plttht!

sometimes things just suck. one thing that sucks is finding out that you didn't get into an internship program that you had your heart set on. another thing that sucks is having someone you love more than anyone else find out that he didn't get into a program that he had his heart set on. to that, i say, "plttht!" with all of the spit and slobber it implies.

august reverie

mmm... salt & vinegar chips... i've had a hankerin' for these for the last few weeks and have finally found my fix. does the fact that they're "sea salt" make them better for me? i hope. 'cause i'm eating a lot of them. mm..mm..mmmm....


ok. now i've forgotten what i was planning to write about. do you remember? maybe it was about the weekend... mil and i went rollerblading yesterday. he went around the park four times...

...this is near the end of his third lap (when i joined him).

we spent the rest of the day vegitating (and eating taco bell), but we felt that we were entitled given we'd already gotten some exercise and fresh air. it was also about 150% humidity yesterday, so who really wants to be out in that?

i also finally saw "march of the penguins" on saturday. baby penguins are *officially* the cutest animals on earth. can you deny it?

we also watched ungodly amounts of "coupling". phew, is that a good show. if you haven't watched it, you must. at first mil and i weren't sure what all the hype was about, but once we hit the "giggle loop" episode, we were hooked. not sure how anyone thought an american version would work though... why is america like that? anything that's good must be reworked for maximum profitability -- even if that means that it's no longer good.

the fella and i also found ourselves in the fortunate position of having several of our closest friends depart their chosen borough just to hang out with us. we chucked our no-take-out rule, and plugged in the scene-it. despite my inability to remember anything from any movie, it was a fun evening. i also had the rare opportunity to watch someone else fall unconscious during a social activity. this was awesome because...well... it's usually me.

boring bird

well, my boss came in for about 2 minutes today, and for the first time i was actually really happy to see him. i've been so tired and lazy these last few weeks that i've actually been boring myself. (blah, blah, house, blah, blah, politics... i know you're feeling it too.) he didn't actually have a lot for me to do (hence my speedy return to the blog world), but i enjoyed the two minutes of intellectual stimulation.

just one question: does this mean i like work?

idle hands...

mil and i are working our way toward academically-induced asceticism. it's amazing what a little penury will do to ya.

i’ve always had reverence for the simplicity of the quaker lifestyle and the rejection of consumerism that it entails, but i have been self-aware enough to know that i do not have the wherewithal to actually live like that . in the last few months, however, mil and i have had to cut back, not just on the frivolities (movies, dinners out, clothes), but on the essentials (cable, take out, dvds). we’re doing our best to hoard enough money to pay rent next month… what’s amazing is that even though we’ve been doing all this scrimping and saving, our apartment is still overrun with crap we don’t need and never use. i opened my medicine cabinet today and noticed that despite the fact that we’ve been eating mac n’ cheese for the last five weeks, i still have ridiculous quantities of lotions, toners, hair goops, and moisturizers overrunning my cabinet(s). hell, i could go into business! mil has a collection of simpsons dolls… i mean figures, that would put comic store man to shame, and despite his recent restraint, our dvd collection still puts most of our better-employed friends in awe. i guess after a lifetime of reflexive purchasing (of which, izzy was the largest of all), it’s hard to change one’s ways.

this is most obvious when i am here at work without much to do. i start thinking about all of the things i want… first on the list is that house i mentioned in my last post, but once i remember how impossible that is, i start thinking about puppies and searching petfinder.com. once i realize that we live in a small one bedroom apartment and that i’d have to pick-up dog poo, i start looking at the real estate section of the ny times to see what we might be able to someday afford. it continues like this for a while. occasionally, i’ll start looking at birds or kittens when the puppy thing passes. sometimes i’m off my rocker enough to start looking at cars to see how expensive they are nowadays.

are we all like this? looking for the next big purchase? the next thing that will make our normal lives a little more exciting (for about five minutes)? is it just me that thinks this is pretty sad?

a stoop of my own

last night i had the pleasure of drooling over my uncle's old brownstone in brooklyn. sometime in the 1970s, my uncle and his wife at the time decided to rebel against their suburban backgrounds and find a charming old 1870s, 4-story brownstone in the 'hood in brooklyn (now the hipster haven known as clinton hill). when i used to visit as a kid, i thought their house was so much cooler than the house we had in houston. how many of my friends had three sets of stairs in their houses? how many of them had houses that were over a hundred years old... in the middle of new york city no less? ever since then i dreamt of one day owning a brownstone of my own... of course now that i'm old enough to consider buying any piece of property (notice i didn't say wealthy enough), the price of a brownstone in any of the boroughs hovers around a million dollars if not infinitely more... so sad to see that dream squashed.

my widowed aunt is now selling the place, so i will not even have the pleasure of visiting in the not-too-distant future. i guess that's how it goes...

etcetera

isn't it weird to see it spelled out like that? i sorta like it... it looks like what it is (an onomotopoeia of sorts).

anyway, i will begin today's post with a discussion of lids. not "lids" like that crappy mall store, but lids like those on a jar or soda bottle. i take a moment to talk about lids because mil seems to have a special connection to them -- so special, in fact, that i am not allowed to close any important items in our apartment for fear that i will let a little of that bane of freshness and carbonation...air...in. last night i got a talking-to for not closing the plastic container protecting our precious oreos tightly enough. fortunately, i don't take these things too seriously, so our marriage goes on without a hitch. fortunate, as well, is the fact that mil accepts these little deficiencies with only mild ire (though thank goodness, it wasn't a seltzer bottle -- then i'd really be in trouble).

**
on an entirely unrelated topic, i will mention the things i enjoy most in a blog:
1) frequent reference to the self in the third person. (moosk really likes that)
2) anthropomorphism of animals or small children (yes, i know that children are people -- i'm not that much of a lefty -- but by this i mean the providing of infants/small children with verbal capacities beyond their years).
3) funny names for spouses/significant others (e.g., "the queen" or "the squirrely")
4) humorous bits of remembered dialogue (i think i respect this most because my memory is like a sieve -- periodically throughout the day i exclaim, "this would be hysterical on the blog!" only to have the entire conversation fly out of my head mere seconds later.)
5) presence of verbal exclamations in written dialoge (e.g., gah, hurmph, pshaw)

**
finally, a rather fightening post from edward at obsidian wings... an interesting update on the unfortunate individual who was shot by the police on the tube last month.

start fighting!

not something you expected me to say, eh?

seriously, jeffrey yamaguchi has a great list of 25 things you can do to fight corporate control. i think most of us born and bred consumers will have a tough time with all 25 (i will cut down on my old navy duds, but i can't go cold turkey), but i'm for any list that has "surf the web" as a rule.

what race is pink?

lately i have been thinking a lot about race and ethnicity. one reason is that i am working on our annual progress report which requires us to calculate how many study participants we've had, stratifying them by race and ethnicity. (since our project is government sponsored, we have to prove that our participants are racially and ethnically diverse.) this report often proves challenging because we always lump hispanic/latino in with race, not ethnicity, when we ask the study participants. the gov't., however, wants to know how many white hispanic/latinos we have versus black or asian (?) or native american hispanic/latinos. what's interesting to me is that hispanic vs. not hispanic is the only ethnic category requested. when i look at wikipedia to figure out exactly what it means to be "white", it lumps together all people of european, middle eastern, and north african descent. it also describes it as an ethnicity versus a race. but if "white" isn't a race, what is? well, it seems we're not quite sure. wikipedia does its best to explain here. i'm still not convinced. which leads me to the other reason i was thinking about race and ethnicity...

i was reading middlesex this past weekend, and i noticed that the central character did not think of herself/himself as american in the traditional sense because of her/his greek background. (i'll just refer to her as a "she" from now on since that's what she was thought to be at that point in the book, and it's just a pain in the *ss to keep writin "she/he.") she hung out with the other outsiders -- the indian girl, the asian girl, and the jewish girl. this struck a chord with me because i realized that that configuration mapped almost precisely onto my experience growing up in houston (through the murkiness or memory i see my lunch table: three indian girls, two asian girls, a jewish girl, a sri lankan, a unitarian, and a lesbian). i put that together with my social work professors remark on my genogram assignment that i am not "white," and i finally realized at age 28 that i am not the plain-jane, all-american girl that i always thought i was. i realized that all of the popular girls in my private school were of the freckly, protestant variety. my half-jewish, half-catholic, mostly agnostic background put me into my own category or "otherness." i guess what's so strange about this is not that i'm "other" -- h*ll, most of us are, aren't we? it's that i didn't realize it until now.

anyway, that's my revelation for the week. anyone else have any dramatic self-discoveries that didn't occur until adulthood?

what happens in vegas...

i'm so exhausted right now that i can't really think of anything interesting or witty to write. i've uploaded some pics onto flickr if you're interested in seeing them. i actually took a whole set of photos of the call girl cards that were all over the street, but i was afraid they'd close my flickr account. showgirl and i thought it was hysterical that the streets were littered with tons of these little 3x5 cards containing pictures of scantily clad women with such enigmatic captions as "pink passion -- $49 special!" or "affordable blondes direct to you!" one topless britney look-alike with a pink baseball cap (aptly named "star") is only $47. i knew that "what happens in vegas stays in vegas," but i didn't know that the "escort services" came so cheap and so well publicized. interesting that given the location of these cards (on the ground, propped up on trash cans) it would actually be easier for a 4-year old to catch sight of them than a 40-year old. i can only imagine what the passers by thought when they saw me and my hot friend snapping photos of the exotic "lola" and the well-hung "vicky."

anyway, that was about is vegas-y as my vacation got. i spent the majority of the time out by my grandmother's pool (hooray for the new, tanner me!) or finding creative ways to decline her chocolate chip cookies (which had a texture somewhere between pralines and cardboard thanks to her last-minute substitution of maple syrup for the usual brown sugar). i got to catch-up with showgirl as well who is no longer a showgirl, but an elementary school p.e. teacher. she is rather desperately trying for her second child, so i got to hear quite a bit about basal body temperatures and recommended timing for home pregnancy tests. i tried to be encouraging without revealing my own not-so-latent desire for mommyhood. i kept reminding myself how nice it will be to enjoy another year of having mil all to myself before pregnancy and parenthood take over. one of the highlights of the trip was a show involving lots of carnival-esque acrobats and esther williams-style aquatic dances.



i also got to enjoy one of the occasional treats afforded friends of the showfolk -- petting and cuddling with a bouncing baby white tiger. well, this one wasn't exactly bouncing...

sitting... on a jetplane

well, i have returned. a little redder, a little fatter (thanks, grammie), and a lot more tired. thanks to the weather system moving through the new york area, i took an unexpected two-hour trip to cleveland en route back from vegas. my dad gets the award for best father ever for waking up at 1am and driving from westchester to newark to pick me up -- after all these years i'm still a little amazed at how much my folks love me. i finally climbed into bed at 2:30, only to be awoken at what seemed to be a painfully early 8:30. despite the early hour, the man and the bird seemed grateful for my return, though i'm looking forward to seeing both of them later today when my brain regains its normal functioning. i'm mainlining coffee at the moment. my buddy, coffee, takes good care of me...

till the photos arrive, i will leave you with the things I miss most about new york when away:

10) my blogs… I know I can access these elsewhere, but that requires effort, and I am not good with effort.

9) my hazelnut coffee… (see comment above)

8) my ability to get wherever I want to go without an automobile (and therefore without the resultant expensive gasoline and war-causing oil)

7) good food… cheap

6) my bed

5) my bird

4) the prevalence of the leftist views I’ve come to know and love

3) my ny friends

2) my folks

and this one’s a gimme…

1) my man

btw, thanks to the 9 hours on the plane, i'm nearly finished with middlesex... if you haven't read this one yet, i highly recommend it.

comments

ah... now i get it. i'm flattered that someone thinks that i get enough traffic to warrant advertising on my comments, but since i'm not really interested in having non-paying advertisers, i shall return to my practice of allowing only registered users to comment. sorry if this is a pain for those actually wanting to... say... comment on my site. that's still more than welcome!

vegas, baby, vegas

well, i am off for a long weekend in -- you guessed it -- vegas. i'm not much of a gambler, so this trip is more of a family vacation. perhaps you remember a while back when i posted about my grandmother's slowly fading memory.... well, she has returned home to vegas where she is most happy. she can tap dance with "the girls" and play nickel poker when she's feeling like a night out. this, of course, makes the rest of us worry sick since none of her relatives live anywhere near vegas. our compromise was that she can continue living like the showgirl that she is, so long as she lets us come and visit her every few weeks. now is my turn. it should be fun. like all grandmothers, she tends to spoil me rotten. of course, i'll miss mil like mad, but that's the duty of every spouse, so i'll do it with panache (and phone calls several times a day).

i'll report back on my return. in the meantime i leave you with this hot pic of my friend, showgirl, who i will also be visiting while in vegas. (gentlemen, she is a married woman, so stop your drooling now. ladies, she's a mother of an eight-year old, so you may commence your drooling... life is just not fair.)

boor-dum

does anyone else here have a case of the summer blahs? i remember getting this back when i was in elementary school... august hit and half of me was anxiously awaiting the start of the school year and the heightened activity levels that came with it, while the other half of me was in dread of the months of homework and lack of playtime ahead. despite the mixed emotions, both halves were equally ready to get this party started.

this time around, i must admit that less than half of me is excited about the year to come, but the entirety of me just wants to get this whole thing over with. i wish i had one of hermione's time turners, so i could just flash forward to the me a year from now. the one who's finished going to school and working at the same time. the one who's found a nice high-paying job in the social work field (preferably at columbia, so i can keep my benefits). the one who's husband has already aced the mcats and started med-school applications. yeah... that would be nice. instead, i'm me now. waiting anxiously for the unknown...

a couple of weeks ago, i managed to negotiate a return to my full-time salary. unfortunately, i did so at the cost of my future sanity. another professor here in the psych department needs a part-time assistant, and since right now i have increased my blog-roll tenfold out of sheer boredom, it seemed like an easy enough thing to do. of course in four weeks, i will start my classes, and in six weeks i will be knee-deep in my field placement, so i will have about thirty hours a week to do twice as much work as i'm doing now. yay! reading this blog, you'd think i'm none too smart... but really, it's the appeal of that extra $5K a year (combined with the fear that mil and i won't have enough dough to pay next month's rent) that kicked whatever forethought i had out the window.

see, one of the best things about keeping a journal or a blog is that a year from now, i can look back on this moment and sigh. it will feel as though i did indeed have a time turner, and time really did flash forward -- well, one can dream, can't she?

knitting whimsy

some folks put their creative talents to good use... take for example this vibrator cozy complements of mes projects! and you always thought your grandma was knitting booties...

park life

after a week where it was so hot and 'umid that i felt like i was going to melt into the ground every time i walked outside, it was nice to have a weekend where we didn't get above 90F. to celebrate, mil and i spent 90% of the of the daylight hours in one park or another. yesterday we met one of mil's school buddies and his girlfriend. girlfriend and i spoke about the good and ills of social work school while mil and buddy tossed a frisbee. i of course took a few breaks from the conversation to snap some park photos. this is my favorite.


what actually made the less than 90F weather even better was the fact that 75% of the new yorkers escaped the city to their country homes in new hampshire or their beach homes in the hamptons for the weekend. one of the best things about living in a city where gentrification has reigned supreme is that most of the residents are too rich to stay in one place all summer long. yay us! we practically get the place to ourselves!

mil and i actually had quite a day yesterday. we spent most of the day processing the pregnancy scare of the month (i.e., arguing). this one was a doozy... several days late, some achy boobs and nausea to make it feel authentic. blech. after realizing that there were no little mils or moosks on the way, we felt relieved, but i also felt a little sad (i'm sure hormones had nothing to do with it). as a result of the emotional upheaval, i started to question my whole social work plan. since mil is laying the groundwork for a long and grueling medical training, i'm wondering if it's worth the time, energy, and money that will go into my finishing my msw -- especially since msws are not known for their high salaries. who knows if i can even afford to take an msw job once i get the degree next year.

anyway, we got past the upheaval. we're back to the original plan. one year of hell, and then we can move on to family and future stuff... today was good. we spent some time in prospect park with good friends. mil got to play catch with metsfan, and i got to catch-up with cat, crimson, and archivist. we also got some all-important puppy and baby time.


btw, i just witnessed one of the most beautiful moments of my life. mil just carried izzy over to her cage and gave her a carrot... and i'm still alive. i will carry that moment in my heart forever...

life in the big city

welcome to our living room. with the influx of new money and new architecture to our 'hood, we now have to pleasure of living in the new times square. our local deli has now become an american apparel. our old biography sign with the time and temperature has turned into this:

the light from this sign is so bright it lights up our fridge in the middle of the night. here's a straight, daytime shot...

mmm... sushi

homemade sushi
Originally uploaded by atb20.

for our first anniversary, mil got me a sushi set. we were very intimidated at first. gotta buy the right fish, gotta use the right kind of rice, turn it and fan it just right... seemed like a lot of work. last night, with nothing better on our social calendars we decided to break in the rice-maker and sushi set and this was the result. may not look like much, but in taste our spicy tuna rolls almost rivaled yoshi... almost.

why i love northern exposure

ruthann: my other son, matthew... he had such promise...
ed: oh, what happened?
ruthann: he moved to chicago. he's an investment banker.
ed: i'm sorry...

intelligent design

hi. i was just listening to air american radio this morning and reminded of how frighteningly ridiculous our government has become. it's this whole concept of teaching "intelligent design" in public schools as if it were some alternative scientific theory on par with evolution instead of just a load a bullsh*t. pardon my french, but intelligent design is not a theory. it is an article of faith, and whatever "evidence" these bible beaters conjure up to support their "theory" really just undermines their religious belief if you ask me. the bible never said that it was proposing a scientific theory when it told the story of genesis and the creation of the earth. it was an allegory meant to inspire reverence for the grandness of god's creation. the folks on air america were mentioning how "days" as we know them cannot exist without the sun which was created on one of those "days." makes sense, but that just proves my point -- you can't argue science against faith. they exist on different planes -- one rational, the other spiritual, both valuable.

what scares me so much is that i am reminded of high school. i grew up without any sort of organized religion. when i had questions about where we came from or how the earth came into being, i looked to science. i never knew any other way. i assumed everyone else was like me in that regard. but i was wrong. amazing that growing up in texas my theory that everyone was like me wasn't challenged until high school. i went to a private prep school that claimed no affiliation with the episcopal church next door (despite our weekly "chapel" excursions to said church which included a rote recitation of the lord's prayer...hmm...). once over lunch, i found my friends arguing with one member of our group over evolution. i'm not sure how the topic came up, but i was shocked to learn that 9 out of 10 of my friends did not believe in evolution. they were attacking my one friend, w, pointing at a glass of water and saying things like, "so you believe we came from this???" i couldn't believe what i was hearing! you mean you don't? you think that the first man was made out of clay and women were made from this guy's rib??? they then went to go get one of our history teachers to prove their point. i thought, phew, at least she'll knock some sense into them. but, no, she didn't... more shocking than my barely post-pubescent friends believing that evolution was questionable, but our history teacher believed that there was geological proof of genesis. geological proof of genesis!!! what? where? how? i thought all geological evidence proved that the earth was billions of years old?!? it was this moment when i decided to leave texas for good. there's no way i'm raising my children in a state where more than 50% of intelligent, well-educated folks think evolution is questionable because there's "evidence" for genesis.

anyway, you can imagine the fear that set-in when i first learned that individuals within our federal government thought that "intelligent design" should be taught as an alternative to evolution in our public schools. i realize that i just ended any hope of having a reasonable discourse with folks on the other side of the debate -- you know, beginning by calling "intelligent design" bullsh*t and all...

next post will be a fun one... i promise!

and i present to you...

zee afghan
Originally uploaded by atb20.

well, it is finally complete. my own personal masterpiece -- The Afghan! begun in november of '04, The Afghan found it's way home this july. i am now staring at my blank knitting needles in disbelief.