The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet, by Colleen McCullough

Book 12

There is an incredible number of Pride and Prejudice sequels out there and I understand most of them are garbage.  I picked up this one because:

1. Its focus was on Mary Bennet, the puritanical middle sister, rather than on the mythical children of the Darcys. And;
2. It was written by Colleen McCullough.  If anyone could make this particular mini-genre not suck, it was McCullough.

I was correct in my thinking.  Mary was a good subject because from the original novel.  We only knew her as her sisters saw her and she was young enough to have evolved into something interesting by the beginning of this tale - 20 years later.

As the novel opens, the horrid Mrs. Bennet is finally dead.  Mary, who has spent her entire life caring for her, is finally free to have her own adventures.  Darcy and Bingley have settled some money on her.  You know, for keeping the old lady out of their hair for all those years.

Darcy and Elizabeth have been in a rut for most of their marriage.  Charles and Jane are ok, but he cheats on her mercilessly and takes off for months at a time.  Kitty married a rather wealthy man that was sporting enough to die while she was still young.  And Lydia is Lydia.   The action commences.

It did not suck.  I enjoyed most of it, although it did feel like the climax of the book came a bit early and tying it together at the end took too long.  I really could have skipped the Darcys' frank discussion of the failings of their sex life.  But if you find it necessary to revisit Pemberley, this is a good read.

Up in the Air

When Up in the Air came out last year, no one could believe that I wasn’t rushing out to see it. Because:


1. “You dig Clooney, don’t you?”

2. “You travel all the time..you’ll get all the Frequent Flyer jokes!”

3. “You work in HR..and Clooney fires people!”

Yeah. Let’s talk about that. I work in HR. So I want to watch a movie about firing people?  I barely dragged myself out to see Star Trek.

Besides that..it offends me down to my core that someone from outside the organization would be hired to end someone else’s employment. I don’t care how big a company is or how...never mind.

Just add that someone thought it would be a good idea to do it via web conference. Why would I want to see a movie about that?

Then the Oscar nominations came out. Fine. I will look at it.

The travel stuff was funny. Clooney explaining the Frequent Flyer tricks for the airport was awesome. That security line part? I can’t say that I would “get in line behind the Asian guys”, but one certainly knows about the families with small children and those totally new to the security rules. Not six months ago I was stuck behind a lady that could not believe her makeup was being confiscated, and all I could feel was ticked off that she was holding up the rest of us.

Clooney made this movie. Nothing about the plot was particularly surprising, but there were some good pieces. The part that resonated – as it was designed to – was the scene with the lady, extremely calm as she heard the news that she downsized. Then she said that she was going to jump off a bridge. There was also the illustration of the disconnect between the Real World and the On the Road world. That someone would choose to live On the Road all the time was totally alien to me.

However. I did learn something – faux/homey = foamy. Is that a real thing?

Random Sunday Night Blathering

Joker the Bunny has gone home and I am gearing up for a couple of business trips.  The horrid part about that is Alex and Ainslie are expecting their baby sister while I am gone.

I took them to lunch yesterday at Noodles.  I had neglected to pack a toddler spoon, and Ainslie had trouble with the fork.  Every time I tried to help her, she put her fists up in front of her face, shook her head back and forth and made a noise that sounded just exactly like "warning..warning..warning..(I am going to scream!)"  So I had to hurryhurry put three noodles on the fork, put it down and say, "OK, then!"  And she would pick up the fork.

Sixteen months old, that one.

Here's what's funny.  There is a Cold Stone Creamery around the corner and I asked Alex if he wanted to go get some ice cream.  He said, "Nah.  We just went to the grocery store."

When I told this to his mother, she was all impressed and explained that Edy's was Buy 1 Get 2 Free at the Jewel.  So.  Public Service Announcement there.  Oh.  And another:

For a series of uninteresting reasons, I happen to walk into an Old Navy store.  No wait - one of the reasons is important:

It was 10am on a Sunday and many stores do not open until 11.  I will walk into a store where I do not normally shop to kill time until the place I need to go is open.  This happens nearly every Sunday.  Someone should really count up all of the unnecessary purchases I have made at Bed, Bath and Beyond just because they open early.

Oh, and my friend Jodi has had really good luck at Old Navy lately.  Lame commercials aside.

Anyway.  The Ladies of My Acquaintance (read as: my female co-workers) have lamented all winter long about the lack of straight skirts in the stores.  Everything has been flared or ruffled or something otherwise unacceptable.  Old Navy had a straight skirt, machine washable, cut just above the knee and appropriate for the business casual workplace.  For $20.00.

I am mostly satisfied with the Final Four.  I'd have been happier if Duke was out (Butler put up a good fight), but I promised to shut up and be happy if Notre Dame was bumped early.  And so I shall.  My mother made a similar vow, (except for the shutting up part) that she has already violated in her raucous support for the Big Ten. 

So.  Another week. 

Custom Trail Mix

A few weeks ago, at my neighborhood Fresh Market, I was in the bulk food section and saw an interesting trail mix. It involved dried cherries, pistachios and cashews. I bought a container.


I loved it so much that the next day I went back and bought another container. And then my mother discovered it, too. This was going to get expensive. Then I remembered nutsonline.com, the website from which I order almonds and pine nuts for Kiwi the Grey. I wondered if they had something comparable.

Boy, did they. It’s called Custom Trail Mix.

Basically, you can take your pick of all of the stuff they sell and have them mix it together in a five pound bag. How much stuff is that? Example:

There are 11 kinds of nuts listed, plus a “mixed nuts” option. I clicked on “Almonds”. There are more than 45 options listed just under almonds. Prices vary depending on the items you choose.  I picked:

2 parts dried bing cherries

1 part dried cranberries

1 part roasted, salted pistachios

1 part roasted, salted cashews

1 part mixed nuts

As always, the order processed quickly. Once it arrived, we filled an airtight container, then put the rest of the bag in the freezer. So far, I am very pleased.

It should be noted that in the end (meaning, after I paid shipping), this was more expensive than buying five pounds of the original trail mix in the store. But seriously. Custom trail mix.

I am a Convert

I may have told you that I do most of my banking online.  I was actually a pretty early adopter, because I fell all in love with the way you could schedule when payments are going to be received.  And the bank sends the funds in time to meet the deadline.  In however many years I have used this service, I have only had two problems.  The one that was Chase's fault, they told me about immediately and offered to pay any fees that I may have incurred due to the delay.  The second problem was on the receiving end - and Bank of America was just wrong.

However.  I have held out on using the ATM to deposit funds.  For some bizarre reason, I have felt like I need an actual person to deposit my money.  Because people, you know, never make mistakes.

Well, Chase did some good marketing with those commercials, so I went over to Dominick's to give it a try.  I figured that at the Dominick's ATM, if something bad happened, like my check was shredded instead of scanned, there would be people right there.  People.

I endorsed the check with a "for deposit only".  Then I started the transaction.  The ATM offers to print a scan of the receipt, with the scanned check on it.

It was beautiful.  It took less time than a teller, who has to type in your account information.  I just logged in to check my account, and there it is.

I may never set foot in my bank again.

Ridiculous Creature of Habit

The "Get a Grip on the Starbucks Factor" experiment lasted five or six weeks.  It failed for two reasons:

1. I had to remember both to buy more coffee and to bring it to work; and
2. I was right in thinking that the protein of the hot chocolate in the morning made me less hungry

So it was back to the coffee cart run by the deli in our building.  Francisco didn't miss a beat, even my first day back.  Grande hot chocolate, skim milk, no whipped cream.  With peppermint syrup instead of the vanilla when it is in season.  Even on the first day back I didn't have to tell him what I wanted.  Even the peppermint part.  We exchanged "good morning"s, he made the drink for me, I said "thank you" and left.

So.  Every morning we do this.

This morning, I headed downstairs early because I had a meeting at 9am.  Francisco wasn't there yet.  There was a new girl at the coffee cart.  Well - not new, because she has worked at the deli for awhile.  And not a girl.  A lady.  She asked me what I would like.

I was totally dumbfounded for several seconds.  Francisco happened to walk through the door that second, and I nearly said, "He knows!"  But instead: 

"Uhhhh.  Grande.  Hot chocolate, please.  With.  Ummm.  Skim milk.  And..."

I knew there was another high-maintenance thing I always say, but she was halfway through steaming the milk before I remembered.  "And no whipped cream!  Um.  Please."

I had somehow forgotten the words "grande skim no whip hot chocolate".  Technically, Starbucks says "nonfat" instead of "skim", but I haven't adopted that last piece of the lingo.  So rebellious, I am.

(rolls eyes and posts)

In Case You Needed to Go "Awwwwwww!"

Both of the newspapers I "read" regularly - the Chicago Tribune and USA Today - have added sections on pets.  No, I do not call it news.  But I think we can agree that sometimes the news just sucks, anyway.  USA Today posted a story from a reader about her Newfoundland named Rosie.  Isn't she the cutest thing?  It is a "did you ever wonder what your dog does all day while you are at work?" story.

It will make my mother cry because it sounds like something my late, great dog Dallas would have done.

Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin

Book 11

I was a bit cranky about this spring's One Book One Chicago pick because it was just published last year.  Meaning the used book stores didn't have it around.  But seriously, this particular book club never fails. 

Brooklyn is about a young lady in post-war Ireland whose elder sister rather steamrolls her into taking an opportunity to emigrate to the states.  Eilis lands in Brooklyn with a perfectly respectable job, in a perfectly respectable boarding house, going to night school and building a life for herself.  Even though she is dumbfounded as to why she was chosen to go and is homesick like crazy.

She meets Mr. Wonderful, who is actually wonderful.  There is a moment when it becomes clear that he wants to marry her and she can't commit to it.  On one hand, I think she is a damn fool.  But really, the unspoken dilemma that she has is that if she makes a commitment to this American (Italian, if it matters), she is also deciding not to go home.  For real.  I was feeling that.

Many things about the immigrant experience are addressed here - the church as the center of the community, the ethnic enclaves.  At one point, her department store employer determines to cater to the new African American families moving in to the community.  Eilis is chosen to staff the lingerie counter when the nylons are sold and serves the first African American customers.  She notes the tension, and how everyone is trying to ignore it.  She notes that the customers don't look at her and don't speak to her and she handles their purchases.  And she has to fight about it at home in the boarding house.  I thought it was very well done - I rather forgot the fact that Toibin is from Dublin.

Spoiler

That I had guessed before I got to it..but the sister dies suddenly and unexpectedly.  Before Eilis makes the trip back to Ireland, Mr. Wonderful talks her into a secret wedding.  Just to make sure she doesn't decide to stay home with her mother.  It seems like a heavy handed weasel thing to do, but it showed that he knew her pretty damn well.

So three quarters of the book is about building a life in America and the last part is racing toward answering the question: does she throw it all away out of guilt?

I was a little disappointed that some less dramatic compromises were not considered.  Like, say..why didn't Mr. Wonderful go to Ireland with her?  And why did Eilis not consider sending for her mother to come to America?  Or even going home for the purpose of settling business and taking her mother back to America?  The Choose Mom or Choose the Guy was a bit stark, but I suppose that is how you build the drama.

That said, I really loved this book.

The Civil War, Ken Burns

I borrowed my mother's DVDs of The Civil War when I went on vacation and just now finished it.  Of course, I had seen most of it before, but always in bits and pieces.  Not full episodes in order.

The episodes are broken out by year, so it is mostly chronological.  There are some exceptions.  For example, I was rather rankled that 1864 ended without mention of the Battle of Franklin, but that turned up in the 1865 piece.

Burns pulls together artists to read the first person narratives   Morgan Freeman reads for Frederick Douglass, and a few other African Americans of the time.  Julie Harris reads for Mary Chestnut (I really have to pick up her diaries) and some other southern ladies.  It was distracting when their rather distinctive voices were reading for more than one person. I got over it.  Oh, and Jason Robards read for General Grant, which was awesome.

The visuals are photographs, panning in and out and from one side to another, which was fine.  And there was also video footage - some was modern landscape of the battlefields and landscape and some was footage of the aged soldiers from early in the last century.

Finally, we have the historians, like the famous Shelby Foote, give some perspective.  David McCullough narrates the entire thing. 

As a pretend student of history, I found it all very effective and entertaining.  Although it probably took me so long to get through because I still get emotionally involved in the stories.  If my perspective changed on anyone, it was General Sherman.  I never liked him much, which I imagine is primarily due to too much Gone with the Wind in my youth.  But two things about him stand out:

First, when the rest of the Union was...well, mean to General Grant..to him or about him, Sherman always had his back.  When Grant was benched for no good reason, when the rumors about the booze ran rampant, when people called him a butcher.  Sherman was always his friend.  I like that.  Also, Sherman was the first guy to say out loud and in public that this was going to be a long and ugly war.  People gave him such a hard time for speaking what he knew to be true and he fell into a deep depression.  But Dude was right, and I have some sympathy.

I was hoping for some more on General Longstreet, but no dice.

I couldn't watch this over and over like a TV show, but to revisit every few years might be interesting.  But seriously, I have books to read.

Aunt Anne Wins

You might recall my telling you that my nephew Alex was unimpressed when I gifted him with a hardcover copy of Ramona the Pest for his 5th birthday last month.  I spoke with my brother today, and now it seems the kid can't get enough of it.  They rode their bikes to the library to check out Beezus and Ramona and Ramona the Brave. 

Scott was floored at the number of Beverly Cleary books.  "You know there is one just about Ribsy?"

Um.  Yeah.  Wait until they get to Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.  I outgrew Judy Blume before she was done writing about Peter and Fudge.