recommended viewing for July 2007

The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

The trouble with Harry

Impossible to get a decent night's sleep until I finished the new Harry Potter. The reviews haven't been 100 percent kind to that book, even before it was written. And I certainly agree with some of the criticisms. But for Rowling's ability to create a wolrd and move me into it for however long it takes to read those pages, for her to create voices that I can hear inside my head and hillsides that I can see even without closing my eyes, I applaud the hell out of her. I love these books -- every bit as much as I loved "A Wrinkle in Time" when I was a kid (you can see the similarities). I loved the chance to be part of the magic again. Could have done without the epilogue, however...Aside from being totally cheesy, it came at the end of a book that really taps into your imagination, and then took away any chance for you to actually use that imagination.

You reap what you sow? Yeah, right.

This is the kind of speech you can only use figuratively. Gardenwise it just isn't adding up for me.

I planted zucchini and yellow squash and tomatoes and cucumbers and radishes.
The rabbits took over so we built a fence.
The radish havest came up okay but the tomatoes got attacked by birds.
The cucumbers got hijacked by a bunch of renegade chipmonks.
We tried covering the plants with a net. That stopped the birds, but not the renegade chipmonks. I tried to put toilet paper rolls over the stems of the squash but we still got those borer beetles. And the drought hasn't helped. Inconsistant watering leads to blossom end rot, despite putting tums in the soil to help give it a boost of calcium. We're still getting something of a harvest. Not all of the tomatoes have blossom end rot, and the little cucumbers are doing great (the vine produces so many that it's okay if we have a couple of renegade chipmonks). And how much zucchini does one family need? Still, we are NOT reaping what we sow here. Not by a longshot.

new vehicles

So we've just bought ourselves a new vehicle. Am suffering from buyer's remorse in that
1. it isn't a hybrid
2. it isn't a station wagon.
We weren't station wagon people when I was a kid, we were sedan people. Now that I'm a grownup and should get to BE a station wagon person, I just couldn't find the right option. I was ticked off at Suburu for the way they treated us when our old Suburu died. The Passat didn't stack up in consumer reports (or our own affordability index). And my beloved Toyota STOPPED MAKING STATION WAGONS SOMETIME IN THE 90s. So here we are in a regular Accord, which looks kind of purlish in the right light. I feel like I'm cheating on Toyota (my Corolla has 230,000 miles and counting) but they let me down first with this station wagon business.

At least we didn't get a KIA Sedona. And at least, as I enter into my first car payment since 1995, I now know what kind of cars are out there. My friend Mia says they don't make cars for people like us. I think she might be right.

ladybird johnson, rip

It is a weird thing to learn somebody's still alive just in time to hear about her death. There I was, looking at that same Frank Wolfe photo of the first lady in a field of painted wild flowers. The photo hadn't changed, but everything else had, which I guess is the way it always is. No great words of wisdom, here. Just wanted to note my sadness at her passing.