Book club at my new place!

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Well, my camera's on the fritz, so I drove everyone crazy at book club with my Flip camcorder instead. I promised them all no videos, just still shots saved from the videos, and I am holding true to my word: click here for the whole set.

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I do want to apologize to the book club gals for being so obsessed with that whole thing. Many's the shot I could have saved that showed wrinkled brows of slight irritation as I came looming yet again with my camcorder! Sorry about that, you guys. It was my first time hosting book club and I frankly admit that I geeked out. I couldn't help it! It was just so dang exciting.

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It was great fun and I hope to have more (camera-free) gatherings at my groovy new pad as time goes on. It's great to have a place where I can actually have eight people come over and give them plenty of room to sit!

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Here's to book club! It was a great one.

Only in Denmark!

I need to share this e-mail from my mother. It's too much fun not to share!

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This evening we went back to the marketplace at Gammeltorv for our evening meal. We were sitting comfortably, enjoying our entrecote steaks, when Dad decided he should find a toilet. He headed down Strøget toward the big public toilets there. Well, time passed...and time passed...and time passed. I began to wonder if he had become ill or something, but he suddenly showed up, bursting with something to tell me. It turned out to be something that could only happen to John Venning. This is his story:

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He went down the steps to the men's toilet, only to find two young women there, one of them naked except for bikini panties. She was being painted by the other one.

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"Excuse me, but this is the men's toilet."

"Yes, that's all right."

"But someone could call the police about you."

"The police already know."

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So of course Dad got into conversation with them, while the body-painting continued, and discovered that this was part of a big campaign. You see, the almost-naked girl was standing with her back to the wall. One side of her body was being painted to match the cement blocks of the wall there, while the other side was being painted sort of off-white with narrow maroon stripes to match the wall there. The idea was to make her almost invisible, just a part of the wall. The campaign? To make people aware of the need to wash their hands after going to the toilet, as part of the campaign warning people about H1N1 (swine flu). If someone started to leave without washing his hands, part of the wall would leap at him, yelling at him to wash his hands. Is that a novel idea, or what?

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After we finished our steaks, we went back there, and Dad led me down the steps to the men's toilet. By that time a young man was sitting at the entrance where clients are to drop their 2 kroner, and Dad told him, "My wife has to see this." He grinned understandingly. I was startled to see how well the young woman did blend into the wall, even though I knew she would be there. Dad, the young man, and I fell into a brief, amusing conversation. The girl held her pose and her silence. Of course Dad stepped toward her and offered to touch up a couple of places where he said the paint brush had missed. Playing along, I grabbed his arm and exclaimed, "You just stay away from her!" The young man was laughing, but he also told us in a low voice that there's a camera taking everything that happens during this campaign. So when someone goes over that footage, Dad and I will be stars.

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Actually, I can imagine how it might go. As one enters the main room, the girl is on the left, hardly noticeable. One could easily head quickly for the toilets straight ahead and not look to the left at all. Then, coming out of the toilet, he might be zipping up his pants, not looking one way or the other. If he walked right past the sinks without using them, that's when the wall would leap at him. I just hope there aren't any deaths from heart attacks. As Penny would say about Dad's propensity for odd experiences, "Why does life keep happening to him?!"

Four good things

Grilling chicken in the yard at our new place on our anniversary:
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A cat under a coffee table:
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New slipcovers and a big old earth-tonesy 1970s painting:
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And filmy new curtains to go with the groovy hanging spider plant:
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Lollipop!

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I have recently been obsessed with PBS. You know those concerts they've been showing for about five years now? It's been the glam Seventies, the psychedelic Sixties, or the mod Sixties - so many options with the amazing span of that decade... but finally they've dived into the Fifties with a big concert of mainstream Fifties groups. And for some reason I have become downright obsessed with this one. For all I know, it's from years ago, but I am only now discovering it, at any rate.

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If I had to pick a favorite musical era it would be ten or fifteen years later or ten years earlier: let's face it, there's a Fifties formula here. All the "doo-wop-she-waddy-waddies" and the "sh-boom-sh-booms" are pretty repetitive after a while.

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But to see these people today is what is so exciting.

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See, that's the irony. This gang is older than the others PBS has trucked out. But they seem as young as they ever were. Here's why - and remember, this comes to you from a hippie T-shirt-and-jeans girl, so don't think I'm selling you some kind of conservative line, here. The thing is, these singers come out in well-turned dresses and suits, just as they did when they were brand new faces on the scene. The Four Preps are all coordinated and buttoned. The McGuire Sisters are shimmery and crisp. The years melt away.

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Conversely, the musicians of the Sixties and Seventies went to great lengths to break free of that dress code, and thank God for that, say I! But when those guys come out, silver-haired but in long hair and caps and ratty denim, they look - well, old. They're still wearing the costume of the young rebel, as they should, and as they did! They have no choice. It's who they are. I get that. I wouldn't want it any other way.

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But then you see the Four Aces and they're as they always were, somehow. They haven't aged. At all. Not really.

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My favorite part: Lynn Evans, the lead singer from the Chordettes. I was in the kitchen when I heard her announced, and then that saucy little song came on: "Lollipop! Lollipop! Oh! lolli-lolli-lolli-lollipop! Lollipop! Oh!" To me, that song screams teenager. Some fresh little Lolita breezing by the corner with a lollipop - knowing exactly her effect on, say, the Four Lads, who happen to be standing there "standin' on the corner, watchin' all the girls go by." That's the power of very early rock and roll. You can hear the sex appeal loud and clear, and it stays - you know - contained. But no less urgent.

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And when I came into the living room, there was Lynn Evans today, in a long, trim dress, swaying and singing. She was spirited and rockin' and she sounded and looked like - well, like herself, and like the Fifties, and like an older woman, and, equally, like that saucy teenager on the corner. Hinting, smiling. "He loves to kiss me till I can't see straight." Wow!

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Fifties pop.

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*Pop!*

My sister has a green thumb!

Check out that crazy zucchini!

Here I am

In the time since I last posted, I plunged into the busiest part of the big integration project at work and completely disappeared from the rest of my life. And I moved to the new place. It's been crazy. I feel as though the world is whooshing around me - Elvis Fest and all manner of other events have come and gone in Riverside Park... friends have gone on exotic trips to Argentina... there have been flurries of excitement in the news, including quite the variety of celebrity deaths...! And I've been missing the whole thing. I've even broken lunch dates with good friends and that makes me mad.
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But there's a faint light dawning on the horizon now. I had a super-lazy Sunday and I am feeling a thousand times better for it. Time to check in on Facebook, catch up on some e-mail, and see what the world is up to.
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Meanwhile, there's nothing to blog about, as you might imagine, since I haven't done anything in the last three weeks except work. Oh, except I got a groovy haircut. It was getting pretty shaggy. The homeless look is not very becoming.