Pork Chop Dilettante

Beach Treasures

Treasures from the Delaware Seashore State Park:

All images copyright emilie kleiner 2010. Please do not steal my images.

Treasure Hunting

I have an innate desire to find things. I do crossword puzzles and find answers to clues. I like to find the clean surface beneath a layer of grime and dust (vacuum cleaner commercials are especially thrilling for me). If you have misplaced your car keys, please ask me to help you find them. But my favorite thing of all is treasure hunting on a beach. Give me pieces of coral, small pebbles that have been tumbled in the surf, larger stones with striations of white that mark them like the trajectories left behind by airplanes in the sky. Even better are the whelks and razor clams and driftwood.

I'm sure there are many psycho-therapuetic inferences you could make about me, like I'm still searching for my purpose in life or something, but I doubt it. I think I'm just weird, and I've accepted that long ago. So anyway, on Good Friday this year my family and I went to the Delaware Seashore State Park to picnic and find little gifts from the sea.

Here are some of the photos from our trip. I'll have shots of my little treasures later on, but here you can see the peacefulness that is the shore. I think I should move there.

 Ladybugs like to hide under the dune grasses that blow onto the shore.

 

A driftwood boomerang

 

Paradise on the coast of Delaware...it will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

 

All images are copyright emilie kleiner, 2010. 
  

New Obsessions

My first new obsession is Donnie Darko. Yes, it took me long enough to see the movie, I know. It was awesome! I spent over an hour reading interpretations and analyses on web sites and discussion boards. I never cease to amaze myself with how far my geekiness reaches. I am achieving more and more every day. This movie is very bizarre and not one that I thought I'd ever like (demonic bunny rabbit soothsayers are not usually my thing). However, it is a spectacular melting pot of sci-fi, teenage angst, semi-dysfunctional families and dark humor. My only criticism is that some of the characters drop the f-bomb a little too often for my taste. It gets old after a while.

My other new obsession is Deceiver.com. It's fantabulous. I love reading about how hypocritical celebrities are (politicians, PETA, global warming fanatics) . There's always something new to learn.

Some quasi-obsessions: my new reproduction Star Wars lunchbox, She & Him, Assateague Island, and diving through recycling bins to retrieve unclaimed bottle caps from Coca-Cola products (www.mycokerewards.com). 

Catching Up

So I haven't posted in a little while. Sorry, guys. I've had a few crazy weeks! The first weekend in August was the wedding of one of my college roommates and dearest friends. I agreed to be the photographer, which is a very stressful job, but for a friend like her I was happy to oblige. Once I have adjusted the photos for the web I will post a few for you to see.

This past weekend I filled in at the barn on Saturday (hello muscle memory...doing those stalls was a bitch!) and then went to the Virgin Mobile Festival on Sunday. I had a fabulous time, but I've never been to a concert where people crowd-surfed or participated in mosh pits (I know, I live a sheltered life). My best friend from high school came up from Richmond to go to the festival with me. We were mostly excited about Stone Temple Pilots. We were able to find a spot towards the front--however that's where all the good times were happening. There was, of course, the obligatory pre-concert pot-smoking ritual, which happened all around us. Then during Plush some dude fell on my neck as he attempted to crowd surf. After that, we got stuck in not one, but two mosh pits, and finally I'd had enough of people nearly falling on my head so I ran to the far edge of the crowd so I wouldn't get hurt.

Before STP, Iggy Pop and the Stooges were on. Iggy Pop is ridiculous but very entertaining. 'Nuff said. Anyway, when we got there, She & Him was finishing up on the South Stage. They were really good! I'm glad I was able to catch their performance. After STP was Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor is almost unrecognizable now as a beefcake. Laura and I stood around for the first three songs but didn't know any of them so we left to go see Kanye West. Woo hoo! He was really good, as I expected. We didn't stay long enough to hear Stronger (really disappointed but I wanted to go to bed). On our way out of the race track, we heard the start of Head Like a Hole and ran back in so we could hear that live. That was a treat!

This Saturday I'm headed to the beach with my family, and let me tell you, va-K couldn't come any sooner. I have plenty of books to read and I can't wait to get out on the sand. I hope the water temp is good this year, and even more than that, I hope that it doesn't rain all week like it did last year.

 

Oh, before I go, I watched two good movies last night: The Savages and The Girl in the Cafe. Surprisingly, The Savages wasn't completely depressing considering it was about dealing with a convalescing parent and estranged siblings. The Girl in the Cafe was a thought-provoking May-December romance/social justice film that took place in Britain and Iceland. It was really poignant.

I Finally Watched Labyrinth...

 

I can see why it is a cult favorite. Gotta love Jim Henson, and David Bowie definitely stole the show with his skinny legs and Duran Duran hair. I just love him. However, it is Ludo who stole my heart. He's a good beast--one to keep in your corner for sure.

This holiday weekend I visited my best friend Laura. She lives in Richmond, VA, and I was glad to get away for a few days. We went to Williamsburg on Friday and walked around Merchant Square for a while. We had dinner at the Cheese Shop, which had awesome sandwiches on crusty bread and a plethora of "foodstuffs" for sale. We also walked down to the little kitchen house where her grandparents used to live (see below). The rest of the weekend we were zombies because of the unruly smoke alarms that kept going off in her mom's house. It started at 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning and continued (on and off) until 9:30 p.m. that night. I hope they were able to fix it because that sucked. Ugh, my neck hurts from yoga this morning. Anyway, I had a great time and can't wait until she moves up here later in the year.

This is kind of dorky, but I'll admit to it anyway. I was reading a "buzz" article on Yahoo! today about the top ten movie plot twists and found out that one of the actors in the Stargate movie played the, um, "lady" in The Crying Game. Ack. Why am I so slow to catch on to stuff like that? (Probably because I haven't seen the Crying Game). I didn't even know Jennifer Connelly was in Labyrinth. You can't take me anywhere. Anyway, the bloke I'm speaking of is Jaye Davidson. He hasn't been in anything since Stargate, which came out in 1994. That's too bad. I really liked him as Ra. From what I have read on the interweb, he has left acting and is happily working as a fashion assistant.

Wish I was still on vaca...

My family picked the only rainy week in the WHOLE summer to vacation in Ocean City, MD. We managed to find other fun things to do, like visit Assateague Island, the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum (my sister Sara got freaked out by the shrunken heads), go to the go kart track, and watch for dolphins at the beach while braving the arctic wind. Ha!

My sisters, brother-in-law and I even went to Seacrets one night. It was like the over 60 crowd was there reliving their past of really bad dancing and overpriced alcohol. We ditched that popsicle stand and played rummy back at the condo instead. We celebrated my nephew's 2nd birthday later in the week, and we had crabs, clams and beer al fresco at a restaurant that was sitting in a giant sandbox. That was way cool.

Here are the obligatory photos that commemorate this lovely time at the beach:

                                                                                

The Fair!

Yesterday I went to the Cecil County Fair! It was so full of hillbilly goodness I could barely contain myself. I love visiting the animals in the 4-H barns and seeing people I went to high school with that have lots of babies and a requisite cigarette or two.

Here are some highlights from the 4-H barns:

Here are some hogs takin' an awesome nap-a-rooni. They make wonderful noises. I thought these two were very handsome.

It's not so easy to tell in this photo because it's backlit, but this was a ginormous bull. He was so sexy with his black shiny fur. Oh guess what--the word "ginormous" has been added to the dictionary.

I nearly gave myself a heart attack when I saw all these incredibly cute buns. There were some funny angora buns and some dwarf buns and this cute little guy with silly ear flops. When I finally have my own home I will definitely have some pet buns. :)

Now this guy is a Grand Champion and Reserve Champion cock-a-doodle-doo. He is very large and in charge, as you can tell by the photo. He filled up almost the entire width of his cage.

And there you have it folks. A sampling of the animal fun you can have at the Cecil County Fair. There are lots of fun games and rides, a magic show, chainsaw art, a rodeo, horse shows, drag racing, and tractor pulls, too.