Handmade Gift Ideas

So it’s that time again: everyone is scrambling for gifts for other people, things that might be appreciated but won’t break the bank and, preferably, won’t contribute too much to the scuppering of the planet.

I say, buy homemade. More specifically, I say “Buy homemade from these nice folks who I either know, sort-of-know, or have bought from before”. All these folks are cottage industrialists, crafting away for the love of it and to support themselves by the work of their hands. Hoorah!

Vozamer sells odd little monsters in various media.

Debbie sells letterpress cards, pottery, prints and original art (often of odd little monsters)

Clemantine Press offers letterpress cards and paper stuffs (drool)

Messie makes beautiful little bags for useful purposes (like keeping change and knitting in)

AliceInParis sells original folk art from Nova Scotia (I have some in my bedroom. It’s lovely)

Oh2122 sells beautiful homemade jewellery.

Jo periodically lists hand-dyed yarns as does Shelly, if you’re into knitting or crochet or fondling soft wool…

(All except Jo ship from North America).

So don’t say you can’t find anything nice.

Star Trek Movie Trailer Worries

See, this first trailer is Good. It ties Star Trek to the most exciting era of space travel that we had in (real) history AND it throws a bone to the rabid Trek fans (among whom I count myself, even if it is a sort of quiet rabidity) with the voice over at the end.

It’s clever. Star Trek is a part of our history, even if it wasn’t true. It FEELS almost as true, to people who weren’t there but have grown up watching all these things on the TV together. JFK? Got him. Moon landings? Yup. Final frontier. Sure!

The ship is under construction, the movie’s under construction…I’m not saying it’s ‘genius’ but it is well thought out. And I got a bit excited.

Aaaand then there’s this. Generic action movie trailer complete with gravity-defying Earth-based slow-mo stunts and angst.

Then Kirk high-fives Spock and says, I kid you not,

“Buckle Up.”

Is that meant as an ironic joke, given the fact that we were always amazed no-one installed seatbelts on the Enterprise, based on how often they fell out of their chairs? Or am I giving the new production team too much credit?

I’m just glad they cut away before Spock says, “Woah!”

The last Star Trek movie was such a disappointment to me that I have no faith this one will rise above the second trailer’s ‘promise’ and appeal to me at all.

I’ll probably still go and see it though. Baaaa.

Slightly R-Rated

This morning at Pilates we were doing an exercise that Carolynn, our instructor, claimed was good for the transverse abdominals.

Someone, who can talk while exercising, said,

“Did anyone see Oprah last week? She had someone on who said that the transverse abdominals are the best for sex!”

There were some exclamations and titters and then we got back to work.

There was a pause, then Carolynn said, quietly,

“OK, let’s REALLY work on these…”

Tool Time

I like my neighbour, but last night I was sorely tempted to sneak into his shed and pour sugar in the engine of his leaf blower.

It’s not just that he has a leaf blower that he uses as the sun sinks down and the day should be at its most peaceful. It’s that he has a leaf blower that comes complete with extra decibels and an intensely annoying high whine that drills into your head from its vantage point high above the bag-pipe drone of the lower engine note.

I don’t know where Dave managed to find it, but there’s a medieval Scotsman somewhere who wishes he could charge into battle with this thing strapped to his arm.

Black Is The New Black

So now it’s all trendy to talk about issues of race and colour and stuff.

There was an article on the radio this morning about a local conference, Bench2Business, which is aimed at “aspiring and established scientists and entrepreneurs of color”.

At one point they were talking to an entrepreneur who was ruefully pointing out how race is a distraction in his line.

It happened to me just last week when I was making a presentation to a cosmetics company…and the same thing was, gee, Bruce, what do you think about Barack Obama running for president?
-quote ripped from WHYY’s site

You could hear him shaking his head.

I wanted to reassure him that it’s not really a racial thing. It’s an idiocy-of-small-talk thing.

As someone who sounds different from everyone else around me I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been in the middle of a sentence when I’ve been interrupted by a question about my accent. It’s happened in business meetings, with friends, in the middle of a rant, at medical appointments, even on telemarketing calls (and you know how hard it is to get THEM off their script!).

I suppose it’s some kind of progress that Bruce’s black skin has descended from Big F’ing Deal to an irritating small-talking distraction.

Welcome to my world, Bruce: one where everyone will now talk to you, whether you want them to or not!

Me & My Brain – a dangerous combination

Well there’s a lesson for you.

I love being able to be online whenever I want, but today I was not.

I took G to his Pee Wee Sports class and spent part of the time alone in the Y’s beautiful, airy foyer, just me and my notebook.

Then I drove G somewhere else, and he fell asleep. So I pulled over, and pulled out my notebook while he napped.

Now I have a list of 12 new writing projects that I could work on and am mostly excited about.

Just need to find the time to do the writing…

Election Night (for the uninitiated)

We turned on the TV at 7, when the coverage began. All the stations had their maps and their stuff up and down the sides of the TV screen and scrolling underneath. They all had a billion ‘experts’ at the ready, but of course, they had nothing to report because the polls hadn’t closed ANYWHERE at that point.

So we played a game and kept the TV on in the corner as the results started pouring in. The TV stations here ‘call’ each state (as you may remember from the 2000 debacle) and they called a few big ones for Obama while we were playing so I was getting increasingly distracted. We finished up at some time after ten when they had ‘called’ Ohio for Obama. This was big. No-one has lost Ohio and won the presidency in a thousand years, or something like that. I started to get a little bit excited. I squashed it down because, you know, I’m from Scotland and getting optimistic about stuff like ‘winning’ anything doesn’t tend to turn out well. I’d already had the Phillies winning the World Series, surely I couldn’t hope for any more?

I bolted from the table the moment I had lost the board game (!) and hunkered down in my armchair. It was so nice to be watching an election without that sinking feeling that has become so familiar. I was actually starting to hope. I hadn’t sat this far into election night coverage before, because I was usually so disenchanted both by the results and the coverage, that I couldn’t stand to watch. Not this time.

At 11 pm the polls on the west coast were due to close and I was expecting the TV stations to wait a decorous amount of time before making some cautious predictions. Silly me.

At 11.01, they came back from a commercial break and said, “We have news.” They slapped up a graphic of Barak Obama with the legend “44th President of the United States of America” and added “Barak Obama has won the Presidency” and cut to scenes of cheering crowds and people crying and flag-waving, bemused children.

A collective “Huh?” filled our living room as three Scots tried to figure out how that had happened.

For the first time all evening, the news folks stopped wittering and just showed the crowds. There was no explanation, but apparently they had gone with the foregone conclusion that he had won most of the west coast, and had only waited to call it, for dramatic effect.

It was pretty dramatic.

I looked on with narrow-eyed skepticism until I saw John McCain walk out onto the stage at his hotel, to give his concession speech. They don’t do that unless they are sure they have lost. I’ve always thought it was an awful thing to do, especially when they do it before the polls have closed in the last two states, (poor Alaska and Hawaii. Maybe next time they can be allowed a five hour head-start and can start casting their votes at 7 pm the night before, just to give them a chance to be heard for once!). But this time I didn’t mind so much. I realised a maniacal grin had spread across my face and I was starting to believe this was real.

It was nice to be able to feel compassion and admiration for John McCain again as he talked (even if he did still seem to think Sarah Palin was a good idea), instead of just being scared.

And when Obama came out to speak, I sat forward in my seat and lapped up every word. There may have even been a tear (but I blame Jesse Jackson who was in the crowd crying like a baby, and I never can look at a man cry without joining in). It was great. He was statesmanlike, he was presidential.

This is our Kennedy moment.

(I just hope it doesn’t turn out the same way.)

This reminds me of having a baby. You hope for it and anticipate it for so long, and it’s exciting and phenomenal when it happens. And then you immediately start fervently praying to God to keep him safe.

Post-Election

Gosh it’s hard to concentrate today.

I have to say, I am just thrilled with the election result here in the US.

I think I live in a pretty Republican neighbourhood so I’ll have to watch that I’m not too jubilant when I see everyone (because that would be in bad taste, and because I don’t think anyone is 100% right or 100% wrong on anything – gosh, how liberal of me. Why is that a dirty word, again? Oh right. Maybe it’s not anymore).

But I’m so relieved that the US seems like less scary place today. Especially since I live here.

Woo-hoo!

Fall

Fall is falling away. I feel it was sudden and brief this year. Maybe it’s because I don’t have our pear tree holding out into mid-December. Some of the trees, particularly the maples, are still putting on a good show, but the birches are bare and so are many of the yellow-leaved trees the names of which I do not know.

The time changed on Saturday night and everyone is predictably jet-lagged.

Dark by 5.30 pm is not a happy thing. Light at 6 am doesn’t do much for me either. I wish they wouldn’t do that.

When I run the world…

Lucky

I have  some problems with where I live. It’s too far from my family, in both miles and hours. The culture is foreign and even after 14 years I don’t feel entirely at home here. I suspect I never will. It’s too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. I miss the landscape of my homeland.

But sometimes I feel very lucky.

Yesterday I wandered into town on a beautiful, crisp, sunny day. The sky was an impossible, cinematic shade of blue. The trees lining the streets were sporting leaves in every shade from purple to fire-red to banana yellow. The sun shone through them, turning the whole world into a stained glass-lit cathedral.

My son’s school, Kindergarten to Fourth Grade, paraded in costume around the park near the school, in a display of cuteness that banished every emotion but happiness from the immediate vicinity.

In the evening, I took my crockpot around to my neighbour’s driveway, where it was cool but not too cold to stand around eating hot dogs and chili and pulled pork, surrounded by costume-clad kiddies. Parents appeared with kiddie tables and fixin’s and napkins and everyone pitched in, herding the toddlers back to the tables and making sure everyone had drinks and food and someone to hug when they fell down.

At 6pm everyone paraded down the street and then we all set off to trick or treat around the entire neighbourhood. People whose kids are long gone sat on deck chairs in their driveways with great tubs of candies and made a fuss of all the little kids in just the way you wish everyone would treat your children all the time.

And this morning the sun is shining again. We don’t have to worry about where our next meal is coming from. The neighbours are sending ‘thanks for the fun’ emails.

We live in a land of plenty. Sometimes it goes to extremes. Sometimes it’s just what you need.