hipster much?

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Originally uploaded by kjerstieb

Mike Sebba gave Lucy these awesome glasses (with no glass) which Lucy wore around Brooklyn and the West Village all day. She was happy as a clam, and managed to look both ridiculous and amazing at the same time. She finally took them off to go to sleep, but I think it is safe to say you will be seeing them a lot in the weeks to come. Thanks Mike -- I mean it!

you say it's your birthday

Today's blog post is dedicated to Richard, because it is his birthday. And not just any birthday, mind you, but his 40th. In honor of this special day, I am posting some fun facts about Richard that you might not have known (and some that you probably do).

1. He is from Nuneaton, a small town near Coventry, in the middle of England. Nuneaton was a fabric mill town, and Richard's grandfather served in WWII in Egyptian cotton mills. Nuneaton was also the home to famous British author George Eliot, who was a lady. A lady named George -- imagine that..... As a side note, Nuneaton is about as far away from the ocean as you can get in England, yet Richard's mother is an avid supporter of the Bristish Lifeboating Association. That has always amused me.

2. Richard went to college a couple of times in England, but it didn't stick. He was actually accepted to some library science programs, but for some reason pursued sociology and nursing. He had to come here to be a British Librarian.

3. After the non-sticking college experience(s), Richard went to Israel where he worked on both a kibbutz and a moshav (farm). He has some great stories about the farm -- shooting porcupines from the back of an ultralight plane, living with runaway convicts, etc.

4. When I first met Richard, I thought he was Jewish. Refer to # 3.

5. When I first met Richard, he had long hair in a pony tail (which he did not wash for a year, as an experiment), skinny legs that ended in Doc Marten boots, and all his belongings fit in a backpack. Needless to say, he was dreamy.

6. Richard did a six month internship at a huge homeless shelter in DC, and was much beloved by the residents and staff. When we got married in Cecil County, MD (hotbed of the KKK) at the shelter where we met, a van-ful of African-American homeless people drove up for our wedding, to mingle with the rural white homeless people. Good times.

7. Richard loves to read. Anything and everything. He is happiest with his nose in some kind of reading material. He approaches the Economist the same way I approach Entertainment Weekly. For some reason, he knows MUCH more about current events than I do. He was meant to be a librarian. But for some reason, he refuses to change his name to Giles.

8. Speaking of Giles, Richard loves Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV show and the comic books. He also loves most science fiction, the Blade trilogy, and the collected works of the incredible actress, Michelle Rodriguez. You may be surprised to learn that he played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons as a youth. But now is his time, since Geek is the new Cool.

9. Richard is kind of deaf, which makes going to bars and restaurants kind of a bummer for him. But he likes to hang out with people, and is quite chatty. He is really funny, especially to Andrew. It took him some time to get used to my crazy family, and he still refuses to play Pictionary with us, but he loves it when everyone is around.

10. Richard is a great dad. He loves Lucy to the moon and back. Lucy and I both get a little scared when he uses his stern dad voice, but that is a rare occurrence. Richard is also a great husband. He would do anything for me, which is pretty amazing. I think his favorite thing to do is just hang out with me and Lucy, especially if he can be covered in cats.

11. Richard loves cats. Dogs, not so much, but he walks them and takes them to the park, and sometimes I catch him snuggling with Butterstick.

12. Richard can play the piano, guitar, and pretty much any stringed instrument. For awhile (when we lived in Cecil County), he had a banjo. I wish he would play more.

13. Richard is artistic. I always teased him when he was in school because he was Mr. 4.0. Then he had to take a studio art class, which I thought would bring an end to his perfect GPA. Imagine my surprise when he started painting amazing works of art. Next time you are at our house, check out the painting of paper cranes that hangs in our living room. Richard painted it, and it is awesome.

14. Richad has a tattoo that says "sui generis", which is Latin for one-of-a-kind (who knew?). Once, when he was at the Wawa, the clerk asked him if it said "You so generous" -- so now it does, in our hearts.

15. There are many more fun facts I could share, but we are getting ready to go to NYC to celebrate his big day, so I will end by saying:
I glitter heart Richard, and wish him a HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I can't wait to see what he will be like at 50, 60, 70, 80....and more!

Love Love,
Me

2oo9 resolution update

Floss.

Went to the dentist yesterday (it had been 2 years -- how did that happen?), and not only do I have cavities that need to be filled, but I also have an abscess in a tooth that has already had a root canal and crown. I have known for awhile that something was going on in that general area of my mouth, but the issues I was having were gum-related -- and I couldn't imagine there could actually be anything in the tooth to be a problem. But there is. And it is called pus, I think. I am on antibiotics to clear up the infection, and have a consult with the endodontist next week. Now, the tooth itself has not been hurting -- until today. Thanks Amoxicillin.

Good news -- no mouth cancer. Bad news -- bad dental coverage.

2009

It's 2009 (which, as Margit pointed out, is the last year that you can make New Year's glasses with 2 0s for the eyes. now what?), and it is time to make resolutions, which I don't usually do. No one ever keeps them, do they? But, for blog's sake, here are a few:

1) blog more
2) facebook less
3) read more (I am avoiding a significant portion of the Strand's top 80, for sure)
4) watch TV less
5) do more arts & crafts
6) do fun things with the some of the 4,000+ pictures in my flickr account
7) play more games with Lucy
8) go on more dates with Richard
9) master some tasty new dishes
10) and of course, eat better and go to the gym

Happy New Year!
xoxo -- Kirsten

spell with flickr

yes we did!

According to Richard, who monitors my blog stats via Google Analytics, there was a huge spike in visits to my blog on election day, which leads me to believe that 40 of you (or ten of you who visited four times) were curious to know my thoughts on that momentous day. Here's the scoop -- I couldn't possibly blog that day because we were so busy electing Barack Obama!

Lucy and I headed over to the Bellefonte Fire Station at 7 am, and waited in line for about 40 minutes to vote, which seemed like a good sign to me. After our annual trip to the cardiologist (Lucy is fine! Come back in a year! Yay!), we went to Obama HQ in Wilmington, and were sent to Chester for GOTV activities, from a church basement in a housing project. It was an incredible operation -- people in and out all day -- tons of them from Delaware. Lucy, Richard and I knocked on about 75 doors in an African-American working class neighborhood. Most of the people we talked to were lovely, and most had already voted (we were on the second pass of three through the neighborhood). We were amazed (and frankly, appalled) by the polling station there -- it was the dilapidated clubhouse for the abandoned neighborhood swimming pool. According to one of the residents, the polls had closed for about 30 minutes because part of the ceiling had collapsed on some voters....Nice.

After canvassing, we headed back to Wilmington HQ. I made some phone calls to Virginia voters, and Richard made calls on behalf of the Delaware Dems. Lucy made signs. We saw Andrew and his friend Mandy, who had also volunteered to GOTV in Chester, got yelled at by the Delaware Campaign Director for chatting, but had a good time nonetheless. The energy in the room was high -- people were really optimistic about how the race was going to go. While we were there, we got the info on the planned Victory Party, and the Campaign Director (who I know from my last job) invited us to come to the Obama Volunteers Party room, which Lucy thought was pretty special.

Headed home to let out the dogs, and stopped by to visit our next door neighbors, who had also been on a GOTV mission, and ended up hanging out with them and their extended family for dinner and to watch early returns. It was nerve-wracking. As McCain-heavy returns would come in, Richard would remind everyone that these were tiny fractions of the precincts that had reported, or that the returns were from states McCain was expected to win, and that they were not signs of an apocalypse. We finally got too antsy to stay, and since the returns had started to move in Obama's favor, we decided to head downtown for the Victory Party (we didn't want to go the a Victory Party if McCain won -- how depressing would that have been?).

The party was fun -- most of the Delaware democrats were there giving victory speeches (we were standing right behind John Carney while Jack Markell gave his speech -- it seemed so sad, and I kind of wanted to give John a hug -- but Richard assures me that he will be OK). There was a balloon drop, which is always fun, although it seemed kind of early in the night. We saw tons of people we knew, which was cool --as I have said before, I like to surround myself with people who agree with me politically. Poor Lucy was exhausted, and really wanted to go into the special Obama Volunteers room, which had been on lockdown for some reason. At around 9:30, we finally got to go into the room, which just had marginally better food than the main ballroom, but worse TV. By 10:30, Lucy was about to collapse, so we headed home, just in time to see the election called for Obama.

Incredible. For the first time in 8 years, I was crying with happiness and pride, instead of sobbing in despair and threatening to leave the country. A couple of people have sent me messages thanking Richard, Lucy and me for our hard work on the campaign -- and I appreciate that -- but honestly, it was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. As cliched as it is to say, it was so cool to see a truly diverse group of people (young, old, black, white, men, women, dogs, etc.) coming together for a common purpose. And despite the terrible state of the economy, and the war, and the general shittiness of the world right now, I do have hope for the future, and a belief that Obama will help get us headed back in the right direction. And I am particularly glad that Lucy was able to be a part of all of this, too.

On Thursday, flickr created a group photo pool of messages for Obama. You should check it out -- the messages range from funny to inspiring (and a lot of people really want to make sure that the Obamas adopt a rescue dog). Here is mine (you may recognize a certain PostSecret-ness about it), which sums up my feelings about the election:

(To see the image larger, click here.) And thanks for visiting. Now that the election is over, I will have more time for blogging (if I can stop playing so much WordTwist on Facebook....).

the beckoning of lovely

Today I got an email from the author of my favorite book (see previous blog references here and here), Amy Krouse Rosenthal, that said the following:

"hello kirsten,
a) i save all my nice emails
b) yours falls into that category [i sent Amy an email two years ago thanking her for writing my favorite book, in particular the entry about NPR's Sylvia Poggioli -- a copy of my e-mail was included at the bottom of Amy's e-mail today -- impressive!]
c) i do not send out formal/official/mass updates or newsletters about my work
d) however, every once in a blue moon, i stumble into something that i might feel is worth letting you (someone who expressed interest in my work) personally know about
e) this is one of those moons
f) so here it is. it just launched a few days ago
g) PLEASE...if you want to be taken out of my "saved forever" email folder, just say the word in a reply email and consider it done. and accept my apology now.
h) if you do like the above, please feel free to pass it along to friends. the more people who see it and participate, the better... (this will make sense after viewing)

all my very best today and beyond,
amy k.r."

Needless to say, I viewed the video, and it choked me up a little, so I thought I would share it with my faithful blog readers. Watch the video, and see if you want to participate in the action with me.

all my very best today and beyond,
kirsten b.o.