Sunday, July 13, 2008

Random Observation

On the radio, television and in print I have noticed a trend that kind of surprised me. It seems that young children are trying to get away with something. And that thing is going to bed without changing into their pajamas. It seems that by not changing into their pajamas, children the world over will be able to save time both at night and in the morning simply by keeping their clothes on.
This doesn't seem desirable to me, because if it was up to me, I would never change out of my pajamas- they are very comfy. In fact, it seems that by age 16, this trend of not wanting to put on pajamas totally reverses itself, and you get the strange phenomena of people wearing pajamas as clothing all the time. However, most of us move past that and become functioning adults, wearing our pajamas at night and our clothing during the day (and those who don't end up on What Not to Wear).

Friday, July 11, 2008

Things I've been tagging

I'm vaguely obsessed with del.icio.us, a social bookmarking website that allows you to save websites that you find online, and share them with your friends. Here are some of the things that I've been tagging this week.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters- this coffee shop has a Seattle location, where J and I are going to be next week. We're soliciting recommendations if you have any!

Curry Chicken Soup-
sounds delicious, no? Recipes are probably my #1 tag- especially when I'm reading tastespotting.

Pingg- for years I've been bored of evite, but haven't found a reasonable alternative. Could this be it?

The best lock to protect your bike
- I just got a new bike! It might not need the *best* lock, but I would like it not to get stolen. Just in case, I haven't left it outside a store yet- I've just gone pleasure riding.

The Seattle Underground Tour
- someone from Seattle recommended this as her favorite touristy thing to do in town. Again, if you've been to Seattle (and you're not Brianna who has already done this), suggest away! We love ideas.

Baby Toy Alternatives- as some of my friends have been having kids, and I'm thinking about having some myself, ideas for low-mess apartment friendly, sustainable toys are on my mind. This article has some good ideas (and Unclutterer is an awesome blog).

The Boys and the Subway
- both my husband and Brianna tagged this for me. It's an adorable NYC picture book, and it made me smile.

Salumi Artisan Cured Meats- One of Brianna's Seattle suggestions. YUM.

Update on the Red Hook Ball Fields- we have a date to go to the ballfields, but last I heard, they still weren't open. Keep your fingers crossed that it will happen soon!

This isn't comprehensive, but a pretty good overview of fun things I've found in my travels this week. If you're on del.icio.us and want to be my friend, let me know and I'll add you. I tag things for people all the time that look interesting or fun, and it drives me crazy when I want to tag something for someone and have to email it instead. I think we all should start to embrace social bookmarking.



Saturday, July 05, 2008

mememe

About a month ago, Brianna tagged me for a meme which I responded to by not blogging for a month, therefore avoiding responsibility by not writing at all- even though if it was only self imposed responsibility which few people even see. But tonight I have decided to buck up and finish this so that I can blog in the future without feeling irrational guilt.

Anyway, the meming goes like this:
1. Link to the person who tagged you (check. At least twice)
2. Post the rules on your blog (uh, check? Seems kind of silly)
3. Write six random things about yourself (This is where I start to freak out because I have no clue of what to write)
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs (And this is where I get out of something, because I don't even *know* six people who blog, well, at least who haven't already done this meme.)
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website. (off the hook-- boo-ya)
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up. (well, now)

In some ways I think that writing six random things about myself should be easy. There are many random things about me. However, random doesn't necessarily mean interesting, and it seems like something of a waste to post boring random things. I want my random things to tell a story- to draw people in and form a sense of commonality of all our experiences. So, please bear with me in my grand attempt.

1) I measure time in people's ages.

That doesn't really make a lot of sense written down, so let me try to explain. In some ways, everyone measures time in age. I'm 30, my cousin is 17 and my father is in his 50s. But when I think about events and objects, I measure that in age. A school year is a pregnancy- about 9 months. I've been married for almost a toddler- just about 2 years- but have been with my husband for a 4th grader- 10 years. I've lived in New York City for a nearly a 3rd grader- 8 years. I like being able to visualize how long something is, and measuring in people's ages really helps me do that. And in case you were wondering, if all goes well, I'll be retiring by the time Kajal's beautiful little girl is a 25 year old woman, graduated from college, and making her way in the world.

2) I often get along with children better than I get along with adults.

I really like playing. At family gatherings, I will rarely be found socializing with the adults in the kitchen, but instead will be the one playing game upon game of tic-tac-toe, or hide and seek. I will roll down a hill or play tag or jump from colored square to colored square on the rug in my bedroom. I love coloring books, crayons, plain white paper and paint. I like not having the pressure to be an adult. If you need a babysitter, call me.

3) This made me cry. And laugh- don't get me wrong. But totally cry. It made me think of the beauty of humanity and the world. I must have too many hormones or something.

4) Music isn't a big thing to me.

I mean, don't get me wrong- I like music and all. But music seems to mean way more to 99.25% of the people in the world than it does to me. I got through high school both listening to the radio and swingin' on the flippity-flop, but I was more into obsessively listening to my copies of Oliver! and The Secret Garden (oh, Mandy Patinkin, how I love you). By the time I entered college I owned about 20 CDs (Brianna will scoff at this number, and label it closer to 5 with one of those being En Vogue, so does it even count?), the majority of them being Billy Joel and Broadway musicals. I was fine with that. My major musical influences now are as follows: Dar Williams, Ani DiFranco, Ben Folds and no, actually I think that's it. I supplement with The Postal Service, Jets to Brazil and whatever it is that my husband is currently listening to. And I'm still just fine with this.

5) I grew up on next to a farm.

When my parents bought the house I grew up in, you couldn't see another house in any direction. Straight ahead, out of the front door- a farm. To the left, woods, then a farm. To the right, woods, then a tree nursery. To the back, woods, then the same farm that was to the left. The man whom my parents bought their land from was the farmer who lived down the street (and owned the farm that we were mostly surrounded by).

When I was little, you could see houses, but they were still pretty far away. My brother and I would run through the woods to the fields behind our house to pick strawberries and corn. We would ride our bikes through the dirt paths (we weren't allowed to ride on our surprisingly busy street with a 40mph speed limit and small shoulder) and feed long pieces of grass to the cows steer. My uncle married one of the farmer's daughters and they built a house in the woods to our right. My aunt taught us how to dig for potatoes and her father fed us cow's tongue sandwiches (I opted for good old fashioned PBJ). Now that the farm is condos and a golf course, I'm pretty nostalgic for my rural youth, with all the pros of living on the farm, with none of the "getting up early" or "taking care of vegetables" that seemed to take the romance out of actually being Laura Ingalls Wilder.

6) I've never really broken a bone (though I once fractured my middle finger in gym class)

If I ever play "two truths and a lie" with you, my lie is that I broke my leg during gymnastics in 7th grade (one of my truths is #5). Though I did suffer a nasty bruise from falling off the balance beam that year after attempting a 360 degree jump during practice, my bones have stayed more or less in one piece for my entire life.

The only minor exception to this random fact also occurred in middle school. We had co-ed gym, which to adolescent girls is both "whoo!" in the fact that they get proximity to adolescent boys (which is desired) and "egads!" for the same reason (though most people would not say egads). My gym teachers- Mr. C and Mr. S (Mr. C actually went by Mr. C; Mr. S went by his name, but I later dated his son, so I'll refer to him by S to give him some anonymity) decided that they wanted us to weight train by doing stations through the gym. This was awesome for them (which I can totally vouch for now as an actual teacher- great strategy guys!) as they could teach us for about 1 day on the correct way to use each station, and then spend the rest of the unit sitting at the side of the gym bullshitting as we did what they taught us to do on day one. It was really the workshop model at it's best, and I applaud them. However, I was kind of a dumbass, and probably to impress some boy that wouldn't pay attention to me until I was 25 and way hotter than I was at 13, I used weights that were too heavy for me to do a Dumbbell Lateral Raise (I just had to spend about 5 minutes googling that). The weight of the dumbbells made it so that instead of the weights coming together in a slow, controlled movement, they crashed together really hard. And when I say "together" I mean a weight sandwich with my middle finger as the meat inside dumbbell bread. The Misters C and S ignored my tears and gave me a band-aid. A week later my finger still hurt a lot, making my mother bring me to the doctor. Some x-rays later, my middle finger was was in a splint and a bandage, making it so puking in Math class actually wasn't the worst thing that happened to me in Middle School.

So, that's my meme. I hope you enjoyed it, and now I can go back to not blogging because I'm lazy rather than through misguided guilt.



 
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