Friday Update

This morning, little M rolled over! She's done it before, sort of by accident, but this morning she did it three times in a row! M is four months old now and just gorgeous. Here she is, looking rather thoughtful and playing with her favorite toy. (Don't worry - she's in her car seat, but she's not in the car. I'm not letting her ride around without her belt fastened.) Enjoy your weekend!

Announcing...

We are happy to announce that our daughter, Baby M, was born at 9:21 AM on November 29th! M weighed 9 lbs. 1 oz. and was 20 inches long. We are all healthy and happy, and enjoying getting to know each other.

Friday!

I get ridiculously tired these days, as I near the end of my pregnancy (4 weeks to my due date!), so Friday is very welcome. Fortunately, I only have another week of work before my maternity leave starts. I was originally going to work a little longer but sanity - and my doctor and husband - prevailed and now I get a break before the baby comes. At least that's what I'm hoping for, though every time I tell someone that, it seems they respond about how their first came 1, 2, 3 weeks early!

While I'm talking about babies, I thought I'd share this photo of me at just a few weeks old.


From left: my older cousin trying to console me, my grandmother, me (the one screaming), another cousin (6 months older), and my sister, trying to figure out how she ended up with this little baby hanging around. Fortunately, we grew up to be very good friends.

Architecture Links: Family Edition

Inspired by my family, here are today's architecture links.

These links are for my husband, who loves treehouses:
Lofty shelterporn: 'New Treehouses of the World'
Offbeat Traveler: Yellow Treehouse restaurant in New Zealand
Modern Tree Living: Creative Treehouse Designs & Plans
This one isn't exactly a treehouse, but it feels like one: Lofted Forest Home: Organic Curves & Natural Materials

For my sister, Archidose has some beautiful photos of the Antioch Baptist Church in Perry County, Alabama by Rural Studio, 2002.

This photo is for my mom, because Salvador Dali always reminds me of her. I'm not really sure why, though.


Via Jezebel, this is a photo of a lamp by Moschino from their new collection of one-of-a-kind melted, twisted homewares inspired by Salvador Dali.

Friday Update

I was trying to be good this week, and not buy any new books. But last Saturday, I found myself waiting for class to start and somehow decided it would be okay to wait in a bookstore. I'm sure we can all guess where this is going...

I'm definitely in a genre groove these days. I've been reading a lot of sci-fi and a lot of, as I think its called, urban fantasy. Terrible genre name, though, so maybe I'm wrong. The two books I bought fall into the latter category.


The first was the next book (#4) in the Women of the Otherworld series I've been reading, Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong. (My inner Puritan is making herself heard - I feel a little bit like I should be putting black bars over this cover.)


After wanting this book since I heard about it via Scalzi's Whatever* blog, I broke down and bought Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn. Don't forget, you can read online the first Kitty short story, Doctor Kitty Solves All Your Love Problems, as well as an excerpt from the newest novel in the series, Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand.

In other Lorin reading news this week, I posted reviews of two very different sci-fi books, both of which I liked: Old Man's War** and Parable of the Sower. My sister thought my review of Parable was a bit soft, as I called it "a little scary":

A little scary?? Parable of the Sower scared me to death. It actually put me off reading for a little while, it freaked me out so much. ... I haven't read [dystopian fiction] since I read this book. Its basically fact in some ways.

As the annoying little sister, I'd like to point out that this did not stop her from moving to California, which is basically ground zero in this book.

Also this week, I finished So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld. I have to be honest, I didn't enjoy So Yesterday nearly as much as his other books. Maybe because its not sci-fi/fantasy? Maybe because I'm not a teenager? I have reviews of two other Westerfeld books that I'll post this weekend.

I also started reading a newly published book, Roanoke: A Novel of Elizabethan Intrigue by Margaret Lawrence.

Happy Friday!


* Seriously, you are reading it, right?
**Scalzi, again. Am I becoming a fan girl?

Art & Architecture Links

Rather than post these one at a time (which I tend to do), I thought I'd try to save these up a bit and write them as one Art & Architecture link post. Some of these are a little old, but whatevs. So, in no particular order -

My cousin is awesome and an awesome dancer/choreographer. I already knew that, but now the Boston Globe does, too.

10 Best Architecture Songs from archdaily.

Also from arch daily, Half of small architecture firms are short of work. Um, that's a "no shit, Sherlock" from those of us in the industry.


Archidose blogged about this Prayer and Meditation Pavilion in Soba, Sudan by Studio Tamassociati. I think it's pretty beautiful in its simplicity, letting shadow and texture do so much.

For the Star Trek and sci-fi fans among us, I present Considering an Alternate San Francisco by Life Without Buildings.

On the same note, there is also the Adaptive Reuse of Crashed Starships, also from Life Without Buildings.

Well, gosh, that should do it for now. I'm sure I'll be back with more soon.

Friday Update

TGIF! I've had a busy past two weeks at work (which is good - I'd much rather be busy than bored) and now have a cold on top. I'm very happy it's the weekend. I only wish this was a three-day weekend, too!

In books this week, I am very proud of myself: I went to the bookstore on Tuesday to get my sister a birthday present and I did not walk out with anything for myself! This is a miracle. Of course, it may be because my husband and I bought five books over the weekend, plus I went to the library and checked out about seven more. So it's not like I have any shortage of reading material! So, what did I come home with?



For my sister's birthday, I bought a book I've had my eye on for a while: People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.

Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. ... this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.

Clearly, I need to borrow it from my sister when she's done.

For myself, I bought two (very different) books, the first was Dime Store Magic (the 3rd Women of the Otherworld book) by Kelley Armstrong.



Like Stolen (the second book in the series), this book was enjoyable, but did not quite live up to Bitten (book 1). I will likely read the other books in the series, but look forward to future books about werewolf Elena, rather than installments about witch Paige.



The other book I bought was Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Well, before I could even look at Old Man's War, my husband was tearing through it, unwilling to put it down to even eat. So the next day (yes, he read it that quickly) he headed back to a bookstore to pick up the two sequels: The Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony. I'm sure we'll also be getting Zoe's Tale when it comes out in paperback, if we can wait that long.

Have a great weekend, full of wonderful books!

On The Road

This week's e-mail book club book, is Queen of the Road by Doreen Orion.

From the book jacket:

A pampered Long Island princess hits the road in a converted bus with her wilderness-loving husband, travels the country for one year, and brings it all hilariously to life in this offbeat and romantic memoir.

Doreen and Tim are married psychiatrists with a twist: She's a self-proclaimed Long Island princess, grouchy couch potato, and shoe addict. He's an affable, though driven, outdoorsman. When Tim suggests "chucking it all" to travel cross-country in a converted bus, Doreen asks, "Why can't you be like a normal husband in a midlife crisis and have an affair or buy a Corvette?" But she soon shocks them both, agreeing to set forth with their sixty-pound dog, two querulous cats--and no agenda--in a 340-square-foot bus.

"Queen of the Road" is Doreen's offbeat and romantic tale about refusing to settle; about choosing the unconventional road with all the misadventures it brings(fire, flood, armed robbery, and finding themselves in a nudist RV park, to name just a few). The marvelous places they visit and delightful people they encounter have a life-changing effect on all the travelers, as Doreen grows to appreciate the simple life, Tim mellows, and even the pets pull together. Best of all, readers get to go along for the ride through forty-seven states in this often hilarious and always entertaining memoir, in which a boisterous marriage of polar opposites becomes stronger than ever.

So far, I'm enjoying this one quite a bit and think its pretty funny. It is also, I fear, a look into my future. Here's a little story about my in-laws (who I love):

Many years ago, my father-in-law bought a Unimog that had been converted into a camper. [FYI, a Unimog is a Mercedes-Benz truck originally built as a German missile carrier (or something).] Since then, he has tricked it out with everything you could imagine (including a wind turbine for off-the-grid electricity) and it is one serious RV on steroids. I wish I had a photo of the finished product. Here's a photo of a virgin Unimog:



Even though they are retired, my m-i-l and f-i-l both volunteer and keep busy, so going off for a year isn't in the cards for them. But still, the in-laws, God love 'em, have taken this thing all over, including to Alaska. I don't imagine that this was my m-i-l's first choice for summer vacation, but she's a great sport and this was a dream of my f-i-l's.

And, like father, like son. Though my husband's dream isn't to spend extended periods of time crammed into a truck, cruising the roads of America. No, no. His goal is to some day spend an extended period of time crammed into a boat, sailing the Pacific. We occasionally sail and pretty much every time we do, my husband suggests that we throw it all in for life living aboard a sailboat. In my more delusional moments, I agree, but then I get home, and look at my closet and our bookshelves and I think, I could never live on a boat.

So, if author Doreen Orion and my mother-in-law are any indication, I'll be packing up my belongings and moving to a boat in about twenty years. Yay!


Buy Queen of the Road on Amazon.