Random pix taken one morning last week

Blockbust

ME (passing movie theater): Movies out now: Bad Teacher, and Horrible Bosses.
HUBBY: What does that say about society?

Huh, uh...

I logged into this when I meant to log into something else.

So...hi everybody!

I hope you are having a good summer. Don't let it pass you by!

Another good song from a commercial

Are you ready, get set... The original song is better than in the NY Lottery commercial.

Although it reminds me of this other song that was in a car commercial last year.

Good fer nothin'

Babies R us has a coupon for 20 percent on any regularly priced baby item. Underneath it says:

Excludes ALL toys, baby food, diapers, formula, wipes, Ameda Baby Brezza, Baby Jogger, BOB, Britax, Bugaboo, Cybex, ERGObaby, Mamas and Papas, Motherhood Maternity, Nap Nanny, Pediped, Peg Perego, Phil and Teds, Robeez, Tommee Tippee, under Armour, electronic learning toys, netbooks, tablets, video game hardware, video games, Apple products, FAO, RobotGalaxy, gift cards, photo studios, phone orders, special orders, assembly fee, delivery fee, and shipping and handling.

Did they forget anything??

Summer scenes

A good day to play hooky

Alleyway, as seen from window of our building

Italian cookies from Giorgio's

True delight

Home from work, resting, feet up on the couch, and my infant son is snoozing comfortably in his playpen a few feet away.

Writing stuff

I love this. Just love it. It's from Glimmer Train, a lit mag. The guy writes, "This is a picture of me trying to write while caring for my one-year-old son, Colton. He’s made my process more erratic and uncomfortable, but he’s so damn cute...."

I also like his writerly wooden desk and accountant's lamp. But I could never write long-term on a laptop, and I don't know why people do it voluntarily. I'd get too hunched.

Also, new review of my book is up on Amazon. Yay! It's nice that people are still finding it, even years after it came out. She read it on Kindle.

Writergate

I often send risque Twitter pics of myself to all 9,564 of my secret lovers. I hide my identifying features so they can't tell who I am. But it recently came out that it's me. I'm not sure how anyone could tell! I hid everything important! How did they know?

?

The High Line

Ten new blocks of the high line in NYC will open Wednesday, extending it to 30th Street! It's an old railroad line that they've converted into a long walking trail/park.

We saw some pretty sights when we went, the perfect juxtaposition of meadow growth and urban industrial decay. We'll have to go back to see more, with baby this time.

Good morning!

Found the photo that went with my Wildwood memory, although it doesn't appear to be raining at that moment.

Nature in the city





Saw this a few blocks from my house yesterday.

I can't tell which of these it is, but it's sure pretty.

Update

From: George Karagias info@criterionchocolates.com
To: lizzner lizzner@aol.com
Sent: Fri, May 6, 2011 1:39 pm
Subject: Re: coconut

Yes, We made vanilla,chocolate, and strawberry cakes. They were uncoded ( no chocolate on them) and we no longer make them.

----- Original Message -----
From: lizzner@aol.com
To: info@criterionchocolates.com
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2011 1:17 PM
Subject: coconut
Hey, when you guys were in Asbury Park, did you used to make vanilla and strawberry coconut patties? I used to love getting those at the candy shops on the boardwalk. I don't remember if they were yours or someone else's. No one makes them anymore!

I want candy

A while ago, I wrote here about not being able to find my favorite vanilla fudge candies. Eventually I did.

Well, I have a new challenge. When I was a kid, the candy shops on the boardwalk at Asbury Park (Criterion Candies, maybe Fanny Farmer) used to have round coconut patties - both vanilla and strawberry.

I can't find them anywhere now, except maybe chocolate covered. I want to find them without chocolate. They're big flat patties, white or pink.

You are welcome to try to look on the internet, but you shan't find any either, I bet.

Last r0und of memories

Janelle wrote in with a chaper of a book she wrote a while ago. And another reader, Mickey, submitted this:

"I was ten years old in 1965 and we were on vacation at my favorite place in New Hampshire near where my grandfather had built a small diner. We would eat there a couple of times during the vacation.
"I remember that he served the greatest tasting ice cream ever made. I always would order a big serving of Coffee flavored ice cream. I have never been able to find any that comes close to that brand.
"Anyway this story is not about my love for that ice cream, however it is about love. That was the year that I met a girl from Maryland, Clarkesville to be exact. That was the summer when I fell madly in puppy love with a girl. To this day I can remember her house number.
"I didn’t know anything about the anatomy of girls back then, but there was something about her that made my head spin. I have many found memories about those summers spent in Merrimack County.
"Some wonderful memories were born on those vacations. My happiest days were spent with my brother and father fishing on Chase Pond. "

Blogfan Sam writes to share his childhood memory:

"I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. We lived in a huge house and rented out part of it on occasion, but it was empty at the moment. There was a phone on the wall, not yet in service. I remember entertaining my sister making "phone calls" to a make believe witch, and my sister laughing her head off. She didn't laugh a lot (still doesn't) but for some reason she was really laughing that time."

Thanks! I remember doing stuff like that with my brother too. In fact, that stirred more memories of my own.

I had a photo to go with my entry about Wildwood, and I was going to find it and put it up here today, but I can't seem to find the photo album now that has it. It's my mom and brother eating the pastries on that patio. That album must be in one of the moving boxes still. I will have to post it when I find it.

Any other readers who want to share some random childhood memories for me to post, e-mail 'em to me at lizzner@aol.com.

Random childhood memory

Some of our happy childhood memories are of big events, but sometimes it's something small and random that occupies a warm spot in our mind.

One of my random good memories is this:

My mom, brother and I are on vacation in Wildwood, N.J. with its boardwalk and fine sand and long strip of old hotels. One morning, we wake up to a steady, melodious rainstorm. It's the kind of rain that is strong but not pounding, and it provides a musical lull. Even though the beach is meant to be enjoyed in sunny weather, there's something calming about watching the waves roll under a stormy sky, and I don't mind the break from hot weather at all.

We head a few blocks to a pastry shop and sit at one of the outdoor tables under an overhang. There's a white railing around the patio, and as I eat my sticky bun, I watch the rain hit the railing and splash in different directions. Beyond that I see the little shorehomes of the town. Political stickers are plastered all over the poles, and a resident is dropping something into a mailbox.

It's just a calm morning scene I remember. Why has it always stood out? I have no idea. I don't remember anything else about that trip, just eating pastries in the morning in the rain and observing the town.

I bet you have a few kind of random memories like that, slices of life that are nothing fancy, but just make you happy when you recall them. What are yours? Tell me!

Mailbag

James from college writes:

Seriously, the best way I have found to bring our children up right is A) Be an example for them B) Role play, use examples from real life...how would YOU handle that? What would YOU do if... C) Give them plenty of opportunities to "do good." (or bad). Give your son either a lot of positive feedback if he does well or make it a teachable moment if he falls short. We are all works in progress.I am so grateful that you share your wonderful, joyous life with all of us via the Internet. Jim

I didn't bring my son to work today, even though it was take your child to work day. I didn't think I'd get much done, what with all the crying and pooping. And that's just from me - I'm sure my son would have done some of that, too!

How do you raise your children to be nice people?

There are several blog entries I've been wanting to write for a while. At some point I'm going to get to the one about turning 40, even though I may really be 50 by then. But at least I can trick people into thinking I'm younger.

Anyway, one quicker entry I wanted to write is this...

Everyone tells us our son is cute, and he is. But when he gets to the age when his personality starts to really develop, how do we teach him to be a nice person?

There's a line between being firm when teaching your kids to do a certain thing, and being so firm that they rebel and do the opposite. I guess most parents figure it out as they go, and reassess over and over again. There are some kids who aren't very nice when they're younger but gradually figure it out. We've all met them.

Things like rewarding good behavior and being strict about bad behavior are important, but more important is showing why, so they understand your reasoning.

How do you teach your kids right from wrong, particularly in how they treat other people? Stefanie Klein had an interesting blog entry about this a while back that I wanted to link to, so here it is.

Sports talk

HUBBY (watching Mets game): They're winning 4-0!

ME: Are they playing the worst team in baseball?

HUBBY: They ARE the worst team in baseball.

Baby's first seder

Street shots

Nice little ditty

Is it just me, or are there some interesting songs featured in commercials these days? I guess because of the internet, you can find out what song is being used a lot more than you used to.

Right now there's a Tide/"Future friendly" goods commercial that even shows the "Shazam" logo on screen, so you can put your iphone up to find out what the song is. I simply put Tide/Future friendly song into Google and found it.

And here's another song I liked from a commercial last year.

Ah, spring.

(The second one is the original. I played around with it on my computer to get the first one; not sure which I like better.)

Nice new review

I saw that someone visited my website today from Jamaica. Does that mean they're on vacation enjoying my book by the warm beaches? It's a nice thought.

Anyway, I saw there's a great new review on a site called Bookshelf Banter. Excerpt:

She is the most over-thinking over-thinker I’ve ever heard of, and coming from someone like myself, who overanalyzes Every. Single. Thing, that’s saying a lot! It was so much fun to empathize with another over analyzer and see how her brain flits so quickly from one line of thinking to the next. For example, in one scene Carrie starts wondering if polkas are Polish so she looks it up in the dictionary, next thing you know she goes off on some tangent that leads her to wonder about gypsy moths.

Back to the beach

Cape May shots from when we were there in 2009.

Saw this last time I was in NYC.

they should make cherry m&m's.

oh, the internet sez they did already. for a limited time.

A lovely review of my book

Thanks, Random Ramblings blog!!

Eggsellent

Eggs Edessa, Americana Diner, East Windsor, NJ.

An excellent breakfast to start what was a great day.

Oh, oh, domino

A photo of one of my favorite pastimes as an adolescent. I set this up on our dining room floor in Freehold.

The show "That's Incredible!" made these domino setups popular. Note: That's also the show that made the phrase "Don't try this at home" popular. But I tried this at home. It didn't involve blowing anything up. Actually, there was one holiday season when two different game companies were selling colored domino sets to capitalize on the craze. I got the Incredible Domino Rally for Hannukah. My friend Missy got the other one. I forget what it was called, but her parents got it for her because it had 600 dominoes...little did they realize that the dominoes in that set were teeny-tiny. What a ripoff!

Stuff on my camera...

Column for my college paper in which I made the case that every student should have access to e-mail. From around 1992. Bold stance, no?

Smoked gouda mac and cheese I made on Monday when I was off. Conclusion: Really not worth the hour to buy the ingredients and cook it. Sometimes from scratch or homemade just ends up wasting time. It was ok, but I could have probably picked it up at a restaurant somewhere and still saved money and effort.

Short story I wrote in high school. Will explain later.

Blogfan Sam writes:

I think you should have kept it "hivernating".. perhaps spelling it to show it's not a mistake, like HIVEernating or hive-ernating. Maybe you would have gotten an A instead of a B (or a Bee). Just a thought, revisit that story and turn it into a children's book.

Response:

Good idea! It would get a lot of BUZZ!

At least not everyone rejected me.

...thank you, Muffin!

Another found item, this from eighth grade. I think this is from Holmdel Happenings. The only nice thing to happen in snooty ol' Holmdel. I got a $50 savings bond.

Yay!

They only rejected me later. What a tease.

(See more new stuff below.)

One writer's beginnings.

I actually wrote "hivernate," but then I realized teachers would just think I was making a mistake, so I corrected it. Dang.

Yes, it's all for the best

"If at the moment you are wondering if all of your efforts have gone for nought, I can't blame you. But I hope that in time you will come to realize that is not so. Whatever disappointment there may be at not gaining admission to Princeton will eventually pass. What will remain and stand you in good stead the rest of your life are the admirable personal qualities and accomplishments that came through in your application."

It might as well have started, "Dear Shitster..."

P.S. The hubby says: "April 12, 1989? I was in eighth grade!"

Moving

So we've been moving. I've been in my apartment for a whopping 17 years, so there's a lot of stuff. Plus I have childhood stuff in there, since my parents left my childhood home long ago and I had to drag my things to college and various apts. after that.

Moving means finding little things from your past and deciding whether to keep them. Today I went through some papers and found the following two gems:

1. My rejection letter from Princeton.
2. A letter from my brother that begins, "Dear Shitster..."

Jeopardy! On-line test

Baby slept right through it. None of the questions were about spitting up anyway. Here's a Youtube video of someone taking the test. I did so-so.

Had to move some of my (many, many) journals to a new location this week. More explanation forthcoming. Meanwhile, found some original scribblings of my first novel:

This is Poopardy!

I'm going to take the Jeopardy! on-line test this week. The baby is going to help me cheat if any of the topics are as follows:

POOP
BREASTMILK
CUTENESS
SMILES
WAKING UP AT 4:15 AM
CLANDESTINE SOCK REMOVAL

iPhone copy thanks to Brad

Chick lit and 'Sex and the City' being studied academically

Hey, yesterday's entry was all I had time to write! Anyway, there is now an academic book out about chick lit. The author interviewed me several years ago. She's very nice! It started as an article. I'll have to see if I can get my hands on a copy of the book.

I wonder if she's start a class at UNH about chick lit. Ooh, assign my book! Must work on a bribe...

Dogs should live at least as long as cats.

If you're ever feeling hopeless...

...reaching out to someone, particularly a professional, is a good idea. I'm spurred to write this mainly because of something I just read on the internet. Look how quickly things may change for this person. And all she did was write to a wacky advice columnist...

Two nice reviews

After a lull, I got two nice reviews in a row last week! Maybe the snow is keeping people inside and reading... or maybe they knew my 40th b-day was coming and they felt bad for me. Hee!

First one.

And second.

Also, School Library Journal said some nice things, so maybe school libraries will buy it now. Their review is posted on Amazon.

I notice that Amazon says there are 72 reviews, when there were only 71 a few days ago. I don't see the new one up, so it must be pending.

This morning...

In case you were wondering

N.J.S.A. 26:4B-4 Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, a mother shall be entitled to breast feed her baby in any location of a place of public accommodation, resort or amusement wherein the mother is otherwise permitted.

EFFECTIVE MAY 19, 1997

The Legislature finds and declares that: the Surgeon General of the United States recommends that babies from birth to one year of age should be breast fed, unless medically contraindicated, in order to achieve a healthy start on life; breast milk strengthens the immune system of babies, improves digestion and is of better nutritional value than regular milk; other benefits include the establishment of a strong mother-baby bond and a potential increase in baby's IQ level; despite the Surgeon General's recommendation, statistics reveal a declining number of women are choosing to breast feed their children, and nearly half of all new mothers are now choosing formula over breast milk even before they leave the hospital; the social constraints of modern society impede a woman's choice to breast feed due to embarrassment, fear of criminal prosecution and lack of public acceptance; therefore, it is in the best interest of the State to recognize breast feeding in places of public accommodation as an important right which must be encouraged in order to promote child health.

I want to beeeee a part of it, in old Nyack...

Hubby took me for b-day dinner to a lovely restaurant in Nyack. It was my choice, and I chose it as much for the cute town it was in then for how good the food looked. Nyack is an old artsy waterfront town in New Yawk state. Here are some pics from around the restaurant.

A couple was even getting married there! Brrr, it was a bit cold to be wearing your wedding duds outside.

If you go to the restaurant, I definitely recommend their crab ravioli. Good portion, good taste.

What a drag it is getting old

I am sorry this blog has gotten boring. I think I have some good entries brewing, particularly since I'm about to turn...um...30...well, ok, 40...shhhh. So as soon as I find the time, I will write.

Do some of you really not care about getting older? Ugh.

Luckily, I am going to be consuming something on this birthday that harks back to the birthdays of my youth. HINT.

Happy new year!

I had a great 2010, but clearly not everyone did. So...onward and upward!!

Happy new year!

Instead of hunting and wounding helpless animals, my husband brought back THIS delightful meal. The yellowish one is champagne!

Anyway, thanks for being such good readers and friends this year. Stay tuned...I'm turning 40 soon, and that will probably result in at least a couple of entries.

Have a great one!

Worst and best

A few days ago I mentioned that someone thought my book was the worst book of 2010. Well, this person thinks it was the best. Different strokes!

Quote

We did see the movie 'Easy A.' What followed:

FATHER IN 'EASY A': After we watch 'The Bucket List,' remember to cross 'watch "The Bucket List" off our bucket list.

ME: That was terrible.

HUBBY: The whole MOVIE IS TERRIBLE!!

It takes every kind of people

One reader had this to say about Carrie Pilby, in a review on the website Goodreads.com: "If the title of this book was Kevin Pilby, the book would get a rave review from literati types, a fancy arty cover, and a movie starring Michael Cera. I feel like the author is being cheated out of this ... Feminist-ish rant aside, I really enjoyed this book ... I hope it gets a wider audience that the cover is aiming for, and that it gets good press, hell and maybe even a movie deal, with Ellen Page in the starring role."

And on the other hand, this person believes Carrie Pilby was the worst book of 2010.

All valid opinions. I've loved books that others hated. Just shows how different opinions can be!

Dinner and a movie

Movies I have wanted to see in the last few years have been few and far between. But around the time I gave birth, a ton of movies came out that looked worth seeing. So now I have some good choices when hubby and I want to pay-per-view. The ones I wanna see include:

Easy A

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Social Network

The Town

And we're gonna also see Wall Street II.

I also think The Backup Plan looks good, but how much am I gonna have to pay hubby to watch this:

The movie is a story of a woman (played by Jennifer Lopez) who is worried about her biological clock ticking and thus goes in for artificial insemination, only to find the perfect man (played by Alex O’Loughlin) on the very same day. What follows is a never before relationship which starts with handling together a pregnancy, while dating and romancing side by side!

Question

Do people under 25 ever use the term "cable tv" these days or even know what it means, since pretty much ALL TV is cable TV now? If I tell my son someday that something is "on cable," will he laugh at me? (Of course, I'll be using it to mean any channel over 13, but he won't see it that way.)

click to enlarge

I can wait a little more

Many years ago, probably at least seven or eight, I cut out this Calvin and Hobbes cartoon from the newspaper. I loved the last line. I kept it in my "in" box and never had a place to put it, so it's sat at the bottom of my in box for almost a decade! Here it is. Have happy holidays, everyone. Thank you for reading my humble blog.

Months

The worst three months of the year are coming up. The weather is lousy and there are no holidays to compensate. They should move Xmas to the end of January to make January more tolerable. (Yeah, yeah, I know.) Now, I bet you're saying to yourself, "But Addledwriter, I thought you love snow!" I DO! But most of what we get Jan-March isn't light, fluffy flakes falling to earth and wrapping us up in Mother Nature's wonder. It's just coldness and slush. I'll love it if we get a nice blizzard. Luckily I have a lovely family and gas heat, so we'll be toasty through the winter.

Buckley

My family moved four times as I was going through school, so I have distinct memories of four sets of kids. I used to wonder what happened to certain ones, and these days, Google and Facebook allow you to find out. So when I'm bored, I Google the more interesting kids I encountered growing up, to find out what became of them.

(As a side note -- I started reading this blog at one point, where a guy wrote down every memory he had of the kids he went to school with in Wisconsin. I remember odd things like that too, but I'd never do a blog like that -- too much chance to offend someone. Still, it just shows some of the funny things you remember from elementary school.)

Anyway, among all the kids I encountered in four school districts in Central New Jersey in the 1980s, one of the smarter ones was Buck R. I remember him because he was in the top three smartest kids in my eighth grade class, and that was a class in which almost everyone was pretty smart. It was the year we lived in snobby Holmdel, N.J.

Buck was handsome and looked kinda like Doogie Howser, with the scrunched nose. He talked kinda slow, which made any funny thing he said even funnier. There are two distinct funny things he said that I remember the whole class laughing at:

1. We had a substitute teacher for social studies one day. Anyone who has been in the gifted/smartypants/honors classes knows that sometimes the smart kids can be just as obnoxious as the other classes, only maybe in a less threatening way. They're wiseasses and think they're superior to the teacher. So this day, my classmates were riling up the sub about something.

The sub said, "You kids are acting retarded."

Buck responded, in his calm, slow manner, "Yeah, we're the retarded gifted and talented class..." which got several people roaring.

2. Whenever we got done early with our work in class, like say before Christmas break or on a half day, the class would clamor for Trivial Pursuit. That's usually how the teachers passed the time on one of those non-work giddy days. They'd break the class in half and one side would play the other side.

One day, we were playing Trivial Pursuit and our teacher asked this question: "What is the number one reason for divorce in the United States?"

Buck suddenly burst out, "IM-potency."

That also got a big laugh...kind of the way he said it so matter-of-factly, and just the fact that he said it to begin with.

Anyway, I Googled him years ago. He had gone to Harvard Law and then become a manager at Goldman Sachs. Maybe a dull sort of occupation, but work doesn't make the man. That was about all that showed up about dear Buck.

Until I happened to hear something funny last week. Stephen Colbert was complaining about Wall Street executives and their bonuses. He mentioned that one of his writers found the Goldman Sachs credit card of a manager there. He held it up on TV and threatened to reveal one number of it each night on the show unless the owner came on the show to defend the bonuses. Who does the card belong to? Buck R.! (Colbert also made fun of his very Yuppie sounding first and last name). Here is a rundown of the event from the Washington Post, with video.

So anyway, Buck is famous again, as he should be.

Those totally awesome '80s

This past Halloween, there was an "'80s" section in the local costume store. So the '80s have joined the '50s and '60s as iconic decades. Who would have thought that the heyday of my youth would be later celebrated and even admired by younger generations, much like the greasers were celebrated when I was growing up? That's just gnarly.

I loved the early '80s. Sure, that was the time I was picked on in junior high, but that's not what I remember most. I remember taping songs off the American Top 40 each Sunday; I remember my brother and I searching for the video arcade in any hotel my parents stayed at. (We found one in Kissimmee, Fla. that was rated one of the top 10 arcades in the country by a video game magazine at the time - I think either by Enter or Joysticks.) I recall learning BASIC. I definitely remember Jodi, Kathy, and Jen D. obsessing over Duran Duran.

Most '80s icons have been brought back and hammered into the ground thanks to VH1 and other nostalgia outlets. It's hard to find things that people forgot.

But recently I remembered three '80s songs that no one thinks about much these days.

1. Centipede

I completely forgot about this one until it was mentioned off-handedly in music writer Rob Sheffield's Book, "Talking to Girls about Duran Duran," which I read portions of recently while pumping breastmilk. (Hey, ya gotta do something.) It's by a Jackson sister.

2. I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down

This was one of those songs that dripped into the top 40 for a few weeks but didn't stay long. And yet, it hung around in my head. I don't think I've heard it since the last time it was in the top 40, but of course, it's locatable on YouTube. This guy definitely looks '80s.

3. Be Mine, Tonight

A Neil Diamond song my brother and I both liked. It actually was in a dream I had a few months ago, for some reason. I don't actually remember what the dream was about. It was not about Neil Diamond. It's a peppy little tune.

We never knew it for what it was worth; it was worth more than we understood...Be mine, tonight.

Article about young adult books

...In Publisher's Weekly. Worth reading if you are interested in the genre.

Here's a sandwich to go with it.

Rain on the fire escape

A warm winter rain on the fire escape, Sunday morning. I enjoyed it so much, I thought I'd share it with you.

2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Some of you hopeful novelists will be happy to know that Amazon has finally announced the details of next year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. I wish they'd had a contest like this back in the old days, before I started writing Carrie Pilby. But it all worked out in the end! Anyway, details are here. Good luck!