I find it utterly fascinating what sorts of names people come up with when they have to talk about a hypothetical person. "John" is traditional, as in "John Doe." Or "Jane." I find this very boring. Shouldn't Adam be the generic? I mean, he was the biblical first person. Or Eve? (Actually I shouldn't say that: Eve is used as the generic term for certain human ancestors, as in "Mitochondria Eve." If you just thought of a particular late 1990's video game, you are old and you have my respect.)
I often find myself in these kinds of conversations (make of that what you will) and I have come to realize something about my own hypothetical person.
1. It's a man.
2. His name is Jim-Bob.
I suppose it's easy enough to guess why my default person is a man. I'm an American and an English speaker and thus acculturated to thinking of "male" as the default when I have to gender something, despite the very best efforts of one of my favorite professors ever (a philosophy professor) to convince me that the generic should be female because fetuses all start female and things with no real gender (like worker ants) are usually referred to as female. That was a male professor, by the by, for all of you people out there going "stupid self-centered navel-gazing feminists remaking everything all women-centered."
So that's all very well and good, you may be thinking, but why Jim-Bob?
Well, see, I used to switch between Jim and Bob. This is because they are generic man-names and I didn't actually really KNOW any Jims or Bobs, so I can use both those names without anyone thinking I'm trying to talk about someone else (considering some of the predictions of my hypothetical Jim-Bob, this is VERY NECESSARY.) And eventually I think I just kind of glommed them together, and they were reborn as Jim-Bob.
Jim-Bob is not a redneck, although people usually think he is. I can't imagine why. If my generic person was going to be a redneck, I'd've named him Junior.
Jim-Bob isn't my only generic person, of course. There is also Precious Toby. Precious Toby is my generic name for a spoiled child. You know the kind: the super-sheltered, pampered kid whose mummy and daddy intervene the second he gets a "satisfactory" instead of "Exceeds expectations" on his preschool report card for nap time, because the teacher is endangering his future as a dual engineering/philosophy major double-matriculated at MIT and Harvard, or some such rubbish.
I do know a Toby. My dad's pet Yorkie is named Toby. And he is precious. But I am pretty confident that if HE was in pre-school he would exceed all expectations, except for his fixation on humping pillows at nap time.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
The Goddess Goes Crackers
So it has been too long since I posted. McSigh. Life is busy, what can I say?
So here's a post!
I have a food dehydrator. The reason I have said dehydrator is so I can make crackers.
Don't laugh.
I'm particularly fond of the flax seed crackers that raw foodist types make to fit the strict rules of their "don't consume anything that's been heated above 118 or 105 degrees" rules. This apparently preserves the enzymes and leads to fantastic health, longevity, cures your cancer, regrows your hair, ect, ect. I don't know about any of that. I have a few raw food cookbooks and I use them more than you'd think, especially in the summer. They make the *best* smoothies and salads. And their crackers are DAMN tasty. BEST. CRACKERS. EVER
They are also expensive. We're talking eight to twelve bucks a two ounce bag expensive, so although I really like them, I never buy them. I am tempted, but then Darth Vader's voice booms at me down the aisles of Wholefoods intoning that "YOU ARE NOT A LAWYER YET." Then I put the crackers back. (Am I the only person who is stalked by the disembodied voice of Darth Vader? Maybe it's because my parent's first real date was to go see Star Wars.)
Hence my "I should really get my own dehydrator so I can make my own crackers." thing. I tossed one on the bridal registry, didn't really expect I'd get it, except I did (note for future brides and grooms: this always happens. I didn't get the dishes we could've used more....but I got a dehydrator!) So I figured, hell, probably I should use it?
So I bought some buckwheat, some sesame seeds, and some flax seeds. I think I spent a whopping five bucks on it all (the raw materials of flax seed and buckwheat crackers are not the expensive part: all the ingredients were organic, purchased from the bulk bins at Wholefoods, and cheap as heck.). Then I checked out a few raw food books (mine are, I believe, in my sister-in-laws basement. I WILL GET THEM OUT EVENTUALLY I PROMISE!!!). And then I started to experiment.
I am only telling you about this because of the reaction of Hubby. Hubby initially eyed the raw food books and went "Okay, fine. But I'm not going to eat it." I think he's afraid because it was raw food books that taught me to make green smoothies. I LOVE green smoothies. Basically it's a fruit smoothie that you add spinach to. I often have a big green smoothie for breakfast, and he never fails to eye it like it's going to come to life and chase him around the house, even though he drinks Naked's Green Machine juice and I swear to you that tastes more like green stuff than my smoothies.
Anyway.
He later walked into the kitchen when batch one was...(baking? Dehydrating? Solidifying slowly at 105 degrees?) and went "Wow, something smells good!"
"It's the flax crackers." I said.
"Really?" he sounded surprised.
Then I came upon him nibbling on the finished product with every evidence of enjoyment. My heart both leapt and sank. Leapt, because if you want me to WUV YOU FOREVER, it's really quite simple. All you have to do is compliment my cooking. That's it. Compliment my cooking, and a part of me will forgive you nearly any slight, because I LOVE to cook, and I LOVE to feed people, and I LOVE it when they like what I made. Sank, because my husband is an eater. Let me put this simply: one night I made him a pasta dish. I believe it involved fresh spring veggies, angel hair pasta, and a basil lemon garlic butter I find sometimes that is really scrumptious. I made him a big double batch. y'know, so he would have leftovers for the rest of the week.
He ate the entire batch. At once. With a FORK straight out of the bowl I mixed it in. While watching Ken Burn's the Civil War on Netflix. It gave him a terriable tummy ache.
"Honey, you do realize those take, like, twenty four hours to make." I said anxiously.
"I'll put them back."
"No! No, eat them if you like them. Just...leave some for me, okay?"
He then moved on to the buckwheat crackers (these only take twelve hours to make. It's not that much active time, just dehydrating time.) He liked the maple cinnamon ones okay, but thought the chocolate coconut buckwheat crackers were just awesome and ate a huge pile of them with a glass of milk (this probably defeats the whole raw food thing, huh?).
I've got a new batch of both in the dehydrator now and I'm already planning my next batch. Assuming the hubby doesn't eat them all first. :)
So here's a post!
I have a food dehydrator. The reason I have said dehydrator is so I can make crackers.
Don't laugh.
I'm particularly fond of the flax seed crackers that raw foodist types make to fit the strict rules of their "don't consume anything that's been heated above 118 or 105 degrees" rules. This apparently preserves the enzymes and leads to fantastic health, longevity, cures your cancer, regrows your hair, ect, ect. I don't know about any of that. I have a few raw food cookbooks and I use them more than you'd think, especially in the summer. They make the *best* smoothies and salads. And their crackers are DAMN tasty. BEST. CRACKERS. EVER
They are also expensive. We're talking eight to twelve bucks a two ounce bag expensive, so although I really like them, I never buy them. I am tempted, but then Darth Vader's voice booms at me down the aisles of Wholefoods intoning that "YOU ARE NOT A LAWYER YET." Then I put the crackers back. (Am I the only person who is stalked by the disembodied voice of Darth Vader? Maybe it's because my parent's first real date was to go see Star Wars.)
Hence my "I should really get my own dehydrator so I can make my own crackers." thing. I tossed one on the bridal registry, didn't really expect I'd get it, except I did (note for future brides and grooms: this always happens. I didn't get the dishes we could've used more....but I got a dehydrator!) So I figured, hell, probably I should use it?
So I bought some buckwheat, some sesame seeds, and some flax seeds. I think I spent a whopping five bucks on it all (the raw materials of flax seed and buckwheat crackers are not the expensive part: all the ingredients were organic, purchased from the bulk bins at Wholefoods, and cheap as heck.). Then I checked out a few raw food books (mine are, I believe, in my sister-in-laws basement. I WILL GET THEM OUT EVENTUALLY I PROMISE!!!). And then I started to experiment.
I am only telling you about this because of the reaction of Hubby. Hubby initially eyed the raw food books and went "Okay, fine. But I'm not going to eat it." I think he's afraid because it was raw food books that taught me to make green smoothies. I LOVE green smoothies. Basically it's a fruit smoothie that you add spinach to. I often have a big green smoothie for breakfast, and he never fails to eye it like it's going to come to life and chase him around the house, even though he drinks Naked's Green Machine juice and I swear to you that tastes more like green stuff than my smoothies.
Anyway.
He later walked into the kitchen when batch one was...(baking? Dehydrating? Solidifying slowly at 105 degrees?) and went "Wow, something smells good!"
"It's the flax crackers." I said.
"Really?" he sounded surprised.
Then I came upon him nibbling on the finished product with every evidence of enjoyment. My heart both leapt and sank. Leapt, because if you want me to WUV YOU FOREVER, it's really quite simple. All you have to do is compliment my cooking. That's it. Compliment my cooking, and a part of me will forgive you nearly any slight, because I LOVE to cook, and I LOVE to feed people, and I LOVE it when they like what I made. Sank, because my husband is an eater. Let me put this simply: one night I made him a pasta dish. I believe it involved fresh spring veggies, angel hair pasta, and a basil lemon garlic butter I find sometimes that is really scrumptious. I made him a big double batch. y'know, so he would have leftovers for the rest of the week.
He ate the entire batch. At once. With a FORK straight out of the bowl I mixed it in. While watching Ken Burn's the Civil War on Netflix. It gave him a terriable tummy ache.
"Honey, you do realize those take, like, twenty four hours to make." I said anxiously.
"I'll put them back."
"No! No, eat them if you like them. Just...leave some for me, okay?"
He then moved on to the buckwheat crackers (these only take twelve hours to make. It's not that much active time, just dehydrating time.) He liked the maple cinnamon ones okay, but thought the chocolate coconut buckwheat crackers were just awesome and ate a huge pile of them with a glass of milk (this probably defeats the whole raw food thing, huh?).
I've got a new batch of both in the dehydrator now and I'm already planning my next batch. Assuming the hubby doesn't eat them all first. :)
Thursday, May 20, 2010
I Roll 20's
I am one of those most hated gamer types: the profoundly lucky type. Please note: as previously mentioned, I am unusually lucky. But my luck isn't always good (in fact, it's usually bad). The number one way to ensure I have good luck is to hand me a set of dice and tell me to roll for initiative, at which point, I will become that lucky sonovah*&^%$ who has to be constantly reminded of the finer points of the rules but will none the less slaughter everyone and everything else because s/he keeps rolling whatever it is s/he needs to, even if it's astronomically unlikely.
I grew up playing not Dungeons and Dragons (I didn't pick that up until 3rd edition when I was in college, honestly), but BattleTech. Classic BattleTech, thank you very much. This basically means that I learned to play a strategy heavy hexagon-based war game that involves giant robots blasting each other into smithereens. I was taught to play BattleTech by my proud father, who was attempting to figure out how to get me more interested in math. It only sort-of worked: to this day, I can (roughly) figure probability in my head but I can't multiply or divide deliberately without use of a calculator, even though to figure out my to-hit probability, I am certainly doing one or the other somewhere in the recesses of my demented little mind. I am also very good with decimals and remembering how much more damage my head can take before my pilot passes out. If you play BattleTech, these are extremely useful skills. It has also, I am told, made me a bizarre and frustrating chess player. Not a good one, mind. But bizarre and frustrating to play against.
My father is not an inherently lucky player. I am. This has created great mirth in our father-daughter destruction time over the years.
For a year or two, while I was in high school, my Dad and I gamed with a group in a rural town in Delaware that played BattleTech most Friday nights. They initially made the assumption that my father was dragging me along to baby-sit my younger brothers (barely out of the toddling stage). I believe they were initially also of the mind to "spare the girl and humor her." This condescending attitude lasted about an hour into our first game, at which point I was reclassified as A Very Large Threat.
My father tells the story better than I do, but to the best of my recollection, this was more or less how it went down.
I was piloting a Wolfhound. This is a relatively small medium size-classed mech, which is only important isofar as that I was in one of the smallest, most lightly armored mechs on the field that evening. After realizing that I was going to take very effective potshots at them and thus probably shouldn't be ignored despite 1. being a very small mech and 2. being a very young lady, one of the other players turned his assault-class heavy mech on me. My mech took exactly one hit. To the head. Which due to the rules of the game, since that was where my pilot was located, meant I had to roll to see if my pilot was injured. He was; he had a concussion. I then had to roll to see if he remained conscious. He did not. He passed out, which cased my mech to fall down. This had the knock-off effect of making me a very hard to hit target: a prone mech just isn't as good a target as one that is standing up.
For the REST OF THE SESSION, I had to roll at the start of each turn to see if my pilot would wake up. He always did. I would then spend a movement point getting the mech back on it's feet, proceed to shoot up anybody in targeting range, as they were stupid enough to turn their (thinly armored) backs on me (usually because they were pinning themselves between large buildings, and their choice was to turn their back on me, or on another assault-class mech). I would, at the end of my turn, then have to roll again, to see if my pilot stayed conscious. He never did. He would then immediately pass out, my mech would flop over again, and the players who were growing vexed with the fact that I was shooting their mechs to pieces and decided I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO DIE RIGHT THEN would be greatly frustrated at their inability to hit me, because I was on the ground, and thus harder to hit.
By the end of the night, I had taken out several other, much larger mechs. Except for that one shot to the head, all the damage my Wolfhound had taken was from hitting the ground repeatedly as the pilot repeatedly lost consciousness. This eventually indeed caused one of the legs to fall off, which didn't hamper me from hopping around the field one-leggedly blowing holes in everyone else before passing out and falling down again. The mental image was hilarious; most of my co-players did not appreciate this.
I earned their respect. And perhaps a bit of their fear; my unnatural luck occasionally has that effect on people I game with.
Even my poor husband is not immune. A year or two ago we were playing Hunter (a classic World of Darkness game) and I made a series of rolls that allowed us, at something like 100 to 1 odds, to find sufficient silver trinkets in a *hospital gift shop* to make silver buckshot with which to hunt werewolves. It was one of the rare occasions too where my luck appeared to be catching: someone else made a roll later that session that allowed him to find, via Google, the true name of a major archdemon, which you can imagine is not very likely.
My husband still grinds his teeth about this. It's fairly cute.
I miss gaming. It's a great stress-reliever (nothing quite like putting aside thoughts of the minute of civil procedure for a few hours to pretend to be a ditzy waitress who hunts vampires or something). I'm hoping maybe we can get a group together this summer after my hubby is done student teaching; it'd be a lot of fun.
I grew up playing not Dungeons and Dragons (I didn't pick that up until 3rd edition when I was in college, honestly), but BattleTech. Classic BattleTech, thank you very much. This basically means that I learned to play a strategy heavy hexagon-based war game that involves giant robots blasting each other into smithereens. I was taught to play BattleTech by my proud father, who was attempting to figure out how to get me more interested in math. It only sort-of worked: to this day, I can (roughly) figure probability in my head but I can't multiply or divide deliberately without use of a calculator, even though to figure out my to-hit probability, I am certainly doing one or the other somewhere in the recesses of my demented little mind. I am also very good with decimals and remembering how much more damage my head can take before my pilot passes out. If you play BattleTech, these are extremely useful skills. It has also, I am told, made me a bizarre and frustrating chess player. Not a good one, mind. But bizarre and frustrating to play against.
My father is not an inherently lucky player. I am. This has created great mirth in our father-daughter destruction time over the years.
For a year or two, while I was in high school, my Dad and I gamed with a group in a rural town in Delaware that played BattleTech most Friday nights. They initially made the assumption that my father was dragging me along to baby-sit my younger brothers (barely out of the toddling stage). I believe they were initially also of the mind to "spare the girl and humor her." This condescending attitude lasted about an hour into our first game, at which point I was reclassified as A Very Large Threat.
My father tells the story better than I do, but to the best of my recollection, this was more or less how it went down.
I was piloting a Wolfhound. This is a relatively small medium size-classed mech, which is only important isofar as that I was in one of the smallest, most lightly armored mechs on the field that evening. After realizing that I was going to take very effective potshots at them and thus probably shouldn't be ignored despite 1. being a very small mech and 2. being a very young lady, one of the other players turned his assault-class heavy mech on me. My mech took exactly one hit. To the head. Which due to the rules of the game, since that was where my pilot was located, meant I had to roll to see if my pilot was injured. He was; he had a concussion. I then had to roll to see if he remained conscious. He did not. He passed out, which cased my mech to fall down. This had the knock-off effect of making me a very hard to hit target: a prone mech just isn't as good a target as one that is standing up.
For the REST OF THE SESSION, I had to roll at the start of each turn to see if my pilot would wake up. He always did. I would then spend a movement point getting the mech back on it's feet, proceed to shoot up anybody in targeting range, as they were stupid enough to turn their (thinly armored) backs on me (usually because they were pinning themselves between large buildings, and their choice was to turn their back on me, or on another assault-class mech). I would, at the end of my turn, then have to roll again, to see if my pilot stayed conscious. He never did. He would then immediately pass out, my mech would flop over again, and the players who were growing vexed with the fact that I was shooting their mechs to pieces and decided I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO DIE RIGHT THEN would be greatly frustrated at their inability to hit me, because I was on the ground, and thus harder to hit.
By the end of the night, I had taken out several other, much larger mechs. Except for that one shot to the head, all the damage my Wolfhound had taken was from hitting the ground repeatedly as the pilot repeatedly lost consciousness. This eventually indeed caused one of the legs to fall off, which didn't hamper me from hopping around the field one-leggedly blowing holes in everyone else before passing out and falling down again. The mental image was hilarious; most of my co-players did not appreciate this.
I earned their respect. And perhaps a bit of their fear; my unnatural luck occasionally has that effect on people I game with.
Even my poor husband is not immune. A year or two ago we were playing Hunter (a classic World of Darkness game) and I made a series of rolls that allowed us, at something like 100 to 1 odds, to find sufficient silver trinkets in a *hospital gift shop* to make silver buckshot with which to hunt werewolves. It was one of the rare occasions too where my luck appeared to be catching: someone else made a roll later that session that allowed him to find, via Google, the true name of a major archdemon, which you can imagine is not very likely.
My husband still grinds his teeth about this. It's fairly cute.
I miss gaming. It's a great stress-reliever (nothing quite like putting aside thoughts of the minute of civil procedure for a few hours to pretend to be a ditzy waitress who hunts vampires or something). I'm hoping maybe we can get a group together this summer after my hubby is done student teaching; it'd be a lot of fun.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Caffeine
"I'm trying to cut down on my caffeine consumption
So when I get up I just have one cup of coffee
And I like to have another cup of coffee with my breakfast
And on the way to work I like to get a cup of coffee
Like the kind of cup of coffee that you get with a doughnut
'Cept I never get the doughnut I just have the cup of coffee
And when I get to work I like to have a cup of coffee
'Cause I like to have a coffee when I'm talking on the phone
But it usually goes cold and I need to get another
Cup of coffee and it's lunch and I have an espresso
And when I get back it's not morning anymore
So I have a diet cola and another diet cola
And by then I'm feeling fine and I'm feeling pretty sharp
And I'm feeling pretty wired and I'm getting things done..."
"Stress" - Jim's Big Ego
My caffeine consumption is the stuff of legend.
It is in no small part the result of being a chronic insomniac. I don't sleep well; I never have, although it started to get bad during high school. My brain does not like shutting down for the evening; it just keeps wheeling through thoughts cheerfully, like some sort of perpetual motion machine.
Worse, I often wake up several times during the night if my sleep conditions are not absolutely PERFECT (meaning I am in my own bed, the temperature is exactly 62 degrees, I have my fuzzy sleep mask and my microfiber blanket, and it is either quiet or there is white noise). When I have a bad night (which again, is often), I run on caffeine. This is clearly not ideal, because the likelihood that the caffeine I gulp down to wake me up is causing the trouble I have going to and staying asleep is relatively high.
At my all time worst, I drank coffee all morning--literally all morning--and then switched to Coke around noon. I shudder to think how much caffeine (and sugar, from the coke--I drink my coffee with milk only) was coursing through my system during those dark days (otherwise known as "My entire undergraduate career").
The fun part about this is that when I started college I DID NOT LIKE coffee. Sure, I drank coffee sometimes, mostly at high school social functions where it was mostly a vehicle for me ingesting twenty-three packets of pure sugar, but I didn't become a coffee junky until some years later.
My coffee addiction is the result of a spectacularly ill advised crush. You know, the one you look back on and go "I am so glad we never dated and he wasn't into me, because I would had to *^%*ing kill him because he is a *&^%bag and he totally would have deserved it?" That one. I got away from that one emotionally unscathed (once the initial bruised feelings faded. Me being me, this took about a weekend; I move into and out of emotional states with great decisiveness and never let anyone tell you otherwise), but addicted to coffee, which I drink with milk only. I happen to think sugar in and whipped cream on coffee drinks are both abominations before the Lord our God, and have scared more than one barista by yelping like a distressed puppy when I see him/her approaching my sacred cappuccino with the whipped cream can. Also, I know when to stop adding sugar to my husband's coffee when I take a tiny sip and I find it unbearably disgusting. True story.
Since law school (where as a 1L I was at various points so caffeinated I swear I could feel all my individual atoms trembling twice as fast as usual), I've cut down considerably. I no longer drink carbonated sodas of any kind unless I happen to be out to eat (and even then I usually order water). And my coffee consumption is much better; I'm down to three cups a morning rather than "heck I lose count at six" all day long.
Granted, those "cups" are more like a cup and a half...twelve ounces, not eight. This is a bad habit I picked up from my father, who will tell you he has "two cups" of coffee every morning. He is a liar. His idea of "two cups" is to drink two 16 ounce travel mugs of coffee. And he usually forgets to tell you he makes third for the road. (I love you, Old Man. But you are a lying liar who lies about his coffee consumption: I have WATCHED YOU!!!!)
These days, I'm trying to cut down further. I have, for the last few days, switched my morning coffee for a mix of yerba mate and black tea. I am operating under the theory that yerba mate (a South American holly bush) has different kinds of caffeine-ish stimulants in it and is supposed to give you a gentler, less jittery high. I add the black tea because yerba mate by itself, frankly, tastes like fresh mowed grass. It isn't unpleasant, exactly. But it takes some getting used to and mixing a little black tea in the mix seems to help cut the grassy flavor to a reasonable level.
It must be working at least somewhat because I have not collapsed into a heap or gotten caffeine withdrawal headaches and I have also not devolved into the rapid talking, glassy eyed chipmunk-on-speed I can occasionally morph into when I've hit the java a little too hard.
Still, I miss my morning cuppa and I am left wondering what I am going to do with my coffee machine. "Making my coffee machine feel useful" does not seem like a rational reason to keep drinking coffee, unlike "Coffee prevents me from developing psychic powers and ripping the world to scattered space junk with my uncaffeinated rage", which may actually be true.
So when I get up I just have one cup of coffee
And I like to have another cup of coffee with my breakfast
And on the way to work I like to get a cup of coffee
Like the kind of cup of coffee that you get with a doughnut
'Cept I never get the doughnut I just have the cup of coffee
And when I get to work I like to have a cup of coffee
'Cause I like to have a coffee when I'm talking on the phone
But it usually goes cold and I need to get another
Cup of coffee and it's lunch and I have an espresso
And when I get back it's not morning anymore
So I have a diet cola and another diet cola
And by then I'm feeling fine and I'm feeling pretty sharp
And I'm feeling pretty wired and I'm getting things done..."
"Stress" - Jim's Big Ego
My caffeine consumption is the stuff of legend.
It is in no small part the result of being a chronic insomniac. I don't sleep well; I never have, although it started to get bad during high school. My brain does not like shutting down for the evening; it just keeps wheeling through thoughts cheerfully, like some sort of perpetual motion machine.
Worse, I often wake up several times during the night if my sleep conditions are not absolutely PERFECT (meaning I am in my own bed, the temperature is exactly 62 degrees, I have my fuzzy sleep mask and my microfiber blanket, and it is either quiet or there is white noise). When I have a bad night (which again, is often), I run on caffeine. This is clearly not ideal, because the likelihood that the caffeine I gulp down to wake me up is causing the trouble I have going to and staying asleep is relatively high.
At my all time worst, I drank coffee all morning--literally all morning--and then switched to Coke around noon. I shudder to think how much caffeine (and sugar, from the coke--I drink my coffee with milk only) was coursing through my system during those dark days (otherwise known as "My entire undergraduate career").
The fun part about this is that when I started college I DID NOT LIKE coffee. Sure, I drank coffee sometimes, mostly at high school social functions where it was mostly a vehicle for me ingesting twenty-three packets of pure sugar, but I didn't become a coffee junky until some years later.
My coffee addiction is the result of a spectacularly ill advised crush. You know, the one you look back on and go "I am so glad we never dated and he wasn't into me, because I would had to *^%*ing kill him because he is a *&^%bag and he totally would have deserved it?" That one. I got away from that one emotionally unscathed (once the initial bruised feelings faded. Me being me, this took about a weekend; I move into and out of emotional states with great decisiveness and never let anyone tell you otherwise), but addicted to coffee, which I drink with milk only. I happen to think sugar in and whipped cream on coffee drinks are both abominations before the Lord our God, and have scared more than one barista by yelping like a distressed puppy when I see him/her approaching my sacred cappuccino with the whipped cream can. Also, I know when to stop adding sugar to my husband's coffee when I take a tiny sip and I find it unbearably disgusting. True story.
Since law school (where as a 1L I was at various points so caffeinated I swear I could feel all my individual atoms trembling twice as fast as usual), I've cut down considerably. I no longer drink carbonated sodas of any kind unless I happen to be out to eat (and even then I usually order water). And my coffee consumption is much better; I'm down to three cups a morning rather than "heck I lose count at six" all day long.
Granted, those "cups" are more like a cup and a half...twelve ounces, not eight. This is a bad habit I picked up from my father, who will tell you he has "two cups" of coffee every morning. He is a liar. His idea of "two cups" is to drink two 16 ounce travel mugs of coffee. And he usually forgets to tell you he makes third for the road. (I love you, Old Man. But you are a lying liar who lies about his coffee consumption: I have WATCHED YOU!!!!)
These days, I'm trying to cut down further. I have, for the last few days, switched my morning coffee for a mix of yerba mate and black tea. I am operating under the theory that yerba mate (a South American holly bush) has different kinds of caffeine-ish stimulants in it and is supposed to give you a gentler, less jittery high. I add the black tea because yerba mate by itself, frankly, tastes like fresh mowed grass. It isn't unpleasant, exactly. But it takes some getting used to and mixing a little black tea in the mix seems to help cut the grassy flavor to a reasonable level.
It must be working at least somewhat because I have not collapsed into a heap or gotten caffeine withdrawal headaches and I have also not devolved into the rapid talking, glassy eyed chipmunk-on-speed I can occasionally morph into when I've hit the java a little too hard.
Still, I miss my morning cuppa and I am left wondering what I am going to do with my coffee machine. "Making my coffee machine feel useful" does not seem like a rational reason to keep drinking coffee, unlike "Coffee prevents me from developing psychic powers and ripping the world to scattered space junk with my uncaffeinated rage", which may actually be true.
Monday, May 10, 2010
What's in a name?
Apparently my name lacks character. Upon looking a couple of days ago at the new baby name rankings (Isabella indeed), I ended up through a series of links at a baby name site of apparently great popularity. Always curious, I punched in my name. Their assessment? It was along the lines of "trendy for a while, but lacks the character of Alice."
I was never aware that my name was trendy. Seriously, I've literally lost count of all the Amanda's I've ever met; I know only one other Alicia personally at this point, and I don't even know her all that well.
There is an amusing story about how I came to be Alicia. As I recall, the name my mother used in Spanish class in high school was Alicia--said "ah-lees-cee-ah"--and she developed a lasting fondness for the name. I was born when my mother was nineteen (admittedly, she turned twenty a couple of weeks later) and therefore I suppose she didn't have time to change her mind and be swayed by whatever her favorite pop star or soap opera maven was naming their offspring. Alicia--said "ah-lee-sha"--was the only name my parents had picked out for their firstborn. Hilariously, everybody was confident I was going to be a boy because of various pieces of folk wisdom having to do with my size (big) and such. I suppose it's a good thing all around I was a girl after all; I don't know what my parent's would have called me (at a guess, William after my mother's father, as my father's father long ago threatened to disinherit any descendant given his given name--Arnold. Which nobody calls him. Everybody calls him Hutch, including my grandmother.)
I rather like my name, frankly. I even liked it when teachers in my middle and high school careers used to mark me absent because they expected to be a Latino. Or when people butcher how to say my name, sometimes by calling me some-other-name-that-starts-with-"A" entirely (there are admittedly a variety of ways to pronounce "Alicia", but none of them as far as I know involve saying it as "Allison.") I even like it, in this age of contact lists and cell phones, when people accidentally call me on a regular basis. My name starting with the letter "A", which means that cell phones, when smooshed in pockets and accidentally calling someone, often call me, leaving me to listen to the humdrum sounds of whatever shopping mall they happen to be in at the time while going "Hello?..." to empty air.
See, I don't accidentally call people on MY cell phone. I just inadvertently take pictures of the inside of my pockets, which is TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
The other problem with having a name that starts with an "A" is that on Facebook I swear to god I get more spam than most people. This is because when those stupid quizes and games ask you to "pick 15 friends" I'm almost always near the top of the list, and thus easy to click, rather than buried somewhere near the bottom. It almost makes me wish my parents called me Zelda (perhaps if I was seven or eight years younger they would've--my mom is a big classic Legend of Zelda fan). This has become less of a problem since I figured out how to block aps on Facebook, though, which makes me happy: I used to get so much facebook spam I had a hard time actually finding postings I might want to see, which led to friends inviting me out and me not finding out about it until six months after they'd stopped wondering why I never bothered to respond.
Alicia, for the record, means either, from the German Adelaide, "noble or exalted", or from the Greek Aletheia, "truth." At least one baby name book I've seen splits the difference and claims it means "noble truth." Since my middle name, Audrey, means "noble strength" I seem to have a surplus of nobility kicking around my moniker. You'd think that'd make me somewhat more dignified....but you'd be wrong. (there is no nobility in my surname thankfully. It means "the son of short Hugh." My father is in fact short, but his name is David. Come to think of it, my married name means "Short Man", so clearly there isn't much tallness in my last name, married or otherwise.)
Could have been worse, though. My parents could've named me Grace. Since I regularly trip over air and recently managed to fall on my face while tripping over a jump rope (which I then got entangled in a ceiling fan), I could live without being a walking case of irony.
I was never aware that my name was trendy. Seriously, I've literally lost count of all the Amanda's I've ever met; I know only one other Alicia personally at this point, and I don't even know her all that well.
There is an amusing story about how I came to be Alicia. As I recall, the name my mother used in Spanish class in high school was Alicia--said "ah-lees-cee-ah"--and she developed a lasting fondness for the name. I was born when my mother was nineteen (admittedly, she turned twenty a couple of weeks later) and therefore I suppose she didn't have time to change her mind and be swayed by whatever her favorite pop star or soap opera maven was naming their offspring. Alicia--said "ah-lee-sha"--was the only name my parents had picked out for their firstborn. Hilariously, everybody was confident I was going to be a boy because of various pieces of folk wisdom having to do with my size (big) and such. I suppose it's a good thing all around I was a girl after all; I don't know what my parent's would have called me (at a guess, William after my mother's father, as my father's father long ago threatened to disinherit any descendant given his given name--Arnold. Which nobody calls him. Everybody calls him Hutch, including my grandmother.)
I rather like my name, frankly. I even liked it when teachers in my middle and high school careers used to mark me absent because they expected to be a Latino. Or when people butcher how to say my name, sometimes by calling me some-other-name-that-starts-with-"A" entirely (there are admittedly a variety of ways to pronounce "Alicia", but none of them as far as I know involve saying it as "Allison.") I even like it, in this age of contact lists and cell phones, when people accidentally call me on a regular basis. My name starting with the letter "A", which means that cell phones, when smooshed in pockets and accidentally calling someone, often call me, leaving me to listen to the humdrum sounds of whatever shopping mall they happen to be in at the time while going "Hello?..." to empty air.
See, I don't accidentally call people on MY cell phone. I just inadvertently take pictures of the inside of my pockets, which is TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
The other problem with having a name that starts with an "A" is that on Facebook I swear to god I get more spam than most people. This is because when those stupid quizes and games ask you to "pick 15 friends" I'm almost always near the top of the list, and thus easy to click, rather than buried somewhere near the bottom. It almost makes me wish my parents called me Zelda (perhaps if I was seven or eight years younger they would've--my mom is a big classic Legend of Zelda fan). This has become less of a problem since I figured out how to block aps on Facebook, though, which makes me happy: I used to get so much facebook spam I had a hard time actually finding postings I might want to see, which led to friends inviting me out and me not finding out about it until six months after they'd stopped wondering why I never bothered to respond.
Alicia, for the record, means either, from the German Adelaide, "noble or exalted", or from the Greek Aletheia, "truth." At least one baby name book I've seen splits the difference and claims it means "noble truth." Since my middle name, Audrey, means "noble strength" I seem to have a surplus of nobility kicking around my moniker. You'd think that'd make me somewhat more dignified....but you'd be wrong. (there is no nobility in my surname thankfully. It means "the son of short Hugh." My father is in fact short, but his name is David. Come to think of it, my married name means "Short Man", so clearly there isn't much tallness in my last name, married or otherwise.)
Could have been worse, though. My parents could've named me Grace. Since I regularly trip over air and recently managed to fall on my face while tripping over a jump rope (which I then got entangled in a ceiling fan), I could live without being a walking case of irony.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
On Vanishing Objects
I have decided that I am no longer going to put things where I will obviously be able to find them later. This is because when I do so, I lose them and never see them again (or only find them again with great difficulty and swearing). From now on, I shall squirrel things away in illogical places where no sane person would put them.
Take, if you will, my watch. Since we moved into our current apartment, I have lost the ability to take my watch off and know where it is to put it back on later. I have no idea why. All through undergrad and law school, I wore the same watch--a Fossil metal banded watch with a hot pink, orange, and yellow swirly sort of face, which I was justifiably very proud of as I bought it with the very first money I ever made for speaking publicly (I believe I talked about ethics). I know for a fact that watch is somewhere in this apartment. I just have no earthly idea where it is.
Two other watches which I wore more rarely have suffered the same fate. They're here somewhere. I don't know exactly where. As my current work requires me to be rather more aware of the actual time than I've become accustomed to lately, I bought a cheap Timex at Target a few days ago. Two days ago, I took it off and VERY DELIBERATELY thought to myself "I should put this where I will be able to find it again because I really need it."
Do you think I can remember where that is? Nooooo. In my attempt to locate it yesterday, I knocked a jar of spaghetti sauce over from where my husband had put it on top of a shelving unit in the dining room (space is at something of a premium in the kitchen, the sad side effect of keeping kosher and needing therefore twice as much room to store dishes as everybody else). It shattered into a million gory pieces and spattered sauce all over my dining room floor, which caused me to go on a mad hunt for my dustpan and hand-broom to help sweep up the glass.
It took me FORTY MINUTES to find it, and by the time I did, I was so agitated that I had kicked a paper bag from the kitchen to the middle of our living room, yelled repeatedly at the gnomes to bring it back already (as I had just used it the day before, I was quite confident it was gnomes), and made myself late for my first appointment of the day (blessedly, the person I met with was ALSO running late and thus never noticed.) I found it underneath a pile of clothes I had set aside that require hand washing. How it got from the kitchen (where I used it for sweeping purposes the day before) to the bathroom under the pile for hand-washing, I have no idea (gnomes?).
I still haven't found my watch.
From now on, when I find one of them (there are like five of them scattered around the bloody apartment by now) I will store them in the stupidest place possible, like inside my running shoes, or wrapped around my dumbbells. Clearly this putting them in reasonable places thing fails miserably because my brain works so illogically I can't ever recall where this reasonable place is. It must be getting rather cluttered, I think, as it seems to be holding four watches and what remains of my sanity.
UPDATE: I found the pink and yellow faced Fossil! It was hiding behind some DVDs on our DVD shelf. I have no idea what it was doing there, besides hiding from me.
Take, if you will, my watch. Since we moved into our current apartment, I have lost the ability to take my watch off and know where it is to put it back on later. I have no idea why. All through undergrad and law school, I wore the same watch--a Fossil metal banded watch with a hot pink, orange, and yellow swirly sort of face, which I was justifiably very proud of as I bought it with the very first money I ever made for speaking publicly (I believe I talked about ethics). I know for a fact that watch is somewhere in this apartment. I just have no earthly idea where it is.
Two other watches which I wore more rarely have suffered the same fate. They're here somewhere. I don't know exactly where. As my current work requires me to be rather more aware of the actual time than I've become accustomed to lately, I bought a cheap Timex at Target a few days ago. Two days ago, I took it off and VERY DELIBERATELY thought to myself "I should put this where I will be able to find it again because I really need it."
Do you think I can remember where that is? Nooooo. In my attempt to locate it yesterday, I knocked a jar of spaghetti sauce over from where my husband had put it on top of a shelving unit in the dining room (space is at something of a premium in the kitchen, the sad side effect of keeping kosher and needing therefore twice as much room to store dishes as everybody else). It shattered into a million gory pieces and spattered sauce all over my dining room floor, which caused me to go on a mad hunt for my dustpan and hand-broom to help sweep up the glass.
It took me FORTY MINUTES to find it, and by the time I did, I was so agitated that I had kicked a paper bag from the kitchen to the middle of our living room, yelled repeatedly at the gnomes to bring it back already (as I had just used it the day before, I was quite confident it was gnomes), and made myself late for my first appointment of the day (blessedly, the person I met with was ALSO running late and thus never noticed.) I found it underneath a pile of clothes I had set aside that require hand washing. How it got from the kitchen (where I used it for sweeping purposes the day before) to the bathroom under the pile for hand-washing, I have no idea (gnomes?).
I still haven't found my watch.
From now on, when I find one of them (there are like five of them scattered around the bloody apartment by now) I will store them in the stupidest place possible, like inside my running shoes, or wrapped around my dumbbells. Clearly this putting them in reasonable places thing fails miserably because my brain works so illogically I can't ever recall where this reasonable place is. It must be getting rather cluttered, I think, as it seems to be holding four watches and what remains of my sanity.
UPDATE: I found the pink and yellow faced Fossil! It was hiding behind some DVDs on our DVD shelf. I have no idea what it was doing there, besides hiding from me.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
On why I am truly the Goddess of Misfortune
Why am I the Goddess of Misfortune?
I have excellent proof that I am, in fact, possessed of more-than-my-fair-share of luck. It's like a superpower! It's just that most of it is bad.
To wit, in one very recent fifteen day period, I awoke with a terrible bout of carpal tunnel syndrome which rendered my left hand useless for three days, discovered that my health insurance provider was attempting to retroactively drop my insurance coverage eight months after we'd bought my annual policy, drove my husband's car into a telephone pole while pulling out of a parking lot (taking out the hood, the front bumper, the radiator and the air conditioning compressor to the tune of four thousand dollars), subsequently got whiplash from said incident, and ended up with a staph infection (from, apparently, a hangnail) in my left thumb which caused it to swell like I'd just smacked it with a hammer.
April was a very cruel month, alas. At least we had car insurance and antibiotics are cheap.
This appears to be an inherited trait. When I called to bemoan my ill luck to my Auntie Barbie, she informed me that what was wrong with me was that I was born a member of our family, and we pretty much all have mostly rotten luck. My great-grandfather Aubrey apparently used to tell people he'd have no luck at all if not for bad, and this is a trait I sincerely wish I had not inherited.
I could give more examples--the tendency I have for anything bad that will happen in the month of July tending to occur directly on my birthday, for instance, or the fact that after something like nine years of schooling I finally managed to graduate law school into the worst legal recession in fifty years comes to mind. But I will resist for now (I might need something to blog about later), and leave it at that I appear to be an epicenter for bizarre happenings, legal technicalities, medical mysteries, and credibility-stretching coincidences. I have not lost my sense of humor. This is perhaps good, because I'm not entirely sure what I'd do if I wasn't able to find my own less-than-ideal present circumstances somewhat funny.
I live in interesting times. Perhaps you will find them amusing.
I have excellent proof that I am, in fact, possessed of more-than-my-fair-share of luck. It's like a superpower! It's just that most of it is bad.
To wit, in one very recent fifteen day period, I awoke with a terrible bout of carpal tunnel syndrome which rendered my left hand useless for three days, discovered that my health insurance provider was attempting to retroactively drop my insurance coverage eight months after we'd bought my annual policy, drove my husband's car into a telephone pole while pulling out of a parking lot (taking out the hood, the front bumper, the radiator and the air conditioning compressor to the tune of four thousand dollars), subsequently got whiplash from said incident, and ended up with a staph infection (from, apparently, a hangnail) in my left thumb which caused it to swell like I'd just smacked it with a hammer.
April was a very cruel month, alas. At least we had car insurance and antibiotics are cheap.
This appears to be an inherited trait. When I called to bemoan my ill luck to my Auntie Barbie, she informed me that what was wrong with me was that I was born a member of our family, and we pretty much all have mostly rotten luck. My great-grandfather Aubrey apparently used to tell people he'd have no luck at all if not for bad, and this is a trait I sincerely wish I had not inherited.
I could give more examples--the tendency I have for anything bad that will happen in the month of July tending to occur directly on my birthday, for instance, or the fact that after something like nine years of schooling I finally managed to graduate law school into the worst legal recession in fifty years comes to mind. But I will resist for now (I might need something to blog about later), and leave it at that I appear to be an epicenter for bizarre happenings, legal technicalities, medical mysteries, and credibility-stretching coincidences. I have not lost my sense of humor. This is perhaps good, because I'm not entirely sure what I'd do if I wasn't able to find my own less-than-ideal present circumstances somewhat funny.
I live in interesting times. Perhaps you will find them amusing.
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