Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

What you get when you google askew. Using "google" as a verb.

Movies I've seen recently. Two ends of the movie spectrum.

"Soylent Green" was a 1973 movie that I somehow missed and knew absolutely nothing about until last night when it showed up on TV (I've always liked the name though -- the words "Soylent Green" roll nicely off the tongue and suggest something just a little unpleasant; now that I've seen the movie I know why--see crackers above). And the movie "The Artist" is simply spectacular. I could feel myself smiling virtually from the first moment the screen lit up. No violence, no blood, no abuse, no horror, no suspense, just pure pleasure.

This is what Tina Brown said about the movie:
"....the audience was so enchanted and uplifted they applauded at the end and skipped out into the cold January night smiling dreamily like an audience in the ’30s finding a dollar in the street."

Brown's review was in a short article with a funny (I thought) title: Fix Economy, See 'The Artist' First.

I agree.

Our pileated woodpecker visited yesterday.

This goes beyond being a typo. (1/25/12 Update: "blue riband" is probably NOT a typo. See Anne's comment.)

From The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson.
I read a lot about climate change because I think it's just the most fascinating subject. It has it all: death, destruction, drama, debate, politics. Isn't this a great mistake?

Ha!

Potato tutorial.

For the past few years I've been successfully growing potatoes in my tiny veggie garden. I buy potatoes at the grocery store -- just your run-of-the-mill grocery store -- cut them into pieces, plant each piece, and wait. I always get potatoes. But I've always wondered if I was making a mistake by using industrial strength potatoes instead of, say, seeds or non-Big Ag potatoes. I don't know for sure that this adorable little girl helped me understand my potato-growing any better but isn't she fun to watch? And now I WILL spend a little time doing a little research. It won't necessarily change the way I plant potatoes but I might be a little more educated. The reason I won't necessarily change my ways is that I'm old... well old-ish, and I've been bombarded with carcinogens for all those years, and I'm just pessimistic enough to believe that nothing I do now, especially if it just involves potato-planting, will change any of that.

And thank you to this guy who alerted me to this video.

James Carville and I "would like to take a moment to revel."

Gleeful words :

"Your new front-runner is one of your old front runners, Newt Gingrich. I would like to take a moment to revel: I cannot personally tell you how pleased I am to see old Newt rise to the top after listening to all of your nauseating, sickening lectures on the evils of government and the importance of family values."

Dwight Schrute! What are you doing there?

Free books anyone? I have more than 90 credits in my online book-swapping club and I want to get rid of them. Anyone want a free used book? Email me!

See in the upper left corner? Where it says "credits"? That means I can request 92 books and they can be sent anywhere I want. Want a book? Nonfiction, fiction, hardback, paperback. If you search for the book you want here and see a blue "order this now" button on the right that means it's in the system. Send me your mailing address via email (pamelawinters@comcast.net) and I'll have the book shipped to you. Such a deal.

I wonder if Supreme Court justice Sam Alito will show up for next week's State of the Union speech.

Two years ago when Pres. Obama wisely criticized the horrible Citizens United v. the FEC decision during his State of the Union speech, Justice Alito famously (infamously) mouthed "not true." So now we know that this decision led to the Super PACS which make me (and Stephen Colbert) sick. So will Alito show up at next week's SOTU? Will Obama look him in the eye and say, essentially, "see?! I told you so asshole." No, none of that will happen. Obama's too cool. But if Alito's there I'll be yelling it at the TV set.

A trip to Old Town Alexandria, VA.

Anne of The Complaint Department and I went to Old Town yesterday. She wanted to buy some lamp shades and I went along for the ride. We had lunch at a Lebanese restaurant called Layla's (do the Lebanese worship Eric Clapton??) -- this was the sampler appetizer we shared.** And she wowed me by buying, seemingly impulsively, an enormous chest of drawers ... as a gift for her husband. It wasn't totally an impulse purchase. She had seen it just after Christmas and remembered it. I was just very impressed with the efficient, decisive, well-thought-out way she made the purchase. And then a gathering of store employees and free-lance workers-on-the-street helped load it into her car and off we went, back over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into Maryland.

Old Town is a lovely place to visit and we're going back when the weather is better. I want to visit the Masonic Temple, which you can see way in the background on the left in the third picture from the top. I don't know why exactly, except that I'm always curious about these semi-secret societies.

**1/21/12 update: the restaurant was actually The Pita House not Layla's. Two Lebanese restaurants within a block or two of each other!

Fungus from my sister's neck of the woods. Not sure what they are but they sure are purty.

What kind of fungus is this? I'll bet my sister knows.

It was growing on a dead limb in the woods next to my house. So pretty on the bottom. But what is it?

Also running for President. Meet Vermin Supreme!

If you manage to get through the whole 5 minutes you'll hear him reaffirm his campaign promise of a pony for every American! He's on the New Hampshire ballot so all you Hampshirians who can't find a suitable Republican can vote for this guy.

GrandCats Occupy Brooklyn.

The boys are on top of the kitchen cabinets, where they are technically not supposed to be. Maybe they know they have appointments next Wednesday to have their manhoods altered.

Eye Oh Ah tonight.

At long last the Eye Oh Ah caucuses are tonight. I'll be firmly planted in front of my small screen TV watching C-Span, which will cover not one but two of the cauci. It will be a bit like peering into someone's living room while standing in their dark, cold front yard. Could I be a bigger geek? Or am I a nerd? Or perhaps a masochist? I'm rooting for Santorum because I am eager to see his brown line soar to the top. After he soars, we only need Huntsman to soar and then it will mean that at one time nearly all the candidates soared.

Book Confessions, 2011.

Hi, I'm Pam and I'm a junk-book-aholic. When I go into my local library and see this kind of trash on the shelf of new books I just can't help myself. Is this a waste of time? Not really. I feel like I learned a tiny bit about what it's like to be a teenager in Alaska. I'd like to say that it's a new year's resolution to stop reading self-serving, badly written memoirs but I can't. Speaking of resolutions, last year's attempt to improve my habits was a bust. I sort of managed to accomplish three of my 12 resolutions (I stopped buying soft drinks, I didn't start knitting any new scarfs, and I reduced by a tiny, tiny bit my yak-yak-yakking), but I'm not sure I'm even going to write up a list this year. Converting my room of horrors into a guest bedroom is my only resolution.

Candle-making! At last. I have more wax cappings to melt but first I need to buy lots of stockings. It takes a lot -- it's a messy business. But fun.

I think these pictures pretty much tell the story of my maiden attempt at candle-making. I know I wasted some wax because I let too much of the stocking stuffed with the clean burr comb sink under the hot water. That caused a lot of the melted wax to stick to the stocking and it had to be thrown out.

Happy New Year!