I haven't seen Clint Eastwood yet

CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, Calif. -- We're on day No. 5 of the Trip to Nearly All of California. So far, we've hung out in Berkeley, bummed around San Francisco, played in Santa Cruz and put our feet in the ocean at Half Moon Bay. Now we're in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where Clint Eastwood was mayor from 1986 to 1988. (Though we've decided that he is and always will be the mayor of Mantown.) We'd planned to spend the night in Big Sur, but those pesky wildfires have closed the Pacific Coast Highway around the town. So, we quickly amended plans, found a lovely hotel in Carmel and will take 101 down to Santa Barbara. It's not quite the drive down the PCH I was hoping for, but it will do in a pinch.

Some visuals for you.


Muir Beach


Half Moon Bay


We bought fresh strawberries here. They were quite tasty.

Of retirement and science

Geez, I can't seem to rustle up the energy lately to attend to this blog every day. But I am not retiring this endeavor, like Joseph, Rusty and B.J. I'll miss your posts, fellas.

Anywho, I keep forgetting to post this little tidbit. The boyfriend's big hit "What We Need More of is Science" is featured in the video for the Science Olympiad's National Tournament, held at George Washington University in May. It's the first song you hear when the video opens. Awesome.
UPDATE: My parents called to say they saw the Science Olympiad video on the PBS station at their cabin in Arkansas over the weekend. Going global!

Also, I'm going to California in a week, traveling from San Francisco down to Burbank via Highway 1. Last chance for recommendations on stuff to do!

I'm so lazy

At least, that's the excuse I'm giving for why I haven't written lately. Not a good one, but it's a reason. In the meantime, here are a few of the things that have changed since we last talked.

1. I watch a lot of Ninja Warrior and Unbeatable Banzuke. I can't get enough of the commentators. "How could he let this happen? He has taken a watery plunge off the Rolling Log!" and "Welcome back to your greatest nightmare, Yamamoto! Mr. Ninja Warrior, my friend, will the sun ever shine on you again?"

2. My parents met the boyfriend's parents. It was a lot of fun, actually. We all went to the Georgia Aquarium on a Saturday, a sport I would not recommend unless you like wall-to-wall screaming children and no elbow room. We also got to spend some quality time with the boyfriend's sister, who is currently with child.



3. I bought an orange purse. Yes, I also thought I had lost my mind, but it's the cutest bag. Of course, as usual, I can't find it on the Target Web site. You'll just have to use your imagination. Having gone to college in Big Orange Country, I was little concerned I would look like a crazy alum trying to relive her glory days, but the tint is far too dark for it to be Vol orange. Plus, orange is the new black. Or maybe yellow is. Whatever.

See Rock City. Check.

From our trip to Chattanooga last weekend...


The Walnut Street (pedestrian) Bridge


Jellyfish at the Tennessee Aquarium


I'm not sure who the little girl is, but the fish sure liked her.


Lover's Leap at Rock City


The carousel at Coolidge Park downtown


An interactive percussion public art thingamabob at Coolidge Park.


Owen, the child of my friend, Sara. He had just turned one a few days before. I blogged about his birth here.

Books! Books!

Scrivener did it. So did Alenda Lux. Guess I'll jump in, too.

The top 100 or so books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. Bold the books you have read, caps lock the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. It's a nice way to make yourself feel guilty for the ones you haven't read.

Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
WUTHERING HEIGHTS
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
DON QUIXOTE
MOBY DICK
ULYSSES
Madame Bovary
THE ODYSSEY
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
JANE EYRE
THE TALE OF TWO CITIES
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
THE ILIAD
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
THE CANTERBURY TALES
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
OLIVER TWIST
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
THE PRINCE
THE SOUND AND THE FURY
Angela's Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
THE SCARLET LETTER
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
THE MISTS OF AVALON
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
TREASURE ISLAND
David Copperfield
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Sex and the City review

WARNING: THESE ARE MY THOUGHTS ON THE SEX AND THE CITY MOVIE. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, YOU SHOULD STOP READING RIGHT NOW. DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU.

I was very nervous going into the Sex and the City movie. I adore the show and was worried the movie would just ruin everything. The show tied everything up with a neat little pink bow, and I was not prepared to have that all unraveled. Previews showed infidelity, jilting, crying and -- groan -- Jennifer Hudson. Holy crap, that girl can't act.

I joined what appeared to be every single woman in Atlanta to watch the movie last night. And I am elated to say it was great! It was witty. It gave longtime dedicated fans of the show plenty of inside jokes. It had fantastically outlandish fashion statements. And it ended well, which, let's face it, is what needed to happen. It dragged in a few places but mostly felt like a really long episode of the popular HBO show. Even Jennifer Hudson was bearable.

Synopsis: The movie picks up four years after the show ended with Carrie happily in love with Mr. Big. Samantha has moved to California to be with Smith. Miranda is still working too much, which is causing her marriage to Steve to suffer. Six months without sex. Ouch. Charlotte is, of course, happily married to Harry and raising adopted daughter Lilly. Then everything falls apart when Carrie is jilted by Big at the altar and Steve cheats on Miranda. There's a lot of tears, a trip to Mexico and many, many cocktails. Carrie reinvents herself with a new assistant (played by Hudson) and a new decorating scheme in her apartment. Miranda leaves Steve. Insert in a lot of clever puns (like Carrie talking about being in a "Mexicoma"). Fast forward to the end, where Big and Carrie get married at City Hall, Miranda and Steve agree to work it out and Charlotte has a baby despite believing she was barren. Then Samantha -- unhappy in Cali and in her relationship -- moves back to NYC. Ta da.

I might have missed some things because the two girls next to me insisted on commenting loudly on every single line in the movie. Grrrrr.

Tillamook Cheddar

I thought I had seen it all. And then Tillamook Cheddar came along. That would be Tillamook Cheddar, the painting dog.


The artist herself.

According to the Web site passed along to me by my dog-obsessed friend, Noodles, Tillie (as she's known) lives in Brooklyn, has had 17 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe and is the mother of six. In 2006, F. Bowman Hastie III published her biography, "Portrait of the Dog as a Young Artist."

The bio on her Web site describes her technique as:

The artist's primary process is a dynamic color transfer technique. In preparation for each of Tillie's works, her assistants assemble a touch-sensitive recording device by affixing pigment-coated vellum to a sheet of lithograph paper backed by mat board. The artist takes the prepared "canvas" in her mouth and brings it to her workspace. Working on the outside surface, she applies pressure with teeth and claws in a methodic ritual marked by dramatic shifts in tempo and intensity. The resultant sharp and sweeping intersecting lines complement the artist's delicate paw prints and subtle tongue impressions, composing an expressionistic image that is revealed on the paper beneath when she is finished. She works with shocking intensity, sometimes to the point of destroying her creations.

Should I be worried that a Jack Russell terrier makes me feel inadequate?