Sunshine Blogger Award #2

I've been tagged! Cecilia at Craft, Coffee, and Cake nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award (some months ago...). As usual, I'm bad at following the rules for these sorts of things as I've been MIA from the blogging world so long that no one I traditionally followed still blogs, and thus I am at a loss as to who to pass it on to. (Not that there aren't many lovely blogs currently being written, but I'm no longer up to date on those.)

So, instead, I am (1) posting the official logo of the award:

Done.

(2) Thanking my nominator—thank you, Cecilia!— and (3) linking to her blog (see above). (4) I will answer her questions, before (5) posing eleven questions of my own, to be answered by whoever would like to do so.

1. If you had to live out the events in a book as the main character, which book would you choose? Oh dear, the problem with this question is that main characters (at least in good books) suffer a lot. And I don't get excited about suffering. It's all very well for Bilbo to go from being chased by goblins to up a tree guarded by wolves, but I don't think that sounds very pleasing to personally experience. I guess I might go with Emma Woodhouse. The suffering she goes through is mainly the humiliation of realizing she is not as wise, clever, or good as she thought she was, and though that can be a very uncomfortable experience, it's also a very important one.

2. Favourite weird combination of flavours that everyone else hates? A cocoa cherry arugula smoothie. I'm not sure if anyone else has tried this combination, actually, but every time I make it I find it simultaneously addictive while being objectively disgusting.

3. Who are your favourite actor and actress? I actually don't have favorite celebrities of any kind (unless you count Jane Austen as a celebrity). I like good movies and good acting but I don't follow actors/actresses outside of movies at all, and I wouldn't necessarily seek out new movies on the basis of particular cast members. Boring answer, sorry.

4. If you had all the money in the world to buy an outfit for a ball, what would you wear? (The sky's the limit for this one - you can wear any dress, shoes, bag, hairstyle you like!) Oh dear, there are so many options. For daily wear I like some styles from the twentieth century — either 1910s or 1940s — but for a ball gown I suppose I would go with something vaguely eighteenth century, with lace-trimmed sleeves, a full skirt, brocade fabric, and hopefully a higher neckline than many of these kinds of gowns seem to offer. Likely in a rich blue or green, something along these lines perhaps:

5. Quote from a film that makes you smile/laugh? Anything from The Importance of Being Earnest. I could watch that movie every day. 

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a very delicate exotic fruit. Touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor's Square.

*

Algernon: My dear Aunt Augusta, I mean he was found out! The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean — so Bunbury died. 

Lady Bracknell: He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians. I am glad, however, that he made up his mind at the last to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice. 

*

To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.

6. Social situation from a book/film to which you completely relate?

After rereading C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy after getting married, I definitely relate to some of Mark and Jane's early struggles in marriage (feeling frustration without knowing how to communicate it, turning frustration with oneself against the other, learning how to manage the gap between expectations and reality...).

7. Most inspiring quote from a non-religious book? It would likely be something from the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis. This is one I have oft reminded myself of from Lord of the Rings:

So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

8. What personal quality do you think, if everyone possessed it, would make the biggest difference to the world? Ooh, my first thought is to say humility. 

9. You have to have one antagonist from a novel tag along with you for the next six months. Who would it be? Oh dear, what antagonist would one want hanging about?? My mind is running on Jane Austen so I'm going to say the Eltons. They would at least provide some amusement mixed with the irritation.

10. Can you speak another language? If so, which one? If not, which one would you like to learn? I speak French decently and German very, very poorly. I would love to improve my abilities in both.

11. Would you rather be an amazing homemaker and housekeeper, or be able to write beautiful poetry? I'd have to say homemaking. It would be cool to have the ability to write poetry (the only poems I've ever written are hopefully long lost to posterity), but having a cozy and comfortable home is very satisfying to me. Homemaking also, oddly enough, feels more like a creative outlet to me than trying to write poems ever has. There is something about trying a new recipe or seeing a bowl of flour turn into a loaf of bread that feels like it scratches a creative itch rather than just being a means to intaking calories.

One of my baking experiments this year: cinnamon star bread!

That's a wrap! Here are eleven questions of my own that readers can take it upon themselves to answer in the comments:

1. If you could guarantee the safety, would you want to give birth at home?
2. You are giving birth to twins today, a boy and a girl. What are you naming them?
3. What is the most important thing you would want your (actual or hypothetical) children to learn from you?
4. Did you grow up believing in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy?
5. Have you ever considered the relative merits, risks, and reasons for co-sleeping versus sleep training infants?
6. If you were raising a baby in the 12th century, what modern conveniences would you miss the most? What traditional practices would you be most grateful for?
7. Would you choose to find out the gender of your baby during pregnancy?
8. What do you think are the best first foods for weaning babies?
9. What child-rearing topic do you find most controversial or challenging to discuss?
10. What activity or interest would you be most excited to share with your children?
11. What most intimidates you about the idea of parenting?

You may have noticed that these questions all have a theme. And that's because... I'm expecting my first baby! Baby is due in March 2026. At the last minute we chose not to find out the gender at our ultrasound, which has added to my already great anticipation for the delivery. Baby is already a mover and a shaker, and I can't wait to meet him or her. Pregnancy has had its challenges — along with stressful and exciting job changes for both me and my husband, losing my sweetest little cat friend of almost sixteen years, and continuing to figure out married life. But for all that I am excited for next year and grateful for everything the Lord has been doing in me (spiritually and physically!) in 2025.

À la prochaine!

P. S. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

P. P. S. Happy late 250th birthday to Jane Austen! I hope you all celebrated.

A satirical review of ---, a real pizza place in Ithaca, NY

My husband and I had the memorable experience of eating the most disappointing pizza of our lives on a work trip last October. For our own amusement, we wrote a satirical review together of the restaurant that we intended to post on Google Reviews, but ultimately decided it might just ruin the owner's day, and being self-employed myself I know how that would feel and I didn't want to do that to anyone. So I share it here, with the name redacted, and hope it provides someone with a laugh instead of a sigh.

. . .

 Review of ——— in Ithaca, NY

We visited Ithaca for a weekend last fall for a physics workshop at Cornell. Our first choice for dinner was Franco’s Pizzeria downtown, which looked really good. Google Maps took us to the wrong parking lot, but we got there eventually — only to find out they were closed that weekend during Cornell’s fall break to do renovations. 😢 So we picked ——— as a second option. 

Atmosphere: like a carry-out-only Waffle House for pizza (floor was a little sticky like Waffle House, too). We decided to order their version of a Margherita, which seemed safe. We’ve collectively eaten a lot of pizza over the years 🍕, and you usually can’t go wrong with a Margherita! Little did we know we were about to eat the worst pizza either of us have ever tasted. 🫥 Six months later we are still talking about it (“At least it’s not as bad as that pizza in Ithaca”). Instead of fresh, flavorful tomatoes, these were whole stewed tomatoes — seemingly from a can. Have you ever had a pizza where every bite was consumed by a whole canned tomato? If there was fresh basil on that pizza like the menu alleges, it was so overshadowed by the tomatoes that we don’t remember it. Not to mention the cheese was in large, unmelted clumps and the sauce tasted weird and sweet. Overall, it was a strange combination of flavors.

We also ordered a Caesar salad, which again seemed like a safe choice. Unfortunately we didn’t check inside the box before we left, and only noticed after we opened the salad back in our hotel room that there was cold garlic shrimp on our salad. Why was there so much shrimp on a Caesar salad?? We eventually realized they probably gave us a different salad from the menu, one that came with garlic shrimp, pineapple habanero dressing, and pickled tomatoes. 😱 As with the pizza, it was a strange combination of flavors.

Eating the food was like going to work at a job that you don’t enjoy. You don’t go because you are passionate about your work. You go for the paycheck. We did not eat the food because we liked it. We ate the food because we needed the calories… We were desperate. But the more we ate, the less we wanted to keep eating… so eventually we stopped. One of us had to eat the leftovers for lunch the following day (you do what you’ve got to do) — normally I avoid the microwave but there was no way I was eating those whole tomatoes cold, so I made an exception just to make it through. We ended up tossing the salad though — just couldn’t do it.

We still talk about this pizza to this very day… It was memorable. We really enjoy good pizza, but we have to admit that we talk about this place far more often than the good ones — we remember this as the worst pizza we have found so far. Perhaps your experience here will be better than ours — they seemed kind of new, so maybe they’re still figuring things out. There is only one way to find out, but be prepared for some memories. For pizza, request no tomatoes. For salad, request no shrimp. Try ordering some other menu items. If Franco’s Pizzeria is open, go there and let us know how it is.

P.S. I love writing satirical pieces. If you enjoyed this, perhaps let me know in a comment if you'd like to read more of this sort of thing?

A venture into satire

In which I share:

A Decolonized Review of Peasants into Frenchmen

   A cheeky homage to my years of graduate school

First off, I'd like to give Mr. Weber credit for managing to get this book published. I don't think I could have convinced an editor to accept this manuscript, but it helps that he has blue eyes, is male, and especially that he has the privilege of being a literate human being.

I take issue with the premise of this book. Prof. Weber would like to examine the incorporation of rural peasants in France into the French imagined community. Even an undergraduate can see how Eurocentric a book on French people in France is. Prof. Weber also used mainly French primary sources, which raises accessibility and justice issue for readers who do not speak French.

On the subject of sources, I was more than a little upset than Weber only cites Das Kapital once. I know that Marx was German, that DK was written 30 years before this book begins, and that this is a social and cultural history not about the nineteenth-century intellectual milieu, but as Weber says in the introduction, there were socialists in France, so I am shocked that he did not include a thorough analysis of the one socialist text I know (unless it was in chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, or 27, because I admit I didn't read those).

Finally, I don't understand why Weber did not complement his analysis with comparisons to 1970s America, which would have been useful and more interesting to me. I kept thinking he would go there, but he never quite did. To be sure, this would have added another 200 pages and the book is already too long, at 500 pages. Perhaps he could have cut out some of that stuff on France to save space.

Sunshine Blogger Award

Lizzie Hexam at Starlight and Saucepans (what a fun blog name, by the way) nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award!

The rules of this award include thanking the nominator, answering his or her questions, and nominating up to 11 others. I've never been very good at following tag rules, and after almost thirteen years of blogging (and barely showing my face here during the previous six), just about all of the bloggers I was actively following in the beginning have moved on with their lives. So I really have no one to tag.

But I can follow rules #1 — thank you, Lizzie! — and #2.

The questions:

1. What’s your second favorite TV show?

Hm, I don't watch TV shows very often (movies are more my thing). But I'd say Wodehouse Playhouse is up there as a not-quite-favorite-but-always-delightful option.

2. If you could only read the works of one author all the rest of your life, who would you choose? (The Bible is exempted from this.)

Jane Austen, no question. Though C. S. Lewis would be a very close second.

3. What’s a fun fact about yourself that you would like people to know, but there’s never a good opportunity to bring up?

I really enjoyed my research on French history during my master's degree and loved any opportunity to share about it, but rarely got the opportunity to talk about my research in detail (and still less now that it's several years in the past). 

4. Tell us a random weird word that you like.

"Lest."

5. You’re going to Mordor with the Ring, and you’re assembling your Fellowship! Which eight fictional characters (from any fictional works, not just LOTR) do you want to come with you, and why? (If you aren’t familiar with The Lord of the Rings, just assemble eight fictional characters you would want to bring along on a dangerous quest.)

I assume this comes with the unspoken limitation that I can't just pick the Fellowship itself. Sooo, in no particular order, the following are a mismatched selection of people who are good to have along in sticky situations:

1. Gandalf (though likely to abandon us at some point, he'll be useful while he's along)
2. Anne Elliot (as Captain Wentworth knows, we can count on her to be calm and sensible in a crisis)
3. Percy Blakeney (when we get in a jam, he's very likely to think of clever solutions that no one else would think of)
4. Bilbo Baggins (we need someone along who values food and cheer and song)
5. Jason Bourne (clearly someone you want in your corner when it comes to a fight)
6. Jill Pole (brave and experienced in dangerous adventures)
7. Gurgi (his wallet of food would come in handy, but most especially Gurgi himself is the only one who can equal Samwise Gamgee for faithfulness)
8. Thorin Oakenshield (we all know he isn't without his faults, but once he committed himself to the cause he wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice his life to bring the quest to completion, and he is a warrior to be feared)

That was fun. :)

6. Do you on the whole prefer movies from before or after 1960? Why?

Well, most of my favorite movies fall between 1990 and 2005, so I would say after 1960, but I do enjoy many pre-1960 films and I have a hot take that there are no truly excellent movies made in the last two decades.

7. Suppose you’re tasked with creating a flag for a new country. What does it look like?

A rich green background with a silver or gold Celtic knot pattern in the center.

8. Is poetry or prose fiction more expressive? Do you think one form is higher than the other?

I prefer prose. Poetry is such a widely varying genre that it's hard to rank how expressive it is. I find most poetry to be the author expressing something that no one else understands, and thus prose to me is generally more expressive. 

9. What are the last three songs you listened to?

I recently discovered The Gray Havens and have been listening to little else for the past two weeks. I love their complex lyrics and literary allusions. My Spotify history says the last three songs were Anywhere, Come Thou Fount, and Train Station.

10. If you had the ability to make it so that it was always your favorite season of the year, would you do it?

No, because I like the variety. Now if I could shorten my least favorite season (summer) so that we could cut down on the days we have to endure above 90º... that's tempting.

11. Dream cast your favorite actor and actress (either can be from any time period; this is dream casting, after all!) in an adaptation of the classic book you think they’re best suited for.

This is a tricky question because I really don't have favorite actors or actresses. I don't follow any celebrities, and it's easier for me to think of actors who I find annoying than ones I really like (I guess it's a good thing I'm not a casting director). My mind is also going blank on classic books that have yet to be made into good film adaptions (except for Mansfield Park, which I've already dream-casted, and The Space Trilogy, which I'm certain would be a horrible movie if someone decided to adapt it).

Thinking about Wodehouse Playhouse has reminded me that there are some more obscure Wodehouse stories that have yet to be portrayed on screen. I think "The Castaways" from Blandings Castle and Elsewhere would make a hilarious addition to the collection. This is a boring answer, but the husband and wife team who star in all the Wodehouse Playhouse episodes would undoubtably do a fine job.

And that's a wrap! If there are any readers who would have liked to answer eleven interesting questions, consider yourself tagged and answer in the comments:

1. Would you ever raise and butcher your own meat?
2. What is the newest book (by date of publication, not read-date) you read and liked?
3. What is your favorite board game?
4. Are there any hobbies you once enjoyed but abandoned?
5. If you could be instantly fluent in another language, what language would you pick?
6. What is the most valuable thing you learned from your mother?
7. Are you a capable plant owner? (and if so, can you tell me how to become like you?)
8. Are there any words or phrases you say too often?
9. What is the most recent meal you ate?
10. What is your favorite thing about your least favorite season?
11. If you've completed a college degree, what would you have studied if you didn't get that degree? (Or if you haven't completed a degree, what would you like to study?)

À la prochaine,