Party was a hit. Stuffed peppers and chicken were rock solid, Chatman brought some swiss chard in a marinara and some spectacular egg salad dip (made from his little hen’s eggs), Walt brought some great potatoes, Jess brought some deep fried asparagus (which I had never had but loved), there were some spinach and also a romaine salad, as well as a tomato/cuke/onion salad. A good time was had (and is being had) by all. Also, this was dog night- we had five of the hairy critters running around at one point. Here is the newest addition to the Bethany community, Frannie:
That’s honestly the best picture I could get. I took about 20, but she’s a puppy, so everything is a blur. She’s a rescue puggle, and she takes cute to eleven. Earlier tonight when Harry and Chatman are over, they brought their dog Buddy Ray over, who is a schnauzer/JRT mix, and I motioned for Buddy Ray to hop up on my lap. As I was doing that, Rosie jumped up on my right thigh. So as Buddy Ray was climbing up, Lily came screaming over from the other couch, pushed Buddy Ray out of the way, and claimed the left thigh. It was like she was saying “I was docile the last time some strange got introduced into this household and I ended up with that Rosie shit going down, NOT FUCKING HAPPENING AGAIN.” We all laughed.
Aside from the fact that all my friends are smart, love animals, and can cook, I turned on the mac mini and said “someone play some music.” Went to the bathroom, and they were rocking Tennessee Jed when I came out.
I have such a good, good life.
*** Update ***
Some pictures from my friend Jill so you all can get a better look of Fran:
My favorite is the first, how she ran to Bill’s lap and just melted and went all “VOGUE!” and showed her shit.
Steeplejack
What did you end up doing with the chicken? The Himalayan marmalade?
MikeBoyScout
Ain’t no place I’d rather be
SiubhanDuinne
Yes you do, John Cole. Yes you do.
BGinCHI
@Steeplejack: Yeah, fess up Cole on the chix. We gave solid recs on that one.
We did Bobaks veal sausages on the grill with mixed grilled veggies (peppers, mush, onion, squash), ears of corn (also grilled, with cumin and lime). Now pie and Greek yogurt ice cream.
Catching up on Sunday’s Game of Thrones. Little man asleep. Life is good.
burnspbesq
For a self-proclaimed misanthrope, you’re pretty damned sociable. Something doesn’t compute.
BGinCHI
@burnspbesq: Cole doesn’t do as well with individuals as he does with groups.
He’s agoraphilic.
PeakVT
there were some spinach and also a romaine salad, as well as a tomato/cuke/onion salad.
No arugula? For shame.
Simon Taverner
A puggle, huh? I’d never heard of them before my wife brought one home 3 weeks ago. Ours is also very cute, and still much tinier than this one.
MikeInSewickley
Sometimes life is worth living…especially when unconditional love keeps running around the place on four paws.
Add great friends and I’d call that a day in the plus column of life.
John Cole
@Steeplejack:
No, I got super lazy after cleaning my house and watering all my plants and flowers in 90 degree heat, then walking down the street and watering my dad’s plants (they are at the beach), so I just bought a marinade. I actually was pleasantly surprised- it was a soy based marinade that turned out to be delicious. It was called Allegro, and it was soy based. I just put a dozen thighs in it for about 6 hours and it was good.
I like people on my terms. I’m always happy to host. Plus, I don’t have to talk that much because I am busy cooking, cleaning, and drinking. But I am definitely cool with my small circle of friends.
Steeplejack (phone)
Waiting outside the bookstore to give a former coworker a ride home. Buses were on holiday schedule today. Feel like I want to get on the road and drive all night. Not gonna happen.
JCT
At a meeting in Canada — forgot it stayed light so late, kept drinking. BIG MISTAKE. Luckily I already gave my talk or this could have been BAD.
Roger Moore
@JCT:
Yeah, I was at a meeting in Vancouver last week- they were careful not to schedule it for Memorial Day Weekend this year- and the long days were a nice bonus. I held back on the drinking this year, even though free drinks are a major feature of the conference.
Yutsano
My folks punted on dinner and made French dip with fries and watermelon. Ate only half the sandwich but I inhaled the fruit. Starting to actually feel a bit less sore than earlier, pain level has been muy high all day.
And got a Dawg story. He went out drinking with a few other Dawgs and caught the attention of a female. She even got as far as rubbing his dick (which surprised me, but he took it as a compliment) before he let her down easy. I’m gonna give him shit about this for WEEKS!!
amk
holidays humor
The minister dies and the congregation decides that his widow, should remarry. Since it is a small village the only available candidate is the local butcher. Although very reluctantly, since she was used to living with a bible scholar, she accepts.
After the marriage, on Friday night just after taking a bath – the new husband tells his wife, “Look, my mother always said that before the beginning of the weekend it was a blessing to have sex.”
They do it and then on Saturday he tells her, “According to my father it is a blessing to have sex during the day before the Sabbath.
There they go again and when it is time to go to sleep he tells her, “My grandfather told me that one should always have sex on Sabbath night.”
Finally they go to sleep and when they wake up the next morning he tells her, “My aunt says that a Christian man always starts the Sabbath by having sex. So lets do it.”
Finally on Monday she goes out to the market and meets a friend that asks her, “So how is the new husband?”
“Well, an intellectual he ain’t, but he sure does come from a wonderful family.”
kdaug
The best is when I come out of the office, the little one thumps her tail on the couch, ears back and eyes half-closed.
“Hello, Daddy”
Nicknamed her “Thumper” for a reason.
John Cole
This may be the deadest open thread on a holiday every.
S. cerevisiae
Hey JC, I just watched the first part of Hatfields and McCoys and I thought it was pretty good – was wondering how people over in those parts were taking it?
Linnaeus
Spent the long weekend by myself, since my friends were either out of town or had other plans. Made a nice steak au poivre with a dijon mustard sauce. Not bad.
Violet
@John Cole:
I love this sentence.
Your party sounds great and Frannie is adorable.
I spent the day going through boxes and boxes of books and only had one meltdown. Then went to the store to get some stuff for the grill. When it cooled down a bit in the evening I worked in the garden. Not a bad day but didn’t really feel like a holiday.
Suffern ACE
Watching the Vietnam in HD marathon on H2. All this history is new to my partner, who is equal parts horrified and curious and confused about the whole thing. By about 1967 he figured that the war would be wrapping up soon. Said the same thing about 68, then 69. The the episode covering 70 he was just kind of resigned that it wasn’t ending anytime soon. But without prompting, he got mad at Nixon for escalating the war.
burnspbesq
Listening to the new John Abercrombie record, “Within a Song.” Liking it a lot. I’m generally not a big Joe Lovano fan, but his playing on this record is dead on.
asiangrrlMN
Frannie is a doll baby! And, TUUUUUUUNCH! (Obligatory, but always heartfelt).
@Yutsano: Wait, what? NYD?
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: NYD. I couldn’t stop giggling as he was telling me the details. He also has a bug in his brain about moving to Colorado. I think I know why, but it still kinda stunned me.
handsmile
Steeplejack:
Several hours ago on the “Happy Memorial Day” thread you asked commenter gogol’s wife about a recent edition of Proust’s Rememberance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time. If you were referring to the Penguin Classic edition that was published during the last decade, I’m happy to offer a qualified recommendation. (I’m just now catching up on recent threads and have chosen to post this comment here, as you seem to be reading it.)
The decision by Penguin to publish a new edition, with each volume translated by a different author, prompted me to return to this literary behemoth a couple of decades after the personal triumph of completing the Enright/Kilmartin/Moncrieff translation. As you noted, by commissioning seven different translators, the project itself is only a partial success volume by volume.
The translation of Swann’s Way by Lydia Davis, perhaps the boldest decision given the author’s seemingly incongruous fictional style, is a superb introduction and signals the project’s overall commitment to accessibility for contemporary readers. Throughout the series, some of Proust’s post-impressionistic “poetry” is sacrificed for a crisper modernist prose. Sodom and Gomorrah, translated by John Sturrock is perhaps the most successful (truest to Proust’s own language and style) single volume in the edition, with Mark Treharne’s translation of The Guermantes Way also a fine accomplishment. I had greater or lesser squabbles or quibbles with the other four volumes. Overall I would expect, with some measure of regret, that the E/K/M translation will remain the standard version for those choosing or assigned to embark upon this monumental epic.
Mind you, all of the above is merely the late-night opinion of one committed (but not fluent) reader of French literature and not a scholar as gogol’s wife can claim with Russian literature. Nevertheless, this flaneur doffs his chapeau to you for considering to undertake the adventure. Bonne chance, mon ami!
Mister Papercut
I can think of nothing more terrifying.
Linda Featheringill
@Suffern ACE: #21
Which is exactly how we felt in 1967, 68, 69, and etc.
trollhattan
Perfect weekend, so wasted a lot of it defoliating the garden and getting in some tomatoes and peppers. I won’t be able to function physically tomorrow. Maybe somebody can wheel me to work in a cart.
Fukushima radionuclides–it’s everybody’s now, bitchez.
www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20120529_03.html
bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18239107
Steeplejack
@handsmile:
Thanks for the rundown. My other lingering question is about the Moncrieff-Kilmartin-Enright translation: to what extent have Kilmartin and Enright de-Moncrieff’d it, and does the result hang together and not read like a hodgepodge?
Lately I have been feeling the urge to reread a number of books that I first read in the ’70s, either to see how they hold up or to try new translations. Also, there is something satisfying about piling huge books on the Nook and barely making a dent in its capacity.
I was dismayed a few days ago to find that The Alexandria Quartet is not available for the Nook. Right now I am rereading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels, in between various crime novels, some stuff on PTSD and some random ephemera.
TaMara (BHF)
I’m in a weird place. I’m restless and frustrated with just about everything in my life right now. I thought that putting in notice at work a couple of weeks ago was going to help alleviate some of it, but this weekend it intensified.
I think I’m going to have to do something drastic to get out of this funk. I just don’t know what it is yet. Trip to far off land (suggestions?), get married (oh, now that would be drastic), move, get a dog, move and get a dog, join my brother on his next skydiving trip, give all my money to charity and join a monastery (oh wait they don’t take women and make you give up sex, so that’s off the table).
I just don’t know. Stay tuned.
piratedan
damn you people, bleeping elitist with your fancy dinner parties and friends and interesting lives while us proles are left to deal with dogs and cats behaving as if their digestive issues are crossed with drone technology as they seek out the only unstained furniture and carpet left in the house. Here I am eating homemade calzones with no special ingredients, no McMegan culinary tricks with plain old countertops and knives of no distinction whatsoever busy worrying about how any normal person can withstand the onslaught of ads that accuse Dem candidates of everything from cannibalism to aiding and abetting muslim extremists because don’t believe that we should drill more oil wells.
you damn totebaggers…. where the FUCK are your lapel pins!
Yutsano
@TaMara (BHF): You’d join an abbey and become a nun, but I think there’s a requirement that you be Catholic too. Restlessness means you need some kind of a change. What about culinary school? Then you could open a restaurant or something.
Mnemosyne
@amk:
I’m pretty sure the original version of that joke had “rabbi,” not “minister,” as the first husband’s job. Can’t say for sure, but it just seems to have the structure of a classic Jewish joke
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
Convent. Abbey is for monks, convent is for nuns. Or nunnery, if you must, though that word had other connotations in Shakespeare’s time. When Hamlet tells Ophelia “get thee to a nunnery,” he’s not suggesting that she become a Catholic.
TaMara (BHF)
@Yutsano: Still celibacy, so that’s out.
Ugh no culinary school. Don’t tell anyone but I’m so tired of cooking right now I want to lockdown my kitchen.
Change for sure. Just not sure in which direction to jump. It’ll come to me. I usually get this feeling just before something really good presents itself. By that time I’m so itchy for change I don’t hesitate to go for it.
TaMara (BHF)
@Mnemosyne: What do we call where buddhist monks hangout, because that’s really what I was thinking…
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: I guess an abbess takes her vows at a convent then goes and looks after the boys. I dunno, I’m not even close to Catholic. :)
@TaMara (BHF): Might I suggest this is the worst time for a major life change like marriage. I do like the idea of going somewhere for a time. Maybe Australia? You could couch surf with TattooSydney for a spell.
handsmile
@Steeplejack:
Both Kilmartin and Enright each updated/revised Moncrieff’s original English language translation based upon two subsequent “La Pleiade” editions of La Temps Perdu. Each revision (or in Enright’s case a revision of a revision) wrought few changes to Moncrieff’s prose; for better or worse, his translating style remains the dominant and coherent voice. They choose to clarify, polish, and tinker with the text, not “de-Moncrieff” it (if I understand what you mean). The Penguin Classic edition is itself based upon the 1989 “La Pleiade” text that Enright used.
I hold fast in my determination to bar the handsmile threshold from the nefarious Nook or its silicon counterparts.
I confess never to have read The Alexandria Quartet. Crime or misdemeanor?
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
Not necessarily Catholic. There are other religions with traditions of monasteries and convents. Other Orthodox Christian churches do, as do some branches of Buddhism.
Dee Loralei
I had a fine dinner, appetizers of buttermilk onion rings and a tripel beer (A Victory Golden Monkey). Entree of smoked ribs, baked beans, coleslaw, dilly bread and a smoked Porter. (And yea it was smokey. Yazoo Sue by Yazoo Brewery in Nashvegas)Dessert was an angel food cake with a white chocolate French Butter cream with raspberry puree, which always makes me break out into Prince songs.)
.. “she wore a raspberry puree…”
AHEM.
Mnemosyne
@TaMara (BHF):
It’s still a monastery, just a Buddhist one. IIRC, the nice thing about becoming a Buddhist monk is that the celibacy rule only applies while you’re at the monastery. You can come and go from the monastery, unlike Catholicism, where you have to take a vow for life.
I get a little foggy on how the whole Buddhist nun thing works, though.
@Yutsano:
I’m Irish and Italian — I think it was required by law that I be raised a Catholic. :-)
Though Wikipedia says I’m wrong about “abbey” — the word is actually gender-neutral and an abbey can house either a monastery or a convent. So that clears up the confusion about how an abbess can be in charge of a convent in an abbey. Well, for me, anyway.
TaMara (BHF)
@Yutsano:
Hee-hee. I didn’t say this was necessarily going to be something smart. And to this non-(re)marrying girl, I think this would be the only time someone might actually convince me…
EDIT: Oh, didn’t realize how late it was. Must get rest, have to wrangle the rabid cats tomorrow. Take your drugs and have a restful (hopefully) night Yutsano.
PurpleGirl
@Yutsano: Nope, an Abbess looks after nuns in a convent or abbey. An abbey can be the home of monks or nuns.
ETA: I had a great aunt who after her husband died became a nun. She joined a silent order and went to a cloistered convent where she was the liaison to the outside world. She handled the shopping and stuff like that. She lived between the noisy outside and silence inside the convent. When she died, her funeral mass was performed by Bishop Sheen.
TaMara (BHF)
@Mnemosyne: OK Buddhist monastery back on the table. ;-)
Mnemosyne
Also, too, this fascinating article in the LA Times made me think that it’s too bad that we don’t have anything resembling secular monasteries that would allow people with a strong intellectual interest who have trouble with everyday life to just lose themselves in a life of the mind without having to worry about mundane things like rent or food.
Nuns and monks also live in cells.
handsmile
@TaMara (BHF): (#30)
And as for skydiving, you might just want to take a look at this video:
guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/may/27/skydiving-octogenarian-slides-harness-video
Spoiler alert: happy ending.
(And I post this as someone for whom sky-diving is a “Must-Do” in this lifetime.)
For all the restlessness and uncertainty you expressed above, I hope you’ll hold onto this statement for comfort and courage:
suzanne
I was feeling Memorial Day guilt, so my husband and I donated a few bucks to Give an Hour. Made me feel marginally better. Went out for brunch, cleaned the house while my husband took Thing One to the movies, and I stayed home with Thing Two. Made a decent Cream of Asparagus soup.
Could use a week off to get my life in order. Le sigh.
Yutsano
@TaMara (BHF): Thanks to the drugs (I’m on a muscle relaxer as well since I was spasming in the hospital) sleep is not an issue. Have to get up early since I do have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow and a four hour drive to get to it. That’s the only downside to convalescing at the ranch. But I knew that already. It will all work itself out.
@PurpleGirl: Can we just declare abbey horrifically ambiguous and leave it at that? :)
Alison
@Mnemosyne: Dude. I would be all about that. In fact, it’s like you took the words right out of my brain…
But I would miss my mom. I’d need visitor days :P
YellowJournalism
All this talk of nuns and abbeys, maybe she should just join a revival of The Sound of Music.
Nuns, Nazis, and a crapload of kids! What could go wrong?
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@TaMara (BHF): Whatever your intentions and your funk, don’t quit your job in this economy.
Sez an old hand at trying to find work in the heart of a recession in fear of getting laid off in this one.
I had success once redefining my interests and career with the same employer. Not always easy but worth a shot.
Suffern ACE
@Alison: I’m not funding that unless celibacy is involved. And also bland food. There needs to be a heavy cost, or too many poseurs would join. That said, I’d allow a monopoly on the production of some kind of alcoholic beverage.
PurpleGirl
@Yutsano: I have no problem with that.
Alison
@Suffern ACE: Well not to get all TMI maybe but I’m fine with both of your first requirements. But I don’t drink, so I can’t help with the alcohol production. And really, I think the poseurs would get tired of it quickly and take off back to the familiar.
Steeplejack
@handsmile:
I don’t know how well it would hold up, which is one reason I want to reread it, and I don’t know your particular tastes in literary fiction. But in my memory it is Proustian—dense, deep, leisurely—and I don’t think it would be dated. You could always try Justine and see how you like it.
From Wikipedia:
That description makes it sound drier than it is. If you’ve ever read Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, it has a little bit of that kind of a feeling, times four.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Do tell!
@TaMara (BHF): Oh, boy, do I understand this well. Good luck with your new adventure.
PurpleGirl
OT: The firm of Dewey & LeBouef has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I worked in a predecessor firm — LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae — for four years. I feel sorry for the clerks, paralegals, and other support staff. LeBoeuf, Lamb (nicknamed The Butchers) was the 79th largest firm in 1990.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Steeplejack: Hmmm. I’m the only person I know who liked “Under the Volcano”. I’ll have to check these out. It’s also got one of the great last lines:
“Somebody threw a dead dog after him down the ravine.”
burnspbesq
@PurpleGirl:
It’s been a slow-motion train wreck for months. Another merger where there wasn’t enough cultural due diligence.
Shana
@Mnemosyne: Speaking of which, recently hubby and I went to NYC and saw Old Jews Telling Jokes. Lots of fun, some old favorites, some new ones. Well done show on the whole although a bit overpriced. Recommended.