smacky and bucky

Wow, quite a while between posts. I haven't been particularly busy or depressed or anything, just haven't been in much of a mood to post. We watched Baby Mama over the weekend, the same night Amy Pohler had her baby in real life, as it turned out. It was pretty funny, though I wonder if it pissed off women who used surrogates to have babies. The whole (SPOILER ALERT) "surprise, you're pregnant yourself! It's a miracle!" usually doesn't happen in real life, though I did have a really good friend ask me to write a letter of recommendation for he and his wife to adopt a baby and I wrote a great letter, and a few weeks later he called me and said his wife was pregnant. Good for them, but it was kind of a letdown, frankly. It was a fantastic letter.

Then the other night on Dexter, his girlfriend is pregnant and he's going to be a dad. A serial killer, a father. It's like everyone involved in popular culture is at the age where they're having babies, and they're reminding us about it every day.

Behold the bounty of the October farmers' market near our house:


We went this morning, on the way home from the dog park, and got one red tomato, a big batch of basil, two purple onions, a ball of garlic, a big batch of radishes, a bag of small yellow tomatoes, three finger eggplants, one white eggplant, and two macintosh apples. We had mozzarella, tomato, and basil on a baguette sandwiches for lunch today. YUM!


Let's overlook the fact that it's all sitting on a Dunkin' Donuts box. Yesterday was Laura's birthday and I slipped out early and got donuts, putting candles in a pumpkin donut first thing in the morning.

Is it creepy that I think Maureen McCormick still looks fantastic? (The answer is no, by the way. Creepy would be if I had a crush on her 19-year-old daughter!) She just released a "tell all" book about how after the Brady Bunch show ended she got into drugs, eventually trading sex for cocaine. If I had been her age and in her social circle back then, I would have tried to get a hold of a big bag of coke, stat!

Okay, let's move on to something less creepy...

Tomorrow is L's birthday! (How's that for a topic shift?) We're going to a dog park in the morning for a meet-up with other kerry blue and wheaten terriers in the area. Kirby will love it, Lexi will probably want to spend the entire time sitting by our side. (She prefers the company of humans to other dogs.) Then L has a friend's baby shower to attend, then we'll go to a restaurant of her choosing. I won't say what I got her, just in case she does actually read this now and then. You never know.

Last night, after the debate, we noticed this scene. Behold our dog sleeping in a ball in a chair as her new dog bed is taken over by a very small cat.

Amazing how five days away from the office bring things back into perspective.

I have a workshop to attend in downtown DC tomorrow, and while I would normally dread such a thing, I'm actually looking forward to it.

We took the dogs to the dog park on Saturday and I snapped this picture with my camera phone. This graffiti wasn't there a month ago. I don't know if it was completed in one marathon night session or what. If it was, it took a team to do it, with ladders and about 50 different colors of paint. As usual, I can't read a word of it. Graffiti always looks so stylized I can't tell vowels from consonants, but I can appreciate the talent of the artist (though I'm glad I don't own the building that was hit).

We watched Persepolis tonight, and it was such a great film. I added the autobiographical graphic novel set on which it is based to my wish list. It was a beautiful film about finding yourself, and sometimes having to leave and return (and leave again) to do it.

It's also a powerful look at Iran, from the fall of the Shah through the revolution to the present day.

I see so much in what the religious extremists have done there in what religious extremists would like to do in America if they ever had their way: Censorship, dictating morality through law, etc. The movie also subtly shows how wrong it is to judge all the people of a nation with a blanket view, as if they were all part of one giant entity.

Well worth adding to your Netflix, if you haven't seen it. Laura enjoyed it too, and believe me, she was not thrilled at the idea of a black and white cartoon in French with subtitles. (I think there might be an English dubbed option available on the DVD, but see it in the original French. It's part of the experience.)

We're trying to decide what to do over the upcoming long Columbus Day weekend. The wife and I might go somewhere with the dogs, which would be fun. Also, a friend from college has proposed a camping trip in the mountains, which would also be fun, but I'd be going there without L, how ain't big on camping. Not sure I want to spend the long weekend after my birthday with guys in a tent.

I have an all-day workshop to attend on the Tuesday after Columbus Day, so I'd prefer to be well rested for it, as opposed to smelly, tired, and possibly slightly hungover.

Ooooh, Capicon is also October 12. I skipped the August one, so I haven't been since June. I miss the smell of old newsprint and geek sweat. Might need to make time for that as well.

I was listening to Classic Rewind on the satellite radio in my wife's car over the weekend. The station is billed as "the next generation of classic rock." They played Hall and Oates, Foreigner, and Journey. It got me thinking about how everything I grew up with is just starting to be considered retro, (and how that makes me feel old, but that's another post) and what other things that were fads when I was a teen have yet to become big again. Then it hit me. The major cultural fashion push that could be hitting in a big way:

If a tattered copy of this book were to get into the hands of the current popular crowd at a high school in a descent-sized town, we'll be seeing preppy clothes on everyone under 18 next fall.

The evidence:

• I've already heard rumblings of people "popping" their collars (and thought "Oh no, please don't tell me people are doing that again!").

• Laura mentioned that the news did a story on plaids being back in style.

Those are two of the cornerstones of preppyism. If people start wearing loafers or "boat shoes" without socks, we'll know it's time to raise the fashion terror threat level to orange. If a teen boy willingly wears plaid pants usually seen on golfers and the elderly, the level goes directly to red.