2/3 of a Trilogy

A few weeks back I finally picked up the first book in The Hunger Games series.  People had been raving about it, and I expected it to be a good book, but I was surprised at how quickly it drew me in.  It's a short book, which is too bad, considering how quickly I inhaled it, and that is my one main complaint about the series so far.  I realize that it is intended as young adult fiction, but J.K. Rowling has proven that a 400-page book isn't daunting to teenagers if the story is good enough.

The first book did a great job of introducing the main character, Katniss, a young woman who is both fiercely independent, and fiercely protective of those who she claims as her own.  In a dystopic future, she becomes the breadwinner of her family, learning to hunt, gather, trade and sell to supplement her family's meager income, which is still better than many of the families around her.  She has a rebellious streak, which causes problems when she is chosen to take part in the annual Hunger Games, a festival designed to celebrate the triumph of the Capital over the Districts after a rebellion 74 years in the past, while simultaneously impressing upon those districts just how much power the Capitol holds.  In a battle where teenagers are forced to fight to the death, she manages to maintain her moral integrity and survives (otherwise we'd have no books 2 and 3, right?).

I finished the book thinking that it was a cross between Ender's Game and Twilight, but in a good way.  Ender's Game is one of my favorite books, and Ender is a similar character to Katniss -- a child forced into vicious surroundings, whose intelligence and basic human decency allows him to defy the game and write his own rules.  The Twilight aspect comes from just a few similarities between Katniss and Bella -- most obviously, the fact that she is torn between two men who both love her desperately.  I can easily see why comparisons were made between the two franchises when the Hunger Games movie came out.  However, unlike Bella, Katniss is fully aware of her own talents and abilities, she is engaged with and in control of her destiny at all times, and she has a strong sense of self-esteem.  When she takes action, it is to protect both herself and her loved ones, unlike Bella, who sees absolutely no value in herself and is always itching to become the sacraficial lamb.  Katniss's biggest flaw is perhaps her inability to let her guard down enough to recognize and accept the love of the people who surround her. 

I also wish that the first book didn't end as a cliffhanger.  Call me old fashioned, but even if you are planning a series, I expect you, as the author, to give me a complete story in each book.  Again, J.K. Rowling managed to pull it off 7 times.  I expected the second book to pick up exactly where the first left off, but fortunately there was a gap -- I say fortunately, because that gap was somewhat artfully filled in to start the next book.

And the second book, Catching Fire, was just as absorbing as the first.  But it was also too short.  Katniss has to deal with life back in the village as the Capitol begins to crack down, and she continues to battle with her conflicting feelings about the two men she has been involved with.  However, in this book, I definitely saw the parallels between her character and the goddess Diana/Artemis -- a beautiful virgin who is at home in the woods, who is freakishly good with a bow, and who resists romantic entanglements.  She finds herself a pawn in the Capitol's game while the other districts begin to rise up in rebellion, but as always she struggles to protect those she can, and to maintain her integrity in the face of forced brutality.

My main problem with this book was that so much of the action was simply glossed over, particularly the explanation at the end that sets us up for book 3 in the series.  These are slim novels, and taking the time to actually walk through the pentultimate conversation as it unfolded would have been much more satisfying than the "here's what he said," two-sentence summary of that conversation.  The same can be said for some of the action of the book itself -- near the beginning of the novel, when Katniss heads out for a 12-district tour, we only experience one or two stops, and the rest is explained away in a few short paragraphs.  I thought it was being sped past to get to a juicier main act, but sections of that part of the story seemed rushed as well.  And, again, it ends on a cliffhanger, but I have come to accept that from this series.

All that said, I am definitely looking forward to getting my hands on book 3 of the series.  I hope that the pace doesn't continue to increase, because if it does, I'm afraid I'll be done with the final book in a matter of hours.  I'm just hoping that the author was so excited to get into the meat of the final story, she rushed a little in part 2.  I hope there's more to savor in the final act.

Garden!

We put in a garden this weekend!  Our house came with a pair of lovely raised planting beds, but they didn't have much soil in them.  I wanted to start by planting just one of them.  This weekend, we pulled all the weeds that have been growing wild in there, went and got a truckload of compost, filled in the half-full bed, got a bunch of plants and soaker hose, used some pavers we got last year for a different project and didn't use, and put a garden together.  And then we put a little fence around it to keep the dogs out.  The best part was watching T, who has worked in construction for most of his life, measuring out the locations of the pavers to make sure they were perfectly evenly spaced, and then pulling out a little level to make sure they were flat, too.  We put a row of tomatoes across the back, which includes 4 different varieties, including an heirloom named Mr. Stripey.  We also put in 4 broccoli plants, 3 red cabbages, 2 cucumber vines, a zucchini, a Hubbard squash, and a honedew melon.  Considering this is our first garden, I hope everything grows well!

While we were getting all the veggies, we also got some flowers to put in our front planting bed.  Last weekend we replaced the horrible, thorny reddish bushes that came with the house, and put in 2 boxwoods in front, and a flowering bush on the side.  Now we also have some color out there, with a row of flowers in front of the bushes, and we picked up a three-pack of daylilies at Costco today to put along the side.  I know daylilies do well around here, and they're a nice, tall punch of color.

The veggies and the tools

Diezel insisted on helping all day

The plants in the ground, with soaker hose

Fencing to keep Cara out

Our front planter

Daylilies on the side

Pansies

Daylilies

Asters

One Tough Mama

A good friend of mine from Arcata, CA, Nicole, was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.  I met her when I first moved to Arcata in 2000 -- not only did our partners work and kayak together, so we spent a lot of time camping and socializing, but we were also members of a very tight-knit book club, the Brainy Book Babes.  When I moved back to Arcata after grad school, I managed to rent a room in a house that was just a few blocks from hers, and we would frequently take her sweet dog Vista (aka Poochie) for long walks around the neighborhood and through the redwoods of the community forest.  I went to her rehearsal dinner and her wedding, attended her first baby shower, stayed at her house for visits after I had moved out of the area, and the last time I made it back to the coast, I was lucky enough to attend her daughter's 1st birthday.  As the physical distance between us grew, social media allowed us to stay in touch, and I got to watch from afar as her daughter grew up, her son came into the world, and she and her husband started their own organic ice cream shop, which has been a smashing success.

Nicole has always been an inspiration to me.  It is rare to find someone who moves through life with such kindness, determination, and grace.  She is smart, athletic, thoughtful, kind, brave, creative, loving, mindful and energetic.  She is the kind of person who always looks for ways that she can help others, but who doesn't forget to take care of herself as well.  She has a beautiful family, and with them has created a wonderful home, and they have reached out to actively become part of an amazing local community.

So it's no surprise that Nicole is once again inspiring me with her response to her cancer diagnosis.  She had a very successful mastectomy a little over a month ago, and is now preparing to begin radiation and chemo treatments to eliminate the last of the cancer cells.  While she lives in Arcata, her medical team and treatment will be over 300 miles away in Marin.  And how has she decided to get there?  She will be turning the journey into a 6-day cycling trip!  And not only is she doing this for herself, but she is turning the ride into a cancer awareness ride, and a fundraiser for her treatment center, the Center for Integrative Wellness and Health, and the Humboldt County Breast Health Project.  She has begun chronicling the journey and is accepting donations on her blog, kickingmycancer.com.  Her family will be her SAG (support-and-gear) wagon, coming along for the journey in a rented RV.  And her story is so inspirational, she has gained sponsorship for her ride from several local businesses in Arcata, and her story was picked up by the Larkespur-Corte Madera Patch.  Another mutual friend blogged about Nicole's amazing ride, so I thought I should do my part to spread the word, too.  So if you would like to support an amazing woman and friend, please go to her blog page and donate, or just read her story and spread the word!

Mighty Morphing Power Mutt



I spent a significant portion of Saturday afternoon in my back yard, pulling out burr plants.  We have two areas that grow weeds at the back edge of the yard -- in one of our empty raised flower beds, and in the gravel RV parking strip along the very back of our lot.  I don't remember having any burrs back there last year, but I filled a medium-sized wastebasket with them this year.  I have decided the reason for this is our dog, Cara, is a virtually-perfect burr delivery system.

When I first got Cara in the summer of 2006, there was almost no hint that she would become a burr magnet.  She was sleek and black, with a very short coat all over.  The only long hair on her was a hint of fluffiness behind her lab-like ears.

The first day I had her at home

On a hike, about a week later

Once she got her winter coat that year, though, things started to change.  By spring, the new hair hadn't shed out -- suddenly, she had fuzzy paws that were perfect for picking up sock burrs.  I would spend hours picking them off her feet and out from between her toes.


Burr nightmare

During 2007 and 2008, the changes were continuing to progress.  Now she had more fuzz behind the ears, feathers growing from her front legs, and a hint of eyebrows coming in.

Feathery legs, and a blurred-out wagging tail

The beginning of the eyebrows

By this point, she was getting so many burrs in her feet and leg hair, and even behind her ears, that I started trimming them to make our lives easier.

neat and trimmed

By the time we moved to Utah in 2009, the hair was out of control.  The eyebrows, foot and leg hair kept getting longer and longer, plus she started growing long hair on the inside of her thighs and armpits, and on her belly.  And more and more of the hair that was growing in was either white, or literally striped black and white.


Snow everywhere

Armpit hair

There aren't as many burrs in our area here, so all of her hair has been allowed to grow untrimmed for the last few years.  And, as you can see, it has just kept on going -- she has longer toe, leg, and armpit hair, her eyebrows have gotten longer and turned into a larger fan around her eyes, she has long wisps growing off of her everywhere, and she's even grown a pretty good goatee.  The eyebrows, in fact, have become her defining feature -- everyone comments on them.  We call them her "crazy old man eyebrows."  We think it's possible that she's slowly morphing into a schnauzer, or possibly a sheepdog.

Furball

Full eye fan and goatee

I pulled out a picture the other day that a friend had taken of Cara, just a few months after I'd gotten her.  I showed it to T, and he looked at it for a sec and then said, "Cute pup."  He didn't even recognize her.  And would you?

The short-haired puppy



Not Identical Twins

As I mentioned last week, I've been working on a larger knitting project for a few weeks, that wasn't ready to be revealed.  But it's now in the mail, so it's time to post!  A good friend of mine just had twins, and I decided to knit a few of the toys out of the book Toys to Knit by Tracy Chapman.  The patterns are sooo cute, and it's a new book to me, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I picked the monkey (from the cover) and the penguin for their cuteness.  I thought they would be about the same size, although the finished size of the toys isn't mentioned in the book.

I did make some color decisions that were different from the book.  I went with a variegated brown yarn for the monkey, and decided to use white for the areas on him that should have been buff -- that way, I could use the same white from the penguin.  And I figured I would use yarn from my stash for the monkey's vest.  The scarf to go with it seemed like overkill.

As I got into the knitting, I realized that EVERYTHING was going to be knit flat and then sewn together.  I don't like sewing my knitting together very much, but I decided, at least the first time through, to just follow the directions as they were written.  That meant that, by the time I was done, I had a total of 15 different parts to sew together.

Yes, I laid him out like a skeleton from "Bones"

The body was done in three parts, and I still don't understand why you couldn't shape the front the same way the back was shaped.  The arms and legs were knit flat, separate from the hands and feet, when they could have been knit in the round with a color change, which would have made everyone's lives easier.  OK, just mine.  Oh, and I opted to just pick up stitches on either side of the head for the ears, instead of sewing them on, as suggested in the book.  Also, maybe it was because of the yarn I chose from my stash, but the first vest I knit was much, much too small, so I had to make it a few rows longer and almost twice as wide to fit him.  And for some reason, the front and back pieces of my head didn't match up, but I'm sure that was due to knitter error, not the pattern.  *wink*  To make things worse, there were very few sewing directions.  It just said "sew as shown in the photo," but with the photo monkey wearing both a scarf and a vest, you couldn't see how the arms and head went on at all!  Very frustrating for someone who hasn't sewn together a lot of toy parts before.  It took forever for me to sew everything up, and there was a delay as I ran out of polyfill part way through, but when all was said and done, here's how he looked:

A very tall monkey

The other pattern I picked was the penguin.  As soon as I started knitting, I realized they were not going to be anywhere near the same size.  But at least the penguin had a lot less pieces.

Penguin pieces

And, actually, there is one extra piece in that photo that didn't go into the penguin.  Can you see the shaping on the piece that looks like the right-hand body panel (yeah, I forgot I'd knit this "extra" piece and got confused as I was laying him out)?  That's the wing, as knit according to the pattern directions.  Again, the photo in the book has a black wing against a black body, so I have no idea what it was supposed to look like.  But the directions said to knit the wing in stocking stitch, which meant the whole thing just curled up into a tube!  I took it upon myself to knit them in seed stitch, which I think looked nice texturally.  I was surprised to discover that the body was just a front and a back panel.  Next time I make one of these, I plan on figuring out how to do 2 back body panels and a triangular base piece, so that he actually has a little tail.  Maybe I could turn the white belly, like I was turning a heel?  I don't know, I'd have to practice that one a little.  Also, the pattern called for knitting the monkey with doubled yarn, I assume so that the stuffing wouldn't show through when you stuffed him.  They didn't do the same for the penguin, and I kinda wished they had.  Again, I couldn't see how they had sewn on the wings, so I just sewed straight across the top, leaving them long and floppy.  I think they look sweet that way.  I also had trouble figuring out how to sew his head together so that it looked the same as in the book.  But here he is:

cute little penguin

Since I took both photos on our rolltop desk, you can compare the height of the cubbies to see how much smaller the penguin is than the monkey.  I feel bad for whichever twin gets the little guy -- these two are definitely not identical!  But hopefully, by the time they get big enough to decide whose is whose, whoever has the penguin will love him enough to make up for his smaller stature.  And in the meantime, I hope that the packages of onesies that went along with the gift will help out their mom and dad.  *smile*

Strawberry Reservoir

Last weekend, T and I took a drive with the dogs to a spot called Strawberry Reservoir, southeast of Heber, UT.  It's actually on the other side of the mountains we looked across the lake at during our wedding -- not a bad spot to be scouting out a campsite for our anniversary in June.
On the way up, the dogs were in their traditional positions in the car.

Cara on the console, eyebrows and ear-hair blowing
in the wind from the A/C

Diezel hogging the back seat

The views on the way there were gorgeous -- I think the scenery is definitely the best part of Utah.

We had to stop a few times to let the dogs sniff around and pee, which ended up both times in pulling goatshead burrs out of tender paws.  But we finally got to the spot T had found once before, while following bad GPS coordinates to a jobsite.  It was up above the lake, in a very pretty spot.

There were lots of aspens in the area, which are a favorite for arborglyphs (yes, that's the fancy archaeological name for stuff people have carved into a tree).  The oldest one I found wasn't even near the historical period, but I still enjoyed poking around and seeing who had left their marks.

Not that old, but from a long way away

Just a little older than me

Sweethearts

I don't even know if this is English, but I love the dinosaur!

The dogs ran around and played in/ate from leftover snowbanks sprinkled here and there in the woods, and we managed to keep Cara from rolling in the deer bits left at the campsite by hunters.  It was too early for spring leaves at that altitude, but as we drove back down and out, the willows were bright yellow and orange -- they were the only thing that was really colorful in the landscape.

And on the way home, the dogs took their traditional post-romp positions -- with Cara in the back seat using Diezel as her pillow.

Blurry, but cute

Grilled Artichokes

I have been working on a few knitting projects recently, but I can't reveal them yet.  So this week, I'd like to share my experiments with grilled artichokes.

I have been trying a lot of different grilled veggies over the past few years, starting with asparagus, then zucchini, corn, and even cauliflower.  And I love love love artichokes.  So the thought of grilling artichokes was too delicious to resist.

I read a whole bunch of recipes, and saw variations on a similar theme.  Most say to boil or steam the 'chokes first, then add seasoning, and then grill them briefly.  So I started by steaming my artichokes, like I always do.

To prep the artichokes, I cut off the tip of the artichoke with a sharp knife, snip off the tips of each of the leaves with scissors if they have thorns, trim off all but 1" of the stem, and then peel the outer skin off the remaining stem.  But then I take it a step further than most: I split my artichokes and remove the fuzzy choke before I start cooking them.  It's easy to do, saves me time later, and actually makes my 'chokes cook more quickly.  All you have to do is balance the artichoke on its trimmed top, and slice it in half from the stem all the way down.  Then, take a small spoon, and press the edge of the spoon right along the bottom edge of the fuzzy choke.

Use a spoon to press along the line between the fuzz and the artichoke heart

The fuzz will yield much more easily than the actual flesh of the artichoke, so with a little care you can easily scoop out all of the fuzz without removing the yummy heart.  Once the choke is out, I usually flip the spoon over, insert it between the leaves just above the point where the tips go from purple to white, and pull down, to remove the lowest layer of leaves.  I then run the 'choke under cool water to rinse out any remaining fuzz and loose lower leaves, and it seems to prevent further browning.  (I don't worry about a little bit of browning, but you can dip the cut side into lemon juice and water to stop it from browning if it bothers you.)

Scoop everything out, including the purple-tipped lowest leaves

I then take my halved, hollowed artichokes and put them into my steamer, stems-up, to cook.  In this condition, they only take about 12 minutes to steam, instead of the 20 minutes required for whole artichokes.

I prop them up, in the hopes that this will cook them more evenly,
but they usually fall over during cooking

Most of the recipes I had read called for brushing the cooled artichokes (which you need to cut in half and de-choke after the fact if you steamed them whole) with a combination of oil and seasonings, but one called for marinating the 'chokes overnight before grilling them.  I decided to go with the brush-on method first, since I had 4 artichokes to work with.

I combined a few tablespoons of oil, a teaspoon or so of lemon juice, a few tablespoons of chopped garlic, and maybe half a teaspoon of the garlic juice out of my pre-chopped garlic jar.  I brushed both sides of the artichokes with the mixture, including the inside of the hollow, sprinkled them with kosher salt flakes, and then put them on the grill, face-down, for a few minutes until they browned.  Then I turned them over, spooned the chopped garlic into the bases of the artichoke halves, and then gave them a few more minutes on the other side.  Oh yeah, and I was grilling mine alongside the steak I was having for dinner that night.  (T was working late, so I grilled his steak for him when he got home).

Bases filled with garlic bits

A delicious dinner

The resulting artichokes were a mixed success.  Because I just brushed the outside of the artichokes with the seasoning, the leaves themselves didn't get a whole lot of seasoning on them, especially once you got past the first few outer layers of leaves.  They were basically just plain, steamed artichoke leaves.  However, the interior leaves and the heart were absolutely delicious, since the hollow held a lot of the juice, and the grilled garlic bits were a delicious bonus.

So the text time around, I decided to try this marinated artichoke recipe.  I marinate most of my veggies in a combination of oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper, so this sounded like a pretty good mix.  Because I wasn't teaching last week, I used my usual technique to steam these first thing in the morning.  I threw them into a ice bath to cool them off quickly and stop them from cooking, and then put them into a Ziploc bag filled with the marinade.  I didn't have fresh ginger, so I added about 1 1/2 tsp. of ground ginger instead.  Then I let them soak all day in the fridge, flipping them once.

Steamed, marinated 'chokes

I drained them as best I could before throwing them on the grill, and used a similar cooking technique to the first time.  More of the marinade definitely dripped out on the grill, and I think it took them a tiny bit longer to cook because they were so much more juicy than the first time.  In this case, the flavor definitely penetrated much further into the artichokes, which was a good thing.  However, the ground ginger was a bit of a mistake -- I put in too much, meaning the ginger flavor was a little too strong, and worse, it made the marinade gritty.  So I would marinate them again to get the seasoning all the way through, but I would use the garlic-and-lemon seasoning next time around, or possibly my tried-and-true veggie marinade.

What other veggies do you grill, and how do you season them?