Googly-eyed

I can't believe I didn't post at all the entire month of February. I mean, I know it's a short month, but still. I was hoping I could get at least one post in (I tried last night, but I actually fell asleep beside my laptop. Not the first time that's happened, and surely not the last, either).

But wow, Feb. was really busy. I can't even remember half the stuff I did, at this point, but I know a not-insignificant amount of cleaning was done, a goodly number of movies and hockey games were seen, there was a friend's art opening I went to, a couple stitch 'n' bitches to attend, and Johnny & I started going ice skating with the gang from the unofficial Panthers board every weekend, which is awesome. It ain't roller skating (I miss my quads!), and it gives my knees a bit of hell, but it's still pretty bitchin'. All in all, a very busy month.

So anyway, to atone for being such an absent blogger lately, here are some tidbits of what I did this afternoon, in the bloggy spirit of oversharing. I do Google myself every so often (as I'm sure you all do, too - it's really sort of like good internet hygiene, y'know?), and this post linked by one of my Twitter acquaintances reminded me that it's that time again. I'm actually quite difficult to find via Google, as my name is common enough to return multitudes of hits - there's even a journalist (formerly of the Washington Post, now with the Wall Street Journal) who shares my name. I'm rather pleased with my Google anonymity. That's why you won't see my full name on this blog or on my Blogger identity. But even if it did end up on here somehow, it wouldn't matter, because I'd still get lost in a sea of like-named individuals, many of whom are way higher-profile than I'll ever be. I've got a couple friends who, if you Google their full name, pages about them are the only results that show up. That just boggles my mind. Here, on the other hand, is what you get when you Google for me:

If you Google my first name and last name, on page 3 of the results you'll get the LinkedIn directory for everyone with my name, which I am on (one of 39 people). On page 7 of the results, there is a link to a page which cached a link to my Twitter account when I still had my full name attached to it. I am nowhere else to be found in the first 10 pages of results.

If you Google my nickname and my last name, a link to my old blog url shows up on the first page. Pathetically enough, I have still not placed a redirect from my old url to here, so I'm sure there are still some folks out there who think I abandoned my blog in November of 2007.

If you Google my full name plus "twitter," the page with the cached link to my Twitter account is the first result.

If you Google my full name plus "blogger," I am not anywhere to be found in the first 10 pages of results.

If you Google my full name plus "blog," there is a link to my old blog url on page 5.

"My name".blogspot.com gives you the same page as "my name".org, which appears to be the online resume of a theater director out West (interesting projects she's worked on!). "My name".com gives a placeholder page. "My name".net does not exist.

If you Google my e-mail alias, you get 3 pages of results, none of which are related to me at all. If you Google my personal e-mail address, you get four results, two of which link to comments I've made on Threadless, one of which links to my old blog url, and one of which links to some site which appears to be for spammers, as it just contains a list of random e-mail addresses, and Google warns "This site may harm your computer" (this would explain the large amount of spam I get, all of which Gmail catches - thanks, Gmail!). If you Google my "grown-up" e-mail address, which is the one I'd use for any job application or anything, you get no results.

So. Thanks for giving me a boring name, Mom & Dad! Actually, I like my name alright - it's just a little long. At 19 letters and 7 syllables, it was kind of a pain when I was learning to write as a kid, and it's still a mouthful to say. It's not so weird that I have to spell it for people all the time, but it's not John-Smith common, either. It's got a "z" and a bunch of "i"s in it, and since those are two of my favorite letters, it's just fine with me.

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25 things

I did this meme on Facebook, and I'm re-posting it here because some of these things were things I've been meaning to blog about, anyway. I'll expand on the pertinent ones at some future point, if I can ever work up the motivation.

So, 25 Things:

We all know how this works, right? I think everyone else on earth has been tagged for this at least once, so I'm only tagging people I know have done it already. If, by some miracle, you haven't been tagged yet, and you wish I had tagged you, pretend I just did.

So, without further ado, 25 Random Things About Me:

1. Most people seem to profess vague annoyance with the task when they post these things - but I love them. Love reading 'em, love writing 'em. If you ever need to tag anyone for a "list a buncha random things about yourself" meme, I'm your girl. I wanted to be tagged for this one for like, two weeks before anyone tagged me.

2. Clearly, I spend way too much time on teh intarwebz. I'm trying to be better about this.

3. I do love to travel. I've been to 24 countries (26 if you break down the UK into its component parts and count them each separately). I can think of at least 20 more, just off the top of my head, that I'd really like to visit soon. Lifetime travel goals: all 50 states, all 7 continents, all of Europe - at least!

4. Once, at a party, I miscounted and announced that I'd been to 44 countries. Oops. I have no idea where that number came from. I seem to remember alcohol being involved.

5. Pretty much any nerdy hobby you can name, I do it (or am interested in it to some degree). Where's George/Where's Willy? Yup. Geocaching? Uh huh. Philately? Numismatics? Check and check. I would bookcross more, but I really hate to get rid of books, even for the fun of spreading them around. I'm not hardcore enough to really know what I'm looking at most of the time, but I do enjoy planespotting and trainspotting. Comics, anime, sci-fi - duh. I even get nerdy about my not-so-nerdy hobbies (arts-&-crafty stuff).

6. Here is why I could never be a writer for a living, even though I've been told I'm good at it: it takes me forever. I've been at this for like, half an hour, now, and I'm only up to thing 6.

7. I can trace my dad's side of my family in this country back to a kid who landed in Virginia 401 years ago. On my mom's side, I'm in the first full generation born here - my mom's youngest sibling was born in the US, but my mom was born in China.

8. I love that - the whole Barack-Obama, nowhere-else-on-earth-is-my-story-even-possible-ness of my family.

9. I'm pretty obsessed with the salsa blanca that only Hampton Roads Mexican restaurants serve. You cannot get that stuff anywhere else. I eat at Mexican places as often as I can when I'm home for a visit.

10. Other things I miss about home: The Naro, everyone having personalized license plates, natural bodies of water everywhere (as opposed to man-made lakes & canals), The NorVa, all the artsy stuff (Chrysler Museum, Virginia Stage, etc.).

11. I don't tolerate heat very well, and consequently loathe hot weather.

12. Despite that, I don't dislike living in South Florida nearly as much as I thought I would. I've met a lot of really cool people here, and there's tons of interesting stuff to do. & OMG, I love palm trees! :D I just make sure to spend as little time outdoors as humanly possible. I actually like the reassuring sameness to the weather here, in a way. I don't need to consult the forecast, I can safely assume that it'll be hotter than I'd like for about 355 days per year.

13. If left to my own devices, I will stay up all night and sleep all day. I really have to force myself to go to bed at a "normal" time.

14. I want a house the way some women want a baby. I know it's a huge responsibility and an enormous expense, but I still want one so badly. I fawn over architecture and home dec magazines. I pore over real estate listings. It's a buyer's market right now - I just hope we can take full advantage.

15. I spend way too much time thinking about typography, the shapes of functional objects, and package design for someone utterly unconnected to the design world.

16. I'm allergic to cats, but I love 'em anyway. =^.^=

17. I'm also allergic to pineapple and penicillin.

18. There are 4 more tattoos I want to get soon.

19. 19 is my lucky number. :)

20. I'm amazed how much being 30 feels like being 12 again. For instance, I need braces (again).

21. I used to hate sports, but now I'm a pretty big hockey fan. I also sort-of, vaguely follow baseball and football (English Premier League, not NFL). When we're down at the pub watching the football, occasionally we catch a rugby game or a cricket match, & that is fun, too, if sometimes confusing. And I still love roller derby, even tho' I don't play anymore.

22. I have weird hearing. I can't hear soft sounds as well as most people, but I also can't tolerate loud noises as well as most people. I carry earplugs with me at all times.

23. At last count, I had 800-some CDs - and last count was, gosh, something like two and a half years ago now. It's high time to do another inventory, methinks.

24. I still have no idea - none at all - what I want to be when I grow up.

25. Probably about 75% of the time I spend on Facebook, I'm playing word games. Wordscraper/Lexulous, Scramble, Word Twist, whatever - if you want to play, please start a game with me!


Reading over everyone's 25 Things, I'm reminded again of just how remarkable y'all are, and how glad I am that I know you.

Cheers!

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two years in effing paradise

Two years ago today, I finally pulled up in front of this building, Lucy crammed full of boxes and stuff. That was it. Voila, I'd made it, I was now a resident of the Sunshine State.

It's simultaneously hard to believe it's already been two years, and hard to believe it's only been two years. Part of me still feels like I just got here, but part of me feels like I've been here forever. I guess the latter feeling is due mostly to how much has happened in those two years - it's amazing how much can happen in such a short time.

On the whole, I really have enjoyed living here a lot more than I thought I would. Enough so that, when it looked like we would be leaving the area by this summer, I was actually kinda bummed (tho' also rather excited at the prospect of living somewhere with four seasons, again, and being able to get my winter clothes out of storage). And now that it is entirely up in the air as to whether or not we'll be moving away at some point this year (we'll definitely be moving, but it may only be as far as Miami-Dade - long story, full of details and variables that rely on as-yet-unknown facts - I'll post something when we know anything, but until then, there's not much point), I am kinda glad there's a distinct possibility we may be staying. I'm sure that's at least somewhat due to my marked distaste for moving, but there's also the fact that, aside from the wretched weather and horrific traffic, this area has a lot to recommend itself. I've been meaning to post about a lot of those things... maybe this year I'll actually get around to doing that. Maybe I should join one of those meme things, like Things I Love Thursday - maybe that'll motivate me to post more often about actual things of substance, as opposed to my usual inane babbling. Eh, we'll see.

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a few thoughts for today

My grandmother would be 94 today if she were still alive. This is the first time her birthday's passed without her being here. Happy birthday, Nana. I miss you.

Picked up the cat from the cat hotel today (or, as Johnny might put it, I sprung her from the kitty jail). She certainly seems happy to be home. :) She didn't put on that much more weight while we were gone this time, but combined with what she gained while we were gone in November... well, let's just say that Prue needs to make a new year's resolution to lose some weight. She is a tubby, chubby kitty. Some of it will drop pretty quickly now that she can run around and jump up on things and play with her toys all day again, but I'm wondering if perhaps we'll have to put her back on the diet food, too, even if just for a little while.

Sadly, I am feeling as tubby as my cat these days. Eating like crap and not really exercising for about two months will do that to you, I guess. I will definitely have to go on the diet food for a bit, plus make sure to run around and jump up on things and play with my toys. And hey, maybe even go back to the gym one of these days. I'm not quite sure how that will work out, tho', since I'm looking at my schedule for the next few months, and this year is shaping up to be potentially even busier than the last. Yikes.

Edited to add: Oh, oh, I almost forgot! This is apparently my 200th post on this blog! Wow. Sure doesn't seem like it's been that many (then again, I clearly forget the vast majority of crap I post about, roughly 2 minutes after I hit the "Publish Post" button). That is a lot of incoherent babbling and rambling on. Here's to at least 200 more posts I also won't recall! ;)

...

Happy new 2000-what? Rarr bleah stumble *crash*

Seriously, it's 2009 already? I... am so out of it. Like, wow. Being sick out of my mind right now is not helping things any, I guess.

So new year's resolutions are a crock of shit, but anyway, here are some things I really would like to get done this year.

Blah Blah Blah Resolution-Cakes


• Post and caption my gigantic backlog of pictures. And when I say GIGANTIC backlog, I am not kidding. I want 2009 to be my year of the photo.


• Clean up this god damn dump of a blog. Maybe I'll actually use it more if I finally fix my template and all.


• Get rid of a bunch of stuff. Particularly old clothes I don't/can't wear anymore. I can't find anything to wear half the time because our bedroom is such a huge mess, and it's really driving me crazy. Well, crazier.


• Buy a house and pack up and move into it. But first we have to figure out if Johnny's going to law school, and if so, where; or if he's getting a new job, in which case we won't be moving very far. I have no control over either of those things, tho', so I'm kind of spinning my wheels on this one (except for the packing part - gotta start on that the minute we get home - no matter what happens, we won't be in our apartment for too much longer).


• Somewhat corollary to the last point, we've got this big list of stuff we need to do in South Florida before we leave, if it turns out we will, in fact, be leaving. I'll probably post that list somewhere so we can keep track of it, and so other people can suggest things we may have forgotten or overlooked.


• NaNoWriMo. I'm gonna plan for it this year, goddammit! This stupid story has been percolating in my head since 2006, fer cryin' out loud. I need to get it out and be done with it.


• I should probably get around to learning to play bridge, since I didn't do that this past year.

That is all. Happy new year, all three of you who will ever read this! :) Now I'm gonna go stuff tissues up my nose in a vain attempt to stem the never-ending tide of mucus that has been snaking down my upper lip for the past 3 hours or so. Ugh.

.....

and now for something completely different...

This has no relation to Taiwan at all, but I just have to say, when I saw this, my only response was, "Wow - really? Welcome to 1997, dude." Sheez. I think this guy lives in England, but that is really no excuse.

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back on that horse

I haven't posted here in a while, I know... Even my last post was a mobile post, made from my cell phone. I've just been very, very busy lately (as usual), but since there are a bunch of things I want to post about (also as usual), I'll try to put more stuff up here soon (as usual, again). I've managed to go back and edit some of my old posts which needed editing, but I haven't gotten to them all yet, and my template is woefully out of date. I hope to have all that done maybe by mid-November, before our trip to Taiwan. I'd love to do it sooner, but the film festival is on now, and that's taking up all my free time. But I certainly want to get back to posting here - especially now that I know there are people reading! ;)

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a brief respite from derby posts

There's more to post about events at the < - >, but this is good news, and I have pictures to post with it that haven't been uploaded yet. In the meantime, here are some more things I've been meaning to blather about.

• From Slate, there's this slide-show essay about the show Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today at the MoMA. I particularly appreciated being introduced to Synecdoche by Byron Kim (slide 7, if you look at the essay). Fascinating stuff.


• Also on Slate, to mark the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, there's this series of essays from people who, once upon a time, supported going to war. Most of these mea culpas kind of cheesed me off, because they're all like, "Oh, we couldn't have imagined what a debacle it would be, how could we possibly have known?" Uhm, duh? If like, every Iraq expert on earth is saying "This is gonna be a disaster," how could you possibly not have known? A few of them cite post-9/11 "zomg teh terroristses are evarywhere" fervor as having clouded their judgment, but man, we didn't go into Iraq until 2003, and more importantly, it was clear even at the time that Iraq didn't have a damn thing to do with 9/11. The one that pisses me off the most, tho', is William Saletan's lame-ass list of "lessons learned." My jaw dropped when I read lesson #1:

  1. Question authority. That's what the Quakers taught me in college. But you don't have to be a pacifist to see how it applies to Iraq. The U.S. government deceived itself and us about the evidence of WMD. I'm a bit too young, or just too poorly read in history, to have absorbed Vietnam's lessons about trusting your government. So I learned it the hard way. I hope my kids don't have to go through another dumb war to get the same lesson.

  "(A) bit too young, or just too poorly read in history, to have absorbed Vietnam's lessons"??? Dang, Will. I'm pretty sure I'm younger than you are, and I certainly had no problem picking up the whole "question authority" thing from Vietnam, and countless other examples of governments the world over flat-out lying to their citizens. Jeez. I used to have some respect for Saletan, but he pretty much lost it with that piece.


• This was a refreshing blog to read: I'm Black and for Hillary. Get Over it. by Tara Roberts. Slate has started linking to posts on that site, The Root, and I'm glad they have - there's definitely some interesting stuff on there. For instance, take this essay by Alice Walker about her support for Barack, which I found somewhat distressing. The feeling I get from reading her post is that Walker's support for Obama is supremely based on race, even while she's professing that it's not. It's not that I'm a Hillary supporter - I've got just as many problems with her as I do with Barack. But I do feel like this campaign is making it pretty clear that American society is way more sexist than racist. Hillary is getting extra shit piled on her because she's a woman, and Barack is getting handled with kid gloves in some quarters because no one wants to give off even the faintest whiff of racism. It's not that I want people to give Hillary a pass if she screws up, but I would like Obama supporters to take a more critical view of their candidate from time to time. Here, try this bit of frothing at the mouth from Christopher Hitchens as an example.
  
  Getting back to Alice Walker's essay, now, the part that most upset me was not any of the political content, but this passage:

  The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea – so kept from black people it had been – that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.

  It really breaks my heart to think that an author of her stature would, to this day, feel uncomfortable in libraries. It makes me sad to think of anyone feeling uncomfortable in a library, but it's particularly heartrending in her case because of her relationship with words.


• Speaking of words, here's some more linguistic nerdiness: NYT article about language use in Suriname. Ostensibly, the official language is Dutch - but the de facto national tongue is a Creole dialect called Sranan Tongo, and there are so many immigrants from so many other places, at least nine other languages are spoken by sizable chunks of the nation's population, too. Craziness! I bet that is such a cool place to visit.


• Man, the Old 97's are getting old. Just look at that picture! Kee-ripes. Anyway, they've got a new album coming out on May 13th, and boy do I hope it's better than their last one. :/ It would be great if they toured it down here, too, since Johnny has still never seen them live.


• Check out this pair of Where's George hits I got recently:
  hit #1
  hit #2
  Spent at the same place on the same day, hit at the same time on the same day, but actually entered 6 days and 4 states apart! I wonder if that confused the person who hit them...


• Speaking of WG, this bill of mine was one of three Wild Georges the hitter found that day! What a lucky duck. I thought I was doing really well, with three Wilds found in the space of a couple weeks (this unmarked one at Langerado, this one from the merch guy at the TMBG show at Revolution, and this one that had been buried on Mom's kitchen table for god only knows how long), but three in one day has me beat. I wish I could find more Wilds. I did get a bunch of bills into the merch till at < - >, so maybe I'll get some good hits soon from that. I've been behind on checking my hits since I had to switch the e-mail account I'm using with WG, but at the same time, the hits definitely seem to be slowing down. I get a lot more dry spells now that last several days than I ever used to. I still don't know if it's a Florida thing, if it's that I'm spending less cash these days, or if hits are down site-wide.
  
  Oh, and I had my 8th Georgiversary on March 24th, and I was too busy that day to even run my Your Bills report. Dang. I am a slacker Georger these days, it seems. Here are my stats from the refresh I did on the closest day to my actual Georgiversary:

  This Report is current as of: Mar-25-08 09:26 AM
  'Your Bills' Summary Statistics
  You have entered 11,085 Bills worth $27,333
  Bills with hits: 2,786 Total hits: 3,744
  Hit rate: 25.13% Slugging Percentage: 33.78% (total hits/total bills)
  George Score: 1,128.00
  Your rank (based on George Score) is #613
  (out of 51,788 current users with a George Score. [98.8 Percentile])
  Your State Rank in Florida is: 84 out of 6,726 [98.8]

  I was down to 84 in FL because I hadn't run my report for more than 5 days - when I do refresh regularly, I'm ranked around 36. And I did just enter my 11,111th bill recently. :D


• When Johnny replaced my computer's hard drive a few months ago, I lost a few programs like GraphicConverter which came on my computer when I bought it, but didn't come on the system disc. Last time I tried, I couldn't get the current update of GraphicConverter to work on my aging machine, anyway, so I started looking for a replacement basic graphics editor. I was all into the idea of trying GIMP, but when I went to install it, I found the native OS X version isn't ready yet, so I'd still need to get X11 - which Johnny had installed on my machine, once upon a time, but which I hadn't yet reinstalled. So I went to reinstall X11, and after following a bunch of links, I couldn't find a version for 10.3.9 (which is the OS I'm still using) - everything is for 10.4 and up now. And I hate the idea of having to use X11, anyway - it's a pain in the ass. I just want something that is quick, and that works serviceably - I don't need a really full-featured program with a gigantic footprint. Looking for some specific advice on GIMP on 10.3.9, I found the Google cache of an old forum thread from Wilber-Loves-Apple which basically convinced me that trying to get GIMP to work on my machine would be way more of a hassle than I'd want to deal with.
  
  Johnny found me this program called Seashore which sounded exactly like what I was looking for. So I downloaded & installed it, and so far it's worked fine. Simple, no-hassle - it just works. Perfect.


• I have been wanting to try playing ice hockey for a while, and I was just pointed to this local women-only league by a message-board acquaintance. I didn't even know there were ice rinks around here aside from Incredible Ice (the Panthers' practice facility, which is all the way up in Coral Springs), but there are like, 3 of them! Apparently there's quite the ice hockey culture in South Florida - well, much more so than you'd think, anyway. The Girls' Night Out league plays at Glacier Ice & Snow in Pompano Beach, but alas, they play on Monday nights, which conflicts with derby practice for me. If we ever have an off-season for derby, tho', I am so there! There's just the small issue of having to drop another few hundred $$ on equipment... but I really do want to play hockey! It just looks like a crazy amount of fun! Too bad the women's league is no-check, tho'. I totally want to take someone into the boards. >:D


• I did some poking around on Etsy recently, and that's always such a bad idea, because I find so much stuff that I want to buy, and I don't have the $$ to spare right now. Here are a few of my new favorite sellers, tho': Lost Mitten (the Perler bead video game coaster sets are the best!), Eighty8Words (see also her interesting blog post about how she makes her pendants), dlk designs (someone needs to buy me this necklace, right now - no joke), Shalottlilly (this chica has the prettiest product pics, because she is in nearly all of them), Atomic Veggie (sweet-ass vintage beads and findings), The Builders Studio (rayguns!!!), Kitchens of 1956 (vintage kitchenware, oooh). And, just because they're so awesome, here are a couple of my old favorites: Tigerlillyshop (love love love the plastic rings - really want the new stamp kits she has up), Red Panda Chainmaille (very pretty stuff - I love the necklace I got from her a while back). So, long story short? If you want to buy me a present, I can point you to a lot of stuff on Etsy I want. Just ask. :D


• I could use some pretty letterpressed stationery, too. Just FYI. There is also this place, if you're in Syracuse, NY, but they didn't hire Bean when she applied for a job there, so, y'know, they're not as cool as they could be. ;)


• Someone needs to buy me this shirt, too (women's XL, please!). To think there was a time in my life when I didn't appreciate Helvetica... I was young, I was foolish, and I know better now.


• Speaking of type, and getting back to the politics thing, there's this post on the blog for Helvetica, the movie about the Obama campaign's use of the Gotham typeface, and how that fits in with their larger campaign message.


• If anybody sees any more of the series 1 Munny zipper pulls, please snag them for me. I really want the TV one and the banana one.


• More from Slate: Are Excessive Lyrics Ruining Pop Music? I don't know about "ruining," but I certainly do think instrumentals are underrated. As far as I'm concerned, the most unassailably cool music on earth is Booker T. and the MG's, and the fact that it doesn't have any words is a significant part of what makes it so cool. There needs to be a serious mainstream instrumental resurgence, dammit. Bonus points to the article for mentioning Ratatat, tho' I'd love them even more if they mentioned Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet or Atomic 7.


• Also: John McCain is a good person, but his campaign ads are effin' terrible (seriously - misspelling his name?? Ouch). A visit to a "widow's village" in China - the first of a series about Chinese immigration. Interesting stuff. And it's great that Iceland has tons of clean, renewable energy, but doesn't most any attempt as translation of that local resource to the broader world population (whether by moving energy-intensive manufacturing to Iceland, or by getting more people to come to Iceland, or what have you) still result in a good chunk of non-renewable energy being used up just to get things to and from Iceland? Maybe so, but I am still dying to visit the place. I mean, come on, Iceland - so freaking cool.


• Thanks to this helpful post on the official Gmail blog, I'm importing all the old e-mail I can into my Gmail accounts. It does take a long time, but it's worth it just for being able to search my thousands of old messages in easy Gmail fashion. Plus, it means I've got an additional backup of all that old mail. Hooray for Gmail!


• Finally, Montana is weird.

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April already?

Sheez. March got really busy really quickly. I can't believe I'm so far behind on posting stuff already. So much for my goals for '08.

Anyway, in the interest of clearing some tabs off my browser, here are a bunch of things I've been meaning to post about for a while:

• Anu of A Word A Day went on a tear using quotes from Yahia Lababidi as the x-bonus quotes on the AWAD mailings recently. My interest was piqued - dude's got some great aphorisms (scroll all the way down the page on that last link to see some). So now I want to get his book, Signposts to Elsewhere, but it's currently unavailable on Amazon, and I can't even tell if it's currently in print. I guess I'll have to check the library sometime soon. But if you see one, please buy me a copy. :)


• I still need to listen to this Mike Doughty interview on NPR, from back when his new album came out in February. The album (Golden Delicious) is ok - the songs on it that are good are really good, but there are a few in the middle that feel like filler. Still, filler from MD beats what most people put out.


• R.I.P., Arthur C. Clarke. I always had more of a soft spot for Isaac Asimov, and I don't think I've ever read a Clarke novel, but the man did write some fantastic short stories. Here's an interesting NY Times piece about the influence of spirituality in Clarke's work.


• Rag Trade is for sale. The owner chick has posted a bunch of Myspace bulletins (that link might not work if you're not their friend on Myspace) advertising that fact. She says she wants like, $20,000 for the store, and that she's very motivated to sell because she's moving to an organic farm in Israel (!). If I were at all interested in owning a business, in particular a clothing store, I would 100% jump at this chance. Rag Trade's in a great location, across the street from Amendment XXI and a few blocks down from Churchill's and Sweat. I don't know if it's got a really huge clientele (it's got that weird super-expensive-trendy-upscale boutique thing going right alongside the odd-and-tacky thrift store stuff, which is not a combination just any old store can pull off), but they didn't seem to be hurting for business when I went there. They seem to get a lot of mentions in articles featuring trendy things to do in Miami, too. That kind of business is very personality-driven, tho', and I know I don't have the personality (nor the fashion sense) to be a success at it. But it's a great opportunity for some aspiring young businessperson, and I hope the store continues to do well after it's sold. I'll be really sad if it goes under, even if I don't get down that way to shop there very often.


• So after hearing the episode of Topical Currents (the crappy local talk show) on WLRN a while back about Peruvian food, I am very excited to try it! They had on the chef from Panorama, a swanky hotel restaurant in Coconut Grove. I'm sure the place is really expensive, but I still want to check it out because the food sounds ludicrously tasty. Maybe for a special occasion... (More info here.) Also, in Googling that place, I turned up quite a few other Peruvian places to try. This could become quite the gastronomic adventure!


• Speaking of food, I am also dying to try these: amazing black bean brownies. Don't they sound good?? Mmmm, brownies...


• Johnny hepped me to this post on Critical Miami about how now (or at least, relatively soon) is the time to move to South Florida and buy a house/condo here. It says pretty much exactly what I've been thinking - that this whole mess with the housing market means that people like us (first-time home buyers who are really super eager to buy a house) now have the rare opportunity of *perhaps* being able to find housing in this market that is *relatively* affordable! In that vein, I have been kind of trying to keep an eye on HousingTracker to see roughly what sellers are asking for around here. The whole idea of buying a house, and all the research and paperwork and massive amounts of stuff that go into it, plus the thought of having to move again soon, just makes my head spin. But I know that it might be a now-or-never kind of proposition, so I'm trying to prepare for it, at least a little bit.
  
  We already missed out on one great deal, tho'. The house at the end of our block had been on the market since before I moved here, and had originally listed for $625,000 - reduced to $550,000, and then to $499,000, which was still too much - but it's so pretty and seems (from the outside) to be so well-suited to our needs. I hadn't bothered contacting the real estate agent about it, because even the reduced price was still nearly twice what we can really afford to pay - but then I saw the "for sale" sign was down, so out of curiosity, I e-mailed her. She said there was an offer in on it, but asked if I had a backup offer. I told her no, since the last list price I saw was still way out of our price range. She wrote back and said, oh, that's the old price - the house is in pre-foreclosure and it's going for $274,000. D'OHH! Now every time I drive down the street, I look at that place and think, "Oh man, if only I'd contacted her sooner..." :( It's pretty depressing.


• Here's an amusing NYT article on bad baby names, and whether or not they really have any effect on a kid's personality as they grow up. Here's the bit I found personally relevant:

  “Today it’s all about individuality,” Mr. Sherrod said. “In the past, there was more of a sense of humor, probably because fathers had more say in the names.” He said the waning influence of fathers might explain why there are no longer so many names like Nice Deal, Butcher Baker, Lotta Beers and Good Bye, although some dads still try.

  This explains why, every time we talk about what we'd name a cat if we got one, Johnny suggests naming it Thor (note to my DH: never gonna happen). Thank goodness we're never having kids.


• Another article I found interesting due to my linguistic and biological nerdiness: Are Women Really Better at Language? It will be interesting to see if the results are reproducible with a larger sample population, and if, as the research team plans to examine next, girls' language processing advantages really do decrease with age. If they do, what might the biological factors be in boys' skills eventually reaching parity with girls'? Ok, I like to think about these things, anyway. I know, I'm a weirdo.

Gahh, this post is getting huge, and I am still nowhere near done posting all the pages I have up in tabs. I'm gonna call it quits for now, tho' - but here's one last item before I do. In honor of April Fool's Day (a "holiday" which I generally detest and refuse to acknowledge, btw), here's a video of Norfolk Academy's class of 1986 senior prank: filling The Pit with water on April Fool's Day.

I was in 2nd grade at the time, and I seriously thought those seniors had done the coolest thing ever. They were totally rockstars to me. I wish my grade had been able to come up with something even half as cool for a senior prank (I don't recall us actually doing a senior prank of any sort - how lame). Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Ned Lilly.

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I'm in the wrong business

Is it bad that, after reading this New York Times article, I wanted to try to write a novel on my cell phone? Maybe, like, do my NaNoWriMo novel, at least in part on my phone? Because I do have that full QWERTY keyboard and unlimited txt messages...

I don't think that would really do much to help me actually finish my NaNoWriMo book this year, tho'. I am, btw, totally going to do it this year. The only reason I didn't last year was, well, Mom's stroke happened, and my computer's hard drive died, both at roughly the same time (early-mid November). One or the other thing, I could have coped with; but both at once? No way. Nothing is gonna stop me this year, tho'!

Speaking of words and writing and whatnot, I keep thinking maybe I'm heading toward the wrong career. Maybe I should switch to linguistics. Hey, I am word-nerdy, and I like to do things like ruminate on the seemingly quickened pace of evolution in vocabulary usage in the technological age. I mean, as a linguist, I could get someone to give me money to study the way people talk in IM chats! Like, holy crap! The conclusions of that study, btw (that IM'ing "blur(s) the divide between face-to-face speech and writing" and that people "go out of their way to develop styles of writing that make IM more like talk"), I could have told them from copious firsthand experience and anecdotal evidence. Hell, I was doing that, back before there was IM, even - I totally used "btw" and the quotative like when I wrote letters and postcards to people back in high school! That was like, 1993-1996, people! Everybody always told me that reading one of my letters was just like listening to me talk. I was a decade or more ahead of that trend, motherfuckers! Too bad it is only in hindsight that I can tell I'm a trendsetter. ;) Ah, well.

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goals for 2008

Now that we are, oh, about an hour away from being three months into 2008, I figure it's finally time I get around to posting something I meant to post back in January.

I'm not one for new year's resolutions, but at the beginning of the year I often set myself some projects to accomplish by year's end. Invariably I fail to do everything I want - but that's pretty much how life goes. It never stops me from setting myself ridiculous little tasks every January (and usually abandoning them about mid-February).

I wanted to try something a little different this year, tho'. I kind of went micro and macro, both more specific and more broad in my aims at the same time. Hmm, that sentence isn't going to make much sense until I tell you what my goals are. So without further ado:

my goals for 2008

• learn how to play bridge


• travel more


• craft more

and yes, the ever-popular

• blog more

The bridge thing is mostly Nana's fault. She was a big bridge player, and I now have all her bridge supplies - decks of cards, cute little scoring pads, etc. I figure I might as well put the stuff to some use. Learning to play bridge also fits into my long-term super-secret plan of turning myself into a demented 50's mod housewife.

Traveling, well, I always want to do more of that. But it's really going to happen this year. Specifically, I want to go to more places I've never been before. Man, it's been five years now since the last time I took a trip off the continent! It sucks that the bulk of my international travel took place between 1997 and 2001. I miss jetting off to crazy, exotic places. But this year... well, let's just say our passports expire this year, and we've already sent them in for renewal. More on this in a future post...

As for crafting, it just occurred to me when I finally got back to FL after dealing with all Nana's stuff that so much of the excess crap I keep hauling around from place to place is craft supplies. Stuff I'm planning to use to make something, someday. Well, we are out of space and I can't keep carting all this stuff around, so that someday is today. Or at least, it's this year. Crafting is something I love so dearly, but I don't do nearly often enough. So I'm making it a priority to set aside the time (even if it's just once a month) and actually complete some long-festering projects this year. It'll clear out some closet space, and it'll make me feel better.

More blogging, well, I'm not setting a schedule or anything, just trying to make sure that, when I have an idea for a blog I want to write, I actually follow through on it and sit down and write the thing before I forget what it was I wanted to say in the first place. That's all.

I guess if I have to sum up my goals for the year into one over-arching theme, I'd say it comes down to this: be more productive. Make significant progress toward long-term plans by finishing specific small tasks. Less sitting on my ass and more kicking ass. I've been keeping it up fairly well so far, and it's past mid-February already, so. I think 2008 is going to be a good year. :)

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a few random things...

I have a few serious posts I've been meaning to write (in all my spare time - ha! My entire life right now revolves around the Jan. 31st deadline by which we have to clear all this stuff out of my grandmother's apartment), but there are a few little frivolous things I want to get off my chest at the moment...

Thing 1:
HDTV is really pretty amazing. I had no idea! Johnny & I haven't had cable since 2003, and haven't had a TV at all since December 2006, so obviously, I haven't been watching much TV for the past few years. When we did have a TV, it was a mid-late 80's set which had been obsolete since about 1993. So, hearing all the hoopla about HDTV, I was kind of like, eh, what's the big deal? I barely watch TV anyway, so who cares if it looks so much better?

Nana got a flat-panel TV not too long ago and upgraded her cable so she got HD channels. I watched it a bit when I came to visit her, but since regular TV looks a little shitty on such a high-res screen, and since most of the shows she wanted to watch weren't broadcast in HD, I wasn't so impressed.

But now that I am here by myself, I'm watching a lot more TV, just because I have it on for background noise so much. And I'm watching more and more shows in HD. And now I understand just how much better it really looks than regular TV, and why it's so worth the upgrade that the government is mandating a switch in broadcast standards. It just looks so faboo! It's almost distracting sometimes. Like, I'm watching the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (here is how you know I'm old: I almost called it the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour), and I am only half listening to the interview because I'm so dazzled by the anchor's tie. You can see so much detail in the fabric, you can tell exactly how it feels to the touch! That is nuts! I would give up this TV in a second if I could have my grandmother back, whole and healthy... but since I can't have that, at least I can enjoy the bitchin' TV I've just inherited. Thank you, Nana!

Thing 2:
It's been about 24 hours now since I first heard of Heath Ledger's death. I was truly shocked when I first heard about it, but now I'm already sick of hearing about it. It's tragic, but it's really not that much of a story. The poor kid is dead. We don't know exactly how he died yet, but it sure looks like a drug overdose, accidental or not. Yeah, it's a shame, and no, we're probably never going to know all the details. Can we move on now? He had a lot of potential as an actor, but honestly, I can only think of two good movies I've seen him in, and one really terrible one. Based on that track record, I can't say I cared too much about him one way or the other, and his untimely demise doesn't change that. I'm sorry for his family and loved ones, but if I hear any more speculation about the pills in his apartment or his mental state in the past few months, I'm going to stick a knitting needle in my eye.

Thing 3:
Whoever brought over the boxes of Russell Stover chocolates, my expanding waistline, skyrocketing blood sugar level, and I curse you.

And now I'd better end this post before I get interrupted yet again.