stay-inside day

The weather today is superlatively nasty - not snow, which is fluffy and nice, but raining ice and 30 mph gusts of wind. I have decided that it is a day for enjoying air-tight home construction. Dick, however, wins the award for most-hard southern transplant, as he has left to brave broken subway trains and a foot of icy snow on the ground to cover a faux Boston Tea Party (i.e., no actual tea thrown in the harbor) put on by supporters of Ron Paul for his blogging gig. Before the gross weather showed up I was going to join him, but instead I'm sitting in the couch under a warm blanket, eating delicious vegetarian chili, and watching season 1 of "Buffy."

Speaking of Ron Paul, is it just me or is his anthem the catchiest jangle pop I've heard in ages? Just wait for the organ and 'la-la-la's about three quarters of the way through.

it's the little things that bring me happiness

Specifically, the little things with very large ears. In this case, the long-eared jerboa.

where have all the drunks gone?

You would think in a town known for its Irish heritage, cold weather, and general orneriness of people, it would be hard to find a body not devoted to sweet delicious alcohol. And yet Dick and I find ourselves encountering a distressing number of teetotalers. Not that there's anything wrong with being dry, it's just that Dick and I have worked hard to cultivate a sophisticated drinking practice, and we like to exercise it regularly. Last night we found ourselves at a birthday party devoid of both alcohol and animal products. It was nice, and I had one of the best Hostess-style cupcakes I've tasted, and it was vegan. There were also kick ass ginger cookies, made with grated fresh ginger. What is it with vegans being such good bakers, anyway? It's uncanny.

Back to the subject of drinking, I saw this book at a store the other day, and immediately wanted to buy one for all the great drinkers in my life. It's a republishing of a book originally written in, I believe, the 1930's by a Scotsman who used the pseudonym Aeneas MacDonald "in deference to his mother."

holy fuck it is cold

I'm glad to be working in the heated buildings of Underfunded Public Art School, because it is motherfucking cold outside. I thought I was tougher than this - I mean, I remember back in college walking around when it was -10 degrees F, and it's only, like, 15 degrees now. Today has proven that my current glove arsenal is insufficient to keep my Raynaud's-afflicted hands from getting painfully cold. I have a plan, however, for a secret weapon of cold-fighting warmth: felted wool mittens with a cotton flannel lining or fleece sewn in. It will be a few weeks at least before I have time for things like knitting, but I may shift this project to the top of the craftiness to-do list.

In other news, I'm writing a paper on Cory Arcangel,who made this, which is actually playable in its original form:

"I shot Andy Warhol"

another victim of the cross-blog infection

I, like htrouser and raynorgrace, have a yucky cold thing that has had me in bed for almost the entirety of the last two days. Thus, I blame a new kind of virus or bacteria that transmits itself through blog-to-blog contact.

In other news, sickness is preventing me from doing anything productive, which is really sucky, because there is much I need to do. Blah, I hate being sick!

off to the midwest

I'm off this weekend to Cleveland for my grandfather's 95th birthday celebration. I'm bringing a Pentax 67 I'm borrowing from State Art School's equipment stash for picture-taking.

fun instead of unpacking

Last night Dick and I were feeling a bit down (living in an new city isn't always easy, you know), so we decided to eschew inside duties like unpacking for evening fun-seeking.

Stop one was the new favorite local Irish pub, which has proven to have the best selection of beer on tap in our 'hood, if not great (one of the disappointments of Beantown has been the mediocre selection at the drinking establishments). The bartender told us they will soon be installing a cooler for bottled beer that will further augment the choices. It's also dark, smelly, and lets people bring their pet dogs in. I like this; Dick is a little wary, but after a couple of pints even he can't deny the cuteness of a friendly doggy.

Next we tried a little Salvadoran restaurant, which proved to have a great menu and the cheapest food I've seen in town yet. Dick got two cheese pupusas for $3 and could not stop talking about how delicious they were for the rest of the night.

Then we hopped the T to the Esplanade. I was astounded by how beautiful it was, and how amazing the view of the Charles, Cambridge, and Boston at night. We walked until my feet started hurting (still healing from their adjustment to much more walking) and then back to home and to bed.

they say "fuck" a lot more, too

I got a local phone number for my cell phone. I was surprised to find that the change in area code came with a change in the automated voice on the phone - the soothing voice now speaks faster. Dick thinks it's an all new, northeastern accent; I hypothesize that there's one automated voice the speed of which the cell phone company adjusts depending on your geographic location.

the first beantown post

In the interest of reporting the many things happening over the last two weeks, I should have been posting more. What spare time I have had, though, has not found me in front of a computer long enough to type sentences. Thus, a brief review:

-The car is sold. I am car-less.

-The driveway here was not big enough for the PODS container. Five days and a trip to city hall for permits later, the POD made it to the street and was unloaded by people we paid to carry our things up the stairs to our third floor apartment. This felt extravagant, but worthwhile.

-School has started.

-Tanqueray gin is much cheaper in MA than my former state of residence. Much rejoicing.

things of a tuesday

-Tomorrow is my last day at work. This is scary. Also, I have way too much crap in my office. Some of it doesn't even belong to me, like Dick's Charlambides and Bardo Pond cds. But there are some things that must be preserved, like the coffee grinder and llama finger puppet.

-I bought this external hard drive (specifically, the red one, at 250GB). It really looks like a giant Lego. It worked well and fast, but the user documentation is crap. Seriously, tech companies of the world, hire a technical writer.

-The HR people at work recently created a group called "The Fun Club." Their mission is to plan fun things for us to do. So far that has consisted of "TV show lunchtime," when they show an episode of an old TV show in a conference room. Their selections so far: Bewitched and Charlie's Angels (episode: "Angels in Chains"). Maybe this series has secretly been curated by raynorgrace.

-I'm really glad that giant country in the north of Asia is called "Russia" again. When I was in grade school "Soviet Union" seemed so dull, like the name of a bank or a chemical company. "Russia," on the other hand, kindled ideas of a cold, hard country, furry hats and men doing that squatting kick dance and borscht. And what was with "USSR"? How does "Soviet Union" abbreviate to "USSR"? Ok, "USSR" is most of the letters in "Russia"...maybe they were into some avant garde word jumbling. Anyway, I'm glad its back to Russia.

who sells handmade cards in our fair city?

I need to send out some very tardy thank you cards to the kind people who wrote letters of recommendation for me for my MFA apps. They are brilliant and creative people, so I want to send them something handmade and out of the ordinary. In Boston I saw a few amazing letterpress cards in local gift shops, but for some reason neglected to buy them (probably I was distracted by a shiny object).

I haven't been able to find anything like that in our fair city. At least not the point of the geometric shape that is Ex-industrial Town. Does anyone know where I can get some?

i used to think his avatar was a picture of him in a college play

omg, dickumbrage is back! why am i always the last to know?

i cower before your blogging might, dickumbrage.

complaining about the complainers

In case you didn't know, last week we had several days in a row where the heat index got up to around 110 degrees. That is really fucking hot. Even at night, when it cooled down to 80 or so, the humidity rose to 85%. It was so hot during the day I felt dazed walking to my car from my office. I got mild heat exhaustion after running errands for an hour at lunchtime. It made me cranky (er, crankier), and when I experienced or was recovering from recently experiencing the heat, pretty much the only conversation my melted brain could put together was "mmmrrrmm fucking hot mrrrmm."

Yet every time it gets really hot, some jackhole writes a column in the paper complaining about how people keep talking about how hot it is. Like, "Oooh, look at all those idiots stating the obvious because their wee brains are so wee and feeble!" But I think it is YOU who are the idiot, Mr. or Ms. Columnist! We keep talking about how hot it is because it is the only thing we are thinking about. It's probably the only thing we are thinking about because most humans don't do very well running around in 110 degree heat, and our bodies are suffering and trying to tell us to find a cave or something and lie around until it cools off. Perhaps you lack this evolutionary instinct, and thus will die the next time you wander into the overheated world completely oblivious to the physical danger you face while you gab about Kierkegaard or hedge funds or whatever it is you deem suitable for conversation.

If you're going to complain about something, complain about the red teams.

suburb adventures

This is what a turn on my planned bike route in Sprawling Suburb - where I'm holed up with the 'rents until I leave for Boston in a couple weeks - looks like from a satellite. I did a modified version of this ride with my dad last night, and it took us through some lovely rural area with farm houses and small fields of some sort of late-summer crop (I'm thinking potatoes). That, and a new public library stuck in the middle of a field, cookie-cutter McMansion developments, and a lots of upturned dirt being prepared for building yet another housing development.

The combination (or, I guess, transition of) rural and suburban is fascinating, and it's warmed me a bit to Sprawling Suburb. I really want to start taking photos of it, and now I just have to get my ass outside with a camera in hand. The satellite photo of it is even great. I love the way those suburban neighborhoods look from the sky: like teeth? or a microscopic organism? or a deformed sprocket?

if you want to buy my car, you should not call my cell phone 18 times

because then I won't let you anywhere near my person or property.

not thinking about moving things

As of last Tuesday we are out of our house, having survived the moving out process. All of our stuff is in one of these guys in some warehouse, happily sitting around in a climate that is no higher than 75 degrees. It was all incredibly tiring and stressful, and if you want me to relate the trials and tribulations you'll have to provide me with at least one hearty serving of a delicious and refreshing alcoholic beverage. Barring that, let's talk about something else. Like commuting!

I've already discovered the (not surprising) suckitude of our region's public transportation. I thought I'd worked out a nice plan though: my dad works near the main bus transfer station in the big technology park, so he could drop me off there on his way to work. The bus I'd take goes straight from the main station to the station near where I work, taking only 15 minutes. Then I found out my dad is going to out of town for nearly the entire time I'd be making this commute.

I could use the park 'n' ride at the bus transfer station, but that might end up being more expensive than driving (15 mile trip driving vs. 6 miles driving and $3.20 for the round trip on the bus). But is it worth a little extra to do something good for the environment? And maybe save me the mind-numbing highway driving?

selling and buying

The yard sale Saturday went well, netting us a modest bit of cash in small bills to spend on burritos and/or strippers. No one bought my computer desk, even when marked down to $8, so I posted it for sale on Craigslist for $20 this morning. Within half an hour I got six responses, and they keep rolling in. Responding to the various queries is a bit more of a pain than a yard sale, but it's definitely more profitable. I'm thinking maybe we should have done this with a few other pieces of furniture, and then we'd have money for even more burritos and strippers.

Now that I've sold some possessions, it's time to think about buying some new ones, natch! Specifically for me, a bed. I'm working on painting a headboard I got cheap at a thrift store last year, so I need a mattress. Sears.com has some nicely priced sets: a full mattress and box spring for ~$300. I ran to the local Sears at lunch today to try some out for comfort, but their selection sucked. The only had a couple of mattresses on display, and most of them were $500-900. "WTF? " I thought. A little Google searching and the always enlightening Seth Stevenson gave me the straight dope: all mattresses are basically the same, and it doesn't really matter what kind of mattress you sleep on anyway, so buy the cheapest one available. And so I happily shall.

makin' like the computer peoples

One of the things I'm selling at the yard sale tomorrow is my old Compaq PC that my parents bought for me in 1999 for college. It was never a great computer, but it's held up surprisingly well over the years. I hope someone will want to pay $5 for the component parts (monitor, box, accessories) or $15 for the whole package. I like to think it would be a good old computer for someone who just needs to do word processing and access the Interwebs, but I'd be just as happy to hand it over to someone who wants to make art out of it or take out their work-related frustrations on it with a baseball bat a la Office Space.

I had a notion I'd want to wipe all my data off the hard drive, and the ever-knowledgeable and patient Jason! pointed me to Darik's Boot and Nuke. It all seemed very esoteric, but after a couple of tries DBAN started up and wiped everything from my hard drive. This morning I reinstalled Windows 2000 Pro so someone can use the PC for general PC things if they wish. I backed up the drivers for my sound card and ethernet card before wiping the hard drive, but I'm not sure if I need to reinstall them, or if I do, where to put them.

Overall, I'm rather proud of myself, though I imagine this sort of thing is laughably simple to the initiated.

yard sale

We're having a yard sale this Saturday, July 21. Starts at 8:00 a.m and should go till noon or so. Come buy our stuff. There will even be a pile of free stuff that will not require buying.

What can you buy from us? Furniture of various sorts, lamps, housewares, a light fixture, one of those push lawnmower things, suitcases, exciting crafty things, etc.

Tell your friends.

we have an apartment

Apartment hunting in Boston was harrowing. Its real estate market gets second place for insanity, falling behind only NYC. We tried for about a week to find a place without an agent, then finally gave up and latched on to the very friendly people at this place. Yes, those ladies are the owners, and they are as crazy as they look.

When I walked into the office, the woman on the left who looks kind of like Lily Tomlin walked up to me and said, "Allison! How are you?! You don't look 5 months pregnant!" In case you are not aware, my name is not Allison, and I am not pregnant.

The woman on the right is married to the bassist from the J. Giles band. As crazy as it is to have to pay an agent simply to show you an apartment to rent, I was pretty happy to give these people my money.

The place is quite nice, too: 3rd floor of the classic Boston triple-decker, hardwoods, 2 bedrooms, and nearly as spacious as the place we're in now. As you can perhaps imagine, the rent is about equal to a mortgage payment on a pretty nice little house in Ex-industrial City.

The least starts September 1. Our lease here ends July 31. For intervening month, we shall be living in cardboard boxes, or perhaps a van by the river.

transit woes

Being in Boston for a week and a half (more on that later) has already spoiled me: I am completely put out by the lameness of Geometrically-shaped Region's public transportation. I haven't had much need to take it, and the only time I have - the special express from Ex-industrial City to the State Fair - was very satisfying. However, circumstances are such that I will be living with my parents in Sprawling Suburban Helltown for about a month while I wait I'm working in Ex-Industrial City. I really want to sell my car to get some cash, and I really don't want to have to make a 25-minute (one-way) commute twice a day.

I checked out the website of the local transit authority, which is only buses. First of all, the so-called trip planner they link to is pretty crappy as well as totally depressing: according to their calculations, it will take me 1 hour and 18 minutes to travel from my parents house to the main transit terminal, which is only about 7 miles from their house. Mind you, this is not 1 hour and 18 minutes to work, which is semi-reasonable: I'd have another 30 minutes on the bus before reaching my final destination. Plus, I'd have to walk 2.4 miles to the nearest bus stop, which doesn't have so much as a bench to sit on.

I could ride my bike to the main terminal and then take the bus, which would give me that double whammy of exercise and getting to work accomplished in one fell swoop. 7 miles of bike riding in the southern summer heat and humidity would definitely necessitate showering, though, and I don't have access to any shower facilities at work.

Transit system, you are lame.

what is and is not on the innernets

Every time I go to the New York Times website to read an article, I'm presented with a flash ad by the Parents, The Anti-Drug people beseeching mommies and daddies to be aware of what their kids are looking at/doing online. The ad shows a kid wandering through a cartoon mall with stores labelled "XXX," "Candy," "Sports," and "Marijuana."

The ad is a total ripoff of a great sketch fromChapelle's Show, except that the people who made the anti-drug spot seem to have never used the internet before. First of all, if the internet is a mall, then there needs to be like 987263743 more stores that say "XXX." Then there's the marijuana store. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the innernets do not have marijuana. If there were a "cannibis" section of Amazon, god knows, they'd be doing a pretty good business, but it isn't there. I'VE LOOKED. Ebay also has a distinct lack of marijuana for sale or auction. Maybe if you live in Amsterdam you can place your order on the web, but I kind of doubt it.

Let's review what we've learned:

The innernet has: porn
The innernet does not have: marijuana

This WILL be on your final exam.

paula vs. winston

From Bravotv.com, an entertaining game wherein one tries to determine if a comment was made by Paula Abdul or Winston Churchill. Not as easy as you'd think.

Lifted from Defamer.

computer geek advice needed

I might as well rename my blog "So I'm moving...", since that seems to be the impetus for 3 out of every 4 blogs these days (the impetus for the other 1 seems to be "hilarious videos from 15 years ago").

So I'm moving, and one of the special challenges is figuring out what to do with my computer files. Dick and I recently bought a shiny new Mac, which will be our computer for home and mine for school. I've still got my 1999 Compaq desktop, and there are many files I wish to keep on my Dell laptop from work, including all of the digital photos related to my future grad school work. The Compaq and all the trimmings is going to the highest bidder ($15? Anyone? Anyone?) once I've cleaned off the hard drive, and the Dell, natch, will reclaimed by Southern Private University when I cease to be their employee.

Thus, I need to transfer all the files I want to keep from the computers I will no longer have to the computer I do have. I have a thumb drive, which could do the trick, but I'm also starting to think I may want to take this opportunity to create a more permanent backup/storage solution for the stuff that, if lost, would cause a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. It's likely that in school I'll be doing digital photo and video stuff, meaning I'll need a pretty hefty storage limit. I'm also kind of poor.

I was thinking online backup/storage, but that shit is too expensive (unless you know of something cheaper, dear reader). Now I'm leaning toward the external hard drive solution, but I haven't a clue what to get. I want something for around $50 that is smallish but not so small I'll lose it, durable, 80ish gigs or so, and cheap. Did I mention cheap?

the beantown mixtape

The move to beantown necessitates a mix of songs about/from Boston, and the playlist has just gotten a "New Editon" (ahhh, I crack myself up). But there are so many hits to choose from:

"If It Isn't Love"


"Candy Girl"


"Popcorn Love"


"Cool it now"

arcade fire: it's not just the music that's whiny

Arcade Fire will steal your basketball. Another reason to hate them. Like you needed another one.

Shamelessly lifted from Can't Stop The Bleeding.

more Cleveland Indians goodness

I watched the Indians defeat Dice-K and the Red Sox yesterday, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I also found a couple more Indians blogs. There's the exhaustively informative one, and then there's the one written by (gasp) a woman. The latter is not the best blog ever, but I do like that she a) talks about feminist things, b) is anti-Chief Wahoo, and c) has fake boyfriends, just like me (see list to your right [for the record, none of these fake boyfriends could/would ever replace or be half as awesome as my real boyfriend]).

Speaking of being a fan of one of the few remaining pro sports teams with a racist mascot, I was pleased to discover one can purchase Indians gear that sports the non-racist alternative logo, a cursive "I." My head prefers a fitted hat, but I'll take the adjustable if that's what it takes.

i muse. oh, how i muse.

Random musings, to make sure something shows up on this here blog now and then:

-I'm selling my car, sometimes known as Little Blue Wonder. 2002 Echo. Whatever money I have left after paying off the loan will be used to pay for cost of renting an apartment, which is steep relative to Ex-industrial City. I'm trying to determine a good, anonymous place I don't actually have to pay for to host one web page worth of information and a couple small jpegs. Blogger? Too easily tracked to my other blog activites, unless I created a new account. Southern Private Univesity-provided web space? Possible, but identified with my last name, and will likely disappear as soon as I cease to work here. Web space I pay for now? Domains all have my name in them. I wouldn't be so squeamish about the whole name business if my last name weren't so uncommon and google-able, and I weren't so afraid of random stalkers following my car around and sending me creepy letters.

-I tried to make Memorial Day weekend DIY Project Weekend. Started building some much-needed CD shelves, and probably would have gotten closer to finished if I hadn't drained the power out of the drill kindly lended to me by The Friends Who's Names Begin With J. I also started sewing a Built By Wendy short-sleeved blouse in lime sherbet-green checked cotton. No actual sewing action has taken place, but I did get all of the pieces cut. Some day, perhaps, I'll submit photographic evidence of all this DIYness.

-Dick is a Mets fan, and as his enthusiasm for the Baseball-headed One grows, I feel the need to be like him and start enjoying my own team. Historically, when people ask me who my team is, Cleveland has been the easy answer, because I was born there, my family is from there, and I've never lived anywhere else with a major league ball team. Anywho, Dick and I watched the Indians play the other day, and I felt a distinct lack of sports fan idiocy. Thus, I am in search of a few good Indians blog that can bring the snark, the dorkiness, and the gossip.

All I've found so far is Mistake by the Lake Sporting Times, which, in spite of its catchy title and handy parking tips, is a little low on posting and also covers the lesser sports of basketball and football.

-Who knew? Coal is the next clean energy.

were lost but now are found

This past weekend was a boon in terms of finding things that were lost and that I had more or less given up hope of ever finding again. On Friday afternoon, after several weeks of searching everywhere in our house I could think of, I found a missing savings bond. Yes, dear readers, I advise you all to learn from my mistake and never, ever, misplace something that translates directly into about $900 of cold hard cash. Weirdly, I found it in my office, on the floor, under a stack of miscellaneous papers, in a folder with other savings bond-related items. I must have brought it to work sometime a couple months ago to call the Treasury folks, since as a government organization they are only open during the hours I'm at work.

I suspected that savings bond was lying around somewhere, but what was really shocking was when a dickumbrage and I watched a guy run up to our house sunday morning and leave a package on the front porch. Our first thought was "bomb?" but it turns out to have been a package I mailed my sister for her birthday over two months ago that she never got. It was a particularly frustrating loss, since the item contained within was a hand-knitted scarf I had made for her, and not something I could go pick up another of at a store. And it just so turns out that my sister will be in town next weekend, so I can give the scarf to her in person.

eveel, like the fru-its of the deveel

So, exactly how bad does an artist have to be before one becomes complicit in their badness by liking the art they create?

By "bad" I mean "doing really rather horrible unethical and/or immoral things" that don't necessarily manifest themselves in the art.

Exhibit A: Some folks were talking about buying a Phil Spector box set, which pissed me off in light of what I've learned about him lately. (Granted, it also pissed me off because the music is being marketing as Phil Spector's, when really it was largely the music of girl groups produced by Phil. The paranoid feminist in me assumes the aforementioned folks [male] bought the CD because it's easier to maintain your manly punkrock cred by saying you like Phil Spector than saying you like girl groups. If you are more secure in your manly punkrock cred/like girl groups than I assume the folks in this story to be, you should invest in this absolutely incredible box set.)

Exhibit B: I still listen to Biggie even though I know he beat his wife and other women (discussed in this article).

FUN or DUMB

Oops.

The spokesman added that the company recognised that there were some who viewed Banksy's work as legitimate art but that their graffiti removal teams were "staffed by professional cleaners not professional art critics".

[post title from AV Geeks recent show "Other People's Property"]

i've lost my faith in shipping

I've been burned by the world of shipping.

First, a package containing a lace scarf I knitted for my sister's birthday with my own widdle hands got lost. I shipped it USPS Priority Mail, and didn't get any sort of delivery confirmation, so it's pretty much lost in the great dark chasm of untrackable mail. Perhaps it's on the Island of Misfit Mail, or perhaps it was eaten on her doorstep by a vicious paper-and-wool-eating feral cat. We may never know, and I figured I'd learned my lesson about not paying the extra 50 cents for delivery confirmation.

Yesterday, a package containing a rather expensive coat I purchased on bluefly.com, in preparation for the move to Beantown, disappeared from my front porch. This time the shipper was DHL, and proved that even delivery confirmation doesn't prevent your package from being stolen off your freaking porch. I'm a bit pissed at the DHL delivery person for leaving a big ass package that says "Hello! I' m a big package from an online designer outlet!" on my front porch, as opposed to the much less visible back deck, but whatev. It's gone, and they don't have that coat in my size any more, and I have to wait "up to twelve days" for bluefly to conduct its investigation before I can get my $140 back.

I'm totally switching to Trystero.

dear grandma: you are not being divorced

My grandmother - my dad's mom - has had dementia for several years. I'm not sure of the exact diagnosis (it's not Alzheimer's), but the symptoms are basically a progressive loss of memory. Two years ago, my grandfather died under somewhat mysterious circumstances: he died underneath his own car while my grandmother was still inside. He, of sound body and mind for his 80+ years, had taken care of her. She didn't have any memory at the time of what happened when he died, and she had a hard time remembering that he had died.

Over the next while, my grandmother would sometimes remember that my grandfather was dead, and sometimes wouldn't. She'd tell my dad, for example, she was mad at my grandfather for not being around for a couple of days. My dad gave her a call last night while Dick and I were at my folks house for Easter dinner. My grandmother was very upset, because, she told him, my grandfather had served her with divorce papers. That, she said, was why he hadn't been around lately.

My grandparents were totally devoted to each other, and it's amazing to me that while my grandmother can't remember that my grandfather died, she's constantly aware that he's missing. My poor dad doesn't know what to do - apparently they've stop reminding her that my grandfather is dead, because each time they tell her it's like she's getting the news for the first time (she is, in a way). I told my dad about this book I had heard about on NPR a while back, and he seemed interesting. Which is good, coming from the family that never admits to or seeks help for problems that are more emotional and mental than physical.

beantown, ho!

It's official: dickumbrage and I shall be moving to Boston, Taxachusetts at the end of this summer for me to attend the Master of Fine Arts program at the Massachusetts College of Art. A brief tour of Boston courtesy of Google image search:


See, you move to a big city, and you get shot.


Mr. Baseball Hype 2007, aka "Dice-K"


There are Boston baked beans, and then there are Boston Baked Beans.


Giant Christian Science HQ, including Pool for the Drowning of Nonbelievers, Monolithic Skyscraper of God, and tacky neo-neo-classical cathedral.

It turns out that a couple of folks we know from current or past connections to Southern Private University are also planning on moving to Boston about the same time, which is exciting, because now we can commiserate with someone about cold weather and a lack of collard greens in grocery store produce centers.

won't you be my bikefriend?

It's been nearly a year since ankle met car, and I'm still not back to running. The pain in the little screwed together joint is actually getting worse. The weather is warm, and I need to get out and work off my winter lipid stores. Fortunately, my ankle tolerates biking well, so I'd like to get out for some nice long bike rides. I'm pissed, though, because the one cycling group in the area attempts to serve four counties, and most of the rides start in a county that is not my own. Driving 30 minutes to ride a bike is both absurd and a pain in the ass.

Also, I've been afraid to ride on my own since I was bitten by a dog on the local greenway. It's a little paranoid and silly of me, but I justify myself by reasoning there are many good reasons to have a biking buddy based on rational fears.

So, anyone want to join in on some slowish bike rides with a slightly out of shape lady who only has a mountain bike? Weekends are good, some evenings work too.

what do i do with this crap?

There are many things I like about living in Our Fair City, but the city services often leave something to be desired. For example, yard waste. Dick and I have actually started doing things to our yard - things that encourage growing, rather than, say, trying to kill the grass so we don't have to mow it. We planted a little herb and veg garden that we are very proud of. We check it hourly to see if any of our seeds have sprouted. We pulled weeds and raked up some of the leaves that have been clogging our yard since they fell off the trees several months ago.

So now we have a pile of the dreaded Yard Waste. Dreaded because Our Fair City will only dispose of your yard waste if you pay them to. That's not such a bad deal, I guess, if you have over $100 to spend on a big plastic bin and the fee to have the city come and take it away every now and then. I don't, and, frankly, I suspect there are many other people who don't have 'yard waste bin' at the top of their list of things on which to spend $100. If I pack up all of the crap myself and take it to the nearest recycling center, I still have to pay a fee. The city website suggests I could alternately buy one of their composting bins, sold at cost (a good deal, I admit), for my yard waste. But a big pile of leaves actually makes for pretty shitty compost, and the composting bins are currently sold out. Lovely.

I've considered sneaking my leaves and such into a neighbor's yard waste bin in the middle of the night, or perhaps taking part in the age-old tradition of piling it all in the back yard and setting it on fire.

In other waste news, any one want a couple bottles full of used cooking oil?

mystery fabric

In my pondering of what sort of fabric would behoove a spring/summer dress, I've become obsessed with Westfalenstoffe. Westfalenstoffe (which, I think, roughly translates to "fabric from Westphalia") is a kind of cotton fabric from eastern Germany. The designs combine geomtery and folk motifs in amazing repititions, and remind me of Paul Klee



The mystery is not so much locating the fabric - I discovered it among the many fine offerings at Reprodepot.com, source of the amazing cubicle fabric - but finding out something about its history. The manufacturer of the fabric (I think there is only one..) says this about it:

The workshop for Westfalenstoffe has been successful for more than 75 years.

It was found by german state-prize winner Professor Hanne Nuete Kaemmerer and other notable designer.

The designs are influenced by the typical art and traditional way of living found in the westphalian area of Germany.

Some patterns designed in the 1930´s are still part of the current collection and remain just as popular as when they were first designed.

But I can't find any other information on the innernets about Westfalenstoffe or Prof. Kaemmerer there (also, apparently, spelled Hanne-Nute Kammerer). My curiosity is piqued.

My dad travels to Germany regularly on business, and he'll be heading there in April. I think I'm going to send him on a mission to get me a few yards (meters?) of Westfalenstoffe, based on my guess that it's relatively common there and would be cheaper than buying it from a U.S. website and paying for shipping. Plus, it's fun to send people on international shopping errands for you.

day-after women's day post

The author of the wonderful Dress A Day blog has a post about the subtle sexism of men imparting their opinions on traditional aesthetics of femininity to women they hardly know. In her case, its "I really like it when women wear dresses."

I was asked once by a male colleague, in the midst of one-on-one meeting in which I was interviewing him about project for an article I was writing, if I ever considered growing my hair long. My response at the time was "No." In retrospect I wish I had said, "What I do with my hair is none of your fucking business, buddy." Because it's not, and what kind of asshole brings up the hair style of a woman in a professional setting?.

Oh. And there's that, too.

meltdown, or, just melty

Even after becoming an atheist, living in sin, and not attending mass except for when your parents make you go on Christmas, sometimes that Catholic upbringing comes back to haunt you. Sometimes it makes you buy Virgen de Gaudalupe air fresheners for your car. Sometimes it makes you unbearibly neurotic with the anger/guilt combo induced by your mother nearly weeping when you tell her you've chosen the Dark Path of Art School and she responds, "You're leaving me just like I left [my mother]," and "My stomach really hurts now." And then you want to drink a lot and also get a tatoo that says "I BROKE MY DEAR OLD MOTHER'S HEART" on your forearm, which, come to think of it, puts you in kind of the same league as Britney Spears, except that she's probably Methodist or whatever and did it out of spite/insanity and not as a penance for being the worst daughter ever and breaking your mother's heart with your selfish, selfish educational pursuits.

And sometimes it just makes you see the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese.

Mmmmmmm, grilled cheese.

ghost in the machine

My car radio seems to have been inhabited by a ghost: I'm driving along, listening to the slow jams on Foxy 107 FM, and suddenly the frequency hops down. It's been happening with greater frequency over the past week to the point that this morning Owen Bennet Jones was interrupted every 3 minutes with a trip 0.2 down the dial. Local College Station keeps skipping up to Local Moderately Sucky Jazz Station.

A little innernet searching hasn't yielded any newsgroup discussions of problems like this. That's a little disconcerting, because that means it's not a common problem. My limited knowledge of audio electronics has led me to hypothesize that the problem is with whatever mechanism scans the radio frequencies. I further hypothesize that whatever in this mechanism makes it cease scanning frequencies has gotten "loose" or "wiggy" and thus jumps around unexpectedly.

I'm afraid I may have to call (gasp) the dealer, but I suspect they won't offer any help until I haul the car into their shop and have them charge me $80 for zip ties like they did last time. Maybe I should call the Car Talk guys. Or maybe I should get in touch with Tangina Barrons.

shameful shoe shopping post (which is also the 'shamefully alliterative title' post)

I blame the upper-60-degree weather last week for causing some rather premature spring fever, but I've been wasting lots of time lately thinking about summer shoes.

My philosophy on shoe buying has changed slightly recently, from "buy whatever is cute, cheap, and reasonably comfortable" to "I need something I can walk 2.3 miles in and wear to work." To new philosophy is due to the fact that I've been walking to work 3-4 times a week lately. The bike has a flat, and I determined that walking was a better option in the chilly winter anyway. Once the summer humidity sets in, my natural ability to sweat more than most burly men will likely make walking to work undesirable, but until then, I am loving it. Plus, I don't have to wear a helmet.

So I need shoes that appease both my vanity and my feet. Many women I know swear by Dansko shoes, though I've avoided them in the past because a) it's hard to find a pair for under $100 and b) they've looked a little too much like their wooden inspiration:


Yeah.

Apparently, though, they are practically sinfully comfortable, and the better styles are more John Fluevog than Dutch Boy.

These three are all on ebay for exceedingly cheap prices, around $35 including the shipping.
Basic, versatile, but not thrilling.
I really really like these.
These are red and therefore good.
These are from Zappos, and are not cheap. But they are Mary Janes, which I love, and I kind of like that they are more shoe than sandal.

So much to ponder.

one meeellion dollars

i'm not a reject!

Tuesday I got some good news: I am not a grad school reject! I'm not accepted, either, but I'm on the waiting list for the MFA program at Big Public University of Another State. I've taken this to mean I don't come across as a big fucking idiot to at least one admissions committee, which is actually kind of a shocking thing to realize.

Perhaps I shouldn't be gloating about these things semi-publicly yet, but fuck it. I found out I'm not a total reject. And that is exciting.

more fake social experience brought to you by expensive innernet thingies

If you were outraged/driven to drink even more by Second Life's virtual march on Washington, you'll be pleased to hear that your tax dollars (well, for some of you) are being spent to give rich, white college students the opportunity to experience white privilege - virtually. It's called Game2Know, and it's coming to a Southern Private University near you.

The game is intended to enable users to experience the effects of institutionalized privilege (on the one hand) and disenfranchisement (on the other) by having to adopt a persona of a different race, gender, ethnicity, ability set, etc. By loading the virtual world with real-world statistics about disparities in access to housing, education, health services and the formal and informal institutions that connect people to capital, users will experience how being a member of a particular demographic group has a direct effect on their ability or inability to accrue wealth and “succeed” by the norms of the “American Dream.” As they play the game, participants will learn how factors other than individual ability affects material success, including access to privileges that often seem invisible to those who benefit from them.

It's a good thing they're not making those poor kids actually leave their sheltered campus to experience the majority non-white city in which they live: it's dangerous!

Plus, now you can be white and have a black avatar without having to justify yourself!

cubicle skirt

I finished the skirt out of the cubicle fabric last night, and wore it to work today. This was the first time I made a skirt from this pattern on my own (my mom helped with pinky skirt), and I endeavored to follow all the instructions and do everything all good 'n' proper. I also wanted to add a lining to make the skirt warmer and less translucent. I found some instructions and managed to figure it out, so now it's business on the outside, white cotton with light pink polka dots on the inside.

It seemed to take forever to put it together, and having to hem two skirt bottoms (once for the skirt, once for the lining) was a drag. But it was a good learning experience. It still has many imperfections, but I love wearing this skirt. It's flouncy and a little poufy and in general fun to wear.

On:


Off, with glimpse of the lining, and cat:

garbanzo goodness

Yesterday I was searching the internets for a recipe for lemon scones, as we had some lemons in the house and I needed to make something quick for the weekly knitting get-together. In the process I discovered Orangette, a food/foodie blog run by a woman in Seattle. She posts recipes (and excellent pictures of the result), I found inspiration in her most recent post about a chick pea salad.

I've actually been making a heated version of this recipe for about a year or so, and it's one of my favorites: heat up olive oil and garlic in a pan, add chickpeas, heat; add salt, pepper, and parmesan. This recipe came from some fellow* on NPR talking about the fact that Americans don't know how to create meals that are tasty or healthy. He provided this as a typical Italaian lunch, which, when served with good bread and a salad, is nutrilicious, easy, and elegant.

So when I saw the Orangette post of essentially the same recipe, except cold, and with a little fresh lemon juice, I couldn't believe I'd never thought to make it that way for lunch. This morning I did, and there was much rejoicing.

*This may have been the same guy who famously carted an entire pig carcass on his Vespa and butchered it in his NYC apartment. I can't remember his name, and one look at the results of a Google search for "butcher pig" had me wishing I had not tried to discover it that way.

vagina friday!

Really, I don't look for the vagina-related news; it finds me.

-A new movie about vagina dentata, (aka "thorny ladyflower" aka "fang tang"). Made by a man, natch!
-Menstruation-related ephemera from the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health. the museum is in Germany, and run by a man who's sensitive about menstruation (but not Dave Foley). The website is so terrible it makes my head explode and is virtually unnavigable.Old ads for feminine hygiene products, including one that came with 3-D glasses! Pamphlets designed to simultaneously educate pubescent girls about the bodily functions no one wants to talk about and make sure they feel good 'n' ashamed about it! Oh, and naked Danish cartoon teens from the 70's. I don't know what they're saying, but I think it has something to do with feeling 'fresh' for a date with that hot 45-year old dude at the discotheque.

things i learned before 10 am

It snowed here this morning for the first time in two years, but what really amazed me today was the many insane things I learned in this article of the Washington Post.

1. David Lynch and Donovan are travelling around together telling people about the wonders of Transcendental Meditation.


2. And were hosted by the Hungarian ambassador to the U.S. in what was probably the craziest dinner party of the year, or since Salvador Dali died.


3. "...D.C. diplomat band Coalition of the Willing..." Wh-What?! Not, however, the same as Bobby Previte's band Coalition of the Willing. So confusing! But what I would pay to see them both on the same bill...

iRaq

Can two wrongs make a right?

With Photoshop, apparently yes.



(Originally here, via here.)

car falling apart

The other day I was driving on the highway, and a piece of my car fell off. Not all the way, but there's this large plastic piece that hooks under the engine and whatnot on the front that is no longer attached in the way it should be.





If it weren't for the bungee cords, it would be dragging on the ground. It seems fairly non-essential, so my plan is to just remove it entirely for the time. But do I need to replace it? Since it's just plastic held on with hex nuts, I figure I could replace it myself rather than paying whatever absurb cost a repair shop would charge. I've browsed a couple of car parts websites, but I can't figure out what this thing is called.

Give me your ideas, oh wise ones.

i am totally into self-referential clothing

Which is why I just bought two yards of this:



I can't wait to make a skirt out of this and wear it to work, which looks just like the design on the fabric, except that at my office some of the particularly anti-social computer programmers rigged up makeshift cardboard doors on their cubes.

I'm thinking of using the same pattern I used for pinky skirt, which I've been wanting to make again since the pink seersuckerish fabric is a bit out of season at the moment.

But I really need to stop buying fabric until I actually complete some of the projects I dream up and purchase supplies for. I want my weekend project to be cleaning out the 3rd bedroom in our house enough to be able to use the sewing space for sewing, but putting together grad school apps may take precedence.

By the way, I bought it at ReproDepot.com, which is awesome.

return to routine

Pre-vacation December was hell, due to a combination of legal things, massive work bullshit, frenzied grad school application preparation, holiday things, and ongoing inability to have money in my checking account for longer than a week after I get paid. The whole Christmas thing was a much-needed break. I went to my sister's place in [city next to] Norfolk, Virginia, and had a pretty nice time knitting and spending time with the fam and making cocktails out of vodka and whatever else she had in her house.

Dick was in New York for Baby Jesus Day, and I flew up there the day after Xmas. We had a lovely time. Details of our adventures are forthcomning, but for now let me say that the most suprising things about our trip was how sore my feet and leg muscles got after a couple days of walking around and how damn much we missed the kitties. They, apparently, missed us too, and since we got back three days ago it's been a human/kitty love fest. Except for this morning at 4:00 am, when Astro Cat decided it was time to run around the house and Macy Cat decided it was time to eat the Christmas tree.