I gave up on the idea of a pseudonym.

So, I’ve taken up blogging over at:

Karen Pinco

If you want to read more about what the spy has been up to, come on over!

Most of you know by now that I’m a bit of a science geek. So I have to share with you my favorite entry into the: 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge Winners

For an explanation (and other winners) head on over to the MSNBC!

From the actions and behaviors our youngest son spontaneously engages in, we have concluded that secreted in his room is a book entitled Training For Espionage at the Pre-K Level.

Skills include, but are not limited to:

1) Physical Concealment. At the tender age of 2, he began employing floor-length curtains. For up to fifteen minutes at a time, he would stand motionless and silent as we called his name. (My other son giggles when attempting this.) Threats elicited no response. Sounds of a panicked mother searching the house produced no response. We quickly began searching outside, worried that our youngest might have escaped into a nearby construction zone. At last, at the end of his fifteen minute training period, he jumped out with a ‘Ta-Da!’. We’ve since learned to look behind curtains.

2) Evasive Driving. This is where an older brother comes in handy. Point your scooter/tricycle at him, accelerate in said older brother’s direction, but turn only when collision is imminent. Repeat mercilessly.

3) Money Transfer. While your older brother is sleeping and your parents are downstairs, tip-toe into his room. Remove all coins from his piggy-bank and transfer those coins to your own piggy bank. Deny all knowledge the next morning.

4) Moving About Silently. Our youngest routinely sneaks about the house undetected. See earlier post.

5) Darkness Provides Cover. At the tender age of four, he moves through dark rooms without the slightest hesitation. When he begins insisting on an all-black wardrobe, we’ll know we’re in serious trouble.

6) Concealment of Objects. This past Thursday morning - 10 minutes before we HAD to go out of the door - my youngest announced he could not find his shoes. A frantic search followed. Four people searching could not find them.  We had to put him in some old, outgrown shoes of his brother’s for the day. And the day after that. Two days later I found the shoes - they were propped on the radiator behind  long curtains. When questioned, he produced a cute and disarming smile, “Yes, that’s where they are. YOU had to find them.”

7) Secure Entryways. This past summer my youngest began placing tape across a door to tell if someone had come through or not. I’m not kidding. So far as I’m aware, he figured this out on his own.

8. Physical Training and Self-Defense. My four year old will routinely put on his shoes and run laps around the house. He also beats up his eight year old brother daily just to stay in practice.

9) Plant Objects. My youngest often slips things into our clothing while we’re in it. By jumping on his father and tickling him, he was able to distract his father while secreting five separate pieces of Lego in: pockets, shoes, and socks. Husband found these objects much later.

10) Weaponry. Four year old has snuck down a hallway with a handful of plastic marbles, sliding sideways against the wall to avoid detection, and launched them at his unsuspecting mother. My husband bought the boys Nerf guns this winter - youngest enjoys the target practice. When father or brother are not available, he substitutes pets.

11) Capture and Contain. Soon after we moved into this house the past summer, our youngest began locking himself in his room - and us out. My husband turned the doorknob around so that we could (hypothetically) lock our youngest in. Not too much later, grandma came to visit. We gave my husband the night off and my mother and I set about getting the boys to bed. Our youngest, recognizing an opportunity when it presented itself, noticed that his mother, his grandmother AND his brother were all in his room, slammed the door shut and locked us in. We banged. We yelled. My youngest laughed. Assuming this was the noise of ‘getting the boys to bed’, my husband blissfully ignored us all. Eventually, our youngest took pity and released the locking mechanism.

12) Disarm with Charm. He gets himself out of trouble with an adorable and innocent grin coupled with wide blue eyes, a look he can pull off at the drop of a hat. This works amazingly well with strangers. Particularly little old ladies.

To date, this is all the pre-K spy training of which we have become aware. Since we have not yet located his training manuel, we are certain there is much more yet to come. We suspect the use of electronic devices to surface in the near future.

*

My four and a half year old gave up naps at age two. Then, around age three, he stopped going to sleep at a normal three year old’s bedtime. I want to make it clear that we put him in bed absolutely no later than 7:30pm, he simply refuses to stay there or to sleep until 10:00pm. Yes, even without a nap. Yes, even with all those ’slowing the day down’ activities like quiet time and storybooks. And no TV after dinnertime. I’ve sat next to him doing the ’shh’ routine for up to an hour. He lies there, compliant, eyes shut but wide awake.

At 6:30am - 7:30 maybe on weekends - he’s up and about. Fully rested.

I need more sleep than my four and a half year old.

Still, we persist in a ‘normal’ bedtime for our almost five year old. But if we don’t force him to stay in his bed, what is he up to?

• He slips silently into his sleeping eight year old brother’s bedroom and steals (and destroys) his carefully built Star Wars Lego.
• He slips silently down the stairs (no one else in the house can traverse them without squeaking loudly) and helps himself to paper from my printer and pens from my drawer in a darkened study as my husband and I watch TV.
• He builds elaborate Lego cities.
• He slips silently down the stairs to appear before us when we’ve made popcorn with an ‘I’m hungry’ and wide sad eyes.
• He writes notes on my post-its and sticks them all over the upstairs hallway.
• He stomps noisily down to ‘tell us a story’. Odd ones. We’ve videotaped a few. One was about an attack skunk.
• Once he used 1/2 a tube of hair gel to ’spike’ his hair. It was more like an alien barfed on his head. This resulted in a 10:00pm shower.
• He squeezed all of his toothpaste out onto the counter, smearing it thinly just because he thought a blue counter top would ‘be pretty’.
• Just the last few nights, he’s been dragging his sleeping bag downstairs to ’stay with us’. (Sometimes we cave if the TV show isn’t inappropriate and let him stay for a bit, but CSI is not for four year olds.)
• At grandma and grandpa’s house, he snuck down their stairs in the dark and into the 1st floor bedroom in the dark to play with grandpa’s laser pointer.
• He’s snuck into our room to answer the telephone (dead giveaway, and not so sneaky).
• He emptied his pants drawer and stuffed the cat inside just to have company in his room.
• He took all 100 dixie cups (for rinsing the mouth), filled  them with water, and covered the bathroom counters and floors.

So.

Am I raising a spy? I just know his teenage years are going to be challenging. We’re thinking we’re going to need some form of a GPS tracking system. Does anyone have any advice? Words of comfort?

*

*

The lights are always pretty.

Here are some of ours (the boys each have their own menorah).

Well, its been a long time since I’ve posted much. And since I’ve promised to post photos (just click on them to enlarge) of my trip, I figured I’d better do it before the season has passed.

About a week and a half ago, we took the boys to my hometown. But instead of staying locally, we headed an hour or so north to the Finger Lakes. Growing up in the region, I had no idea there were wineries. Not until I brought my future husband home years ago and my parents took us north on a wine trail….

Getting ready for NaNoWriMo, I decided to set my new novel in the Finger Lakes region. Well, what with a lot of school vacation days and the boys driving me nuts, I had a bright idea. My husband cashed in a vacation day, and we headed off on a ‘research’ trip (some things about writing are fun and my husband hoped on board this project willingly enough).

Its been a while since we’ve been back, but this past weekend had those perfect fall days that start off cold, but warm to a pleasant 70 degrees. The sun was out and a recent frost had caused the leaves to break out in brilliant color, but the rain and wind had yet to knock the leaves off their trees…

On a Saturday, we took the boys to Glenora Wine Cellars, mostly for the tour (but we did sample the wines and walk off with a few). They showed us the machinery that separates the grapes from their stems, extracts the juice, then filters out the sludge. Then it was off to the barrel room.

Here’s a photo of a barrel. Note the plaque? You can buy your own barrel, visit it (I kid you not, the guide says people do), and at last, collect the wine AND the empty barrel.

Here are the fermentation tanks.

The bottling/corking machinery.

By the end of the tour, the boys were getting a bit wild, so we took them to Watkins Glen. Nothing like about a thousand steps to wear them down. Unfortunately, it did us in too.

The next day, my parents kept the kids at home and we set off to sample the wines of those wineries between the lower halves of Lake Cayuga and Seneca. Our favorites? Lucas, Lamoreaux Landing, Wagner, and Standing Stone. The photos below are from Wagner.

On our way out, we passed a ‘limo’. You can sign up for tours that include a driver. No need to sip discreetly and dump the rest (or spit). Those individuals debussing had definitely not been dumping their tastings. They looked to be enjoying themselves thoroughly… Wiffer Wine Tour anyone?

Tags: finger lakes, research, wine, Writing

At last, the promised book giveaway.

I pre-ordered Out of Time by Samatha Graves, then bought a copy off the shelf literally two days before Amazon.com finally sent my copy.

I gobbled it up in under 24 hours. Had the children not required feeding, transportation to school, and other such care, I’d have finished it in one sitting.

Since the above mentioned children have worn me down today, I’ll make it easy. Tell me why you want this book and whether or not you own a valid passport, and I’ll enter your name in a drawing.

Why replace it with more paper when it makes such a wonderful landing pad?

A Wiffer pointed me to this blog posting - the list is copied from Very Good Taste. It is a list they made of 100 things that they think every good omnivore should have tried once in their life. They have thoughtfully created links to a number of the stranger foods (I had to go look several of them up myself).

“The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food - but a good omnivore should really try it all. Don’t worry if you haven’t, mind you; neither have I, though I’ll be sure to work on it. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize everything in the hundred, either; Wikipedia has the answers.

Here’s what [they] want [me and you] to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.”

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred: (comments are in parentheses)

1. Venison (grew up near hunters - school was out for buck and doe days)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros (yum)
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (alligator really, it had a bit of a tang - not bad)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava (yum)
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas (a big mistake)
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O (on Hey Day at UPenn)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail (if ‘Rabe de Toro’ counts)
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (Of course. I lived in Savannah, GA)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill (yes if survival depended upon it)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail (not again)
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict (gross)
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (my mom was hoping we wouldn’t ask for the wing…)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers (not a repeater…)
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Sorry, deadly food and organ meats are out.  How about you?

I have discovered something wonderful about my new toy iPhone… I’ve never been one to use the camera feature on my cell phone, the images just weren’t worth it. They’re still not great, but the iPhone makes it really easy to use.

Anyway, I was at the bookstore this past weekend when I broke down and bought Sam’s new book (that’s mine on the right). I took a photo of it sitting on the kiosk at the front of the store. It only took me two days to read (many interruptions) and is, in my opinion, her best book yet! The next day, Amazon.com shipped me the copy I’d pre-ordered (as soon as it gets here, I’ll have my first give-away).

Then, I had a brilliant idea.

Since I can’t possibly buy every book I want to read, I used to write down the title and author so I could remember to order it later (from either Amazon.com or the library). Then it occurred to me that it would be a lot easier to simply photograph each book I want to read…. It was much faster than writing and within moments I had a photo of every book I want to read. Look! One of my favorite authors has a new book out!