Thank you, Suse!
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P is for:
Pea Soup!
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Primo and the Junior Penguins Yellow Team.
He finished his season Saturday and came home with a Pens away jersey, and a Marty Straka bobblehead (ok, I know he’s not a Penguin anymore) and a trophy, which promptly fell off its pedestal.
Primo came downstairs with the two pieces in his hands, crying. I told him we could fix it and started rooting around in the junk drawer for the Crazy Glue.
And then he told me his trophy breaking was almost as sad as if I had died.
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Popco by Scarlett Thomas is, despite the author’s unfortunate name, one of the most interesting and fresh contemporary books I have read in a long time. Besides, it’s about, in part, cryptology, and I like cryptology. Codes and code-breaking fascinate me, even though my math background is nominal at best. If you read PopCo and like it, I can say you will probably also like Simon Singh’s comprehensive and totally accessible (non-fiction) The Code Book. Other fun, smart fiction dealing with puzzles includes Ellen Raskin’s children’s book The Westing Game, Graeme Base’s visual riddle The Eleventh Hour, and Tom Stoppard’s brilliant, erudite play, Arcadia.
Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon has been on my to-read list for so long it’s embarrassing.
At one point in my younger, more ambitious reading life, I slogged through much of Douglas Hofstedter’s classic Godel, Escher, Bach and am now glad I did, though it was tough going at the time.
I poked around on Thomas’s website for a while this morning and fell even deeper in love with her when I read that she adored David Mitchell and read his number9dream interspersed with bouts of learning to play Radiohead’s “Karma Police” on her guitar.
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Porch railings. When we bought our house, there were, attached to the porch columns, the original wooden turned-spindle porch railings. I took them off when I rebuilt the porch columns and never got around to putting them back on as honestly, they needed serious work, or perhaps a total rebuild. I am at the point where I am exploring alternatives – brand new vinyl replicas, new handrails with the original spindles, iron railings...what-have-you. But I NEED porch railings since The Baby delights in toddling around the edge of the porch, teetering on the brink of disaster every time we go outside, and my heart just can’t take the stress anymore.
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Pajamas. I wish I could live in my pajamas. I sleep in ratty old t-shirts and cotton pajama bottoms (Old Navy men’s L or XL, usually, and I prefer light-colored striped patterns). I love how comfy they are, how easy they are to clean, and how oddly sexy I feel in them. It’s easy to imagine you are a sylph when your excess weight is completely covered. Somewhat along those lines, I have often said before that I could be very happy dressing in what most Americans consider Muslim or Orthodox clothing – long-sleeved loose shirts, long loose skirts, and a headscarf. I have never, even when I was very thin, been comfortable displaying large amounts of skin, or with wearing form-fitting clothing. I have lately taken to looking for my skirts on one of these websites, because I can’t seem to find anything worth spending the money on, that I could actually wear on my body in public, at typical retail stores. (I hope this isn’t offensive to anyone who is a practicing Muslim or Jewish woman; I truly see it more as appreciation for the ways in which you choose to reveal or cover your bodies, and not just put it all out there on a plate for anyone to goggle. I don’t mean to offend anyone, I hope I don’t.)
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Package. I got a package today in the mail. I LOVE getting packages in the mail. Granted, this package contained Seg’s birthday present trains, but I am expecting a book any day now, and even a boring package is a good package.
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Pumpkin and Punto. Punto, il cane, gets a scoop or two of pumpkin on top of his dry food at his evening meal. Apparently it's very good for dogs' digestive systems. I am just trying to prolong the time till I have to have his anal glands drained.
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Present and Party. I am preparing for Seg's birthday party, wrapping his presents and planning his cake.
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P words I just like:
Pandora
pepper
percolate
perpetrate
phylum
plankton
psyllium
putz
6 comments:
Singh's book, Fermat's Enigma, is well worth a read.
grace
Now you're cooking pumpkin every day for the canine?!!!
I adore percolate, and prostrate although I have to concentrate rather hard when I say that latter one, you know.
I'm sitting here typing my comment while in my pyjamas - I look down and see baggy, white with a small pink and blue striped bottoms, a long sleeved t-shirt and pale pink tracksuit top (yes that tracksuit top again!).
I've just secured all three parts to Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle books. A girlfriend of mine has read the first instalment, Quicksilver, and is going on and on about it (in a nice way of course - it always interests me every time she mentions it!). She wants to read Cryptomicon too.
I'm addicted to books by post now. And pumpkin for the dog and draining glands? I didn't realise dog ownership was like that :-0
Draw some railings. We'll do them in the shop. No telling Marisa.
Scarlett Thomas is my Secret Girlfriend! I'm so glad you liked Popco! Now . . . go and request The End of Mr. Y from the library. Hurry! :-)
Pumpkin, eh? That's a new one for me.
There is nothing in the world quite like canine anal sacs. I once had a dog whose sac excretions smelled like green apples- no joke- but have never been as fortunate since.
tmi?
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