Wednesday, January 30, 2008

X is for-

What X is for.

I can add:
Xiphius
Xenophobia
X-Country Skis

Monday, January 28, 2008

unpaid advertising

Hey New Yorkers- try to make it to this. I know one of the people involved and it promises to be amazing.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Our weights may be naturally fixed within a 10-20 pound range. While it's possible to use diet and exercise to move above or below that range, it's really really hard. This doesn't surprise me too much based on my own experience (my own weight doesn't vary more than 20 pounds outside of pregnancy, though over the past couple years it has responded more to winter lethargy/ junk food) but it defies most of our cultural assumptions about fat. (via Shapely Prose)

I know someone who will like the dome

Sustainably designed gingerbread houses. We should encourage C's school to make edible compost bins, skylights, solar panels, strawbales, and wind turbines instead of trying to pass off graham crackers glued to milk cartons as gingerbread houses.

Wrong at so many levels. (from copyranter)

S: Does this outfit look okay?
D: It's cool in a kind of Star Trek meets Amish sort of way.

(So how am I supposed to use that kind of feedback? Can I wear this to work, or will it be too alluring for geeks with purity fetishes, or is it too bizarre to leave the house? Dan does not make a good fashion consultant.)

Sunday, January 20, 2008

This would be more fun if it represented your actual DNA.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

I'm thinking of breaking down and buying leather shoes, since my year-long search for synthetic replacements for my falling-apart shoes has been fruitless. I'm trying to decide what I can do to make myself feel less guilty about it- maybe a donation to PETA? I think that it's generally a cop-out to mitigate sins with cash (buying carbon offsets may be a feel-good solution, but really YOU SHOULDN'T BE FLYING SO MUCH) but I'm running out of other options. My feet are hard enough to fit that I can't get used ones off e-bay, and I never find anything appropriate at local thrift stores. (Two consignment shops are supposed to call me if they ever get anything in my size, but they haven't yet.)

Related- I like the idea of exchanging environmental sins but wouldn't trust most people to follow through. (Phoebe could at least ensure that Joey wasn't eating meat in her presence.)

Thursday, January 17, 2008

A sang a song about vampires at breakfast today. We're not sure where she learned about vampires (Dan suggested that maybe they're doing a unit on them in school, but that didn't sound very Montessori-ish to me) but I was thinking it might be time to show her this.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008


A was seeming awfully big today, so I wanted a picture from when she was little.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Ah, fun at work. I haven't seen a lot of the supposed 100 best movies (italicized in list below). Now my coworkers can lay off my homemade lunches and instead mock me for never having seen Rocky.

Citizen Kane (1941) Dan and I wanted to see it after reading Kavalier & Clay
The Godfather (1972)
Casablanca (1942)
Raging Bull (1980)
Singin' In The Rain (1952) Renee saw it at the Alfred library but we lacked technology, so we took advantage of my boyfriend's VCR without his consent
Gone With The Wind (1939) read the book
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
Schindler's list (1993)
Vertigo (1958)
The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
City Lights (1931)
The Searchers (1956)
Star Wars (1977)
Psycho (1960)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) At some point after A was born we rented this, but were way too tired to follow the ending, even though I'd read the book
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
The Graduate (1967)
The General (1927)
On The Waterfront (1954)
It's A Wonderful life (1946)
Chinatown (1974)
Some like It Hot (1959)
The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)
E.T. The Extra-terrestrial (1982)
To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
High Noon (1952)
All About Eve (1950)
Double Indemnity (1944) at Bryan Park in Bloomington
Apocalypse Now (1979) a friend upgraded to DVD and gave us their VHS
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Godfather Part Ii (1974)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Annie Hall (1977)
The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
The Best Years Of Our lives (1946)
The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
The Sound Of Music (1965) as a kid, plus as a sing-along in Seattle right after C was born
King Kong (1933)
Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Shane (1953)
It Happened One Night (1934)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Rear Window (1954) college film festival
Intolerance (1916)
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001)
West Side Story (1961)
Taxi Driver (1976)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
M*a*s*h (1970)
North By Northwest (1959)
Jaws (1975)
Rocky (1976)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Nashville (1975)
Duck Soup (1933)
Sullivan's Travels (1941)
American Graffiti (1973)
Cabaret (1972)
Network (1976)
The African Queen (1951)
Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Unforgiven (1992)
Tootsie (1982)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)
The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) I actually saw this in a theater!
In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
Forrest Gump (1994)
All The President's Men (1976)
Modern Times (1936)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
The Apartment (1960)
Spartacus (1960)
Sunrise (1927)
Titanic (1997)
Easy Rider (1969)
A Night At The Opera (1935)
Platoon (1986)
12 Angry Men (1957)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Swing Time (1936)
Sophie's Choice (1982)
Goodfellas (1990)
The French Connection (1971)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
Do The Right Thing (1989)
Blade Runner (1982)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Toy Story (1995)
Ben-hur (1959)

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Monday, January 07, 2008

I’m feeling better than I have in almost a week, but the first five people I saw at work all mentioned that I look awful. Should take that as a blow to my ego or a sign that I should still be in bed?

I’ve managed to persuade all of my study sites that we really don’t have to give out Wal-Mart gift cards as participant incentives. We’re instead going to distribute cards from stores headquartered in New York. Two of the sites were really receptive to the idea, one was less-than-enthused but willing to give it a try, and two didn’t seem to care much either way. My boss is going to roll her eyes when she finds out, but I’m hoping that now that I’ve managed to navigate the headaches of ordering cards from multiple stores that I’ll be able to convince my coworkers of the merits of the idea so they’ll do the same for future studies. Wal-Mart is a convenient choice because it’s accessible from most locations; I need to purchase and track cards from four different companies, two of which are not local to me. But at least some of my coworkers are thoughtful enough to go to the trouble, and the others may be convinced if I make it easy for them and play up the benefits of fostering a sense of local connection among participants.

Friday, January 04, 2008

I should know better than to read popular magazines. Alas, the mindless allure of "Real Simple" was too hard to resist in my flu-induced delirium. Most egregious article: "Together for life: honest, intimate snapshots of what makes marriage work." The common theme among all five couples profiled? There's a problem, the woman changes. One gave up her catering business because the work was impinging on their Saturday night dates. "As much as I enjoyed my work, my family's happiness was more important to me. I learned then that marriage is really about compromise." One isn't really interested in sex (can't imagine why, after having three children in three years) but she bears it anyway because she "wants to be respectful of his needs." One worked a crappy job for ten years because her husband couldn't find a job in his field- it seems surprisingly common for women to support their families with whatever work they can find, while their husbands won't compromise their standards and take crappy jobs themselves.

It's entirely possible that these folks have fairly egalitarian marriages and that the writer focused on the wives' compromises because of the composition of their readership. Certainly a number of choices that Dan and I have made would appear anti-feminist in isolation. But the editorial implication that women alone are responsible for accommodating their families is infuriating. Why not include a man who waitered to support his wife through law school, or a couple that decided to move to a small town when they couldn't agree on an urban or rural area?

(Dan took advantage of my weakened anti-bad-media defenses by putting on a James Bond movie. We only got ten minutes into it, but in that time 007 added a surfboard and a hovercraft to his transportation repertoire, so I guess it was almost worth it. I was surprised at its PG-13 rating though- have rating standards eroded, or am I just hypersensitive? I'd expect any James Bond flick to be a lot more graphic than Young Sherlock Holmes.)