SOLS: Five Seconds

A bit of a line has formed at the door as, looking out, everyone decides they'd better zip their jackets and flip up their hoods.
"Oh my goodness!"
"I love it!"
With gasps and exclamations they one by one disappear until I am at the door myself and there is nothing between me and the grey anymore. I can't stand on the threshold forever. Out.
Out.
Into.
Rain.
Heavy marbles of water bouncing, obscuring, catching the glow from headlights. Running feet slapping, splashing. Lost for five seconds. Cold, wet door handle. In. The rattle of rain on the car roof is how I hear: I am dry(ish), I am safe, I am alive.

SOLS: Beware the Ides

What a great day! Peach cobbler for breakfast? Don't mind if I do! Last minute load of laundry timed perfectly so my jacket's clean and only slightly damp? Excellent! Sentence diagramming? What fun! Spending all my spare time with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James as I work on two term papers over the next month? Tres cool!

I'm only a tiny bit worried that the ides are lulling me into a false sense of security. The day's almost over, but perhaps Brutus is waiting with a treacherous dagger behind my eyelids, and the second I fall asleep...

SOLS: The Marble Faun

Today I gave my presentation in 361 on Hawthorne's The Marble Faun. Although I had a pretty good power-point put together (the kind I like: all pictures, no words), I didn't have my hand-out ready. This, however, turns out to be a good thing, since once in front of the class the space between my mouth and brain widened to lightyears. Actually, it wasn't so bad, but there were several things I had intended to say but completely forgot or missed the opportunity. So, it's perfect that I still need to make a handout because now I can include all the things I meant to say, but didn't, like--I highly recommend this book.

SOLS: Makin' Banana Pancakes

Today I Cooked:

8:30 - Breakfast: Banana Pancakes

2:30 - Dinner: Stroganoff Caserole

4:00 - Dessert: Peach Cobbler

8:00 - Dessert (again): Chips-Ahoy S'mores, Pretzel S'mores, Pretzel Fudge-Ganache S'mores

Today I Ate:

All of the Above.

SOLS: Metropolis

I've been saying forever that I want to go to BYU's International Cinema. The extra culture, the free entertainment, there's a lot of appeal. But somehow, I've never made it. Never until tonight. One of my profs encouraged us to go see this weekend's feature--Metropolis, a silent German film from the 1920s. I took him up on it, and I'm glad I did, although I can't say I loved the movie. I didn't like or dislike it. In fact, I feel like I am completely unqualified to give an opinion. The film was a product of a completely foreign culture--and I don't just mean nationality. Metropolis made me realize how much the genre of film has changed in just a hundred years. Not only has the technology changed, but audience expectations and methods of interpretation too. For example, the romance of 1927 looked today like possible possession or a psychotic fit of some sort. So, while I can't say whether it was good or bad, Metropolis was certainly worth watching as it caused me to metacognate about how I watch movies, and the International Cinema experience was definitely worth repeating.

SOLS: The Friday Errands

Working twenty hours between Monday and Thursday is hard. It means middle of the week homework always seems half done and sleep is low on the priority list. But it also means that Thursday is Friday, sort of, and once class ends at noon on the real Friday I feel like a king. Here is the weekend waiting for me like a full-sailed ship, and here am I, its doughty captain.

And the job of the first voyage of this weekend-ship is always to run all the tiny, but important errands that I haven't been able to do for the last five days. Today I visited the banks, depositing the little slips of paper that represent all the conversations with fascinating students, all the copies, all the smiles, and all the time not wasted in the past two weeks; and making loan-payment no. 30 on my car. Then there's the gas station, to fill up the car that I now officially own half of. The library, to return my books, pay my fines because they're late as always. All these little things used to seem so tedious when I had more time. But the glow of the maiden voyage of the weekend makes them somehow excessively pleasant.

Included in these errands is always a stop at Macey's where I allow myself to leisurely stroll the aisles gathering provisions for the days ahead. Today I aimed for hobbit-like food since I promised to contribute to Amanda's entmoot tonight. The strawberries were right in front and they smelled like weekend; then there was a display of Keebler cookies on sale, and those little elves could probably pass for hobbits, so, of course; I don't think they have fruit sours in the Shire, but Amanda loves them; and, last but not least, blueberry cream loafs from the day-old bakery--which was a complete score because I've always wanted to try them, but could never justify the price.

SOLS: Hawthorne, a Bench, Spring, and Me

Ahhh, the weather, one of those beautiful gifts of a perfect Spring day before the season has really come. And by chance I had time between school and work (which never happens on Thursday), and there it was--an empty bench just for me. I got to do my homework out in the sun, I got to breathe wide breaths, I got to fill my soul with the anticipation of Winter's end.

SOLS: Things I Love

If you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all. If you have to say something, then say something nice. Today I have nothing to say except this:

I love things. I love shoes. I love Yo-Yo Ma playing his cello on Youtube. I love wandering through the library and picking up the first book that catches my eye, and checking it out, no matter what. I love strawberries, oreos, candy corn, and tooth paste. I love the origami critters taped to my wall. I love coming home. I love going out. I love words spicey and sweet. I love breathing in and breathing out.

SOLS: Let It Be Lent!

Mardi Gras!!! Okay, I didn't actually celebrate Fat Tuesday or Carnival, but it was a really great day. And...I am looking forward to celebrating Lent. Lent? I hear you, my imaginary audience, ask. But, Megan, you're not Catholic, and besides is Lent really something you celebrate? Isn't it more something you suffer through?

Yes. I know, it can be, and not by my reckoning. A few years ago I jokingly told people that for Lent I was giving up the dreadful habit of being wrong, but this year I'm taking it seriously--Lent, that is. I officially renounce complaining. No complaining for 40 days. Not one moan, groan, whine, or kvetch! Will I succeed? All my money says no, but I'm going to try anyway. I think life will be better if I say it is, or if I don't say that it isn't. So come Lent, come gentle Lent, come, cheer-filled, sun-browed Lent! I celebrate you!

(Shakespeare and Whitman?)

SOLS: Louis XIV, King of China?

I'm hanging out with Amanda, doing homework. It's nice (minus the homework part). She's working on Art History and I'm studying for tomorrow's midterm. Sometimes I wish we could trade--I'll write about how Caravaggio influenced artists all over Europe and she can compile a list of the characteristics of sentimental literature.

Then she leans over to ask me if the following sentence seems right. "King Louis called himself Sun Ling." She's been filling out answers on a worksheet from a wordbank where Sun King has been mis-typed as Sun Ling. Now we can't stop seeing Louis XIV in a Versailles-turned-pagoda shouting to all his officials and heads-of-this-and-that, "I am Sun Ling! Call me Sun Ling!"

Typos make me smile.

SOLS: The Andes Project

So, two weeks ago we pulled "The Andes" out of our magical hat of topics. "Great!" I thought. Machu Pichu (spelling?), Peru, llamas, bright, knit shawls, hats, and ponchos here I come!


I did dash off a sketch of Amanda and I cum llamas and authentic garb during a spare moment at work last week, but my final project was a little less inside the box. I stopped by Maceys to replenish my stock of vitamin C (if it weren't orange and grapefruit season, winter really wouldn't be worth it), and, lo and behold, Andes Mints were on sale. "Ha!" I thought, "Andes, spelled just like the mountain range, with some simplified peaks for a logo, I wonder why I never made the connection before...I wonder if the mints originated in South America?" Needless to say, I bought a package.


I didn't find much time for research, but the internet is so very handy. From the Andes website I learned that the mints are owned by Tootsie, which really surprised me. I don't know, tootsie rolls, tootsie pops, dots, and the rest seem so middle class--you know, my kind of candy. But Andes Mints? Those are high class! My kind of after dinner mint are the hard, starlight kind Sonic drops in with your chili cheese fries, or the bad butter-mints Grease Monkey leaves on your seat (except they didn't last time I got my oil changed...I feel cheated).

Another surprise, the mints are not actually christened after the mountains. A man named Andrew Kanelos first started making the mints (or something like them) in the 1920s and selling them as Andy's Candies. Where was he selling them, you may ask. Not in Peru, not anywhere in South America. Chicago. They changed the name to Andes in the 1950s--I guess snow-capped peaks, ancient ruins, and llama herders seemed like a better marketing tool than some guy from Chicago.

Despite these disappointments, the website did give me a great final project--Andes Mint Pillow Cookies. Don't think I was completely lazy, though, relying on the website to do all the work for me. I did have to do some experimentation. For starters, I only had 28 mints, not the called-for 49. So I halved everything, minus the egg (it didn't seem right to put in half an egg). Then, I don't like to eat butter, but I learned during our project on cuisine that applesauce makes a good substitute for butter/shortening/etc in baking. So, applesauce. This, however, made the dough far too wet to roll. At this point I gave up on independence and called on the culinary prowess of my Mom. She seconded my plan to add more flower. Although this resulted in a thicker dough it was still too wet to roll out. But we didn't want the cookie dough to become paste, so instead of adding even more flower, we used spoons to mold the dough around the mints.





If you check out the picture included with the official recipe, you'll note that my "pillows" look much more comfortable.





Like magic, Kate and McKell turned up just in time to help me eat the first batch--a warm, but not-too-sweet cookie outside surounding a piping hot, ooey-gooey, mint-chocolatey center. Perfect (despite being disparraged for being low-fat, even though I still insist that nothing that has an Andes Mint center can be counted as low-fat).

SOLS: A Weekend Away

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball."

So says Ishmael in Moby-Dick. In the Greene family we believe in a similar mode of deliverance from our "hypos" (whatever those are)--the road. After this past week I accounted it high time to get to the road. Convenient, since Carter had a mountain-bike race in St. George this morning. We drove down last night, throwing away responsibility, transferring all the gravity and friction of our lives to the humming tires-on-highway under us, revelling in the dying art-form that is the family road-trip.

We talked, laughed, quizzed each other with random trivia, ate too much, lost our troubles in strange places uncluttered by the usual details of our lives. And today we all basked in Carter's glory. He won for his division! Granted he was the only racer in his division--nonetheless, he worked hard doing something he loves and being there to watch him was like watching someone open a present you know they'll love.

We took our time coming home, and, although four hours (one way) is a short road-trip by our usual standards, I now feel quite cured.