Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

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).

Wayne had more first classes this week. He said they were "scary," but he also talked about the interesting new people he met and some discussion they had in one of the classes. The figure painting professor, who remembered Wayne's portfolio (the robot paintings), was surprised to learn Wayne could paint a different style. Can most MFA students only do one style? [it really depressed me to learn that SJSU didn't know what to do with me because of my artist statement/application essay; apparently they thought that my portfolio was really impressive but couldn't understand "what I would do in grad school"... it makes me think that other schools were in the same situation with my application. "live and learn" rebecca says to me. - wayne]

We hung out with lots of friends this week. We had an old Michigan roommate of mine, Erika, over one night (she likes our gyros, yay) and she told us about a relevant case on hobby versus job tax law for future reference when we declare Wayne's art a profession on our taxes. We visited with Kate and Robi (my friend from Austin who lives here, and her fiance) when we helped them move stuff Thursday. And we showed some new friends in our ward, Chris and Alyssa, Wayne's Knights of the North Park film Monday. It was fun to hear their opinions on the film, especially since they don't know much about us and are into documentaries. [they recommended that i watch a british documentary called "7 up." I only watched two of the five programs and that was plenty for me. each program was approximately 2 1/2 hours long. fascinating documentary though: I recommend it.] Though Wayne realized this week that the reason he has trouble explaining the film to people is that he created a film about art that he and some friends created (the experience), and it is neither a documentary nor a story-based movie. [i've always had a hard time talking about this film with people from either film or documentary side. I realized why when i finally talked about it with some new media artists. one guy is even doing these fantastic explorations into "bacteria paintings."]

And then Friday we took off for Northern CA. My work gave me both Friday and Monday off, and Wayne had no classes Friday (or Monday since it's Labor Day). And we talked Jon and Faith into meeting us in the Redwood National Park to hang out all weekend. What a wonderful weekend it was.

It started off a bit painful though. We stopped for lunch on our way out of town (among a bunch of other errands), and after deciding our digital camera is one of our three or four most expensive possessions, took the camera in to the restaurant with us. And left it there. [d'oh!] It was only when we reached the golden gate bridge and wanted to take a picture that we realized our folly. Fortunately, Kate came to the rescue and gave us the number for the restaurant and took time out of her busy pre-wedding schedule to stop and pick up the camera. Yay for wonderful friends.

After that experience, though, we were less prepared to deal well with holiday traffic and the hot weather on our drive. Somehow we had forgotten in the last two weeks that the rest of the nation (including our last home in Provo) was still in a heat wave. San Jose area weather has been good to us, to say the least. After a long drive, we finally arrived at the campsite we had reserved online and set up our tent in the dark. Jon and Faith met us there much later than they had planned as well; I had already fallen asleep!

Both Wayne and Jon, I must say, doubted Faith's and my plan to only reserve one night at Elk Prairie Creek State Park. We just wanted a place we could meet where we would all know ahead of time what campsite number we were at (since cell service was unreliable at best). It was a very full campground, packed completely full of people. Loud and crowded, it felt generally like a hotel with no walls. Saturday morning we woke up early and searched immediately for a primitive campground. In general primitive campgrounds are smaller, cheaper, and first-come first-serve. We talked to the ranger at Prairie Creek and got a couple of good suggestions, and we went with the first. What a good move that was!

We highly recommend Flint Ridge if you want a cheaper (i.e. free) campground in the Redwood National Forest. It was beautiful, especially in the fog, on a cliff right along the coast. We could hear the ocean as we fell asleep and there were much less people at the campground [total silence]. The weather was so cool...highs of 60 and lows in the 40s. Even with sweatshirts we were a little chilly! What a nice change from the hot drive the day before. It was a quarter mile hike from the parking lot, and we had to drive on a gravel road for a while, and we weren't supposed to have campfires because of "fire danger", but otherwise it was perfect. The so-called fire danger was on the other side of the National Park, but they enforced it across the whole park. Kind of silly if you ask me. We had a fire both nights we were there though, because we thought "no open fires" meant no fires outside the protected fire rings. Why distinguish if they really mean no fires at all? But the cops were very cool about it. :)

We went to the beach after setting up camp again, and enjoyed the ocean. We tried to fly out sport kite, but the killer whales we saw distracted us! We saw four killer whales! None of us had seen whales in the wild before, so we were surprised when Wayne said he saw whales in the ocean just off the shoreline. We tried to decide if they could possibly be anything else, but they spouted water and had the tails of whales and were too large to be dolphins.... Each of the four had a different personality, some more shy and popped up less to spout out the blow hole, and one that waved good-bye with its tail fin each time it came to the surface. They were very consistent, all four coming up to the surface in the same order each time, and each sequence was four and a half minutes apart.

Later on, we played games back at the campsite and enjoyed a warm fire and smores. We were exhausted and slept till noon the next day. Then we went on a hike through the Moorman trail, a beautiful part of the Redwood Forest. We climbed inside trees and over logs and under huge trunks and all over the place. It was great fun indeed. We enjoyed the company of Jon and Faith, and the nice cool weather, and the beautiful area.

The trip home wasn't so bad, though it was hot and we still hit traffic, but we left earlier in the day and took long baths. And Star Cat sure is glad to see us.

Since we've moved to California, we've been kept busy unpacking, going to school, going to work and just being busy. This is a random collection of pictures from the past month of our lives. Some are from Kate and Robi's wedding this past weekend, some are just showing our new apartment, some are pictures of us playing on the beach.

• View album

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

Lamb Parmigiana
----------------------
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.

To get this meal started, get a leg of lamb cut and trim off the fat. For most lamb, you really need that fat, but not for this meal. Slice the cut of lamb into 1/2 inch fillets; this might be easiest when the lamb is half frozen. Because the lamb doesn't have any fat on it, you really want to cut the fillet shallow enough so it will cook all the way through quickly. Mix an egg with the lamb in a bowl and in a seperate bowl bread the lamb with the cereal crumbs. Fry with 2 TBS of oil in the skillet, until both sides are browned. Put aside until the garlic and sauce are ready.

In the meantime, we need to roast the garlic. Put it in a 9 x 13 along with the olive oil and the lemon juice, spreading them out. Roast in the oven until the garlic really begins to give off some flavor, then pull the dish out and drizzle half the sauce on the bottom. Then put an even layer of cooked lamb on the bottom and cover with cheeses. We recommend approximately 2 cups mozarella, 1 cup cheddar and 3 TBS of parmesan. Cook at 350 until the cheese is melted and slightly browned (about 20 minutes).

Serves 3-4.

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. But I was going to be in classes until very late, so it turned out to be a normal Tuesday evening with dinner at Boston Market. Or, we'd like to have it not be normal to eat out every Tuesday night, but if she goes in late and I get home late, this often results in neither of us wanting to prepare a meal at 9:30 at night. And not much is open at that time. Ah, long days...

Speaking of long days, most of ours were. Wednesday we played until late with an old roommate of Rebecca's and the miracle of the day was that we finally found some lamps for our house that we agreed on. It's not that we don't agree on lamps, it's that we disagree with lampmakers as a general rule. But we're pleased with our selections and now we don't have pitch black bedrooms and a living room in partial darkness. Thursday was a final push to get our pictures at home hung and the rest of the house decorated and unpacked. It seems like we've been "mostly" unpacked for a long time now, but we're so close now we can taste it. Special thanks to those of you who sent in coupons for Michael's, ironically we weren't able to use them. [you can't talk someone into letting you use a coupon (40% off) instead of the normal sale (35% off) if they don't know how to do anything different than the usual... -beck]

Then the weekend was taken up by wedding things. Rebecca didn't work at all on Friday, due to a "spa date" with the bride (Kate Maslied, an old and dear friend) and thus tried to work some on Saturday to catch up for a missed day. The evening was a rehearsal for the wedding and although we did nothing but stand around, at least we were invited to the dinner afterwards at a nice Croatian restaurant. Who knew that goulash is traditionally croatian? I didn't. But since no one at our table had the goulash, I don't know if it is anything like the way my mother made it. We had the zagrebacki, quite delicious, but I wanted to point out that I had my first calamari. It was fried like onion rings and I had no clue what I was eating until long after the fact, but quite delicious. Not at all what I was expecting from Melissa's explanations.

Saturday, we both worked for a good chunk of the day. Then the rest was wedding. See that here. We had a great time and are really happy for Kate and Robi. Since they're actually moving closer to us, we'll be able to play lots of games with them all the time, now that they are less busy with wedding plans.

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

-David Salle

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! Hehehe. Or we could just do a "routine" check up just for fun. Whichever. All I know is that it's very nice to have insurance again, but not have to foot the whole bill ourselves in order to have it. I never liked the feeling of "betting against yourself." [she gets that from Grandpa Madsen. -wayne]

We also decided which grocery store we would frequent. We did grocery shopping Monday night at one store, and then walked through a second with receipt in hand, price comparing every item. We were sad that Safeway just didn't beat SaveMart like we were hoping -- at least not for the things we generally buy in a week. Maybe we can still make occassional trips to Safeway, because they admittedly have much better bread options [and we love tasty bread]. It would also be nice to find a farmer's market, because supposedly that is the place to buy produce here, but we aren't quite sure how to begin with that one.

One important thing we've learned this week is that managers fix things if you ask them to. Before choosing the apartment we did, I read all sorts of reviews people wrote online. The biggest complaint people had of the place is that "the managers never fixed things." We had limited options, so we took a risk by coming here anyway. But since we've been here, we have learned that most likely managers didn't fix things for those people because they simply never got around to asking for it. We noticed a light going out in the parking lot, so we mentioned it a manager in passing and the next day they fixed it. The light had been like that since we got here, we just took a few weeks to bother mentioning it. Moral of the story, don't complain about things if you haven't bother to do your part. Oh, and another story this week to go along with that moral: I realized our TV warranty was about to expire when we sorted through documents in our filing cabinet, so we decided to try asking if they would replace the remote for us (nothing else is "wrong" with the TV, so why not ask for something at least). I lost the remote after I moved from the first apartment I lived at in Michigan, so we've had no remote for the past three and a half years. Lo and behold, we call and ask if they might send us a replacement, and they fedex us a remote the next day. Who knew? Apparently we just had to ask! [all these wasted years without a remote ;) -wayne]

Work is coming along. I've fixed a few bugs in the company's software so far, which I'm quite sure took me much longer than my coworkers would have taken. But I'm starting to figure things out a little better, which is nice. Wayne's facing challenging questions at school about what art he is interested in, questions that are beginning to change the way he understands everything. So while he's still figuring things out there, at least he's understanding what the important questions are to ask. He'll have all of grad school to make a dent on the answers, right? I figure that's the whole point of grad school. To show you just how much you don't know, but to equip you to be able to try and answer some of the questions.

We've had fun the rest of the week as well. We learned a new game with some friends of ours Sunday night: Pirate's Cove. It's a fun game, and makes me want to try another game by the same people: Ticket to Ride. Wayne went to play soccer with some guys in the ward Thursday; he had fun there as well. And Friday we went to a ward activity down in Santa Cruz. It was nice to have an activity on the beach and roast some hot dogs and meet a few new people, but it wasn't a particularly well attended activity. Perhaps because it was a 30-45 minute drive away. Perhaps because gasoline is not particularly cheap (though getting cheaper, yay). For whatever reason, but the point is we didn't get there early enough to have sunlight to fly our kite. Oh well.

And Saturday we went up to San Francisco to visit the SFMoMA [to see the Matthew Barney exhibit before it closed]. What a fun day. It was expensive, of course, but fun. Parking actually cost more than admission to the museum, amazingly enough. I was amazed, anyway. But we found our way around the city, picked up some art supplies for Wayne, and window shopped at a fun game/toy store, and just enjoyed walking around and seeing what people were doing. We walked past these guys playing music on the sidewalk, and I enjoyed their sign: "if you take a picture, you pay a dollar." They were set up right next to a line of tourists waiting to ride the trolley. The museum itself had some interesting pieces, though not as large as other museums we've been to (it doesn't even compare to the MoMA in NYC). We enjoyed seeing a Robert Irwin piece though [a first for me! his work and james turrell's just have to be experienced; no reproduction can ever do it justice]. I think that was the highlight for me. Seeing how well he used the light and shadows in the room itself was just amazing. Wayne made an interesting observation while we were there -- when you go in an art museum, you're looking at history. Even in the "modern" section. Even the pieces done by artists who are still alive. If those artists were to do those pieces right now, they would be different. They would mean something different. Interesting.

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.

Not romantic as in romance, romantic as in non-classical attempt to idealize emotion and romanticize history and times which are long gone. Nothing but emotions, mush and words words words. But that's what Joyce wanted to do. That's what he did very well. So, congrats to you, Joyce! You accomplished a great work and revolutionized writing at the turn of the 20th century. I guess my feelings for this book can be summed up in one phrase: it took me two months to read this book.

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.

I am the Cheese is an amazing book. Matt Elmore always told me to read it: he loved the book. I think in high school he loved all of Cormier's work. After I read First Death, I couldn't understand why. Now that I've read Cheese, it makes perfect sense. Cormier's writing style captures the teenage boy mentality, excitement and fears. Although I've long since left my teenage years, my heart was racing while reading this book.

Unfortunately, I can't write much about the book because I don't reveal any spoilers from the book; you have to figure it out for yourself. But in true Cormier style, he was telling you the secrets of the ending throughout the book (even telling you that he's telling you), but I never picked up on them: I was too enraptured by the story itself. Needless to say, I couldn't put this book down, didn't sleep, read it when I should have been working until I finished it. Each chapter was a horrible place to end. What I'm interested to see is whether or not this book reads as well the second or third or thirteenth time through.

As I said before, what is interesting about Cormier's work from this era is that it is very rooted in a 1970's mentality. I didn't respect that when reading Second Death because I was living in the prosperous 90's. During the 70s there were terrorists, plane hijackings, terrible strife in the Middle East, etc. Sound familiar? Perhaps experince of living through the early 2000s has allowed me to see what I missed in the 70s. Either way, I understand Cormier's pessimistic and dark world much better.

We rented this documentary last night. I've got such a jumble of thoughts after watching this film that I think i need to write them down to sort them out.

For starters, Daniel Johnston got to be one messed up kid, but I have to admit that there is something brilliant about this guy. I had never heard of him, but I had heard his music through the influences of all the bands that I listen to. I was one of those kids that saw the Hi, How Are You? t-shirt on Kurt Cobain and always wanted to know what band it was. But I'm getting away from the thoughts I had about this film, about Daniel Johnston. I really connected with Daniel Johnston and saw a lot of myself in him. As a child/teenager, I was as maniacal and truly believed that my art was worth being in the world. There was one difference between myself and Daniel that I think is crucial to how our paths unfolded differently: my parents accepted me for who I was and the choices I made. I don't think Daniel had that acceptance.

This didn't make going to college any better. My first year at BYU I completely blew off. I stopped going to classes completely in order to dedicate all my time to working on my art. I still think that some of the best work I ever did was from that year. Then there was another major change: I went on a mission and Daniel went into self-destructive mode. My mission toned me down, broke my wild spirit, put me into a comatose mood that makes me afraid to show my art to anyone.

I don't claim to be a genius, but it scares me to watch this film. In part because I see the dangers that lurk behind the minds of all of us, the destruction that it can create to feel unloved and unwanted for what you want to do, the maniacal pressure that's expected of "artists," etc. I hate the art world. I hate it so much, when there was a time that I was obsessed with it. Now, I look with disdain at the kind of competition it breeds. I don't like competition. I don't like to think that I'm so much better than all the other really good people out there. There's no reason to. Although it's safe for me to hide in my studio putzing away at my paintings, I see more of a future in collaborative team artwork. I prefer to work with other people putting together larger than life projects. Maybe I'm just telling myself this because it's better than thinking about the kind of destruction that happens to people who are striving to overcome the odds it takes to become something.

I don't know. I don't know, but I know that this film scared me good.

I do have to leave with a disclaimer. I am in no WAY like Daniel Johnston. He's really messed up. But I AM really thankful for how sane my wife keeps me. Thank goodness for her. She's the best because she allows me to draw cute little robots and aliens and silly things and takes me seriously. Yay for that.

Amazingly, I survived high school and college English Lit classes without having read this book. I read 1984 three or four times, but never Brave New World. All I can say is that I shouldn't have read the forward for this book. I saved it until the end, just in case it had spoilers in it. Even though I saved the forward until the end, it still spoiled the book for me.

I thought Aldus Huxley was just being cynical in his book; I didn't think he actually believed this world he described was a real threat, a real possibility. But the forward made it seem like he thought it a real possibility. He wrote the book in 1932, and the forward in 1946. Both depressing times to be writing in the history of man, to be sure. Even more depressing was his opinion that we "have only two alternatives to choose from," and neither is a pretty sight: a national, militarized totalitarianism (e.g. Nazi rule, or 1984); or a supranational totalitarianism resulting from social chaos and rapid technological progress (e.g. Brave New World).

I see rapid technological advances being a problem because law can't keep up with technology (for instance, how do you make laws about what kind of websites people can make and how you can advertise for them?). However, I wouldn't exactly say that it results in chaos. Hasn't there been just as much good coming from technology as well (geneaology websites, advances in medicine, etc)? He introduces a lot of the good results: people live longer, never suffer from problems of age, drugs have no nasty side effects, everyone fits in their role in society. But there are no negative side effects. I suppose this is the problem. All the good in his world only results because the government enforces it, none of the bad results because the government prevents it. Ultimately individuals have no control or decisions because that has been taken from their hands "for their own good." I wonder what Huxley would say about all the technology that law can't keep up with now. :)

I think in the end, what bothered me most was that he really underestimated spirituality and moral behavior. The Savage, when faced with a "high society" and "neverending happiness" contrasted this with his romantic and religious upbringing, and claimed the right to "be unhappy." I applauded this choice, of course, for without sadness how can you know happiness? He was choosing to have real happiness, not artificial happiness handed to him on a silver platter. But the end that comes from this is nothing good. I can't say I liked the ending. I guess I'm too much of an optimist to appreciate it.

It was an interesting book, and I enjoyed reading it. But the ending...and reading the forward afterwards on top of that.... At least it made me think, right?

How do I know that the word 'I' stands for me?

-Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophical Grammar

We play games. We like games. We like to play games.
Here is a list of all the games we own.

• allegiance
  
• apples to apples
  
• atmosfear
  
• beyond balderdash
  
• boggle
  
• bohnanza (i.e. the bean game)
  
• carcassonne with the expansion packs: inns and cathedrals, the count
  
• catch phrase
  
• cheater
  
• chrononauts
  
• cranium
  
• dominoes
  
• dr. seuss trivia game
  
• fluxx
  
• guillotine
  
• in a pickle
  
• killer bunnies
  
• lost cities
  
• mad gab
  
• mille bornes
  
• monkeys on the moon
  
• munchkin fu
  
• nanofictionary
  
• pass the pigs
  
• phase 10
  
• pit
  
• quiddler
  
• risk
  
• rook
  
• san juan
  
• scattergories
  
• scotland yard
  
• scrabble, deluxe edition
  
• set
  
• settlers of catan
  
• taboo
  
• twitch
  
• uno
  
• visualEyes
  
• yahtzee deluxe edition
  
• zigity
  

An important thing to know about us is that we are always on the lookout for new and exciting games. Here is our current list of games we'd like to own (sooner, rather than later). For convenience, we've also included the best price for each game.

• ticket to ride - $28
  
• cosmic encounters - $20
  
• citadels - $14
  
• blue moon city - $28
  
• goa - $26
  
• loot - $6
  
• obscura tempora - $25
  
• el grande - $39
  
• alhambra - $23
  
• medici - $24
  
• betrayal at house on the hill - $29
  
• arkham horror - $35
  

Well, right now there's just one on this list. But you never know....

• monopoly (and any derivative thereof)

What didn't we do this week?

Tuesday evening, 5:50 pm Pacific Standard Time.
I got out of class and packed everything up in a hurry. Although I normally have class on Tuesday evenings, this was a special night when class was in San Francisco. Or rather, class was cancelled, but our professor wanted (required?) us to go to a council panel on the Zero One Festival from this summer. We hit 280 flying because the reception started at 6:30 and the forum/panel started at 7:45. Thomas told me to park at the Safeway around the corner from the Art Institute, but after we got off 80, we learned that turning left on Market isn't something done easily. After another 20 minutes trying to ingeniously get across that street, park at a Tower Records, talk with Thomas to find out that the Safeway was a couple blocks away and Tower is less lenient with their parking, found a new spot, walked back up the hills: it was time, the panel was starting. That's alright. Although it really was my first "artist conference" to rub elbows with my contemporaries, the stench of wine was a bit overpowering and I was glad for the excuse to relocate our car.

The panel was fascinating. Really, I should let Rebecca talk about her feelings as an outsider coming to a "real" art meeting, because she had a much different experience than I had. Mine was mostly bureaucratic and administrative. This panel was a discussion about what went well and what needs to be fixed if there is the possibility of having a technology San Jose biennale. It is a fascinating prospect, especially since I might be around to be a part of such a great milestone in art history, but there are a lot of theoretical conflicts about making a "new media" art festival -- making something concrete out of something that by nature isn't. Anyways, we got home a little after midnight, but that's becoming more usual for us.

Friday evening, 7:20 pm Pacific Standard Time.
We have tried to sit for dinner for twenty minutes. Without children and with strong wills to be actively engaged in a good cause, it takes a lot of self-control to sit at the dinner table for longer than 15 minutes [or even 10 minutes]. So we're working our way up. But this night, we were also determined to not have another Friday go by without doing something unique for date night.

After searching cityscape for something to do in this town, we picked up the yellow pages and started hunting down used bookstores in the area. It's a good thing we got distracted and went to a game store instead because we are simply devilish at used bookstores and show no restraint whatsoever [we show a bit more restraint at game stores because there's not usually such good deals! :) -beck]. But we ended up at the Game Kastle down the street from us. This game store gets big points for having the widest selection of any game store we've ever been to [though only one copy of each game on the shelves...so they fit a wider selection into a smaller space]. I started talking with this old man who was a big gamer and asked him for some recommendations. After going through a long list of great games, I think he sold us finally on Ticket to Ride and Blue Moon City. I was then approached by the (really cool) counter kid who said "I work here...so....could I give you some recommendations?" Like it was his duty. Like it was his right. It was so cool. He's the one who then proceeded to sell us on Killer Bunnies. After we got home, we found that we now have a list of $125 worth of games that we want to own. Ah, games.

We also watched the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, an absolutely fascinating, captivating documentary about a crazy musician. I had heard great reviews about this film and when I saw the trailer I wanted to watch it. It just came out on DVD. Go rent it. Thanks mom and dad for believing in me!

Saturday morning, 9:50am Pacific Standard Time.
After everyone's replies to last week's email about farmer's markets (especially thanks to Melissa for the web tips), we made it a point to check out our local market. Sadly our local market isn't that large and doesn't emphasize produce. We did pick up some delicious fruit (white nectarines have amazing flavor), but next time we will try to find a place that sells things like onions and peppers.

Afterwards, we stopped by my studio at work to do a bit of cleaning [and picture taking...and so I could see all the new work! -beck]. I'm still in the process of getting organized and finding out what I need. Apparently, I need a trashcan brought in from home. And paper towels. And Rebecca got to see my paintings of Pikachu. Ah, Pikachu.

The rest of the day was spent playing games, doing homework, and Rebecca went to the Relief Society broadcast. Afterwards, they had shrimp, fresh veggies and fruit (non-prepackaged) and other fancy things. Ah, California ... land of "plenty."

Now, I'm not a stickler about grammar, per se. Sure, I notice on occassion when there is a misplaced or missing punctuation mark. But it doesn't ruin my day or take the "s" off my proverbial skittle to see an it's where an its belongs. Given Lynne Truss's warning at the start of the book that you should put this book down if you don't gasp in horror when you see incorrect grammar, I almost put the book down without reading past the first page. I called her on her hyperbole and sarcasm though, and I'm glad I did.

It was a fun read, as long as I remembered to overlook her frequent "call to arms" comments as she tried to "rally the troops" to her cause - to the aid of dying grammar. I suppose I tend to be more in the linguistic camp; I don't mind simply observing how language is used and how it evolves; it doesn't bother me when people use it "incorrectly." Plus, some things I knew were wrong, she was doing all over the place, so who was she to talk? Then she pointed out that Americans and British have some differences in acceptable uses of punctuation. Oh. Who knew? Anyway, as I told my husband, I read this book for two reasons and two reasons only: (1) the funny jokes about ambiguities in grammar, and (b) Truss's interesting presentation of the history of punctuation marks.

I did disagree with her doomsday reports on how technology (e.g. chat rooms or text messages) is changing grammar. Text messages are a completely different medium from books and journalism; grammar must evolve to the new medium. I don't know that it will change more permanent communication means, since the technology communication is fleeting by nature. We shall see eh? And if it does, I'm okay with that. So this book may not change my understanding or usage of grammar, but at least it was enjoyable food for thought.

Wayne's Version of Wolfgang Puck's Pizza Dough
-----------------------------------
1 cup warm water
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
3 cups flour
1 tsp honey
2 TBS olive oil
1 tsp salt
2 TBS parmesan cheese
1 TBS oregano

If you're using a bread machine (which is what we recommend), then make sure you're just doing the dough setting. If not, then mix the items and let the dough rise for about an hour. First put the water and yeast together, topping with the 3 cups flour. At this point, it's best to start the mixing of the dough. This is to activate the yeast without killing by premature exposure to the salt. Then, after the flour and water make a paste, add the remaining ingredients. Mix well and let rise.

After it's risen, separate the dough into two balls. Dust a rolling pin and the dough with flour. Make them into whatever shape you want (round? square? hexagonal?). Cook for 9 minutes at 425 degrees and then flip before you add toppings. This certifies that the dough will be fully cooked.

I was really excited to pick up P.D. James' novel after I saw the trailer for the upcoming film based on the book. The concept behind the plot captivated my interest from the start.

A short time in the future, mankind suddenly realizes that children aren't being born. Suddenly, mankind realizes that we are doomed. For reasons unexplained, we can no longer have children. Years go by and men give up hope. What happens after time? What happens to the spirit of the masses? What kind of world would we have if we realized that we were on the extinction list? Then, throw back at mankind the first pregnancy in 25 years.

It's a terribly fascinating concept and P.D. James does a wonderful job in giving justification for this extinction scenario. As a population, we are steadily declining our birthing rates. It is claimed that we are not wanting more children, but what if we don't know that we are becoming less able to have children. It's a terrifying prospect.

A couple of complaints:

First, James wrote this book in 1992. She placed the end of births (Omega) in 1995. I'm always really bothered by futurist writers who feel the need to place dates on their stories because it automatically obsoletes the text. Someone living in 2006 finds these dates a bit silly when we're talking about suspending my sense of disbelief.

Second, although the concept is so amazingly air tight as a sure fire place for an amazing story to happen, nothing happens in this book. It's basically a story about power and the corruption of power. Interesting, but I kept wondering if I wouldn't have been more interested in reading this story from the perspective of one of the different characters. Or of the focus being more tender. Or maybe it's that I never cared for any of the characters. The author didn't want me to. So, how can I care for this book?

Third, James greatly underestimates certain aspects of humanity which are always prevalent. She apparently hasn't done any historical reading about people in crises. One thread that humanity never lets go of is religion. Despite that religiousity has declined, especially in the past century, people cling to religion more fervently when something terrible happens to the greater populous. I had a hard time believing in P.D. James' world because she puts such an emphasis on how people abandoned God and religion.