Elderly Library of Congress researcher: "May I ask you something?"
Me: "Of course."
ELOCR: [Pointing at my IRISPen] "Does that put text onto your computer?"
Me: "Yeah, it does." [Showing him said text.]
ELOCR: "Marvelous. How does it not get the words all jumbled up?"
Me: "Erm... I have no idea. But it doesn't."
ELOCR: Marvelous.

• Someone peed all over the floor in the airplane bathroom. KLASSY.
• We saw Obama's plane when we landed at National Airport. AWESOME.
• Getting a condo in DC = TOTALLY WORTH IT.
• It's important to know the difference between a Queen and a Full. Especially if you're going to bill the condo as having a Queen. kthnxbai!
• John is a master at getting The Internet to work. As long as I have The Internet, I'm happy. Amen.

Friday evening after work, I set out to bake a cherry clafouti (recipe here). I washed and drained some beautiful rainier cherries then put them in a pan in the oven, along with sugar and lemon juice, to roast at 350 for fifteen minutes. After a few minutes, I stirred them, then went back into the other room. A couple minutes later, I heard a strange rumbling noise. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, but it was getting louder. I asked John if he could hear it, too, and he came into the kitchen. Just as I was about to open the oven door, there was a huge explosion in the oven followed by a bright light that shot up through one of the burners on the stove! Needless to say, the cherries were ruined, and we spent the evening buying and installing a new oven and hood. And how was your Friday?

Since I laid it all out there the other day and revealed my distaste for phone-talking (and, let's clarify: it's not that I NEVER talk on the phone, or that I REFUSE to talk on the phone, just that it's low on my list of preferred method of communication. Am looking into carrier pigeons.), I thought I'd round out the week with another quirk of mine. You know, just to keep it real. Here goes: I hate food smells. I don't mean the smell that wafts from the plate while you're eating dinner, or even the smell of food cooking in the oven. No, what I hate is the smell that l-i-n-g-e-r-s in the kitchen long after the meal has been eaten and the dishes washed. You know, sort of a greasy smell that sticks around like houseguest who has overstayed their welcome? Yeah, that smell. My distaste for lingering food smells is so severe (HAVE BIONIC NOSE) that I change my clothes immediately after returning home from a restaurant. When I was in college, my parents and I used to meet for lunch once a week at a little place near campus. The food was always great (still is), but the food smells, they could not be conquered. I wound up packing an extra shirt to change into after lunch, for work. Call me weird, but I don't like smelling like Mexican food five hours after I've eaten it. Who's with me?

I have a confession to make, and I know it puts me in the minority. Probably in a very, very small minority. With this confession, I become a mere blip in the statistics, a tiny spec of sand in a vast sea of... well, you get the idea. Here goes: I hate talking on the phone. (I know, right?) I used to be SUCH a phone-talker. In junior high and high school, wild boars couldn't keep me off the phone. I'd talk to my friends at school, only to rush home and talk to them on the phone. But now? Now I can barely tolerate the phone. I don't know why, really, don't know what changed. But there are days (shhhh...) there are days when I press the "do not disturb" button on the phone, and there are even some nights when the phone rings at our house and I holler to John, "I'm not talking to anyone tonight!" Is that weird? Have I just put myself into some sort of weirdo category? Hello? Is this thing on?

I'm honored and awed that Tiffany nominated my humble blog for a Brilliante Weblog award. As I've said before, this blog is really more an exercise in creativity for me, so it continues to astound me that anyone actually reads it. You like me! You really like me! Ahem. It wouldn't be an award if it didn't have red tape, so let's get down to brass tax. In accepting this award, I have to follow these simple rules:

1. Please put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you.
3. You must nominate 7 fellow bloggers for this award.
4. Add links to the recipients.
5. Leave a comment so the recipients know they have received an award.

There are many, many blogs that I read regularly and would love to honor here. Some, though, have already been honored many times over with various awards, so I'm going to limit myself to lesser-known bloggers. These women (okay, and one man) consistently publish material that I fiercely admire, and hope to emulate. They are:

• Emily of Not That You Asked. She's wicked funny, fantastically witty, and her posts consistently make my stomach hurt from laughing so hard. Read her recent post on finding a cockroach in her bathroom. You won't regret it.
• Leah (not her real name, I understand) of A Girl and A Boy. She has a serene, delicate writing style that makes mine look rather like a trampling elephant, I'm afraid! Her posts are always smart and thoughtful. I can only imagine that she's as charming in person as she is on, er, my screen. (AM A DORK.)
• Moose, over at Moose in the Kitchen, is brilliant. She's at once raucously funny and quietly introspective. You'll want to make sure you read about how she ends up looking like a purple flannel bat when she makes her bed.
• Schnozz's Schnozzfest is definitely one to keep an eye on. She recently did an etch-a-sketch number on her old blog posts, so I can't point you in the direction of some of my favorites, but she's back now and just as funny as ever. Her writing is razor-sharp and you'll find yourself laughing out loud, even if you suspect some of the jokes are over your head.
• Jonna at Jonniker is my latest blog-affair. She posts in the evenings, and I often force myself not to read her blog at night so that I can have something fun to read in the morning before work. She actually embodies a lot of what I like about Tiffany's blog: the ability of a writer to really explore a topic, illuminating all of its nooks and crannies.
• Linda's All and Sundry is nothing short of genius. I can't tell you the number of times I've read parts of her posts out loud to John, only to have both of us dissolve into hysterical laughter. I recommend starting with her post about her husband as an appetizer.
• And finally, A Daily Oliver. It's not a bloggy-blog, per se, in that Dean's posts aren't written but consist only of photos. One photo, posted every day, of his Weimaraners Oliver and Hugo. Not only do I get a kick out of looking at Oliver and Hugo's goofy antics, but I also enjoy drinking in the French scenery that the photos depict. I'd like to be as dedicated to posting photos as Dean is.

So there you have it! Seven blogs that I admire and deem utterly worthy of brilliante-ness. Thanks again, Tiffany!

I've come to the conclusion that I have a very Dumbledore relationship with my dissertation advisor. Allow me to explain. In the Harry Potter series, Harry often notes that he and his mentor Albus Dumbledore talk only about Harry's plans, Harry's future, Harry's life. And I've noticed that it's the same with my advisor. I've known her for five years now, but I couldn't give you more than a basic sketch of her life. I know she was born in California, and I know where she got her various degrees. I know she's outdoorsy. I've also met her husband a few times. But beyond that, I know virtually nothing about her. Her mother has died since she's been my advisor, but I didn't know that until nearly a year after the fact, when she mentioned it in passing. It's strange, really, to know so little about someone who has such a major role in one's life.

Since half the blogging world is in San Francisco right now, I thought I'd just post a photo today. This is one of John's many coffee drinks, an iced Vietnamese coffee. I really like this photo because as the hot coffee hits the cold milk, the two start to slowly mingle, giving off a cool lava lamp effect.

I've officially turned into THAT person, I know, I know. The person who can't go five minutes without talking about how all the BPA in plastic water bottles is slowly mutating us, or about how what goes on at CAFOs is enough to turn the most rabid carnivore into a vegetarian. I know, I do. But I can't help myself; once you see it, you can't un-see it. And the thing is, I really MISS a lot of those things I'm forcing myself to go without! Dammit, I MISS bottled water! (Sometimes... sometimes I buy a single bottled water and drink it down in an instant, reveling in its glorious bottled-water-ness.) I LIKE ordering food and not worrying about what's in it! Ignorance truly is bliss, folks. Take high fructose corn syrup. We had breakfast for dinner the other night, and I can't tell you how much I wanted to get some Mrs Butterworth's (sue me, okay?) to put on a huge stack of pancakes, evoking days long past when my grandparents would take us all to Perkins and I'd get a plate of silver dollar pancakes swimming in syrup that doesn't even pretend to be good for you. Those were the days. When did life get so complicated, anyway?

You may have noticed Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle sitting happily on my "Books I'm Reading" list for several weeks now. In truth, I'm not still reading it-- I read it weeks ago over the course of a couple evenings. See: Book Vampire. (Though I confess I'm still slogging through What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. It's 855 pages long! SEND HELP. AND COOKIES.) But since finishing it, I've been recommending Kingsolver's book to anyone who'll listen, and even to those who won't. It's easily the best book I've read since, well, the last Harry Potter book last summer. Though, understandably, in quite a different vein. I'd hate for you to come away from this thinking that Kingsolver has to face a life-or-death battle with an evil squash overlord or something. But, I digress (LOTS). Kingsolver writes about a year her family spent living off their land and off of the food they could acquire locally. We've gotten so used to being able to get strawberries year-round, or bananas in climates that can't actually support bananas, that we've gotten completely away from the concept of eating what's in season locally. And it could help in so many ways. The tomato problems of late? Not a problem if you grow your own tomatoes! Anyway, if you haven't already read it, I highly recommend you do. It's informative and entertaining, and Kingsolver (as always) writes beautifully.

Some people deal with stress by exercising. Not me, no sir. I bottle it all up. It's a technique that's served me well over the years. The only side effects are 1) occasionally I give myself an illness that even doctors can't figure out and 2) the stress, it comes out, well, in my dreams. My friend Amy, who's also in graduate school, does the same thing and she and I compared stress dreams the other day. She sent me this email:

"I was up most of the night in panic about my class and how I'm going to get it all done. You will appreciate the stress dream I had: I dreamed that people were holding me down and cutting gashes in my arms and filling the gashes with heroin so I'd become an addict."

To which I replied:

"DUDE. That's a stress dream if I've ever heard one. Wanna hear mine? I dreamt that I went to the doctor for a checkup (which I never do) and they told me I was pregnant. Not just pregnant, though: ABOUT TO GIVE BIRTH. But, uh, I didn't look pregnant. I didn't feel pregnant. I was not, that I knew of, pregnant, and CERTAINLY not nine months pregnant. But the doctors, they were convinced that I was pregnant, and had decided to cut me open to haul the (nonexistent) baby out."

Probably not the best way to deal with stress, but it certainly makes for interesting conversations!

So a few years ago we replaced the ceiling fans in this house. It wasn't so much the fact that they were ugly (though trust me, they were), but I also had a sneaking suspicion that they had been installed incorrectly. A suspicion that, I might add, was confirmed when we found scorch marks underneath each of them. I won't even trifle with your intelligence by describing the water heater that could have killed us all. Home Inspector = ON CRACK. Ahem. In any case, we replaced the ceiling fans (and the deadly water heater). We opted for run-of-the-mill fans in my office and in the guest room/John's office, but in the master bedroom we wanted something that would move a little more air, since it's a much larger space. We wound up buying this one, since it seemed to fit the bill. It came with a remote control, which didn't impress us but with which we thought we could live. What could go wrong? Insert red warning flag here. LOTS could go wrong. When you're installing a ceiling fan, especially a ceiling fan with all the wiring necessary for a remote control crammed up into its canopy, you're dealing with a lot of wiring in a very small space. And when you're buying something that's mass produced for a big box store, you're not exactly getting the highest quality (see: everything you've ever bought at WalMart). So, yeah, lots could go wrong. And lots has gone wrong. Most vexing to us is the fact that the light on the ceiling fan randomly turns on, when nobody's even touching the remote. Case in point: I'm currently sitting in the living room, John's in his office (with his normal ceiling fan), and the light in the bedroom just came on. Sometimes it lights up, then dims, then lights up, then dims, then lights up, then dims, all in the space of a few seconds. Sometimes it happens in the middle of the night. FUN. And sometimes the fan turns itself off completely. ALSO FUN. So the moral of the story is this: if you see this fan while shopping in Lowe's one day, and you've got $119 burning a hole in your pocket, you'd be better off lighting the money on fire than buying that fan.

I think our belongings might be breeding. Allow me to explain. A couple times a year, for the past several years, John and I have lugged anything from boxes full of random stuff to huge pieces of furniture to the Salvation Army. A conservative estimate would be that we've made six such trips since we bought this house in 2004. I'm no mathematician, but doesn't that mean that we should have less stuff than we have now, and more closet/garage/general space? Assuming that's correct, why does it so often feel like there's no room in our house? I'm left to believe that our belongings are multiplying. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

John walked into the kitchen the other day, just as I was cutting up some beef for our oldest cat (don't ask). He started laughing as I made my way through the pile of raw meat, cutting each piece down with a pair of kitchen shears, and he paused to catch his breath and say: "You'd never make it in a meat-processing plant. They'd be all, 'here's your big-ass knife!' and you'd be all 'where are my scissors?'" Clearly I need to keep my day job.

Hi! Hello there. Did you have a happy Fourth? Hopefully yours was decidedly less rainy than ours. It's just as well, I suppose, since Gainesville doesn't actually have a fireworks display. Apparently the city is out of money for fireworks and (woe to many children, I'm sure) the fake ice rink they used to have downtown so that kids could ice skate in 65-degree weather. Don't ask. In any case, we watched "A Capitol Fourth" on PBS Friday night, followed by the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks special from New York (note to DC: New York does a better show-- lose the jumbotron that blocks the actual fireworks). Saturday morning kicked off our Homesteading Weekend, in which John made bread and yogurt and I made granola and peach cobbler. The high point of the weekend, no doubt, was when John tried to buy mason jars at the grocery store. The cashier knelt down close to the conveyer belt to get a closer look at the jars. As she wondered aloud what was in the jars, she triggered the conveyer belt, sending the box of empty jars crashing into the bridge of her nose. Good times. And how was your weekend?

As part of our ongoing quest to minimize our impact, John and I decided recently to do away with paper napkins and use cloth napkins instead. Even though you still use energy to clean the cloth napkins, we reasoned, at least you're not throwing them away after one use. After I spent a lot of time scouring the vast interwebs for suitable, serviceable napkins, I called my parents. I knew that they had a lot of cloth napkins that they didn't use, and I figured that if they were willing to part with some of them, that was better than bringing brand new napkins into the system. They readily agreed to send us some of their spares, but then came the question I didn't anticipate: "And you'll also need napkin rings, right?" I always thought that napkin rings were a bit too frou-frou for me, and we're not really frou-frou people, so I turned them down. "Oh, no," I said, feeling very down-to-earth, "I don't get into that." They should have laughed me off the phone, but they didn't. Napkin rings, my parents carefully explained, aren't just for show. The idea behind cloth napkins, they said, is that they can be used again and again over the course of a few days. Because they don't get very dirty, they don't need to be washed after every meal. The purpose of napkin rings, then, is so that you know which one is yours. I was astonished. Who knew?!? This is the kind of knowledge that's dying these days. This is the kind of knowledge that isn't getting used, much less passed on from generation to generation. And it kills me because this is the very kind of knowledge that would enable us to step a little lighter on the planet. Napkin rings. Who knew?