Delayed Reaction

Have you ever had this super exciting thing you've looked forward to for months and months, but it takes so long to actually happen that by the time it does you forget to even mention it to anyone?  

Hurray!!!!  About a year and a half ago we started snowballing our student loans (which are the only debts we have) and after paying off Drew's solitary (small) loan, we moved on to mine...which are more plentiful...  ANYway, two down and two degrees paid for, now it's just two loans (for one degree) left!  I hope we can pay them off before we ever buy a house, but we'll see how it goes. 

(Not even an exclamation mark, UHEAA?)

Matched (Book Review)

Author: Ally Condie
Year: 2010
Genre: Dystopian/Romance
Reading Level: Young Adult
Series: #1 in the Matched trilogy

Literary Awards:

Teen Buckeye Book Award (2012), YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults (2011), Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Books of the Year for Fiction (2010), Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee (2013)

Plot Summary: Cassia Reyes has never had any cause to doubt the Society and its benevolence.  When the Society Matches her to her best friend, Xander, everything seems perfect.  But when Cassia catches a glimpse of a different Match for her--one the Society says was just a mistake in the system--her peaceful world explodes into possibilities. 

Red Flags: Some very mild violence

My Rating: B
This rating really has less to do with anything technical and more to do with the fact that this story just didn't interest me.  If you want a dystopian novel that's heavier on the romance and lighter on the heavier stuff that often comes with dystopian novels, this will hit the spot.  If you like an angsty love triangle or fretting over the question of "Which boy??" this is your book!  But as for me, it was just kind of dull and uneventful.  The Society was kind of interesting but not really new and I didn't have much patience for Cassia's mental back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth) with EVERY decision.  

I think Ally Condie has some nice turns of phrase, but I do question her frequent use of people "popping" food in their mouths.  You pop nuts, candy or popcorn in your mouth--but noodles?  Try popping a forkful of spaghetti in your mouth.  It's a small detail, I know, but there are so many words for eating!  Shouldn't an author, of all people, know more than one and know which one works best in a sentence?

Overall, for me, a standard dystopian novel with a bit too much romance (and romantical angsting) for my taste.  

Also I kept picturing these two boys.   Which begs the question, does Ky have a belly button??

Memorable lines:
"My mother yawns, her blue eyes opening wide." (Just try doing this.)

Crafts are for Babies! (Bonus edition)

You know that game of two truths, one lie?  Let's play it: There are three more crafts I did for the Speck.  I am only going to post about one of them.  The images on this post feature his real name.

Just a week or so ago, I had a last minute idea for another craft.  The room needed a little more art, and so I decided it would fun to hang some kind of bunting over the crib that included his name.  We threw around a couple of ideas and soon settled on the best idea, which was also the easiest.  

So I made up triangular pennants in Photoshop featuring the mobile animals, added the letters and then we printed them as 8x10 photos at Costco!  Making them in Photoshop took just a couple of hours and the rest of it took much less.  I cut them out, we measured and cut slits, strung them with ribbon and hung the thing up!  Parfait.  (Everybody likes parfait)

Here they are: 

 

The whales and the anchors are my favorites.  And that smiley face adds some real class, doesn't it?  Lucky Speck.

PS: I knooooooow he's not the size of a Speck anymore, but does anyone really think we'd update his nickname every time he got bigger?  If we did that we'd be calling him Loaf of Bread now.  I have every intention of calling him the Speck even when he's a foot taller than me and whining about girls.

To the North!

Northern California, that is.  We went there for a week and had a grand old time, full of sights and seeing.  Here's how it all happened:

For months we contemplated having a vacation before the Speck arrives--a "babymoon", if you prefer the jargon--but never decided on anything.  Then towards the end of March Drew's boss suggested he come out to California to finally visit the office (he works remotely, you may recall).  To which I said "Vacation!!!" and that was that.  So, not only did we get vacation, we got part of it paid for, since Drew was doing work stuff for a few days.  Partly paid for trips are really the best kind of trips.

We went a lot of places and saw a lot of things, and by golly, if I can boil a Mediterranean cruise down to one post, I can surely do the same for this trip!  But as usual, Drew has covered it in greater detail, if you are looking for detail.  Let's take it place by place:

1) Sacramento: home of the airport and our arrival after an uneventful flight.  We picked up our rental car and headed to...

2) Rancho Cordova: our nearby destination and home of Drew's office.  We checked into our hotel, and tried without success to find a Hmong restaurant in the area.  In the end we went to the recommended Adalberto's for Mexican.  

It turns out their menu is almost identical to the places here, but the food was a lot less greasy, came with free salsa and chips and didn't require a Tums later.  Win-win-win!  From RC, we went a ways up the road to...

3) El Dorado Hills!  We lived here for several years when I was a lass--it's the place and house I remember best from my childhood and it's where we moved from when we went to Missouri.  It was strange and fun to visit, where some things looked so much the same and so many things looked totally different.  It would have been fun to be there with my family, who remember so much more than me, but I did all right on my own.  It was much greener and prettier (scenically speaking) than I remembered.  In some ways it reminded me very much of Missouri, which I did not expect.

My old house!  My room was upstairs in the far right corner.  I wonder if the Strawberry Shortcake wallpaper is still up...

My beloved elementary school.  Go Badgers!  Who are now, apparently, bears. 

At the end of our EDH exploring, we went back to Rancho and picked up a (pricey) pizza from Round Table Pizza, just because I remembered it.  It was very good, and Drew is so nice not to complain when I want a vegetable pizza.

The next three days we stayed in Rancho, and Drew went to work while I sat by the pool in the morning and did little projects at the hotel in the afternoon.  The weather was perfect the entire trip, though the locals apologized many times that it wasn't "better." 

Drewbles went into more detail about this, but I will mention it too.  He's been listening to this particular Survivor podcast for a number of years now, and the people who do it live near Rancho.  So on Wednesday night we watched Survivor with them and then featured on the recap podcast after!  We are like celebrities or at least celebrity adjacent.  Anyway, they were extremely nice and very conscientious hosts and never let my water glass run out.  We stayed up very, very late, but it was really fun and Drew was beside himself with glee.  The next morning we checked out and headed off to...

4) The Jelly Belly Factory: It is exactly what it sounds like--a factory for making jelly bellies.  It also includes this soaring jelly belly man and a lot of Ronald Reagan art made from jelly bellies.

We bought a bag of Belly Flops, had some samples, wore our hats on the tour and then got back on the road for...  

5) The Walt Disney Family Museum: This was our first stop in San Francisco, and it is also much what it sounds like (though it is not owned or run by the Disney company).  We had some navigational issues getting there, but still had plenty of time to see it all.  Highlights include a model of Disneyland and the frequent benches that I took advantage of.  

 

 

After a few hours here, it was evening time and we headed into...

6) San Francisco (proper): We started our first night there by sitting down on the bed and...didn't get up again.  We ordered some Thai and watched a lot of Wife Swap while waiting for Project Runway, which didn't come on until 9 and was TWO HOURS and I fell asleep at the end.  It was good to take it easy because the next day started early with...

6a) Fisherman's Wharf/Aquarium of the Bay/Pier 39: I very much enjoy the sight and smell of fresh seafood, even though I am sometimes grossed out by seeing their glassy eyeballs.  The aquarium was a bit on the small side, but I enjoyed their multiple tunnels and baby rays that would pop their little faces out of the water--has anyone ever seen full-grown rays do that?  I never have seen the like!  Anyway, the chowder from Boudin's made a very excellent lunch.

 

 

 

 

We also saw Hugh Jackman.

6b) Alcatraz: there are so many places I never thought I would actually see in my life, and this is one of them.  One of the good things about Drew is that he DOES stuff instead of wishing to do stuff or talking about doing stuff.  I am less of a doer so he is good for me that way.  Anyhoo, Alcatraz!  It was a very interesting place to visit and kind of spooky too, being an old prison and all.  What a horrible place to live!  Then again, the people who lived there were pretty horrible themselves so...

 

 

One tourist lady in particular was taking these super excited photos throughout. I decided to try her method in the solitary confinement area.  No light or human contact, woot!

6c) Lombard Street: It's...curvy...?  We spent the rest of the night watching Wife Swap (again) and waiting for the new episode of Grimm to come on, only to get a repeat in the end.  Thwarted!

6d) Muir Woods: When I was girl in EDH, we learned about Redwoods in school and all got a tiny sapling to plant.  I remember having ideas about planting it under a trampoline and the tree growing up through it.  This was a silly idea, not least because we didn't even HAVE a trampoline.  Anyway, it was been a lifelong goal of mine to see the Redwoods, and we did it!  (Also, I have to give Rise of the Planet of the Apes credit for my knowing there were Redwoods near San Francisco.)

 

 

 

Sometimes when I see something like this that I've always wanted to see, it feels kind of anticlimactic when it actually happens.  I don't know what I expect--that there will be streamers or fireworks or people congratulating me?  I am learning to just be impressed and glad on my own.  And the trees were SO tall and lovely and it smelled so nice.  Muir Woods itself is a very nice place to visit, with wide, smooth paths to walk on and numerous options for trails of various lengths.  I would love to go back one day and do a longer one, with Drew carrying the Speck around instead of me.  We left there with a little tree model carved from--what else--a Redwood and a nifty pair of earrings made of tiny Redwood pinecones.

6e) The Golden Gate Bridge: We drove over it four times and took lots of pictures.  It is, um, a good, sturdy bridge.

(For all our awkward-on-purpose picture taking, sometimes we look kind of awkward on accident.  It keeps us humble?)

6f) Ocean Beach: Neither of us knew SF housed such a great, sandy beach!  I could have sat there all day, and I would be happy to live in earshot of waves.  Alas, I know from House Hunters that that can be a very expensive place to live.  We did some sand writing, I found some more shells for my collection and we were grossed out by the many partial bodies of crabs in the sand.

  
6g) Ghiradelli Square: We wound up going here for dinner at a fancy schmancy restaurant and I had more chowder (not as good as Boudin's!).  True fact: I couldn't eat all my bread bowl but since I cannot let a bread bowl go to waste, I brought it all the way back home. 

And that, essentially, was the end of our trip!  The next morning we packed, I wore my dress as a skirt (awesome), I maybe cried about not being able to pack a suitcase right (um), we went back to Sacramento and a short flight and drive later we were back at home.

It was the perfect length of trip, and it was fun to see a new place and so many new things.  I was a little nervous beforehand about my ability to do stuff, and while I wasn't as fast as usual, I was quite pleased with how well I kept up and how not-hard it was.  Go me!  I suppose the Speck deserves a little credit there too.  *high fives tummy*  Thanks for the trip, Husb and Husb's work!

(Final side note: people in California were much more prone to stare at my stomach than Utahers.  Also much more prone to say things like "When are you due!?!?  *googly eyes*"  Newbs.)

Crafts are for Babies! (pt. 4)

Way back at Christmastime, when the world was finally interesting to me again (beyond House Hunters and the couch), I started thinking about this little creature human who had taken up residence in my innards.  Not meaningful thoughts, but thoughts like "I should probably make something."  I enjoyed making my little felt snowmen so much that I soon came to the conclusion that I needed to make a mobile with felt animals galore.  

I poked around the internet for tutorials, but the one I kept seeing that suited my plan involved cross stitching hoops.  Now, let me say that sometimes I am irrational.  And for some reason I was irrationally against using cross stitching hoops.  The thought filled me with revulsion.  It STILL fills me with revulsion.  (Obviously I have nothing against other people using those hoops--it's just the thought of ME using them that I can't stand) 

So, I came up with the whole design myself and I intended to document this whole mobile-making process from start to finish.  Well.  That didn't really happen at all.  Oh well, I'll conquer Pinterest another day.  Plus, now I am mysterious.  

Once we knew the Speck was a boy, I knew I wanted a mobile of sea creatures.  So Drewbles and I brainstormed a bit for creatures and corresponding colors and then I drew the thing up:

(Side story: sometimes during college, when I was really hungry, I would sometimes draw my dinner in my notebook margins--all of the ingredients and how to assemble them.  This worked best with sandwiches and burritos.)

Then I drew out my little patterns, using an oatmeal lid as a frame for the drawings to keep them all roughly the same size.  It was not an exact science, as some were long and some were tall and some were big all around. 

We took a little trip to Coney Island Hobby Lobby and then I got to work cutting them out.  Then, while we were in California and Drew was working, I spent a couple afternoons sewing them up and stuffing them.  One thing I quickly learned: stuff as you go!  I even took a picture of this part:

That was the last picture I took before it was done, oops.  Assembly didn't take as long as I thought, but I did hit a bump when it came time to fixing the anchor to the rest of it (I had drawn this out but it didn't work quite right in execution).  I scowled at it for a few days and then Drew sat down and figured it out in ten minutes.  This is what husbandfolk are for, people.  Here is the finished product:

(Husbandfolk are also handy for holding things so you can take pictures of your craftiness)

Here are some glamour shots of the individual players:

(We call this one Spyro...it was not intentional)

(When I sewed this one up his open-mouthed smile kind of disappeared.  Now it looks more like a toothless, old-man kind of smile.  But he's still pretty cute, I GUESS.)

I'll let you work out just how it all came together because it would be a really boring thing to read and probably confusing without any pictures.  But I'm pleased to say that it turned out exactly how I envisioned it, and really, can one ask any more of a craft?  

The Law and the Lady (Book Review)

Author: Wilkie Collins
Year: 1875
Genre: Mystery/Classics
Reading Level: Adult

Plot Summary: Valeria is a brand-new bride when she accidentally uncovers a dreadful secret in her new husband's past.  Too ashamed to live with her knowing she is aware of his history, her husband leaves her.  Determined to recover her marriage, Valeria begins her own investigation into the past, but what she finds there may do more harm than good.

Red Flags: None

My Rating: B
This book was a nice change of pace, as it's been a while since I read a classic.  I wish I could say this was more satisfying than it was, but still, I generally enjoyed it.  The first half was definitely my favorite part--it was compelling and mysterious.  The second half started to drag, partly because I figured things out so far ahead of the characters (it would be interesting to know if many contemporary readers solved the mystery early or if this is just a byproduct of living in the age of Law & Order).   

There were a lot of interesting elements to this book, as well as a few rather dull ones.  Dexter in particular was so different and, really, quite strange (as was Ariel).  It's also unusual to read a mystery novel from a female protagonist's perspective.  Valeria was not the most exciting character, but I always hoped the best for her and was invested in her self-declared mission. I wouldn't call Wilkie Collins a masterful writer, but he did create a couple of very memorable (and rather tragic) characters.

Overall, there were some very unique elements to this book, especially in the characters, and the mystery was a compelling one.  I wish the second half had kept up the intensity of the first, but despite my quibbles, it was a worthwhile read.

Memorable lines:
"It shared the fate of most warnings. It only made me more and more eager to have my own way."--ch. 23

"My brains are boiling in my head."--ch. 24

"There is the whole difference between the mental constitution of the sexes, which no legislation will ever alter as long as the world lasts! What does it matter? Women are infinitely superior to men in the moral qualities which are the true adornments of humanity. Be content—oh, my mistaken sisters, be content with that!"--ch. 29

"And so it ended! Not as I thought it would end; not perhaps as you thought it would end. What do we know of our own lives? What do we know of the fulfillment of our dearest wishes? God knows—and that is best."--ch. 50