There is definitely going to be a baby Shipman! Tam has confirmed that she is harboring a goldfish-sized kidlet. I am so exited I could make very unprofessional high-pitched squealy noises, but of course, I would never do such a thing. Never.

I am surrounded by babies all of the sudden. My grand-niece made an appearance at the end of February, Eds2000 just had a baby boy who is cuter (and has more hair) than any other baby in town, I'm sure of it, and now Tam is expecting. Yes, hubbles and I did the obligatory checking in with ourselves (babies are exciting... y'know, we could... oh yeah, the whole "we will almost certainly bear cyclopses or twitchy liverless children should we go the reproduction route" thing...), but we've decided that rather than filling a nursery ourselves, we'll rent other people's children now and again. Yes, rent. We'll pay. Not well, but we'll pay.

Tam, prepare to be showered with strangely-shaped knitted baby gear : )

The world has a few new wonderful people in it-- what great news!

This weekend trip to Vermont was simply not meant to happen.

We set out early Friday morning to meet up with friends in Endicott, NY with plans to head off as a foursome to the Green Mountains of Vermont, for a visit to poet Ruth Stone and, if time and weather permitted, a little hiking, museum hopping, and even a visit to a nearby world-class water buffalo dairy renowned for its mozzarella and yogurt.

We got the news as we were packing our bags into the car that Ruth was feeling a little under the weather, and while she wasn't deathly ill, she would be taking some time in the afternoon to check in with her doctor, and might not be feeling up to having visitors afterward. We wished her well, and made sure that we had all the hiking/camping gear at the ready, as it seemed more time would now be spent in the wilds than was originally planned.

As we pulled off on the exit for Endicott, Hubby noticed a strange repetitive clicking sound coming from the car that unnerved him, and since the exit would take us right near a Saab dealership, he figured he would stop in and have a few Saab experts look over our noble steed, to give him peace of mind for the long drive.

The experts discovered a problem with the clutch, and explained that to fix the problem the transmission would have to be physically removed from the car, just to make the clutch accessible. A pain, surely, and an expensive one, but at least we discovered it before driving off into the mountains, where tow trucks and cell coverage would be hard to count on.

Over coffee with our Endicott pals, we decided that pal Ken would drive hubby back to Ithaca to pick up my car, the trusty rust-free Volvo, and the trip, after a few hours' delay, would continue on apace. The day was yet young, and we were up for a weekend in the mountains!

So pal Karen and I chatted and laughed and looked online to find out what was going on in the Middelbury Vermont environs until the boys returned with the Volvo. All of us piled into the cars and took to the road. We'd stop to gas up outside of Endicott, and be on our way.

Of course, as a foursome of people who are kind of high on the idea of a vacation and an evening meal potentially centered around truly fresh mozzrella di bufala, we chattered like wrens to each other at the pumps. And then, the Volvo refused to start. Not even a sputter. After having passed inspection mere weeks ago!

Since we couldn't fit ourselves and all of our gear into one car, we decided to call the trip off. In only a few hours we were down two cars, and the original reason for the trip-- visiting with Ruth-- was unlikely to work out: obviously the fates did not want us to spend our vacation time together in this way. We called Triple A, and had our second car towed 100 miles back to Ithaca, so that we would have a nearby vehicle available that would allow us to make the drive out to pick up the lamed Saab, trapped far away in the dealer's lot.

It's eerie that somehow everything conspired to keep us from Vermonting, but at least the bad luck that was pointed right at us only took out a few cars; no people were hurt, no kitties in need of emergency vet surgery. Of all the things that could have happened to hold up a vacation, this was probably the best. The only person who faced any physical discomfort at all, Ruth, turns out to have a simple cold, so all of us are hale and hearty, just not vacationing.

A million years ago Ruth Stone bought a very literally out-of-the-way place in the the Green Mountains that has become the stuff of legend in poetry circles:


With my first piece of ready cash I bought my own
place in Vermont; kerosene lamps, dirt road.
I’m sticking here like a porcupine up a tree.


That is where I'm headed this weekend. To stay with Ruth, you are required to write poetry at her kitchen table with her (by the light of those same kerosene lamps-- there is no electricity there to this day), and to be kind to her aged cats. The only poem of my own that I've ever posted on LJ was written at that table: maybe something worth sharing will come out of this visit, though I don't advise anyone hold their breath waiting for that to happen.

I will also be trying to persuade my travelling companions to take a short cheese pilgrimage or two: they are good souls, and might just be convinced to visit Nettle Meadow just for the Old Goat Nursing Home, if not for the wonderful dairy products.

I won't get any work done. And thanks be to God for that.

Because I do not yet have any kitten pictures, here are

some videos of a squid with elbows .

Yes, elbows. And veeerrrry long legs.

Arms.

Er, elbow-bearing limb-y things.

A tiny kitten has been hanging around the house for a few days: she's very friendly and obviously used to people, but phone calls to neighbors haven't turned up her owner yet.

My landlord decided to adopt her-- he grinned like a mad thing talking to me about how much fun it would be to sit around with his daughter thinking up a name for her, and how much his daughter already loved the little scamp. Unfortunately, he didn't clear the adoption idea with his wife, who was upset to learn the kitten had been brought inside and fed canned chicken soup.

She put the kitten outside, and it waited right next to the door, ready to sneak in when I went outside to hang our tent's rain fly out on the line.

A tiny calico blur rushed past me and up the steps into my apartment, into a warm, carpeted bedroom, whereupon the blur resolved itself into a white kitten of approximately 11 weeks with an orange ear, a few orange spots on her back, a tabby ear, and a tabby tail. She growled at Plum, but once he lumbered off to visit his food dish, she became a purr machine. I'm smitten, I am, so I'm letting her spend the night here tonight. She's far too little to be outside fighting the cold and the coyotes by her self, so I'll feed her and cuddle her, and take her in to the SPCA come noon tomorrow.

Lucky for me, there is great hatred between her and the resident cats, as otherwise I would be tempted to keep her. Given my druthers, I'd have a houseful of furry beasties, with someone to snuggle at every turn.

I'll get pictures as soon as I can convince the little darling to come out from under the bed: she's not frightened and hiding-- she just found one of Plum's toys under there, and is merrily chewing it to slobbery feathery bits.

I've spent the past few days (and nights, embarrassingly enough-- I have no mad skills in computer savvy-osity) trying to properly format and lay out the collection's damage assessment, which means moving what can amount to 70 pages or more of hooey (my notes, pointers to thumbnails of images and to full-size images of each object in the collection, the images themselves, and background information on the objects for the use of our tour guides) back and forth, and get a request to take a few minutes to make a few comments on the docents' training manual that's being put together by others in the committee.

Individual tours should take about an hour, just as an estimate. The training manual should provide enough information for the docents to put together a few different customized tours, along with all the necessary information on safety exits, smoking policies, who patrons should contact if their request for a tour is turned down, et cetera et cetera. So I get out my red pencil and prepare to make a few notes and suggestions.

And the docents' training manual lands in my e-mail inbox, and it's....

Wait for it ...

11 pages long.

That's it. A mere list of bullet points. Almost no attempt whatsoever to tie bits of background information provided on the time period or the company to the actual objects on display. I have the information to bulk up the manual to the heft it needs, but that won't involve a few suggestions-- it will involve a rewrite.

Growl.

And one of the people who helped write the manual sent it to me in an e-mail that also "informed" me that Barack Obama isn't really a citizen, a completely inappropriate mixing of business and personal.

11 pages. The mind reels.

This li'l guy is so cute, you could NEVER inflict cirrhosis upon him/

Absentee ballots with the Democratic presidential candidate's name spelled "Barack Osama" were sent to 300 voters from upstate New York. Since the letters are nowhere near each other on the keyboard, I have trouble believing it was a typo.

No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, nor whom you support in the coming election, this should bother you.

This is about as wrong as the St. Gallen hot air balloon is right:

We cut our grocery bill by about a third this week, to cover whatever car option we go with (resurrect the Volvo? Buy the Smart Car?), and ironically this means that we eat a little better: more of what we buy is cheap basic ingredients, so that more of the day-to-day hooey can be made at home rather than purchased ready-made. All our bread, sweets, and sauces for stuff are homemade, therefore yummier, if more time-consuming for someone who SHOULD be working on docent-training manuals.

Tonight: Grilled lemon-yogurt chicken (a recipe 4000 years old and still being cooked has to be good, after all), homemade pita bread, salad with a tomato and mint from our garden, and black-bean hummus (which hubbles has already requested for lunches in future-- a good sign that it turned out well).

LEMON-YOGURT CHICKEN

Marinate chicken in a sauce made from:

* a spoonful or so of pureed garlic
* half a container of plain yogurt
* two tablespoons or so of lemon juice
* a teaspoon or even less of lemon zest-- depending on your citrus cravings
* a good dose of dried herbs d provence
* smidgeon of paprika (I like Croatian sweet paprika, but I'm biased)
* salt and pepper to taste.

Chicken should marinate for three hours at least. The yogurt does wonderful things for chicken: it tenderizes the meat a bit without turning it to mush. It browns and sweetens a bit on the grill without tasting burnt. And its tang is the perfect conterpart to the sweet paprika and the bright lemon.

Yum.