Wine tasting and dress fitting

Beyond selecting the napkin color, the numbers of h’ors d’oeuvres we plan to serve and what we’ll serve to the ravenous hordes just post the synagogue service, there are some fun things also associated with this practically a wedding.
Today, Boo and I drove through a post-card perfect landscape of rolling white lawns and snow-covered trees [...]

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Stomping Wasps

Every nearly-spring, when temperatures hover around 40 degrees or about 4 or 5 C, the wasps over-wintering under the roof eaves emerge and attempt to fly in the air they soon discover is inhospitable. Usually, by this point in the year, my porch is littered with small barbed bodies feebly wriggling in the snow banks. [...]

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Photo Friday

Winter often presents bleak landscapes, watery sunshine and frequent vistas of ice and snow. I think we grow accustomed to little variation in color during this season, although the SAD symptoms do abate somewhat when we are given a brilliantly sunny day to contrast against all that white and grey. Today, with exhibit A, is [...]

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Ten Things Tuesday- random bits

Life is very strange when a job’s end is on the horizon. I keep focused on what I am doing for my classes, but then I remember that this may well be the last time I prepare whatever specific lessons I am planning and then I recycle the extras instead of filing them away. [...]

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Bonfires and sparks

I spent a good part of Saturday evening standing in front of a large bonfire, waiting for the sparks to ignite a huge pile of fodder; each February, our friends collect their yuletide trees and assorted burnable, and create a pyre. However, we’ve had a lot of rain, freezing rain and falling slush lately [...]

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Thing is, snakes don’t have fingers

Two evenings ago, Bob helped me spread some goopy crap on my face to induce a peel.
Yeah, vanity has set in and I wanted to do some nuclear exfoliation for younger, more youthful-looking skin.
Initially, it felt like I’d been bitch slapped by a loofah.
Now, however, I am doing a cunning impression of a tunnel snake.
My [...]

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Remember the Planet on Valentine’s Day

With the massive volumes of chocolate and flowers going through registers all over the place today, it’s important to be mindful of the places your purchases originate.
Did you know that over FORTY percent of the world’s conventional (non-organic and non-fair trade) chocolate comes from the Ivory Coast, where the International Labor Organizations has reported rampant [...]

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Are ya coming?

RSVPs are starting to come in (through email or phone calls only: no unnecessary mail system clogging), but there are important people in my extended family from whom we have not yet heard.
My cousin in Calgary says he would like to come to the upcoming Bat Mitzvah. I say like to because he feels [...]

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Ten Things Tuesday – Things of Which I Approve

Um, not ending sentences too often with prepositions?
Chili inspired me today, courtesy of Saintseester, and this is exactly the inspiration I needed to get me blogging again-ish.
1. Speaking more than one language. My mother speaks 4 languages, having been educated in the late 40s and early 50s, in Europe where multilingualism is the norm. [...]

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Point of You

It’s Monday all over the place.
So, I was going over narrative structure with my Comp kids today when I wrote THAT on the board.
One of my students, dutifully taking notes without having to be reminded that some of the material might just come in handy, looked up quizzically and read what I’d scrawled in black [...]

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