zubatac

OMG I need to get a hair cut. I should make an appointment. Will try to resist asking them to just shave my head. (I've been wearing a hat around the house because I am a dork and you know that feeling you get in your scalp when you hair has been bent the "wrong" way for a while under a hat? Ow. My scalp hurts.)

Yeah...I really am a morning person. This means that I am totally hyper and ridiculous at 9am on a Saturday, especially if I've been up since 7am.

I should go do more painting. I'm actually feeling like I don't completely suck at what I am doing right now so I should ride that wave of confidence until it crashes upon the shore of self doubt. Um.

I'll be in San Francisco from this Wednesday to the following Tuesday for vacation; anyone want to get together or anything interesting going on?

It took two different medications, but I got sleep midnight to 5:30am,
and then after a deeply miserable 1 1/4 hour, slept until 10am, when
hammering began directly over my head. I feel rested, a little groggy
from the medicine, but very relieved that my day off is not completely shot.

Now to gather leaves on what might be the last tolerable day to do so.

When I mention to people that I'm in a triad relationship (which I'll now update to quad, though I don't expect it'll change anything), the most common question I get asked is "So how does that work?"

My flippant answer is "Quite well!" But then I usually follow that up by explaining that it's just like a two-person relationship times 1.5 2, which seems to be satisfactory.

The second most common question is "How do you sleep?"

And since there seems to be an interest, and I mentioned it in a meme-comment today, I thought I'd share.

At the moment, Greg is sleeping on the side nearest the window, which is where the fan is, because he's a furnace and will overheat otherwise. I'm on the other side, Robb is in the middle, and Jerry is in Japan. We each have our own set of covers. (Which is a good thing, since I don't think we have any blankets wide enough to span the Pacific.)

I still remember
How she appears in darkness,
Recall her silent voice.

I still remember
Answers he never gave me,
Things he never meant.

I still remember
Echoes of an empty room,
Armies of phantoms.

The storm's long over,
Once rain-drenched marshes parched,
Wind-harassed grasses brown and dead
And new growth green and fragrant in their stead.

But ancient trees,
Trunks fed by years of rains,
Record, like ghosts, in rings of brown and beige
Forgotten floods and droughts of a past age.

Though you're years gone
The tears we shed together
Left rings to mark tempestuous refrains.
I'm haunted by the memory of rains.

Am I sick or not?
I'm avoiding baby Susan because I might be.
I keep thinking I'm well, and then getting a sore throat at random.
Some of it might be cat allergies, some lack of sleep, but I just can't tell.

Would have liked to come over, guys. Thanks for the invite.

Because I have no planning skills whatsoever when my schedule is (allegedly) full,
I gave no advance thought to the knowledge that I have the evening free here at home.
Would anyone without prior plans care to come over and play?

A gallon of apple cider is heavy, yo. It was free, however, so I really should not bitch and moan.

Also: I had another really hilarious conversation with RS this evening. Topics of conversation included: crazy people, crazy people with guns, paranoia. It was really very funny.

I'm sitting and looking at our new-to-us dining room table and chairs which finally got delivered this morning. The movers who delivered it even showed up when they said they would.

*happy dance*

Off to work now.

Walking to the T this morning I was reminded that I secretly rather like winter. I was all "hey, it's kind of gray and cold out why the hell am I smiling?" Maybe I just enjoy the suffering of others.

And then! It got sunny! So it was sunny and cold-ish and I got to hang out with T (the mailroom guy) and RS (who is one of the funniest people alive) while they took their smoke breaks and I attempted to not breathe in too much smoke. I was laughing pretty hard there for a minute. Yay, laughing!

I should go do work now.

I've been fumbling around for a couple of weeks now with the quantum mechanics.
( Square pulse propagation. )

OK, once again I'm behind on posting. This time my reason is that I've been in a training course all week, 9-5. It's interesting and fun, and sometimes frustrating, but always exhausting. Oy.

ANYway...Halloween was a blast. Having it on a Saturday was great. In the morning we went to a Halloween party (thinly disguised as a "fall festival") at Ruthie's preschool, where the kids had a blast. Then to mom's house for nap, where Ruthie and Baz napped together and mom managed to capture a picture of same, which is undeniably the cutest thing ever.

( The totally adorable picture )

Then we went to a party at Baz and metafrantic and sandykidd's house, which was fun, and then home and trick-or-treating. Isaac was a Transformer and Ruthie was a duck, and sandykidd did a great job of painting their faces to go with their costumes, but alas I don't think I got any pictures! :( Oh well.

It was a freakishly warm night, which was nice. The neighbors were all hanging out on their front steps/porches waiting for us. The kids got QUITE the haul of candy. After a while their bags got so heavy that they asked me to carry them, whereupon I decided that enough was enough. ;)

Anyway, so that was fun. And then came the Halloween Witch! (Also known as the Switch Witch, but I don't like that one.)

Have you guys heard of this? I had never heard of the idea until a few weeks ago. Basically the "Switch Witch" is like the tooth fairy, except that instead of taking teeth she takes kids' Halloween candy, and instead of leaving money she leaves a toy. The idea, obviously, is to get them to give up some of their candy. ;)

Well, I wasn't at all sure how my kids would react to this idea, since they both LOVE candy, and especially since I had said they couldn't eat any candy for 5 days before Halloween and then eat as much as they wanted on the day (which my mom always used to do with me and metafrantic and I think it worked out pretty well).

Anyway, so I decided to just give it a shot and see what happened. If they didn't go for it, fine, but it couldn't hurt to try, right?

( Our 'Switch Witch' Story )

Whee! So that was fun. We're definitely doing that again next year.

possibly of interest to the (many) people i know with symptoms of asthma:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03brod.html?em

Me: Ruthie, are you done with your noodles?
Ruthie: Uh-huh.
Me: Do you want something else to eat?
R: No.
Me: Do you want something to drink?
R: No.
Me: Well, do you want grass and mud? [this is our code phrase for "don't want anything"]
R: Yeah.
Me: Do you want a million dollars?
R: No!! I don't even take dollars!
Me: You don't?
R: No!! Dollars are money. I don't take money!
Me: Well, what do you take?
R: I take toys!

Well, duh! Silly mama!

I am totally winning the getting stuff done game this week. That's worth mentioning given how often I feel like I lose that game.

I've signed up for a CPR and first aid class on Sunday. This will get me the certificate I need in order to register for the EMT classes next term. Yay!

The flowers sent from Central Square Florist were amazing and lasted forever. The flowers from 1-800-flowers were not.

Baby S now weighs 9 lbs 14 ounces. So she's gained 11 ounces in the past seven days. We must be doing something right. (Yes, she was down to 9 lbs 2 ounces when she left the hospital, and then she was up an ounce the next day.)

Now I get summoned for jury duty, not sometime in the past 10 years when I had nothing better to do with my days? Sigh.

• Day 5: in which our heroes do not spend their life savings on a flying carpet
• Day 6: in which our heroes briefly split the party

(There has been a brief pause while I pestered Jerry into captioning the hike, but we should be back on target again now.)

Sorry literary hipsters, but I'm calling it quits on Infinite Jest. David Foster Wallace, your quirky post-modern writing has exceeded my threshold for style over substance. I think I did pretty well -- I got about 25% through -- but the book has become like eating an unending buffet of unflavored porridge.

In retrospect, I should have returned it immediately upon reading Dave Eggers' grandiose preface in which he praised Infinite Jest as a perfect crystalline jewel of work, where no word was out of place, where no editor could hope to touch the work without destroying it, where skipping even a single word would damage the enjoyment of the piece. Eggers strongly implied that anyone who did not gush over the book is an uncultured plebeian, and that if you did not feel the same that you best keep it to yourself lest you look like a fool.

I took this to be standard Eggers commentary, and indeed Eggers and Wallace are two peas in a pod. Given two short essays, one from each, I think I would be hard pressed to tell them apart. Eggers, however, generally appears to know when to stop. The same cannot be said for, as he is called by devotees, DFW.

It wasn't the apparent lack of plot that turned me off, although plot is certainly a strong motivating factor for continuing to read a book. The book starts off with a number of disconnected but interesting anecdotes that after a hundred pages or so coalesce into the beginnings of a plot. I thoroughly enjoy Neal Stephenson (although I must admit that Anathem was a bit trying at first), so clearly I have no problem with 40 page detours through the details of a dental operation with no attachment to the story beyond developing details of a lead (or even incidental) character. No, DFW's meandering style may have made it hard to read more than 40 pages before bed without falling asleep, but it did not prevent me from enjoying the book.

Slightly more to blame, although again not a deal breaker, is DFW's signature writing style, often described as "why use 10 words, when 100 will do"? To explain this, I can do no better than to point you at the fantastic Growing Sentences with David Foster Wallace by James Tanner. I strongly suggest that you go read this before attempting to read any Wallace. Every sentence in the entire book is put through this process. Used sparingly, it can be endearing. Slathered like too much mayonnaise over the entire book…. it is a very heavy meal indeed.

But no, the items so far were still not enough to make me (figuratively, since I have thankfully for my back been reading this on a Kindle) toss the book out the window. The worst offense, the thing that makes Infinite Jest unworthy of being read, is that DFW is one of the most astonishingly and utterly unoriginal authors I have ever encountered.

Unoriginal? But isn't he regarded as a creative genius? Apparently so, but barely ten pages pass where he does not take an old chestnut, rewrite it in his own words, and excrete it onto the page. This is not uncommon for authors, but the frequency with which he brazenly does this is astonishing. The straw that broke the camel's back, at least had the camel been carrying a printed copy of the book, was when I encountered in a section of what I can only call "filler", an entire chapter that was the classic Barrel of Bricks story printed verbatim.

When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism. When you steal from many, it's research. And when you steal from all of them, you're David Foster Wallace.

Yumm. Emma's really is the best pizza in town. It's usually too far for me to walk there, sit down to eat, and then get back in time to cover D's lunch break but today I just got two slices for takeout because I really needed a long walk after covering for D this morning and since she got in so late she's taking a later break so...I win yummy pizza. Plus, I ran in to ckd while waiting for said yummy pizza so...good lunch break.

So. On Sunday night twitch124 and I went to see Liam Finn and Eliza Jane at The Middle East. Liam and EJ were awesome and manic and hilarious. The opening bands...not so much.

Forest Fires- the music would have just been kind of boring 70s soft rock if not for the lead singer, who insisted on introducing his songs, thus revealing his status as a pretentious douchebag. twitch124 and I stayed up front for a few songs and then moved to the back of the room, the better to hear each other be judgmental bitches.

twitch124: "The douchebag scale is linear, not logarithmic. Don't break the douchebag scale!"

Pretentious Douchebag: "This song is called 'I Will Make You Love Me.'"
farwing: "No you won't."

Then Miracle Fortress arrived on the scene. Um. He was kind of hilarious is a New Wave "did I just time travel back to 1978?" kind of way. Lots of strobe, colored lights, and incomprehensible wailing vocals. It was very, very funny to me but I had consumed 1.5 gin and tonics by this point. twitch124 said that she figured his usual audience was all on E, because that would explain the strobe lights.

twitch124: "Oh my god its 1983. Oh, no. It stopped."

twitch124: "He's totally an act you need to see live and shit faced."

So then Liam and Eliza Jane got on stage and they were wonderful. I kind of didn't take good notes on the set list at first because I was being lazy but then they played Red Wine Bottle and I started taking notes:

Red Wine Bottle (This is a song from the 7 Worlds Collide: The Sun Came Out album, which you might know if you stalk all members of the Finn family like I do. It was wonderful to hear live.)

"Introducing Harry the Auto Harp" song (They are such goofballs!)

Helter Skelter. (Dude, that was awesome. Really, really awesome. After the song ended Liam was all "Er...what song do you play after Helter Skelter?")

Wise Man
Second Chance
Lead Balloon

"I'm more of a werewolf"

Cinnamon Girl (cover)
an old Betchadupa song
Honest Face
Fire in Your Belly

Ready?

Regard! A rabidly rational reasoner, rigid in ratiocination, reflexively repulsed by religion,
refusing to reform, and recalcitrant.
Railing with rage at his race for ruining what rightly is robust, and for rampaging remorselessly
regardless of results to the republic. Review of his reports reveals readiness to receive reasons to
revise his resentment, and redress his roars of wrongful recitations. Regretfully, receiving none.
Reclusive, rebellious and reserved, he reaches for realizations, repair, and
regeneration in a rapid rush.
Rattling on, repeating rehearsed remarks, regretting repetition, he researches references to a route
to respect, but the road remains hidden.
Relying on rest to recuperate, rueing much and refraining from more,
writing randomly without rhyme or reason, he remains,
rightly or wrongly,
R.

Last night when I went to Whole Foods to get some turkey backs for pies I discovered that while they were out of turkey they had duck legs at $6/lb... so of course I bought them out.

The question now is, pies? stew? roasted? or something else?

The Deluxe Town Diner, it's a favorite. Tonight, it was where eclecticavitar and I went for dinner (they're open until 10pm). Yes, the sweet potato fries are great. And I still love their Apple-Curry Turkey Burger. But tonight I was in the mood for a tuna melt - with Cheddar, for the record. I had it with the Sweet Potato fries and a pot of Roibois tea. It was perfect, in my opinon. It wasn't too fishy tasting and had just the right amount of mayo. In fact, even the way it spilled out from between the bread and the crispiness of the whole wheat bread, itself, was exactly the way I like it.

eclectiavitar had the chocolate chip pancakes (breakfast served all day) and a coke and we each walked away overly full and full of smiles and our bill was under $26.

It's a great diner for vegitarians and omnivores alike and has some lovely and unusual foods (for a diner) that means just about ANYONE can find SOMETHING to eat.

Just say yes.

1. gilana, call your office: Pantone consumer products!
( cut for shiny linkage )

2. Out of the sheer kindness of her little heart, sen_ichi_rei made me hand-knitted gloves! Fingerless gloves, perfect for computing! They are purple and green!
( cut for shiny photo )

3. In unrelated news, as of this morning, my office has new carpeting which is blue and purple and -- not really any green, but still also pretty.

4. Storyteller and local character Brother Blue passed away last night. Alav ha-shalom.

I took a loooong shower last night, and had plenty of time before and after it. And I think there was no cluster feeding yesterday.

Hey - I'm not pregnant any more! I have a waist-ish, and my feet fit into my shoes. My body is pretty darn amazing. Also, 20 lbs lighter than when I got pregnant. (Wow was my body ready to be pregnant.) I'm looking forward to getting abdominal muscles back, but I know that takes time.

So, I know Maine is getting all the same-sex marriage attention, and not without justice, but having kvetched about Maine already I figured I'd at least acknowledge the passing of Referendum Measure 71 in Washington state, which "would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage"... aka the in-all-but-name bill.

Which doesn't suck.

My thanks to everyone on my f'list who donated time, effort, attention, money or energy to making that happen.

So, back when Greg & Jerry & I formed a triad, Alice asked me if we would ever consider adding a fourth.

I remember saying that I didn't think it was completely out of the question, if we ever met the right person and all that, but we certainly weren't planning on it. I mean, three is plenty!

Of course, Jerry & I didn't plan on adding Greg, either; as with all the long-term poly relationships I know of, it just kinda... happened.

Um.

It, ah, kinda just happened... again.

( I blame Simon Pegg. )

So long story short, there's this guy, his name is Robb, we think he's pretty awesome, and last night he got on a bus and now he's on his way here to join us.

And we're looking for a house.

...and how was your weekend?

the trick to efficiently removing the cotton from the heads of puritan cotton swabs is that they are wound clockwise, so you have to unwind them counterclockwise.

(yes, this is precisely how interesting my life is sometimes.)

Wanted to take the opportunity to thank the folks on my f'list who donated time and effort and money and energy and attention to preserving marriage equality in Maine. Results notwithstanding, I appreciate it.

And if there's anyone on my f'list who donated time or effort or money or energy or attention to supporting the opposition in Maine, I really don't want to hear about it right now, OK? Thanks.

Later: OK... I think I'm up for it now.

Dear bigots of Maine:

Ugh. Way to let the rest of New England (well, except for Rhode Island) down.

Grrrrrr,
farwing


(P.S. Seriously, you're making me like New Hampshire. WTF.)

I've been failing to do anything lj-ish for so long it feels quite strange to be posting something. Also, my computer has acquired at least three separate ailments and will probably be going into the shop while I finish packing (and boy, do I have a lot of packing to do in the next week, so it may be awhile yet before I exist again... not to mention that I seem to have myself picked up a strange ailment).

San Diegans, I'll be around unti the 12th. I might try to sneak in a visit to the Zoo or Wild Animal Park -- if anyone wants to come (or, you know, go to dinner or have tea or whatnot), please ping me? Preferably by phone, considering the whole computer thing. There are several people I'd love to see before I leave town.

Everyone else, please wish me luck with the packing... I am... not exactly inspired at the moment. But I miss you all! And I'll be back someday. Maybe even soon.

Here are the things I said on Twitter today.

• 07:34 Urgh! In my efforts to get us up early, I got us up too early. Math is hard. wah. #
• 09:54 Day two of all-day training. Got in late, missed my caffeine. May fall asleep in class. #
• 17:41 Car won't start. Am horribly late to pick up kids. Mormons tried to preach at me while waiting for bus. Augh!! #
• 18:41 Why must car break down on a week when I'm in training & absolutely cannot skip any work? This is a disaster. What am I going to do??? #
• 22:35 Ruthie on nursing: "There's milk coming out! And orange juice." Unlikely! #
• 23:36 should be asleep, can't settle down, too wound up with everything in my brain :( #

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I think I'm coming down with something, probably flu.
I've had students coming in and coughing on me for days.

I suddenly realized--why should I lose $1000 or so of business by being sick, just because
a student isn't polite enough to keep their germs at home?
Too late for this year, but I really should have a policy from now on:

if you are coughing or sneezing from illness, I will not tutor you.

It's just too expensive.

I think I'm going to be slightly evil and not even cancel work tomorrow, unless I feel a lot
worse. I'll wear a mask. Most of my day is students I am seeing for the first time. I cancel
on them now they might well never come back.

I did not want to get sick, drat it. I was careful. I wiped things down...phooey.

I am certainly skipping Wordgames tomorrow. Whoever else I expose, I'm not going to be the
one to give little Susan the flu.

So sleeeeeepy you guys. Ugh. At least it is sunny out. I *will* go outside for part of my lunch break today dammit.

I guess I could try drinking coffee...

I do not have a sore throat. I do not have a stuffy nose.
I just have allergies.
I hope.
(Chomps vitamin C and gargles with mouthwash and takes allergy meds.)
Would be nice if I could get more than 7 hours of sleep more than once per month.
Cat demanding attention at 7am probably did not actually shorten my sleep, but I would have
preferred to try a bit longer.

Had a completely lovely trip, but for all the actual travel parts.

10 hours in the airport on Thursday to fly standby because they cancelled our original flight due to snow. 1.5 hours on the tarmac tonight due to a broken valve of some kind. Way too much driving in heinous L.A. traffic.

BUT! Everything else was really, really good. More to come.

Here are the things I said on Twitter today.

• 11:41 Btw am in all-day training every day this week so i won't be online much till evening #

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Finally saw Where the Wild Things Are tonight. I only cried twice:

( Cut, Cut, Cut )

As I said to muffyjo, whose superpowers of babysitting allowed us to go to the movies for the first time in forever, it was like a kick in the head, but in a good way.

( soooooooup of the evening, beautiful soooooup! )

things we say:
"foie gras is a sometimes food." (but oh my god, the foie gras "toad in the hole" appetizer at central kitchen right now... basically perfect french toast with egg yolk in the hole in the middle, crispy on the outside and tender in the middle, surrounded by a currant maple gastrique [dried currants rehydrated in something amazing mapley], and topped by seared foie gras. so. damned. good.)

"our waitress is so darned cute and earnest. don't you just want to pat her on the head?"
"that's not where i want to pat her."

and overheard from a woman yelling on the street: "it's not working because of your stupid spells!" i feel like there should be a story there...

and i am madly in lust with these boots and it's all weegoddess's fault.

We had a party - it was fun. I think we'll have another in Feb or March.
Any date suggestions or good toddler/preschooler activities?

I found this moving:

My Mikado rehearsal schedule:
Tue., 11/3: 7-10 p.m.
Wed., 11/4: 7-10 p.m.
Thu., 11/5: 7-10 p.m.
Sat., 11/7: 2-5 p.m.
Tue., 11/10: 7-8:30 p.m.
Sat., 11/14: 2-5 p.m.
Mon., 11/16: 7-10 p.m.
Tue., 11/17: 7-10 p.m.
Wed., 11/18: 7-10 p.m.
Thu., 11/19: 7-10 p.m.
Sat., 11/21: 2-5 p.m.
Mon., 11/23: 7-10 p.m.
Tue., 11/24: 7-10 p.m.
Sun., 11/29: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. (set put-in)
Mon., 11/30: 7-10 p.m.
Tue., 12/1: 7 p.m.-??? (cue-to-cue)
Wed., 12/2: 6-11 p.m. (dress rehearsal)
Thu., 12/3: 6-11 p.m. (dress rehearsal)

Performance schedule:
Fri., 12/4: 8 p.m. (opening night!)
Sat., 12/5: 8 p.m.
Sun., 12/6: 2 p.m. (matinee)
Thu., 12/10: 8 p.m.
Fri., 12/11: 8 p.m.
Sat., 12/12: 2 p.m. (closing performance! a matinee)

And somewhere in there there's Thanksgiving, and I will also probably try to attend various parties. If I don't manage to show up, or if I do, but appear fried and then fall asleep in a corner, you'll know why.

Oh, and then...
Sun., 12/13: 8:00 a.m. (fly our tired, cold asses to St. Maarten to relax w/parents @ timeshare)
Tue., 12/15: trowa_barton's birthday!!!
Thu., 12/17: 6:00 p.m. (fly home from St. Maarten)
Sat., 12/19: time TBA (birthday party for Trowa!)

And then there's holiday stuff with the household, and then a week and a half of blessed doing-nothingness.

I might be insane.

Anyone able to do a grocery run for me today or tomorrow? Not a huge pile of stuff, and I'm very good at making specific lists (and even sorting them in the order of the aisles of your chosen grocery store, because I am that sort of housewife.)

Edit:Thanks, many volunteers, we're set for this load!

Here are the things I said on Twitter today.

• 09:49 Ruthie's first words upon awakening this morning: "I think I ate too much candy last night." #
• 15:08 Back from vegetarian food festival. Ruthie's napping, i'm watching yesterday's game, and isaac's sorting his Halloween candy. :) #
• 16:10 @bbphotographer It was pretty good, but not particularly great with 2 little kids. Too crowded, hard to navigate, not stroller-friendly. #
• 22:24 I know the clock says 10:30, but boy oh boy does the body have another opinion. #

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