Thanksgiving.

After making three loaves of buttermilk bread for our various festivities on Wednesday night, I went out to see an old friend I rarely get to see these days. I rarely get to see him because he lives in restaurant New York ... where night is day and day is night. In any case, it was good to see him, despite being incredibly exhausted when I woke up the next morning for my first New York Thanksgiving.

First, we went to a pot luck with a rather eclectic group, where for the first time in my life people actually gave me business cards. It was a pretty good time with a copious amount of food and nice people. The bread received a rather warm reception and the conversation flowed pretty easily given that some people there were aspiring Broadway stars, some MBA's and quants, some lonely churchgoers with nowhere else to be and well ... me. All of us crammed into a somewhat warm New York apartment and ate well more than is humanly natural.

Second, we went over to have dinner with some old friends, their parents, their 2 year old son, as well as their son's playground friend and his family. My friends were cooking so much food they had commandeered the stove in a common room of their building to assist in the preparations. Now, ideally, this meal would have started at 4, putting us home right at 6:30 or so when I expected my friends from LA to arrive at our apartment after their transcontinental flight. However, this was not to be. Everyone ran a bit late but fortuitously my friends and their family had prepared SO much food, my friends were able to come from the airport and join us for a Thanksgiving meal. The turkey was perfectly cooked (though the hosts declared it too dry), the sweet potatoes were marshmallow free and delicious, there were homemade cinnamon biscuits, crisp green beans and fresh, tart, homemade cranberry sauce. This delicious meal was then capped off by the presentation of the largest apple pie I have ever seen in my life. It was big enough to feed an army. Even though everyone had a fairly large piece, less than half of it was gone. All this delicious food was enjoyed while the kids chased each other around, played with Mindy, made music and tried on fireman outfits to the general delight of parents, grandparents and guests alike. It was a great meal, but we were all exhausted and before it was too late grabbed a cab home for the four of us ... plus Mindy of course.

Upon arriving home our friends surprised us with a new version of Scene-It, which we gladly cracked open and played several rounds of while our stomachs began to slowly forgive us (or at least I felt this way) for the day of overindulgence. It was a lot of fun and my personal record was 5-1 for the night. Though sadly I felt I had no real astonishing answers or flashes of brilliant, insightful recall. I pretty much got lucky. But, I will take it as this morning I am not nearly as lucky, since I am sitting in my office waiting for a collaborator to be free in order to discuss a project we need to have submitted within a week or two. I hate abandoning my friends for a morning, but this does need to get done so hopefully it will pay off in the end. In any case, he is about to be free, so I should wrap up. In any case, that was Thanksgiving for me this year.

AMNH

Well, it is in. My application to volunteer at the Natural History Museum is in. We shall see if it works out, but hopefully this will give me a way to get out of the house and do something worthwhile.

Catching Up on Photos...

These photos go back to my last night in Germany with a very old friend, attending the US Open including a Williams Sisters match and my trip to Austin where I saw my cousin D. Sadly I have been bad about taking my camera with me these days, but hopefully I will be able to steal some photos from Amber to document other experiences I have had. In any case, on this night before Thanksgiving, I wanted to try to catch up and bring myself back to keeping up with documenting my adventures.

Austin:



The US Open:




































Last Night In Bonn with Anne:

Everyman

While my second loaf of buttermilk bread is coming together, I figured I would write about the book I just finished, namely Everyman by Phillip Roth. This is my first Roth novel, and he is certainly gifted at concisely capturing the emotions one feels in various parts of their life. Death is the central theme here, and the character relives his greatest triumphs and tragedies, moments of extreme virility and tremendous frailty. It is a life both well led and full of hurtful acts and regrets. Though this man was perhaps too old for me to fully understand his reaction to things like the terrorist acts of 9/11 and a loss of one's former perceived glory, but it was a captivating perspective on death and dying. As I think about death more than I care to admit, I did appreciate the read and particularly will come back to this book for the words to express the way I am feeling when I eventually lose those I love.

For Shame.

So, although it is not reflected here, I have been in the mood to write quite a bit lately but often just too tired or distracted to do so. To that end, I want to try to start posting stories more often (hopefully daily) and get back in the routine of the actually recording my thoughts. If anyone out there who actually reads this blog would do their best to prod me along in this, I might need it.

A Prayer for Owen Meany.

I just finished this book by John Irving, which surprisingly I really enjoyed. I say surprisingly because having started this book before and put it aside out of boredom, it was more out of desperation I picked it up off my shelf again for my subway reading selection. However, this time around I found it incredibly endearing, funny and particularly true to the experience of being a young boy. Some of the things that happened to John Wheelwright as he became an adult seemed a bit far fetched, particularly his difficulty in meeting women. I do not know why it struck me as so unrealistic, but perhaps it is because I myself feel like a Joseph much of the time but was able to at least find one woman who was interested in me. Also, the character of Hester was a bit hard for me to find believable. Throughout the book, I was unable to get a clear picture of her in my head, which to me means the character was a bit ill-formed. However, some of the characters seemed all too real. I felt far more afraid of the similarities I saw between myself and Lewis Merrill, the individual whose constant feelings of doubt, fear and guilt drive him to weakness and ineffectiveness both personally and professionally.

I am making too much of the faults and dark themes of this book, since really it is one of the funniest, most hopeful books I have read in a rather long time. It actually made me laugh out loud regularly and molded some incredibly lovable characters in Owen, Tabby, Dan, the Grandmother, the cousins and even the town players. In the end, this was really a fantastic tale of friendship and loss.

Also, as an English teacher, Wheelwright also comments that the true wit of an author is lost on the young, who are all driven only by plot and action. It shames me to say, this statement applies directly to me. It has taken age and experience to find the joy in subtle observations about life, society and relationships buried in pages of detailed descriptions. In any case, I am glad I read this book as an adult, as I would not have appreciated it any earlier.

Quick Question...

Does drinking mint tea while winding down after editing papers all evening count as a new hobby? I am hoping so, because then I am well on my way to being more well-rounded.