Nom de Plume

I believe they term our neighborhood “transitional.” I found out what happened last night. From the Seattle P.I.:

Someone shot at an unmarked police vehicle late Thursday in south Seattle and officers were searching for a suspect, Seattle police reported.

The shooting was reported about 10:15 p.m. on Rainier Avenue South at South Fisher Place. No officers or the vehicle were hit, police Sgt. Deanna Nollette said.

Police had a K-9 unit at the scene. Officers were looking for a suspect with a pitbull puppy, she said.

Tonight Harry and I went for our tromple in Madison Park, and when we came back started noticing all the police cars with blazing lights. I’ve never seen so many in one place. The entire Safeway block is surrounded; there are at least 30 police cars along with a helicopter circling overhead. And of course, there’s NO NEWS OF WHAT’S GOING ON.

I tried to read this while Dave was here working on the kitchen. He’s a great guy, but I was feeling very scattered. Not only was I reduced to wandering Seattle like a homeless person, but I was without office, without any place uncluttered to sit (in truth, the house looked like a bomb had hit), and without any peace amid the hammering and drywall dust. All this is to say that I got midway through the book, put it down, and never picked it up again. In short, dear reader, this was an abandoned book. And I am perfectly willing to admit that there were external circumstances that contributed to its abandonment.

However.

The mess in the house matched the mess between the covers.

I am ambivalent about Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Marisha Pessl does a fabulous job of capturing a certain mood and feel. She has a keen eye, and is truly witty. At the same time, I found the novel incredibly disorganized. The story moves along in fits and starts–and when the plot is moving forward, it’s a great read. But there are pages and pages devoted to nothing more than setting the mood with arcane references and intellectual acrobatics. To this end, every paragraph has several long parenthetical asides; my feeling is that if one relies so heavily on parentheses that a quarter of the book is devoted to them, one should consider better organization. Ultimately, Special Topics lost me.

It’s too bad. There was so much good stuff there–but it could have used some ruthless chopping.

Apparently, Vonage is expecting its customer base to go the way of its stock price–that is to say way, way down. How else to explain the title of its mass e-mailing? Yep, introducing the “Vonage Alumni Newsletter.”

I have been reduced to roaming Seattle like a homeless person.

Steve burst into the bedroom at 7:30–far too early when one stayed up until two reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics–and shook me awake. “The electrician is coming in two hours. Can you clean up the basement?” Meanwhile, Dave was finishing framing the bank of windows we’re putting in over the freshly reporcelained old kitchen sink and the dog was whining that he hadn’t been fed in HOURS.

So I cleaned up the basement, ignored the fine dust on everything else in the house, got dressed, and started out the door. “Oh,” said Steve, “I forgot. Those carriage doors on Craig’s List? Can you go look at them?” (Yet another project–the garage. I remain hopeful that it will be turned into my office.) I went; they were a mess. Now, I’m sitting in All City Coffee in Georgetown. Right outside the window is a matched pair of pet goats on dog leashes.

Thanks for all the lovely comments.

And to commemorate, let me post pictures of what the kitchen looks like now.

I’m thinking about retiring the blog.

I’ve kept this thing going for over three years now. It’s gone through several iterations, chronicled the ephemera of my life, and I don’t regret what is, after all, an exercise in narcissism. But these days, it just feels pointless–and frankly, I’m not having fun with it anymore. More to the point, I have the sneaking suspicion that blogging is keeping me from working on the novel.

I don’t know; maybe this is just a phase. Maybe I’m just depressed.

I don’t have the energy to write reviews. So here we are again with one-word reviews. I might be able to muster up a couple more words.

Amazing.

The jury’s still out on this one. It’s wonderfully written, but frankly do I care? Not so much.

Decent historical kiddie lit.

Enchanting.

This series is truly a delight.

Totally, completely, absolutely FUN.

Completely underrated.

I was going to post a bunch of demo-in-progress kitchen pictures, but really … why bother? This is what it looks like now:

The plans are:

1) All new appliances, for one.
2) A really funky farmhouse sink that we got at Re-store. It’s being reporcelained as we blog and is going approximately where the existing sink is–though at 51 inches will take up a considerably larger amount of space.
3) You see that taller window at the end? That’s going away, and the fridge is going there. But wait, you say! Getting rid of windows? Actually, we’re adding a bank of four windows over the sink instead.
4) The stove is staying where it is, but will be flanked by cabinets.
5) Steve’s brother is coming out next week to do some of the above, and will also tear out and replace the ceiling.

There are lots more ideas floating around Chez Smunshi, but we’re not terribly organized about the process. Some neighbors are also redoing their kitchen and we goggled at their beautifully rendered plans. Ours consist of some chicken scratch on graph paper.

This was the kitchen before we moved in.

To tell the truth, we added a lot more color to the room–but it probably looks its best here. The tenants who lived here were apparently anal (to put it politely), and were a LOT cleaner than we are. We painted the walls and put down slate floor. Also added wainscot around the room.

And the problem is that you can see how crooked everything is–and if it’s not crooked, it’s just crap. when everything was white, it at least looked, well, clean. We’ve been living with this for two years now.

Until two weeks ago, at which point Mr. Demo decided it was “time to commit to redoing the kitchen.” I can’t complain about Steve having problems with commitment; he dragged out a chainsaw and sawed off half the counter.

Keep posted, and I’ll show you what the kitchen is looking like today.