Right now I’m reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. It’s GREAT!!! It’s tough for me to find reading time these days so I keep sneaking away long enough to read a few pages before somebody tracks me down for another game of Uno. Even if you don’t support the instant starmaker called Oprah’s Book Club, this book is worth reading. Don’t let the subject (cathedral building) scare you off – this book is not just for architects and clergymen. I’ve already ordered World Without End from Amazon since I have a feeling I’ll be sad to see Pillars end.

Other favorites (in random order):

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, Jeannette Walls
Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
Forever: A Novel, Pete Hamill
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Daughter of Fortune, Isabel Allende
Lucia, Lucia, Adriana Trigiani
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
Midwives, Chris Bohjalian
Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
Keeping Faith, Jodi Piccoult
The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
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In random order…

~ IKEA – It is well worth the half-hour drive down to Stoughton to spend a few hours browsing through IKEA. You can even drop your potty-trained kids off in their playroom for 45 minutes! The stuff is stylish and modern, the quality is decent, and the prices are great. We bought a really nice solid wood dresser for our guest room for $179! The food in the cafe is great too!

~ Jordan’s Furniture – If you’re looking for furniture to last a while, Jordan’s has the best furniture, the best service, and the prices are not bad for the quality you get. Their showroom is a fun way to spend an hour or two, with taxi/fire engine strollers, an hourly “show” for the kids, a small snack bar, and thousands of square feet of decorating ideas. If you buy something you get tokens for the candy machines, and a year of credit with no interest.

~ BJ’s – I go to BJ’s at least once a week and Ben probably goes once a week too. If I make it out of there for less than $100 I draw stares from the other shoppers as I high-five myself. On the bright side, if there’s ever a natural disaster you can all come over to our house since we have enough tuna, cereal, and mac&cheese to feed us all for the foreseeable future. If I have any money left after I leave BJ’s, I head over to Target.

~ Trader Joe’s – For just about everything food-related (and wine!!) that I can’t buy at BJ’s, I shop at TJ’s. Auntie Em (Monica) is a long-time TJ’s employee, and Ellen (Degeneres) claims to shop there so it HAS to be good. I love to check out their demos…you can usually get a good dinner idea. One time they gave me the suggestion of serving their lobster bisque (awesome!), “thinned” with heavy cream, over a few lobster raviolis as an appetizer. They told me to cut a few chives on top and it looked so *FAHN-say*.

~ Joe’s American Bar & Grill – Conveniently located in Shoppers World, this has become my new favorite casual dining spot. Everything at Joe’s is made fresh. They have a great kids’ menu and a booklet for the kids to color and do puzzles in. The atmosphere is warm, casual, and not overly loud, even though there are lots of families with kids. For a night out without the kids I like the Melting Pot (ladies’ night) and the Oregon Club (date night).

~ Amazon.com – You can buy just about anything on Amazon.com these days, and their one-click service and free freight on $25 orders make it way too easy to overspend. You can even buy articles by yours truly for the low-low price of $5.95 each, with irresistable titles like “Dissecting the Life Safety Code.” I’m still waiting for my first royalty check.

~ eBay – Anything I can’t find on Amazon.com eventually shows up on eBay. Again, way too easy to blow the budget on out-of-print books and my discontinued china pattern. I know it’s only a matter of time before I buy something and the seller turns out to be Lana.

~ J. Jill – Really, the only place I shop for clothes. Well, when I used to shop for clothes anyway. At the end of each pregnancy I made an emergency run to J. Jill for some baggy clothes to wear postpartum. I’m still wearing them.

~ Alpha Dog K9 Training – Although Alpha-Dog has limited appeal (you have to own a dog), we couldn’t live without Christina and the rest of the trainers there. They have been so helpful with Zoe and Annie, and I highly recommend them for obedience training, fun stuff like Agility, Rally-O and Flyball, and specialized classes like NEADS (National Education for Assistance Dog Services) and TDI (Therapy Dogs International). Christina is even testing the use of a digestive enzyme to keep dogs from eating poopsicles. Woohooooooo!!! Annie recently graduated from the Puppy Kindergarten class and will be starting Beginner Obedience soon.

My New Months’ Resolutions for January worked out great!! I’ve been looking forward to February so I can add some new good habits.

~ Get one monkey off my back every day. This can be a form that needs to be filled out, a bill waiting to be paid, or an email that’s overdue for a response (or anything else that’s bugging me!).

~ Declutter for 15 minutes per day. I can do anything for 15 minutes. It may take me a whole year of 15-minute decluttering sessions but hopefully I’ll eventually see some progress.

~ Think about what I’m eating. I just bought a book called “Eat This, Not That!”. It’s extremely enlightening. By being aware of the fat/calorie/sodium content of what I’m eating and making small changes, I really think I can see some results.
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It has been years since I’ve
seen an owl in the wild, and it has only happened a couple of times in my life. I think the owls may be getting ready to take over the world because they seem to be coming out of hiding. Last week when I dropped Adlani off at school, the teachers were all pointing at the trees beyond the playground, where there were 2 big owls up in a tall tree. One of my coworkers who lives in the wilds of New Hampshire was attacked by an owl who was interested in his Bluetooth headset and its flashing light (at least he claims that’s where the scratches on his neck came from). And yesterday Ben saw a big owl in our neighbor’s tree. What’s the deal?

The other day, Aliya and I were talking about someone we met who was in school to be an architect. I asked if she knew what an architect was and she said, “Um…someone who works with you?” YES! Architects work WITH ME! Though I think they consider me their servant, judging from the last-minute demands and disparaging comments. I’ve been called the “anti-fairy godmother” and accused of “ruining the whole design.” Amazing, since all I do is pick out door hardware that meets functional, security, and code-related requirements, while balancing on the high wire between the aesthetic requirements of architects. Don’t get me wrong, some architects (well, at least one…Sherry) are nice and have ideas based in reality. It reminded me of a letter by Annie Choi that was printed in PIDGEN, A publication of the graduate students of the Princeton School of Architecture.

Here’s a link (Caution, there are some words you may not want to explain to your 6-year-old):

http://www.partiv.com/2007/07/19/dear-architects-i-am-sick-of-your-shit/

And in case the link ever gets broken, here is the text of Annie’s letter, since I doubt any of the kids will go back this far and see the swear words (I’m adding this on 7/18/09):

“Dear Architects, I am sick of your shit.

Once, a long time ago in the days of yore, I had a friend who was studying architecture to become, presumably, an architect.

This friend introduced me to other friends, who were also studying architecture. Then these friends had other friends who were architects – real architects doing real architecture like designing luxury condos that look a lot like glass dildos. And these real architects knew other real architects and now the only people I know are architects. And they all design glass dildos that I will never work or live in and serve only to obstruct my view of New Jersey.

Do not get me wrong, architects. I like you as a person. I think you are nice, smell good most of the time, and I like your glasses. You have crazy hair, and if you are lucky, most of it is on your head. But I do not care about architecture. It is true. This is what I do care about:
* burritos
* hedgehogs
* coffee

As you can see, architecture is not on the list. I believe that architecture falls somewhere between toenail fungus and invasive colonoscopy in the list of things that interest me.

Perhaps if you didn’t talk about it so much, I would be more interested. When you point to a glass cylinder and say proudly, hey my office designed that, I giggle and say it looks like a bong. You turn your head in disgust and shame. You think, obviously she does not understand. What does she know? She is just a writer. She is no architect. She respects vowels, not glass cocks. And then you say now I am designing a lifestyle center, and I ask what is that, and you say it is a place that offers goods and services and retail opportunities and I say you mean like a mall and you say no. It is a lifestyle center. I say it sounds like a mall. I am from the Valley, bitch. I know malls.

Architects, I will not lie, you confuse me. You work sixty, eighty hours a week and yet you are always poor. Why aren’t you buying me a drink? Where is your bounty of riches? Maybe you spent it on merlot. Maybe you spent it on hookers and blow. I cannot be sure. It is a mystery. I will leave that to the scientists to figure out.

Architects love to discuss how much sleep they have gotten. One will say how he was at the studio until five in the morning, only to return again two hours later. Then another will say, oh that is nothing. I haven’t slept in a week. And then another will say, guess what, I have never slept ever. My dear architects, the measure of how hard you’ve worked and how much you’ve accomplished is not related to the number of hours you have not slept. Have you heard of Rem Koolhaas? He is a famous architect. I know this because you tell me he is a famous architect. I hear that Rem Koolhaas is always sleeping. He is, I presume, sleeping right now. And I hear he gets shit done. And I also hear that in a stunning move, he is making a building that looks not like a glass cock, but like a concrete vagina. When you sleep more, you get vagina. You can all take a lesson from Rem Koolhaas.

Life is hard for me, please understand. Architects are an important part of my existence. They call me at eleven at night and say they just got off work, am I hungry? Listen, it is practically midnight. I ate hours ago. So long ago that, in fact, I am hungry again. So yes, I will go. Then I will go and there will be other architects talking about AutoCAD shortcuts and something about electric panels and can you believe that is all I did today, what a drag. I look around the table at the poor, tired, and hungry, and think to myself, I have but only one bullet left in the gun. Who will I choose?

I have a friend who is a doctor. He gives me drugs. I enjoy them. I have a friend who is a lawyer. He helped me sue my landlord. My architect friends have given me nothing. No drugs, no medical advice, and they don’t know how to spell subpoena. One architect friend figured out that my apartment was one hundred and eighty seven square feet. That was nice. Thanks for that.

I suppose one could ask what someone like me brings to architects like yourselves. I bring cheer. I yell at architects when they start talking about architecture. I force them to discuss far more interesting topics, like turkey eggs. Why do we eat chicken eggs, but not turkey eggs? They are bigger. And people really like turkey. See? I am not afraid to ask the tough questions.

So, dear architects, I will stick around, for only a little while. I hope that one day some of you will become doctors and lawyers or will figure out my taxes. And we will laugh at the days when you spent the entire evening talking about some European you’ve never met who designed a building you will never see because you are too busy working on something that will never get built. But even if that day doesn’t arrive, give me a call anyway, I am free.

Yours truly,
Annie Choi”