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Telemarkers

Today we headed to REI’s quarterly Garage Sale event, eager as always to indulge our inner consumer while upholding our outer austerity. Sure, we may walk out of REI with our arms overladen with outdoor gear, but everything had been previously purchased by other spendthrift shoppers and found inadequate enough to return to REI, who then tagged each item with a drastically reduced price and an explanation for the return:

On a Marmot Parka: “Customer says the neck is too tight.”

On a pair of chunky Dansko Mary Janes: “Customer says the heels feel squishy.”

On a DVD on how to deter bear attacks: “DVD was loose in the case and has scratches. And, customer was attacked by a bear anyway.”

Thanks to our willing to show up an hour early and wait in line with other Garage Sale enthusiasts — some of whom drive a reverse pilgrimage from the mountains of New Hampshire and Maine to Boston metro– we’ve done pretty well at the previous two REI Garage Sales. Our inventory of skis now includes backcountry skis, alpine skis, and cross-country skis, mostly retired rental gear at drastically reduced prices. As we waited in line this morning, we discussed other needs and wants. The gear that will be available at a REI Garage sale is a mystery beforehand, but Mr. P longed to buy a new hiking pack, and I fancied some cooking gear for camping. We agreed that the last thing we needed were more skis.

But wouldn’t you know? REI’s doors open at 10am and the first thing we see when we rush into the store are telemark skis — the one type of ski that we don’t have. Before we knew it, we were grabbing skis and pulling on telemark boots amid a frenzy of other excited would-be telemarkers.

We each ended up with K2 Super Stinx telemark skis and boots for $80, a steal. Now, to learn how to telemark ski…

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By Meredith – April 4, 2009

Beverage Review: Vitaminwater10

Hydration for People Who Don’t Like the Taste of Water

Just yesterday I read in the New York Times that the beverage company Glaceau, a division of Coca-cola, was unleashing a 10-calorie version of their popular Vitaminwater via a $50 million multimedia marketing campaign. Glaceau is confident that Vitaminwater10 will become the nutrient-enhanced low-calorie hydration of choice for active consumers because it features an all-natural blend of sweeteners from the stevia plant. “When we cracked the code on the sweetener late last year,” said the Chief of Marketing, “we felt we had to bring this out in a big way.”

Hence, this morning as I was exiting Boston South Station, a young woman donned in Vitaminwater garb handed me a free bottle of Vitaminwater10. I could have snuck the bottle into my bag and grabbed one more from another young woman stationed nearby, but the one and only time I ever drank Vitaminwater I was repulsed by its sweet chemical taste, like flat soda doused with generic juice concentrate.

As if this free sample wasn’t enough of a marketing blitz, as I walked to the office I saw a kiosk advertisement for Vitaminwater10 that proclaimed it was “healthier than googling your Ex.” Woah, that’s pretty damn healthy… I guess? Now I just can’t wait to drink Vitaminwater10, because the people who make it are cognizant of all my little batshit quirks. 

The flavor of my free sample is called “essential orange-orange.” According to the essential orange-orange white paper, “Vitaminwater10 is the perfect combination. It’s only 10 calories per serving, naturally sweetened, and tastes amazing.” Which confirms my suspicion that this drink is aimed at People Who Don’t Like the Taste of Water. I’ve never understood these people, because water doesn’t really have a taste. It’s water. But somehow this need for something sweet that delivers no actual energy has created an entire category of enhanced water. Maybe that’s why Vitaminwater10 strikes me as such a dystopian name for a beverage.

I forgot about my free bottle of Vitaminwater10 essential orange-orange until 2pm. Then I cracked open the plastic bottle and took a gulp. The sweetness is not convincing. Neither is the orange. And still there’s an aftertaste that reminds me of chewable kids vitamins. After a few more swallows, I put the bottle aside until a co-worker saw it and gave me a knowing look, like I knew you were one of those people who don’t like the taste of water. So I emptied it in the sink and tossed the bottle in the recycling bin. If a perfect beverage is low calorie hydration with a sweet taste, no artificial sweeteners, and 100% RDA Vitamin C, well, I’ll stick to water-water.

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By Meredith – April 2, 2009

Penny Candy

The price of candy bars at the Metro convenience store near my work went from .79 cents to $1.09 sometime in the past two weeeks. Yes, the Metro imposed its own 40% fat tax on the candy counter to help customers lose that extra weight in their wallets. 

At first I thought that the clerk rung in a jumbo-sized candy bar instead of a regular-sized candy bar. An understandable mistake, since the clerk appeared to be an immigrant from Southeast Asia, and in his native country a pack of regular-sized Almond M&Ms must look like an obscene amount of candy. 

“Is that right?” I asked, gesturing to the price on the cash register’s digital display.

“Yes, one dollar nine.” He glanced at me rather fiercely. I sensed that this man had attained a more distinguished profession in his native country than convenience store clerk, like a doctor, lawyer, or member of a military junta.

I fished a dime out of my wallet and dropped it in his hand, slapped a dollar bill on the counter, then grabbed my candy and fled before he handed me the penny, an exchange that would lower both our dignities. 

$1.09 for roughly 15 mass-produced chocolate-coated almonds! Mercy. I can remember when a candy bar cost 50 cents. Gee, that must have been way back in 2006.

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By Meredith – April 1, 2009

Smokin’

I don’t deny that there are moments when I’d kill for a cigarette. Well, maybe not kill a person or a cat, but certainly a mouse or even a squirrel.

The other night we watched the classic film To Have and Have Not with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Pure Hollywood magic: Lauren Bacall made smoking look like the most glamorous, seductive, relaxing, and natural thing that a woman could do. How many premature deaths were indirectly caused by Lauren Bacall lighting a cigarette off of a match, muttering something in her husky voice, and blowing out a 2-foot long plume of smoke?

If I found out that the world was ending tomorrow, I’d hole up with Mr. P in the woods with 2 bottles of wine and a carton of American Spirits. If I were selecting a last meal before my state-sponsored execution, I’d ask for a baguette, a slab of Camembert, a stack of pancakes with strawberries and maple syrup, a Kit Kat, a bottle of champagne, and a pack of cigarettes (although the ultimate perversity in America’s system of capital punishment is that an inmate’s last request for alcohol or cigarettes will usually be denied.)

But my nicotine urges and smoking fantasies are short-lived. I’ll be walking around downtown Boston on a sunny early-Spring day, and I’ll see a dozen examples of tobacco’s vileness: A sallow-skinned man who looks like Skeletor mechanically sucking down his dose, a wheezing businessman with a wobbly butt pacing around a building entrance, a plump frizzy-haired woman with a cigarette in one hand, a Dunkin Donuts cup in the other hand, and a pig-in-slop look on her jowly wrinkling face.

Quick, quick, cue up Lauren Bacall!

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By Meredith – March 31, 2009

Humdinger

Now that the media has proclaimed the era of vulgar excess is over, I feel a little less goody-goody about shaking my head and chuckling over some of the crazy things that we’ve witnesses in the past decade. CEOs receiving annual salaries of $54 million. Secretaries carrying $500 Coach purses. 10-year olds strutting around in $200 Ugg boots. Construction workers getting weekly hand facials. Families with bad credit and/or annual incomes of $45K getting $300,000 mortgages. Absurd.

But, perhaps nothing epitomized unbridled American exuberance like the Hummer.

Originally designed in the 1980s for the military to transport personnel and light cargo, the Hummer became repurposed for a variety of uses, such as carrying missiles, moving howitzers, launching grenades, providing armored security on the front lines, and transporting American civilians through the tumultous streets of their suburban and urban environs. “It’s time to take Janie to her ballet class. I’ll start the Hummer.”

The Hummer became a status symbol among the elite class and the wanna-bes. There are a multitude of theories as to which personality disorder would sway a person to sink $60k into this most un-civic of all road vehicles: Schizoid satisfaction of seeing all other cars shirk from the Hummer’s path… Paranoid fears of domestic terrorism… Anxious doubts about one’s adequacy as a human being… Sadistic thoughts of flattening another car in the event of an accident… Sociopathic pride in the Hummer’s dismal fuel economy (comparable to a muscle car with a leaky fuel tank) which asserts the owner’s largess and dominance over nature.

But then oil prices went up, the Dow Jones went down, and the novelty of commandeering a tank in a supermarket parking lot wore thin. General Motors, who acquired the right to market and distribute the Hummer brand in 1998 under recently-fired CEO Rick Wagoner’s stunningly inept leadership that has lead to more than $73 billion in losses, promised the Federal Government that it would get rid of the Hummer brand, either by letting Hummer die or by selling the brand. GM is expected to announce the Hummer’s fate tomorrow.

Speaking of Hummers, the New York Times reported today that the Hummer is enjoying popularity in Iraq, news that didn’t surprise me until I learned it’s not just because of the perceived protection from roadside bombs. Apparently, in Iraq, manliness is measured by the size of a man’s car. I guess some things are universal like that.

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By Meredith – March 30, 2009

Obsequy

I didn’t start writing this post with the intention of blogging my Grandmother’s funeral. I was not sitting in the funeral home, mentally spinning the proceedings into blog fodder. And I’m fully aware of how tacky it may seem to journalize a funeral alongside a movie review of The Watchmen. But… why is that? Is it for the same reason that nobody whips out their digital camera during the ceremony and takes pictures of the deceased… because to infuse the situation with new media is inappropriate? Well, it’s not like I was live-blogging, or sending out tweets via Twitter, or trying to think of a tactful Facebook status. It’s just that today, when I sat down to write, this is what came out…

We left Boston at 3:30am on Friday morning, bound for Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The mood in the car was groggy but determined to make it to the funeral starting at 9:30am. Mr. P drove while I dozed and stared out the window at the dark highway. Across the median, hundreds of semi-trailer trucks rambled towards Boston in a steady stream of glaring headlights and side markers. Daylight broke just as we approached the Tappan Zee Bridge, and though the road thickened with commuters, we never broke our 70 mph pace. We stopped for a break just after crossing the PA border and got coffee and Tastykakes from a vending machine, which we ate on a bench in our funereal attire. By 10am, we were in Lancaster, cruising around cozy streets of row homes.

We located the funeral home and arrived at the viewing. The room was crowded with family, friends, old neighbors, members of her church. There were hugs and sad smiles. The open casket beckoned at the front of the room, but the need to see Grandma one last time could not completely overcome my squeamishness about dead bodies. Finally my mother lead me over to the coffin, and I peered at Grandma. Her wrinkles were gone and her face looked serene and content. It was both reassuring and terrifying.

Some things that one does not overhear at the funeral of a 98-year old woman: “She was so young.” “She had so much life.” “It was too soon.” “What was the cause of death?”

The ceremony started with the pastor declaring that it would not be a somber service, but rather a celebration of Anna Kraft’s life. He spoke of her family, her husband, her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, and her great-great grandchild, a one-month old baby girl who I happened to be sitting behind and whose gentle cooing calmed me immensely.

My mother and uncle offered eulogies. As they spoke lovingly of their mother, it dawned on me that we were saying goodbye to the family’s matriarch. She had been a constant presence in our lives and had devoted her life to us, her family. The memories that we all had of her were of everyday happenings in the domestic sphere — a great pie, a stack of presents under the Christmas tree, a warm hug. But the sum of these trivial events, well, that’s a Grandma.

After the burial service, there was a luncheon in the reception room of a nearby hotel. The Pennsylvania Dutch menu gave me pause: It was cold cuts with kaiser rolls and horseradish, potato salad, cole slaw, and potato chips, a selection that revived memories of informal Christmas dinners at Grandma Kraft’s house. My appetite was dampened with grief, but I ate. I ate a sandwich and then two pieces of cake, because that’s what Grandma would have wanted.

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By Meredith – March 29, 2009

The Ultimate Deadline

Learning of the death of a loved one can make once-weighty matters seem suddenly frivolous. That documentation deadline I was stressing about last week? Pooh. That’s not a deadline. Death is a deadline.

Death also makes the already-frivolous seem fucking ridiculous. I took a small walk at lunch today, to clear my mind, and I passed a well-dressed young woman who squealed into her cell phone “I was like, so, like, whatever, so, like, see you!” What? How can you waste the few precious breaths given to you by your creator on jargon that’s like, so, like insipid?

But death does not spur creativity. As I prepare for a last-minute trip to PA to attend my Grandma’s funeral, my mind isn’t exactly in the mood to write in the style that I typically adopt for this website. It’s too busy pondering stuff. Death stuff. Life stuff. Stuff involving black shoes and whether they are appropriately somber. Sad stuff. And happy stuff and memories of Grandma.

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By Meredith – March 27, 2009

Mourning

Last night, a 98-year old woman passed away in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Her name was Anna Kraft and she lived in Lancaster County her whole long life. She trained as a teacher and taught for one year before stopping to have children — 7 in all, 4 girls and 3 boys. Her husband was a high school vice principal and avid gardner who was active in his community, and who passed away in the 1980s. She had never learned to drive. She was beloved by her family, and enjoyed good health well into her 90s.

She was my Grandma Kraft, my maternal grandmother, my last living blood link to that generation. And she was the embodiment of grandmotherhood. She was selfless, caring, never angry, gently doting, and, in my childhood, usually baking pies.

Here are some memories of my Grandma Kraft, in rough chronological order: I remember going to her house in Lancaster, the house where my mother and her 6 siblings grew up, and playing Monopoly on the dining room table as Grandma bustled around the kitchen, perpetually in motion. I remember staying at her house once when my parents went away and taking the bus with her to shop at the Lancaster Central Market. I remember doing cartwheels for her in a park at a family reunion. I remember her lemon meringue pie and her deviled eggs. I remember her hugging people at her husband’s funeral, her eyes red and wet. I remember her every Christmas, doggedly handing out envelopes of cash to protesting children and grandchildren.

I remember visiting her when she moved into her retirement home and bringing her flowers, and her saying “Why’d you go and do that?” (this seemed to be a standard response whenever someone splurged on her). I remember sitting next to her at a party in the function room of a seafood restaurant, and her pointing past the fish and potatoes to the parsley garnish and saying “That’s the healthiest thing on this plate.” I remember talking to her soon after my wedding last year, which she was unable to attend, and her saying “You’ll have to get used to your new name now” (a seemingly simple and practical statement with layers of wisdom underneath it).

Just this morning, before I learned that my Grandma had passed, I read about the plane crash in Montana that killed seven children and their parents. I was looking at a picture of some of the kids, all smiling and cute, and the tragedy of their deaths nearly moved me to tears. They were so young, and it was so sudden.

For a 98-year woman with declining health to gently pass away should be no cause for agonized grief. But there is some grief, there are a few tears, there is regret that I was unable to visit her as much as I should have. I comfort myself by remembering that death is a part of life, and we were blessed to have her with us as long as we did.

“We shall find peace. We shall hear angels,
we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”
-Anton Chekhov

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By Meredith – March 24, 2009

Movie Review: The Watchmen

The Watchmen is the best graphic novel I’ve ever read. Then again it’s the only one I’ve ever read. About 8 years ago I dated a fanboy with an array of obsessions, including comics, Star Wars, Star Trek, Simpsons, anime, indie music, horror movies, Tolkien, and anything else that has associated action figures or a trace amount of kitsch irony. Eager to indoctrinate me into the world of comics, ex-boyfriend lent me The Watchmen as an introduction to the genre. And I loved it. It was nothing like how I imagined comic books to be. It was sophisticated and eloquent, imaginative and ambitious, suspenseful and engrossing, a science fiction masterpiece. My mind was blown and I was prepared to become a comic book geek who would accompany ex-boyfriend to comic conferences and be a smokin’ hot trophy on his scrawny arm. “Give me more!” I demanded to ex-boyfriend, who fed me about 3 or 4 other graphic novels that were totally not on the same level as The Watchmen. I lost interest in comics and eventually in ex-boyfriend, and The Watchmen sticks in my mind as the only positive impact ex-boyfriend made on my life.

The Watchmen seemed like an unfilmable novel, like Ender’s Game or Finnegan’s Wake. But despite the protests of The Watchmen‘s creator and the fears of many fans, Hollywood was determined to make it into a blockbuster. And The Watchmen is not a bad movie at all, really. The Watchmen sags in some places and nowhere near approaches the genius of the graphic novel, but it’s visual appeal is fully capable of entrancing the viewer for the full 2 hours and 40 minutes.

When any book is made into a movie, fans of the book inevitably moan about the details that are lost — the writer’s style, voice, use of language, pacing, sometimes entire characters and scenes. One would think that a graphic novel would suffer minimal distortion, especially when it adheres to the story line as strictly as The Watchmen does. But the minute details that the graphic novel choose to present in each frame — facial expressions, body positions, blood splatters — are lost when the pictures begin to move. In fact, the most striking scene of the movie is the opening credits, a sequence of frozen images set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changing.”

People who never read The Watchmen will be able to keep up if they pay strict attention and manage to filter out all the little gorgeous details — what may have been one fleeting frame in the graphic novel becomes a distracting flashback in the movie. Still, I can’t imagine liking The Watchmen half as much as I did if I never read the graphic novel, because most of the fun was seeing the characters — Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, the Comedian — come alive on the big screen. Overall, a flawed achievement.

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By Meredith – March 23, 2009

XC Skiing and the Pogues

Yesterday was a busy day. In the morning we went XC skiing, and in the evening we went to the Pogues show. These 2 activities are discordant, almost contradictory, and I cannot muster one single unifying theme except the incongruousness.

XC Skiing

New Hampshire’s thick snow cover is steadily disintegrating as spring presses its warm, wet nose against the Northeast, so we headed to Waterville Valley to enjoy one last hurrah on our XC skis. We were eager to test the new ski gear that we acquired recently at clearance sales before we have to pack it all away in storage for the next 8 months.

My new XC skis are skating skis. Skating is a XC technique that resembles ice skating on the snow.  Skating requires exceptional balance, stamina, and a willingness to go fast.

Here it is: the last XC ski picture for 8 months, I promise (barring any April snowstorms)…

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Pogues

I fell in love with the Pogues in college. The Pogues were one of the few musical groups that my ‘Irish-American pride’ friends and I agreed on. They didn’t understand why punks liked this band featuring an accordion, tin whistle, and banjo, while I didn’t understand how anyone but a punk could like a band featuring Shane MacGowan.

So I wasn’t surprised that the crowd at the Pogues show was an eclectic mix of ratty punks and spiffy celtic folk music fans. Since I’m too far removed from my punk days to dredge up any credible punk clothing, I dressed more like the latter, wearing a collared white shirt under a black jumper and knee-high black boots. We arrived early at the House of Blues in Boston, still breathless from skiing, because I was determined to get a good place in front the stage. And we did — slightly right of center, 3-people deep behind the security barrier. We were close enough to be able to inhale Shane MacGowan’s secondhand smoke and (theoretically) count his teeth as he took swigs from a whiskey bottle.

The Pogues got on stage shortly after 9pm and started off with “Streams of Whiskey.” I was one of the crazy people who yelled every lyric, danced furiously, and cheered every time they announced the next song because they played all my favorites — “White City,” “Thousands are Sailing,” “Turkish Song of the Damned, “Dirty Old Town.” Halfway through “The Body of an American,” a guy interrupted my singalong cries of “I’m a freeborn man in the USA!” to attempt to hit on me — as my husband stood right next time me, completely unaware and engrossed in the show. He purported to be Irish and called himself a “son of Ireland.” I ignored him. Later, during “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” a mosh pit started next to me, and I was so infused with energy that I was briefly absorbed into it, joyful and free, holding my own against these raucous young men. The show ended after 11pm, just as my legs muscles were on the verge of turning to jelly.

Here are some pictures from Mr. P’s cell phone, including Shane with his whiskey bottle.

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By Meredith – March 22, 2009