The Soundtrack of Your Life: a Meme

Here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, winamp, media player, iPod)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. New question - press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool

And my results:

Opening Credits: "A-Punk", Vampire Weekend.
Aye aye aye aye! Nicely enough, this album makes me nostalgic for General Public and other stuff I enjoyed as a teen. It's not quite English Beat.

Waking Up: "Judy, Judy", Archer Prewitt.
Sounds like I need lots of coffee. This isn't the kind of thing I'd usually listen to in the morning, unless it was a lazy Sunday and I had the day off to myself to read and knit. Which rarely happens.

First Day At School: "Conquer Worm", Bill Laswell.
I haven't actually listened to this before, but what a great song title. Does conjure the twitchy boredom of school.

Falling in Love: "Mic Check", Cornelius.
There is no way I was ever smooth when falling in love. Maybe this song is just some nice irony. Or maybe it's about not being able to speak well when I would get a crush.

Breaking Up: "Stuart", the Dead Milkmen.
I don't think I've ever actually told someone that I like him/her because they know what the queers are doing to the soil. And hopefully I didn't sound like that much of a loon during a breakup.

Prom: "Restless Soul". the Proclaimers.
"It drove you on, twenty-five years ago, it'll drive you tomorrow. It can't stop, it'll drive you til you drop, restless soul.... You feel like there's a curse putting you to the test, but you've been blessed.... You're always looking for a place your mind can rest, it's not there, it's not there. So drift away, let tomorrow have today while your dreams take tomorrow..." Maybe this makes more sense as a retrospective. What I actually remember dancing to at my prom was Tainted Love by Soft Cell.

Life's Okay: "Standing in for Joe", XTC.
I'm going to cheat because this is too silly and not fitting with my life whatsoever. But I get something by Konono 1, and then Civilians by Erin McKeown. Ah, "The World's Address" by TMBG. Hmm. Wish I could substitute some other XTC song.

Mental Breakdown: "Sunday", Bloc Party.
Heavy night.... This does sound like driving to the water and moping, which I certainly did. Ah teenage life in New England.

Driving: "Ackee 123", English Beat.
I do remember driving around with What Is Beat in the car, but this isn't on that tape.

Flashback: "Hold Back the Rain", Duran Duran.
I never went through the OMG DURAN DURAN phase that a lot of my cohorts went through, but I did love the albums.

Getting Back Together: "Can You Heal Us (Holy Man)", Paul Weller.
Hang on tight, hang on strong.

Wedding: "Disappearing Song", David Gray.
Wow, um no.

Birth of a Child: "I Need You", the Eurythmics.
Right song title, completely wrong song sentiment.

Final Battle: "You've Got Everything Now", the Smiths.
So apparently I lose and I'm a whiny loser.

Death Scene: "On and On (Acapella)", Eryka Badu.
Peace and lessons manifest with every lesson learned.... Can't you just see this, cinematically. I'm not really cool enough to die to this, but I'd aspire to it.

Funeral Song: "Hail! Men o'War's Men", from HMS Pinafore.
Poor little buttercup, dear little buttercup.... And apparently this causes some snickering. I don't know the plot of this Gilbert & Sullivan well enough to know what's going on at this point in the story.

End Credits: "International Flight", David Snell, on The Outernational Sound.
Boy I somehow end up sounding all sauve. Deeeweeeyyy..... (ya da da di dah) Sauuuuve.

One of two possibilities

My dad's visiting this week. Interesting things: in the Apple store, the salesperson assumed I was his wife. At the playground today, my friend thought he was my brother.

So either I look like potential trophy wife material, or my facial care routine is so, so fired.

She needs it more than she knows

Patron: Do you have that book, "America's Cheapest Families Gets You Right On Your Money?"

Me: Ah yes (reads subtitle: your guide to living better, spending less, and cashing in on your dreams); ours is checked out. Looks like there are eight copies in our system; they're all out or on hold right now, can I place a hold for you?

Patron: How long is the waiting list?

Me: There are four holds on eight copies, so you'd only be waiting a couple of weeks.

Patron: Nah, I'm gonna head over to the bookstore and buy it.

PMR: The Jesus and Mary Chain, live

Courtney: It sucked. Completely. Total crap.

Everyone else: Holy fucking hell I got to see the J&MC and they didn't pull any bullshit about not play your favorite song. I mean, even Sidewalking. Never witnessed a roomful of people jumping up and down in total glee for a whole show. Nicely incongruous with their lyrics. And my ear is whistling, I always love a show when my ear whistles afterwards.

Not pithy, but who cares.

PMR: The Upsidedowns (live)

Dude needza cape.

PMR: The Real Tuesday Weld, live

Ahhh, fun show with full band and visuals. Clicky title for his myspace; also go to his regular site to get more of a sense of his visuals.

Tin Pan-tronica!

yoga

So we supposedly have made an agreement that the husband will come home a little earlier one day a week, so I can get to yoga classes.

And now I'm looking through the class descriptions, and the place I was thinking of trying keeps using the words 'juicy' and 'yummy' in their text. Um, ew. Thankfully, I live close to four studios, but most of them seem to like having their advanced classes in the post-7pm timeslot. One of them has childcare, at such short time periods that there is no choice of classes and I'd probably be working during all possible timeslots anyway.

Juicy, yummy, here I go....

*facepalm*

facepalm = that moment when you realize you shouldn't have done that....

Today's version is 'I just forwarded an email to a work superior that includes my husband and I calling each other by our pet names.'

My husband emailed me to let me know that he had tried calling me twice at work today. Neither call was answered at the reference desk, but he was also told in the process that (a) I wasn't working today and (b) I must be working at the other branch. Erm, read the damn schedule, receptionist. Especially when I've said hello to you. I had no idea he had called until he emailed - which was unfortunately after closing. Receptionist never mentioned it to me. He was trying to see if it was a good day to bring the kids to visit me.

just this

JH

A birdie told me what you're going through. I'm so sorry to hear about it. I don't have really great words to say except the oft-repeated 'stay strong and hang in there'. We'll be thinking about you.

A balanced collection

Perusing Amazon.com this morning to verify some bibliodata (yeah, I could use WorldCat, but Amazon is more fun). And I spy this title:

Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments

... and it's by once-upon-a-time Clinton hack Dick "Wow did my parents name me right" Morris.

So if you put this in a room with the new Scott McClellan "Oops did I tell you I had my fingers crossed while serving as Bush's Press Secretary" book, you have a finely balanced collection. Jeesh.

So I woke up this morning and decided....

1) That if Hillary Clinton thinks it's okay to declare victory and claim better electability based on other peoples' racism, she's immoral and has no business being a public servant. The better course of action is to step back, address the social ill of racism while she's in a position to do so, and stop exploiting it for personal gain.

2) Cory Doctorow's new novel, Little Brother, is Young Adult because it's hamfisted. I'm also surprised and peeved at him for portraying a librarian as someone who is okay with the government gathering massive amounts of private data on citizens and mining it in the name of national security. We like data and its possibilities.... but we love our - and our patrons' - privacy. Wanna watch a librarian foam at the mouth? Mention the PATRIOT Act as it relates to libraries. (And for the millionth time, Laura Bush doesn't count.)

Meet Saffron!

She came home with us on Friday from the Humane Society, and has already settled in quite well. TJ is, well, okay. A little miffed, but not too mad to cuddle with me.

And she's too girly to call Rickroll.

PMR: Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Timbaland: "4 Minutes"

AKA The Cougar Themesong. Hear those trumpets? Yep, it's the Apocalypse.

What the world needs now...

Is an LOL Cats Steampunk Pirate Band.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Can I Has Steam Mateys. Singing delightful shantys such as "Does You Have a Flavor (tick tock)" and "Oh Hai and Ahoy I Upgraded Your Timex".

So wrong, but feels so right

How wrong is it that I want to adopt a ginger tabby and name it Rickroll?

Never gonna give you up....

Another messed up dream

A couple of nights ago I had another broken instrument dream. In this one, I was at a spiritual retreat and participants were encouraged to bring their musical instruments. During a break between sessions, a facilitator started messing around with my sarangi, saying that he had one too. He didn't ask my permission, and he broke my bow. The hair became floppy and useless. I was observing from that strange dream 'I can see what's going on but can't intervene' perspective. Then when we got back into session, he asked me to play as if nothing was wrong.

The facilitator was not someone I knew, and the setting wasn't familiar. I'm just wondering what these dreams mean, if anything. They get me quite upset by the time I wake up, and leave me unsettled for a few days.

PMR: She & Him (or, erm, Her)

Zooey Deschanel, please give Mandy Moore her day job back.
Mandy Moore, please give Zooey Deschanel her day job back.

Thanks, ladies!

Seventeen Years

Fulfilling a promise made years ago to my sarangi teacher in Pune, I finally got to see Aruna Narayan last weekend!

A ha ha ha!

Really messed up dream

One of those dreams with a whole bunch of rolling random things. Somewhere, a mini fig tree was involved. In another part, I got a job as an extra in some movie and somehow spent time with one of its stars, Kal Penn. I was playing a tamboura, and he snapped its neck off. It was a rented tamboura, and I was going to be on the hook for six hundred dollars for it, so I decoupaged the receipt to my fingernail so I could show him that it was not a trifling amount.

And yes, I woke up thinking, I get to have a dream about Kal Penn, but that's it? He breaks my tamboura? Sigh.

a URL that I should register

WowAmIReallySickOfSteamPunk.com

Also, I looked at Remy Nicole on YouTube and feel slightly guilty about the PMR below. It's like beating up a girl scout.

Pithy Music Review: Remi Nicole, "Rock & Roll"

This might have been okay waaay back when it was a demo. It has since been overproduced into being the worst thing on the radio. Cringeworthy.

Isms intersecting

The article that this entry's title links to was something I found on Feministing, a blog I read on a daily basis. It was tucked into a weekend roundup of links.

The author describes a situation in which a neighboring airline passenger crossed her boundaries. In the process, she swore at him, which further aggravated the man. In her writing she constructs the incident, including the reactions of the flight attendants she called for assistance, through the lenses of racial and gender biases.

Here's my problem with her argument: she swore at the guy before he 'assaulted' her. I'm using quotes because she chose not to press charges. She then becomes irate with the flight attendants, who tell her she has the option to press charges but it would require her getting off the flight. The flight attendants repeat the fact that she swore at the man. The writer seems to have no consciousness of the fact that her swearing could be construed as verbal assault. Doesn't excuse the male passenger - he had, after she swore at him, grabbed her arm and threatened to slap her - but as he had already left the row before the flight attendants came, and she was not willing to go forward with pressing charges, the flight attendants have no further obligations than to get the plane ready for flight. This includes getting her to calm down and let them do the rest of their jobs. When the flight gets underway, the writer is in tears, and then she gets upset that the flight attendant comes back to check on her. Because that's maternalistic. She's also quite sure that the entire incident happened the way it did because she's Asian American, and not slender.

So... we have a writer, who won't accept responsibility for her words in causing a situation to escalate, and who you cannot possibly approach in any way if you're white because she's going to find fault with your mindset. You're either with her, or against her. Oooookay.

To me, feminism includes believing that your actions and words have consequences. She chose to swear at someone who was approaching antagonistic behavior, and it sent him further down that path. Saying her words had nothing to do with the outcome is like saying that what a woman says shouldn't matter. Which, had she decided to press charges, wouldn't do her so well in court, would it?

I read the story two days ago and it's still stuck in my craw.

In a much less agonizing story, I had a slightly odd intersection-of-race-and-gender incident of my own yesterday. I was grocery shopping, with both kids in tow, and stopped at the fish counter to get some salmon. It's a local grocery chain, not quite Whole Foods, full of hipster types that also fill my neighborhood. I'm mainly paying attention to my own kids and getting the errands done, when a black man comes by and - I wish I could describe this better - kinda waves his arms at me and then tells me he's just picking on me because I'm a white woman and it was "a white woman thing". Um.... I don't know what body language I was using before this happened, beyond putting the wrapped salmon into my cart. I'm far from being the only white woman in the store. He might be the only, if not one of the very few black men in there. He also happened to be a bit flamboyant. It wasn't antagonistic, but it was just weird. I was thrown for a loop. Mainly because there wasn't a darn thing I could do in equal response that wouldn't automatically label me as a racist or a homophobe. Later, as I was putting my items on a conveyer for checkout, he was came up to the front looking for a checkout line. My line was short, but it looked like he was trying to avoid it. I signaled him over and said I was harmless, really. He said something about 'just messing with me because I had a good smile.' I still don't quite get it - maybe he thought I was someone he knew, and then halfway through realized I wasn't, so his gesture fell flat, or maybe I looked 'safe' to play with because I was toting my two biracial kids with me. I can't do much more than chalk it up to Portland randomness at this point.

Pithy music review: Velella Velella

Velella Velella: Wheeee! Wheeee! (Not all PMRs are gonna be snark.)

Check 'em here. PDXers, go see 'em at Holocene on 2/28.

Pithy music review: Girlfriend in a Coma

If this wasn't by the Smiths, it would have been laughed off the planet.

"I have been in villages in rural Gujurat! I have been a patient in a hospital in rural Gujurat!"

In planning our trip to Kerala this coming November, my husband has been sweating the details of our itinerary. Which town, which hotel, how many days, how to transport from A to B, etc.

And what he keeps asking me is, am I sure I want to visit his family's rural village?

This is bugging me - not the question of whether or not to go; I definitely want to go and would consider the trip incomplete without going. But my husband, who hasn't been in India since he was 3, seems convinced that village life would take me outside of my comfort zone, even though I have been in rural villages before. I'm also wondering if the fact that his repeated asking bugs me so much indicates that (a) he's reluctant but feels duty-bound to go, and would like an out or (b) I am experiencing "I am soooo into diversity! Lemme show you!" whiteyism.

So I keep telling him, I want to go, I am part of his family and would feel awful if we didn't go. Maybe by the time we're on our way there, he'll believe me.

John McCain wants me to break the law

I am getting several calls a day from John McCain, asking for my vote in Virginia's primary.

These calls are coming to my Oregon home phone number. When we moved, we had the "this number is no longer in service, please call this number...." message direct people to my still-Virginia cell phone number, so we don't know how the McCain folks got our home number. We're also perturbed by the fact that these calls come from "blocked number" or "no data" IDs.

In any event, I can't legally vote in VA's primary, and something - like say, a 503 area code - should have clued McCain's databankers to this fact. But maybe he's that desperate that he's willing to take a chance on the possibility that I am not registered in Oregon yet (which, of course, I am).

Pithy music review: Tu Fawning

Tu Fawning describes the audience, enthusiastically clapping for this. Yikes.

"There are better ways to show one's appreciation for Tom Waits. Sitting alone in a room is one of them."

"A soundtrack to a movie I would stay the hell away from."

Heretical perfume review: Rose Ikebana v. Clarins' Par Amour Toujours

Hermes' Rose Ikebana = Clarins' Par Amour Toujours.

Rose juice with berries and grapefruit. One is designed by Jean-Claude Ellena, Hermes' in-house perfumer, as part of their Hermessences line and thus accoladed; the other is available at the department store and has a heart on the cap and is therefore to be ridiculed.

XTCensored

Took a few moments to walk the baby in a stroller today, in between raindrops. Put on the iPod, which was set on shuffle as usual. It starts up with an old favorite, XTC's Respectable Street. But this was some odd version, and I wonder where I got it...

"Now they talk about ?absorbtion?, in cosmopolitan proportions to their daughters..."

Oh yes. Suburbanites discussing paper towels, or perhaps feminine hygiene products, 'tis the scourge of Britain.

"Now she's talking 'bout diseases, and which ?proposition? pleases best her old man...."

Ok. The real lyric is 'sex position.' Maybe not OK with the BBC.

"Sunday Church and they look fetching, Saturday night saw him ?stretching? over our fence..."

So.... no drunken wretching. Yoga! Your obnoxious neighbor does yoga over property lines!

All part of decency's jigsaw, I suppose - indeed!

Fiddling around my playlist, it looks like this version is from the greatest hits compilation Upsy Daisy Assortment. Cleanliness wipes a lot of the fun from it. Do yourself a favor and make sure you listen to the Black Sea version.

sweetest thing

On the advice of my music teacher, I picked up a copy of Ravi Shankar's autobiography and musical exercise book, My Music My Life. There is a beautiful new edition published by Mandala, and it features a recent picture of Shankarji, playing his sitar with closed eyes.

My daughter likes to take the book, drape her fingers across the sitar's strings, and kiss Ravi Shankar's face.

swimming upstream

So here's what's going on with me....

Some kind of weird, girl-area pain. It's been on the heels of some other problems, and I finally got another doctor to look at what was going on after my first doctor seemingly dropped me. But it's a case of "you have small abnormalities that shouldn't be causing a lot of pain, so come back in a couple of months and we'll check again." In the meanwhile, I'm on Vicodin to keep on top of the pain, as ibuprofin and other OTCs do nothing.

A friend of the family is in a very uneasy situation, and I can't say much about it publicly, but it has had me and my husband worried sick. We think things are looking up, but not sure yet.

I completely screwed up a work situation - someone had asked me to cover for them today. They asked me in November, and hadn't mentioned it since, and I just plum didn't keep track of it and was gobsmacked by the 'where are you' call this morning. Adding to that, I was in an increased amount of pain today from yesterday's poke-n-prod, and I realized I had one Vicodin left so needed to stop to get a refill or the pharmacy would be closed before I got home. I have been pining for a device that would easily sync calendars with my Mac, and would allow me to update in the field. I time. As it is, I don't utilize my calendar enough because I have to be in front of this machine to see it. Want it in my pocket. It's new cellphone time. You know where this is heading.

I'm also lobbying for the return of a cleaning service. The pain and the medicine leave me very tired, and screw up my sleep, and I can basically keep the toys from completely overrunning the place and the laundry and dishes done and the crumbs swept and that's about it.

Despite the tone of this post, I don't spend a lot of time griping about this condition. I do have fears about where it may be leading, but there is nothing I can do at this point. I'm not getting much reading done, I'm pouring my energy into coordinating a group knitting project at work, into my kids, and trying to stay comfortable. But I don't have much energy for much else, and I feel that it's time to get some help with the daily tasks if I can't get medical relief for a while.

Things I have had to explain to my 6-yr-old

- Many, many aspects of Star Wars, including lots of questions about "Dark Vader" and "Obi Wan Kedobi".

- How that woman got a beard on her chin (yea Portland).

- Why some medical treatments make you feel yucky even if they're doing good things for you.

- Why boys can't have babies.

- How long it takes things to turn to compost.

- Which things will never turn into dirt or compost.

- Who was Martin Luther King Jr.

- Why, if MLK was so important, he wasn't President.

- The difference between primaries and the presidential election.

- Why the gums around a loose tooth bleed just before the tooth comes out.

I've probably forgotten a bunch already. Whew.

tabla lesson

This was later on Bea's birthday.

medical pet peeve

When you get an ultrasound, and it's not for pregnancy, you're in the room staring at the screen, trying to relate the grainy black & white images to the nice color diagrams you've looked at from medical texts. The technician can tell you what that blob is ("That's your uterus.... that's your ovary.... that's your endometrial lining....") but since that person is not a radiologist, they can't show or tell you what's actually wrong or not-so-wrong. It's another day or two of waiting until your doctor gets back to you with the radiologist's reports. So, you've already seen the images first hand, but you still don't know what's going on.

I know they do this for efficiency, because the radiologist can determine what is going on in much less time than it takes to grab the images, but I do wish they'd just schedule a few minutes of time to hear the interpretation at the end of the ultrasound. Waiting really, really sucks.

Birthday hijinx!

Oh my, I no longer have a baby.

sarangi

My fingering isn't perfect in this pic. But anyway.

still gone.

drove to the county animal shelter today, talked to the neighbors, posted on craigslist, checked the online 'founds' at the humane society and the biggest animal hospital.

it is wrong that i got a crush on another cat while i was checking out the found kitties? feels too soon, but he wanted to play and he had orange eyes. bea had a blast looking at an entire room of kitties. i felt so sad, knowing that most of them probably wouldn't have anyone coming to look for them.

according to the movies, she should have shown up at the door either when i was packing bea and the stroller and the cat carrier into the car to go to the shelter, or right when we got back, or right after i talked with all the neighbors. damn lyin' movies.

cassie

she's missing.

i've had this cat for nine years. only a few months shorter than the length of my marriage.

she's gone missing on us once before, when we moved to portland, and she decided to hang out in the neighboring overgrown yard for a couple of days. but we've been in this house about a year now, so there should be no disorientation.

i came back from music lesson last night, read my son a couple of chapters, and settled with my own book before drifting off to sleep. i didn't get to ask my husband if he had sent her out for the night - a source of squabble, as i've never believed it to be safe, but the cat has never believed in letting us sleep through the night, either. i would be the one getting my nose or toes chomped around 3 am, while my husband simply couldn't stand the mewing or clawing to get into our bedroom if she was shut outside our room at night.

i noticed yesterday that she was walking gingerly up the stairs like an old cat. she's at least 11, and tiny. we don't know her true age as she was an adult when we adopted her. she hadn't been acting sick, but she had seemed to need more time with me after the kids had gone to bed recently.

even tj seems a bit put off, as if he's trying to ask where she is even though they were hardly buddies. he's had many a nose-swack from her in the mornings, idling for space at the breakfast bowls. the rest of the time, they ignored each other.

i hope i open the door to get the paper tomorrow and find her. i've checked the animal shelter's online lost and found, and unless she made it to gresham, she isn't there. also checked the major animal hospital, and craigslist. the number of lost pets on craigslist in just one day made my heart break a little. i have searched all the hidden nooks in the house, hoping that if she has passed, she found a comfortable space and slept until she couldn't wake.

How did I not know

... that John Larroquette is now on Boston Legal?

Strikingly white-haired now, but you'll always be Dan Fielding to me....

bibliofantasy

noun: something you've always wanted to see in print, but it doesn't exist.

usage: "I did recently check out a history that is exactly in the area I was researching, and noticed that most of the secondary material cited in the book postdates my graduate studies. This is kind of a bummer, because if I had finished my thesis, it likely would have been cited in it. As a library geek, it's always been a little bibliofantasy of mine to be cited."

"It's wicked cold!"

A few days in New England trained my son well.

learned to do / to learn to do

recently i've been exploring jewelry making more, and music. and now i'm starting to develop a check-list in my head of things i'd like to dabble in:

- there's a few quilting shops around here with great fabrics. i just want to find a nice, simple tunic pattern and whip some up in the spring.

- more jewelry making techniques. after thanksgiving we're dedicated to gettin the garage in order, which include machine shop space, and i want to use what i've learned and expand. here's what i made on my first go-round:



- scent. while i've been having some fun going up to a custom-scent body products shop not far from my house, i'm curious to see what i could come up with on my own. i don't know if i really have the patience, though - mix up a batch, wait six weeks, see if it needs chucking or tweaking...

150

i did a bit of exercise on a regular basis for a while (hello again, Denise Austin!), and my weight went below 150 for the first time since Bea was born.

then i had a crazier than usual week, and i forewent getting up at 6 to follow along with the previous day's tivo'd exercise show (denise is on at the same time as curious george, and i'll never win that battle. plus 7 is just a little too late - i have to do it before the kids are up.) so this morning, i'm at exactly 150.0 lbs.

seems like some kind of sign to get moving, or admit defeat.

busy.

hella.

i coulda sworn i was posting about easy-going, not-much-happenin' days. over and done with, apparently. i've been taking an insane number of classes - music, jewelry-making. got to meet ram narayan's son, who gave an amazing sarod concert. (oh and oh. it turns out my original sarangi teacher in pune was good friends with his dad. and he put a blessing on little bea's singing head, and said he'd be at her first concert. cloud 9 stuff for me.) have been asked to participate in a music performance in december, and to prepare a demonstration on sarangi for several classes in nathan's school. also been asked to be the 'professional guest jew' for hannukah in nathan's classroom. got a new responsibility at work, which i'm really enjoying - collection stuff, which i haven't really had under my belt before (i get to buy stuff! woohoo! you know they like you at work when they let you play with their money.) oh, and my kids. are awesome. boo is all about the halloween. and somehow i turned 'hey let's trick or treat together' with some of his friends into 'hey let's have dinner at my place, then go trick or treating.' trying to exercise regularly, since two people during one weekend asked me when i'm due. (!!!!) trying to be busy making more knitted jewelry for friday, but i'm typing this instead. meeting up with a couple of perfume people thursday. my hands hurt.

welcome to the boys' sangeet club

i spent three evenings over the weekend in a raga singing workshop with pandit pran nath's disciple, terry riley. (wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Riley)

riley is also an experimental musician in his own right, having played with tape loops since the 50s. but this workshop was purely indian music. he'd give us a little bit of the raga, a bit more, and a bit more, until about an hour later we'd have the whole composition.

there were certainly things to be gleaned from this: that there is a certain pattern of ascent and descent, and that the same 'note' may be quite different depending on how you're approaching it. it felt like the note could be considered to have a range, started just above the note below and ending just at the tail of the note above. pran nath apparently believed that a note would be different from raga to raga.

the group in the workshop comprised of about 20. it was mostly guys. at least half of the women who were there practice singing or chanting as a devotional, and were looking to expand their range. many of the people there were also instrumentalists - several tabla players, and one guy who had just returned from tuva with a lovely folk stringed instrument and a penchant for throat singing. (amazing post-workshop jam between that and tabla!)

i've already found that i'm using what i learned in my sarangi playing, even though i haven't had a lesson since the workshop. my sarangi instructor is also a student of pran nath, so she's looking forward to working on the ragas with me.

one thing i realized, though, is that although i've been wanting to play music with someone, i'm hesitant to just call someone from the workshop and work with 'em. because it's likely to be a guy. and there was definitely a feeling of being in a guys' club during the workshop. toward the end, someone asked terry for an anecdote about pran nath, and he wasn't able to just spit one out - so he said that two of the men at the workshop were also pran nath's students and could also be asked. my instructor had to pipe up that she was pran nath's student too - and we were all in her house at the time.

so.... still just me, the sarangi, and the buddha machine for right now.

someone come to my house

and show me how to use Garage Band.

The Apple shops all offer the GB classes from 3-4 PM, which doesn't work when one has a kid to pick up from school.

I have been messing around with my sarangi and a Buddha Machine, and wrote a little melody to play over one of the loops. I'd like to develop it further, but I realize what my problem is:

The hours of 10 pm - 12 am are about the only reliable time I have with my hands free. In this time, I am trying to: knit a sweater, make jewelry, read, play music, and actually talk to my husband. Unfortunately, I while away a chunk of this in front of this very computer screen, too.

Someone come to my house, and sew me on some extra arms.

there are toast marks on my back

i was grilled for over an hour by a scientologist at the reference desk today.

a lot of the answers had to do with explain what our policies were regarding collections, cooperative borrowing, donations, and various fine points about the catalog and how it organizes results. and then, after literally AN HOUR of this, he wants to know how the dewey decimal system is broken down.

"you don't have a handout you can just give me?"
"nope."
"they don't teach dewey in schools anymore. they just teach politics."
(not rising to the bait on that one.)
"why don't you have a handout?"
"because most patrons come to this desk looking for a particular author, or title, or subject. and i help them get it."
"what if they want to browse?"
"usually they still want a subject area to browse in."
"so i'm a freak of nature?"
"you're one of the more curious patrons we've had in."

other parts of the exchange included explaining that we don't take donations if the donor specifies the book has to become part of the collection, and that just because our branch is big, we may not have all the material on scientology he thinks we should have, but we will get it from other branches. why don't we have it? because there are six other copies of this book in county, and none of them are checked out, and we don't get many requests for it at our branch. therefore, there is an adequate supply.

i kept my cool, but i'm totally drained. i hope to g-d he doesn't come back in tomorrow.

i know that i should not have spent that much time on one patron. i did interrupt him when other patrons came to the desk and i told him i would do so. i do have a fear that patrons with agendas like that are looking for an opportunity to have a problem with how they are treated and to scream discrimination.

loneliness

now that boo has gone back to school, it has hit me.

i am mindnumbingly, soulstompingly lonely. moving twice in two years, and staying home all week with a baby has finally gotten to me.

i was really looking forward to connecting with some of the parents at boo's new school, and it isn't happening. not only is it not happening, but at a coffee morning last week, i actually felt quite snubbed. i looked around the room and saw that everyone had gotten paired off into conversation, except me. someone had started talking with me, and before i could even respond fully, she gave me the 'uh-huh' nod had turned to someone else. i waited for about 8 minutes, and left without saying anything further. i am now avoiding people in the halls.

i barely see my neighbors, and i'm feeling awkward around a couple of them anyway. next door, we had given them a wedding present that they have yet to verbally acknowledge - which is all i'm looking for, i don't expect a written thanks - and across the street, we made them sorbet out of the cherries they brought over before their month-long trip out of town, so they wouldn't miss their own fruit. i mean, just tell me if you liked it. or return my tupperware. or something.

i'm basically crying a lot, and anything tips me over right now. i hold myself together long enough to get boo into his classroom, and to pick him up and spend the afternoon with him, but that's about it.

Beach day!

This was the Sunday before school started. We just took it as a day trip. Cannon Beach's hotels were entirely full, so it was just as well.

Bea got a chance to put her toes in the sand, and I held her above the water (too cold for baby toes). Boo flew a kite and felt quite masterful by the end of the day.

deeeep breath

boo's first day in his new school went fine. for some reason, the school system tried to knock him out of his class, but his teacher was prepared for him to show up. or, semi-prepared: his desk was waiting in the hallway. he doesn't seem too put out by being in a roomful of kids who mostly know each other already.

the small amount of people-watching i did during pickup and dropoff was fun. it was like being in a hallway of my clones. i feel a tad bit pigeonholed.

dad's surgery was delayed by an urgent case that his surgeon worked on this morning. this made me fret for a bit until i got more news - one prefers a fresh, non-tired doc working on your folks. however, by 9 pm EST, surgery was done, and all went well. it took longer than expected, but went well.

boo also did well at his tabla lesson today. he was really dreadful during some of the summer sessions - he did not like having to wait for my sarangi lesson. when we drove to his teacher's, he had fallen asleep in the car. this is usually a sign that i'm in for a lot of protests and tears. there was a bit, but i simply told him we were there for his lesson and he was to do it. i stayed in the other room (he acts up a bit if i'm watching) and it sounded like one of his better sessions.

i took a long walk with bea in her jogging stroller this afternoon. i was surprised at how out-of-shape i had become. i tried on jeans last night and felt awful about finding myself a size 14. there are boxes and boxes of size 8s and 10s in our garage and closets, and i want to be in those clothes again.

favorite thing

Bea loves thumbpiano!

bullet points (non-violent version)

- Boo has another wiggly tooth. He's also willingly gone to the dentist to have a couple of front teeth repaired. When he was little, he refused to go to sleep without a bottle. This left him with cavities. I knew they needed repairing but was scared of the process - the dentist we went to in Manassas wanted him to go to a specialist, and I had a grave fear of having him go through a major procedure and anesthesia. We have a dentist on our block here, so we went in for a cleaning. They told us that the affected teeth will likely fall out in the next year, and that the roots had formed a hard protective layer around themselves. Fixing them was mostly cosmetic, and I let Boo make the decision to have it done. His smile looks a lot better. I'm happy for him, it will be nice to start school at yet another new place with a better smile.

Sub-points: Yes, the bottle was a major argument between Boodad and me at the time. I pointed out that giving him milk after he brushed his teeth negated the benefits of brushing. I am shaking my head about this now - why didn't I just take over bedtime? Even if it was the only time Boo really got with his dad. Thankfully, these haven't been issues with Bea - neither the bottle, or the lack of dad-time.

- While Boo is losing teeth, Bea is gaining! Two little stubs on the bottom. She doesn't seem bothered by them, but I do get the occasional wicked chomp.

- I am not a good ukulele player. Not even passable. Boggles me that I can play sarangi, but not this.

- I think I've gotten my perfume ya-yas out for a while. It can become a ridiculously expensive quest, and I find it puts me very much into immediate gratification mode. This compounds the expense, as I have samples on order but still go out to sniff things in stores because I really want to smell something new, now. I like having a wardrobe of scents to chose from as part of getting dressed. But I don't want to end up on a never-ending ultimate scent quest.

- I do like perfume because perfume doesn't care if I can't lose the babyweight. And it is more pleasant to smell like Eau d'Whatever than Whiff o'Babypuke.

- Yes, we're looking forward to school starting. But I'm feeling a little guilty about this. Did we have enough fun this summer? Did I take Boo on enough adventures? It has been difficult to feel like I've been fully engaged for Boo while also taking care of Bea. I was looking forward to Boo taking the bus to school, but Boodad reminded me that taking him to and from school was helpful for meeting other parents and being able to interface with his teacher last year. Maybe he'll take the bus there, but I will pick him up.

- Once school starts, I can get Bea in the jogging stroller and move more. Yea! I had been trying to do this in the evenings, but it started getting impossible. Somehow our dinner-to-evening activities got later and later, and I couldn't get the time to myself. Boo would throw a fit about not going with me, and that meant I couldn't move with much speed.

- Later this month, I will be taking a three-evening raga class with Terry Riley. I'm very, very excited. I'm also at a point with the sarangi that I want to do more with it - playing with someone, or learning how to record myself and process it on the computer.

- I have been trying to be involved with the Portland chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, but I have some reservations and obstacles. One is, I can't see what they're doing that is different than other groups. The goals of the national movement are kind of amorphous to me, and there is not much online presence from other chapters to make idea-sharing easy. Another obstacle is a guy in the group who gives me incredibly bad vibes. Exactly the same vibes from a damaging exboyfriend. I don't like being in the room with him. I ran into him at the grocery store, and he didn't acknowledge me but I still got bad vibes. Eugh. And perhaps the biggest obstacle is a heap of passive aggression from Boodad, who will inevitably be late home if I have a meeting.

- Just realized this morning that the High Holy Days are right around the corner. Still haven't templeshopped yet, and I don't like doing it right before the holidays. I also don't feel a huge compulsion this year, which is very unusual for me.

Uke!

I gots myself a beautiful bright blue ukulele today. And a book of mildly cheesy classic songs. I'm plinking my way through 'Daydream Believer' right now.

Wheeee! Boo is more than a tad jealous, even though he got a new guitar today too.

btw, boing boing

dear boing boing,

please start tagging your posts. it drives me bonkers when i remember reading about an interesting book on your site, and can't remember any identifying information about it. readers have to scroll back through to whatever day it was posted on - and sometimes i don't remember exactly what day that was. having tags like 'book' 'science fiction' would be helpful.

yeah, i could set up a del.icio.us account just to do this, but for pete's sake. the place that pimped 'everything is miscellaneous' should be into doing some tagging, right?

full, full day

i worked a bit today, but not at my regular reference duties. i got to help with a program featuring a local author and Holocaust survivor. i've been used to seeing fairly low turnout at adult library programs, but this one was amazing. we had over 100 people, who stayed in rapt attention, despite the building's failed air conditioning.

i have heard Holocaust survivors speak before, and it always humbles me when i meet one by chance. i don't want to think i'm immune to hearing about the horrors. but i stood toward the back of the room, wondering if there was a portion of the crowd there for the 'horror porn' part of it. much in the way there are always readers for those 'a boy called it' books. this speaker had much to say about how the smallest shred of compassion could yield yards of hope. i am hoping that listeners took home that message.

right after i got home, we bundled out and headed to the india festival in the center of the city. lots of food, music, dancing. i think earlier in the day they may have had some events that boo would have been able to participate in, but i think he had fun. i surprised a couple of people with my mad hindi-speakin' skillz. (har.) however, did not locate somewhere to obtain mad malayalam-speakin' skillz. oh well. did obtain a sari, salwar kameez and bangles - and got bea some baby bangles - because sometimes i have to go to indian music events.

while watching boo stride about, i wondered at what point i could even begin to explain the Holocaust to him. the idea of him knowing that humans could be so horrible disturbs me. he's too young. and once he knows this, he can't be so young anymore.

Mind the gap

Boo has lost his first tooth!

blipvert!

Boing Boing has a post featuring two iconoclasts shillin' for da man. But yippedy skippedy, BB'er David Pescovitz terms the Burroughs spot a "blipvert!" Ah, I can almost smell the ZikZak.

Staring contest

Whose eyes are bigger?

My perfume history

This is in response to the question, "Do you believe in a 'holy grail' fragrance?". Yes, I've gotten obsessed with this to the point that I've joined two perfume-specific webboards.

My take on this is kind of backwards, I guess:

I was introduced to 'real' scents sometime in high school, when I was given a couple of minis of Paloma Picasso. Kind of ridiculously strong for a 15-yr-old even in the 80s, but it's always been the scent I compare everything else to - even if I'm looking for something quite the opposite in character.

I've had several scents that lasted for long periods of my life: Feminite de Bois when I was a few years older, Red Door in college (until a housemate made it her signature too), I can't remember what I wore in grad school but probably couldn't afford much. I somehow found a spray bottle of Joy in Marshall's just before I got married, and after we moved to a metropolitan area, I wore Robert Isabell's Calla and By by D&G. I collected oodles of things from Duty Free shops (Diorever, Salvatore Ferragamo, Ultraviolet, Patou For Ever) on a couple of visits to family in England, and would buy something from time to time (Casmir, Amor Amor) but didn't feel settled with one particular scent.

The area that we lived in had pretty bad air quality, and my sinuses suffered. I would have to go for long stretches wearing nothing. I also worked in an environment where scent was not tolerated.

I eventually wound up having a septoplasty to relieve my poor old sinuses, and my sense of smell vanished for about a month. It was really unnerving, how many pleasures this took away - food in particular. Once it came back, I looked for something gentle to wear every day, and chose Clarins' Par Amour Toujours.

But now, we have moved, I've had a second baby, and my 30s are waning. PAT feels too young to me, and I went back to 'something like Paloma Picasso, but not so strong' for my new scent. I'm very happy and will likely wear Premier Figuire Extreme most days (good grief, I will be known here as "that PFE girl" if I mention it again!), but there's just too much out there to say that's the only one for me. And there will always be a rounded bottle with a black sillouette on my dresser!

My busy, busy nose

So.... got some samples from online retailer luckyscent.

The first shipment of the samples got lost in the mail (I suspect there is a very nicely scented postal worker somewhere in Portland!), and the company graciously resent. In the meanwhile, I visited the Perfume House, which was an amazing experience in itself. I sampled and sniffed away and walked out as the delighted new wearer of L'Artisan's Premier Figuire Extreme. I have never, never spent so much on a bottle. I had fallen for it before I found out the price.

The samples that arrived afterwards seem disappointing in comparison - which I'm happy about, since I've made my major perfume purchase and don't want to find something else right away.

First up: Pilar and Lucy's Tiptoeing through the Chambers of the Moon. This line gives cute names to everything. And, of course, most of the notes are "secret", but supposedly include amber and tuberose. Well, let me divulge the "secret." THIS SMELLS LIKE A BIG O' BOTTLE OF VANILLA, with nothing else.

I do not enjoy feeling like a walking cupcake. I scrubbed it off my wrists.

Second: Maitre Perfumeur et Gantier - Or des Indes. I think I was interested in this because I was also interested in Patou's new scent, Sira des Indes - unfortunately, too sweet on me. This isn't sweet, and does indeed bring back memories of the air in India. Liked it for the top and middle. The endnote, however, smelled like flat patchouli on me.

I have a few more samples to go through, but they'll have to wait for another day. I went back to putting on some Figuire. It's got a nice top of fresh fig, with spiciness underneath. It has enough to it to become a dear, personal signature scent.

I'm new to writing about perfume. I hope to make this an occasional topic - although I wonder if my nose can detect enough complexity to put into words.

Parents just left today

I kinda held my breath until I heard from them upon their arrival in Providence.

My dad has some nasty recurring vascular clots in his leg, and he almost had to have surgery on them while here. In a way, I wish he did, because he wasn't able to enjoy as much of this visit and it seemed that the medical treatment he got here (went into the emergency dept of local hospital when the warning signs suddenly popped up again) seemed more indepth than he was getting at home. He wanted to see his surgeon at home, however, and the home doc concurred that if he took it easy, he could wait til then. He sees his doc tomorrow, and will probably be immediately routed for another surgery. His fourth.

I am more than suspecting that he may decide this is his last plane trip. I'm glad it didn't happen while he was in Navajo territory.

After we brought my folks to the airport this morning, we hung out with a friend whose son plays good-n-loud with Boo. Good to see my friend (we had fun collaborating on a piece of jewelry together!), and also good for both Boo and I to not sit at a now-much-emptier home.

gonna have to watch out for this one

my parents are visiting, which has given me less time to post.

yesterday, i took mom and bea out for some girly fun at a local boutique. boo was quite relieved to stay at home with pa. unfortunately, the owner's little dog barked and scared bea, so it took some time to calm her down again.

after shopping, we went to a bubble tea place to cool off. there, bea decided to flirt with the guy at the next table. he had a bar piercing in the middle of his eyebrow, facial hair, and oodles of tattoos. bea was trying her darndest, but he wasn't interested.

she eventually decided she was more interested in trying to grab my honeydew milk tea. and she got some smiles out of other patrons.

one step forward, skip a step back....

why do all CFL lightbulbs come in plastic packaging? they really aren't any more fragile than traditional lightbulbs, which come in recyclable cardboard. it seems like some kind of silly tradeoff - get the eco-responsible bulbs, leave a heap o' plastic on the planet. manufacturers, change this!

mashup time!

"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. "

here's where the story ends...

hee hee hee hee. (thanks, dorota!)

luxury is the pursuit

a couple of observations:

the other day i stopped by uwajimaya, a japanese grocery-and-then-some store in beaverton. unlike the 'global foods' in northern virginia, this is a place to find very high quality produce and other foodstuffs. there is an entire row of imported cookies and candies, tons of spices (not just japanese - i bought some indian chili powder, which is just made of chilis. american chili powder has salt, cumin and some other things in it.), kitchenwares, gift items, bath products, noodles, frozen foods. this place also has a japanese-language book store, and a shiseido boutique. i had a brief food list - yakisoba noodles and some other things - but i stepped into the shiseido boutique.

it's a small white room, where the products are arranged. there are testers. a woman popped out and offered advice, demonstrated a product on my face, gathered what i was shopping for, and included some samples in my bag. shiseido's products have nicely stylized packaging.

it occurred to me that this was much like being in the apple store - simple clean store, demonstrations, salespeople who know the products well, products that are physically attractive as well as highly functional. apple stores need to work well because they are selling higher priced products that have functions that can be found at lower price ranges. much like shiseido and other higher-end cosmetics need to be marketed through the specialized counters with exclusive staff - there's a world of experiential difference between buying that level of product versus picking up face goo from the drugstore. apple needs their buying experience to be a much more satifying one than that found in the lairs of best buy and circuit city.

i'm sure if i read some marketing magazines or books, the analogy's probably been made already. it's likely that apple studied this kind of consumer interaction when designing the stores.


the other thing that's been tempting my time away lately is reading perfume blogs. now smell this and basenotes have addictive amounts of information on them, and i find myself tracking down obscure scents that i hadn't heard of before, but somehow must smell. not that i don't already have a bunch of bottles - it's the tracking down of something new, and wanting to see if the written descriptions match the nose's experience. luckily for me, a number of online perfume stores will sell samples. i tried a couple of the variations on paco rabanne's 'ultraviolet', but didn't like them. a couple of other scents that sounded good online were not pleasant on my wrist. i'm trying a few more from luckyscent - mostly ones i've never heard of before reading these blogs.

the impression i get when reading the blogs and especially the comments on them is that for scenties (just a spin on 'foodies for the perfume fanatics), there is some ultimate perfume out there somewhere, and lots and lots to try out during the pursuit.

i am thoroughly aware that reading about perfume is like dancing about architecture. and that there are a lot more important things to spend time and money on. sigh.

yes, both of these in one shift at work

patron a: i must have books by (duder) t. (duder). he's a genius. he's an economist, and i hear him on the radio, and he's the only one telling the truth.

me: ma'am, we have books by several duder duders, but none that look like the right person. let me do some more searching.

patron a: i tell you, if the politicians actually paid attention to him, this country would finally be running the right way.

me: ma'am, could it be (duder) _e_ (duder)? he's a professor in the economics department of (blank) university?

patron a: that's him! you mean you don't have his books? it's criminal that you don't have his books.

me: well, his list of publications shows that he last published a book in 1999, and his books are published by small presses and are more likely to be purchased by academic libraries. i can look at multnomah county library's catalog and see if they own any of his works; as a resident of this county you are also eligible for one of their library cards. we don't exchange books with them, but <

patron a: (in disgust) oh no, i won't step foot in that city.

me: your other option is interlibrary loan (followed by explanation of how ILL works). so, you'd like "big huge libertarian book of why governments shouldn't provide any services", correct?

patron a leaves, somehow escaping without becoming engulfed in flames of irony.


patron b: can you help me get online? i need to look something up on the internet.

me: sure, i can get you started. do you have a library card?

patron b: yes.

i get him logged in. the screen shows the internet use policy.

me: this is the internet use policy, it basically states that you can use the computers for one hour per day, the printing will cost ten cents a page, and that there's no online gameplaying or naughty stuff.

patron b: really? you have a policy on that?

me: yes....

patron b: because i always vote against the library levy, because in the news they show people getting playboy on the library computers.

me: perhaps you might want to actually check out what goes on in the library before the next levy comes up, sir.


seriously, i just wonder how these patrons couldn't see the glaring disconnects between what they were purporting to be true, and the fact that they were using a service that they supposedly disagree with on principal.

quality time with another neighbor today

boo was invited to play with our across-the-street neighbor today, and they had a great time sharing time on a swing, making mudpuddles and playing in damp sand. i held bea and got to chat with the mom. it was very nice and relaxing.

between this, last night's wine tasting, and the network of spiritual progressives meeting yesterday evening, i am starting to feel a little more connected. it's been five months-ish since we moved to this house, and 14 months since we moved to portland. for some reason i'd been feeling a little down lately: unconnected, not feeling certain about spilling my guts to anyone, and wondering if i;d become too guarded to spill my guts anyway. or too guarded to *have* guts, and just living a fairly surface-level life.

for someone who is kinda loud, i'm fairly introverted, and i sometimes fear being tolerated versus being truly liked. actually, i feel like much of my awkward childhood/adolescent was in the state of being bemusedly tolerated instead of liked, and when i get a little down i feel like i'm right back there.

having a couple of just nice interactions really helped lift that cloud. now i wonder if that cloud is fairly normal.

drunk. courtesy of the neighbors!

our neighbors landed at our house with 4 bottles of red wine.

this was a planned thing, supposedly to help them choose which wine would be served at their wedding reception.

man am i drunk. and i'm suprised that i liked the cab most of all.

they got to try my ice cream: greg is lactose intolerant, so he had blueberry sorbet, while martina, boodad and i had my newest concoction: rasmalai ice cream!

3 cups heavy cream
2/3 c sugar
12 cardamom pods
pinch saffron
2 tblsp rosewater

heat cream, cardamom pods and saffron until bubbles form around edges of saucepan. stir in sugar until dissolved. cool down, add rosewater, store mix in fridge for at least 4 hours. spoon out pods before putting in ice cream maker. top with chopped pistachios if desired.

oh noes! my million dollar idea, gone!

when i was in grad school, i had a horribly petty boss at my assistantship. this inspired a great idea, that i never actually brought to fruition:

effigy pinatas.

you contact me and give me a picture of whoever it is who's bugging you, and you get back a customized pinata. great for exes, bosses, politicians, annoying celebs, etc. get your aggressions out, and get candy!

dammit dammit. i should at least grab the domain name if it's available.

hunt and peck

i'm posting this from our new toy, a nokia internet tablet with a touchscreen. there's a little stylus, and a 'keyboard' automagically pops up when you're in an entry field. it even tries to give you options to complete your words! the keyboard is mostly qwerty with some punctuation marks added in. there's an email client and a media player, and the device runs on linux. no phone, but you could add a webcam with a mini usb connection.

i have been avoiding iphonamania, although i will say i was disappointed to read that the rumored 4th quarter iphone nano is most likely just an analyst's wishful conjecture. i just want my cell phone to sync with mac's ical! and i don't want to pay 500 or 600 for that function. this device, though, is a relatively measly 120, and at that price i can use google's calendar. woohoo!

two hours and two onions later...

i just made dhal and a mushroom/pea/paneer curry for my sarangi teacher's music teacher, Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan.. I'll be running over to deliver the food tomorrow.

He was in the house during our lessons today, and he held Bea for a little while and was cooing and singing to her. Lucky baby!

i blinked...

and now my baby is six months old.

smoreestas (tm)

chocolate graham crackers
peanut butter
dark chocolate chips
marshmallows

toast marshmallows on grill.

schmeer peanut butter on graham cracker, sprinkle with dark chocolate chips.
sandwich toasty marhmallows between schmeered and plain graham crackers. heat of marshmallows will melt chips and peant butter.



you're welcome.

if you give a kid a flag....

my son was given a small american flag last night. the fabric is about 5 inches by 4 inches, and it's stapled onto a wooden dowel.

he spent a lot of time today aggressively waving it in my face, and trying to swat me on the bum with it. is this kind of behavior just endemic in the fabric, or what?

in portland....

dennis kucinich is a rock star!

carryin' baggage

i love the fact that i can walk to my local freddy's (fred meyers, a grocery store that's almot like a wal-mart without the nausea). but i am going bonkers with how many plastic bags i'm brining in to the house. i have tote bags, but they all seem to have permanent functions right now. so, i went a-webhuntin' for a canvas tote for the grocery store.

decided i wanted an american-made tote.

so, do i go the plain-ol' route, and get an LL bean (made in maine, which suprised me because so much of their clothing is now imported) or - the only candidate i'm interested in who has a tote bag - john edwards?

the thing that's killing me on edwards is $7 shipping for a $15.5 bag. augh!

update: LL bean's shipping is $6. so i ordered the edwards bag, and made a donation to the kucinich campaign.
update 2: and then i get to work, and realize the library foundation sells exactly what i'm looking for, for $10. d'oh! i am now the proud owner of a red one.

house is for sale!

click on the title to get a detailed website.

budding chef

believe me, you'll be glad there are no pics for this.

i cam downstairs after my shower and found that boo had been 'cooking'. the tally includes: 1 whole onion, bag of frozen blueberries, 2 eggs ("i can crack them without getting any shell in the bowl!"), tumeric, dill weed, curry powder, sprinkle topping for ice cream, food coloring, flour, confectioners sugar, culinary lavender, peanut butter, cherry tomatoes, i would guess some water, maybe some milk, mustard seeds, lemon peel, marjoram, and.... god knows what else.

no, he didn't try to eat it, and he didn't ask me to try it, either.

i can has cutebaby

it has occurred to me that while the LOLcat phenom is probably a jumping sharkfest now, it has affected how i babytalk with bea.

'nanners are the yum!' 'is your tireds?' 'do you has the wa-was?'

poor kid, and her poor future teachers who will be undoing mom's grammatical miscues.

i'm stealing woot's product description

because it's a very nice tribute to don "mr wizard" herbert.

We're Off To Take Pictures Of The Wizard

A glass of water sat on St. Peter’s gold-trimmed marble desk. On the surface of the water sat a small box-like structure, made by folding up the sides of a piece of ordinary window screen. Eyes a-goggle, St. Peter stared in wonderment as the screen boat lazily floated across the water.

“I give up, Don,” St. Peter finally laughed. “Why doesn’t it sink? I mean, the thing’s full of holes! And it’s made of metal! What gives, huh? What gives?”

The new arrival smiled. “You see, all matter is made up of tiny particles called molecules. Molecules are all attracted to other molecules, some more strongly than others, and this attraction is called adhesion. The adhesion of the water molecules to each other forms a kind of ‘skin’ on the water’s surface, which is strong enough to hold up the screen without breaking. This is called ‘surface tension.’ Now, er, if you’ve seen enough, maybe I can go on through the gates-”

St. Peter waved a hand impatiently. “In a minute, in a minute. What’s the hurry, right? Eternity isn’t going anywhere.” With an eager flourish, the white-bearded saint produced a glass milk bottle, a hard-boiled egg, a strip of newsprint, and a match from beneath his gossamer robes. “First, how about the egg-in-the-bottle trick? Please? I’ve never seen this one in person.”
Don sighed a weary sigh. “OK, but take a picture. I’m not going to do this every time you want to see it.”

“One step ahead of you there.” St. Peter turned on his Vivitar 8600s 8.1MP Digital Camera. “Check this Vivitar out – an 8 MP sensor, a 2.8” LCD, and a 6x optical zoom. That’s twice the zoom of your standard camera. Pretty scientific, huh, Don? Ooh, I know! I’ll take a video! The 8600s takes VGA mpeg4 video at 30fps!”

Keeping his opinions about the Vivitar brand to himself, Don started the experiment. He’d done it a thousand times before. Light the strip of paper on fire. Drop it in the bottle. Set the egg on the open neck of the bottle. SHLUP! In goes the egg, fully intact. He couldn’t believe he was running through this banal stunt once again, while all the delights of Heaven waited for him just beyond the gates. But Don’s impatience turned into delight when he saw the awed grin on St. Peter’s face. This was what he’d lived for. So what if I’m dead?, Don thought. Life is temporary. Science is forever.

this makes my brain hurt

commentary by former American Liberry Assn prez Michael Gorman on britannica's web 2.0 blog...


responded to a blog on social sites and linked on boing boing (and now on britannica's blog as well)....


i'm currently reading 'everything is miscellaneous', which deals in part with these very issues. in fact, in one of the beginning chapters it details with britannica's history of trying to find other ways of ordering information, which often made it more obscured in the process.

frankly, i'm embarrassed by gorman's assertions. he hinges his argument on the belief that humans learn either by direct experience, or by direct interaction with teachers, experts or authoratative texts. he feels that the internet encourages non-authoritative and non-expert materials out there. for a discussion that is purportedly about web 2.0 sites, this argument is woefully outdated. i know. i made this argument in liberry school. pre-wiki, pre-blog, and at the very birth of google. and even then, we liberrians-in-training talked about applying bibliographic instruction to web information so that our patrons might have a change in heck of discerning a page with valid info from a crackpot site on the wild, wild web.

however, the very point of web 2.0 is that those sites' claims can be debated and challenged - often on the very site, if not on another that links to it much like a citation index. and while i am not saying that consensus equals truth, the formation of consensus - or the failure to form consensus - is as much a set of information as that of original point being made. metadata! it's a good thing.

a big topic, and i'm giving it short shrift here. i also need to read gorman's second part - a quick glance gives the impression that he's off on a further tear about the non-authorative nature of web 2.0, and calls it 'anti-intellectual', and those who support it are under the sway of 'pop sociology'. i wonder why gorman seems to think that every intellectual exercise needs to follow the structure of scholarly academic tradition.

all hail his noodly appendage!

had an urge to try making pasta from scratch. which of course meant doing one of my favorite things, buying a kitchen gadget or appliance that can only do one thing. in this case, technically it was two: a hand-crank pasta machine, and a pasta drying rack. a cuisinart was also purchased, which also only does one thing: proves that i'm a big yuppie.



it's a little tricky, and my first batch wasn't particularly elegant, but it was mighty tasty. cuisinart was used to mix dough and to shred cheese. (and to prove that i'm a giant yuppie.)

family pics

what is this, cute overload?



boo entertaining the sister. notice the family funky hair!







yup. they're really like this. unless he's being really goofy, in which case she's giggling like crazy.






it gets even better....

you don't know me

incognito!

buncha pics!

beatrice received an amazing quilt made by my former boss! she's also stylin' in an outfit sent by a former coworker.




one of her favorite toys. okay, i bought it because i liked it, and she eventually decided she likes it too.





helpful big brother! i still have to take a deep breath when he says he wants to help with her, or to cheer her up when she's fussy, but he's really very sweet with her and she absolultely adores him.





the big news: SOLID FOOD!! this is from her first trial of rice cereal. the next day, i mixed some up and took it with us when we went out to dinner. she scarfed it all down, and i had made more than i thought she'd ever eat - and she ate very neatly. i wound up running to the grocery store down the street from the restaurant to get more baby food! she then ate a little jar of pears. the entire jar.

ok, that's a total mom thing to get so excited about. but she really seemed to be a bottomless pit last night.



boo walking after school with one of his best friends. if i had caught them a moment earlier, i would have captured them holding hands.

buncha little notes

it's back to busy for me. or at least, out of the house most of the day. keeps me outta trouble, or something.

i've been spending a lot of time at boo's school library, and have begun co-planning and presenting the programs for kindergarteners. since the class is large, it is split into two groups, so i'm in there twice a week. (d'oh! just realized that the book fair is tomorrow, and i haven't any cash. oops.) i'm having a blast, and it's a good change from being in there just trying to keep the kids under control to trying to keep the kids engaged. it's making me think that i could swing being a children's librarian after all. school media specialist maayyybeee - but from what i see of jane's day, i'd go bonkers with the constant interruptions and lack of assistance.

i've also gotten back to cooking. we do live in restaurant heaven, but it really hit me one night when my parents were visiting that i'm capable of making most things on a non-ethnic restaurant menu. (my mom ordered an asparagus risotto that was $14.) i guess i've always felt that restaurant food must be more complicated than i could do at home, but that order was really a mindchanger. the other thing about cooking is that i watched my mom do the passive-aggressive dance in the kitchen: an appearance of lots of exertion for, um, british-style food (nigella not included) topped with a 'oh don't worry about little ol' me doing all this work'. between the highly overpriced risotto and the very simple recipe for macaroons on everyday food just before passover, i finally realized cooking is really not that hard. i've since subscribed to everyday food (martha stewart gets us all in the end), and now find i'm actually planning what to try cooking days in advance.

since bea has now enjoyed a fingertip of rose petal gelato a couple of times now, i tried making rosewater ice cream last night. pretty good! i used a philadelphia-style vanilla recipe (meaning, no eggs and therefore much quicker to prepare) and added two tablespoons of rosewater. yummy! i think i may try adding some raspberries into the cream - strained to keep seeds out - to get a nice rosey hue next time.

later tonight i'm going to try setting up a whole wheat sourdough starter. we've been paying over $3 a loaf for locally-made wheat sourdough bread, and i'm sure i could make some. i used the bread machine sunday night to make pizza dough, and last night boo gleefully helped roll out the dough and put on toppings. another big hit, and since the dough can be prepared in advance, it will probably become a monday (or hectic) night favorite.

back to martha stewart getting us all in the end: i've been using that new garnier face stuff in the green bottles, because if you're a 35-yr-old not-quite-hipster, you'll do whatever sarah jessica parker tells you to do.

started back on sarangi lessons today. boo is going to try a little tabla during his next violin lesson. while he sounds very good on violin, i'm a bit tired of the arguments we constantly have about continuing. i don't want him to quit so soon, although at the same time i'm highly aware of how much i hated being in choir when i was a kid, and how i wasn't allowed to leave for eight years. he, however, is actually getting a music education with his lessons, where i was in a parrot-this-back situation.

i've been trying to knit up this very sweet dress for bea. it has a small amount of lacework at the bottom hem, which is where the pattern starts. twice i messed up the lace pattern (you know you're exhausted when you can't keep an 8-stitch repeat straight), and then i finally got it - and then realized that i had twisted the fabric on the circular needles, causing a mobius strip that couldn't be repaired. so on to attempt #4....

i've made some jewelry in the past month, too. and now etsy has produced a little 'mini' that lets me put this on this blog...

mindful

when i was on a meditation retreat a couple of years ago, one of the practices was an eating meditation in which each bite was taken slowly and completely before the next bite began. one was encouraged to think about how the food got to the plate - the growing, reaping, transporting, preparing, etc, in an effort to be mindful of the food's connection to the earth and to other people. (not much chemicals in the food at the meditation center!)

these days, i practically inhale my food because i never know when i'm going to be needed by one kid or the other. i hope i can get back to slow eating one day.

today i took myself and bea out to lunch. while waiting for the order, bea and i had a little coo-filled 'chat'. she fell asleep right about the time the food arrived, although she was pretty interested in my salad before she conked out. last weekend she had a fingertip's worth of rosewater gelato, and she's been mooching for food ever since. i ate the rest of my lunch realizing how quickly she's growing, and how little baby-time we're going to have.

better pic of boo

boo makes a goofy face when he's posing for pictures. it's a very stilted smile. he photographs much better in candids! this is him enjoying a horse swing that was at the tulip farm.

tiptoe...

or roll through the tulips, depending on the age.

yesterday was gray but not really raining, so i took the kids to a tulip farm about an hour away from portland. (no school due to a teacher workshop day.) it turned out to be clearer out there, and the sight of rows upon rows of tulips was amazing - boo even asked 'am i imagining this, or are we really here?'.

this sanjaya thing

let me start with the standard "but of course i don't watch american idol". which is actually true, i don't like it because i am not interested in common denominator music, even if all hipsters bow before kelly clarkson's 'since u been gone.'

while there's plenty of chatter about the sanjaya phenomenon, i haven't seen anything about the underlying reason this is happening. ladies and gentlemen, it's about race. it's about those 'other' categories on the census. don't believe me? well, can you imagine this joke (or however you think of it) going on so long if the kid in question was white?

your wish is my command

and another....

spring is in the air, erasure's on the stereo

new erasure song

they asked for erasure fan submissions of 'falling in love' for the video, and i nearly sent one in of bea and i having our first look at each other, but didn't - i wouldn't have been the only mum to have done so, it turns out.

such a sweet and happy song. waiting for the album....

seder went well

seder went very well. jun didn't come, as he started a new session of classes and was tired. the boys behaved pretty well and asked the classic four questions: can we eat yet? can we eat the orange on the seder plate? can we eat yet? when's dessert?

boo helped me make 'fruit heads' - we took a 'personal-sized' watermelon, cut it in half, scooped the innards, and made fruit kabobs with the watermelon, strawberries, mango chunks and grapes, and used the kabobs for 'hair' and pieces of fruit for faces. those we very successful desserts for the boys. we also made chocolate macaroons, which were easy and really yummy. both recipes/projects were from PBS shows we saw over the weekend - the fruit heads from Zoom, and the macaroons from everyday food. boo also helped me mix the charoset together. he really, really enjoys cooking.

lots of songs, including the 'my darlin' clementine' version of the four children's questions, and a song about the ten plagues sung to the tune of the addams family theme!

i made an 'iranian beef and eggplant stew' that was in a kosher cookbook i've owned for years. it came out really, really nicely. nancy brought matzoh ball soup - i will have to ask her to teach me to make matzoh balls, mine fall apart so i've given up. i also prepared baby carrots and baby yukon gold potatoes. and, in great jewish mom tradition, i made waaaay too much (i prepared brocolli that didn't even make it to the table!) so we'll have leftovers for a day or two. yippee!

ca-a-a-an you feel the lo-o-ove toni-i-ight

over on consumerist: (clicky)


some of those comments make me darnright misty eyed. or, erm, dewey eyed.

someone call john hughes...

So my seder tonight includes 2 babies, 2 six-year-old boys, 2 non-jewish husbands and possibly a Japanese exchange student.