Casa Highland

moving out, and moving on...

2010-04-22T17:10:00.002-05:00

i moved to Somerville after graduating college in 1995. i had been a country girl growing up, and although as an adult i wanted to live in the city, i wasn't quite comfortable in the Big City of Boston. somerville had all of the conveniences of a city, while still having some green space and more of a small-town-feel community. my first apartment was on Highland Ave, right next to the fire station, and in less than a year i moved one building up the street. when my dad offered me help with a down payment, the Casa was the result. it was the third place i lived on the same street, but this one was mine.

i fell in love with my house at first sight, in a way i think you only can with your first house. i picked it out with my friend Jade, and she remained my roommate for years, until it was time for her to move out, and move on, with her boyfriend (now her husband). over the years i had many roommates, and many tenants, and there are a couple of dozen people out there who once called Casa Highland home. each set of people was it's own little family for me. i was lucky to have a house that i loved, and to live with people that i loved.

but about a year and a half ago, i realized it was time to move on.

the conveniences of the city, which once lured me in, were now no longer quite so sparkly. more and more of my life was happening outside of the city. shayne moved out, kathryn was moving on to graduate school, and it became time to think about my next steps. the house that i once loved so fiercely was now just a monetary obligation that was more of a touch-down pad to sleep and shower than it was a home. my boyfriend, my family, my friends, and my job, all lured me out of the city and out of my house on a frequent basis.

deciding to part with the house was a surprisingly difficult decision to me, and yet once i made it, the rest was easy. i sold it instantly, realizing the new owner could afford to make all of the updates to the house i never had time or money for. i got a huge dumpster and emptied the house out. hired movers and moved out in a late winter snow storm last year.

for me, moving out and moving on, also meant moving home. i have always been a country mouse at heart, not a city mouse, and my mothers huge 2-family antique farmhouse had an open apartment. it was a touch down pad while i planned my next move. and the first night i slept in my new apartment, i felt like i was home. my country life is peppered with wildlife sightings, and mouse problems, and bugs, and i can go on my back porch at night and gaze at all the stars in the sky. i am happy here.

but again, my next move beckons, as Ned and i look for a place of our own. these houses are just stages. they are each a home, each a family, and each a different part of a life that feels truly blessed.

these shells that we wrap around ourselves can be big or small, shiny or plain, some are crenellated with decorations, and some can be as dull as an old tin can. but if we are lucky, they cover us and keep us safe and give us room to grow. i am thankful for the shelter they have given, for the families they have housed, and for the opportunities that they have each granted.

it seems odd to keep a blog (or a flickr account, or a twitter account, etc.) named Casa Highland, when the Casa has since been sold and flipped for condos and is no longer recognizable. but i think i carry the best of the Casa around with me. i hope that all of her previous occupants do, too.

in many ways, any place i live is Casa Highland. she is the old shell i carry in my pocket for good luck, and she reminds me where i came from.

two thumbs up to somerville...

2008-11-06T18:20:00.002-05:00

tuesday night, before the results even started coming in, i fired off this email to Joe Curtatone, the mayor of Somerville:

Dear Mayor Curtatone,

This morning I woke up bright and early, looking forward to doing my
civic duty and being part of this historic election. I work for the
Commonwealth, outside the city, and actually used personal vacation
time to make sure that I had a chance to vote. I knew I would be
late for work, and I accepted that because voting is important, and I
feel that with *this* election things are particularly important.
Not only is the presidential election going to make history, but the
ballot questions are provoking and important for the future of
Massachusetts.

I parked in Davis Square so that I could get to work as quickly as
possible, so as to not needlessly squander my limited vacation time.
I fed the meter, even though it was 6:45 AM, and walked down to the
Dilboy to vote.

I am not about to complain that it took me over two hours to wait in
line and cast my ballot. I am thrilled with the voter turn out, and
am happy that people are motivated. The line was pleasant, the
volunteers were above reproach, and I didn't even complain when I
found that I had been booted to the inactive voter rolls for missing
the primary. It was fixed quickly and easily, and I voted with pride.

I was dismayed, however, to find out that while I was patiently
waiting in a two block long line to vote, the City of Somerville took
the opportunity to look at my expired meter and ticket my car! I had
no chance to feed my meter. I had put in the maximum number of
quarters that I could. And had the voting line been reasonable, I
would have made it back to my car.

We do the residents of Somerville a huge disservice by fining them
for executing their right to vote, and for completing their civic
duty. If there was ever day when Somerville should have looked the
other was, this was it. It shouldn't be a day about making money.
It should be a day about everybody boldly stepping forward into a
new, unknown, future together.

Respectfully,

-- katherine

today, much to my surprise, i had this reply:

Dear Katherine -

I apologize for the inconvenience and applaud you for waiting in line to
vote. We saw a record number of voters come out to the polls in
Somerville on Tuesday - it truly was a great day for our city, our
state, and our country.

On Tuesday, our Parking Controls Officers were instructed to be mindful
of the long lines and the polls and to issue tickets accordingly.

I spoke to my Director of Traffic and Parking, Dear Katherine -

I apologize for the inconvenience and applaud you for waiting in line to
vote. We saw a record number of voters come out to the polls in
Somerville on Tuesday - it truly was a great day for our city, our
state, and our country.

On Tuesday, our Parking Controls Officers were instructed to be mindful
of the long lines and the polls and to issue tickets accordingly.

I spoke to my Director of Traffic and Parking, Jim Kotzuba, and he will
dismiss your ticket. I have cced Jim on this email so you can provide
him any pertinent information.

Again, I apologize for this inconvenience.

Best -

Joe Curtatone

many thanks to the mayor, and to somerville, for making things right. if you got ticketed while voting, i suggest you send an email!

way past Dunbar...

2008-06-09T19:29:00.005-05:00

in the early 1990's, an anthropologist named Robin Dunbar came up with what he believed was the magic number in social groups. not a theoretical number, or an imaginary number, but an actual hard number. 148 to be exact. by researching monkey brains, and monkey behavior, Dunbar came to believe that a basic social group could be no larger than 148 without a breakdown in core values. groups larger than 148 had to rely on an increasingly complicated series of norms, rules, and laws to keep the community intact. 50 monkeys need no rules. 500 do. by rounding off 148 to 150 (since we humans love round numbers) we have Dunbar's Number.

evolutionary psychologist have done what evolutionary psychologists do, and they have extrapolated from little monkeys to great big human monkeys, and said that much of the same exists in our cultures. deep in our monkey brains, when our groups get too large, our rules get more complex. or anarchy breaks out. or crime increases. or more people start paying attention to britney spears and lindsey lohan like they matter.

david wong, in a stroke of what i consider to be utter brilliance, has dubbed the number of monkeys in our world to be our individual monkeysphere (and no, this is nothing like the ball you run around in in the game Monkey Ball, although in my mind it looks as such). i have a monkeysphere, and so do you. and much as you exist in my monkeysphere, i am apparently in yours. david wong is not in my monkeysphere, nor i in his. so he's just not a real monkey to me. he's a theoretical monkey, and i will care about him a little less because of this. monkeyfilter, anyone?

craigslist used to be a very small monkeysphere, particularly in boston. the boston CL was the first to break off of san francisco, and for a long time it was very small. i think at one point the forums (my community, my monkeysphere) was probably no more than 10 people. the laid back community policing policy of CL allowed this to remain a stable group. sure, we fought. we bickered. we drank together. we dated. and slowly the size of our community began to increase. these days, it's hard to go more than 24 hours without hearing a reference to craigslist. it was mentioned on my morning radio, and in the news, and on Twitter. i am mentioning it right now, and i assume you know what i'm talking about. and you probably do.

the monkeysphere of craigslist became increasingly crowded... and the Terms of Use became increasingly complicated. what was started as a side project for Craig in 1995 has ended up as a web site that gets over 10 billion hits a month. yeah. that's billion-with-a-b. and i can see why. i have made friends there. i have sold furniture. i have found, uh, six different boyfriends. i got my tenants that way. i gave away a studios worth of yarn. i have used it to hear about people's deaths and to celebrate their lives. i get info there. and give advice. craigslist is a one stop shopping site in a way that amazon hoped to be and probably never will be. in a world where google is king and yahoo is queen, craigslist is the unquestionable and irrepressible jester.

but i think it's too large for the feel good "fighting evil one post at a time" philosophy that has ruled it for the past 20 years. with it's small staff, and community moderation, it still attempts to live within the monkeysphere. and yet i believe that it went way past the threshold for Dunbar's Number somewhere in the early part of the century. just a quick look at the fact sheet shows how boston was created in 2000, and then each year the number of new cities grows. by the time the timeline gets down to 2006 (just six years later!), the sheet simply states "More than 130 new cites were added". They don't even name them. because these cities are no longer Real Monkeys!

and the moderators can't keep up. the people who flag inappropriate posts can't keep up. and the trolls keep multiplying because we are not real monkeys to them. people throw the n-word around because they can. people call each other "homos" and "fags" because they can. hitler is widely used to begin, or to end, arguments (please see "Godwin's Law"). people are sexist, racist, classist, elist, pain in the ass jerks, because we are well past Dunbar. and in the end, unless craigslist keeps up, it will kill the website for useful content and it will become another 4Chan-like free for all website. it will still be current, because of it's huge hulking mass and power, but it will have no real impact for the goals that the website claims to espouse. sadly, imho, craigslist will either need to give up it's faith in "community moderation" or give up it's belief in mission "restoring the human voice to the Internet".

craigslist is no longer the human voice. and why? because it has one too many monkeys.

what would you pay?

2008-05-12T18:22:00.002-05:00

at work today, i got to place an order with one of our vendors for "human semen". what does human semen cost? apparently $359.10 for 25 ML.

which sure seems like a lot.

but it got me thinking....

what does NON-human semen cost?

for comparison, i checked on bull semen. i picked this for a few reasons. mainly, i was pretty sure i could find the answer on the internet without stumbling across some pervy bestiality porno site. but also because my grandfather was an (attempted? failed? i dunno) bull breeder of his favorite big-ass bull. it seemed fitting somehow.

a little research showed me that bull semen costs about $20 a straw. a straw is roughly equivalent to 1/2 a ML. so some fancy math shows me that bull semen costs about $1000 for 25 ML.

a few thoughts on this:

is bull semen more expensive than human semen because the bull doesn't donate voluntarily?

$20 is the cost for semen from a mediocre bull. the fisher scientific catalog does not specify the quality of the human. can we assume equally mediocre?

we recently purchased something at work called the Ultra SpermFinder. it's mission is to allow slides from rape victims to be scanned electronically for sperm, which is an incredibly time consuming thing to do by hand. the hope is to help clear up some of the DNA backlog. but it made me wonder..... could we use the Ultra SpermFinder to... well.... find sperm and perhaps not have to pay through the nose for it? and, if so... could an enterprising young scientist perhaps devise an UltraBullSpermFinder and really make a fortune? go ahead and do it! i give you the idea for free!!

i've been getting in the spring spirit...

2008-04-13T20:40:00.003-05:00

it's always surprising to me that i am a born and bred new englander. the winters are incredibly hard on me. i don't know if it's true seasonal affective disorder or not, but winter bums me out. i spent a few years hunkered down in front of a light box. i usually up my anti-depressant medication. but at the end of it all, i just get mopey. i forget what it's like to have fun. to have energy. i just want to sit down in the dark and eat buckets and buckets of cheese.

and then the weather turns. the sun gets warmer. my mood brightens. and suddenly i want to eat salad. i realize that i miss my friends. and i start to feel better.

this year i celebrated the turn of the seasons by heading to canada. not the obvious choice for how to welcome back spring. i didn't plant new growth to honor persephone. i headed to where it was colder and darker. and watched the red sox play the blue jays.

baseball is, i suppose, as much as a sign of spring as cadbury easter eggs are. and it's more my style. and less fattening.

so my boyfriend, his sister, and i, made a pilgrimage to watch the sox. we drove up to toronto and explored the city. we watched our team lose. and yet still my heart was lighter upon my return.

maybe it's time for me to put away the cheese and remember how much i love lettuce.

when uniform & rhythmic is wrong...

2008-03-12T19:40:00.004-05:00

most of us are raised to believe in a natural order of things. we believe there is a rhythm and a back-beat that everything is pulsing in concordance to. phi, the divine number. the golden ratio. the divine proportion. mathematics teaches us that certain uniform standards repeat over and over again. we can witness this in nature. in religion. in the arts.

but what about when chaos is the norm?

i, along with approximately 3 million other americans, have epilepsy. a part of my brain kind of goes into spasm, and creates wave after wave of neurological connections. the problem is that the brain is meant to behave randomly. the sharp, jagged, messy lines of an EEG are the norm, as we are messy and complex beings. the sharp, rhythmic, syncopated spikes on an EEG are evidence of a disorder.

but when you tell people that you have epilepsy, the first thing they offer to do is to shove a checkbook in your mouth if you go into convulsions. um, folks? this is very VERY wrong. stay away from my mouth. i have a form of epilepsy that never has a single convulsion. so back off! and even if i did have convulsions, the well meaning folks who want to pry your mouth open and shove stuff in it under the misguided belief that they are keeping you from swallowing or biting off your tongue -- they tend to do more damage than good. by and large, your frenulum (how's that for a college word!) is the membrane that keeps your tongue from falling down the back of your throat. okay, technically when you are unconscious your tongue can fall to the back of your throat and block your airway. but i'll risk it.

if i ever do have a convulsive seizure, i have more faith in my frenulum than in your checkbook.

having epilepsy doesn't have much of an impact on me. i stay away from strobe lights, and thus will never see the Blue Man Group perform, and i can't go see the Big Apple Circus. i can't donate blood in most states, even though epilepsy is not a blood born disease. i need to have a note from my doctor that states i am safe to drive. and if i don't take my medicine i can see and hear things that aren't there, and everything starts to taste like sterno.

i have taken drugs for this condition for the past 13 years.

the meds make me groggy. make me gain weight. damage my skin. make me terribly likely to develop a sunburn. make me heat and cold intolerant, like a little lizard. they can mess with my sleep and my alertness and can make me feel a little muddle-headed. if i didn't have health insurance my epilepsy medications would be costing me $480 a month. for one prescription. that doesn't even have a street value. no inner-city kids are popping handfuls of neurontin for fun.

but i take them like clockwork.

i take them to keep my brain messy and complicated, like nature truly intended.

behind the scenes at Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

2008-03-01T20:52:00.004-05:00

(WARNING: for those of you who really really care about the show and cry every week, you should probably stop reading now!)

for the last week or so, my work has been overrun with do-gooders in blue shirts and hardhats. in their quest to build a house for somebody in every state, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition just finished up a house in Maynard, MA. Paul Giunta was severely injured in a car accident when he was driving home from the hospital where his wife had just given birth. he was paralyzed and has been living in a house that can not accommodate a wheelchair. Paul Giunta was forced to live with his parents since getting out of the hospital, while his wife raised their three kids in their non-accessible house.

the Giunta's live just down the road from the lab, and the empty lots around us were used as staging areas for the over 500 volunteers and contractors who came to tear down the old house and build the new.

i learned a lot about the show just by sitting on the sidelines, chatting with the security guards, and secretly letting some of the crew use our bathroom.

having EM:HE come to town is a bit like having the circus come to town. everybody dresses up in their finery (matching t-shirts and hardhats) and their is an infectious aura of good will. huge trucks roll in non-stop. many are delivering, or removing, building supplies. but some bring soda to the volunteers (pepsi and coke both came), some bring things the family will need (an entire truckload of lands-end clothing), many bring the media, both local and national, and tour-buses and a fleet of golf carts drive the spectators and VIP's to and from the build site.

needless to say -- it's chaos.

some of my staff were devastated to get a behind the scenes look at the show. it had never occurred to them that they would do the "surprise early morning door knock" more than once. i think they did it five times, over two different days. ditto with the trademark "MOVE THAT BUS". they often bring in a fake family in a limo to get the shot just right. and they move the bus a few times.

to me, this was as expected. this is, after all, pageantry. but to my staff, it was a little like learning that there is no santa claus.

what did surprise me, however, was the length EM:HE went to include the entire community. the goodwill is genuine. and in a country where people are jaded and sarcastic, everybody was genuinely happy for the Giunta's. So they did the bus trick a few too many times. at the end of the day, a family that has seen hard times got a new handicap accessible house. the neighbors who put up with the mess and the noise and the chaos? they all got presents. every neighbor was given either new appliances from Sears, or cold hard cash. it's hard to begrudge those around you when you hear the hum of the ice-maker in your new stainless steel fridge. the show planted one of their security guards at the entrance to *our* parking lot, just to make sure that our meager parking wasn't poached by onlookers. and over 50 different local tradespeople were given a part of the project, so at the end of the day, even though workers and security and staff were bussed in by the truckload, we could all feel like we were part of a little Home Makeover magic.

many congrats to the Giunta's. we wish you all the best.

if lolsecretz was the mashing of my two favorite memes

2008-02-16T12:18:00.002-05:00

then icanhazcheezburger has finally mashed one of those memes with... well... casa highland!

in an adorable string of pictures, a young man proposed to his sweetie on valentines day, by using his cat in lolcat photos. the cat had a mouse. and a ring box. and when i saw it that day, i thought "aw, those are the same ring boxes that jade uses".

then, in the follow-up, i learned that it *was* one of jade's ring boxes, as well as jade's ring.

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/hascheezburger/510213.html

and jade is a founding member of casa highland. we had two previous apartments we gave that name to, as we moved up and down the same street. the name finally settled here when i bought this house.

it's like being close to royalty!

a tale of two cities...

2008-02-04T18:31:00.001-05:00

as i am coming down (or is that coming up?) from the depths of the post-superbowl depression, i try to remind myself that this is just one more step taken in the endless Boston-New York rivalry. we win, they lose. they win, we lose.

on the upside, i have discovered ryan parker, and he makes it all seem okay. this is my new favorite song:

sometimes it's hard to say goodbye...

2008-01-28T12:37:00.001-05:00

one of my favorite, stupid, blogs has decided to end it's run. lolsecretz has decided that it is time to call it quits and move on to other endeavors. it's a silly little page that blended the memes of lolcatz and post secret to create a mashup of emotions and dumb animal pictures.

was it the secrets of animals? of owners? the answer was never clear. and like postsecret it could essily delve into the maudlin or the innane depending on the given day or week.

so long lolsecretz.

thanks for all the lolz.

my job has some odd perks sometimes...

2007-11-07T20:23:00.001-05:00

yup. i got certified in firearms safety. this is the first step to being able to get a license to carry. do i want a gun? probably not. owning a gun is one of the best ways to get shot. i am incredibly klutzy, and a wee bit paranoid, which seems like a bad combination when you add a gun into the mix. i am likely to shoot myself. or the cat. so i don't really want a gun. but i would like to have the right to have a gun.

a permit for mace, in the state of massachusetts, costs $100, and involves getting a background check, finger-printed, etc. all to carry a non-lethal weapon. a license to carry a firearm, on the other hand, costs $100, and involves getting a background check, finger-printed, etc. and at the end of it you can have mace in your purse, a shotgun in your car, a revolver in the bedside table, and a pistol shoved down the back of your pants.

to me, the choice seems clear.

but keep watching this space. i am likely to get denied for a license to carry. it is going to be interesting, i think.

again, i don't want a gun. but i am going to be hella pissed if they tell me i can't have one.

greetings from Halifax

2007-09-21T12:25:00.001-05:00

i (understandably) get a lot of crap for having gone to Australia and never blogged about it. in order to do a preemptive beat-down of the smack-talk, i thought i should do a little halifax update. jessamnyn and i have once again gone on a Great Tour of Libraries, with a bunch of sightseeing and vacation thrown in. this time we headed north to halifax. on the way we have hopped over to Prince Edward Island, wandered through a corner of New Brunswick, and we just might still make it over to Cape Breton tomorrow.

i don't think i vacation like a lot of other people. for example, i didn't go see the Citadel in halifax, or Anne of Green Gables house in PEI, and i may eat no seafood while i am here. what i have done, however, is seen a little how people really live. i have drank coffee at the local coffee house. i have seen the libraries and parks. i got to stay in a weird converted antique train caboose. i have taken the commuter ferry across the bay. i went to some of the smaller and lesser known museums, and skipped the flashy pirate museum, that the locals seem to scorn as a fad museum that is hopping on the Pirates of the Caribbean bandwagon. i have met people from all over canada, and heard what they think about the war, the economy, the Patriot Act, and OJ Simpson.

i'm not being preachy. for many people, this is their idea of a terrible and boring vacation, which i could have probably taken without ever leaving somerville & my laptop. but for me, this kind of noodling about leaves me happy and at peace.

it's been great so far. not quite as epic as cuddling a koala, but then again it's not a 36 hour flight home.

north carolina is trying to kill me

2007-08-28T21:24:00.001-05:00

two weeks ago, i concussed myself on a cabinet door at my summer job. one week ago, i threw my back out when i dropped my car at the mechanic to fix the muffler. and today, i went over my handlebars on my bike after my hand slipped off the handle (biking to school in 95 degree weather is sweaty work). more pics on my flickr page.

i hope this degree is worth it.

milestones in living alone...

2007-06-20T20:41:00.000-05:00

there are few times i miss having a roommate more than when it's time to get rid of the Really Huge Bug (RHB).

my friends and family know that i have a mild case of entomophobia, and tend to shriek and hyperventilate when i get too close to bugs. i'm working on it, but honestly, the treatment for phobias is often worse than the irrational fear itself. let's see -- i could use gradual desensitization, where i get closer and closer to scarier and scarier bugs, or i could use flooding, where they just toss me into a vat of bugs. no thanks. so i live with it.

but when i woke up this morning, and a totally terrifying RHB was in my tub, i realized i now lived alone. there was no one else to get rid of the bug. fine. i didn't really want to shower anyway. then i realized i would come home, and the RHB would still be in my tub.

and while i could skip showering for a day, more than that was just silly. i had to be a grown up. i had to get rid of the RHB myself.

so i did it! i got rid of the bug myself, and rewarded myself with a long, hot, shower. and i kept one mistrustful eye on the drain, lest anything else crawl out of it.

the RHB in question, btw, was a common house centipede. i have to say, now that wikipedia has informed me that it injects poison venom through it's fangs, i don't find it all that common. and at 6:00 am it was downright terrifying.

a weekend at the ridge...

2007-06-17T17:36:00.001-05:00

i accidentally wound up spending fathers day with my father this year. like mother's day, it's not a holiday my family is particularly gung-ho about. but weeks ago i got myself on his busy calendar, and the chosen date just happened to be fathers day. my sister came down, and we decided to make a family weekend on it. my family is not normally chummy like this, but it was a pleasant way to pass the time.

tom (my dad) and cindy (his wife) live in a beautiful and sunny house in westport, ma. which is named The Ridge. they have converted the garage into a wonderful guest cottage, where the fridge is always stocked with soda, the bed always has fresh linens, and the wifi and cable come in beautifully. downstairs in the cottage cindy runs a new business called westport shells, where she makes these intricate sailors valentines.

they had just gotten two new kittens, in addition to their older cat, casey, and their dog, decker. for those of you who can do the math, this totally breaks the N + 1 rule of pet ownership. however, i figure when you're older, and retired, and living in a quaint seaside town, you can get away with breaking a few rules.

when we weren't playing with the kittens, we spent out time eating way too much food, walking along the beach, searching for stuff on the internet, and listening to my dad expound on his various crackpot theories of the world. my dad is, without a doubt, one of the smartest and funniest people i know. however, this does not mean that me and my sister give him any slack when he starts to bullshit us. we spent a lot of the weekend calling bullshit.

for fathers day we took him to his favorite breakfast venue of choice, ihop, and called bullshit with a smile.

happy fathers day, dad!

the more things change...

2007-06-11T18:19:00.000-05:00

it's been a busy month and a half, and there have been big changes here at the casa. shayne graduated with style, and without a lot of fanfare she moved down to NC where she will be attending graduate school. i am staying at the casa and am going to try living alone for a while.

i have owned this house for nine years now, and it has seen a lot of changes. people and pets have come and gone, and the only constant variables are me and boo. i moved in here with jade and andrew, and our tenants were dan and sadie. andrew moved out, and corey moved in. then corey moved out and frank moved in. jade and frank moved out, and shayne and whiskey moved in. in between we had a revolving door of wayward boys and girls and pets and guests who needed a place to crash.

this house has been a home to many people, and i assume it will shelter a few more before i am done. it is my nature to try to take care of others, and feeding them and giving them a roof over their head and a floor under their feet is the best way i know how.

and yet i am going to go it alone for a while, and maybe work on taking care of myself. there will always be more strays to take in and more wayward kids who need a place to crash.

in the meantime, i expect my baking to go very very overboard!

i gots the crazy eyes...

2007-04-24T18:38:00.000-05:00

so i was emailing a friend the other day, and happened to list all the places on my body that have scars. the list included: surgical scars on my breast, arm, wrist, and belly, as well as injury scars on my hands, arms, legs, ass, belly, back, and chin.

i can now add something new to the list -- my eyes.

a routine trip to the eye doctor resulted in me learning that my eyeballs are scarred.

those of you who know me, will not be surprised. for example, i have temporarily blinded myself twice (once with laundry detergent and once with paint) and given myself paper cuts on my eyeballs twice. twice! apparently this has all had a little wear and tear on 'em.

what this meant was that when they did my exam, they were extra careful to use the super-duper dilators on my creaky old eyeballs. and i walked around all day with the crazy eyes!

good news -- my eyesight is apparently getting better. huzzah! way to go little scarred eyeballs! keep up the good work!!

how late is too late...?

2007-04-17T19:27:00.000-05:00

on December 15, 1992 i was home for winter break from Earlham College and listening to the radio, when a news program broke in and i heard that my friend Galen Gibson had been shot and killed at Simon's Rock of Bard College. this was many years BC (Before Columbine) and the first real school shooting of the 90's. it was shocking, and i didn't really know what to make of it. Galen and i had been in the same Unitarian youth group, and while we were not close, and i was a few years older than him, we had many friends in common and knew each other reasonably well. and on the day previous he had been gunned down by a classmate named Wayne Lo.

i never wrote a condolence card to his family, and i didn't go to the funeral. his father wrote a very inspirational book called "Gone Boy -- A Walkabout" that i devoured and cried over, and i still never wrote. i was embattled in my own fight with Bard College and coming to terms with my own life changing events, and i simply couldn't face it. he had other friends who were closer who i know showered the family with love and with memories of Galen, and i wasn't needed.

over the years, i have crafted many letters to Gregory Gibson, Galen's father. and i have never posted a single one. too much time had passed. right now, i believe that Galen, had he lived, would have been 33. and we probably wouldn't still be in touch. but since he was forever frozen at 18, he has stayed with me. along with all the unposted letters to his father.

today i decided that it is never too late, and i sent an email to Gregory, saying that i was thinking of Galen, and that i was sorry for his loss. the events of this week reminded me that it is never too late to send condolences.

guess who's going to grad school for free?

2007-03-23T18:18:00.000-05:00

*thumbs*

this girl!

that's right, folks - i'll be attending UNC chapel hill in the fall (for library and information science)!! i received a fellowship that includes: FREE tuition (!!!), a job working for the IT department for 20 hours per week during the school year, student health insurance, and a small stipend for each semester.

huzzah!

come visit me in chapel hill!!

this place just keeps trying and trying...

2007-02-20T20:51:00.000-05:00

the first year i owned the casa, the porch got condemned and the tenants furnace got a cracked heat exchanger, which filled the place up with carbon monoxide. ever since, i've thought that the casa secretly wants to kill me. every few years it musters the courage to make another run at it. this year it's making a valiant effort. for the second time, we sat in the dark, feeling the place get colder and colder, as we waited for repair dudes. this time it was the electricity, not the furnace. and there was no dead bird. and it lasted hours, not days. but still.... anybody want a slightly used house with a small blood lust problem?

Dear Fox25 News Undercover...

2007-02-13T21:03:00.000-05:00

okay, so the Fox 25 News at ten hasn't even been on yet, but i have been watching the upcoming promo's for it. and i wrote them a letter. here's what it said:

Dear Fox25 News,
I have an even greater undercover story for you than the ability walk right into public schools. It's shocking, and very troubling (especially in these dark times), but apparently you can ALSO walk right into the post office, city hall, and **gasp** the public library!!
I can think of more pressing news right now (especially in these dark times) than the fact that you can walk into a public building.
Sincerely,
-- bandit

so what i got back (so far) was an autoreply, thanking me for writing, and they seemed to feel awfully sorry that they couldn't personally write back to every person. they gave me some useful phone numbers. here they are:

MA Office of Consumer Affairs: 617-973-8787
Attorney General's Office: 617-727-2200

what do you s'pose would happen if i called up the Attorney General to say that i was very concerned that people were allowed to walk RIGHT INTO A PUBLIC BUILDING?

my year by the numbers

2007-02-05T13:25:00.000-05:00

-quit smoking: 2 times
-started smoking: 2 times
-welcomed: 1 new nephew and 1 new niece into the world
-read: more books than i can remember
-made: 5 new friends at school
-earned: $13,060 total for the year
-baked: roughly 50 dozen cookies
-ate: roughly 40 dozen cookies
-tried: 75% of the frozen novelties available in the grocery store
-skied: once in utah for the first time ever
-fell out of love: 1 time
-fell in love: 0 times
-kissed: 8 people
-cried: about 156 times (working average of 3 times a week)
-laughed: about 1424 times (working average of 4 times a day)
-made loved ones cry: more times than i would like to count
-made loved ones laugh: more times than i can count
-applied to: 5 different grad schools
-bought: 30 new pairs of underwear, about 1/2 of which actually fit
-had: 1 root canal
-glued: 30 more rhinestones onto my car
-turned: 15,398 words of my life into essays
-wrote: 46 pages of academic work
-pub crawled: 70 miles on easter sunday
-made: 10 tshirts
-gave away: 1 blankie (i hope you like it, louisa)
-played: 9 days, 18 hours, 47 minutes of world of warcraft
-attended: 1 funeral, 0 weddings

and the stuff that can't be calculated in numbers: i'm less broken than i was at 18 and less grief-stricken than i was at 23. i'm more confident than i was at 22 and have a longer life expectancy than i did at 19. i'm more single than i was at 24 and more content with my current life and hopeful about my future prospects than i think i've ever been before. i have a nasty case of tonsillitis right now and the wind chill outside is -2 degrees fahrenheit, but these cruel realities aside, things are pretty good. i'm better than i used to be. let's hope the trend continues.

red tag of death...!

2007-01-26T19:45:00.000-05:00

so shayne was sitting at home tonight and she noticed that the furnace was singing. quietly. seeping out through the vents. it was like a slow dirge. a funeral dirge. josh (aka "mustache guy", but now sans-mustache) noticed that it smelled like an elementary school. it smelled like crayola crayons, or a cheaper generic maybe, like a Rose crayon maybe, melting on a heater on a muggy day.

i came home and confirmed the funny smell. checked the cats. checked the oven. listened to the serenade of the dying furnace.

bravely i went down to the basement to check on the condition, where i tripped over a dead starling. impressively, i didn't shriek. most of you prolly know that i am terrified of the basement at night. killers with rusty axes lure down there. they pull the fuses to lure me down there. i refuse! i send Shayne down instead. she's my canary in a coal for mile for axe murders.

but i digress.

the upshot is that Josh took care of the dead bird, while i called the Gas Company. they warned me that it sounded dangerous, although still safe to stay in the house so long as we didn't turn on any appliances or lights. i peed by flashlight since we didn't want to brave flipping on the light. we crouched in fear that somebody would ring the doorbell. we didn't touch the cats for terror of static electricity.

the road filled up with fire trucks soon after i called. alas, it was not for us. i was oddly disappointed.

the gas company finally came out, investigated, and slapped on a Red Tag of Death. they cut the gas and disconnected my furnace.

on the coldest night of the year.

this is how old people die. Joe For Oil warns me on tv all the time. check on the old folks!

and tonight it's my turn. please, friends of the casa call to check in. as i type the temperature is plummeting. my fingers are getting cold, but still i soldier on... growing weaker... i hear it's like falling asleep.... oh so sleepy....

(okay, actually we have a space heater running and the gas company should be out tonight at some time after midnight to give me a new motor).

you can't make up this kind of drama, kids.

thank you bernard derriman

2007-01-24T23:21:00.000-05:00

for giving us a loveable animated bunny i'm completely mesmerized by.

your arj and poopy cartoons are pretty damn funny, too.

case: solved!

2007-01-22T15:33:00.000-05:00

first of all thanks to loyal reader banky edwards for being the first to come up with definitive evidence proving that the owner/chef of the new city slicker cafe in somerville is in fact the orginal owner/chef of urban gourmet - you can check his work in the comments section of this post.

and in one of those weird and cosmic coincidences that the universe sometimes serves up, i had my very own personal confirmation of the connection this afternoon, when i ran into the owner/chef's wife (who i used to work with years ago at a local university). she confirmed that her husband just opened his new place on thursday and was glad to hear that some of us old customers had found our way to him so quickly :)

so for all of you urban gourmet lovers, get thee down to 588 somerville ave and pick up a menu! or just call them at (617) 625-0700 and order something (i highly recommend what used to be called the urban cowboy pie and is now dubbed the chicken club - white pizza with bacon, red onion and tomato.... ~drool~).

the case of the puzzling pizza!

2007-01-21T20:28:00.000-05:00

that's right junior super sleuths -- we need *your* help to solve this crime! you might think you're not ready for field work, but i say that all your training has MADE you ready. get out there, hit the streets, and figure out what the heck is going on!

it's like this. many of you have heard out piteous laments about the burning down of Urban Gourmet, our favorite pizza joint. what we didn't mention is that Urban Gourmet was under new management when it burned. we are not sure where Jen and Rich went when they sold Urban to the owner of Soundbites (another fine Somerville establishment), but they wandered off into the sunset.

recently, a new menu was left in our mailbox (thanks Swissy!) for City Slicker Cafe. the offerings were eerily similar to our beloved Urban Gourmet. who else makes a shrimp and bacon pie, fer christsake? we were told that Jen and Rich were running the joint.

shayne immediately called in an order, and questioned the man who answered the phone there. what ensued was the most confusing ten minutes ever shared. it seems a simple thing, right? to find out who the owners are? nope. this dude wasn't going to tell us. no way. no how. he talked circles around shayne until she gave up in vexation.

"TO THE INTERNET!" we roared. there were numerous references on ChowHound, but they had all been deleted. in fact, there were no references to the new City Slicker that hadn't been deleted. City Slicker's own website isn't live either, even though it's mentioned prominently on their menu. there are no mentions anywhere.

so Junior Super Sleuths, we implore you... do any of you know the answer to this puzzling pizza pie?

tales from the couch...

2007-01-19T18:14:00.000-05:00

so i have been informed recently that the blog has become in grave danger of TMP (too much paladin) and that perhaps i might want to tone down both the crazy cat lady antics and the geek gamer stories. apparently both of these things means that i will be doomed to be single for the rest of my life.

while that proclamation doesn't exactly make me quake with fear, it did give me pause. one of the girls at work is reading "the girlfriend's bible" and has been tossing out interesting tid-bits about everything i have done wrong in my 35 years. she didn't even scratch the surface. other friends of mine have informed me that i need to get off my couch more.

since i am currently home sick on the couch, now is not the time. but here's what the world looks like from my couch... not too shabby. i have a house that i love, overflowing with friends, with a guest room that is often full (did leave a toothbrush here recently?). i have pets i cherish and a roomie who makes me snort with laughter. i have wireless which allows me to relate to the world even while i am crawling with germs and snifflier than a coke addict. i have a cell phone which allows me to know that one of my staff quit while i was out today (good luck in your new job, courtney!) and a landline that i rarely answer (sorry for letting my membership lapse ACLU!). i have music on in the other room (currently playing "if i were a moose" by Fred Small), and a sweet smelling candle burning on the side table. i have three different email inboxes open which tinkle often with merry dings and bells when i get mail.

i could, if i really wanted to, easily find a boyfriend without even leaving my couch. there appear to be a million men out there who are looking for a "partner in crime", a line which if posted in a personal ad will rule that person out automagically even if they are a doughnut baking, pub quiz playing, book reading, llama raising, smart, sexy, big, bald guy who wants nothing more in this world than to make me happy. partner in crime? forget it. he's out.

so, see? why do i need to leave the couch at all? i have it all right here.

Okay, NOW i have reached the new pinnacle of geekdom!

2007-01-15T17:52:00.000-05:00

can you smell the excitement in the air, folks? do you know that that is? it's been all over the news. it's going to be epic. it's the midnight launch of World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade! and because i clearly decided about three months ago that dignity was over-rated, here' what i've done. shayne and i were both in for the night, plunked down on the couch. i had a long day at work. shayne had just taken a shower and hadn't dried her hair yet. but on a moments notice we ran down to the car and burned rubber over to the Ghetto Glen Mall where we put down $5.00 to reserve our copy of the new Warcraft.

but that's not the worst part.

the worst part.... the shameful part... or what *would* be shameful if i had any shame left... is that i will be getting back into the car later tonight. shayne, big daddy, and i will be doing the midnight run to EB Games to get our copy of the new game the minute it's released.

whispers: heh

2007... year of the casa

2007-01-07T18:53:00.000-05:00

so far 2007 is proving to be a banner year for the upper half. we're kicking the lower half's ass in the following categories: shenanigans, wacky hijinks and of course, tomfoolery. not only did we start the year with a squeaky clean casa, but the past two weekends in a row we've partied with various friends until the wee hours of the morning, we've had houseguests from down the street and the suburbs and even australia. you know how sometimes plants and animals get all messed up with unseasonably warm weather in the middle of a new england winter? we're like a pair of crocuses blooming too soon. it's probably gonna bite us in the ass if nature decides to right itself, but it sure has been fun.

for the first week of this still young year, we've been partying like rock stars and damn, are we tired.

to the whole casa family - we hope your 2007 has gotten off to the same kind of start. happy new year, all.

i have reached the pinnacle of geekdom!

2006-12-29T23:44:00.000-05:00

so, as many of y'all know, shayne and i have been "playing a little warcraft". we share a level 36 Paladin named Viskey (after a funny typo the pharmacist made on some medecine for shayne's cat). we periodically yell out such gems as "WILLOW PANTS OF THE MONKEY!!"

we have a guild, and some of our "guildies" are ten, or youger. which is good, because warcraft changes all of your cusses into &^%$#@!

we have a pet kitten in the bank, safely stowed in a carrier.

and we have a very generous benefactor who occasionally buys us trinkets and bad-ass armor.

but if all of this isn't geeky enough -- we have reached a new height! yessiree folks. we trolled another warcraft player on youtube.

i am a little ashamed. but stand by what i said. shaman's wear dresses and thus will never be truly menacing.

tis the season...

2006-12-15T15:16:00.000-05:00

most of you know that the holiday season tends to leave me cranky and annoyed at the world. look at my holiday post from last year. it's just not my thing.

but this year i am more grateful than most. and perhaps a wee bit more emotional.

and sometimes there is a small part of the holiday season that touches me in an odd way.

this year, i found that small thing.

this year it was the runaway reindeer.

it made my small heart grow three sizes.

sorry, i couldn't blog.... i was washing my cat...

2006-11-29T09:55:00.000-05:00

whenever i don't want to do something, and i need to come up with a totally transparent excuse, i say "sorry, i can't do {insert avoided activity here}, i have to wash my cat." it's such a blatant lie that it easily conveys the sense of hell no, i would rather do any inane act than do whatever it is you want to do. cat washing -- the universal avoidance tool.

so have i really been spending the last two blogless months cat washing? nope. just once. and let me tell you, once was enough. scoutie and i were making breakfast one morning, and whiskey came running through the kitchen. her face was *covered* with cobwebs. we grabbed her to get them off, and realized that our usually white kitty was black from the belly down. next, boo came trundling by, and he had the same affliction. clearly these cats had been doing something naughty. we discovered that the cats had somehow gotten into the attic, which is full of roofing tar. boo has been trying to get in that room for 8 years. fucking roofing tar! so we threw them in the bathroom together while we finished our breakfast, grabbed the camera, and readied ourselves for the task ahead. cat washing.

for those of you who have never washed a cat, i have a suggestion. don't. but if for some reason you absolutely need to, let me walk you through it.

HOW TO WASH A CAT:

Find a very dirty cat in need of cleaning.
Decide that once you are going through the hell, maybe your miserable cat would like company so he doesn't feel so foolish and alone. Grab another cat.
Fill up a small tub with warm water and a dash of Johnson's Baby Shampoo.
Grab the cat with a death grip around his middle that shows you mean business. this is no time to worry that you are holding him too tight. hold him tighter!
Dip the cat in the water, and squoosh him down until he is up to his neck in the water. Careful, this is often where they get a little pissy. Hold 'em tight and whatever you do DON'T LET GO!
Don't worry too much about scrubbing. The cat will be fighting and biting and clawing so much to get out of the water that he will likely lather himself up with the effort.
Once you figure he's been tortured enough, take him out of the small tub, and set him down. Pour warm, clean, water over him until there are no suds left.
Take the pathetic, shivering, cat, and wrap him in a towel to dry him off.
By this point, all the fight has probably gone out of your cat. He will just lay there licking himself dry and glaring balefully at you. Take this opportunity to grab your camera and take photo's of his tiny chicken feet.
Repeat with the next cat.
Blow them dry with a hairdryer set on low if needed. Be careful not to point the dryer directly at their eyes or ears. They don't like it, and I don't blame them. Have you ever accidently suctioned your contacts to your eye by not paying attention to where the hairdryer is? It sucks. And the poor cat has been through enough, don't you think?
Now the cat is clean and dry, and you are probably soaking wet and bloody. Get out that first aid kit and clean yourself up.

so, sorry for the hiatus folks. as you can see, i've been busy. i was washing the cat.

welcome to the world, louisa...

2006-09-23T16:49:00.000-05:00

may your life be filled with light and love and happiness!

unordered update with several postscripts

2006-09-08T15:34:00.000-05:00

i took the GREs. not great scores but perfectly serviceable. hopefully they'll get me in to the grad programs i'm looking at: UNC Chapel Hill, University of Washington, University of Denver, University of Syracuse, and the University of Illinois
the fall semester has begun. i am a senior. huzzah!
i received a letter telling me that i've been "nominated by the Simmons College Faculty to be a member of Academy. Academy is the honor society of the undergraduate college." apparently my gpa places me in the 94th percentile of the class of 2007. of course my first thought was, 'dammit. i knew those 2 A-'s would come back to bite me in the ass... i should be in the 99th percentile!!'
i've drastically cut back on hours at JP Licks and i'm happy as a clam at high tide working for the digital librarian at a private economic consulting company downtown. i scan and index documents and have plenty of time to do homework (or screw around on the internet, whichever comes first)

so that's my life in a nutshell. or bulleted list, as it were.

p.s. you're all welcome to attend the honors convocation at 2:30pm 9/13 at Simmons, where i will be awarded the Academy Scroll and pin. it's going to be ever so much fun.

p.p.s. the above postscript is entirely sarcastic. if i see anyone i know there i will bash you with my scroll and stick you with my pin. if you don't believe me i'm sure i can supply several references attesting to my violent and agressive nature.

possibly the worst marketing campaign ever...

2006-08-25T20:44:00.000-05:00

so i am watching tv with scoutie tonight, ignoring the commercials and tapping away on my laptop, when i see something out of the corner of my eye, and startled, i look up. there, on my tv screen is a weird brown brick, with arms and legs. and everybody who touches it gets slimed. brown snail-trails are left in it's wake. skidmarks, if you will. scoutie informs me that it's name is "fudgems". and apparently this is supposed to encourage me to buy pizza.

the good folks at Domino's think that this little mumbling, dancing, giggling "brownie" is going to make me more likely to take them up on their Two-for-Tuesday deal.

i look at it and think, as i feel most people will, "oh look! dancing poo!"

i also think that the good folks at domino's need a new ad agency.

check it out for yourself. tasty treat? or dancing poo? i think the answer is clear.

tales from the crime lab...

2006-08-03T20:18:00.000-05:00

a of days ago i celebrated my one year anniversary at the Crime Lab. yup, i have been gainfully employed for a full year. almost doesn't seem possible. and working for The Man at that. it's been a fun year. i have hired more people than i have fired. i have watched our budget balloon to new heights. we opened one new lab, and in October we will open another even larger one, and move our main offices. i have learned a tremendous amount about state government, crime control, and forensic science. and i have actually had a lot of fun along the way.

some of the fun has been funnier than others.

the crime lab isn't open to the public. we don't give tours, or allow the press inside. although we fly the state flag, the building is fairly innocuous. it's a converted school house and the sign on the front of the building is small. most people can't even find the doorbell.

and yet don't underestimate the public. they're tricky. they can sometimes find their way in.

of course, they make it no further than reception. and generally that means that i get brought up to the front desk and shoo them away. but sometimes i listen to what they want first. and what do they want?

i want a scientist to tell me, or at least an office manager:
a man walks into the crime lab with a zip-lock baggie. in the baggie is a clod of dirt with a chunk of something in it. the man found the clod/chunk in his backyard when he was digging up a tree stump. he thought it was suspicious looking. he thought it needed a trained professional to tell him what it was. he thought it could be a piece of wood. or a bone. but he wasn't sure. he was concerned and wanted a scientist to analyze it. i told him that we didn't do that, and that he should contact his local pd if he was worried. i told him he needed to leave and tried to hustle him along. he didn't want to leave until somebody in authority told him their professional assesment. it wasn't going to happen. finally he beseached me, and begged me to tell him what i thought. i replied "i think i write purchase orders for a living!" he nodded, sagely, took his clod and left smiling.

i want you to tell me if this smells funny:
a lady walks into the crime lab, clutching an disposable coffee cup, filled with what looked like... well... coffee. she sets it on the counter, and tells us that somebody is trying to kill her. every time she walks out of the room, they put a little more poison in her coffee cup. or maybe they pee in it. she's not sure. she wants us to run toxicology tests to prove that someone is out to get her, and she wants to know what the poison is. if it's urine, she wants us to run DNA tests so we call tell her who is out to get her. we explain that we don't do this, and that she needs to contact her local pd (noticing a trend here...?). she asks me what she should do. and i tell her, with a perfectly straight face, that i think she should stop drinking coffee.

i want to spy on other peoples kids, just not piss off my own:
a lady walks into the crime lab, clutching a magazine. slathered across the cover, in big type, is lurid details from the latest high profile pervert who was using myspace. she launches into a long, garbled, but very passionate ramble about how horrible dangerous the internet is. she has two young daughters, who use myspace, and she worries about them. she wants to teach kids about internet safety. she wants to help. she looks at me and wails "I WANT TO HELP THE FBI CATCH INTERNET PREDATORS ON MYSPACE!" i explain that we don't do that, and that she needs to contact the freakin' FBI. i also told her that she probably didn't need her help, but that maybe she should sit down with her own daughters and see what they are looking at and using, and explain to them about how to be safe. she looks at me, very affronted, and says "oh. they wouldn't like that. i like to give them their privacy".

these things never happen on C.S.I.

house of neuralgia

2006-07-29T22:36:00.000-05:00

i'm now officially the second member of the casa to have a weird nerve problem.

i blame you, kate.

the Dove Foundation called me tonight...

2006-07-25T19:59:00.000-05:00

i normally don't answer my phone, but for some reason when the state of Michigan called me, i decided to pick up. only it wasn't Michigan. it was The Dove Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to family decency in films and television. they said they had a short survey that would take less than 90 seconds, and asked me if i would participate. i was feeling generous, so why not. here's the transcript of the call, to the best of my recollection:

DF: decent, good, kind people are concerned about the morality of television and movies going down the toilet, and are worried that the average american can't do anything to fix it. do you agree that the content of television and movies is often objectionable?

me: i don't think there is enough obscenity on television.

DF: what?

me: there should be more obscenity on tv.

DF: "click"

that's right. it all took less than 90 seconds because they hung up on me. so if you are reading over their survey results (which they swear are "unquestionably accurate and without prejudice") and wondering how middle america is feeling about decency on tv, the honest answer is -- no one knows. they hang up on folks who don't agree.

so to level the playing field, here's what i suggest. if you feel as though their research methods are shoddy, please take this survey. you don't have to tell them you want to see more tits and ass on tv, but you should tell them your opinion in a way that will be more of a pain in the ass for them to delete from the database.

out with the old

2006-07-24T15:27:00.000-05:00

the casa is generally a cluttered world of books and mail and the occassional cat-hair-tumbleweed slowly blowing across the floor. the bathroom and the kitchen are cleaned regularly but they are exceptions to the rule. we tidy up here more than we clean - moving piles from one surface to another, vacuuming the dust bunnies in the corners, shuffling books/dvds/videogames back to where they live (even though they always manage to migrate back to the coffee table/top of the tv/floor). i took a few hours of my days off to tend to a few of the forgotten realms, the areas we always look at and say, 'we really should clean that' but then dinner is ready and 'jeopardy' is on tv and then somehow the whole night has slipped away without getting anything accomplished.

i scrubbed the stovetop, soaking the drip pans and burner rack thingys (i don't know what they're called) for an hour in scalding soapy water. i thought the soaking would losen some grime but it still took 45 minutes, copious amounts of bar-keeper's friend, and plenty of elbow grease to get most of the baked on crud off. unfortunately it didn't occur to me to take a 'before' picture. oh well. recent houseguests may be the only ones who appreciate the full glory that is now the stovetop.

this was living in the fridge. i think it used to be a bowl of tomato soup (the chunky tomato bisque is amazing!). i know it's mold and therefore disgusting, but look. it's kind of beautiful, too.

i also tackled the primary living space with a few garbage bags, some furniture polish and rage (ha! this was a typo too good to fix... i meant to say rags), and the vacuum.

i found some peace in the process of scrubbing, of cleaning so hard i sweated, of going through the accumulated dirt and effluvia and finding things i had forgotten about. already the house has lost its sharp, clean edge. the piles have slowly started to sneak back onto the coffee table and i'm pretty sure i just saw a baby tumbleweed making its way into the kitchen. but i have to start carmelizing onions and chopping cucumbers for dinner tonight and then 'jeopardy' will be on tv and then... well. you know how it goes. why didn't anyone tell me how humbling cleaning a house is? and why did it take me so long to find the joy in the whole process?

fifty bazillion problems...

2006-07-17T19:59:00.000-05:00

so the latest headline regarding the big dig debacle reads "Romney: 1,454 problem areas in ceiling tiles".

really? you want to go on record with exactly how many tiles are a problem?

honestly, i would just stop counting at this point and proclaim "it's all just rotten". because let me tell you, this Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve reverse countdown to total tunnel collapse is just getting ludicrous.

on a related side-note... look closely the next time they air a bit on the news about the tunnels. you will see tiny white tyvek tags used on all the evidence. i helped buy those. that was my work. so maybe that can be considered my donation to the fifty bazillion dollar price tag as well. i've done my part.

this week i...

2006-07-16T20:55:00.000-05:00

-made a tshirt
-got a new job (don't be alarmed - i'll still be serving ice cream for your pleasure from time to time)
-fell up the stairs 3 times
-broke 2 sales records at the ice cream store
-dropped: a box of spoons and several ice cream scoops on the floor at work, a container of gorgonzola and a container of oats on the kitchen floor, and a whole pizza (luckily it landed cheese-up so dinner wasn't ruined)
-visited my doctor for a fun-filled annual physical (apparently my blood pressure is *very* good!)
-made some cookies and sent them to portand, oregon
-reread several delightful young adult books
-read a new young adult book
-took whiskey out for a jaunt in the backyard in hopes of slimming her down a bit. she gives kathryn's garden two paws up.

i think that's about it. further updates as events warrant.

i was a sullen teenager...

2006-07-08T16:22:00.000-05:00

i am not sure if the 80's were kind to anybody, but they sure seemed to hit me particularly hard. in most pictures from that time, i am staring out at the camera, unabashedly, with baleful eyes. you can see the same look reappear from age 16 to 21. i am sure that i smiled during those years, but it sure doesn't get captured on film a lot.

what does get captured is a fascinating array of haircuts, some spectacular, some scary. and you can tell that my look vacillated from hippie to punk rock to downright preppy. i was clearly trying to find my nook, as most kids were probably doing. i was experimenting. and i was sometimes so unbelievably full of myself that it's hard to take my teenage self seriously.

i look back and wish i could have a talk with that kid. tell her that we were going to grow up okay, and that maybe we didn't have to fight so hard. my senior year book quote was Dylan Thomas, and simply read "do not go gentle into that good night". good lord. i was a pompous, self-aggrandizing, maudlin kid. thanks for all of you who bore with me. it probably wasn't easy!

40 days as a non-smoker

2006-07-03T19:34:00.000-05:00

i haven't said much about quitting smoking, and i thought maybe i would check in about. it's been over 40 days since i have had a cigarette, which seems monumental after 21 years, on and off, as a smoker.

there are very few things that we measure in days. a baby's age perhaps, a countdown since a birthday, or how many days late a period is. since i have no children, i'm fine with being 35, and my period isn't late, it got me thinking... what if i measured all my life events in days? would that make it seem better or worse. so here's my countdown:

last cigarette -- 43 days
last drink -- 6022 days
last kiss -- 23 days
last time somebody tried to kiss me -- 4 days
last laugh -- less than 1 day
last cry -- 3 days
last scream -- 8 days
last time i made a new friend -- 29 days
last time i pissed off an old friend -- 7 days

all in all, i think counting in days makes my life look okay. sure, i wish it had been a shorter span since my last kiss, and a greater time since i hurt somebody i cared about... but i guess i think that i'm doing okay.

and someday, when i start counting my time as a non-smoker in years rather than days, maybe i'll stop counting all together. seems unlikely, but maybe.

no, kate doesn't beat me...

2006-06-25T21:04:00.000-05:00

i'm just *really* clumsy. i fell down the stairs on friday at my sister's house. here are the bruises on my back as they appeared on saturday evening:

and here they are with a little more color today:

and if those aren't enough to get me a little sympathy (okay, it was my own damn fault - never again will i wear flipflops in the rain), check out the bruises on my forearms:

the one on the right is particularly impressive (and painful). this might be karma from negative cheering in the world cup (i.e. cheering *against* a team instead of *for* a team). but i bet you a $2 beer that i don't learn my lesson!

**p.s. please note: i was completely sober at the time this injury was sustained.

for all of you doubters...

2006-06-21T20:05:00.000-05:00

i have finally been vindicated by mass.gov. i was spending some time checking out the new citizen information pages, just to see what kind of face massachusetts was putting forwards to new folks. i would hate to think that people would come to the state and think that we spend all of our time debating the various merits of fluff. and at first, i was skeptical. for example, under the "practical guide to living in the state", there is a section for helpful hints. this has four hints -- how to find a doctor, how to find a dentist, how to find a licensed day care provider, and where you can get a nickel for your empty soda bottle. one of these things isn't like the other.

but i kept on, figuring there must be some wisdom in these pages, and there was. i am relieved to know that embalmers need to be licensed in this state. this could one day be useful. but the real kernel of wisdom was tucked deep in the list on the page of Unincorporated and Unofficial Names. there, about two thirds of the way down, right below Pocket and right above Point Independence, there it was!

PODUNK.

i have been telling people for years that the mythical Podunk, who's name is synonymous with East Bum Fuck Nowhere, was actually an unincorporated township in Worcester. and now Mass.gov has validated this.

okay, actually nobody is totally sure where the first and original Podunk came from. maybe it was massachusetts, maybe it was near Ulysses NY, Hartford CT, or Wadsboro VT (all worthy contenders). and maybe the truth doesn't matter. maybe Pudunk is just a small, unimportant, tiny place within all of us. mine just happens to say "wicked" a lot, bitch about Mitt Romney, and drive around in an old beaten car that has a bumper-sticker slapped on it's ass that reads "Don't Blame Me. I'm from Massachusetts".

an update from the upper-half

2006-06-18T16:09:00.000-05:00

so shayne and i both had the day off on friday (thank you bunker hill day, or breed's hill day, or whatever you want to call it) and we decided to head out to the beach. while this might conjure up images of long white beaches and vistas of endless sand dunes, we decided to be city kids and go to a city beach -- so we headed off to revere beach. we spent the day counting gold chains roped around overly-tanned old men's waddles. we saw a girl who was eight months pregnant in a thong bikini (and much to our dismay she looked far better than either shayne or i in our non-pregnant state). we got cheese fries at kelly's. and we played like children in the ocean.

the cats are recuperating nicely. boo is back to his old self, and trixie is learning to keep her tongue in her mouth without the aid of any teeth. i am simply amazed at their resiliency, and i am much relieved.

last night it was drinks at bones with the foundation, needs more meat, and the lower-half of the casa. we tried to get together with vontrapperkeeper, but for some reason our messages weren't getting through to his blackberry... there were endless movie quotes being thrown around. a lot of $2.00 beers were guzzled. and much to my dismay everybody kept singing that james blunt song "you're beautiful". that song makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a dull butter knife. however, i confess i like it a little more now that i have heard the parody "my cubicle" (which you can listen to here). good times.

the cat tooth-fairy owes me big time.

2006-06-15T15:42:00.000-05:00

boo and trixie went in this morning for their dental appointments.

boo, who has genetically bad teeth, lost another three molars. i am not sure how many this leaves him with, but i think the answer is "precious few".

trixie, as i have mentioned, is allergic to her own teeth. while i was hoping for the best, sometimes it is unclear exactly what the best is. she had twelve teeth removed. this will, in the long term, make her much more comfortable, and she will adjust just fine.

i, on the other hand, am a wreck. there is something so overwhelming about seeing your own pets in pain. i can't explain to them why they hurt. or why i put them through this. i can't tell them that they will feel better soon. i mean, i do. but they don't exactly understand me, although i use my best baby-speaking voice. the best i can do is just know, in my own heart, that i am caretaking the best i can and that i am making the right choices for them.

sometimes being a grown up sucks.

allons enfants de la patrie...

2006-06-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

le jour de gloire est arrive!!

why am i singing La Marseillaise, you might ask (if you know the french national anthem in its native language, which i happen to know all the words to for some completely unknown reason... i'm sure those brain cells could be used for something much more worthwhile)? because for the first (and probably only) time in my life, i'll be cheering on the french national football team tomorrow at noon. i don't feel good about it - i've been making a concentrated effort to support countries that have been victimized by imperial powers. this sometimes means that i have to deny my own heritage (actually, it pretty much always means that... apologies to the US and english teams but c'mon now, you guys are representing some serious assholes) and it often means that i'm supporting african countries that i'm only vaguely aware of their geographic location (i found togo the other day - turns out it's right next to ghana, who knew?), but i think i'm a better person for it. however, sometimes personal feelings take precedence over idealist impulses. so allez francais!!

allons-y, les bleus!

i've been meaning to post this for a while...

2006-06-11T10:00:00.000-05:00

if technology advanced, and scoutie and i ever had a love child together, it would look a little like this.

creepy, right?

setting the record straight

2006-06-05T20:25:00.000-05:00

just so we're all clear: i told kate a month ago that we had critters in the walls. she thought i was insane.

i hope they find their way into her bedroom and scare the bejesus out of her.

one year ago...

2006-06-05T20:15:00.000-05:00

i was lobbing lemon wedges up into the gutter trying to dislodge the pigeon squatters that had moved into my gutter. after taking out a generation of pigeons-to-be with a broom, they finally began viewing me as their natural predator, and they wisely moved on.

their damn cooing was driving me insane.

and now i have found something evening more annoying than the maniacal sighing of a nesting bird -- squirrels. in particular, clumsy squirrels, tripping and falling and generallry galumphing through the walls. it sounds like we are under attack.

now, i am a pro at getting rid of pesty varmints. i got out my trusty broom, and started whacking the walls.

so far, all i managed to do is disrupt some dust bunnies.

why is this cat screaming...?

2006-05-31T16:54:00.000-05:00

BECAUSE SHE IS ALLERGIC TO HER OWN GOD DAMN TEETH!!

okay, technically that isn't true. apparently she has lymphocytic-plasmacytic gingivitis stomatitis (LPGS), which means she is allergic to her own plaque.

since you can't really have teeth without plaque, it's basically the same thing in my eyes.

at least now we know why she smells so bad.

sorry trixie.

you may already be a winner...

2006-05-30T19:48:00.000-05:00

it's killing me. who knows what this truck does?!?!?

seriously. i know... i can be obsessive. it's true. i perseverate. and i ponder. and certain things get caught in my head. and then the more i think about them, the more they begin to nag...

so help me out folks. i saw the truck in the somerville parade. i know it's part of Somerville Works. but that's all i know. and now i can't stop thinking about it. it looks a little like one of those crap vacuums that they have in european cities, that do nothing but drive around and suck up dog poo. but it has that fancy winch in front, as if it will be rescuing small children from the bottom of wells. yet those tubes on the sides look like they could launch rockets. and it's oh so very shiny, like a toy. what does the DPW need with a crap-sucking-timmy-fell-down-the-well-scud-missile-launching-tonka-truck?

and i mean it -- a dozen homemade cookies to the first person who can tell me what the heck this thing does!!

casa highland gets in on the action...

2006-05-29T10:09:00.000-05:00

so kathryn came home from her college reunion yesterday all tired and possibly (heck, probably!) hung over. she was just in time to watch the parade go by. the arts council had made a special float, which she helped put together. i was of the mistaken idea that she would actually be *in* the parade, but apparently this was not to be.

until shayne and i started instigating.

and nagging.

and cajoling.

and *inspiring*.

so up the street she ran, where she hopped on the float, and rode it down. throwing out old expired art beat dog tags to the adoring crowd. making art for freedom.

i scream, you scream, we all scream...

2006-05-29T00:53:00.000-05:00

i like my job. in theory, i derive pleasure from increasing other peoples’ happiness quotients (giving people ice cream makes them happy!). however, the reality of my job is that it's filled with the tedium of answering the question, “what is cow tracks?” roughly 139 times every shift (it's a sweet cream base with a fudge swirl, mini peanut butter cups and chocolate chips, in case you're wondering), calling the cops on the bum who’s peed all over himself in front of the store, and getting yelled at for the high price of homemade ice cream (like i'm personally profiting… i’m not exactly moneybags mcgee over here, people).
a few days ago when some guy asked me how thick our frappes are (milkshakes for you non-new england natives). i answered him in my driest tone, ‘they’re about an 8 on the viscosity scale.’ he smiled and said sincerely, ‘that sounds great!’ i guess stupid questions deserve stupid answers that involve fabricated measuring systems.
then there are the questions that completely dumbfound me. ‘what does your black raspberry taste like?’ uh, it tastes a lot like black raspberries. hence the name. 'what's coffee oreo?' we're not exactly ben & jerry's - no lyrical and obtuse names like the gobfather, vermonty python or phish food here. if it's called 'coffee oreo', chances are good that it is in fact coffee ice cream with oreos in it.
the other day some girl asked me what the hardest ice cream to scoop is, then promptly ordered it. great, now the customers are intent on making me work even harder for my just-above minimum wage hourly rate. carrying 6 buckets (roughly 90 lbs) of ice cream up the stairs at the same time clearly means that I’m slacking and I need to be working harder. why doesn't everyone just get whatever’s hardest to scoop so shayne’s right bicep becomes even more freakish! hey, at least I know that if this ice cream gig doesn’t work out, I can join the circus freakshow as the amazing lopsided woman.
however, my favorite of all the weird questions/feedback at the ice cream store has to be the customer comment card that was filled out last year complaining that our ice cream tastes too much like what it's supposed to be. the example this astute customer used was the oreo ice cream - it tastes just like actual oreos, not enough like vanilla ice cream with oreos in it. they should definitely stay away from the chocolate ice cream, then. it tastes suspiciously chocolately.

... tiny american flags for others!

2006-05-28T17:48:00.000-05:00

one of the joys of living on the main drag in somerville is that all of the parades go right by the house. i can wander out in my bare feet, sit on the stoop, and enjoy the wonder that is somerville. this place, while being the most densely populated city in MA (and in the top ten of the entire U.S.), still struggles to rest somewhere between modern metropolis and small town. nothing highlights this better than an olde tyme parade.

for two hours, shayne and i watched a long slow trek of people celebrating the holiday. there were marching bands, cheerleaders, armed forces (and not so armed forces, such as the transit police), bagpipers, clowns, nuns, flag girls, weird cars and trucks, little league teams, clydesdales, civil servants, shriners, shriners, and more shriners. if it weren't for the shriners, i would guess that the whole thing would have taken 45 minutes tops.

which left me to wonder about the shriners. they have appeared in most parades and celebrations that i have seen in the U.S. and yet i was left scratching my head, wondering "who are these men, and what the heck do they do??". so i pulled out my trusty "international encyclopedia of secret societies & fraternal orders" and did a little research.

the shriners full name is The Imperial Council of the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. no wonder they thought to shorten that. and they are an offshoot of the Masons (Ancient, Free, & Accepted). any master mason of the 32nd degree, or a Knights Templar, can get in. they are the wacky side of the usually very serious Masons.

according to lore, it was started because the Masons were teetotalers, and these men wanted to drink booze. they almost got kicked out of the Masons for being boisterous drunks, until they started turning some of their extra energy to good works. the shriners hospital kept them in the good graces of the Masons, and generally kept them from getting arrested for all of their wild shenanigans. it has not, however, kept them in the good graces of people who are followers of Islam. the shriners have ripped off and bedazzled a lot of their rituals and apparently generally piss them off.

and, as i suspected... ladies can't be shriners. if you are the wife, mother, daughter, or sister of a shriner, you can join the auxiliary Ladies Oriental Shrine of North America, but you can't get the sparkly fez or drive in the tiny cars or get elected to Most Illustrious Grand Potentate.

basically what i learned is that the shriners are even weirder than i initially thought.

i confess...

2006-05-25T20:05:00.000-05:00

many of my friends and family have heard me brag about my mad culinary skillz. i will talk your ear off about the importance of cream of tartar in making the perfect snickerdoodles, or how a little bit of lemon juice really just brightens up any meal. while i might not be able to pick a decent table wine, i can find a ripe melon, or a juicy lime, or generally tell if pork has been infused with water and salt prior to packaging. i own more specialty kitchen gadgets than a kitchen of my size should have. a zester. a ginger grater. a marble mortal and pestle. a freakin' cake fork for christ's sake. i have a hand cranked bread maker from the 50's, and an electric one from the nineties. i own more cookbooks than i own dictionaries.

and while my tastes tend to run to the comfort food, it's always just a little fancy. meatloaf wrapped in bacon. macaroni and cheese made with gruyere and gorgonzola. toasted pine nuts in everything.

and yet... i do confess... i have a love of junk food. and i don't mean junk food in the "twinkie" sense (although i did once make the loved and feared twinkie casserole for shayne), but in the convenience food, there's-no-real-food-in-my-food, sort of way.

i am terribly embarrassed about this.

so, to purge my guilty conscience, i do hereby avow my deepest love for the following:

bacos
bisquik
suddenly salad mix in a box
magic shell
cake mix
peperidge farms frozen garlic bread
any kind of doughnut, the crappier the better
cheese wiz
coffemate creamer
pilsbury crescent rolls
gourmayo
any mini sausages, preferably with tasty dippin' sauce

whew. i feel better now.

pornucopia!

2006-05-14T15:39:00.000-05:00

friday night shayne and i went out with peter and brenda to catch a night of amateur porn. it was the seventh annual "You Oughta Be in Pictures" show, sponsored by local women-friendly sex shops Grand Openings and Good Vibrations. people spend all year sending in submissions for the event, which is run three times. three master dvd's are made, and at the end of the night, each is ritualistically destroyed.

the clips are all shorts, which run from the funny to the dirty to the down-right kinky. but really the whole thing is just a celebration of sexuality. the actors appear to be having a good time, the audience is enthusiastic, and Kim Airs, the curator of the fesitval has a good sense of what plays well to a mixed crowd.

it seems like it's a great chance for everybody to get their preferences validated. there was an homage to men in thongs, a sneak peek at the sexual life of doughnuts, some intense gender-bending, and a deep respect for the sexuality of the older generation, the younger generation, and everybody in between. gay, straight, plushie or s/m. it was all there. and the audience loved it.

perhaps the funniest clip of the night was the last, which involved an erect penis and a lamb chop puppet. since we had already seen so much debauchery, we were expecting it and resigned, except for the young man behind me who blurted out "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! NO, LAMB CHOP! DON'T DO IT!!". but she did, and now we are all educated as to where baby lamb chop puppets come from. i think Shari Lewis might be turning over in her grave.

standing around and eating snacks for hunger

2006-05-10T18:02:00.000-05:00

shayne and i just did our annual volunteering for the Walk for Hunger. she and i have done this together most years for the past six years or so. our old company used to organize troops to help marshall crowds and direct walkers through busy intersections. while most of us no longer work for the company (and in fact, tend to call ourselves "survivors" of the place), we still show up year after year, to hold the same signs, and stand on the same corners, to help out.

and eat snacks.

one of the great ironies of this gig is that they pack up snack bags. free chips and drinks and coffee and doughnuts and candy bars. so while other people are trudging 20 miles to stamp out hunger, we lollygag, smoke cigarettes, eat free snacks. i felt a little guilty about the whole thing.

do i still feel like what i did contributed? sure. in that old lady sort of way. i dread becoming one of those people who no longer gives their time or energy, just their money. although that's valid, too.

helping out comes in many forms, and i was raised to raise my voice for what i believe in. when i was younger, i donated blood and marched on washington. i went to peace vigils and took back the night. i once even went so far as to lash myself to a trident nuclear submarine. i spent four years donating my time as a rape counselor, being on call for the hospitals for victims of sexual assault. i saw the worst that the world had to offer. and yes, when i was a teenager i even actually walked the Walk for Hunger.

and i just realized that i trudged those 20 miles, back in 1987, eating snacks, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes.

maybe i really haven't changed that much at all.

the lord giveth...

2006-05-09T20:14:00.000-05:00

and the lord apparently taketh away my magical blizzard toaster.

it's gone.

as quickly as it appeared on the roof of the car, it vanished from the casa porch. who wanders around the homes of somerville, desperately searching for a free small kitchen appliance?

i dunno.

maybe it gets more at the redemption center than the bounty of diet coke and seltzer bottles we leave in the recycling. maybe some tufts kid, all hopped up on goofballs, had the munchies and desperately needed a pop-tart.

and maybe i imagined the whole thing.

but i swear it was there.

ride me sexy.

ride me sexy!

2006-05-07T12:18:00.000-05:00

there is something slightly magical about the casa. i don't know if it's our magnetic pull... or the junky look of the outside of the house... but it seems to be the repository of other people's unwanted crap. and i am not talking about the detritus of the inhabitants. nope. people just leave their trash here.

this weekend somebody left us an old stairmaster. we don't know where it came from. but there is appeared in front of the casa. a few hours later, somebody added the "ride me sexy" sign. and a few hours after that, it was gone.

this isn't the first time stuff has just shown up here. during this winter's blizzard, a toaster automagically appeared on the roof of one of the cars. it's cord was laid out straight behind it, trailing down the back window. and the snow drifted around it. who carries around a toaster in the middle of a blizzard. and why?

earlier this year it was a copy of the book "Schnozzola: The Story of Jimmy Durante". it appeared on the roof of the grannymobile, open to a winsome picture of the big-nosed man himself.

why us? why here? and what the heck is going to appear next??

the hilarity gets us every time...

2006-04-22T09:23:00.000-05:00

so it's time for a new bulletted list, which has it's genesis in the personal shame i feel for having let the casa blog lapse. what can i say? i fell victim to too much hilarity.

* kathryn had a nasty accident on her bike, which resulted in a casa family field trip to the ER. shayne and i went along, since any chance to play doctor is a good one in our book. pics from the visit (yes, i brought my camera just so i could blog about it) can be found here.

* shayne and i discovered a new way to amuse ourselves a few weekends ago. i decided that it was my mission to find shayne a new boyfriend. so i posted a personal ad for her on CL. i thought it was a witty ad, and apparently many men agreed with me. shayne got me back by writing a personal ad for me. over 50 responses in 24 hours poured into my new email account datemyroomie@gmail.com. we spent the weekend fielding emails for each other and corresponding with some great men. no dates came out of it, but it was probably a step in the right direction for both of us. if you care to read the ad that i posted for her, please check the comments section.

* and finally we celebrated easter in high style with a pub crawl that started at the thirsty scholar and ended in a hot tub on the cape. i am not sure how these things happen.

too much hilarity has resulted in both shayne and i being sick and lying around the living room moaning "i don't feel so good" to each other. it's the casa family motto, and we wear our coat of arms proudly.

welcome to the world, xavier...

2006-04-14T00:03:00.000-05:00

may your life be long and happy and filled with love and laughter and beauty... i'm sure it will with such wonderful parents (and aunties and uncles and grandparents!! :)

birthdays and rocket launchers

2006-04-02T17:26:00.000-05:00

so i turned 35 on thursday, or as Marc put it... i've made it way past Jesus age now. the whole thing was a lot of fun, and i find that i am not one of those neurotic people who gets mopey about getting older. i got two stuffed llamas from a guy i work with, which was sweet. a gift certificate to dunkin donuts for many cups of coffee, and various cards from the women i work with. got to chat with many friends and family and field a plethora of emails. the whole thing made me feel quite loved.

scoutie not only took me out for sushi (okay, we actually ate sushi in our jammies on the couch in the casa), and bought me flowers, but she made me a tower of home-made whoopie pies. she remembered that i had mentioned it three months ago as what i wanted for my birthday. i, of course, had totally forgotten this. man, you haven't had a sweet desert unless you've had a fresh baked whoopie pie.

friday i went out for drinks with some close friends. i find that my birthday is a great excuse for my friends to get hammered. this time the evening wound up with all of us in underbones in various arm-wrestling matches. the one-armed-bandit wisely decided to take pics instead of wrestling. i like to think i get smarter as i get older.

and to end up a good week, my staff and i got to spend some time hanging out with the guys from the ballistics department. i feel like my job at the crime lab is finally paying off... since they let me hold a rocket launcher! there are not many jobs one can get and play with a rocket launcher, short of being in the army or being a terrorist. and let's face it, those two occupations seem to come with "don't ask, don't tell" policies that make me uncomfortable.

so it's been a good week. many thanks to all who played a part in it.

the making of a bridesmaid dress & a wedding!!

2006-03-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

my dear friend sara got married on 25 march, and i was lucky enough to be one of her bridesmaids. i was supposed to wear a pink dress, and as usual, i dreamed up a dress but then couldn't find anything that quite worked. cobi and i tried going to new york to find the perfect pink silk shantung, but didn't have any luck. finally, my sister and i headed down to chinatown and stumbled on a watermelon fabric. there wasn't enough, so i had to modify the pattern slightly. it still came out well.
i am always fascinated by processes. so, here's some pictures of the process!

i started off by laying out the pattern on the lining and silk. all the pieces were then cut out, and i pinned little labels on each piece (1 right = piece 1, right side) so things didn't get confusing, and so that i was sure to use the 'right side' of the silk and that everything matched. nothing is worse than finishing the dress and finding out you've sewed a right-side to a wrong-side. reading the directions was key: normally i like to blunder my way through projects, but i only had one shot at doing this right and was gonna be damned if i screwed up beacuse of my hubris. i read each direction carefully and, as dad always said, measured twice and cut once. i did my best to balance confidence with hubris, and it worked pretty well.

penelope was kind enough to supervise the sewing and cutting, chewing on the fabric edges and chasing thread when needed. every night, she re-arranged the sewing table by batting anything she could onto the floor, just to watch it fall. i wore the special kathryn-shirt that rd and ben made for my birthday - it has special powers, and i needed 'em.

carefully sewing the silk - the hardest was yet to come, and i struggled royally with the boning at first. the zipper went in alright, but i was dumb enough to try putting the boning in the front seams (curved for the bust) first, instead of doing the (non-curved) side seams. this was the first project for which i'd used boning, and i have to say it was a lot easier than i thought. next time i plan to have some masking tape on hand to hold the boning in place - it will make it easy, i can sew through the masking tape, and then just tear it off without having to struggle with pins or (as i did) simply winging it by going slowly and holding the boning as i needed.

the lining and dress itself, waiting to be united in some nice even seams. as you can see, i barely made it in terms of thread. i started using different colored thread on the boning and non-visible seams in order to conserve the matching thread for the hems and sewing the lace together for the ruffled petticoat that was attached to the bottom of the lining.

and, the result with my cute little green shoes. i got a pedicure with pink to match the dress, and also covered a headband with the pink fabric. i couldn't find any reasonably priced green jewelry to match, so i made a necklace and some earrings to match. maybe i'll post some close-up pictures of those as well. some observations:

the boning of the dress was well worth it, especially for the shape and bit of support it provided.
i was worried the shoes didn't match, but tying the color in with accessories was key
patience, patience: the only time i started making mistakes while making the dress was when i was tired and had been working on it for hours. from now on, as soon as i make a mistake or get frustrated, i need to put everything down and return to it after a good night's sleep
the pattern, fabric, and notions were $75. i spent about 14 hours on the dress - so if you have more money than time, i would recommend just buying a dress. that being said, the sense of satisfaction i get everytime i look at it is worth a whole lot. it was just the fabric i wanted, and i was able to tailor the fit to my figure - it's hard to find things that fit just right

and, the wedding:

me, sara, christine, and joey (the man of honor)

completely lovely. sara looked fantastic, and the ceremony and reception were very sara & chris; not too formal and just right. it's always nice to see someone who is in love with your friend - it's like it gives you an automatic connection: "hey, i think she's awesome too!!". in different ways, but you know what i mean. anyhow, i'm not gonna get all emo right now, but it was really wonderful to be there and spend more time with chris.

when i got there i had some nice time to spend with sara, and we got to just relax and chat at the swanky corporate apartment we stayed in. i also got to hang out with joey and run errands and he understands about alone time, and chitty-chat with christine, which was really nice. i love visiting NC and wish i could do it more, though i am excited because i'll be back in august for my ex-boyfriend potatoes' wedding. fortunately sara and chris are going as well, so i know the trip will be super-fun. you can visit sara & chris' wedding photo page for more pictures. oh, weddings - so much fun! i could really go on - the bachelorette was awesome, and sara's friends are so nice and were hospitable and helpful, the reception was great fun and we danced and drank and...you know...one of those fantastic weekends that i desperately freakin' needed.

i hate to be the one to tell boo that we're jewish.

2006-03-12T19:33:00.000-05:00

boo loves to pretend that he is one of santa's reindeer:

on the mend...

2006-03-12T16:49:00.000-05:00

so i have been sick as a dog this week. i was doing fine until tuesday evening, when i was horribly stricken with something mean. my fever didn't get below 102 until thursday morning, and at it's peak it reached 104. as an adult, fevers that high are rare, and i think it cooked my brain a little. now i am just left with a garden variety cold, and the feeling that my body is recuperating from a long illness. i lost five pounds and let the cats fend for themselves while shayne was gone. now that i am mostly better, i spent a chunk of the morning cleaning up cat poo. i think they managed to get every room in the house.

in the midst of this, my mom had a birthday. while last year my sister orchestrated a great little flickr project... this year the best i could do was a weak little phone call in the morning. it might not have been the most exuberant birthday greeting, but my mom knows i love her and that she is often in my thoughts. happy belated birthday mom!

on a random side note -- i am getting very interested in how unknown strangers find the blog. this is such a little personal account of life at the casa, that they must find it strange. so, for the first half of the month of march, here is a partial list of google image searches that have brought folks to the blog:

nekkid
tasty deserts
naked kate
letterpress printing
blondie brownies
nice house on the beach
dancing chicken
franklin, tennessee
barn smell
see down her shirt
gardening hat
marinating
jesus sculpture
penelope pumpkins

i think this shows that, if nothing else, this blog is an eclectic mix. and that the casa must be a damn interesting place to live...

mormon country

2006-03-11T19:00:00.000-05:00

yeah, that's right - i went to utah this week. i went to visit one of my oldest and dearest friends, who luckily works in a ski store and got me free rentals and lift tickets. thanks, malik! you're the best...around!! nothing's gonna evah bring you down!! i skiied at 3 different mountains in park city (park city, deer valley, and the canyons), read 5 books (including the last 3 dark tower books by stephen king, good stuff), and watched 2 movies (star trek: nemesis and underworld... nemesis was great, underworld was just as crappy as i expected, but mildly entertaining nonetheless).

the skiing was amazing - this is a full mountain picture of the canyons, which was probably my favorite mountain. the trails are all set back from the village/condo part of the resort - you have to take a gondola over a huge canyon in order to get to the slopes. it's also the biggest of the three mountains, but because of the terrain (lots of canyons, just as advertised), it felt the smallest. it took me a while to get the feel of it after not having skiied for 7 years, but once i remembered how to shake my hips (the fact that i'd forgotten proves that i don't get out enough these days), i was just fine. as i left park city, a huge storm hit, dumping about 31" of snow over 3 days. i bowed my head and apologized to mother nature for all the complaining i do about new england snow.

good company, good skiing, good books. but most importantly, i managed to avoid all the mormons, returning just as heathen as i left. which is good, because i've been informed that if i turn mormon i have to live in the basement. and it's scary down there.

some recent casa accomplishments

2006-03-05T19:23:00.000-05:00

well, we've had a very busy weekend here at the casa. friday night, casa-friend dan had a party at his beautiful new house. kate, shayne and i headed over to bring greetings, bad champagne, and homemade mac n cheese. i'm particularly impressed that i pulled the mac n cheese together, having been out of work sick on wednesday and thursday, and a shitty day back on friday.

regardless, i rallied and we trooped over where i had a fantastic time seeing CL people, and getting pretty tossed and stoned. i never smoke pot, so i'm always particularly entertained with myself (and everyone else for that matter). i told the party stories of stupid things done while drunk, including playing 'nails'. this involves a tree stump, some drunk friends, and a hammer being tossed in the air and caught, with a rapid whack on someone's nail. it's the best freaking game ever; i only wish we had a stump in the backyard. i could be found every summer night, inebriated with a box of nails and some cute boys, standing around a stump.

anyhow, shayne and i got trashed and kate stayed sober, and we trooped over to marc's house. fortunately he had cupcakes for us to eat, unfortunately he only had gin with a weird sports drink as a mixer. shayne and i, always the troopers, didn't let that stop us. and: it was weirdly good. we headed home, where i passed out in bed after sending someone a text message. i can't remember what i wrote, and i didn't save it, but the rather ...er... curt response would indicate i got some things off my chest. oh, kathryn, you're such a funny girl! hahaha. anyhow, i woke up face down with all my earrings in, hair still all done, socks on, but no pants. *shrug* it's beyond me.

saturday was spent sleeping and washing dishes. saturday night my dear friend alison and i went out to a nice sushi dinner. we caught up, and had a really nice time. the trouble started when we headed to charlie's kitchen, where we ran into a bunch of friends upstairs at a table. they're a bunch of dudes who tattoo for a living, and they like to drink. they particularly like to do shots, ordered in rounds, for the entire table. alison was bright enough to leave after a few beers and two shots, but i decided i needed to finish what i started. more shots, more cape codders later, i was pleasantly hammered and decided to go help my sister downstairs (she was bartending). she gave me water till everyone had cleared out, and i washed the bar top and helped clean up, then went home. it was a fun night!

which brings us to today. i met my friend joe for coffee at 10:30. we had a nice chat, and caught up. i walked him to work and then headed home. napped, sat, smoke cigarettes, and did a lot of thinking. i've had some weird personal stuff going on lately - i'm pretty confused, and things can't get worked out for another few days due to scheduling. it's definitely got me in really bizarre headspace, and if i sit and think, i drive myself insane.

so, i cleaned the oven. for three hours, with a toothbrush. i just sat there in my sweatpants and shirt from yesterday, scouring the goddamn oven. i took all the knobs off and thoroughly washed them, i soaked and scoured the burners, the pans, everything. it was really therapeutic. and i felt accomplished. not wanting to quit a good thing, i did the following things as well:

washed all the kitchen rugs
scoured the dishrack
washed the microwave, inside & out
washed the fridge
cleaned all kitchen surfaces
put out all trash and recyclables
washed both penelope's dishes
washed penelope's little orange placemat
cleaned penelope's litter box and put in new litter
swept
washed the floor
dusted and swept the living room and dining room
swept the bathroom
washed the bathroom floor

needless to say i'm sitting pretty fuckin' pretty over here at the casa. once the floors dry i'll clean the bathroom, and then go to bed. or get started on the bridesmaid dress. or the invites for the bachelorette. fuuuuck! i need a personal assistant.

weekend round up (from last weekend)

2006-02-26T12:17:00.000-05:00

i have been trying to be better about updating the blog. so i am going to at least catch up on last weekend. maybe later i will do this weekend. i make no promises.

after an incredibly stressful week at work, and the promise of an even more stressful one the next week, i decided to split town. shayne and i went up to VT to visit our respective sisters.

i started the trip by going to a turkey supper at the catholic church. they needed a new roof, so for $8.00 i got a full dinner and some interesting conversation. the guy next to me scared the pants off of me by wanting to talk about the Pope. i felt edgy enough about being in a catholic church, the last thing i wanted to do was get into a theologic conversation. it turns out that the dude wanted to bash on the Pope for being a nazi youth. boy, was i relieved.

the rest of the weekend was spent eating, and walking, and futzing. my sister figured out a nifty little cellphone hack so that i could create my own ringtone. now, when my phone rings, it plays Lonesome Magic Vice Harvest (aka -- the music from that Geico commercial). it makes me happy every time it happens. i got to see the school my sister swims out, and the legal clinic where greg works. and i got to pick up some of my favorite VT doughnuts and other assorted junk at the dented can store.

i returned much rested and ready to face the chaos at work.

not quite sleeping, fast in bed.

2006-02-24T04:32:00.000-05:00

so i'm up for my usual insomniac bout. reading a book, texting truncated conversations with an absence.

i just had a cigarette on the front porch. the smell of the air reminded me of a night in august four years and two apartments ago. it was so hot that night - i don't know how cold air and hot air can smell the same, but they do.

it was the first time brandon had slept over, but just slept, and on the couch. i was a strangely naive 23, and still not sure how to make the jump from couch to bed. we had bare feet, and i was wearing a slate blue tank top and pj pants - pink with hearts, a valentine's day present from my mother. there was a top that matched. it was overkill and i gave it to the goodwill, but good pj pants are something you keep.

i had brushed my teeth and was walking down the hallway. it was an awful hallway, running the length of our almost railroad apartment. there was a flourescent light at one end, and it was wood panelled and narrow. two doors at opposite ends, with nothing in between. somewhere there's a picture he took of me walking to the living room, with little drops of water and toothpaste staining my tank top. he loved that picture because i was so real and honest in it, and i realized that there is an intimacy and purity in unadultered reality that i'd never known before.

neither of us could sleep that night, and we ended up sitting on the front stoop at 4 in the morning, with our respective pj pant legs rolled up, touching knees and whispering so that we didn't distrub the city.

one year (one heartbreak, four months of space, one semi-back-together) later we were riding our bikes on the fourth of july. i had already fallen once because of him, and we took another tumble on the way back from playing in some sprinklers. there are pictures of our skinned knees together on the curb. he got it worse than i did, but the accident was caused when he grabbed the back of my bike and pushed - well intentioned but poorly executed. friends at the party were angry with him for not being more careful with me. i still took care of us: washed cuts, ibuprofen, water.

it's strange to think that someone who left me so bereft is now this beautiful set of memories and things that float along at night and have a taste and smell to them. tonight there is a sense of things going on: some sort of activity in the ether that can't be spoken or even defined with words. like you just reach up and pluck the past out of the breeze, to look at for a moment, and then let it drift off again. i am in love with the idea of somerville keeping my secrets and memories safe on its porches and stoops and quiet streets.

hunkered down...

2006-02-13T11:08:00.000-05:00

we had a nice weekend hunkered down at the casa. saturday was spent in tense anticipation of the coming storm muttering "where is the damn snow". the damn snow didn't come until the wee hours of Sunday morning. Shayne and i went out to the sligo with half of the duffless foundation and MDG and some other friends. we camped out in the sligo until the jackass with the giant beer hat on filled up the place with kids. we tried to hold our ground, we tried filling up the jukebox and drinking our cheap beer in plastic cups. duffless and i even shared a massive mind meld moment when her songs came on, and we talked about mix tapes from the 80's. for some odd reason, almost any mix tape i got from a dude in the highschool included the song Troy by Sinead O'Connor. as i was telling her this, the song cued up on the jukebox. it was magical.

once we were finally forced out of the sligo, we wandered over to underbones, which was quieter and warmer and knew the difference between tonic water and club soda. we stayed until they kicked us out. and like any fairy tale must end, we put a slightly tipsy emily into the Banky Cab and made him promise to get her home safely.

yesterday the storm roared through, dumping almost two feet of snow on us. i hunkered down at the casa, shoveled and cooked and caught up on my mail. sometimes the snow really brigs out the best in people. the neighbors chat and wave. the dogs frolic in the drifts. the streets are quiet and sedate. when i went out on my porch this morning to have a smoke, i looked down at the fresh two inches of powder on my walkway, and saw that somebody had left me a message. there was also a heart on the back of my car. thanks to whomever left it. the little gestures remind me of why i stay in new england.

gains and losses...

2006-02-03T23:39:00.000-05:00

no, not really. let's just say it wasn't the best of weeks. nor was it the worst. it might be a little out of place above the picture of me jauntily posing in kate's huge underwear, but i'm feeling introspective tonight, so if you're just here for the laughs, you might want to move along. i'm sure there will be more shenanigans and hijinks soon enough, stay tuned.

"Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe."
from "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison

i worry a lot about the kind of love i give - is it wicked or violent or weak or stupid? or is it just flawed and imperfect and complicated? i know that sometimes my love comes out all wrong, it gets twisted up inside and i don't know how to untangle it. all i know for sure is that my loved ones make me want to be a better person so i can better return the love that's shown to me (even when that love comes out messy or mean or confused...). i hope i'm on the right path. if the people who love me are any indication, i'm pretty sure i am.

thank you all for loving me so well.

finally -- an update!

2006-01-22T18:32:00.000-05:00

okay, so i am finally caving to all the peer pressure, and doing a little update. sorry folks. i suppose having a blog is much like having a pet -- it needs constant care and feeding. thankfully the blog, unlike the pets, seems to have no problem "keeping it in the box". trixie, on the other hand..

i made it through the holidays just fine. my sis came down and we did some nifty art projects for gifts for the family. when i finally get the pics uploaded, i'll post 'em. they turned out really nice. spent some time at my dad's house. ate a lot of food. spent scoutie's bday (otherwise known as new years eve) eating yet more food and watching a foot and a half of dvd's.

the crime lab continues to be odd. the joy this month is that somehow they let the maintenance contract for the air conditioning lapse. so we can't get it fixed. in the whole damn lab. and who gets to hear all of the complaints about this? me, of course. am i the facilities manager? nope. just lucky i guess. crime is up in massachusetts right now. gun violence is particularly up. watch your backs, folks. could be a dangerous year.

in other news... most of you have heard that i have an underwear buying problem. i own more than 100 pairs of panties, over 75 bras in a rainbow of colors. and the money i have spent on all of this (i have expensive tastes) could probably feed a small nation. it is a problem i am getting mostly under control since my finances got tight. now, what most of you probably *don't* know is that i have a deeper, darker, underwear problem. one i am ashamed of. one i can't control no matter how had i try. my problem is this:

I DON'T KNOW WHAT SIZE UNDERWEAR I WEAR.

i have been wearing underwear on and off for 35 years. and somehow i still have no sense of what i wear. a 6? 7? 8? medium? large? extra large? i can't figure it out. so i have an entire bag of never worn underwear in my room that just isn't my size.

lately, perhaps overestimating my recent weight gain, i have been buying underwear that would fit *around* an entire small nation. really big. at that size, it isn't called "underwear" anymore. it sure isn't "panties". it's just plain ol' big underpants.

here's shayne wearing my latest mistake:

a few lists.

2006-01-21T18:49:00.000-05:00

things i like about vermont

trees, streams, lakes and clouds
filmmakers
white river junction
what feels like the space to be outdoors and creative
green things in the summer, white things in the winter
small towns and cats

things i would like to do

go to grad school at NYU and study visual culture
get a new rear wheel for my bike with a new hub
rake & mulch my garden. i know, i know...i'm running behind. done! 01.22.06
take up handset letterpress again
mo.ti.vate.!

things i have done recently

gone to philly for new year's with the ladies
lost and found my wallet - thanks officer nieves. and, if you ever want to did the do, you know who to call.
had a friend over for dinner
gone to a friend's for dinner
cried twice
gotten pretty hammered a few times
driven to vermont and back

i have no pictures i really feel like sharing. but hopefully there will be some visuals soon.
oh, and one thing i would love to see more of: cute butchy-dykes on home improvement shows. ai yi yi...hot.

my gains and losses for the week

2006-01-18T22:03:00.000-05:00

got out of my parking ticket fine: +$45
received package from hickory farms: + (meat and cheese)
had first part of root canal/crown procedure: + painful drilling, -$1,800

i got a parking ticket when i parked on the street in powder house circle a few months ago, but the nice man at the somerville traffic and parking office let me off. thank you mr. whatever-your-name-is, i'm sorry i wasn't paying attention when you introduced yourself but i'm grateful for your leniency.

kate and i finally got our xmas gift for each other - a discount meat and cheese platter from hickory farms. behold the bounty!! we decided to go high-class this year, hoping to avoid the figi's fiasco from last xmas, most of which went uneaten and can still be found in kate's office. figi's gave us many cheese products, none of which contained any cheese at all, and some interesting meat products. our favorite was the mettwurst - we still sing about it today (to the tune of 'sound of silence')...
hello mettwurst my old friend
i've come to eat you once again
from figi's we did get you
only to find you taste like a shoe

the root canal wasn't painful, just creepy. i kept picturing the dentist poking his teeny tiny little pick deep into the roots of my teeth and pulling out bits of pink tissue (wondering what a root canal is? the american dental association can explain it better than me). by the end of it i had messed up my neck from being tense and couldn't turn my head for a few days, but next time i'm make sure he gasses me or i get some valium. yeah, that's right, i have to go back! root canals take at least 2 visits, sometimes many more. but eventually i'll be able to eat using the right side of my mouth again and when it happens i will eat potato chips and jelly beans for every meal!! it will be glorious.

oh and i started school today. this time next week i'll be programming my very own lego robot. my hope is that it will be able to act as my monkey butler, getting me food and drinks so i never have to leave the couch.

happy happy kids...

2005-12-25T14:41:00.000-05:00

merry christmas, all that good stuff. it was 80 degrees in LA yesterday, and my sister and i cruised through hollywood and gorged ourselves on pink's bacon-chili-cheese dogs and nacho-chili-cheese fries. totally disgusting but absolutely delicious. and we only do it once a year, so whatev! i am, however, overeating. i know that happens during the holidays but me being here with my mother makes it worse.

things with mom have been going fine. we're not best friends or anything, but i've been good about ignoring the nagging as best i can. we've spent a lot of time cooking in the kitchen (sugar cookies, baklava, spicy stew, saffron orzo, coffee cake, two batches of icing, a layer cake, salad, steak tips, gouda mashed potatoes, broccoli, yule trixies, pork loin, spinach artichoke dip, steamed veggies, more mashed potatoes, asparagus, and devilled eggs), which makes her happy. she just talks and talks and i just cook and cook and we're perfectly fine with that. and i'm enjoying spending time with my dad. yesterday i was laying on the diving board by the pool in my flannel pj's and was wicked hot - god i miss the sunshine.

i love it dearly, but i completely loathe this city...i miss the casa and the 'lope and the kate and the shayne. i can't wait to get home!

it ain't quite chestnuts roasting on an open fire

2005-12-11T18:31:00.000-05:00

but one of the things that i really like about the holiday season is doing some holiday baking. i like baking at any time, but this gives me a chance to really strut my stuff. add into that the fact that i am dirt poor this year (working at the crime lab barely keeps the cats in kibble), so its a nice gift for folks. this year, scoutie and i are doing a joint effort. we took all of these ingredients:

and we
added some
elbow grease...

and at the end of the day, we had a freezer full of spectacular cookies. lemon shortbread with dried cranberries, peanut butter blossoms, gingersnaps, and peppermint cookies with chocolate drizzle. this morning i woke up early and made some biscotti and some blondies.

we have gone through two pounds of butter, five pounds of flour, two pounds of sugar, nine eggs, half a bottle of vanilla, a lemon, a bag of dried cranberries, a bag of almonds, five cups of coconut, 3/4 a cup of mashed potatoes (don't ask), and three bags of chocolate chips are about to meet their doom.

if that doesn't scream happy holidays, i don't know what does.

christmas comes to the crime lab...

2005-12-08T18:25:00.000-05:00

so i figured it was only a matter of time, and i was right. christmas has come to the crime lab. i was initially fooled into believing they actually meant to strive for religious inclusiveness by advertising their "holiday party" instead of a christmas party, and advocating a "yankee gift swap" over a secret santa.

but today the kids who work for me went up into the attic and brought down the christmas tree, now proudly displayed in the reception area. one of the guys referred to is as a "holiday tree", and i had to put my foot down on that misnomer. if it's a tree (or a reasonable facsimile brought to you by international plastics) and it's bedecked with ornaments and tinsel, and if it is nestling gaily wrapped gifts underneath it (or empty cheerio boxes wrapped to resemble something that might actually be fun), and if there is a benevolent angel on top (or another special item from international plastics, but this time looking slightly melted and a little moldy) -- then it's a god damn fucking christmas tree. and just call is such.

apparently the commonwealth of massachusetts is christian.

and i had that awkward moment that all non-believers face... do i say something?

frankly, i am tired of having the conversation of whether or not xmas has become a secular holiday. peoples opinions on the matter are as entrenched and deeply believed as religion itself. and i am tired of being the wet blanket who douses everybody's holiday cheer. the kids were having a great time setting up the tree, and it probably made their day. everybody walks by and comments on how festive the reception area looks.

so, no. i didn't say anything. but it had nothing to do with endorsing good will toward men or seasonal holiday cheer. the fact of the matter is that i am only four months into my six month probationary period. and if the commonwealth is dumb enough to put a tree in a government building, then they are dumb enough to give me a bag of hell for a christmas present if i complain.

but next year they had better watch out.

some good news from chatsworth:

2005-12-05T17:18:00.000-05:00

marilyn manson has gotten married!
i have to tell mom so she can drop off a card or some sort of gift basket - i know she will be thrilled!!

so here's what i learned today...

2005-12-01T19:35:00.000-05:00

i learned that the way to get all my friends to the casa blog is to let a rumor start that i posted nekkid pics of my tenant. no such luck, kids.

but while you're here... i just had this conversation with a Mr. Burke from california

Mr. B: Hi. I'm calling on behalf of the ACLU.

Me: Hi.

Mr. B: You may not know this, but the ACLU is in the middle of a landmark case in California concerning your civil liberties.

Me: Which case?

Mr. B: It involves the right of the government to subpoena your medical and library records with practically no cause, reason, or judicial oversight.

Me: Oh. You mean the Patriot Act case.

Mr. B: Well... because of a Gag Rule we are not allowed to say.

Me: But you mean that case, right?

Mr. B: I can't even confirm that much.

Me: You can't say Patriot Act, can you?

Mr. B: I can't even confirm that much.

the whole thing was very Kafkaesque.

on an unrelated side note: the assessors office just came to evaluate my property. they downgraded my bathroom from modern to standard. i am not sure what that says about my house.

open invitation time!

2005-11-26T11:45:00.000-05:00

i know that the casa has already extended an open invitation to the excellent spencer anderson, who is dreamy with his carpenter skills, good ideas, and glasses.

i am pleased to announce to joaquin phoenix (and any of 'his people' who might follow the casa blog) that he is also more than welcome to visit the casa at anytime. i mean, really...anytime. with his acting skills, handsome good looks, and really quite excellent singing voice, i would definitely cook him dinner.

also, if you haven't seen walk the line, you should. i really enjoyed it.

bah humbug! (or: here we go again...)

2005-11-16T14:25:00.000-05:00

the holidays are fast approaching, and december is the most dread-filled month of the year for me. thanksgiving should be just fine: i'll make a nice dinner, we'll have people over for a post-t-day wind down at the casa, and everything will be low pressure super nice. i'll make an appropriate amount of food, the casa will smell good, i'll have fun entertaining...it'll be great. christina even got the night off work, so she'll be there for the whole thing!

then, there's christmas. i just got an email from dad, and the line "we'd like you to come home for a full five days" made my stomach drop. i love the idea of christmas, but i freaking hate it. and i feel this weird pressure to lose some weight before i go home, so that mom doesn't comment on it. i get to spend almost $500 to visit and get picked at, nagged, and bothered. for five whole days. my dad describes mom and i as being "on different sides of a brick wall, banging our heads". swell - i just can't wait to get home.

here's a little dialogue from last year. dad and i were sitting in the living room, quietly reading our respective books. then mom comes on the scene:

mom: are you cold? is it cold in here?

me: no, i'm fine.

now she looks at dad...

mom: honey, are you cold?

dad: no, i'm comfortable.

mom: are you sure?

dad and i: yes.

mom: kathryn, come over here and open the vent, i think you must be cold.

me: no, i'm not cold, i'm just fine.

mom: are you thirsty?

me: no

mom: how about some o.j.?

me: no, thank you, i'm not thirsty

mom: want something to eat? a sandwich? we have left-over ham!!

me: no, i'm not hungry, thanks.

mom: there's cookies!

me: mom, i'm not hungry.

mom reaches out and grabs my foot. please note: i hate people touching my feet. i retract my foot under a pillow to protect it.

mom: who did your pedicure? did you paint them yourself? etc. etc.

so this year: screw decking the halls. just keep my wine glass filled, thanks, and i'll try to avoid decking mom.

huh.

2005-11-11T12:15:00.000-05:00

my office overlooks harvard square. currently, one of the (many) buskers is a troupe of south american gentlemen, theoretically in the garb of their native land. they are playing flutes, guitars and using synthesizers. it's the sort of music you might hear in "the nature store". i dislike this sort of music intensely. my boss is here, and she *loves* it, so the window is open and i can't turn on my music. so i'm just sitting, listening....and the tune they're playing is freakin' Unchained Melody - i am truly in hell.

and what a segue - from one pottery-related topic to another, namely: mine! here's the pottery i made over the summer, in my first pottery class ever. i know at least one person out there is excited about this (hi G.O.D.P.!), so let's do it up:

here are the three i'm most proud of. i made a flower pot with a fluted edge for my sister (to replace one that the mysterious flower-pot vandals broke), as well as a small cup and a bowl. please notice how thick and clumsy the sides of the bowl are, and then compare to my (later) flower pot and cup, whose sides are slender and delicate. i am also a huge fan of bright colors, which i tried to incorporate. my teacher is a big 'cambridge-earth-tones' type, and she hated the colors and combos i chose. oh well! (edit: in the time i've put this blog entry on 'draft' - approx. 1 hr 15 minutes - they've looped back from playing the pink panther theme song to do a repeat of 'unchained melody' - are they on a freaking loop?!)

I also made a small pitcher. during our first class, we had to make cups. they were naturally awful, but my teacher had us keep them and "make them into something useful", so i took a sloppy cup and formed a wiggle into the spout, added a handle, and glazed it with a dip-glaze. there is a matching, also droopy sugar bowl but i don't have a picture of that one. anyhow - it is cute, in a child-like way.

and last but not least is my favorite bowl, because it came out well, and i love the colors i used. the finish is a little imperfect, but hey - people pay big bucks for handcrafted...right? there are also a couple of ashtrays - i only have a picture of one - but all of those were dipped, not painted. i wish the colors had come out a little better in the pictures, because it really is quite pretty. for bigger pictures of all of these (haha...) go to my flickr page.

overall, i had a pretty good time in class. if i had the money right now, i'd take another class, but in the meantime i'm keeping myself busy with other little projects.

as long as we're updating: the casa garden

2005-11-10T15:32:00.000-05:00

i've just begun putting the casa garden to sleep for the long winter. there are a few small blooms still left on the Agastache 'Apache Sunset'. The common name is 'root beer hyssop' so named because when you brush the foliage, the slightly sweet, sticky smell of root beer is released. i spent much of a weekend digging up all the perennials and re-arranging them, as i now know how they look when more fleshed out than the tiny little plants i put in last spring.

i think it should be a good spring; i hope my favorites will come back up after the winter. the one and only plant that i am positively dying about, hoping they'll survive and bloom, are the Papaver orientalis. i saw some in a friend's garden in seattle two years ago, and fell in love - they have these huge, beautiful, rice-paper thin flowers. that's all i want: oriental poppies.

my columbines did pretty well this year, though, and i'm excited to see how much bigger they get. i've got several varieties planted: Aquliegia canadensis, Aquilegia skinnerii (Tequila Sunrise), and Aquilegia vulgaris (Black Barlow). i need to do a very thorough job cleaning up leaves and debris, though, because some have contracted leaf miners. in order to prevent their reappearance in the spring, all contaminated debris and leaves from the columbines must be removed. i've included a picture - they kind of look like intestines. gross.

other than that, there haven't really been any pest problems. though the local birds did snack quite extensively on the grass seed i put down a few weeks ago. no biggie - the grass hasn't really taken off, and i suspect i will just re-seed it in the spring. there are some precious little grasslings, though - kind of nice to think about new buds and growth even as things are slowing down and going into hibernation for the long, crappy winter. maybe i'll pull up those pictures in february to remind me of what's to come.

the garden's come a long way, though, and i'm proud of the results. the most recent task was to enlarge the perennial bed, and lay down a handsome bluestone border. we also took all the timbers from along the back fence, and made a raised bed at the far end of the garden near the big tree. i hope to put some interesting varieties of ferns and hellebores in that bed - plants that do well in shade. also, i love the unique color combinations and variations of hellebores. if i could afford to have a huge drift of them, i would - but toooooo expensive. maybe i can come up with some other ideas during the winter.

one of the benefits to being a card-carrying member of the somerville garden club is that i get a newsletter every month, with a handy list of tasks to do in the garden. it's nice to have such a climate/region-specific reference, as well as thoughtful articles on plants and horticultural goings-on in the area. you might initially think it a po-dunk operation, but the club has its shit together - the newsletter is well written and well designed, and i get emailed updates of club gatherings and projects. i'm bummed to have missed the november meeting (it was last night, i was hosting the volume vixens meeting here at the casa), but will be able to hit up the wilson square fall cleanup this weekend.

to document our progess, here are some pictures of the garden in the fall of 2004:

and in the fall of 2005, with some help from christina, kate and derek: (please be sure to note our posh bluestone edging, provided gratis by derek)

and the hopeful grass:

sleep tight, garden!
i'll be dreaming of you all winter.
love,
kathryn

an update from the upper half...

2005-11-08T16:58:00.000-05:00

i realized that with the exception of my rant about the alderman at large race, i have been mostly quiet. been busy. here's a recap of what i've been up to:

* i got an apology from Rebekah and a statement that she would take me off her contact list immediately. i wrote her back thanking her, but explaining that might be difficult since i hadn't given her my address or phone number (oops). i rectified that. since then i have gotten no phone calls, and they have mostly stopped by only once a day, most times for the lower half. however, since they came by *twice* today and hung crap on my doorknob, i am still pissed.

* i did buy a car. i have a '98 honda civic EX coupe. it's green and looks a lot like scouties, only minus all the glitz. but it has a moonroof, so i think we will call it a draw. it passed inspection and gets 30+ miles to the gallon and in three years i will have it paid off. yikes.

* i have a new commitment to opening all my mail every day. new mail bin, new sorting files, and a new attitude. this might not seem like a big deal, but i have had a mail problem for years. it finally caught up to me in an evil way, when i missed a notice that they were canceling my homeowners insurance. i *will* open all my mail. really.

* trixie has the herp, and boo is getting wierder.

* i got to write a testimonial for my old boss, fred, at accent banner. the owner of the company is trying to block his collecting unemployment after he was fired (right after i left). fred asked if i would mind writing a statement about the hours that he worked. no problem. the owner of the flag store tried to get it tossed out of the court because it was hearsay, and i wasn't there to testify about it's validity or my own. the judge looked over my letter and said "she works for the state police. that's good enough for me. the letter is in." my current job has weird perks i never would have thought of.

* work is going okay. we've been busy taking over the running of our condemned building in agawam. i got a raise thanks to my union.

* and finally, mitt romney has actually done something right in my eyes -- Massachusetts has finally made a public statement about it's intentions to fully divest from Microsoft in the next year. we are moving to all open source software. this should be interesting. and i have been having a hard time at work explaining to people why this is a good thing. they are mostly computer illiterate, except they can use word, and maybe excell, and they can probably find porn on the internet. then again, these people also don't understand why there are constitutional challenges to the patriot act, and why the gays aren't happy with civil unions and keep trying for marriage rights. we just speak a different language.

an open letter to Rebekah Gewirtz...

2005-11-02T18:10:00.000-05:00

Dear Rebecca, It was so nice to meet you on my porch. Thank you for talking with me about the campaign. I appreciate your thoughtful consideration for the race and i hope that I can count on you to LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE. Sincerely, -- kate

okay, here's my real open letter, actually sent to Ms. Gewirtz:

Dear Rebekah,

As a voting member of Ward Six in Somerville it has come to my attention that you are running for Alderman. It would be hard to miss. You have deluged my front porch with mail, and your partial smile glances up from me on the litter that surrounds my home, asking if you can count on my support. If for some reason I was visually impaired, it would still be apparent as your people call me daily, and sometimes twice daily, to ask if they can count on my support. My doorbell rings at all hours with your bright eyed helpers asking if you can count on my support.

Rebekah (and I feel like I know you well enough by now that we are old friends and I can call you by your first name), I got to tell you... Nope. You can't count on my support. In fact, with each incessant plea for my support, the chance that I would actually vote for you becomes more and more remote. With tonight's phone call, where your loyal telemarketer actually *cursed* at me, I have to say that it's just not going to happen. Now that we are square on that, please leave me alone. You are verging on harassment. I have asked your people not to come to my door, and the next time they will get bodily evicted. I have asked your telemarketers to put me on your do not call list (something which, by the way, they are required to do by law) and I get verbally attacked. I won't block your mail, so go ahead and feel free to kill dozens more trees. I won't read it, but it's a free country.

The saddest part of this is that I actually support some of your politics. I went to your website and I read your leaflets. But now I am just flat out pissed. So, perhaps a small lesson to you in campaigning: You want to push just enough to get your point across and be memorable, but not so much that the voters want to get a restraining order against you.

So, Rebekah, I hope that I can count on your support to respect my wishes and leave me in peace.

Sincerely,

-- katherine

save the (2) trees

2005-11-01T01:11:00.000-05:00

there are two beech trees outside the simmons cafeteria that they're tearing down in order to start work on the underground parking garage/school of management/grassy quad construction project. this has caused somewhat of an uproar in the simmons community. several students have been camping out in tents by the trees for the past few weeks. they attached ropes to the trees and their tents - if anyone tries to take those trees, they'll know about it! i'd like to say that i find this commitment to the save-the-tree cause inspiring, or at least sweet. but really it makes me angry. these kids don't have anything better to do than camp out by two trees? i'm all for being environmentally responsible, but protesting 2 trees being cut down isn't exactly 'save the rainforests'. this is a particularly ridiculous instance of middle-class college kids looking to protest something, anything. the administration's response to this tiny little protest is just as pathetic. here are some choice excerpts from dan cheever's email regarding the trees:

"I am writing Simmons students, faculty and staff to invite everyone to
celebrate our wonderful beech trees outside the Fens Cafeteria. As you
know, sadly we have to remove the trees... I expect that this will be an
'in-the-moment' event where students, faculty, and staff will gather to
speak, read poetry, or simply reflect. Refreshments will be served on
the lower patio."

refreshments? student poetry?!? tree celebration!?! that sound positively *delightful*. count me in!

in other news i just discovered that some kid i went to elementary school with became a model. he used to walk me to my classroom in 2nd grade, until he asked me to be his girlfriend and i said no. it's clear from his glamour shots that i made the correct decision.

the hardest part

2005-10-21T15:26:00.000-05:00

is that people's lives keep moving while you are stuck in their past.

R. I. P. Grannymobile.

2005-10-18T10:23:00.000-05:00

well, i did the deed. i signed the DNR on the grannymobile. there will be no heroic last minute measures. no forced intake of fluids. no jolts with the zapping paddles. no life support. i brought her home and will let her die in peace in her sleep, the way she i believe she always wanted it.

i brought her in over the weekend, as she didn't sound too good. she had a little cough and sputter, and was having trouble getting around. they looked at her, found out that she had bled out internally, and used some fancy tracing dye to find the culprit. it was worse than we though -- multiple organ failure. problems with the intake manifold and the valve cover gaskets. i could save her, but frankly, the cost was too high, and i don't think she would want me to do it. she has lived a good life.

so now i am driving around in a dippy, rented, chevy aveo. i feel a little guilty enjoying it's cheap american pep. the fact that it starts. and it's defroster works. and it's ceiling isn't resting on my head. and it will, i am guessing, get more than 14 miles to the gallon.

i guess it's time for me to grow up a little, and get a grown up car.

so long grannymobile. thanks for everything along the way.

it would make it easier to call home

2005-10-17T20:52:00.000-05:00

if i didn't catch so much hell for not calling more frequently.
it's my dad's birthday, and i just got an email from mom because i flaked on calling her saturday.
i have to call, because it's his birthday. i don't want to. i will probably have to hear it from mom. but i have to.
i made him brownies, my sister made him cookies, and we got them to him for his birthday.
and mom is clearly pissed because i didn't call her, and i don't want to deal with this.
ok. go-time.

settling in for the long winter

2005-10-14T20:35:00.000-05:00

it's been a long week, and i'm exhausted. work was crappy but i got a ton done. i also made a massive almost horrid mistake, but managed to fix it at the last minute. it's nice that other assistants "get it". like...when i call andrew's assistant, she knows i'm holding on by the skin of my teeth, and i know she's having a helluva time scheduling all this. so we cut each other slack and don't rat each other out. i once heard about some club of (then-called) secretaries of the big dawgs in NYC in the 40s. these ladies had dinners and a little private club, just stuck together for support and strength and to watch each other's backs. i like that i have that unspoken sense with the other assistants i work with. it's really weird at work, though - i'm an assistant (travel plans, copies, etc.) but i also do initial screenings, make site visits, give speeches, and make decisions and recommendations. it's such a full spectrum job, but sometimes juggling all of everything floating in my head gets to be overwhelming. this morning was one of those moments. anyhow.

most of the time these days, friday night rolls around and i am ready to stay at home and relax. i used to just head straight out to the bars, but i just can't pull that off anymore. i'm definitely going out tomorrow - motherboar is playing the middle east, and it should be a fun show, and i'm excited to meet mr. grotto, my good friend joe's dad. he's almost mythical - i've been hearing about him for years, and finally: i will have met all the immediate grotto family members. and sunday, the boston massacre roller derby team has a bout with the rhode island riveters, so i'm gonna go watch darling malicen thunderland kick ass and take names. i just hope she doesn't get hurt. also, i'm laying a little low this weekend because i'm wicked broke. heh. truth comes out, eh?

perhaps it's time to start my winter-time knitting projects? i do need a new pair of legwarmers. i have a pretty cute pair i made two years ago, but they are a little too loose in the ankle area. i'd like snugger-fitting legwarmers so it doesn't look like i have cankles. i don't know what cankles exactly are, but i don't think they're a good thing. anyhow. ok, i have to do something or i'm going to rot in front of the lappy and tv. all i fucking need is a tv-dinner...ugh.

dear god, don't let me turn into that person.

and not to get everyone too excited, but i took some pictures of the pottery i made over the summer in my pottery class. let's just say most of my work is "special"...i'll post those soon. something for y'all to look forward to...

and i thought incontinent cats were gross...

2005-10-14T00:10:00.000-05:00

a rat roughly the size of penelope ran across both my feet this evening.

*shudder*

i think i have to throw these shoes away now.

meh.

a note from kitty. p.

2005-10-05T01:00:00.000-05:00

fucj yeah! metal and spencer moody (murder city devils, dead low tide). holy christ...i love spencer moody, who sings songs about how the world needs to have softer edges. i agree with him, and would like to offer him the option of having babies with me.

edit: ok, in a more sober light, the babies option is off the table. but still - really good show.

marble-borough!

2005-10-04T19:11:00.000-05:00

so my ex-boyfriend is coming to town this weekend. which means it's time for my annual pilgrimage to one of the worlds oddest places -- the marble convention. ritchie is a punk rocker teacher who takes in stray animals and deals marbles on the side. he once stole my heart by meeting my bus with a bag of hamsters clutched in his hand. he had rescued them from drowning in a trash can. he's that kind of guy. and he buys, sells, and collects marbles.

and once a year, for almost a decade now, i go spend time at the convention in marlborough. it's funny the things you do for ex-boyfriends. while i might not actively pursue this hobby on my own, i have a tiny collection of marbles, and can speak knowledgeably about agates and handmades and christiansons and peltiers, and i can even spin the marble urban legend tale about The Golden Rebel. but i generally don't unless ritchie's in town.

when rich and i dated, a million years ago now, i spent my time watching his various hard core bands play in dirty clubs. i did the same when we were in college together. it's what you do when you're dating somebody -- you take on odd habits and quirks and loves of theirs. if you're lucky, it's stuff like favorite restaurants or music you listen to or a penchant for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. and maybe it you're unlucky you find yourself robbing houses.

but if you're really unlucky... they make you a red sox fan.

almost every guy i've ever dated has tried to make me a fan of the red sox, and for many years i could avoid it. then, about four or five years ago, it got under my skin. and i found myself watching games when there was nobody *making* me do it. i was finally a fan. i don't talk much about it. i live in fear that somebody will expect me to rattle off stats or, worse yet, ask me to join in their fantasy league, but it's there.

i used to think that these guys were just trying to bond and share a great love of theirs with me. ha! these guys... these guys... were freaking sadists. these guys wanted to teach me the pain and desperation that comes with being a red sox fan.

so the marble convention is coming to town, and once again the sox are in post season. and once again i am cursing every man i have ever dated.

nekkid pics!

2005-10-02T11:54:00.000-05:00

my dad has been taking all of the boxes of old slides and converting them to disc. for me it is a treasure trove of photos of my childhood, my family, and my friends. places and people i had forgotten. proof that i was a mostly happy kid. and a cute kid. and often a very very weird kid. it also means that there are now nekkid pics of me on the internet. many thanks to banky for pointing that out. for folks who want to see more of these, check out my dads flickr photos.

this might be my all-time favorite photo of the batch. my family is on vacation on cape cod. my mom says it looks so weird because it was our first attempt with the self-timer. i think it looks weird because my family was often uncomfortable with standing still, so to sit and stare at the camera was unnatural for us. i remember my childhood as constant motion. projects and plans and action. i am sure that we had our still moments. from the pics, i am pretty sure that i spent all of those moments asleep.

an update from kitty pancakes

2005-09-28T19:08:00.000-05:00

so here's a little list of tidbits.

my dad likes the movie 'ever after' with drew barrymore. that is the cutest thing ever.
i am still coughing gross shit up, and having a hard time dealing with the rest of my life when i feel so crappy.
just bought tickets to chicago to visit lisa. SO excited. i'll be missing halloween with friends, but i never go anywhere, and this is exciting.
our couches are coming next week!
i need a new bike. my bottom bracket is shot, and so is my rear hub.
ky "touch warming body massage" commercials are fucking awful. am i the only one who is grossed out by being massaged all over with lube? ughhhhh.
i am not, however, opposed to backrubs. which i love.
penelope has been particularly snuggly lately, which has been nice as i've been sick.
i love 'ever after' too. tee-hee!

so, the lower half is home sick today.

2005-09-27T09:48:00.000-05:00

holy jesus, i have been coughing up the grossest shit ever. i've gone through a half-box of kleenex (puffs with lotion to pamper my nostrils) in just 12 hours. it sounds like i have consumption or something. AND i left all this stuff half-done at work that's totally stressing me because i was supposed to have it done already. argh...

life at the casa...

2005-09-17T20:17:00.000-05:00

shayne has been a blog slacker.

2005-09-16T00:42:00.000-05:00

i've been busy, too. but when it's 1:30am on a week night and you can't sleep, the night seems endless. so i thought i would use some of that godforsaken time to blog. here's a list of things i learned this week:

my computer science professor owes me approximately $240. she's cancelled three (of four!) class sessions this semester.
tom jones (the novel by henry fielding, not the well-endowed welshman) is extremely entertaining. 18th century brit lit=fun!
henry james once condescendingly called sarah orne jewett's country of the pointed firs a 'beautiful little quantum of achievement'. sarah orne jewett lives on the shelf next to henry james in the library. i hope ms. jewett's books beat the shit of mr. james' books every night.
i can still (almost) lose it when speaking words that really matter in front of other people. writing class is making me mental as well as contributing to an insomniac state.
i'm (really) stressed out. why am i always the last to figure this one out?

and finally, i learned not to blog when you're suffering from insomnia. it makes for some dreary stuff.