For Me? A Blog Award!

While I was away for two months and not blogging here, this blog was the recipient of a "One Lovely Blog" award from Sherrie at Just Books. According to the award guidelines Sherrie posted, I'm supposed to pass this along to 15 other "newly discovered" blogs. The only problem is that I haven't really discovered 15 other blogs recently. I'm not even sure I read 15 blogs regularly. I try to read Debi's regularly. Neil Gaiman's, too. I haven't been as good as I would like about reading Annie's blog regularly. I'd like to read Kara's blog more often. For the next two weeks, the two blogs I'll be checking more than daily are the ones my younger son is keeping as he and his older brother tour Europe. One is a photographic journal of their travels; the other is a self-portrait he takes each day. This is how I know where they are or have been since they don't really have a set itinerary to follow.

It's interesting to have this blog win an award from someone I don't even know. Obviously, someone who posts a blog to the Internet should consider that anyone who happens across it might start to read it. For that reason, I try to post things that I think people other than my immediate family might be interested in. This has included book reviews, reflections on one thing or another, a tribute to my father on his last birthday (since he's got another one coming up this week, Happy Birthday, Dad! You make 80 look like the new 55!). I invited a large number of people to follow my blog of the trip. I've never really invited anyone outside my family and a few close friends to this blog, though I do have the URL posted on my Facebook page, access to which is limited to my Facebook friends. I'm flattered and a bit proud that someone thought this little corner of my world worthy of mention. So thanks, Sherrie, and I'll try to keep up the good work. There will be another book review coming, maybe even later tonight. First, though, it's back to making my mom a special Mother's Day dinner. The pie (from my good friend Mrs. Smith) is cooling on the table, the potato salad is chilling in the refrigerator, the meat loaf is cooking in the oven, and I'm about to start on the ginger candied carrots. I'm getting hungrier just seeing, smelling, and writing about it all.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all who play the role of a mother, be they biological or step or just a mother figure to another person. It's Mother's Day for me, too, but since the sons are in Madrid, Spain at the moment, the day will be more about my honoring my own mother and making all her favorite dishes for dinner tonight. First, though, is breakfast. Then, it's off to three hours of martial arts workout and class where I may or may not be the only mother in attendance. Then I have some errands to run after which I hope to post a more proper blog post while doing various dinner prep things. It seems that this blog got an award from another blogger while I was away and only posting to my trip blog. I should also do my final book review for Annie's What's In a Name-2 challenge. And then there's the post I'd like to do about waste disposal and recycling around the world, or at least the parts of the world I just visited. There's also a post I'd like to do about getting travel suggestions from other people. There's also a post about ... Yeah, this whole being back in the real world and having things to do can really cut into one's blogging time.

We're Here!

When we get to Hue tomorrow, I'll try to post about the trip here; I've been working on a post (with photos) along the way. It was a long but good trip. All the flights were on time, and I have a new airline to recommend highly. Already there are some good stories.

First impressions after only 90 minutes on the ground. The airport was a contradiction. From the runway side, it looked like something out of the 1960s, an impression helped more than a bit by the empty Quonset huts lining the runway and a crumbling wall emblazoned with a peace sign. At the same time, we landed in an Qatar Airway airbus 330, followed by a Lufthansa 747, and another 747 of a third airline. Fortunately, our plane's passengers were first to immigration, baggage claim, and customs.

Okay, I'll admit that it was something of a thrill to see a driver holding up a sign with out names on it. I'm not 100 percent sure, but I might be able to get used to that. We were underway to the hotel about a half hour after we landed. The driver said that at midnight he could make it from the airport to our hotel in 10 minutes but at other times it might take an hour. I can see now why none of the guidebooks recommended renting a car here. There were almost no private cars on the streets; most were commercial vehicles or taxis. And the number of little motorbikes? If you've been to Italy and seen the motorbikes on the streets of Rome, well, that doesn't even come close. And despite the almost total absence of traffic lights or stop signs, traffic flowed. There was honking and stopping and starting, but it flowed. The driver said one reason was a lack of bullying on the part of drivers. He explained that in the event of a traffic infraction, he would have to give the policeman his document folder, which would be returned to him with a smile but without the 15 US dollars folded into the paperwork.

Yeah, it's a different place, but there's wireless, and there's bottled water in the fridge. I don't think we need dinner having been fed quite well by Qatar Airways. I'm going to send e-mails now so folks know we got here and can look for something on this blog.

Marching Along

Random thoughts and gratitudes as we enter a new and unexpectedly snowy month ...

I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that 48 hours from now I will be sitting at Dulles Airport waiting to board a British Airways jet bound for London on what passes here for a great adventure. I am so lucky to be able to do this, to have a husband whose job makes it possible. I am also so lucky to have two kids whose schedules allow them to come along. This could well be the last real family vacation we take as parents and kids, so I guess I had better enjoy it.

The temperature tonight could set a new low for this date. I will leave on Wednesday wearing a sweater underneath my denim jacket. Once I enter the terminal at Dulles, the next time I step outdoors may be into the tropical temperatures of Ho Chi Minh City. The temperature shock may exceed the culture shock. Five weeks later, we will leave the tropics, re-emerging in Northern Europe. Shopping will be necessary, as I do not plan to take heavier clothes than the jeans, sweater, and denim jacket I will leave here wearing.

I finished up my current project at work just in time to be away for two months. I am so spoiled with the job I have. Part-time with very flexible hours, done mostly from home. A few regular projects that I do each year, and others that I do because they arise and threaten to swamp the full-timers in the office. It's just an added bonus that these extra projects usually come with a "Do you have time for this now?" or an "Are you interested in this?" attached.

In packing for the great adventure, I decided to step outside my usual comfort zone a bit. Those who know me well may be shocked to read that I am taking nothing to do involving fiber with me. No knitting, no needlework, no hand-piecing. I plan to challenge myself creatively with photography, drawing, and writing. Here in my natural habitat, I often find myself thinking that I should try to get back into photography or try to do some drawing or try to work more on my writing beyond the outlet offered by doing National Novel Writing Month every now and again. The trip offers me the chance to do that by removing myself from the temptations of fiber. This is not to say that I will return without having acquired any silk, merely that I won't be working with it while on the trip.

Finally, thanks to Pinky the amazing Acer netbook, I can write as we travel, so perhaps I will land in Ho Chi Minh City with something ready to post to the Hue blog. We shall see. One cannot plan too much on an adventure without risking removing some of what makes it adventurous.

Quickly ... Before I Start Dinner

There's a new post on Neil Gaiman's journal (a blog I highly recommend). He's reading his book that's about to come out, Blueberry Girl. I will only say two things. First, I want this book; even more, I would like to figure out how to save Neil's reading of the book. Second, if I knew someone with a young girl or pregnant with a girl, I would get them this book. It is that good. My eyes were welling up as I listened to the reading, and the art is stunning even on its own. But don't take my word for it. Go there, and see for yourself.

Once again, I am more than profoundly embarrassed that I didn't discover Neil Gaiman until this past fall's National Book Festival. I am so looking forward to savoring American Gods while in Hue ... where I will be just one week from today.

The Zookeeper's Wife (book review)

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman was my choice in the relative category of Annie’s What’s In a Name - 2 challenge. It may explain my doctorate in psychology in what seems like a past life, but I’ve always been attracted to stories everyday people who aided others in World War II Germany. Or perhaps it’s because I wonder whether, deep down, I would have the courage and resolve to act similarly in the same situation.

The zookeeper’s wife of the title was Antonina Zabinski, wife of Jan, the director of the Warsaw Zoo. The Zabinskis were Polish Christians but managed to save over three hundred people, most Jewish, during the course of the war. The zoo was closed as a result of the way (the Germans looted some of the animals when they took control of Warsaw), but the empty cages housed some of the refugees, who were code-named after animals. Other refugees hid in the zookeeper’s villa. Antonina tended to all, stretching her family’s meager rations to feed everyone, playing musical codes on the piano to send refugees into hiding places, and worrying over her young son’s increasing involvement in the family’s activities.

Just as compelling as the story of the family’s humanitarian efforts is, the story of the family’s pet animals is enchanting. A badger kiddie toilets and knocking on a door to be let into the house. Elephants filling a moat with dirt to create mud so that they could wade across. A carnivorous pet rabbit. The book had much to offer on several levels. At the same time, Ackerman explores how the Nazi interest in creating a perfect race of humans corresponded to their interest in creating pure strains of certain animals, the reason that many of the animals in the Warsaw Zoo were moved to German zoos.

I would highly recommend The Zookeeper’s Wife to anyone with an interest in the human side of World War II. Ackerman has a very nice writing style, and the book is, in between periods of gleeful marvel at the animal stories or of reflection on the human condition, quite easy to read.

The Last Templar (book review)

I read The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury for Annie’s What’s In a Name - 2 challenge, in the profession category, “templar” being accepted to refer to a member of the Knights Templar or, interestingly enough, “a barrister or other person occupying chambers in the Temple, London.”

This book was just done as a made-for-TV movie, the reviews of which weren’t that good. While the book is no literary classic, as thrillers go, it wasn’t half bad. After a short introduction set in 1291, the present-day action opens with four masked horsemen dressed as Knights Templar riding into the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and stealing artifacts from a Treasures of the Vatican exhibit. The book’s heroine, archaeologist Tess Chaykin, sees the leader of the horsemen almost reverently steals only one item, a geared device, over which he says some Latin words. She decides to investigate on her own, at the same time as the official FBI investigation is headed by Sean Reilly, a terrorist specialist and, relevant to the plot, a practicing Roman Catholic. Separately at times, together at others, they discover what the stolen device was and its importance, before finding themselves in a race against the Catholic church to find the secret to which the device points.

If I had a bone to pick with The Last Templar, it would be that the characters, especially Tess Chaykin, were not too well developed. In particular, Tess is said to be an archaeologist, working at the Manoukian Archaeological Institute, yet she is always addressed as “Miss Chaykin” rather than “Dr. Chaykin.” It’s a small point, to be sure, but it would have been nice to have a bit more background on Tess and on Sean, to make them a bit more real. That aside, The Last Templar does offer a good escape into fiction for those needing a break from the everyday.