Back from the Tropics

I’m still aching from a cramped voyage involving myriad forms of transportation: a 6 am ferry to catch a 6:30 taxi to catch an 8:30 plane to catch a 5 pm bus to hop on a 5:30 subway to walk home half a mile lugging two pieces of luggage and three dense cakes. But, it was all worth it. The sunsets were beautiful. The water was azure. The fish were exotic. The flora was fragrant. The wedding was lovely. The new in-laws were charming. Really, only pictures could show you what my sister-in-law’s wedding was like.

A friendly iguana

The new family

A relaxed starfish

Beach kiss

Island sunset

Greenery

Just in time for the end of my carefree summer break, my little plants have come into their own. Now, whenever I need a little respite from the pains of working life, I’ll be able to relax on my porches and gaze at their velvet, verdant visages. I added a few herbs this week to keep my petunias and tomatoes company.

Here’s a view of the back porch:

This is what it’s like to be a tomato plant:

Succulents with 4th-grade art project (a piranha ashtray of course):

Still life with rusty mini-trike:

Next week it’s Karen’s wedding in the Virgin Islands. (I know, be jealous.) And, then I’m off to Manhattan. Theses little dudes will miss me, I can tell.

Escape from Bitch Mountain

I could have cried in my apartment and let the dog jump on me and bark loudly in my face to “calm me down.” Or, I could have gone for a run to blow off some steam. I chose option 2, and to shake things up I took the new humorous/inspiring/fast-paced mix CD that my training buddy made me. So, I’m sprinting because I’m very steamed from work hassles, and I’m grinning and laughing hysterically because each new song is a surprise from a seemingly random artist, genre, and era, wholly unrelated to the previous song. When “Eye of the Tiger” opens and three cars come to screeching halts in the crosswalk in various wonky directions blocking my way and slowing my nice pace, I think, Did Rocky have to deal with this crazy urban bullshit? When “Shot Through the Heart” blasts and I narrowly miss the giant, plummeting defecation of a large overhead bird, I think, Is this what Bon Jovi had in mind when he wrote this? When “Spare the Horse, Ride a Cowboy” twangs as the gray sky turns into a glasses-smearing, walkman-shorting, shoe-muddying, sweat-mixing downpour, I think if the Dixie Chicks covered this and made it about cowgirls would it sound misogynistic and gross? And, speaking of gross, this sidewalk is gross, and I feel gross and cold, and so much for burning off steam.

[Image from: http://www.anticoemoderno.it/Antico/Vinile.htm]

Having No Boss Does Not Mean Work Is More Fun, It Just Means You Don’t Get Paid When Other People Screw Up

I had to go for a run because I had major mis/non/messed-up-communications with three clients this week, one involving a schedule crunch that prevents me from getting the work and the other two involve having to rewrite major sections because the clients changed the specs *after* I had done the work.

Quotations are word-for-word from one client’s email:

“We’re envisioning the two-page narratives for this theme to be short biographical excerpts that are clearly tied to the content the students will be reading about in the expository section.” blah, blah, blah--(read: You have to throw away 6 pages of writing and redo it all because we changed our minds and a loophole in the contract means you have to do it for free)--blah, blah, blah “I know we didn’t include this in the guidelines. It just seems to make sense to do it this way.”

It just makes sense to do it this way. It just makes sense. Sense.

[Image from: http://bandsonhand.com/proddetail.php?prod=03035]

Numerologist’s Dispatch

[Warning: Reader discretion advised. A quick reread of this post, and I realize that I delve pretty deeply into my solid nerdy core. Please read no further if your coolness is easily bruised.]

Well, it’s a little personal tradition of mine to send letters to people on numerologically significant dates. And today is a pretty fun one, though it has brought out all the dilettantes due to a little tradition that associates six hundred and sixty six with the devil and perhaps goth coolness or something. Anyway, I sent only one letter today, but it was one of my masterpieces stationary-wise and stamp-wise. I used a shiny copper colored envelope with a gorgeous, hand-painted peacock on it, which I purchased from a stationary merchant in Bombay market last year. As if metallic copper paint wasn’t fancy enough, I sealed it with a giant gold star sticker, but wait! Really, I haven’t gotten to the best part! Because the Indian stationary was a little on the weighty side, I thought I might need more than the usual single-rate stamp. What is it at these days? 48 cents or something? I didn’t think that the lame-ass squash series that I bought in a hurry at the post office last week belonged on such a special envelope. But then a beautiful thought came to me! I finally have an envelope and occasion worthy enough for the two 33-cent stamps that I have been saving for a special day. (Well actually, I originally purchased them for normal mailings, bills, etc. but it was during that crazy year or two when the price of stamps kept going up so often, our heads were swirling. They just became special from being pent up in a drawer for ten years. But, I digress.) Anyway, I used the two best stamps from the homage to the 1940s series: the Slinky and Rosie the Riveter.

Out of focus, but isn’t it spectacular?! I don’t think I can best it.

A Stack of Potential

This is my favorite stage of quilting, when all the pieces of fabric have been cut and they are ready to be pieced together. It’s the protoquilt. This weekend, I cut out 288 triangles and 720 squares, for a total of 1,008 pieces of fabric. They stand in tidy stacks, their velvety strata the result of about six hours of hand cutting. (That’s because I can’t find my rotary cutter, so I was forced to go 19th century on those ten colorful yards of calico.)

Now for the piecing stage. That's when I find out whether I got the math right. In my textbook writing, I’ve tried to include a few quilting questions in the math workbooks. However, oddly enough, most real-world quilting geometry is too advanced for even the high school level. It’s those pesky right triangles with their ¼-inch seam allowances. Anyway, yesterday I started piecing, and I’ll know within a few more hours of work whether I got the calculations right.

“I Miss My Solitary Sorrow”

A friend who is going through a hard time said that to me today. Her mother is visiting, so I guess there is less time or space for her to mope about during this rotten phase she is going through (a very difficult break up). I’m not going through a particularly hard time or anything, but I can relate to the sentiment. I miss my solo time keenly. We just have so much less space in this apartment, and as a freelancer, I was used to having the house to myself for ten hours every weekday. I feel this acute lack of privacy especially now that Zephyr has taken to jumping on me and barking loudly in my face every time I get upset. If I start to cry, yell, or raise my voice, even just to complain about some passing annoying political issue, he’ll get really agitated and try to make me be happy, or at least that is what I suppose he is doing. It is very sweet theoretically. However, in practice there is nothing more irritating to an already-upset cat person than a dog physically restraining her and emitting piercing barks in an effort to control her emotions. Anyway, the end result of all this nonsense is that Scott and I regularly fantasize about the place we will live in next. It will be ridiculously large. And, it will have a backyard. I didn’t realize how much alone time I had just by virtue of it being warm enough to go outside for more months of the year. Even public spaces are smaller and more crowded when the weather is bad. I think I need to go camping or something.

[Image from: http://www.thehotspotonline.com/eyecandy/popart/]

Urban Tri

I usually try to do a full version of the triathlon at the gym before the big race. I call this the Easy Gym Tri, because it involves sitting in the hot tub, running and biking on ergonomically correct gym equipment, lazing about between segments, and generally not pushing oneself too hard. It takes about twice as long as the actual event. Anyway, I mentioned it to this year’s training buddies, my science journalism classmates Liz and Kate--who are turning out to have a lot more pep than I originally anticipated--and they said, Why wait until a couple weeks before the race? How about this Friday instead? I didn’t have a very good argument at the time, so next thing I know I’ve committed to doing a full sprint-length triathlon every three weeks until the actual triathlon which is on July 30th.

Anyway, today was the second of these doozies. Only, these ladies have left the “Easy” out of the equation. The last Not-so-Easy Gym Tri of 3 weeks ago kicked my butt, but today’s qualifies as a full-on triathlon in my book. Instead of doing the gym thing, we laid out a nice urban course that winded past garbage heaps, sped us through highway interchanges with billowing clouds of car exhaust, ran us through a herd of burly street geese (who were trying to cross the street), forced us onto glass shards and into potholes, wove us through phalanxes of power-walking moms with double-wide baby strollers, and finally spit us into my stinky, garbage-y, puke-lined avenue. Only 10 feet from our final destination, a semi parked in our crosswalk and then we had to maneuver around an armored car parked on the sidewalk. I think this last one-two doubled the length of our final glory leg. Ow. I am in lots of pain now.

Here is what I looked like after a race a few years back. I do not feel as peppy today.

Quilting in the Electronic Age

Because driving around Boston is such a hassle, and because drunken bar people have been whittling our car down to a tiny smashed nub, I thought I’d try a new approach to fabric shopping. I tried a little experiment to see what ordering fabric online might be like. I am itching to start three different quilt projects, one for a brother who got married a year ago, one for a brother who is getting married this summer, and another for my sister-in-law who is also getting married this summer. Anyway, I shopped online and found the perfect fabric combos, got them approved by all three couples, and then tried to order the fabric. Let’s just say I will be braving Boston traffic and heading to the nearest fabric store once I get some work done this week. It did not go well. Not only did the e-fabric-stores not have a third of my chosen prints in stock, but of course, I just got the package, and none of the fabrics look like their pics. I know, this was always a serious risk, but it was shocking to discover how wrong they could be. All the reds were oranges and none of the peaches matched in intensity. Oh well, it was a nice try, even if a very pricey try.

My conclusion: Like other aspects of quilting, don’t bother getting high tech. The old-fashioned way is pretty much the best way. Hmm…I’ll have to make an exception to that rule. Rotary cutters are freakin’ incredible inventions.

PS. I must admit that receiving a tidy little package packed snug with vibrant crafting potential was quite a delight. They even included a little chintzy piece of tissue paper to keep the full-color receipt from bleeding onto my calicos. It was a seamstress’s fantasy come true. My crumby cell phone camera doesn’t do it justice:

PPS. Now imagine this quilt:

With these fabrics:

Very exciting, n’est-ce pas!

A Benign Mutation

Don’t expect excellence, but X-Men III extends excitement.

Director Brett Ratner packs plenty of action and comic-book drama into this enjoyable summer flick, X-Men: The Last Stand, a third installment in the X-Men series about a motley group of action heroes whose DNA mutations have given them extraordinary superpowers.

Though the genetically enhanced are now more accepted than they previously were, Professor Charles Xavier, played by the ageless Patrick Stewart, still runs a private school to shelter and hone the talents of young, misunderstood mutants and exercise a team of crime-fighting heroes who step in when misguided mutants, such as the sexy and deadly shape-shifting succubus known as Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) wreck havoc on society.

Proving that you don’t always have to be pretty to be a good guy, Hank McCoy, played by the unrecognizable Kelsey Grammer, a blue-haired mutant, burly in appearance though stately in manner, (with his Founding Fathers accent he should have been called Ape Lincoln) has been named Secretary of Mutant Affairs for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to ensure that the historically embroiled mutant-nonmutant relations stay smooth.

However, even in these supposedly mutant-friendly times, prejudices linger, and a heart-wrenching scene in which a young boy, the fledgling Swan, tries desperately and secretly to hack off his own mutant wings reminds us how difficult it still is to be a mutant.

In an attempt to quiet public concern, government scientists have developed a treatment that strips mutants of their powers (or afflictions, depending on your point of view), sending ripples of controversy through the briefly serene mutant community.

Recognizing that such a “cure” would render him powerless, arch-nemesis Magneto, in an uncharacteristically lukewarm performance by Ian McKellen, rallies support from a new breed of bad-guy mutants—scrawny, androgynous punks, complete with black garb, gang-style tattoos, and facial piercings—to assist him in his quest to destroy the cure, which has been hidden in a shiny new research facility on Alcatraz.

The chance resurrection of erstwhile heroine Jean Gray, played by Famke Janssen, along with her long-squelched alter ego Phoenix, a powerful sorceress-like personality with questionable loyalties presents Magneto with the upper hand he may need to carry off the heist.

Continuing sexual tension between the ambivalent Jean Gray and rival good-guy lovers Cyclops (James Marsden) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is both steamy and dangerous. Jackman, as Wolverine, delivers yet another smoldering, manly performance as the loner rebel who’s been tamed by the good professor. However, Halle Barry, as Storm, who in this movie seems to be nothing more than a schoolmarm and lifter of pesky fogs, leaves a weak, clammy impression with only the occasional bolt of lightning. And sadly, the continuation of the compelling mutant-coming-of-age storyline for Rogue, played by Anna Paquin, is awkwardly dropped for most of the movie, and we don’t even get to see her superpowers in action.

With no time wasted on ridiculous explanations of the pseudoscience behind such fantastic events, X-Men III is a fun summer movie that entertains without straining the brain. Don’t forget to stay past the credits for a glimpse at the plot workings of a possible sequel.

[Image from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4990000/newsid_4995200/4995250.stm]

Smashy Smashy

Someone ran into our car AGAIN yesterday. This is the third time that our parked car has been violated by drunken barhoppers. How does that catchy little maxim go? Smash my car once, you’re a bastard. Smash my car three times and I’m a big sucker for parking in the same spot. Something like that… As much fun as our neighborhood is for eating out and getting places easily, I’m beginning to think I’m ready to move back to the sleepy little ‘burbs.

Driving in Boston is not a pleasure, and fortunately when you live where we do, you rarely have to do it. Granted, I’m always complaining about the two or three things you can’t do without a car, but it’s relatively rare to need one for the essentials. Yet, as much fun as it is to sit around feeling smug about not consuming gasoline, I really miss getting to drive places. And I miss my cute little Subaru! (But thank god she is at my mom’s house, safe from the dangers of parking here in my ‘hood!)

Why do we have a car at all? It’s hard to say. I have to do some reporting in faraway places. Also, you need a car to get to a decent quilting store. And, I need some herb plants, too, and there don’t seem to be any decent nurseries within walking distance. I hesitate to drive for non-professional or essential errands because the three or four times that I have braved that activity resulted in hysterical crying: twice in Cambridge and once in Framingham. I’m proud of my trip to Cape Cod, because I didn’t break into tears until I got stuck in a labyrinth of construction detours hours later in downtown Boston on the way home. This city is just impossible to navigate. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. True, I’m particularly bad at finding my way around, but this place really is notorious for crooked roads, unnamed avenues, aggressive drivers, unorganized neighborhood street layouts, and hideously congested traffic. I swear!

The damage:

Massachusetts Table Saw Massacre

Well, we are having a regular scorcher here in Boston, 70-something degrees, which means that we’ve opened the windows. Last September, I remember it took me a few nights to get used to the sounds of the city coming in so stridently through my windows along with the breeze:

• drunken college stumbling from the bars to their cars, singing, howling, and finally puking
• loud Brazilian pop music blasting from my neighbors’ apartments (I wish they liked Bossa Nova instead, oh well)
• one particular Celine Dionne album over and over and over (I started singing along eventually.)
• children laughing and toddlers gurgling (My neighbors have 4 or 5 darlings who seem to always be playing joyfully outside.)
• emergency vehicle sirens howling, though they do so intermittently here, only when people are actually in their way, rather than nonstop until they reach their destination like they do back home
• firecrackers detonating at midnight on what I can only assume to be traditional holidays in some culture (not mine)
• the can lady rolling her groaning, overfilled shopping cart and rifling through our recyclables (In the summer she wears a traditional Asian rice-paddy hat, the kind that looks like a flattened cone.)
• one mystery sound, which Scott proudly figured out last Fall: The taco truck comes every morning at 8:15 am to the post office behind us and toots his old fashioned horn to let them know that breakfast is here.

But, the hullabaloo soon went away, because it got too freakin’ cold and we shut out the chill and the noise. It’s now back, with screaming table saws from our g*ddamn next-door neighbor’s landlord. He’s building an ugly wall and it’s making an ugly racket. At 10 am on a Saturday. I’m having murderous thoughts.

[Image from: http://www.event.is/frettir/nr/38]

Please Flush the Da Vinci Commode

There’s no need to crack The Da Vinci Code. Ron Howard’s latest movie based on the fun and only superficially intellectual book of the same name is already broken. Any controversy that church-types have derived from the intriguing trailers or even Dan Brown’s low-brow pop novel might pad opening weekend box-office revenues, but even die-hard fans of cheesy conspiracy movies will be disappointed by Howard’s sloppy filmmaking.

The plot opens intriguingly enough, but soon tumbles into an awkward, chaotic muddle. French police are stumped by clues left by a murdered museum curator and enlist the help of the victim’s associate, Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, whose perpetually wrinkled brow, pasty complexion, and scruffy, new-age hairdo make him perfect as the innocent Harvard “symbology” professor who finds himself the main suspect in the serial murder case a millennium in the making. French government agent and granddaughter of the murdered man Sophie Neveu, played by Audrey Tautou, rescues Langdon from near arrest and recruits him to help her puzzle out her grandfather’s message, which turns out to be a treasure hunt for the holy grail and an expose into a 2,000-year-old boys-vs-girls conspiracy involving Opus Dei, an obscure sect within the Catholic church.

Our first clues that the film’s plot goes beyond the quotidian murder mystery are the gory crime-scene photos. The Louvre’s curator has been shot, but instead of dying with a whimper, he strips naked, draws pagan symbols in blood on his nude body and leaves cryptic messages about Leonardo da Vinci’s famous works written in invisible ink all over the grand art museum before he dies. Though the mysterious message contains baffling number sequences and anagrams that could give your average sudoku or crossword puzzle fanatic a thrill, hasty pacing and un-illuminating computer graphics give viewers little chance to follow in the main characters’ unraveling of the titular brainteaser.

Few of the acting performances are stellar. Hanks adequately conveys tired, agnostic, and claustrophobic, but gives us little clue as to how Langdon feels about his jolting new role as adventurer nor about his attractive partner in code-cracking. Tautou as Neveu strikes neither an intelligent nor glamorous profile, always staring with wide-eyed wonder that her enigmatic grandfather could have entangled her and his colleague in such a jostling escapade, whose violent twists serve only to further confuse her and rumple her dull Parisian suit. Paul Bettany grosses us out as Silas, a scary, murderous monk with albinism and a penchant for self torture—he regularly beats himself bloody with a whip and always wears around his thigh a flesh-ripping salice, a device that looks like a doggy choke chain collar. As if his pale, scabby skin and grimy robes aren’t enough of a stereotype, he keeps showing up in classic horror movie style—suddenly, violently, and out of nowhere, right after a potential victim has completed his or her last line. Only Langdon’s colleague, grail expert Leigh Teabing, played by Ian McKellen, displays any depth of character, with simultaneous affection and envy of his old friend, as a well as an all-consuming passion for his life’s work—brilliantly illustrated in a delightful moment in which he meticulously examines a precious gewgaw through reading glasses and magnifying lenses all the while muttering sighs of ecstasy over this new clue to the whereabouts of the holy grail.

Brown’s book, though full of gory and symbolic imagery, spooky architecture, historical references, and cryptic intrigue failed to inspire even a moderate air of grandiose mystery on the big screen. Though all of the scenes take place in famous cathedrals, ancient castles, and art museums, Howard squanders all opportunities for great cinematography and uses tight shots, dark shadows, and hectic editing to create a feeling of immanent danger. Bright, washed out, grainy flashbacks describing the plot’s historical background are the brightest moments in movie, but only in the sense that they are well lit and give the audience a clue that the film’s dimness is intentional rather than the fault of the theater’s projectionist.

As if such murkiness and close quarters aren’t enough to strip even a holy-grail quest of its due grand scale, the characters’ use of fantastical and unnecessary technologies further dilutes the movie’s historical heft. In at least two scenes, professors explain their craft using unrealistic, ultra-fancy power-point presentations in which computers magically project illustrations of their spoken explications. Even Langdon’s terrific academic-turned-superhero line, “I have to get to a library fast,” takes a turn for the cheap and easy when instead of hunting down a dusty, velum tome, he uses a stranger’s cell-phone internet service to access the information he needs. (A generous pause on the phone’s screen perhaps accommodates a lucrative product placement?)

The Da Vinci Code’s overall effect is a cross between National Treasure and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, only you’ll get more laughs out of those light-hearted movies than from this dim, brutal failure of a summer action-adventure flick.

[Image from: http://www.theage.com.au/news/film/murderous-monk-business/2006/05/18/1147545446120.html]

Blog Jam

I’m beginning to see why blogging is such a sticky medium. It’s meant to be ephemeral, yet it has more permanence than verbal communication. I can mouth off on the blog one day and feel certain that after a few posts, people probably won’t dip too far into the archives. Thus, that bitchy blog hardly carries a lasting effect. However, the archive is still there for anyone’s perusal as long as you don’t delete the posts, and even when you do there are weird search sites that can keep copies of your postings long after you wished they were gone.

Also, I’ve found that I tend to blog most often when I’m angry, and thus, the overall effect of my blog has become more of a whine-fest and less of what I had originally wanted it to be: a posting of journal style, literary entries. I tend to get this desired, more writerly effect when I handwrite letters to friends or family, yet when I write in a hard-copy journal, I tend to just complain. I’ve started several journals to practice my personal writing, but they always dwindle off. Instead, I’ve started keeping copies of letters that I write so that I can look back at the kinds of things that inspire me to write well and when I’m just blathering on.

Another reason I wanted to keep a blog, other than practicing writing for an audience (albeit a very supportive and small one), was to keep in touch with friends and family. Only a couple of my friends keep blogs, but I tend to feel most in touch with them because of it. Now that I live so far from all the people that I really care about, it seemed like a good way of maintaining closeness even with great distance. However, because the blog is a public medium, I end up writing less personal accounts. I hesitate to post freely about the uglier passing emotions, such as depression, embarrassment, or anger with one’s spouse or family members. I still need handwritten correspondence, email, and telephone to really keep in touch with people.

Finally, blogging is quite a bit more of a commitment than I thought it would be. Not posting on your blog often has more meaning than you want it to. For example, when I took a month-long break at the end of the semester, I heard from readers (all two of them) that for weeks I hadn’t been doing anything but whining about gardening (the topic of my last entry). Like a newspaper or magazine editor, the blogger has to maintain a steady stream of fresh material to keep her audience happy. My schoolmates want to have a blog associated with our student on-line science magazine (in the works), but I don't think that I could take that on without serious hestitation. On top of all my other school work, I'd hate to feel obligated to post as often as you need to to keep appearances up-to-date. I mean, how often do you have something brilliant or even semi-interesting to say about science, or life for that matter?

[Image from: http://perfectlyimperfect.blogspot.com/the_blog_345.jpg]

‘Maters

I planted some tomatoes today. This act--jolting me out of my month-long pout about how short the Boston growing season is--was inspired by a talk I went to yesterday, given by Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I haven’t read either of these books yet in their entirety, but from reading bits and parts and from listening to his talk, I’m psyched to read on. He captured two things perfectly: One is the luxuriously nurturing feeling you get from planting seeds on a sunny spring day. The other is the simultaneous glee and monotony of purchasing an organic-farm vegetable subscription. On the one hand, you are inspired by weekly surprises of arugula, beets, turnips, and okra--rare vegetables one seldom thinks to experiment with--and thus, one gets to look through and try out some fun new recipes. On the other hand, there can be a few weeks when the box is mostly okra, and you get real sick of okra, even in the form of such Cajun delights as gumbo and jumbalaya. Anyway, Pollan talked about this fun way of getting great veggies, though kind of glossing over the negative side in order to prop up his PR campaign for supporting the local farmer. He also reminded us how good a garden-grown tomato tastes. Mmm! I can’t wait for a crop. Sadly, neither my shady little porch nor the lead-poisoned, dog-bespoiled backyard that I share with my neighbors will likely yield any real tomatoes, but it’s fun to have something to water again.

Irish greenhouse

You Ain’t From Around Here

This week I discovered two ingredients that are sadly missing from New England cuisine: queso and ground sausage. Now the queso part isn’t too surprising. I mean, we’re pretty far from the border, so why would Tex Mex be any good up here. But, you ask a local whether they want to order chips and queso and they don’t know what you are talking about. Very sad. I will have to enlighten some of these folks in the near future. (By the way, they think that enchiladas use flour tortillas…yick, very soggy.)

The ground sausage thing blew my mind, though. I just can’t imagine a large grocery store not carrying this staple. I mean obviously I don’t cook with it very often these days, but how are these people supposed to make sausage lasagna? Or, breakfast sausage patties? Or creamed corn and sausage? (Okay, that last one is just gross, but it was a regular meal in the Frohlich household when I was growing up.) The butcher man at the super market said that they don’t carry sausage out of its casing except during the holidays. This explains why I was able to buy it no problem for my Thanksgiving turkey stuffing.

Come to think of it, I might want to shake things up around here and make Southern Surprise, a recipe I just made up: queso with ground sausage. Sounds delish, no? I’d have to import the ingredients, but Jimmy Dean would approve.

[Image from: http://www.jimmydean.com/products.asp?p=1]

Ill Communication

When I read about people living in squalor, having too many cats, or staying in abusive relationships, I think “Man, how could they let it get so bad?” But, then a part of me thinks maybe they started out like me, doing okay but letting some things slide occasionally, and they just let one new detail slip every day until an acceptable situation slowly evolved into an unacceptable situation. You know, sometimes I leave garbage out on the countertop for a day. What if I did that every day? Then it would be squalor, right? Well, I’m one of those people--not in a poor hygiene or abusive sense. But, I’ve nearly crossed the line over to the criminally negligent arena of having crappy phone service. And, it’s mostly self-inflicted. We have two cordless phones, two cell phones, two fax machines, one cable modem, two wireless modems, and a corded phone--all told about $1,000 worth of equipment. In addition, we pay over $200 a month on telecommunications bills and services. Yet, because of a bad combination of crappy cell phone service, old batteries, poor location of land-line connections, general laziness, and some recent financial setbacks, Scott and I have let ourselves get into a situation where we can enjoy no more than one hour-long phone call per day, and any other phone calls that we make that day have to be limited to 15-20 min bursts before we are cut off. The solution: about $200+ in new phone equipment, new batteries, or new cell phone service. Normally, I wouldn’t mind spending that amount to improve my life and get a service that gives me so much comfort, safety, and pleasure. I’m just sick and tired of giving people so much money and not getting what I want! Aaaargh!

[Image from: http://www.amazon.com/]

Scooped and Deceived!

I could just spit! As my final radio documentary, I had wanted to do a piece on this local facility that trains monkeys to help paraplegics, a monkey college. Six weeks ago, I called them and explained what I wanted to do and that I would try to sell it to WBUR, the local public radio station. The rep at the monkey college said that they couldn’t let me interview someone there because they were all booked up on media events, blah, blah, blah. He said maybe I could call in a year and he might have time for me then. So, what do I see on the WBUR website this past week?! A freakin’ radio story on the monkey college! They aired it last week, with an intro that implies that they conceived of the idea just two weeks ago. Follow this linkfor a listen.

This is proof that it’s all about your connections. I’m sure when they called, he didn’t give them the call-me-in-a-year bs. Grrrr!! I feel like a chump. (Or, should I say a chimp?) I want to throw some feces at them, like a monkey who failed out of monkey college.

P.S. Scott says that I wouldn’t have lasted a minute in that place anyway. It’s true. I’m scared of monkeys. But, I swear I would have pulled myself together for such a great story!

[Image from: http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/04/20060427_17.asp]

Scooped

Damn it! I’ve been scooped by a glossy! The editor and chief from Technology Review, the MIT uber-geek magazine, came to our class to speak today. Apparently, they are about to do a huge, front-page feature on the Sony rootkit, the exact same topic that I have been writing about all semester. I could kick myself for waiting on that one. I was hoping to get my piece published somewhere this summer, but now I can’t because it will look like a copycat piece instead of a cutting edge article. Plus, because I haven’t yet pitched it to anyone, I don’t even get to look like a badass for thinking of something that a major magazine then later did. Oh well. I suppose this happens constantly in the real world.

I’m afraid of the real world.

[Image from: http://www.mediamaxtechnology.com/HTML/index.asp]

When the Puck Sank

Well, I finally finished my radio documentary about underwater hockey. I’m trying to sell it to the local radio station, but I’m not too sure that they will go for it. Apparently, they already ran one like it a few years ago. I’m like, if it’s old news, why hasn’t anybody heard of it? Anyway, follow this link to have a listen.

[Image from: http://members.tripod.com/jls_website/uwh/index.html]

Marathon Madness

I watched the Boston Marathon today. This was one of the most amazing sporting events I’ve ever attended, except perhaps a world cup game. I got all choked up watching the physical rawness of the runners dragging themselves along on mile 23. It amazed me how exhausted and focused they all looked. And, they no longer seemed to care that they looked terrible. I guess it takes energy to suck in your tummy and straighten your gym shorts, energy that you really don’t have to spare when you are running 26 miles.

Bostonians are just crazy for this race. The spectators were out of control. All the screaming and cheering deafened me to the point where I considered putting paper in my ears. This one lady had a sign that said “Go Japan!” and then something in Japanese, and she would go ape shit every time an Asian runner went by. If one of the runners stopped to stretch or catch their breath, everyone would yell and cheer until they started up again.

Plus, it’s not enough to just run a marathon up here. You also have to do it with a twist. One guy has been running it while pushing his wheelchair-bound son for 25 years. These other two guys do the whole thing while “joggling.” See if you can guess what that means from the picture below. I saw them both today. Apparently they are vying from some kind of world record.

[Image from: http://www.wcsh6.com/home/article.asp?id=34092]

Hugs Not Bugs

I went to a benefit tonight as part of a radio assignment. The event consisted of several speakers including three young people, two of whom have HIV and a third whose mother has HIV, and they all gave speeches about how HIV has affected their lives and how hard it is to be public about the disease. It was pretty powerful. I interviewed the speakers afterward. One girl, who is 17 and an eloquent speaker, gave me a terrific interview. She was so poised and friendly. It was funny, because I am such a crummy interviewer when I have a microphone in front of me. I just feel really rude and like I’m invading people’s space. But, of course, this girl has a lot of practice talking to strangers and making them feel comfortable, and she’s probably been in front of dozens of mics. So, of course, I was completely nervous and awkward, and by contrast this teen was totally cool.

At the end of the interview, I went to shake her hand, and she said “Naw, how about a hug.” It was really sweet, because I just don’t get very many hugs these days, especially since I left Austin (except from Scott of course), and I needed a bit of TLC from this precociously maternal teenage girl.

Only when I got on the subway did I realize that of course the hugging thing was part of the message. It wasn’t just because I looked like I needed a hug. They wanted everyone to be comfortable with the disease and understand that hugging is safe, etc. The funny part is that I had spent the entire afternoon obsessively washing my hands because this one guy with a cold shook my hand earlier and I didn’t want his cold. It didn’t even occur to me to fear getting HIV, but I was freaking out about the cold germs. Of course, that’s the way it should be because you can get a cold from a handshake and not HIV.

The point of this rambling soliloquy: This is proof that AIDS awareness activists have actually gotten somewhere in the last 20 years. I wouldn’t have felt this way when I was a kid, back when every one was freaking out about HIV, and somewhere along the way a transition occurred that I didn’t even notice.

Here’s the link to my story.

[Image from: http://www.aids.hacettepe.edu.tr/]

Autocannibalization Needs Salt

I had a dream last night in which it was the future and politicians had made a law that de-stigmatized cannibalism, as long as no one was suffering, however that works. Anyway, everyone immediately thought eating human meat was okay and not creepy or wrong, just because it was no longer against the law. But, I still had this feeling it was wrong. To add to the weirdness, someone also had just invented a kind of human cloning that allowed you to cultivate a full-grown clone of yourself in just a few weeks. So, maybe you can see where this is going… Someone made a clone of me, my clone died, and then for some reason I was coerced into making a stew out of my clone self and then eating it.

I tasted bland.

Self Psychoanalyst: Geez, could I be any more transparent?

[Image from: http://www.suegregg.com/recipes/soups/splitpeasoup/splitpeasoup640x480.htm]

Garden Dreams

I miss the smell of good soil, finding plump earthworms in your garden bed, planning the layout of the veggies and spice plants, scoring and soaking seeds, checking on the lil’ sprouts, the satisfaction of composting, buying six-packs of baby plants, purchasing and orchestrating hi-tech irrigation systems, shopping for funky pots, pulling apart delicate root balls, and dreaming of tomato season. I also miss redbud trees and agave plants.

From a recent trip to Austin, where spring is now:

Colour Me Cowardly

As part of an application for a summer internship, I completed a writing test today for New Scientist, a prominent British science magazine that has a bureau here in Boston. The editor gave me the assignment last Friday, and I had exactly one week to find a news story, interview scientists, and write a 600 word article about it. No problem, I’ve been doing this every week or two for a couple of my classes. I thought that the biggest challenge would be making sure that I used the British spellings of words (e.g. analyse, colour, nanometer, etc.). But, apparently, when it comes to timed writing, I crack under pressure. I could barely keep it together.

For some reason, though I usually have a plethora of story ideas, I couldn’t get excited about a single one this week. I ended up reluctantly choosing a story about comets because I’ve been doing so many astronomy pieces of late that I thought I would at least feel comfortable with the topic and had a good relationship with enough sources that I wouldn’t get bogged down by a lack of information. Also, though I usually procrastinate on assignments, for this one, I started right away. Yet, even with these two things going for me, I almost bombed.

Two things happened. First, I didn’t make the connection until Thursday, that they made this announcement about comets at a comet conference in Houston, and thus, all the reliable comet scientists were unreachable because they were all, well, in Houston. (DUH!)

The other thing that happened was that I totally psyched myself out. I couldn’t stand the idea that whether or not I would get this great job all hinged on how I did with just 600 words. I couldn’t concentrate, got a terrible case of writer’s block, and basically left myself no time to edit my submission because I finished it at 5:45 pm—15 minutes before the deadline.

The sad part is that the very people who can relate to this painful drama are my competitors. All of my classmates are going through the same thing, though only one of them also had this particular writing test. I never know if they want to commiserate about how hard this is or whether they are secretly resenting me for any of my meager successes. It may be all in my head, but usually we share such warm camaraderie and lately I haven't felt it. I guess it’s odd that, until now, I’ve managed to avoid the whole cutthroat academic atmosphere that is usually inherent to graduate programs. I suppose it was unavoidable.

The good thing is that even though I didn’t do the best writing I could have, I at least finished the damn thing (barely in time), it had some sort of a point (though meager), and it fleshed out a semi-newsy topic (however unimportant). My victory: I didn’t completely embarrass myself. If for some crazy reason I do get the job, it will in spite of this writing test and not because of it.

Wild-2, My Favourite Comet of Late : )

[Image from: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/16jan_stardust.htm]

I ain’t got the blues.

Sorry for the long absence; t’was a ferocious week of term papers and then spring break, which I took as a break from all writing, including blogging.

Today I bombed a guitar test. I got a B-, which sounds like a good grade, but really it’s not. The funny thing is that I really was better prepared than I sounded. It’s just the performance that I suck at, and with a guitar test that’s all that really matters. Basically, I couldn’t keep up with the professor’s strumming, so even though I could play every note of Norwegian Wood, I just couldn’t play it at the same pace as him. Then, to top it all off, he asked me to bust out with an extemporaneous blues riff. Good lord. Not only do I not have rhythm, but I have no soul. Thanks for pointing that out so officially Professor Warren.

Poor Professor Warren. Today, he had to listen to at least 30 students play the same tired Beatles song…and badly at that.

[Image from: http://www.balboafeet.com/articles/gypsyswing.php]

More ‘Fichin’

If you ever feel like traveling back in time, go to the library and scan through a microfiche reel containing issues of 1960s Time magazines (serendipitous pun!). I did a bit of that this afternoon for the professor I am working for. Not only does the magazine itself generate anachronistic ambience, but the machine is straight from a nearly expired era. All its parts are giant and clunky, and the deteriorating grey plastic looks like it was skinned from my family’s first Apple IIe. It doesn’t even have a digital display. Instead, if anything goes awry, a red light with a funny icon lights up. After a few of these error messages blinked at me, signaling yet another delay in my attempt to make barely legible copies of a seriously out-of-date mag, I realized the icon is a symbolic representation of a sheet of paper moving through a series of rollers in the printing mechanism. That is, there is a paper jam and you have to disembowel the dinosaur and prod it back into functionality. I wonder how long it will take librarians to get an electronic version of all those old archives. Until then, it’s kind of fun to do it the old fashioned way.

[Image from: http://www.gl.iit.edu/govdocs/micro/micro.html]

Micro-Fache

I had an exciting face off with a B-school jerk today. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating my side of the conflict. I was too shocked to say anything back really, but he did sass me pretty good. Here’s how it went:

I was doing a little microfiche research as part of my teaching assistantship. I hadn’t used one of those hunks of junk since, maybe, junior high. It was pretty fun trying to figure out how to get the little spool loaded and the image aligned and in focus. I was a little self-conscious about how much noise I was making, because the machine’s motor and the spinning spool were quite loud, but whatever, I didn’t choose to locate this dinosaur in the middle of a public study area.

Anyway, I had everything lined up to make a copy, and when I popped in a quarter (highway robbery: one quarter = one copy!), nothing happened. I put another quarter in the machine and again, nothing happened. I pressed several buttons and then hit the change return button. Suddenly, it was like Las Vegas and I hit the jackpot at the slots! The machine started spitting out quarter after quarter--probably $10 worth came out in the end. Ka-chunk, ka-ching, ka-chunk, ka-ching!! It was pretty funny, so I was cracking up. Now, keep in mind, this was in a library, so there were dozens of students nearby, all studying in silence. Thus, the sound effects from my lack of lo-tech know-how were magnified by my embarrassment and their annoyance. I ran to get the librarian who came to my rescue. He banged around the inside of the machine, readjusted all my handiwork, and stole back all the quarters (damn--that was laundry money!). All the while, he was talking in a regular voice, not the stereotypical librarian whisper. I took his cue and responded at the same decibel--plus, maybe a little louder so he could hear me over his clattering repairs.

Well, of course, you can guess how this ended. Some little snotty kid stood up, glared, and sneered that couldn’t we tell that he and his comrades were all trying to read and *this* had been going on for at least 5 minutes. I wanted to snap back, “Look, it’s only for a short while and once I get this figured out, I will be out of your wormy little way. And, can’t you see that this man is the Librarian?! He is like the sheriff, and what he says goes in this town.” Fortunately, a wise little voice of reason in my head reminded me that I was about a decade too old to be trying to out-sass the undergrads, and I didn’t say anything back. But, I fumed about it all afternoon. Hah, take that!

[Image from: http://www.mixnet.biz/services/microfilm.asp]

[Image from: http://www.jokejam.com/cartoons.htm]

Fumble Fest

Boy, have I got a lot to learn about radio. Nina and I had our first live radio newscast today. If you listened in, you might have thought that we hadn’t prepared at all, but in fact, we spent a total of maybe five woman-hours preparing for it. And, the show lasted a whole whopping 16 minutes! AND, nine of those minutes were pre-produced radio packages from two of our classmates. Okay, enough math.

I had no idea there were so many things to keep track of when deejaying. Every new form of sound that you use--voice on mic, mini-disc track, CD track, mp3 file--requires that you push the correct, poorly labeled button and often push up the little scroll-y bar thing. What the hell are those called? Anyway, for each transition, I’d panic, trying to figure out which thing to fade up and which thing to fade down. Plus, people kept walking in and giving us suggestions for things we should add to spice up the show--during the show! For example, the silly trumpet news theme music was added at the last minute. Because BU doesn’t have an abandoned radio studio for students to practice on, we couldn’t really practice unless we practiced on air, or at least that is what they told us. And to top it all off, we had to write intros and modify stories on the fly while the mini-disc tracks were playing. It was quite exciting. I think I had enough adrenaline pumped into my veins to lift a car. I didn’t come down for another hour at least.

I didn’t even get into the writing part of it. I hadn’t realized that most of the writing on deadline that I do involves knowing the stuff before hand and then writing it all quickly. The time I spend beforehand is what I call “percolation time.” You don’t get any of that in the newsroom. Plus, radio writing needs to be a lot more interesting to hold the listener’s attention. Or, perhaps all of my writing needs to be more interesting. Hmm…I’m thinking I am learning more than I thought I would from this whole experience. We’ll see how it goes next week.

To listen to the archive, follow the link to the WTBU website. Go to “Schedule” and look for the 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm “Rock Block.” You have to scroll to about an hour and a half into the show to hear Nina and me.

[Image from: http://www.uncleozzie.com/trips/reviews.html]

Dog’s Adrift

Dogs + Giant snow drifts = Great fun!

The dogs are very excited about last night’s snowfall. They are so cute, tearing around like four-year-olds on sugar. I haven’t seen this much pooch glee since Athena caught her first squirrel. Okay, I actually didn’t get to see that, but I hear she was pretty darn euphoric. (Poor squirrel!) I took them to the park and it felt like being a contestant in the Iditarod. They could not wait to be unleashed and were practically dragging me up the hill. Their favorite snow-time activity: playing fetch with snowballs, eating them, and then puking up the melt water. Even kids aren’t this easy to entertain.

Lil’ Tex’s First Blizzard

I think this is my first blizzard. It isn’t so bad, because I guess we’re only getting about a foot or so, but I’m choosing to stay inside all day. It did not occur to me until my brother mentioned it offhand last night that one should prepare for a blizzard. Apparently everyone else knew this, so when I went to the store last night, it was packed with people buying supplies, well, groceries anyhow. It’s not like a hurricane where you have to board up your windows and get canned food and water, but you can just count on everything being difficult to do the next day, or so I hear.

Wow, it is white out there!

[Image from: http://www.unl.edu/scarlet/v13n5/v13n5nibs.html]

Anchor-wo-man

You are looking at the new news anchorperson for WTBU Radio on Thursdays from 3:30-4:00 PM! That’s right, I’m going to be writing and reading news stories for the college radio station along with co-anchor, Nina, a woman from my Public Radio class. So, what will we talk about for half an hour? Good question. I’m thinking there will be segment with a Science Friday-esq spin to it, in which I interview local scientists live. Also, I would like to do a movie review every week. Plus, there will be BU and Boston news, the usual AP drivel on national news, and hopefully some of my classmates will allow me to broadcast their excellent feature stories. I’ll let you all know as soon as it airs, but I might get to do my first broadcast next week. You can listen in by following this link to the WTBU website.

Ow! My eye! …oh

A first for this southerner: I got a snowflake in my eye. I saw this giant white chunk coming at me. I felt it touch my sclera and I started to panic…must protect…valuable organ…primary shield (glasses lens) has failed! Then it melted immediately, of course. Quite refreshing actually, like a squirt of chilled Visine.

I’m guessing this is one of those things that most people who grew up around real winters experienced often as a child. Maybe, like running around with their tongues out, they also ran around trying to catch snowflakes in their eyeballs for fun. I know nothing about this. It occurs to me there are probably a thousand aspects of snow, ice, and other sub-freezing eventualities that I am ignorant of. Did they suck on icicles like ice-pops? Did they crunch the snow drifts like a crème brulee? Did they eat snow-cream? Did they watch as dogs made yellow-rimmed cenotes in snow piles? Did they examine the patterns in frost on window panes? Did they really get their tongues stuck on metal poles? Did they see cave formations in waterfalls? I’ve only read about these things, and as an adult, I don’t make time for finding out myself.

Those precious years when I was a young child and had all the curiosity, time, and patience for exploring the world at a face-to-the-ground level were spent in warmer climes. I know everything there is about ant-lion pits, the paper cuts you get from trying to weave baskets out of giant grasses (the kind with puffy cream plumes), the feel of agave flesh under your finger nails (and how to pinch off the spines and poke them into the leaves like a pomander), and keeping an eye out for water moccasins while hunting for tadpoles. But, I am a novice when it comes to snow.

[Image from: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/book/snowflake.htm]

Movie-Manic

In case you haven’t noticed, I am now in the movie-watching phase of year, in which I start to get a little obsessed with viewing all of the Oscar nominees. This is a nasty vice, I’ll admit. It is expensive and it is not clear that it improves my life in any way. Plus, I miss school and work deadlines and alienate my husband in trying to cram a year’s worth of schlock-y movie watching into four weeks. I’m sad this year, because I don’t really have a chance to throw my annual Academy Award’s party, but nonetheless, I’m still frantically trying to see all the nominees before the big date. I really should see a doctor about this obsession--a head doctor that is. I suspect it has something to do with another secret stress-relieving habit that I have: making to-do lists and crossing off items on said lists. My movie list is really just a to-do list, and going to the movie is crossing off one more list item. It feels like what I imagine that shooting heroine feels like to an addict. It also feels like what I know for a fact that peeling stickers off and sticking them onto things feels like to someone (eg. me) who has a tactile peeling fetish.

Shew, I feel like I just went to confession.

[Image from: http://www.wackypackages.org/stickers/cloth/peeling.html]

Match-disa-Point and Hustle & Whoa!

Two movies that I felt certain I knew were about one thing but turned out to be the complete opposite: Match Point and Hustle & Flow, both Oscar nominees by the way. (Dear reader, while this is not a spoiler per se, if you want to experience the thrill of not knowing at all what a movie is about before you see it, please don’t read the rest of this entry and just head straight to the theater or video store immediately.) To add to the surprise is the fact that they are thematically inverses of one another. I didn’t read much about either of these movies before viewing them and only had the previews to go on, which is very likely why I was so astonished. The opening of Match Point promised that it would be Woody Allen’s attempt at the sweet treacle of a Wimbledon II, but it turned out to be “the feel-bad movie of the year” according to moi. (Sorry, quoting oneself in an article is a journalism no-no, but this is my blog, so who cares.) I came home from seeing Match Point and realized that I desperately needed to see some movie about bunnies or some other cutie-pie antidote, because I was afraid of slitting my wrists it was so depressing. (For some reason Scott and I started watching Bram Stokers Dracula, I can’t tell you why, but I put an end to that and snuggled up with the New Yorker instead.) It turns out I should have watched Hustle & Flow, but I wasn’t clued into that at the time. Hustle & Flow seemed like it would be one of those hour-and-a-half train wrecks in which you grind a millimeter off your tooth enamel waiting for the shit to hit the fan because, you think, how could a movie about a destitute pimp/rapper and his herd of dirty little whores turn out well? But, no, in fact it was downright heartwarming, and I mean compared to, say, It's a Wonderful Life! I cried from the sweet sappiness of it all. Go rent it immediately!

[Image from: http://regencymovies.com/movieRunDetail.php?theaterId=10&movieRunId=1147&movieId=265]

My Pet Cloud

I had another moment of geek euphoria in discussing my latest science article with my feature writing professor. I am writing a piece on a magical material called aerogel, which is kind of like hard foam, and it is the lightest solid on Earth (officially named so by the Guinness Book of World Records). Okay, you might not be impressed yet, but please sit down for this next little factoid: It is transparent! That’s right, it is like a super-lightweight glass. In addition to being porous and having some wack acoustic and kinetic properties, it also happens to be an excellent insulating material, so it has all sorts of possibilities for use as insulating glass in greenhouses, solar swimming pool heaters, and satellites. This January, NASA just retrieved a space capsule called Stardust that collected comet dust in aerogel so perfectly it made a bunch of astronomers weep with joy during a press conference. Clearly, it is one of the hottest things in materials science these days.

Really, this stuff will blow your mind. Please refer immediately to the pictures posted below to get an idea of how weird it looks. Chunks of aerogel look completely alien, like some sort of ghost foam. People are so captivated by its mystique that they have given it names like frozen fog, solid smoke, and (my favorite) pet clouds. There is a funny description on the website of some researchers who I might interview in which they say that your first encounter with aerogel goes something like this: You cup it carefully in your hand and comment on how lightweight and translucent it is. You gingerly press it to see if it is flexible. Upon noting with surprise that it is strong, you press it harder. At this point, the aerogel shatters into a thousand pieces, and a look of panic comes over your face. You’ve killed it! Just so I can experience the feel of it myself, I am tempted to spend the 25 bucks it costs to get a lab in Wisconsin to send me a piece the size of a stack of about 6 quarters.

Take a gander at these pics snagged from U. Wisconsin, NASA, and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab:

[Image from: http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~aerogel/aboutaerogel.html]

[Image from: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/aerogel.html]

[Image from: http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/aerogel-insulation.html]