Nonetheless, we’ve been saving for proper furniture, set back last spring by gale-force winds blowing down our fence, again in the summer by our air conditioner dying, and again this spring by a car wreck and a tornado taking off our roof within a week of each other.  We managed to get our feet back under us over the summer, though, and have been on the lookout for a new living room set for months.

At first we thought we’d get a sectional, but alas, they were all either too modern, too frumpy, or too huge.  When we finally found a suitable one at Havertys (option C, in cappuccino), it was a bit more than we wanted to spend, and they weren’t bargaining!  Waiting for a good sale, but not entirely certain the Havertys sectional was the ideal layout for our living room, we kept our eyes open and were struck by this sofa and matching chair set, which was a better price, but would get pricier by the time we added occasional tables.  Still, we planned to wait until a good after-Thanksgiving or after-Christmas sale and buy those pieces, because they were super comfy, just right for our layout, and even matched our accessories.

That decisiveness still didn’t stop us from looking around.  This past Friday night, wanting to get out of the house and thinking we might find a coffee and end table, we went to The Dump, which is not as shady as it sounds! It’s actually a very nice store that buys overstocks and closeout furniture and furniture from dealers who are going out of business and resells for 50-75% off retail price. Not five minutes after we arrived, we saw a living room set that were very similar in style to the set at Havertys, just as comfortable, and way less money, plus it included an ottoman that could double as a coffee table. After about thirty minutes’ debating, we made a salesperson who’d been ready to go home very happy by walking out of The Dump with the invoice for the newly-purchased furniture.  It was delivered around 5:30 last evening, and after a quick trip to Lowe’s for new matching curtains, we could not be more pleased with our new living room.

Then a new supermarket came to town:  Super H-Mart.  It’s an Asian grocery chain, and there are only two in Texas.  Apparently Carrollton has the next-highest Korean and Vietnamese population in the state after Houston, and boy, am I glad we do, because H-Mart not only has the most beautiful produce and meat sections I’ve ever seen, along with a fish market that sells any kind of — live — seafood you can think of, but it’s the cheapest supermarket I’ve ever seen when it comes to fresh foods.  Here’s my receipt from my first excursion there last Friday:

You read that correctly — $11.76 for all that, including nearly two pounds of lean ground beef.  I used half for mostaccioli, and I’ll use the other half for tacos, giving me two meals for the price of what I normally pay for one pound of lean beef at Wal Mart.  Combine that $11.76 with the $50 I spent at Wal Mart and Albertsons for my milk, orange juice, pasta, sauces, and other pantry staples, and I did a week’s groceries for less than $65!  Next week will undoubtedly be a little more, because I need paper products and some toiletry items, but still, every little penny saved is a penny earned, right?

Last night I reached new heights in culinary capers. No dinners were ruined, for once, but I did manage to dye our  chicken purple. Deep, vivid purple.  Like a bruise.  Actually, by the time I’d finished cooking the chicken, it looked like something from one of Francesco Redi’s science experiments with spoiled meat and maggots.

Fortunately for me, in this household, taste counts for more than presentation.

So, how did I manage to dye our chicken purple? That is the question…

I was cooking chicken and bell peppers, as pictured here, when I first tried the recipe about three weeks ago:

Lovely, yes?  It tastes as good as it looks.  And last night it tasted just like it normally looks, even though it didn’t look at all like this, being purple.

You see, the recipe calls for a red onion.  The particular red onion I got this week was much more purple than red, even when it had been peeled and diced up in the food processor.  As the chicken cooked with it in a skillet, the onion’s color bled onto the white meat.  There was absolutely  nothing I could have done to prevent this happening, and, as it didn’t alter the flavor in any way, we topped our white rice* with red, green, and yellow bell peppers and purple chicken. It was quite a colorful meal, to say the least.

*Incidentally, while I was busy turning our chicken purple, I nearly botched our rice as I haven’t done since I was a new bride, by absentmindedly leaving out a cup of the water.  Fortunately I was able to save it by adding water and cooking it for ten minutes longer.

And yes, this was microwavable rice; I’m an even bigger failure at stove-top rice than I am at microwavable.

A fair is a veritable smorgasbord orgasbord orgasbord

After the crowds have ceased

Each night when the lights go out

It can be found on the ground all around

Oh, what a ratly feast!

Periodically as Mr. Burt and I walked around the State Fair of Texas yesterday, I would burst into this song.  Especially as we passed the food stalls.  Even though there was a sad lack of the rotten cotton candy Templeton so gleefully sings of as he gorges himself on leftover fair food, items such as German fajitas — a bratwurst and saurkraut wrapped up in a tortilla — made it easy to imagine fair guests rolling back to the parking lot at the end of the day.

And the German fajitas weren’t the most unhealthy foods at the fair.  Far from it.

Fried bacon was this year’s new fried concoction at the fair.  You should have seen the lines for it.  And as if fried bacon itself wasn’t unhealthy enough, people were helping themselves to ranch dressing to dip it in.

And finally, one which I just don’t get at all:

If only Templeton could attend the State Fair of Texas, huh?

Today I was working on a scene between my two star-crossed lovers set at the Bear Habitat on the Baylor campus.  In this scene, the male lead, an alumnus, tells the female lead, a freshman, about the long-standing rivalry between Baylor and the University of Texas and the ill-fated prank in which UT stole one of our bears and painted it orange, resulting in the bear’s death from paint poisoning.

As a page of dialogue unfolded dealing with this old Baylor story, it occurred to me I couldn’t remember where I’d actually heard it, and decided to do some fact-checking.  It’s a good thing I did, because as it turns out, what actually happened was that in the 1950s, a bear was kidnapped, but no paint was involved, nor death, as far as I can tell.  Terrified to find himself in the back seat of a car, the bear began to shred the interor with his claws.  As said car was the brand new car of one of the pranksters’ parents, the students pulled over, dumped the bear in the wilderness, and drove off.  The crime was found out when they took the car to get the interior repaired a few weeks later.  The bear’s fate is uncertain.

So you see, I was way off, not only about the bear, but about Baylor’s rival school:  the bear thieves were students of Texas A&M, with whom Baylor holds a rivalry going back to 1899, and is known as the “Battle of the Brazos.”

I’ve ammeded my chapter with the correct version of the story, but I think I’m going to leave in the myth, as well.  After all, if it’s the kind of thing I heard and accepted as fact as a Baylor freshman, isn’t it likely my heroine would have heard the same story about UT painting the Baylor bear orange?

Fast-forward seventeen months to October, 2008.  I was waiting for a piano tuner to arrive when there came a knock at the door, an hour early.  I answered it, and a girl said, “Just handing out flyers today,” and gave me this slip of paper:

Oh no, Kirby vacuum cleaner company!  You will not get the better of me again.  Even if my carpet does look appalling.  In fact, you might even get a scathing letter from me about our last encounter with you, now that I know how to contact you.  I’ll demand my two hours back.

Actually, on second thought, I’d probably better not waste any more time with Kirby.

At least they’re being up-front this time.  Mostly.  I notice they didn’t mention they’ll force women and their husbands to sit and watch a vacuum cleaner demonstration for two hours.  Or dump sand on their floors.

Maybe I’ll whip up a flyer of my own two hand out to all my neighbors, informing them of the Kirby scam.

Or maybe I’ll just tell them to read my blog…

I’m not sure if this is a practice in most of the country, or even in the state, but in my neighborhood, if you no longer want something, you set it on your curb, and chances are, it’ll disappear. No, it won’t be taken away by the weekly large refuse pickup, though we do have that. It’ll be scavenged by the neighbors. For example, earlier this year, Mr. Burt got a new desk and chair. We set the old chair on the curb, went inside to get the desk, and in the three or so minutes it took us to lift the desk and drag it out the door and down the front walk to the street, the chair was long gone. A few hours later, the desk was gone, too.

Today Mr. Burt and I thought it would be nice to enjoy the balmy October weather by walking up to the doughnut shop around the corner. As we walked through the neighborhood, admiring landscaping, we noticed two 24 x 36 inch canvases propped against a neighbor’s mailbox — vintage ad artwork, such as we use to decorate pretty much our entire house. They were in good condition, so immediately we claimed them, and carried them with us to the doughnut shop, lest they be claimed by some other scavenging neighbor before we could get back to them.

In the doughnut shop, the lady behind the counter saw us carrying canvases and asked if we were artists. I gleefully told her we’d taken them from someone’s curb. When we left, because we arrived too late for there actually to be any doughnuts yet, and headed down the street to Dunkin Doughnuts, Mr. Burt said, “If anyone asks, just say we picked them up on the way out. Don’t tell them you took someone’s trash!” But isn’t that the fun of it, telling people about your really awesome deal on something cool?? And anyway, it’s really funny when you acquire things this way. At least, I think it is. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and all of that…

It was a hoot trying to make our way across a very busy four lane road to Dunkin Doughnuts with these canvases. We were jaywalking, and it was really windy, and the wind kept catching the canvases. So we’re running across the street, trying not to get hit by cars, or to get picked up and carried away like parasailers…

On our way home, we passed the house where we’d found the art just as the homeowner was returning from the grocery store. She saw us carrying the canvases and grinned. We thanked her for getting rid of art that matches our decor, and she said her boyfriend manages an apartment complex that was redecorating the lobby, and brought the prints home for her. Not having any wall space for them, she set them out for any passing neighbors. I’m very happy we were the passing neighbors!

Here are our art treasures:

Those of you who have been to our house know we’ve got a bit of a musical theme going on in the living room, so I’ll have to find a spot for the instrument one in there. Probably the luggage one will go in the stairway, as it and the upstairs hall are in a travel theme.

Our art find sort of makes up for not being able to buy our sectional this weekend as planned. Stupid Havertys raised the price, and then wouldn’t bargain at all, not even for free delivery; you’d think with the economy in the toilet, they’d be a bit desperate for sales! It was doubly frustrating, since they had the pieces we wanted in stock, and could have had new furniture this week. Oh well, guess we’ll wait and hope for the price to drop! (Though not, we hope, at the economy’s expense.)

Aside from the fact that this has to be one of the dorkiest and pointless wastes of money I’ve ever heard of, why would I need to order a personalized sweatshirt, t-shirt, or cap when I’ve already got the personalized postcard?

Also, did everyone on my street get one of these?  Do the Nguyens next door have an opportuntiy to order Nguyen University gear?  If so, should I be worried that a company bothered to find out the names of all the people in my neighborhood?

The cardboard sleeve of my Hot Pocket carries the following warning:  Caution - Product may be hot.

I don’t know whether to say duh or to scratch my head at the may.  Of course I expect my Hot Pocket to be hot.  What’s this may business all about?  Do you mean if I nuke my Hot Pocket for two minutes like it says, it won’t necessarily come out hot?  Under what circumstances?  That I have a completely defective microwave?

Anyway…

In checking IMDB for the release date of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, I saw, not surprisingly, that it’s based on a book.  A young adult book by John Boyne.  Immediately I searched for it in the Carrollton Public Library’s online card catalogue, and was delighted to find a copy available.  I picked it up yesterday and read it in a few hours.

As expected, the book provided a unique and compelling perspective of the Holocaust.  I was especially moved by the tentative exploration of the duplicitous nature of a person who can be a father who is loved and respected and thought of as good by his children while simultaneously being capable of committing the worst sorts of atrocities against humanity as a concentration camp commander.  Holocaust stories always make you shake your head in disbelief at how something so patently evil could have been embraced on such a massive scale, how people could just let it happen.  It is that inability to really wrap your mind around such a horrible thing that John Boyne capitalizes on in this novel, the shades of grey in which life is painted and people are forced to make moral choices, that innate human naivety so aptly captured in the point of view of a nine year-old boy, which unlike other Holocaust fiction I’ve read, made the stealth campaign of fascist propaganda finally click for me.  That’s how they did it.

I don’t really mean this post to be a book review, nor do I really mean it to be a grim Holocaust post (I realize how messed up it is to have a post tagged with both “the holocaust” and “silliness”), but I will ad that when I reviewed The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas on Facebook’s Visual Bookshelf application, I gave it 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.  I wish I could say exactly why, but I can’t quite pinpoint it any more precisely than I simply didn’t finish it and say wow, as I’ve said about so many other books lately.  As much as some of the scenes resonated with me (the movie’s still on my list of Upcoming Films I Definitely Want To See Assuming They Get Decent Reviews), I felt there was something lacking.  The ending is disturbing — though I’m not sure if that’s exactly why the books as a whole didn’t  mesh for me, because Holocaust stories are inherently disturbing.  It might have been the pacing that didn’t quite work for me in the end.  It might also have been that the scenario itself contradicts other Holocaust fiction I’ve read and requires a level of suspension of disbelief I wasn’t entirely able to achieve.

Overall, I really liked the book, am glad I read it, and recommend it highly, because it is very moving and original and impeccably written and does contain a lot of themes that really resonate with importance and relavence to our times, and I’d like to talk about it with other people.

All that to say…

This foray into Holocaust fiction, which I haven’t taken since I was a teenager, inspired me to pick up The Zion Covenant series by Bodie Thoene.   I read the books more than ten years ago and loved them and have thought about them, and the characters, often since then.

(I sort of have a Books I Want and Need to Read list, but I don’t really stick by it, because I’m very much a mood reader.  I have to read what I want, when I want, even if I’m in the middle of another book or there’s a book someone has told me I have to read.  Probably this is because I was an English major who spent 3 1/2 years being forced to read things I didn’t necessarily care to read, in impossible amounts of time, to the extent that after I graduated, I didn’t pick up a book except Harry Potter for a good year.  I was ruined for reading, but I’m recovering and devouring books.  Or maybe I just have a Veruca Salt “Daddy I Want an Oompa Loompa Now” personality, as I eat like this, too.)

Once again, the Carrollton Public Library came through for me, though I approached the first book, Vienna Prelude, with no little trepidation.  Before I even got to the library, I was hesitant to re-read the books because obviously as an English major and a writer I’ve grown as a reader since I was a young teen (does that sound rather snobbish?) and there was that distinct possibility the books weren’t really as good as I remembered them being.  (I’m very happy to say that, 124 pages in, and with a strong reluctance to put it down even to write this post, it’s every bit as good as I remember.  Better, even, since I’m older and understand a good deal more about history and politics.)  But after I got to the library, I hesitated to check out Vienna Prelude for a much shallower (and possibly snobbier, though maybe not) reason.

The library has copies of books two through six in the Zion Covenant in the new editions published in 2005.  Vienna Prelude, however, is one of the original 1989 paperbacks.  And this copy has inspired me to use a word I haven’t used since probably 1989.

Grody.

I could exercise my authorly powers of description and paint word pictures of how the binding is broken (although that doesn’t bother me, as I always break the bindings of my books), how the cover is bent and curled and torn and the laminant is peeling, how there’s a faded sticker of some sort stuck to the front, peeling up and revealing some kind of gunk, how there are bits of tape with more gunk stuck haphazardly, how some of the words inside are obscured where pages have stuck together, and how every few pages I find some sort of stain whose origins I really don’t want to know, and how I hold the book gingerly in my fingertips as I read and have to think really hard about how much I enjoy the story and exercise sheer force of will not to gag at the thought of touching this grody book.  But they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so even though I used about a hundred words just now, I’ll give you three pictures instead of three thousand more words, because I don’t think mere words really can convey the grodiness of this book.

Seriously, I think if the rest of the series was in this condition, I wouldn’t have bothered to check the first one out.  As compelling as the story is, the larger part of my rapid-fire page turning is a desire to finish so I can return this book and get to the nicer, newer, un-grody editions.

I really do judge a book by its cover.