Winter sports

Before Joker and I had kids, we were pretty enthusiastic participants in some of the most expensive and least kid-friendly sports out there: scuba diving, snowboarding and golf.  Suffice it to say, we've done far less of all three since the Bug was born.  Our last ski trip was four years ago this spring, and it was our only one of that season.

Since the Bug has always been timid about new things, we weren't yet holding our breath about getting her into skiing.  We had talked with her about trying to ice skate this year - the Evergreen Lake is just way too awesome not to use it! - and we'd hoped that getting her up on skis would follow.  So imagine our surprise last weekend when we had not one but two incredible successes!  She tried skating at the Lake, and loved it, on Saturday.  And on Monday she skied with Joker and one of her best buddies from school! 

First "run" down the bunny slope

So, it is looking like we will, in fact, be back on the slopes before too long.  The Bunny isn't exactly ready to try it herself, but after watching the post-lesson Bug swoosh her way down solo, I am sure she'll want to join in the fun, too.  Now if we can just get them interested in golf...

Gervase

It took about three sittings to finish Ann Moray's charming novella Gervase, but before the review I'd like to share a little about the author.  She was a very close friend of Joker's grandmother's (and his parents), and she was my brother-in-law's godmother.  She lived what I think of as the glamorous life of a New York socialite: born in Wales, studied music in Vienna, married a Venezuelan diplomat.  But the lovely stories of her that I've been told include the afternoon when Joker was a boy, and Ann Moray taught him about the fairies who lived in the lawn, and how to step carefully around and over them to keep them safe. 

Ann Moray, jacket photo (c Marcus Blechman)

So I was more than a little interested to read one of her four books, which Joker had recently completed as well.

Gervase tells the story of a girl in rural Maine who suffered a brain injury in an accident at age 13.  It left her unable to grasp much academically, but she gained the ability to read other people's thoughts.  Enter Gervase, the baby deer, who she can also understand. Maeve and Gervase become inseparable, and their adventure together is very charming.  Gervase helps Maeve to navigate - and to help bring together - both her world and that of the animals around them. 

I could have lived without the C.S. Lewis/Aslan-ian parallel to Christianity (which I am not particularly fond of in the Chronicals of Narnia, either), and the prologue is completely unnecessary, but both of those can probably be chalked up to the book's being written in 1970. Moray might not go down into the annals of the great 20th Century authors, but I would absolutely recommend this book to younger readers (or to people who knew the author personally, of course).  It's not easy to get your hands on, being rather out of print, but if you've got 10-year-old girls around and can track it down, I think you'll be glad you did.  And I most certainly look forward to the Bug and the Bunny enjoying this in a few years.

Next up:  The Magicians by Lev Grossman.  I'm also working my way through the graphic novel The Walking Dead (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Tony Moore, Cliff Rathburn).  The intensely scary AMC series is based on this - and somehow, the comics are both scarier and more intense. 

New gig, special twist

So as I mentioned before, I've started a new job.  I'm running business development for a start-up called Collector's Quest - they've built a platform to connect buyers and sellers of collectibles and antiques.  To boil it down, imagine a marketplace for small retailers in this space (a la Etsy, but not for handmade goodies) that employs algorithms to identify a user's specific interests (think Match.com).  Collectibles and antiques represent a huge market, it's very fragmented and offline today, and we've got some smart media people behind us to help drive usage.  So, feeling good.

One of the best things shouldn't be omitted: I am working from home.  This is a new thing for me and I'm psyched.  First and foremost, I'm very excited about CQ and what I can do to help grow the business.  No work-from-home situation would be worth it if I didn't believe the company itself was a winner.  But now I have a level of flexibility that I've never had before.  I can work full time and still pick my kids up from school/daycare every day, go to all their performances, be the class mom. 

Spending the past six months at home solidified two things in my mind.  First, I need to work.  It makes me a better mom and a better wife, and it makes me happy.  I feel important, satisfied that I matter to the world.  And second, I like spending time with my kids, just doing our daily whatevers, more than I ever thought I would.  I thought I'd hate the full-time mommy role, and there were things that drove me nuts, but I really enjoyed the extra cuddle time at nap or taking the kids to the zoo mid-week.  The Bunny and the Bug are (generally) super fun to hang out with!

So I feel like this is a huge coup for me.  An exciting new company that I believe has an opportunity to really make it, and that I truly believe I'll help to succeed.  Plus an uber-flexible schedule that will allow me to spend more time with the kids.  I'm ironing out the balancing act, but that'll come.  And when it does, everyone will win - my boss, my kids, my husband and me.  Yay.

Out Stealing Horses

Happy 2012!  May your year be filled with adventure, laughter and love.  If you're lucky, you'll get some good books in there, too.
***

Out Stealing Horses was an unexpected treat - I chanced upon it, decided to read it based on nothing but the review excerpts on the back and very much enjoyed it.  It's written by Per Petterson, who is something of a star Norwegian author, if such a thing is even possible, and was translated into English by Anne Born in 2007 to rave reviews.  I expect we'll see even greater future successes from this author/translator team.

The book tells of Trond Sander, a man approaching 70 who decides to move to a rustic cabin in remote eastern Norway.  He views the place as something of a fixer-upper, and plans to spend his days methodically preparing for the coming winter and the years beyond.  A chance encounter with a neighbor sets Trond into reminiscing about his summer of 1948, the last he spent with his beloved father.

Trond's friend Jon appeared on the doorstep most mornings with the day's plan of action in his head.  He was a couple of years older than Trond, and a local in the small town that Trond and his father were staying in this particular summer.  The two friends shared moments of adventure, but rarely spoke of anything consequential.  The days in this river town were spent in physical work and the enjoyment of nature.  As the summer progressed, Trond found himself discovering more of his father's life and secrets than he perhaps ever wished to do.

The parallel struggles of Trond and his neighbor preparing for winter, intertwined with Trond's recollection of that summer, tell twin stories of loss and yearning.  Petterson's prose is sparse, pointed and captivating.  Out Stealing Horses is a lovely book, one where the enjoyment lies as much in the language itself as it does in the plot.

Next up: Gervase, a very short novel written by Ann Moray, one of Joker's grandmother's dear friends.  I understand that it's about a stag, which seems particularly fun to read living among Evergreen's elk!

Tradition

There are some people (read: my brother Shane) who are all about traditions.  Eating certain meals on certain days, hanging decorations in the same places every year - doing things that your people have done before you and that your progeny will continue after you're gone.  I don't quite buy into that, nor do I eschew it altogether.  I guess my strategy is something of a hybrid, picking and choosing those traditions worth carrying on, and leaving others behind in the dust.

During the holiday season, though, more of my old family traditions tend to rear their heads than at other times of the year.  Here are some of my favorites, ones that I hope that the Bug and the Bunny will carry on themselves:

• Cookies.  I don't have much of a sweet tooth.  I don't buy cookies (or other treats) on a regular basis, and I only make them when one of my kids has a birthday or a school obligation.  But I love making - and eating - Christmas cookies.  But I have a half dozen Christmas cookie recipes from three of my four great-grandmothers, and I make three or four kinds each year.  I think it's so neat that the recipes that my great-grands never even needed to measure out still make the best cookies in town.
• Advent calendar.  We had one that looked like this when I was a kid, and when the Bug was born my mother found a seamstress who could make one for us.  The girls love pulling the ornaments out of the pockets and finding a place for them on the tree, and the Bug counts down the days until Christmas after each morning's ritual.  Here's hoping there are still people who can sew when my girls are ready to start families of their own!

• Family.  I love spending time with family over the holidays - from our extended family's annual Christmas party pot-luck, to Christmas Eve at my Grandma Jan's house (where, if you were ever curious, I learned that gin is the better spirit to add to a bloody mary), to the full-day eating affair we fondly refer to as "Christmas."  I don't much care if the venue, the meal and even the participants rotate, but I care very much that I spend time with family.
• Photo Christmas cards.  Yeah, they can be cheesy (trust me - we've gotten some doozies over the years), but I love them.  I love receiving them, and I send them myself.  We just don't see our friends and their kids often enough - the cards are a simple way to follow the goings-on of people in our lives.

I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting some of the big ones, but this is what came to mind today.  Hope you're having the merriest of holiday seasons!

Great Expectations

So I've had a tough time finding a rhythm for reading and reviewing.  We moved, then I was finishing my twin nephews' stockings... excuses, excuses.  But now I am again gainfully employed (more on that soon), the stockings are done and I think I will be able to be back in a groove.  May not be the frequency of prior years, but no more 3-months-between-book-reviews bullshit.  Promise.
***
I had very modest expectations about Great Expectations, a classic by Charles Dickens that I have not heard of anyone reading outside of high school English classes.  I'd read A Tale of Two Cities as a sophomore in high school, and I hated it.  My impression of Dickens was that his books became classics because he was old and British, and he'd written the impressively bizarre and dark A Christmas Carol along with some other old British crap.  Well, apologies to your memory, Mr. Dickens.  Your other books are bizarre and dark and kinda hilarious, too.

The book begins with the back story of our narrator and protagonist Pip, whose first and last names are not really relevant.  Orphaned at a young age, he's been raised by his sister (who pretty much resents him) and her husband Joe (who is pretty much bullied by his wife).  He ends up being forced to assist a felon with the completion of his escape by providing the convict with a file and a parcel of food.  This memory tortures Pip, who sees his convict in every shadow.  After a subsequent run-in with the same convict, Pip doesn't hear from him again.

Several years after this misadventure, Pip finds himself befriended rather mysteriously by the (totally insane) Miss Havisham, an elderly-ish woman of indeterminate age, who dresses in her one-time wedding dress with all clocks in her mansion eternally reading the time of her being left at the altar.  Pip becomes enamored with the somewhat unexplained Estella, has a run-in with a young gentleman who tries unsuccessfully to kick his ass, meets a whole pile of strangers who hate his guts.  And ultimately, he learns that he has been left a fortune by an unnamed benefactor.

Not to give away the story - it's quite compelling and takes several very unexpected turns - but Pip goes to London to live out his great expectations.  Hence, the title.  He meets a number of dark and maybe-evil supporting characters, and nothing that happens early in the book should be forgotten.  I'm not going to go as far as to call this one "highly recommended", but I will certainly not shy away from more Dickens in my future.

Next up: Out Stealing Horses by Norwegian novelist Per Petterson.  It was released in English translation in 2007 and appears on quite a few best-of lists for that year. 

Key West: you should totally go there

Sunset from Mallory Pier

First, a huge thank you to Mima and Boppie for watching the girls last week so that Joker and I could get away to Key West, Florida.  We couldn't have done it without your help, and the girls both thought that THEY were the ones on vacation... worked out perfectly for us!

We met two other couples down there for a weekend of eating, drinking, sunshine, laughs and a couple of trips under the water.  And the city didn't disappoint - we had a wonderful time!  What a treat to spend the weekend with friends we don't see often enough!

There are so many reasons that Key West is one of our favorite repeat destinations.  It is an easy trip from the east coast (though not so much from Denver), it's a walking-friendly town, the seafood is fresh and plentiful and it's a great party scene.  The people are laid-back and friendly.  The sun is shining and the sunsets are breathtaking.  There are a few cool shipwrecks to dive.  And there are sometimes pirates.

Sunset from The Top, the highest point in KW

Just after the sun has set, from The Top

Halloween meets Christmas... meets pink lawn flamingos

And it's quirky.  The biggest party of the year is Fantasy Fest, which is the week leading up to Halloween.  From what we hear, the town turns out its crazy and visitors flock from all over the place.  Last weekend was the Christmas parade and there were already decorations aplenty. (Including a few houses which seemed to just throw red and green lights on top of the existing Halloween decorations.  As I said, it's quirky.)