To those who live in Pittsburgh (or are from Pittsburgh), you know what the death of Myron Cope means. To my non-Pittsburgh friends, the only way to get a flavor of what Myron Cope is about is to hear that crazy voice. It's insane.
The latest and greatest blog currently in vogue (or is that en vogue? Whatever) is "Stuff White People Like". Each new posting is pretty darn good, but when you read the site as a whole, you find yourself nodding along going "YEAH! YEAH! I know someone, ok, me, just like that!"
And because I'm the whitest white woman in America, and love this CD, my favorite post is actually the guest column - Top Ten Hip Hop Songs White People Like. But then I read the one about the dogs, and Whole Foods, and the Prius.... Snort.
Looking for that charity that combines your love of cycling, help for the third world, and coffee? Well look no further, Bikes to Rwanda is here. Our local coffee shop is doing a fund raiser tonight for them, so that's how I found out about it. And of course Rwanda still stirs echos from the movie "Hotel Rwanda". (I spent half the movie going "We knew?! And we didn't do anything?!" I was in my even more self absorbed stage when that went down. I seriously had no idea.) But if you don't happen to live in Pittsburgh, go to Bikes to Rwanda's contribute page and send a few bucks their way. C'mon, you just dropped $2000 for a new bike, $5 for some frou-frou coffee drink, and $10 for lunch. Do you feel good saying you don't have $10 for charity?
Ok, Ok, I have to admit Valentine’s Day is one of two holidays a year against which I hold a grudge. It all goes back to that rather uninteresting dating life I had. Every year we’d get that one-two punch of New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day. They were the days on which it seemed like EVERYONE was in FREAKING LOVE except me and a few other equally bitter friends. Every diamonds commercial seemed to say “Every Kiss begins with Kay. Except for you. You don’t have a kiss or a diamond do you? Schmuck.” Bitter, bitter, bitter. And even when I did have a Mr Right (or Right Now), I was still bitter enough at the Romance Industrial Complex that both days tended to be low key. We watched movies on NY eve, or went out to dinner for Valentine’s, and that was about it.
Fortunately for me, my husband knows the four things that make me happy – roses, chocolate, babykins, and him. Well six if you count the two dogs in the car. Anyway, he showed up at work for lunch with all of the above. 2 chocolate bars from Ecuador (his birthplace) and 2 chocolate bars from Galler in Brugges, where we bought chocolate on our honeymoon. (How’s this for the perfect euro-travel setup – on the day he and the other guys on our trip rode the Paris-Roubaix course, I hung out in a French farmhouse eating Belgian chocolate. Life is good!).
Just a few more weeks, and we’ll have to tell Porter the Saga of the Honeymoon for the very first time. It’s a story that he will hear over and over again. Because it makes his daddy and I laugh. Especially the part where we were hurtling through the darkness from Brussels to Lille in a tiny car with two strangers who barely spoke English (while I barely spoke French), wondering if we were going to die in a ditch somewhere. And then got to Lille and were dropped off only to find out that “gang” is apparently a universal phenomenon. And then were saved by a taxi driver that I still pray for every day. Porter might be older when we tell him about the “Hollywood” portion of the story – the guy who may disprove the theory that you “can’t” get addicted to marijuana. And the thing that we’ll tell Porter is key to the whole thing is…no matter how crappy things get, a good sense of humor is key. We each melted down at different times, but never at the same time. But all along we knew that when it was all said and done, it was going to be a GREAT story. And it is.
Happy Valentine’s day, my love of my life. Just think, a mere 46 more of these before you get to renegotiate the contract.
Now if someone could just ban the damn CFLs. I've been a good girl and loaded two of them up in our house. One is in the living room giving my husband a headache. The other is in our basement where it belongs. But nooooo, CFLs are going to be the wave of the future. I gave ours a whirl with the idea of saving money on electricity (that it's supposed to be environmentally friendly was just a side benefit). But I'm not impressed. And from an environmental standpoint, I'm not sure that using mercury that heavily is going to ultimately be a good thing for anyone. Yes one bulb contains very little mercury. But millions of bulbs? What happens when they start hitting the town dump? Because you know that we'll be lucky if 10% of people recycle their mercury bulbs. Choice between tossing in trash can and running to a "convenient location" blocks or miles from their house? Yeahhhhh....
I do believe we should be good stewards of the earth. I'm just not sure mercury anythings are the means to do that. And apparently biofuels aren't either. (Booyah, brought that right back around to my opening line. Not bad, eh?)
Regardless of what you think of this story, can we just agree that this:
Outside the Shattuck Avenue recruiting station earlier this week, a handful of protesters with the anti-war group Code Pink camped out, strumming a guitar as they sang anti-war songs and held signs against the Iraq war. "Time to end the war, time to end the war, time to end the war right now," they sang to the beat of "I've Been Working on the Railroad."
Shows the sign of uncreative minds? Strumming a guitar? Really, when are you going to get past 1965? And the best lyrics you can come up with is "Time to end the war, time to end the war, time to end the war right now". I know some little kids withthe same creativity: "I want a cookie, I want a cookie. I want a cookie right now."
As for what I think of the story....the city of Berkely are a bunch of imbeciles. I hope congress does pull back the $2 million in federal funding. Idiots.
Last week I had jury duty. And despite what I’ve been told, letting the clerk of court know that I had an engineering degree AND that I’m an IT business analyst did not get me out of jury duty. Later I was talking with another juror who was an engineer, and he’d been told the same thing. Lies! All lies!
Regardless, it was kind of an interesting experience. We ended up with a personal injury case, where there was a fender bender, which aggravated a pre-existing back condition and rendered the hit party unable to work. That was so sad. I felt for him, truly.
Some thoughts:
-I loved that the defendant’s name was Smith and his lawyer’s name was Jones. -Our judge was a marine who served in Vietnam and got two bronze stars. And he thanked our bitching, moaning selves for service to our country. -At one point the plaintiff’s lawyer got crosswise with the judge. The judge gave him an instruction, and the lawyer either didn’t understand or else tried to go there anyway. The judge darn near leaped across the bench. -Court rooms are not as pretty as they look on tv. The woodwork was all there, but so was the stuff piled up in the corners. -Under things that suck – having to ask the 50 year old “tip staff” man for a place to pump milk. And then getting to use a deliberating room for this adventure while he stood guard outside. Courts: Not a nursing mom friendly environment. -The defendant’s lawyer was talking to the defendant about which cars he had, and their colors. He had a gold Cadillac Seville for his personal car, and he drove a yellow cab for work. The lawyer kind of laughed, but she had to ask: “What color was the yellow cab?”
Overall an interesting, and somewhat depressing experience. The proceedings were interesting, but seeing someone whose life fell into shambles over a fender bender was depressing. Glad I did it, but I don't want to go again.
Chris calculated last night that conservatively I've burned 49,000 calories just feeding Porter for the last 5 months. Or, if you take the rule of thumb calculation,
Porter's roughly 23 weeks old x 7 days x 600 calories/day = 96,600 calories.
I think I hear a bunch of bike racing guys gearing up for the new season by trying to figure out how to lactate.
Update: Curses, sorry about that guys, wrong blog. This was supposed to be updating grandparents and family who are all excited about things like the latest foods Porter's eating and what toys he has.
In other words....never mind.
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Acorn Squash.
We had two left acorn squash left over from last season's CSA. Chris isn't a big fan, and I find they take a little work which almost doesn't seem worth it for one person. But I never did bring myself to get rid of them. So last night I chopped them up, boiled, and pureed them. Then I poured them into two ice cube trays, and put whatever was left over in a coffee cup that I use as Porter's bowl, plastic'd it and threw it in the fridge. (He actually does have a regular baby bowl, but it's sort of big for what he's eating right now).
20 seconds in the microwave and our little chow hound was a happy boy. I have somewhere between 14 and 28 days (1 cube or 2 per meal? We'll find out tomorrow).
In other news, craigslist is once again my friend. I got Porter a Leapfrog "Learn and Groove Music Table" for super-duper cheap. It's a little old for him since he's not really able to stand on his own, but I figure he'll grow into it.
It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm…of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.
-H.L. Mencken
By Ken Levine One of the writers from the TV series M*A*S*H writes about Hollywood, showbiz, etc
Class Factotum She's Baaaacccckkkkk. And as funny as ever!
Cobb I'm fascinated on this man's ponderings on being American. And being black. And being an African-American.
Confessions of a Pioneer Woman She makes me laugh. Any woman who has named her own disease - Low Blood Sugar Cranky Butt Disorder - is ok by me.
Cute Overload OK! I admit it, I love a website which uses terms like "prosh" and "paws-up-itude". I'm pretty sure I will have my engineering degree taken away now.
Fatmarc Mountain Bike, Cyclo-cross...is there anything this man doesn't do?
Update: Curses, sorry about that guys, wrong blog. This was supposed to be updating grandparents and family who are all excited about things like the latest foods Porter's eating and what toys he has.
In other news, craigslist is once again my friend. I got Porter a Leapfrog "Learn and Groove Music Table" for super-duper cheap. It's a little old for him since he's not really able to stand on his own, but I figure he'll grow into it.
