Category Archives: all posts

dork dork dork

I am such a sucker for solar chargers. I’m trying to decide if the solio charger is what I need, or if I should go for something more robust. Probably more robust b/c my rechargable batteries require a wall-socket to charge, and I don’t want to go buying all kinds of specific accessories. but the solio is SO MUCH CUTER than one of the larger, film based chargers! and it’s “only” $100! and then I wouldn’t have to get a car charger for my cell phone!

Philadelphia

Last weekend was the philly office party, and michelle and I decided to make a weekend of it. Actually, it ended up being less than 24 hours, but it was still pretty fun. we drove down on sat. after I fixed my skirt and we packed and slept in and were sleepy, and got to town around 4:30. the hotel we were staying at was charitably called “european” on various on-line rating boards, but it was the only one with availability that didn’t cost $334 (pre tax). But despite the nonworking elevator (since june at least! can you imagine?) and the space where there should have been a headboard (ripped from the wall! yikes!) and the part where our room hadn’t been cleaned before we got there and smelled like skunky weed, we safely stayed and didn’t pick up any bugs or other vermin. phew.

The sunday after the office party (where, as I’ve mentioned before, there was arm wrestling – but also kareoke! but just me! ha!) we only had a little bit of time to spend in town. We managed to find a nice diner to eat in. I snapped a few photos from our walk around town.

Continue reading

Worlds! Largest! Garage Sale!

a couple of weeks ago I went up to the Worlds! Largest! Garage Sale! in Warrensburg with some girlfriends. it was superfun!

We all drove up the night before and met at daddy-o’s house, where we were kindly housed in the 5th wheel camper. it was a cold night, but the sleeping bags were quite toasty. it was the first time camping for one of our girls! how exciting! it also changed my mind about mummy sleeping bags. I’ve been using a threadbare worn out sleeping bag from (potentially at least) 15 years ago, and I have been reluctant to upgrade to a mummy bag. now that I see how wonderfuly cozy a big new warm sleeping bag is in the fall (favorite time to camp! less bugs! hats around campfires!) I think I’ll make the plunge.

we got up at 5:15 AM (it seemed more reasonable than 5AM) and had some lovely continental breakfast courtesy the folks and drove up in my stepsisters borrowed minivan, arriving around 7:45 or so. And traffic was already backed up until the highway! we found the last free parking spot on the side of the road and walked off into the fray.

there were a lot of things that I DIDN’T buy, including v.c. andrews books and these awesome tree faces.

Continue reading

office party

sat. michelle and I drove down to philly for their office party. it was on a boat, and I’ll do just about anything that is on a boat. we got a hotel room and planned to make a weekend of it but got a late start on sat. and didn’t sleep much on sunday. anyway, I’m not sure what the highlight of the evening was but it might have been me arm-wrestling with a colleague. it was a tie. and MAN does my arm hurt today! I’ve been talking about arm-wrestling for a long time at work, you know, as a method of conflict resolution, but I’m not so sure anymore. my muscles! they are aching!

soap box sandwich.

so, because I accidentally went to the sock dreams webpage to link to my star socks for the pirate band post, I accidentally became induced to purchase a whole lot of socks. like, 113 bucks worth of socks. um. At least it’s 12 pairs of socks, and I’d say I can wear at least 10 of them to work regularly.

Last week when I was pulling on a pair of knee highs I did stop and ask myself “should a project engineer wear knee highs to work?” and then I put them all the way on, because it was kind of cool outside and heck if I’m going to start wearing nylons to work Every Day. those things are bad for you! and I only own 1 pair of pants! In light of the momentary sock insecurity, I made sure to stock up on a lot of Really Long socks – that will be thigh high length, ergo not knee sock length. That should keep things professional.

[[um. this post is a soap box sandwich b/c it smooshes the soap box post about ecofoods between two fluffy pieces of white bread that are studded with currants, pirates, and socks. see, there’s always a method here, folks. always.]]

(un)sustainable agriculture, e.coli, western water rights, and local food.

there is a whole lot that could be said about the e.coli thing. now that the spinach thing has gone from spinach to also lettuce, I was thinking about maybe saying something. Anyway, this whole situation falls neatly under several of the topics on the “things I feel strongly about” list, so I will try to restrain myself. Jesse over at Corduroy Orange has touched on some of the issues in a couple of posts, as well.

maybe bullets will keep me on-track, ordered, and without too much fist raising prosteltizing.

  • I found out that the strain of e.coli that is responsible for the spinach sickness and deaths is a strain that can withstand high-acid conditions. incidentally, when you factory farm cows you create high acid conditions in their stomachs. cows don’t really eat grain alone very happily – it creates something called “feedlot bloat” which creates excess gas that inflates in the cows rumen and which can press on the cows lungs and suffocate them. this is one of the reasons why it’s GOOD that feedlot cows are slaughtered within a year. The grain also makes a high acid condition in the stomachs, which makes for some happy special evil strain of e.coli.
  • the map that jesse posted says this very clearly, but it’s amazing that we are relying on the salinas valley in california for the majority of our produce. not only is this ridiculous, it’s unsustainable for a number of reasons: 1. we shouldn’t have all of our food eggs in one basket, so to speak. 2. fuel costs have been, until recently, going up superfast. these costs weren’t embedded in the cost of our cheap california produce, but they will be sometime! 3. I hear that the northern groundwater wells (primary source of irrigation for the salinas valley) are experiencing saline intrusion. which means, you know, that we’ve got all these eggs in a basket but it turns out the basket is really just a really big hourglass full of sand, and the sand is dropping out of the bottom of the glass, and the some day the eggs will come shooting out as well.
  • if you haven’t read cadillac desert, you really should. the water rights issues in the west will only become more important as time goes by. and now that farmers are learning that they have to pay attention to the run-off from factory farms I can only see some complicated negotiations in the future.
  • I think there should be a serious dialog about the cost of food in america.
  • and while we’re talking, we might want to look into the ENVIRONMENTAL cost of food in america. I’m not just talking about food miles here, but also the unsustainability of an economy that always comes down to a dependance on oil – usually in the form of petrochemical fertilizers.
  • I also think there should be a serious dialog about homeland security. The spinach situation reminds me a lot of the green onion hepatitis A outbreak when I lived in pittsburgh. we can’t just keep getting all this cheap food from around the world without dealing with the social and environmental consequences. who’s picking your food? are they being paid enough to live well? to be hygenic? to treat their own illnesses or to take time off of work when they’re contagious? if these aren’t issues of homeland security, I don’t know what is.

Anyway! not too bad, no? just a quick hop onto the ol’ soap box! so as not to just wave my hands around without offering any real solutions, how about CSAs? they say the personal is the political, and I see food as an extremely political issue. and with any issue, you have to decide where to start and start slowly. you can’t let the scope of the issue overwhelm you into non-action. I’ve decided to start by eating meat infrequently, trying to eat organic and grass-fed where I can, and by purchasing as much local and/or organic food as I can find and afford.

pirate band

last night I met rob in hoboken to see captain bogg & salty, a pirate rock band. it was awesome fun. they were so rock’n’roll – after the show a feller said to his friend (in a humorously loud voice) “this was the best thing that has ever happened to me!” I bought a CD to share with my nephews and requested a photo with some of the band.

pirateband
I also told them that my uncle was a pirate in seattle. They said “oh, is he with the so-and-so pirates?” and I said “no, but he took a lot of acid when he was a kid!” and then I relayed the disputed cabbage story. I have been told by one parent that we ate so much cabbage when we were children b/c the other parent was concerned we would get scurvy. the other parent disputes this story and says it was because the initial parent wouldn’t eat any vegetables EXCEPT for cabbage. Based on pure ridiculousness, I prefer to think we ate 1/8 of a head of cabbage every night with dinner as scurvy prevention. It worked, I mean, I grew up to be 5’11” and as strong as an ox.

also, not only was the pirate band super fun, but it afforded an opportunity to wear my star socks. it’s impossible to wear these subtly, so I’m just going with it.

starsocks

posting

I have been so busy at work that I don’t get much of a chance to post lots of stuff. But I keep thinking: hey, that would be a great blog post. So I’ve started to make a list of posts in my wordpress admin window, and that’s a good start. I just worry that I’ll put up, oh, 10,000 posts on one day and then go for 3 weeks without posting, and that’s no good!

Speaking of work, it’s been going very well. I’ve been working extra hard and have been getting good results. my biggest problem is, I think, my tendency to take things personally. Like having to tell a client about newly discovered contamination at a site – I take that kind of personally. it’s not like I’m carrying around a sack of PCBs and sprinkling it around, but I am overly invested in the issues, maybe, or I just want to make everyone happy.  I’m trying to let go of things like this and it is sort of working… I am not woken in the middle of the night anymore, anyway! but it’s a long struggle to revise the way you approach a problem.

September 2006 books

56. It Ends with Revelations by Dodie Smith
57. All that Remains by Patricia Cornwall
58. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Vol II: 1910-1924
59. Blowfly by Patricia Cornwall
60. Life Support by Tess Gerritsen
61. Blindsight by Robin Cook
62. Gravity by Tess Gerritsen
63. Laura by Vivian Schurfranz
64. Nora by Jeffie Ross Gordon
65. Diana by Mary Francis Schura
66. Jacquelyn by Jeffie Ross Gordon
67. Jenie by Jane Claypool Miner
68. Josie by Vivian Schurfranz
69. Margaret by Jane Claypool Miner
70. Corey by Jane Claypool Miner
71. Veronica by Jane Claypool Miner
72. Cassie by Vivian Schurfranz
73. Julie by Vivian Schurfranz
74. Caroline by Willo Davis Roberts
75. Venitia by Georgette Heyer
* the books with girls names are all sunfire books, which are books featuring young girls in various tulmultous times of american history. I used to read them in middle school and I learned a lot about various epic adventures. of course, they’ve all got the same basic structure: girl in thrilling period of american history must choose between two totally different but equally devoted suitors. this page is a great reference. you know, if you’re interested in learning more. I bought a lot of 15 from ebay in the spring.

** Venitia is NOT a sunfire romance, it was a selection of the chicklit book club and is a 1958 regency period novel. I really enjoyed it.

*** mom has passed along quite a few thriller mass market paperbacks, and I did my best to read all the odds and ends on my bookshelf this month. I’m passing them along to the lending library at my gym, or to Kathleen. I hope someone else enjoys them!

**** I can NOT believe I’m up to 75 books. It’s because they’re all trash, but whatever. I’ll take it. I am so well on my way to 100 books this year. as long as I don’t start watching lots of dvds, I’ll totally make it.

darn cool links

this is totally awesome: modular radiant heating strips for use anywhere in your home.

I’ve been shutting off the powerstrip that juices up my tv, radio, and dvd player, as well as unplugging my microwave, but this power strip will shut off everything that is plugged into it if you turn off a governor appliance, like, a lamp. very easy for people to do.

after talking about it for about 3 months, I just purchased green power for my home. I wanted to do 100% NJ based wind b/c I don’t use much electricity so I can afford to pay the additional 5 cents/kwh, but instead signed up for the option with 1% NJ solar. My decision was made entirely on what local NJ energy renewable I wanted to support.

I just stumbled onto wiki how and it looks neat.

and writing that down reminded me of this really incredible illustration of how a sewing machine works.

I know I’m late to the party, but I don’t want to forget about these fancy modular flooring tiles. miyo vinyl flooring and flor carpet flooring (which are recycleable and available in recycled/natural materials). and I wonder how they’d work with the modular radiant heating?

also, crafty: I’ve added a few new links to the sidebar. adorn magazine is a wonderful new publication that my birthday twin and good friend linda works on. this is love forever, west coast crafty, and paper dolly girl are all crafty blogs of old internet crafty girlfriends. I love it! they are full of inspiration and I know they’ll keep me honest about my crafting. and by keep me honest, I mean: KEEP ME CRAFTING.

pretty.

websitesasgraphs is a higher level of dorkitude than I understand, but it’s still pretty:

websitesasgraphs

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

smart women vote

one of the saddest things about giving up my trusty and wonderful and very rusty busted honda civic was parting with the carefully chosen bumperstickers.

flo1

on the left hand side I have a “smart women vote 2004” sticker. I was happy to see that the smart women have got up another set of electioneering materials for sale. including a new, ageless “smart women vote” sticker. now I’ve got to decide: how much do I want to put onto the back of my sweet zippy little insight? voting is very very important, that’s for sure. as is my 60+ mpg sticker. I’m just not sure how well that yellow “live larger, drive smaller” bumpersticker will coordinate with my dark blue car.

recharge on the whole buy vs. make

I thought this was pretty interesting:

a seattle dancer wears the same little brown dress for a year and then after her project is over she commits to wearing only handmade and recycled clothing for a year.

it really reminds me of all the sewing I have to do in order to maintain my buy vs. make concept. and it helped me to make an adult decision regarding this coming weekend: some of my crafty girlfriends and I are planning to drive up to warrensburg for the worlds largest garage sale. Afterwards I wasn’t sure if I should drive home or if I should stay in albany. the idea of an 11 hour driving weekend for just 24 hours of garage saleing seems so silly, but after reading all of the little brown dress journal I think I’ll go home sat. night and on sunday will clean my room and sew a skirt. I have an office party to go on 10/7 and I’d love to have something new and nice to wear. and with all the work I’ve been doing I’ve been way off track on the goals of keeping my house clean and sewing my new clothes. hopefully I’ll be able to get with the program on sunday and get some stuff done!

in other craftastic and recycled clothing news, swap-o-rama-rama looks like an all around good time. I’m hoping to make it to the next NYC event on 10/8. I love it!

Big Red Balls of Sun

there are two reasons why it’s nice to get to work at 6 or 6:30 in the morning:

1. my regular 45 min. or 1 hour of goofing off gets packed in before the day starts, and

2. the sunrise over edison is awfully pretty.

things I feel strongly about

a list of things I feel strongly about, and therefore, may cause me to soapbox about willy nilly:

  • alternative fuels
  • feminism
  • sustainable food sources
  • community
  • reduction of consumerism
  • self-sufficiency within the framework of todays american culture
  • energy efficiency
  • the value of popular culture
  • transportation issues
  • classism and issues of structural violence

my dorkiest story from high school

this NYTimes science article about the discovery of what lucy’s daughter would be, if, you know, lucy had a daughter, (I’m talking about australopithecines here, fyi) reminded me of the year that ruth and I were on Nisk-Art and planned to go to a yearbook and literary magazine conference in NYC. Ruth was into anthropology and made me read a book about the discovery of Lucy (I’m pretty sure it was this book. which I totally did (it was my first non-fiction book for pleasure, and it was a good one to start with!). And then we went to the conference in NYC and totally cut one of the afternoon sessions and went to the museum of natural history, and we saw [a replica of] LUCY’S BONES.

see? how totally dorky is that? this is way dorkier than us learning to spell Tlahuizcowpanticutli. Totally way dorkier.

well.

Excitement is being asked to choose a dinner location for a group of out-of-town work colleagues close to the office, even though you’re not really a local, and finding out that the thai restaurant you’ve picked and said was “nice” is not the one you’ve brought everyone to at all. At least the one we did end up at was very wonderful, with a menu in both thai and english and really fantastic food. not so much with the ambiance, though the napkins were cloth. my coworkers took a photo with their camera phone and promised to reciprocate with an equally exciting dining experience the next time I was in baltimore. heck! I bet that photo makes it into a presentation sometime.

in other news, what are the odds that me having thai food 3x in 4 days contributed to the coup in thailand? when a butterfly flaps its wings, that’s what I say. anyone got any special food binge requests for me?

“But how could the Science Guy fail us like this, Pluto?”

I was looking up Bill Nye on wikipedia and learned that he agrees with the Pluto name and status change. Oh, Bill. Pluto and I are both very sad to hear that.

in more cheerful news, happy international talk-like-a-pirate day!

the promotion came through.

I’m now officially a project engineer/assistant project manager. Which means I get to order new business cards – which makes set #4 that I’ll have ordered in the 1 1/2 years I’ve been here. So far I have had cards for the mahwah office, for the edison office, and updated cards with my PE on them. I’m so glad I just put “engineer” on my notepads! I’d hate to waste them.

of course, now my coworkers are trying to figure out the best way to let the disgruntled senior engineers in the other office know about my promotion. you know, just to shake some cages and rattle some chains. I think I’ll just call up my buddy and let HIM know. he’s a chatter, he’ll probably spread the word pretty nicely. I feel so awkward about it though! there are people who have been working for much longer than I have, and who are not being advanced like me. partly it’s because I’m good at promoting myself and have an advanced degree and a license, but it is still a little lopsided. What can you do? I must remind myself that I worked hard to get this promotion, even if it did seem to go by “all in a days work.”

the only appropriate sept. 11th post I can think of.

>>> “DanAaron” 09/11/01 09:35AM >>>

hey there, can you see the smoke?

Continue reading