Bloglets

Aside from the mouse invasion and visit to the eye doctor, I’ve had nothing much to report lately. No full blog posts, only blog-lets.

In no particular order.

Came across this entry in the museum’s accession register the other day: Dated 1931, someone had donated a jacana, which is a kind of bird, to the museum. “Donor wishes bird to be anonymous.” I can solemnly promise you I have NO IDEA what that bird’s name is.

Winter. I surrender.

No more mice. Apparently he was a lone scout and since he didn’t report back to headquarters, no others have followed him to the dangerous anti-mouse territory of my home. Profound gratitude from me, fading optimism from Wilkie. Dickens remains oblivious. (Geekwif, he prefers mint to catnip. He LOVES IcyHot and peppermint foot lotion.)

The Oscars. Yawn.

New glasses. Yay! This happens every 2-3 years and involves a visit to the Glasses Fairy. Having a Glasses Fairy is a huge improvement to the old-fashioned method of selecting new frames, what I liked to call the ‘Which Blur Looks Better?’ process of trying things on without having your corrective lenses in place. The Glasses Fairy flits around the optical shop shooting questions at me (‘Do you wear red often? What do you do for a living? Gold or silver jewelry?’), making return visits to my face so she can decide exactly what shade of brown my eyes are or the distance between my eyes, and selecting many, many frames which she drapes over her tiny arms. Then she comes back and makes me try them all on, dismissing some before I’ve even had a chance to see them. (‘Too wide’, ‘not enough nose’, ‘wrong shape’). It’s like being in my own little episode of ‘What Not to Wear’ but only for the strip of face between eyebrows and cheekbones. This year’s frames are a little crazier than usual but she insisted I had to go out on a limb. ‘You’re creative! It’s essential.’ In case you're wondering, there's simply no arguing with the Glasses Fairy. I’ll spend the next 2 years trying to live up to the level of cool represented by my creative glasses.

Successful tofu cooking experience, number one. I’ve cooked with tofu before but am uniformly disappointed with the results. This time I made spinach-and-tofu stuffed shells and yum. I suppose if you cover anything with pasta, red sauce and enough cheese you’ll make it taste good. But yum.

Did anyone see the episode of ‘Project Runway’ in which fashion designers were let loose in the Metropolitan Museum before opening hours to select a single art work for their own inspiration? As a museum person I found myself burying my head in the couch as fashion designers armed with new digital cameras went traipsing through the European paintings gallery and the Temple of Dendur taking bazillions of flash photos. Grrrr. Hello, unnecessary light exposure. If Philippe de Montebello (director of the Met) weren’t on his merry way toward imminent retirement, would the same thing have happened? I have no idea. (Flash photography of irreplaceable paintings aside, I do love the current season of ‘Project Runway.’ And when Tim Gunn declared that if he were a professional wrestler, his persona would be called Polly Syllabica and Heidi Klum and all the designers looked completely baffled… priceless.)

Spring. A fairytale?

Complete Jane Austen round up. The PBS Masterpiece series of all Jane Austen works is not yet complete, but I’ve been re-reading the Austen books I hadn’t looked at in years and I have to say, I’ve been a little surprised. I liked Emma better this time around, disliked Sense & Sensibility much more than expected, could take or leave Mansfield Park just as before, and discovered that I had never read Northanger Abbey, despite my faulty memory, and that I really enjoyed it. Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion remain my favorites.

Four words of deliciousness: New England Clam Chowder. I will never cook it myself. But it is the only way I will voluntarily ingest clams. It is the silver lining of endless New England winters.