Overrated:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• The Kite Runner
• The Girls from Ames
• Anything by Jodi Picoult
• The Secret Life of Bees

Underrated:

• A Thousand Splendid Suns
• Little Heathens
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Brooklyn
• Without a Map
• The House at Sugar Beach
• The Secret Scripture

Properly rated:

• The Hunger Games series
• Cutting for Stone
• My Life in France
• Room
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Agree/disagree?

Last month, Jeff and I took a day off of working and parenting, and spent it pretending to be glass artists. Along with four friends, we spent the day at an artist’s studio and he very patiently taught us how to work with glass–the kind of glass that is molten and hanging off the end of a steel rod. Here is a hugely simplified explanation of the process (you’ll notice I use technical terms. Like “blob”).

The first task is to gather a blob of glass on the end of the rod, being careful not to put your thumb over the hole (the one you’ll be blowing into later); otherwise, you’ll trap steam inside and burn yourself. Then, carefully carry the blob over to a steel-topped table called a marver and roll it back and forth to shape it (so this is called marvering). Keep twisting the steel rod continuously. Repeat the gathering process until the blob is a suitable size.

Then, blow! But don’t forget to keep twisting the whole time. Blow hard enough, but not too hard. Once the bubble is the right size, reheat the glass (the furnace used for this purpose is called the glory hole). Then shape the glass using tongs, damp wooden molds or several thicknesses of newspaper, also damp. Side note: I have heard from more than one glass artist that the Wall Street Journal is best suited for this job. Once the shape is satisfactory, the finished product is snapped off the end of the rod and goes into an annealer to cool (depending on the size of the piece this can take days or weeks).

It took me at least 30 minutes of this process, with constant supervision and assistance from the artist and his team, to make a sad, deformed little cup, the type of thing you could buy at IKEA for 99 cents. Still, I MADE IT with MY OWN HANDS from MOLTEN GLASS how cool is that!

Next we tackled paperweights. For this we used bits and pieces of colored glass and canes. These are like long straws made of glass, which may have colors or designs embedded within them; you can snap or cut them into pieces and stand them vertically to reveal what’s inside.

Arrange these pieces onto a stone tile. Place this into a small warming oven to bring it closer in temperature to the clear, hot glass that will be added. That glass is again gathered  from the pot and then gently pressed against the pieces on the tile (the artist had to do this part for us). Once they have adhered, the entire blob is reheated in the glory hole and then shaped with the molds or damp newspaper. Once you are happy with the shape, the paperweight goes into the annealer to cool. After a few days or a week it is ready for polishing.

I am pretty happy with my finished paperweight. It’s very hard to predict what you’ll get after the colored glass pieces are picked up and melted into your clear glass. I chose based on color and didn’t try to plan a finished arrangement or design for how they’d look, so I wasn’t disappointed.

More photos on Flickr.

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Over on the Reviews tab, I have a giveaway for you: kids’ winter boots. Go see.

Early in the winter, Sears contacted me to ask if our family would be interested in reviewing some kids’ winter boots.* Apparently they heard about our typical winter weather conditions? We received the adorable girls’ Svetlana faux fur-trimmed boot (pictured). Jo was smitten right away with the fur trim and especially the peace-sign detail; she loves peace signs as much as your average flower child did.

The boots fit right on the first try (always something I worry about when ordering shoes online). They have a rubber sole and a zip closure and were immediately pronounced warm and cozy. The girl proceeded to wear them pretty much every day, weather and color coordination be damned; they were right (at least in her mind) for every outfit and temperature.

With the very unusual winter we have had so far–no significant snowfall or cold temps until just recently–we had not been able to test the boots under those conditions. They stayed dry and warm in rainy and slushy weather and chilly, if not icy cold, temperatures. However, when the thermometer finally dropped down around the 0 degrees F mark, and the snow piled up higher than 6 inches, the boots were less able to keep the elements out.

Still, we would recommend these boots for slightly warmer climates and for occasions where your daughter isn’t playing actively or walking too far in the snow. My daughter will continue to wear them, indoors and out, whenever she can, because she absolutely loves the way they look. And honestly, with the kind of winters we have here, it makes sense to have more than one pair of boots, for differing conditions and just to mix things up. I bought myself two pairs a few years ago because when I just had one, I became unbearably sick of them by Christmas–with months to go when I’d have to wear them daily. And with the beating kids put on boots, having one pair for milder days and another for serious snowfall helps both last longer.

*WIN!*

Would you like your own pair of boots for your child? Leave a comment by Sunday, 1/29, and you’ll be entered to win a pair of either the Canyon River Blues Svetlana boots (for girls) or the Totes Rick boots (for boys, shown at right), your choice. Make sure your email address is included with your comment so I can contact you. Both are available in kids’ shoe sizes 11 to 6.

*So just to be clear, Sears gave me a pair of boots, free, and then they said they’ll give YOU a pair too. Also free. But they didn’t tell me what or whether to write about their boots. And they won’t tell you either.

So tell me, does St. Nick visit your house? He never came around when I was a kid. We had to wait for Santa to drop by on December 24 like everyone else. But it seems that here in the frozen North where we live, most children are accustomed to a little pre-stocking of the stocking. When they go to bed on December 5, they put out their shoes or socks (I’ve heard both) so that St. Nick can fill them with treats. Apparently we can attribute this to our state’s German immigrant roots, although it should be noted that my mother is twice as German as I am and her mother was born and raised in this state, and yet St. Nick dissed us every year of my childhood.

For our kids, this all started when Jo was in kindergarten. We arrived at school on the morning of December 6 and saw that one of her gym shoes was missing from the shelf above her hook. I started to grill her about how on earth she managed to lose one shoe, but then noticed that every shoe on the shelf was missing its partner. It turned out that St. Nick had grabbed them all, stuffed them with goodies and brought them into the classroom.

From then on, well, it seemed that we would need to open our doors/chimney to the jolly old elf each December 5, because why would he skip over our house only to visit everyone else in town? (This also means we’re four for four on trips to Walgreens at 9 p.m. on that same night. Things that make you go ho-ho-hmmmm.)

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P.S.: I also wrote more about holiday slacking in this guest post at Diets in Review.

A brief summary of what we’ve been up to, in photos:

As Jo gets more serious about skating, I add new skills too. First it was the hair styling (actual email received a few weeks ago: “Please do not cut your skater’s hair until competition season is over. Bangs are especially hard to work with!”) and the fact that “if you’re not puking, you’re skating.” Then it was understanding how to buy ice time, via a contract with the figure skating club. For the record, my best bet was to buy 26 hours of time at once, calculated on a per-minute basis.

Most recently, I took a lesson how to be a music monitor during said ice time. Someone asked me “Is that like a DJ?” and I said yes, only without the turntables and those giant headphones. And also, cold. Basically, you sit in one of those boxes next to the ice and put CDs into the player. On the ice, 15 or so girls are either practicing individually or working one-on-one with a coach. They line up their CDs of program music and the monitor plays them, in order. Except sometimes, a coach comes in with a “pro call” and bumps to the front of the line. (There is a list of about 20 rules for music playing, so you can understand why I was totally nervous the first time). And then some other times, whichever skater whose turn it is doesn’t want their music after all. So between each CD, the monitor has to stick her head out of the box and bellow, “JULIA!” or “MADDIE!” or “KATIE!” once or ten times until the girl says Yes, please play my CD, or No, not now, thanks.

Related: Why is it kind of intimidating dealing with teenage girls? They are perfectly nice, but I did not like that bellowing part of the job.

Also related: Proper attire is essential for music monitors. This means fingerless gloves, and also apparently eyeglasses so you can realize that there are not one, but TWO space heaters in your little box, in case you would like to maybe turn them on?

The children at my kids’ school observed the anniversary of 9/11 by making and decorating “peace pinwheels” and placing them in front of the building. They still know little of what happened that day, and less of what it meant then and means now. There will be time for that later.

9/11/2010

9/11/2008

9/11/2006

Dear Wednesday weather,
WTG!

Warmly,
MM

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Dear people who left a flat-screen TV on the curb,
Really? You broke it already? If so, let me Google that for you.

Your hippie friend,
MM

*

Dear leathery jogger,
Maybe look into some sunscreen? Or perhaps it’s too late.

With concern,
MM

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Dear aggrieved driver,
I have the same right as you do to be on this road. So back off.

Sincerely,
The mom on the bike

P.S. Here’s a thought: Contact your alderman and demand more bike lanes. Then we both win.

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Dear Rails to Trails,
You are awesome.

Thankfully,
MM

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Dear lake,
You are pretty. But you also, um, smell. Something you ate?

Your friend,
MM

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Dear roundabout,
Remember when you scarred me for life? Good times!

Still a little mad,
MM

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Dear me,
I’m glad you talked me (you? myself? I?) into a bike ride instead of the treadmill today.

Love,
You know who

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Dear Mom,
I’m so glad you retired so you would have time to make peach jam and bring me a jar so I could have it on some toast after my bike ride.

Love,
Your favorite daughter and grammar expert

Two pictures:

Two announcements:

“Wow, I did not expect the kindergartners to be SO small.” (This from the first grader.)

“The second day of school is always the best. Because it’s usually a Friday.” (Also the first grader. They are so wise.)

Sometimes, you really do get a PR pitch that is right on the money. I wrote about that on my review page today. You should check it out because you could win a prize of your very own.

I’ve also been meaning to tell you about a nice email I received after my cranky post about how I like to do my OWN crosswords, independently. The people behind CRUX Crosswords for iPad gave me a code so I could check out their app. It is a nice collection of crossword puzzles from many sources, from my beloved New York Times to the Onion’s AV Club. You still need a membership to access some of these (that darn Times), but if you already have one, you can enter your info here and get puzzles through the app. It was just awfully nice to receive a totally no-pressure email from someone who really had read my post and acted accordingly.

This would all be a great segue into a BlogHer wrapup post, but since this isn’t 2009 there aren’t many stories to tell of either bloggers or brands behaving badly … at least, as far as I know. I saw lots of good friends, met some new people (still going through the cards and following/subscribing; I will get to you soon, I promise!), attended some sessions and parties, enjoyed the San Diego weather. I wrote about my brush with fame (Bob Harper!) at my fitness site. I missed a few things that I later regretted, and a few people who couldn’t be there.

As always, my favorite favorite thing was the Voices of the Year community keynote–and I love this post about it, and all of BlogHer11, from Liz at Mom-101, “You get what you give.” It’s a smart takeaway for all of us.