Tim and Jen Live Here

with my new car. Isn’t she beautiful? I’m seriously ready to make a commitment. Like, till death do us part. Her death, of course, as I am planning to outlive even a Volvo. In the fall of 2001 we bought my previous car - a Mercury Sable wagon. It was a great car, but funny - I hardly miss it. We got the wagon since we had two big dogs and figured we’d have kids soon. Now, 7 years, 0 kids, -2 dogs, and 135,000 miles later, a practical car seemed less important. I’ve always wanted a convertible (yes, even living in Michigan), so I bought a convertible. My requirements of four seats, front wheel drive, and hard top limited the selection to the Volvo C70 and the Pontiac G6. The Pontiac is nice, but the Volvo won hands down, even for the extra cost.

I’m thinking of naming her Sassa, a nickname for the Scandinavian “Astrid” meaning “god beautiful”. I’m not sure exactly what “god beautiful” means, but I think this car comes close.

Last weekend I noticed a preying mantis climbing up the garage trim, around 11am on Sunday. She (I assume she, because I assume mating has happened for the season, so most male mantises are currently headless) stayed on the garage trim, within a 2-foot area. She was there Monday. Kind of weird. Tuesday. Really weird! Was she laying an egg sac? Maybe something to look forward to!

She was still there Wednesday when I went to work, nearly 96 hours later. She was gone Wednesday evening, and no egg sac was there in her place. I did notice a preying mantis crawling over the side of our next-door-neighbor’s house (the side nearest our garage) on Saturday. I haven’t seen her again, nor an egg sac, but I keep looking.

The words in pictures aren’t really relevant to anything, but I’ve been having fun playing with Spell with flickr and wanted to use it here.

As evidenced by the mounds of multicolored produce at the Farmers’ Market each Saturday morning, it’s major harvest time. The Canadians are smart enough to celebrate Thanksgiving when the harvest is bountiful (Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!) as opposed to in late November, when there might be snow and most food is in from the fields and has been for quite a while. An added benefit is that Canadian Thanksgiving does not fall during National Novel Writing Month, but that’s not really the point of this post

I just wanted to share a bit of my Farmers’ Market find, because it’s so gorgeous and delicious. In the last couple of weeks I’ve gotten kale (3 kinds), swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower (purple!), squash (several kinds), lettuce, beets, leeks, potatoes, peppers, celery, watermelon, tomatoes, apples, apple cider, raspberries, carrots, onions, eggs, eggplant, gourds, and probably several other things I can’t remember right now. Here are photos of a few:

Gourds and teeny, tiny pumpkins to decorate for Halloween/Fall.

Four kinds of squash!

Orange and purple carrots.

More purple. Don’t the eggplant and cauliflower go together so well? Gorgeous.

Applesauce. Homemade. I hope that doesn’t look gross. It’s just a beautiful, pink, creamy, sweet dish that’s so wonderful to eat. And it’s just apples, cut up with the skins still on and cooked down for a while - no sweetener or anything.

World’s cutest potato.

Sometimes there’s something on your mind that just isn’t all that big, but you feel like sharing. Some people wait patiently and gather all these things up into a potpourri kind of post. I’d be being very generous to myself to simply say I’m not that organized. Thus, Just A Minute postings that don’t contain much, but therefore won’t take you long to read either. Here’s the first.

This quote from Stevie Nicks had me wondering:

If you see somebody running down the street naked every single day, you stop looking up.

Doesn’t that totally depend on who the somebody is?

I love books. All books. Even books I don’t like very much (there are a few). Walking into a library or bookstore feels like going home. This is Banned Books Week, in case you hadn’t heard. And of course, as people like to point out, banning a book is among the best ways to get people to read it. We tend to want what we can’t have. Does it work the other way around? If I say, “Let’s have a book-banning party!” will that make people not want to ban books? No? Well, then, nevermind the title of this post . . .

I’m very tempted to buy this bracelet in support of banned books. ALA has other items listed on that page as well. Or maybe “Banned Schmanned” tickles your funny bone?

There have been a lot of words written this week about banned books. It’s making me think just how many of them I haven’t read. Not because I’m offended by their content (I can’t think of any book I’ve read or am familiar with that would really offend me), or because I don’t like the subject matter, but rather because I’ve got toppling piles and drawers full of books waiting to be read. See the photo evidence below if you don’t believe me. I keep telling myself I’ll read some banned books every time Banned Books Week comes around, but I haven’t kept that promise to myself. Soon, really. I suppose that I can console myself with the knowledge that many of the books in those piles would be banned if more people took the time to know about them. I like books with violence, foul language, and explicit sexual content. And magic and witchcraft.

This is my to-be-read pile of library books. And Lila, because apparently she likes to have her picture taken.

This is one of my five “I own these” to-be-read piles. Plus, the top three drawers of that (tall) dresser are full of books. At least those don’t threaten to topple over every time a cat breathes near them.

What banned books do you wish you’d read but haven’t managed to get around to yet? Here are links to several lists of frequently challenged or banned books, taken from the ALA site:

• Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2007
• Most Frequently Challenged Books of the 21st Century
• Top 100 Challenged Books 1990-1999

I’ve read and loved plenty of frequently-challenged books, such as the Harry Potter series and To Kill A Mockingbird. High on my list of banned-books-to-read-soon:

• Catcher in the Rye (nope, never had to read it in high school)
• anything by Maya Angelou
• The Color Purple
• Brave New World
• Captain Underpants - Really curious what the buzz is. And are these even still popular?
• The Anarchist Cookbook - The used book store I volunteer at had a copy waiting to be priced recently
• Slaughterhouse-Five
• Pillars of the Earth
• Jumper (yes, the one the movie was based on)

Banned or not, I have zero interest in Howard Stern’s “Private Parts”.