The first book I ever read by Robert Cormier was After the First Death. Although I admitted that the book was well written intellectually, the book was very dated in a 1970's world and I didn't give it credit for being a wonderful novel. Being dated to the 1970's is key to understanding both First Death and I am the Cheese. read more »

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
There was a time I would have embraced fully James Joyce's work. However, at this point in my life I see this work as being romantic dribble. read more »

hot tubs are nice
Well, we finally picked a health insurance plan. My company offered a few different options, and it was a headache to try and figure out the difference between HMOs and PPOs, and decide which we wanted. Fortunately if we don't like what we picked, we can switch in December. So let's hurry up and get sick so we can figure out if we like our insurance! read more »

Literal
Literal-mindedness doesn't get you anywhere very interesting. I want to take bigger leaps.
-David Salle

A short short short week
This week began half way through, due to labor day, and ended abruptly as well. Rebecca had Monday off due to a company holiday, which is a good thing because we spent our labor day driving home from the redwoods. We knew she also needed Friday off, so to make up for Friday in advance, we had planned that she would work extra long hours the remaining three days; this plan quickly dissolved when we weren't able to get her into work on Tuesday until noon. Between getting myself moved into my studio on campus and other problems, it turned out to be a long day. read more »

Lamb Parmigiana
Lamb Parmigiana
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1 lb leg of lamb (no bone)
2 oz. corn flakes (finely crushed)
1 egg
1 TBS garlic, chopped or minced
1 TBS lemon juice
4 TBS EVOO
2 cups seasoned tomato sauce (Prego or your favorite "pizza" sauce)
as much shredded mozarella, cheddar and parmesan cheese as you can stand!*
Turn oven to 350 degrees. Turn on skillet to 375/Medium High. read more »

Technology and the arts
Technology's not going to change the number of geniuses in the world, but there has been a whole middle zone of quite talented people who don't have that superhuman gift. Some of the lounge pianists I've heard are pretty good. They're not going to play Carnegie Hall, but they're pretty good.
-Bill Viola

camping - over the river and through the woods
We had quite the week, I'll say that much. We are now California residents...we both have driver's licenses, the car is registered and we thought of a new mnemonic phrase to help us remember the new license plate, and we even have a local bank to our names. Well, to Wayne's name, since I didn't have a "valid" government photo ID (at that point I had a paper CA license and my old UT license, which the CA people told me would be valid but the lady at the bank wasn't convinced). read more »

we're not in kansas anymore
Well, for those of you who didn't know... we moved. How's that for Captain Obvious?
Two weeks ago (was it only that long ago?!) we finished packing up most of the house. We had planned to load the truck on Tuesday with some of our church members' help and we wanted to be mostly packed up before they came. We like efficient moves where everything is ready and we only need manpower to move things from our apartment into the 16 foot truck. How did we ever get enough stuff to fill a 16 foot truck? I don't know. I blame unsold artwork which clutters our lives. read more »

Oregon and packing
Sorry we didn't write last week. We went to Oregon for the weekend! read more »
