Something Shiny!

Phoning it in

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.

Damn you, high fructose corn syrup!

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?

Currently reading

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.

Summertime, and the living is... stressful

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!

That &#@$&#! fan

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.

Multiplying like rabbits

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?

Keeping my day job

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.