slowtech

September 1st in Boston

2011-09-01T21:04:00.001-05:00

Our new downstairs neighbor moved in today. She is pretty young. I found myself wanting to give her motherly advice about how to change lanes around here, but she's from CT so I doubt she needs help.

This is for those of you who live in kindler, gentler areas of the world, who might one day wish to come leaf-peeping and be foolhardy enough to try to drive yourself.

How To Change Lanes in Massachusetts Traffic:
1. Swerve without warning in the direction that you want to go in, then quickly swerve back.
2. Now that you have the attention of every car in the near vicinity, put on your blinker.
3. Swerve into your destination lane. If you've timed it right, you will have frightened the driver behind you so badly that they slammed on the brakes and left you plenty of room to coast into their lane.

You can get across several lanes of traffic quite quickly in this way, although be warned that passengers sometimes object to the car's rapid darting movements, and are vocal about it. Ignore them.

Note: do not, by any means, turn on your blinker in advance of the first swerve. This only warns other drivers of your intentions and they will speed up and sit right in your blind spot. Thus you lose face, and the other drivers swoop in to prey upon your weakness.

Me, Google and the Tinfoil Hat

2011-02-17T20:51:00.003-05:00

So I'm kind of excited that the search industry is finally getting some mainstream coverage. I think it's funny that SEO seems to be getting more attention than paid - in the industry, there's a kind of SEO-as-underdog perception. (Also SEO-as-cowboy, but that's a different post.)

If you haven't read the NYT article about JC Penney gaming Google's natural SERPs, go read it now. Then come back and re-read that last sentence, and it will make much more sense.

I've been reading a lot of shrieky stuff online which loudly condemns JC Penney for cheating. Dude, using black-hat techniques is unorthodox for sure, and also pretty stupid for a site that you want to keep around for the long term, which JC Penney presumably was going for. But I don't see how breaking Google's guidelines is immoral - white and black hat are just opposite faces on a coin, not laws meted out by the justice system on behalf of you, the voter. (If JC Penney's SEO firm, SearchDex, failed to disclose the risk of getting blackballed by Google to JC Penney, then that was unethical. It's also not unheard of - I mentioned cowboys for a reason. Digital marketing is a land grab right now, and the industry is young enough that snake-oil salesmen abound.)

I agree that black hat usually results in a crappy user experience, but I think that it's Google's job to keep improving the search results as the web evolves and expands, and the job of company websites to make the websites as good as possible. At the end of the day, black or white hat SEO doesn't matter if you've got a 99.9% bounce rate and no one stays on your site long enough to actually make you some money. (Bounce rate was famously described by Avinash Kaushik as "I came, I puked, I left.")

I think Google is incredibly disingenuous when they, on the one hand, get businesses to do their work for them by publishing SEO guidelines, and on the other hand maintain that their pure and noble mission is the happiness of the user, and the piles of money generated in Mountain View are just a side artifact of Larry Page's and Sergei Brin's laudable desire to organize the world's information. They might have been motivated soley by altruism at the start, but the tentacles of Google have spread much farther than that over the past decade. Google runs an office in Washington DC devoted soley to lobbying. At the very least, making money is a twin passion to organizing information at Google.

The Times article suggests that Google allowed this black hat stuff to go on for fear of disturbing the relationship with JC Penney's paid search advertising, worth $25 million a month. Not incidentally, that is a big goddamn budget. I would guess that my employer is in the top 500 largest PPC (paid search) advertisers in the US, but that's a lot of clams even to me. Worth it, too - did you ever think about how much cheaper it is to ship shit out of a warehouse than maintain brick-and-mortar stores staffed with humans who can only process one transaction at a time? The profit margins on online transactions are so much better than offline because the overhead is way lower.

All of which explains why JC Penney was eager to get all the traffic they could, particularly over the holidays. A risky strategy, sure, and I do wonder if the top brass even knew that their SEO firm was doing this - retail is a pretty old-fashioned industry, and SEO is complicated and new.

My guess is that Google has known about the JC Penney site for a while and was trying to solve the problem algorithmically when the Times story broke. I do believe Matt Cutts (for once) when he says that Google's spam team didn't let it go because they were worried about disturbing the business relationship with the paid search side of the house.

First, Google makes no money directly off of organic traffic - but JC Penney spends $25 million a month on paid search ads. Therefore, Google actually has a direct interest in reducing JC Penney's organic traffic because it will force them to rely more heavily on Google. Secondly, Google can stand to lose 25 million in revenue per month a lot more easily that JC Penney can find an alternate source for all the high-quality, high-intent traffic that Google currently gives them. Thirdly, it's as embarrassing as shit for Google. I also think that there's a genuinely strong corporate culture at Google which would be a considerable obstacle to surmount in order to proceed with some kind of back room blind-eye deal. Like I said, twin passions.

What is truly amazing about this situation, and others like it, is that we don’t look at why Google is placing such disproportionate weight on links, particularly in this case, when so many of the links are of poor quality.

I think Evan LaPointe has put his finger on the heart of the matter here, who has the best response I've seen so far to the whole JC Penney kerfuffle. He puts forth the revolutionary idea that instead of concentrating all that energy on marketing, companies refocus and invest in improving their product (an e-commerce website). I really don't understand why most B2C businesses fail to realize this - they're going to make a lot more money over the long term if they can establish an ongoing relationship with a customer. In retail, it's always cheaper to extend the lifetime value of the customer by re-marketing to the existing customer base than it is to acquire new customers. Hello, anyone remember mail-order catalogues? Great business model. E-commerce is exactly the same. I don't care if your product is coffins, something that no one will ever need more than one of - it's worth cultivating an ongoing relationship with your (surviving) customers, for word of mouth sales alone.

So: I don't buy that Google knowingly ignored JC Penney's black hat tactics, and I think it's possible that JC Penney did not, in fact, know what was going on. (Not very likely - but possible.)

What I'm curious about is what prompted this article in the Times. David Segal is doing some excellent journalistic work in the search space, I just wonder what brought his attention to JC Penney and DecorMyEyes in the first place. It wasn't Microsoft, who were still showing JC Penney's results for days after the article was published (and who just got busted copying Google's search results.) I could see competitors like Blekko or Mahalo tipping off the reporter though, couldn't you? I would, if I thought of it. What a great strategy in the battle for hearts and minds: expose your opponent's legitimate weaknesses. It's not any wilder than what goes down on Capital Hill. It seems like a good space for a reporter to make a name in, too - there's a lot of money sloshing around in search these days.

You want conspiracy theories, here are mine. Google is doing its best to keep its results just good enough not to lose users, but to make the organic results useless enough to force uses to take a second look at the paid search ads. Jill Whalen proposes this and I think she's got a good point.

In the same way that Google gets businesses to do much of the heavy lifting on helping the algorithms to return relevant results, while not giving away enough for anyone to copy their secret sauce, Google is responding to increasing ad blindness on the part of users by reducing relevancy in the natural results at the same time as it mucks about with the look of paid search ads to make them appeal more to the user.

If you're not in paid search, you might not have taken special note of this, but Google is now extending ad titles so that they are longer, with a click-to-call phone number embedded in the ad, as we've been seeing for a while in organic local results. They've also introduced site links into the ads, just like we see in organic results.
It's a delicate balance, and I admit that I take a small-minded satisfaction in pointing out the contradictions between some of Google's stated policies versus the policies that are self-evidently in place. They talk a lot about relevance, but for Google, what's relevant is what's likeliest to make the most money for Google.

Google is usually pretty long-term in their thinking - it's one of the reasons that makes them such a great company. (I know I just spent the whole post slagging them off, but I do admire them tremendously in many ways. What can I say - I come to bury Caesar not to praise him.) So I think they're genuine when they say that they want to get rid of content farms, even though content farms make them a crapload of money. I hope the next algorithm update drops soon, because I think the Google organic results have gone a little too far in the direction of "intentionally crappy".

Plenty of tinfoil to go around. Don't be shy.

Every day is Caturday

2011-01-11T12:13:00.006-05:00

Tooth-achingly sweet, but that's never stopped me before.

I've got an app for my phone called Darkroom, which is free and helps you take pictures indoors by doing one simple thing: not taking the picture until your hand stops shaking. I have a serious case of camera shake myself (even if I'm resting my elbows on a firm surface) so it's been working well for me.

Also, why don't more household-linen companies use pictures of cute sleeping cats and dogs in their ads? I think Bob and Nibbles look pretty comfortable here, and if I didn't already own this bedding, I would want to buy it.

This is why I still eat meat

2011-01-03T20:54:00.009-05:00

Spaghetti Carbonara*

Okay, everyone single should be able to cook at least one thing, because it is such a great way to seduce people. This is also a recipe for people who don't cook. You don't have to be cheap and busy to appreciate this recipe, but it might help.

You can fancy it up with some creative shopping but every basic component can be the kind of thing that keeps forever - especially if you're using jarred pesto and skipping the ricotta. (The eggs ought to be fresh too, but I suppose you could substitute shelf-stable-forever EggBeaters. If you're camping or something. Or you could use two tablespoons of water mixed with a tsp of flax seed if you're vegan** or super grossed out by EggBeaters (I am). But fresh eggs are best.)

3/4 lb of pasta
2 egg yolks
fresh ricotta
1 tbsp pesto, or more if you prefer.
2 tbsp butter
fresh parmesan
pinch of nutmeg
ground pepper
4 tbsp white wine or vegetable stock
100 grams/3 oz cubed pancetta, about 1 cm x 1 cm. Bacon is fine too.

Put the pasta water on in a big pot to boil. The water for pasta should be "as salty as the Mediterranean", whatever.

Cut up the pancetta. Dump it in another large pot with one tbsp of the butter. Cook until the pancetta has started to brown a little and then add the wine or stock. Cook until the liquid has reduced to about 2 tbsp.

If the pasta water has started boiling yet, put it in and set a timer for the cooking time on the box or just cook it until it's the texture you like. I always use the timer because I can't be bothered to keep testing the pasta.

While the pancetta is browning, you can start the egg sauce. In a smallish bowl, beat the eggs with the cheeses. If you aren't using the ricotta, add a couple of extra tablespoons of cream/milk/stock/pasta water. Remember to check on the pasta, by the way. Don't let the pancetta stick and burn, either. Add the nutmeg to the egg sauce. (If you are like me, you got a microplane from your sister for christmas and you will become childishly happy at the prospect of using the microplane to grate the cheese right onto the eggs and then using the exact same microplane to grate the nutmeg in right after. But I think I'm the only one like me.) Grate some pepper over the sauce. The Parmesan and the pancetta are both pretty salty, so you probably won't need salt.

Turn off the heat under the pancetta. Add the other tbsp of butter and the pesto. If you're using electric burners, that's too bad, and it also means that you're going to need to remove the pancetta pot from that entire burner. Turn the drained pasta back into the pancetta pot and toss it around a little, enough to get the pasta pretty well coated all over with the delicious salty bacony grease. Add the egg sauce. Stir well until it has all amalgamated into a deliciously sticky, heart-stoppingly delicious blaze of creamy sauce-bacon-pasta glory. Weep for your arteries. Be so fucking glad that you aren't a vegetarian.

*This recipe is actually so far from the original spaghetti carbonara that I am probably justified in renaming it Pasta Carabonara except that seems like the kind of silly pun an editor would make.

** Did you know bacon bits are vegan?

Vegan Substitutions

For the ricotta I would probably substitute plain soy milk into which you've warmed and steeped a dried porcini, crumbled into tiny bits. If you have advance notice for this meal you could also buy some fresh mushrooms - whatever kind you like - and saute those in olive oil lieu of the pancetta.

When you drain the pasta, reserve a bit of the cooking water.

Right before you put the pasta back in, add another slug of oil and a pinch or two of flour - maybe a teaspoon or so. Push it around in the pan until the flour is golden brown or doesn't taste raw, whichever way you want to judge it. The mushrooms will make everything look brown so you might want to go by taste.

Add the wine and cook most of the booze off. Then add the bacon bits. Those little motherfuckers are salty so you probably won't need to add salt. Add the pesto. Add the soy-porcini stuff. Stir until you've got a sauce that has the texture you like. Technically you made a roux, which is another way of saying gravy, when you added the flour to the fat, and rouxes are magical creatures that allow you to marry fat with water-based liquid in a smooth sauce, as opposed to something lumpy that separates and looks curdled. If the sauce doesn't look liquidy enough, you can add some of the reserved cooking water (or soy milk or vegetable stock or ... water) tablespoon by tablespoon.

Once the sauce is done, put the drained pasta back in the pot and stir it to get things pretty well distributed. Serve, garnished with fresh basil if you're feeling froggy.

Christmas cookies

2010-12-11T17:42:00.001-05:00

Grinding the spices for them. Totally crazy, I agree. Also, drinking. Unrelated, I'm sure.

Bob is "helping" by knocking shit all over the place to remind me that he has not yet had dinner. He's such a little pissant. Right now he's playing with the ground mustard. I hope he doesn't ingest any, because mustard is an emetic.

The Empress of Cat Food

2010-12-01T19:59:00.004-05:00

FrankenMouse

So far the raw diet experiment is going pretty well. The cats all loooooove it. And their poops smell a lot less! I would write about all the reasons that I'm finding it to be a good idea and how I am NOT AT ALL CRAZY to do it, except I'm too busy making the cat food itself.

I tell you what, though, I would totally start my own business making this shit, except I wouldn't make the frozen kind (shipping and storage costs would make it prohibitively expensive, I think) but the pressure canned kind which is shelf stable at room temp. It would be so easy. You would source your meat suppliers (seek out ethical ones) and get your permits together. Call your company FrankenMouse, because the food is basically trying to re-engineer a mouse and mice are the perfect food. (Or call the company something less stupid. Please don't think that the kind of marketing that I do is the kind that involves naming start-ups.)

Christ, you could start production out of your own kitchen. Pressure can all the food, then you can ship it at ground rates. Once business ramps up, look for a commercial kitchen. After that's outgrown itself, move to a farm and raise your own rabbits and chickens locally. Organically. It would cut down on production costs hugely. Raise their feed on the farm as well, natch. Get vets to consult on special needs lines. Do actual research on actual cats. Eat your own cat food, literally - something like a video of me eating the raw cat food would totally go viral on YouTube. Holy shit, right? I should make that video just to see if there's a market. (Also that would be BADASS.) Invest in a sustainable salmon fishery. Make corporate donatations to salmon research. Sell excess produce to local restaurants, because the kicker is that not only is the cat food human-grade, you're raising the chickens and rabbits and salmon on human-grade food.

You could market it as not only the best cat food nutritionally, but also the cheapest and most ethical choice possible. You could get Whole Foods to distribute it, first some local in-store testing and then nationally. You could build an empire.

He ain't heavy,

2010-11-28T16:54:00.000-05:00

he's my brother.

that kid ain't right in the head

2010-11-11T20:59:00.004-05:00

I decided the other day that I ought to try one of those stupid blogger things where you list things you are thankful for every day. Three things, things every day during November, whatever. I figured it would efficiently because it would give me blog fodder and also something to read back through when I'm depressed. Also it's possible that the act of being creative is enough to make me feel not depressed - like the endorphin rush you get from exercise.

I'm not feeling particularly enthused about it at the moment, but according to a lot of people, if you force yourself to grind out creative work every day, you'll eventually produce something decent. (Also I kind of think that I force out creative stuff at work every day, so ... why I thought making more work for myself was a good idea, I don't know ... as you can see I'm pretty ambivalent about the general idea of assigning myself MORE work.)

But! If I'm not a huge fan of vague thankfulness and gratitude (does feeling "thankful" work better when you believe in God?), I am at least a true believer in neuroplasticity (basically training your brain to sit up and beg) so it's good to force the ole grey noodle into something different.

Today I happen to be glad that I have a therapist who I like and the money for copays so I can actually go see her.

I win at life.

2010-10-31T02:56:00.001-05:00

And the aftermath.

happy halloween!

2010-10-29T21:09:00.002-05:00

Shoes and ships and sailing wax

2010-10-24T08:57:00.008-05:00

Sorry to leave you all hanging. I have a good excuse though. My new job is excellent. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but so far so good. I am SO glad to be working with some of the best litigators in the country! Man, do they know how to go after bad people who do bad things!

Also Dave has been out of the house a lot; one of his bands will be recording a new album (an LP? What the hell is the difference these days?) out in LA. They have been working very diligently, so diligently that Dave got bronchitis on top of a cold. This is sort of funny since I had an unrelated cold which progressed to bronchitis a week before. I think I was in denial about being sick because I decided not to take anything to reduce my fever in the hopes that a high fever would burn the virus out quicker.

It turned out not to be such a great idea. I planned to monitor my temperature and take something if my temperature went up past 102F, but when I wasn't paying attention it shot up to 103 and I spent a very uncomfortable night in a wringing wet bed. If I had known my fever was that high I would have taken something for it but it turns out you can't read a thermometer when your brain is busy cooking itself. It's like being on recreational drugs without the recreational aspect. My temp dropped by itself overnight to a mere 101, which is when I discovered the results of the previous evening's failed attempt to read the thermometer.

Oh well. I called in sick for a second day in a row and went to the doctor, who diagnosed bronchitis and gave me a z-pack and a note for work. (Then when I got into work no one would take the note from me because they all believed me. So I tucked it in between the pages of my employee handbook, because I didn't know what else to do with it.) I'm probably dumb enough to avoid going to the doctor even after that fever, but I am a nonsmoker and therefore when my insides became coated in gray gunk it seemed like there was more to the story. I was pretty relieved not to have pneumonia actually. According to the doctor bronchitis vs. pneumonia is really a matter of the location, location, location of your bacterial infection. How gross is that thought, by the way? At least as gross as gray mucus.

The cats were all pretty happy to have me home though. Obviously - I was toasty warm and slept for 20 hours a day. It's a cat's dream come true. And Bob showed me how there is now not a single surface in the house that he cannot reach. He is the giantest asshole I have ever met, and I have met some bad cats in my day. I think the assholery is the pigheadedness of really superior cat who is trying to figure out his place in the world.

Nibbles is no slouch either - she has figured out how to open drawers and I am pretty sure she opened the kitchen cabinet on her own the other day. But Nibbles is lazier and prettier than Bob, and she's friendlier too. She generally overcomes visitors by putting her paw in their chest and looking deep into their eyes. She did this with my landlord the other day, which was extra useful since he had stopped by because the rent was late. (He was super nice about it actually, and perhaps a little distracted by Nibbles climbing up his chest onto his head while purring ecstatically.)

All the cats seem to have been super naughty lately. I'm attributing this to switching them all to wet food (in preparation for a transition to a raw diet). Apparently dry food is like crack for cats, and almost as bad for them. Or they could just be energetic because we haven't been around very much. Whatever - the little fuckers want to party all the time.

We tried them with raw meat for the first time last night, actually, and four out of the five went for it with gusto. The holdout was Pip, who has also been the slowest to get excited about eating wet food. Pip is actually what prompted the switch to a raw diet (which, I *know*, is totally a crazy cat lady thing to do). He had a bladder "blockage" which cost $1700 and a trip to the veterinary ER to unblock. It was caused by him eating dry food and not drinking enough water. If he had been eating wet food, it's extremely unlikely that this would have happened. I was searching online to find out more about the bladder blockage and found Lisa Pierson's extremely authoritative site about the benefits of a raw diet. She is not only a vet but she talks about a groundbreaking study (which I can't find right now, argh) done by a vet which compared several generations of cats who were fed dry food only vs. a natural diet - within a couple of generations the dry-only cats had developed some serious problems.)

Besides it being a pain in the ass to deal with raw food, my reservation about a raw diet was how much it would cost and whether or not it would be okay for Lucky (who is diabetic) and Pip to eat instead of their presciption food. I couldn't work out how the cost compares to prescription canned food because I didn't know how much cats eat a day. It's based on their body weight, but most cats are around the 5 ounces/day mark. (The equivalent of five mice! This is unreasonably interesting to me. For our cats to support themselves they would need 25 mice per day between them!@ Holy shit!) But Lisa Pierson actually crunches the numbers and works out the cost (.64/cat/day) - which is cheaper than Pip's prescription canned food. A 6 pound bag of dry Rx for Lucky costs about thirty five bucks, or sick bucks a pound, That's a lot more expensive than the raw diet, which is about two bucks a pound. (Science Diet is like .18 cents a pounds, which is really kind of scary when you think about it.)

So there have turned out to be a surprising number of side benefits which I didn't expect just from the switch to canned food. It's easier to feed them - they all have two meals a day, all at the same time, and then we can clean the counters completely between meals. (In fact, we are almost at a point where we will be able to feed them all on the floor instead of having to keep dry kibble available at all times on the counters for Pip, Wiggles (aka Nibbles) and Little Bobby Dickface. Yes! Having a bowl of food on the counter has grossed me out for years!)

Also the litter boxes smell less terrible. I don't know what they put into the dry food, but it's pretty awful when it comes out the other end. Supposedly a raw diet will render the poops odorless, or almost odorless. If this is true, it's worth switching only for that reason. My goal in housekeeping is to have a house where you would never know that we had cats if the cats themselves didn't come out to say hello. This means cleaning the litterboxes a LOT and vacuuming a LOT. (I wish I had a good way to pick up pet hair on soft furnishings.) If the litterboxes are less grody, it's a little easier for me to deal with cleaning them when I come in the door after work. Cook's Illustrated recently reviewed robot vacuums. I've wanted one for a while but I don't know anyone who has one and could tell me how well they really work; however, if CI says they're worth the money then I trust them. (Apparently there is even a robot which will mop the floor! I love this idea since mopping the kitchen floor is one of my least favorite tasks.)

Another funny thing: I said that all the cats liked the raw chicken except for Pip; the PigBear loved the chicken but actually stopped eating it when she was full. I have never before seen her stop eating of her own volition. I'm hopeful that we might be able to help her lose weight with the raw diet (it's really easy to calculate how many calories she'll need based on her weight.) We just need a vet scale, and thanks - again - to Lisa Pierson, I know where to buy one online.

Lucky in particular went for the raw chicken with gusto. We don't know the history of his first three years; Dave's friend adopted him because her cleaning lady found him hanging around outside a dumpster, so I wonder if he went for the meat because he has had experience living rough? (on the other hand, I know Bob and Nibbles never hunted outside and they liked it, so who knows.)

One other happy thing about the raw diet: since I'm buying decent meat for the cats this means that we'll probably have more meat around, which bodes well for the humans. In a post which I can't find right now, Jennifer Reese of the Tipsy Baker observes that cooking vegetarian requires a lot more work than cooking meat. (I am super envious of her pet goat having, chicken keeping lifestyle. I hate plain eggs but they'd be handy to feed the cats.) I gave the cats one chicken breast last night and Dave and I had the other two for our dinner. When we ate dinner, none of the cats begged for food. ... because they were full? Because cats find raw meat infinitely more delicious than cooked? A fluke? Only time will tell.

It was the easiest and most delicious thing I have made in a while. Dave is still feeling kind of punky from his illness so it was a comfort food kind of night. I read Nigel Slater for inspiration (he is such a good food writer, and what's more, I don't think I have ever made any of his recipes and had it turn out badly. Probably in part because his recipes are super flexible.)

I sauteed a chicken breast in 1 tbl butter (yes - just butter) and then deglazed the pan with some vegetable stock (Slater calls for white wine, which would have been better but I had none), then added some buttermilk (Slater says yoghurt or creme fraiche, but again I had neither.) I let it all bubble away for a while, reducing and concentrating the flavor. The heat made the buttermilk split into tiny, unattractive white globules (this would not have happened if I'd used creme fraiche) so while the sauce was reducing I made a quick roux (browned the 1 tbsp flour on one side of a nonstick pan while 2 tbls of butter melted on the other side, then combined the two and added the dregs of some vegetable stock) and stirred it into the sauce, which thickened it up a bit and, more importantly, camouflaged the split buttermilk. Then I added the juice from a leftover half a lemon, tasted the sauce, decided it needed capers, and added a tablespoon or so of those plus a little brine from the jar. (I would not have needed a roux at all had I used yoghurt or creme fraiche, and the sauce would have reduced more quickly too.) Once the sauce had thickened up to my liking I threw in about a half a cup of basil leaves from the plant which has been yellowing sadly on top of the fridge ever since the weather turned cold and I brought it indoors.

While all this was happening I had a spaghetti squash roasting in a 450F oven. (I split it in half, scooped out the seeds and strings, salted and peppered it and put it face down in a glass baking dish for about half an hour. I suspect I left it in there longer than that, but overcooking spaghetti squash wasn't a big risk, and in fact, it was fine.) Once the chicken and its sauce were ready, I piled the spaghetti-like squash innards (not an appealing simile, sorry) into shallow pasta bowls and put the chicken breasts on top and then poured the sauce on top of everything. Apart from the use of spaghetti squash instead of angel hair pasta, this is the Italian restaurant comfort food of my childhood. (Well, as a kid I would have ordered veal instead of chicken, but who's counting?)

Also, despite the use of butter, it was incredibly healthy. Three tablespoons of butter isn't much (about 300 calories) when the rest of the meal is boneless skinless chicken breasts and squash - I didn't set out to make a diet meal but apparently that's what happened. I also didn't have to fuck around chopping and sauteing onion and garlic for a soffrito (aka mirepoix if you're feeling froggy), which is something I almost always have to make when I am cooking vegetarian in order to get some depth of flavor. Meat is so much easier to build a meal around and it provides a flavor that vegetables, delicious in their own right, can't produce. And that's why I will never be vegetarian. But I do want ethically treated meat, i.e. animals that have good lives right up until the day they are killed so that I can eat them. (If I lived in a place where I could get excellent produce year round, I think vegetarianism would be a lot easier. But I live in Boston where the growing season is four months long, hence the almost perpetual need for a soffrito.)

And that's all she wrote for now. Don't forget to tune in for another episode about really dowdy and unfashionable ways to spend your time.

from now on, I calls 'em as I sees 'em

2010-10-11T21:36:00.002-05:00

...not like I ever did mince words. I'm more towards the "blunt to the point of rudeness" end of the spectrum.

The past ten days have totally kicked my ass into the stratosphere, and not in a good way. So no insights from me.

But listen to this song, because it's one of my favorites, even if I am embedding it via gootube (currently* I have a hateon for Google and all its minions)

* I'm sure that by tomorrow morning I'll be back to welcoming our new Googlous overlords. In the meantime I'm hacked off.

at least we know now who ate Joey's mic

2010-10-05T19:39:00.002-05:00

Not that knowing does me much good.

It may be time for an intervention

2010-10-01T13:14:00.001-05:00

I just got all excited thinking about looking at my data to see if it makes a bell curve and what it looks like in a scatterplot chart. This seems like a problematic trend.

On the positive side, my high school math teacher would be proud (thanks, Mr Murphy! Even though I referred to my time with you as "probability and sadistics" all year, it turned out to be pretty handy lo these many years later.)

This is purely for bragging rights:

2010-09-27T20:53:00.001-05:00

Plum jam on a weeknight. Yes, the apple pectin is homemade, since you ask.

concord grapes must have a lot of umami

2010-09-21T22:28:00.003-05:00

the odor that the concord grape produces while in the superheated grasp of the reproductive urge creates an almost palpable miasma - musky and and densely sweet.

Caturday Scheduled Programming

2010-09-18T09:33:00.001-05:00

Hello, Lunch!

2010-09-13T13:02:00.002-05:00

Katurdayklok

2010-09-11T09:38:00.007-05:00

Do anyting for catklok
Do anything for catklok
Do anything for catklok
Do anything for catklok

I'll teach you who poop

catklok catklok catklok!

Pipgar Pipgelf fell out of a tree

Nibbles Wartooth ate a bumble bee

Bobby Murderface Murderface Murderface

Luckles doodly doo doodly doo ding dong diddly doodly doo

PigBear Explosion

With apologies to Dethklok
& thanks to stoops for his brutal assistance writing this post.

Last jar

2010-09-11T09:18:00.002-05:00

Guess it's time for another batch. Marmalade is so easy to make that I usually tend to overdo it and make enough to last three years, but this time I got it right.

Reading

2010-09-09T09:37:00.001-05:00

Just finished Radio Days by Garrison Keillor and I find myself full of reluctant admiration for the man. He strikes me as a pompous phony who condescends unpleasantly to his characters, but he can certainly turn a phrase.

so wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully pretty!

2010-09-06T16:45:00.004-05:00

you know that I'd do anything for you ...

If you’re in there, please save me, Superman

2010-08-27T23:36:00.004-05:00

How to Make a Self-Watering Potted Plant

2010-08-26T23:04:00.004-05:00

I'm not that much of a draftsman (or scanner user), but you get the idea.

That thing on the far right is supposed to say "capillary action" and if that's the wrong phrase, please don't tell me because the closest I get to science these days is an Excel spreadsheet and I don't really care if I'm wrong.

Testing

2010-08-25T21:10:00.001-05:00

Blogging from phone ... Now I just need picasa to throw pictures directly from my phone onto here. I'm all caught up to the year 2008!

practice, practice, practice

2010-08-25T16:58:00.002-05:00

working on trying to think of myself as a creative person again ...

Cyanide occurs naturally too

2010-08-20T09:43:00.005-05:00

On the Perils of Being a Hippie

Alas, "natural"

Tom's of Maine deodorant

caused chemical burns

In Which I Combine Three Major Talents

2010-08-10T16:45:00.009-05:00

A Not-At-All Exhaustive List of Things I am Good At:
1. Analyzing the crap out of things
2. Baking yeast bread
3. Writing

Now I will try not to bore the socks off you while I do all three things at once. Feel free to judge me in the comments section.

Since I am STILL looking for work (I can't even get arrested in this town right now), I'm obviously broke. Broke enough that I started to wonder if it was worth the effort of making my own bread. I know my bread is better, but is it cheaper? (Let's pretend my time is worth nothing in this scenario, which is what a lot of employers seem to think right now anyway, so in a way it's true.)

A loaf at Market Basket costs $1.99. What about the raw materials for my bread? They have to make a profit, so I'll guess that it costs them a dollar or less to produce each loaf of bread, but they also have access to economies of scale - so I'll stick with the $1.99.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I feel like if I'm going to the trouble of making homemade bread, it should be cheaper than commercially produced versions - as well as taste better and be free of suspect shelf-stabilizing chemicals. Think of homemade tomato sauce - a tin of tomatoes, a couple of spoonfuls of olive oil, salt, pepper, and onion and garlic - those are all inexpensive ingredients and I can make enough pasta sauce for dinner for two about a buck. (Add the pasta and you're talking about two dollars to feed two people for dinner - cheaper, tastes better and it's healthier.)

So I crunched the numbers. It turns out that those economies of scale make a crucial difference. My homemade bread cost $2.11 to make, while I can buy a loaf of bread for $1.99. Ounce per ounce, the homemade bread is 20% more expensive. (That link is to a Google doc version of my spreadsheet.)

But is supermarket bread really a better deal? I was still hoping that somehow homemade bread would turn out to be cheaper, so I looked at cost per calorie efficiency (thinking back to chemistry class and my lightbulb moment when I realized that a calorie was a way to measure energy ... and we eat to keep going ... so calories is probably a more effective unit of measurement here).

Calorie per calorie, homemade bread is 15% cheaper than supermarket bread. This is a good thing to know when you are trying to figure out, as all poor people do, what food will give you the most calories for the least money. Plus, with homemade bread I get to feel all superior about using high-quality ingredients like honey and molasses instead of the dreaded HFCS.

Recipe notes: I omitted the salt from the recipe because I used salted butter in the recipe. I find Beard is sometimes heavy-handed with the salt and the sweet in writing his recipes (probably why they taste so damn good.) I also subbed rice milk for dairy (we just don't keep fresh milk around any more).

Cracked Wheat Bread, from James Beard's Beard on Bread

* 1/2 cup cracked wheat -- fine
* 1 1/2 cups boiling water
* 1 package active dry yeast
* 1/3 cup warm water -- 100-110 deg.
* 1/4 cup butter -- softened
* 1 1/2 tablespoons salt
* 2 tablespoons molasses
* 2 tablespoons honey
* 1 cup milk
* 1 cup whole-wheat flour
* 4 cups all-purpose flour

Cook the cracked wheat in the boiling water about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking until all the water is absorbed. Dissolve the yeast in the 1/3 cup lukewarm water in a large mixing bowl and let proof. Stir the butter, salt, molasses, honey, and milk into the cooked cracked wheat. Cool to lukewarm, then add to the yeast mixture. With a large spoon or with one hand, start stirring in the flours, 1 cup at a time.

When the dough is stiff enough to work, turn out on a floured board and knead a good 10 to 12 minutes, working in a little of the remaining flour as necessary. When smooth and elastic, shape into a ball and put in a buttered bowl, turning to coat with butter. Cover, place in a warm, draft-free spot, and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.

Punch down and shape into two loaves.

Put in well-buttered 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pans, cover, and let rise again until doubled in bulk, or until the dough reaches the tops of the pans.
Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven 30 to 35 minutes, or until the loaves sound hollow when tapped on top and bottom. Cool on racks. Makes 2 loaves.

That's right, bitches. Quarter cup of butter. I said my bread was better.

Interviewing

2010-07-06T11:13:00.003-05:00

I've been looking for jobs for the past 4 months or so (kind of sporadically back in March, in a more focused way since May) and that means I have been having a lot of interviews. A LOT of interviews. So I created a little equation that will show you how the process works.

5 x applications yields 1 x call-back/phone screen
5 x phone screens yields 1 x in-person interview
5 x in-person yields 1 x second in-person interview
3 x second in-person yields 1 x job offer

Did you do the math? It's ugly out there. Stop & Shop is hiring, though!

Anyway, I've figured out some processes that make interviewing easier for me and I thought I'd share them (and also archive them for my own reference.) I'm not going to talk about obvious things like not lying because you already know not to lie. This is also going to include some things which might be specific to my industry, but I'm sure you can make parallels on your own.

To prepare for a phone screen, I do the following things:

1. Review the job description and my resume and try to think of specific ways in which my experience matches (or doesn't) the desired candidate. They want someone who has handled budgets over $250,000? My last two jobs have included budgets over a million! They want someone to lead a team of 4? Uh ... I have only supervised and trained interns. I need to figure out how to address that in the phone screen.

2. Figure out the company's business model and what life-cycle stage the company is at (are they a start-up with three other people running out of someone's basement or are they a start-up with 100 people who are on a round C of venture capital financing and planning to go public within two years?) This stuff is important not only in helping you figure out if you want to work there, but also in providing you with material to ask strategic questions (I'm getting there, I promise.)

3. Snoop around as much as possible about your interviewer/hiring manager. What's their professional background - do you know anyone in common? Are they an avid mountain biker? You can jot this down and, if you're able, say work it into the conversation, e.g. "Years ago I did a little SEO work for my brother's side business - he has a start-up that makes parts for mountain bikes. Man, that was a long time ago - back in the day, all you had to do for SEO was a few on-page elements!"

Do they have hands-on experience in your area or are they looking for someone who is already a self-directed expert who won't need much input? It requires different strategies. If I see that the hiring manager has a strong paid or natural background, I'm going to need to make this person feel confident that I know what I'm doing and that I'm okay with a boss who likes to log in and check out the accounts. If it's someone who has almost no hands-on experience in a search role, I'm going to have to - again- make the hiring manager feel confident in my expertise and in my ability to handle money and fulfill my quotas without needing hand-holding when it comes to tactical execution. (For the record, I'm pretty happy with both styles of management.)

Is the hiring manager on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn? Do they have a blog? Do they have a profile on the company website? Use whatever you can! Pump mutual acquaintances for information!

4. Plan your own questions to ask during the phone screen. Essentially you want your questions to show that you've done your due diligence researching and that you can think strategically (no one wants to hire a monkey who can't do anything but push a lever over and over again.) The questions that you ask are your only opportunity to show off how smart you are, so put some thought into them. In my industry, I don't usually bother to ask why the position is open - usually I'm talking to start-ups and this is a new role, or the person who did the job before me has moved on to another opportunity. But if you're a teacher or an editor or something, yes, it could be pretty important to ask why the role is open if the interviewer hasn't addressed it.

Ask how they measure success and what their internal reporting systems look like - is it very granular or is closing the loop going to be something that they need help with? What software platforms are they using to measure internally and externally? What's the business goal of the website? (You would think it would be obvious, but it's not always clear if the goal is to brand or the drive leads/sales or to raise category awareness ...)

Take notes, because you can then use that information to build your next set of questions in the in-person. If they say on the phone that they've got no problem closing the loop and their reporting is very granular indeed, then in the in-person you can ask how about their attribution model - is it last click attribution or are they looking for patterns in second and third visits? How are they using that granular information in a strategic way that helps inform key business decisions - what's their strategy for separating the wheat from the chaff in the super-detailed granular reporting that's available? Yadda yadda.

5. Listen closely for the pauses in the conversation so you don't step on their questions. This one is REALLY hard for me since I am such a blabbermouth and I just expect people to interrupt me right back. But there's no better way to ruin a phone screen than by not letting your interviewer get a word in edgewise. (Guess how I know?) Phone screens are harder than in-person interviews in this way because you don't get to see someone's body language or expressions. On the plus side, phone screens are a bit like an open-book test - you can be looking at the company's website while you're on the phone.

6. Analyze the company before the call. In my case this usually means doing a basic SEO and analytics audit. This gives me an idea of how professional they are (looking at a site's SEO is a little like being in the dressing room of an actor who is getting ready for a performance - what do they look like without makeup, flattering lighting and costume? If you're in a field where SEO doesn't apply, look for successes and failures of the company - did the publishing company famously pass on The Lovely Bones? Does the school district consistently win awards or do they barely scrape by with below-average test scores? This is all information you can work into your conversation on the fly (although be careful about alluding to embarrassing failures.)

Preparing for an in-person interview:

1. Snoop and take notes on ALL the people you'll be meeting with, if you know who that will be, and don't be afraid to take notes. Maybe they went to the same college as you, years later - you can establish a bond over that.

2. Figure out your outfit and have it ready before the day of the interview. And by outfit, I don't just mean making sure that your suit and shirt are pressed and ready in the closet - you also need to print out a copy of the job description, a couple of spare resumes (often people are given little notice before they interview you and haven't had time to review your resume), a notebook, a business-type handbag (whatever the dude equivalent is - a briefcase? Laptop bag?), a few pens. Put your phone on silent the night before. Set your alarm the night before and put a reminder in your phone or calendar three or four hours before the interview reminding you to get ready. Put gum and a spare pair of stockings in your bag. Gas up the car. Whatever - it's already going to be stressful, so if everything is ready to go, that's one less thing you need to charge around the house looking for.

3. Print out the directions, calculate how long it'll take to get there and then plan for an extra 50% of travel time. If it's 30 minutes away, leave 45 minutes or an hour early. (I like to leave at least half an hour of padding.) Make sure your phone is charged in case someone rear-ends you on your way there. Arrive early to the building (and spend the time reviewing your notes) - you'll be calm and cool. Announce yourself to the receptionist three to five minutes before the interview time - this shows that you're prompt but doesn't stress out your interviewer by making them feel that they have to see you immediately.

3. Review all the snooping and conclusions from your phone screen prep - it's pretty common for weeks to elapse between phone screens and in-person interviews so you want to make sure it's all fresh in your mind.

4. Prepare a separate set of questions for the in-person - they'll remember if you repeat yourself. These should be based at least in part on the information you got during the phone screen (this shows that you were listening and that you're able to draw conclusions.) I would shoot for questions that are about 2/3 about the business (and many of these will be answered in the natural course of the interview) and 1/3 about interpersonal stuff.

You can ask things like, "What does your ideal candidate look like - and what are you looking for that I don't have?" or "What's your preferred management style?". If you know the manager is looking to build a team, ask about some of the challenges she's faced in the process. If you know this department is a new area for the company, ask what the success metrics are - how will they know that Facebook is worthwhile and has made a good return on the time investment? They'll definitely talk a lot about how great the company is and how wonderful the prospects are - so ask if they can tell you a little bit about what's not so great about the company. Ask about your interviewer's background - people love to talk about themselves. Don't make the first joke (I *always* fail on this one). Ask where the company/department will be in 5 years (or two). Try to get across to the manager that you're not interested in their job.

And as my friend Kat points out - a little reverse interrogation goes a long way. You can have all these questions ready, but use common sense in deciding when and how much you want to control the interview.

5. Get ready for hard, unexpected questions. Don't be scared to take a moment or two to think or to say, "Can we come back to that? I can't think of an example right now." I try to be as candid as possible while not damaging myself. Someone once said, "We've talked a lot about what you're good at - now tell me what you're not so good at." The cliched answers of "I try too hard/too much of a perfectionist/care too much" were not going to do anything for me here if I wanted to maintain the rapport with the interviewer, so I thought for a moment and said, "Well, I'm not great at confrontation - many women aren't, and it's something I'm working on. I'm also a bit of a procrastinator, which I am really working hard on, because otherwise I end up in the office at 9 pm trying to make a deadline and my husband is unhappy and it's a bad scene." In this case, that answer worked - my interviewer smiled and said she procrastinates sometimes too. It also happens to be the exact truth - I do struggle sometimes with procrastination and it is something I'm trying hard to be better about.

I've also been asked to talk about a time when I screwed up and how I responded. In that case, my answer was to talk about a time when a test had gone wrong due to my own inattention - so I confessed that I'd screwed up on a test and then talked about the lessons I had learned - in this case, I learned to A) build reporting on test results into my regular results reporting and B) to set up my test reporting BEFORE the test goes live, so that I know ahead of time what my success metrics will be and I have a framework that I can plug the results into. I've been asked about a time that I was yelled at by someone much higher up and how I responded (I didn't have an answer for that one since it's never happened and, in fact, I totally blew that question.)

I've been asked about a time when I had a conflict with someone at work and how I dealt with it. Again, I didn't really have a good answer since I'm not good at confrontations, so I just told the truth: that I don't tend to have blow-ups with people (even though maybe sometimes I should) and that when I've run across people who are really irritating to work with (in my case it's only happened a few times and it was always with someone who didn't appear to me to be doing their share of the work) I've addressed it on an ad-hoc basis - either let go of it if it wasn't affecting my performance results or talked to the person themselves or talked to a manager or HR if talking to the person had no results.

Sometimes you don't have a non-damaging anecdote to relate either because you haven't actually experienced it or the situation was for-real, legitimately insane (but you can't say that in an interview) - so sometimes it's okay to say, "that hasn't happened, but here's how I would try to address it." I mean, if your teammate isn't pulling their weight you don't always know why - maybe their kid has cancer! - so it's not always something that can be directly addressed or solved. Acknowledging the reality of messy real-world situations is just as likely to score you points in an interview as having a good story to tell.

6. Sincerity is the best sales tool. Use it.

And like I said, most of my examples are from my industry - but the point isn't to give you specific questions to ask or not ask, the point is to show you how to think strategically about your own interviews.

Good luck! And wish me some luck too, please - I need a job sooner rather than later.

Nerdy

2010-06-21T12:50:00.010-05:00

I've been reading so many books written or set in pre decimal Britain (pre 1971, that is) that I went to the trouble of writing out a list of the currencies. At last, I know what farthings and tanners are! (The authors are Joan Aiken, Charles Dickens, E.F. Benson, P.G. Wodehouse and Thomas W. Hanshew. What? Job hunting leaves a lot of leisure for reading.)

Also, and only tangentially related, while I don't know if this lap pillow counts as merely nerdy or weird and actively creepy, I'm going to go ahead and guess that this isn't what the popular kids have in their living room.

Update: I don't have one of these pillows myself. My original wording was a little unclear.

(H/T to geekologie)

chocolate chocolate peanut butter peanut butter ice cream

2010-06-15T15:17:00.008-05:00

I made triple chocolate ice cream the other day and it was reeeeaaally good. I used a David Lebovitz recipe and it worked almost perfectly. The texture was a little, uh, dense - a bit more so than normal for even home-made ice cream. It didn't quite freeze in the machine because I did two stupid things. I got impatient and cooled down the custard in the freezer, AND I didn't let the melted chocolate chips cool enough. (Melted chocolate chips aren't specified in this recipe but every ice cream that I make is stracciatella. It's a compulsion.) So next time I'll avoid that particular scenario, because it was confidence-wrecking to look at my churned ice cream reverting back to custard as fast as it could. Also I might throw a little aged dark rum in there to help prevent it from getting quite so hard; now that I've tasted the chocolate, I think it'll go well with rum. (I wasn't in *that* much doubt about the rum but I've never before met a chocolate ice cream that I actually liked - they all seem to have a little bit of a rough edge to their taste.) Speaking of taste, this is the best ice cream I have ever made (although I usually say that about each new recipe.) But there's no edge to the chocolate flavour at all - it tastes exactly like good chocolate mixed with good cream and rich egg yolks ought to taste. It's an excellent recipe, although kind of a pain in the ass.

However. David Lebovitz's recipe is not a recipe which requires a lot of faffing about. You don't have to bother with separating eggs and cooking very cautiously over very low heat while you wonder what coating the back of the spoon means, really. Just throw some dairy and sugar and cocoa into a pan, bring to a boil, dump in some peanut butter and you're almost done. But of course I'm unsatisfied with a simple recipe like that - something deep at the bottom of my soul cries out in pain until I've turned every recipe into a huge, time-consuming project.* So I've marked up the recipe with the changes I would make. Truthfully, the chocolate ice cream base isn't good enough to stand on its own, but I'm also not up for making the triple chocolate thing that I talked about at the beginning of the post just so that I can dunk some Skippy into it. That triple chocolate number deserves respect, and Skippy is just not a respectful ingredient. So my suggestions are bolded. (To make me feel important!)

Ice Cream:

Ingredients:

* 2 cups half and half [I went ahead and used a 2:1 mixture of whipping cream and whole milk. The extra fat means it won't freeze quite so hard. Also more fat means more deliciousness for me.]
* ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
* ½ cup sugar
* Pinch of salt
* ½ cup smooth peanut butter [Don't even both trying to use Teddy or some "healthy" hippie brand. What you want here is Jif or Skippy, with all the added salt and sugar and stabilizers.]
[I'd add 1/4 tsp of instant espresso to the cream mixture - I find that a little bit of coffee underneath chocolate flavor can make the chocolate flavor seem stronger and more complex without being identifiable on its own as coffee.]
[I'd also throw in a slug of dark rum at the end to try to lighten up the texture of the end product.]

Recipe:

1. Whisk together the cream, milk, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt in a large saucepan. Heat the mixture, whisking frequently, until it comes to a full, rolling boil (it will start to foam up). Remove from the heat and whisk in the peanut butter, stirring until thoroughly blended.
2. Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. [It's the easiest ice cream I've ever churned - the peanut butter gives it body and stiffness so it's really easy to transfer into the container you'll freeze it in without making a big mess. It's actually so nice, texturally, that it makes me think peanut butter is a really underrated ingredient.]
[3. At the last minute of churning, I added 2 ounces of melted cooled chocolate chips to the "batter" - it's the easiest way to add chocolate chips ever, and you avoid having too-large, rock-hard lumps of chocolate which threaten your crowns when you bite down unwarily.]

Peanut Butter Chunks

Ingredients:

* 6 tablespoons peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
* 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
[Next time I am going to add some salt to these guys - maybe 1/2 or 1 tsp of kosher salt, just to see what that's like. I am a salty-sweet person.]
Recipe:

Mix together the peanut butter and sugar in a small bowl. Line a dinner plate with plastic wrap. Pinch off small pieces of the peanut butter mixture, about ½ teaspoon each, and drop them onto the dinner plate. [It would be a bigger pain in the ass, but next time I'd go for smaller chunks, like 1/4 of a tablespoon, so that you got smaller bites of the chunks more often.] Once you’ve used all of the mixture, freeze the chunks. [It occurred to me that once frozen, you could dip the chocolate balls into melted chocolate to make them extra irresistible. But again, you're almost talking project at that point when all you're really trying to do is make yourself a fucking bowl of ice cream already. So maybe not.]

Mixing them in: Fold the Peanut Butter Chunks into 1 quart of ice cream as you remove it from the machine.

If you do decide to make this recipe, I assure you it will be delicious even if you slavishly follow David Lebovitz's instructions to the letter and disregard my chatty commentary.

Also, no pictures because the only pictures I can ever manage of chocolate ice cream are the kinds of pictures that make you think, "That dog was sick!".

*Ice cream, by the way, is pretty simple to make, especially if you make "philadelphia" style ice creams which don't involve an egg custard. Ice cream should not be a Cook's Illustrated-style project with twenty seven ingredients and an active cooking time of four hours. That I need to make ice cream harder for myself says a lot about me - none of it good. If you were keeping track, I suggested seven modifications to the recipe, and none of them were shortcuts. The life of a perfectionist is not all wine and roses, you know!

Aftermath

2010-06-07T11:25:00.000-05:00

I had the privilege of interacting with a charming and well-mannered bachelor party recently - the groom's note says it all.

(No, seriously, they were actually charming and well-mannered, hence this thank-you from the groom. Sure, they all came in loaded and loud, but I wasn't asleep anyway. My only annoyance was that since Dave failed to warn me that he was bringing the entire party back to our house after the bars closed, I was wearing my giant disgusting bathrobe when a dozen dudes trooped through the door. No one cared but me, of course.)

Unbelievably Short-Sighted Idiocy of the Day

2010-05-27T16:15:00.003-05:00

I went to go fill a prescription today and lo and behold, my insurance maxed out at a 30 mg/day dose - whereas MY DOCTOR has me on 40 mgs/day of this medicine. I have to APPEAL IN WRITING to request that the company makes an "exception" for me. This is so fucking outrageous and short-sighted on the insurance company's part - do they WANT me to need to go back in the hospital? Because my last stay (with the same insurance providers!) cost about ten thousand dollars for every day I was in there, which is a lot more expensive than ten fucking extra milligrams of medicine.

I cannot believe I need to jump through this many hoops to get a fucking prescription filled.

None of the customer service people, by the way, could tell me anything about WHY this policy has been enacted. And guess what else? The appeals process takes 30 days and I only have enough medicine to last me for 22.5 days. Really, I would gladly become 25% less crazy, but the customer service reps couldn't tell me how to do that, either.

And I'm one of the lucky people who has healthcare at all!

Jesus fucking H Christ. Do I write to my senator about this, or what? How can I get a class-action suit started? I'm totally pissed and totally powerless.

School Gaze

2010-04-16T11:28:00.002-05:00

Remember how you had to line up by height for elementary school class pictures? That's what these three remind me up. And of course, they are studying the habits of one Mr. Squirrel, who enjoys taunting them from his leafy fortress. He's probably farting in their general direction, too.

Arnolfini Marriage

2010-04-10T18:31:00.001-05:00

Another Dispatch from the Pinko Commie Front

2010-03-23T20:20:00.003-05:00

So, the health care bill. I agree, it's not perfect and it doesn't address all the issues I would like it to*. But I think it's a start.

Not all that long ago, I got really sick. (I haven't mentioned it here before - among other reasons, I've been recuperating rather than blogging about recuperating.) I was really sick. I spent a lot of time in hospitals while people worked to save my life.

Without health insurance, these would have been my options:
1. Death
2. Treatment - at the cost of $40,000 of debt

This is why I believe that health care is a right, not a privilege. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right? Which part of having to go $40,000 in debt in order to save your own life constitutes liberty or the pursuit of happiness? And I didn't even have something complicated and expensive like cancer!

Although I was lucky enough to have health insurance when I got sick, not everyone is as lucky as me. And it *is* luck. I had no input into being born white, which is a huge privilege - and that's just for starters. I've had lots of other privilege in my life, and I agree with Luke that "unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required". Dave and I are solidly middle class - ostensibly the demographic getting "screwed" by this bill, and we both agree that we are HAPPY to have to pay a little bit more in our taxes so that fewer people have to decide between life and crippling debt.

For the record? When I was sick? If I'd had to make that choice? I would have chosen to die. I'm not saying that's what everyone would or should choose, but it would have been my choice. I was pretty motherfucking sick and I felt pretty motherfucking bad. So if you read this blog, you probably know me. Know that without health insurance, you would not be reading this right now, because I would be dead.

Thousands of Americans have to make non-hypothetical versions of my choice, and they not only have blog readers, they have friends and families and people who love them - but who aren't in a position to spot them $40,000. Just pause for a second, and let that idea sink in.

* I am most unhappy about the rabidly oppressive Stupak provisions, and second-most unhappy that the issue of the cost of health care hasn't been directly addressed. But my friend Jodi, an economist, wrote a great post about the way the bill works from an economic point of view, and she's a lot ~~smarter than me~~ more coherent than me on the issue.

I used to work for an insurance company, and at this job I learned that, in Massachusetts at least, no driver, no matter how risky, could be denied automobile insurance. If a driver is rejected from insurers via the traditional channels, he can get insurance via a secondary pool that all of the insurers have to contribute to. These premiums are higher than in most other cases, but at least there is an insurance option for people who want to operate a car. This seems to work pretty well, so why not have the same for health insurance?

In a way, that’s pretty much what we are ending up with. (For the record, it costs about twice as much to insure me as it costs to insure my car. This ratio is lower than it probably should be because I am a bad driver.) Insurance exchanges are being set up to serve customers who cannot get insurance from private companies directly. People are even being treated better than my car since they are getting subsidized if they have an income such that regular health insurance is “unaffordable.” (I hate that word, since it really has no good meaning, but you get my point.) And yes, this works in some fashion as a transfer from the more wealthy to the less wealthy, since it has to be paid for somehow and we have a progressive income tax. (See below for more on this point and deficit neutrality.)

Go read the whole thing, though; it's worth it. Plus there are cartoons!

Weekend at Bernie's

2010-03-14T19:56:00.002-05:00

The cat we call "Pig-Bear" got up onto the kitchen counter, using the dishwasher as a springboard and ate enough food for three cats. I called and called and she didn't show so I thought maybe she had just exploded somewhere, like at the bottom of the stairs where I wouldn't have heard the bang.

So I shut the dishwasher and refilled the bowl on the counter for the three who AREN'T too fat to jump up there, and she shuffled out from somewhere as soon as she heard the ping of nuggets bouncing off stainless. I have never seen such a guilty-looking cat.

Babies really do say "Wah!"

2010-03-04T16:49:00.004-05:00

So, I recently had the privilege of spending time with my sister and her new baby. (3-4 days old! We are both baby novices so it was actually really fun trying to figure out what the baby wanted and why she was crying. Fun, and also loud. That's the great thing about being an aunt, though - I could just be all, "hey, I'm heading out to meet a friend for drinks" and leave for a while, and then come back drunk after the baby was in bed.) Anyway - newborns are amazing, which is not something I had ever noticed before. It's like they have some kind of magical power so that you can just hold one and stare for hours and not get bored. Sort of like taking drugs, but with more control over the experience. And more barf and poop.

Anyway! I took about a thousand photos (really only about 300) and here are some of my sister, the baby, the baby-daddy (who is not only really handsome - way to go, Sue! - but is also an excellent baby-whisperer) and the baby-daddy's two kids (who are freaking adorable. I got to bake pink cupcakes with the little girl - she is 4 and a half and her brother is 2 and a half. I love kids at that age, they're so much fun to do stuff with. Plus they can talk, so they can tell you what's wrong. And the occasional melt-down is par for the course.)

So, pictures, now that you've gotten the cast of characters.

How sweet is that little mouth?

The baby whisperer ...

to the rescue!

(Seriously. She cries and he immediately flips her upside down or does some other kind of baby gymnastics and she calms down instantly.)

The kids are soooo into the baby, it's really sweet (when they aren't poking out her eyes by accident):

Everyone gathered around the baby for a worship session.

All her little outfits are too big since she's still an infant.

This is my favorite photo, out of all 300:

TRIGGER WARNING - You Fit Into Me

2010-02-16T00:39:00.007-05:00

Note: the following photos are about abuse and may be triggering to you. Please be sure to read my disclaimer underneath after you've looked at the pictures.

Disclaimer: My kitten gave me the black eye. For real. He got his claw hooked in the skin under my eye and must have burst a blood vessel in freeing himself. That was how I woke up, by the way - naked, screaming, and with blood and tears streaming dramatically down my face. (No pictures of that, but how's that for a Monday?) The incident seemed to be playing out a poem by Margaret Atwood which I have always loved:

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

-Margaret Atwood

Also, I would like to add that Dave helped me take these pictures, which was excellent of him, especially since it was past midnight when I wanted his help.

In any case, the dramatic black eye (courtesy of Bob T. Cat) and the way it was incurred got me thinking of that Atwood poem, which I have always thought is about an abusive relationship. These pictures imply a fairly typical abuse scenario (heterosexual male-on-female violence). It's probably what most people think of when they hear "abusive relationship". But I'm trying to get at a bit more than that (you can tell me if you think I succeeded): abuse happens in secret, and a whole family will collude in maintaining the fiction of normality, even though something very different is happening behind closed doors. And so for the abused, it's incredibly crazy-making because terrible things are happening - sexually, verbally, emotionally, with violence, or a combination - and not only does no one outside know what's going on, no one inside the family will talk about it either. So the fictional story of the happy family or the happy couple is polished to a high gloss and given all the trappings. Underneath the accessories of success, it's a totally different kind of story. And that's why I wanted to use the black eye with the fairytale wedding dress (yes, it's my real wedding dress).

Okay, enough rambling. How about some pictures of kittens?

Notice Bob's claws:

King of the World:

Bob sleeping with Lucky:

Bob sleeping with Whittles, his sister:

Whittles and Bob are very close:

Both kittens are very curious about new food. This is pureed sweet potato.

Yes, she's eating flour. Bob was sneaking molasses yesterday but I didn't get a picture.

Whittles supervising:

Whittles and Bob with Pip, for scale:

I just plain like this picture of Pip:

Whittles looking innocent:

Whittles making lace:

Whittles doing her thing:

For those of you keeping track at home, you may be thinking, "hmmm, there's Lucky, Simone, Pip and Inty and now TWO kittens? SIX cats?"

But no, we don't have six cats. We have five. We lost Inty on New Year's Eve this year. She would have been 10 on April 11th. I was really fucking glad to say goodbye to 2009.

Doin' it fer the lulz

2010-01-12T21:49:00.005-05:00

moar funny pictures

With thanks to Katharine Weber for the Cheeseburger Magic 8 Ball.

even more belated

2010-01-11T22:05:00.002-05:00

The mysterious case of the disappearing fish

2010-01-10T13:46:00.004-05:00

Another gruesome little tale from the Aquarium of Death.

I turned on the aquarium light early one morning last week and noticed there was a dead one floating at the top. These things happen. It must have died sometime in the night because it had already been about half eaten by its tank mates. So I yelled for Dave to come look (as you do) and then I hopped in the car to drop Dave off at the T station (ten minute round trip in the car, but a 15 minute walk, and at temperatures below freezing like they have been all week, it's just not that big a deal to take ten minutes out of my morning at 7 am to drop him off.) Lengthy backstory aside, what I'm trying to get across to you is that ten minutes elapsed, tops, between when I first noticed the deader and when I got back from dropping Dave off.

The fish had disappeared. I don't know if the other fish in the tank had a feeding frenzy or if they are always such efficient little cannibals (maybe it only died ten minutes before I noticed the body) or if they stashed the body somewhere in the fake plants to eat later like a lion with a gazelle carcass, but maybe I'm just not meant to be privy to all the secrets of the Tank of Doom.

Needless to say, they didn't get fed that day.

belated

2010-01-10T00:40:00.000-05:00

Decorating the cookies is my favorite part.

Wonder Woman: the Lost Years

2009-10-31T10:29:00.003-05:00

photos courtesy of the fabulous Jeff Beene

It's hard to keep your feet dry when you're kicking in a skull

2009-10-28T18:57:00.002-05:00

In other news, it's hard to keep up with your blog when most of the month has been like this week: by the time I go home tonight, I will have spent 32 hours in the office. I have an hour commute each way.

More areas of excellence for me: my husband arrived home at 2 am Monday morning after 10 days away. I have since seen him for a grand total of 4 hours. (Not counting sleeping time, of course.)

Yes, I am typing this from the office at 8 pm - while I'm on hold with Bing's search support center.

If you are baffled by this blog post title, check here for the reference.

Words Cannot Express ...

2009-09-29T17:48:00.004-05:00

... how much I love this video.

via Swiss Miss

Obvi, I am not a graphic designer but I do get requests like this (for my industry) all the time.

"So my buddy has this website about cardboard boxes, just a hobby. Tell me for free how he can make big bucks without putting any work or thought into it?"

"I want to start a website about chicken farming. How do I go about becoming a powerful thought leader in the chicken farming industry? I only want to post new content once every three months and I'm totally resistant to any suggestions you might have about ways to build an audience or interact with others in the industry."

"I'm interested in starting an online business selling yoga bolsters. How do I get started with an e-commerce website?"

... go fuck yourselves, people. There's a reason you don't already know how to do what you're asking me to do for you: it requires a lot of time, a lot of technical expertise, and a lot of effort - and that's before you get to the money you'll be required to invest in your online venture (and not including the money you didn't offer me.)

Note to my brother (who I don't think actually reads this blog, but anyway): I was totally happy to consult on your side business website (and I'll update this post with a link including great anchor text, if you like) because you approached it like a normal business project. So the above comments are NOT directed at you.

Rambly

2009-09-21T08:30:00.003-05:00

I have the day off and it's gorgeous fall weather. I took today off because we went to New York this weekend. New York was great. It sort of breaks my heart a little every time I go because there is just so MUCH available. It helps that we always either stay with my sister or friends, so that is like a built-in guarantee of a worthwhile trip. I would move there in a heartbeat IF the cost of living wasn't so high and IF I didn't already really like my life in Somerville. I mean, I know I bitch about cat barf and being tired a lot, but apart from being so damned busy it's a pretty good life. (Inty barfed on my laptop keyboard while we were gone, by the way.)

Anyway, whenever I go on any kind of trip, even if it's only an overnight in New York, I like to take the day off after I get back to get caught up on things. I usually just end up with a migraine from the stress if I don't take the day off anyway, so planning for it is better.

So instead of having a migraine and feeling bad about missing work, I'm guilt-free and ready to do some yardwork (gotta start getting the garden ready for winter), baking (a James Beard fresh fruit pie and some espresso-chocolate shortbread cookies - that's a Dorie Greenspan recipe adapted by Smitten Kitchen. The James Beard recipe is from his American Cookery, a copy of which was given to me by my wonderful friend Lysne, and I'm going to be making some of my own modifications to it.) And other stuff - grocery shopping, laundry, vacuuming, catching up on some stuff for work. Dave took the day off too so I bet he will help with the yardwork and the shopping.

Maybe I'll take the camera out and try to get some pictures in the pretty september light. I haven't made much progress lately on the photography front, technically - don't think I have time for that today but we'll see. I'd better tear myself away from the Wire soon if I'm going to get any of that done, though. (I really like the Wire, but I wonder how accurate it is. Most of the time when I'm walking around in bad neighborhoods, there aren't millions of cops around like there are in the show. That's partly what makes it a bad neighborhood - no cops.)

Vietnam, redux

2009-09-15T21:08:00.004-05:00

Who swapped my Tuesday with a Monday? It's not bad enough that Lucky saluted the morning today with vomit, I also got to work a 12 hour day, listen to some drinky-smelling cabbie's hard luck story on the way home (which of course resulted in my giving him a 50% tip), get home to hungry cats, one of whom has barfed AGAIN during the day, scoop the litterboxes, and the clean up the welcome-home barf that Lucky produced, this time selecting Dave's lyrics to throw up on. Simone also followed her usual starving-alley-cat routine. This time I wasn't as fast and she helped herself to a pretty sizable serving.

Just by barfing twice (possibly thrice) today Lucky spent $50 bucks; he's diabetic and vomiting can be a sign of high blood sugar so I'm going to have to take him into the vet for a blood sugar stick so we can see if he's become unstable. It's going to suck if he has to go back on insulin, less because of the expense than because it's a pain in the ass to give him a shot once or twice a day and time it with his meals. We do have a diabetes testing kit at home but for some reason getting blood out of Lucky is like getting blood from a stone. Maybe I will make the vet tech let me practice drawing blood when I take him in. Refill strips for the blood glucometer are a lot cheaper than a vet visit.

It fucking stinks like Simple Green in here because that's what I used to clean up all the barf with. I can't open a window because the windows in my office have their storm windows down; Dave went around putting storm windows down on Saturday and of course the weather warmed right back up on Sunday. I could open the storm window but I don't think I have the strength, after a meagre dinner of Chex Mix. Lucky thing my fingers are still working well enough to type.

The only positive outcomes for today are that at least I'm not driving a cab and Dave seems to use waterproof ink for his lyrics. THANK GOD.

Good Morning Vietnam

2009-09-15T06:34:00.004-05:00

Sometimes I like having a blog because it's not a place where anyone can tell me, "that's not an appropriate story for this audience" or "way to overshare." So you've been warned.

I was sitting at the computer a few minutes ago when I heard the pre-barf wail coming from one of the cats. Inty - usually the culprit due to her IBS - was right there next to the computer, so it wasn't her. No, it was Lucky, pacing on the living room rug with his tongue out. Pip and Simone had rushed to his side, which was sweet in the case of Pip and gross in the case of Simone, since I could see her sniffing around eagerly before Lucky had even tossed his cookies*.

And then he did barf, and Simone barely waited until he was done before rushing in to bat cleanup. She was gobbling so quickly that she was snorting because she's got a permanently blocked nose and couldn't breathe through it. But why let breathing distract you from a hot meal? She grumbled when I cleaned it up and settled back to lick the carpet a little. Happy Tuesday to me!

And now I need to shower before work. If only a shower would clean my brain.

* yeah, wet food for diabetics really. I bet you knew that we didn't actually feed him cookies.

Oops

2009-09-10T17:16:00.003-05:00

Every time I hear the New Pornographers' lyric "the easy call, the call of search" I think for a second that they're talking about the industry I work in. They aren't, of course - no one in their right mind would write a song about the deeply boring* subject of search engine marketing, especially not a song as stirring as My Rights Versus Yours. What the hell would you write a song about, anyway? Here are some catchy ideas:

Alexa's Metrics Versus Compete's
My Conversion Funnel Versus Yours
Google Analytics Versus Omniture
PPC Versus SEO

... Yeah. I thought so. It's total gibberish to anyone who isn't knee deep in online marketing - I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a whole other language, but it's definitely got dialect status.

The other super awesome thing about the lyric in the original song is I've been hearing it wrong anyway. The full verse goes like this:

Under your wheels, your chance is with
The easy call, the called-off search
The medicine, it still won't work
But there's dangerous levels of it here

And here's the song, if you don't know it. It rocks. I can't find a link to the album version but the Letterman show is pretty close.

The one time I saw them live, I was disappointed because everything they played sounded exactly like the album, plus the band looked bored. But whatevs - the album version is a great version of the song.

* I don't find the field boring in the slightest but you should keep in mind that I also regret not having the time to learn and practice the ancient art of bonsai. So there's your measuring stick.

Reading

2009-09-09T17:38:00.002-05:00

I'm currently reading Lorrie Moore's Self-Help and it's very hard to put down in the middle of a story. I love her prose - it's hard and sharp and clean-edged. I don't know how I would feel about reading a whole novel of prose like that - it might be like a visit to the chandelier factory. But the short stories are just the thing.

It reminds me of Elizabeth Stroud's Olive Kitteredge in that it centers largely on the female experience of the world*. Moore is almost aggressive in leaving men out of most of the stories (the ones I've read so far, anyway). Since the male experience, gaze, mindset are the primary lens for in the vast majority of the 'literary' books I have read in my life, reading these stories is almost like visiting Mrs Piggle-Wiggle's upside down house.

* still a white, middle-class experience of the world, but I'll take what I can get at the moment

I've had worse

2009-09-08T06:15:00.009-05:00

So I love my doctor but she has strange bedside manner. Strange as in she actually interrupted a recent pap smear to go answer an email. I didn't mind because I feel totally safe in the office and we'd been talking about the email (actually I think it was more like an instant message but whatever) and she had an idea while she was examining me and was all, "Stay right where you are!", stripped off her gloves, sent the message - I watched from the table with my feet still in the stirrups - then re-gloved and continued. In context, it was okay and I felt safe, but it was a classic "what not to do".

At least she finished with the speculum before interrupting the exam, which was good because during that part there were definitely some pauses and some "where is the cervix?" muttering coming from the bottom of the table, followed by speculum-cranking noises and attendant internal sensations. I don't have much love for the speculum, I have to say, but it's not that bad - I've definitely had worse sex. (Lisa suggested Worse Sex Than a Speculum would be an awesome band, which it would. And I will be the lead singer and guitarist in that band! I just need to find me some musical ability first.)

The entire visit to the doctor made me realize why some people hate going to the doctor. There was the "You've gained weight since last year!" comment. (Yes, and I'm wearing bigger jeans to prove it.) And also the "You should really be eating more calcium." (Yes, but I dislike the taste of milk and yogurt.) And the "You're still thinking about kids in a couple of years?" (HELL NO, which is what I said last time I was in to see you and you asked about it.) This segued into "You're taking how much Lexapro?" (Yes, I am on the maximum dosage because I have severe anxiety and depression, and while we're on the topic I'll also tell you that my husband is bipolar I. Quite apart from financial considerations, we're pretty reluctant to pass that kind of poisoned genetic legacy on to a kid. So can I get my tubes tied already?) It was like a horrible cross between a conversation with your mother and a high school guidance counselor, if either of those two had recently poked you in the cervix with a giant Q-tip.

Good thing I don't have to go back until next year.

Reading

2009-09-02T20:32:00.002-05:00

I have been re-reading Bleak House (well - listening to it) over the last few weeks. It's a novel I've admired for a long time, but I haven't made it through a re-read since my early twenties.

I am largely enjoying it, but I don't think Dickens had a very good grasp on female friendship. All Esther and Ada seem to do is call each other "dear one" and "my darling" and it's just cloying and fake. I don't really enjoy Louisa May Alcott more than Dickens but I do think she's got a better grasp on the way women interact with each other. Dickens kind of gets women wrong anyway, throughout his books. (I need to re-read Little Dorrit and I've never read The Old Curiosity Shop, but there's a plethora of evidence just in the books I've re-read in the last couple of years - Kate in Nicholas Nickleby, Dora in Great Expectations- all his women are either penitent sinners, brainless saints or the target of satire.)

But everything else is good and I'm enjoying the re-read a lot. He plots so well, and I forgive him for some of the schmaltz he deploys because it's often in service of social justice. And he's really funny. I mean, he's not writing with the wonderful subtlety of Henry James but he's not trying to, either. Henry James is sort of like NPR anyway - really great stuff, and all smart and well-intentioned (although Henry James definitely doesn't try as hard to be liked as NPR does) and a little prideful - and after a while, a total downer. (Trollope is actually my favorite of the Victorian men - he's funny AND subtle and he gets women. The politics could possibly be dry unless you are the kind of person who is fascinated by office politics, as I am, in which case you won't find it dry at all.)

domestic goddess

2009-08-31T21:06:00.005-05:00

So sometimes I get a wild hair up my ass and turn into what I think is some kind of superwoman. Today was one of those days. I worked from 9 until 5:45 (technically leaving early, but whatever), went to the chiropractor, cooked dinner (teriyaki turkey tips with a big salad with homegrown tomatoes. I love having a gas grill and the tomatoes were totally worth the trouble. I put them in giant containers, the biggest I could find, and next year I'll stake them better but it just worked perfectly.

I also got a loaf of cornmeal bread underway (I love having a Kitchen Aid), made the bed, put away some dishes (I love having a dishwasher) and cleaned up the kitchen.

And before I got to bed I'll have folded a load of laundry, taken the bread out of the oven and cleaned the litterboxes. I wish I had time to get some embroidery done, but unless I want to stay up until midnight there's not time for that. I am also not going to get around to my mail pile tonight, which I totally don't mind missing.

But for right now, I'm totally going to take an ice cream break and watch A&E's Hoarders. Fascinating! Mental illness! Makes me feel better about my life!

Also I was a little overconfident in trying to get everything done and left the bread on top of the stove, which got super hot from the oven preheating beneath it and kind of cooked a little. I pulled off the weird crusty edges and punched it down and am letting it rise as usual; I think it'll be okay, just slightly smaller loaves than usual. So as a superwoman, I still need some work.

Thank dog for implants

2009-08-13T20:23:00.003-05:00

I am old enough to remember back in the early nineties, before breast implants were widespread, how hard it was to find bras with a small back and a large cup. Even when you could find G or H cup bras in the Ladies department of Filene's, you could never find them smaller than 36 inches. In addition to having no range of sizes, they were all old-lady bras and went for about $50 bucks a pop. For a fifteen year old buying bras with her babysitting money on furtive trips to the mall, it was a pretty sucky situation. I was relieved to be able to dispense with Olga-brand beige cups the size of your head (as some humorous smaller-boobed friend demonstrated) when I got the breast reduction at 18, and moved on to the much easier-to-find world of the 34D. It wasn't a piece of cake, but it wasn't so impossible to find pretty bras.

At some point when I was living in the UK, bras suddenly started showing up in a much larger (heh) range of sizes due to the widespread popularity of silicone breast implants (and later, saline). That was a relief since I had only been able to find 36Cs in the UK before that and the band slid up my back and hormonal birth control had given the girls a boost (unwanted, but I made the best of things by ensuring they didn't go unappreciated.) Then I moved to New Zealand, lost a bunch of weight because my first marriage was breaking up, and found that 32DDs fit me better. And ever since, I've been wearing this one sportsbra that I bought over there (Elle MacPherson brand, which I couldn't find here.) That was in 2005. I have been wearing the same bra at least once a week for four and a half years. Jesus. I've put on 20 pounds in that time.

So I decided it was time to get fitted for real. Lo and behold, I've graduated to a 32E. I'm still kind of gobsmacked. That seems like a big size when I have been thinking of myself as a D all these years.

Hard to argue with the evidence, though.

It has been a week of self discovery, in fact! I went to the dentist also, and confirmed that I grind my teeth in my sleep. (I had been hoping that all the times Dave woke me up in the night to tell me to stop grinding were freak isolated occurrences, like hurricanes in Florida in September. All just isolated freak occurrences.) The hygienist informed me that I have also been chewing on my tongue. She could tell from the calluses along the sides of it. Jesus H. Christ. Who chews on their own motherfucking tongue? I mean, obviously I do, and there are enough other wackjobs like me that it's a known phenomenon, but what the fucking fuck? I was all happy about not having cavities and not getting yelled at for flossing wrong until I found out that the dentist-provided mouthguard costs $550 and usually isn't covered by dental insurance. I guess I'll be chewing on my tongue for a while longer, because I just spent all my money on new 32E bras.

Then the hygienist asked me if I have dry mouth and I was all, "No way!" until I remembered that I'm constantly thirsty and made the connection. Apparently one can treat dry mouth with the help of toothpaste, mouthwash and serum. I tried the toothpaste and mouthwash tonight. It was definitely less delicious than my regular toothpaste, but whatever, it seems to be working a little. Bring on the serum!

Man, apart from some blog entries I've read about mastitis, this was the unsexiest post I've ever seen that was all about boobs. Yay me! Setting new records for internetian naval-gazing!

Gratitude

2009-07-30T22:17:00.000-05:00

Things I am thankful for:
1. Alcohol
2. Earplugs
3. Rides home from the club

Summer

2009-07-29T21:07:00.006-05:00

This is how I know summer has finally arrived: tonight in yoga I did a faceplant out of a balance pose* and now I have a big red mark on my forehead. I may have to wear a hat to work tomorrow. The reason I fell out of the pose was because it's so fucking hot and steamy in Boston and my sadistic ashtanga teacher turns off the a/c in the summer to promote sweating. I just slipped in a puddle of my own sweat and hit the motherfucking deck. Headfirst. I've never taken a Bikram class and I never want to, but I think it may be a similar experience.

* crow pose, or bakasana if you want to be all correct about it.

ZOMG!

2009-07-28T20:49:00.003-05:00

So it turns out homemade creme caramel icecream with maple syrup on it is fucking delicious.

Also, i got an iPhone last month and I love it so much (I am writing this entry on it!) that I just pointed it at the tv, thinking it could be the remote from now on. Because it can pretty much do everything else. It will very nearly go down on you (unlike that lying Dyson Animal) - there's a vibrator app.

Friday night bachlorette

2009-07-24T22:07:00.004-05:00

So Dave is down the Cape tonight playing a show and I'm on my own. I also left my phone at work (curses!) so I was feeling all lonely and isolated when I first got home from work. Then I watched 3 hours of What Not To Wear and realized that nights home alone can be pretty sweet after all. I even got really excitable and changed the battery in my camera, then (surprise) I futzed around taking pictures for a while. My embroidered apron is coming along.

I finished the space ship.

There are a lot of tiny little hairs on that apron. A lot.

Lucky is always ready to help out.

Bet you're no longer wondering how the apron came to be covered in cat hair.

The underside of the flame embroidery is a hot mess. too bad. The front is hott.

All your robots are belong to us.

When he dies, I'm going to have a taxidermist make him into a wallet that says "Bad Motherfucker" on it.

This is why I can't be trusted with sharp things

2009-07-02T20:39:00.003-05:00

So, it turns out rubber bands start to melt if you bake them at 375F for half an hour. It took me a while to figure out why the cherry-nectarine buckle didn't smell as good as I expected. For those of you who are in the dark, a buckle is basically a streusel-topped coffee cake with fresh fruit in the cake part. I messed with the recipe a little, but I didn't expect anything crazy to happen. (I used cherries instead of blueberries - by the way, pitting a bunch of fresh cherries and peeling nectarines are a huge pain in the ass, in case you wondered.) Then the house started to smell really weird.

Good thing I checked on the cake, because the rubber band that I put around the end of the springform cake tin had snapped and was starting to melt onto the oven rack. Chalk that one up to "it seemed like a good idea at the time." We're theoretically going to a friend's backyard barbeque tomorrow and I thought it would be good to bring something. Theoretically because if they don't have a covered area of their backyard, I'm not going. They're good cooks and all, but I'm totally not down with standing in the rain for hours for the sake of two beers and a damp-bunned hamburger.

Just in case the barbeque occurs, I decided to be all smart and forward-thinking and bake the cake in a pan lined with parchment paper for easy removal. But the parchment was kind of refusing to stay in place and I didn't have the cake batter ready yet to weigh it down, so I stuck a rubber band around the outside of the springform pan and that kept the parchment paper in place pretty nicely. However, I failed to take off the rubber band when I put the cake in the oven. It's like I thought the rubber would be impervious to heat or something. Why don't I ever learn? Tire fires are a running joke on Simpsons! The entire MBTA system smells like burning rubber! Putting rubber bands in a really hot oven is probably not a good idea.

Anyway, I hope it turns out okay despite the burning rubber thing. The french chocolate silk pie for Dave's birthday came out really well. We ate pie all weekend. I think it's the best birthday dessert I've made for him yet. I guess I'll find out if he requests it again next year.

For Annie Lennox

2009-06-25T22:43:00.007-05:00

I have spent most of the evening picking up shards of glass off the kitchen floor. With my bare feet. One of the cats (probably Pip the asshole) knocked the butter dish onto the floor and it shattered into a thousand tiny, greasy pieces. All the cats wanted to lick butter off of the broken glass.

It was worth it, though. It was in service of a french silk chocolate pie for Dave's birthday, which is tomorrow. I hope it sets properly, because when I licked the bowl it was pretty good. I will be bummed if all I have managed to make is a big puddle of pudding inside a pie shell, although I suspect that even if this happens, I can just freeze the pie and that's probably going to be super good too. Maybe we should freeze the leftovers even if it sets. (That is, if there are any leftovers. Apparently Dave ate a whole cheesecake once. I can only hope to tempt him to such heights of gluttony tomorrow. I'll let you know how it all shakes out.)

Claire Danes is the only Juliet I've ever seen who isn't hugely whiny. Even Olivia Hussey, although I love the Zeffirelli version. Also, this song makes me nostalgic for the good parts of being sixteen.

Enjoy your fridays, kids. I know I'll enjoy mine.

typical blogger cat pictures

2009-06-21T20:50:00.005-05:00

Sorry about the unscheduled blogging hiatus. I had a cold and then we threw that whiskey party, so that stuff kept me away from the computer. Here's what's been happening, in my absence.

I gave Pip some catnip again.

Lucky has discovered that laptops are made of warm.

Simone is as plump and as bursting with sweetness as always. (Yes, I stole that from the copy on the raisin box. Me and my copy-thieving ways.)

Inty is costing a million dollars, as usual.

Her IBD started flaring up again - puking at least once a day - so I took her to the vet. This time we didn't wait until she got so skinny she almost died. $250 worth of testing later, we can rule out thyroid and diabetes and be pretty sure that the increased levels of cat barf in our house are because of Inty's IBD - which, you know, is what we figured was happening before we took her to the vet.

Anyway, now she has a new steroid ($35) and $60 worth of a new prescription food. We've changed from low ingredient - i.e. proteins she probably hasn't encountered and thus isn't allergic to - to a hypoallergenic food. Basically to make the hypoallergenic they denature the protein molecule and chop it up all small in the hopes that the immune system won't respond to a smaller molecule the way that it does to normal big protein molecules. If she keeps barfing and doesn't respond to the steroid, we'll put her back on an anti-nausea drug. And maybe re-start a regime of giving her B-12 shots periodically. That's all if, though, and I'd kind of like it not to progress further because: expensive. Also, the strain of keeping all that chemistry in my head just reminds me of why I never did pursue my childhood dream of becoming a vet: not good enough at chemistry. Or math in general. As an adult, knowing a little bit more about how much vets get to deal with poop and barf and what their earning potential is, I'm kind of glad that I was a quitter when it came to chemistry.

No comment.

No photos in this post were staged, though some were retouched afer they came out of the camera.

grab bag

2009-06-16T18:34:00.002-05:00

Dave has a show tonight at T.T. the Bear’s, so this is going to have to be short.

Best thing I saw today: buncha Tibetan monks in saffron robes sitting outside the Starbucks on Boylston St. (Right in the middle of the Back bay, which is a ritzy area of Boston, for my non-local readers.)

Best lie I heard today: my friend Lisa told her mom that the tube of KY on her bedside table was “for the dog’s paws, to keep them from getting cracked in the winter.” Heheheheh. That’s a great story, not just because of Lisa’s quick thinking but because her mom didn’t know what KY was.

Watching the Squirrel Channel:

this shot was not staged. heh.

And that’s all I’ve got.

P.S. I totally got Lisa’s permission to use that story, I am not that rude. Thanks, generous lady!

P.P.S. "Computers" almost rhymes with "uterus". There's a joke in there somewhere, but I haven't figured it out yet.

online reading

2009-06-15T18:34:00.004-05:00

in honor of this monday being as shitty as most mondays, here's a post with some links to crap I read on the internet which you might like to read, too. Most of this stuff is pretty well-known, so don't be surprised if you don't find anything new here. It's more of a reflection of my tastes than anything else.

Angry Black Bitch. She has such a great voice and she's wicked smart. She writes a lot about the intersection of race, gender and class politics. Totally different angle from the mostly white, mostly middle-class well-meaning liberal young women who are kind of at the forefront of the third wave of feminism (in the blogosphere, at least, the big mainstream feminist blogs tend to be pretty white and pretty middle class. And pretty boring after a while.)

538. I visited this site daily during the run-up to this year's election; it has really good analysis of polling outcomes and techniques. Obviously this kind of thing makes me happy, since I have much love in my heart for data and analysis thereof.

sociological images. I'm kind of a new reader so I'm a little at a loss to describe this blog; basically it takes collections of images (or one image? Usually there is more than one, though) and makes an argument based on the messages given by the images. A recent post on a Harper's Bazaar photo shoot, for example, decodes a pretty clear message about appropriate roles in family life. Sort of like going behind the scenes at Disneyland, if Disneyland was the country's collective unconscious.

Indexed. Funny and smart commentary on a lot of wacky stuff.

Style Rookie. Okay, this kid is like 13 and she totally kicks my ass for creativity and awesomeness and style genius and the balls to wear her creations. I so wish I had been her, or had a friend like her, when I was in seventh grade. Instead I will read her blog as an adult and marvel. She totally inspires me to dress better. (thanks to Lisa for sending me this link.)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I read a lot of random shit, so maybe I will do a post like this again at some point.

Lasted: one day

2009-06-14T19:12:00.004-05:00

I couldn't take the guilt. I moved the roses to the dining room where I wouldn't be the only one enjoying them. I suck.

And as long as I'm confessing things, I'll admit that every picture I post taken inside my house is kinda staged.

the dark blobs under the table are Pip and Simone grooming each other. Not staged

I mean, it mostly looks like this but I'd say that there's about 20% more clutter. (Hmmm, maybe 20% is giving us too much credit. Kay? Can you weigh in on this?) But the booze is only temporary. We're having a whisky party next weekend so we're all stocked up on single malts and bourbon and whiskey. And also wine and beer and rum and vodka in case you want to come to the party but don't like whisky, whiskey or bourbon. (I got kind of carried away at the liquor store.) Also if you're reading this and you're local, I probably know you personally so consider yourself invited and that I am just dumb and forgot to email or facebook you.

So, party, yay. We haven't had a party since my birthday last year, which makes it over a year, which is too long. I have been fussing with my hanging baskets for weeks so they will be party-ready.

this picture was not staged. I don't count "choosing a good angle" as staging.

Okay, that's a lie, I have been fussing with the hanging baskets since I got them and that's because it's the first time I have ever grown flowers and not killed them right away. But this year something has clicked in my brain (regular watering ?) and I'm nuts about gardening.

This picture was not staged. Fuck, now I am obsessed about staging versus not.

When I say the gardening bug has taken hold, I will tell you that I have begun saving the water from when I clean the fishtank and use it to water the plants. Fish poop is rich in nitrogen, apparently. I also made an all-natural aphid repellent from dish soap, wesson and water. So far it doesn't seem to have done much to deter the aphids. It's a bummer since it's cheap and I felt like a virtuous hippie when I was making it, but I think I will go back to the all-natural shit they sell at the garden center, which at least seems to kill the fuckers. I question their claims of "able to use on day of harvest" but it says it's for organic gardeners, so it can't be too bad. Right?

Anyway, I should shut up now. I have dishes to do, laundry to fold, litterboxes to scoop. Miles to go before I sleep.

Great Expectations

2009-06-13T15:52:00.003-05:00

I wish my desk looked this clean all the time. This picture is totally staged though. The roses (from my little pots) smell like summer. I feel a little guilty that I'm the only one who will get to enjoy them, since I am the only one who sits here. Not guilty enough to move the vase, though.

Anyway, so fake cleanliness. Recently I bit the bullet and bought a new vacuum. I actually forked out five hundred bucks for a Dyson Animal. It was the reviews on Amazon that did it to me. They were like, insanely positive. There were reviews titled, "This Vacuum Changed My Life." I am not even making this up.

So when it I arrived I got all excited and insisted on vacuuming at 10 pm and testing each attachment in turn. This made Dave very angry. I think he wanted to sleep or watch TV or relax or something. I don't know the specifics because I wasn't really paying attention. I decided a long time ago that he's lucky to have a wife who gets so pumped up about vacuums and keeping the house clean.

I am kind of disappointed in the vacuum though. I think maybe my expectations got over-inflated by all those long, lovingly detailed reviews by people who now referred to their Dysons as "Jesus". So I was pretty much thinking that the second I plugged it in, all the dust in the house would race into the vacuum's gaping maw of its own accord while the vacuum gave me head.

It didn't work out quite like that, though. I mean, it worked fine and smelled better than the 15 year old Kenmore we have been using, which emits a steady stream of something that smells like a dog fart from its nether regions, but it definitely didn't make the earth move. I dunno. I think I was kind of stupid to buy into the hype in the first place. So I guess the moral of this story is, even a $500 vacuum won't go down on you.

Listening

2009-06-12T21:26:00.004-05:00

Sigur Ros. My favorite album is called ( ), and they released it with all the tracks untitled. The whole album is sung in a made-up language called Vonlenska. Later on they went back and gave the tracks names and translated the invented language. It's really pretty, and they are very hip, in part because they aren't that well-known. Plus Pico Iyer is a fan! How can you go wrong?

This is the first track on the album. It is a beautiful haunting sad song (I listen to it a lot at work for this reason).

The video is unsettling and creepy. In a good way.

june showers

2009-06-11T19:40:00.004-05:00

Obligatory blogger's photo of rose with raindrops

The pretty roses have less-pretty aphids

This shrub rose is called wingding, which makes me think of the font. Hee.

Hairy tomato stems. Also well-equipped with aphids.

And besides growing things in containers, we've been "pruning", aka whacking the hell out of the plants in the garden which are overgrown (which is all of them.)

I call this one "Hacked-off hedges, flanked by giant brush pile"

Another contributor to the brush pile. This thing used to reach the second floor. In winter it got so bowed down with snow that the branches made the sidewalk impassable anytime we had a storm. Since we got 64 inches this winter, that happened a lot.

This picture of the brush pile doesn't do the real thing justice (and I'm not far enough along on my photography lessons to know how to take a better picture) but at least the cars are there for scale.

It's been raining a lot lately, and cold. It didn't help either of our moods to come home today and find that the cleaning lady had had a festival of breakage. She broke the hot water faucet handle in the bathroom, the step/lid thingie on the kitchen trash can, and although this isn't technically breaking anything, I unwisely left out one of the buckets that I use for cleaning the fish tank. She used it to do something else with - probably cleaning the floor, which is good, but with chemicals, which means I won't be able to use it for the fish again. Dammit. She also forgot to lock the house up when she was leaving. Gah.

rush

2009-06-09T19:19:00.005-05:00

worked late, home even later (around 8) because I allowed some poor Irish girl standing on the street corner in the rain to talk to me about the charity she was hawking. twenty minutes later something called "children international" has my credit card details and will be taking $22/month to give to impoverished girls in India.

Guess I had sucker on my forehead tonight because on the T some I allowed some rando to strike up a conversation with me, all because I said, "fuck!" when the train stopped and the lights went out. The rando accompanied me all the way to the Harvard square T stop, interrogating me about my job and telling me about his life history. Judging from his pinpoint pupils, he was on drugs of some kind, but totally harmless. Plus he was so tiny I could have snapped him in two with ease.

am writing this hurriedly while the water for my polenta comes to a boil. bet I will find typos galore when I re-read. More than usual, I mean, since I never proof before posting. i'm slack like that.

anyway, so here is a nice picture of me and Dave taken at some gig somewhere, sometime in the last couple of months.

I think we must have been sitting down, since I am not usually taller than him.

update: I think I must be sitting on his lap here.

Snorkeling

2009-06-08T17:45:00.000-05:00

in the ocean is one of my favorite things. Unfortunately, though our hotel was right on the beach, the surf there was too rough to do much swimming (not if you wanted to keep your bathing suit on, anyway.)

But we did get to do some snorkeling one day, and I bought a disposable underwater camera and took pictures. None of them are great, but some of them give you an idea.

I have to say, turtles that are actually in the water are fast motherfuckers. They also have moss on their shells.

They kind of look like they're flying through the water.

Swimming with the fishes!

The people running the cruise made us all wear stupid deflatable life jackets that wouldn't deflate all the way, so I couldn't dive as deep as I wanted - so all the reef pictures look kind of faraway.

Also apparently underwater cameras need to come with a flash, because this parrot fish just looks blue, like everything else. Underwater cameras also seem to have strange and interesting results in the film, which compensates a little.

This is more like what a parrot fish looks like in real life. I didn't take that picture, though. these people did.

gardening etc

2009-06-07T18:58:00.007-05:00

We spent most of this sunny weekend outside. Well, got a good chunk of time outside, anyway. We ran a bunch of errands yesterday, including a trip to the the hardware store for a serious pair of pruning scissors, the kind that can take down live wood with a two inch diameter. These things could take your hand off at the wrist.

I was trying to think of a non-boring way to describe how much crap we took down, but I'll just tell you that the resulting brush pile is about the size and shape of a sedan. Something like a Ford Taurus. I think we're going to have to rent a woodchipper to get rid of it. (Speaking of woodchippers, the closest I have ever been to one is the movie Fargo, which we watched last week. It's held up well.)

When I got one particularly big branch, the old guys sitting on the porch across the street clapped for me. Then one yelled, "Don't hurt yourself!" which was a little late since I'd already been hit in the head several times with falling branches. Eventually I learned to get out of the way.

Then today was more errands and yoga, and then we both fell asleep in the afternoon. I took the extended version of the nap while he got up and went for a bike ride. Then I played with the flowers - we have hanging baskets with scarlet verbena and pink petunias and I spent a while deadheading those and the baskets of impatiens.

I also went after the aphids that infest my tomatoes and roses with a "natural" organic pesticide. In a couple of weeks, I think I'll have roses and tomatoes should start being ready a few weeks after that. When the current batch of insecticide runs out, I think I'm going to make my own from dishwashing liquid, mineral oil and water.

I'm really excited about the gardening stuff this year for some reason. I've made various attempts before at container gardening, but I've always proven to have a black thumb. Hopefully this year will be better, because I really like flowers and homegrown tomatoes.

For dinner tonight we grilled some steak tips (just the Whole Foods "santa fe" marinated steak tips) and some veggies (videlia onion, summer squash and zucchini tossed in a mixture of olive oil, fresh thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper.) I love my new gas grill - means the grill is ready to go in ten minutes - and the nonstick grill pan I used for the vegetables. We had sweetcorn, too. I love early summer corn.

All in all it was a pretty restful weekend. A good break from the work week (although actually I should be catching up on some work stuff rather than sitting on the couch blogging and catching up on other blogs. Oh well. I so need to make this rhubarb-berry jam soon. Although I originally went to David Lebovitz's site because summer has got me wanting to start making ice cream again. I'm dying to make this Salted Butter Caramel icecream, which I think will be delicious but looks like a pain in the ass since you make 2 kinds of caramel as well as the custard for the base. Bet it will be worth it, though.)

cop out picture post

2009-06-04T19:31:00.002-05:00

It's thursday and I don't have a lot to say for myself, so here's an old picture of Simone nursing Pip.

And I've downloaded a bunch of lessons that will be an intro to DSLR, since I really am not using the camera's functionality to the utmost. The lessons will take me through the technical stuff and then towards the end you learn some basic rules of composition. I think it will be exactly what I need to make my pictures better.

Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah

2009-06-03T20:53:00.003-05:00

So Dave brought home flowers for me last night, which was a nice (and timely) surprise, given The Night Of The Candles.

I love flowers, and it's not that I'm glad Zoe is dead or anything, but I totally don't miss her habit of eating all flowers that were brought into the house and then barfing up piles of gaily colored petals right underneath the dining room table. None of the other four seem interested in eating flowers, so yay - more flowers for me!

After work tonight I made dinner (one of those desperation meals that ends up being surprisingly good. This was a lentil-chickpea-tomato thing with a bunch of fresh coriander I clipped a couple of days ago from the "garden", aka a couple of containers of tomatoes.

Roar! T-Rex cooks dinner!

Check out my vintage apron. I fucking love that thing. I bought it from a htrift store in outside of Buffalo on one of our trips there to visit his family. I used to wear the apron as a wraparound skirt the summer after I'd had mono and had lost twenty pounds. It was very short and very breezy. Perfect for hot days!

Mono is no fucking joke when you're a grownup. Most people can't just take two weeks off work or whatever the way a kid who's in high school or college can. Anyway, I certainly didn't have that much sick leave or enough job security and didn't feel like I could take the time off to get well. Plus my mono went undiagnosed for about two months, which gave it time to get really bad. I kept going to the doctor and telling them my throat hurt and I was really tired and feverish all the time, and they just kept diagnosing me with strep throat and giving me antibiotics. I did have a whole bunch of strep infections but they were a side effect from the mono, which knocks out your immune system. I got really terrible colds during this period too, the kind with a big fever which throws your ass on the floor. At one point I thought I was actually going to get fired because I'd taken all my sick time and all my vacation time.

But then Mom suggested I get tested for mono, so I asked the doctor to do that along with the usual strep test, and it turned out I did have mono. Then at least it made sense why I was falling asleep in traffic and at my desk at work and any time I sat still for more than 30 seconds. The way I knew I was finally getting better was that my insomnia started up again. Then I knew I was done with the mono. But that didn't happen until I'd been sick for about 9 months, and I'd gotten reaaaaal thin.

I overexposed the crap out of this photo so you can see how scrawny I'd gotten.

I can't say I miss the mono - it sucked, I didn't see any friends for the whole time because I couldn't stay awake long enough to leave the house - but that flat stomach was nice. Oh well. My boobs are bigger now. You win some, you lose some.

And just 'cause, here's a sneak peek at my first embroidery project. I am, by the way, totally loving the ability to do a little photo tweaking in picnik from within flickr. Now, Yahoo, if you could get this right, why can't you make your search engine better?

It's an apron, of course, because I am that freak who collects aprons. Some day I should do an apron round-up post. That would probably be the most boring blog post ever, but that's what the internet is for, right? Saving toenail clippings and showing off your aprons?

Smellovision

2009-06-02T20:00:00.001-05:00

Just like the pioneers

2009-06-01T19:47:00.004-05:00

I am typing this in the dark, with Lucky draped over my left arms and part of the touchpad - every time I click the mouse he gets offended, but not offended enough to disembark. I can't touch-type so the screen is bent towards me at a less than 90 degree angle so I can see the letters on the keys by the romantic backlighting of the LCD.

The reason I am typing in the dark is because Dave is in the midst of a full-blown manic episode and is trying to calm himself down ironing by candlelight. Just like the pioneers did! Earlier we had a stimulating round of, "Why can't you read my mind" wherein I failed repeatedly to read Dave's mind. Maybe if I just try harder next time, I'll figure it out and he won't get so mad! Just kidding. Maybe next time I will wise up and start drinking early in the evening. I bet the pioneer wives did that, too.

Anyway, so I should stop typing now so I find out what further excitements the evening holds for me. Also I think it's time to get into my jammies. Jammies are the best.

Happy Caturday

2009-05-30T18:44:00.004-05:00

Lucky had oral surgery* this week and held a grudge against me for like 5 days because I was the one who dropped him off and picked him up from the vet. I think he's forgiven me now though.

*The cost for the op came in under $1000. What a bargain! It's almost like I saved money. Except that it still cost about nine hundred dollars.

The Lazy Woman's Way to Blog

2009-05-29T19:46:00.006-05:00

... reposting a Facebook meme. So sue me. It's Friday and I'm on the couch in my jammies and just realized I forgot about a friend's birthday. I feel bad, but not bad enough to get dressed again and go out out to a crowded bar. (Sorry, dude. I'll buy you a beer soon, okay?)

Fifteen books that stayed with me.

1)The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies. It's funny, it's perceptive about what makes people tick, it's learned, it's well-plotted and the devil shows up in a bunch of cameo roles.
2) Hamlet - Shakespeare. I re-read Hamlet periodically, mostly when I'm feeling really sorry for myself, because no one knows more about self-pity than Hamlet.
3) Bleak House by Charles Dickens. It's kind of fashionable to despise Dickens as a schlocky wordbag, but unpalatable as that kind of saccharine is to the modern reader, he was usually using those moments to make a larger point about a social injustice. Once he was rich and famous he used his writing as a platform to call for social reforms, which rocks. Plus he is capable of some genuinely gorgeous passages and can create as complex a character as any in literature.
4) All the Calvin & Hobbes books - Bill Watterson. I learned a lot from watching Watterson toe the fine line between funny and bleak, and I respect the hell out of him for stopping at the top of his game.
5) The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken. McCracken's prose is simple and beautiful, and she navigates the weighty themes of love, death and the frailty of the human condition without ever breaking a sweat.
6) The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. I have a weakness for re-told fairy tales and Carter's lush, dark writing.
7) Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones. Another fairy tale re-telling. The plot reads as though it grew organically but she's got layers and layers of classical references in there. I think it is technically brilliant as well as a sympathetic portrait of the extent to which children are disenfranchised.
8) Portrait of a Lady - Henry James. I really think it was James's work that first got me interested in psychology.
9) The Chronicles of Barchester - Anthony Trollope. What can I say? I have a thing for 19th century drawing room stories. Plus the man can plot.
10) Everything Jane Austen wrote. There is nothing new I can say about her.
11) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. I have loved this since I first read it at 15 and now that I'm 31 I still love it. It is just so beautiful.
12) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - a hundred years later, this is STILL a creepy story as well as, you know, a discussion of good vs. evil and a virtuoso example of literary showmanship. I always think Hitchcock must have learned a lot from this book.
13) The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis (pretend I put the accent over the a.) Admittedly strange reading for an atheist, but this got me through a lot of long, hard nights in my late teens and early twenties. Pain is pain, yo, whether it's religious or secular.
14) The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. I'm not normally a short story person but oh my god, these were so wonderfully written.
15) From Hell by Alan Moore. This was the book that made me finally understand what the big deal was about graphic novels.

What are y'all's 15 big books? I had a hard time narrowing it down and probably if I did it again tomorrow, I'd have 15 different books, but still fun.

A Day In the Life

2009-05-28T19:56:00.003-05:00

Things I have done tonight since getting home:

Dropped Dave off at a bandmate's house
Fed and medicated the cats (this is a much bigger pain in the ass than you'd think.)
Petted the cats
Practiced smiling at myself in the mirror to prepare for the new license picture I will get tomorrow, god willing and the crick don't rise
Noodled around on the internet

Things I still need to do:
clean litterboxes
make dinner and clean up
laundry
go to bed early so can actually get into work at eight like I've been meaning to do all week

How can such boring stuff keep me so busy? WTF?

Up to

2009-05-25T20:05:00.003-05:00

The trip to Barbados for our first anniversary was fantastic.

We hung out with old friends from our last trip and made a few new ones.

clearly that ten pounds hasn't budged since the last time I posted about it.

We went ziplining in the rainforest.

We went sailing on the catamaran and snorkled over coral reefs and a sunken ship. We swam with enormous, friendly sea turtles. (We'll see if any of my pictures from the disposable underwater camera actually come out. I petted one. Its back was surprisingly mossy.) The view was gorgeous.

And the boat had an open bar for the whole trip.

What ten pounds?

We had many romantic dinners.

Isn't the decor just awesome?

I chased reluctant crabs with my camera.

We did plenty of lounging around, too.

The cats were happy to see us when we came home.

Since we've been home, I have done approximately one thousand loads of laundry, made meringues and puttered around with the container "garden", aka a couple of tomatoes and a few hanging baskets on the porch that I'm desperately trying to keep alive. Also I dyed my hair blond.

And that's all the news I've got for now.

the usual brain dump

2009-05-11T18:04:00.002-05:00

Katharine was right (she usually is) and I do need to post something to push the toenails further down on the page. Here’s the Beta Band.

This song has been on my mind because of the awesome ending (starts at about 4:15). We are going to Barbados later this week (yay!), basically for an extended long weekend. I am a little stressed out about it, which is stupid – who gets worked up about a fucking vacation? But I have been having anxiety dreams since Friday night (usually these involve me being back at school. I won’t elaborate more because I have not been blessed with the gift of making my dreams interesting to others. That is probably because NO ONE ELSE’S DREAMS ARE INTERESTING, unless you are like the star of someone else’s dream and then it’s only interesting to hear about in a self-gratifying way.)

The anxiety is extra strange since I just finished a big work project last week and it’s usually work that prompts stress dreams. But this time I am anxious about packing, or something. Like it’s SO HARD to throw small bottles of conditioner and a bathing suit into my suitcase. (Although typing this, I just realized we are going to have to check luggage if we want to bring sunblock with us, since that comes in larger-than-3-ounce containers. Dilemma: check luggage and deal with lines/lost baggage/fees, or carry on and get fleeced when we buy sunblock at the resort? Man, do I have first world problems, or what?)

And the cats. Leaving the cats makes me anxious. They aren’t frail or anything but with 4 of them, we see the vet about twice a month for one thing or another. Fat Simone currently has some kind of skin condition on her forehead which she has been scratching at, so now it’s scabby and oozing, and obviously we want to get that taken care of before we leave. Dave made an appointment at the vet to take her in on Wed and was fairly surly about being the one who always has to take the cats in, but he shut up when I reminded him that he’s only been doing it since last September, and before that I took care of all the cats-during-the-week stuff, because my job was closer and more flexible and I had the car. Now my job is not close, not particularly flexible and costs $20 to park for a day*, so it makes more sense for him to do the cat shuttling. I could work from home in mornings or evenings and take the cats that way, though. I just hate working from home because I’m not as productive.

Ooops, that was kind of a long detour. So, anyway, going to Barbados. In a few days. Yay! And not much else to report otherwise.

* This seems like an outrageous amount to me, but according to Forbes recently, Boston is tied for #19 on the top 20 list of Highest Cost of Living Cities, so maybe 20 bucks to put my car onto 275 square feet of concrete 8 stories up is actually a good deal and I just don't realize it. Because I am blinded by my first world priviledge and all.

Blowing my tiny mind

2009-05-01T12:23:00.008-05:00

Check out this guy's blog entry about his collection of nail clippings. My brain totally blew a gasket. God, I love the internet so much. Absolutely the best part of the blog entry is the comments posted to it from fellow savers.

"I thought I was strange for saving ribbons and skin from my girl/friend."

You ARE strange.

"I once had a friend who ate a toenail clipping we found for 5 dollars. "

Wow. Just wow.

"I'm glad not everyone finds it disgusting , I have been known to keep full toe nails , where they have fallen off after being stamped on, and once kept a finger nail in a matchbox from a girl I fancied. Sick me ? no ! Its a shame I didn't keep them longer , but there was a strange smell that accompanied them . "

*Blink* *blink blink blink*

Enjoy the rest of your friday, children. Props to Erin for alerting me to the existence of this piece of internet arcana.

And then there were four

2009-04-18T14:04:00.005-05:00

We put Zoe to sleep this morning. She was 15 and so thin and wasted - it had been a very long time since she was able to do more than eat, sleep and growl. Her whiskers were falling out. She still hadn't grown back the hair on her paw from where she was shaved last summer after a blood sugar collapse.

We were with her while she died. The vet will normally put a catheter in and then administer the drug while you are there with the pet, but her veins were in such terrible shape and her blood pressure and circulation were so bad that they couldn't get a catheter in.

We ended up having to hold her down while the vet injected the drug directly into a vein in her thigh. She struggled but she didn't have much fight left in her. Pretty quickly her head started to droop and then her heart stopped and I could tell from her eyes that she had left us. I wish I could believe in heaven so I could believe that that's where she went. I guess I will have to content myself with knowing that she is the earth's pet now.

Oh Zoe. I miss how you used to groom my hair until it was soaking wet and disgusting. I miss how you wanted to be on my lap and purr even when it was 95 degrees out. I miss playing baseball with you - you had such good aim batting away toys. I miss you curled up on my chest, purring for hours while we both napped. I miss the funny little hairs between your toes. I miss your people-food-stealing mischievousness. I miss you. I know it's better that you aren't in pain all the time now. I know we made the right, kind decision. But it's still hard.

Update: I love this picture of baby Zoe and baby Dave. Kittens together.

Happiness is

2009-04-16T20:06:00.003-05:00

singing along to Passenger Side while drinking whiskey with only the cats to hear.

This right here is made of awesome. I think it's actually better than the original - the video definitely beats Robert Smith clawing at the air and lying on the floor singing.

In case you are not familiar with the original.

In what may not be a coincidence, Simone is currently lying in my lap purring and biting my typing fingers. That's the signal that I have to go be a crazy cat lady for a while. Plus the whiskey needs a refill.

Spring

2009-04-13T20:27:00.000-05:00

Finally on its way.

Um, ew. And etc.

2009-04-09T19:07:00.003-05:00

After I finished listening to Jane Eyre I started listening to Sense and Sensibility. Marianne comes down with a "putrid fever", which sounds gross, and almost dies. I've read Sense and Sensibility quite a few times, but I don't think I've read it since before Google. I always wondered what exactly a "putrid fever" was, but until now I didn't have the internet to help me find out.

Turns out putrid fevers are also known as typhus. Jane Austen and one of her sisters nearly died of it, which is how she was so familiar with the disease. 'Hey,' I thought, 'typhus is what the pupils at Jane Eyre's school get. What is typhus though? Is it like typhoid?'. Nope. It's an infection (treated nowadays with antibiotics) that's spread by body lice. EW EW EW EW EW. That totally clashes with my image of that era in history as being full of well-clothed, well spoken ladies and gents - basically as I listened to the book I was picturing the Ang Lee movie with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, so finding out that the characters and their author were all crawling with lice was kind of a shock. It makes sense, of course, given the lack of running water and central heating at the time, but still. EW.

Next I am going to listen to Dombey and Son. At least Dickens was upfront about the effects of poor sanitation (the graveyard description in Bleak House, for example.)

But back to Austen. Listening to Sense and Sensibility I realized that not only are admirable male characters rare in Austen (most of the good men are kind of waxwork models of piety and virtue, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightly being the exceptions), but that it's all about the inner lives and landscape of women. I guess I knew that already, but I was finally like, 'Oh! That's why lots of men don't enjoy reading her - she's not writing for them.' Well, duh, right? Except that as a woman, of course I grew up reading all kinds of books which focus on the male experience (David Copperfield, Treasure Island, Tom Jones, Boswell's Life of Johnson - the list is endless) - because those books are so much more common than the female-centered ones - so it never occurred to me to be bored by reading about the experiences of men. I'd have run out of books pretty quickly.

Moving on. I've been reading (really reading, I mean, not listening) Hilary Mantel. She is wonderful - very dark and very funny. I'm on my third of her books and I admire her writing tremendously.

In other news, all five cats are still around and I'm/we're still agonizing over Zoe. I posted a question about euthanasia to the blog of a vet that I really like. Here's his answer. Definitely not easy. I do think Zoe's in pain, though our vet didn't agree the last time we saw him, and will try the painkiller test on her.

Somehow it's 8:30 already and I still need to vacuum (we are drowning in a sea of litter), clean the catboxes, and do my taxes (argh). And get to bed early, 'cause I need to be in the office by 8 tomorrow.

Crushing

2009-04-03T19:18:00.007-05:00

So I have been reading Sarah Vowell intermittently since Christmas when Dave got me three of her books as gifts. It was a good choice on his part because I totally love her. I was laughing on the T while I read it on the trip home. This paragraph just killed me:

The professor asked if anyone had read Camus. I, of course, had read L'Etranger in the original French, and raised my hand.* I mentioned the protagonist who doesn't care about his mother's death. Then I said that I often washed dishes with my mom. When she'd hand me a knife to dry, I would have the fleeting thought that it would be pretty easy to kill her if I wanted. I should mention that I usually sat in the back, so when I said this about a hundred heads whipped around to stare at me. What I should have said was, "But I don't want to kill her!" What I actually said was, "Oh, like you never thought about killing your mom."

How can you not love this woman? Plus I am always the one who ends up with my whole department staring at me like another head has shot up out of my neck. I work in marketing, which isn't quite as full of kids who were popular in high school as sales departments tend to be, but marketing is full of the kids who were the ultra cool ones wearing all black and smoking cigarettes back behind the gym. Thus they seem shocked every time when I come out with some amusing anecdote about that time my first husband went on a three day drinking binge and came home perched happily inside a garbage truck. My feeling is that it's a fucking great story and I tell it well; their feeling is that I've had some crazy wild life and it's sort of in poor taste to mention it. So it's always nice to read someone else who is okay with admitting their own humilations.

Speaking of the trip home, I had promised Dave that I'd leave work promptly at 6 so I could be home at 7 so I could see his face for a few minutes before he left to play a gig. I of course didn't leave work at 6 - I left at something more like 6:20, because I was shooting the shit with my boss, who I like a lot. (Don't get me wrong, I really like everyone I work with. They just all think I'm nuts.) As I walked to the subway, I uttered a little prayer that the trains would cooperate and I'd get home near 7 anyway and not at like 7:30, which would have totally pissed Dave off.

Then I wondered who I was praying to, since I don't believe in God, and decided that maybe I had proven that there were no atheists in foxholes. Then I wondered why I don't believe in God, and remembered that it's because I can't get past that whole bad-things-happening-to-god-people thing. Then I wondered if, supposing there really is a God, if I was going to hell for not believing. The trains did cooperate and as I pulled into my last stop I thought to say thanks just in case but then wondered if the perhaps-God who might have helped me out with the trains could hear me from underground. As if God's reception is limited like the T-Mobile network. And then I made a conscious decision to stop thinking about theological matters and listened to Sense and Sensibility on the walk home instead.

*I too read this in the original French and would also have raised my hand.

headdesk

2009-04-03T10:38:00.003-05:00

How stupid can you get? Some family stole a bunch of stuff and boasted about it on national TV, then got busted. Jesus. It reminds me of the time my sister's credit card number was stolen online - they caught the thief because he had his ill-gotten gains shipped directly to his house.

When I worked in retail, we used to see shoplifters all the time. When I first started the job, I asked my boss how to spot them. "It's easy," he said. "They act in a suspicious manner." And they do! I guess if you're lazy and stupid and venial enough to think thievery is preferable to an actual job, it doesn't occur to you to try to act normal when trying to get away with it.

Not at all related to April Fool's

2009-04-01T12:01:00.007-05:00

I think the baby snuggie thing is actually a photoshop disaster and not a detachable fleecy alien womb, but you have to admit the similarities are great:

The mom looks a lot happier about the situation than Kane.

hat tip to Pandagon for opening my eyes.

so totally worth it, though

2009-03-31T21:02:00.002-05:00

one of the fucking cats flipped my display upside down again. Plus the modem was acting up so I had to reset it before I could tediously navigate my way across the upside down backwards desktop to get to Google. (ctrl + alt + UP arrow fixes it.) little furry bastards. lucky for them they're cute.

I am old and nerdy

2009-03-23T20:15:00.002-05:00

moar funny pictures

We had to move the rosaries out of Pip's reach. He knocked over Buddha trying to get one. You'll be glad to know Buddha escaped unscathed.

Not a whole ton to say for myself lately. Well, there's been a lot going on (when is there not?) but I haven't had much time to write about any of it. Dave in 3 bands, though, so I see the amount of writing time in my life hockey sticking. He's off at practice now, in fact, but he left dinner in the oven for me. Good man. I was starving when I got home (god knows why, there is a plethora of free snacks at the office and I get through a lot of mini-bags of Cheez-Its in a day) so it was extra nice to walk in the door and be able to stuff my face without having to wait around while the ramen finishes cooking.

Listening to a Librivox recording of Jane Eyre and am really enjoying it. I've read Jane Eyre before, at least once, but I don't think I've read it in maybe 10 years. Long enough so I'd forgotten almost everything but the salient points of the story: poor governess, rich Mr. Rochester, mad wife in the attic, "Reader, I married him". That's kind of inescapable cultural knowledge about Jane Eyre - I probably knew that much going in the first time I read it. I'd forgotten how events unfold, though, and how much fun Jane's conversations with Mr. Rochester are.

Man, listening to this as an adult, though, I can barely hear the story over the warning sirens in my head screaming, "Get out of there, Jane! Mr. Rochester is crazypants!" I mean, he dresses up as a gypsy and lies to her, he misleads her about marrying someone else, he plans to entrap her in a fake marriage, then he tries to get her to be his mistress, and even after all that Jane's like, "Mr. R! I luffs him so!" That doesn't seem like such a happy ending to me. Her other alternative, the creepy St. John Rivers, is awful too. I don't think Charlotte Bronte had a very high opinion of men. I don't think she knew much about children either - Jane is a governess but her charge is just so boring and stupid.

Anyway. The litter box and some laundry are calling. If I can ever get Lucky off my lap. He's my internet boyfriend and always insists on being in my lap whenever I'm on the internet. I don't know how he knows, but he does.

Whole lotta grooming love going on around here.

in like a lion, indeed

2009-03-01T13:34:00.004-05:00

I dyed my hair purple.

Me and my new hair with Zoe.

curly hair in the dining room.

Lucky. He is a pushy old customer from Brookline.

He's our FIFTH cat. Pip was number 4, which was already too many, and then we acquired a fifth. So the deal with Lucky is that he belonged to a blind friend of Dave's. Lucky was diagnosed with diabetes (he's 12 and overweight), so obviously his blind owner couldn't see to give him his shots. So Dave's blind friend found a home for Lucky with another friend of hers ... except that lady was diagnosed with alzheimer's and couldn't remember the shots. So Lucky ended up back at the shelter and since he's 12 and diabetic and overweight, he was probably going to spend the rest of his life at the shelter, except we are suckers and adopted him. Two days after we brought him home, he had a hypoglycemic episode and almost died. After a mere thirteen hundred dollars, though, he was saved, and now he's not diabetic. (For now. Cats are really hard to keep stable. Zoe's back on insulin, for example, but only a small dose once a day. And we've invested in a blood glucometer and checked her blood sugar this afternoon; we'll probably start monitoring them both regularly. If I can avoid any more $1300 emergencies, I definitely want to.)

So five cats is way too many, and it's also an expensive hobby, but Lucky is super sweet. I had food poisoning last week and was running a high fever and generally felt awful, and Lucky was super happy just to lie in bed with me. He totally spooned me. Lucky (totally misnamed, in case you hadn't guessed, but Dave's blind friend's cleaning lady found him in a dumpster when he was 3), anyway, Lucky is really easygoing and gets along with the other cats, apart from Zoe, who hates everyone. He and Pip wrestle - he's the only cat strong enough to kick Pip's ass. Pip is a big boy these days - he was 9.5 pounds at the vet last month and I bet he's up to ten now. We call him "muscle boy" because he's a brick shithouse.

Look how much bigger he's gotten since August.

Pip likes cat TV.

Dave took this photo of Simone. She is his favorite. Technically Simone is still bigger than Pip, but she's a lover, not a fighter, and Pip wales on her ass all the time. (Whales? Wails? I think it's a regional phrase and I've only heard it spoken, not seen it written. Google was no help.) The brown rug with circles is in the second bedroom, which is now "the dude room", god help us. So naturally a brown rug was an appropriately masculine choice.

Sometimes Pip can be sweet.

I like how they both have their tongues out.

We are going to see Trail of Dead tonight at the Middle East Downstairs, which should be a good show. The only problem is that their set doesn’t start until 11 (which ought to make work tomorrow sleepy. My plan is to shower before the show and do a roll and stroll tomorrow morning; I figure if we get in at 1, I can go right to bed and sleep until 7:30 tomorrow morning and leave the house by 8, which will make me feel wretched, but I will be functional tomorrow for work, at least. I grow old, I grow old, and will probably regret seeing the show tomorrow.) Oh, and we’re getting 6 inches of snow today and supposed to have another 12 tomorrow. Yay New England. In the meantime we are listening to Yo La Tengo - transferring vinyl to MP3s, puttering and doing housework, and we need to hit the grocery store if we want to eat next week. A nap before the show is also very likely. Life is busy.

and just for kicks, a couple of pictures from when we were out in New Mexico over Christmas to see my parents.

The sky is so blue out there.

Some kind of cactus flower.

Hippy dippy woo-woo crap

2009-01-20T21:45:00.006-05:00

So, I've been doing yoga for a few years now and all yoga practices incorporate meditation in some way. It's my understanding that yoga evolved as a way to get the kinks out of your body so you could meditate without being disturbed by a leg cramp or something. I don't know how true that is ... but for me, anyway, I started doing yoga as a way to get more fit physically. Eventually I started to notice some mental benefits - exercise is always a de-stresser, of course, but yoga in particular puts focus on mental and physical discipline and awareness and integration of the mental/spiritual with physical.

My therapist has been suggesting for a while now that I incorporate regular meditation into my routine as an anxiety management technique. I have an anxiety disorder that I take meds for every day, and I have tranquilizers available for urgent situations, but I'm not content to leave everything to the pharma-psychology to manage itself. Plus I really believe that meds work much better in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy. Meditation is one example of a CBT technique that I use but I have many.

Anyway, at my therapist's urging, I gave meditation a shot but was never quite able to work it into my routine - given the choice between sleeping an extra ten minutes and getting up to meditate, sleep always wins. Then recently I was talking with a friend about my mental health stuff (my friend has some similar issues) and my friend mentioned that she meditates on the train in the mornings. And I was immediately like, oh, BINGO! because otherwise the time on the train is wasted - well, I read, but I can't really do anything productive - it's not a long enough journey to get the laptop out and it's too jerky and crowded to be able to physically write anything. The train is sort of the perfect place, because cell phones don't work, there's no internet, no point in getting the laptop out to work, and even though you're in the midst of a crowd literally pressing in on you physically, emotionally you are completely isolated.

So I just shut my eyes and meditate through a couple of stops (or all the way in), and it doesn't matter if I've got a seat or have to stand, and I'm not chanting and I just look like all the other tired commuters. The only time it's really hard is if people are having a conversation nearby that's loud enough for me to hear distinctly - I almost always end up listening to it rather than meditating, but I try to treat those incidents as a challenge and a way to improve my focus rather than just get ANGRY SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU STUPID ASS I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT YOUR STUPID LIFE SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP BEFORE I STAB YOU IN THE FACE. Although trying to improve my focus rather than get angry doesn't always work. heh.

I generally focus on the breath - I cannot just clear my mind and blank out, especially on the way to work in the morning, I have to focus on something neutral or else I'll just start making mental to-do lists for the day ahead. Zen koans don't really work for me either. I am not perfect at it by any means - most of the time, thanks to yoga practice, I can sink right into a meditative state, but I'll almost immediately realize that I'm thinking again, at which point I refocus on the breath. I try to just take note of the thoughts as they pass through, just to kind of check in, awareness-wise, but I let them keep on swimming by without picking up a train of thought and riding it to the end. I've worked out a couple of visualizations, too, but I tend to be super-visual no matter what I'm doing.

It's been very helpful for me in a number of ways. For one thing, even though I am trying not to think about anything, I often do end up solving little problems that have been nagging at the back of my mind for a while. For another, I don't have to be afraid of my brain any more. I used to read all the time when physically possible - book on the T, book on ipod for the walk to and from the T, book on ipod for housework and at actual work whenever the level of work was low enough to permit a book on tape. If I was stuck anywhere I couldn't distract myself with a book or TV, I was miserable and started to worry immediately. You know those middle of the night hamster wheel thoughts? I had those all the time, and I just blocked them out as much as possible. I don't know if I'm describing the situation well, but it was pretty uncomfortable.

Somehow with meditating, the worries are no longer what bubble immediately to the forefront of my mind, and it's surprisingly peaceful to be able to sit quietly rather than working myself up into a panic attack within 15 minutes (not quite that bad, but definitely going in that direction.) I enjoy it now, enough that I try to remember to meditate on weekends, too (especially useful if Dave is wearing his cranky pants).

Sorry that was so long. If you don't have a train ride, it might be a little harder to set aside time and space. On weekends I shut myself in one of the bedrooms. If one or more cats is in there with me, that cat will probably want attention, so I try to use that distraction as a way to improve my ability to focus and shut out any disturbances. (Don't really have face-stabbing inclinations with the cats, fortunately.) Sometimes if I'm really wound up while at home I'll light incense and turn on a little water fountain and focus on the scented smoke and the burbling water. I think the key anyway is not to expect too much from yourself and to incorporate it into your daily routine.

Unrelated: fishtank update. So another fish "disappeared", this one immediately after I'd cleaned the tank. Dammit! I think I have been accidentally killing the algae eaters when I vacuum the gravel - they like to hide and I guess I am just vacuuming too enthusiastically or something. I think I may also have found where one of the bodies is lying. Ugh.

WTF of the day

2009-01-12T22:00:00.004-05:00

What is the deal with chamomile tea? Every time I try it I just end up thinking it tastes like hot water which has recently had straw in it. And we have this super-posh chamomile at work too. The CEO is a tea snob and brings in all kinds of loose leaf teas, which is an awesome perk, but even chamomile that's been like lovingly harvested by sixteen year old greek virgins using only the tips of their fingers to gently coax the head of the flower from the stem. It still doesn't taste any better than the powder in the twinings bags.

Anyway. Seppaku tossed me this link. How did I miss this meme until now? I played it over and over until Dave lost his temper, which made me laugh harder.

Annnd now I'm tired. I'm listening to this version of Anne of Green Gables, by one of my favorite Librivox readers. I really like listening to books on my ipod, it makes doing housework almost pleasant. And if the reader is good, it's a slower and richer experience to listen to a book than it is to read.

I read the book many times as a child, and it's quite a bit funnier than I remember. Very sly. On the other hand, there's a lot of honest-to-god treacle in there too. But it's interesting to watch as Montgomery creates characters and sets scenes and to see how the humor works.

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish

2009-01-11T20:25:00.005-05:00

So I keep tropical fish, and it's not something I write about that often because really, how much is there to say? They swim around, sometimes Pip makes a grab for sushi, whatever. Also I am not very good at taking care of them - I'm kind of slack about water changes and definitely not good about changing the carbon filter regularly and the tank gets a lot of sunlight from our windows where it's situated so usually the water is a little cloudy and maybe a little greenish. Just like tornado weather!

And also I do dumb shit like putting fish together which then eat each other. I've got some serpae tetras and they eat the fins of the little neons that are also in there. Every time I tell someone who knows about fish what's going on, they say, "serpaes aren't supposed to nip neons!" No shit, that's why I thought it would be okay to put the two together, but apparently not. The neons are practically finless by this point. Poor guys just roll all over the tank without their stabilizing fins. I should really flush them and but them out of their misery, but I'm not even a good enough fish owner to do that.

And I realize the above makes me sound like a pretty bad pet owner, but I have actually improved. When I first got the fishtank, I was obsessed with the water and everything being sparkling clean, so I would do 100% water changes regularly and would boil the rocks to get the algae and germs off of them. Mysteriously, the fish kept dying, no matter how clean I kept the tank. then I realized that part of the problem was that I was uncontrolled when I added water back to the tank - I used to just dump a bucket's worth in and it would create a little tsunami in the tank and the fish would be dashed against the glass sides of the tank and die of their injuries. Doh. Also a fish-keeping friend came over and was like, whooooaaaa, you have the cleanest tank I've ever seen, I don't think it's healthy for the fish, I think they need more algae and stuff to be able to maintain bacterial life which will in turn keep the pH balance in check.

So now the tank is kind of dirty and I clean it less often. It's grosser to look at but the fish do seem to be lasting longer.

Which brings me to my current topic. If you weren't already disgusted by my tales from the piscine crypt, here comes some more. In order to combat the algae problem, I bought some little algae eaters. I know I brought three of them home but a couple of weeks ago I looked and looked and could only find two. They hide so I kept looking over the next couple of days but could only ever find two. So today I changed the water and even changed the carbon filter, expecting to find a fish skeleton somewhere, but no. I don't know where the hell that third guy went. I guess the tank ate him. Maybe he's under the gravel somewhere and of his bones are coral made. Who the hell knows?

And now that I have metaphorically aired my dirty laundry, it's time to get the clean load out of the dryer and get on with the next load.

Rambling

2009-01-10T11:21:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year. Uh, ten days in, that is. I'm a teensy bit behind. I like to think of it as being fashionably late.

So I kind of think New Year's Resolutions are bullshit, because they don't seem to work for me. But this year I accidentally seem to have acquired some. Nothing that ambitious - to write more fiction, to meditate more regularly, and to be better about dealing with my mail pile (I totally let it stack up and then end up spending three hours dealing with month's worth of crap.)

so far, so good: I'm meditating on the train on the way into work in the morning, I've been on top of the mail this week and I'm trying to use the time on the way home from work to think about my writing. The ride home from work is harder, though - I get pretty wound up sometimes and just want to relax with a book instead of trying to be creative. It's rewarding when I do manage it, though. Plus I have a couple of writer friends to email with about the writing stuff, so that helps keep me enthusiastic.

We spent Christmas in Santa Fe, visiting my parents, and I took - no shit - about three hundred pictures. Which of course is why I haven't posted any, since the thought of digging through 300 pictures seems like it will be an involved project. Also work has been crazy busy since everyone got back into the office this week.

Not much downtime this weekend, either - Dave and I went out with friends from my work for drinks and dinner last night (if work is dismayingly busy, the upside is really liking the people I work with). We spent this morning doing housework (the cleaner hasn't been since before Christmas and the place is filthy). This afternoon we're going to a rally against Prop 8. I think it will be challenging, since it's outside and it's about 20F here in Boston. Supposed to get another 8 inches or so tonight, which should sit nicely on top of the layer of ice leftover from the last storm last weekend. Remind me why I chose to move back to this climate? Boston would be a much better city if it was at the latitude of, say, LA. Then we're getting takeout and hanging out with friends tonight. Tomorrow morning would normally be yoga but I've got a brunch date with some old friends from high school. Tomorrow afternoon and evening are still free, I think, so I'll probably end up doing really scintillating stuff like laundry and cleaning the fishtank and cooking for the week. And I'd like to work in some yoga at home, too. And then the weekend will be gone and it'll be back to work!

Random Awesome

2008-12-02T17:19:00.003-05:00

Frank Zappa, at home with his parents. via swissmiss, who curates an awesome website. There are more in the series here.

I also really liked how Eric Clapton's mom obviously got out the good silver for the picture. Touching, somehow.

Monday looms

2008-11-30T20:17:00.003-05:00

But not yet! I still have a few hours. We spent most of this weekend completely unplugged and it was glorious. I love the internet, but it's also my job, so it was good to have some time offline.

I got some reading done.

See if you can spot all four cats!

Note also that the living room is trashed. I cleaned it yesterday but it's pretty much ruined again by now. We didn't really go out much, although we did have Thanksgiving at my sister's house, with my nephews and my other sister in attendance. My sister can really put down a thanksgiving spread. I was grateful not to have to cook the whole meal, although I made rolls and a fresh cranberry bread and that was our contribution to the feast.

Besides the normal weekend housework projects, I had time to do some mending which I'd been meaning to get to for roughly six months.

You can see I'm a lousy seamstress. I was originally working with white on white - at least then I don't have to look at my mistakes - but it was really fucking hard to see. So I switched to blue, which is fine since the stitching is on the inside of a pillowcase and won't be seen. I am a slacker. The only reason I mend sheets instead of throwing them out and buying new is that they're really heavy cotton and high thread count, plus since they're old they're really soft and silky. And also new sheets are expensive.

I also got the cats all fucked up on catnip and took pictures.

See if you can spot Pip's need to be neutered! He has no idea.

And now, back to the weekday grind again. Le sigh. I do feel better after the slow, four day weekend, though. Plus I made lasagna tonight (used the recipe from Cover and Bake, with a few modifications. Cover and Bake is done by the obsessive Cook's Illustrated people, so you know that the recipes will always work and be delicious, just as you know the recipe will take forever. And it did take forever, and it was delicious. And I made flavored basil oil, and also some chutney. So at least I have good leftovers to nosh on during the week.

Winter ramblings

2008-11-23T09:14:00.003-05:00

Whenever this showed up on the windows of the house I grew up in, Mom would say that Jack Frost had visited in the night. What do you know, Somerville's on his route, too! I always thought he made gorgeous patterns.

And I know that this blog has become nothing but a repository of Simone and Pip pictures lately, but when they're cute as fuck, how can I resist?

He tried to sleep with me like that last night and ended up getting hairs in my already-sexy mouth guard.(I have bruxism.) In fact, I had headaches and neckaches all last week and was thinking that it was because of my new contacts, so I switched to glasses, but the aches remained. I'm thinking now it was probably the result of clenching my teeth all night long.

The contacts are a pain in the ass, too. I needed a semi-custom lens for my right eye because the astigmatism basically makes my eye lopsided, so the contact won't stay in place. So I have a special giant contact that is supposed to be more stable, except it's not all that much more stable. My vision is really a lot better with glasses, but I don't like the way I look in glasses (mostly 'cause I can't wear mascara.) So I'm wearing the contacts to work anyway, which is exciting since due to the movement of the contact, my right eye's vision correction changes constantly - sometimes it's good and matches the left eye, sometimes it's not so good and I've got one eye seeing things blurrily and one eye seeing things sharply. It's awesome to look at excel spreadsheets when you're seeing double outlines all day, I can tell you. But I've been reading Oliver Sacks and I know the brain is super flexible so I think it ought to be able to re-map so I no longer notice a difference in focus. My left eye is much more severe than my right, so in the years before I had glasses, I used my right eye for distance and my left eye for close up work. Not consciously, of course, my brain just did it. So I think it ought to be able to adapt to the one consistent focus and the one inconsistent focus. And it is starting to happen. But my eyes do get tired towards the end of the day, I have to say.

Random Yo La Tengo Songs for Monday

2008-11-17T13:58:00.003-05:00

Stockholm Syndrome:

I apologize for the Final Fantasy video - it had the best sound quality of all the clips I could find on YouTube.

Mr. Tough

This song always makes me laugh because the vocals sound like Herbert the Pervert from Family Guy (below).

caturday love fest

2008-11-16T21:15:00.003-05:00

I know it's Sunday today but I took these pictures yesterday. We've had such a nice weekend just hanging out. It's been so frigging long since we've actually seen each other for more than ten minutes at a time. I have bread that's gonna be ready to go in the oven any minute and we were lazy and took a nap this afternoon. I'm so relaxed. Wish tomorrow wasn't Monday, but oh well.

She's grooming him while he nurses. She's not producing milk any more (thank god) but he still latches on for comfort, even though he's not very small any more.

I like how she has her paw flung over his shoulder here.

LUV. WE HAZ IT.

slowtech

September 1st in Boston

Me, Google and the Tinfoil Hat

Every day is Caturday

This is why I still eat meat

Christmas cookies

The Empress of Cat Food

He ain't heavy,

that kid ain't right in the head

I win at life.

happy halloween!

Shoes and ships and sailing wax

from now on, I calls 'em as I sees 'em

at least we know now who ate Joey's mic

It may be time for an intervention

This is purely for bragging rights:

concord grapes *must* have a lot of umami

Caturday Scheduled Programming

Hello, Lunch!

Katurdayklok

Last jar

Reading

so wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully pretty!

If you’re in there, please save me, Superman

How to Make a Self-Watering Potted Plant

Testing

practice, practice, practice

Cyanide occurs naturally too

In Which I Combine Three Major Talents

Interviewing

Nerdy

chocolate chocolate peanut butter peanut butter ice cream

Aftermath

Unbelievably Short-Sighted Idiocy of the Day

School Gaze

Arnolfini Marriage

Another Dispatch from the Pinko Commie Front

Weekend at Bernie's

Babies really do say "Wah!"

TRIGGER WARNING - You Fit Into Me

Doin' it fer the lulz

even more belated

The mysterious case of the disappearing fish

belated

Wonder Woman: the Lost Years

It's hard to keep your feet dry when you're kicking in a skull

Words Cannot Express ...

Rambly

Vietnam, redux

Good Morning Vietnam

Oops

Reading

I've had worse

Reading

domestic goddess

Thank dog for implants

Gratitude

Summer

ZOMG!

Friday night bachlorette

This is why I can't be trusted with sharp things

For Annie Lennox

typical blogger cat pictures

grab bag

online reading

Lasted: one day

Great Expectations

Listening

june showers

rush

Snorkeling

gardening etc

cop out picture post

Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah

Smellovision

Just like the pioneers

Happy Caturday

The Lazy Woman's Way to Blog

A Day In the Life

Up to

concord grapes must have a lot of umami

headdesk