dubinology

Monday Roundup

2010-09-20T15:08:00.005-05:00

Perhaps I will feel totally fulfilled if I can actually enumerate the things I got done each week and reflect on how much is actually happening even when it seems nothing is happening.

Last week, as I noted in some updates of previous posts, I did set a few balls in motion. I made appointments regarding our finances. I did a bunch of laundry on Monday. I have some landscaping in the works with SV.

Also, I am sort of proud that I made 35 copies of a flyer promoting my google group for our block here in Davis, and went around with Sammy and D putting them in people's mailboxes. This was something I'd been meaning to do all year, and I did it. People started emailing me, slowly but surely, and now I have about 20 people signed up representing 14 households out of 34. We missed having a block listserve like we had on Hazel, so if I can continue to promote this one, we can get down to the serious business of discussing the ridiculous crime rate here (sarcasm), the new Trader Joe's opening next month (awesome), and other items on our Keep Davis Boring Agenda.

House-wise, my bed is still unmade. And I did spend time this week cleaning up after Carmen's barfathon and Sam's pee-in-panties-athons that could have been better used straightening up.

Finally, I spent some time working with lil'Dubin on a project of hers that may bear fruit. Dubin, talk to me. I don't understand your cryptic communications. Fruit? Definitely fruit? Maybe fruit? Strange fruit?

Now, it's 1:30. On to project laundry and perhaps to straighten up in general. Need to consider rearrangement of drawers/clothing. Also want to continue sending out feelers for people to help me understand the Internet and how to Make a Website without starting from scratch as usual. iWeb may be good, but I'm also interested in hearing more about what abh has to say about CMS and whatnot.

Also this week, want to make Karen's honey label even if it might be too late. Work on Noah's calling card. Think about Teacher Naomi's business card needs. Attend Yoga by riding bike to Kaya tonight. Continue with epic CD-burning project.

Baby D is awake in there and babbling, so I bid my reader(s) adieu.

Notes on Fall in Davis

2010-09-20T14:58:00.003-05:00

Hello, my friends. I've been noticing the undergrads are starting to appear around Davis, as classes for the fall quarter are starting soon. I have to admit that I automatically look down my nose at almost all of them except the ones that I know personally, the girls that babysit my kids, for example. (Sidebar: Dang, these hippie Coop whole wheat hempy graham crackers taste hecka like molasses. Feh.)

So, yesterday, for example, I was out and about thinking bad thoughts about the undergrads in Target, the ones buying torch lamps and mini-fridges and "storage solutions." I realize that I am projecting a bit - I am unforgiving to them because I am still pretty ruthless when it comes to my estimation of my former self. You know, that collegiate self who'd make me shrivel to see a video tape of her, the way you cringe when you hear your own voice on an answering machine. That self who was really, really trying to figure out how to Be an Adult and Have Fun simultaneously. Maybe I'm jealous of College Me because that girl got to sit around in the Music Library until lunchtime and then go eat on the grass while watching attractive young people walk around campus. Or I'm jealous of how College Me got challenged more often to step outside her social comfort zone by going to weird artsy parties instead of chatting endlessly one-on-one with friends. College Me also got to live in the Coops and with friends in cool shared housing, which was really very fun; however, I'm way too far past that now -- past my ability to live in a kitchen that smells like cumin and Simple Green at all times, past my ability to sit on a couch that has major cooties (other than Carmen's) and beyond the me who could have face-time with all those people at 9 in the morning.

So, in the name of fairness, I'm going to also articulate some awesome things about College Me. I think CM took full advantage of what Cal had to offer. I'm proud of her for sticking around in African Drumming class for several semesters even though frankly she found the crowd there intimidating. She took Indonesian Gamelan, Tennis, Printmaking, French, Music Theory, Welsh Mythology, Math, Russian, Physics, Modern Dance (shout out to abh), Ballet (shout out to May), Italian, Victorian Children's Literature, Ceramic Sculpture, Tae Kwon Do, and all kinds of other stuff. I'm proud that she kept auditioning for various a Capella groups even though it never really panned out (sorry, Anna), and that she sang choral stuff for two years with no prior experience. Oh, and the whole Architecture curriculum, too; I almost forgot about that.

Now, this may just prove that CM was a privileged, soft dilettante. True. But she totally carpediemed those college years. And you know what else? This came up in a conversation with Sara the other day -- she was able to really use that time to learn for learning's sake. That concept had its downside, too, given how much trouble she had channeling her collegiate energy into a fulfilling job after college. But being excited simply to learn new things is a gift. I think a lot of her friends had that gift, too, even the ones who didn't have the luxury of messing around so much with things outside their majors.

So, basically, rock on you silly Davis undergrads! Go study basket weaving. Carry on with your Contact Improv. Cruise around on your bikes with no helmet while texting (no, wait, stop doing that, please). I may still look down my nose at you, but it's only 'cause I'm jealous..

Update 8:40pm -- How did I forget about yoga? Tomorrow, then.

Emotional Furniture

2010-09-15T15:29:00.008-05:00

Well, hello darlings. It's nice that a few of you are there so I'm not just having cawfee and talking to myself.

So, back to the tawpic at hand: can I use this blog to help me with my mental/emotional/ organizational furniture rearrangement?

I was thinking about the way things get done in my life. I like to make lists and I can definitely see categories amongst the items -- long-term goals, short-term goals, tedious maintenance, etc. But what causes me to wake up in the morning and choose a particular item to attack? Happenstance.

I'm just like anyone else in that I tend to put off things that are either difficult, scary, or seem like they're going to be long and involved processes. If something seems like a really epic time commitment, I'm inclined to put it aside until some future date when "I have time to sit down and really think about it" or "I've finished all these other maintenance tasks" like clearing off my desk, hanging up these framed pictures, sorted through all this junk, or reorganized my underwear drawer.

If I keep going like this, it's going to take a long time to get to the items on my list that involve any adventure requiring more than one day to complete, i.e. the website making and the crafting of some business schemes.

Also, I do have a focus problem. Not the kind that steals my attention to detail; as y'all know, I have Attention Surplus Disorder and will spend six hours pushing six pixels around the page until I am satisfied. I mean more that I'm such a dilettante and that I enjoy so many things that I can't seem to pick one to go deeper into. For example, right now I want to take this guitar-making class and the calligraphy class and the screen-printing class. If I could just focus all my energies on one thing, like developing my photography website, I could really get somewhere with that.

All that said, I do enjoy being me -- a multi-armed Deity of Dabbling. It's who I am. So the real challenge will be to find a balance between doing a bit of everything and achieving satisfaction out of going deeper into at least one or two things.

And that's a challenge that will require a more concentrated attempt to organize my time instead of doing the least complex items first and saving the rest for never. What about the idea of putting things into some of the aforementioned categories and then doing one of each each day? Like one small task, one household maintenance thing, one short-term goal related task, and one piece of a long-term puzzle? Each day, hell, how about one of each per week?

Or putting all my items into a literal hat and picking one each morning to accomplish?

Thoughts? Or are you all shaking your heads, like, "Dubin, chillax. Life is about the journey..."

Macher Time!

2010-09-13T15:19:00.005-05:00

Usually, the word "macher" is used to evoke a "mover-and-shaker" type person. An ambitious person. A person with goals and the power to reach them. Perhaps a manipulator and/or a shmoozer, but a definite Doer of Things.

Still, the word itself just means "maker." I like to make things, therefore I am a macher and maybe even a Macher.

1. Professional Ambitions: Architecture. Pending.

2. Professional Ambitions: Non-Architecture. These are activities that I am considering parlaying into serious work/income. The thought is that I could do one or more of these temporarily while my children are young and then return to full-time architecture firming when my schedule frees up. The single greatest thing I need to start is a website. A website for each one of these things separately, even though I could do more than one of them in practice.

UPDATE 9/20/10: Have done some poking around and questioning of friends regarding ways of building a professional but simply website without a lot of delay or outlay. Also, trying to understand my options re: CSS, CMS, etc. Trying to learn the meanings of acronyms in general.

a. Photography. Primarily children's event photography, and secondarily non-children events. Step one - cut a hole in the box. Step two - Talk to Kyle Cassidy for advice, and choose my thirty or so BEST portraits and pull them aside to make a website. Step three - figure out how to make the website. In the past, I've made my websites through total hackery, and this time I shoudl do a little research so I don't have to invent the wheel again and again. Any thoughts, anyone? TJ says that people do whole websites on WordPress now. Step four - after website is live, gain publicity through the wiki, word of mouth, post at the Coop and Craft Center, the Davis Facebook page, etc. Step five - gain more technical chops. Consider learning more about the Nikon D80 by, for example, reading the manual. What additional equipment do I need to be (or just look) like a pro? Lens-flare preventor? Monopod? Umbrella-style lighting?

b. Graphic Design - Custom Ketubot. Need website, similar to above. This is a labor of love, since I like words and I like lettering and I like images. I don't, however, like most "Judaica." Why is Judaica always so dated-looking, and never sophisticated? Judaica! I question your taste level. Now that I've made my own ketubah and my sister's, I could make a few more samples - say, a total of four or five - and put them on a website, describing how I am interested in collaborating with couples on custom ketubot. My Israeli friends have been helping me with the Hebrew texts and translations. After the website is live, provide the links to as many Jewish giftshops and synagogue stores as possible, including museums and cultural centers. Agree to send paper samples to these stores along with business cards or paper flyers to hand out.

c. Graphic Design - Wedding invites, business cards. To letterpress or not to letterpress? That is the question. Is it really worth getting involved in letterpress? An alternative would be to design invitations and outsource the printing to offset or letterpress. I could also take the screen-printing classes at the UCD Craft Center and focus on screen-printables. Calligraphy (for envelope addressing and other hand work) could be offered if I take the Calligraphy class. This idea requires culling and photographing my previous design work (my invitation, lil'dub's invitation suite, and hil'o'beans' invitation) and creating a website for starters. There is also a studio-lighting class at the CC.

d. Veils, the Ethical Dilemma. Making wedding veils is fun and very easy. There is a huge profit to be made here. I mean, there's a big profit margin available on each veil because people pay silly amounts of money for things like these. I believe this is so because brides don't want to admit that a veil is not much more than a bunch of tulle or french netting, and that its hard to make a veil look really bad. Yes, you can DIY it. I have had requests, particularly after the younger Dub's wedding, to make veils similar to the birdcage I fashioned for her. But I feel like it's too fruity, too shee-shee, to actively pursue this line of business. And it almost seems predatory to me. Hmm... thoughts?

e.

3. Gifts and Household Items.

a. Finish Laurel's Blouse! How can I not have finished the blouse?

b. Quilt. I like the idea of making modern (read: contemporary, but not too West-Elmy) quilts. Should I make a really ambitious quilt where I put a lot of thought into the design? Or a bunch of smaller ones as gifts to maximize the number of people exposed to my quiltetude?

c. Knitted toys. I do like to knit me some stuffed creatures. I could also revisit Jess Hutchinson's Unusual Toys to Knit and Enjoy and give those to the new babies of the world.

Lifestyle Maintenance (TM)

2010-09-13T14:34:00.004-05:00

Perhaps attaching a schedule to boring household tasks will help them to complete themselves. After I flesh it out here, I may consider putting these things on my google calendar for some depressing reminders weekly.

1. Laundry. It is now clear to me that laundry day should be Monday. This will be better than simply waiting until no one has any underwear left and declaring that day "Floating Laundry Day."

2. Plants. How could I be so duuuumb? Plants need water! Plants should be watered every Friday. Don't forget plants in pots outside front door. This is somehow related in my mind to the idea of Shabbat. Tikun Olam! Speaking of Shabbat, we should consider Doing It. But that goes into another potential post about Increasing Spiritual/Traditional Rituals.

3. Exercise. Why do I always stumble over how to spell "exercise"? I need to establish a routine. Here's a start:

a. Yoga. My knee injury from February of this year has set me back, so I'm a little afraid of regular (sweat-breaking) yoga classes. Need to consider Level 1 or the All Levels class. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday at 7:15 at Kaya. Also, Thursdays for Restorative if all else fails. Sunday at 7 is Bollywood Dancing at Kaya (following yoga from 4:00-6:30). Sunday at 10am at the Bo Tree.

b. Pilates. Can do Pilates either at home on Netflix, every morning? Tuesdays and Thursdays at the DAC, but need to sign Baby D up for the childcare.

c. Dance. At FDF, Belly Dance Technique 7:30 on Mondays, BalleTone at 6:30 on Wednesdays, Macumba at 6:30 on Sundays followed by HipHop at 7:30. Also, after Oct. 4 - Drumming followed by Iranian (8:30 and 10 pm) on Tuesdays, BellyDance at 8:30 on Wednesdays, Fiesta AfroLatina at 8:30 on Thursdays, BalleTone moves to 7:30 on Thursday.

d. Swimming. Screw it. It's getting too cold for non-heated pools.

Shopping List:

- buy short length of hose and timer for mindless front door plant irrigation.

The Davis Homestead

2010-09-13T14:16:00.007-05:00

Wow, I already forgot how to tag my posts in Delicious.

Anyway. This section is devoted to non-housework related business.

1. Masterplan. We could be better at checking off small design problems if we could fit them into a bigger design ideal. For example, the guest bathroom is gross and not very functional, but I don't want to improve it because I want to change it wholesale. Also, we could replace a lot of windows, but I'd hate to do that before deciding if the walls they are in will even be there in the future. So, I intend to work on a design for the house renovation, this time using Sketchup and possibly Revit. This will slow me down, but will help me keep up with those softwares. Sketchup is useful for doing 3D models including building orientation, sun exposure, etc.

2. Landscape. It's hard to consider the landscaping issues separately from the Masterplan, see part 1. We're wasting a lot of water on stuff that I don't care about, and not using enough water on the things I do want to thrive. The pool area is a broken-down mess. How do we maintain some of the Secret-Gardenesque characteristics of our backyard while improving the beauty and overall awesomeness (and safety) of our space?

UPDATE 9/20/10: Talked to SV about options for rezoning the irrigation and killing some of the sprinkler heads that are overwatering the shaded areas! Yes! Continue with SV for irrigation and the various smaller zones so that new plantings can go in in October. This is by no means a holistic approach to figuring out the backyard, but it will be nice to see some improvements for next year in spite of a lack of Big Overarching Design.

3. Organize. Right now the guest room is basically storage. I've saved the hardest-to-classify goods for last in there. Also, scattered throughout the house are other items to be trashed or filed away, but they've become invisible now. Here in Davis, we get frequent mailings telling us that the Salvation Army Truck will be coming by, or the Veterans want our used goods, or the CP Awareness people need our old clothing. Then, trucks come by and pick up anything you put out for them. The good side is that you don't need to drive your purged goods anywhere. The bad news is that sometimes they don't see your items and pass you by. In any case, I should use these bi-weekly visits to purge and make it a goal to put out at least one box every time. Right? That way I won't put off organizing with the excuse that I need to get everything all ready at once to go to GoodWill. As soon as the storage, er, I mean Guest Room is empty of stuff, I will let you know and then you can come sleep over.

4.

Big Picture - the Heavy Lifting

2010-09-13T14:05:00.006-05:00

Hi again.

Here are some long-term issues I need to address.

1. Money. Wells Fargo has our money and I need to figure out a way that Schwab should have it. This involves picking investments, which is why it is easy to lag on doing anything about it because picking investments can be daunting. I think the way to divide this up into reasonable chunks is to start with letting Charlie know our intentions. Then we can talk to Paul. Perhaps TJ should be the one to let Charlie know we are moving. Tell TJ to call Charlie (step one). After that, I can deal with Paul.

DEADLINE: Schedule conference call with Charlie for this week.
UPDATE, 9/20/10: Call is scheduled! Even better, Charlie has been forewarned of our intentions. Also, we have an appointment tomorrow to talk to the Schwab guy. I think the ball is rolling. Yeh.

2. Legal Documents. Last year, we decided we should have a will and pick people to be our financial executors and decide who should raise our kids if we die and whatnot. I was very proud that we went to see a lawyer about this, but as it turns out, just going to see a lawyer is not enough. You have to actually review the documents he prepares, and then insert the appropriate names into the slots, and then sign everything. I think there are a hundred pages to review, an obvious reason why we never did anything. We ran into the lawyer at the Farmers' Market one day, and of course I was all bashful. He warned us against continuing to "sit on the docs." We need to choose who we want in these roles (step one, involving a powwow with TJ) and then ask them if they are interested, like, "Hello. Are you interested in raising our children if we should both die?" (the asking is step two). Finally, reviewing and signing the docs (step three) and then filing them (final step).

DEADLINE: Schedule the powwow for one night this week (week of 9/12). Ask people before Thanksgiving. Be done with docs before year's end.
UPDATE 9/20/10: Didn't do anything this week. Duh.

3.

Considering

2010-09-13T13:51:00.003-05:00

I'm considering repurposing this blog for my own mental organization.

Anyone still getting my updates via feed may glaze over and lose interest, but that's ok. I just need a place to organize my thoughts and figure out what I'm doing in general. Now that my job is no longer 9-5, and I work at home on household, kid-related and personal project stuff, I need to get a grip on my goals and try to establish some structure.

SO. It's Monday. What am I trying to do this today? This week? In the long run?

Let's start with big picture items that I can list and then prioritize. Maybe I can put in an entry called "Big Picture" and then edit it as I check these things off. I can also have entries labeled by month or category, like, "Household Crap" or "Professional Development" or "Stuff I want/need to make."

If anyone out there is actually reading this, I can also try to occasionally (assuming this catches on with myself) do a song-and-dance or tell some jokes.

Hello (hellooo... helloo... hello...), is this thing on?

CTRL-F will work in the future.

2009-05-28T11:15:00.003-05:00

12:12 PM

me: you may or may not find this amusing, but I just saw a cartoon picture of a giraffe on the internets

TJ: ok

me: and my immediate reaction was to email it to sam because he would like it
then i was like, um

TJ: hehehe

me: kid doesn't check email
DUH

TJ: that's funny

me: that's like when i impulsively try to search things that aren't digital
like my own brain
or a paper book
find, replace
it doesn't really work that way

TJ: just wait until we're all disembodied heads in glass jars
ctrl-F will work

Lil'Dub tagged me

2008-05-23T19:57:00.005-05:00

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Locate the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged me.

Ehem.

New designs result. Mary Eleanor Spear's "range bar" and John Tukey's "box plot" can be mostly erased without loss of information. The revised design, a quartile plot, shows the same five numbers.

I tag every single one of you who is right now reading this. If you have a blog, you must comply!

More of the same Jibba Jabba

2008-04-14T21:15:00.004-05:00

I have been really lazy here. You probably think I'm busy, right? Oh, she has a kid and a job and a house that needs work and all kinds of fascinating extracurricular activities, so she must be busy. Nah. If I spent the time making up nice blog stories that I do playing stupid Scrabulous on Facebook, then I would still have a few readers out there.

So I just came back from rehearsal for Carmina Burana, which I'm singing with a group at out neighborhood Universitas. It's a weirdly mixed group - plenty of undergrads, but a lot of older people as well that must be faculty, staff, and local alumni. I sat down on the first day next to a girl who cheerfully asked me what year I was. I said, "I'm an alumna..." and she said, "Oh. I'm a freshman." Then she proceeded to tell me how she was freaking out because her friend just got "promised" to a guy, and they had only been going out for five months. I was like, "What's promised? Is that a religious thing?" and she said, "No, like, promised to be engaged later. This is terrible! She's only a freshman! Pardon me while I freak out, I mean, this is big..." Then she went back to texting madly on her phone.

It's a little tricky to describe the average choral singer. There are about 40-50% normal-looking people. The rest fit into various other categories.

1. math grad student, probably goes to Renn Faire a lot

2. classic band geek girl or girl who did a lot of musical theater in high school; laughs a lot and makes gestures

3. some geeky combination of both of the above, except, strangely, a student of the humanities; can be overheard talking about "Model Congress"

4. frizzy-haired middle-aged ladies who would probably wear a boxy blazer with a cat brooch on it, or perhaps a sweatshirt that says, "Too Many Books, Too Little Time!"

5. that one person with the facial piercing

6. serious musicians who coincidently happen to be really attractive - these are the minority

I have also noticed that more sopranos than altos are blond. Also, more are tall. If I seem to be leaving out stereotyping the men, it's because they sit behind me so I don't get to give them the once-over as much.

While I'm reducing everyone to categories as usual, I'll add some more categories based on actual singing:

a. awesome singer, nothing wrong with them

b. nice voice, but sings way too loud and doesn't even seem to notice it

c. person who is sitting right next to you and you can't even tell she's singing - this is either because she sings really softly, she blends beautifully, or because she's surreptitiously studying some psychology textbook under her score and not singing at all

d. nice voice, but is pronouncing all the Latin, Italian, German or French wrong... this is the WORST kind, because the director usually reviews all the pronunciation so there's no excuse other than having NO EAR for language, which is weird, right, because you have an ear for music...

Today this girl was sitting next to me and I was staring at her toes the whole time because she was wearing flipflops and it's still like 45 degrees outside at night. She has bright fuchsia toenail polish and an unfortunate Disney sweatshirt on. She's not rolling any of the 'r's and keeps pronouncing all the 'o's and 'u's with a Philly (or Valley?) accent, making all the pure vowels sound like diphthongs. This is a disaster, but what can I do? Club her?

Now's the point where you tell me to relax and that I am an overly-critical crazyperson who would enjoy life more if I wasn't so intolerant. Well, you'd be right but it's my dag blog.

I'm going to bed now. Night night!

What to eat?

2008-03-13T11:19:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting in the living room in Topanga, in my vacay with the baby, and my mom comes up to me and says, "What should I make tomorrow night?" She's holding a book called A Collection of the VERY FINEST RECIPES ever assembled into one Cookbook. This book is softcover, with a strawberry shortcake on the front. Under the title, it says "see back cover." On the back, the editors tell a story about how these recipes really are the truly best-ever recipes for cooking and eating that were ever created and compiled. The date on this thing is 1979.

Sample recipe titles inside:

Connecticut Supper for 6
Workperson's Roast
Polynesian Meat Loaf (this was when everything was Polynesian)
Beef Birds with Olive Gravy
$25,000 California Casserole
Pheasant - All Drunk & Spunky
Avocados on the Half Shell
How Danes Roll Cabbage
Oatmeal Cottage Cheese Patties
and
An Infallible Recipe for Preserving Children

The purpose of this blog entry is to suggest that maybe housewives in the seventies had pretty decent senses of humor.

MAIL ART 3, Coming this April

2008-02-25T15:43:00.004-05:00

Are you interested? I know at least that Amanda is. Mail Art participants will send a piece of their own original artwork to a randomly assigned recipient each week. Artclash asks that everyone spend at least two hours each week creating their artwork and mail each piece on time, so by the end of the month each will have sent and received four pieces of art. The last Mail Art project drew over 100 participants from 12 states and 3 countries!

To participate, please send your name and address via snail mail to 4535 Larchwood Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19143 by March 14, and they will send you the names and addresses of 4 other participants.

http://artclash.com

What's this "meme" thing?

2008-02-12T22:13:00.005-05:00

Capella tagged me! Here are the rules of the game.

1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules.
3) Share six non-important things / habits / quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people.
5) Make sure the people you tagged KNOW you tagged them by commenting that you did. (I don't entirely get this, but I think that means I go to their blogs and comment in them.)

Six things:

a) non-important thing #1: I like almost all food except I hate zucchini and all summer squashes. I think I might lack some kind of enzyme for liking them, since everyone else seems to think they're peachy.

b) I don't like it when people park unwanted furniture near my desk at work. It happens more often than you would think.

c) I am known for being the official cake-cutter at all birthday or shower or party situations where cake needs to be cut because I really enjoy the way the knife feels as it slices through sheet cake. I have a lot of practice knowing how to slice the pieces up without undue frosting buildup on the knife, which causes unfortunate disfiguration of the fluffy roses. In general, I have good haptic skills.

d) I looked at my seed catalog the entire time everyone else was watching the Superbowl. I am trying to make it through to the spring by thinking about Sungolds and Armenian cucumbers...

e) I believe I could have been an awesome hairstylist and perhaps that I missed my calling. I also would have been an incredible private investigator or a competent seamstress/patternmaker or a decent math teacher. I would have been the world's worst astronaut, bible salesman, and/or podiatrist.

f) I don't like it when people touch me with their moist toes. Ew! I have several similar pet peeves that most of you already know about, like the whole gum cracking thing.

I tag Karen. I know I'm supposed to tag more people, but Capella already tagged my sis. I don't know that many people with blogs! I am not sure Amanda would do it... would you, ABH?

I love Karen's stories:

K- "here, you'll like this hush puppy."
Lili- "i don't wanna eat puppies!"
K- "it's not a real puppy. that's just the name."
Lili- (taking a bite) "i just felt a puppy bone!"

Open postcards to ABH and AEW...

2008-02-10T22:22:00.000-05:00

... and a teaser to the rest of youse all.

These and these are the last four entries of two series of digital postcards. Amanda and Amber and I have been sending them back and forth over the internets lately for the purpose of creating a final set of them for Fun-A-Day.

The idea is that for each day in the month of January, we sent digital postcards on alternate days. The person receiving would then alter or build upon or riff off of the previous image and send it back (a la Layer Tennis, although it was our idea first). It's like a cross between penpalling and whisper-down-the-lane. If this confuses or intrigues you, please attend the Fun-a-Day show at Studio 34 this upcoming Saturday night, and you'll see what it's all about.

Of or pertaining to Scotland

2008-01-26T21:05:00.000-05:00

1. Imitating a Scottish accent is universally (mostly) considered fun and/or funny. Why? Please elaborate.

2. Hilary is having her annual birthday clothing swap tomorrow, and I'm going to try to go up there with Sammy for the event. This pertains to Scotland because Hilary used to play street hockey on a team in Brooklyn with Mike Meyers, and the connection between Mike Meyers and Scotland is obvious.

3. Right around the time I left for maternity leave, my firm was purchased/subsumed by a large Scottish architecture firm. Nowadays, we see the Scots every so often as they visit our office - Friday, we had one such a visit. Scottish Architect did a slide presentation of some of the work going on there, and he used the phrase "bespoke building." I think I know what that means - like, a "dedicated" building, perhaps? The interesting thing with the far-flung English speaking world is that people from different sides of the pond can have whole conversations and perfectly understand one another, and then someone has to go and say "bespoke building" or "nappies and biscuits and trousers" or "bollocks" and we are forced to confront our insurmountable differences.

4. Scottish Architect also mentioned that British sculptor Antony Gormley had done a sculpture for this particular site. The piece he showed is called Angel of the North, a massive figure with a wingspan of something like 50 meters, made of corten steel. I like this image, and it reminded me of seeing Gormley's Field installation when I went to Edinburgh with Shari in 1994. Field was of particular interest to me - I liked the scale of the whole endeavor. I like the idea of a man bending 350 people to his will and convincing them to spend time making a zillion of these little guys out of clay. (Even more interesting is the ability of Patrick Dougherty to get volunteer labor organized enough to help him make these things. But he's not Scottish, so let's move on.)

5. Thanks to Jim and Lori watching Sam at their house for a couple of hours, TJ and I went out last Friday to see a reprise of The Sea by James Sugg, this time performed at Gloria Dei, the Old Swedes' Church. (Yes, I know the difference between Sweden and Scotland, stay with me.) I already happened to have seen this a year or two ago with Christine when he performed it at the Wilma Theater as part of the Live Arts Festival. But it was epic - I mean, it was fairly short, but James Sugg is completely diabolical on the stage and it was very musical, I loved it and I think Miller did too. How could we not, given its description as "a one-man rock opera" and "...the soul of a classical song cycle, but the performance style... of a full-on rock concert." A sea-shanty Rock Opera! When I saw it again in the Old Swedes' Church, it was brilliant there - I couldn't believe it hadn't been conceived there, it fit so well. The space itself makes you feel like you're in an old sailing ship of some kind, and the ye olde headstones in the cemetery outside have 'f's where there might have been 's's. As we were leaving after the show, I heard a little bit of a lilt coming from the steps above me and there was Rachel, of Scottish Ross-and-Rachel, who we met a little over a year ago when I was still pregnant. They're friends of a friend of Ashu, and when they came to Philadelphia we took them to the Standard Tap to introduce ourselves. Rachel, as it turned out, was the stage manager for the production and TJ and I were happy to see she found a niche in this city while her husband is working on his postdoc! They are both really nice and I look forward to getting together with them again and hearing them speak Scottish.

6. Last night we watched The Wicker Man on cable on-demand. As it started to unfold, I couldn't understand whether it was the worst movie ever made or the best. On the one hand, it had a goodly amount of bad acting and all kinds of creepy 70s-style sexual deviance. But, it was practically a MUSICAL! A musicale, even. And there was an autoharp involved at one point. And papier mache animal costumes and a freaky burning hand. His Majesty Lord Summerisle had hair like an electrocuted 80s Ted Danson. No, wait - more like Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future. There were Scottish accents and did I mention jaunty tunes? It was phenomenal. Now I know where Burningman in its current incarnation came from - some kids in SF in the 70s watching THIS MOVIE. Although when actual human and animal sacrifice is involved, sung to the Middle English tune of "Sumer Is Icumen In," it's a little more intense to watch and not a little upsetting.

Favor for Bender

2008-01-19T16:00:00.000-05:00

I was doing a favor for my colleague, Dr. Ross Bender, and designed a cover for his new Glottopsychiatry textbook. It came out so nicely, don't you think?

NYRs

2008-01-01T22:53:00.000-05:00

1. Do more correspondence ART. (Amanda, no pressure.)

2. Curb eating, as per usual American female obsession with losing 10 pounds.

3. Clean up everything around here!

4. Do not pressure self to always be cleaning up everything around here. Relax more.

5. Finish Architectural Registration Exams in January before my birthday -- doable!

6. See more, hear more, play more music.

7. Go to sleep earlier... good night!

... and a happy New Year to all...

Additional Geographic Revelations...

2007-12-30T21:29:00.000-05:00

...gleaned from looking at maps just now.

1. I finally nailed down exactly where Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are.

2. Lithuania is right above this little piece of Russia that's not even attached to the rest of Russia! Discontinuous!

3. Alaska and Hawaii are disconnected and hecka far away from the rest of the US. Now, actually, I knew this already, of course. But this was the first time it dawned on me how odd it is that Alaska is part of the US. Why? It's enormous, and far, and NOT EVEN CONNECTED. I asked TJ why we wanted it as a state, and he said he thought Russia sold it to us cheap, and I asked why we bought it even if it was cheap and he said he didn't know.

4. I now know where Yemen is. I also know which one's Qatar and which one's the UAE and which piece is Oman. I also noticed that Bahrain is tiny. It's like the Belize of the Middle East.

5. Eritrea and Ethiopia are really close to Israel, which explains why there are Jewish Ethiopians. This is something I couldn't get a handle on as a child, but that's because I never realized that Ethiopia was that close. Sorry for being an idiot, but I haven't looked at maps like this since junior high, and apparently in junior high I wasn't paying enough attention.

Next stop: I'm going to go look at southeast Asia and get a handle on all that Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam stuff.

P.S. This all reminds me of an interesting story about when Zach Berman and I were sharing Amanda's tiny apartment in Greenpoint that one summer. There was this little girl named Itsel upstairs, and she always came down asking if Amanda was back yet, and Zach kept saying, "No, she's in Cambodia," and I guess Itsel thought that must be a place in Queens or something because an hour later she'd ask again. So finally Zach got out the atlas to show her how far away it was, and immediately her eyes glazed over and she almost fainted from disinterest and then she went back to coloring with markers. This is why kids don't learn about geography - they don't know that it's interesting until they're 32 and realize that if they were asked to draw a map of the world, it wouldn't even be funny.

The End.

Over There, according to Dubin

2007-12-27T13:50:00.001-05:00

My understanding of the 'Stans is still limited, but I'm learning more through the years. First of all, there are more of them than you know. How many? Well, there are Pakistan and Afghanistan, obviously. Then there are the second-tier (in terms of name recognition) 'Stans like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan is in a category all to itself, owing to Sacha Baron Cohen and the infamy of his hero, Borat. Anyway, these are then further subdivided into lots of regional 'Stans, like Baluchistan, Shurjestan, Qoraqalpoghiston, etc.

If you had asked me to draw the geography of the Middle East on a blank piece of paper, I would have drawn Iraq and Afghanistan next to each other. To the left of this, I would have placed Israel and its bordering countries of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt (which I know roughly how to draw as a vestige of Hebrew School in 3rd and 4th grade). So far so good. I know that Greece and Turkey are somewhere north of all that, and that if you go far enough north you'll hit Russia and Ukraine. Armenia and those guys are also north, somewhere. To the east you'll eventually get to India. But the problems would start once I had to join these things together - how far is Israel from Iraq? Where's Pakistan? How does Iran fit into all this? Did you know the eastern part of China is much closer to Kabul than Kabul is to Baghdad? And how did Kazakhstan get so big? No wonder they were pissed off about Borat.

My sketching ability is still poor, but it's better now. And today, I learned that Afghanistan and Iraq do not even share a border. After the Twin Towers fell, we were told that bin Laden was hiding in the hills of Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq using Afghanistan as a staging ground, but the relationship between these two countries was blurry at best to most Americans and I wonder how many people realize that Iran is a sizable piece of land right smack in between them. People my age have a vague awareness that the political history of Russia has a lot to do with power structures in the Middle East, but we don't have a good sense of how Russian interests shaped the area as much as American ones. (We probably know even less about what wacky meddling the US and Britain were up to while we were growing up.)

As time goes by, I piece more of it all together. Given that my ability to remember the histories of nations and wars is terrible, the only way I understand any of it all is through personal connections. For example, Iran. Growing up with Sara jan, I always had a special feeling about Iran and thought I knew a passable amount about the culture there, both before the Revolution and after. I could do a reasonable imitation of her father's speaking voice, and I knew some Persian words!* We were exposed to stories told by Sara's dad, stories about how much they partied and had fun there in their youths, and I got a vivid picture of the pro-Western life there under the Shah in the 70s (even if it was a very narrow slice of the picture). I didn't fully understand what the final straw was under the Ayatollah, if it was a cultural/religious issue or more related to the violence between Iraq and Iran, but I knew that something made Sara's family emigrate since people don't just up and leave their homelands for kicks. It must have been unlivable for them in Tehran.

Sara also taught me things** like, ok, the fact that Iran is totally different from Iraq, because the Iranians are Indo-Europeans. Whatever Iraqis and Armenians and Turks and Arabs are, they are NOT Persians. (Many nationalities are proud of who they are, but it would be just as valid to say that people are proud of who they AREN'T.)

But now what about Afghanis? When I moved to Philadelphia, I learned that there are two Afghani restaurants on Chestnut between 2nd and Front - Ariana and Kabul. I've tried them both and they are DELICIOUS. And both remind me very much of Sara's Mom's and Aunts' cooking. I also just read The Kite Runner the day before yesterday, a story of a young boy's life in Afghanistan before emigrating to the US in the late 70s. In the book, the characters who don't speak Urdu speak Farsi, and I recognized a lot of the words. Khoda hafez!

The Kite Runner really took it out of me, by the way. I know I'm sensitive to sad stories, even when they're nominally fiction. (This is apparently a quality I got from my Dad, who could barely watch Project Runway owing to its brutality.) Can I deal with seeing the movie, which happens to be out now? I probably will read A Thousand Splendid Suns, but I don't know which is worse - a book about the ravages of war, or a movie.

Is it wrong to learn about what's going on in the world through historical fiction? Probably, since it's on the fiction shelf for a reason. But I can't really absorb the current state of affairs in the world by watching CNN. And it does make me happy when stories like these become mainstream bestsellers; it means that people are human, and that they DO care about what's happening out there even if they can only process it in the form of a story, rather than a newscast.

On that note, I've been waiting with baited breath for Persepolis, and now it's coming to New York and L.A. on the 25th! Maybe next, we'll get to see something by Rutu Modan on the big screen...

* Ok, you actually don't even want to know what I learned how to say in Persian. It is a bunch of ridiculous and useless stuff. Although if I ever need to romance a Persian man, I can bust out my, "beman takyekon, mesleh shabnam begol."

** So interestingly, when Sara used to want to say that something was in the equivalent of "B.F.E." she would generally say that it was in Uzbekistan. Now I know that Uzbekistan isn't even that far from Iran, I mean relatively speaking. So, like, that's not even as strong a statement as I thought it was. Hmm.

Dreams won't quit

2007-12-23T12:31:00.000-05:00

Ever since the stomach bug, I've been having the most interesting dreams. Last night's I was in rural France, where the town restaurant had tables set up in the street. Whenever the bus came through the mountain pass, the proprieters had to run out and quickly grab everything (including all the carafes of wine all over the place) and pull it out of the street because for some reason the buses weren't allowed to stop. Eventually that dream stepped up the violence when a little house got blown up and a horse came flying out the window, but its reins got tangled on the front balcony and it just hung there, kicking. Hmm.

The most inspired thing I have dreamed up this week was a new search engine for Google. Instead of just Google Scholar and Google Shopping and whatever there already is, we now have Google MIND. Seriously. Google Mind would allow you to search people's minds to find out who was thinking about what at any given time. I'm thinking of writing to Google to see if they're interested in this. It's a pretty hot concept.

But really, am I the only one whose brain has become a little skewed by the ability to search quickly through lots of digital data? The other day, I couldn't remember something, and my first instinct was to go look it up on the internet. Except that there is no search engine that can root around through the tubes inside my brain, so there'll be no googling for what my favorite song was at camp in 1983. You can't google for the name of that girl's dog, you know, the girl who used to live on the corner of something and something, and her dog had a really interesting name, what was it?

Things I just typed into Google that failed to produce the info I needed:

1. Where is Vanya right now, and is he really gay?
2. Where in this house is that unopened tube of butt cream for Sam?
3. Do I have time to take a shower real quick before we go?

I'm telling you, my brain is addled because it often tried to frame questions like these in proper search terms so as to produce the most useful hits inside my mind.

Next up: Google Future. You just type in some search terms and see what's going to happen tomorrow...

Woe

2007-12-17T20:36:00.001-05:00

Hello friends in the box. I'm laid up by a stomach bug that Sam brought home from daycare. Here's how it went:

Thursday: We got warned by the Ladies at daycare that a bunch of the babies were out with a 24-hour stomach bug. Sam was fine. We put him to bed as usual that night.

Friday morning: Woke up and picked up baby, to find that he had puked up some lovely sweetpotatoish stuff in his crib. Spray'n'washed that and since he was otherwise happy, took him to daycare. By 3pm, got call to come pick him up again due to "a big vomit." Friday evening, Sam happily puked up most of what he ate, with little signs of distress. Put him to bed that night on extra towels.

Saturday morning: No barf in Sam's bed, he's happy as a clam. Saturday proceeds normally.

Sunday morning: I don't feel so hot. I commence day-long barfathon, which is so miserable, because what's more wretched than retching? I count minutes to the end of "24-hour" period. Stare at ceiling. Try to watch Lord of the Rings on cable - this only succeeds in my forever associating Viggo Mortensen with feeling nauseous (a damn shame, if you ask me). Eat an apple, refund the apple. TJ starts barfing also now. (Please excuse excessive use of that word.) Eventually evening comes and I try to sleep without much success. Sam seems peachy.

Monday morning: Expect to be feeling ok, as 24 hours have passed. Do not feel ok. Do not go to work, and miss important meeting. Spend day waiting to feel better. By now, have stopped refunding stomach contents, but still feel gross. Actually take shower. Sleep much of day. Eat frozen banana. This brings us to now.

So far, the only good thing that has come of this is that I may have lost a pound. On balance, I'd say it's not worth it. I was also told by a fellow parent of a little kid that this is going to be an annual experience, and it's already clear that TJ's been sick more in the past few months than in his whole life put together. All the babies are coughing chronically, even when they're NOT "sick"... can this be right? I'm confused, but I can't say I wasn't warned...

(P.S. I'm playing with my WACOM graphic pen! Here's my impression of Sam acting all chilled out.)

A quiet landscape...

2007-10-23T21:22:00.000-05:00

Kyle's new project (in the works) has produced this nice image! Now this should be the kind of coffee table book that even a mother could love. When TJ called during our photo session, I said, "Kyle's here. He's doing another gun book, only this time with rocking chairs..."

Is this thing on?

2007-09-19T21:17:00.000-05:00

Hello, hello?

I'm sitting in TJ's Man Room right now. Actually, it's a sunroom that isn't especially manly but since he really wanted a Man Room, we'll call it that.

The windows are open because it's still nice enough out at night to allow the fresh air to come in, and I can tell someone's out on Ellen's back porch because I can smell the cigarette smoke from below... I hear the rocker moving on the slats, and I can almost imagine I hear the sound of someone stubbing out the butt in a terra cotta dish already overflowing with the same. Her screen door just banged shut.

I'm going to bed early tonight because I must awake at 2am and roam around the streets with Rich until 4am. No, it's not a party, it's Town Watch! Maybe tonight we'll assist in catching another perp like last time! Sounds like a story, huh? All in good time, my children...

But before that, Karen wanted me to do this "tag" thing so here I go. You're supposed to write about yourself in acrostic form, like in 6th grade in Mrs. Levy's class, and then tag others to do the same:

E is for everything, which is what I think I know.

L is for libero, as in tempo libero, which means "free time" in Italian... Totally random, but I just started trying to brush up on my Italian since we'll be traveling there soon.

I is for indelible. I love Sharpies!

S is for Sammy, the fruit of my loins, whose feet I love to nibble.

A is for architect, for that is what I is.

B for TJ, my b'sheret.

E again for ephemeral; I always have a strong sense of time passing. Especially now with the baby, and watching him get bigger by the minute, I know one day soon we'll wake up and he'll be grown...

T is for TV -- not that I am associated with TV, but it's interesting how we haven't watched any at all since 8/20, almost a whole month. I actually do miss it. What's been happening on the Discovery Health Channel these days???

H for the endlessness of unpacking now that we're settling back into the relatively cavernous Hazel House!

Goodness, I've given away my identity! As long as it's not googlable, I imagine it'll be ok.

Tushybutt!

2007-07-26T14:33:00.001-05:00

Oh Sweet Jesus is my offspring ever cute!

2007-07-05T17:43:00.000-05:00

Those of you with babies, or those without babies but with imaginations, can guess why there is no content on my blog other than photos lately. It's because I've forgotten where I put my content. It's in long-term storage in my brain somewhere... I'll find it one of these days.

In the meantime:

More photos

2007-06-28T15:07:00.000-05:00

Here are some more cute ones!

(Typing one-handed is hard...)

Just born!!!

I like this one of Sam and the Teej.

Sam and the other Dubin!

Came through his Bris in one piece... uh, I mean, you know. He did ok. :)

Just chillin'.

Me and baby.

Taking Stock

2007-06-22T11:36:00.000-05:00

I'm blogging! And this morning, I even ran the dishwasher and put in a load of laundry! MY GOD. I'm doing STUFF.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind for obvious reasons, but I think I've survived ok. It started out with a strange morning on the 9th of June, a day after my due date, when I went into labor and things progressed much faster than I imagined. TJ and I had been to all these classes and heard all sorts of advice from previous first-time mothers - we knew that babies don't just pop out like in the movies! It takes HOURS, potentially DAYS, and you aren't supposed to go to the hospital immediately at the first signs of contractions - you're supposed to wait until they are 1 minute long, four minutes apart, for an hour. I was so sure the whole process would take me 24 hours or worse, but by 11 am I was in so much pain that TJ and I and my mom jetted over to the hospital. By 12:30 pm, Sam was born.

But not the regular way. The escape hatch way. It turned out something was wrong -- some kind of placental abruption for those who want to google the condition, and almost as soon as I got into the hospital I was informed that I was having an emergency C-section STAT. Interestingly, at that point everything gets semi-hazy, but I do remember some things clearly: I remember them taking off my earrings and the ball chain around my neck where my wedding rings were. I remember them putting the gas mask on my face and thinking that it sure smelled funny. I remember not so much the waking up part, which I think took a while, but I remember them showing me Sam's footprints stamped on a piece of paper, and then they placed the baby up by my head - he was on my pillow, and believe it or not, he was frenching me! He was definitely trying to make out with me, or perhaps he was trying to suck milk out of my face... either way, it was a bit foggy but I remember it.

Later on, I gave some thought to how traumatic the whole thing was for TJ and for my mom. TJ told me he was very scared, and my mom would have been except no one really told her what was going on. She somehow got relegated to a remote waiting room and didn't even know I was having the emergency operation until after it was done. Once she knew about it, she was really worried about me even though the baby was already out and in TJ's arms - I can imagine them handing him a baby not more than five or ten minutes after I was wheeled away... "Here's your baby sir, have fun with that. We're gonna go back and stitch up your wife now, ok? Cool." It would have been nice to have that moment together, but what can you do?

I think it all worked out in the end. I am recovering pretty well, and Sam seems no worse for the wear. Plus, most importantly, I don't have any hemorrhoids! Nor stitches in my stuff! All that worrying, and nothing but a five inch scar under my bikini. I mean, under where I would be wearing a bikini, once I can actually imagine wearing a bikini again...

To be continued!

At Long Last

2007-06-15T10:32:00.001-05:00

DEAN'S HERE!!!!!

Born June 09, 2007

8 lbs. 2 oz., 20 inches long

Actual Name: Samuel Nash Green

Aliases: Dean, Deaniac, Dorn, Sam

(Spoiler: He will be the subject of future posts on this blog.)

K: Thanks for reminding me to put in his name! Details, details.

State of the Dubin Address

2007-06-01T12:27:00.001-05:00

Megan once said that writing a "state of the Megan" post would degrade the quality of her blog, and for the most part I agree with her. But given that my due date is in one week, I feel it's appropriate here.

1. Feet - not pretty. Dinner rolls.

2. Hands - not pretty either. Meat paws.

3. Everything else is physically in order - I think I have no stretch marks so far, but that may be because I can't see the southern hemisphere of my abdomen so I am blissfully unaware of them.

4. Dean - he's still squirming around in there, and I've been told he'll probably be on the big side. Dag! I mean, that IS what I expected, but I still hope that his head-to-body ratio is roughly normal and that he doesn't wreck me entirely. I really would like to avoid a c-section, but whatever will be, will be.

5. General lifestyle - I have been off on maternity leave since Tuesday! So far, it rules. I actually get to check things off my personal agenda. Like, yesterday I went to Kinkos and made some copies and then went to the Historical Commission to get something signed off on, and then I went to L&I to drop it off, and then I went to ReStore and took a look at their supply of 2'-0" doors to see if any would be appropriate for our newly smaller basement door entry. Wouldn't you know, I actually found one and it was less than $100 so I bought it and the lady there helped me heave it into the car and then I picked up the Teej and we took it to Hazel House. It is totally gonna fit and it's really satisfying to just get to do all these errands during the day. The sun is out! People are alive out there on the street! You can walk the dog to the park and run into your freelancing friends there at noon, or people who have weird hours like Diana the Emergency Services Vet! You can do all this without feeling guilty that you're blowing your lunch hour! I wonder how long it would take to get sick of not working? Knowing me, I'd start to develop anxiety about it, but no sign of that just yet...

6. Real Estate Empire - Still holding fast to our two outposts. Kater Street will most likely go up for rent in August. Hazel is inching along, but the painters can't start until the beginning of July, which is really unfortunate. It makes me want to go over there and just start painting already, but I'm a little clumsy these days. The front yard and rear yard are a total disaster. I'd consider Agent Orange if it weren't for fair young Dean and Carmen, his faithful companion-to-be.

7. The next two weeks - Magic 8-ball says, "Cannot predict now." Or alternately, "Reply hazy, ask again." One cannot predict when Dean will want to test out his land lungs. But thanks to some key people, we are flush with hand-me-downs and seem roughly set up for now. Mom is supposed to come the 5th, and then Dad and Younger Dubin have tickets for the 9th. Will Dean show up before then? Or if he's late, and shows up on the 15th, will everyone have gone back home already? What does Dean have planned for US?!?!?!?

My sources say, "Ask again later..."

On Hating

2007-05-22T12:37:00.000-05:00

I know that most of you know this, but I'm sort of a hater. For such a nice girl, it's hard to believe, but it's true. I get agitated with the behavior of strangers ALL THE TIME. And it makes my stomach churn acid, and my adrenalin gets pumping like I'm going to fight-or-flight.

1. Flipflops. See previous post. But I forgot one thing, which is that I HATE long toenails so much I can't even tell you. I hate it when toenails are even medium length, because they must be short. And worst of all, I hate when cute young girls wearing summery skirts and flipflops get FRENCH TOENAIL PEDICURES. For those of you who need this defined (Bob), a French Manicure is the type that accentuates the delineation between the white part of your nail and the pink part... they paint your whole nail sorta nudish/pinkish and then put an opaque white strip at the edge. When girls get this on their feet, it strikes me as horrendous in the same way seeing a girl wearing prosthetic nose hairs would. Why would you accentuate the length of your toenails???

2. Gum cracking. I hate gum snapping, popping and cracking. Rosie knows this, and so does Courtney. I get agitated with my own friends and family when I can even so much as barely hear the suggestion of gum in someone's mouth. I will routinely change cars on Amtrak or straight up get off the bus to avoid hearing this noise.

3. Repetitive noises. When Dennis uses the packing tape gun that's shaped like a shark, and it makes that loud tape noise, I start to get insane if it goes on too long. When a truck is backing up and keeps beep-beep-beeping, I start to freak. If a car alarm is going off near my window, I can't work. There is also a certain person in my office whose laugh sounds like a dying sheep, and although it's not completely repetitive, it is extremely upsetting. I know this noise thing is a problem that I would do well to solve, but I haven't been able to figure out how! My mom says I have a tolerance problem. She is right. I just can't seem to turn off the physical homicidal reaction I get to these things.

Anyway, this list is fun. I'll leave it alone for now and add more later as I think of things. (Things that make me freakishly intolerant and not really suited for life with other humans, that is.)

The Scourge of Things I Hate Contrasted with the Joy of Things I Love

2007-05-21T17:02:00.000-05:00

Hate:

Girls who wear flipflops and think that flipflops are shoes. They're NOT SHOES! This morning I saw a woman on the bus who was wearing a business suit with black flipflops! Black flipflops are not "formal" flipflops. Neither should flipflops with a wedge heel be considered as an extra stylish version of the standard flipflop. Ladies, seriously, I really wish that you would not wear these things with a dress-up outfit. The appropriate use of the FF is with a really ratty pair of jeans or shorts and a tank top and you're actually going to the beach or just bumming around your block. Not for a job interview and not for going to class and not for Saturday night.

Update: I can't believe I forgot to mention this other particularity of my flipflop/toenail hate.

The only thing I hate worse than the start of flipflop season is this other character who shows up all year round - the Jock Wearing Those Blue and White Addidas Plastic Sandals with the Nubby Things on the Inside of the Foot Part and Who Never, Ever Picks up His/Her Feet So those Damned Things Slap Against the Ground All Day Long. He/she is often spotted in the bathroom of your suite at Foothill dorm at U.C. Berkeley. Pick up your feet, kid! Step lively!!!

Finally, I hate that I cannot sleep these days. CAN'T SLEEP. Am not sleeping. Actually, I'm surprised I'm not more tired right now.

Love:

Nice sandals. Strappy sandals that I cannot wear right now because my feet are too dinner-rollish due to pregnancy.

Also, love the weather today. As I was walking back from the doctor's to my office, I realized it was perfect ice cream weather. I noticed that this divey pizza place I walked past had ice cream, so I went in and asked for a mint-chip cone; the guy who served it up seemed like he had never done it before, and the ice cream kept falling off the cone back into the bucket. He was an old Italian guy. Finally he got it to stay on there and says, "Hey, becausa you pretty lady anda you also pregnant, I treat you," and gives me the cone. I love him!

Except the cone was weak. I mean, the ice cream was tasty enough, but there wasn't much of it and it was el cheapo stuff. So I ate it and kept walking and then passed ANOTHER ice cream place, except this one was a real parlor, so I WENT IN AND GOT ANOTHER CONE. You heard me, I ate two ice cream cones in a row! The second one was blueberry cheesecake flavor and greatly exceeded the first in quantity and quality. It was delicious. I gotta take advantage of this preg thing while I still can, you know.

I think it's cute when ladies ask me when I'm due and then announce, "It's a boy, right?" and when I say "yes," they act like, DAMN, they're good. I love that. They feel so accomplished at having predicted Dean's maleness by observing something in the way my beachball is positioned on me. They are always so proud of themselves, these ladies who are usually older immigrant ladies or older black American ladies. They are cute.

Finally, the one good things about not being able to sleep is that I get to witness Carmen's predawn antics. I love them. Around four in the a.m., Carmen perks up and starts looking around. Her ears go up. She waits. She sits there on the bed looking towards the window. She turns on her ESP radar thing she has. At approximately 4:12 am, she gets extra alert and maybe says, "Boh!" softly. Then at 4:14 a vehicle can be heard at the end of the street, but barely... at this point she runs downstairs to get set up. At 4:15, the vehicle passes our house, slows down or stops, and the newspaper comes through the door slot - this is the moment she's been building to! She barks like hell for about 10 seconds and bites the paper out of the slot. Then she leaves it down there, comes back upstairs, brushes her paws together in self-satisfaction, and goes back to sleep. I love her.

I'm sorry!

2007-05-14T09:49:00.000-05:00

Dear Blog,

I realize that I am not giving you the attention that I had hoped to give you. I know you understand that there are things going on in my life right now that are a bit distracting, but I also know that it's not your problem and you shouldn't be made to feel ignored or neglected.

Sometimes we all have to make sacrifices. That's what being a family's all about! For example, Nani is going to have to stop sitting on the counter where the amp used to be, because that's going to be where the changing area is. We are probably going to move her food to some other counter, since my mom thinks it's gross to keep catfood on the kitchen counter anyway (and she's probably right, given where those paws have been. Ew.)

Carmen will also need to make sacrifices. She's going to have to learn how to not step on people's feet all the time, and how to not kick Dean in the head by accident. It's time Carmen got a better understanding of where exactly her body parts are in space, relative to other objects. And she will be asked nicely not to eviscerate Dean's toys, and to refrain from pulling the plastic eyes off of things.

As for you, you just have to sit tight and understand that sometimes new family members come along that demand a little more attention for a period of time than you do. We will get you things to make you feel honored, like a tee-shirt that says, "I'm the Big Sister!" but we require your patience and help, ok? Can you do that? Do you think you can help Mommy and Daddy by being extra good for a while? Perhaps you might consider writing a few entries on your own - I could even check the spelling for you and make helpful comments here and there.

If you can manage to be nice and patient for a whole month, I will take you to Kiddie City and let you pick out any game you want.

Love,
Dubin

Poetry Spam

2007-04-29T18:00:00.000-05:00

Last night TJ and I went to the Olayas for the second annual Poetry Slam on Hazel Avenue. Now, the Teej was a little skeptical at first. I guess I was too, given my college experience, where poetry was anything read angstily while heavily emphasizing every seventh syllable.

Anyway, it was very fun. The evening opened with a reading of a poem called "Church" by young master Mattheo (5 years old). The poem went on and on about how church (pronounced chuh-tch) is good for you and church is fun and church is where you go to get food and church is all sorts of great. At the end of it, his mom (Amy) leaned over to me and whispered, "We don't go to church." That made me crack up, because kids can be so freaking weird sometimes. Later on Mattheo read another short one about potato chips; this one was very advanced and contained a simile comparing the waviness of the chip to the ocean.

Amy read a sad one about the premature death of her brother. Not too much to be said about that except that it was a good poem, and that it was very sad when her brother died 3 years ago.

Then Brett played some songs he wrote. Brett is a member of the songwriting school that Anna has dubbed, "Let's All Bake a Compost Cake." It's only natural, he's a primary school teacher and a guitar-playing crunchy hippie-type, so he would naturally write songs containing words like "hegemony" and "suburbia" and "privilege." He also sang a song called "You Little Shits." I like Brett - he reminds me of the Bay.

Rich read an extended poem written in Spanish by his late father. Joe read from Rudyard Kipling while his son, Isaiah, climbed on top of him. Some hipsters from Brooklyn came down in a posse and one of them recited Neruda. Another one did a dramatic recital (from memory, at that) of several wikipedia entries discovered by hitting the "random article" link on the sidebar. This last reading would be categorized, of course, as "found art," something close to my own heart and a good topic for segueing into telling you about the selections that I read.

I called my set "Poetry Spam." (Yeh, I thought this was pretty clever until I just googled it and realized that it has already been dubbed as such by others.) I didn't write the poems, nor did I even alter them. I simply read spam emails in their unadulterated form. You ever notice how some spam emails seem to be generated by computers using random phrases fed to the machine; the blocks of random prose get chopped up, rearranged and regurgitated for the purpose of fooling spam filters into letting them pass through as regular discussion material? I used to get these absolutely all the time. Now I get good ones less often, but when they are good, they are very good. Anyway, here's my set - the only thing added by me are the titles.

I Prefer Liberty

I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.
I never know how much of what I say is true.
Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy.
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
New Penis Enlargement Patches!
I don't really trust a sane person.

What Did my Hands Do?

Top software brands and Independence you can trust.
Buy Cheap PC Software from Special Reserve.
Everyone dies. Not everyone really lives.
What did my hands do before they held you?

Artificial Intelligence

A frustrating paycheck assimilates the steam engine.
Some pork chop over a grand piano pees on an inferiority complex,
living with the garbage can.

A knowingly dirt-encrusted photon falls in love
with the fruit cake.
An umbrella brainwashes another parking lot.
Some pork chop for the mortician, some globule,
and the fractured industrial complex are what made America great!

Briar Patches and Hockey Players

Sheriff around take a peek at hydrogen atom beyond curse,
but clock for a change of heart about toward anomaly.

Polar bear defined by sheriff, toward trombone,
and about briar patch are what made America great!

Vern and I took around microscope
(with behind tornado, near fruit cake).

He called her Vern (or was it Vern?).

He called her Vern (or was it Vern?).

Behind tuba player, wedding dress around skyscraper,
and for hockey player are what made America great!

Pianist

We decided to return there for the foodgasm
worthy pesto sauce!
How are you going to use it?

I actually beat him at mini golf!
:::daydream believer:::
:::daydream believer:::

If you see something wonderful,
you confidently embrace it.
But it should also be remembered that this
is a card of great creativity,
of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition.

It also describes some of the additional features
available if the software is upgraded to
Data Protector Express.

Check the recipes at.

We waited a little longer to sit on the same patio,
and this time we ate early enough
to catch the sunset during dinner.
They're just as good as money in your pocket.
Basically the poor little guy had food poisoning!

Check the recipes at.

We know how to make each other laugh
and just have a good time wandering about.
They're just as good as money in your pocket.
Maybe if I had seen the first night,
they might have introduced people
and expected you to remember.

It also describes some of the additional features
available if the software is upgraded to
Data Protector Express.

This time however, can also result in great creativity,
psychic powers, visions and insight.
Don't waste it; it's still good food.
Maybe if I had seen the first night,
they might have introduced people
and expected you to remember.
They are partnering with Restaurants.
Basically the poor little guy had food poisoning!

Then the plan was to head to the city for SOS.
The list goes on and on and on
:::daydream believer:::

If you see something wonderful,
you confidently embrace it.

And it's getting close to Christmas,
with even more candy on the horizon.
They are partnering with Restaurants.

We decided to return there for the foodgasm
worthy pesto sauce!

It also addresses common backup and recovery scenarios
to assist in disaster recovery planning.
It also describes some of the additional features
available if the software is upgraded to
Data Protector Express.

But regardless, the hype about the movie seemed to be
about how it was designed to influence people
to feel pro-Republican
and anti-Democrat.

I was supposed to meet some friends.

I was supposed to meet some friends.

I decided to go to sunset, bring the puppy, and just catch
the last
hour or two.

-fin-

But why?

2007-04-23T16:47:00.000-05:00

I've been hanging out with some kids lately! This past weekend we went up to New Jersey and then to Connecticut, dropping in on my second cousins and their three boys (7-year-old Ethan, 5-year-old Ezra and 2-year-old Aidan) and then visiting with Tracy and Sheila who have Jack (almost a year) and are expecting another boy in July. Last week I attended Gabriel John Dubin's bris (he's the soft and pretty new boychik in my cousin Marc's family). Every couple weeks I walk home from work with Jim and see Asa as well, who was born in August so is about 8 months. This coming weekend I should hang out with a few girls (Hallie and Karina, both under a year, and maybe some others that will come to the WalkAmerica March of Dimes fundraiser).

All these kids develop at different rates, and it's really interesting to watch! Some are sitting up before the others, some say words and some don't, and in Jack's case he's practically walking but still can't crawl. Hallie was behind the eight ball in that she was extremely premature but (knock wood) seems to be keeping up with the rest of the class pretty well.

TJ and I joke around about what our boy will be like. We usually imagine him as becoming one of those curious types who tend to charm some people and annoy others.

You know how some kids are:

Kid: Dad, why do birds fly?

Dad: Well, because their bodies evolved to be able to take advantage of the air as a medium for, you know, moving through space.

Kid: Why?

Dad: Well, that's a question for an evolutionary biologist. I think they started out as some kind of reptile, and then gradually their bodies started to exhibit feathers and whatnot.

Kid: Why did that happen?

Dad: Um, maybe some of them who had a few feathers were able to get off the ground and escape predators, so they lived to reproduce where their no-feathers counterparts did not.

Kid: Why?

Dad: Because the ones with no feathers got eaten.

Kid: Oh no! Why?

Dad: Because there is this thing called the food chain. Unless you're at the top of it, you're supposedly going to get eaten by something that's higher up than you are.

Kid: But why?

Dad: Because that's how the world works.

Kid: That sucks for some animals.

Dad: I know, I guess we should be lucky that we're sort of on the top now so nothing will eat us. We just have to worry about wars and about killing each other...

Kid: Yeah. Why is there war?

Dad: In this particular instance, our President... actually, it's kind of a long story.

Kid: Oh. Why?

* * *

So that's how some kids are. Right? This kid is probably four or so, and everyone secretly wants to have this kind of kid because the kid is curious and smart and verbal. (Let's just call him Isaac for the time being.) Anyway, Isaac is totally knowledgeable about things that adults don't know about at all, like which atmospheric layer is the stratosphere and which one is the troposphere. Isaac also know the difference between Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus, and he'll tell you which animals are endothermic and that a koala is not a true marsupial. Isaac cracks some people up, but his parents are worried that he won't socialize properly if he doesn't shut his trap and let other kids talk, including his little brother who is probably a mute because he can't get a word in anyway.

Anyway, who knows what our kid will be like, we're just guessing that he might be a little bit Aspergery (G-d forbid for real, just joking) and care overly much about racing cars or Sputnik or the history of the tractor, to the exclusion of other things.

Yesterday we were driving home, and I said, "Ok, let's practice."

TJ: Huh?

Me: How does the car work?

TJ: You put gas in it and it goes.

Me: Why?

TJ: Because of combustion.

Me: What's that?

TJ: Gas catches on fire in the presence of oxygen and burns. It needs oxygen, though, so usually the gas in your gas tank doesn't spontaneously combust like that lady was talking about on Car Talk.

Me: Why not?

TJ: Because there's a special valve in the intake pipe.

Me: Why?

TJ: Ok, stop.

* * *

I asked him what we would do if we had the "but why" kid who didn't grow out of the phase.

Can you believe he said, "Well, you haven't really outgrown it yourself."

I was like, "OMG!!! I'm the BUT WHY kid? I'M THE BUT WHY KID!! AGGHH!"

All of a sudden I thought of tons of examples, like how I always ask him about the characters on Lost and their inner motivations, like, "Why would Charlie even Trust Desmond, he's acting hella sketchy? And why the heck would John blow up the submarine, that, like, makes NO SENSE at all. I mean, why are they making Juliette out to be all evil, when all the flashbacks show her as a good person and people don't just turn evil overnight, right? And why do they write this dumb show as if they haven't even figured out what happens next week yet but they're just going to plant enough seeds of foreshadowing to make everything a possibility, which is really annoying to the viewing audience."

Every once in a while, he'll say, "Why are you asking me? I don't know." And I'll say, "Asking you what?" and he'll say, "All these questions?" and I'll say, "Oh, I guess they're rhetorical." And then he'll say, "How do I know if a question is rhetorical or if you want me to answer it? Sometimes it's confusing." And I usually say, "Well, if we're watching TV or a movie it's probably rhetorical."

So that's it. I AM THE BUT WHY KID. I hope I'm the charming version and not the annoying version, but the BUT WHY KID never knows which one he is. That's the rub.

Anyway, since I've already come out of the closet about this, I might as well ask you all some questions.

For example, why did Paul Simon write that song about Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War? Did he like Magritte's work in particular, or he just saw a photo of them after the war with a dog, and made up some random things but it didn't have anything to do with surrealism at all? Or did it? And is there anyone who knows? Did his friends ask him these questions after the album came out, and if so, did he answer them, so at least they know? Did he tell his Mom? Did he tell Carrie Fisher? Did she ask him about the song? If she didn't ask, did he get mad that she wasn't even curious? Is that why they got divorced? Or if not, WHY did they?

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY??????

"Le rendez-vous de chasse", Bruxelles, 1934.

Sitting from left to right: Irène Hamoir, Marthe Beauvoisin, Georgette Magritte.
Standing from left to right: E.L.T. Mesens, René Magritte, Louis Scutenaire, André Souris, Paul Nougé.

Give me more advice

2007-04-09T20:53:00.000-05:00

Along with the yam recipes that you can suggest at the end of the previous post, I also need your help with baby knowledge.

Hear ye, baby people! If you own a baby or know anything about them, help me by telling me what to buy in advance of a newborn's arrival. For example, I know I need diapers and a place to change the baby, but I doubt we need a crib right away. We need some type of bassinet and a bouncy seat thing? What kind? What kind of stroller is good? I don't like huge ones, but I suppose we shouldn't get a flimsy one, either. A plastic tubby? What else might we not think of? Do we need a humidifier? Does everyone use a baby monitor, and if so, what type is best?

You're helping a woman who occasionally gets information overload. Sometimes if I go to buy a stick of deodorant, I have to stand in the aisle and smell each kind to see which one is the most "me" and which one I can deal with the best for the next two months. I'm not trying to be difficult and waste time, I'm just a victim of the great bounty of products and information available to us all. (See previous post about why I do my grocery shopping online.)

Help me, please.

For your amusement

2007-04-09T20:36:00.000-05:00

I do online grocery shopping because I HATE the grocery store. I like Trader Joe's and I like Whole Foods, because they are pleasant and the people there seem content to be shopping. But the regular grocery store is where one has to go to buy (a) things that are on special, (b) toilet paper that doesn't abrade your hiney, (c) bulk seltzer and cat litter, etc.

Online delivery from Genuardis works great in helping me avoid being in that nasty big-store environment. I hate the fluorescent lights, and I hate that they play terrible muzak, and I hate that everyone looks miserable pushing their carts around. In fact, after about 30 minutes of wandering around listening to some R&B duet between Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt, I get kind of morbidly depressed. If I go outside again and go straight home without passing go and without stopping at the Designer Shoe Warehouse, it wears off in short order. But it's a risk I prefer not to take.

So lately I've noticed that they always screw something up about my order. Sometimes they forget things, sometimes they're just out of stock in a bunch of categories. But they're always good about crediting my account when I call them to report the problem, so I usually don't sweat it that much.

Tonight, the delivery came and they made some, er, substitutions. For example, I ordered 3 Clif Bars at $1.00 a piece. They were out, so they substituted 3 BOXES of another kind of peanut butter energy bar and charged me $15 instead of $3. They substituted some other wacky stuff, too. (Although I actually did buy the gefilte fish and horseradish, which TJ thought must be a mistake. That's right, I bought it. You heard me.)

They also tend to pack everything in about 400 plastic bags. Most items come, like, one item per bag. I HATE THAT. I hate owning plastic bags. The only saving grace is we have a dog, so we USE them. But still.

Finally, the best part of tonight was getting two giant bags full of yams. It looked like about 25 yams. I said to the guy, "Um, I ordered one pound of yams." He said, "Well, here's 10 lbs, sorry." So I called up Genuardis and told them that I ordered 1 lb of yams but was charged for 9.27 lbs and received 9.27 lbs. I made a joke, like, "Oh, I thought I hit '1' but I probably hit '9.27' by mistake." The customer service lady did not laugh. She took the extra off my bill and told me to keep the yams.

What shall I do with the 25 yams that are sitting on my counter? Taking suggestions now in the comment area.

Brooks Brothers, Save the Children

2007-03-28T12:44:00.001-05:00

These are actually two different topics, not a sentence in the imperative.

1. Brooks Brothers' latest ad campaign cracked me up when I saw a print version lying on the kitchen table at work. I couldn't get over the sense that they seem to be mocking the very people they're selling to. I mean, look at this:

http://www.brooksbrothers.com/content/advertising/popup.html

What the heck kind of party is this? If you were on the beach and came upon these people, what would you think? You'd laugh, right? Especially Mr. Guy with the linen sports jacket and the v-neck with the stripes at the collar. I like how there are also Black Folks at this beach party, maybe some relatives of Barack Obama showed up.

2. There is a company called "Dialogue Direct" that hires gregarious young people to stalk the street corners in center city and try to get you to sign up for a monthly giving program to either Children's International, the World Wildlife Federation, or alternately Save the Children. They kind of rotate through the three of them every few months. Sometimes you'll see the same college-aged kid on the same corner for a few weeks at a time, but then they get burnt out from constant rejection and give up to go work at Whole Foods or something.

Today, this nice, crunchy looking guy (probably a summertime camp drama counsellor) approach me with the usual tactic. He stuck out his hand and told me his name, which is supposed to endear me to him, and then I'm supposed to tell him my name (forming a bond between us). He asked me if I was a teacher. I said no.

Him: What are you?
Me: Uh, I'm an architect.
Him: Oh, cool, so what does that mean?
Me: Excuse me?
Him: Do you draw up the plans?
Me: Sorta, yeh.
Him: Like Ayn Rand?
Me: Huh?
Him: You know, the Fountainhead?
Me: Right.
Him: Did you read that book?
Me: Yes. I'm not a Rand fan.
Him: Oh, heh heh, you mean you're not an objectivist?
Me: No. [start digging in my purse]
Him: I read it, I thought it was very interesting.
Me: [edging away] I thought that book was sorta horrifying. I have to go now...
Him: No! Wait! You thought Ellsworth was horrifying?
Me: Yeh, the whole book. Horrifying. Um, bye! [start jogging away and almost get hit by car, realize I am going the wrong way and go around block to avoid him]

That's sorta the end, but this is only one of a million interactions I've had with these kids. Sometimes I am nice and then say, "Good luck, I gotta go." Sometimes I talk to them for awhile, but not lately. Once, the day after I got a raise, I broke down and sponsored a child so now I'm already signed up for the monthly thing, but telling the kids that doesn't stop them, they usually ask me if wouldn't I in fact like to sponsor another child?

Another good one was the time I was sitting on a ledge waiting for something to happen, and I was watching the same guy try to work up conversations with all the people walking by. It was so depressing to see how many didn't even make eye contact with him. I called him over, which confused him. He sat down next to me, and I said,

Me: Why are you doing this?
Him: Huh?
Me: I mean, this has to be the WORST JOB EVER.
Him: It's not so bad.
Me: I would be totally demoralized by all the rejection.
Him: I don't take it personally.
Me: You shouldn't, I just still wouldn't be able to deal with it.
Him: Eh, I'm going back to school soon anyway.
Me: Do you get paid enough to make it worth it?
Him: Eh, not a lot.
Me: Well, good luck.
Him: Uh, thanks.

Later, through talking to yet another one of them, I found out that they get paid a small wage, and then they get a commission when they ensnare someone. Their main company gets paid the equivalent of two years of the contribution rate for every sponsorship. This means that until you have been paying the World Wildlife Federation for two whole years, the WWF doesn't even break EVEN from paying Dialogue Direct.

Somehow this depresses me more. We have nonprofits hiring a for-profit to get them subscriptions, and they don't even see any value from it for at least two years (assuming the person stays on that long). Plus, a whole mess of kids has to endure constant semi-social rejection on street corners. Plus, those of us who work around here have to deal with it. I don't know, I just don't think this whole scheme is a net positive for the world...

Getting Organized

2007-03-19T19:57:00.000-05:00

Taxes need to be done, so I'm going to start organizing my papers. I need to fish out all the things I've saved, this time for the two of us since we will be filing jointly (not sure yet what that implies, tax burden-wise) -- W2s, 1099s, that paper that comes from the mortgage company, the sheet from PNC bank that says I earned $10 interest on my checking account this year, charitable donations, etc. Then I have to throw out all the other slips of paper I've saved that have nothing to do with any of that - for example, old bills that I already paid but felt the need to save for some unknown reason.

Then I gotta organize other things, because relatively soon we will move to the Hazel House. We'll need to do some purging over here in the G-Ho; I already made a box for the Goodwill, in which I placed some tag sale things TJ's mom got us (olive holder and toothpick dispenser, country cottage spoon-holder for the stove, fluorescent-painted candelabra made out of bread dough from Venezuela, etc.). We have a long way to go yet.

Then, if the organizing bug really hits me, I can go through and finish the thankyous from our wedding, start making lists of weird things we need to buy to accommodate a baby in our lives, and go throw out all the little tiny flosses and toothpastes we seem to have so many of from going to the dentist.

To top things off, I can organize some of the intangibles around here. For example, I will now summarize and categorize the games that the pets play, in order of their preference, just for my own records:

1. Barbarians at the Gate: This game is played by hanging out at our bedroom door and alternately whining or pawing the doorknob, or meowing depending on who you are. When TJ finally gets sick of it in the morning and goes to open the door, go ahead and bust in and race all around, causing chaos.

2. The Land of Not Carmen: For cats only. This is a game played by Nani about 75% of the time. It involves being where Carmen is not, usually accomplished by achieving a greater-than-floor-level altitude. Favorite locales in the Land include the "Nani Alter" (a stool she likes to lounge on), the bureau, the dining room table, and best of all, the top of the fridge.

3. Drawer: Also a cat-only game. Drawer is played when some human opens a drawer in the dresser and Nani jumps into my underwear and stays in there even though I'm allergic to her and will probably itch because of it. On occasion, TJ will forget she's in there and close the drawer. Heh heh.

4. Cats and Dogs: Similar to Barbarians except more interactive between the two of them. Carmen chases Nani all around and they both squeal and turn the rugs upside down.

5. Flat Surface: Nani used to play this a lot more often before we kicked the two of them out of the sleeping area. This game is played by stepping on TJ's chest when he is in a more-or-less horizontal position and flattening his torso with repeated kneading movements. When the torso is good and flat, and only then, Nani lays down with her dainty paws crossed and her butt right in TJ's nose. Purring adds to the effect.

6. Stick: Carmen's favorite. Probably self-explanatory.

7. Sit on my Face and Tell me that you Love Me: Carmen's signature move is to nip another dog's ankles until they get all distracted and irritated, and then do a switcharoo move and plant her butt on their face. This signifies a win.

8. I'm Ignoring You: Nani plays this game with Carmen quite often. She also plays it with me, which makes me upset because hey, I give her wet food and everything. She never, ever plays this game with TJ.

9. Accountant: Nani used to play this more often, but she's kind of grown disgusted with us and has lowered her expectations. She used to get wet food on the weekends as a special treat, so she'd religiously keep track of the days and then remind us when it was a weekend day. She even had this little green eye shade and some kind of ledger for keeping her dates straight. The only problem was that it was often actually a Thursday or a Wednesday when she'd demand that it was in fact Sunday, and if you dared to argue she'd shriek, "By my calculations it's SUNDAY!" and there was no arguing with her.

10. Entropy/Saving the World: Every time the two of them (or Carmen, as the case usually is) turn something upside down or inside out, or shred or disembowel anything with stuffing, or barf or crap somewhere inside, or tear open the trash, or punch holes in all the mail with her teeth, Carmen will have some overblown science-based excuse for it. If I remember right, the logic goes something like this: By increasing entropy in this localized region, the pets are actually trying to offset the increase of entropy in our world as a whole. Something about how if entropy tends to increase in general, then the only way to save the universe from expanding out of control is to account for all worldwide entropy right here in our house. I don't know, you have to ask her if you want more explanation. Frankly, I think the whole thing is bullshit.

A little sadness...

2007-03-12T20:18:00.000-05:00

Capella reminded me yesterday that "I never post." I mean, obviously I POST, but I don't post with the regularity of some of the people out there whose blogs I read. I think part of my slacking came from this feeling of failure that followed the buildup of the whole "I gotta blog about our India trip" thing, and then my subsequent inability to follow through - some of you may have noticed that I never got past Pune. (Let's just say the rest was pretty fun - saw an elephant, ate dinner three times a day, drove in cars piloted by crazy people, survived to tell about it!)

Having a blog creates some pressure, and not because anyone really cares if I post my thoughts-of-the-day or not - I'm not worried about letting anyone down, here. It's that I obviously want an audience, and want people to come back and read my drivel and all that. So if I don't post that often, only the six of you diehards will come back to check on me here. Anyway, I guess there's not much more to say about this concept, I only wish that there had been blogging when I graduated from college and was much more likely to post something magically engaging every dayish.*

So: My sadness today comes from the recent news that Brad Delp is dead.

(I'll pause while you google him.)

As I was saying, Delp (former lead singer of Boston) died on the 9th, but TJ just sent me the Times article about it today. I can't say that I am horribly sad, because you may remember that I told you I'd never go to a 21st-century Boston show at the Tweeter Center anyway. My sadness isn't because Delp is dead and the world will never hear him sing again; it's actually more because he always looked like such a nice man, especially in his recent photos as a middle-aged regular guy. **

Take a look at this picture, you'll see what I mean - he's the guy on the left. Actually, they all look like kind of nice guys, but one could believe that Tom Scholz is probably smug behind that grin (top) and that the bass player (right), who I think is Fran Sheehan, could be one of those dickish characters like the bass player (Billy Crudup as "Russell") in "Almost Famous." Sib Hashian, the fro guy, is clearly everything at once: drummer, crazy man, afro picker, lover, fighter, chest-hair-cultivator, sensitive new age guru, etc.

Here's another one for you, this one is my favorite photo in all of place-name-rock history:

Some of you guys know how much listening to Boston's debut album gets me all worked up - you may have heard my melodramatic story about running the "Bay to Breakers" in San Francisco - getting weary near the end, coming over the rise to the sounds of More than a Feeling playing on some loudspeaker, getting the strength to carry on to the end.

Or maybe you know about the one and only painting I ever "painted," which was a nice large canvas gessoed all white with the words "I understand about indecision" lettered across the bottom (does Dan still own that? probably not, but it was funny to us at the time...).

One winter Dan and I drove from Tahoe down the eastern side of the Sierras. We played that album repeatedly in the car, and at some point Let Me Take You Home Tonight came on for the fortieth time. We happened to realize we were lost right around then, so we pulled up next to a bar, the only thing around on the one-lane road we had gotten on. As I left the car to go in and ask for directions, I hesitated for a moment because I really like that song and I was probably still singing along. Entering the bar (probably through swinging saloon doors, it was that cinematic), I heard my song ending on the jukebox. They were playing the same song. On the jukebox in the bar. Maybe you had to be there, but it was something else...

I know some people cannot really appreciate this, but listening to that album generally gives me superhuman strength to do the dumb things I gotta do. One night in the Hazel House, Christine and I were stripping wallpaper and since we were flagging, we put on the Debut Album. I think we finished scraping at 4 am that night, wondering if we needed to apologize to Ellen next door for all the singing and carrying on...

UPDATE: I forgot one story. At least one. One year when my sister was in, say, 8th grade, she wanted to go to a Depeche Mode show - as I recall it was in Long Beach or something. My mom figured that if we had to drive her down there, we might as well go to the show, too (my mom claimed she was curious because my sister was so obsessed with DM). "We" turned out to be me, my mom, and for some reason my cousin Cherie. Of course ADub split off ASAP and went down with Zach to try to get close to the front. The other three of us sat way up high, and I started feeling a little sorry for myself - how did I get in this arena sitting next to my mom at a Depeche Mode concert? How has this come to pass? When can we get out of here? I mean, I even liked DM, but somehow couldn't deal with the situation as a whole.

After some extended period of time, my sister came back and agreed to leave, and as we shuttled my teeny tiny mom through the crazy throngs, I wondered if we were ever going to get out of the parking lot alive. Then, all of a sudden, a convertible went by playing Peace of Mind as loud as could be, and the dawn came up in my brain and I hoisted my mom over my head and carried her to safety! True story.

* Maybe there was blogging but I wasn't paying attention? It was probably like online dating, in that it hadn't gone mainstream yet so only freaky people did it. As opposed to now, of course. Heh heh.

** Note, under "risk factors," he was a vegetarian.

Led Zeppelin: Great Band, or the Greatest Band?

2007-02-25T18:51:00.000-05:00

Um, this was an either/or question. I'll just go ahead and put you down for "the greatest."

Some interesting developments have been occurring 'round here. I mean, there's the obvious - the ongoing "development" of Dean Green, who is now noticeably swishing around in there and occasionally punching me in the waist. Yesterday I was in the car and he jabbed me rather insistently, so I jabbed him back to see what would happen - he kinda got the hint and quit sloshing for a minute or two, then went back to shoving. That kid's a nudge already.*

Work at the Hazel House is ongoing. I don't think I've written about that before here, but to summarize - both the Teej and I owned real estate when we met, something I refer to as the "Philadelphia Problem."** When we got married, I moved into his place, which is charming but smaller than mine, and we started working on some ongoing issues with mine (henceforth to be called Hazel House, or alternately the Country House). Ongoing issues means that it was a semi-beat-up 1910 house that I was chipping away at with the help of Al and Christine, Lauren and Eytan, and other past housemates. Some significant work got done two years ago, when I redid the upstairs bathroom and some ceilings up there as well - put in a skylight, etc. But the fact still remained that the kitchen was a disaster and the back of the house was sort of falling into the ground. Now we're addressing those issues with a real contractor (unfortunately at real contractor prices) and I've been involved in trying to push things along so that we can move in there before Dean Green moves in with us! The details of all that will be a post for another day.

On the home front here at Kater House/ City House, a few noteworthy items from the past couple of weeks are blogworthy, but I will tell you about one of them here and save the rest for another post:

TJ is becoming a foam-sword-basher-wannabe after all. Remember when I admitted that I secretly should have been a foam-sword-basher but I couldn't muster the conviction? Part of all that arose in high school when I overheard my dad listening to some Steeleye Span on the reel-to-reel. I couldn't tell you why, but it grabbed me - the first song I started getting stuck in my head was "Two Magicians" from Now We are Six (Shanachie, 1974). I made him make me some cassette tapes of that album and he threw in Hark! The Village Wait(1970), Please to See the King(1971), Below the Salt (1972), Parcel of Rogues(1973), and All Around my Hat(1975). *** Thus began my nagging, accidental obsession with all things Traditional Ballady.

In the late 1960s and early 70s, we really got lucky (not me personally, I wasn't around just yet) in that Folk Rock became a semi-acceptable popular genre. I'm not talking about the Byrds and Bob Dylan, I'm talking about British/Celtic traditional ballads in their raw form being arranged for electric guitar solo, best exemplified by Steeleye and the Pentangle. Can you believe it? Believe it. Sometimes I listen to this stuff and really feel like I came out in the wrong decade, but what's done is done. Anyway, some of this purer stuff influenced bands like Jethro Tull (Songs from the Wood and Heavy Horses, 1977-78), Fleetwood Mac, and Led Zeppelin to name a few.

So, like, obviously TJ would already be a Zeppelin fan because he is a Guitar Guy. In fact, on our "minimoon" in Big Sur, we tried to buy some music for the car trip back down the coast via San Simeon - unfortunately, the pickings at the Ventana Inn and Spa were slim, so we wound up with a classical guitar Zeppelin tribute album. It turned out to be AWESOME, and somehow we continue to listen to it all the time because it reminds us of our nice time last summer. Well, ironically, when you take Jimmy Page playing "Black Mountain Side" (from their debut album, 1969) and have a guy with a classical guitar do an instrumental rendition of it, what you get is precisely the arrangement by Bert Jansch called "Blackwaterslide" (1966). I pointed this out to the Teej, and he was thus introduced to Bert Jansch as a result of my father having supplied me with lots of such cassettes in my youth.

So now, TJ liking and appreciating Zeppelin is a no-brainer, and TJ liking Bert Jansch is cool but also kind of obvious since they both involve seriously righteous Guitar Guys. But I always got the feeling that TJ wasn't that interested in singers or lyrics or singing in general, and was mostly grabbed by Hella Tight Guitar-Playing.

So you'll imagine my surprise when one day he comes home and announces that he downloaded a bunch of Steeleye at school and he's been listening to it. Only weeks earlier, I had gotten a bunch of it in mp3 form (as opposed to my old cassettes) and had been revisiting the albums in a way that I honestly assumed had annoyed the hell out of him, but he had tolerated nicely - you see, I sang really loudly through about 5 straight albums one night, and he had to retreat downstairs. I just didn't think he would go for it - this stuff is very lyric-heavy and involves a lot of cheesy storylines about maidens and lost maidenheads and sailors and bandits and class differences and blacksmiths and miners and stuff. But the next thing I know, he's singing about all of those things in a ye-olde accent, and seeming to get a kick out of it.

I guess that's the end of the tale, but I can't even tell you that it makes me really happy in some nebulous kind of way. Like, he likes something I like and I didn't even force him! It makes me want to sing a jaunty ballad about it. I love TJ for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that he just sort of gets a lot of things that are either cool or important or both. The recent secret-foam-sword-lover revelation is really just icing, but it's fun and I appreciate it.

(I'm gonna quit and publish here so I don't miss my haircut, but probably when I come back I'll have to go back and edit this whole rambling thing until it makes any form of sense...)

*(In case it is not obvious, I am chuckling to myself right now and I did not abuse my fetus by shoving him hard, this is all kind of a joke and all that.)

** Not to be confused with the L.A. problem (two cars, one parking spot) or the New York problem (two rent-controlled apartments) or the hideously dubbed "two-body problem."

*** My Dad was always making me tapes of stuff I expressed interest in. Now that I think about it, almost everything we sang in chorus in college, he put on a tape for me and sent me - he owned recordings of the Pergolesi Stabat Mater, the Poulenc Requiem, Orff's Carmina Burana, and about twenty other things we had performed. When I still kept my tapes in meticulous order, I'd transcribe all the tracks onto the liners in a certain way with a certain color pen and all was right with the world.

File under "Correspondence Art"

2007-02-13T21:22:00.000-05:00

Readers-

I used to mess around more at work that I currently am able to.

Don't look at me like that, all incredulous.

I admit, there were times when I was bored with the mundane task I was assigned, especially as a lowest-on-the-pole CAD jockey back in the 90s. And also back in the early oughts. And perhaps the mid oughts as well.

But now I am a Serious Professional, or at least someone who has a lot of crap on her desk. Overall, it beats the early days of architectural internship, but there's a drawback: I don't produce as much quality photoshoppery.

Used to be a time when if my house had a party, I'd spend a good amount of time designing the invite. Or I'd mess around with design the t-shirts for important neighborhoodly civic groups. Or I'd montage images of my old housemates to make us look like an especially winning bunch in order that we should get on "Trading Spaces" (which we did, but that's a story for another day)...

Nowadays, it's just, you know, log in this submittal, check the email for new RFIs, call the diffuser representative to see if anodized bronze is in the manufacturer's standard range of finishes, coordinate ductwork clusterfuck with the mechanical engineer, etc. I just don't have the disposable time I used to to do midday Correspondence Art.

Amanda and I started doing the correspondencce art stuff in 1997ish. I've kept the website where I post these things in order, but the only thing I'm doing with it right now is using it as a receptacle for collecting images until I figure out what I really am going to do with them. We are still going back and forth, but at a fairly slow rate - the last thread started in 2004 and only has 15 images so far. This posting is inspired by the fact that I just took time to complete another one, since it has been MY TURN for quite some time. Click on the image below for a link to the other serieses (what's the plural of series??!?)... scroll down tothe bottom for the most recent.

22 Passed Out

2007-02-08T22:48:00.000-05:00

Ok, I know I've been a deadbeat blogger and these piddly efforts to let you all know I'm still here are not that compelling. Still, since I'm short of the time/peace of mind to post anything substantial these days, I wanted to share this billboard that was in the neighborhood we were staying in while in Pune. Now if you want to be a T.E.H., you know who to call.

P.S. I am all busy these days due to my actual job, renovating my house, taking my A.R.E.s (Architectural Registration Exams, have another one on Monday -- there are nine total), sitting around being overwhelmed at the prospect of doing the laundry BECAUSE THERE'S JUST SO MUCH OF IT, HOW DID THERE GET TO BE SO MUCH OF IT??, and thinking seriously about reading the books about pregnancy and childbirth that AEW mailed me. Today my O.B. asked me if I had a pediatrician picked out yet. I freaked a little. Why am I always feeling mildly overwhelmed by life, even when I'm having fun?

Number Five is ALIVE! No disassemble.

2007-02-05T21:30:00.000-05:00

Today while walking home, I saw a lamp out with my neighbor's trash! Remember the heartbreaking IKEA commercial with the unwanted lamp? It was like that, but on my very own street. It was one of those gooseneck kind that look extra anthropomorphic, with its neck bent towards the ground. And it's really cold out tonight, so it was shivering a little. Ok, fine, it wasn't shivering. But it had to be cold, I mean, it's made out of metal.

When I got home, I saw TJ had sent me this link to an ad from last night's superbowl game. Watch it at your own peril, because I'm about to kill myself over here.

Now I'm not dumb but I can't understand

2007-01-29T22:22:00.000-05:00

Amber asks: She or He?????

Analyze the following image for the answer. Hint: even though it is as clear as day (not), I will tell you that you are looking at a fetus. Also, there is a small arrow drawn in for you by the ultrasound tech; this may indicate the presence of something notable in the field of view. Other than that, you have nothing but your own personal powers of deduction to guide you. Good luck, friends.

P.S. I am also including one of my favorite David Shrigleys for your amusement -- seemed appropriate to the topic. This is entitled, "Foetus Argues Moot Point with Itself in the Womb."

We interrupt this regularly scheduled India thing

2007-01-28T02:20:00.000-05:00

WHOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

There is totally somebody in there!!!

Still more India, and even more India

2007-01-24T19:04:00.000-05:00

I assume you guy(s) are all still interested in this series of installations on India, so I will continue to expound.

We spent the next several days in Pune, then a short trip to the Buddhist and Hindu rock-cut caves at Ajanta and Ellora, and then back to Pune for a day or two. That first part was one type of experience where we actually spent quite a bit of time with some other delightful Americans (mostly Abby's family) that had come for the wedding as well. The second part of the trip was more about TJ and I traipsing around without the entourage and checking out the tourist sites of Goa and Kerala.

For those who don't know Indian geography (me before the trip), Maharashtra is the state where Bombay* (Mumbai) is located, about halfway down the western length of the country. Goa is immediately south of that on the coast - it's a small state that was until recently a Portuguese colony. Karnataka, where Bangalore is located, and Kerala are farther south still. Goa and Kerala in particular are stocked with European tourists, but one can avoid them if one wants to. When we crossed over eventually to Tamil Nadu to fly out of Madurai airport, east of Kerala, things were decidedly less touristy and I enjoyed the drive through the rural areas. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Back in Pune, preparations for the wedding involved Ashu and Abby going through grand efforts to secularize their Hindu ceremony and to write up the meaning of all the symbolism for the Americans. Little did Abby realize, but the wedding itself was so chaotic that we might not have been able to follow what was going on even with the translation... It seems that in a Hindu wedding, there aren't strict starting and ending times. People start filling in in the morning from 9 to 11:30, and maybe the bride is finished being professionally wrapped in a saree by then. Breakfast is served for those just milling about - ours was a yummy accumulation of some type of grain, tapioca, yogurt, coconut and something else and wasn't too savory for me to handle for the morning meal.

I got sareed as well! TJ is wearing a Kurta in this picture. Check out his Chappals.

After breakfast, the bride is eventually done preparing and the ceremony starts, but no one makes a grand proclamation and there is no ceremonial marching music. It just sort of starts... people are still coming in and out, kids are running around, and the ceremony carries on for a couple of hours whilst people are chatting and hanging out. At a certain point, the couple moves to the side and sits on the floor, where a fire is lit to symbolize something. The rooms fills up with smoke and the pregnant ladies take refuge outside for a while. Someone hands you a bunch of rice. Later, you will throw this rice, but not all at once like in the U.S. You throw bits at a time corresponding to things that are done during the ceremony, and then at the end you throw all the rest of it.

By now, it's time to eat again, and the hall eats in shifts. One group sits down at a set of long tables and is served an extensive lunch. While that's going on, people are still milling about socializing. Later on, the plates will be cleared and others will take a turn at eating. At the wedding in question, which was small by Indian standards, this only had to be done three times. I bet at 500-person weddings, there are like 8 shifts. It probably lasts all night!

Later in the evening, after things had finished up and we took a nap, there was a western-style reception for dinner (more food) with cocktails and music in an outdoor setting reminiscent of the Santa Monica Mountains in its geology, plantlife and overall je-ne-sais-quois.

More about Pune and the rest of our trip to follow, and then I'll eventually wrap it up and start talking about mundane things again like how sad it is that Carmen thinks she's being punished because we banished her from the bedroom due to my allergies. Sniff!

*Ever since independence in 1947, many locations in India have changed their names. Much of this resulted from the reorganization of the states on linguistic lines (as opposed to British colonial divisions). However, in the last six years, many major towns and cities have been renamed in ways that affect foreigners more. Among this flood of changes, three stand out. These are the former cities of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, which, together with Delhi, are considered the "mega cities" of India.1 They are the four most populous cities in India, and all but Madras are among the 15 most populous cities in the world.2 As a result, they are important commercial and transit hubs, and are well known outside India. Yet nearly six years later, most non-Indians still have no idea that they are now named Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata. The preceding information was nicked off some UCBerkeley website.

Horn OK Please

2007-01-18T18:56:00.000-05:00

We exited the airport and looked around for a guy who would be holding a card with our names, since Ashu had kindly arranged for our transport from Mumbai to Pune by Taxi. I really didn't know what to expect, since we were hours late and I couldn't imagine that the guy would still be around, but we actually found him eventually... He didn't speak English, but the first thing he did was got us two bottles of Aquafina for the ride - how thoughtful, I mean really!

So we hit the road to Pune, which is a medium-sized city about 75 miles southeast of Mumbai; although it's not far, we were warned in advance that the ride takes 3-1/2 hours at best due to "road conditions." Just getting out of the big city was quite a feat, what with all the cars and animals and people in the road. Our first impressions of Mumbai were very skewed (as we would later learn) because all we really saw was shantytowns and beggars coming up to the car on the way to the road to Pune -- we weren't looking necessarily forward to coming back at the end of our trip. I didn't even know what to think about all the young women with babies approaching the car, and about the people sleeping on the sides of the road - I was too overwhelmed with tiredness and pretty relieved that I'd have a few hours to nod off.

We started our journey in the afternoon, but soon it was dark. I awoke to find our taxi in all kinds of hot water on the "highway." We kept coming up to slower-moving vehicles, and I noticed that all cargo trucks were brightly painted in a carnivally fashion, and they all said some version of "Honk OK Please" or "Sound OK Horn" painted prominently on the rear of themselves.

It didn't take long to see what was going on - people were supposed to just honk to let these generally slower vehicles know they were there. So you come up behind them, honk, try to go around them, honk more, and then when you're almost past them, you honk some more. Immediately after that you overtake another one, so you just do it again - it amounts to a non-stop honkathon from all angles. I later noted that this happens no matter what type of vehicle you're passing, whether it's a scooter or motorcycle or autorickshaw* or another car. You just beep the horn. You also beep the horn when going around a corner or a turn in a windy road. You beep at bicycles, dogs, oxen, piles of agricultural debris, burning trash, construction sites, goats, children, bales of sugarcane, painted trees, busloads of pilgrims, roadside shrines, and just to keep yourself company. (Later in the trip, Rajendra would tell us a story about the various meanings of the turn signal in India - it can mean "I'm turning this way" OR "go ahead and pass me on this side"... obviously a misinterpretation of the signal could be an immediate accident, but they seem to have it figured out.)

Eventually, we close in on Pune. We are to be staying at the flat of one Mrs. Asha R., known most famously as the mother of the one and only international man of mystery, Anand. Anand's family keeps this flat in Pune, even though they don't live there, because I think they go there often for business and/or pleasure. Our job was to get the key to the flat from Sagar, the son of the cousin of the mom of Anand. We kinda knew Sagar's address, and we sorta knew the address of the flat, and our driver kinda sorta didn't speak English. It was fun. Oh and also, they don't have addresses per se in India. Every structure has a name, and you say what street it's on in what city, and that's it. So for example:

Remi Bizcourt, Shah Industrial Estate
Off Veera Desai Road, Anheri West
Mumbai 400 053 India

or

3rd floor, Millennium Centre
Somajiguda Hyderabad 500 016 India

or

A-27, Mohan Co-operative Industrial Estate Limited
Mathura Road New Delhi 110 044 India

You get the gist. We were going to find Sagar at some address like that, and our driver kept getting out of the car to ask people where it was. Eventually, we found him, and he hopped in the vehicle with us to show us where the flat was and bring the keys over - we found it and dragged ourselves into the ye-olde-elevator up to the top floor where we entered and began to open up the place. Nobody lives there regularly, so it was fairly spartan. We flipped on the "geyser" (what the hot water heater is called) and tried to get the lay of the land. Our plan was to shower, go find food, and then pass out for the night. I went into the kitchen, turned on the light, and greeted a medium-sized albino lizard sitting in the sink. TJ and I teamed up to scoop him into a collander and shuttle him to the balcony, where we dubbed him Edgar Winter Jr. and released him into the night...

*One of these babies:

Sidebar fixed

2007-01-17T21:51:00.001-05:00

Sorry to have worried you unnecessarily.

Why is my sidebar still down there?... and more India

2007-01-17T21:05:00.001-05:00

As I was saying, we don't even know if they'll let us land. Some time later, we hear that they are in fact permitting us to land, but this is a priviledge reserved only for long-haul flights with connections and the planes are being spaced out over time. We had gotten a late start to begin with, and now it looked like we'd have to fly around the airport a bit and waste some more time. Our fairly generous layover was starting to look shorter and shorter - after we landed, we sat around for at least an hour before we got a gate, and by that time we would have missed our connecting flight had we not been pretty sure that was delayed in getting off the ground as well.

About forty of us ran through the terminal (a thing I hate doing, running through airport terminals) to get to the Mumbai flight. We talked to one girl while going through security (yes, again) with our hand luggage. She was going to India for her own wedding, which was to be one week later. The screener tried to give her a hard time about all the candles that were in her carryon, but she shut him down nicely with fierce stress-induced aggression. She herself was from Long Island, but was marrying an Indian dude; she had her mother in tow as well. Anyway, we did all make it onto the flight, which was also delayed by three hours.

Somehow I wasn't surprised when we landed in Mumbai and our luggage was nowhere to be found. Wait, hold on, back up.

Landing in Mumbai International airport is confusing because depending on which side of the plane you're on, you can't quite get a sense of what kind of city you're at. You can see some tall buildings and some air pollution, so you know there's a city there, but you also see the slapped-together shacks of the slums coming right smack up to the airport, practically spilling onto the runways. It looks like an undulating sea of corrugated metal.

The plane landed and we had the novelty pleasure of getting off onto one of those rolling stairway things. Entering the terminal, things are a little dusty and there are all these random potted plants along the hallway to the baggage claim - the plants look a little confused. "Why are we here?" they are asking.

Now, as I was saying, our baggage was nowhere, but at least it seemed that all the people from our Newark flight were in the same boat. We waiting in a chaotic "queue" of frustrated travellers, and bit by bit we became aware of little things like the fact that people were smoking. Inside. In the line. Actually, those were the Germans, but still - it's the little things that strike you as different when you first get somewhere.

For the sake of getting anywhere, I can't tell this story in real time, but if I could, we'd be at the lost luggage counter for quite a while. We eventually got our pink slips with some kind of vague instructions to call British Airways if we don't hear from them soon. We were told that our luggage would be brought to us in Pune as soon as it came in. The people telling us this did not look overly concerned with the veracity of this claim. We shrugged and went through customs, then out into the midday chaos. I saw a million faces, lots of taxis, and a goat...

India: Let's do this thing.

2007-01-17T20:33:00.000-05:00

It's now or never, India. Just you and me, mano a mano. If I don't write about you now, I'm just going to drift off into never doing it at all.

It's a hard thing, describing an experience in which something weird and different happened every day, so I guess that just makes me procrastinate the whole thing. This is amazingly similar to the laundry problem and the crap-lying-around problem and all the other housekeeping problems I have. It's as if my brain says, "Well, if you're not going to do the whole thing justice right now, and complete the entire project, there's really no need to start, now, is there?" I've been fighting that natural inclination to be all-or-nothing my whole life.

Let's take some pressure off, and I'll just tell you some of the stories now and we'll just see how it goes, kay?

The beginning of our journey was kind of inauspicious. We called a taxi to the train station, and the taxi never came - by the time we tracked it down, we were just barely going to make our Septa/NJT trains to Newark. As it turned out, we were rushing for nothing because somehow I had pulled the train departure time from an outdated Septa schedule anyway (from the Septa website, no less) and the train was already gone. The next regional train was in an hour. Since it was already 9 pm, we made the decision to just suck it up and take Amtrak, a much pricier option than the regional rail but one that would get us there in not much more than an hour. (Our plan was to sleep in the Newark Airport Hilton and then get up very early for our flight.)

So we buy our tickets and since the train was running five minutes late, TJ decides to go into McDonalds. I spend the next ten minutes sweating bullets as the train comes and is announced and waits and TJ is still in the MacDo. I'm shouting across the station, "Just leave the damn food where it is, the train is going to leave!" but he doesn't hear me. He shows up running and we dash onto the train, smashing people with our big backpacks and cramming up the aisle for a seat. As soon as we manage to sit down, he puts his drink down and I promptly spill it into my seat, so I can't really sit down the whole ride. The train then proceeds to NOT stop at the Newark Airport stop, even though the marquis said it would.

From that point on, things improved - we got off at the main Newark stop and took a cab, and it turned out the Airport Hilton was shockingly nicely appointed! I even took some of the mini shampoos/conditioners with me in my carryon bag, despite my policy against accumulating little useless things, because they were Neutrogena and I like Neutrogena (pay attention, this will come in handy later).

We go early the next morning, make the plane, all is well. Except that because of the unusually intense fog in London, most planes in and out have been cancelled and that's exactly where we're headed in order to transfer to the Mumbai flight. Sailing through the air watching the in-flight entertainment, we don't know if they're going to let us land...

(This image is a teaser so you'll stay tuned to future installments. What IS that thing? What could it be?)

I don't get it

2007-01-14T15:28:00.000-05:00

How come sometimes when you post, your whole sidebar shoots down to the bottom of the page? I tried making the graphics narrower... worked in the past, but not today. Anyone?

I know, I know, my trip... but...

2007-01-14T15:17:00.000-05:00

I am having my quarterly Rose Polenzani love-affair-rekindling moment right now. Will you share it with me?

I will tell you about India in good time... all in good time.

Jumping ahead

2007-01-05T06:45:00.000-05:00

I realize that by writing about today's Ayurvedic experience I'm jumping ahead of the story, which I plan to tell in some semi-linear way when I get home. (Here in India, it's been very hard to get a reliable internet connection even though we've been staying in "nice" hotels... I'll probably fill you in more on that later. Anyway, it made blogging-as-I-go totally unfeasible. Right now, I'm at the Abad Whispering Palms in Kumarkom, a fairly shmancy place - in fact probably the nicest place we've stayed at so far - in a town with nothing to do except visit the bird sanctuary, which we're doing at the crack of dawn tomorrow. The internet connection here is reliable -- reliably slow, that is, but it seems to work for more than ten minutes at a time so I'm risking this entry with cautious optimism.)

I just came from my Ayurvedic massage. In truth, I wouldn't have done it at all, except for two things; first, like I said, there's nothing else to do right now except sit around and "relax," which is sometimes hard for me to do, and secondly, it's cheap. Even at a fancy hotel where we're paying almost comparable to U.S. prices, the full-body massage is 900 rupees. If you were here, you'd know that that is outlandishly expensive and equates to about $20. Elsewhere, this could cost 200-500 rupees, but we splurged just to get the Ayurvedic experience in Kerala as opposed to back in the States or not at all.

So, TJ and I decided to both go for it, even though I was recovering from a sunburn from the Goa "snorkling boat trip" (which was great except that there was no snorkling at all, but I digress). Since the first half of our trip was devoted to attending Abby and Ashu's wedding in Pune, and the second half was nominally our "real" honeymoon, we haven't shyed away from trying to get luxurious this week. (I'll write more later about how sometimes it can be difficult to "get luxurious" in India even if you are willing to pay, as exemplified by our houseboat trip yesterday.)

So in the name of honeymooning, we got the full-body massage and TJ added on an additional 45-minute Sirodhara* treatment. He's still in his, while I just got out of mine and am ready to recount the experience.

I was curious going into it how a South Indian ayurvedic massage might differ from the classic American version of the Swedish deep-tissue thing we usually get back home. I've had maybe six massages in my life, at various occasions, and I can tell you that even in the most intimate cases, there's a level of distance between the masseuse/masseur and the client. For example, someone will show you your room, and then leave while you take off your things and get under the sheet. Then, although they may do scandalous things like touch your butt, they do them one at a time and then replace that body part under the sheet. If you flip over, you do so under the sheet. It's very decorous.

When I went in for today's massage, I came into a room where a nice young lady basically indicated that I should take it all off and lie down on a table. No sheet! In fact, she just stood there, waiting. "Ok," I thought, "I can go with this." I lay down on the fiberglass table, which was not like a standard padded massage table covered by a sheet, and more like an autopsy table. In fact, I felt like I was about to be autopsied except for having walked in off the street and not come in cold in a bag. I wonder if autopsy tables are flat, or if they are crowned in the middle like this one, with a curb all around the edges to catch the liquids?

It soon became clear why the curb was needed - this massage was more about covering me with large quantities of warm oil and rubbing me. Not kneading me, the way one would expect in a western massage, but rubbing me the way you'd rub your skin if you were trying to get warmer. I think it's all about increasing circulation and lymphatic flow or something.

She started with my face and then moved to my scalp. If she had been an American person, I would have joked around about how my thick hair was going to take more oil than she had in her pot. As it was, I didn't say anything, but I closed my eyes and envisioned the likely appearance of my head. She was rubbing this stuff in as if she were trying to give me dreds! I was cringing-slash-enjoying it.

The rest of the massage was more rubbing with oils. The oil smelled a lot like dinner, which made me feel a lot like dinner. In fact, I felt that if you spit-roasted me right there (literally, not in the Paul Hamilton sense) I'd be extremely tender and tasty. (SIDEBAR: I've noticed that a lot of things in India smell like dinner - for example, breakfast smells like dinner, lunch smells like dinner, and sometimes dessert smells like dinner. I'm really starting to get sick of both sweet and savory things that smell like dinner. You know what I want right now? I want a hippie salad with romaine, red potatos, garbanzos, kidney beans, sprouts, boiled egg, plain tuna, olives, lemon juice and salt and THAT'S IT. No cardamom! No CUMIN, for god's sake, no more CUMIN!!! Ok, I'm done fantasizing for now.)

I'm smelling like dinner, and she's massaging. To make a short story short, a full-body massage here apparently means that they massage everything they can see without an endoscope. 'Nuff said.

After that, I got into one of those boxes that you only see in 1950s weight-loss magazine ads, the kind where you sit in it and they close the doors and slide a piece over the top so only your head is sticking out, then they steam you. I was starting to get concerned, knowing I'm not supposed to raise my body temperature that much during pregnancy, but I was really only in there for five minutes. Finally, top the whole thing off with a shower, where you try in vain to get most of the oil off you. Then, you get something more rubbed into the part of your hair, and finaly some sandalwood placed between your eyes and at the base of your neck. And voila! You're cured of what ails you.

I don't regret doing it, but it was, you know, not a life-changing experience. In fact, it got a little boring. I think I'm becoming more and more like my mother in that things that are nominally relaxing and meditative are tending to make me itch a little as time goes on. This morning, I met a girl named Salima who had come from a 2-week cleanse in Bangalore, where she was massaged thrice weekly between accupuncture treatments, yoga classes, and enemas. Bah! I couldn't do it. I like the idea of feeling renewed by such a thing, but I'd last a few days tops.

Right now, Irish Lady is waiting to use this portal into the international world at large (the internet terminal) so I'm signing off. I hope to fill you in with more juicy bits when I arrive at home! It's not too late to tell me if you want anything from India - want me to bring you a little elephant statue? Or one of those crazy dolls with the ebony fingernails? Or a beautiful Saree you'll never figure out when to wear? Just let me know, I'll do my best.

XOXO

* SIRODHARA ~ Ayurvedic forehead oil flow treatment - Luke warm herb-infused Ayurvedic oil is gently and steadily poured over the forehead in a continuous stream using a special rhythmic swaying movement, while a gentle massage is given also on the forehead. This results in a fantastic sense of deep relaxation and inner peace; highly effective in removing mental stress and anxieties, in treating insomnia and headaches and improves memory.

Going!

2006-12-21T18:54:00.000-05:00

Bye guys! We are off to Newark Airport to begin our India journey... happy season to you all and pardon the hiatus...

Champagne Wishes and Lariam Dreams

2006-12-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

I started taking Lariam in preparation for our trip to India because it seems to be the only anti-malarial drug that's not contra-indicated in pregnancy. I was warned, however, that it's got some "neurological side effects." What? "Vivid" dreams, they told me. If you do a little internet research, you'll find stronger words than vivid and some people claim it makes them moody, anxious or depressed. Needless to say, I wasn't thrilled about launching into a world of self-induced mental instability, but this little part of me was curious about what kind of dreams I might have...

I took one pill so far - you're supposed to take them once a week, from a week or two in advance of your trip through four weeks following your return. Some people notice that they only have weird dreams the first night after they take it. I started my course on Wednesday morning. Here's an account of the dreams so far, and I'll try to post others if they happen!

Wednesday night: I dreamed about a completely ordinary subject, but it is interesting to note that I remembered my dream, which hasn't been happening a lot lately. This time, the dream was about travel - we were going somewhere, couldn't find our passport, were late for the flight, and all the usual hectic travel anxiety. The only memorable detail besides all that was that we boarded some type of large commercial plane, like an AirBus type. We entered through the cockpit, where a white shag rug was laid out on the floor, and walked back into the first room of the plane. In it, instead of regular plane seats, there were card tables and folding chairs set up. I made some comment that we should go farther back to get a real seat, since clearly the folding chairs were gonna fly all over the place. We went into a different room, and it was all the same - folding and plastic patio chairs. I had a bad feeling about that flight... FIN.

Thursday night: This one was better. I dreamed that I was in 30th Street Station, or at least it was supposed to be 30th St. but only somewhat resembled that particular Deco/Neoclassical train station. It's one of those cavernous spaces, like Grand Central's main waiting room. Anyway, someone had discovered old wallpaper under the existing wall finishes, and had begun stripping off the top layer to reveal the wallpaper underneath. It turned out to be not just any old wallpaper, but huge full-sized floor-to-ceiling images of -- of I don't know what, some kind of phantasmagorical people, giant heads and faces, I suppose of some historical characters. But it was really detailed and really impressive. All of a sudden, I wasn't really in the station anymore, but rather in some other place like a shopping mall, and this time I was very clearly inside some kind of adventure video game. It was called "World of Warcraft," but I know what WoW looks like and this was NOT THAT. It was very eerie, I was playing cards with someone who I knew was trying to kill me, so I reminded myself to "save the game" in case I got killed. There was a moment where I was flat on my stomach trying to shoot some coins across the floor and knock over some other coins - don't know why, but it had to do with saving my life. Something shifted and I was ballroom dancing with a person whose shadow alternated between blue and red - it was an indicator of his temper/temperament. Finally, I had a gun and it shot bits of light - I was firing it at others, trying to take them down even though they were all shooting at me. I knew I was a goner and would have to start the game over. As my character pooped out, Julia Toth from high school came out and accused me of trying to kill her baby. I remember thinking that was ironic, since I'm the one who's supposed to be protecting a baby.

It's already nine, what the hey? I'll stay and do my blog.

2006-12-14T20:59:00.000-05:00

I am on a roll over here.* I know it's nine p.m., but sometimes you just can't get anything done during the day until people leave. Otherwise, you're sitting around kibbitzing or eating cake for someone's birthday or immitating the unicorn voices from the latest youtube video you saw. Now that certain people who talk to me and make me laugh have left the joint, I finished up something important and put a big fat check mark next to it on my list.

Before I go home, I thought I'd elaborate a little bit on my last teaser.

T.J. and I are told that we are going to have a BABY! A human baby that is part me and part him. I have known about this for more than three months, but one thing that you learn when this happens to you is that no one goes running around telling other people until about 12 weeks go by. So I had to refrain from blogging about it, which was hard because if you find out you're pregnant, there's not so much else to talk about for a while. (Now I'm about 15 weeks.)

So I bided my time and told my mom and dad... in fact I swore my mom to secrecy, after which she promptly and immediately told my sister. I wanted to tell my sister myself but oh, well, my bad actually, since everyone knows Mom can't keep a secret for better or for worse. We told TJ's family before Thanksgiving and then started coming out with it to people at work and to friends near and far.

It's the strangest kind of purgatory... not a bad purgatory, just a mild feeling that I am not at a resting state, not at equilibrium. That is, I have some elves hammering and nailing in my guts, and they really don't need my help at all. I've asked, and they're just like, "No, we got it under control. Stop being such a micromanager." So I basically just walk around with my pants too tight, wondering what they're doing in there. Part of me wants time to rush by so we can assuage our curiosity by finding out whether Baby is cute or funny-looking, and part of me wants to slow the train down because this train is a seriously long-distance ride so you better want to go where you're going! We do want to go there. I do. But you know, we girls subconsciously think about this our whole lives, and even when we feel ready it's still like pulling some type of trigger.

We are still planning on going to India next week, which is something that's upsetting my Mom a lot. They have malaria and microorganisms and measles and Japanese Encephalitis and typhoid and TB and polio and Dengue Fever and twenty other things that we don't get just hanging around in the States. We thought it over and considered cancelling the trip, but really - we're going for Ashu and Abby's wedding, and it just seemed like the right thing to do on a gut-feeling level. I will try to post some good photos and details of our trip in the New Year!

So, as for other important details like WHAT IS IT (GENDER), we don't know yet. There's a lot of stuff I don't know yet -- I'm supposed to go in for a "quad screening" on Monday, which is a test to tell you if there might or might not be something horribly wrong with your wee'un. I haven't knitted a thing, nor have I read any of the pregnancy books AEW so lovingly annotated and sent me. (I received them last night at home, and opened one up to a page telling me specifically not to do the ab exercises I had just come from doing at the gym.) Maybe I will have time to read up on myself while we sit on a long plane ride next week!

That's all for now, but I promise to be better at revealing little bits of info as they unfold. It's 9:29 and I'm finally going to get off my tuchus and go home to my TJ and my doggie.

*I was feeling punchy enough to say that I was on a fucking roll over here, except now that I know my Uncle Alan reads my blog, I should moderate my language.

Our Creative Endeavor Reveals Itself

2006-12-06T15:20:00.000-05:00

You know how I know I married the right person?

Today is the first day TJ is done with his deadline of last week (some paper he's writing with another student and his advisor, who we will call Fezzik in this scenario since he is a big giant man with an accent). So his mind is lighter and he finally got some sleep last night and Fezzik is off his back for the time being. Today he called me at work to discuss some banal thing like the location of the automobile or if I want to go out to eat tonight. Then, he gets all animated on the phone and says, "Oh, by the way, I figured out what our Creative Project is going to be!"

He and I have always been trying to figure out what our Creative Project is going to be. We thought for a while that it would be Our Act. Our Act was going to be him being all David Rawlings on guitar and mandolin, and me being all Gillian Welchish on strummy rhythm guitar and voice (since everyone knows it's the guy that does the meedly-meeing on the solos and the girl just goes boom-chicky while singing). The only problem was that we never practice, and by never I mean never ever. We sing in the car, but as awesome a musician as TJ is, he isn't a ringer at singing harmonies at all (well, actually his teacher apparently used to marvel at how bad he was at singing harmonies given his general musicianship, etc.) And, in order to help him I'd have to sit down at a piano and figure them out and I never do that because for one we don't have a piano and even if we did I wouldn't because I have no discipline and never get anything done these days. So let's just say Our Act never got off the ground, even though the potential is definitely there.

We have several other points of intersection that have lead us down some other paths for potential collaboration. We would occasionally talk about the software I use in my practice, and how it generally sucks in one way or another and how we could get together and write good software for architects who have been accustomed to using crappy, buggy software with no version control and no ability to really utilize databases to bring us out of the Neanderthal period. That never went anywhere because it's much too much like WORK for me to even think about that stuff when I don't have to, but we may return to it someday. It would be a pretty huge undertaking.

So today, TJ announces that he's hit upon Our Creative Endeavor, and we are going to write a video game.

TJ: It's gonna be called Dog Park.

Me: Ok, I'm with you...

TJ: It's like Street Fighter except it takes place in the dog park, and you can choose to play different dog characters with different fighting [editor's note: fighting=playing, not real fighting] styles.

Me: Right, ok. Would it be sort of skill-based, like the Table Tennis game? Or more like Soul Caliber, where you just hit all the buttons at once and see what happens?

TJ: It should be somewhat skill-based, like you can strategize and create formations like in Madden '07.

Me: Uh huh. So the different moves could be "bite rear ankle" or "sit on face"...

TJ: Yeh! Or "jack-in-the-box" like Bernie, that Boston Terrier who just bops up and down.

So this is it, I actually agree with him and I think we can do this. This will be the greatest collaboration man has ever known... I will be art director and we will both come up with the dog-types and moves, and he will do most of the coding but it would be nice if I could get in there too and learn some... he can figure out how to make a physics engine that can produce accurate-looking dog saliva flinging motions, we can both learn Flash, maybe we can do it in Flash... we can both figure out the soundtrack and try to capture it from a Casio or something...

So that is going to be Our Creative Endeavor, and I am once again reminded that the Teej is my forever true love.

If you've read this far, then you get to also learn the secret I've been keeping from the blogosphere until now -- TJ and I have another creative project in the works, and it's due in June. But that is a topic for another post!

By the way, the image below is I DON'T KNOW WHAT, but I suspect it is not a real game.

Anti-intellectual Property

2006-11-30T16:12:00.000-05:00

I hate to be an ungracious receiver of information. Megan thought I would like the Beautiful Revolution and I just couldn't get over the flagrancy with which this guy copies David Shrigley!

Here are some examples. By the way, there is no moral to this tale except that one should never copy anything unless the copy is funnier than the original, which, like, never happens.

ON FEAR

A Beautiful Revolution :

David Shrigley:

ON PENS

A Beautiful Revolution:

David Shrigley:

ON TREES

A Beautiful Revolution:

David Shrigley:

ON OPTIMISM

A Beautiful Revolution:

David Shrigley:

ON DIAGRAMS

A Beautiful Revolution:

David Shrigley:

ON WRITING THINGS WITHIN A CIRCLE

A Beautiful Revolution:

David Shrigley:

Lisa, do you like stuff?

2006-11-28T10:30:00.000-05:00

I am in DC today. I actually came down yesterday and stayed at a hotel last night, where I will also stay tonight. Staying in hotels by yourself is boring as all getout, and also slightly existentially jarring (at least for me, but then a lot of things are). I say this because when you are in a hotel room by yourself, you are the proverbial tree falling in a forest with no one to witness it. No one there to see if you use all the towels, or make the coffee or not, no one to see whether you hesitate over the porn channel while surfing the cable options. It's lonely.

So anyway, here I am. I am working in the DC office for these few days to help my nice coworker catch up on a job we're doing down here. (He's the nice one who cracks his gum, but so far so good with that these days. I guess I'll need a pseudonym for him - uh, we'll use DCGuy because he only did the gum thing once or twice, so I feel bad giving him a gum-related moniker.)

I am watching a helicopter go by, and DCGuy says it's either GW or Dick, since no other helicopters have rights to fly over downtown DC airspace. Yesterday we saw Dick going home to the vice presidential mansion. I guess these guys don't exactly hop on the Metro.

Topics to explore in this posting:

1. Why does DC suck? (or not)
2. TJ and I don't have a phone relationship
3. DCGuy went to a meeting and his computer is making weird alert noises
4. Reminiscence over living here in the past
5. Had lunch with Nuge

___

1. DC - everyone seems to have an opinion about the place. Some people really like it. Others who may not have felt any strong emotions in the past rush to defend it when Megan disses it. Some people seriously hate it; in fact, there's a website devoted to that: why.i.hate.dc.

All I can say is that it is an odd place. I can't comment with full authority, because I've never lived here in a context where I had a community of any kind, or was in school, or had many friends. I did live here for 8 months in 1997-98, but since I was somewhat isolated by my job to having a few friends of convenience, I felt pretty out of the loop. The young-people culture here is very different than what I was used to - people didn't dress the same, there were plenty of boys in ties and girls with pearls. I saw glimpses of a cool, livable DC, but I never got into any real groove here.

2. I already knew this, but the Teej and I don't really have a phone relationship. We never have, I guess because we never conducted any of our relationship from a distance. I first noticed we didn't have a phone thing going on when he was in Seattle for the summer - we'd talk on the phone, but it seemed a little forced, like, "we are engaged, so we should murmur sweet nothings to each other over the phone before we go to bed." Yesterday, I called him from here in the evening... I was walking around in search of a burrito, and I called to say hi. Interestingly, we chatted for a bit and then were like, "Uh, well, ok love you, bye."

I'm not going to ask, "IS this NORMAL???" because who cares? But I do know that I had phone relationships with boyfriends of yore, so at first I felt like one must be able to sustain an hour-long conversation every time one talks on the phone with one. Now maybe it's nice that we have a actual space-time relationship, and we usually get to hang out, like, every day! Still, it must be on my mind a little bit if I bothered to bring it up.

3. DCGuy went to a meeting and every once in a while his computer would make a Donald Duck sound. This was jarring, but it's over now.

4. Living here in the past, I seem to walk past my former 1997 self sometimes. For example, the office here is right across from the YMCA I belonged to briefly. I used to go there, do some ellipting or rowing or whatever I did, and then ride my Huffy home to Logan Circle via Scott Circle. I remember where I used to park my bike, and how I used to go... it's a little spooky somehow.

This is probably because I had just graduated from college and had no clue what I was doing in general. I was here by circumstance, working a term job that I extended briefly out of ambivalence. I lived, among other places, in a house with three slightly older people who had distinct points in life and career vectors, and that made me feel all the more confused.

I listened to a lot of music that year, some of which Tara laughed at me for when she came to visit. For example, I loved Sublime. (I still maintain that they were hella groovy.) I also somehow wound up listening to a lot of Henry Rollins spoken-word comedy stuff, which I found hilarious at the time, and also to a lot of David Byrne. Now, when I hear David Byrne, I am transported to the room in the house on Logan Circle, with the tan carpet and random furniture and a borrowed sewing machine and nothing else but a mess of Sublime CDs and that "Speculations on Seagullism" thesis I was working on. (Come to think of it, I also associate working in DC with Joel Boardman, because I remember he was a very good email correspondent and he was working on his "metro" web project at the time, which accepted the Seagullism thing once I figured out how to scan it and do some image-mapping so it was all clickable and interactive.)

I still think that DC will never be neutral for me, and even if I had to move here and made a million friends, it would still evoke the emotion of wandering-aimless-among-neutrally-dressed-driven-types. Not to mention the physicality of the place, which I find unappealing. Every single building is exactly ten stories high, so it's a bunch of ugly cubes with retail in the bottom if you're lucky. How could it ever compare to the vertigo of New York in that respect? It can't, and I imagine it's supposed to be more humane for that, but it's instead very drone-like in my own personal architectural opinion.

5. Bright side of being here is that I got to catch up a little with E.Nuge, who is now an avid reader of this blog as of yesterday. In fact, even though we hadn't seen each other in forever, she knew almost everything already because of the blog! How convenient, right? Anyway, we had lunch (too short for that much catching up) and as always I was reminded of the unique things about her: she remembers stuff you told her a long time ago, she's hella funny, and she's an all-around good girl who I wish had decided to go to law school in Philadelphia instead of here. See you next time I'm in DC, maybe, and we can move on past 2003 and continue the updating process! xoxo

The Extreme Vigilance of our Public Servants

2006-11-18T20:07:00.000-05:00

Today, I went out to the car and found a ticket for an outdated emissions sticker. (I knew ours expired at the end of October, so I was in the wrong).

I got in the car and drove to my haircut appointment, and when I came back there was another ticket for the outdated emissions sticker, $41 penalty, as well as a ticket for parking longer than 2 hours (my bad). Ouch. I realized I'd better go get the emissions test done today, but it was already dark and I didn't know if that would be possible. I resolved to get home and see if Pep Boys would be open tomorrow.

So I go park at my last errand -- I went to Ross Dress-for-Less (or RD4L as we call it) to get a pie pan. Sidebar: Yes! You can get a pie pan at RD4L! You can get almost anything at RD4L.

When I came out I found the third ticket for the outdated emissions sticker. Total for the day: $144.

That's the end of this little story, have a lovely evening all you people out there. (I am now in Ignore-Bad-Things mode, given the laughability of this situation. So, now would be a good time to tell me something I don't want to hear, in case you've been waiting for just the right moment to do something like that...)

Update: After I posted the above tale of woe, I realized it was almost nine o'clock and I had better take Carmen to the dog park before she flipped out ninja-style and attacked me. I took her in the car, even though it's only a little over a mile away and we usually walk, because it's cold out and I wanted to get home and be warm. So we go in the car, and since it's nine p.m. I park in a slightly optimistic parking space, thinking it's late at night on a very quiet street on a Saturday, with no one around. Forty minutes later, I come back to the car to find a PPA car pulled up behind me issuing me my fifth ticket of the day for a grand total of $185.

I should feel lucky that he missed the fact that my emissions sticker is out of date, and only issue me the ticket for being partially in a no-stopping zone. Instead, I do not feel lucky. I feel like a complete asshole. I am completely humiliated, but also completely in awe of the Parking Authority. I wouldn't have thought it possible to get five tickets in one day if one was TRYING to. I am now numb to all parking-related emotions. Tomorrow, when I go outside to find what will surely be yet another emissions ticket, I will simply put it in my purse with the rest of them and head over to the Pep Boys.

Oh, I haven't forgotten all y'alls...

2006-11-16T23:45:00.000-05:00

I could update you on the status of our "skit," which after a total upheaval is looking pretty good and I think it's going to be funny (we are essentially making a funny music video to a stupid pop song starring people in the office, it's totally goofy).

Or, I was going to write an open letter to Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania's Clintonesque governor, asking about why and how he can support opening up the state to legal slots parlors. Even if a state could generate a lot of tax revenue from casinos, isn't that the most regressive tax anyone can think of?

Alternately, I could tell you about "Brita," our latest dog-sitting charge, who is a Miniature Schnauzer. It's funny to see me or TJ walking her with Carmen, because Carmen's big and Brita's small; Carmen's young and Brita's old; Carmen's reddish and Brita's greyish; Carmen's sporting an au-naturel-look and Brita's got manicured facial hair; and basically they look like an odd couple with Carmen loping around and Brita shuffling madly to keep up. One of the funny things Brita does is when you pick her up and put her outside to pee (she can't get over the threshold on her own) you have to put her down gingerly or else all four legs splay out. As it is, when she figures out where she wants to pee, her rear end drops and her two rear leg shoot out straight sideways. She can't climb the steps by herself, or so she thinks. She also has thyroid pills and glucosamine powder and prescription dog food and aloe vera extract and eye drops and all that. Carmen already ate her three squeaky toys for her.

Another thing I could talk about is how I actually filed some receipts today and sorted through the mail, and it feels really good to even take a small bite out of organizational tasks. If it feels so good, then why can't I do this all the time instead of assuming that everything will have to be done as one monumental effort on the weekend? Because the weekend never comes, you know...

In actuality, those are all a bunch of one- or two- liners, so I've already exhausted the topics. I leave you with this bizarre diagram somebody drew to explain the main features of a Miniature Schnauzer like Brita...

Challenges in the Workplace

2006-11-07T20:41:00.000-05:00

...but not related to work.

I have to make a skit. Stop snickering. It's a skit that is going to be put on video and shown at our upcoming 40th Anniversary Gala Event. Interestingly, it came to be my particular honor to compose and direct this skit (jointly with another person at work) because one of the PR people decided that we were the two "funny" ones in the Philadelphia office and therefore we should prepare some kind of spoof or satirical treatment and have it shown on video next month at the big soiree.

Now, this is kind of a setup for failure. There are at least three hundred employees in several cities, the majority of whom I don't know. We don't share any common stories, and only 50-60 of them work in my office in Philadelphia. I've worked for the firm for four years, but since I work in a satellite office, I'm not even up on all the injokes and funny bits of the main office. And what's a skit if not full of inside jokes and specific humor? Hmm.

Another thing is that the other guy who is doing this with me is not who I would have chosen to be on my comedy-writing team. I mean, I don't think he's funny. And I don't think he thinks I'm funny (yeh, I know, weird but true). Have you ever had the experience of trying to work with someone on a humorous skit, and you suggest something and they look at you blankly, and then they say something and you try to conceal your displeasure, and it goes back and forth like that? Uggh, it's been awful.

Anyway, I am going to take charge and write it however I want based on out earlier discussions. But I need help. I think the basic premise is ok if not the most original, and this thing has to be ready to tape on Thursday! Help me with funny ideas!

40th Anniversary Gala Skit

Basic premise: Spoof of The Office, but we incorporate some elements of spoofing other shows within that context. Other shows to spoof: Lost, Office Space (the movie), the Geico ad with the caveman, etcÂ

The logo of The Office appears in the lower left-hand corner throughout the show.

Starts with me insisting that I can't go to the office lunch meeting because I have to stay at my desk and punch in the NUMBERS. If I don't punch in the numbers, something terrible will happen, so I just have to stay and punch in the numbers.

Then there's some more office nonsense akin to the TPS reports thing from Office Space.

Then some things specific to our work, which you couldn't be expected to help with.

But, you CAN help with more universal stuff! If you had to write some kind of humorous parody of YOUR office, what would you do?

Seriously. I'm becoming despondent.

Redress!

2006-10-31T12:04:00.000-05:00

Dubin,

There's been a wee glitch with the Knitty Calendar contest and I now have to choose an alternate for one of the months. Could you please send me the attached image at full resolution, uncropped? I need to see the quality of the image up close before I can make a final decision.

Thanks in advance for your help!
Amy

Amy,

That's great, sure, I will send them when I get home (I'm at work and these are on my home machine).

I thought the calendar was already printed and done and for sale?

Thanks,
Dubin

***

Dubin,

Um, yeah. But it's print-on-demand, which means that only those ordered are printed. It's quite an awkward situation, but one of the photos didn't print well, and that's why I have to do this. Until it's fixed, the calendar is out of the shop. But I love this photo of yours and it would do very well in June as long as the resolution is high enough. So you'd be slid in as a runner-up winner, if all goes well.

I'll be looking forward to seeing this picture tonight!

Best,
Amy

Cable Crack on Comcast

2006-10-29T23:26:00.000-05:00

During the time I had set aside to post a blog entry on something important, I instead got sucked into watching the Discovery Health Channel. When I say sucked, I probably mean more like dragged or magnetized. All I know is that I had a basket of laundry in my hands and was about to go upstairs, and all of a sudden Manar's Story: Born with Two Heads comes on and I'm sitting on the edge of the ottoman for the rest of the night.

Here are some of the reasons why I could watch this channel all day, every day:

Medical Incredible
Mystery Diagnosis: The Man who Never Sweats
Secrets of the Great Plague
When Surgical Tools get Left Behind
Plastic Surgery: Before and After
Archie the 84-lb Baby
Surviving Sextuplets
Born Without a FACE

...and that's only this week.

Time to Choose: "Good," "Evil," or "Don't Know"

2006-10-24T18:23:00.000-05:00

After Yoga on Sunday, I went to Essene (the local health food market that I usually call Obscene because it is so expensive. I went because they have an organic prepared food bar where you can eat lunch and also get a good dose of East-Bay-slash-Co-Op nostalgia due to the combination of aromas: cumin, coffee, and Seventh Generation cleaning products. Usually I try to eat and hit the road to get on to my next thing, but this time I took the newspaper and just sat and read it for a while.

I almost never seem to allow myself this pleasure. If we got the newspaper at home regularly, I'd never read it because I'd look for a spot to sit down and spread it out, and then wind up cleaning up the dining room table which would lead to emptying the dishwasher* and doing the laundry and then I'd forget what I started doing, which was trying to RELAX.

Anyway, I was at Essene reading the Weekly or the City Paper, and I gravitated away from articles about the midterm elections and towards the article about rich kids on drugs. The article talked about how Bucks County kids (the ones who are typically richer and more suburban that Philadelphia County kids) are coming down to "the badlands" of North Philly to score horse.

It seems that these kids feel that HEROIN is ok to do, and even carries great status-elevating power, because now that the Colombians are in charge it comes so strong you can just snort it instead of shooting it up. So now, just like cocaine was in the 80s, it's sort of a faddish designer drug among rich high school kids. Oh, except it kills you dead faster and much more often.

This got me all depressed because one of my favorite activities is to think about how my future children will become screwed up either by me or by the world we live in.

Once I had a conversation with Anna about where we would send our kids to school. I remember her saying that she'd just suck it up and send her kids to private school because she wanted them to be safe and not distracted by violence and crappy inner-city issues. I remember thinking that I would send my kids to public school, but not for the reasons you are all thinking. I am no martyr, and if a public school is no good, I certainly wouldn't send my child on principle (even though I believe in public schools in general and think we should not abandon them even if we can afford to pay).

The real reason I would send my kids to public school is that I'm afraid of rich kids. Rick kids can get in a lot of trouble, and rich bored suburban kids even more so. I almost went to private school for high school, because it was close and appealing to my parents. Instead I went to school with Megan at Van Nuys Math/Science Magnet, and became an honorary Asian person for awhile.

Our school was big and full of non-native speakers of English. There were two kinds - those in the magnet, who were typically raised by parents who valued good grades above all else and transferred their values to their kids, and the other kind whose parents were probably trying to make ends meet and who plodded along in ESL and then maybe joined the army. I didn't figure into either category particularly well, but was mostly in the former.

I basically hated high school. I felt it was alienating and weird and was a recipe for poorly socializing nerds and ambitious pre-meds. I had no school spirit to speak of and never went to football games or dances. We had our little group of friends and that was gonna have to be enough.

But all in all, I am not sure I would have chosen to go to private school with people who were "more like me." In this case, "more like me" means people who lived in my neighborhood on the westside, were white and the grandchildren of immigrants rather than immigrants themselves, whose parents could afford to pay for private school.

I was scared of those kids. Ever since I saw a 60 minutes episode about how the relative rich public school in the Palisades (Pali High) was overrun by drug addicts. I knew people who went to Crossroads, which was a sort of hippy-dippy touchy-feely school that was a favorite among kids of celebrities, and they were SCREWED UP people, in general - many of them alcoholics or addicts.

So I guess what I'm getting at is, what's a person to do with one's future unborn children? Everywhere has the potential to screw them up! New York is too racy, the midwest is dangerous because they will grow up smokers and have sex early, L.A. is too sprawling and weird and they will probably be in a car crash. If my kids are ugly and unstylish, they'll be unhappy. If they're pretty and popular, they'll get pregnant early or wind up among the secretly-bad-that-no-one-knew-how-bad-until-it-was-too-late.

Should I hope my kids come out total nerds with no friends so no one will corrupt them? No, right? I agree that exploring this is ludicrous at this point, but please humor me and comment.

* Actually, I don't empty. I just fill. I fill and T.J. empties. We figured that I was better at the slow-drip tasks, and he was better at defined, periodic tasks.

A Minor Setback

2006-10-21T10:12:00.000-05:00

This morning I awoke to find that I did not win the Knitty 2007 calendar contest.

Here's who did - I mean, these photos are nice and all, but I don't get it.

It doesn't count as a "road trip" if it's for work.

2006-10-17T19:59:00.000-05:00

Today, I drove three hours to D.C., spent 5-1/2 hours onsite, and then drove four hours back. In the rain. In traffic. Here's what happened while I was driving.

Morning. I had to blow my nose and all of a sudden realized I had NOTHING on which to blow it. I had already nixed the idea of stopping at the Chesapeake House for coffee since I had to make up for lost time (the lost time being the time I was still sleeping instead of driving this morning). I even decided to go through the EZPass lanes at the tollbooths instead of paying cash (although that meant I would not get receipts to turn in for reimbursement and now I'll have to forge something or write up some sob story about how the receipts flew out the window), so there was no time to waste looking for tissue outside my own car. Finally, I found something in the glove compartment that looked like a minipack of babywipes, all dried out with age. Perfect! Except it wasn't babywipes, it was some type of freshen-up wipes for after the gym, and the pack smelled like it used to be saturated with Axe Bodyspray. I had no choice, so I blew my nose and then smelled the overpowering Axe-type smell with newly-cleared sinuses and almost threw up in my own lap.

No stopping for Dubin! No Cinnabons, no coffee, no nothing. Also, since I only drive about 65, I had to make up some time for that as well. I usually go down there with Eeyore ,who drives like a madman so we get there in 2-1/2 hours even with the pitstops. This morning it took me three hours and when I finally showed up I found that I had missed the whole meeting but really that's not important for reasons I won't bother to explain here.

Skip forward past the working part to the next interesting agenda item:

Lunch. We ate with the client and the contractor at the cafeteria of the Armed Forces Retirement Home, the site on which our building is located. If you use your imagination, you can envision what it is like to eat lunch at a cafeteria that is painted pepto-bismol-pink all over (David O. noted that it must be "preemptive") and is full of retired soldiers. These guys are all old, some of them friendly, some of them ornery, and almost none of them female. We sat a table with one of the chaplains. I ate the sloppy joe with tater tots and drippy peas. The contractor had the fried fish slab with 6 oz. of tartar sauce on top, plus tots and drippy corn. David O. chose the cream of asparagus soup as well as something that looked like a salad he fabricated at the salad bar except that it was made of gherkins, pineapple chunks, beets, grated cheese, and marshmallows. The main topic of conversation was about whether you should be unequivocal with your teenage children about forbidding drug and alcohol use in all cases, or whether it would help to be realistic and try to teach moderation. I voted for unequivocal, but then again it's all academic to me so I can say whatever I want because I don't have scary teenage kids yet.

Skip the rest of the work day except the part where the contractor is asking me how he's supposed to install a duct in an existing soffit if I didn't indicate any demolition work at that soffit. I said, "Just shove it in there." He was like, "Just shove it in there?" and I was all, "yeh, just stick it in there." This is actually architect/contractor humor because he wanted me to admit that I forgot to indicate demo and patching, and I was trying to be retarded so we could move on to the next topic.

Evening. Driving home, there was plenty of time in traffic to choose which pledge drive I felt like listening to. I actually even listened to Christian Radio for a good half-hour because it was an allegorical kid's story told by animals and I was in the mood. I scanned around and heard a bunch of evocative songs before I got home:

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.

actually

More than a Feeling.

debut album

Tom Sholtz

Drown

Trace

guy

Brown-Eyed Girl

favorite

cast a memory back there, sometimes I'm overcome

Anyway, that's about it for the travelog. The gas light came on 50 miles out from the Hess near my house, and I just went for it. I rolled in on fumes, filled the car, bought a pack of gum, parked in the rain. T.J. made me dinner - some type of teriyaki tilapia that he copied off of Nate, who served the same thing last night, but it was GOOD, though! Thank you, Teej. You're nice... now I will brush my teeth while reading Capella/Bob/Megan and go to bed full... all in all not such a bad day, as workdays go...

Abraham Lincoln playing Chess with a Beaver

2006-10-10T19:23:00.000-05:00

Sometimes your dreams will really betray you.

The other night I had a dream that my boyfriend was Jeff from this season's Project Runway.

"But Dubin, he HAS A TATTOO ALL OVER HIS NECK!"

Don't worry, in the dream, he got laser surgery and it was gone. Seriously.

I told T.J., who said,

"I knew I hated that guy."

That's not the way it should be

2006-10-08T16:46:00.000-05:00

I begin this post with the ending: I wound up with an O.B. tampon sticking out of my left ear on Friday. See, I'm playing with chronology, Pulp-Fiction-style.

I had to stick the O.B. tampon in my ear because I didn't have my squooshy ear plugs that I've started carrying around in my purse. I could have stuck a tampon in each ear, but that would have looked silly. So I opted for just the ear nearest where the offending noise was coming from. Why would a full-grown woman stick a tampon in her ear? What sound could be so terrible as to warrant doing such a thing in an office setting?

I was down in the D.C. office on Friday, working with a very upstanding, kind, and capable human being for whom I have nothing but respect. There is something military about him, like he might call you "ma'am" or say "yes, sir" to people. He's quite clean-cut and totally polite.

So anyway, I was down there on Friday helping him with a project. I was frustrated because I had gone all the way down there and got very little done, given that the computer wasn't connecting to our network and I spent most of the day crawling around on the floor plugging and unplugging different cables to different data ports to see which link was the broken one. At just about the time where I felt like giving up (which is essentially never, for me, I mean I NEVER give up), my colleague goes and pops in a piece of gum and starts cracking it over at his desk.

For those of you who are not imaginary and who actually know me, you know this is my most major pet peeve. When I can actually hear the sound, however faint, of gum moving around in anyone's mouth, I get irate. I literally get a homicidal feeling if I hear popping sounds. I know something's wrong with me, I've known it for a long time. But I'll be damned if I know what to do about it.

Colleague is over there cracking his gum, and the blood is rising in my head. My life is flashing before my eyes, and I'm testing out alternate scenarios for making it stop:

"Uh, excuse me, but can you do me a favor and stop cracking your gum? Sorry, It's a pet peeve of mine and I will actually kill you shortly if you don't, so taking it out will be a win-win situation for both of us.

"Uh, excuse me, but well, um, it's kind of hard to explain, but you seem like a nice understanding person, and uh, well, the thing is that the gum, I just can't take it, I hope you understand, I need you to take it out, yeh, um, I hate to be a bitch, but, yeh, I know it's just gum, uh, but I don't want to go back to jail so please, just trust me...

"Uh, excuse me, TAKE THE GUM OUT YOUCRAZYMOFO WHAT THE HELL AREYOUTHINKING??????"

This is a really sad story for me, because this kind of reaction has haunted me forever. My mom used to love telling me I had a tolerance problem. I do have a tolerance problem.

Thank God for Kelly Feighan. The other day Kelly and I were sitting in a diner with some friends we ran into at the flea market, and somehow the topic turned to pet peeves. When Kelly admitted that she absolutely can't stand the sound of people drinking from water bottles with squirt-tops, I fell in love with her.

She went on to describe... "You know, people create a suction between their mouth and the bottle top, and then when they break the suction it makes this cracking sound when the plastic pops back into shape, followed by a moist whooshing sound coming off their lips. It's horrible." Then we went on to admit that we both routinely change seats on the train if anyone's making any horrible noises, or talking too loud on their cell phones. I am really glad to know it's not just me.

Now, no need to get all oversensitive around me for fear you'll piss me off. I'm a reasonable person. Just stay away from the gum, the cell phone, all water bottles, toenail clippers, nail files, chalk, packing tape, and anything else inexcusable, and we'll continue getting along just fine.

Some of you feel sorry for this LÅMP

2006-10-03T20:34:00.000-05:00

Remember that commercial where there's a sad looking desk lamp that gets put out on the curb, and the happy homeowner is seen bringing in a new Ikea lamp and setting it up inside? And then it starts to rain, and the inside looks so warm and inviting and there's the old lamp, its neck bent shamefully downwards, getting rained on next to the garbage can. The narrator comes in all of a sudden and goes (in a Scandi accent): "Some of you feel sorry for this lamp. But you are crazy!..."

WAIT, why am I trying to describe this when we have YouTube????

Anyway.

I was thinking about the lamp commercial because I was thinking about the mysterious life-like properties of things that are clearly not alive. The idea of objects having feelings is interesting. Some people know that the lamp has no feelings, but we still feel sorry for it because it's sort of anthropomorphic. I started thinking about how women are probably more likely to feel sorry for the lamp than men are, and lo and behold I came across this when I was searching for the video: "Women Feel Sorry for Lamps and Old Chairs and Shit."

While it totally cracked me up, it fell into the category of "It's Funny Because it's True." Not all of it, I mean whoever wrote it is probably a fifteen-year-old virginboy. My favorite part is:

"What if someone came in and took one of those objects away — for repairs or something? As a man you would think this was jolly good. Most things need repairing after all. It’s good to know some man is doing it and not some woman. A woman, however, women would be heartbroken.

“The poor item!” she would say. “He’s being taken away from all his other item friends!”

But it IS true that women seem more likely to tacitly understand the living qualities of the unalive. I mean, just Saturday afternoon when Courtney and I were at the flea market, I found myself asking a guy if one of his lamp globes could come with me, or if he had to stay with his friends the other lamp globes. I just meant, can I break up the set, you know? I wasn't even trying to be cute. And the guy was like, "Uh, yeh, he has to stay with his friends..."

Closely related is the question of why some objects seem to be universally satisfying and some seem just unsatisfying in a way that one can't articulate. Here are some examples:

Satisfying: cue ball, key, jade plant, Ipod, bowling pin, Rubik's Cube, bubble wrap, hard-boiled egg, brick, wheel, gear, pint glass.

Unsatisfying: dry-erase marker, futon, toothbrush, zucchini (ok, that's not universal, but I hate it), plastic bag, dry cement, toilet paper roll, coaster, CD-case, shower curtain.

I know I'm not alone in subconsciously assessing daily objects for this intangible quality of being "satisfying." It gets even more interesting when you start talking about totally abstract things like numbers, letters, or colors. This morning, our intern Kristen and I were talking about my OCD quiz, and she asked me why I didn't prefer 2 or 6 or 8 to 3. She claimed that 2 is nicer, and 6 or 8 are even better because they are even-numbered groupings, and groupings are nice and everything's nice and even. I was pretty horrified, 'cause 6 and 8 aren't even prime, and here she is saying they're awesome. Likewise, she was really appalled that I like 7 as maybe my second favorite, which she finds completely hideous and pointy.

What is your opinion? Are you a guy who has friends on your shelf? Are you a woman who throws out familiar objects with abandon? Is it a gender thing? If so, I prefer to think of it as a positive thing to have a rich imaginary world of good and bad, but it definitely has its shortcomings when you really want to run around the park clockwise, but you can't... because... well, because of G-d and his pesky counterclockwise mandate.

P.S. I noticed at services on Yom Kippur that my prayerbook actually spelled out God. Is that because we went to the reform services? The Rabbi was definitely a stinky hippie, but I still didn't know you were allowed to spell out His name in a book.

Blogger Atrophy

2006-10-01T21:09:00.000-05:00

I've noticed my sister isn't posting so often, and I can totally understand. You think to yourself, how do I do what Megan does? She has such stamina. Younger Dubin pointed out that Meg has something brilliant to say almost every day, and I said I hoped it was because she was slacking nicely at her state government job. Secretly I suspect it doesn't really take her that long to drop her wisdom, so maybe she actually gets work done, too.

Right now, T.J. is sitting behind me facing the opposite direction. I am at my desk and he is at his. And he is playing World of Warcraft. That's right kids, T.J. has gotten himself involved in the Massively Multiplayer game world, which means that instead of playing Oblivion or Table Tennis downstairs on the Xbox 360, he's upstairs playing WoW on his new lappy. I already made him wear earphones while he's doing it, so I don't have to listen to all the sounds of monsters and animals getting whacked with swords. I want to spend time with him, but I don't think we should become the kind of couple who sit facing opposite directions playing the same game at the same time in the same fake universe.

Maybe what this means is that I should escape by going back downstairs and having my own reunion with the 360. I hear that Dance Dance Revolution is coming out for it -- all I would need would be the game and one dance pad... in case... anyone's... listening... who wants to buy me a present.

We will need a new quiz, then.

2006-09-27T17:43:00.000-05:00

Updated!

We all agree that their's something wrong with that O.C.D. quiz. Help me make a new one, here, you can beta test this for me:

DUBIN's New and Improved O.C.D. test!
Or, how to know if you're a Bossy Know-it-all 4th-Grade Snot or not.

1. Did you notice that I spelled "there's" wrong in the first sentence?
a. yes (1 point)
b. not really (negative ten points)

2. If you noticed, did you:
a. hate my guts for it (2 points)
b. decide I'm an idiot and stop reading at that point (impossible, you're totally still reading)
c. give me the benefit of the doubt (negative 1 point)
d. I didn't NOTICE, you idiot, I already TOLD you that in question #1!!! (1 point)

3. Are you upset because the a-b-c-d part isn't indented beyond the 1-2-3 part?
a. yes, very (10 points)
b. yes, a little bit (zero points)
c. not really (are you sure? it's really annoying. ok, fine, zero points.)

4. Do you think O.C.D. is a smart person's affliction?
a. yes, I do (1 point)
b. no, that's a foundless theory (negative 2 points, you're not smart enough to be in our cool club)

5. Think about your favorite color. Is it odd, or even?
a. what are you talking about? (zero points)
b. even (1 point)
c. odd (1 point)
d. it's irrational (zero points, you're trying too hard)

6. What time is your alarm set for?
a. 7:08 (1 point)
b. 7:21 (1 point)
c. 7:33 (1 point)
d. 7:49 (1 point)
e. 8:00 (zero points)

7. What will happen if you don't make a basket when throwing out a piece of litter?
a. the world will end (1 point)
b. something unknown but bad will happen (1 point)
c. something unknown but good will happen (ok, that's a new one, 1 point for that)
d. nothing (you poor, blissful soul: zero points)
e. you have to go back and try it again seven times, and if you miss any of those you have to start over but you can only achieve success if you complete this task on a try that is a power of seven in itself, and if you make seven baskets on the seventh try you're damn lucky because otherwise you wouldn't get a good chance until the 49th try or even later (stop here, you win)

8. Is there a correct way to jog around the park (counterclockwise vs. clockwise)?
a. No, because if you always go the same way 'round, you'll develop asymmetrical muscle tone so you should mix it up (zero points)
b. No, because if you go the same way every time, then you will get tan on one arm and one leg and one half of your face, so mix it up (true, but zero points)
c. Yes, G-d intended us to only go counterclockwise around the park (1 point)

9. If you think you see a ghost in your house, you should
a. scream (zero points)
b. talk to it rationally and assume it's a good ghost (1 point)
c. convince yourself that you are crazy and that there's no such thing as ghosts (negative one point)
d. walk around the location where you saw it, counterclockwise, seven times, and it will never bother you again (1 point)

10. Which part of the floor is lava?
a. cracks (1 point)
b. all the black tiles (1 point)
c. every seam in the hardwood floor (ooh, sorry for you but you get three points)
d. the actual lava part (zero points)

11. Do you have hand sanitizer in your desk drawer at work?
a. yes--doesn't every woman? (1 point)
b. yes, next to my toothbrush and floss and first aid kit (2 points)
c. yes, and I make people use it before they touch my mouse (3 points)
d. yes, and I use it to clean up after I murder anyone who EVER tries to touch my mouse (4 points)

12. The following things help a commercial airplane stay aloft:
a. your walkman being ON even when the stewardess says it can't be during takeoff (1 point)
b. air pressure differential above/below the wing (zero points)
c. the fact that you touched the safety card three times (2 points)
d. angle of the flaps and adequate air speed (zero points)
e. competent pilot and copilot (zero points)
f. the fact that you winked three times in the pilot's direction before he turned around and saw you (1 point)
g. fuel (ok, one point for fuel)
h. the dedication with which you repeat your mantra silently and continuously to yourself throughout the entire flight ("please lord don't let us all go down in a gleaming silver death machine, please lord don't let us all go down in a gleaming silver death machine, etc.") (three points)

OK, let's SCORE YOU:

Negative points: You're really, truly, amazingly normal. Congratulations.

1-3 points: You're probably ok. It may be that you're just a little paranoid, or neurotic, or maybe you're just obnoxious and got that point from question #2. All in all you're not that hard to relate to, but you still might be the type to squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle and leave it like that. (Shivers.)

3+ points: You know who you are. Practice getting a grip by purposely sabotaging some of your own routines to prove to yourself that no one's gonna die. If anyone actually does die, that would be a shame and would actually be a serious setback for you. But that's beside the point.

Congratulations! You have finished my first ever quiz that I wrote all by myself.

Obsessive but not Compulsive? Uh huh, sure.

2006-09-20T22:56:00.000-05:00

This one's for you, P-John.

What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? Before you go on reading, you might choose to take this screening quiz just to determine if you have it. Not that I particularly care whether you have it or not, but it's curious to see how low the threshold is set. For example, I scored between 12 and 17 (I took it twice, but either way I am totally O.C.D. girl) even though I stated that all my obsessive-compulsive tendencies do not affect my life in negative ways, and that I don't avoid activities because of them. But I am still it.

This came up because I was listening to This American Life on my satellite radio at work. There was this episode that was really great, but it was probably especially compelling to those who can recognize behaviors like this in themselves. It covered:

The woman obsessed with the number 2
Lauren Slater story about getting obsessive compulsive disorder
Orthodox Jew talks about whether Hasidic Judaism is like an obsession
Woman who made a kitchen out of beads

Never mind for the moment that at least two or three of these four bullet points are related to Judaism* or have to do with a person who is Jewish, that connection is a topic for another day. The first act was a discussion back and forth between a guy and his ex-girlfriend regarding her obsession with bilateral symmetry and with the number 2, i.e. she had to do everything twice, among other things. He claimed this affected their relationship; she claimed he was just being silly and mean about it all, and that it was no big deal. The second act was a rather serious story about a girl's sudden onset of severe O.C.D. symptoms.

As I was listening, I remember how both my sister and I used to have hallmark O.C.D. behaviors, most of which we both grew out of over time. I think neither of us did the whole germ and hand-washing thing, but we both definitely had to touch things a certain number of times (for me it was three, because OBVIOUSLY 3 is the best, most whole, most perfect number) and conducted pointless little rituals. These things were never accompanied by voices saying "you must do this or something terrible will happen," but nonetheless the feeling was there that one must really continue doing the rituals JUST BECAUSE.

I remember that for a long time, every time I closed my closet door in my bedroom, I had to flip the lightswitch on and off three times. I also had to look out a certain window three times before going to bed. Then there were the more spontaneous compulsions, ones that just popped up based on circumstance -- like you must say something three times in your head before the light turns green. I still sort of do that, like my mind will determine that I have to reach the other side of the crosswalk before the hand starts to flash. Or else? I dunno, just or else.

It is interesting to note that these feelings come up mostly when I feel out of control of my destiny, namely when I am on a plane. Since I'm nervous on the plane anyway, because I can't simply hop out and fix the thing if it breaks and I certainly don't have any control over the piloting or any previous maintenance, I launch into rituals mode. I start doing things that will supposedly keep the plane aloft -- it used to be that if I didn't have my walkman (remember those?), that would suck because the walkman was the key ingredient in keeping the plane up. You know, stuff like that. It's less bad now, but still there.

So anyway, the other day P-John was waiting for me at lunch so we could go visit our friend's baby in the hospital. He said, "when are we leaving?" and I said, "two minutes," and he said, "two real minutes or two girl minutes?" and I was like, "no need to drag gender into this, you can just say 'two real minutes or two Dubin minutes' and be specific about it."

Then, I had an epiphany! The reason there are "Dubin minutes" so often is because of my O.C.D! You see, I can't actually get up from my chair until some specific unit of my work is done, OR ELSE! So if I say "two minutes" what I really mean is "until my O.C.D. requirements are met, and I don't know when that will be," but as you can imagine, one can't really SAY that because it's too long and somewhat antagonistic. So you just say "two minutes."

On the way to the hospital, I explained my epiphany to P.J. -- I thought he would relate because the guy is totally obsessive, too. But he then claimed that he's "obsessive but not compulsive." I challenged that, of course, but he was adamant; for example, he said that although he prefers his pens and pencils all lined up orthogonally to the edges of his desk, he knows the world won't end if they aren't that way. Dude, ok. He gave a few more examples like that, but I remained unconvinced.

I guess what I am proposing is that you CAN'T be obsessive without being at least somewhat compulsive. Whatever moves you to have obsessions, whether minor or major, rules you to at least some degree and causes you to act out semi-pointless rituals in order to fulfill them. I also think that O.C.D. is a spectrum, ranging from benign obsessions that don't really hurt anyone to full-fledged life-ruining dedication to the gods of the disorder. On the low end, we have people who simply can't concentrate if their desks aren't neat, and on the high end we have the crazy hand washers who would benefit from medication.

So, think about it. Can you be obsessive without being compulsive? Can you be compulsive without being obsessive, and if so, is that what Tourette's Syndrome is all about? Please think about it this week and get back to me. In the meantime, I'll be messing up the pens on P-John's desk.

* Unrelated: My mom went to services this week at the Valley Outreach Synagogue, where the service was conducted by the cantor who officiated our wedding. She said it was totally Rosh Hashana: The Musical! I am sorry I missed it... you gotta love reform Judaism.

Chocolate = Dog Poison -- Fact or Myth?

2006-09-19T20:46:00.000-05:00

I guess we will find out.

After we babysat Ravi for two weeks, Patty gave us some treats from Greece: a bag with some chocolates and some foil-wrapped chocolately baklava. In the bag was a note that said, "Thanks for taking care of me. Love, Ravi xoxo." I guess Carmen thought the note was for her because she jumped up and ate the whole bag, plastic, wrappers, candy and all.

As if that weren't enough, she also jumped up on a different counter and ate some candy from a baby shower I went to on Saturday. This candy was like little non-pareils of what seemed like toothpaste mixed with pastel food coloring mixed with chalk. Well, she ate all that plus most of the tulle it was wrapped up in.

Dr. Khuly, if you are reading this, IS MY DOG GOING TO DIE?

She seems chipper as always.

Please tell me the truth.

Thanks,
Dubin

Jazz Hands and Nekkid Ladies, Part I

2006-09-17T15:55:00.000-05:00

I want to post something every day so that you will come back and check in with me, but it just isn't happening. It's not that I have little to say, it's that I have lots to say and can't seem to relax enough to sit down and type it out. Most of the time I'm obsessing over things that have to get done. You know it's a bad scene when your mom starts telling you to just C.T.F.O.* and that the world won't end if certain things don't get done.

Like right now, I have to go to work. Yes, I know it's Sunday. My work situation is one where working on the weekend has become completely normalized.

At least I got to sneak out on Friday with enough time to meet S.Wag. for dinner at the bar at Caribou, and then go to the last Fringe show I'd likely be able to make before the festival ended on Saturday night. The thing we went to was called "HELL" and was somehow inspired by Dante's Inferno but seemed to be about a lot of other things, too.

When approaching a fringey-type contemporary performance of art/dance/multimedia, I'm usually pretty open at first, and then immediately judgemental about whether it's quality or whether it's some far-reaching allegorical bullshit with no real talent to back it up. That's the thing about "the contemporary arts"- with modern dance and performance, we're defining the genres as we go, so you never know what box to put something in until you're halfway into it. For example, if you went to see an action movie with some famous action star, you'd know what box it fits in before you see it. If you went to see Disney's The Lion King Musical, you wouldn't know what the costumes or sets would look like, or what the music would sound like, but you certainly would know the format (part one, intermission, part two) and basically what to wear and what to expect.

So, we go to see "HELL" and the first thing that happens is that we sit down and the house lights are still on, but there are some people up on stage doing sort of Fame-esque dances to pop songs, and lip synching with enthusiasm. This clip shows bits of that part, which I later found out was called the "cabaret" section.

So, what you have is a situation where I don't even know if this is the actual show, or some kind of opening number, or what. The house lights are completely on, and people are kind of still trickling in. I am starting to suspect that this will be the lamest production ever, akin to me dressing up in my bedroom and doing "modern dance" moves that I made up. I can't tell what S.Wag. is thinking, and I purposely refrain from looking over at him and giving him the eye-roll because I still want to give it a chance and don't want to taint his perception. I also am amused because I feel like this is somehow a completely tongue-in-cheek thing and I'm waiting to see if I'm being Punked and how it pans out.

The "cabaret" continues for three or four numbers, and then drastically changes to a weirder version of the same. Soon after that, the bulk of the piece commences, which the above video clip skips entirely (the seemingly poorly synchronized topless people at the end are really at the very, very end of the piece). There is weird stuff going on on stage. People come out in sloppy clothes and with music stands, and then procede to do some spinning and swirling and slapping while a few of them light up cigarettes in succession. Ok, first of all, I'm amused that they are lighting up on stage and realize they must be European. But then I get pretty into it because I can actually smell the smoke from where I'm sitting and the lighting makes the rising plumes look really cool. More slapping and writhing happens, but I find myself sort of liking it.

Here are a few moments that I'll describe as examples of things I found compelling --There was a figure dressed all in black with a black sock over its head, and it would just occassionally come out and immitate what the main person was doing, but towards the edge of the stage and without fanfare. It was as if the stage became a double-exposed negative, with the images out of synch with the frame. You'd see a motion in the foreground, and then something twitching on the edge of the frame. It was fantastic, but I can't describe why.

Another part was when a figure, who I later knew to be the choreographer, was standing on the stage facing the back. He just kind of stood there, wearing too many clothes and a tarantula-like wig, facing the back. Every once in a while he'd move. The urge I felt for him to turn around was so strong, I could taste it. I don't know if that was the intention -- to set up this tension where everyone's WAITING for this dude to TURN AROUND ALREADY. But it was very effective and made me feel tingly.

* Chill the F Out. (Not that my mom actually said that.)

J.H. and N.L., Part II

2006-09-17T15:54:00.000-05:00

Right, so we are now at a moment in the performance where I don't know WHAT I think. Is this LAME or is this AWESOME? I usually don't have this ambivalence problem* but I still couldn't figure out how to judge it. Every once in a while, the dancers would do a series of moves that made you realize just how beautiful and weird and particularly good they were, but then they'd go back to writhing.

An arch of lights stood on the stage. At one point a character unscrewed random bulbs. Very disturbing. Then later, another character screwed them back in, which was an immense relief.

And then gratuitous partial nudity happened, starting with just boobs. Later, there was full nudity, followed by some costumeage, followed by full nudity again. Here's the conversation I had with myself:

Me: Oh, great. Gratuitous nudity.
Me: Gratuitous? Gratuitous of what?
Me: Well, I just don't think it adds anything.
Me: So you think it's for shock value?
Me: No, I just think it doesn't help the point of the piece.
Me: What's the point of the piece?
Me: I don't know.
Me: Ok, Einstein.
Me: Well, how are people supposed to concentrate when they're all wondering if it hurts to dance without a cup? The choreographer know everyone's just going to be looking at boobs and tan lines and navel piercings and the diversity of the human form and that kind of stuff. They'll be deciding who's hot and in what order they find them attractive. People aren't evolved enough to not notice that nakedness and sexuality are related and sexuality is titillating so it's sort of a cheap thrill onstage.
Me: Ok, so what?
Me: Well, I think that's all beside the point of the piece so it's distracting.
Me: Maybe it's not beside the point.
Me: Just SHUT UP, ok?

Meanwhile, the onstage activity starts to happen to the strains of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. This is ever more confusing to me. Why Beethoven's Fifth? Why evoke a familiar piece, one so familiar, in fact, as to have lost most of its emotional content?

The dancers seem to be punishing themselves onstage. They must be exhausted by this point, since the performance has been very athletic. They must be sweaty and tired of being exposed and tired of the bright lights on their privates and tired of staring out at a crowd of not-particularly-stylish Americans. In fact, lots of people in the audience are retired-looking. What do older people think of this craziness? The smoking and the nudity and the writhing? Are they shocked? No one's walked out yet...

* Yes, I do.

And, finally, Part III

2006-09-17T14:21:00.000-05:00

You may be interested to know that when the curtain finally fell on "HELL," there was a question and answer with Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten, the joint choreographers.

And I was surprised to find that people were REALLY INTO IT. Even the dowdy old ladies raised their hands and asked pointed questions about the choreographing process, about the varying meaning of nudity for an American audience and a European one, and about the games the artists played with lighting -- who was being viewed and who was viewing? The house lights being on some of the time gave the audience a sense of being watched; you, the dancers, are watching us as we watch you, except you are naked. What does that dynamic signify? What images of Hell are really being put forward? Who is the anonymous shadow, and what does he want?

The choreographers spoke about their work -- Greco is Italian, and his English is good but not perfect. I couldn't understand a word he said. That is to say, I understood all the words he said. But I had no idea what he was saying. I sort of felt like I was back in architecture school, but without the anxiety, as he expounded on how, "the preparation of body and mind, which has to become receptive to deeperlying impulses in ordertobeabletobefaithfultothebody we havedeveloped a toolforsuchapreparation whichisatrajectoryforthebodytotravel throughthatallows ittoreachtheawareness andreceptivityneededtocope withnewinformationandpossibly preexisting movementmaterial."

Right.

In the final analysis, I loved the whole thing.

I can only say that it was exhilarating, rather than frustrating, not to be able to decide whether this "art" was valid or not. I loved it as a sum of its parts, all it's little dissonances and resolutions. People in the audience surprised me with an openness that seemed out of line with their appearances. I loved hearing the Italian speak about nonsense.

S.Wag. liked it, too. He said, "I'm so glad that didn't suck like the show I went to on Tuesday."

Curtain.

Oh, and in case you were wondering...

2006-09-12T22:31:00.000-05:00

... today, in two separate incidents, I dropped my cell phone into a sink full of "water" and I dropped my ATM card from my back pocket into the loo.

UPDATE: Miraculously, phone is working again. I don't know if this is going to last or what. ATM card works, verified this morning. I am back in business.

UPDATE: No, on second thought it might be actually dead. The phone, I mean.

A Tiny Morsel from the Fringe

2006-09-12T20:12:00.000-05:00

The Fringe Festival has been upon us these last couple of weeks, and it feels like camp. Philadelphia often seems like a small town anyway, seeing as how you tend to run into people you know a lot. But the Fringe is a time when the collective will-to-be-weird encompasses a nice cross section of the population, and people come out to watch performances where nothing is guaranteed to be good but everything's guaranteed to be a little off. (And to be fair, most of it's really good.**)

The reason it feels like camp is that, more than at any other type of performance series, there's a sense of camaraderie amongst the audiences. There's a thing called the Late Night Cabaret, a big bar and informal music venue that doesn't even exist 50 weeks out of the year, where everyone congregates after the shows each night. People actually talk to each other at the shows, and often times the performance spaces are unusual, like inside a UHaul, or at someone's house, or at the hotel pool at the Sheraton in Society Hill and you actually get wet, or in an abandoned movie theater, or as was the case last Friday, at my old belly dancing studio.

T.J. and Nate and I went to go see "Madison to Madurai: 134 Days in Mother India," a monologue by H.R. Britton.* I knew it would be one of the smaller venues and one of the less famous performers, but other than that I didn't know what to expect so I told Nate that we should just imagine it will be a grossly under-attended little one-man show that only costs $5, and then we couldn't be disappointed. (I have a thing about going to events where I secretly suspect I will be one of the few people there... I feel a lot of empathy for performers in general, so I just can't take it when things are under-attended and I wind up laughing extra loud and generally embarrassing myself to make the performer feel better. Duh, Jesus, Dubin.)

So we get there, and it's not empty at all! Or, more to the point, the ratio of people attending to chairs set up is pretty high, even though there aren't that many chairs set up. There's a cat wandering around the place, something I remember from belly dance class... that gregarious cat. And then H.R. comes out and starts his story, just sitting peacefully on a stool talking about traveling in India.

We went because we are going to India in December, but mostly we went because the blurb described the piece as "an anxiously comic travelogue." I couldn't pass up an anxiously comic anything.

The thing I liked most about it was that the performer hit a nice sweet spot between taking his youthful self seriously (the self he reminisces about in his stories) and being able to look back and laugh at it. In other words, he respects the mindset he was in at that time, but also tells the story knowing that sounds kinda laughable to recount how you saved your pennies for an open-ended trip to India to go deeper into Buddhist thought and learn from the great eastern spiritual swami-types. You know? Kind of cliched, like "boy sets out to find himself amongst a totally foreign culture" kind of story.

Anyway, it just got me thinking about travel and how I get when I am out of my element. In the past, I've tended to hide until I felt like I could assimilate. Like, if I had to look at a map, I'd sneak into a restroom, memorize it, and come back out with the map securely tucked away. Or when on a bus in Italy, I'd put on some dark glasses and try to make people think I was Italian by limiting anything I said to three words. I can't help it, I just feel very vulnerable when I stand out as a stranger in a strange land.

However, if you aren't willing to be silly and different and just be you in all your American doofiness, you stand to lose track of yourself while traveling. H.R. Britton, on several occasions in his piece, described himself as becoming a "mascot." Like, he said he got on a 58-hour train to the south of India, and became the mascot of the sleeping car -- everyone asking him questions and staring at him and enjoying his differentness.

I figure that this is how one travels without losing one's own personality. I have always worried that my totally overblown urge to keep my dignity at all costs ruins a lot of perfectly fun fiascos, and I am going to try to relax just a little bit this time around, when we go in December.

* 9/15 and 9/16 at Studio 1831 (1831 Brandywine Street), $5.

** The best place to get a sense of the Philly Fringe is at the website of my former next-door neighbor. He is a great photographer, but more interestingly he is totally ubiquitous... J.J. is everywhere, photographing everything, at all times.

http://www.jjtiziou.net/2006festival/index.php

___

A Poem

2006-09-10T10:36:00.000-05:00

Oh silence! Why is the house so quiet?
The animals aren't moving, and T.J. is in Korea.

Arise, Carmen, and taunt the lazy cat,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That her food bowl is empty.

Be not her tormenter, since she is your ally.
"Dubin was gone all day yesterday,
and apparently is a deadbeat mom. Let's revolt!"

These are my pets, and they get my love,
but, oh that they tended themselves!
She meows, yet she says nothing. What of that?

T.J. is in Korea, so I will answer it!
I am too bold, she only wants wet food.

We had an agreement with the cat,
A matter of serious business, to give moist food on weekends
and on that promise much is weighed.

What if _I_ waited all week for moist food and was denied?
The brightness of my cheeks would shame my owners
As daylight doth a lamp. My green eyeshade would attest
to endless nights spent counting and awaiting la fin de semaine.

And Carmen would through the airy house whine so loud
That birds would sing and think she were not right.
See how she leans her cheek upon her paw?
The sound of her sighs, muffled by her floppy lips,
lying on the futon!

She rests. O, rest awhile, bright angel!
For I already took you to the dog park and you ran into Ravi
and humped him wrong-way'round, being o'er his head,
As if a leashed messenger of heaven
Unto the white, upturned, wondering eyes
as he fell back to kick your ass
in the gravelly dust, under lazy-puffing clouds
and sails upon the bosom of the air.

P.S. T.J. we miss you.

Fractions and Numbers

2006-09-08T13:31:00.000-05:00

I. Values

A. The topic of "fractions" is following me around these days

1. TJ is taking a fancy extra-hard algebra class this semester

a. He's also taking Marathi, which is unrelated but cool

b. I'm jealous as usual

2. Fractions have numerators and they have denominators

a. My sister's post about jam is really about the relative size of the numerator compared to the denominator.

(1) in this case, the numerator is quality people you’ve met in NYC

(2) the denominator is the total number of people available for dating you

(3) both numbers are huge

(4) the overall value approaches zero even though the numerator is large

b. The Genghis situation

(1) I was speaking to P-John about the Genghis Problem

(2) I have been feeling sorry for Genghis lately

(3) Genghis sets up impossible outcomes and then fails to meet them

(4) this means that the denominator is always very large and consists of promises made and appointments scheduled

(5) the numerator is the total number of promises kept and meetings that actually happen when they are supposed to

(6) the total approaches zero -- even though the numerator is non-negligible, the denominator is ridiculous

(7) Life in this mode must be highly unsatisfying

c. New Year’s resolutions

(1) last year I resolved to start fewer things

(2) that way my denominator can be smaller

(3) so my total contentment value is greater!

(4) cheating, but so what

(5) I have failed at keeping this resolution so far

B. Fractions aren’t mentioned in the epic rock opera called “Numbers” by Cat Stevens; only whole numbers are addressed

1. only non-negative integers get to sing

2. no irrational numbers, please

II. Proper outline format

A. If you have a “I” you must have a “II”

B. If you have an “A” you must have a “B”

Sunday at the Dogpark: A Play in Four Acts

2006-09-04T21:14:00.000-05:00

On Sunday morning, before we went up to Litchfield to visit T.J.'s Dad and meet his new wife-to-be, we took Carmen and Ravi to the D.P. to make sure they pooped and got some of the lead out before a long car trip. It had been raining for days, but the sun had come out finally and I noticed that some mushrooms had bloomed in a little patch.

The mushrooms looked downright lush. They seemed so happy to be there, so tender and robust -- I imagined how stoked I would be if I were a bunny.

You ever look at the underside of a big, clean mushroom? It's so nice. These ones, especially the whole ones, reminded me of fresh snow at dawn before all the mammals come out and tromp through it.

I had the simultaneous urge to smash these to bits and to build a plexiglass box around them so no one else would.

Instead, I picked some of the coffee that had sprung up nearby and we hit the road...

I wasn't kidding about my Sports Card

2006-09-01T16:05:00.000-05:00

These will be extremely unvaluable someday.

This is what happens when the photo booth is free

2006-09-01T16:03:00.000-05:00

Short Attention Span Theater

2006-08-31T19:32:00.000-05:00

Oy, gut. I am... that word that you get called when you look irritated and ashen and pissed off and exasperated. Beleaguered! That's it. Or maybe Harried.

My work life is comical. Maybe some day I will have a moment to tell you about it.

(I should mention that Poor John has it worse than I do and complains less than I do, just in case he reads this and thinks I'm a pussy because I complain when I'm at work until nine two days in a week.)

Since my attention span is short right now, here's a bulleted list of noteworthy things:

1. I got an award for softball. Ok, fine, it's a lame award and everyone got one. But I got an award for a sport! AND I GOT A SPORTS CARD! With my picture and my stats on it. I have "stats," I can't get over it. I have a "batting average" -- I batted 0.400 this season. Believe THAT!

2. I haven't been to the gym in EVER. It is not a great situation.

3. I haven't been to Yoga in longer. That's no good either.

4. I have, however, been using my waterpik and also doing crunches in the morning. Those are my only two good deeds right now. I think it's paying off, because I went to the dentist this morning and for once didn't get a lecture.

5. This may sound really dorky, and it is, but my neighborhood email listserve somehow started determining who would play who in the musical about our neighborhood. It's funny because many of us haven't even met each other, so we're guessing based on personality and vague descriptions that have been made over the years. When I suggested Maggie Gyllenhaal for myself, someone scoffed, like, "you wish." Dood, what's wrong with that? I don't think it's a stretch, right? Anyway, this person suggested Holly Hunter or that chick that plays the mom on "Malcom in the Middle."

BARF ME OUT.

Usually You Can't Underestimate People

2006-08-25T09:28:00.000-05:00

"No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." -- H.L. Mencken

What a terrible quote, right? (Totally valid, but awful nonetheless.) Mencken's got lots more where that came from, on all sorts of topics ranging from love to marriage to politics to generalized cynical pissiness. He was the archetypical Snarky McSnarkerson.* His writings were offensive in so many categories that he was, in a way, universally acceptable no matter how racist, sexist, Anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and otherwise grotesque he became--he was an equal-opportunity hater.

At this point, this post could go in one of two directions. Having introduced Mencken, I could either talk about (a) how I accidentally underestimated the determination and engineering skills of one Jeffrey Vaughan or (b) how much I hate Libertarians and why.

Let's do both. Read on.

* To wit, more Mencken quotables:

Historian: An unsuccessful novelist.

Husband: A No. 16 neck in a No. 15 1/2 collar.

Idealist: One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Immorality: The morality of those who are having a better time.

Love: The delusion that one woman differs from another.

Morality: The theory that every human act must either be right or wrong, and that 99% of them are wrong.

Pastor: One employed by the wicked to prove to them by his example that virtue doesn't pay.

Newspaper: a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

...and my favorite:

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

U.Y.C.U.P. Part I: The Libertarian Scourge

2006-08-25T09:27:00.001-05:00

Libertarians, FEH! Objectivists, double FEH!

HELLO PEOPLE. Listen to me. "Every man for himself" is a philosophical no-brainer. Sure, yes, survival of the fittest and all that. Social Darwinism, whatever. No taxes? No social services? You think poor people are just bad at life? You think Jews are liberal because they are genetically predisposed towards guilt? You want to Just Say No to compulsory, state-funded education?

Look, there's a big difference between the way the world is if left to its own devices and the way it would be if we got just very slightly more collective here. I'm no socialist, and I'm no bleeding heart. I just want the world I live in to be as AWESOME as possible, which means I don't want to look at homeless people (I want them to have homes), I don't want to encounter stupid people (the result of shitty public schools), I would rather not be a victim of crime (the thing that happens when the have-nots notice the haves), and I want my friends and family to be healthy and cared for (something that can't happen when people can't afford to buy into the health insurance machine).

But this is all tangential to my real beef with Libertarians. My real problem is that I can't deal with people who are emotionally bankrupt. I prefer people who don't separate and alienate themselves from others. I prefer the company of those who posess a certain amount of self-awareness and maybe even some joie-de-vivre. I like people who have friends. So with that, I challenge anyone to find me a Libertarian who's not an arrogant fuck.

FIN!

U.Y.C.U.P. Part II: In which I Underestimate Jeff Vaughan

2006-08-25T09:27:00.000-05:00

You already know that I'm the snarky one. In the absence of contrary data, I assume things won't work the way they're designed to, people will mess up causing me grief, and that taxi will run the red light and knock me off my bike. It's a condition that alternately harms my outlook and prevents me from danger and disappointment. But anyway.

A few weeks ago, I was riding my bike home and passed by a set of rowhouses at 15th and Naudain or thereabouts. There were some people standing around, and I realized one of them was T.J.'s friend Nick, but didn't have time to process and wave before passing by... I also barely perceived that one of the dudes sitting on the stoop was my husband. I got a few houses down the alley, wheeled around and came back to confirm.

So these guys are all sitting/standing around staring at a rather comely mid-century sofa sitting on the sidewalk. After talking with them for a few moments, I got the briefing:

1. The sofa was Jeff's grandmother's and he's very attached to it.
2. We are standing in front of Jeff's house.
3. These guys have been struggling to get the couch in by
    a. shoving it up the stairs but it was too long to turn
    b. hoisiting it up on a rope to the 2nd story window
    c. preparing to cut the thing in two and then repair it
        i. they are waiting for Jeff to get the jigsaw
        ii. They have already started surgery on the fabric bottom to         get to the frame

After I processed all the information, I suggested that what they were doing was going to result in wrecking the couch. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have cared so much, but it was a nice looking couch! A nice looking couch is a rare thing. I pointed out that if they were going to mortally wound the couch and leave it out on the sidewalk to die, they might as well leave it out on the sidewalk with a "free" sign and let someone have it. Jeff had me refer to point (1) which stated that he's really attached to the couch because it was his grandmother's.

As a result of all this negotiating, I told Jeff and T.J. to put the sofa in the Volvo and take it to the Hazel Avenue Estate for short-term storage until they could figure out where to keep it. I was secretly hoping Jeff would leave it for a year or so, and take me up on my offer to borrow a smaller couch of ours, because I totally liked this couch. In any case, I remember doing my usual muttering about boys being knuckleheads and how the whole couch situation was clearly a geometrical no-go from the beginning, and duh it's so obvious, et cetera.

Well, yesterday, T.J. and Jeff went over to get the couch again, and I heard the whole story after the fact. Jeff had gone to the Lowes and bought a beam to stick out the third story window. Who buys a beam? A single beam? I guess it was a long 6x6 or something. He set the beam out the window and had some people sit on it on the inside end. Then, he used the two pulleys he had bought and attached on the other end, hoisted the couch right-side up (not the long way) with relative ease, and guided it through the window.

I underestimated Jeff! I consider myself a person with a lot of determination, and I will NEVER let a problem go unsolved even if there's no obvious way to solve it. But I would not have gone to the store and spent $50 on materials towards a scientific and multi-pronged attack on the gravitational and geometric couch challenge. I just wouldn't have.

I hereby eat crow and boys are not dummies and Jeff is clever and all that good stuff.

Blogs, dogs, and pickles (in that order)

2006-08-23T22:50:00.000-05:00

It's a lot of pressure to write a blog that six people read. You want to really give your all to those six people, and not half-ass the thing. That means some days, when a fully formed post is right there in your head but you don't have time to tap it out, you just skip it altogether because you want each post to be a self-contained nugget of wisdom and if that's not what you have time for, then you'd rather not just blather on about what happened today and blah blah blah.

That said, this is what happened today: we have two dogs instead of one. Not permanently, but for two weeks. We have Ravi, who is Carmen's Number One Main Squeeze. She is very popular and has a lot of boyfriends (because she has a nice personality and is a terrific athlete), but Ravi is the guy she loves the best. Patty (Ravi's owner) and I have discussed how serious this has become, and we think it's ok for them to be going steady as long as they're more or less supervised.

Anyway, so there's two of them and they're the same size and shape and color and everything, although Ravi looks more like a guy somehow. They like to lie around biting each other's necks and snorgling. Today we were watching them do this, and all of a sudden I see a small piece of poop on the floor. A little round piece, like a large milk dud. I yelled "not it" even though it was a really small piece and went upstairs to close the door to the closet with the cat's litterbox, because obviously Ravi must (like Carmen) be interested in cat box snax.

Turns out it was just the end of a small pickle. Seriously, it wasn't poop. It was the end of a pickle! How does the end of a small pickle wind up on the floor? No one knows, but that's exactly what it was. It was good for some chortling... we thought it was poop and it was a pickle!

In other news Carmen is totally vexing. She keeps peeing on the floor. We went back and forth, thinking it was a "leak" because sometimes it was so small and seemed to happen while she was sleeping. Now, three days in a row she has peed robustly on a spot on the carpet. We have diligently Bisseled it up each time. We don't know what else to do, I mean, the girl has it good! T.J. takes her to the dog park TWICE A DAY! It's like two hours or more of each day of his life! Let's see, two hours out of... how many hours is a person awake? Let's say 15. That means that T.J. devotes over 13% of his waking life to exercising the doggie!

We are at a loss. Please help us.

Slight Diversion until I compose my real post

2006-08-22T12:51:00.000-05:00

My boss is famous among his staff for answering a question with a question. And also for responding to specific, clearly-delineated, simple requests with emails that say, "Let's talk. Call me on my cell." He always requests that you call him on his cell, instead of calling you directly, and then he is never there because he's always busy, so he has to call you back anyway after you leave a voicemail. Which he hardly ever does. And he is also well known for ignoring your emails completely because he, "gets so many emails a day, really, you have no idea."

Today, I received this from a coworker who we will refer to as Brand New Dad:

BND says, "I was going through old e-mails looking for some info from Genghis and just for fun I compiled his responses to all my questions since January. I asked a lot more questions; these are only the ones he actually responded to. Italicized text indicates when he actually answered my question. I am not making this up."

Let’s talk.
G

Folks:
We need to resolve this today.
Thanks
G

Let's talk about this first.
Thanks
G

I would respectfully disagree.
Let’s talk
G

Let’s review this on Tuesday when I get back.
Thanks
G

Please go to my office and look the documents.
The right answer will come from them.
G

I do.
Let’s talk.
G

Can we have a conference call later on today?
Please call me on my cell.
Thanks
G

Please call me on my cell after 4:00 PM.
Thanks
G

I would appreciate it if we talk about this at our 1:00 PM conference call.
Thanks
G

No.
But we should be able to locate them.
Let’s talk late this PM.
Thanks
G

Let’s review later on today in person.
Thanks
G

Let’s review with the team later on today.
Thanks
G

Let’s discuss tomorrow.
Thanks
G

Please see me on this also.
Thanks
G

Please see me on this.
Thanks
G

CONFIRMED.
G

Why don’t you bring the info and we can look at the issues in my office.
I will be on a conference call until 2:00 PM.
Thanks
G

I will look at this tomorrow.
G

Chuck has the originals.
Thanks

Let’s discuss first thing in the morning.
Thanks
G

I am not sure that I would agree.
Let’s talk about this

No.
Please call me on this.
Thanks
G

No.
Let’s talk about this.
Thanks
G

I watch one T.V. show.

2006-08-16T22:19:00.000-05:00

TRAGIC OUTCOME.

They kicked off Alison Kelly. Auf wiedersehen.

ALISON!

Instead of Vincent, that loony mofo.

Who is responsible?
I know it's not Tim.
Is it that Nina Garcia character?
I bet it was her fault.

Unbelievable. I should go back to playing XBOX and never watch T.V. again.

Goodbye, lovely Alison...

True Story: Live and Learn

2006-08-14T17:06:00.000-05:00

Those of you who read my gemologist tale a few entries back will note that I have gone back to change the names to protect the innocent. (ME! I'm innocent!) I can't believe I used real names! What if Genghis googles himself? What if Poor John googles for "Poor John"? What if Carmen sees that I posted her incontinence for all the world to laugh at? Sometimes, words hurt...

My sense of decorum kicked into gear because the following email exchange just happened:

From: Gemologist@brisket.com
Date: 2006/08/14 Mon AM 10:44:00 CDT
To: Dubin
Subject: Nice Blog

I ran across your blog just now, I guess I won't take too much offense to my lack of detail with sizing.... :-) So did you try our cheesesteaks yet? I think they should win Best of Philly by next year. We also added breakfast. I'm not sure if eggs fit into the meat category or not. See you soon, your Jeweler

* * * * *
Needless to say, after I got done hiding under my desk out of sheer embarrassment (after all, I essentially said he was a crappy jeweler! and that his mom isn't sweet! holy shit! I take it back, I take it back! Retract, retract!) , I wrote back:

From: Dubin
Date: 2006/08/14 Mon AM 10:54:00 CDT
To: Gemologist@brisket.com
Subject: Nice Blog

OH SHIT. Well, I guess in my efforts to amuse my friends and myself, I have now made it so that I can absolutely never, ever, ever talk to you or see you ever again because I'm humiliated. Nice knowing you. If you see a girl walking by your store with a bag over her head, that's me. P.S. I should have known you'd google for your brisket to see how high up on the hit list you are! I am an idiot. Plus, the story is embellished for humor's sake, like all good stories are. Did I mention I'm retarded? Love, Dubin

TAKE HEED ALL YOUNG BLOGGERS OUT THERE! Or I guess I am the only one retarded enough to assume one's jeweler isn't googling himself... NOTE-TO-SELF: "Everyone is googling himself!"

Late-breaking post script: The names in the Gemologist posting have been subsequently changed BACK to the way it was before by request of said jeweler.

From: Gemologist@brisket.com
Date: 2006/08/14 Mon PM 06:13:11 CDT
To: Dubin
Subject: Retraction

A Bubby's Employee did the google search and let me know so I checked it myself. I truly loved the write-up. I always welcome constructive criticism and will do my best to be more detail oriented. The best part is that it was your unedited feeling, and hey.....you still patronize me in spite of myself. Sincerely, Max

P.S. Please put back the real names. I loved it the way it was. I wanted to show my friends and they got broken links. Please don't be embarrassed.

* * * * *
It seems that Max is the most emotionally healthy, non-defensive dude ever. Or, maybe he's just not mad about me calling him a shitty jeweler because his real love is the brisket, and at night instead of dreaming about old European-cut diamonds, he's drifting off to sleep with images of the fat melting off of delicious brisket and wondering whether eggs fit into the "meat" category or not...

Knitty.com Calendar Entry

2006-08-13T18:29:00.000-05:00

Even though I'm supposed to be studying for my M.E.P. exam, I just finished shooting and cropping my entry for the 2007 Calendar contest.

What thinkest thee?

Life Immitates Seinfeld

2006-08-13T12:29:00.000-05:00

I am punting on Part II of the Architectural Education Rant for the time being to bring you a more universally entertaining story. This happened last week, but after sharing it with some coworkers and seeing the sustained amusement it generated, I will document it here for posterity. There is no moral to this story; file under, "If you didn't laugh, you'd cry."

Did you know that every A.C. window unit has a filter that must be cleaned? I guess I knew that, but had probably sent the information to what I call the "long term storage" warehouse of my brain. I'm not so into A.C. in general, but since T.J. is one of those dudes who is always hot, I conceded to having two window units in the upper floor of our house. As far as I can tell, it never occurred to either of us to clean the filters at any point.

One day, we get home after the ladies had come. The "ladies" are the Portuguese ladies that come every two weeks and help us not to be disgusting in exchange for eighty dollars. They clean the surfaces in the bathroom and kitchen, sweep, vacuum, and that's about it. But it is always nice to come home and see the bathroom sink all clean and shiny.

So the ladies had come, and there's this note on the dining room table that says, "Todd: There is H20 all over the futon and desk upstairs from the A.C." (That's kind of funny in itself because when you talk to them in English or even Spanish, they have no idea what you're saying, but then they go ahead and write "H20" to mean water... go figure.)

We went upstairs and indeed, there was water all over my papers and the futon and the curtain and the floor. T.J. figured that the AC outlet where the condenser water drips out must be clogged, so he took the unit out and set about to cleaning the filter out in the bathroom. This took him at least 45 minutes, and resulted in a lot of wet and dirty towels on the floor. Also, the previously shiny sink was filthy and also clogged. Totally clogged with dirt and fuzz and crap.

But at least the filter was clean, so the Teej puts it back in the unit and then goes to put the unit back in the window. I saw him preparing to put it in, and it occurred to me to ask if he needed help, but my mind jumped back to a previous situation where I asked him if he needed help with the same task last year, and he said something like, "No, it's easier to do it myself." So I keep walking and go in the bedroom.

Momentarily I hear a very loud and very bad noise. Then silence. I peek into the office and there is T.J. and there is an open window and there is clearly no type of A.C. unit. He just kind of looks at me in acknowledgement of the fact that yes, the unit just fell out the window onto the brick pavers below.

Now, when I heard the bad noise, it actually didn't sound to me like an A.C. unit hitting bricks. It sounded more like a person jumping through a plate glass door. So doing some quick mental arithmetic, I come over and stick my head way out the open window and look down. I see lots of glass shards. There was nothing made of glass on the patio, so I go downstairs to confirm that the unit had smashed the kitchen window below on its way down.

Now's a good point in our story to take stock. We have:

- One futon soaked with water
- One desk and personal papers covered with water
- One ruined curtain
- One bathroom covered with dirty wet towels
- One newly cleaned bathroom sink, now filthy and clogged
- One smashed A.C. unit with a pointlessly clean filter
- Negative one operational A.C. unit in August
- Negative one functioning kitchen window
- One ghetto piece of plywood over smashed window
- Kitchen sink and patio full of glass
- One dented propane tank

The propane tank on the patio was struck by the falling window unit, and it would have been a much better tragicomedy if the tank had exploded and burned the whole house down, but alas. It didn't.

I think this is one of those stories that my dad in particular would like because he thinks Murphy's law only applies to him. Here we have a beautiful example of how efforts to offset entropy often result in greater entropy. For example, we were trying to cool the house to create a more civilized living environment, but the unit exploded water all over. Then, T.J. took great pains to clean the filter only to subsequently drop the unit out the window. Then, in trying to grab it by the cord, he wound up with cord-burn and the unit swung like a pendulum back towards the house, smashing the window when it would otherwise have fallen straight down.

I reiterate that there is no lesson to be learned here. I'm sure we will both continue to drop A.C. units out the literal and metaphorical windows of our lives. We are only in trouble when it ceases to be funny... right?

The Emergent Emergency

2006-08-10T19:34:00.000-05:00

I was biking home thinking about how I would post a blog entry relating to the conversations I had today at work. There was the usual Genghis activity, and in fact he was in rare form PLUS he was actively irritated with me, so we both got under each other's skin very badly. But more interestingly, at the end of the day when I already had my keys and my bike helmet in my hand, I wound up having a long conversation with two coworkers (I'll call them Bob and Kristen) about the nature of architectural education and the clash in the academy between the study of Architecture and the concept of Historic Preservation. We discussed the arbitrariness of "schools of thought" as they change from era to era, and whether or not it was a pipe dream to think that graduate schools of design could ever really do more than pay lip service to interdisciplinary education between architecture, urban planning, preservation, the fine arts, landscape architecture, and the other fields that are supposedly allied arts.

We also vented frustrations at the experience of being a creative but essentially science-minded person in an architectural program. There is a lot of stuff that goes on, a whole language of elaborate bullshit, and a somewhat new concept I call the Pseudoscience of Design, or "graphing irrelevant data." Now that we live with computerized construction technology that aids us in building whatever wacky shapes we choose, design schools have become obsessed with justifying these choices using science or nature or philosophy or basically ANYTHING in the world other than simply beauty or personal taste of the designer or (gasp!) utility.

So, the word "emergence" has come into fashion. Emergence as a concept is not new, and you can read about it here and here and here and many other places. If you clicked on those "here"s, you'd probably be intrigued. But imagine what happens when schools of architecture latch on to such a term and start doing this and this and fucking this. (If you can get over all the popups, you'll eventually be rewarded with nonsense.) God, especially that last one. It KILLS me that MIT is buying this crap as well, but no "top" school of design is immune to the emergent virus.

Here, try this one. Now click on the "About_EmTech." Get it now? Of course not, but you did get to see some wireframe wontons.

The notion that we should study the forms that emerge from apparent chaos and try to find order in them is interesting. But then take architecture students who often come to a top-notch grad program at Columbia or Harvard with no undergrad design experience, and hand them a software package and tell them to design a fishery using the emergent properties of slime molds in Finland. Did you just ask me to design a fishery based on the way slime molds regenerate? Yes, you did.

What I am talking about here, for those who may not be following, is a mass delusion among the non-vocational (read intellectual/academic) design programs that we should program computers to design buildings for us. Not only that, but that these programs should generate the built form based on natural processes, like patterns of cellular growth or the movement of bees through a colony, which are of dubious relation to the structure being designed. Let me repeat - we are teaching students to program robots to design our environment. What is missing? I'll tell you what's missing: the freakin' human spirit, that's what's missing. Go to any architecture school and look around at the cloned blobs on the computer monitors, then grab some young impressionable first-years and try to save them by dragging them over to the Law School and forcing them to apply. Much less scary in there, methinks.

After coming home and having a glass of wine, I find myself uninterested in writing part II of this Scourge of Emergence diatribe. I am more interested in going downstairs to have another glass of wine. But the conversation with Bob and Kristen about trying to merge a love for old buildings and an interest in urban contexts with what the architectural academic community is passing off as science really riled me all up.

This experience with contemporary architectural education may have been what drove me to the field of Historic Preservation in the first place... the field is certainly stodgier, but the reward can be serious -- I get to play with buildings like the former Cincinnati Union Terminal (my current project, see below). Instead of wondering which ant colony's growth to graph in order to inform the design of my daycare center, I get to provide real solutions to adapting this building to its current use as a museum. Stay tuned for Diatribe Part Deux!

Cinéma Vérité

2006-08-05T22:32:00.000-05:00

Sometimes words are not necessary.

I observed this scene today at the Hazel House, whereupon Carmen and I were inspired to make a film for you, our fans.

Overload!

2006-08-02T17:03:00.000-05:00

Both Carmen and Phoebe are internet movie stars!

This is so thrilling.

Next, we'll have to get Droo and the Family Kittens booked for some local venues. Dear "Droo's Person," have you any photos of the old man with his new kitten friends? At least Droo still has his friendster profile up, where he can read his testimonials and feel good about himself.

And now, for some more visuals!

I am Foreshortened Droo.

I am Elongated Phoebe.

We are Carmen & Phoebe, practicing our "stances."

The Stampede Scene.

This is where you can see that she looks just like her
mother, the fruit bat.

Wonder twin powers, activate! Form of yinyang!

Shape of Rectangle!

And finally, a gem from the archives: cult classic Mies Launch (2004).

Oopsie

2006-08-02T06:34:00.000-05:00

Pissed Pissedofferson

2006-07-31T07:48:00.000-05:00

Let me tell you a story about a girl who works for a man. This man has some genuinely good qualities, like he gives us computers and pencils with which to do our work, and thinks of us in some perverse way as his children. I believe that he wants to care and that he has a sense of humor about himself, which is always good. But.

But, he's a total freakazoid. The man never sleeps, and travels constantly. If you ask him how he is, he says exhausted, and he'll expound on it relentlessly each and every time. He has what can only be described as undiagnosed A.D.D. For example, he can't have a conversation with you at his desk without either playing solitaire simultaneously, or going through his email or paper mail, assessing and tearing up each piece while pretending to listen to what you're saying. He is a terrible pretender. If you're going to be a bad listener, at least be a good actor.

So, he's kind of a shitty boss but he's not a monster, so you can't hate him most of the time. (Let's give him a pseudonym right now, so I can more easily refer to him without repeating pronouns so much -- let's call him "Genghis.") For example, Genghis loves to gossip, which is always endearing. He'll say, in the most serious tone, that he's going to tell you something in confidence and that you must keep it to yourself. So then he tells you some bit of news that you already knew because you heard it through the rumor mill. You keep quiet on it for a few days until someone else tells it to you again, swearing you to secrecy because Genghis swore him to secrecy. Duh.

Lately I've been more critical of his ridiculous behavior for two reasons. The first is that for the past two months, I've been piddling away at what I think I'm supposed to be doing with no actual direction from him, and it's starting to wear on me. I feel useless, because even as I work on this project, I know it will have to be undone and redone in a particular way (which I would rather do the first time around, but can't because I have no input from him). The second reason is that he has been taking advantage of a friend and coworker of mine, let's call him "Poor John," because Poor John is relatively young and willing and able to work long hours. So Genghis is literally working him to death simply because he can't get organized enough to respect Poor John's time better. If he could respect other people's time, he could learn to use it well and not have people jump through ridiculous hoops to redo things over and over because they weren't given adequate information in the first place. This place can be so inefficient, it scares me.

Last week, Genghis asked me to come in on Sunday to speak with him about our project. (This is not unusual, as he thinks that no one does anything really important on the weekends anyway, which one could argue is true.) So, whatever, I agreed even though I knew it would be a fruitless meeting.

So I come in on Sunday after yoga, and I admit, I was in a pretty good mood because I had just ridden my bike to yoga and then bought an ice cream cone. At about 12:15 pm, I come upstairs to find Genghis and Poor John sitting in the office, which is no less than a steam bath because they don't turn the air conditioner on on the weekends. (That's because people aren't typically working on the weekends, but I digress.) The first thing that happens is that Genghis asks me sweetly to go back downstairs and also get him an ice cream cone. It was a cute enough request, and he looked so covetous of my treat, that I did it without too much squirming. It's then 12:35. I go back to my desk to wait for Genghis to be done talking to Poor John. I surf the web for puppy porn.

12:58. Poor John emerges. I assume this means I'm supposed to get up and go in for my turn. I go in to see the boss man, but he's on the phone. He gestures for me to come in and sit down, which I do. Five minutes later, he's still on the phone. I glare at him. He flashes all ten fingers, which I take to mean come back in ten minutes. I go back to my desk and wait for him to come get me when he's done.

1:25. I get sick of waiting and looking at homeless puppies (ok, one can never really get sick of looking at homeless puppies because homeless puppies are soooo niiiice) so I get up and go back in there. He's off the phone, so I start in with some questions. For some reason he decides to cut me off and says we should go in the conference room. Fine. 1:32. We sit down and discuss the project for about 6 minutes. (That's right, you almost missed it.) We then spend another 45 minutes talking about Formula One racing and other Genghis Hobbies. ("Talking" isn't exactly the right word to describe what we were doing, but at least one of us was talking.) It's sad, because this is Genghis's form of socializing, so I let him do it.

2:15. I wait for him to finish with the Hobbies, and try to discuss something important about another project. At this point, he sees fit to return to his office for the rest of the discussion, so he can play solitaire and answer emails while pretending to listen to me. I say that if he would wait three minutes I could say my piece, to which he responds, "Well, you can talk and walk, can't you? Let's go to my office." I blather, he pretends (poorly) to listen, and blah blah, et cetera. I give up on communication and try to leave, even though I'm worried about Poor John's health (at this point he's glistening like a block of cheddar left out after the family picnic).

Before I leave, Genghis says that I should come in at seven on Monday because he has something important I need to do for another one of our jobs, and he'll leave the information on my desk for me when I get in. I agree to do this, because resistance is futile.

Monday, 7 am. I come in. There is nothing on my desk except my own usual crap. I call Genghis, who says that he'll call me back in ten minutes.

8:31 am. Genghis calls and says that I'll need to call him back at 10 am so he and I can have a conference call with another colleague.

10:00 am. I call. Genghis says he'll call me back in twenty minutes.

10:15 am. I begin a process that is known as "levying the asshole tax." This is a term that Anna coined to refer to the times that you almost purposely waste time at work because you're steamed.

10:44 am. I am finishing up this blog entry. Before I leave you lovely reader(s), I present you with this image of the cover of A Star is Born, the remake starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand. I am including this here for no other reason than that I'm sort of fascinated by this cover in the way that I'd be fascinated by a closeup of roadkill. This image has skeeved me out since the first time I saw it. It's got something for everyone - it's very seventies, moist and yet frizzy, libidinous and yet ridiculous. Enjoy.