This is me all dressed up for the Mad Men party at Mom 2.0. I’m wearing my hair like this from now on.

I’ve been a little silent because I came home with a nasty cold, but I’ll have photos up soon and a collection of a few of my favorite moments from the weekend.

For Hank’s third birthday I made these inexpensive sidewalk chalk party favors.

I bought the pretty striped chalk in packs of four at the drugstore, then rolled each piece in waxed paper and just twisted the ends to seal them. Easy, fast and cheap.

I’ve read a lot of Martin Amis. I find his fiction off putting, but I keep reading because his work makes me want to take another pass at everything I write. The Moronic Inferno is a collection of his non-fiction essays, which I recommend. These are the parts I wanted to remember:

“Terrible things happen all the time. This is the terrible thing.”

“What’s the difference between $75 million and $150 million? Hardly any difference, surely, in our terms. But in the life of pure money $75 million and $150 million are chalk and cheese. What’s the difference? The difference is $75 million.”

of Truman Capote:
“‘The name’s Tony, isn’t it?’ he croaked.
‘No. Martin,’ I said, trying to make Martin sound quite like Tony.”

“From the point of view of ostentation — well, the house had a monogrammed marble driveway, and went on from there.”

“Miss Didion’s style relishes emphasis, repetition, re-emphasis. Her style likes looking at the same things from different angles. Her style likes starting and ending successive sentences with identical phrases.”

“Hef took the stage. For a man who never goes out, who rises at mid-afternoon, who wanders his draped mansion in slippers and robe (whose lifestyle, on paper, resembles nothing so much as a study in terminal depression)< Hef looks good -- surprisingly, even scandalously so."

"Many times in Bellow's novels, we are reminding that 'being human' isn't the automatic condition of every human being."

Vocabulary

amour propre
Respect for oneself; self-esteem.

beau monde
the world of fashion and society

squib
a short and witty or sarcastic saying or writing.

obsequy
a funeral rite or ceremony

traduce
to speak maliciously and falsely of; slander; defame:

blancmange
a sweet pudding prepared with almond milk and gelatin and flavored with rum or kirsch.

etiolate
to cause (a plant) to whiten or grow pale by excluding light: to etiolate celery.

quango
a semi-public advisory and administrative body supported by the government and having most of its members appointed by the government.

imposture
the action or practice of imposing fraudulently upon others.

voluptuary
a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit and enjoyment of luxury and sensual pleasure.

argot
a specialized idiomatic vocabulary peculiar to a particular class or group of people, esp. that of an underworld group, devised for private communication and identification: a Restoration play rich in thieves’ argot.

Troilism (sometimes spelled triolism)
refers to the erotic interest in watching one’s romantic partner engage in sexual behavior with a third party, sometimes while hidden

bumf
Printed matter, such as pamphlets, forms, or memorandums, especially of an official nature and deemed of little interest or importance.