Many ladies in the book club enjoyed this story, which deals heavily–and a bit too heavy-handedly, in my opinion–with the issues of self-image and environmental economy. Fifteen-year-old Tally, the protagonist, travels to the Rusty Ruins, a dinosaur field of sorts from the time when humans relied on dirty fuel-burning transportation and stayed ugly their entire lives. In the end, Tally’s eyes are opened to the realities of the pretty surgeries and she must make a choice.

The plot was compelling, but I didn’t find myself identifying with the self-image issues the uglies feel. Oh, I have self-image issues, but their “solution” (1) isn’t possible for me (unless I want to look like poor Jocelyn Wildenstein) and (2) it isn’t really a solution. I am pretty sure that Westerfeld isn’t actually condoning pretty surgeries, but without reading the rest of the series, readers cannot be sure what he is actually condoning. I support magic Shallow Hal glasses or something.

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Now that both America’s and England’s Summermärchen are over (and Germany is through to the quarter finals!!!), I think some inspiring World Cup design might lift losing spirits (unless you’re rooting for Germany, in which case, party in the streets!!!).

[image source]

In her Weekly Reader: World Cup Edition, Lorraine shared a great article on World Cup iPhone apps ;), a history of the World Cup logos (I like Mexico 1970 and 1986, and Italy 1990; totally disagree with the author about the Germany 2006 logo), a very German World Cup guidebook, and a beautiful bracket tracker.

In closing… AUF GEHT’S DEUTSCHLAND, SCHIESS EIN TOOOOOOR!!!

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I’ve been recording quotations from it, and there is one that I read last night that perfectly describes a sensation I’ve experienced before in my life but never tried to shroud in words, and I just have to share it here in my pensieve.

Moments like this act as magical interludes, placing our hearts at the edge of our souls: fleetingly, yet intensely, a fragment of eternity has come to enrich time. Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in turn–and in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn: human life continues to throb. (91)

Have you ever experienced this?

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It was very hot and very humid. Some clouds and wind made the third 5k to the end bearable, along with the aid stations with lots of water and ice. One even had a high-powered mister, and another had water spraying from a hose. It was awesome.

We had a great cheering squad! My mom and Sarah’s husband, Chris, followed us around Joplin and they met up with us several times throughout the race, ringing cowbells, yelling, blowing an air horn, and waving signs. Nothing helps power a tired, hot runner forward more than cheers. Remember this if you ever attend / happen upon a race. Cheer nonstop. We need it, and we love you for it.

Finally, Sarah. When I wanted to stop, she said, “Not until that stoplight.” When I asked her if she would quit or keep running if I dropped out, she hesitated, and said, “It doesn’t matter because quitting isn’t an option. You will finish this race.” And I did because of her.

I would be remiss to ignore the excellent organization of the Boomtown Run Half Marathon. I definitely recommend this race (and would all the more so if it weren’t so hot) because of how well the entire event was put together. Registration was smooth. The course had plenty of aid stations, lots of medical support, and they reacted to or had already planned for the forecasted heat. Which I am very glad about; wouldn’t want another Chicago. My favorite part of the race support? I have to choose three experiences. (1) A volunteer named June at about mile 10.4 (just before the course turned south into Schifferdecker Park) who cheered and cheered and cheered! It was so uplifting! (2) The swag! We got a technical jersey at packet pick-up and a sweet medal and technical race hat at the finish line. That’s the best swag I’ve ever received in a race! (3) Ice tubs at the post-race party. See picture below. Very very cold, but I love the restorative effects of an ice bath on sort muscles and joints!

And that’s about all the nice things I can say about the Boomtown Run, no discredit to the organizers, only to the frickin’ weather. :) I’m starting to think I’m not made for half-marathons. *sigh*

If you want to see the rest of the pictures Chris took during the race, click here.

UPDATE! I was just about to publish this post when I found out that out of about 850 people who started, 400 DNFed. Wow. That makes me feel a LOT better about how poorly we did.

Update #2: I have to correct the information above. There were 850 total runners in both the half marathon and the 5k. Of that, 290 were 5k runners and 443 were half-marathon finishers. That means there were 117 DNFers, not 400. Still, that is 26% of the entrants who did did not complete the race. Even if 30 of those did not even start the race, that leaves 20% who DNFed. So I still feel good about crossing that finish line, even if it took me way too long.

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What’s the best way to follow your favorite team? Or at least to stay in-the-know so you’ll have something to discuss with your footy-obsessed friends between June 11 and July 11? With an iPhone app, of course! But which one? Here are my recommendations, for everyone from serious Fußball fans with office pool standings to keep track of, to soccer fans who want to know what’s going on. I’ve even included an embarrassing entry in the World Cup iPhone arena.

Best All-in-One App:  ESPN2010 FIFA World Cup

I have a feeling that this strong, well-balanced app from sports behemoth ESPN will be my go-to app for World Cup 2010.The app is free, but to get all sorts of cool options, like live audio, play-by-play commentary, and alerts for all 64 matches, you have to buy the World Cup Premium Package for $7.99. I don’t know that I’ll pay 8 bucks (!) for those features. They do sound nice, but for 8 clams? Hmm. We’ll see.

Unlike a couple other World Cup apps (who shall, for now, remain nameless), ESPN’s news section stays current (nice feature, right?), and this is an absolute must-have for a sports event with up to three games a day during the group stage.

There is a small news ticker along the bottom of the app, but unlike the Fox Soccer Channel app (honorable mention, below), it is minimalist and well-designed. It doesn’t detract from the main function of the app, which is to share World Cup info.

This app also features your chosen favorite teams front and center. (In case you’re wondering, mine are, in no particular order, England, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, and Brazil.)

In the spinner below your favorites is where all of the other useful information is located, including Scores & Schedule, News, Video, Tables, Stats, and Teams. All of this information is just a finger slide away. Great design.

Best True Footy Fan App: World Football Tracker

Warning: This $0.99 app is for serious fand only! Or for people who really like entering numbers into boxes.

This app lets you plug in your predictions for every game, then figures group stage tables. Based on group stage scores entered (and maybe on world standings, which can be updated with a single click from the Options menu), it predicts round of 16, quarter finals, semi-finals, and final stage face-offs! Rob and I usually make predictions and compete for highest score (3 points for a spot-on correct prediction, 2 points for the right spread, or 1 point for correctly identifying the winner), so this will really help me to see the effects of my predictions and adjust as necessary. Shh, don’t tell him my secret.

But the app isn’t just useful for score predictions. It shows the time, date, and location of every match, includes a knockout table, and lets you choose a favorite team (although I can’t quite figure out how to do that, and there aren’t instructions in the Help section).

For a buck, it’s a great app for serious footy fans.

Best Year-Round App: iFooty (and iFooty Plus for $2.99)

This is the soccer app that I use year round, and even though I can’t see any World Cup-related stats yet because the app displays results and game breakdowns, I am sure that it will be as useful during the World Cup as it was for checking Champions League, Premiere League, Bundesliga, La Liga, or whichever world league(s) you want to follow. It offers push notifications for any teams you specify. As a fan who just can’t watch all the games I want to live, I really love this feature.

Honorable Mention: Fox Soccer Channel

Wow. This one was disappointing. While it supplies the basic, expected features, like displaying group tables and team information (in a style that I found overly difficult to navigate), the news ticker is flashy and distracting, news items were almost two months old, and the gallery images? There are some “fun” galleries, like World Cup of Hair and Hunky Soccer Players Gallery. The captions in this one sound like they were written by a dude whose women told him which players were hot but not why. Now, I am not one to disagree with anyone who says soccer players are hot. But I think serious commentary is expected. I get the impression that some of these galleries were created ahead of June 11 just fill out the gallery section.  They are entertaining, that’s for sure, but junk food when I’m looking for meat and potatoes. Check out the hormonal captions Fox Soccer Channel subjects users to.

Have another great soccer app? Share it in the comments! If you feel like writing about it, email it to lam (at) lindenamueller.com; I’d love to feature it as a guest post!

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Instead, I found a tale about a sometimes wiser-than-her-years, sometimes naive teenager who lived in a beautiful world muddled by thick, stumbling prose, often distracting in its put-on complexity. To be fair, there were shining gems of sentences that captured the beauty of winter in the Ozarks, the misfortune of living in an island of interrelated meth families, and the chill isolation experienced by a teenager thrust into the role of parent, caregiver, and bounty hunter.

Unfortunately, the book ends up, for me, being a flat, family feud of a story that doesn’t tell the story of what it’s like for most people who are close to a meth addict (trust me). Instead it follows a daughter around who is searching for her dad among doors-close-in-your-face communities. That’s it.

To be fair, many of the ladies in my book club loved the book, so follow Levar Burton’s advice: you don’t have to take my word for it.

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Throughout the entire book, it seemed to me that none of the characters took the war seriously. Some were busy scheming and getting rich (Milo Minderbinder, “What’s good for M&M Enterprises is good for the country”). Others were trying to understand why they were being tormented by other bombardiers or their officers (poor Chaplain Tappman was constantly being challenged and undermined by his atheist assistant; Captain Flume was certain that Chief White Halfoat would slit his throat in the middle of the night). Some were falling in love with whores in Rome (Natley’s girlfriend plays a pivotal role in the ending). The book is filled with adventure after dizzying adventure, and many of them epitomize “catch-22.”

I really enjoyed this book, although I think it would be difficult to follow if you read the paper book. I listened to it in audiobook format, and the reader gave each character his own voice. It is an excellent production, and I definitely recommend checking this one out as an audiobook.

Currently Reading

Well, I’ve juggled several books in the last couple months, partially because I started reading Der Vorleser auf deutsch, which is hard for me. So I needed a book that I could read and really relax instead of feeling like I was working. Here’s what I’m reading right now.

• Der Vorleser
• Dancing on My Ashes
• The Pilgrim’s Progress
• Going Rogue

I’m going to focus on the first two before I continue with the second two. Oh! I read Winter’s Bone with the book club I’ve joined, so I’ll be writing a blog post about that soon. Preview: I was not impressed, but many of the other ladies in the book club loved it.

Follow my progress in detail here.

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Then, last month, The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver started pissing off residents of Huntington, West Virginia, which is now—thanks to Oliver—famous for being the unhealthiest city in America (the claim is based on a CDC report published in 2008). He’s stepping on lots of toes there—chefs at elementary schools, a local radio personality, even hospital administrators who seemed to be more worried about the bad PR than the health of their city. But Oliver’s goal is not to cause a ruckus. He just wants school to feed kids fresh foods, not processed foods, and he wants them and their parents to rediscover the joy and ease of cooking. How fulfilling is it to pop a frozen pizza in the microwave?

This is something that Rob and I discovered this year, and I love it! I thought it would be tiresome to have to cook everything from scratch—no mixes, no boxed or canned or frozen meals—but it’s… *gasp* fun! We have fun planning our meals each week, trying to come up with creative dishes that use what we already have and maybe two or three store-bought or fresh items, fun scouring cookbooks—new and old—and cooking magazines for recipes that might fit the bill. Hey, we even have fun cooking!

We’re not counting carbs or grams of fat or points. We’re just trying to “eat more veg” (as Oliver/the Brits like to say) and know exactly what’s going into the food we eat.

So I challenge you to try it out for a month. We made homemade mac and cheese last month and it is the best I’ve ever tasted. Rob’s baking easy, four-ingredient artisan bread at home (no preservatives or unknown chemicals). I’ve found a truly delicious tuna salad recipe to eat that bread with. Rob’s good at main dishes, veggies, and bread, and I’m good at main dishes (most of the time—don’t ask about the fajitas), veggies, and desserts. What will you be good at?

One more thing. I also ask that you support Oliver’s quest to change that way school food is done in America. He’s collecting names for a petition that aims to give our schoolchildren

better food at school and better health prospects

and

to keep cooking skills alive.

He’s got almost 500,000. Let’s get a million people who want to rediscover the joy of cooking and give better food and better health to our children. Sign the petition here!

You know, we all want to change the world.

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The first thing I noticed when I got this book was how good it felt and looked. The cover is matte and the book feels solid in my hands. The pages are thick and and each page has a parchment-type background with some nice shading. Nothing to do with content, I know, but I always enjoy a book that feels good. And, to be perfectly honest with you, I like it when books smell good too. (I know you’re wondering: yes, The Voice of Psalms smells very nice, clean, sweet smell.)

Okay, aesthetics aside, I loved this book. It is the book of Psalms from the Bible, but in language that we can really understand. The people who created this version took the idioms and images of the authors’ times and translated them to ones that we relate to, and they altered the language in that manner as well.

It is powerful.

I’ve read Psalms before. I’ve read it a couple times. But I followed one of several reading plans listed in the front–I did the “Forty-Day Reading Plan to Worship the Eternal One with Your Praise” plan–and I felt like I was reading a new book, in a good way! I took so much more away from my readings than I normally do, not only because of the new voice, but also because of the footnotes. The images really spoke to me. I would love to read The Voice of Proverbs *hint, hint, Thomas Nelson Publishers :) *

In the name of full disclosure, I want my readers to know that I got this book from the publisher in exchange for a blog review and a review on a retail site through a program called Book Sneeze. It’s the second blogging swag I’ve gotten, and I really enjoyed it!

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Oooh, did I have fun today! Sarah and I were downtown hanging out / working at MudHouse with Nigel and Nigel (they’re married—read their story here and here). Then we went to Red Velvet Art because I love love love Elsie‘s art and inspiration and wanted to finally see it in person. What a treat! We got all inspired and decided to spend some time seeing what we could find at a flea market.

I found two World War II / early Cold War cookbooks. I picked up America’s Cook Book (with washable cover!) because it’s old, from 1945, and presents recipes along with3 or 4, sometimes 10 or 12, modifications, like a basic biscuit recipe, then mods for nut biscuits, orange tea biscuits, or cheese biscuits (p 114).

Plus, the introduction to this third wartime edition is an excellent little piece of writing. Here is the first paragraph and part of the second.

Introduction to the Third Edition by Mrs. William Brown Meloney

The kitchens of America have gone to War. Today every homemaker is drafted and the kitchen apron is her uniform. In small towns, in big cities and on farms, American women are standing up to daily battles as momentous as those on the military fronts–the battle of supply and demand, of food values against food shortage, of flavor versus monotony. And, like our boys in blue and brown, housewives must expect much hardship and little glory. Yet on their smallest decisions hang tremendous results. The struggle in the kitchen will decide not only the health and morale of the home front but the conservation of our nation’s food supply. Women are hastening or retarding our final Victory. The hand the cuts the ration coupon may win the War.

Fortunately the American housewife has many friendly allies. In no other country has the art of cookery and the science of food values been so carefully studied and so clearly explained to the public as in America.

How could I not pick this up?

The Big Spread: The Encyclopedia of Hors D’Oeuvers and Canapes, from 1953, is small—3×5 index card size—with a comb binding and tabs denoting the fun section titles, like Decorative Edibles and Spear-Its.

I love the unique format, love the graphics, love the sans-serif font. Check out this classy 1950s guy nomming on a delectable Spear-It.

I can’t wait to make some of these tasty-sounding dishes!

If fifteen people share this post on Twitter, I will post two recipes, one from each book, for all of you to enjoy. You’ll really get more than that, because I am going to share the three pages of biscuit recipes from America’s Cook Book. I’ll share Cheese Nippies (eat like popcorn!) from The Big Spread. If you share the post, use the hashtag #LAMcooking or include @xgravity23 so I can count how many times it has been shared.

I love playing cards, and I collect unique Bicycle desk, so when I saw a red and green Bicycle Christmas tin filled with a red and green deck, I had to pick it up. I don’t think these are vintage—my guess is that they are from some time in the 1990s or early 2000s—but both decks have all 52 cards plus jokers, and the back of the cards and the tin liner has a festive star print.

My last fun find is a wooden owl napkin / salt and pepper shakers holder. I fell in love with cute, stylized owls because of Hootsuite, my Twitter client of choice and all of their cute owl graphics like El Hoot-o, Link Bandito, which I just found today, and their main Hootsuite owl. WhenI found this cute and functional trivet owl at Grandma and Poppy’s, and Poppy gave it to me, we decided that we would decorate our kitchen with owls. The owl trivet has nested above our stove, where it is in reach when I need it.

Today, Sarah spotted this wooden owl napkin holder at the flea market. It has round hollows on each end for what I am sure were originally adorable matching salt and pepper shakers, long lost now unfortunately. In the Mueller household, this napkin holder will corral important mail before it gets filed, reducing countertop clutter.

Have an adorable Saturday, and don’t forget to tweet a link to this post (use #lamcooking or @xgravity23 in your tweet).

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