Bon Jour

The art--and Frustration--of the Interview

Cousins day - February

Hello from the Big Apple
21 November 2009 We have arrived, after a long day. Travel days are always long. It began very early. We planned to leave at 4. I was so afraid I'd oversleep that I didn't get to sleep until after 1 and then woke up at 3:30, a few minutes before the timer on the stove went off.We got the dogs fed. Even they seemed to wonder what I was doing feeding them in the middle of the night.

Off to the Big Apple
I will probably be on a plane when most of you are reading this entry. Walt tells me we are leaving the house at 4 a.m. four our 6-something flight. I'm not looking forward to the flight. I think we change planes twice and the bulk of the flight will have us both in middle seats. I don't mind being in a middle seat, if necessary, with Walt on one side, but if I have to sit between two strangers, I am sorely aware that both of them are grumbling to themselves about having to sit next to a big fat lady. I spend the whole time getting myself into the "smallest" possible body posture I can and am sore and

Not at all Funny
I saw this on the net today: A lot of funny things float around the internet and some of them are actually funny. This one is terrifying. You may or may not have heard that there is a movement to "pray for Obama" floating around some of the fundamentalist extremists. Now on the surface you'd wonder what could be wrong with praying for the president, or what might even be funny about

Thursday Thirteen
Thirteen books I can see from where I'm sitting that I have been meaning to read, but haven't yet.1. Scarpetta (Patricia Cornwell)2. Trunk Music (Michael Connelly)3. Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)4. Three books by Philippa Gregory Marta gave me5. Daniel X (James Patterson)6. Until I Find You (John Irving)7. Voyager (Diana Gabaldon...but I have to finish "Dragonfly in Amber" first)8. The Myth of You and Me (Leah Stewart)9. Quentins (Maeve Binchy)10. Blood and Fire (David Gerrold)11. Chesapeake (James Michener)12. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (Gregory Maguire)13. The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)

2 Dog Night
When I woke up this morning, it was nice and warm in the house. The weather has been so cold this week that I've been closing the sliding glass door in the family room at night when we go to sleep, rather than leaving it open a bit for the puppies to go out through the night. It was nice not to get up shivering. But then I came into my office and it was like walking into a refrigerator. The dog do