sushi for the new year

i'd write a nice post summing up the year beautifully and poignantly. but for 2 reasons. 1) i have a cat (doozer) sitting in front of the monitor* which makes it hard to see. and 2) i'm headed out to friend's house for sushi! yum!

have a safe and happy new year. welcome 2009! can't wait to see the great things you bring!

*i now have 1 cat on my lap licking my fingers and 1 cat in front of the monitor. sweet. i hate to break their little hearts by leaving the house in a minute.

reengaged

we're back from nj...well, i should say, i'm back. baldman was back for a day and then left for ms, where he will deposit his mother, visit family, attend to some business, and then return to me by the weekend.

we had a fantastic visit with family and i will post pictures and share more later this week.

i do want to share about my big christmas present from my husband. but that requires a little tangent.

when we first got engaged in the late fall of 2001, we did it with very little frills. hey, we're no frills people, so it fit. we did not have an engagement ring, and neither of us felt particularly interested in getting one. primarily this was because we were very aware of the fact that the exploitation of diamonds causes wide-spread human rights abuses in africa (no need to post a link here, just google it for lots of reading). and because the idea that a diamond engagement ring equals forever is just blatantly offensive to me. the other reason was that frankly we didn't have the money and both baldman and i are pretty much ethically agreed that we won't buy anything we can't afford. in the back of my head, i did think it would be cool to get some kind of antique ring maybe for an anniversary or something down the line. but i digress. so we had no engagement ring, just wedding bands.

well, a few months ago when baldman's mom and sister were cleaning their mother/grandmother's house, they came across her engagement ring, given to her in the 1940's. baldman's mom asked if he would like to give it to me, he conferred with me, and we agreed it would be a very meaningful and special thing to have. so baldman took it, got it sized and presented it to me on christmas morning. it was all very sweet. so here's the picture of him giving it to me.



and here is a picture of the ring with my wedding band. sorry it's not a better picture but our camera kept dying (piece of junk! (the camera, not the ring)).



now that i've had the ring and worn it for a few days it's a really weird thing to have it on. i almost feel too flashy or like i've given up some of my identity. i know that sounds strange, but it's such a rarity to not have an engagement ring, i felt sort of more special not having one, like it was more purposeful that way. but of course, i'm totally happy to have it and i know it's a very special thing! i just have to get used to it. and we feel like it's a win all around. we're making use of something that was no longer being used, thus not necessarily taking away the means by which the diamond was acquired, but at least making full use out of it (it's recycling, y'all!). but more importantly, we have something that has history with our family and that means a lot to all of us. i only hope that we will be able to pass it down to our grandchild some day.

online card

have a very merry and blessed christmas, dear readers!

it's your birthday today. yes it is!

happy birthday to my sweet, sweet, sweety. i love you and i look forward to many more years to celebrate the blessings of your life.

a very waldie christmas

it's about to be a very waldie* christmas.





*and cutshall, and reid.

that's south carolina for ya

when my coworker was doing some research today on local schools she came across this little gem...posted on the district website!

Lexington One spends less per pupil than many school districts in the state. In fact 48 out of the state’s 85 school districts currently spend more per pupil than Lexington One. Obviously the district is a good steward of taxpayers’ money.

really, people!? i would have thought the district would want to hide this fact, not advertise it! wouldn't you think that education would be one thing we would want our tax dollars to go to?

a capital weekend

i've been absent from posting for about a week because i've been running a christmas frenzy to get everything done before our trip to nj next week. i've also been recovering from a hectic but fun weekend in dc.

we went to the wedding of a friend of mine from college, so we got to reconnect with some old friends and meet some new ones. we even got an added bonus of crashing at the apartment of a friend from columbia who relocated to dc. plus we snuck in a museum or two, which was exhausting, but worth it.

here are some photographic highlights.


the nation's capital in the evening



a friendly face.


this picture is blurry because our camera was fritzing out, but it shows emily's beautiful dress and veil. the veil was irish lace that has been used for generations of weddings in her family. she looked so classy!


the nyu ladies


who are those fancy people?


the band, amaretto, was awesome!


the finesse


"hello there."


OMG! baldman's biggest fear!


friends

an unexpected expense

we had to have a dead tree removed from our property. it was really big, probably one of the biggest in the neighborhood, not that you could tell from these pictures.







bye bye, tree.

this one's for erica

christmas shopping

for those still looking to get some shopping done, here is a great place to get some creative, home-made gifts.

waldie's quiz answered

thanks, all, who took part in the waldie's quiz. i didn't expect to get such analytical answers!

so you're all right, even fuzzy (sort of) who said e) dubloons! over the past 14 months we have found any number of (un)amazing things buried (or not buried) in our back yard. we have found lots of small and large pieces of glass, a whole paint can, whole and pieces of cinder blocks and bricks, a rug that was about 3'x15' (buried and covered with dirt and grass), pennies (almost a spanish dubloon), rusted tools, etc.

so we feel fairly certain that before we arrived our house was solidly in the white trash realm. well, maybe we haven't really helped it too much on that front, but at least we're getting rid of the actual trash in the yard.

a single flower

i think it's appropriate that the rose bushes in our front yard have produced one single pink flower today. today is the anniversary of baldman's dad's death and those flowers were from his funeral.

david reid, march 23, 1954 - december 2, 2007
we miss you.

waldie's quiz

i am always amazed at the buried treasure that i find every time i work out in the garden. today i spent the day raking pine straw and magnolia leaves. while i was raking i ran across an unexpected item buried in the ground. which leads me to this quiz:

which of the following items have i found buried in our yard?
a) broken glass
b) a rug
c) a can of paint
d) whole cinder blocks

post your answers in the comments section and i'll reveal the answer in another post in a few days.

happy thanksgiving!

i hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving! this was our first thanksgiving in our house and without family. plus, it brought up some difficult memories of the past year. but we tried our hardest to make it a great holiday and it really was!

we took a walk for a couple of hours this morning. it was a beautiful day so we went down to the river walk. here are a few shots of sites along the way.


kittens!



then we came back and got to work on cooking. we had some good friends over and had an excellent afternoon of eating, drawing, silly dances, charades, and playing outside. it couldn't have been a more perfect day in my opinion.

here are some pictures of the afternoon at the house and a video of us all doing silly dances to work off some of our dinner and clear room in our tummies for dessert.


playing outside.










drawing pictures.


charades.

our annual annual christmas party is back!

since thanksgiving is just barrelling toward us (this week!) and next sunday starts advent, it's a natural extension to forget all that and jump right to christmas!*

those folks who have known us for a few years might remember our annual christmas party. we had to put a hiatus on it last year but this year we'll be back in full swing, with a slight alteration. because of scheduling conflicts we're going to do it in january this year. so mark your calendars for january 10th and we'll have more details to come in a few weeks.

i'll leave you with this picture of yummy food to tempt you to hold that date on your calendars.

yummmm! be there!

*for those sticklers who are all for keeping holidays holidays and get mad when they put halloween candy out in august, i'm actually with you on that. it was a little jest about skipping thanksgiving and advent.

still sick but recovering

i stayed home from work for three days this week. that's a rarity in my life. (and i'll pay for it in the coming weeks.) i still have a bit of the sniffles and lots of phlegm (i just like that word, sorry) but overall i feel a whole lot better.

it was a guilty pleasure just lounging around for those 3 days, though. i think i watched like 15 hours of the newest season of dancing with the stars. i'm still not caught up to the current episode so don't give anything away if you've been watching. despite never being a fan of n'sync, i think i really like lance bass, even though i'm sure he won't make it all the way.

thanks husband

i'm staying home from bible study tonight because my throat hurts like mad crazy. baldman had this "cold-thingy" for a week and now, it seems, has passed it on to me. so i guess we do share everything.

i've not been regularly blogging, which some have pointed out to me, thank you very much. i have had things to post about but mostly no time. and then when i had a minute of time, nothing really seemed noteworthy to blog about.

i'm finishing up the last of the creative act classes. we've met some really interesting authors, the most funny was sophie gee who talked about sex and garbage in the 18th century. i think it would've been hilarious in any context, but it was especially hilarious given the age of most attendants. i look forward to hearing jane hamilton this week (if i make it. cold, go away!) even though her book made me want to slit my wrists.

i picked our first harvest of collards and put it in a delic quiche. the garlic has sprouted, as have some of our other seeds. now i have to get out there and tidy things up a bit and continue to pray that they grow grow grow.

we're not going out of town for thanksgiving, which is sad. this'll be the first thanksgiving that we've had at our own place though, so i guess that's good. we're going to have some company over and hopefully make some really yummy treats! i love thanksgiving foods!

benefit concert

gringo star

check it out. my cousin's band, gringo star, is mentioned as spin magazine's artist of the day. way to go guys!

yes we can

i would feel like i was missing something if i didn't speak a few words about yesterday's election.

i voted yesterday evening. it took all of 10 minutes (though it did take my husband 2 1/2 hours in the morning).

congratulations to our new president-elect obama.

what's been going on

i mentioned in my previous post that i would blog more about what i've been up to, which may have sounded like i'd been up to something really interesting. sorry for the let down.

but here are a few of the mundane things i've been up to.

i'm still really enjoying the lectures that i'm going to 2 times a week. last wednesday we welcomed richard ford. i find it fascinating to hear authors talk about their books because they (or at least those so far) have been nothing like their characters. yet at the same time they talk so much like their characters and when they read their books it just sounds so much better.

on tuesday evening i had to get all fancied-up for a gala that my work was having. baldman couldn't go with me so i had to fly solo. but he took this picture of me as i headed out the door.



this weekend i am working on getting my garden into shape. i took out all the old dead and dying veggies (pumpkins that never took, spent tomato plants and green bean vines). i tilled the soil and planted my garlic and a few more seeds. the last round of seeds didn't really take so i'm trying some lettuces and spinach again. i think they should survive the cold weather, if they grow at all. let's hope so. i also moved around a few plants to try to see if they will do better in a different spot. i guess i practice experimental gardening. whereby, i sort of read books and such on plants, and then mostly ignore or forget what it says, causing me to move things around until i find a place that 1) i like and 2) it will grow.

anyways, i worked a good part of the day and then collapsed for an hour on the swing. it was really nice to do that. this photo was not authorized but i'll post it anyway.

singing tea part two

my tea sang again yesterday morning. it's kind of becoming like a morning melody now.

happy halloween

a little halloween joke from my laffy taffy.

question: why did the skeleton go to the movies alone?


answer: because he had nobody to go with him.


OH!

happy halloween, y'all.



(by the way, i have more to write on several things over the past few days but i'm exhausted and don't have the energy now. so more to come hopefully over the weekend.)

singing tea

this morning i made myself a cup of tea and a bagel and sat down to do some work on the computer. immediately i started hearing this high pitched humming sound. i didn't think much of it at first because we live by a factory which makes weird noises at all hours. when it got louder i thought it was the computer. but then i went to take a sip of tea and i realized it was coming from my mug of tea! what's the deal, y'all!? there wasn't anything in the mug except hot water (boiled on the stove, not in the microwave), diluted tea, and honey. no teabag. no spoon. but it was making a very distinct and audible hum/whine sound. i didn't know what else to do so i just drank it. but i felt very much like the tea was dying as i did so.

there was no one else around except the cats so i have no proof of this. but i swear it happened.

preserving history

i mentioned a bit ago that i was taking a free seminar at our town's university. one of the books that we've been assigned is daniel mendelsohn's the lost. in the book, daniel goes on a search to find out how his jewish great uncle, aunt and their four daughters died in poland during the holocaust. during this search, he ends up learning not only how they died, but also a whole lot about how they (and others in their small town) lived during that time.

of all the books we've read for the class, this one has so far been my favorite. i have always found family history and family myths to be quite an interesting interesting subject, so the book was already right up my alley. plus, i really enjoyed mendelsohn's classical way of telling a story by weaving through various tangential topics, eventually leading to some point or found fact. it's totally fascinating. i highly recommend the read. however, i should note that there are some really horrific depictions of what happened to the people in the town, many of which will be permanently ingrained in my memory.

because of this book, though, i've been giving a lot of thought to how all of us (or, rather, most of us) will eventually be forgotten. all of our stories will eventually just fade away, just as the majority of those who went before us have faded. it seems very fitting to the cycle of life, yet at the same time, it really makes me sad.

so it was very fitting that today i received an email from my brother about a family website that he and another relative have started for my mother's family. it's totally interesting and they did a great job!

it's an interesting way, i think, to preserve history and to continue the telling of stories. won't it be interesting to see what happens to the web (and all our stories on it) when our children's children are coming up?

state fair

on sunday baldman took a surprise (to me) break from his homework (he has 1 exam and 1 paper due this week) and escorted me to the state fair. i LOVE the fair! and i really didn't think i would get there this year. i think i just love all that greasy, deep fried, sugary, salty, goodness in such a small vicinity. though, i can't believe it, but i didn't have a fried candy bar this year. i just felt too junked out at the moment. so we opted for french fries instead (much healthier??).

we just walked around for a few hours. we checked out the artwork, the agriculture, the sand sculpture, the (classic!) people-watching, and seals. yes, seals! we saw some high schoolers showing off their goats (no euphemism there. i mean literal goats.). they were cute (the goats, not the teenagers). though the seals were cuter. i tried to upload a video of a daredevil motorcyclist that we saw, but it didn't work :( so you'll have to imagine it: a guy in a metal circle cage who rode his motorcycle completely upside down and around the inside of the cage with a woman standing in the middle of it, all to the song crazy train. we did manage a few picts on flickr.

too funny to pass up

i'm sorry, but i just thought this was really fun. i mean, i usually find sarah silverman funny so i guess that's not a surprise.

warning, this video does contain cursing so it's definitely not one to watch at work or with the kids around.


The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

thanks, paul, for reaching across the isle and posting this on your blog.

reid party

since we had the house clean and party-ready for the slow food event on saturday, we decided to just open up the house in the evening and have a little party for our friends. we had a small but fun crowd come out. some folks even came from out of state! great company and more delicious food. how could we go wrong?

here are some picts that we took.









you can find a link to more pictures of the event taken by one of our guests here.

caught in the creative act

for the past few years (4 i think) usc has hosted a free lecture series, caught in the creative act, where 2 days a week for 6 weeks, folks read books, discuss, and meet the authors. i'm really excited to be registered for the course this year. i went to our first session tonight and it was packed. and i thought it was really interesting that i was basically the only person in the auditorium who was under the age of oh, say, 50 (to be generous). that's not deterring me. as i mentioned to baldman tonight, i spend a whole lot of time around teens and youth, so i'm actually looking forward to spending some time with older folks. this wednesday we'll meet our first author, josephine humphries (who is from our state).

here is the book list for this semester if you want to read along (cause i think it might be too late to register,but i'm not 100% sure):

Josephine Humphreys, Rich in Love

Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost

Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land

Valerie Miner, After Eden

Sophie Gee, Scandal of the Season & Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock

Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

beer paring event sum-up and picts

the slow food columbia beer pairing went really well this weekend. we had a good turnout. folks seemed to really enjoy the chill atmosphere, the fantastic beers, and the sumptuous food. plus, the weather held out for folks to get in a few games of red neck golf. a big ups to untamed beer for being our guest speaker at this event. if you're looking for someone to MC your next beer event, brian's your guy!


cerelle starts out the event with a slow food intro


brian pours the first beers


everyone listens intently to the beer master

if you're interested in more info about the beers we sampled, check out untamed beer's post about the event.

GOTV

south carolina, and lots of other parts of the country, today's the last day to register to vote. if you've not done it, do it!

domestic violence awareness month

the month of october is domestic violence awareness month. one of the events going on around town is this art exhibit at city art in the vista. it's totally free and open to the public. i went tonight (briefly because i'm under the weather) to their opening reception and was able to see the photographs. they're totally moving and worth taking a look-see.

Details.....



SCCADVASA presents an exclusive showing of Living with the Enemy
The Exhibition: An Extraordinary work of photojournalism by Donna Ferrato
Exhibit will be at City Art Gallery
1224 Lincoln Street, Columbia, SC 29201
October 3-11, 2008

more information can be found here.

slow food event at our house

i can't believe i've neglected to put this on my blog before today.

Slow Food Columbia Presents:

Local Beer Tasting - October 11, 2008 from 2:00pm - 4:00pm

Beer Tasting with small food pairings
Olympia / Columbia, SC
Saturday, October 11, 2008 - 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
$30 for non-Slow Food members; $25 for members

Slow Food Columbia is hosting a casual local beer tasting which will take place at the home of Waldie, an active member of our convivium. We hope you will join us as we welcome from Greenville, local beer expert Brian Cendrowski.

I think the best quotation from Brian's bio - and the most fitting for Slow Foodies - is the following: "For Brian, it isn't just about the beer, it's about the people and the relationships that beer brings together."

So please join us! We're selling tickets online only for this smaller, more laid-back event. Tickets must be purchased in advance, online and cannot be bought at the door.

BUY TICKETS TODAY:http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/44977


More information here.

great dinner

roasted sweet potatoes with butter

indian-spiced chickpea salad with yogurt and herbs

spiced mustard greens with cumin

pumpkin pie

cursed machinery

remember how i sung the praises of the bread machine that i just got? well, i bought the ingredients to make a second loaf of bread yesterday and wouldn't you know but the little paddle thing (a necessary part of the machine) was totally missing! i searched high and low and just cannot find it. and, since it's a discontinued model the piece was hard to come by and i ended up paying $23 for the replacement. that's my luck for ya!

doozer inspects the alien visiting the house

last weekend

i never really wrote in detail about what we did last weekend when my parents were in town. so here it is.

they arrived wednesday night and left on monday morning so we had a good long 4 day weekend to chill and do fun stuff.

i already mentioned that bo put in a dishwasher for us. here's a picture of it.

a God send!

thursday night we were tired from installing the dishwasher all day and the house was a wreck so we took take the parents out to one of our favorite restaurants in town. yummm! be bim bop!

friday, baldman had to work so he stayed in town, but mom, bo and i headed to the mountains to visit my uncle in boone. what a great town that is! we just hung around the town, walked in a few shops, went to dinner with my aunt and uncle and then the 5 of us took off to cross the border into tennessee to go to an antique auction. i love auctions. it's like a lost art. and i find it fascinating to see what people bid and do not bid on. i got a lot of interesting stuff there*.

here are a few picts of boone, (i'm sorry i didn't take more).





we got home way late friday so us old folks were about spent for the rest of the weekend. we walked around thrift stores and then headed home for a rest and a home cooked meal and time to spiff up for an nice evening out. a few weeks ago a very considerate friend of ours gave us season tickets to the south carolina philharmonic. because they were season tickets we also got 2 free additional tickets to any show of our choice. so, that being said, saturday was opening night and we all got to go! the show was fantastic and the new music director was really lively! it was great fun!

after mass on sunday we headed to the greek festival. man, that place was packed! they even expanded it this year, but it was still packed. and for the first time since we've been attending (5 years), they were sold out of most of the good food. the veggie plate was gone. the spanekopeta was gone. the baklava was gone. geeze, what did we go for!? but we scrounged a plate together anyway and enjoyed the good weather and people watching.




*"interesting" is sort of a polite way to say junk. but, to be honest, it really wasn't junk. my uncle had a great time bidding on things and then say, "i bought that for you!" so i got a great dresser which my mom bought me, a watermelon rug (the most interesting find), and a cool oil lamp which is missing the dome on top.