My First Ticket

Yes, it's true. I have my car for less than a month and I've gone and gotten myself my very first ticket. It was earlier this week, on Monday. A speeding ticket no less! I can hear some of you who know me better chuckling out there. I was on my way to the UPS store to mail off my brother's (heavy) portfolio. It was raining, and I know I was going fast, but not that fast. Officer Alden pulled me over by the Bailey Bros. on Route 10. The ticket cost more than the shipping costs for the portfolio. Oh well. Does everyone remember their first moving violation? I'm still trying to decide if I should contest or just pay the darn thing. The office was very nice and he explained the whole ticket processing thing. Yick.

It didn't put me in a very good mood, and I had planned to write most of that afternoon. I wrote a little bit; I was mainly transcribing interview with Cynthia Huntington. Transcribing is nice. It's like emptying a box of puzzle pieces: you pick out the pieces are start putting them together to make a picture.

What else have I been up to this week? A lot of meetings and informational interviews. It's good to get out of the house. For my second interview I visited the hospital to meet with the Director of Supportive Services at the new cancer center. She was very nice. We talked about this new pilot program to introduce complementary alternative medicine therapies (CAM therapies) for outpatients.

DHMC is huge! Lots of corridors and several wings. A person could get lost in there. In addition to your requisite bookstore, cafeteria, and flower shop, they have the following:

Beauty Salon

Convenience Store

Credit Union

Dry Cleaner

Optical Shop

Travel Agent

They even have a branch of our bank, Fleet Bank (soon-to-be Bank of America), right there next to the bookstore. And our favorite bank guy works there part of the week. He even waved to me when I walked past his window!

Anyway, next week will be busy. Last Saturday, Roger and I hung out with the other fellows from the cardiology department along with their respective families. A lot of twins--three pairs, two identical and one fraternal! There must be something in the water. Anyway, I got to meet a couple of the other wives and played with some very cute babies. A few of us exchanged email addresses and I've made plans to hang out with some of them next week. So, barring any further moving violations, it should be fun!

Who Is a Writer?

Who can be a writer? With Blogger and Xanga, anybody can be a writer, self-publishing their thoughts. I am surfing the web for information on the new NH poet laureate, Cynthia Huntington. I am meeting with her next week to talk about her writing and would like to have something intelligent to say. Her recent book of a poetry is hard to find around here, even though she is the director of the creative writing program at Dartmouth. Fortunately, there is a copy at Norwich Bookstore on hold for me, which I will pick up after this short blog.

Anyway, surfing and surfing, I read her biography on the Ploughshares web site. For fun, I looked up an old Michigan classmate of mine, Jess Row. He now teaches at Montclair State University in NJ. He recently received the Whiting Award for promising new writers. Then I googled another UM alum, Karen Hwa, who is now an editor at Cornell UP. I always enjoyed her work. She has a few published pieces available on online chapbooks.

I am a writer. At least, I used to think so. In my portfolio I have maybe three good stories unpublished, not yet rewritten, but probably should be: "Alarms," "The Right Arm," and "Service," These are getting old. I have seeds of newer projects tucked away in different half-filled notebooks around the house. I make assignments for myself: write a story where you keep populating each scene with more and more people; write a story in an hour; just write.

I have an essay on driving that I would like to translate into a scene in a story, and another idea about a visit to Rembrandt exhibit. Reading helps me to write, because I react to what I read. I see your sentence and raise you another - I can write a character that would answer differently. I've been enjoying Carol Shields. Her prose is intelligent without being preachy, accessible on a word-by-word level, but still challenging when you see what the words have woven together. I felt the same way about Harriet Doerr's Stones for Ibarra, although admittedly it got a little precious towards the end.

SWEET NEW FIND
Fellow blogger Zach Braff. His musings on his new movie's web site (see link under Movie Watch) are a treat!

Bialetti Moka Espresso

GENEVIEVE'S NEW FAVORITE APPLIANCE: The Bialetti Moka Espresso.
Who knew making coffee could be so easy? Our little espresso maker (with the authentic l'omino, little man, on the side) was a gift from my first landlady back in Boston, Raffaela Fabbo. Mrs. Fabbo had given it to my mother as an Easter present, but somehow it just followed me whenever I moved. Anyway, for the longest time it was just an interesting shelf item that I would put out to dress up my kitchen. Well, my parents sent us some ground espresso from their recent trip to Costa Rica. The bag smelled so good that I thought I'd give the brewing thing a try. Eureka! Coffee! Black gold! (Or is that oil?) Yum, yum. Roger's mom is trying to get Roger to stop drinking Diet Coke in the morning (aspartame: bad!), so maybe I can switch him to this. Not that coffee addiction is much better than Diet Coke addiction. Ah, caffeine the old fashioned way.

URBAN SPRAWL ALERT
Evidence of this is a creeping up all around us. Here are some of Gen and Rog's Upper Valley retail predictions for the next three years:

There will be a Home Depot in Lebanon (okay, this is a cheat, because they broke ground for the HD this past month).

There will be a Bed, Bath & Beyond (the two seem to go hand-in-hand, at least Gen hopes so).

White River Junction will be the next Bucktown/Wicker Park (hey, they're already saying it's the East Village of the UV).

The new Dartmouth Bookstore will be a smash! (Perhaps people who developed the Brookline Booksmith can be convinced to expand their interests to the north - alas, it looks like B&N will be the new proprietors, see link below.)

For those of you interested, here's a link to a story on the impending closing/re-opening of the Dartmouth Bookstore: A Bookstore Survives.

STANFORD, RAH! RAH!
Did anyone read the recent issue of the Alumni Magazine? The cover story is all about the Stanford Shopping Center. I don't know how I feel about coming from a university that is so proud of its mall. It's supposed to be super-super fancy now, a la South Coast Plaza. Remember back in 1996 when we would stroll through the arcades to get a brioche at La Baguette or pick up toys at the Museum Store (now no longer there)? Who knew Pottery Barn would be so big? Chime in, people!

The Vermont (and New Hampshire) Years

Yes, Genevieve and Roger have traded in their renter status and hi-rise life in Chicago for a thirty-year mortgage and a two-bedroom townhouse in the verdant, wooded Upper Valley. Bye, Lake Michigan! Bye, deep dish pizza! Bye, comparison shopping and three Banana Republics within three blocks! Hello, Green Mountain Coffee! Hello, EMS! Hello, Manchester Fisher Cats (the local minor league baseball team)!

This blog (or vlog - get it? Vermont Log) will record G/R's many new experiences living in rural New England. New home, new states (Vermont/New Hampshire), new jobs (Roger at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Gen TBA). Feel free to stop by and check the new news.

CUBS ... DON'T WIN
About nine months ago, Roger discovered BASEBALL. The Cubbies were in the play-offs and we found ourselves going to bars to watch games and drink beer from ice chests. Although our beloved Cubs did not reverse the curse, the run for the pennant stirred in Rog a new interest in sports. We'll miss Wrigley Field - really THE BEST place to watch a game.

Anyway, our nights now often revolve around ESPN's Baseball Tonight. We're trying to get on the Red Sox bandwagon too - although their fans are very intense. Both the Red Sox and the Cubs are in second place in their respective divisions (behind the Yankees and Cardinals, respectively). Here's hoping a miracle happens, or at least a wild card spot.

Tonight's games' outcomes: Cubs don't win (vs. Cards, ugh, it was their last meeting for the season and at WRIGLEY; Gen's favorite pretty boy, relief pitcher, Kyle Farnsworth gave up way too many runs); Red Sox do win (vs. Mariners) (go David Ortiz!)

GENEVIEVE'S NEW FAVORITE APPLIANCE
Can you call a car an appliance? I've recently inherited my brother's RAV 4. Although I was apprehensive about driving at first, I really, really, really like it now. It helps with the grocery shopping. The farthest I've driven is to Woodstock, Vermont, which is about 15 miles away. I hope to tackle interstate highways soon.

GENEVIEVE'S SECOND FAVORITE APPLIANCE
The food processor is an AWESOME invention. It chops, it slices, it purees. It makes it so easy to incorporate GENEVIEVE'S NEW FAVORITE VEGETABLE - celery - into meals! Before celery was boring raw stalks that needs to be eaten with dip. Now it's making appearances in soups and stir-fry. Woo-hoo, more vegetables in our diet is a good thing!

MOVIE JOURNAL
Spider-Man 2: Thumbs way up! Go Alfred Molina!
Barbarian Invasion: Very impressive Canadian film. Great ensemble cast. Watch for the pig-tailed girl who stole the show for us.
American Wedding: Roger says, There are a lot of naked people in it.
CAN'T WAIT TO SEE: The Incredibles (out in November)

ON OUR BOOKSHELF - we have way too many, need to weed soon
We haven't found a bookstore that we absolutely love yet - Brookline Booksmith is still our favorite but that's in the Boston area, at least an hour-and-a-half away. Woodstock has a few, but they're more travel-oriented. And the Dartmouth Bookstore, once a thriving independent, is going out of business. We recently picked up:
The Thinking Fans Guide to Baseball (Leonard Kopett) - great essays on the game
Unless (Carol Shields) - so far so good

UV SCENE
Bringing to you a little bit of the Upper Valley. Check out these local web sites! We enjoy them.
King Arthur Flour (their new cookbook won the James Beard award, www.kingarthurflour.com
Manchester Fisher Cats, www.nhfishercats.com

SM'ACTS (SMALL FACTS)
This blog's URL is named after our stuffed panda - Spanda, the Super Panda, aka Hua Mei of the San Diego Zoo.