AQUARIUM!

We love the New England Aquarium.  We had a lovely time there today with our hosts, Ian and Elizabeth, who are New England Aquarium AMBASSADORS, which means we got to cut in line.  This was particularly good because the place was mobbed.  Lucy loved it.

Due to an unfortunate combination of poor photography skills (mine) and low light levels in the aquarium, we don't really have any good pictures that convey her JOY at seeing all the creatures.  She would have stood at each tank for hours, I think, if we'd let her.

 

Before going into the aquarium, we ran around by the waterfront for a while.  Lucy really enjoyed this large sculpture:

 

And then after the Aquarium, we headed to Cambridge and enjoyed a lovely lunch at the All-Star Sandwich Bar, followed by Christina's for ICE CREAM.  See evidence:

For previous views of our visits to Christina's (and the ensuing messiness) you might take a look at this.  Or this.  Or even this.  Christina's is amazing.    For specific flavor choices on this visit: Jake had Kulfi, Bridget had coconut-Butterfingers, and Lucy had (well, there's no denying it) -- CHOCOLATE.

Getting Ready for 2012

Lucy asked us yesterday: "Can I stay up until MIDNIGHT on New Year's Eve?"

We didn't even know she was aware of the upcoming holiday, let alone that she knew that it involved something called "midnight," another concept that she discovered without our help.

What do you think?  She already made her own hat* and everything:

Should we let her stay up?
*She made the hat at school, where she apparently learned all about this midnight thing....thanks, teachers!

Book Reviews (Children's Book Edition)

Lucy received some lovely books for Christmas, so I write to sing the praises of some her most recent favorites.

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

This is a lovely story with lovely pictures.  It's the tale of an old lady who goes by the name "Miss Rumphius" or "the Lupine Lady," and tells of how she planted the lupine all over her lovely land.  If you've been to Maine, you'll know what I'm talking about here -- the lupine are everywhere, and so very very lovely.  Miss Rumphius's goal (which she passes on to the young girl in the book, and thus, the reader, too) is to make the world more beautiful.  This seems a lovely aspiration.  The book pleases me and makes me want to make the world more beautiful, too.

Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown

I love the illustrations in this, which feature an adorable bear.  That bear's name: Lucy.  Too perfect.  In this book, said bear goes out into the world and finds a child. She thinks it would be great to make that child into a pet.  But, as the title explains, "Children make terrible pets."  It's a keeper.  We actually checked this out from the library and accumulated some overdue fines for it.  We got Lucy another book by this author for Christmas: YOU WILL BE MY FRIEND!, which is also pretty great.


I think our previous review of favorite children's books neglected to mention another of our favorite authors, Mo Willems.  He's responsible for the insanely popular "Pigeon" books, including such classics as Pigeon Wants a Puppy, and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, which were in heavy rotation a couple years ago.


He is also responsible for the whole Elephant and Piggie series, which seems pretty huge.  We have three or so of them; my favorite is There is a Bird on my Head:

But there are tons more. Elephant and Piggie have some great comic back-and-forth, and they discuss important questions like "Are you ready to play outside?" "Can elephants dance?" and "Should I Share My Ice Cream?"  These are the tough questions kids have to face, and Elephant and Piggie help kids figure out the answers.

We're also very excited about a new development at one of our favorite publishers: McSweeney's.  Warning: unless you have a lot of time on your hands, or a huge amount of self-restraint in the browsing of the internets, don't click that link.  You can easily lose hours (pleasant hours!) spinning around McSweeney's Internet Tendencies.  The list of grammar- and punctuation-related bar jokes is worth the price. We're also big fans of Open Letters to People or Entities Not Likely to Respond.
They now have a brand new children's imprint: McSweeney's McMullens.  This link will take you to the page with links to the first four books in the series (we've already signed up for it & so far, they are amazing!).

That's all for now, but I hope to do more book-reviewing soon.  There are so many wonderful children's books -- Lucy's luck....and so are we!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Making Christmas

Stockings hung on the stairway with care:

Check.
I made the one on the left -- it's Jake's.  I'm pleased with it, and I think he is, too.

Very large Christmas Tree:

Check.
That's the smokestack Christmas Tree downtown above the mills.


Ridiculously excited child:

Check.
Those are her new "fantasy animal puppets," a present she got to open on Christmas Eve.  Lucky girl.  The students at a local high school bought a present for each child at Lowell Day Nursery.  Wow.

Jake and Lucy have been busy making an enchanted forest:

Want a closer look?
That's meringue mushrooms and candied cranberries

Hope you're having a lovely Christmas Eve, wherever you are.

Grades done!

Finally!  Finished grading papers.  Now all I have is all the other crap that has piled up.  Ugh!

Still lots to do, but glad to have that off my plate.  Onward!

Best Books of 2011*

What I should be doing right now is grading.  Grading the stack of 65 or so final papers that were turned in today.  Grading them, so that I can finish final grades, so that I can kiss this semester goodbye.  But if you've ever faced a stack of grading, I imagine you know exactly what I'm about to do: ANYTHING BUT GRADE THOSE PAPERS.  It's perverse, I know.   On with the procrastination then:

* Also, a disclaimer: I'm calling this "Best Books of 2011," but don't be fooled; few of these books were *published* in 2011.   The year designation simply indicates that I finally got around to reading them.  Also, the only reviews you're going to read are good reviews.  For the most part, I don't even finish books I don't like.  Let that be a warning to you.

Also, a hazard of my job is that there's not a lot of "fun reading" in my life.  Almost any reading I do is from the pile of books I want and/or should read because they're related to something I teach.  That said, a lot of the books I read for teaching and research really are fun.  Some are not.  But the thing is, even when I'm reading the fun ones, I'm thinking about work.  This ends up with me doing a lot less actual fun reading, and also in me finding a lot of my "fun" reading is also work reading.  Did that make any sense?  I imagine you'll notice some tendencies in the texts below, given that you may know the classes I teach.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Are you ashamed of reading Twilight?  You should be.  Would you like to read about vampires and feel less dirty?  Then read A Discovery of Witches.  It's by an actual historian and is about a historian who goes digging around in the archives and discovers a long-lost manuscript.  (Yes, it has shades of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, but it's different, I swear.  Oh, and Kostova's book is also awesome.)  So, the historian is a witch.  From Salem.  Also, there are vampires.  And demons.  And the whole thing is awesome.  I'm only about a third of the way through (it's LONG!) but I am singing its praises now, already.  If you have any interest whatsoever in vampires and vampire lit, you will find this very pleasing. 

One More Theory About Happiness by Paul Guest

Paul Guest is a poet; I teach some of his poems in my Disability in Literature course.  I picked this up -- it's a memoir-- thinking that I might use it in my course, so it was in the pile of "books to read for class."  One evening, I picked it up just to check it out, and I seriously could not put it down.  It's really terrific.  And not just for my class (though it may show up on a future syllabus).  Guest had a freak accident when he was 12: he was thrown from a bike he was riding, and ended up paralyzed from the neck down.  Given the number of bicycles in our basement, and the sheer number of bike miles completed by our household, this is a shiver-inducing piece of information.  Guest's memoir goes back to that day that changed his life, and explores all that has happened since that day.  This could be morose, it could be depressing, and it could be awful.  But he writes beautifully, with great detail and clarity.  I was blown away.  It's a great, compelling, don't-close-it-til-you're-done read.

The Dewbreaker by Edwidge Danticat


This one is not for any of my classes.  In fact, I'm not entirely sure why I picked it up.  I know nothing about the subject matter or setting (Haiti in the 1960s), and I think this was actually a freebie -- a book a publisher sent me as a thank-you for doing a survey or something of that sort.  I'm not sure why I picked it up, but I couldn't put it down.  The story just keeps going, with different characters taking pieces of it, telling a chapter, then passing it on.  It moves from Haiti to NYC, it has characters of all different sorts.  I'm not going to give away the details, because I knew nothing about it before I started, and I think that's a totally fine way to go into it.  But it's really great.  You won't be disappointed.

That's all for now.  I'm calling it a day and heading home with the stack of papers.  I really must grade.

MUST GRADE.

more later, no doubt.

On Partying and Parenting

It's that most wonderful time of the year when there are lots of holiday parties.  These parties tend to be in the evening, and often start at Lucy's bedtime.  This always leaves us with the question of whether or not we should bring her along. We have a couple of babysitter possibilities, but when we broach the subject with Lucy, it goes like this:

Bridget: Rebecca is coming over on Thursday evening.
Lucy: I DON'T WANT TO BE BABYSAT!
Bridget: But you like Rebecca.  You had a great time with her last time.
Lucy: I DON'T WANT TO BE BABYSAT!  Are you going to a movie?  I can go to a movie now!
Bridget: We're not going to a movie.  We're going to a.....thing for Daddy's work.
Lucy: Is it a party?  I want to go.

So you see, it's a problem.  But we got our babysitter despite Lucy's outcry.  And in fact, she does have a very nice time with Rebecca, despite the protests.  So last night was the party, and I began to feel that the world was conspiring against my going:

First, the babysitter didn't have a car due to some unusual circumstances.  No problem: I would pick her up and drop her off. 

Next: I have a cold with a nasty cough and have been feeling pretty awful.  But I decided that a night out would be good. 

Next: I am dressed and ready to go. The babysitter is here, getting situated.  I am in the bathroom with Lucy.  She throws up.  Directly onto me.  Wow.  So I'm trying to calculate the process of getting her cleaned up, me cleaned up, getting all of us back into the car to take Rebecca home, call it a night.  But Lucy is miraculously saying that she feels fine.  She's fine.  Can she watch Dora?  With Rebecca?  So after consultation with Jake (who is at work, waiting for me) and Rebecca (who very kindly tells me that her brother used to make himself throw up when he didn't want to do something), I decide to change and go.  Right on.  Vomiting child WILL NOT STOP ME.  (Quick, call the "Best Parent in the World" prize committee!)

After a drive to pick up Jake, and then a drive to the party, we end up circling for 45 minutes -- I am not exaggerating, it was 45 minutes -- in order to find a place to park in Davis Square (this is not, I suppose, an entirely unusual thing in this neighborhood).  It was nuts.

But finally, we made it: to Sacco's Bowl Haven.  They have candlepin bowling.  And they have pizza.  And beer.  And it was awesome.  It was our first time doing the candlepin bowling, and we're hooked. ALL work parties should involve bowling.

And they even had a goodie bag for Lucy.  All the other kids of the folks at the office were there, so we were feeling, again, like candidates for that "Best Parents Ever (NOT)" award.  But she really was having a a fine time with Rebecca.  And we were having a fine time without her.  Hooray!

More posting should be expected tomorrow: Lucy's school's Winter Songfest is this afternoon, and there's sure to be something to say!

2011 Photo with Santa

For some comparisons, for last year's picture with Santa at school, go here.  For Carter & Lucy & Santa last year, go here.  Or check out Santa: The Terror: here.

Firsts

Some recent firsts:
Last Friday, we took Lucy (and her BFF Ruth) to see their first movie in a movie theater!  We went to see the Muppets, which is so incredibly awesome, if you haven't seen it, you should stop reading right now and go see it.  Seriously, it's terrific.  Lucy has been singing one of the songs pretty much constantly ever since.  She particularly like the character Mary, played by our household friend, Amy Adams.  Nice.

Today we had two firsts:
Lucy went ICE SKATING for the first time:

She LOVED it.  She used the milk crates at first, but got pretty brave and was soon out-skating us (not that that is very hard!)
Time for skate lessons!!!










After the skating, we went to see a HOCKEY GAME (also a Lucy first).  We all got jerseys!!  It was amazing.  Lucy LOVED it!

We even got to visit with Santa.  Lucy was a bit apprehensive.  When Santa asked what she wanted for Christmas, she froze.  He told her she could write a letter.








Here's our little hockey fan, taking in the game (BC v UML).  We scored twice in the first period.  We left after that, as we had a very tired family.

Go Riverhawks!!!!

















Here we are in a photo taken by UML's photographer, Joanne Sherburne:

Creating Christmas

Things have been busy as always 'round 83 Durant, but with a bit more of a holiday twang.

Lucy and Jake picked up a Christmas tree on Friday after (Lucy's) dance class.  We decorated it today.  There are wreaths on the doors, and electric candles in the windows.  As I type, Pandora is playing some horrible "Christmas tunes" station, which is not yet completely unbearable.

We are still eating Turkey.  Jake has made Turkey Tetrazzini,  Turkey Tacos, and Turkey Gumbo. Tonight, it's still more turkey-in-gravy-over-cornbread-stuffing.  I'm not complaining (really) but wow, we really cooked a bit much on Thanksgiving!

We've been doing a bit of crafting.  We also went to Western Ave Studios to witness (and purchase) some crafting & arting.  Then we went to Michaels' so as to stock up our own (massive) supplies of Christmas craftiness. It's exciting times 'round here.

Photos to follow...having some camera snafus at the moment, but we'll get it eventually.

Speaking of my inability to properly operate a camera, Jake has just made the most magnificent cocktails ever.  Primary ingredient: home-infused local cranberry vodka.  Amazing.  But then he also made "not-so-simple-syrup" (simple syrup with some cinnamon) which is also featured.  Really, you must have one.

Cheers!

Here's our elf.

Banking Update; History Lesson

I'm delighted to report today that we are officially free of Bank of America!  We walked down this afternoon and closed all of our accounts.  We've completely moved everything over to Jeanne d'Arc Credit Union.  Hooray.

Our brief (well, too long) visit to the local branch only served to confirm our belief that we were doing the right thing.  Don't get me wrong, the tellers and everyone who work at that branch are lovely folks, and we like them.  They have always tried to help us, even going against BofA's asinine rules and requirements and fees. But the branch is seriously under-served.  There is ALWAYS a line, and there is not physically enough room for the number of customers they regularly have.  The facility is small, cramped, overheated, and smelly.  I feel bad for the folks who work there.

We're also very fed up with the way BofA treats long-time customers, particularly those with smaller accounts.  We overheard an older couple who were demanding to know (in heavily accented English) why they were being charged $6 a month for their checking after all these years of it being free.  As is typical, the folks who can least afford extra fees are the only ones who have to pay them.  The bank employee explained that they had previously used direct deposit, but now that they didn't, there were fees.  The fact that in this economic climate, tons of people are losing their jobs, and thus don't even have a paycheck to direct deposit seemed not to factor into the regulations.  The bank employee could only offer that if they switched to online banking from their home computer, their fees would be less.  This clearly wasn't an option for this couple.

So we're delighted to be free of that mess.  Triumph!

In other news, Lucy came home this afternoon and asked to watch a movie -- one of the Peanuts specials we have.  We recently acquired the whole DVD box set of Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas specials.  Lucy specifically requested one of the lesser-known specials: The Mayflower Voyagers.  I asked why she liked this one.  Her response: "People die in this one."

I'll let you pause to pick up your jaw (at least I had to).

Wow.  I'm not sure if I'm more taken aback by the fact that a Peanuts special features death, or that it's Lucy's favorite one because of that fact.  She's our little Sarah Vowell, I suppose.

I have yet to watch the episode, although I clearly need to do so immediately.  

Buy Nothing Day

We celebrated Buy Nothing Day by going to our favorite zoo -- Stone Zoo.  It was lovely.

The kids are having a great time playing together, and we're enjoying watching them.

We just finished Thanksgiving Dinner, Part Deux: Rise of the Leftovers.  It was awesome.

Lucy went to her dance class this morning; she's loving it.

Tomorrow we do the whole downtown Lowell Holiday celebration, with parade, Art stroll, hot chocolate and the like.  Delightful.

Also, tomorrow will feature Thanksgiving Dinner, Part Three: Leftovers with a Vengeance.

What's cookin'

Happy Thanksgiving to all.
All day yesterday, our house was filled with the awesome smells of Jake preparing for Thanksgiving dinner!  Yum!
Here's what we've (Jake, my mom, and I) made so far:

• Cornbread Stuffing
• "Regular" stuffing
• Cranberry sauce
• Cranberry vodka (may also be referred to as "Cranberry sauce")
• Sweet potato cassarole
• Pecan pie
• Pumpkin pie
• Chocolate tart
• Apple pie
• Cranberry-raspberry-Jello salad

Here's what's going on today:

• Turkey 1 ("normal" turkey, currently cooking in our oven, from Elm Turkey Farm in Dracut)
• Turkey 2 (some sort of heritage breed...currently cooking up at Matt & Mary's, from John Crow Farm)
• Mashed potatoes
• Green beans
• Creamed onions
• Brussels sprouts (with some manner of bacon/maple glaze
• Roasted butternut squash
• Purple cabbage

I will probably update the list later.....I'm sure there's more.

Anyway, all is well here.  Jennifer, Brendan, and Luke are here; Paul and Kathy will arrive later for dinner. We're borrowing Matt & Mary's oven to keep up with the madness.  Woo hoo!

Pies in action:


Hope you're eating well, wherever you are!

1pm update:
Lucy's "napping" in our room, so I am too.  Don't tell her I'm typing.
We watched some of the Macy's Day parade.  It's kind of a tradition here -- Brendan actually marched in the parade one year, and I went into the city to watch him.  It was awesome.

We also watched some of the Dog Show, which is a more recent tradition.  Carter really likes it.

Turkeys are cooking away as planned. We're excited about trying two different kinds of birds.  We're not completely sure *which* heritage breed we got, but it should prove an interesting taste test.
YUM!

A little math problem

Please add the following:
4 4-year old children
3 2- year old children
3 6-or-more-year old children

plus their parental units.

plus one dog (on the hunt for food & love).

Time's up!

The correct answer: TOTAL CHAOS.

And also, a Happy Four-Year Old Lucy.
She had a great time at her party, as did everyone.  Hooray!

Updates from the tenure year

My tenure case has now officially passed both the Department's review process and (just yesterday) the College Personnel Committee.  The voting at both levels (and for all five of us) has been unanimously in favor of tenure for me/us, which is a good thing.
It's off to the Dean next week.
Then University Rank & Tenure.
Then Chancellor.
There might be a few stages in there that I'm missing, because we don't get final word until May.  May 2012.
But who's counting?

In other, less anxiety-producing news, today is Lucy's Birthday! She's FOUR! We can hardly believe it. Here are some pictures of Lucy, Age 4:

(We're in the slow & frustrating process of trying to grow bangs out!!)

I have a backlog of blog posts I need to write....hope to get to those soon!

Happy November to all!

Trick or Treat!

 After a week's delay, we finally had Trick or Treat here in Lowell.  We had a lovely time.  We spent the pre-trick-or-treat prep time up at Matt & Mary's house, where all the kids -- Lucy, Ruth, Woodrow, Henry, and Audrey -- were getting dressed up and revved up for the night.  By 5 pm they were asking "When can we go?  When can we go?" and it was still a whole hour until the festivities were officially beginning.  Yikes!

 

The kids had a tremendous time.  I was at home to give out candy to our trick or treaters (so as to avoid having our house get egged [fingers crossed!]).  Carter was all kinds of worked up about it.  He got into the spirit of the season by dressing up, too:

 

Yup.  He's a reindeer.  The neighborhood kids LOVED seeing him.  

Hope your trick or treat was a good one!