What's For Dinner?

My mom is in town this week, so we tag-teamed dinner tonight. She made a grits casserole, and I grilled shrimp and sausage. Delish....

What I'm Reading Now

World Without End, by Ken Follet.

I cannot even tell you how pumped I am about this book. It's the follow-up to Pillars of the Earth, one of my all-time favorites. If I remember correctly, my brother read Pillars first, then got me to read it. I read it right after Mark and I got married - I always associate it with our tiny two-room apartment, which was barely big enough to hold the thousand-page tome. It's one of those books that you don't read as much as you experience - you get absorbed in the characters and the places and the stories, and you can't put it down, but when you're done, you miss it.

World Without End takes place two-hundred years after Pillars ends, and focuses on four characters with ties to characters in the first book. Not a sequel, from what I understand, just a follow-up.

I haven't even started it - it just came today - but I can't wait to crack it open. I think I'll do that now...

Decoration Day

Ben and Daniel presented the colors this morning during our Decoration Day service. They did a great job!

May Movie Recap

I blogged a while back about summer movies I was (and still am) pumped about. I have seen three of those movies in the last two weeks, so I thought I'd offer my thoughts for those of you considering a fun flick for your Memorial Day festivities:

We begin with Iron Man. I am a big fan of the Marvel Universe, but Iron Man has never been one of my favorites. But I really liked this movie! I know the first movie for a new character is usually slow, what being tied to the back story and all that, but this one was action-packed. Maybe because I didn't know the storyline very well, I was more into it.

Robert Downey, Jr. was an awesome Tony Stark. He was just likeable enough to play an unlikeable character and make you like him. The special effects were great - the final version of the Iron Man suit (red and gold) was wicked cool.

If you're considering taking the kiddies, there was the obligatory violence, but nothing over the top. Also, a couple of racy scenes, but they don't last long. The big thing with this one is whether or not the younger crowd will follow the storyline. DP loved the movie, but was totally lost for the first half. Ben really loved it - he's since been reading all the Iron Man comics he can find - and I think he followed it pretty well. Not for the younger kiddies, but the older ones should be fine.

Overall, a strong showing. Two enthusiastic thumb's up.

Next up, Prince Caspian. We all loved the first one, and it was so loyal to the book. I couldn't remember enough about the book in this one to know if it followed the story as well.

This one was definitely darker, and had lots more fighting. That was a big plus for DP - he lives for battle scenes - but more of a detractor for me. There wasn't as much "magical" stuff in this one, but I did like it. Standing on its own, not being compared to its predecessor, it was a good movie.

It had a good message, too. One line has really stuck with me: they were discussing why Aslan had not come back to save the day, and one of them says "Why doesn't Aslan prove himself to us?" And Lucy says "Maybe we should be proving ourselves to Aslan." Maybe we should.

Since this one is technically for the kiddies, I'm guessing most of you will be taking the kiddies. Two words of caution for the younger kiddies: one, very hard to follow, and two, there's one scene where they are trying to conjure the white witch, and these two wicked creepy things show up. Might be a little unsettling. I was unsettled, and I'm 37.

Overall, a good flick. I think the franchise will continue.

And finally, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I think the working title was Grandpa Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

All kidding aside, I was surprised to find that an old Indy worked well. But it really did. Harrison Ford was still great in the role.

This one had all the same plot devices as its predecessors. Same basic story as well. Indy gets dragged into an adventure involving some ancient thing that we've all heard of, but don't really know much about. Could be historical, could be bunk, who knows, but it works. The effects were good, but not over the top. It had the same look and feel as the others. There was also the obligatory "large amount of something gross" - in the others, it was snakes, insects, rats, and now.....I'll let you watch.

This one would be fine for the kiddies, I thought. Some bad words peppered in here and there, but nothing over the top in the violence department. One kind of disturbing part involving the "large amount of something gross", but it's brief. Both my kids LOVED this one.

Definitely a winner.

To sum up, I am thus far enjoying Movie Summer 2008. Ranking these three in relation to each other, I would have to go with Iron Man first, then Dr. Jones, and finally Prince Caspian. But you can't go wrong with any of them. Fine summertime fun.

Roasted Chicken

Roasted chicken is one of my favorite meals. I got the recipe from the Barefoot Contessa. I LOVE it. A 4-5 lb chicken costs about $5 and feeds all four of us. You can beat that...

Start by brining the chicken overnight. About two and a quarter hours before you need to eat it, take it out of the brine, put it in a roasting pan, and let it come to room temp. (You don't have to do this, or do this completely if you're rushed, but it helps.)

Meanwhile, quarter a lemon and slice a head of garlic in half (so that each clove is sliced in two). Stuff the lemon and the garlic into the cavity and tie the legs together. Drizzle with olive oil (I brush it with a basting brush as well). Salt and pepper it. Cover loosely with tin foil.

Cook at 425 for thirty minutes. Remove the foil, and cook for another hour. Let it rest for 15-30 minutes before serving.

We eat it with mashed potatoes. Everyone is a fan. I have also subbed an onion for the garlic - it works as well. I don't worry with carving it perfectly - I just get the meat off the bone. It may not look all Southern Living and whatnot, but it tastes gooooooooooood.........

Just a Normal Friday Night at Our House

Mark and I are deep into Season 3 of Lost. Last night, we got the boys in bed, watched an episode, and called it a night.

About 2:00, I woke up. There was a noise in the corner of the room. It sounded like something rattling paper. We had a fan going, so I thought something might have gotten caught in the air flow. I gave it a minute. More rattling, then ZING! WHAP! The distinct sound of a mouse zipping across the floor and into the wall. Great, I'm thinking, I hope we have some D-Con under the sink - I can just put some out in the morning.....

Then I feel something fly very close to my head. I sit up. I hear more flapping sounds. I grab Mark. "Wake up! Something's flying around the room!"

Mark sits up. "Whah....." Silence in the room. He sits there stunned for a minute, then rolls over and goes back to sleep.

Now, in thirteen years of marriage, I have never woken Mark up in the middle of the night and sent him off after a noise. Not once. It's just not how I roll. And so it surprised me that he did not find anything alarming about my behavior. He just went back to sleep. Had I not been so scared, I might have smothered him with his pillow.

But I sat there, sure that our talking had frightened our guest and it would be on the move again if I was quiet long enough. I was right. I started hearing movement in the curtain by the bed. I smacked Mark and said "Wake up! Something's in here! I'm not making this up!" And I turned on the light.

We both saw a bird flying across the room. While I'm thinking "How in the heck did a bird get in here?", the bird turns upside down and hangs from its feet off the ceiling. Oh *&$#. Not a bird. A bat.

I learn something new about myself every day. Last night I learned that I am abnormally afraid of bats.

I wigged. I got down under the covers and started crying. "Whatarewegonnado Mark! Whatarewegonnado!" Mark cowered down there with me. Every now and then we would peek out, and that little bastard would be right there staring at us, or worse - flying at the bed. I was in hell.

Finally, Mark says "We've got to open a window and get him to fly out. If we open the bedroom door and he gets out into the house, we'll never get him out. So...go open your window."

"I'm not getting out of this bed. Why do I have to open the window? You open the &%$#&*! window!" I hear a smack behind my head. "What was that?!?!"

"He flew behind the headboard. I think he's under the bed." Needless to say, I got out of the bed.

We opened the window, but couldn't get the screen to budge. For some reason, there was a screwdriver on my nightstand, so we took turns trying to pry it loose. It's very difficult to concentrate on a task when you're constantly jerking your head back and forth, watching for flying bats.

I finally got it loose, pulled it out of the window, and leaned it against the wall by the bathroom. We yanked the bathroom door open, and hid in there while we waited for our plan to work.

Mark quickly realized that if we did not see the bat fly out the window, we would never know for sure he was gone, and we would have to sell the house. So he decides to go out there. "Give me something to hit it with. Just in case."

I gave him a big loofah on a stick. This was apparently not what he had in mind.

He went into the closet and came out with his racquetball racket. Not quite a weapon, but better than a big loofah. He goes back into the room. He runs back into the bathroom. "He's stuck in the screen. We knocked it over when we yanked the door open, and now he's trapped under it." We stand and look at each other, like two deranged fools. Mark says, "OK, I'll go back out and move the screen. Maybe he'll get loose and fly out."

Mark goes back into the bedroom. I hear the screen move. I hear sounds that are not at all human, but that have to be coming from Mark. Then I hear a loud THUNK. Mark says "I got him! I knocked the crap out of him. But I don't know where he is."

So Mark and I very gingerly tiptoe around the room, he with the racquetball racket and me with the big loofah, poised and ready to attack. Mark finds him. He's lying stunned just under the end of our bed. Mark slaps the racquetball racket down over him and traps him underneath. "Now what do we do?" Mark looks over at the nightstand. "Bring me the screwdriver," he says, calmly. Too calmly.

So Mark stabbed the bat with a Phillips-head screwdriver, twice, through the racquetball racket netting. When we were sure he had breathed his last, we scooped him up with the back of a magazine, threw him into a trash bag (double-bagged for safety) and tossed him outside in the garbage can. Game over, man. Game over.

We had too much adrenaline to go back to bed. So we watched another episode of Lost. It was the one where Hurley found the Sweet Pickles van and they miraculously got it running. Good times. Nothing like a quiet night in front of the TV with your spouse.

Carry Your Candle

At Ben's Graduation ceremony, they had a candlelighting ceremony. Each fifth grader with a younger sibling lit a candle, then the younger siblings came up and lit their candle from their brother/sister's candle, then the fifth grader's candle was blown out. It was symbolic of the fifth grader's impending doom in middle school, or something.

No, no, it was all about the passing of the torch and all that. I got it. And it was quiet lovely. But anytime you have a large number of children in a small place and open flame is involved, things don't always go poetically. Each fifth grader lit their candle from a central candle in the middle of the gym. As the kids went to their assigned spots, about half of the candles went out. Rather then turn and obtain flame from the person two inches away, they all went back to the central candle. Quite the log jam insued. Then the younger sibs descended on them like a swarm of locusts - elbows were thrown, I think two kids got trampled - it was rowdy.

But once all the candles were lit and everyone was in place, it all went off without a hitch. Well, almost:

It's hard to see, but Ben is standing to the left of a boy with glasses (the glasses reflect well, that's why I use him as a reference) and Daniel is in front of Ben in a striped shirt.

DP's Highlight Reel

As promised, I have spliced together three short portions of Daniel's class play. It was actually more of a collective dramatic reading....enjoy!

Ben Graduates Fifth Grade! Daniel Graduates Third!

As we do every year at this time, we went to lots of end of the year festivities at the school. Ben's was a little more in-depth this year, as he was "graduating". We attended a very nice, very heart-warming, very lengthy, graduation ceremony on Wednesday. Ben was recognized for getting a perfect score on the state writing exam, and for earning the most AR points in his class. He also won the Presidential Award for Academic Excellence, which is given to students who maintain straight A's from third grade up, and who scored "advanced" on their TCAP tests. That was quite an achievement for him! He is pictured above with his principal - I had to laugh - as each kid came up to get their "diploma", she bent over and whispered "Where's your parents?" and wherever the kid pointed, she turned and grinned for a picture.

Daniel (who I didn't get pics of, but did get a video of - I will post when I can get the time to edit it) performed the role of "Father", quite passionately, I might add, in a class play. He was given an award for his penmanship (cursive writing in third grade, and all that) and an Academic Excellence Award for straight A's.

We are very, VERY proud of our sixth grader, and our fourth grader. Can you believe they are that old? Where does the time go....

Court of Honor

As promised, Troop 37 held their spring Court of Honor tonight. Ben was awarded the Tenderfoot Rank, as well as his Totin' Chip. (The Totin' Chip allows him to carry and use axes, saws, and pocketknives on scout outings. Scary stuff.)

I took a great photo of the back of some kid's head to commemorate the evening.

What I'm Reading Now

The Rosewood Casket, by Sharyn McCrumb.

My mom turned me on to Sharyn McCrumb. She lives in Virginia, but most of her books (the ones I've read at least) are set in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee. She always has a historical element running in tandem with a modern day story. I've read quite a few of her books now - my favorites being She Walks These Hills and The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, although, I have to admit, many of them run together for me. They have the same modern day characters, whose stories progress in each book. The historical parts are easier to keep straight. The Rosewood Casket focuses on Daniel Boone and the Cherokee for the historical part, and some guy with, you guessed it, a rosewood casket in the modern day part. The two stories will eventually entertwine, I'm sure.

If I remember correctly, my mom bought me my copy of The Rosewood Casket, and Mark took it on a trip with him and left it on the plane. So Mom bought me another copy. Moms are good that way. In fact, I think Mom has bought all of my McCrumb books to date; oddly enough, she finds them easier to find in her local bookstores than I find them in mine. Something about a prophet and his hometown, I think.

Here's some trivia I bet you don't know: McCrumb's latest works revolve around the Nascar circuit (don't ask). The first in this series is called St. Dale, about a pilgrimage involving the one and only Dale Earnhart. In the hard copy (can't say for the paperback, as I haven't seen it) McCrumb lists a number of people whom she consulted in the writing of the book. One of them is none other than my mom! (Name misspelled, of course.) Mom had an email conversation with McCrumb about McCleod hospital - parking lot, ER, entrances, and exits, etc. St. Dale was taken to McLeod after piling it up in Darlington one year, and McCrumb wanted to get the details right without actually driving to Florence. Go Mom!

Easy Dinnertime Goodness

+
+
= Yum

Seriously, take your favorite beef roast, add the obligatory salt and pepper, and put it in the crock pot with a bottle of russian dressing. Let it cook on low 7-8 hours. Serve it over rice. Thank me later.

What I'm Reading Now

I'll Watch the Moon, by Ann Tatlock.

Another church lady bag book. Never heard of the book, never heard of the author. The publisher is a big name in the Christian fiction market, so I can only assume that it is considered "Christian Fiction", but nothing in the story itself has led me to that conclusion so far.

So far, it's set in the forties in Minnesota during a polio epidemic. The narrator's brother gets polio, and the house gets quarantined. By "house", I mean boarding house, which is where the narrator's family lives. They have an assortment of interesting characters boarding with them, which adds a lot to the story.

I wouldn't have guessed it, but the polio epidemic is fascinating reading. I asked mom about it this morning - she remembers not being able to go outside, and she thinks my dad was officially quarantined at one time.

I remember reading Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin, where she writes about her childhood in Brooklyn. I was jealous of the lifestyle she described - kids could wander around town all summer long, not worrying about freaks and pervs and the like. It seemed so much better then the scary world we live in now. And then, bam! some kid gets polio and the whole community shuts down. No one goes out, no one comes to visit. It made me realize that modern times aren't all bad.

It also makes me wonder what we fear today, that will be nothing in fifty years. Leukemia? Breast Cancer? Aids?

So if you like historical fiction, and you'd like to know more about iron lungs, try this one. I'm about half-way through and enjoying it.

The Peyton Manning Story

Ben reminded me of the Peyton Manning story last night - it still cracks me up. I only hope it plays as well in print...

Me and Mark and the boys are in the car. Mark is telling us about his buddy getting to meet Peyton Manning at a charity golf tournament. You get a foursome together, pay an entry fee, and play in the tourney. Manning stays at one tee box all day, and as the players come through, they get to tee off with him at this one hole. They take pictures, get autographs, etc. Most importantly, they get to tell all their buddies that they played golf with Peyton Manning. Good times for all.

Mid-way through the story, Ben breaks wind in the back seat. I neither hear it nor smell it. I have no idea this has happened.

So here's what Mark says: "Chad gets to the hole where Manning is and he shakes his hand and says 'I'm Chad So-and-So, I'm a big fan' and Manning says .....Dude! Did you bust one?!?!??! Gyyyahhhh.... "

I'm looking at Mark as he says this, and I'm thinking "What's worse? Meeting Peyton Manning and cracking one off, or having him call you out for it?"

Happy Birthday Kyle!

Best wishes to the Alcohol and Pork Fueled Mad-Man on his big day!