The Rocket Report

Nora's back...

2009-07-06T21:51:00.005-04:00

...and she's swingin' a rutabaga in the kitchen, as the home folks say.

Orange-Scented Roasted Tilapia with Fennel, Carrots, and Arugula
serves two plus one lunch planover - easily scaled up for four or more
~one large fennel bulb, sliced very thinly (fronds reserved for couscous)
~10 to 12 small, young carrots, peeled and halved lengthwise
~1 lb. tilapia filet(s)
~zest of one orange, minced (reserve ¼ tsp. for couscous)
~1 c. baby arugula (or chopped standard arugula), loosely packed
~juice of two oranges (reserve 2 TB for couscous)
~1/3 c. of white wine (not chardonnay)
~2 TB butter, divided
~olive oil
~salt
~white and black pepper

Preheat oven to 450°F. Toss slices of fennel (reserve one slice) and carrot in olive oil.

Arrange fennel slices in one central layer on the bottom of a shallow baking dish; array carrots on either side of the fennel bed. Sprinkle with salt and orange zest. Roast for 10 minutes. During the roasting period, combine the orange juice, white wine, and single fennel slice in a shallow pan on the stove and bring to a simmer. The aim is to reduce volume by about half.

At the ten minute mark, take the vegetables out of the oven and add the tilapia filet(s) on top of the bed of fennel. Drizzle with olive oil and spoon 2 TB of the simmering wine-orange sauce over the fish and return to the oven for 10 to 15 more minutes of roasting, or until fish is cooked through. Meanwhile, when the sauce has reduced, remove the fennel slice and add salt to taste and a hint of white and black pepper. Then mount the sauce with the butter, 1 TB at a time, whisking to incorporate all the fat evenly. Remove from heat and set aside.

To plate, lay down a bed of raw arugula leaves. Dish the fish with fennel and carrots over the arugula and spoon some sauce over the lot. Serve next to couscous salad, below.

Orange-Scented Couscous with Green Olives
~2/3 c. large pearl (Israeli) couscous
~2 TB orange juice
~pinch salt
~olive oil
~1 small shallot, minced
~8-10 green olives, pitted and sliced
~minced fennel fronds
~reserved ¼ tsp. orange zest

Cook couscous until tender in however much water is required; drain excess liquid off in a colander. Return drained couscous to the empty pot and, while still warm, toss with all of the remaining ingredients. Serve warm or cold.

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We joined the local CSA in Queens and have been loving each week's delivery. The big discovery so far has been kohlrabi: looks like a Russian space droid, tastes like the blessed offspring of a mild apple, a red potato, and jicama. NOM. Another thing we've received in abundance has been arugula, which I find nearly magical as a veggie. We had rhubarb in the first week and strawberries in the first two, and only just now have we received the first cabbage of the year. Cabbage: lasts forever and seems to linger on in the fridge, as each portion you use only nibbles away at the almost self-replicating bulk of the cabbage. Oh, ugh. I might just go whole hog and make sauerkraut out of the whole stupid thing.

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Oh, my absence? Yeah. I plead lazy and unmotivated. Oh and, this being food again? I think we're going in that direction after all, especially with the weekly CSA being such a boon. I'm going to aim for a weekly kitchen session that uses the seasonal glut, so you've got some cabbage to look forward to, dear hearts...

Woah yeah, woah no!

2009-02-14T22:43:00.004-05:00

Well.

Things began to pick up in late October, not just because of the glut of fall holidays (Halloween and Thanksgiving, my bi-fecta of awesome). The Election! Oh, the election. All of our hopes confirmed, the grand catharsis. The relief, the release of tension. The weight, almost literal, lifted. The realization that I'd felt so bad for so long and I didn't have to have that low simmer on anymore. Then, in early December, another switch flipped, and I was suddenly rushing into a new job, a new city, a new life. And, to paraphrase an album I like very much, everything that happened happened that day.

This is the short version, clearly. The long version starts on December 15 and doesn't stop until, well, not even now. On December 8 and 10, I interviewed on the phone. On December 13, I woke up in my own bed for what would be the last time for many weeks. On December 15 I interviewed in person. On December 17 I interviewed in person in New York City. On December 18, I flew almost all the way home for the winter holiday. On December 19 at 2 AM, I arrived at home in a rental carload of strangers from my cancelled final flight leg. On December 19 at 11 AM, I was offered and accepted a new job. On December 20th, I booked tickets to California for a new job work trip. On December 22, in my jammies and in front of the fireplace at my parents' house, I gave a complicated "three" weeks notice. On December 28, I flew back to Bostonland. I worked for My Now Former Big Corporate Employer for three days. I had a calm but bewildered New Year, portentious in every way: this, friends, is A Very New Year. January 1: officially on the payroll at My Moderately Sized Independent Employer. January 4: fly to California for "our" sales meeting, whereat I say things like "oh, I'm new. What day is it now? Yes, this is my second day on the job." January 10: fly home. January 12-16: my final week at My Now Former Big Corporate Employer. January 16: I take the bus to New York City, and I do not intend to leave without a lease; on Jan. 17, I have an apartment. On Jan. 19, I begin training for my new job with my new boss, who comes up to Bostonland. On Jan. 23, I rent a truck. On Jan. 24, I wake up at "home" and head for "home": we load the truck with about 1/3 of the Rocket Household possessions and move, at least a little, to New York. On Jan. 26, I start my new job, just over one month from sitting in front of the fireplace with my mom and dad and talking about how truly insane the next four weeks would have to be.

I've been working for three weeks, and I work from about 8 in the morning to around midnight. This is exceptional and will not be the norm. But, as I've proven over and over in the past two months, I am the kind of lady who Does What Has To Be Done. The rest of the Rocket Household and attendant possessions arrive Feb. 28 in a second rented truck.

So you'll understand, dear reader, if I have no idea what day it is.

Except that it's Valentine's Day. I am drinking Pinot Noir and listening to Lou Reed. Happy Valentine's Day!

Cold creeping in

2008-10-20T21:32:00.010-04:00

Saturday night saw the first "killing frost" of the year in Bostonland, with Sunday clear and cold. Monday much the same, especially in the morning. Soup weather. This was dinner tonight, thrown together with my usual approach. I have a pressure cooker, a stovetop machine I highly recommend, and that makes this a 20 minute affair, no lie.

Velvet Potato & Cauliflower Soup with Roasted Garlic
serves two for dinner with planovers; certainly serves four for dinner with a salad or sammich
~1 TB olive oil + 1 TB butter (omit for vegans)
~medium onion, diced
~2 cloves raw garlic, smashed and roughly chopped
~3 medium white potatoes, peeled and cut into 1" dice or so
~small head of cauliflower, florets and stems, cut into medium chunks
~5-6 c. water
~vegetable bullion cube
~1/8 tsp. dried thyme
~white pepper
~salt to taste
~1 large head of roasted garlic*
~chopped chives for garnish, optional

Heat oil (and melt butter) in the bottom of your pressure cooker or soup pot. Add diced onions and cook over medium-low until very soft and translucent. Throw in raw garlic, potatoes, and cauliflower, and toss to coat in fat. Add thyme, pepper, bullion cube, and water, and...

a. ...lock the pressure cooker down. Crank the heat to high and let it be until the vent releases a strong stream of steam, then turn down to medium-low. Ensure that a modest, quiet stream of steam continues to issue from the vent and hold at pressure for 5-7 minutes. Then, remove from heat and loose the steam release valve. When all pressure is released, crack open the cooker and proceed to the next step.
b. ...bring to a boil over high heat. Then, reduce to a simmer and simmer until vegetables are completely soft, however long that takes in a soup pot. Proceed to the next step.

Remove all cloves from the roasted head of garlic and add to the hot pot, stirring in. Then, puree soup until completely smooth in batches in a blender (I have not graduated to an immersion blender, no). Return soup to the cooker/pot and bring back to steaming hot. Serve with crusty bread and a late season salad of spinach, beets, carrot, and apple.

*What, you don't just roast a ton of garlic on the weekends in the fall? That's odd. Here's how: lay a head of garlic on its side--still in its paper--and cut off the tops of all/most of the cloves, setting this cap of cloves aside. Repeat with two other heads. Place opened heads, roots down, in any shallow oven-proof receptacle (I use a glass pie dish). Drizzle slowly and liberally with olive oil, letting oil permeate and soak in. Sprinkle with salt, dried thyme, dried rosemary, black pepper. Place clove caps back on and drizzle those tops with more olive oil. Cover the receptacle with foil, tightly crimped shut at the edges. Roast at 375 degrees until the heads of garlic yield to light pressure on their sides and the cloves are caramel-colored, about 40 minutes give or take.

+ + +

I didn't mean for this to become a food blog, honest. What I'm not telling you, here, is The Disaster of the Spaetzle. Let us never speak of it again.

+ + +

Halloween is coming up. It's pretty much my favorite holiday, though in recent years I've been disappointed in my observation thereof. I am at fault entirely on this, because I have failed to actually live in Boston since we moved here: I've failed to make friends, I've declined to learn about the social life, I don't know anything about clubs, groups, venues, events, etc. So it comes Halloween and I experience a little regret. Why didn't I make a life here, so I could celebrate my favorite holiday with friends? Why wasn't I able to do like I did in Chicago, and get through the first, difficult months of reaching out and building a social circle? And there's the answer: I already did that; I built a life in Chicago and that's where my life was. And also: Boston's only been a stopover for me, drawing even now to its close and taking any shame I feel for being aloof and unsocial with it. Next stop, New York City, which is something I can say on the record now that I've made the announcement to my uppers at work. Shuh-BOOM.

Off the request line.

2008-10-15T20:21:00.009-04:00

I owe someone a little something from a few posts ago, so this one's for you, Jacket.
That's my muscle, fools. I've been working on it.

I'm just over a year into my Going to The Gym to Get Ripped Initiative and I've hit a bit of a plateau. I worked with a trainer for my first month and a half; this was as much as I could afford (it is a swank, swank gym that I can only attend through the miracle of My Big Corporate Employer's health care plan subsidy). I'd been doing that plan--with results, no doubt--but I was starting to feel like I wasn't making more progress. So I took a preview class for a little something they call BURN. Which burns, by the way. The miniclass was 30 minutes and I was sweating like a sweaty pig--I can only guess that in the full hour class I would have been in a pile of sweaty soreness on the floor. But I felt great afterwards and, just like the trainer predicted, I find that my body is craving the increased heart rate, the sweat, and the deep breaths that I get from the cardio portion as well as the soreness and wrung out feeling from the weight work. So I've been picking up the literal pace of my workout. This fast walk/jog/run/jog/walk/run/jog/run/walk flies in the face of my prior attitude to moving at anything other than a swift walk. I have even been known to express the sentiment that I don't even run to catch a bus, if I'm late for work. But I do now, because damn if it don't feel fine.

Back on it

2008-09-29T20:43:00.005-04:00

I have shrugged off the carelessly draped sport coat of kitchen failure tonight, I tell you. Forty-five minutes from scratch to awesome:

Roasted Butternut Squash and Rice Pilaf, with Compound Butter
serves two for dinner and planover lunch; could serve 4-6 as a side to something else
~1 medium butternut squash, unpeeled, cut in half lengthwise, with seeds and pulp scooped out
~1/2 large (or one small) white onion, diced
~1 large carrot, diced
~2 ribs celery, diced
~1/4 tsp. dried thyme
~4 whole cloves
~3/4 c. golden raisins
~3/4 to 1 c. cooked chick peas
~3/4 c. uncooked brown basmati rice
~1 1/2 c. and a splash of water
~1/4 c. toasted walnuts, chopped and divided (see below)
~salt to taste

Set oven to roast (375-400 degrees). Rub cut sides of squash with olive oil and place cut side down on an oiled rimmed baking sheet. Slip sheet into oven and ignore while you prep pilaf. Squash is done when a knife point inserted into the thick neck meets no resistance (40 min? You'll know).

In wide skillet (with a tight fitting lid) filmed with olive oil, cook onion, carrot, and celery until soft. About halfway to soft, add raisins and toss. At "soft," add thyme and cloves, stir, and cook to bloom the smells, about 1 minute. Add chick peas and rice, stir, and heat through, about 2 minutes. When the heat has come up and rice has taken up some oil from the veggies and pan, add the water and pump heat up to get to a boil. After you reach a boil, reduce to a simmer and cover with tight lid. Shake periodically to ensure that nothing sticks and that moisture moves around the pan evenly. Simmer until rice has absorbed *almost* all liquid and is cooked through (30 min? Just test it and see if it's rice or it's twigs; again, you'll know when it's done. "Doin' it all at once" tip: This is a great time to make the compound butter). Turn off heat, add 1/2 of the toasted walnuts, fluff with spoon, salt to taste, and let sit, covered, until ready to serve.

To plate and serve: slip your knife through the squash half lengthwise to create a quarter section. Place quarter section peel side down on the plate. Dish pilaf over/next to squash, all arty-like, and top with a generous dollop (about 1 T or more) of compound butter...

Shallot-Apple-Sage-Walnut Compound Butter
Soften 6 T of unsalted butter and mix the following thoroughly into it:
~1 shallot, minced
~1/2 small tart apple, peeled, very fine dice
~10-12 fresh sage leaves, minced
~1/8 c. toasted walnuts, chopped very fine
~dash white pepper
~pinch salt

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It's got beans, rice, squash, nuts, raisin: a meal in itself, but I imagine if you swing such a way that this would just kill next to a pork chop.

Also, you all know that these recipes are just things I make up, and that substitutions are totally welcome, suggested, and occasionally required, right? I have always hated the Tyrannical Recipe idea--that one MUST have all of the components on hand before making something. There are recipes I follow to the letter, faithfully, because I can: I have a very full pantry and spice cabinet, so I have shallots, white pepper, sun dried tomatoes, miso, molasses, chipotle peppers in adobo, etc. etc. etc. etc. on hand almost all the time because stocking is a priority. But I would never not riff on a recipe if I found I was without something--better that than not making it at all. So if you don't have something, leave it out or substitute it. I find it hard to write down what I cook as dinner recipes sometimes, because I really just grab stuff and throw it in without thinking about amounts or how someone else (or myself) might re-create the dish. But I am trying to more faithfully document dinner, both for my twos and threes of readers, but for a certain true believer who wants these for an assemblage of recipes she's finding time to put together.

Big Girl Bed, or, "Mattresses I Have Known"

2008-09-27T13:38:00.005-04:00

Mattress: now to be filed under "Things I Have Impulsively Purchased Before Thinking Completely Through How to Get Them Home," joining such illustrious and relatively smaller-ticket items as a 12-pound watermelon and 70 lbs. of cat litter.

I'd been waiting out a coworker's moving sale, holding on until the day before his departure to ask "hey, still looking for someone to take that mattress?" in a very calculated attempt to pay less money for an already bargain-priced months-old queen sized pillow top mattress and box spring set. I have a cold, cold heart. In the end, I got a definite deal, paying only slightly more than my nearly insulting lowball initial bid. But this all went down in the space of an afternoon at work. I didn't take time to clear it with my bedmate and didn't really have a plan of how, in fact, I would get the large mattress and its box spring from his second floor apartment across two towns to my second floor apartment, that very evening, all whilst still wearing my work clothes (pencil skirt, kitten heels).

A very fruitful bunch of scrambling produced the finest outcome I could have planned, had I planned. I booked a Zipcar--a pickup truck--from a location mere blocks from the mattress; my partner J just happened to be on the same train as me when I called to relay our new evening activity; the box spring turned out to be split, making it very much easier to move (split box spring! I'll never go back!); Thursday was the last non-rainy day predicted for the next four days; and it was rush hour, meaning my need to drive no more than 30 miles per hour did not make me the slowest person on the road. We trundled back in bumper-to-bumper traffic, stuffed full of pillow top mattress, making liberal use of the side mirrors. We even met a neighbor across the hall when, having firmly wedged the mattress vertically and about eight inches off the ground in the tight corner of the top of our stairs, we had to knock on her door to ask her to open up and permit us to infringe on that last crucial three inches of turn-around room her open door would provide. While giggling like maniacs. Maniacs in kitten heels.

That night, the pillow top sat on the floor in our living room, as we did not have the right sized sheets to put on it or the wherewithall to move the old full sized mattress out of the bedroom. Our living room, in scale with the rest of our modestly sized apartment, looked like a bunch of 5-year-olds were playing that game where the floor is hot lava, and you push the furniture together to avoid walking on the lava floor: from left to right as you "enter" the room, the bookcase was flush with the wall, the surplus TV (don't ask...) was next to the shelf, the mattress was flush with the shelf, the coffee table was flush with the mattress, the couch was flush with the coffee table, and the couch was, as usual, pushed up against the wall of the room. The cat thinks we bought him the World's Biggest Kitty Bed.

This is a Major Change around Chez Rocket. A months-old mattress is as close as I've ever been to a Brand New Bed, for one thing: our old bed was a busted-ass full size set handed down from J's sister when she departed Boston, and the box spring was cracked midway down the long axis of one side of the bed even then. We put it right on the floor, a throwback to the garret days of post-college graduation. The break was on my side, causing a sag that led to back pain as well as a certain mid-mattress slump that in turn led to domestic disputes about Your Side, My Side, and Stealing the Covers. Back in Chicago, we most recently had a bed frame--the brass-and-flowered-knob type--and full sized set from J's grandparent's guest room passed on to us as the result of the kind of grandparental downsizing that can happen around this time in our lives. It was serviceable, which is about all I have ever known a mattress to be. Prior to that bed, J had a second-hand set that she kept on the floor and I had a futon set permanently into "bed" mode. I remember her mattress as quite comfortable and I can say, still, that that original futon (bought while I was unemployed because I realized that I'd never get a job with the kind of sleep I was getting on my tiled floor on my inflatable camp mattress) has been more comfortable than any other mattress I've had. Up to this nearly new pilllow top queen.

So we now have the newest, biggest, fanciest, and most expensive mattress we've ever owned. The flip side is that we're now pretty much obliged to move it next time we move instead of, as has been our wont, abandoning the past mattress in favor of moving less and buying on arrival.

The other flip side (I'm employing a gaming die rather than a coin, apparently) is that we now have a bustedass full sized standard mattress on our hands, and we'd like to find it a third (maybe fourth--I don't know if J's sister bought it used) home. On the one hand, I can attest to the bedbug-free, clean, non-smoking home nature of this mattress, which gives me a leg up on some entries in the third- or fourth-hand mattress market in this college-filled town (Allston, particularly, went through some buggy times in the past few years). On the other, I also know that this mattress is uncomfortable for me and the box spring is certainly busted. So I put an add on Craigslist in the free section, employing humor to honestly portray my mattress and the things I think it can be now: basement soundproofing for your band! a prop in your production of Once Upon a Mattress! a guest bedroom bed, used only sometimes! I hope only to hand it off to someone in need of a clean free mattress.

I got five replies in 20 minutes. Still waiting for final word from my most interested party, but I hope to ditch this thing soon. I'm tired of staring at it from my Big Girl Bed, as it leans accusingly up against my bedroom wall as if to imply that I've gone soft, I've become bougie: what, you need your bed off the floor now? You require back support, weakling? You used to be cool, man. You used to travel light.

I am, however, sleeping like a baby these days.

Success; failure

2008-09-22T21:28:00.005-04:00

This is embarrassing.

I know I put it out there like I'm some sort of kitchen demigod, at least, but I must tell you, some days it just does not come together. Tonight was one of those...days.

In the last few years, my facility in the kitchen has progressed such that I rarely fall flat on my damned face, cooking-wise. In the past, major failures have been the fault of the cookbook; the repeat offender was so consistently disappointing that we threw it away after the Nth consecutive disaster (celery soup...seriously? Seriously). But anything that goes awry now is pretty much all my fault.

I was getting fancy with some risotto this evening, and through a series of steps that I'd prefer did not enter the public record, I produced pretty much the same effect as if I'd made up a pan of Campbell's Tomato soup, cranked in a little pepper, and then made risotto in that. *shudder* It felt like the Methodist church potluck version* of some bastard risotto: "Creamy Rice Casserole with Cheese." Oh, the cheese--another in a string of shameful missteps. My laziness often allows some really excellent improvisation, if I come up short of an ingredient list, but in this case, I'll just say that Monterrey Jack cheese DOES NOT belong in risotto, even under duress. Even if you're, like, camping, do not sub in this cheese if you value your personal definition of risotto--it will so harm the definitional integrity of the concept of "risotto" that the eventual, inevitable result will be that you find yourself whipping up some "risotto" for an evening dinner party by thwumping a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom, a can of skim milk, one diced white onion, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, and a jar of mushrooms (drained) into your slo-cooker in the morning, cranking that puppy to "low," and heading off to work, whistling that delightful theme from the André Riu special that aired on the PBS last night**.

In short, this dinner sits at the top of a very slippery slope. The planovers will only remind me of my failure, so I am abandoning them to my partner, who did not find dinner nearly as offensive as I did.

+ + +

As for my success: it's been just over a year since I joined the gym and I am still going. This is major, as you may recall. My results are result-y, which is good because I went in with only one explicit goal: get ripped. I'm pretty ripped, I gotta say, and it's less difficult to haul ass up the hill on my bike. I have gained and lost no weight at all, which is interesting but not at all important to me. I find, however, that it is harder to keep pushing myself to do more, to max the envelope, as it were, without the encouragement of a trainer. I had one for about eight weeks when I started and I'm thinking about signing up for a few more sessions now that I have a little more experience and focus, routine-wise. Not that my liiiiifting isn't awwwesome, dude. So go me, go gym, go triceps!

And a second success: the following represents the final payment of one of my student loans, so take THAT, University Accounting Services!

_____________________________________

* I must assure you that I love and respect the Methodist church's tradition of the potluck, and if you do not believe me, ask me for my Tuna Noodle Casserole recipe.
** I have only one beef with violinist André Riu: WGBH plays the stuffing out of his insufferably bland, occasionally absurd concerts during pledge drive week(s), causing me to miss things like Masterpiece Theatre or, worse, Nova. This prompts me to only half jokingly call him "that André Riu fucker." Special message to Mr. Riu: Sorry! I know it's not your fault; I should be calling them "those WGBH fuckers," but that does not trip as lightly off the tongue.

On a wedding

2008-09-10T22:02:00.008-04:00

I am lucky to have the kinds of friends who, when they get married, prompt one to think, that's it. That's why marriage is desirable, that's why it is wrong to keep anyone from marrying, that's why anyone wants to do this at all--because is can be this good, this filled with love, this riotous, this unifying, this affirming.

So DS and KP got married out here in Bostonland over the holiday weekend and it was grand. And when we were all dancing after the service and after the dinner, we realized that the reason that everyone gets all cuh-RAY-zy dancey-pants at weddings is that they've spent many minutes, maybe hours, being unable to leap off the bridesmaid line, past the groomsmen, and tackle the beloved bride and groom in a big, stuffing-busting hug. So we shake it loose, we drink it up and sweat it all out for a few hours on a lie-flat dance floor so we can do something with the hot heart energy that's been building up because we weren't free to hold them, because we aren't all together anymore, because there is so much that we don't get to do with and say to each other everyday anymore. We have to find a way to have years of love and dancing in one night, and this happens at weddings because that's when adults can go on vacations together like big squalling masses of undergrads again, stay in hotels, drink champagne straight from the bottle, play dress-up, stay up late, eat cake, meet families, jump on beds, and carve out one or two nights from Our Big Kid Lives to celebrate our friends, their families, their love, and then the family we all make together.

Not to get all sentimental or anything. Cheers to the DS-KP union; couldn't have happened to a better pair of people.

Laying low

2008-08-18T22:09:00.004-04:00

I appear to have come down with my customary case of Olympic Fever.

Only once every four years, for 16 days, to I give myself the freedom to embrace the ignorance necessary to believe in the possibility of global unity, fair play, achievement, and general happy-making embodied by the ideal Olympic games. This includes, but is not limited to, believing in the amateur athlete (which I've been informed is a very old-fashioned manner of looking at the Games), believing in the purity of the competitors and the unimpeachable judges, believing in an even playing field, believing in the noble intentions of both international bodies of sport and nation states, and believing in the goodwill of all countries towards others. It means knowing but choosing to then ignore things like, oh, the maximum amount of coverage for female athletes dictated by the governing body of beach volleyball; the troubling interlocked economic policies and environmental legacy of the host nation; the, as friend JS puts it, confusion of the ersatz and the real often seen in China; the dismaying possibility that the Iranian swimmer chose to plead sick rather than get into a pool with an Israeli; Russia invading Georgia; the US President then running his mouth off about a sovereign nation's territorial integrity; the treacly, oversentimental and massively jingoistic American television coverage of the games; Usain Bolt's borderline showboating at the finish line, the machismo of which makes me think of his home country's high danger for homosexuals; and the very real questions of the Chinese women's gymnasts' ages and what that means for children's rights, for women's rights and safety.

So I know it's out there, all of it. But I only get 16 days to pretend the world is what I want it to be, with all competitors supported by coach and country, competing on a level playing field without advantages of a first-rate first world training system or of drugs. I only take a few weeks--and it's always in an election year--to tell myself the very comforting lie of global peace and pleasantry, of the sageness of presidents and prime ministers, of the universal acknowledgment of and fight against inequality and suffering for all. This is my romantic global moment, in which I see no wrong in My Beloved, in which I ignore all flaws and abuses, in which I am sure *I* can change My Beloved for the better.

So I guess I'm saying I'm still on vacation. And that I sure do geek out over the Olympics.

Return

2008-08-03T21:47:00.003-04:00

I had a safe, predictable series of flights on Friday and am back home, more or less. I'm not quite done with my mental vacation, but tomorrow's shocking return to the office will jolt me back to reality.

I hope to have travelogues for you this week, but a few projects need my attention this week, not the least of which is laundry from my trip. I packed (and dressed) like a backpacker; consequently, when I got home I smelled and looked a little like a backpacker.

If you're interested in my many, many photos, please visit my Flickr stream here; I don't want to clog the blog, you dig?

Gone fishin'

2008-07-20T20:26:00.003-04:00

Well, not fishin', precisely, but gone anyways. I'm Peru-bound on Wednesday and will be at an elevation of roughly 12,400 feet by Thursday night. Madre de dios, I am going to have some fierce altitude sickness, right?

It's winter down there, so I'm packing things like sweaters, hats, and gloves. Feels a little weird given that today it was 93 degrees and humid out, but when I'm at Lake Titicaca (Titicaca! I am an eight-year-old!) I'm sure I'll feel warm, not weird.

Check back after August 1. Thank you for your continued patronage.

Pancakes are dinner too

2008-07-15T20:12:00.006-04:00

Today's market in Copley yielded a great take of fresh, local vegetables for not a lot of money, and as I rode the train home and thought about food, as I very frequently do, a plan came together. Informed by last summer's fritter experiments and a savory spinach pancake recipe from the NYT last March, I raided the fridge in my trademark style and really knocked it out of the park. Culinarily speaking. I must say.

Chard and Sweet Corn Buttermilk (Dinner) Pancakes
serves two with a salad for dinner or one as dinner, then lunch
Prepare, combine, and set aside:
~one shallot (or two scallions, or some onion, whatever), fine dice
~kernels cut off one medium-large ear of fresh sweet corn
~about 1 1/2 c. loosely packed chopped fresh tender chard
~about 1 tsp minced lemon zest
Thoroughly mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl and set aside:
~1 c. flour
~1/4 tsp baking soda
~1/4 tsp + a dash of salt
~1/8 tsp nutmeg
~1/8 tsp cayenne (to taste)
~dash black pepper
Prep wet ingredients:
~3/4 c. buttermilk
~1 egg, beaten in to buttermilk
~2 tsp olive oil, beaten in to liquids

Heat your skillet or griddle of choice in your standard pancaking procedure. (For me, this means heating my trusty one-burner round cast iron flat griddle, which is cured as black as a spade and as nonstick as...a teflon...spade.) Add wet ingredients to dry and mix just to combine and break up lumps. Dump vegetable ingredients into batter and fold in, coating evenly. If it seems too thick, mix in a splash of buttermilk at a time until it has a bit of flow--but keep it tight. Drop onto the medium-hot pan by the 1/4 cup or so, spreading the pancake evenly out to about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick to ensure that it cooks through. Cook on one side until golden; flip and attain goldenness on side two. You're aiming to give the vegetables a slight cooking before you've overdone the 'cake. Keep completed 'cakes warm in a heated oven (unless it's summer and that's just a stupid idea) and eat promptly with ad hoc sauce detailed below.

Impromptu tomato chutney for pancakes
~1 c. quartered grape tomatoes
~8 basil leaves, chopped fine
~juice of 1/2 lemon
~salsa to taste
Mix all together to desired taste and consistency. Eat with pancakes.

+ + +

Get to know the "planover," friend: it's more intentional than the leftover and telegraphs a certain agency and kitchen foresight to those looking at your lunch in the office, leading often to lunch envy and "oooo, are those planovers?" Yes; yes they are.

Note also that the above is a half recipe from its original jumping off point of the NYT 'cake formula, which leads me to believe that you can double it with ease and without fear.

My own advice

2008-07-12T11:34:00.004-04:00

As you may know, I am a proponent of shopping your local businesses before shopping the chains or the internet. When I'm lucky enough to have more than one local to choose from, I try to buy from all pretty equally, unless there is a clearly superior vendor (as with Laurie's Planet of Sound in Chicago, a far, far better record store in my experience than Reckless Records).

For comic books in Boston, this has meant that I've gone to three different shops.

I absolutely love New England Comics, specifically their Malden location. The store is huge, open, and clearly organized, and the staff there has been really friendly, helpful, and engaged--they even took the time to talk shop with me on a Saturday before NY ComicCon. But it takes me a bus and a train, or two train lines, to get there, so it's not my monthly stop.

My more regular monthly comics purveyor has been Newbury Comics, because I can get records there as well, they have a couple of locations I can hit without too much trouble, and they send a weekly email of what's out that week, reminding me to go get my fixes in a timely manner. But with offerings ranging from dumb T-shirts ("Moustache Rides, $0.25!") to DVDs to "punk" belt buckles, Sox caps, and vinyl figurines, the store pulls in a customer and employee base that isn't specifically made up of the kind of fanboy (gender inclusive) that I aspire to be. But it's been a perfectly serviceable experience.

My third comic shop is Comicazi, in my neighbourhood. A tighter space, but still a comprehensive selection. Things with Comicazi had been just fine--until yesterday. Yesterday I'd been to Newbury to get some issues of Buffy Season 8, but because I was behind a few months (for shame!) I needed multiple issues: 14 through 16, inclusive. Newbury did not have 14. Now, it is my own fault that I am short an ish and I really should keep up better, but damn if I did not want 14. This story arc ("Wolves at the Gate") has had at least one MAJOR BOMBSHELL and I neeeeeed every ish. I went to Comicazi after Newbury and scanned the shelves for 14, but it wasn't there. So I asked the guy at the counter, mostly for confirmation, "if a back issue of a comic isn't up on the shelf, you totally do not have it, huh?" He asked which one, and when I said "Buffy 14" something wonderful happened. He went to a stack behind the counter of every Buffy single issue, every Buffy trade, every omnibus. "This guy asked me to hold these for him, and I've held every one, but he's never shown up to buy them and I never see him. I'm going to sell 'his' 14 to you, because he never came through and I am a business owner. If he were a True Believer, he would have come in for them, and you should have this."

I felt both awesome and awful, because in two ways I'd been a bad fangirl: I'd dallied in getting the ish in the first place, and I'd bought the other issues somewhere else. This guy didn't know me from nobody. I'd only been in a couple of times, but he dipped into a delinquent customer's stash for me. So the question of where I will get all comics henceforth is certainly answered. These guys should get all of my local money. I did not deserve that ish, but I will work to deserve it. I've been a fool, Comicazi! Forgive me! I'll be back!

Quick hits

2008-07-07T12:50:00.007-04:00

Delivery methods for Coca-Cola Classic in the order of their relative deliciousness to me, EDITED (1 being most, 5 being least):

glass bottle coke from Mexico (thanks for the reminders, Daisy and Vivek...)
from the fountain at McDonald's
from any fountain
out of a can
out of a 2-liter bottle
out of any plastic bottle

Finest of the Magnum ice cream bars (available in Australia and other UK-type locales), in order of fineness (1 being most, 5 being least):

Magnum EGO
the one that was the multi-chocolate coated with chocolate and a layer of fudge
Magnum Crunch
plain
the one with almonds

Subjective personal ranking of the 7 Dark Tower novels, "best" (1) to "less best" (7):

When presented with a plate of nigiri-sushi and maki, the order in which I will eat it:

hamachi
cucumber roll
maguro
shrimp
octopus
eel
eel roll
hamachi again
oshinko roll

When presented with a long list of email addresses to send a message to, the order in which I will list them:

alphabetically

M&Ms varieties, from personal best to worst:

peanut
peanut butter
"crunch"
almond
rolled under the couch by accident
plain

Yes, I baked

2008-07-01T23:08:00.003-04:00

It's well known around the House of the Rising Somerville that I am the cook, not the baker. I am more comfortable when I can add, fix, doctor as I go; the pot's on the stove and it could all change moment to moment. Baking requires faith on two levels: that the recipe will prove worth it and that I've done it right, because once I close the door it's all over. I lack this faith. It's also almost certainly a control issue--the same reason I feel safer in a car than in a plane. I need to be in charge of the stew.

All the same, I baked this past weekend. My first run at biscotti was a total success. I owe most of this to the stupid-proof nature of biscotti: sugar, flour, whole eggs, baking powder, pinch salt, butter (or not), spices, flavours, fruit (or not). The other part I owe to the best baking book I own: Cook's Illustrated's Baking Illustrated. I just like reading the dang thing, too, but every recipe we've tried has worked out. The lemon-anise biscotti was no exception, and thanks to their detailed description of how they arrived at the perfect recipe, I know why the other recipe, from a very flash looking but sadly disappointing other baking book, was good, but not The Best Recipe.

So now I have about 30 lemon-anise and about 30 cherry-almond biscotti up in my kitchen. I foresee a lot of dunking in my near future.

+ + +

The family Rocket is coming to town. Ma and Pa roll into the airport tomorrow evening, and the first thing we'll do is dunk biscotti into warm milk, before bed. The next day, I'll enlist their help in hanging the new art before we go on a rangy walk around town, hitting my high spots: brunch, museums, dinner in my favorite spot. Friday is the Canada Day of the U.S., also known as the Fourth of July, also known as the Rocket parental wedding anniversary. We'll probably make a pizza and try to overhear the Pops. Pops. I just like saying Pops. Pops. Anyway, I've shored up milk, eggs, coffee, tea, and all those things you'd need to either hit the Oregon Trail or have your folks over. Popsicles and sorbet in the freezer, white wine and sherry and beer in the fridge.

You'll understand if I'm not around for a few days. First, the walkies; then, the deeply overindulgent eating; then, the POPS; then, the recovery.

Thensday

2008-06-28T18:57:00.004-04:00

When I related the story of how I am granted every other Friday off in the summer, my friend C remarked at my great skill at having manipulated space-time to get and hold on to a regularly occurring Thensday. You know: a day suspended off of the calendar, not planned, frequently unexpected, and wholly welcome. Snow days. Days when a rolling brown-out shuts down your parent company's server in Jersey and you all get to go home, or when the transformer on your building makes with the big boom and all the computer screens go blank. Every other Friday all summer for me. What better way to spend it than with flagrant idleness, unapologetic consumption, early drinking, and an action movie?

That's what I thought you'd say.

C and S and I arrived at a new-to-me hole-in-the-wall pub in Cambridge at around 11:30 and began to consume mass quantities. And nachos. When the rains came, we retreated from the patio into the bar and said "well, that settles it" and had another round. By the time we began to be a little sensitive about having outlasted multiple rounds of other patrons, the idea came up to go see the 4:15 of the new Angie Jolie shoot 'em up, Wanted.

This is the kind of movie that, upon seeing previews, prompts my ladyfriend and I to turn to each other and start a low, slowly accelerating chant of "brew and view, Brew and View, BREW and VIEW! BREW AND VIEW!!!" The Brew and View runs nights at the Vic in Chicago when they're not hosting a show; for a solid fiver, they play you two (three on Fridays and Saturdays) movies and the bar serves a high-value double (more like triple) well drink for not a ton of cashola. There are certain movies that lend themselves so well to this concept that I want to view them at the Brew and View, even though I wouldn't see them in any other circumstance (in a regular theater, at home, on a plane, at a friend's house...). Summer dreck fares especially well paired with beers, G&Ts, and cheap popcorn swiped off the abandoned table of the couple who are not staying for the second feature.

Wanted is most certainly summer dreck. Only two (almost three) things allowed me to endure it: I love the director Timur somethingsomething (Night Watch, Day Watch), I was drunk, and I have a shameful attraction to Angelina Jolie. That last one is only about 1/2 of a thing, though, as I find her less and less enrapturing as she acquires a colonialist's menagerie of global children. A far cry from "Hack the Planet," which is how I like to remember her. Oh, pixie cut Angie Jolie, you can make it all the way into my wireless network any weekend evening. *ahem* Where was I...ah yes, "dreck." It wasn't the alco-mo-hol that killed my brain cells, it was this movie. It was the un-twist ultimate twist near the end, the non-evocative evocation to action as the final line, the deeply uncompelling characters (how in the bright hell do you make a fraternity of weaver-assassins THIS boring?), and, on top of it all, an overqualified Morgan Freeman phoning--nay, texting--it in. I wanted to say, "This is Jack's disappointment at this worst realization of what Fight Club could be said to have given us as a film legacy." At least the chase scenes were filled with chases, and the film entire had that little Russian "I don't know what" (how do they say je ne sais quoi in Russian? Maybe they don't ever not know what...) that I love from Timur what'shisname.

I feel badly that C and S suffered through it with me, but they were also real tight by this time, and we'd had some ice cream, so the synapses that weren't languid with Newcastle were hopped up on sugar and butterfat.

If that's not a recipe for a summer movie experience, I just don't know what is.

Shouts out

2008-06-25T20:32:00.007-04:00

I want to take a quick moment to holla for some new additions to my blog roll over there, on the right. No, your right. Stage left. Yeah. Awesome.

The Wilhelm Scream - Helmed by an able gent indeed, the Wilhelm Scream is a GIFT to the blog world and we welcome it and Kumail with open damned arms. Saying it contains movie reviews is like saying that little Reagan had a behavioral disorder. Read it, live it, write a little song for it. I did, and it goes a little someth...hey, where're you going?

Eat Food - It's Sarah's food blog and maybe if we're lucky she'll update it from her summer in Florida. In a string bikini. And an apron, because burning yourself is not funny, y'all.

Real Media Ethics - From the moment Anne launched the good ship OH NO THE MEDIA DI'INT, I've been hanging on her every word. Smart, incisive, and well written, it's everything I didn't even know I needed from a media blog.

The Blog of Diminishing Returns - Econ prof Seth is wicked smart, and consistently pulls the curtain back from those little things that I always think must be fascinating from an economist's point of view. I do not have this point of view: I spent two semesters in econ classes and all I remember is cutting class with DS and, bizarrely, having a strong craving for Diet Coke...

The Highfield Bread Oven - Mark the trucker gets home to Maryland every couple of weekends, at which points he works on his bread oven. Progress is gradual but steady, and I always wish I were there.

They join the ladies at Puffery and the astoundingly thorough and worth it Less Than a Shoestring as topical (rather than strictly personal) reads that I hit.

Surf away, my minions. Can I call you that? Minions? I love you.

Getting things done

2008-06-23T22:50:00.007-04:00

I did a large load of dishes tonight. First, I was astounded that I used so few bowls and so many spoons. Does not compute. Second, I take a great deal of pleasure in doing as many dishes as possible with as little water and the most appropriate amount of soap possible. Some people get virtuously off when they buy organic food; I enjoy aggressively conserving water. Other aggressive acts of conservation/cheapskatery: we've been using and washing and reusing the same 20 or so gallon storage bags for about three years.

In other news, June's going by very quickly. I'd worked out a complex explanation of why it feels this way, involving the long duration of the first week of June--which was a full week long--and also the pocket of business travel that interfered with my use of the Big Corporate Employer-granted summer hours (every other Friday off). I really thought I'd have a little more summer in my summer, but looking down the barrel of my remaining weeks I see a lot of plans and a little less time than I'd imagined back in May.

Anyway, with my girl in Peru I'd made myself a list of home improvements and crafty-type projects to tackle while I have lots of self time. The first was, ah, to blog regularly. So. Cross that one off. The balance:

* frame comic book (Buffy #1, signed; thanks KP!)
* have framed handpainted fabric from India (two years after acquisition!)
* reupholster chair (found it in the alley!)
* design & sew arm covers for sofa (bad kitty! no shreddy!)
* get all up under the range top on my old stove and clean all the crap left there by the previous tenants (and us...)
* clean and oil dining room table
* top the craft desk with cork
* set up sewing machine/craft table on newly corked desk
* make requested aprons (3x! Late Mother's Day, Christmas, and birthdays! Bad Nora!)
* find killer sundress pattern
* make same
* purge shoes
* organize closet
* organize storage room on back of apartment
* conduct a modest book purge; sell as many as possible via Half.com
* seal tub edge with caulked tape
* get made when this method fails epically
* buy TV from that one kid
* sell TV when it turns out to be completely not what we thought it was
* clean fridge interior
* turn moderately ratty cashmere sweater into cardigan
* turn very ratty cashmere into pillows
* turn super ratty duvet into pillows

I feel like my progress has been adequate, and if I remembered how to write the strikethrough tag in HTML, you'd also feel that way, on my behalf, as you view the many things crossed off. It's a shame I don't remember all that self-taught coding. That's for next year.

+ + +

Another thing on my list: eating breakfast. I was totally inspired by Sarah at Brood. This might not seem so big, but it is for me, for despite my firm belief that breakfast is The Most Important Meal of the Day, I cannot seem to haul my ass out of bed the sufficient five to seven minutes that a brief morning meal would require. I like to think that my first and second cups of coffee at the office are almost a meal, but that's completely delusional. So I've been making breakfast happen, and I've been successful for almost three weeks. I try for protein and speed, and I try not to, oh, slice my finger open or choke or spill on myself or anything. English muffins have been buy-one-get-one lately, so this morning I had one with goat cheese and honey and tomorrow I will eat one with peanut butter. Some mornings I have a hard boiled egg and a ton of fruit.

And what's the freaking deal with fruit salad? I would never sit down and eat a banana, 12 strawberries, a handful of frozen raspberries, and two kiwi fruit - that's a ton of fruit at once, and, having grown up lower middle class, I find eating that much fruit a little decadent. But I will readily scarf that amount of fruit in a fruit salad.

My breakfast has a first name, it's NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM.

Moments of silence

2008-06-19T09:31:00.003-04:00

Let's have another one, please, for another acquaintance of mine from college who has passed.

My Small Midwestern Liberal Arts College is tightly knit, and my class, the class of 2001, has lost what feels like more than our share of friends. And I would call all of them friends, and I do feel my heart beneath my bones every time we lose one.

To T and his family--and to J and J and B--we are all your family and we remember your smiles and what it was like to share your time.

14 June

2008-06-14T09:14:00.003-04:00

Today, we are 29. This is the "pushing 30" year, the one about which many people are giving me that look. That look that implies that somehow this is the last good year.

I hate that look.

They're wrong, of course. I'm really excited about getting older; my grey hair is coming in quite evenly; I'm in the best shape of my life; my parents are still alive. I love my career, even though I hate my current job, and I have high hopes for the next step, which could be here even before the calendar year closes. I love my friends, even though I live near so few of them right now. I have a comfortable, small, lived-in apartment with a well-edited collection of books that only just fill the shelves and homemade art on the walls. I like my neighborhood even if I don't like my city. I do what I want, mostly, and am looking forward to the next thing.

Not too shabby, I must say.

I swears...

2008-06-09T21:40:00.003-04:00

I did not mean to leave you alone out there in the Internet, guideless without my guile.

I have returned.

The Esteemed Stew

2008-02-29T20:05:00.004-05:00

Woah, that got awfully heavy awfully quick, didn't it? Here's a recipe for some stew I made the other night when we didn't have too much sitting around and needed something fast. I call it "esteemed" because everyone who saw it at work the next day asked for the recipe. Which I had to come up with...

+ + +

Esteemed Weeknight Stew
olive oil
1 small or 1/2 large white onion, medium dice
1 medium eggplant, peeled and medium diced
1 can (standard can size...) diced tomatoes
1 can chickpeas
1/4 cup raisins
3/4 cup of uncooked quinoa
1 to 2 TB molasses
1 TB brown mustard
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt to taste
toasted almond slivers for garnish

spices: Measurements approximate, so add "to taste"
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 TB paprika OR less to taste

1. in olive oil in large wide stew pot, saute onions until softened and translucent
2. add eggplant, salt mildly and saute to soften slightly
3. clear a spot in the middle of the pot that reveals the bottom. Drizzle in a little olive oil and allow to heat. Add spice mix to this oil and saute briefly to "bloom" the fragrances of the spices. Should take about 60 to 90 seconds. Then, stir all together to distribute spices throughout.
4. Add can of tomatoes followed by 2 cans of water
5. Rinse and drain chickpeas, and add to pot
6. Bring to a simmer. As you bring to a simmer, add the raisins, molasses, and mustard
7. When you've reached simmer, add quinoa and continue to simmer, covered, for 13-15 minutes
8. Quinoa is done when the the grain can be easily "popped" by the teeth and when the white germ separates from the grain--it will look like little curly springs in some places. This means your stew is done.
9. Turn off the heat, add the lemon juice, taste for salt
10. Serve with almonds on top

+ + +

Coming soon - chickpea stew in the pressure cooker, and a near home run of an improvisation: "cheat"balls of tofu, nuts, etc.

This week on White Privilege Digest

2008-02-24T19:25:00.006-05:00

Because I recognize that my words live in the public sphere on this blog, I feel like I should elaborate a bit on white privilege and my thoughts on it. This is precipitated by a small dust-up over my quoting of an alumnus from my college, who, you'll recall, did not believe in white privilege. He contacted me and, in the resulting minor dust-up, I was able to articulate more of my feelings about the unearned, often unquestioned, power of whiteness. I'm sharing them here, with the full disclosure that I did not change the mind of my interlocutor and I doubt I would be able to: we were at loggerheads at the end of the discussion, with me believing that white privilege exists and him believing that all inequity could be accounted for by racism, and believing, in fact, that the idea of white privilege itself was racist (because it ascribes a characteristic--power--to a race) and appealed to "some people, most of whom have a sheltered, self-absorbed, self-centered view of the world."

Needless to say, I do not* agree with this at all. (*edited 2/29 for oops of "do/do not")

We spoke specifically about jobs--employment being one of those places where I feel like white privilege is very often in play and very infrequently questioned. Given the whiteness of board rooms, my interlocutor offered, "Perhaps there are more white people applying for a job than their(sic) are non-white people....". I ask: if one asked WHY more white people might apply for a job than would non-white people, what would that answer reflect? The simple racism of a landlord of a building in the area of the job, who did not want to rent to a non-white person, thereby keeping the person less conveniently near the job site? The simple racism of the corporation, putting forth a front (spoken or not--and if it is unspoken, what might lead one to hear it? You know my answer to that last bit...) that non-whites need not apply? The simple racism of an individual college admissions board member who didn't want to let a black student into a school that might have given that student an alumnus connection to someone who works at the corporation? Possibly even the simple racism of a non-white applicant who sees a white possible HR manager, a white possible boss, a coterie of white possible coworkers, and decides not to put in for a job because she doesn't want to work with white people?

My interlocutor offers this defense: that if 3 of 4 candidates for a job are white, all else being equal, there's a 75% chance that the hiree will be white if no acts of racism occur. And I say that "all else" will *not* be equal even if no overt, concerted racism is exercised because white privilege pervades the backstories and operational realities of all of the candidates. Ask the deeper questions, get the deeper answers.

I see an undercurrent that defines WHITE as the default, WHITE as the norm, WHITE as the prevalent racio-cultural experience, WHITE as the assumption in places as varied as the board room and the grocery store (where a another friend reports that a Mexican-American friend once went looking for a brown man's food and the white clerk did not recognize that food).

I do not understand how one can believe that there is racism in the world but deny that whiteness has advantages that are owed only to whiteness. I don't mean to put forth that white privilege is a *special kind* of racism. It's certainly tied up with racism. But my view and experience of the world has white privilege operating alongside racism as a force of continuing, behind-the-scenes empowerment of one group, by its own hand, over others.

So here's my thesis: White privilege is not something that non-white people hand over to white people, it is something that white people (that is to say, those "raced as white," which has not always been the same group it might be today) have had, historically, the luxury of benefiting from through other white peoples' own political, social, and cultural systems that have been--yes--racist. White privilege is the societal child of institutionalized racism let lose in the day care center of a wider world.

In conclusion, there once were three fish. One swam by the other two and said "mornin' y'all, how's the water?" and the other two looked at each other and one said to the other, "what's water?"

Can You Build a Life from $25**

2008-02-16T16:52:00.010-05:00

I want you to read this article from the Christian Science Monitor before we go on. It's the prerequisite before today's session of "Nora's Bile: Let Me Show You It."

It's short, and I can wait.

Done? How interesting, right? In the vein of Nickel and Dimed--with its renunciation of one's so-called station to explore how another group lives (or struggles to live)--a young man named Adam Shepard decides to take twenty-five bucks, a rucksack of physical things, and nothing else; leave his home with his parents; and step to "the wrong side of the tracks" in Charleston and "[start] his life from scratch" (sort of) as a homeless man to "test the vivacity of the American Dream."

Right.

The conceit that Adam brought "little else" with him than $25 and the clothes on his back reflects a willful blindness to so much about Adam as a person and American society in general that I don't even know where to begin picking this bit of indulgence apart. It is so full of unacknowledged advantages and self-satisfied "discoveries" about self and life and America that a cranky cultural critic and feminist such as myself feels like a kid in a veritable candy store. A candy store of assumptions.

So I'll start at one of my favorite jumping-in points: white privilege. Recently on an alumni network to which I belong, a white man put forth that he didn't believe in it and that it didn't matter if he believed in it or not, it didn't have any effect on him. And it is indeed difficult to convince someone dead-set against acknowledging something troubling to their personal position of power that there is an unseen aspect of their power. But in my view of the world, white privilege exists whether you want it to or not, and that's all I'm going to say in response to someone who said something ignorant a few months back.

Anyway.

The article/interview doesn't really bring up race at all, but the interviewer does skim the issue of Adam being white, asking "what if you were on probation?" I don't think one can ask this question without the weight of the imprisonment rate of black males in America behind it. The astonishing disparity between white incarceration and black incarceration means that any discussion of Adam's 'ability' to 'succeed' after 'starting' with 'nothing' must acknowledge that not being a black man on probation factors into his success rate. But no such acknowledgment comes. Adam's answer to the interviewer is revealing (emphasis mine): "The question isn't whether I would have been able to succeed. I think it's the attitude that I take in: 'I've got child care. I've got a probation officer. I've got all these bills. Now what am I going to do? Am I going to continue to go out to eat and put rims on my Cadillac? Or am I going to make some things happen in my life...?'" In other words, Adam seems to think that just thinking that he had impediments was enough to give him the psychological burden of those limitations--a burden he shouldered by thinking positively and 'making things happen' for himself. He also puts forth a false dilemma, establishing that his basic choice as he scraped together his earning and made budgets (and therefore the choices of the homeless people around him) was either to eat out and pimp his car or to save money. This is not just reductionist, it's willfully blind. It's blind to the fact that Adam is coming from a socioeconomic world that teaches its children--its college educated children, no less--how to see money and how to consider a future in which success is so likely that it is a sure thing. It's blind to the fact that he had the advantage of lacking certain expenses, including but by no means limited to critical medicine.

Also, what kind of jackass actually says that one of the biggest changes from living home'd to living in the continuum of homeless-to-merely-poor was no longer going out to eat? My rent, student loan bills, and utility bills currently equal just over half of my monthly earnings after tax, and I also pretty much no longer go out to eat. It stopped being a sacrifice or change and started being the way I live now a long, long time ago--before I even had a paycheck in Boston, in fact.

An additional shockingly naive story Adam relates in his interview is that he made up "this great back story" of how he ended up where he 'was.' His excitingly tragic tale is a little flight of fancy, a little indulgent method acting: my mom drugs, my dad booze, me leave her for him and here I am. He takes pride, it seems, in having a "great" story, but his great story is not given the kind of praise or even attention from his 'fellow' homeless people that he seems to feel it warrants (emphasis mine): "The interesting thing is that nobody really cared.... It wasn't so much as where we were coming from, it was where we were going." This is remarkably self-centered. Did it ever occur to him that his story was not interesting to others he met not because they were each so focused on adjusting their individual attitudes to ensure future success ("...but where we were going.") but because, well, his story is real for some and might be seen, by others, as no big fucking deal compared to their problems?

I should acknowledge that Nickel and Dimed, a book I enjoyed, was also incomplete in its analysis. Based on this interview alone, I'd have to argue that that book did not wear blinders as large as Adam's. Barbara actually fights a bit with the advantages that she has whether or not she chooses to use them. Adam, on the other hand, just doesn't see that being white is an advantage in and of itself, or that having the kind of attitude that one gains just by soaking in the stew of college is a tool that you use without knowing it. He even has the gall to say that college was a disadvantage in his experiment with strife: his "thinking was inside the box." Inside the box, apparently, of knowing that saving money is a thing that one should do. It is beyond his imagination to think that there are populations out there who do not see the future the same way that he has been cultured (like a pearl in a shell) to see it. There are people whose futures in America do not have the same potentials that his future does by the simple virtue that he is white, comes from a certain background (two parents, comfort, schooling), speaks English, is male, is not unhealthy chronically or mentally ill, does not have babies. Being white, being male, being born to such parents, speaking native English, being healthy: Adam did not make these choices, yet he benefits from them every day.

(And here also, your humble narrator indulges in a little editorializing: Adam, just try being everything I've just mentioned *except* male, and see how different your experience is. If it's not different, I will eat my hat. Also your hat. Also the hats of anyone who mails me one after I return to my "real life," job, apartment, cat, family. In fact, I think I have my own book deal right there: woman attempts to duplicate success of pretend homeless book writer; finds that his rate of success cannot be duplicated simply by Attitude and Determination and may, in fact, have an element of several aspects of unacknowledged privilege to it; woman bogs down the postal system in her ZIP code with the return shipments of many, many hats sent to her by smug white dudes. But really, the story I'm telling is the story of the can-do attitudes of the mail carriers on my block...)

His book had better be more insightful than the interview he gives. Because he just sounds like a naive, ignorant Pollyanna, here--and beyond that, his uninsightful and unthinking endorsement of the whole "bootstraps" thing is very, very damaging. Forgive my failure to find citations and research to back up the following statement, but this attitude--that the poor just don't work hard enough, that the homeless just have bad attitudes (Adam, emphasis mine: "Then there was this other guy who could walk and everything was good in his life, but he was just kind of bumming around, begging on the street corner. To see the attitudes along the way, that is what my story is about."), that all it takes is just, oh I dunno, Pluck or Moxie or Whathaveyou--has been rejected pretty roundly as a valid base for making public policy.

Does Adam know that the fastest growing population of the homeless is families? Because per American Government and Politics Today, published by Thompson Learning this year and supplemented by yours damned truly, it is and they are. The implication in his interview that these families just need to make better decisions is insulting and dangerous.

It's easy and fun to poke holes in Adam's ideas--he's a regular fraking Candide up in here, except with less critical thinking. But his gloss (ha ha, get it?) can damage more than just my afternoon productivity, and that ain't right. His words live in a public sphere and will be used by readers to inform attitudes, and I wish he'd thought of that before he went out there scrounging for a book deal.

I could be wrong, of course. This interview might not actually reflect the level of insight in his book, and I haven't read the book. For all I know--or am likely to find out, since I don't think I could stand reading more tripe from an indulgent white man--his little book might start with a series of disclaimers: this is the inspirational story of me and only me; at the end of my self-imposed year of living dangerously I'd attained all of my goals and could use my magical get-out-of-homelessness free card; and your mileage may vary!

But I fucking doubt it. I do indeed doubt it.

A note: Standard double quotes in this screed indicate content I am quoting from the article. Single quotes should be read as my own 'air quotes,' implying that I, as the screed's author, find something amiss about the application of the term.

**...if you are white, are male, are in good health, and have an outlook on the proper management of money and the potential of your future that is informed by your unacknowledged class and education advantages. This headline, no doubt, was rejected by the CSM...

+ + +

My thanks go to JS for pointing out the article. My dander had been down for a few days and this puts my recent career setback into a better light: at least I'm not as ignorant as this kid! One advantage I gained just from going to college and growing up with two parents who were educated and lower middle class--even if I don't try to use it everyday--is that I know how to think critically. I hope this satisfies her wish that the young writer receive an atomic wedgie. I assure you that every time I vent my spleen, a douchebag's undies get their wings.

Now nothing is brewing.

2008-02-16T16:41:00.003-05:00

Without getting too indulgent, I can tell you that after two good interviews (totaling around 2 1/2 hours of face time, including 45 minutes one-on-one with the CEO) and even "knowing someone" who "knows someone," I was in fact passed over for the job.

All my weeks of chanting change my life, change my life over my email every afternoon were, shockingly, ineffective!

I was most surprised that I had to nearly drag the news of my rejection out of my interviewers, and that they invited me that Monday to "check back at the end of the week," just in case the candidate with whom they were negotiating a final hiring agreement got hit by a bus or posted something offensive on the Interweb that they hadn't seen until the "about to hire someone" cursory Googling, or something. Yeeeeah, that sounds like fun, ladies: I would LOVE to come sucking around on Friday, "just in case."

Pah.

I say this now quickly, to tie up the loose ends, because I have some vitriol to put out there in the ether, but I could not do so before I gave any loyal readers an epilogue.

Consider yourself both brought up to date and also warned.

Somethin's a-brewin'...

2008-01-16T13:32:00.000-05:00

I must tell you, friends and neighbours, that I am extremely stressed out about my current situation and that I want more than anything for it to come to its desired vocational conclusion.

I HATE the "not knowing but waiting" stage, the stage in which you've given it your very good best shot and now, it's all up to them.

Longer.
Letter.
Later.

Meme me, baby.

2007-12-01T20:50:00.000-05:00

Ah, the Internet Meme: so much more than "IM IN UR BASE..." or "THEY BE STEALIN MAH BUKKIT."

I've been tagged by the ever-insightful Sarah of Brood in the latest round of blog chain letters. This one entreats the blog writer to reveal seven facts about him or herself and then tag seven other people to do the same. The success rate for these blog tags would seem, anecdotally, to be greater than the success rate for your average email forward. I mean, you know, she did it, I'm doing it, so...draw your own conclusions.

1. I am very vain about my breasts, a vanity that manifests itself in no small measure as the immense fear that I will lose one or both to cancer or mastitis.
2. This vanity also leads me to buy intensely up-pushing brassieres from Victoria's Secret, even though VS is a horrific company whose latest ad campaign offends me most because its spokestwink rhymes "air" with "air" in a limerick about a new bra.
3. This "air--air" issue is one of the smaller insults, but you should know that I am judging the grammar of everyone around me at all times. My hot button issue right now is "comprises." I heard it on the network national news this week and nearly popped a capillary in the ol' eyeball from vexation.
4. When I was a kid I was in the chorus for "Ahmal and the Night Visitors" and before one performance I picked at a real loaf of bread being used as a prop until I had hollowed it out and eaten all the soft interior, leaving a hollow bread shell for use in the play. The bread carrying chorus member was not pleased.
5. Unlike Sarah, I freaking love musicals. Love love LOVE them.
6. Because of this deep, abiding, enduring love, I have always wanted to play Anita in "West Side Story."
7. I think my mom and dad are just about the greatest parents and the greatest people ever, and I hope that when they need live-in care that I'll be in a geographic, economic, and emotional place to provide it in a co-living arrangement.

I think I'll actually tag you, the reader, to tell me facts about myself. Seven people probably read this, right? First seven readers, with the exception of anyone who's done this meme on their blog, have to leave me a fact about me in the comments. Bloggers, self included, write about themselves an awful lot, but how often do blog readers write about blog writers, huh? Not very, I'll say.

"IM IN YR MEME, FLIPPIN YR PROCEDURE."

Never long enough

2007-11-19T10:27:00.001-05:00

It doesn't matter how long it's been, or what's happened since then. How many others there have been and how many miles doubtless separate us. It doesn't matter how much you hurt me, how much it all hurt, and how ashamed I can still feel for having been such a damned fool. It doesn't even matter how much havoc your memory and the memory of us can create for my life now, if I let it.

All it takes is one dream to send me into the day looking for you again. Once I met a girl who'd been your friend back home. Once, at my lowest (or possibly most optimistic?) point, the ad I placed got a response from another friend: a possible phone number that I never called. Today I found your picture and all I could think was "I am sorry you cut your hair."

I don't actually know if I miss you. I think I do. If we spoke, I would not feel good. If we met, I might not behave. So many years since, but something in my chest remembers you and makes me think I see the back of your head--the way it looked seven full falls ago--on the train in the morning.

If I hold this trigger in me my whole life, when will I stop responding when the gun goes off? When will I hear it, but leave off looking for you?

ANTM: being green is not equal to easy, and issues of reality television in general

2007-11-14T22:25:00.000-05:00

Q: So Nora, do you ever get tired of picking apart the "green" cycle of ANTM for its general half-assery?
A: Not when they're jetting off to China with nary a mention of "carbon footprint."

No no, y'all--China, like Old Navy, gets a pass when it comes to the larger questions of sustainability and general environmental consciousness. Oh, La Banks, why did you open up a can of worms that you could never hope to...consume? Put back in the can? Utilize? (What does one do with an opened can of worms? You probably shouldn't store them in the can, so you'll need to transfer the surplus worms to a plastic or glass container before you put them in the fridge...). I accept that the "green" commitment of this cycle is less, ah, of a commitment. My feelings make the following part of the episode even more delicious: our Hopefuls drive out into the desert and are left behind by their biodiesel van in a landscape that is likely to become more familiar and common as the "light green" actions like the things in which ANTM is dabbling fail, and weather patterns become more extreme due to climate change exacerbated (at best...) by human activity. Get used to the heat, friends, because we're all in this kitchen together.

In panel, our guest judge from the design school challenge offers that Lisa isn't the freshest of faces, the youngest or dewiest of the lot. Tyra fires back, musing "why is the modeling industry so obsessed with women looking like children?" Like her chastisement of the poor misguided man-judge/robot (he was a little metallic, no?) would ever make us forget the way they threw Renee under the bus last cycle on account of her not-so-fresh feeling! I'm not saying Banks and her hangers-on have to pick one line and stick with it, I'm just saying they should at least show a little bit of reflection about the things they say, cycle after cycle. Though it is this lack of reflection that gives us one of my favourite things about ANTM: the completely contradictory critiques from one girl to another! We haven't stumbled into it yet this cycle, but I hold out hope. Two cycles ago, the Panel chastised one girl for not ignoring how sick she felt, not pushing through to deliver the shot. Only a handful of eps later, they berated a different Hopeful for ignoring what her body was telling her, for pushing to hard to get the shot. Are girls supposed to sacrifice their health or not? Are they supposed to lose the weight or not? Are they supposed to look "men's magazine" or just regular sexy/available? It's only a taste of the contradictory messages that all women get all the time from all media, but it's stark as hell on ANTM.

Speaking as we were of worms, maybe Tyra et al should have opened up a can of those red worms, for composting. That would have been green. Composting isn't even that hard--and surely, given the amount of food I've seen the Hopefuls eating, there must be some scraps of not bread, not meat, not fat to churn up into some rich, dark compost. In fact, tonight's ep showed Bianca and Heather breaking bread, possibly pasta, together. Sometimes I almost buy the normalcy, you know? Thank the lo' for yet another (shamefully thrilling! I am ashamed by my cheap, cheap thrills!) shower scene. Unfortunately, we are on the receiving end of a dramatically edited, possibly fabricated fight between the previously docile Heather and Bianca. Now, I have it on good authority that it *is* all in the edits, and it's not like we actually get--or expect--reality in our reality television. We like broadly drawn conflict; we want good girls, bad guys, bad girls, good guys, familiar stories, and situations in which we can imagine ourselves and what we'd do differently and better. With reality television in general--and ANTM in particular, filled as it is with young people still learning how they fit in the world--all of the analysis that the "characters" (who are real people, actually) do about their actions and themselves is externalized: the viewer takes part in review, judgment, assessment. Reality television highlights the inability of its participants to immediately and correctly perceive their situations while they are in them and invites the viewer to engage in the introspection that the participant does not or cannot. We get the gift of edited vignettes that give us all we need to make the right decision; we get to instantly compare characters' reactions to similar things, picking them apart for inconsistency. We get many opportunities in this ep, as Bianca (again) gets to go on about how Heather (again) just needs to get over something or other, when just recently we've seen Bianca's inability to get over something. We can see the things she cannot, grow in a way that she seems to not, and use those judgments to feel superiour. It's the same all over reality television and is, I think, what lies at the core of its endurance: we're all comparing ourselves to the participants and coming out ahead. Since they are real people, we think, we're demonstrating our superiority over our peers, and this makes us feel pretty good about ourselves. This is the danger of reality television--this false comparison--because the people aren't people. They are the pastiche of people, people that make good entertainment. This should remove them from the reasonable range of people to whom we, the viewers, should contrast ourselves and ought to keep us humble when we think "I totally could have done that. I totally would *not* have fux0red that Cover Girl commercial. I completely understand this situation and I would have come out of it with much more self knowledge." This comprises my emergent Theory of Reality Television and Viewer Identification and Transference. It is possible that I missed my calling.

So.

On a reality show that's not all that real, with an environmental commitment that isn't all that committed, sending messages as mixed as they are absolute, lead by Tyra's conceit that she might make changes in an industry that has been as unchanged as any in its continual and continuous need for younger, thinner women: what kinds of analysis, what sorts of self-discovery, what critical thinking at all can we make or find, should we expect, might we demand?

None. That's where I come in.

+ + +

Tune in for China next week where, if you all clap your hands very very hard, Ms. J. (runway coach extraordinare) might treat the viewership to some race caricaturization not seen on my television since PBS played "Breakfast at Tiffany's" that weekend this summer! "Miss-ha Go-Rightry, I Must-ah Plro-tesht!"

ANTM rides again, and so does this laptop

2007-11-08T00:30:00.000-05:00

So.

While we waited for Dell to work a minor miracle—that is, to address our needs on this approximately 2 year old lappy by replacing a hard drive and orchestrating not one but two complete reboots of the system *all while completely under warrantee*—you and I, blog of mine, have fallen seriously behind on the ol’ ANTM recap. Thankfully, Tyra gave a poor sinner like me a bit of a reprieve last week: the mid-cycle recap! Not only did she jog my memory, she gave me one less week through which I need to fly to get up to speed before I dip into tonight’s substantive ep.

I missed the makeover episode, in which they always shear some poor girl’s hair off and she cries and says she looks like a boy (the horror!). Bianca, heretofore known to me only as Queens, was the major target this time, though Ebony also got it bad. Taking off these weaves and wigs is like slash-and-burn farming: nothing grows there for years afterwards. I have some short damned hair, so I don’t get the severe negative reaction they girls have—but as a person with a very stylized look and a specific haircut, hair is a huge part of my identity. And it’s been gratifying to see Bianca toss that wig they fobbed off on her in favour of her eminently better chop job, because short hair does not equal boy. Short hair equals short hair, and Bianca’s begun to own it. I do love a good skull. At the end of the episode, they send the prickly Yalie home. Not a shocker: I still feel like her motivation was about having a conception of what a model is and does, and then enacting that conception. The panel reacted poorly this time, and I read in their reaction the idea that modeling should be from the heart, not the head. Models should be seen and not heard. Unless they’re spokesmodels, as they are in another episode I watched but could not blog. And where, exactly, did Ebony’s personality go? Man, is she a board up there. And that falling on the sword? I called that, on my little couch with my vegetarian dinner in one hand and my remote in the other.

Now, tonight’s episode.

I have wanted so badly for Sarah to do well, not least because she’s a burlesquer and I’ve rolled with my share of the neo-burlesque crowd (holla, Sissy Butch Brothers!). I was not charmed by her audition antics (really, the paper booger trick? That ain’t even vaudeville, honey) and I thought her haircut was very, ah, 1996. It was an improvement over the insipid mop she came in with, but it was not fierce. These criticisms aren’t the point, though. The point is Sarah’s weight.

There’s another thru line to this season apart from the “ANTM goes green” theme, which I cannot help but feel has been summarily dropped. Food and body issues are front and center. But it’s all adding up to me thinking that Tyra, and ANTM doth all protest too much. There’ve been so many references to food, eating, weight, health—and I’m suspicious. “Will we ever have a plus size model” muses Ms. J. You did. You had two last season—did you mean, will we ever have a plus size model that we don’t have to dismiss for reasons totally unrelated to her weight, thankyouverymuch. And, of course, you had this girl, about whom you all lamented: she’s not big enough to be plus, she’s too big for “regular” modeling, she just doesn’t fit. I am not surprised that the industry that Tyra, J, J, and Niles Barker (noted fashion photographer) work in likes a thin girl; I am not surprised that they’re trying to maybe backpedal a bit into “healthy woman” territory. What shocks me is the seeming unselfconsciousness of it all. The recap episode actually had just what I’d been searching/waiting for in my pitch black little size ten heart: a bald demonstration of the hypocrisy that is ANTM’s take on the injustice of (gasp!) sizeism in modeling.

During the Tyra Talkback, cycle winner Dani (she of the overly regional accent—that bit of identity had to go, just like those gap teeth, ladeez) favoured the Hopefuls with a very illustrative story. As a working model, which Dani totally is, Dani was told to lose some weight. Tyra interjects: I was mad! I know how thin she is! Those scumbags, telling a thin girl to get thinner, how dare they, and a model no less! Dani would never sacrifice her health or her body and neither would the Hopefuls, they all immediately supply. So Dani did the only thing she could do, when told by an industry that makes unreasonable and unjust demands on the still developing bodies of young women: she told the client to kiss her plenty slim ass. Okay no, just kidding. She ate healthy and worked out and lost the weight. If you’re confused about the moral here, you’re not the only one. It was emphatically NOT RIGHT, per Tyra and Dani and everyone, for MODELING to ask Dani, thin enough as she is, to lose weight. She sure showed them…by losing weight. It isn’t at all outrageous to find this outrageous. But really, Tyra et al, you can’t set a girl down a path, get indignant about the path, and then wish her luck as she skips down the path.

But back to Sarah. I wanted to like her, and her pics were good enough, but given her background, I expected more. I mean, there was nudie-ness in the recap ep (to my, again, shameful delight), and tonight’s challenge was all about the skimpy Video Vixen wear; where was the sass I thought Sarah must surely have somewheres in there? It was nowhere, and she’s headed home. To my state. So Sarah, give a girl a call when you land back in Massachusetts. We’ll get a damned bite to eat. And maybe after you turn 21, we can get a beer—a not light beer. A stout, maybe, built like you and me: shapely in the glass and thick in the hips. And we can talk about how modeling will never be brought down from the inside, on account of the inability of the master’s tools to disassemble the master’s house.

HaLOLween

2007-10-31T21:58:00.000-04:00

Dig my costume, worn at work today:

HiLARious.

Happy Halloween, all y'all weenies. I sure do miss my friends.

Uh oh, part deux.

2007-10-10T09:53:00.000-04:00

Home computer is about to bite the dust, which means that my use of it will be very limited, as its other user is, you know, a legitimate graduate student with Papers of Importance and CVs and Resumes and what not whilst I--I am merely a recreational user. Our ANTM roundup may come sporadically, both from last week's ep and the one on tonight; I don't feel comfortable blogging from work and things are busy. But!

1. Y'all, Queens needs to chill.
2. Those dresses were GORGEOUS.
3. I think tonight's the makeover ep.

I'll try to keep up, oh my readers. I try to be the kind of person on whom you can count, you know?

ANTM: In which everyone is challenged, more or less

2007-10-02T13:45:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the utter incomprehensibility of computers and their problems, we’re up and running at The House of the Rising Somerville. Technological crisis either averted or delayed; either way, we all win.

On to last week’s (and none too soon in advance of this week’s) episode.

+ + +

If tonight’s ep had a theme for me, it would actually be the one I used before, and though I don’t want to repeat myself it really does work best so I’ll say it again: if I can’t have lip service, I don’t want any service at all. In only one hour—45 minutes if you discount the interminable last quarter hour in panel (and of course minus commercial breaks featuring the oddly bloused Jaslene: think matronly pirate as mother of the bride...)—a rather lightweight and ultimately inconsequential television show on a non-network television station is attempting to get on with environmentalism, anti-smoking, and the representation of disability. And all this on top of the eating problems, body issues, facets of female social interaction, and consumerism we always face! Sometimes I wonder how La Banks manages to give so many things such a smooth glossing over in two cycles each year.

First, and most obviously, the girls will be riding in a “green” van. No limo for them! It’s biodiesel all the way for this cycle! I’m always a little peeved when people make huge changes and ignore the small, important, relatively easy, less flashy changes they could be making to be more environmentally conscious. I'm not entirely surprised that ANTM's on this bandwagon, nor am I surprised that their efforts are incomplete at best. (Was that not an eternally flowing waterfall in the Model Home? Wasn't the thrift store challenge from last season more "green" in that it advocated reuse?) Until the Hopefuls are letting yellow mellow; until they're all using non-trash menstrual alternatives (the Keeper, sea sponge tampons, and washable pads); until they're flushing with grey water; until they don't wear anything dry cleaned or tested on animals; until they use dish cloths instead of paper towels and hankies instead of tissues for all that crying I foresee; until they're saving water by showering with a friend (which, to my prurient delight, they kind of do in a brief bathtub riot!)—until they've made and internalized real personal change, I think it's safe to say that the biodiesel van is, unsurprisingly, only a gesture. And with this week's challenge of assembling a "Model" look from Old Navy, I sure would like to hear a little bit about their green practices or lack thereof, their shipping, their materials, and their labour practices! But thanks anyway, Tyra; we do like getting thrown a bone from time to time.

Bones like antismoking messages? Yes, bones just like those. Girls have been shown smoking in previous cycles, and I do assume that as women in a certain industry and of a certain age, it is likely that many of them smoke. But only one girl actually says so: "it's terrible and I hate that I do it." Yep, it's terrible--but there is nothing like a little over-the-top stage makeup to really bring the terribleness home and Take a Stand against something in a very uncontroversial way. Pretty much everyone knows that smoking is bad for you and Tyra is right there, several years into it, making a medium-bold move: no smoking for the Hopefuls. Which is good, and they shouldn't smoke, because that shit will kill them in my opinion. As a photo challenge, though, it was not so great, and it is so early in the cycle that panel is both tough to call and uninteresting. Too bad it's totally drawn out to the point of being painful, with Big T always overexplaining, overanalysing, overeverything. If there is such a thing as Good Tyra, Bad Tyra, then this is definitely the time of Bad Tyra, with the serious eyes and the "the name of the girl who is in the picture in my hands that represents the girl who has the name I am about to call will still be in the running to become America's. Next. Top. Model. Will it be the girl with the *goodthing* who's *limitation gets in the way* or will it be the *limited* girl who *beat that somehow*." But I digress.

Now. When was the last time you remember hearing about Asperger's in the popular media? Right right: school massacres. Non-experts throw the diagnosis around like they're trying to get a box of free kittens off their hands when young people (usually boys) go bonkers and shoot up stuff. So maybe Asperger's isn't all that well understood, by me or by any other casual television viewer. So how unfair is it that this one young woman is pressed into being the Asperger's ambassador to not only the other Hopefuls and the judging panel but also to the entire viewing audience? What a gift, what a gift it is just to be included! Heather already has what I call a Public Body; by virtue of being a woman as well as by virtue of being a model she has a body that others feel free to not only shape for her through their perceptions and opinions but also judge and police when she, inevitably, falls short. Her diagnosis of mild autism moves her deeper into the realm of Public Body, giving everyone but her more power to determine the kind of person she is. Heather is obliged to educate all of them, all of us, each episode about what does and does not limit her, the things she can and does do. The judges get to say all sorts of soft, tolerant things about how brilliant she is and what a great role model for other people with autism. And the other girls get to say broad, offensive things that essentially boil down to "I don't have any problem with her disability, BUT..." and "I'm totally open minded, BUT..." In many edits this episode, it is implied that Heather can hear every sniping thing they say about her, couched as those things are in euphemism or fake magnanimity. The same thing happened last cycle: "I don't have any problem with plus size models, BUT for reasons completely unrelated to her size, seriously, I just don't think Whitney is Top Model material, you know?" The Brain from Yale can say (or imply) what she will about these girls being dumb, but they're smart enough to know how to take another girl down while sounding like generous, giving human beings. And that's a little too close to my middle school experience for comfort, so I'll move on.

Relatedly, I’ll be interested to watch the development of The Brain. Girl has used the word deserve several times to talk about winning the competition, but away from the judges I get two impressions: that she’s entered into this as a gag and that the thing that she’s leaving unsaid is “these other girls are dumb.” Maybe it reflects a bit of my own bias, my own experience, but my version of her thought process goes a little something like this: “I have never been forced to—or been able to—rely *only* on my looks. I am not like these girls because I am smart and they are not smart and the reason they are not smart is because they've been allowed and told to let their looks carry them along.” This dovetails nicely with a little news item from some weeks ago: Miss Teen South Carolina doing a bang-up job of demonstrating why it is dangerous to tell girls that looks are the most important thing in life. When they all tell you to get pretty first, you either don’t get a fair shake at getting smart ("She's pretty so it doesn't matter") or you just don’t get yourself smartened up ("I'm pretty so it doesn't matter"). As a deeper aside, I was a little disturbed at the way the woman was castigated by the public when her stupidity is completely enabled and encouraged by same.

Under the wire, then, with this wrap up of ANTM Cycle 9 Ep 2, ranging through my theory of the Public Body, my distrust of and mild indignation at the "green" fad, and how much I love to disassemble a bit of pop fluff to see what's in the middle.

The middle is more fluff, incidentally. But aren't we having fun? See you tomorrow.

+ + +

From our corrections department: Sarah, the burlesque dancer from Bostonland, *is* still on the show. I was wrong last week when I counted her out. Will the girl from Queens have as much holier-than-thou indignation about the burlesquer as she does the exotic dancer? If this week's teasers are any indication, that answer is no, but holy crap, girl loves to put down the stripper's choices!

Uh Oh

2007-09-27T08:33:00.000-04:00

A problem with the home computer (whrrrCLICKwhrrCLKCLKCLK *bluescreenofdeath*) will delay our weekly review of America's Next Top Model, in which we place the burden of living publicly with mild autism squarely on the shoulders of one exceptional-looking young woman, and in which it is revealed that it is best to not only not care about what others think of you but also try to find a way to get along (the first of many, many ANTM contradictions).

Thank you for your patience.

Monday mailbag*

2007-09-24T21:14:00.000-04:00

Dear iPod headphones,

I realize that, as ear-bud style headphones, you are essentially disposable, but really--already fuzzing out at what I would call normal listening volumes during what I might think of as normal levels of bass? On the fourth day of use? Come on. You'd better hope it was, indeed, an isolated incident of this evening's commute and not a distinguishing feature, for I find it vexing.

Best,
.NR.

+ + +

Dear "Extra Hot" horseradish,

Scarcely.

Best,
.NR.

+ + +

Dear Antony & The Johnsons,

Holy shit, y'all are good.

Best,
.NR.

+ + +

Dear dishes,

Do yourself.

Best,
.NR.

*not a regular feature

It is everything I hoped it would be

2007-09-20T13:08:00.000-04:00

Oh, my new iPod. I have made a protective sock for you from an old cashmere sock and pinned a 1" hipster button on it (aspirationally--who knows if I'm still a hipster?). I have named you, and you are called JUMP THIS iPOD. I would hate to meet you in a dark alley, my broad shouldered friend. The first album I ripped to my iTunes was The Clash's S/T.

Just as AF suggested, I used you to listen to Elvis Costello during my commute, and I thought of the last time I had tunes in my commute. I was waiting for the #22 bus in Chicago, southbound, 6:00 in the morning, going to my opening shift at the Big Corporate Bookstore. This was five years ago, and a lot of music's been made in the last five years, and I have a lot up on which to catch.

In which I blog a pop culture item

2007-09-19T22:50:00.000-04:00

America's Next Top Model.

Yes, you heard Nora right, cousins. America's. Next. Top. Model. I've been hooked for years. I think it started when there was a Real Live Lesbian on the show (not a great model, I'll say). After that I just kind of...stuck around. Through the relentless self-focus of Tyra Banks, the totally empty platitudes of guest judge Twiggy, the concerted mugging of Janice Dickinson (lest we forget! The First! Supermodel!), the over-the-top Ms. and Mr. J (up there to different ends, certainly, but still both highly stylized), and the unselfaware, unselfconscious, unworldly, marginally entertaining antics of the Hopefuls--I've been there, cackling away on my couch, drinking beer, yelling, analysing, and trying not to let on to my coworkers that I follow a television show such as this and yes, I would love to talk about my opinions of the ways in which each girl enacts her idea of OBJECT, MODEL, WOMAN and even ADULT.

If you want a first episode recap with names at this point, may I direct you to Television Without Pity? I don't keep track of names until I can tell them apart, and the good lo' knows I cannot yet tell one horse from another (without a program...). To me, most of them have blank faces on which other faces can be writ, wax tablets for the stylus, blank canvas for the paint, empty hangers for the clothes. And isn't that what a lot of modeling is? Being the background frame on which the thing of interest is actually displayed? Apart from the very notable exceptions in high fashion, the bulk of the workaday models are nameless and unheralded. It's a job, I guess.

Now, on to this week's cycle premiere ep.

As with previous cycles, in the first episode we get a stream of "candid" interactions and situations in which the many initial girls size each other up for friendship or competition in completely forced situations like, say, on a cruise ship. And, as with previous cycles, it takes almost no time for the girls to be shown eating and talking about eating. The viewers are shown enough footage of food entering mouths to assure us that most of these girls are okay about food, but the girls' conversations, veering invariably as they do toward the subject of eating disorders, indicate something different to me: these girls are very much not okay about food. Even though they might couch it as competitive trash talk or in an "I'm just playin'" tone, or even "I'm so okay about food that I can crack wise about eating disorders," I see a group of young women who know that what goes in the mouth reflects--badly--on what walks down the runway. A sharp audio edit from tonight's ep gives us a voice, "Does anyone want any more bacon?" up against a few sideways glances from several Hopefuls, as if they're thinking Who does that pig think I am? Her? Of course I want no more bacon, this toast and coffee are plenty for me.

Thirty three Hopefuls begin. First, a quick test of their walk with Ms. J, performing her only function on the show: one, maybe two sessions as a runway coach. This time around, our divine Ms. J (my grandmother's nickname for me when I was a wee pliant thing, by the way) settled for instruction through making fun of the less polished walkers. Not that shame isn't a powerful teaching tool; I just wish Lady J would earn her bread with a more constructive role on the show. One walk, one interview. The interviews are always the real gem: the Hopefuls get to shine or make total fools of themselves. Most of them squeal, and many of them cry. A surprising number, in fact, which is interesting to me. And they open up to Tyra, the Js, and Nigel Barker (often called a "noted fashion photographer") in that way that reality television participants have of speeding through stages of intimacy to arrive immediately at "revelatory confessional" level. This is why people on reality television participants seem more screwed up than our friends and ourselves: they merely tell us much more quickly the things that we would tell each other eventually.

One Hopeful's literal sob story (not to make light) consisted of a confessional coaxed from her with nearly no effort from Tyra: my mother was, like, a crackhead, I was raised by my grandmother, she just passed away. A second unsolicited breakdown was from my favourite Hopeful, the M-name from Alaska. She had a certain Grace Jones masculine-feminine quality about her to which I responded, and a strong face. But oh! I was so let down last cycle by Jael, another less plain Hopeful whose promise petered out, for me, even a little before 50 Cent shoved her into the pool at the party. Anyway, M-Hopeful had lived a very legitimately hard life, to which she confessed in what seemed, again (after editing for television, I'm sure), about the 40th second of being in the presence of Tyra Banks. I did wonder what might lead a 23-year-old, very attractive African American woman to a life in Anchorage, Alaska, but I'd of course included little details like "summer job on a fishing vessel" or "romanticized the Iditarod as a girl and ran away from home to train sled dogs." The truth is less like a Gary Paulsen novel: rape, molestation, hard times. Hard times revealed for two of our black female Hopefuls. And I hope the edit that followed M-Hopeful was a conscious one, and I cannot decide if it was brilliant or crushingly stupid: cut from a life of knocks to a girl--a white girl--who actually says that her life's been so good, she never cries or feels bad. She tries to keep it upbeat. She thinks crying is a waste of time. A few contestants later, a white girl (from Florida? I think this was the one who announced she was from the horse capital of America--and I thought, "oh, Kentucky," but it was Florida) says she feels like she's had, like, a normal life, her parents aren't even divorced. Ah, television: teaching us that black girls have hardscrabble lives and modeling is a ticket out; while white girls are blessed and, in the case of one particularly odious Hopeful, self-proclaimedly "built inside and out" for modeling. It's definitely interesting to me how privilege plays forward like this.

One Hopeful is from Boston, my current locale. In an interesting turn of events, she is a burlesque dancer in her real life. She's accurately sized, and this creates trouble for the judges: she's too big for a fashion model, but just on the small size for a plus size model. Mr. J opines, "wouldn't it be nice if we had a category for real size women? Like, 'Real Size Models.'" This nets him a hi-five from Tyra who definitely says "I'm Real Size!" How nice, this handout from modeling for women like myself: if we get a label, we must be acceptable! This little interaction follows nicely from last cycle's inclusion of two (two!) plus size models, of whom Whitney was the clear best candidate (sorry, Diana! You started strong but failed to evolve!). Tyra is known for her advocacy for more healthily sized fashion models, adding her voice to the chorus in the industry speaking out against rail-thin models worldwide. Note, however, that last cycle's winner, Jaslene, has a body like a one-by-six, and if you don't know what that is, feel free to leave me a comment and I'll be happy to explain some basics of carpentry to you. Ah, America's Next Top Model: if I can't have lip service, I don't want any service at all.
In a moment of "ahem, this is on television?" one of the Hopefuls gives Tyra a little demo of what she does for a living. The Hopeful performs bikini waxes, and is understandably pumped for the opportunity to simulate one on (a fully dressed but still a little too...ah...expository?) Tyra. The words "cheeks" and "spread" are employed, as are the phrases "kitty cat" and "get in there." This disturbs me. The girl is, however, no doubt well groomed. (I'm sure I'll get the opportunity to discuss my feelings on hair before the end of the cycle, so I'll hold off here. I do hope the make-over ep doesn't take long to arrive, however.)

By the end of the show, we have whittled away twenty girls to yield a field of 13 competitors. The girl with the wicked Boston accent is gone, as is the burlesquer. M-Hopeful did not make the second, critical cut; she put on a brave face. The nerd is in, the bitch from Chicago who looks Eritrean to me, the exotic dancer ("I'm not nude! I wear a bikini!"), the waxer, and a handful of other 18 to 23 year old aspirants to the title of America's Next Top Model, placed in proximity with each other to create tension and good television; worshiping at the altar of Tyra Banks (do we burn our bras here, rather than incense?).

We'll talk next week, friends and neighbours. I do hope you'll come along for the ride.

In which I join your so-called "future"

2007-09-16T11:01:00.000-04:00

Attention, hep cats:

I have purchased my first iPod. I waffled for some time on the "8 gig Nano vs. 80 gig 'Classic'" question, even calling friend DS for backup. He wasn't there and I was in the very Apple store, completely overwhelmed. In the end, I went with the newly redesigned Classic.

I live in Today now.

Something's...different.

2007-09-12T22:22:00.000-04:00

The big news this week is that my nightly re-run of That One Show About The Four Single Gals in New York City has been replaced by...The Family Guy re-runs. While I applaud the decision of my local CW affiliate in this scheduling change, I really do wonder how they got from Sex in the City to The Family Guy. I mean, I did watch the former, and I do love the latter, and here are a few things I could say next: what kind of audience do they think they have that might carry over (apart from me); are they interested in a complete viewership update; and who cooked this up? A further wrinkle, as I write this: an ad for the SitC rerun just aired, at 11:21, claiming that the show is on every night of the week at 11:00. How very.

+ + +

Another change this week: the weather. Autumn is dropping some serious hints about what is to come. I love the cooler nights, the re-introduction of the blanket to the bed: all fine signs of fall. I've been out of school for some time now (6 years) but fall will always cue those back-to-school feelings. First, I feel like I need new clothes. Then, I want to buy a bunch of pens and notebooks. Finally, I settle into a soft melancholy about the passage of time, the loss of freedom, the narrowing of choices and chances that happens as one gets older. It's tough to believe that spring gets all the props for renewal and rebirth, when really it's autumn that actually holds promise, new beginnings, and the chance to be different this year. So many of my falls began with that thought--it'll all be different this year. Only a few of them were actually different.

And this morning the nostalgia was fierce, as I waited for my instant pod-pack of coffee to be pressed through its little pack-filter and into my cup (a step up from gas station coffee if ever there was one) and paused in unexpected remembrance of the first thing I ever ordered from Bob's Underground coffeehouse on my college campus my freshman year: one cafe au lait, from Theo Bott. That was a real new start, a real beginning, a real change.

Autumn and its fabulous, cooler, lovely sadder days. "Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh, so mellow..."

+ + +

And just when you think you're a boring adult, your best girl moons you and unceremoniously announces that she's "in ur bedroom, doin' ur sudokus."

Turns out that since I didn't want to grow up, I pretty much didn't in a lot of ways.

Those grand days.

2007-09-03T19:24:00.000-04:00

The salad says of an unsecured wireless connection with good speed are over. I think teh intarnets is broke, for me.

+ + +

Here's a little bit about career opportunities and going nowhere for now:

I felt bad about laying the odds against my manager's return from maternity leave, but when she gave her two weeks after one week back from leave, I felt both worse and right. And I decided to make a bold move and declare my interest in her position. I got my confidence up and went in for the Talk and was promptly deflated: they've got someone in line. But really, that's no bad thing--that they would have someone already in mind for the job had occured to me, especially in light of the recent Massive Reorg and Merge of My Big Corporate Explorer. The main thing I wanted to accomplish was to telegraph my interest in moving up soon and my intention to start putting in as things come up. I may have reached a bit above my position, but one of the things I've regretted about my current job is that I did not reach at all to get it. I settled for something that was a step back and I've been suffering for having done so. In the moment, I needed the job and I needed to get in the door with a new company in a new city. I should have stretched myself and gone for a challenge; instead, I took the safe path and the lesson is that when we chose safety, we do not prosper.

And your little dog, in addition.

2007-08-27T09:33:00.000-04:00

Dear Alberto,

Enjoy spending more time with your family.

Smooches,
NR.

Ease on down the road, indeed.

2007-08-13T14:10:00.000-04:00

Dear Karl,

Don't let the door hit, kick, bite, stab, waterboard, anally probe, humiliate, sensorially isolate, strip naked, dog-bait, or otherwise "bring to the brink of death" you on your way out.

Warm regards,
Nora.

*tip o'th'keyboard (??) to JS

Dinners

2007-08-09T21:23:00.000-04:00

Summer vegetable fritters
Grate, sprinkle with salt, and drain in colander over sink:
~one zucchini
~one beet
~one large carrot
~one medium potato
~THEN aggressively squeeze tons and tons of moisture out of that stuff, cheesecloth twist method
Mince fine a handful of garlic cloves, to taste
Small chop leftover raw chard, approx 1/2 cup loosely packed
Leftover brown rice, approx. 3/4 cup, maybe 1/2, you know I don't measure when I'm cooking on the fly...

Toss all o'that in a bowl, mix thoroughly together. Add spice, seasoning, little sauce, etc. I used Penzey's Mural of Flavour generously, with a large pinch of cumin and a big dash of vegan Worcestershire sauce and black pepper. Add some (1/4 cup?) flour for binding, mix well. Make well in center, beat one egg in well, then mix the slurry altogether. Form into smallish patties and fry up aggressively in a bit o' high heat oil (I used grapeseed augmented with homemade chili oil, also grapeseed-based). Eat with a few drops of that same chili oil as dressing, or maybe if you like ketchup (je le deteste) this would be a good time to eat some, or perhaps a creme fraiche or crumbled blue cheese. Makes "5" of undetermined size (I molded my fritters with a small mise that holds maybe 1/2 cup?), so feeds two, or one for dinner and planover lunch. Probably freezes really well. Serve with sweet corn on the cob, as I did, or with a green salad, as I will, or with some sort of chickpea number, heavy on the lime juice and green chili. This could go a lot of ways.

+ + +

Quick tofu and green bean stir fry
1/2 lb. tofu, cut into thin 1"x1/2" planks, or other pleasing shape
large couple handful of green beans, julienned (yes, it's totally worth it to do this, watch your fingers) to yield maybe 1 1/2 cups total
minced red onion, 1/4 cup or so (again, not so much with the measuring)
dried cranberries if you're feeling it
toasted almonds if you're feeling them
for Sauce, mix together a pleasing combination of:
~honey
~rice vinegar
~soy sauce or tamari
~bit of chili garlic sauce (you know, rooster sauce?)
~whatever's sitting around

In a high temp oil (see my above oil machinations), fry tofu on one side until that side is browned. At the halfway point of "browned," add most of the red onion and all of the cranberries. At the "browned" point, add the green beans and toss well over heat. Cook until crisp-tender (or to taste if you're a big soft food lover, you weirdo), adding sauce right at the end and letting it bubble like crazytime to reduce a bit. Pour over brown rice, garnish with remaining raw onions and toasted almonds and just freaking TRY not to burn your mouth, okay?

+ + +

I've gone a little nutso from the farmer's market. Tune in next time for caramelized sweet onion and goat cheese pizza with, you guessed it, homemade chili oil, and the not-quite-a-quesadilla-not-quite-a-pupusa-but-it-acted-like-both. See also Big Salads, Too Hot To Bake, and Box of Mac-N-Cheez.

Oh and...

2007-08-05T22:17:00.001-04:00

Here is an AMAZING article (NSFW) that starts out with the story of a very extreme piercing and moves into one of the more interesting discussions on gender, change, and body choice that I've recently read. Highly recommended reading for those that want, but please consider yourself informed about the metal and the bits.

There is a person from my college days with whom I wish I'd been closer. We're acquaintances and have many of the same friends still, but we weren't in each others' nearest orbits. I had and have so much respect for her, the strong choices he made to become the person he knew she was, the self-knowledge and strength. Also very kind, very cute. And I always felt like his was a model of physical self-determination that I respected and wanted to emulate for myself, even if our methods, extents, and goals were different. The bottom line is, as I've said before, complete ownership of one's own body. If that means ink and metal, or if that means a different body than the one one's mind was born into, the people who are brave enough to create the vessels they want to live in--regardless of what the mainstreaming effects of society tell them they should prefer--well, those are the folks for me.*

*Also, my friends who are largely comfortable with what they have, with less "options packages," you are also alright by me. But not all of us are born finished.

In the meantime...

2007-08-05T21:45:00.000-04:00

inbetween time, ain't we got fun?

In the past month:
work
gym
gamelan
crappy Monday night TV (I cannot look away, David Caruso! You suck!)
vacation, friend and family
cooking, home and away
decorating and rearranging
buying a couch
Zip car-ing
movies
finally finished Anna Karenina (!!)
freelancing

Hope to have a full report on all very soon.

+ + +

From as far back as I can remember up until I was about 18, my dreams were dominated by one enduring image or occurrence: in almost every dream, no matter what the situation was, my eyes would get stuck shut. I'd blink, in the dream, and just wouldn't be able to open them. I could pry them open with my fingers, in the dream, but with the next blink they'd stick again. It's the kind of imagery that *must mean something* but I don't know what it means. The kind of thing that maybe I'd look up in a big ol' dream dictionary if I was in a chain bookstore and had some time to kill.

But at about 18 or 19, this imagery stopped appearing and I haven't had recurring dream imagery up until the past two weeks. Lately, I've had several dreams in which I lose all or most of my teeth. In some, I try to return the teeth or tooth to my mouth, but it's always too large for the empty socket. The most recent was the most troubling: my teeth started chipping, cracking, crumbling, and peeling out for no reason, along with strips of my gums. In the dream I cried, screamed, felt around my mouth with my tongue afraid that I'd feel another broken tooth falling away from the socket. It was the only dream in which I knew what was happening was irreversible, that my teeth were gone for good. It's been the only dream in which I've lost more than one or two teeth total. And it's the only dream in which I've piled the tissue and teeth from my mouth together outside my mouth, crying and hoping a doctor can help me. Up until the last month I'd only had a couple of tooth dreams a year, but the frequency's certainly up now.

In the last four nights, I've had two dreams with very vivid spider imagery. I haven't run into a lot of spiders since we relocated to the east coast--haven't had a lot of spider exposure since I left my folks' house for the dorms and then the city, in fact. So I'm not entirely sure where this is coming from now. Last night, the spiders were large, colourful, like the garden spiders I remember from my family's first house in the relatively less arid southeastern corner of my home state. One stretched towards me on its web as I pulled one strand of the web, trying to free my hand from the sticky. The other dream featured more, smaller spiders, teeming I don't remember where, but teeming.

My teeth are fine, great even, and I haven't seen but a few spiders in the last year. This must mean something.

Forgive me this terrible pun, but...

2007-07-08T20:52:00.000-04:00

I've spend the summer so far meeting my (ice cream) maker.

Hee.

This week it is a cream-enriched frozen yogurt, sweetened with honey and then brightened with a pint of blueberries and a bit of rum, from a recipe on Apartment Therapy. I'll make it again, but next time with less cream (mouthfeel too rich in the original iteration) and with a stronger flavoured honey. The ice cream maker may be a unitasking appliance, but I think it is worth the space up which it takes. Seriously, there is no easy way to get ice cream home from the store on your bicycle, without packing coolpacks and concertedly hauling ass.

In a great segue from hauling ass, I've joined a gym. It all started in the winter, when I lost some stress weight. I didn't mean to lose it, I don't feel like I needed to lose it, but with it gone, I realize I am in bad shape. And I am getting older. And I am less active than I was in Chicago. So I'm taking advantage of My Big Employer's Corporate Health Plan-sponsored gym discount, and of two free summer months. My first complimentary personal training session is Wednesday. It's really taking a lot of mental energy to make myself commit to this--I mean, the last time I was in a gym was my required year of phy ed my freshman year of high school, and I clearly recall the stereotypical set of feelings I had about the situation at that time. Luckily, I am no longer 13, going on 14.

+ + +

From our department of "the hype is kind of mostly true, in my opinion," I drove a Prius today. The best part might have been just being behind a wheel again--any wheel--but the distinctly precious and toy-like nature of the Prius was pretty beguiling. Though I don't really like the push-button start; call me a traditionalist, but I do so love to turn a key. When I filled up the tank (gas included in the car share! gas included in the car share!), the attendant at my local station (full service) was totally hitting on me. An older Pakistani gentleman. As a holdover from my busted-ass-car-owning days, I still think it's a good idea to be on excellent terms with your local service station, so though I will not be taking him up on his offer to let me borrow *his* car whenever I wanted, I will be waving when I walk by and getting fuel there henceforth.

+ + +

Do you think that John Waters knew that his original "Hairspray" would be adapted to the stage and then back to the screen in this manner? I'm going with no.

Eastern Time

2007-07-07T01:10:00.001-04:00

Y'all.

Conan is on very, very late out here in EST-land.

That is all.

A problem.

2007-07-01T09:04:00.000-04:00

My upstairs neighbour (male, single, late thirties/mid-forties?), heretofore known to me as The Muttering Barker, could now better be called The Keening Wailing Shouter. In the month that we've lived here, I'd seen and heard him talk to himself, bark at himself, twitch slightly, and shuffle step down the block. This morning he is moaning, keening, wailing, shouting, mewling, racing in and out of his upstairs apartment and the building, and (for the second Sunday of my notice) screaming "I Hate Life" occasionally.

I do not want to be ableist, and up to just this morning I'd thought maybe he had Tourette's or some similar mild ailment that allowed him to remain independent and high function, not a danger to himself or others. Not so sure now that he's not at least a danger to himself, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little hesitant to continue trying to say hello and good morning to him when I see him around the building or at the bus stop. Selfishly, this was at seven in the morning and I was trying to sleep.

Can, or should, I do anything, I wonder? My real worry is that he will hurt himself. Should I send my landlord a quiet emailed word of concern--"I think my upstairs neighbour may be having some troubles; do you have an emergency contact for him who may be able to check in on him or speak with him?" On first thought, this seems responsible and caring, and if my landlord knows about the tenant's condition he may be able to tell me that the tenant is not a danger to himself. Then again, my landlord may not know about the tenant's condition and I might be playing a small part in what could turn into housing discrimination if my landlord refuses the tenant's renewal. Calling the cops is obviously total overkill, and I also don't feel that approaching him myself to ask if he is okay is appropriate; additionally and frankly, I don't care to do so, given that his refrain on the way down the stairs about an hour and a half ago was in Q-and-A format and in two voices and involved "Why don't they just shut up? They should just shut up."

It's definitely a "where do my renter's rights end and his begin" kind of question. While I should be able to feel safe in my home, he should also be able to be safe to be himself in his home. But if he's not safe with himself--and secondarily, if I am not safe--is concern and action appropriate and if so, what action is proper?

All of the week

2007-06-28T23:35:00.000-04:00

Q: So, Nora, what have you been up to?
A: Oh, not much. Working and not working, sleeping and not sleeping, reading, sweating, not cooking, and taking cold showers.

Q: Whatcha reading?
A: Well, I just finished re-reading Tipping the Velvet and last weekend I ripped through All the Pretty Horses, the writing style of which reminded me of Faulkner, but somehow I was able to stand it--can't say the same for Faulkner. I'm late to the party on Cormac McCarthy, and I've wanted to read The Road ever since that guy I interviewed with at The Retail Bookstore back in September mentioned that he was loving it (you can always trust employee recommendations of that sort) but I am concerned I will lose some cred reading an Oprah book. She ruins everything. But still...the book existed before she picked it, and there's some comfort in the fact that a post-apocalyptic novel of ruination and devastation will be in the hands of many people more used to things like guest appearances by Dr. Phil or Best Friend Gail. Right now I'm tackling Anna Karenina. Little light beach reading, you know...

Q: Bitchin' hot, no?
A: It was worse yesterday (Wednesday). The power outages in the New York City region must have rolled over the main technology office of My Big Employer, because all systems out of their New Jersey office went down around 4:00 so we all beat it. When I got home it was too hot to move. I put on my home-wear only hippie dress and cuddled a kyew-jay-oh-eye-doubleyou (Quart Jar Of Ice Water) and waited to feel normal. Never did. The cat is barfing up puddles of clear, thick liquid, which is a little unsettling, but he's drinking alright and eating about what one would expect in this heat. I'm eating less too, all of it raw and most of it green. Our power went off for about half an hour around 8:45, but all I lost was the radio and the ceiling fan, so I wasn't out much. The community board on LiveJournal was buzzing with much bitching about losing the AC for a time. I have zero sympathy for that, frankly. If you have AC you don't have the opportunity to feel that finest thing of the summer: cooler breezes in the night, through your open bedroom window.

Q: Heard you had a rough Tuesday.
A: Yeeeaah, I did. All I wanted was to come home from the 94-degree day and have a big quick green salad with the arugula I bought at the farmer's market, drink a G&T, and go to gamelan rehearsal. But my smoke alarm was going off. There was no fire (I checked) and there had been no fire for the three hours my neighbour reported it had been shrieking (note to neighbour: times like that, a call to the landlord might be in order. Just might, is all I'm saying). The cat was mightily freaked and the ringing exacerbated my dehydration headache, setting me just enough on edge that I must have sounded a treat in my phone message to the landlord. If only he'd addressed this smoke alarm the first time I had trouble, all of this might not have happened, or might have happened anyway... Anyway, to his great credit he left a grill-out at his house to come pry at the wires hanging out of my ceiling and determined that the unit itself--not the wiring or the backup battery--was faulty, and the alarm company would make amends and fix the thingy. So instead of fab dinner, I had half a glass of water and two ibuprofin. Nummy. It's been a bad week for the cat--later that night the cheap-o roller blind freed itself somehow from its bracket and fell on him, and my head.

Q: I bet you're glad that you have tomorrow off. You'd been saying how one of the finest aspects of Your Big Employer is the every-other-Friday-off summer hours.
A: Yeah, I was pumped until this morning when I got the email that informed me that the meeting tomorrow morning is actually mandatory, not "you are cordially invited to." My Big Employer really needs to work on its importance language. So I have to go in to work in time to be ready to sit down for a town hall meeting about our just-publicly announced merger; this meeting begins, for the alphabet group that encompasses "Rocket," at 9:00 AM sharp. I am thereby denied the finest pleasure of the day off--sleeping in--and obliged to scoot my brunch plan considerably. I am much inconvenienced by this and at this time, just past midnight when Thursday has turned to Friday, am considering just not going and trying to pass it off like I went. I won't actually do this, of course.

Q: Dude, a thousand natural shocks.
A: Don't I know it.

Q: That gives you a nice early start for your day, though.
A: It does, and in the end it'll work out okay--I'm going to get one of the first entry times for the Edward Hopper exhibit at the MFA for sure, and that'll be a gasser. Really looking forward to going to the museum. Then I'd like to come home, catch a nap, watch some of the flix on my shelf, and bake something dessert-y like for the My Alma Mater alumni picnic. The alphabet group that encompasses "Rocket" was tasked with desserts, and I think I'm going to bake that rhubarb cake that Jo does so well. S'posed to be cooler tomorrow too, so I might not be a total insane maniac for thinking about turning on the oven. Gawd, washing the dishes in the dark last night was hot enough; baking a cake for 30 minutes at 350 might be complete folly. I may just buy some Oreos and call it a day.

Q: No you won't.
A: You're right, I won't. Oreos are good, though.

It's all coming together

2007-06-22T20:42:00.000-04:00

My finger cut, that is... nine days from the day I inflicted it and it's healing nicely, despite the fact that I bashed it open in the sink doing dishes--and twice in the shower, and on my work mailbox--during the week. As with most injuries, one doesn't realize how wonderfully and thoughtlessly in concert even the smallest parts of the body work until a part is taken out of commission. Turns out I use the thumb-side side (non-palm) surface of the "pointer" finger of my left hand quite a bit, most notably to brace the eyelet side of a hook-and-eyelet brassiere fastening. An unexpected inconvenience.

+ + +

In New York this past weekend for a event I never even considered wondering about the possibility of attending: fricking Television played in Central Park. Even without Richard Lloyd (hospital, pneumonia, and then amicably retired from the band) it was a good time. Even when they skewed juuussst a little jam-y for my tastes, it was a good time. The big closer, of course, "Marquee Moon" itself, and I held my cell phone up and recorded about a minute of it onto friend D's cell phone. His return message: "okay, two possibilities: you saw a really great Television cover band or--and this is obviously false--you saw Television." Ha.

Stayed with JS & M in Brooklyn, nice little two-level walk-up with a neighbourhood that felt on the cusp of gentrification. An exciting stay, and not just for a fine evening at Florent (delicious, with a completely nonstandard lack of pretension given the Frenchness and fineness of the cuisine) and chill grill out of a Saturday night (in the dark). No no. I hope they'll forgive the "we," but: in the middle of our horror movie showing, we discovered we had mice. During a particularly tense moment in Dead Ringers, out of the corners of our many eyes, we saw the first shadow dart across the floor. I thought cockroach, J thought mouse. J was right. Over the next hour and a half, we went from one mouse to the firm belief that there were no fewer than three, possibly four, in the house. And they were eating the stray dog food nuggets on the floor. A quick assessment of the human foodstuffs revealed they weren't yet all up in the apartment's oatmeal, and I suggested they'd just wandered in recently, to scope the joint. We put away the loose doggy nuggets, verified that the cabinets were sealed fully against the wall, put all the pantry foods in either cabinets or the fridge, and made the plan for the next day: Stinky, Dinky, Blinky, and the unconfirmed Winky would shuffle off their mousely coils at our hands, and a thorough clean would purge the crevasses beneath the fridge and stove of any habitats or leavings.

At the hardware store in Williamsburg, we had the most brutal business of all. No key cutting, fan buying, or bolt-cutter renting for us: we'd come for the lowest-fi of pest control devices, the snap trap. I was (inappropriately I admit, given that it's not my apartment) adamant about the merits of the snap trap over the glue trap. I hate those things, and if you're gonna kill something I think it should be swift, not stretched out over many sticky minutes of starving and panic. We asked the guy at the register if they really worked and he said "dees things been used for t'ousands a years, of course they work, right?"

Right. I wasn't there, but J and M reported that Sunday night they swept beneath the (relatively un-moused) stove and fridge and set out the traps. Monday morning it was requiem eternam Stinky and Dinky. Was there ever a Winky? Did he or she beat a hasty retreat to less patrolled regions of Brooklyn? No se.

+ + +

I hesitate to reveal my Friday night plans, but this 4-hour Ken Burns PBS documentary on the Lewis and Clark expedition surely would be better (than it already is) if that red wine hadn't soured on me...

Today was my birthday, and it's been quite a week.

2007-06-14T15:40:00.000-04:00

I received three birthday cards, each one featuring a cat in a state of either whimsy or affection. All senders pointed out the similarity between the cat on the card and my personal cat. I thought, whose freaking birthday is this, anyway? Mine or his?

Happy birthday to me, y'all, ME ME ME.

+ + +

My series of unfortunate mornings began plainly enough: unexplained 20 minute transit delay on Monday. We sat on the bridge right before Charles MGH for some time. On Tuesday, I thought I'd save a few minutes by hopping on the bus--turning a 10 minute walk into a 3 minute ride. But traffic turned my 10 minute walk into 15 minutes of going nowhere. On my train car, the doors stopped working, which lead to 15 minutes of futzing at Harvard before they emptied my car into the adjoining and moved us along (and I'd even had a seat too...). On Wednesday, I thought, "I'm going to get up in plenty of time to take a shower, really think about what I'm going to put on, eat breakfast, and make it to work on time, finally." Instead, as I sliced the bagel that I'd purchased at the farmer's market the previous afternoon, I sliced open my left index finger. Even as I did it I realized my stupidity--bagel slicing! The number one home kitchen injury! And me with six years of bagel-inclusive food service work! I screamed silently in the kitchen, bagel cast to the floor and bloody knife askew on the block. Then I ran to the bathroom, dripping blood--finger cuts bleed a lot and this one was not deep but definitely open. Once I'd taken the edge off the throb with cold water, I slapped a pantyliner on it and went looking for the gauze and tape. Which I found, right where it should be. My cut is now knitting together from the bottom up, from the little comma at the bottom of the slice created by the serration of my bread knife.

For my birthday, all I really wanted was to not oversleep, not get on a dumb bus, catch a train that went straight to my stop without breaking, and not cause myself injury. Everything went swell.

The actual day of my birth was a Thursday, moreover. My dad and I hashed this out over the phone this morning, with the last of the juice my mobile had (who lets their phone run down on their birthday? Me.). I don't recall what Thursday's child figuratively is, but it is not meek and mild. Is it swarthy and busy? Meticulous and stingy? Bad with names? Shouty?

I am many things on many days.

Down the block, around the corner

2007-06-06T22:14:00.000-04:00

It's amazing how rosy my disposition has become. Love the new apartment, love the new neighbourhood, love that Johnnie's Foodmaster down the block had Boca fake sausage, faux burgers, and meatless patties on sale, two for five. I got four for ten. Bring on the summer grilling season and whathaveyou: I am ready to hit the park, the beach, the streets.

Today I picked up ingredients for a sorbet I saw in The New York Times: buttermilk lemon. Buttermilk is one of those items that you really need when you need it and have no idea how to use otherwise. So now I have, in addition to a really stellar tart-sweet sorbet (so what if a certain someone is stuffing her piehole with gelato even as we speak (well, 6 hours ahead of our speaking time...)), about three-quarters of a cup of buttermilk. Waffle party? Waffle party. Additionally, as I was feeling ambitious, a big dinner: roasted sweet potato, beet, and quinoa "salad" with orange-shallot-garlic dressing. Big on quinoa right now. Very tasty and, if I can believe the box top (seems the honest type) amazingly healthy in that whole-food-for-a-whole-planet way. Also fun to pronounce: Keen Wah. Wah ha! Will make a great lunch tomorrow with that avocado I've been waiting on all week.

You may not believe me, but I write about food about 1/3 as much as I talk about food, and about 1/5 as much as I think about food. When I am bored at work I think about food, and when I'm waiting for my ebay auction on cherry red danskos to end I shop for tiffin boxes.

Does this seem familiar to you too?

2007-05-22T21:26:00.000-04:00

True believers, we move this weekend. Here's how it all came down.

Three (four?) weeks of searching, the toughest aspect of which is the way the broker system in Boston rules the market, comandeering Craig's List like a personal tool of their trade, which I think is gross misuse of a community resource. I find the perfect place in my second outing, but when I call 45 minutes after leaving that broker and that apartment, I've been scooped: someone's written a check in the time it took me to show my partner the pictures I'd taken. About two weeks ago, I find a listing for a non-broker unit in Somerville that fits our needs. We visit, we like it, we take it, the end. And all without a broker fee, so take that. Lease signed, truck booked (curse your black hearts and low rates, U-Haul, for I am rolling the dice on you again), and we're more than half packed. It's half the size of our current suburban travesty, and I'm looking forward to living small and better with a gas stove, hardwood floors, front porch. House of the Rising Somerville.

First rule of moving: GET RID OF IT.
"Second rule, is:" well stacked is half packed.
Three: call a few friends.
(Some readers may note that this is the same third rule as "how to set up your backyard pool.")

That's how we had the smoothest of moves (at least, to a point) last August, and that is how we will have the finest move this Saturday. I will lean out the window and yell "so long, suckers!" as we drive away.

+ + +

More is afoot as we transition to the House of Effective Use of Space. Bed buying? Certainly. More Ikean shelf units? Don't mind if I do. Long-term mattress sharer and co-cooker, roommate and chosen life partner going to Rome for the whole summer? Why not. Tune in for her exploits at the agricultural office of the UN--and all the papal miscellany you can possibly stomach (more, even!)--at romarama.blogspot.com (now, with my camera!). (I suggested she call the blog "Shit Be Old," but I got vetoed.)

How shall I cook for one?
How will the cat react to the sudden 50% drop in number of Moms?
Will my plan of "drink more this summer" lead to troubles or the most fun of all?
How far can I burn through our 180-item Netflix cue?

She leaves on the 2nd of June, then we both turn 28, then we'll see. We'll only see.

In which I make an unallowed amount of noise.

2007-04-04T21:56:00.000-04:00

When you live in an apartment building, you live with a certain expectation about the noise that will be made above or below you--or both. You live with raised voices, with radios, with alarm clocks left on too long, with parties, with big televisions on too loud. Hammering in the walls, furniture from IKEA being assembled, sex, clicky or clompy shoes on around the house, the dryer running later in the night than you'd like. These are just a few examples of allowances made for renting.

My penultimate apartment in Chicago, near Rockwell, was in a building that muffled sound between floors not at all--a distinction we were only able to make in hindsight, with the contrast of our last apartment. Anyway, the apartment off of Rockwell had a set of very, very loud upstairs neighbours. It all began on move-in day, with an argument. Il dit, "Just pick it up, Rene!" Elle: "I can't LIFT it!" "Just PICK IT UP, Rene!!" "I CAN'T LIFT it!!!" "JUST PICK IT UP!!!" I CAN'T LIIIFT IT!!!!!" There was sex at various hours (not a real problem; at least they were happy for a while...), a combination show-tunes/Riverdance night every Tuesday (CLOP CLOP CLOP Heeey BIG SPEN-DER....), and much, much fighting (YOU'RE JUST LIKE YOUR SISTER, RENE!). At about 3 or 4 in the night. As apartment dwellers, we endured as much and as long as we felt was appropriate, and then responded in the appropriate apartment manner: broomstick rap on the ceiling. At 4 in the morning, having a screaming fight, throwing things, in the bedroom above our heads, and those selfish unhappy people actually knocked back, like our broom raps were interrupting their perfectly good row. We yelled "TAKE IT TO THE FRONT ROOM!" and they did. They were one of the major reasons we moved.

So I think I know about living in apartments, and I don't think I am callous about peace and quiet. I keep it down during the appropriate hours and expect to be allowed some latitude with volume within a certain level and time frame.

But tonight my dumbass suburbanite downstairs neighbours thought my 9:00 pm wooden xylophone (actually a Javanese gambang, but raise your hand if you know what that is...) was a bit loud for them, and they pounded on their ceiling/my floor. My downstairs neighbours of the loud parties, the loud ass television, the vibrating ENTIRE HOUSE from whatever huge sewing machines operate in this building, the stomping children, the fights, found me a bit loud at 9:30 in the evening. That's 9:30 eastern time--an hour and a half before the evening news comes on. Come the hell on. I put up with your shit and you put up with mine, all within reason and within acceptable hours--that's the code of apartment living. Your television noise is okay, but my music--not even my radio music, here--is not.

Like I needed another reason to HATE THIS APARTMENT.

+ + +

But here's a reason to party: our lease is indeed tenancy-at-will, therefore month to month. So no penalty for leaving three months early. Fuck off and die, crappy suburban living!

In which I allow that it is possible that I [heart] New York.

2007-03-31T17:23:00.000-04:00

As I'd feared, this past weekend was a dangerous thing: put Nora in a big city and give her some friends and a real burrito and what happens? She begins to draw even more unfavourable comparsions between this possible life and her current life.

Yes yes y'all (tick tock y'all, to the beat y'all, ya don't stop...), my maiden voyage to New York was a total success. On Friday night, as we walked to the diner, we acted as first responders to a pretty serious cab-and-bike accident that happened right in front of our eyes, and my lady hit 911 first--an accident in New York reported by a native Wisconsonite visiting the city from her home in Boston but calling on a phone with a Chicago number. We are modern young America and we move around a lot.

We walked all over the place on Saturday, a fine, sunny, cool day to be in Central Park, watching the beautiful people stroll their bebes about and the bikers ride their beautiful bikes... Then to Brooklyn to the art museum and the feminist art exhibit including The Dinner Party, about which I'll write later. Indian food on the outskirts of Park Slope, and staying up late talking with friends who live in Hell's Kitchen.

Sunday brought me to my set of tasks: yogurt, shoe store, brunch. Check, check, and frickin check: we hit the Lower East Side, Soho, Little Italy, and a few other slivers of neighbourhood that I certainly can't discern from each other. I bought a bag that looks a bit like it's made out of tanned human skin--it is not and it is vegan. We popped into a candy store (Economy Candy) that was filled with kids acting like some kind of kids in candy stores. We brunched in a precious place in Freeman's alley staffed entirely by fellows with moustaches and lithe girls with effortless ensembles (damn their lack of effort!). My friend Jen took a shine to the lipstick our server (server? waitress?) was wearing and asked after it. A quick boutique search and she'd become That Girl With The Red Lipstick On, very oo la lah. All this and a trip to Zabar's for bagels and a $20 tub of truffle stock, with which I'll make some knockout risotto later this week.
I feel a little stupid, a little imprudently smitten. There was just...something about being in a city laid out on a grid again, a city with a big ass subway system, a city! My lady's and my dissatisfaction with our geography grows, and the lure to leave is great. My employer has a large New York office; surely there is much work in immigration law for my partner. One thinks, why not? It is never too late, and one is obligated to search out happiness because life is short.

+ + +

Life is short and the bag I bought is made by a house of design. My bag has a name on it that is not the name of a friend, as was the case with my previous bag. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it is a really delicious bag. On the other, am I not a brand-name girl; I own almost nothing that is marked on its exterior by its maker. I'm afraid that someone will say to me "oh, is that the new 'name & name' bag?" and I'll have to say "Umn, yes."

It's really a soft, glossy bag. I femme out on bags and shoes. I've made my choice and I stick by it.

This one goes up to eleven.

2007-03-22T22:32:00.000-04:00

A more challenging week--in terms of my feelings of personal effectiveness. Inexplicable sinus pressure settled in at the end of last week for a few days as the weather turned back towards 30, chilly, damp, joint-aching. Questioning of geographic life-path (note: not career path) continuous in frequency. Overall dissatisfaction moderate to high, 7 on a scale of 1 to 10.

I'll explain:

10 - Cry Self To Sleep Each Night And Wake Crushed By Weight Of Own Self-Indulgent Sorrow (Seriously, Who Says Sorrow Unless They're Completely Over The Top Melodramatic?)

9 - Massive Ill-Advised Road Trip (note: no car) or Destructive Flirting (9.5)

8 - SHAVE HEAD! SHAVE HEAD NOW!

7 - Dreams of Currently Unattainable Past Satisfactions

6 - Perhaps I Should Buy New Jeans

5 - Those Girl Scout Cookies Sure Are Good And I Think I'll Have Another (Box)

4 - Today I Shall Dress In An Inappropriately Aggressive Manner For Work And Social Engagements

3 - I'll Think Mean Thoughts About Every Other Stupid Commuter On This Stupid Train

2 - Self-Indulgent Blog Updates

1 - Gee, I'm Bored, I Think I'll Wake Up The Cat

+ + +

I've never really been to New York City, but we're going this weekend. I shall be bold and wear my light jacket. (Let it not be said that I am not an optimist in some things.) I only have a couple of things I intend to do, so that I can keep it unoverwhelming: see the recently installed Dinner Party at the Sackler gallery, get some of that 100-yr-old-culture yogurt at Yonah Schimmels on the Lower East Side, go to the vegan shoe store, and take a recently explosively dumped friend out to drown his sorrow. I'll report back on the level of relative deadliness I experience on the beleaguered Fung Wah bus line.

Bad Blogger! No Biscuit!

2007-03-10T10:30:00.000-05:00

Despite my best intentions, etc. etc. I'm sure you see what's happened here.

I still have the job (yeehaw) and it does take up ENTIRE WEEKDAYS, if you can imagine it. There is a lot to learn and not a lot of time to learn it in. I have two bosses, between whom I am expected to split my time evenly, 2 1/2 days' worth of hours per week each. This is...a challenge. Additionally, there are many acronyms being tossed around in the office, and I don't yet know what any of them mean--one acronym I should mention here, though: TPS report. No, really. I've had to fill out numerous TPS reports to request access to various IT utilities. Next thing: I bet I get a PC Load Letter error on the fax machine in the corner...

Winter still holds Bostonland in its unsubtle hands, but there are signs that things are beginning to ease up. In between arctic fronts that have settled on New England in the past two or three weeks, there have been sunny days with temps over 40. Today is one of those days, and I went out on a limb and wore my light jacket.

I'm dogsitting in Southie this weekend, bizarrely enuff. Yes, I'm not a dog fan. But I am a "pretending to be on vacation" fan and a "paid to simply hang out at your house and let the dog out in your yard from time to time" fan. I brought my bike down, and I think I'll take a little ride in a few, explore the environs, try to buy some lunch somewhere.

Gosh, I sure did feel like I had a lot to say. Let this be a lesson: one doesn't actually have that much to talk about, usually.

+ + +

I've been thinking a lot lately about my feminism. More to come on this, I'm sure, later. Everywhere I've looked, it seems, there have been things that inspire thoughtfulness.

+ + +

I've been thinking a lot also about what it means to be living in the diaspora--in my case from Chicago and from my friends. Less on this later.

Gaudeamus Igitur

2007-02-02T12:18:00.000-05:00

I GOT THE JOB, and they're bringing me in $2500 higher than list, because I'm JUST THAT GOOD, y'all, I'm so very desirable. They will not regret it. They are probably already not regretting it.

I start on the 12th, so I have next week to set my affairs in order, tell my freelance clients that I'll have decreased capacity going forward, do my 2006 taxes, buy some work pants, and so forth.

The prospect of imminent paychecks is making me a little giddy...will I go to the record store or the comic book shop first? Do I need some new kicks? I may need some luxury groceries--like olives, juice, and danish butter (!!!). Or maybe I just need to see a matinee movie each day next week, with a big cherry coke in one hand and a box of hot tamales in the other.

Hot-cha, my brothers and sisters: my time of bust-ass brokeness and uninsured nervousness is nearly over. I can kick off another 401K! I can go to the doctor and get my prescriptions for the reasonable rate of $20 a month instead of $50! I can get out of the house every day! I can start living like a big girl again!

2007: so far, high marks.

File Under: Very Bad Marketing Decisions

2007-01-31T17:47:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this morning the orange line in Boston was tied up and delayed for some reason that was not clear. Riders were being routed inefficiently and ineffectively by too few MBTA employees. I did not think that anything could top (bottom?) the CTA for its lack of communication during service interuptions, but the MBTA did it today for sure. Mid-morning, it was announced that there had been a bomb-looking thing--possibly an improvised explosive device--magnetically fixed to the underside of a bridge over which I-93 runs, right above the Sullivan Square station. The bomb squad handled it. They also handled the nine other devices being found on other bridges around the city. The Charles was closed to boat traffic and other bridges and roads were closed to cars, trains, and buses.

All of this activity, all of these thankfully minor inconveniences, all of these resources, and all of this fear? A GUERILLA AD CAMPAIGN FOR A TURNER NETWORK CARTOON.

Turner apologized, calling it part of a big "whoopsy." A whoopsy in ten cities including New York and Chicago.

This is neither cool nor funny, and I'd like to see a lot of lawsuits and fired executives. I don't care if the devices are innocuous and I don't care if the ads were for the determined "cool" Aqua Teen Hunger Force. We live in an age of terror and if our government wants us to be their eyes and ears, maybe cable companies ought to, I dunno, not emulate IEDs in their ad campaigns. It's over the line.

My body, the body, my body

2007-01-22T21:01:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the second annual Blog for Choice Day. I'm coming in decidedly under the wire here at 10 PM Eastern. It's the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a Court decision with its constitutional base in the right to privacy--a right that exists not in letter but, in Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas' words, in the "penumbras" of five Amendments to the Constitution: the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth. It is our shadowy right to privacy that, among other things, makes warrantless wiretapping illegal, allows residents of some states to choose doctor-assisted suicide when it suits them, and gives women the endangered and never savoury option to legally medically terminate a pregnancy.

I am pro-choice. I have many reasons. At the core, I am pro-choice because it is my body. I've built it, I've changed it, I've made strong choices with it, and it is mine. I give it as I please and I keep it in the condition that pleases me. If I wish it to bear a child, I'll arrange that hopeful condition; since my body threw me a curveball last year, I may not have that hope, but that does not change the fact that I, as the sole curator of my built body, deserve to choose.

Because it is my body, I deserve the pleasures it provides. This is not limited to sex; this includes my right to tattoo whatever I want where ever I want. I own my parts and I own the metal in certain of them. I should be able to participate in safely administered body rituals if I please. I can wear my hair in whichever cuts and colours are possible and attractive to me. If I wish my tongue split I have the body right to find a practitioner who can provide such a service for me.

I should have these rights no matter what boundaries are forced on me by law or by other people. Because that's what it comes down to: my body is mine and it's not right for others to police the kind of body I am allowed (or the kind of woman I am at all, for that matter). It's nonnegotiable: it's my body.

That is why I am pro-choice. Because no one should issue orders to anyone else on the conscientious care and keeping of their personal meat-n-water bag.

The weakness of my argument is like that of many other arguments for or against abortion: if you do not agree with my basic statement, you'll not agree with the conclusion I draw from it. It's the same as "it's a person already." I'm finished trying to change the minds of people whose views are the exact base opposite of mine. We'll both just end up angry, screaming at each other, and I have far too much proofreading to do to spend my time arguing in that nonproductive manner.

Happy Birthday Roe.
(pun deliciously intended)

+ + +

For other participating bloggers, try the big list here.

New year, new meme

2007-01-11T11:16:00.000-05:00

Salma put forth a new blog meme, and while I don't have the time at this red hot moment to complete the entire, soul searching, 40-question web quiz, I will answer one:

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I was in love with a place (in my mind, in my mind)/
I made a lot of mistakes (in my mind, in my mind)...

+ + +

Stopping through Chicago on the way to Iowa for a committment ceremony. No, silly, not that kind; they're just not actually getting married, but throwing the party like they are.

"Pop open a bottle of bubbly...

2007-01-01T12:09:00.000-05:00

Here's to another gawdamned New Year."

Deck the Halls. DECK THEM!

2006-12-08T19:30:00.000-05:00

Faithful readers may recall my previous tales of the types of lawn decorations to which one might be subjected in the suburbs.

Well.

The ghosts came down not two days after Halloween and that same morning, though I was not awake to watch, a large and whimsical inflatable turkey took their place. It took me a day and a half to notice that the thing I sighted from the front window was not still the ghosts and Tigger-vampire. The turkey was up until the weekend after the holiday. We had an empty front lawn until three days ago. Now, when I mused that Christmas might be our landlords' holiday, I had no idea I'd be this right. I now live in a house that proudly displays all of the following, in plushly inflated and glowing nylon and from L to R as one stands on the sidewalk facing the house: a large polar bear in a night cap; a small holiday sleigh piloted by Santa; a (real rotating) carousel with whimsical riders; another festive Tigger and Pooh Bear combo; a second Santa popping from a present (two Santas? Doesn't it freak the children?); a family of snowpersons; and, at the center of it all and blocking my view of the lights across the street, a 15-ft tall snowman (height includes Lincoln-like stovepipe hat, natch...) clutching something that looks like a baseball bat in his airily muscular arms.

I don't think "fa la la la la" when I see a 15-ft snowman clutching what looks like a baseball bat outside my front window; I think, what is that snowman doing with that baseball bat, and is he on my side?

The decorating holidays are weighted to the autumn and winter. It's all down hill from here.

+ + +

Happy birthday to my Mom, as of yesterday!

You must choose, brothers and sisters...

2006-12-05T19:29:00.000-05:00

Each day I get to pick: will I be sad today or will I be furious?
How nice it is, sometimes, to have the choice.
How lucky I am, to have options.

Today I am furious.

I am a ball of effing fire. Touch me and die, infidels. Don't make me get my Two-By-Four of Truth and bend this entire city of bean-bakers over my knee and beat some sense into it.

Today's middle finger salute goes out to the potential employer who gave me the phenomenal high hat about their most recent opening. Now truly, if I am being passed over and *ignored completely* for more qualified candidates, that's one thing. Meritocracy? Sure, why not; I'm a winner in that scenario. But if I am being passed over because I've made strong physical choices and present a somewhat "alternative" countenance, I must lodge my objection. I cannot force people to see me as I see myself, but I can say that those who, like me, make these choices in mature adulthood do so knowing that our hard work must ultimately speak for us. We refuse to lie about who we are, because bringing ourselves to work in deceit serves no one. I can guarantee that I work twice as hard as someone who does not have piercings and tattoos because I *choose* to overcome stereotypes everywhere I go. My career so far is a testament to performance speaking louder than looks; after all, the currency of business is, in addition to actual currency, performance.

I surely hope that my experience so far with this potential, highly desirable employer does not indicate that they prefer a certain face for their operations. Without a chance, I won't get the opportunity to change their minds about people like me. And it's a shame when a good learning moment gets wasted.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go put on my boots.

+ + +

Happy birthday Dad! Today you are 63 and that is impressive! I wish very much that you would quit smoking! You almost did three years ago, so why not try again!

November whatever

2006-11-28T13:12:00.000-05:00

Nothing is happening, and as we should all know, if one cannot say anything nice, it's best not to say anything at all.

I would like my life to resume now, please. My adult life, with money. Money money money.

November Six

2006-11-06T13:47:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my little brother's 23rd birthday. Happy birthday, mah brutha. (Erm, he's that tall, orange drink of water on the right...)

The dream-company has another opening. You'd better believe I jumped on that posting and sent my resume and cover letter, with salary requirements, directly to "careers [at]."

Lastly, for our American readers who are eligible and registered, make it a priority to vote in tomorrow's midterm elections, about which I've been warning those of you who call me on the phone via my voice mail greeting for the last two years. If you are not registered, please do so for next time. If you can vote and you choose not to, don't you dare gripe about the government.

That is all.

November One

2006-11-01T13:24:00.000-05:00

This year's Halloween saw me NOT dressing up in any of the following rejected costume concepts (in no particular order):

1. Sexy Anne Frank. This was just...wrong, somehow.

2. Posing self perfectly still at the bottom of my building's stairs with blood and bruises and a broken high heeled shoe as "the woman who took a bad fall down the stairs of her apartment building." Even though this has the added benefit of being part of the scaaaaary Halloween decorations of our two-flat, it was rejected immediately by my sig. o. as well as the panel of nutrition students against whom I tested it as OVER THE LINE.

3. Valerie Solanis. This was a very strong contender, but I didn't wish to be seen as jumping on the renewed Andy Warhol bandwagon on this, its latest swing through the zeitgeist, no matter how much I myself--unrelated to the current rise in his mass cultural stock but fueled by the recent PBS documentary that is part of the rise--am really re/discovering Andy Warhol just now.

4. Nora Pumpkinhands. A pumpkin blight this year (as well as inherent size restrictions of pumpkins themselves) made finding ten similarly sized, small pumpkins to fit on my fingers very difficult. Also, this idea was dumb and would prevent the hoisting of Cold Ones at various collegiate parties to which I had initially planned on, ehm, inviting myself.

5. Columbia. Because I never did finish sequining, by hand, that entire damned jacket.

6. Maude Lebowski. Curse my failure to hit up "Wigs and Plus" on Milwaukee in Chicago before we moved!

It was an uneventful Halloween. I hope to find candy on clearance sometime today or tomorrow.

+ + +

Monday and Tuesday saw me heading to the southern exurb of Canton to work for a local produce organization/distributor, packing apples to send out to their big money donors. The pitch: money, lunch provided, and practically all the apples I could cart off. I took a half bushel each day; the check is on its way to me, via mail; and I got out of the house for a few days. A nice bit of toil for some very nice people.

The best part of all? Doing good work and knocking people back on their asses with my effectiveness. That's a great sadness for me, in this extended unemployment: that my ability to totally wow an employer is sitting stagnant. I haven't even had a real, official, for-an-open-position job interview so I haven't been able to really shine on the job market. It's hard to get through the door, even if I know I'd really stack up well against other applicants once I got through.

I registered with a temp agency late last week. Given the two-day job this week and some more freelancing for my former position, I haven't been in a position to call up and ask what they have for me on a given morning. Tomorrow, I'll call. This is my first temping experience. I don't really know what to expect, but perhaps I'll be working.

+ + +

Last week I sold some camping equipment for $40, thereby doubling my liquid assets. I didn't pay any bills in October--rent, credit card bills from grocery store trips, power bill, cell phone bill--and I can't pay any in November. I am entering forbearance on both my student loans. I am borrowing money from my parents to pay for my prescriptions last month, this month, next month. As I predicted, not working by November first has indeed put my ass in a veritable sling, financially.

+ + +

I'm profoundly unhappy right now, for all the reasons I've already addressed. My thought that this move would be a good (if not a not bad) career choice is being tested. The longer I can't find work in my field, the less time I'll have at a resume-building job before I leave Boston (at roughly the speed of sound...listen, if you will, for my sonic boom) in mid to late 2009. The less rich a resume I'm able to wrangle out of this whole experience (which is not yet a true fiasco, despite the growing feeling that I'm in some sort of hard luck urban comedy; did I mention that last week I got hit by a car whilst biking the two miles home from the grocery store in the next town over? Well, I did, by a white SUV that dinged off my right pannier as someone in the car screamed and then, then, the Bastard. Drove. Off.), the less strong of a candidate I'll be for my next job search.

I've put in only for jobs I feel qualified for--that my skills fit at least in part--because I don't feel like approaching a company for every offering is a good strategy. For more than one of these positions, I've felt I am a very compelling candidate, with skills and experience that make me worth calling back. For none have I been contacted for more information, interview, or references. Nothing nothing nothing, even when I contact friends of friends and associates of coworkers. Nothing.

Chin up and all that bullshit.

That is all.

How our art chooses us

2006-10-09T18:57:00.000-04:00

Ever notice something about yourself that you had forgotten all about? Like a freckle on your arm that you are surprised to see but remember vaguely from the last time you were surprised to see it? I have this reaction to my ankle tattoos often. It might be mostly because I don't see them as much as I see my other work (though I see them slightly more than my newest tricep work and far more than I can see my back plate...). But every time I see them, I think oh, how nice. I love those. What a great thing to have.

And I do love them. They were the first tattoos I got: I was 20 and we all lived in Madison for the summer. I was working a part-time job, the only one I could land after applying for and not getting calls back from 35 others. I made just enough money to pay rent for three months, buy food, and get tattooed. Oh, the simplicity. Ah, the halcyon days. I went to a parlor that seemed popular (for all I know it still is, though I'd patronize another establishment there now) with an idea in my head. An artist who wasn't busy met me at the counter and asked what I wanted. Now, I asked for a pair of black bands around my ankles, but that wasn't what I thought I'd been planning to get--what I'd envisioned, for months up to that point, having inked into my skin. I'd never told anyone what I was planning, so this statement, when I turned on a dime and changed my mind about what I needed, was the first out-loud mention of my plans. And these plans turned out to be different than what I thought I wanted.

Needed. When I spoke it to the artist, I'd told him not what I thought I wanted but rather what I suddenly knew I needed. Maybe our art chooses us. Maybe that's a serious conceit. But maybe I was saved from a bad tattoo (the design for which I still have not divulged to this day) and set on the path I'm on now, the path I know is right.

So after some brief misunderstanding (him: "okay, here's some ankle band flash, with some vines or flowers or stuff." me: "no, solid black. like electrical tape." him: "what?" me: "solid black bands on both ankles, like electrical tape.") I made an in-45-minutes appointment. We worked on placement for 45 minutes and inked for about an hour or and hour and a half, and it was over. Cash money changed hands, aftercare sheets were handed out, and I had a pair of beautiful black tattoos.

I love those. What a great thing to have.

Halloween decoration update!

2006-10-05T12:01:00.000-04:00

I surely wish I had a digital camera. There are two ghosts--one behind the other--popping out of that air-powered pumpkin (which hides them from the waist down) so what it really looks like to me, honestly, is that some ghostly hanky-panky is transpiring inside that pumpkin.

Scandal!

It do not feel like October

2006-10-04T15:33:00.000-04:00

The breeze today feels warm, and the sun is out, so it feels a little more like mid-June. I know, however, that it is October, for the Halloween decorations are going up in front of our little owner-occupied two flat. Wait, that's a little passively constructed... Our landlords are putting seasonal decorations up in the front lawn of their building. They are most certainly au courant in their choice of decorations, as their inflatable ghost popping out of the pumpkin and the giant blow-up Tigger dressed like Dracula have both also been erected by the house down the block.

The house down the block, it should be mentioned, makes my landlord's efforts look like crap, shoddily applied. The house down the block is either occupied by someone who works for the electric company or by someone who is wealthy enough to retain the services of a personal electricity consultant, as there is always a truck from National Grid parked at the over-lit, overly whimsical house, with its alternately delightful and completely stupid pastiche of funny, cute, and scary Halloween decorations. They have the flattened witch-n-broom plastered to their tree, to imply that this wholly non-threatening creature has mistakenly flown into the tree and sustained injury. They also, in contrast, have the newspaper-stuffed front stoop zombie and the simulated grave stones in the side yard. This cemetery simulacrum is next to the inflatable Dracula-Tigger, though, so it gives one less pause than it might otherwise. Strings of sticky-looking cotton spider web and of orange colored Christmas lights (are they still called Christmas lights out of season? Methinks it's like calling a tissue a Kleenex...) hang from the trees, the porch, and the chain link fence. There is even a mummy. The house down the block has been decked out in this manner since mid-September.

By these standards, our landlords are, at least from this modest start with the two trendy inflatable objets d'automne, phoning it in. Unless they have something else up their sleeves, I'm going to have to conclude that Christmas is more their house-decorating occasion. Can't wait.

+ + +

I also can't wait for our landlords to cash that rent check we wrote 17 days ago, along with the one we wrote on the 1st. Our checking account looks falsely awesome, and I can't handle that right now.

+ + +

Last night's dinner featured my very first attempt at scalloped potatoes, cribbed with a few alterations (smaller size, added onion and turnip, tripled garlic content) from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1. It worked, which pleased me. We ate it with a perfect roasted beet each and a small dish of Brussels (Brussel? brussle?) sprouts with dill butter.

Today, however, I tried to make cream of tomato soup out of a can and something went horribly awry. This hasn't ever happened to me in my nearly three decades of Campbell's Tomato experience: the milk curdled, stuck to the bottom of the pan, and in general, precipitated disgustingly out of the soup-solution. I trashed it and ate a granola bar for lunch instead. Adult.

In which we speak of food

2006-09-25T11:12:00.000-04:00

Greetings, True Believers.

In my spare time, I have been applying myself to the art of baking bread. That's not exactly accurate...I've been assembling ingredients and letting the bread machine do all the work. I am taking the credit, though, so that must count for something...

I started with a really great cardamom-sultana bread, which made excellent breakfast toast but was not as good for sandwiches. I moved through a nice hearty rye, then a buttermilk wheat that was perfect (great crumb, great crust, nice density). Then, I experienced my first failure. I am comforted by the fact that is was a failure of ambition, however: I am trying to make my first sourdough from my own, first sourdough starter. I followed the directions exactly, but when I opened the space age hatch on my space age baking box, I beheld a fallen loaf.

I may have erred in my alteration of the recipe--I was aiming for a more tart loaf. I may have added slightly too much yeast. Or, the least encouraging possibility: I might have a not good starter. It looked good to me and it smelled exemplary, but what do I really know about it. A new friend of mine here who bakes sourdough says that my starter looks a little thin. Very well; I shall add more flour and have another go. I may fail again before I really succeed, but the last failure was edible. That's the finest kind of failure.

+ + +

Dinner on Friday: miso glazed eggplant with garlic kale and vegetable-mushroom fried rice. I rule.

+ + +

I am very, very jealous of Don and Kash, who left Chicago for southern California, which means that they have farmers' markets all year long. Boston has its share of markets; I could hit one almost every day of the week, if I could navigate my way to each one. They stop in mid-October, however, and that's coming up a little faster than I like to consider. Last Friday at the Copley Square market, we got Brussels (Brussel? brussel?) sprouts (yes, I love them), a melon that turned out to be mediocre, some small squash, basil for pesto, golden cauliflower, a pound of honey, the aforementioned eggplant, and a pint of raspberries that didn't last us more than 10 minutes. Num. The previous week it was kale, turnip, beets, carrots, and grape tomatoes that, again, didn't last me more than 10 minutes. Love those. But in a few weeks, no more markets.

In Chicago, we belonged to a produce co-op that, through a series of arrangements with like-minded farms, was able to deliver all winter. The co-ops I've investigated here don't do that, and we're far too late to join one for this winter anyway. We co-oped in Chi for three years; I don't really remember how to buy (non-organic, non-local, non-seasonal, less high quality) produce at a grocery store, nor do we live near a good market with a good produce section. Whenever I'm at the store I can't stop thinking about how expensive it all is, and for an inferior product. The way I eat changed so much with the discovery of the co-op and the neighbourhood produce market; now I have to change back. No small feat.

What it underscores for me is that the way I'd come to consume food--the way I collected and prepared the nutrients I need daily--is really different from both the way I'd consumed most of my life, prior, and also the way that I'm going to be consuming for the near future, until I get myself together and make the effort (for it does take more effort to eat like I eat) to consume that way again.

So here's to making the effort to eat more true-ly. It's going to be more difficult for a while, and then it'll get easier again.

La pluie

2006-09-14T15:53:00.000-04:00

Oh look, it's raining outside. You know what's really wonderful? Being inside, listening to the rain, drinking spicy red tea with cardamom and clove, and being dry. All at the same time.

+ + +

Insert completely non-novel rant about the DMV here.

+ + +

As it turned out, one of our old and more long-lost friends lives not just in Bostonland, but in our little true suburb. He and three friends brought some a la carte, and some laundry, over last night. We discovered that the glowing-fire-shaped lamp in the specious fake fireplace actually does work; it is the outlet in the "fireplace" that is busted. We lit the thing up on the coffee table, and man, was it ever atmospheric.

Best of luck now to Flora, who heads to Ethiopia in a few days to volunteer at an orphanage.

Commentary

2006-09-11T16:37:00.000-04:00

I wasn't sure if I wanted to add to the din--if not the discussion--of today's anniversary. I don't have much to say and I've been on self-imposed personal media blackout for most of the day: no TV, no blogs, no papers, no NPR.

On September 11, 2001, my best friend and I had been living in Chicago for about three weeks. I was looking for work. She had a job but was off that day. We rose late and turned on the NPR, and the first thing we heard was "...White House is surrounded by troops, but we don't know where the President is. Again, both the President and Vice President are unaccounted for..." and I thought someone got him; someone got the bastard. The coverage was unclear; we had no TV to check against. Radio off, breakfast on. When our friend called us to come over and watch the big screen at his apartment, things became grave. Everyone left work and we all gathered round and watched 5 or 6 hours of the world changing.

My mom and dad were both turned loose from work about that time as well. They went to my grandmother's house and watched together. After several hours, my 87-year old Okie grandmother mused that this seemed like an opportunity for an awful lot of skulduggery. And she was right. We've been witness in the last half decade to heretofore mind-blowing amounts of skulduggery, and I think it's wrong to simply commemorate our national loss without acknowledging that. Today is a fine day to think about the true tragedy, the real attack and affront to our security and our way of life. But I don't think it is fair to all of our memories to omit discussions of what lead up to the attacks and what resulted from them--everything that resulted from them. Dangerous amounts of history are being at best glossed over and at worst rewritten by people who would reduce the events of September 11, 2001 to a single point of feeling, a "9-11 (tm)" to hit on when a certain feeling is required of the audience or electorate.

So let us remember those who needlessly died, but let's not give up the memories of our anger or the feelings of outrage towards our government that some of us felt. I'm not interested in keeping my angry mouth shut today because of some imposed sanctity. Today's anniversary is a terrible one, but it should not be given over to mourning only. We need to commemorate the feelings that will allow us to move productively forward, or else we'll all be left staring at our clasped hands as politicians and pundits lay benedictions on us, telling us how to feel on this most life-changing day. I don't feel like they should have this near-holiday for themselves; it belongs also to the angry and the unsatisfied, who have also watched the world change and don't at all care for those who are orchestrating the changes.

So much has changed; the world has changed and I have changed, and America has changed. To paraphrase, let's mourn the dead, but let's fight like hell for the living.

It's not a novel opinion or position, but ain't that the beauty of teh intarweb: I can needlessly add to the blah blah blah and still feel like I spoke my mind.

Commonplace

2006-09-04T19:50:00.000-04:00

Most common phrase for Boston living: "Cool and cloudy tomorrow with a 70% chance of rain."

Today we had a break from cool and cloudy with rain: bright sun and a fresh breeze off the ocean. I think ah, the lake effect, but I am of course completely wrong. We spent about four hours walking the freedom trail, from Boston Common to the Bunker Hill monument, an impressive obelisk that predates the Washington Monument by about 40 years. A nice walk, especially when one veers off the path into the neighbourhoods along the way. We walked a prodigious amount, circling back to a T stop not very far from the end of the line on which we live. Boston is much smaller than Chicago, such that you can walk farther in less time, but the neighbourhoods and 'burbs (so far as I have observed) are not as multi-use or purposed as Chicago neighbourhoods. One has to walk farther to get to groceries, farther to the post office or library, farther to the coffee shop. I'm sure the fact that we live in an honest-to-gawd suburb contributes to my impression that this place is not made for people to walk from here to there; it's a car part of the city-place.

Tomorrow's agenda: bank, DMV. School starts for half of us; I hope to hear back from offices that will be returning to work after the long weekend. High hopes.

+ + +

Our owner-occupied two-flat (plus basement apt.) has, in place of a back yard, a sizable in-ground pool, outfitted with a potbellied woodburning stove and a wood-fired clam boil pot (one can only assume). Tenants are not granted the use of this facility; it is for the owners, their kids, and their grandkids. They were out in it today, and I watched as I did a mountain of dishes in my unlikely big kitchen, looking out the jealously window over the sudsy, hot, stainless double basin sink.

+ + +

Requiem eternam, Steve Irwin. Crikey, all y'all: he died doing what he loved. Though for the life of me, as an ertswhile field biologist myself, I cannot figure out why he felt he should wear shorts out into the bush. Every self respecting ecologist knows that long pants are de rigeur, not just because shorts look stupid; long pants are the first line of defense from plants and animals that want to eat, scab, scratch, poison, or kill you. All the same, he enthusiastically worked with reptiles and other animals that might not be so cuddly but are still vital and deserving of preservation.

Forward

2006-09-02T10:13:00.000-04:00

I've begun to get my feet beneath me. In no small part, this is because we've unpacked and organized our kitchen and can cook again. A big step. It's an odd kitchen, but ain't no kitchen don't benefit from the smells of a roasted tomato risotto with fresh green beans. The bikes are still parked in the dining room and with no bookshelves yet purchased, the books are still neatly housed in a handful of boxes from my old place of employment. They're like an ort of my old life lodged in the craw of my new.

I've been told that the weather right now in the Bostonland area is a little unseasonably cool. To me, it feels like we drove out of a beautiful late summer, with its cooler nights and bright hot sun, and into a pleasant autumn. Unfortunately, most days here have been overcast; grey skies do no cities any favours, and the sunny days we have had have definitely made my new place seem more acceptable. Rain expected tomorrow and Monday. The bikes may stay in the dining room a few more days.

+ + +

Now seems like the right time to rattle off a few of the reasons that my first few days in our new home were challenging to my wherewithal. So to say.

* There are no overhead lights in the "living room," "foyer," or bedroom
* Carpet (this is an apartment dealbreaker, for me)
* There is no "study," as advertised. There is the abovementioned "foyer" (or is it a study? With no overhead light and the front door right there, it's tough to picture it as a private office for my gradschoolin' honey) and a (copiously lit from above) "fat hallway," which is too small and too trafficked to be a quiet space (the bedroom, bathroom, "foyer," and dining room all have doors from the fat hallway)
* Electric range
* Specious fake fireplace that divides the dining and front rooms--and the log shaped lamp that occupies it doesn't even work
* Wallpaper
* Wainscoting

These are the things I didn't know about. I was already feeling apprehensive about the lack of a dishwasher, though welcoming the in-unit washer and dryer.

The lesson in all of this is that renting from a distance is hard, and that you should never send someone in whom you don't have full faith to report back on the state of the place. Our representative erred on or omitted several important points. Better luck next year; time to shut my mouth.

+ + +

I'd like to offer a special welcome to my friend Jesse, who is blogging his just-begun life as a student in Cairo and whose blog is linked over on the right, there. One of my oldest friends, some of my fondest memories. Big love to him, and I can't wait to hear how it's all going.

On Having Moved

2006-08-29T13:03:00.000-04:00

It's early, yes, so take this for what it's worth, but I really need to verbalise this and my partner has disallowed my saying it out loud: I really dislike this new apartment and I wish we'd never left Chicago.

On Moving

2006-08-23T12:38:00.000-04:00

I am the only person I know who has not had a completely disastrous experience with a certain moving company whose name is (credit where it's due) a pretty delicious play on words implying that one should do one's own carrying. I'm not sure what allowed me to get away with this in my last intra-city move, but clearly I'm feeling lucky, punk, as I committed myself about three weeks ago to the use of their services for my upcoming inter-state move.

Originally, we wanted to pick up the truck this Sunday, the 27th. Our plans changed in a dramatic and vehicular way shortly after I made my first reservation, however, requiring that I bump the res. date up one day, to the 26th. One might think that, having made the res. on-line, one could change the res. on line. I suppose one would be right, if one was willing to accept that an emailed date change would be addressed in "no more than 48 hours." Fourty-eight hours?! This is the fyoo-chure, friends, and a business email untended for 48 hours—especially when your (doubtlessly) underpaid peons are staffing your phone (and I would assume e-mail) lines from, oh, 4:00 AM to 11:00 PM mountain standard time—is totally unbelievable. Hell, I only work from 9 to 5 CST, and I manage to respond to nearly everything, especially those things that require immediate action, in mere hours.

I decided to use the power of telephone, thinking that perhaps the status of this voice transmission device as somewhat of an elder statesman of near-instantanious communication would maybe get the job done faster. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Say a prayer for the phonebank, the operator, the switchboard: my phone call was immediately converted by the staff person into an email, which he then sent to scheduling. I won't even bother to talk about my hold time, as 20 minutes is neither unusual nor exceptional. It's practically fast, and given that I was able to do work during the hold, it was almost nice to point to the phone and make gestures indicating that I was on a call, which turns out to be an effective excuse for not answering questions from office bystanders like "are you excited about your move?" and "are you all packed up?"

(1. Not right now, I'm not, and 2. Surely not, fool.)

I called the moving hotline on Monday morning and entered my plea for a date change. They told me "someone" would "get back to me" that day or the next (again with the 48 hours! Useless!). I called on Tuesday and made a second request, mentioning that I hadn't heard back the previous day. I was "assured" that "someone" would "return" my call that day. Today is Wednesday and upon my arrival to the office I was filled with such unecessary and self-righteous phone rage that I felt it might be a good idea to call and make three separate requests to three different operators, mentioning each time that I had called for three days running, each day receiving another assurance that "someone" in the ether of scheduling would contact me. Then I dropped an ultimatum: "Mary, I have called three times. It is now 72 hours from my desired pick-up day. If I do not hear back from U today, I will U-se another Haul-ing company and cancel this service. Just for my personal reference, what's the easiest way to cancel U-r Haul-ing service so that I may employ another company?"

I do not believe in subtext. I am, as my new friend Adam pointed out last night, a "straight shooter." I also belive in the power of the first name, and I say this as a veteran of the phone bank: few things catch the attention of someone on the phone like the pointed use of their name. It says either "I'm on to you, bucko" or "I have a fixation with names and I might be a little crazy," both of which can be troublesome when one has become lulled by the relative safety of the non-face-to-face phone relationship.

I got a confirmation call back about an hour after my strongly worded, not not threatening phone call. My date has been moved. Additionally, having exorcised my fury on the phone bank, I can remain calm in what is sure to be a long, slow line at the understaffed local pick-up office of this rental company this Saturday.

Take heart, y'all: being one of those assholes can pay off. I have many proofs of this.

Always tap, never blow.

2006-08-18T12:08:00.000-04:00

Check one, halla. Halla. Hey, hey. One. One. Check one, halla halla.

*ahem*

Welcome to The Rocket Report.