Ceci n'est pas un blog

Today is the 40th anniversary of Che's death.

It is starting to get cold, we expect an overnight low just below freezing.

The hedgehogs all disappeared a couple weeks ago, about the time the trees really started to wear their Fall wardrobe of reds and golds. I know some hedgehogs hiberbate but I prefer to imagine that ours are migrating south. To Spain.

I recently read Breakfast of Champions. It's really good but boy do I wish I'd read it earlier, before I was used to seeing the insertion of the author into his own text. Some of the inheritors of Vonnegut's deceptively simple language and his self referentialism are derivative hacks, some clumsy homage, and some rightful heirs. But the original in his context must have seemed shocking and reveletory and more than a bit transgressive, even for 1972 when transgression was so close to the mainstream.

A few weeks ago, the in-laws were here. We had a great visit. Some sight seeing. Lots of grandparents entertaining their granddaughter and, more often, being entertained by her. The rain that weekend came in to ensure that we spent a whole day at home catching up. Friends cooked up a storm with an evening of bacalau (sp?) and a Norwegian apple trifle with a wonderful name - something about veiled maidens and we made a fish soup that was the closest we've come to recreating a soup we had years ago in a little cafe near the old church in the town by the Ice Hotel.

Last Wednesday was my one year anniverary of being in Norway and working at Opera. Both have been good. H's language acquisition has taken a turn for the staggeringly fast. She corrects our pronounciation and replies with phrases we didn't know she knew. Being in Barnehage has been great. Difficult at first, but hugely valuable.

S is addicted to Scrabulous on Facebook. I don't have time for this blog, I don't know how I'm supposed to fing time to play games and answer quizzes and join groups and look for aging high school acquaintenances in Facebook. I do get it . but I don't get how to integrate into my life; seems like just another place to check for messages and tell people who already know me things they already know about me.

Currently reading JPod. I think it might be quite entertaining but also more than a bit, well, annoying. We'll see. It's certainly a quick read for a book the size of a cinderblock.

H is in the throws of a full-on 4.5 year old's pink girly girl mode. All her dreams are about "lots and lots of princesses with crowns and jewelry and makeup and glass shoes and they have princes and then ..." Her easle is covered in variations on crowns and treasure chests and princesses (many drawn in an abstract nakedness that is both artistically interesting and slightly disturbing). Rat-atouille was fun for her but too loud (and surely we had the most child inappropriate pre-film advertising before a kids film ever). The ballet was more successful. It was more contemporary, beginning with a Balanchine/Shostokovich and moving on to very contemporary pieces. I really liked the Forsythe choreagraphy and the commissioned electronica he used but the final piece, using music with strong references buit in, felt heavy handed and a bit forced. It's really good for H to be seeing more contemporary dance but still I got the question I knew was coming whispered in my ear, "are there going to be princesses soon?"