War Eagle
Win for Auburn
Power of Dixieland.
memories
31
Dec 10
New Year’s Eve
This year:
the Yankee graduated with her Ph.D.
we took our honeymoon to Italy, Greece and Turkey
the Yankee took a job at Auburn
we celebrated our first anniversary
we bought a house
we moved
we discovered we may live on an Indian burial ground
we watched a perfect season of football
I finished the coursework in my Ph.D.
we traveled to Memphis, Las Vegas, New York City and points beyond
we celebrated victories and shared in the sadness of losses
we saw many of our friends, but none of them enough
and we loved our families, but none of them enough.
It was a full, demanding, challenging, rewarding, exhilarating, exhausting, wonderful year. I’m glad you’ve shared in it with us a bit. I hope yours was as full of blessings and joy as ours, and that your 2011 is twice as promising.
26
Dec 10
Catching up
And, now, the regular attempt to add more pictures that were somehow neglected over the course of the last week.
Studying. I’m doing it.
Lots of it.
This is the tree at the main entrance of St. John the Divine in New York, where we saw the Winter Solstice concert.
One of the nicer things about winter is that The Yankee sometimes wear scarves and I can take this picture.
I’m violating my food photography rule here, I know, but this is Pepe’s. This is serious. If you’re in Connecticut, or in Yonkers or anywhere in New England, really, you have to visit Pepe’s. This is one of the better pizza pies you’ve ever eaten.
Family photos are fun. These are my great-grandparents. That’s their youngest grandchild, which would put this picture in the early 1980s. They both look great here. She always looked great, though. And he was the very definition of a Southern gentleman and perhaps one of the finer men I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. We all miss him very much.
I don’t know that I’d ever seen the picture before. I took this on Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle’s house, so this is a picture of a picture, and almost shooting from the hip, as it were.
Now I feel like I’m re-living my childhood. Punch and cookies, the staple food at my grandparents’ home.
Want the recipe? This is a delicious punch … but do cut back on the sugar.
20
Dec 10
America runs on tennis shoes
“This is a good system,” The Yankee said.
We’ve been doing our mileage at the park near her childhood home. This is the park where, two years ago in nine feet of snow and a 17-degree atmosphere that we took our engagement pictures. It was the only day I’ve ever noticed that the wind chill was warmer than the actual temperature. Apparently strange things can happen in a nor’easter.
And it was too nine feet of snow.
There was a picture where we sat on a snow covered bench. We suffered for that particular piece of art. The photograph has never surfaced. I reminded her of all of this today.
Anyway, the system is the park and then down to the nearby Dunkin Donuts.
“On the other hand” I said, “we would go broke if we followed this system every day.”
How you know I don’t have a lot of Dunkin experience. I thought “Holiddays” cup was merely a typo. Apparently it is a code meant to entice a Pavlovian response to all the regular customers that they must run to the store for another coffee. I was unaware.
We spent much of last night working in Photoshop. Such is the chore for creating the modern gag gift. We have a friend who has a particularly morbid Facebook gimmick and we’re going to bring it to life. We printed the finished product today. I’m not saying it will win Present of the Year honors, but I will say I came up with this idea last Christmas.
The great thing is that we can recycle this gag every year.
We had prime rib and Kenny-Christmas tonight, since I won’t be here later this week. I got nice clothes, a cool book and a lot of fun stuff. The best gift was when my mother-in-law donated shoes to a nine-year-old boy for me. That’s the perfect age, really. Little boys are tough on sneakers.
I grew up in that time when sneaker prices were exploding to obscene levels. Simultaneously this was a period that your peers would judge you based on your footwear. Sure, they’d judge you for most everything, but shoes were important.
I never had good shoes. I had Walmart or Payless shoes. The imitations seldom fooled anyone, and they were less than durable. At the time, it mattered; maybe it still does. Perhaps that’s why I wear shoes today — the cheapest New Balance or reasonable loafers or boats I can find — until my feet finally reject them. Shoes, I feel, have to last. That’s probably the only way I can pay my mother back for all the shoes I ran through as a kid. (Once we bought shoes on a Friday and they were destroyed before school on Monday. I still feel pretty bad about that.)
So I hope that little boy gets a nice pair this Christmas. I hope they help make a great Christmas for him and that they mean something to him. I hope he takes care of them — as much as a nine-year-old can — because that’s a great gift.
My mother-in-law, in addition to her many other charms, is a wonderful shopper. She also buys me too many presents. I like this one most of all.
18
Dec 10
Happy Birthday to me
My mother and me, in the snow, some decades ago at my grandparents’ home. I wonder who took this picture.
Perspective: My students are the same age, or older, as my mother is in this photograph.
Further perspective: When she was my age today, my mother had a 15-year-old son learning to drive. Frightening.
How she did it I’ll never know, but all of the things a mother must do, she did well. She’s a special lady.
And I don’t feel a day older. Just don’t stare at the silver in my hair, OK?
