pointedly domestic tasks in which i take great pleasure

+hanging laundry on the clothesline
+hand washing dishes in a sink full of warm soapy water

... and their logical counterparts that I despise:

+ loading the washing machine.
+ loading/unloading the dishwasher

Sometimes the old school ways are still the best.

recent observations

1. I am kind of neurotically paranoid that people can hear whatever is coming through my headphones. It was bad enough when I just had a regular ipod. Or, when I am in my office & I have to take my headphones out over and over and over to just make sure one more time that they are actually plugged in all the way and I'm not actually listening to the external speaker.* But now, with an iphone? The external speaker has allowed me to take my neuroses to the next level, because the other day I was thinking "why does this music sound so faint and the traffic sound so loud?" before realizing that my headphones were unplugged.

*.. while watching videos of boston terriers ... or music video art installations...

2. Very nearly ever woman in my gym has these shorts. Very nearly every woman in my gym has nice looking legs. Are these connected, or do they all just spend way more time working out than I do? Maybe I just need new shorts.


3. Why didn't I ever realize that sweatbands are totally awesome? They are such a logical extension of my bracelet habit. I want a pair in every color.

mind meld

Last night Adam and I both had dreams about
Jad Abumrad, co-host of one of my all-time favorite radio shows RadioLab.

I don't really know what to make of that, other than to tell you that he is a very nice guy & if you haven't caught any of the last four seasons, well, now you know what to listen to on your summer road trips. Great science-based stories for scienctists and lay-people alike

Some of my favorites episodes are:

• Emergence
• Detective Stories
• & Sleep
  

Season Five comes out in Nov. 2008.

i can now cover your end table in wood laminate

We hit thrifting pay dirt this weekend.

A COMPLETE set of Popular Mechanics Do-IT-Yourself Encycolpedias. Circa 1952.
Twelve Volumes!

I can't even begin to detail all of the things that I will soon know how to do. They range from the practical:

Knot tying

Fence building

and of course...

Fire starting
... with your own hand-carved bellows!

& even five pages on how to make a riflescope!
But it can't be all home-improvement all the time, no! So when it is time for recreating, might I suggest that we:

Fly a kite!

Start a succulent garden...

build a pool for the kiddies...

or jazz up some tired old outfits!

Well, I guess now I know what I'm doing with my summer.

well, now i've gone & done it

I didn't mean to change to banner. I was just playing around with a quick mock-up draft to figure out dimensions in case I did decide to draw something up. But I accidentally did something, and now there it is, and i can't find the file for the old banner, and YES, I know it is crooked, but I don't have time to make a real new one right now because there is lamb curry to be made (and consumed), by me, for us. Right now.

i couldn't have said it better myself

Elemental - Cup Of Brown Joy from Moog on Vimeo.

via joshgranger.com

My mad appreciation for the sentiments expressed herein are made stronger by the fact that I truly do, as the good man says, bathe in Earl Grey.

wisdom

I know that I have only been married for almost-two-years, and I'm sure that in 20 more I will have accumulated a shed full of wisdom and insights about this whole business, but here is my main revelation so far:

When you're first dating you spend a lot of time thinking about the other person's Crazy. Too much? Not enough? And finally you find one, where you think that you can deal with their Crazy forever-and-ever-amen. And you pat yourself on the back for finding someone with just the right amount of Crazy.

And slowly you realize that is not the point AT ALL. In fact, you have in backwards. What you really have just done is that you have found someone who has just agreed to sign on to your YOUR Crazy.

There are so many examples of this in our house. From my horrible personality before 9am to the fact that, sadly, I still own a few pairs of underwear that I had when we first met nearly 7 years ago. But here is the most recent case:

Adam just helped me haul our bed and dressed into our tiny little cave of an office so that I could turn our huge, light-filled bedroom into my (our!) office. Everything is backwards and topsy turvy and I love it and I have a new lease on life now that I don't have to work in a dungeon.



For the first time ever we have enough room for both of us to have a desk, and I get to work right next to a window, and peace shall prevail over the land. Just as soon as I can figure out which pictures to hang, and where.



I get the re-arranging urge from my parents. I used to do it to my roommates in college--they'd come back form break and everything would be in a different place. Patty used to deal with it nicely as well. But Adam suffers the brunt of it-- in the one year that we have lived here I have rearranged our living room three times, our entry way twice, now this most recent bedroom-office swap... next up? Dining room! It gives me a new lease on life.

Sunny office! Wheeeeeee-haw! I love Adam.

tipping point

It has rained every day for nearly two weeks.
I was ok with it all until today.
I just can't take it any more.
The irises are wet and soggy.
My house smells of wet puppy.
I am cold down to my bones.

I am going to order some sunshine on pay-per-view.

because sometimes blog entries write themselves

Sarah:

I'm watching this hockey game on TV ("Yeah, it's the Pittsburgh/Philly
game" I say to Dave, like I've been a fan all my life) and I'm pretty
sure they were just playing Cris Cross on the loud speaker. Do you
remember having a party in maybe Jr. High, before the basement was
redone? Maybe you had a lot, I don't know. But I remember during one
particular party I was pretending not to listen to everything going on
from the dining room table and you guys were playing Cris Cross.
I remember telling Mom, "See, I like music like this!" And she
said something to the effect of it not being that bad and she liked it
too. Ha ha ha....

Me:

I have no memory of Kriss Kross (that's with a "K", yo. Adam informs me that Chris Cross was a yacht-rock superstar from the 70s), but I do distinctly remember playing House of Pain's Jump Around -- is that even what the song is called? I don't know. The one where they go: "Jump! Jump! Jump!", as if there really is any other House of Pain song. But Kris Kross had a Jump song too...

Anyway,
I remember playing it on repeat. And i remember thinking of that recently and wondering if mom and dad wanted to die b/c we were playing that damn song over and over.

I also remember that Eric was making out with Erin Wilson.
(She's one of those girls, where either she's living in a trailer with her babies or she's a DA in a mid-sized city. Neither would really surprise me.)
and i was all -- "I'm hosting a party where people are making out. SUCCESS"

This is similar to how we felt when we found out that several of our single friends had hooked up at our wedding.

I don't remember playing any Kriss Kross, but I'm pretty sure it was at the same party.

Henceforth called the JUMP party.

P.S. I love that you felt like "this is MY KIND OF MUSIC!" Right on.

saturday

Collateral damage

Lost a few flower heads while weeding.

A pint for breakfast


Naptime

the cutest one of all

My People Are Awesome Vol. II

This is my middle sister, Sarah:


It is her birthday next week, and I guess I could wait until then to post this, but who knows what might happen next week. I could fall down a man hole and then you'd have to wait a whole additional week while i got over the shock before I got around to this. And that's just too long.

Sarah is hands down the hardest worker I know. She's in school to be a Physician Assistant, which is basically like being a doctor without the malpractice insurance and less debt. She studies ALL the time. Which is too bad, because a lady this foxy should be out on the town, don't you think?

(for random strangers who end up here, she's the one on the left with the sparkly blue eyes-- hell-o)

Are you getting a load of those dimples? Check her out making eyes at the camera in this vintage shot:

She's the beautiful child with the cornsilk hair. The tiny one is Laura -- I want to squeeze her cheeks-- I'm the one in the Donald Duck tee. The beautiful woman is our mom.

Check out the spiffin' outfit Sarah is sporting here -- it is a bit hard to see, but I'll tell you that it is a red sailor dress with a tartan plaid trench coat. Hello? Stylish?


And not to put too fine a point on it, but I'll just note that I am the one wearing black high tops, unfortunate frizzy bangs and a ratty sweatshirt.... sigh.

Anyway, some day you will have gall stones or a broken wrist and Sarah will fix it up. And she will be so sweet and friendly and kind and helpful and confident without seeming stuck up or aloof that you will almost be glad that you are sick, because you had a chance to meet such an amazing person.

Happy early 26th birthday Sarah. I love you more than all the stars in the sky.

Sarah cuddling my laser puppy.

everything's coming up desert grasses

I have one more week of (really-truly-this-time) crazy-busy.
Then back to regular posting. I'm trying to remain calm, and it is working! Everything is coming up roses!

I found out my last paper is not due Fri, oh no. It is due today!
That's fine, I thought. That will give me a jump start on the manuscript revisions that I was supposed to have done weeks ago. I'll just finish it up first thing tomorrow morning.

And the great forest spirits rewarded me for my serenity and canceled both the training that I was supposed to go to last night, AND the softball game that I was going to skip to go to the training.

Other excellent news:

The seeds I planted for a little greenhouse experiment that I have going right now germinated in 2 days and are growing like gangbusters. Desert plants are adapted to immediately take advantage of any available moisture, so it is instant gratification.

my google thinks i scuba

I don't, in general, have any problem with Google's advertising scheme. It is relatively unobtrusive, and most of the time the ad headlines that show up on my Gmail or at the margins of my searches are so far from what I am actually looking for or emailing about that I don't get too freaked out that they are Big Brother monitoring my web use.

However, lately it seems that Google is not only tracking my search words, but also my conversations... and not the online ones. I SWEAR that several times lately I will be talking with someone at work about something and then the next time I check my email there's and AdWords string on that same topic. Is my MacBook BUGGED?

For instance, the girl who has the desk next to me is big into SCUBA & was telling me that she is going tonight to get a new certification. I know nothing about SCUBA, and I certainly haven't been searching online or emailing about it, but when I went to check my email, this popped up:

Scuba Health St.Louis DAN - www.y-kiki.com - Y-kiki is the St. Louis area leader for DAN training and supplies

Ok, I"ve lost you. But it really is creepy when it happens.

P.S. I do know enough to know that SCUBA! is CAPATALIZED!