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1. Food, of course. Good food that you don’t normally eat. 2. The people who make the food. 3. Although I’m not the religious type, and I sometimes get impatient with people who are, I am thankful for their genuine expression of thanksgiving gratitude before the meal. 4. I’m thankful that my husband drove the whole friggen way to Florida. 5. The break from school. Much needed before hell week next week. 6. The cats. They are gracious enough to stay at home and poop and pee in their litter box (we hope). ∞

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The Latest Threes: (Semi-gratitudish) The intartubes: 1. My latest bookmarks are all WordPress related. 2. I’m on Google wave. Are you? 3. I’m still confused about the new Facebook. The meat world: 1. We are shifting to online teacher evals at school (wait, does that count as meat world? Or on the internet?) 2. I haven’t been to a movie in ages, but I did buy Madonna’s Celebration. 3. The kid and I eat out too much. She’s an expensive date, going for three courses and two drinks. But we do have such excellent conversations. My cat: 1. …is very fat. 2. …is on aRead More →

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Generation Y documents everything about itself. Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, the repositories of that generation are endless. My generation has some documentation; we’ve got home movies, videos, pictures, but nothing close to what the children of Gen Y will have as they age. Most people of my generation are lucky if they know anything about more than their grandparents and maybe their great grandparents. My family did a poor job of documenting us. I have very few pictures of us as a children, few of my parents at any age, and almost no pictures of my grandparents. There were no home movies or videos. ComparedRead More →

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My father passed away on January 11. We had a strained relationship for most of my adult life. One of my biggest regrets about losing him is that I didn’t get to learn about his life story. He was an interesting, but broken man. I only knew him when he was broken. He was a wonderful storyteller, but he was reticent to tell the details of his adult life except for snatches of memories and the more mundane events that happened to him. The heart of his life was told only in fragmentary, hushed whispers. The rest I heard haphazardly from my mother. The definingRead More →

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In cleaning out my office today, I discovered a pair of old black and white photos from my childhood. I was probably a year old in the arms of Aaron Henry, a famous civil rights leader. My grandmother, who hosted Henry in her home, who was a district-level politician in Chelsea in New York City at the height of the 60s.  She was progress, well-known, and well-respected. Yes, being radical is in my genetic code. Here is the text of the note my mother sent me with the pictures: The occasion of the photographs was a trip Aaron Henry made to NYC to seek supportRead More →

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Saturday was the kid’s graduation. The weekend was very frustrating and emotional for me. Frustrating because there was a lot of waiting around without anything to do, and because we had to pack up her dorm room. Emotional because…well…she’s graduating. It made me reflect nostalgically on my own high school graduation. It made me feel very old. As did listening to the 80s music at the PALS’ (Parents’ Association of the Louisiana School) graduation party. And also emotional because it means that the kid is leaving the nest. I wasn’t very sympathetic to my family when I left the nest and the kid isn’t veryRead More →

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1. 3-day holiday weekends. 2. The niece is coming home this weekend for what she calls “extended” (i.e., the extended weekends that they get kicked out of the dorms and forced to visit their parents). 3. D&D on Saturday. ∞

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Yesterday was a great Valentine’s day. I looked forward to it for two weeks and I wasn’t disappointed. First we woke up at 6:30 AM (gawd) and baked our usual v-day cookies. Then that evening we went out to eat steak at Ruth’s Chris steakhouse. Which was yummy. Last, we went to see another Bollywood movie, Jodhaa Akbar. Essentially, Jodhaa Akbar is a love story between the Muslim Mughal Emperor and his Hindi wife in 16th century India. It stars Aishwarya Rai, who I think is terribly beautiful. The movie was widely anticipated, and we didn’t get good seats because the theater was so full.Read More →

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Every year for Valentine’s Day, my husband and I make cookies. We’ve done it now seven times. Of course, with each anniversary comes a recounting from the husband about the previous year’s events, including the cookie-making extravaganza. Twice when we lived in the Garden District bungalow and now five times in our current house. This Valentine’s Day our cookies came out perfectly. And when the news of peanut butter salmonella outbreaks hit the internet and the television, we blew it off, because we heard it was Peter Pan, and we buy the ghetto brand, Great Value. Well, lo and behold, we have two jars ofRead More →