Engagement photos

Got these taken like a MONTH ago and it has taken forever for me to get them up. Sheesh.

Anyway, we met with the lovely and talented Sara Gray last month in Seaside, Ore. She is our photographer and did her darndest to get me to smile with teeth showing. We wandered around in the quite-chilly town along the boardwalk and downtown while she took pics with her assistant, her husband Eric Hensley.

Here are the results:



That's the shot we used in the local papers. Love amongst the condos.



More of the same spot.



Laughing! Loving! That's us! On the boardwalk!



Sand dunes.

Sara Gray is very good at making people who are pasty, pudgy and not photogenic (like me) look like acceptable members of society. See more of her work at saragrayphotography.com.

Well, we got the marriage license today, so we're on top of the game. And with one month to go, that's a good thing.

I am officially an old fart

Sent to the NYT today when it was noticed that the acrostic is only availble online from, I presume, here on out.

Dear Editor,

I'm WAY too young to be writing a letter complaining about a redesign in the magazine, and especially in regards to a much-beloved feature moving online, but the acrostic. Seriously. This is my main motivator for buying the Sunday NYT. Everything else I can get online that I want (minus the crossword, which I like to do, but my real affection is reserved for the acrostic) on Sunday. But I spend the money (even the new extra dollar), and sometimes I have to drive way out of town to get the paper (I live in a small town). I hate what it does to my carbon footprint, but I also hate the Acrostic DTs.

Seriously. The Acrostic. I know the redesign has messed it up; I know you're straining at the news hole. I know T Magazine has had some issues and now its elements are being crunched into your newly-teensified space. I know all this. I knew I would eventually pay for the fact that Craigslist has decimated classifieds and free online content does not pay like the paper version, with its expensive display ads. I just didn't expect it would be the acrostic. I thought it would be my job as a reporter. THAT I was prepared to accept.

I suppose my only recourse is to get the games subscription and forgo the physical paper altogether. Heck, it may prevent me from feeling that little dopamine drop that comes with abstaining from reading the magazine preview articles as they become available online.

Well, I'm sure the Acrostic has become to you, poor clerk who has to sift through the letters, was to me when my old paper decided to change the TV listings from vertical to horizontal channels. Except maybe NYT readers are less likely to threaten physical violence (true story, and at least I hope they don't). I feel your pain, too.

Henry Rathvon, Emily Cox, I remain devotedly yours,

Callie White

(What I did not say is that I am sure HR and EC are real people who look like they belong in an early Agatha Christie mystery. If you know the truth about Rathvon and Cox, who I would like to think solve murder mysteries in their spare time, like a much cooler Tommy and Tuppence, don't let me know. Or do. I've already suffered so much disillusionment.)

More Banjo Madness

Today was the big Second Annual Fretted Instrument Guild of Western Washington Four String Banjo Convention. A mouthful, no?

The GH Banjo Band rocked the house, needless to say, during the Round Robin when every band takes turns playing a song. A guy in the Orphan Banjo Band (so called because it was made up of people who were either not part of a regular band or their band was not represented in the Round Robin) turned to me and said, "You guys have got pizzazz!" Why thank you, sir!

We also have video, courtesy of Ray and a little Flip we got as part of a wedding registry that only had the Flip and a tripod on it. I am going to figure out how to use it momentarily and post video. We got Linda doing the Charleston and she is so precious! Oh, and Linda has apparently found my blog while googling her dad's name or maybe Grays Harbor Banjo Band. Hi Linda!

We had Dick Lewis with us. He performs under the monniker "Montana Red" and he is terrific. Ray said he overheard Montana Red asking Hank, the unofficial leader of the Orphan Band (aka "no-name band," but that's just all complicated) for a squirt of something from a can with a guitar on the front. Ray posited that it was for easier finger sliding on the strings. But since a little oil/anything can mess a string up I am curious about this substance.

Before we hit the convention, we went to the Olympia Farmers Market and got some Washington cherries of a variety I can't remember. Ray was impressed because they were so early, I was impressed because they were so sweet and flavorful, even though they were kind of soft. We also go a loaf of Wagner's cinnamon bread, and I don't care how much cinnamon bread you've had in your life you haven't truly had cinnamon bread until you have had the very thinly-rolled and generously-becinnamoned European style cinnamon bread Wagner's sells.

Then the convention was mostly organized by the Tacoma Banjo Club, and was held at the Little Creek Resort (it's really a casino, too, though). I noticed that the readerboard was advertising MMA fighting for tonight (6/6). Well, it was advertising, "Extreme Cage Fighting! Meets No Mercy! Carnage at the Creek! June 6 2009!" where an exclamation = screen switch. Too bad we couldn't stay.

There were us, the orphan and Tacoma bands, as well as the Seattle Banjo Club, the Kitsap Banjo Club and the 101 Band, which appeared to maybe be three people, one on banjo.

There's a lot of overlap in banjo band repetoire. I heard "Side By Side," a kind of Depression-era "we're poor but who cares if we have each other" song, and we all were expected to play "Bye Bye Blues," which I kind of vaguely remembered playing before and especially that tricky Aflat7 chord, and "God Bless America." God Bless Ernie for having the sheet music with him so I could read it!

After the Round Robin, I returned my self-busting busted sunglasses to Target (Ray had taken to calling them "Collette Reardons") and got new kicks for working out that I hope won't hurt my legs like my other sneaks did.

We had dinner at Lemongrass and it was delicious. Also we did more French CD learning. I find French a disheartening language full of words that all sound exactly alike and not nearly close to how they are written. I suppose this is how English learners must feel, only more often, so I should suck it up and continue.

Upon returning home I got a Friends of the Library newsletter and some devastating news: The Timberland Library will have to reduce the number of holds available to each person from 100 to 25, I assume in fall when the other Timberland changes as a result of the failed levy are going into effect (like charging for printing and overdue fines. Yeah, we're totally spoiled). I have a perpetual 80-odd items on hold, people! This will ruin me! This is my summer of (ahemming) or getting off the pot with some of those books! I will have to read like the wind! Why was this NOT IN THE PRESS RELEASE when I wrote about this a few weeks ago! I could have read harder and cleared some items off my plate!

In the meantime, I am freaking out. This is very new news to me. I will have to push my finishing of "The Egg and I" to the back burner, apologies to Kris.

(I recently read Big Box Reuse and Rethinking Thin (I recommend that review, for it has the same reaction I did to the book — i.e. yeah, but, Wha?) and am on P.D. James' The Private Patient. My God that woman is, in the first few chapters anyway, such an amazingly skilled and literary writer for her genre, and she keeps it up even though after 14 Dalgliesh novels alone she could rest on her laurels. Brava!)

Notes on a nearly-feral child

The Tulip Terrorist is beginning to leave his toys on our property. He left a dumptruck up by the rear door in the little enclosed space and a scooter back by the yard. Ray said I should go all Rita DelVecchio on his tuchus: "You leave it on my lawn, this is my dumptruck now!" I also worry it heralds an escalation of his invasion of the house area and specifically he's going to mess up my herb garden. So help him I will throttle his little neck if I catch him ...

Oh who am I kidding. Ray and I totally are disempowered talking to him. We're do-gooder non-confrontational types and the kid is basically without conscience. I can try having a conversation with him, but I know he won't take it seriously.

According to a neighbor his mother was "on meth when she had him." This, combined with his mullet, will just stigmatize him for life. Comfortingly, I guess, the little terror apparently knows right from wrong but doesn't care. I say comfortingly because at least he is aware there is a difference! When I told him those flowers weren't his to pick he may not have cared what I was saying, but he understood. He is not completely feral, then.

Oh, Sara Gray posted some engagement pics on her website so check out how matronly and old I look and how youthful and photogenic Ray is.

In other news: We finally tried razor clam sausage. We were told you had to like razor clams (we do) to eat it, but it tasted a lot like regular sausage. We ate it with sauerkraut.

Big banjo band playout on Saturday — the Four String Banjo convention. It's the Round Robin. Drama will ensue, I am sure!

Bless their hearts.

Tuesday night, after a sweltering and long board meeting, I gave a moment's thought to just not showing up at banjo practice. But then I remembered Leona was keen on my attending and besides, I needed some practice for the upcoming Four String Banjo convention (though no dice, they'd played the six songs they were going to do already so I am kind of hosed). But I am glad I went after all. The ladies of the Grays Harbor Banjo Band had a special surprise for me: A mini-bridal shower.

The banjo band ladies are the unsung heroes of the band. They generally sit in the back with their knitting and crocheting, just going to town, but they also bring most of the food when there is a party.

It turned out they had been putting things together for me for the past few weeks — Leona made me a doily and some lovely potholders, Clydene made slippers and potholders, Blanche made a soft white shawl and some potholders, Betty gave me a lovely bouquet of roses from her garden and a recipe book with some recipes in it and Penney had some dishrags and scrubbers for me. All of the things were handmade. It was really overwhelming. Those women are so sweet to think of me, I am really blessed to know them.