Pretty please! With pink icing on top!

Day/title 53

Bibliographic Information:

Voices on the River: The Story of the Mississippi Waterways

Walter Havighurst

MacMillan, 1964

Summary:

Surveys the Mississippi’s importance over three centuries as a transportation system and contribution to the heartland of American frontier life.

My reaction:

This book was obviously written before it became common knowledge that human beings have the attention span of a gnats toenail clipping–at least the new millennium human being does.  I mean the author goes on and on! There’s huge, looming chunks of text! No bullet points?! No pages of illustrations and/or PowerPoint flow chart screen shots (shout out to Jeniffer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad author)!?  Shoulda known he’d be long winded with a name like Walter Havighurst; he’s all ‘Battle of Tippecanoe’ this and ‘Captain Dickie Hiernaux’ that.  I swear all of the names in the book are a mouthful and I’d just rather chew on something else right now. Where’s my Dunkin Donuts coupon?

But honestly.  I read a couple of paragraphs and it does have a sprawling, adventurous feel to it.  Now if he’d just write a screen play and do a film adaptation I’m all in.

I actually hate sprinkles but the quintessential donut image always has them.

PS– I want to shake it up a bit.  Because I do a lottery to get my call numbers I’m only able to get  non-fiction titles–because those are comprised of 3-7 numbers and a name/descriptor.  But I’m feigning for some fiction, some novels.  The ‘call numbers’ for novels are generally just the author’s last name.  I need to invent a way to do a lottery of sorts for pulling names.  I need a way to randomly select names so that I can go hunt down books by those (hopefully, fingers crossed, please let them be) authors. Make sense? Any suggestions?

The portal to the rabbit hole is in my purse

Anchal*, this really old Indian woman who works in my building gave me this “special breed” tangerine.  We we’re on the elevator .  “Happy Holidays” she said with (was it? yes it was) an almost imperceptible conspiratorial nod and a mirthful twinkle in her eye.   She also gave me a mini Hershey bar.  I ate the Hershey right away.  Who doesn’t eat a Hershey’s right away?

The orange, on the other hand,  gave me pause; which is why it’s still in the vast wasteland otherwise known as my purse.  I mean what kinda trip was Anchal tryina send me on with this “special” orange?  While I pondered whether I should enjoy the pulpy holiday gift I did a photo shoot of it.  It was a a slow day at work and I have lots of construction paper at my job.  I’m a Librarian. Construction paper is par for the course in La vie en Bibliotheque.

it really is a lovely orange...

but I see your 'true' colors too. mmm hmm.

*Names have been changed to protect the enchanted Indian woman who’s been working at the Library for centuries.

Day 18 Joey bag of coconut donuts

Something you crave a lot:

Some times you wanna go…where everybody knows your name…

Well they don’t exactly know my name but they do know my usual.  Not exactly proud of it but I have a usual at my Dunkin Donuts—the coconut donut.  This heavenly, ‘holey’ confection is a hybrid of two of my weaknesses.  Cake—good. Coconut—good. 

I don’t know where this coconut obsession came from.  It really is a recent development but all of a sudden I gotta have coconut: coconut shrimp, coconut soup, coconut cake, coconut ice cream, coconut fish, coconut coconut…

So I figure when they publish findings that rabid coconut consumption is linked to heart health, long life and over-all awesomeness I’ll be light years ahead of the game! WINNING!

Focusing on day 10 of the 30 day blogging challenge

A picture of your favorite place to eat:

The 1st picture is of a table set by my mother for one of her catered affairs. My mother is outstanding  at everything she does—catering is no exception.  Her food is invariably good. Like my girl Nikki Giovanni said, even her [culinary] errors are correct!

When I was a youngin’ on the verge of leaving the nest, my mother tried to pull me into the kitchen to show me some basic cooking skills and my response to her was so quintessentially teen (1. dumb 2. shortsighted 3. uninformed 4. dumb 5. dumber)  that it ain’t even funny.  I said “No thanks I’ll just eat sandwiches. I really like sandwiches”. 

Famous last words. Fastforward 15 years. Today finds me an average cook but I’m sure my kids would’ve much rathered I studied at their ‘nannies’ feet and learned how to make every dish a winner. Ah well. In my kitchen you win some (my family loves my shrimp and grits) and you lose some (my recent attempt at capellini al forno which sat untouched in a house full of 8 hungry people), and when all else fails you go over to nannies’ and see what she has cooking.

The 2nd picture is my favorite Indian restaurant. I wanna go there right now and get mango lassi wasted.