City of Thieves -- Take 2

I loved this book. The story was compelling, and I couldn't put it down. It's the best book I have read in a long time. Things I liked:

- The premise for the story was simple, but the adventures were fantastic;
- The writing was simple, but also clean and precise. Easy to read without seeming too dumbed-down or juvenile;
- The sense of humanity that seeps out of the words. Despite all the death and destruction that surrounds the characters, the book is not at all depressing because it shows that people can still be good in the midst of it all.

North Carolina, Day 5

Unfortunately, I don't have many fun pictures from today. That's not to say it wasn't fun, just that I didn't have my camera handy.

It was another lazy day today. As per usual, I slept really late (10ish). Then J and I drove E's new car to the Hertz lot at the airport so she could return her rental.

E's new car!

Interior

We came back to mom's, had leftovers for breakfast/lunch, finished watching The Incredibles (which we started last night), and started another puzzle. E, J, and I took the dogs for a long walk; I spent some quality time with my book.

Dinner was a really fun wine and small plate dinner at the Weathervane. The restaurant is attached to a store called "A Southern Season," which is possibly the most fabulous kitchen/wine/gourmet food/cookbook store I've ever been in. I love it! We got four wines (all from South Africa -- that was the theme for the evening) and four small plates. Everything was delicious, except that not everyone loved the pate (plate #4). The vegetarian option for that course, which E got, was some totally delicious blue cheese.

What I'm Reading Now -- City of Thieves

I admit: I work in a bookstore and had no idea what this book was even about. Although that's true of a lot of books, I suppose. But a customer came in one night with his two daughters, and it was clear that they were pretty voracious readers. I helped them pick out some good books they hadn't read yet, and recommended a few others for the future. Their dad, in turn, recommended this book to me.

The summary he provided was pretty good. It's set in WWII Leningrad. A boy gets caught by Soviet soldiers looting the body of a dead German who inexplicably fell from the sky. He and a soldier accused of desertion are taken to "the Colonel," who apparently runs the show where they live. Under normal circumstances, the penalty for either of their crimes would have been summary execution, but the Colonel's daughter is getting married in a week, and she wants a wedding cake. The two boys can escape death if they can round up a dozen eggs by the day before her wedding, so that she can have her cake, and eat it, too.

Unfortunately, finding 12 eggs in besieged Leningrad (or Piter, as the boys call it), is no easy task. The book follows them on their journey to save their own lives.

North Carolina, Day 4

Happy Black Friday!

In contrast to most holidays, I did not have to work today! Hooray! So instead, I -- wait for it -- slept in :-) Can you see a pattern here? Mom made us pumpkin pancakes for breakfast, which were most tasty. J and I spent what was left of the morning (and some of the early afternoon) working on the puzzle, while B and K tried to be productive in an academic sense.

After a snack of leftovers for lunch, J and I were rejuvenated enough to finish the puzzle. Hooray! K continued to be productive by re-raking the front yard. Mom and I also helped, and we cleared out the one remaining corner. The problem now is that, until the clean-up guys come to pick up all the leaves on the curb, we can't rake the back yard because there's nothing to do with the piles and piles of leaves! I suppose that's for another day.

Mom's cute "rosemary" Christmas tree

Tonight we went out to dinner at Il Palio, this super-nice restaurant in the Siena Hotel in Chapel Hill. Everything was delicious, and the restaurant was lovely. My meal:

- Amuse-bouche: chestnut and apple soup

- Appetizer: acorn squash bisque (served in half an acorn squash!)

- Entree: pork osso bucco

- Dessert: chocolate cherry semifredo

The whole menu (although it's a tiny bit different) is available here. I recommend looking at it, but try not to drool on your computer.

Apparently the real fun at dinner was not at our table, though. Sitting across from us (behind mom and J, but K, E, and I had a clear line of sight) was a very odd couple. There was an aging white man, and a woman of indeterminate age and nationality. Estimates range from college age (she was in something akin to a prom dress) to middle aged (and not a good-looking middle age, at that), and she could have been from Asia or Central America or anywhere in between. It was difficult to tell.

Anyway, the first thing I noticed was her dress. He was in a suit; she was in a floor-length, open-backed, red satin dress. At one point during our meal, they both got up from their table, he put his jacket around her shoulders, and they were both gone for probably 5-10 minutes. Most of the rest of dinner was uneventful...until it was time for us to get our check.

As we were talking and finishing our wine, red dress lady had a very definite When Harry Met Sally moment -- she threw her head back and forth, and there was audible groaning. When it was over, she slid down in her chair, and said, "that was awesome!" Then they sucked face for a while, and a similar (but slightly more subdued) process ensued. When the second round of face-sucking commenced, she leaned across the corner of the table (they were sitting on adjacent sides of a square table made for four). Apparently they were so deeply involved in their kiss they didn't realize that her weight was tipping the table -- until all their glasses fell over! Some fell on the floor and shattered, others just emptied their contents onto the plates of food.

As the waitstaff came to clean up the mess, we decided it was time to make our exit. We were definitely not the only people in the place who had witnessed their, um, escapades. Maybe someone who had to stick around can say more about what happened after we left....

Mom and me after dinner

E and me after dinner

The Perks of Being a Wallflower -- Take 2

With one qualification, I can say that I totally loved this book.

The qualification relates to something that happens near the end. Suffice it to say, it seems like the author felt that his book wouldn't be literary enough if he didn't add this element, and I think it put sort of a sour twist on the story, which would have been quite fine without it.

Aside from that one little exception, this book was a complete pleasure to read. As I said before, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an epistolary novel, with Charlie is describing his high school freshman year experience to a friend whose identity you never fully discover.

Charlie's observations are both heartbreakingly innocent and incredibly lucid, and it's refreshing to see the world through his eyes.

North Carolina, Day 3

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today was a pretty low-key day, as a holiday should be. K and J went to Raleigh and illegally ran in an 8K Turkey Trot. E and I were supposed to go to yoga, but we slept in for too long. Not a bad alternative, really. Mom made us breakfast -- ebelskiver filled with your choice of Nutella, peach jam, black cherry jam, or lemon curd. I had all 4 kinds, and they were all delicious :-)

E's boyfriend B came over and we started working on a puzzle. B wasn't too interested, but the rest of us made some pretty good progress throughout the course of the day. It's a picture of a castle somewhere, and all that's left to do is the sky, which is, of course, the hardest part.

K worked on her paper all day and made lots of progress, but needed to take a power nap with E's dog -- whose claim to fame is day-long power naps -- for her final motivation.

Dinner was delicious, if somewhat nontraditional. We had a Mexican Thanksgiving, which included Mexican rice, enchiladas, frijoles, cerveza, and pumpkin cake. After dinner we watched Chocolat and worked some more on the puzzle before calling it a night.

North Carolina, Day 2

Sleep. Lots of sleep. It's awesome. Happy Thanksgiving!

Yesterday mostly involved more leaf-raking. It got dark before we could finish the front yard on Day 1, so completion was the name of the game. The yard looks good now, but three things are depressing:

1) it won't last

2) the backyard still has to be done

3) turns out I was wrong -- the leaves have been raked twice before, which makes this quantity all the more impressive!

Our big leaf pile

The clean (for now) yard

K did some work on her paper today, "pushing all the bubbles to the bottom," as she said. Unfortunately, it's not finished yet, so Thanksgiving might be less than fun. Or she'll just take a page from my book and procrastinate.

Oh, and I read some more of my book today! I'm almost finished and am totally loving it. More on that in 50 pages or so.

While my mom was getting dinner ready, the sun was setting behind the trees in her back yard. It was so orange and bright -- it looked like they were on fire!

The sunset

We had some dinner -- apple/carrot/pecan salad and tomato basil soup -- then headed off to Raleigh to see the Carolina Ballet perform to music from Handel's Messiah. The music was wonderful, and the choreography was awesome. For some of the dances, they had probably 20 people on stage, all doing different things, and somehow making it work. There was lots of spandex, which led to some interesting speculation which I will refrain from posting here. Use your imagination.

North Carolina, Day 1

And so, the Thanksgiving feast begins.

K arrived in NC around lunchtime, so she went to lunch with mom. Then they came back to the airport to get J and me, and we all headed back to mom's house. After a late lunch for us late arrivers, the three of us headed out to rake the leaves.

This project needs a little more explanation. Mom lives in an old house which is surrounded by lots and lots of big trees. The leaves were ankle-deep, at least. And they hadn't been raked at all, so they were all soggy and matted together and really heavy. We had two rakes and a leaf blower, and it took the three of us probably two hours to clear out about 2/3 of the front yard. Which is not that big. It was quite a chore. Having said that, though, I hadn't done any leaf raking yet this fall (one of the few perks of living in an apartment), so it wasn't entirely unenjoyable either.

Before Dinner

Then the dinner guests arrived, starting with my little sister E. Also in attendance were the following: neighbor K, friend P, friend R and his very pregnant wife S, and E's boyfriend B. We had a lovely dinner, including much wine, and I think everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. After some kitchen cleanup and curiosity about why E's dog was licking the couch pillow (no, no one had eaten in there and spilled anything), it was off to bed for, oh, 11 hours or so. Glorious!

After Dinner

My Bracelet

This is my new bracelet! I know the picture is two weeks overdue, but I'm posting it anyway, because I love the bracelet and I've worn it to work three times since I got it. It's uber-colorful (as you can see), so it goes with lots of different outfits.

What I'm Reading Now -- The Perks of Being a Wallflower

This book was recommended to me by C, one of the librarians at the law school. Even though we keep it in the adult fiction at my bookstore, she said it was really more of a teen fiction book, and that it was the last good book she could remember reading. If anybody knows books, it should be a librarian, so I'm taking her advice and reading it myself.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is basically a coming-of-age story. The story follows a boy named Charlie as he navigates high school. What makes this book interesting and different, though, is that Charlie is writing letters to "friend" describing his experiences, so you're seeing everything through Charlie's eyes, rather than an omniscient narrator. Charlie is perceptive and funny, and heartbreakingly honest, and I'm only on page 30.