the hypothetical wren

This mug, which I presume my mom found at a thrift store or yard sale, is a perfect coffee-drinking mug. It has a large capacity, and what other beverage (at least among the beverages that you drink out of a mug rather than a pub glass) would you want to drink in such quantities?

The handles of handmade mugs are always tricky. Some are far too small for the vessels they accompany; others are not shaped to adequately accommodate the human hand despite being made by same. The handle on this mug is stout enough to match the body of the mug, yet thin enough to fit comfortably in the hand. The cat painting on the outside — reminiscent, to me, of the pencil illustrations of Ben Shahn — is just gravy.

Of the pictures I’ve taken so far this year, this is one of my favorites. It’s not a technically great shot — the focus is a bit off, and it’s sort of dark due to the bad lighting — but the subject matter is particularly interesting to me. Every Chinese buffet I’ve ever been to has some sort of sheet cake as one of their dessert offerings. Often, these cakes are dry and devoid of much tasty flavor, but the pieces are always cut into precise little squares. Sometimes, I’ve seen these cake squares laid out separately from the mother cake, in neat rows. The repetition of so many identical pieces of cake is quite a mesmerizing sight. Here, you see one of the methods used to accomplish this sort of dessert precision — this piece of cardboard was being used to cut this mediocre coffee-flavored cake into miniature servings.

Most of the people in my family were sick on Thanksgiving, so we postponed the whole turkey business until the following Saturday. (Since only one member of my extended family actually likes turkey, I figure most of us were secretly relieved.) Instead, my mom made a big pot of chicken and noodles, which was so, so, so much better than the standard holiday meal. This is just broth, some vegetables, shredded chicken meat, and two bags of the greatest frozen-food product ever, Grandma’s Frozen Noodles. Sure, my mom or I could make some noodles from scratch, but they wouldn’t be even as good — these are the noodles I grew up on, so they have trained my mouth to think this is what noodles should taste like. (I’m sure I’ve written about these before, at some point.)

I’ve always enjoyed the incongruity between the homey pictures on the front of the bag and the manufacturer’s address on the back — FOOD CITY, U.S.A., DENVER, COLORADO (although, in the last year or so, it seems that FOOD CITY, U.S.A., has moved north to the suburbs, and is now in Arvada). I remember thinking as a kid that FOOD CITY, U.S.A would be a fun place to go, or even to live, since it was where the doughy, chewy noodle goodness came from.

Although their map shows that Grandma’s Noodles have conquered much of the West, in my experience, it’s still a real pain in the ass to find them outside of Colorado. It’s still worth it, though, even if you have to occasionally go to W*l-M**rt (the only place that carries them in NM).

Each time I drive to Roswell, I conclude that there is less and less to look at along the drive. The road from Clines Corners to Roswell is particularly scenery-challenged, and things that would be barely noticeable on busier routes — say, the entire town of Encino — become major attractions, once your eye becomes starved for entertainment. Other people have told me that this is a feature, not a flaw — that if I let myself get used to the rhythms of broad, flat plains with no topographic features, I could find plenty of things to look at. I don’t think I could ever become this person, so, instead, I wait for the few bright, shiny things to be found between ABQ and Roswell, such as this part of an old sign in Moriarty.

Moriarty has one of the lamest town slogans I’ve ever heard of — “The Crossroads of Opportunity,” which I take to mean that opportunity enters, stops, and then passes through Moriarty at top speed, much like the drivers stopping in only to get gas and then scram.

Spending a lot of time in the various UNM libraries often means spending time sitting in other people’s carrels. There’s not a lot of great places to sit in any of the libraries, save the west-wing reading rooms in Zimmerman, and finding chairs adjacent to power outlets is even rarer. When you sit in someone else’s carrel, you can see what books they are working on. Often, I try to guess if I know the person assigned to the carrel by the books on their shelf, and sometimes I’m right. I also try to be a good citizen — a friend of mine was always finding crumbs from other people’s meals in her carrel, so I know not to do that. Anyway, the above picture is of a carrel in the Fine Arts Library. I really liked the sign.