doolin, population 250

yesterday we drove from galway to doolin, a teeny tiny town that is well known for traditional music, so hostels and bed and breakfasts have cropped up to serve the tourists who come to listen to the music in the pubs.  the town (really just a collection of buildings along one main street) was adorable, right on the water (we're on the west coast of ireland, so this is the atlantic ocean), and we had a great pub dinner (i had a goat cheese tart with a big salad and a side of chips - must get potato products whenever possible) and then we hung out until music started in the pub around 9:30.  honestly?  the music was kind of disappointing.  three musicians who sat in the middle of the pub - super cozy, really great atmosphere, but we'd just seen this amazing band the night before in galway, and these guys didn't seem INTO it - there wasn't the energy we'd seen the night before.  also, EVERY PERSON IN THE PUB WAS A TOURIST.  in retrospect, of course, right?  it's a town of 250, so everyone who frequents the pub doesn't live there.  but the music FELT touristy, with cameras going off every second and the musicians seeming lifeless - like they HAD to be there to get tourism to the town.  i don't know if that makes sense...we had a great evening - delicious dinner, great pub, made some friends at the table next to us - but the music wasn't the highlight of the evening.  i didn't get any pictures in the pub - i didn't want to be THAT tourist - but this is a picture i took from our hostel - the pasture literally across the street.  super rural.  smelled like freshly cut hay when we got back to the hostel at night.  loved that.  it was really homey.

to back up a bit...our drive from galway to doolin brought us into county clare!  yay!!

and county clare is GORGEOUS.  dry rock walls - no mortar - line the roads (sometimes a little TOO close to the road for my liking) and mark off the pastures.  cows and sheep everywhere.  again, we had great weather - some rain as we were leaving galway, but it stopped pretty quickly.  every 10 minutes one of us would say to the other, "look how beautiful!"  it felt like every corner we turned had something new and different to see.  and new and different tour buses going 100 miles per hour to avoid.  eek!

i took this picture to illustrate WHY there are so many rock walls.  in the foreground you see green fields and walls; on the hillside, you see that purple stuff?  rocks.  everywhere.  covering every surface.  it was so incredible to see the contrast between the cleared fields and those that hadn't been cleared and were still rock-covered.  it would have been a LOT of work to start farming this land.

and this is our trusty car!  some people (boys) had asked what kind of mercedes it is; it's an A160.  (how is this an "intermediate" car?!?!)

we've now made our way to dingle for the night - another sea-side town a couple hours further south.  the guidebook says there is an excellent ice cream place here, so that is one stop we've got planned for our evening - otherwise we'll just see where the night takes us!  (i can't recommend the lonely planet series highly enough - great maps, interesting blurbs about the towns that i read aloud to other claire while we're driving into the town, good recommendations for food/drink/etc.)

galway

yesterday we left enniskillen and drove to galway, and about 10 minutes into our drive our "sat nav" died.  she had been telling us she had low battery, but was plugged into the car's plug that is made for such things and the light was on indicating it was trying and that was doing no good - we think the cord was bad.  sooooo...me + printed out google maps directions = our new navigation system.  eek.  we got to galway and our hostel just fine, though, and on the way drove through some GORGEOUS land.  we kept meaning to pull over and take pictures, but only did so once:

galway is (apparently) an area where a lot of people still speak the irish language, and walking through the town (and listening to the radio in the car on the way to galway) we definitely heard people speaking something that wasn't english...and wasn't any other language i could recognize.

in galway the weather was perfect - sun, blue skies.  only i could get a little sunburn in ireland, but i did. be embarrassed about how white i am.  claire and i wrote postcards and ate lunch in a little park, then walked along galway bay - and set up our cameras to take this picture.

we had some awesome italian food for dinner with banoffee pie for dessert - nick and jen in belfast had been telling us we needed to try it, and it was every bit as good as i imagined.  as in: HEAVEN.  we left the restaurant intending to wander around and find some live music, and right across the street from the restaurant we found (by using our ears) this band playing amazing traditional music.

it was clear that they were truly talented, and fun, and the place was packed.  it immediately put me in a good mood.  such a lucky find!

today we're headed south to doolin, a town of 250 that is a tourist stop because it's famous for its traditional music.  we're hoping for another great night in a pub!

car radio

yes, today we listened to a radio station called clare FM.

tomorrow the two claires will be in county clare!

there are so few radio stations while driving through rural ireland that our requirements for stopping on a station are: music? not classical? not britney spears or club music?  well then we are listening to it.

enniskillen

(i meant to post this yesterday evening, but the wireless internet at the hostel we're staying at does not work and by the time i realized that fact, all the cafes with internet access were closed. enniskillen kind of shuts down (other than the pubs) at about 5:30...i guess that's what you get in a small town...)

so this is from monday:

today we packed up from nick and jen's house in belfast - they were absolutely the best hosts ever - and took a cab to the rental car place, where we picked up our rental car and other claire drove the 90 miles to enniskillen, our next stop. now, that sounds easy. in fact, the company we'd made a rental car reservation through gave away our automatic car when we were 2 hours later than scheduled (we didn't really know what time nick and jen would need to leave for work, so we erred on the early side) and now they only had manual transmissions. apparently "reserving" a rental car is a loose term. sheesh. we paid a bit more for an automatic car at the next rental car counter over because the only automatic they had was in the "intermediate" class. aka a mercedes. you know, us teachers - we're high rollers. this is claire driving and the "sat nav" (satellite navigation - what they call GPS) helping. but only sort of helping. it didn't know this one road existed that we drove on for like 30 miles.

oops. thank goodness for road signs that said "enniskillen"...

and other claire is a rockstar driver. hooray!

we couldn't check into our room until 5pm, so we explored enniskillen until then. we bought and wrote postcards (and finally bought stamps), checked out the little shops, had a pub lunch (a veggie burger and chips for me - it was delish) at a pub called the linen hall, and during the pub lunch discovered a sign advertising a pub quiz (trivia night) THIS VERY NIGHT at THAT VERY PUB!! obviously we will be going. hooray again!

as part of our wasting time / exploring enniskillen, we went to enniskillen castle which was only barely worth the 4 pounds we paid to tour it. it was pretty small and this photo makes it look more glamorous than it actually is.

but, whatever - the sun came out and it was sort of interesting to look around. this is a view from the castle looking away from the town.

now, a little rest before dinner!

note from tuesday morning: turned out there WAS NO PUB QUIZ (boooooooo), but i had a really nice strawberry cider before we figured that out, and a 70 year old dude (who we initially thought was creepy) came up to talk to us - turns out he is just a lonely old local man and in fact very sweet. he became the second person since we got here to ask us if we are from the west coast of america once he learned we were american. thoughts on why this might be? we are confused. we're blonde? we don't have jersey shore accents? old guy liked to talk american politics; he told us all about how the economy of europe changed after "ronnie reagan" and the others ended the cold war, and he thinks obama is "very intelligent" and hopes he gets reelected. oh, old dude - you entertain us.


we're off to galway now!

giant's causeway

you've waited a while for photos - sorry!  here are some to tide you over; i've got a couple more on facebook if you want to check those out, too.

last night we had dinner at belfast castle, which is owned by the city council and has a nice little restaurant inside.  after dinner we walked around the grounds a bit and i took this picture from the garden looking out over the city and belfast lough (pronounced the same way as a scottish "loch," though this is the ocean, not a lake).

today we drove an hour to the north coast to a place called giant's causeway (learn about it here - thank you, wikipedia).  it was a beautiful day (well, by standards over here - which i agree with) - in the 60s, cloudy, but no rain - and we spent an hour or two walking around and loving the rocks.

hooray - claire and i!

SUCH a cool place to go, and we had a great little walk out to the rocks and then around the area, with lots of breezes from the sea and great views.

we're back and nick and jen's house now, and nick's making dinner (curry - yum).  in other news, i have successfully memorized the six counties in northern ireland (antrim, londonderry, down, armagh, fermanagh, and tyrone) and the four provinces on the island of ireland (leinster, ulster, munster and connacht), so nick says that i'm doing just as well as a 2nd grader.  go me!

tomorrow morning claire and i are off to our next location: enniskillen, northern ireland.  more from there!

belfast

cast of characters necessary to understand this post:
me (duh)
other claire (duh)
nick (a teacher at the program i worked at in oxford last summer; one of my best friends from the program)
jen (his wife, who i met briefly last summer when she came to visit nick)

facts to know:
nick and jen live in belfast.
claire and i have come to visit them for the weekend to start our ireland travels.
they are doing an AWESOME job being our hosts and showing us around and answering all my questions about ireland/northern ireland, the history of sectarian tension here, etc.
they are just awesome in general - good friends to have - and it's easy to be around them.  i love that.

and...begin scene!

before arriving in belfast this morning, nick emailed me this:
if you hear of any rioting in Belfast try not to worry its just a few idiots. And i live nowhere near that (deliberately!!)

i was like, um, i definitely haven't been watching the news...the BBC gave me this article (no mom, you aren't allowed to worry).  and now we're here.  and you guys, i am FASCINATED by belfast.  the four of us took a bus tour of the city today, which nick and jen were kind enough to (a) want to do, and (b) genuinely enjoy.  i learned some history and have come to sort of understand what has caused people to riot this week.  and then we drove on the bus tour through the loyalist neighborhood with their british flags everywhere and huge murals marking the deaths at the hands of nationalists...and then we drove through these huge metal gates with barbed wire on top (open today - "a good sign," said the tour guide - the police close them if the tension gets too high) and then a mile long tall fence between the two neighborhoods - literally, i have never seen anything like it - and we were in the nationalist neighborhood with anti-loyalist murals and a empty lot with a pile ten feet high of old tires to burn when they riot and probably (i'm not kidding) 40 policemen lining the route of a planned march later in the day. (info about the march here, and you should click on the link if only because the still image to start the video is of the huge gates that divide the tense parts of the city from one another.)  it never felt dangerous at all, but you wouldn't catch us in these neighborhoods at night...

i don't know if i'm describing this well, but it was incredible to see a city so divided...while life goes on like normal for young people like nick and jen who live in the suburbs.

i'm tired now and going to bed...but i have a lot more to share about belfast and our time here, so stay tuned for more tomorrow!

i read this post - "mysteries of a nazi photo album" - before leaving for europe, and was totally consumed by it.  the BEAUTIFUL photos, the mystery surrounding who had taken them, the horrible (and intriguing) things they depict, the desire of their current owner to sell them to avoid bankruptcy.  you should know that all these elements put together got me HOOKED.  the new york times published them to try to find information about the photographer and gain publicity so the current owner might be able to sell them.

and within 3 hours online readers had identified the photographer.

this is what is incredible to me, as you probably know - how the internet can connect people all around the world, and not just in trivial (facebook, perhaps) ways...how our collective knowledge is greater than anything you can look up in a book or online.  people solved this mystery, not a search engine.  i'm blown away by all this.  "mystery...solved..."  all of this is worth reading and worth following, i think.

chicago (again)

somehow we booked our flight to belfast for tomorrow morning at 7:15am.  7:15am.  sheesh.  i know that this was the cheapest option, so that's why we picked it, but still.  i'm trying not to think about our wake up in the 4am hour.  sigh.  as that is not very many hours away, i'll make this short...

we had a great day today - had lunch with vin, whose apartment ("flat") we've been staying in - it was SO good to see her, even though it was brief - she is en route to india now for three weeks.  we passed some afternoon time in a park and then had a drink in a pub before seeing chicago, which was awesome.  but, um, i forgot that i'd seen it before.  when we bought the half price tickets i was like, "i don't think i've seen this show before," and i maintained that belief until we were in the theater waiting for the show to start and all of a sudden it came to me that yes!  i had seen it before - two summers ago, also in london, starring jerry springer.  longtime blog readers may remember that.  i am apparently an old woman, because until that moment i had NO MEMORY of seeing the show before.  oops.  but it was really fun and i'm glad we saw it (again)!

after dinner we got a light dinner at a place vin had recommended - opera tavern - i had some gorgonzola and date fritters (delish - i could have eaten 10, but it was probably good the portion size was limited to 4) and ricotta gnocchi with spring vegetables and pesto (delish), and we got some free drinks (also delish).

tomorrow: ireland!!

bank card update and british museum

so i call my bank and they're like, "um yeah, we've got the notation that you were going to be out of the country - your card wasn't blocked because of that.  we just thought one of your withdrawal attempts looked funny, so it blocked that transaction."  turns out it was "funny" because it was from london.  PEOPLE: THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRAVEL - YOU WITHDRAW MONEY FROM "FUNNY" LOCATIONS.  whatever.  all is well in the world now.

after a nap yesterday and a pretty excellent night's sleep last night, i'm feeling good and on british time.  i went to the british museum this afternoon while other claire had lunch with a friend who is also in london.  the british museum rocked; their 100 objects from the podcast "a history of the world in 100 objects" (which i've been listening to well in advance of this trip) were clearly marked on a free map of the museum, so i visited some of them.  the mummies and rosetta stone were particularly crowded, but SO interesting, and the sutton hoo burial stuff was really interesting and less crowded.  the mummies made me a little uneasy, though - that someone's actual remains are the center of attention in a museum hundreds of miles away from where they died...and that these remains have been taken out of egypt and are kept as property of england.  i don't know - felt a little weird.  but i was certainly grateful to be able to see them...so...

the weather is beautiful - 60s and sunny, though i did get sprinkled on for a couple minutes around lunchtime - and we're finding our way around the neighborhood we're staying in.  we're resting right now (hooray for afternoon lie downs!), and then off to dinner and a pub tonight!

in other news...

my debit card doesn't work.  it will not get money out of ATMs for me.  i have tried 3.  and i called my bank before i left to tell them i'd be traveling and not to block my card in other countries, just like i've done in the past.  I DID ALL THE RIGHT THINGS.  AND NOW I AM HERE AND IT IS BLOCKED.  grrrrr.  i have my credit card, though, and i'm really really thankful that other claire is here, because i might be freaking out if she wasn't - she is buying those small things that cash is needed for.  i emailed my bank a couple hours ago (no response) and i'll call them tomorrow, but seriously folks: i'm not pleased.

in other other news, other claire did NOT call her bank, and her card works.  wtf folks.  wtf.

london!

we have arrived!  the flight was long and i didn't get much sleep (it's that weird situation where i have zero idea how much sleep i got.  somewhere between 5 minutes and...a couple hours?  it felt like i woke up every 5 minutes), but we maneuvered our way to pick up keys to my friend vin's flat, found the flat, got some...dinner? (it was 4:30pm and we intend to eat again), and are now checking emails and getting ready for a little nap.  as a reminder to you all: i'll be 5 hours ahead of you for the next seven weeks, and i'll adjust the posting time stamp on this blog to reflect that.

hooray for being settled in vin's super cute flat - and hooray for sleeping in a bed!

now, on to more important news: ANDERSON'S 30TH BIRTHDAY is today, even though we celebrated it a couple weeks ago.  happy birthday to a kind, thoughtful, loving friend (who makes a MEAN batch of cookies).  we love you!  i only got to be friends with you for 10 of your first 30 years; i'm a lucky girl to be able to spend the next 30 as your friend.

claire and claire's ireland adventure!

oh, get excited about what i have made for you:

(yes, i know it is a little too large for this window, but you wanted to be able to see it all in detail, right?)

i've explained to so many people where i'm going this summer and when i'll be there and i know it's all very confusing - and i'm a really visual person, so this map pleases me.  if you're interested, here is our itinerary:

june 21 - depart atlanta for an overnight flight to london
june 22-24 - london (blue pinpoint on the right)
june 25-26 - belfast (A and G on the map)
june 27 - enniskillen (B), still in northern ireland
june 28 - galway (C) - we'll cross the border into the republic of ireland

(brief interlude to sing this song.)



(claire and i often go out to a irish pub in atlanta called limerick junction that has live irish music / covers of whatever you want him to sing, and our favorite musician plays this song.  I THOUGHT THIS SONG WAS OLD AND TRADITIONAL AND SUCH BUT SOME INTERNET RESEARCH HAS REVEALED THAT IT WAS WRITTEN IN 2000 BY AN AMERICAN.  wowsers.  internet, thank you for teaching me that.  i still love this song.  okay, time to get back on track.)

june 29 - doolin (D)
june 30 - dingle (E)
july 1 - dublin (F)
july 2 - drive back to belfast to fly back to london.

(google maps tells me that our week-long road trip in ireland will require us to drive 683 miles.  in terms that i can understand...683 miles is roughly the distance of a one-way trip from atlanta to washington DC.  or atlanta to miami.  or just a little bit longer than a round trip home to see my parents.  there.  i've put it in perspective for myself. now back to our regularly scheduled programming.)


july 3 - i travel to oxford (the blue pinpoint to the west of london), where i'll be working and hanging out (at this job they are sometimes the same thing) until august 8
august 9 - travel to london; fly back to atlanta

(august 10 - start work at my real job.  eek.  let's not think about that right now.)

i'm off to the airport now, dear friends.  as i've said before: when i'm far from home and can't talk to friends and family in person or over the phone, i have LOVED having this blog and sharing my adventures that way.  for those of you who read regularly, please know how much that connection means to me.  and please share your adventures, too!  and comment.  i love comments.  happy summer, all.

my next post will be from the uk!

what i'm listening to right now:

love this song - it's so sweet.



my favorite line: "it may be years until the day / my dreams will match up with my pay."  tell 'em, feist.
what does the title mean?  zero clue.

(shout out to colin, m.d., for introducing me to this song!)

(note: when one does not have a real life job any more because it is summer, and one's roommate is out of town, one has a lot of time for playing music and dancing around the house to it, mostly in one's pajamas.  hoo-ray.)

i think you know this about me: that i will passionately follow a sport (that i otherwise don't care about) for a short period of time if there is a goal in mind that everyone is fighting for.  see: the world cup.  (i don't follow soccer for 3 and 10/12ths years in a row, and then i will follow it obsessively for 2 months while they fight for the big prize.)

also see: rory mcilroy.

rory mcilroy, you broke my heart at that other tournament thingy a couple months ago where you were up by A LOT YAY YOU'RE YOUNG AND FROM NORTHERN IRELAND and then you FELL APART.  it made my heart hurt to watch slash follow it on my computer.  well, YOU'RE UP BY A LOT AGAIN YAY AND YOU'RE STILL FROM NORTHERN IRELAND and the commentators are saying you're breaking records.  i have no choice but to believe them, as i know nothing about golf history.  when you are a an occasionally obsessive fan you don't know these facts yourself.  you just believe the commentators.

don't blow this, rory - i believe in you.  i'll be watching golf tomorrow.  i can't believe i just typed that.

you see that wednesday there?

i'll be in london on that wednesday.

eeeeeee!

last night i sat on a patio AT NIGHT and sweated and sweated.
today i volunteered at world peace and sweated and sweated.
wednesday?  wednesday i won't be sweating.
that was, honestly, the most profound difference i noticed during my first summer in england.  the day i returned to the united states and stepped out of the atlanta airport and it was 90 degrees and the air was HEAVY and the heat enveloped me and sweat sprung out on my back and i realized: i hadn't sweated in six weeks.

so so so excited about my coming trip.  and missing atlanta already.  wtf.

what i'm listening to right now:

more blasts from the past!  thank you, shuffle function on my ipod.



there is no more beautiful voice - and few better songwriters - than joni mitchell.

what i'm listening to right now:

LOVE this song...it just came up on my ipod, which was set to shuffle (it's amazing what music you forgot you had until the shuffle finds it)...

this is a post in honor of flag day

just kidding!!  it is a post in honor of my dad's birthday.  DUH.  happy birthday, dad!

this is us at some point in the 1980s.  i have always loved swimming - a result of being in the water a fair amount when i was younger, and in this photo i'm totally like, "let me go, dad - i can do this on my own!" except that becky was the more adventurous one in the water when we were littler and i probably really did want him near me. just in case something scary happened.  i was kind of a weenie.  one thing my parents did pretty well, in retrospect, was walk that line between pushing me to try new things but not throwing me when i wasn't ready.  example: i got my driver's license after my freshman year of college, at 18.  dad: thank you for not making me learn to drive a manual transmission car before i was ready.  i turned out okay, i think.

my dad is awesome because he can fix almost anything that needs fixing.  he told some bad ass bedtime stories when becky and i were little.  he makes a mean omelet.  he instilled in me a love of history that i didn't realize at the time, but was absolutely a factor in my major in college and my career.  he rarely tells me what to do (even when i want him to, such as when i have no clue what to do when filing my taxes), but rather helps educate me on all the options.  as a teacher i see parents who push their kids unabashedly in the direction that they, as the parents, think is best.  my parents never did that - they always let me make my own decisions.  (except for that time when i was like 9 and dad came home and asked me if i wanted to play rec league soccer again this season.  i said i guessed so.  he said, "good, because i already signed you up."  no, dad, i will never forget that, and yes, of course it was the right move.)  thank you for coming to understand what would make me really upset as a child: that i am really pretttttty sensitive and i need people to be gentle with me sometimes.  thank you for being financially generous, for allowing me to go to duke (again: i have seen parents with a great deal more money than we had who "can't afford" to let their kids go to the school of their choice, yet they have vacation homes and fancy cars).

i love you, dad.  happy birthday!

today...

...the air conditioning works again!  thank you, air conditioning repair man who told me that a capacitor "exploded."  um, yes, i'm pretty glad you fixed that.
...i watched mike and kelly unload boxes on the today show and i decided that mike is the tallest person in alaska.
...i'm looking at hostels for our last night in ireland.
...i'm making corn and bean tacos for lunch with corn that's cut off the cob!  delish.
...i miss our charleston weekend for ANDERSON'S BIRTHDAY - seriously an awesome weekend.
...i'm mourning that i don't really have a good book to read - right now i just have a book i'm GETTING THROUGH, if you know what i mean.
...i'm planning fun things to do for my last eight (eek!!) days in atlanta before i go to england and ireland.  it doesn't feel real that i'll actually be back over there, but i will, and i'm giddy about it.  today: dinner with wendy after my favorite class at the gym!

i'm at the beach for the weekend for ANDERSON'S BIRTHDAY WEEKEND!  (if you are here, you are required to say that several times a day in an excited manner.)  anderson is the first of the duke crew in atlanta to turn 30; we wanted to have a big celebration and planned a surprise beach weekend.  hooray.  the little house we rented is adorable (and the air conditioning works quite well; mr. air conditioning man is coming to my house in atlanta on monday...).  the beers are plentiful.  the weather is excellent.  all is well in the universe!

in other news, i am reading the immortal life of henrietta lacks and it is INCREDIBLE and I CAN'T STOP READING IT.  (mom and nora: this is right up your alleys.)  this is a minor problem, as i've read 200 pages in two days and, um, may finish this book today.  what will i read for the rest of the weekend?!  eek.  i did not plan well.

air conditioning is only awesome WHEN IT WORKS.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

schedule

i've decided that summer in atlanta is all about this:

wake up in the 10 o'clock hour.  watch tv / read book.
eat lunch.
be productive for a couple hours (i ran errands today and stopped by work for a bit to tie up some loose ends there).
go to the gym.
come home during the hottest part of the day - while sweaty from the gym (not a good combo, i know) - and just LIE AROUND.  it is too hot - even in the air conditioned house - to do anything else.  (this is where we are in my day right now.  outside temperature: 91.)
shower.
do something social when the temperature allows you to be outside and not be constantly sweating (today: dinner at taqueria del sol with friends).  drink some sort of delicious summer beverage.  current favorite: mojitos.
sleep.

this will be my life for the next two weeks (minus this weekend - trip to charleston to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday!) and i'm pretty pumped about that.

also:
ohmygodileaveforenglandin14days!!!

“What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things.”

i hate nothing more than "author unknown," because what that really means is that someone normal said this and every started quoting it like it was really profound.  and i happen to agree that this is profound - i happen to really like this - but somehow quotations are given more weight if we know who said them, and particularly if they were said by someone famous.  either way, i love this.  at our final chapel of the year - our school's version of the final faculty meeting, as it was teachers and staff only - this was read.  and i promptly searched for an author; it's all over the internet in collections of quotations, but never with an author.  sigh.

if you can solve my mystery, i'd be grateful.

cherries!

mom and i picked a couple gallons from the cherry bushes in the backyard - this is half of the amount we picked - and tonight we'll pit them.  i am a little bit skittish around cherries - one sour one negates all the delicious sweet ones you eat - but add enough sugar and all is well (cherry pie is pretty yummy).

i'm home in north carolina for the weekend, where it is warm during the day but oh-so-lovely in the morning and at night.  this was the view from our front porch this morning - dad working hard, me having a bagel and reading my book and watching:

there are birds!  there are stars!  there are cherries to be picked and made into a pie!  i love home.

oh, and my dad joined facebook.  omg is right.

what sounds really fun in principle: free yoga class led by my favorite instructor in piedmont park on a thursday (that would be today) evening.

in practice... well, since it's 94 degrees outside right now and i am instantly covered in a thin layer of sweat upon exiting the house and walking to the car (which i did at noon to go to my eye doctor's appointment), um, what would it feel like to do yoga outdoors for an hour and a half?  tragic?  probably so.  especially since i sweat buckets in the climate controlled yoga studio.  yeah...i just decided to watch the finale of season 1 of dexter in my air conditioned house instead (how is dexter going to save deb from the ice truck killer?!? i MUST know)...and go to the air conditioned gym later this evening.

this is the smart move, i promise.

may: 12 13 14

may was a weird month in general.  this first two weeks were chaos - busy busy busy as the seniors got ready to graduate.  the following two weeks were, frankly, boring on the work front.  my seniors had graduated and i had a lot of time to work on little projects but not a lot of actual work to do.  and now it is SUMMER.  i spent most of yesterday reading and watching dexter and eating.  I LOVE SUMMER.

i read three books this month and i continue to be ahead of schedule to read 25 books this year.  hooray! this month i read...


the city of ember, by jeanne duprau (this is a young adult book that becky encouraged me to read; it's a bit more childish than the hunger games, but had a cool premise and i did enjoy reading it.  after the hunger games i'm pretty spoiled, though.  i'll say it again: i. love. that. series.)


the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, by mark haddon (i've read this before, but re-read it this month.  it's a murder mystery narrated by a kid with asperger's syndrome and it is sweet and funny and really compelling.  a quick read and SO good.)

a clash of kings, by george r.r. martin (the second book in the series, and a doozie - 968 pages.  eek.  after finally finishing this one i need a nice short book for the sense of accomplishment that finishing a book gives you.  this is a re-read, too, but i read it so long ago that i remembered very little of what actually happened...so it was sort of like reading it for the first time.  there are a million characters and a lot of sub-plots, so i'm not surprised that i'd forgotten what happened.)

john legend has an AWESOME voice and this is a GREAT song.  i LOVE this.  caps lock everywhere!!

the atlanta weather report for this week:

um, are you kidding me?  90 i can handle.  it's been 90 off and on for a couple weeks.  but 96?!  NOT OKAY.

i've now started stalking the weather in oxford, england.  ahh, the contrast:

in 22 days i won't have to deal with 90 degree weather any more.  COME ON, 22 DAYS.

lunches

last week i made roasted asparagus and tomato penne salad with goat cheese from the may issue of cooking light and put it in four tupperwares to bring to lunch for four days in a row.  (note: i can happily eat the same thing for lunch four days in a row.  a talent, i know.)  i used artichokes instead of olives (olives = gross) and doubled the amount of arugula and it was SO GOOD.  the perfect lunch, in fact!  it's more veggies than pasta, so i feel like i'm eating healthily, too.  hoo-ray.

packing lunch is over for me until august, however - our last day of school was on friday!  SUMMER!!

BOO, transcribed.

Dear Valued Customer [eww - i hate emails that start this way],
During our ticket request phase, there was a great deal of demand for tickets to the London 2012 Olympic Games, resulting in some oversubscribed sessions. As such we employed a ballot system, observed by one of the six global audit firms, to allocate the requested tickets that were oversubscribed, including those in your request. Please understand that the London Organizing Committee is the entity that decides the allocation of tickets amongst the various countries, and we simply act as an agent to sell what is allocated.
Based on the results of the ballot, we regret to inform you that your Ticket Request was not confirmed for any tickets to the London 2012 Olympic Games...[lots more blah blah here that i skimmed]


Ticket Request Phase Results


During our ticket request phase, there was a great deal of demand for tickets to the London 2012 Olympic Games, resulting in many oversubscribed sessions. Below is some detailed information about the Ticket Request Phase.


Top 5 Sports Requested and Expected Results from Ballot Process


1. Swimming – We expect to confirm 4.65% of the tickets requested
2. Athletics – We expect to confirm 20.05% of the tickets requested
3. Gymnastics Artistic – We expect to confirm 5.62% of the tickets requested [damn me for enjoying a sport/event/whatever that is popular!]
4. Football – We expect to confirm 26.69% of the tickets requested
5. Tennis – We expect to confirm 14.08% of the tickets requested

i went to the gym on a friday afternoon (someone be impressed)

and there was a new instructor.  she appeared scary: in amazing shape, tattoos, short hair, crop top to show off her six pack.  eeeek!  i like my aerobics instructors to have some flaw to show they can relate to the common (wo)man: me.  the previous instructor has a huge butt.  this makes me like her: she is human!

cyborg woman starts the class this afternoon by saying, "there is a new sheriff in town, ladies!"

i. am. not. kidding.

it was all i could do not to pee my pants.

and then she was awesome.  hard class, but not so difficult that i (a) had a heart attack, or (b) couldn't do the moves.  whew.

15

today is the 15th anniversary of the day i became a vegetarian.

yes, i have kept track of it.  yes, i know that's ridiculous.  no, i can't help it.

may 25, 1996.  i made the decision that i was going to become a vegetarian for a week to see if i could do it.  i was 13.  13 year old me thought it would be a fun experiment.  but that night mom made pasta salad for dinner, from a kit, and the kit contained bacon bits that were all over the (completed) pasta salad.  i have this VIVID memory of that - of standing in the kitchen and realizing that i had failed just as soon as i started, and i made a decision that i would become a vegetarian tomorrow.  post-bacon bits.  so that was the last meat i ate on purpose: bacon bits.

may 26, 1996 it began.  in the 15 years since that date have i ever taken a bite (or more) of something and realized there was meat in it afterwards?  of course.  have i ever knowingly eaten meat?  no.  that week's experiment just kept going and has turned into 780 weeks (and counting).  i'm proud of this.  i can't imagine a situation in which i would go back to eating animals.  (but their delicious cheese?  why yes, please.)

when i tell people i'm a vegetarian i'm often asked why.  i don't exactly know what made me do it, what made me take that leap, but this is what i think: i was raised on a dairy farm.

(you know you want to see this picture again.)

we ate vegetables from the garden and eggs from the chickens and deer that the neighbors shot on our land and beef from cows we owned.  animals died and i saw death.  i don't think a lot of people are that close to their food - or that close to living things that die.  i was sensitive to where my food was coming from - i was (and am) just plain sensitive.  i don't like to see people or animals in pain.  most animals that we eat live painful lives and then are killed - but in the 21st century, in an industrialized and urbanized america, we don't see any of that.  if people had to raise and slaughter their own animals they would absolutely eat less meat.  i'm not willing to kill a shrimp so i don't eat shrimp.  i guess it's more complicated than that, but you know what i mean.

i'll step down from my soapbox now.

do yourself a favor.  never watch the film gideon's trumpet even though (a) it stars henry fonda, and you like henry fonda, and (b) it's about a supreme court case - one that you're interested in.  this movie goes so slowly you think it must be made for a 90 year old...but is only assuming an intelligence level of a 5th grader.  DON'T TAKE 5 MINUTES TO EXPLAIN DOUBLE JEOPARDY AS IF I AM AN IDIOT.  additionally, THIS MOVIE IS AN HOUR AND 45 MINUTES LONG, YET WITH SOME GOOD EDITING WOULD LAST ABOUT 30 MINUTES.

yet, i continue to watch it.  what does this say about me?

an undoctored view of the floor of my closet.  sandals in the front; real shoes pushed to the back.  and yes, i really do make sure each shoes lives next to his pair.

i love this time of year.

HA.

David Frum, who occasionally predicts that Pawlenty will win the [2012 Republican Presidential] nomination, puts it another way: "Predicting Pawlenty feels like reaching the wrong answer on a math exam. You do the calculation and you arrive at the answer, Pawlenty. You think: That can't be right."


(from here)

i am extremely entertained by this.

dear authorized ticket reseller,
i would really like to know if i got the olympics tickets i put my name in for.  your website says i will be alerted "the week of may 23rd."  fools, it is that week.  don't make me wait until friday to find out.  i'm waiting with bated breath here, and patience is not always my strong suit.  it's the week of may 23rd.  pleeeeeeease tell me.
sincerely,
miss claire

what i'm listening to right now:

"helplessness blues," by fleet foxes



i hadn't realized that fleet foxes had put out a new album until i listened to a recent this american life episode, "this week," that featured this song.  LOVE IT.  i keep listening, catching a few more lines of the lyrics.  pondering them.  playing the song over again.

kittens! inspired by kittens!

(clearly you need to watch this youtube video.)

this is henry.  he is very photogenic.

there are four kittens visiting my office today - the woman across the hall has brought them in to school to give away and they are hanging out in my office and receiving visitors/potential owners.  don't worry: i won't be taking one home myself, but BOY THEY ARE CUTE.

i thiiiiink i've added the ability to follow this blog by email!  enter your email address in the box to the left, complete the steps that you're prompted to complete (enter the letters, then go to your email inbox and click the link to activate the subscription), and VOILA!  you should receive new posts in your email instead of having to come to the blog itself to read new posts.

can someone technologically savvy try this and report back on whether it works?

hooray.

WELL worth the half hour it will take you to read this (it's a long one): "the last two veterans of WWI"

this author is an incredible writer, in my opinion...aaaaand based only on reading this one piece...

eliot

i heart t.s. eliot.  he puts words together in a way that is beautiful to my ears.

for no good reason (just because i want to, and here i get to do what i want to!) here are my three most favoritest lines of eliot's poetry.

#3, from "the waste land":


"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;"
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
--Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.


"the waste land" is an awesome poem, and thanks to a college english class i understand about 50% of it, and that is a 50% that i am proud of.

this is one of those poems that it's so hoity-toity to like.  if you say "the waste land" is your favorite poem, odds are you're just trying to sound smart.  readers: i really do love this poem.  i don't claim to understand it all, but i've read it and it's been analyzed for me and i comprehended some of that analysis.

#2, from "the love song of j. alfred prufrock":


For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons


that whole poem kicks ass; i had trouble picking just that line.  i love this visual - this measuring of time by the one spoon a day you use to stir your coffee and that then accumulates in the sink.


#1, the entire poem "preludes," but particularly this part:


And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

i had - in high school, when i first discovered eliot - almost this whole poem memorized.  i don't know why it's my favorite, but i can so clearly visualize every bit of it, and i like that.

happy poetry day, a holiday created by a miss claire royal proclamation.

really really cool moment - if you like paul simon, you must read and watch this!

(thanks to nora for finding this!)

the last three weeks: chaos.

yesterday: graduated 90 seniors.  lots and lots of hugs.  facebook friend requests from my (now former - sniff sniff) students.  girls' lacrosse game, drinks with jenny (not at the same time).

today: windows open, breeze coming in.  it has cooled down to 62 degrees and the sky looks ready to drop some (but not too many) raindrops on us.  i got up early this morning for movie club and then had a falafel and hummus pita from mediterranean grill for lunch (yummmm), ran some errands, and went shopping (very successfully).  now i'm curled up in bed with my book.

this moment: heaven.

ashokan farewell

i first heard "ashokan farewell" last year*; the senior orchestra students played it as the final piece in the spring concert with each kid taking a little part as a solo.  i cried more than one tear.  tonight at baccalaureate one senior - a talented violinist who is going to major in music in college - played it.

this senior class graduates tomorrow.  am i tired of them - am i glad they are going out into the world they are so desperate to experience?  YES.  but i will miss them more than i anticipated, and that's always how it works - all of a sudden graduation is upon you and the reality hits that these good kids - these special human beings - are leaving.  i've gone from "i'm so glad this is the last day of class" to "um...please don't leave."  i hate goodbyes.  but we're in goodbye season.

and this song gets me every time.




*but really i first heard the song on the ken burns series the civil war, and that might be where you've heard it, too.

my kids think the AP exam yesterday went well - hooray!

for your procrastination pleasure today: "world's oldest man dies in montana at 114"

the blazing sea nuggets did not win at trivia last night; dani's knowledge of the 90s tv show home improvement moved us from 4th place to 2nd place on the final question, so we still placed (whew).  it's fun to look back and think that our knowledge of such different subjects as the chicago bears, star wars, 90s tv, world capitals, nixon, and the bible came together in a 2 hour time period.  this is why i love trivia!

as we speak, my students are taking their AP government exam

i can breathe!  i'm done teaching classes, my students are taking their AP exam - so i'm done preparing them for that - now i have the time to organize my office and catch up on newsweek and clear out my email inboxes.  this week feels so good.

i'm also doing a fair amount of excited thinking about ireland this summer!  other claire and i are on step 1: buying flights from england to ireland and back again...and figuring out a rental car for getting around the country. other claire has volunteered to drive.  YESSSSSS.  i make an excellent co-pilot, but was not excited about driving in a weird car on the wrong side of a small road.

in cleaning up my office i came across this article from newsweek from last year - my thoughts exactly on traveling:
"how to be invisible"

happy tuesday, everyone!  blazing sea nuggets goes for the five-peat at trivia tonight.  can we be so lucky?!

"all women become like their mothers.  that is their tragedy.  no man does.  that's his."
--oscar wilde

happy mother's day, mama!  i love you!

I WANT TO LIVE HERE (in the summer when it's warm and it stays light for a long time - scotland in the winter must be miserable).

baking success

last night i made pumpkin muffins with crumble topping (scroll down to the bottom of the post - above the comments), and people: i know i say this a lot, but if you haven't had these muffins YOU HAVE NOT YET LIVED.  i was talking to the muffin as i ate it.  literally.  the conversation went something like this:

bite one: "oh. my. god."
bite two: "this is so gooooooooood."
bite three: "i am an incredible cheffffff."*
bite four: "i need another one NOW."

but i couldn't have another one!  now OR in the near future.  today is the day i reward my students who have won the current events competitions we have been having all semester in my AP government classes. i reward them with food because they enjoy that.  i made a couple different treats, including these muffins.  there are 6 students on a team x 3 classes = 18 muffins needed, and i only made 19.  the recipe says it makes 12, but that is a LIE.  it makes 19 perfectly.  well, it probably makes 18 perfectly, but i wanted to try one.  duh.

yes, this is a fall-like recipe (perfect for thanksgiving), but it is still delish in may.  things i did differently than the recipe: butter instead of shortening, cinnamon instead of "pumpkin pie spice" (as i have no such thing), real flour instead of gluten-free (duh), i only used about 2/3 of the topping mixture i made, and no powdered sugar sprinkled on top (i dislike that in general).

i'll DEFINITELY be making these again soon...


*by "incredible chef," i mean "incredibly good at following a recipe and not burning things."

is it embarrassing that i didn't quite realize that the bob dylan song "forever young" and the 80s song by alphaville "forever young" have different lyrics?

i mean, of course they do.  of course they're different songs when you think about it.  BUT DIFFERENT SONGS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAVE THE SAME TITLE.  it is confusing to me.

a new live album by brandi carlile was released a couple days ago; i love her and i love this cover of the alphaville version of "forever young":

interesting article about the decision by my best friends, the new york times, on their conscious decision not to refer to bin laden as "mr." bin laden: "Goodbye Mr. Terrorist"

(it appears that all i want to do is give you links to distract you.  perhaps this is the case - i can't deny the evidence.)

census data is cool

http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?hp

how did i not include this yesterday?  this is IN-CRED-I-BLE.  i love the new york times's graphics, and this one takes the cake.  zoom around, find your hometown, click on "view more maps" to see different data.  LOVE this.

FOUR-PEAT!!!

and no, mike, it isn't the sizzler: it's sicily.

some procrastination for you (you're welcome)

it is tuesday.  if it was really important, i did it yesterday.

http://www.booksidoneread.com/
she amuses me, and i hope book lovers will enjoy.

http://1000awesomethings.com/
aunt monica sent me a link to this website a looooong time ago and i've been enjoying it daily without alerting her of that fact.  thanks, monica!!


in other news, blazing sea nuggets goes for the four-peat tonight.  cross your fingers for us!

on sunday i saw world peace and other 4th grade achievements as part of the atlanta film festival and i'd really like to recommend it to everyone, though it isn't in wide release and i don't know when it comes out on DVD or how widely that will be available.

basically i'm telling you to see a movie that you may not be able to see.  i am a jerk.

nora recommended this movie to me - she saw it in DC earlier this year - and recently i was so glad to find out that it was coming to atlanta!

i got a little (a lot) weepy in the dark of the theater at the end of this movie, just thinking about teachers and students and world problems and little kid minds.  that is only heightened today, i guess, with the news that osama bin laden was killed last night in pakistan.  real world problems, real world solutions.  no winners: only losers.  but finality, and no american deaths yesterday in this operation, and those are good things.  incredible news to wake up to, though; i had to blink myself awake enough to concentrate on NPR when i would normally be dozing before really waking up.

april: 10 & 11

the thirteen american arguments, by howard fineman (for my AP government classes my students buy a textbook and, this year, this book as well.  i wanted a book that would address some contemporary american issues and tie them back into the content of the course, and a lot of people on the AP government teachers' listserv i belong to were raving about this book.  my kids read 5 of the 13 chapters and wrote short essays on them; it was well-received by them and really interesting just for people interested in our government, so i'll recommend it to everyone!  it's pretty balanced ideological [a plus for my teaching purposes] and addresses issues like the environment, religion in government, war, and the presidency.  i'll definitely be using it again next year!  i finished the book this month so i'm including it here, but i've been reading bit by bit it all year.)

a game of thrones, by george r.r. martin (this is a re-read, but i didn't say i had to read 25 new books this year...  i first read this book in college [rachie recommended it!] and it's the only fantasy series i've ever read.  think kings and dragons and such.  i am not embarrassed because HBO apparently enjoyed it as well and has made a show out of it; that revived my interest even though i don't have HBO and won't be watching the show until it comes out on DVD.  this is a long book but a very entertaining read...if you're up for the fantasy aspect of it.)

willis alert

this is a small child whose last name is willis.  i know this because his dad was also wearing a willis shirt and, well, if your first name is willis you shouldn't name your kid willis jr.  and i'm assuming they know that.  i made other claire be the stalker who got this picture on her phone.

we were at the braves game.  it was a glorious evening.  we arrived with 55 seniors and left with 53.

(but that was okay because two kids got picked up from the game.)

awesome senior retreat...but when i got home at 12:10am i was pretty glad it was over.  i'm a tired girl.

happy saturday, everyone!

today i went from busy (my normal state at work) to 2 minutes away from being overwhelmed.  as in, i've only just got things under control.

graduation is in 16 days.

there are so many things to do between now and then.

it feels like everyone needs to talk to me about something.  i'm being pulled in 90 different directions.  my patience is expanding by the minute because there's no choice other than to be patient.

will all the seniors graduate?  unclear.  will all of them complete their service hours?  unclear.

additionally, i have so much grading to do.

countdown to this weekend's visit from a friend and his boyfriend and the subsequent beer festival we're going to with a bunch of our friends?  48 hours.

yessssss.

ireland

july: oxford!

(duh, miss claire - tell us something we don't know!)

last week of june: ireland!

(oooh - we didn't know that!)

other claire and i are making plans to travel in ireland for about 10 days before starting work in england.  we've been to dublin, so we're going to explore some smaller towns.  has anyone been to ireland?  we'd love ideas about where to go or things that we must do, etc.  please help.

before going to the republic of ireland we're going to spend a weekend in belfast with a friend of mine from working in oxford last summer.  his name is nick, and he is bow tie guy on the right:

(bow tie guy on the left is the one who isn't returning to oxford and has made my move to oriel college necessary.  i have forgiven him, but only barely.)

nick and his wife grew up in belfast and now are a doctor (him) and a pharmacist (her).  nick taught the medical science class at the summer program i work for.  nick and i skyped today and it was SO good to catch up with him and get his input on what we should do while we're there.  we'll be staying with him and his wife for a weekend and exploring belfast and the giant's causeway on the northern coast of northern ireland before renting a car and heading into the republic of ireland.

additionally, skype is magical.  i could see him, thousands of miles away (we gave each other tours - me of my office [4pm my time], him of his kitchen [9pm his time]).  for free dollars.  the 21st century rocks.

i'm starting (continuing?) to get really excited about this summer.

if you need me, i'll be singing this song to myself on repeat.  or, let's be honest, the two lines i know...

blazing sea nuggets go for the three-peat/hat trick/triple crown/turkey and succeed!!!!!!

dollar signs everywhere!!!

i love trivia nights.  especially when sitting outside in gorgeous 75 degree weather with pizza and friends.

hooray hooray.

back in atlanta after a weekend in charleston

this weekend there was lots of catching up with the 17 (!) other duke rugby girls who were at colin's wedding (including the the lovely bride who was GORGEOUS), as this photo points out:

the ceremony was held on the patio of the south carolina aquarium as the sun was going down, with a party inside near the fishes afterwards.  so the light in this picture isn't ideal...but it is a true reflection of the light at that moment.  sweetest ceremony ever.  references to the princess bride and duke basketball and pre-existing conditions (the bride and groom are both graduating from medical school next month).

in contrast to the bride's beauty, there was this:

and this:

and this - CLEARLY the best outfit of them all:

(yes, that is a one piece sparkly silver pantsuit.  be jealous.)

here's all of us together:

you see, when we were in college we would play a prom dress rugby game every year.  well: we started this my senior year, but colin (the bride) is two years younger than me and they continued it after we left.  think ugly prom dresses from thrift stores that are ripped and torn as you attempt to play rugby in them.  awesomeness.

so as a nod to that memory, 15 of us rugby girls (2 were bridesmaids and had to, you know, wear bridesmaid dresses) wore ugly prom dresses to the wedding and reception.  i have never been stared at so much in my life.  it was really fun, though, and colin thought it was awesome...and it was a fun and silly way to let colin know that we love her.

weekend: success.

"miss claire - how are you posting?  i thought you were in charleston for the weekend!"
"well, lovely readers, i wrote this post yesterday and scheduled it to post today for a little friday fun even though i'm indisposed."
"oh. i get it."

have you heard of a google a day?  i discovered it recently - very fun to flip through, especially with my love of trivia.  go waste some time.

i'm headed to charleston this weekend...

for my friend colin's wedding.  hooray!

colin played rugby with me at duke; while at duke she also started a club called kaadatt - "kids all about dancing all the time."  they would occasionally hold random dance parties on the quad.  it was pretty amazing.  on the invitation for this wedding she wrote that dancing at the reception was "mandatory."

lots and lots of rugby girls are coming to the wedding, including one who is flying in from london.

you had better believe that this is going to be an awesome weekend.

long story short, though - i'll be out of touch for a couple days.  happy easter weekend, everyone!

gay men draw butch things, part 3

a tank.
by willis.

(in related news, we won our trivia night last night!  hooray!)

the "gun" that the tank driver (probably not the technical name) is holding looks like a hair dryer.

also, the tank is driving on...barbed wire wheels?  what is going ON, willis?

oh, i love these drawings...

lazy days

another convert:

yesterday afternoon becky and i laid around on blankets outside and read for an hour.  the sun was shining.  it was heaven.

today i've taken the day off from work and we're eating/shopping/getting manicures, and then probably spending more time reading in this beautiful weather.

life is good.

what i'm listening to right now:

"home," by edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros



a really original sound - and i watched a video of them performing and i have decided that they are truly BIZARRE.  love their music in spite of that (because of that?).  thanks to my friend dylan for introducing me to this band; i thought of him and this song this week as he brought his new baby girl home from the hospital.  hooray for baby norah!

t minus 8 hours until becky arrives!

my sister is coming to visit this weekend!  hooray!
things planned:
indian food take out and the friday night lights premiere on tv
a trip to world peace cafe (how has she never been?!)
quasi-fancy pre-prom dinner with my work friends
prom (i'll try to get her to guest post about her experiences)
post-prom drinks with friends
cinema club on sunday morning
warm weather all around!
trivia!

going to be a great weekend. :)

this is an incredible true story.  it gives me goosebumps and makes me a little teary.

watch this video first.



then watch this one.



i heard about this on NPR (i love NPR just as much as the new york times), but watching the videos is even more incredible than listening to the story.

the world is small.

there are true mysteries that can be solved.

people are inherently good.

really interesting read: NCAA's Double Standard

on a related note, i continue to love reading the new york times online - as part of my job (staying up to date on current events so i can talk about them with my government students) and for enjoyment, i probably read 10 articles on their website a day.

when i found out that the new york times was going to charge to read articles online - if you read more than 20 in one month - i mistakenly thought they said 20 in a day and said to myself "oh, i read less than that - i'll be fine!"  oh wait: i read a lot of articles.  i won't be fine.

magically i got an email the next day where the new york times told me that the $15/month subscription would be waived by lincoln (the car company) for six months because i'm a "loyal reader."  how many loyal readers there are, i don't know.  but i'm pretty stinking happy right now as i continue to read for free.

sunday

another truly gorgeous day - the kind of day that makes you appreciate just the ability to live through it.  i can feel summer coming - can feel the weight of work lifted off my shoulders, can feel the beautiful weather coming (and staying).  i love days like this.

mike and kelly and i went to the braves game this afternoon.  now, you might be saying to yourself, "miss claire, i thought you made a pledge to the universe never to go to a day braves game ever again because you are always hot and miserable!"  why yes, i did make that pledge.  but it's early enough in the season that it isn't TOO hot - though it was in the mid-80s today - and i have found the magic of section 414 where there is shade for the entire game.  heaven!!  pledge taken back!!

i love going to baseball games because of (a) the ability to enjoy being outside (if the weather is nice), (b) i like baseball, and (c) i'm not so terribly invested in the game that i stop enjoying myself if the team does poorly.  duke games are really fun to see in person, but if they're losing i am unhappy.  the braves lost today, 3-0, and it almost didn't matter.  i was happy just to be at a game.  i was in pretty good company, too, so that didn't hurt.

kelly indulged my attempt at an artsy shot of the field reflected in her sunglasses.  thank you, kelly.

i took a shower after the game (sweating still happened even in the shade), and then joey and i had dinner with two friends on the patio of a restaurant near our house and it was still quite warm even though the sun was going down.  strike that: it was the perfect temperature to sit on a patio.  bliss.

monday: to you i say "harumph."  summer vacation: hurry up and get here!

today is april 9th.  it is also the first 90 degree day of 2011 here in atlanta, georgia.

i am just as appalled as you are.

so true:

"While the goal of all movies is to entertain, the kind of film in which I believe goes one step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of his own conscience. It stimulates thought and sets the mental juices flowing."
--Sidney Lumet, director of lots of films (including 12 Angry Men), who died today

question from trivia night on tuesday

category: lyrics
question: name the song that the following line comes from: "son, i've made my life out of reading people's faces."

i NEVER EVER know the lyrics answers - but i did on this one!  aaron gave me a high five.  it was awesome.  anybody else know - without googling it?

crazy thunderstorm on monday night,

and i love this crazy photo of downtown atlanta...

after a realllllly long day:

i'm at the hair salon waiting to see a new stylist named mary.  my old stylist was awesome, but he moved back to indonesia.  so...i'm seeing someone new.  it's loud in there - lots of blowdryers running, etc. - but i hear my name, look up to see a woman smiling at me, she introduces herself as "m," and we go off to her station.  she says something like "so you're new here!" and i say, "oh no, i've been coming here for a while - i'm just new to you!"  we talk about what i want done to my hair (basically, make it how it looked 3 months ago), and then we walk over to the sinks for her to wash my hair.  she says, "so, you're not new?  they had in the computer system that you were a new client."
me: "um, nope!"
her: "and you're andy?"
me: "um, claire?"
her: "what stylist are you supposed to see?"
me: "um, mary?"
her: "i'm em."
oooooh - she's em, not m (perhaps this mary person goes by her initial only, i thought when i heard her say her name).
and then it's back to the front of the salon where mary is waiting for me and i have to sheepishly explain that apparently i can't hear.  em picks up her client - a man named andy.

things we have learned: your gender is not listed next to your name when you make an appointment.

geez.

lunch for tomorrow (and thursday...and friday...) - sweet potato latkes (to go alongside a salad).  they are delicious; only about 3/4 of them made it from pan to tupperware - my mouth got in the way.

the recipe is: 1 grated sweet potato and 1 grated onion.  squish water out.  mix with 1 egg and several tablespoons flour.  fry.  eat.

what i'm listening to right now

"middle cyclone," by neko case



(yes, this is a bizarre homemade music video, but just listen...)

for your entertainment:

sample questions from harvard's 1869 entrance exam.

people who would not have gotten in include: me.

(and not just because i'm a woman.)

march: 6 7 8 9

i have learned, over the past couple months, that when you make an effort to read a little bit more it becomes a habit...and then all of a sudden you're reading a LOT more.  because you enjoy it.  like last month: i read four books in march, which is the most i've read in a really long time.  i got a little obsessed with the hunger games series, too, which kept me reading.

this month i read:


the children's blizzard, by david laskin (really interesting nonfiction book about a blizzard in south dakota and nebraska and iowa in 1888 that killed a bunch of schoolchildren.  i learned a lot from this book - perhaps too much, in fact, about meteorology of the 1880s that led to the blizzard warning not reaching the rural areas with enough time to save people from the danger.  it's so interesting to think about the role that meteorology has in keeping people safe today - i think we underestimate their role today.  but really - i had to skip parts of this book because i just couldn't take any more information about the snow warning system that was in place on the prairie in 1888.)

catching fire, by suzanne collins (the second book in the hunger games series, and every bit as good as the first one.  i got this from the library on a saturday morning and was finished by the end of the day on monday.  obsessed.  i kept texting willis when crazy things would happen because i had to tell SOMEONE and he'd read the series.)

half-broke horses, by jeannette walls (i loved her first book, the glass castle (a memoir) - this book she calls a "true-life novel" - it's based on the author (and her mother)'s memories of her grandmother, but is told as a first-person account as the grandmother on life in the west in the early 20th century.  a really quick read and i love this author - it's probably dorky to say that the stories came alive, but they did.  so call me a dork.  i was really sad when this book was over.)

mockingjay, by suzanne collins (the third (and final) book in the hunger games series.  i bought this from amazon after realizing i couldn't wait for 96 middle schoolers to read this book before i could get it from the library.  i wasn't staying up late to read this book like i had with the first two and it's significantly more serious than the others, but i was glad i'd read it just the same.)