Highbrow-lowbrow

Did you know Art Spiegelman used to draw Garbage Pail Kids?

Startled

... is how I felt this morning when I walked out of the bedroom and saw a man standing on our second floor balcony, staring at me.  It took me a moment to realize that it must have something to do with the repainting of our building.  I thanked my lucky stars that I was in my bathrobe, given my slovenly habit of wandering through the house in various states of undress.

Chaos Walking

Today's Amazon Daily Deal for Kindle offered this young adult trilogy for just $3.  According to the Booklist Review:


" Chased by a madman preacher and possibly the rest of his townsfolk as well, young Todd Hewitt flees his settlement on a planet where war with the natives has killed all the women and infected the men with a germ that broadcasts their thoughts aloud for all to hear. This cacophanous thought-cloud is known as Noise and is rendered with startling effectiveness on the page. The first of many secrets is revealed when Todd discovers an unsettling hole in the Noise, and quickly realizes that he lives in a much different world than the one he thought he did. Some of the central conceits of the drama can be hard to swallow, but the pure inventiveness and excitement of the telling more than make up for it. Narrated in a sort of pidgin English with crack dramatic and comic timing by Todd and featuring one of the finest talking-dog characters anywhere, this troubling, unforgettable opener to the Chaos Walking trilogy is a penetrating look at the ways in which we reveal ourselves to one another, and what it takes to be a man in a society gone horribly wrong. The cliffhanger ending is as effective as a shot to the gut. "


It sounds like it could be either great or terribly bad.  I bought it.

Draw Something

Do you play this?  If not, you should.  With me.

Sleep No More

Have you heard of Sleep No More? It's an immersive theater experience based on Macbeth, where you follow around various characters and see what happen to them, and occasionally they engage you in the story. You can also poke around and explore, opening drawers, reading letters, etc. It sounds amazing, although creepy (given the subject matter). Sadly, it's no longer in Boston.

Bon Appetit food lover's cleanse

Doesn't this sound good? Seems like it involves a lot of advance planning and cooking, though.

My Nordstrom Personal Stylist Experience

In short: fun, but not the miracle I had hoped.

I went last Saturday.  It only took a couple days after filling out the website form to get an appointment.  I also responded to an email asking for my clothing sizes, budget ($300-$500), and goals for the session (mine was to acquire a smart casual/dress casual wardrobe -- I think I said I was specifically interested in a few good basic pieces that could be mixed and matched for "a nice dinner party or a wine-tasting weekend with friends").

Nordstrom has a nice Personal Stylist section with big, well-lit dressing rooms.  My stylist had already pulled a bunch of clothes for me to try on when I got there.  A lot of the clothes were not really in my comfort zone (tight white jeans, voluminous tops, striped jersey blazers, gold-trimmed high heeled wedges), or in a color palette that I generally think of as flattering on me, but I figured what the hell, the whole point was to broaden my clothing horizons.  So I tried on pretty much everything.  Sadly, I did not magically come to believe that leggings-like pants and giant tops are my look, although they are apparently "on trend," in the words of my stylist.  She spent a lot of time sweetly trying to convince me that they looked fine on me and that I have nothing to be self-conscious about, when I should probably have been more assertive and said, well, it's nice that you think so, but I'd really like to try some different profiles.

I also tried on some dresses and liked them before realizing that they were all $400-500.  "Uh, that's a little out of my price range -- I might pay $200 for something I love, but that's pretty much my upper limit," I told the stylist.  She said that was good to know, and whisked away the designer dresses and replaced them with ones more in the $100-$200 range.  In general, we did better with the dresses than with the tight pants/huge top separates.  But I felt like a lot of them weren't flattering in one aspect or another, and, well, anything over $100 should make you feel like a rock star, right?  I did find one red dress that I loved and thought was worth the $118 price tag.

After about two and a half hours and trying on maybe thirty pieces of clothing, I left with the red dress and an oatmeal-colored sheer sweater thing.  My stylist and I both felt that we'd disappointed the other -- she asked for feedback and said she was sad that I hadn't left with a bunch of clothes that I loved, and I felt guilty that I'd spent 2.5 hours of her time on something that wasn't going to make her much of a commission.  I did like her a lot on a personal level and would consider going back to her again with more defined wardrobe goals.  And/or maybe I'll give Macy's a try instead -- it seems like part of the problem was that I have a hard time swallowing Nordstrom prices (I mean, their "low" prices are still over $100 for a lot of things).

In general, I left feeling like it had been interesting and worth the experience, but that I would probably have come home with more clothes if I'd gone shopping on my own.  It's true that those clothes would not have been particularly stylish, but I think for me, it might be better to take baby steps.  A little more trendy at a time, a little more expensive at a time.  Being plunged into Nordstrom fashionville was possibly just a bit too much.

Being by yourself

I was reading something about how people should appreciate being by themselves, rather than feeling lonely, and that you should do things you enjoy when you're alone. I liked this example: you might think it's not worth the bother to cook a nice meal just for yourself, and instead you eat a peanut butter sandwich and then watch TV while thinking negative thoughts about how you're a loser for being at home alone. But if you were on a date with someone you really liked, would you eat a peanut butter sandwich with them, stare at the TV, and insult each other? You wouldn't treat someone you liked that way, so why treat yourself that way?

Posthumous

I came across this posthumously written blog post. The post is beautiful, but the comments are hateful. (The writer emphatically said there is no afterlife, and somehow all these rabidly religious people found this post and wrote things like "he will burn in hell.") I'm surprised the family left the comments there.

Thank you form letter

I recently received an entirely preprinted wedding thank-you note. Not even a handwritten signature! I'm usually not the etiquette police, and this is a dear friend, but I'm going to say it: TACKY. 

Horse's mouth

My dentist told me that horses have rounded teeth, but they grind their teeth flat as they age. I looked this up to verify and I'm not sure it's entirely accurate, but horses do have something like six different sets of teeth. The point is, you can tell a horse's approximate age by looking in its mouth, which is why you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Also, I think the later sets of teeth are longer, so old horses are long in the tooth.

Fashion training

Last time I went shopping with her, my mom told me I should make it a priority to go to high-end clothing stores once in a while to look around and "train my eye."  This is actually great advice.  Part of why I hate clothes shopping is because I have no idea how to put outfits together and how to decide whether a piece "works" or not.  But I had never thought of style as a matter of training.

Thinking more on it, I realize that I used to feel the same way about home decoration.  But after months of perusing home design blogs, I have a better idea now of why things work/don't work, and how to put together a look I like.  Which is evidence that my mom is absolutely right: these things don't just happen by osmosis, but they can happen if you spend the time to train your eye.  Being as fashion-backward as I am is not a matter of natural limitation, but of laziness, if you will.  This was somewhat empowering to realize (even if I continue to be frumpy, at least it's a choice!).  Another point for the wisdom of moms.

Human birdwings

If this is for real, it's pretty awesome.  I think everyone has daydreamed about flapping their arms and soaring up into the air.  With that giant wingspan, though, I wonder how much arm strength it would take to get off the ground.

Reading speed

This is kind of fun.  It tells you how many words you read per minute, and then tells you approximately how many books you can read on one battery charge of your eReader.  It also tells you how long it should take to read any of a number of books.  For example, I should be able to read Tolstoy's "War and Peace" in 12 hours and 48 minutes.  After my terrible experience with Anna Karenina, no thanks, I'd rather have the 12 hours and 48 minutes.

... And then you die.

Why would anyone want this??  It's pretty much saying, "You might as well have fun now because you're going to die soon."  I would not want that reminder on my walls.

The lure of Javascript

Argh! Stayed up until midnight coding. What is wrong with me?
(It all started when I was trying to plan my picture wall and wished I had some online graph paper so I could easily click on a grid and see what my picture layout would look like...)
On the plus side, it worked, which was pretty satisfying.
Good night.

To iPhone or not to iPhone

I've spent a substantial chunk of today musing over whether I want an iPhone.  Basically, I only want it for the games.  Which makes it hard to justify switching to a phone plan that costs $40 more per month than my current phone plan.  So maybe I should just get an iPod Touch?  I could go to the Apple store on the way home from work and have it in my hands by this evening!  But then I will be carrying around a phone AND a Blackberry AND an iPod Touch.  Decisions, decisions.  Even frivolous decisions take up so much mental space.

Cupcake ATM

The person at Sprinkles who came up with the idea of the cupcake ATM is an absolute marketing genius. I had never even heard of Sprinkles before I started seeing news items about this pop up EVERYWHERE. People are seriously excited about what is basically a vending machine.

Ideal Bookshelf

I like this idea -- painting portraits of people through the spines of their favorite books.  A custom portrait would be a great present for a reader.

If you were rich, you could commission a portrait every year of the books you'd read that year.  Wouldn't that make a fun gallery?  And so much less pressure than trying to think of THE handful of volumes that "changed your life, or helped make you who you are today."

Worms

One of the sinks in the women's bathroom here always has these tiny black worms in it.  Google indicates that they are probably the larvae of drain flies, which live on rotting organic matter in drains (I knew it was a bad idea for that coworker to throw soup into the sink!).

Icky as drain flies are, I'll take them over my sister's theory, which was that someone was spitting worms into the sink.

Digested reads

Check out this Guardian series, "Digested read." The author condenses books into about two pages. Here's the digested version of David Copperfield.

Junk Mail

...I am heartily sick of it.  It seems like every company from which I've ever bought anything sends daily emails and weekly catalogs.  Also companies I've never bought anything from and have no interest in (I'm talking to you, AT&T U-verse).  Lately I've been trying to regain control by unsubscribing from email lists and actively contacting companies to ask to be removed from catalog mailing lists.  It's helping.  But I really wish there were a way to opt in/out of all those bulky, paper-wasting catalog mailings before they started showing up on the doorstep.

Related, but not really: I get a TON of junk email offering to grow my male member to astounding proportions.  Why?  Should I start feeling inadequate?

Infants

Reading this Ask Metafilter post about how to get an infant to sleep on his back brought me back to less than a year ago, when I was totally freaked out by a comment on some baby website about how a woman's five-month old baby, whose babysitter had swaddled him to get him to sleep, flipped over, couldn't turn back over because of his swaddle, and was dead by the time she came home. X was exactly that age when I read that.

Infants are so fragile. I'm so glad I don't have to worry about him randomly dying anymore.

Online dating

Online dating horror stories. (I've only read a few of these so far -- saving them for the weekend.)

I always thought online dating would be kind of fun, but in practice I bet it would be 99% people I kind of hated.

BE NICE

On the bus this morning (stupid Volvo!) I saw a sign, where the ads usually go, saying, "BE NICE. MBTA drivers are people too! They are helping you get where you are going. Please be nice to them. RIDE WITH RESPECT." It had a picture of a smiling bus driver. Isn't that sad?

Home is where the heart is

You know how there comes a point in every vacation where you kind of just want to go home?  I think I'm at that point.  I've had a great time, hung out with a bunch of friends, spent quality time with my sister, and eaten lots of fantastic food... but it's time to get back to normal life.  Eating out and getting drinks every night, sleeping on someone else's floor, living in an apartment with three roommates... all fun for a while, but I'm starting to long for S and the quiet comforts of our own space/routine.  Since I'm leaving tomorrow, I guess that makes this trip just about the perfect length.

Hi-ho a derry-o, the Barber of Seville

We're going to see The Barber of Seville on Friday! I don't think I have ever paid to see an opera before.

I don't know anything about the plot or the characters -- do you think I should look it up before we go so I have some context, or would we enjoy it more if it's a surprise? I think the theater will have an English translation displayed on a screen.

Special K

... is supposed to be healthy, right?  It has 25% DV of fiber.  But it must be 95% sugar.  How do people eat this stuff?  It is SO SUGARY.  I took two bites and already have a sugar headache.

Oishii

I didn't realize how much I've been craving Japanese food until coming back to New York.  Tonight I'm having sushi with a friend.  Tomorrow I'm having a fancy Japanese kaiseki dinner with a bunch of friends (and possibly a sister).  We are planning to get onigiri for lunch sometime this week.  And I will probably push for more Japanese food on Thursday night too.  That's seriously all I want to eat.

$4.41/gallon

... is how much I paid for gas last night.  I am in a mild state of shock.  Since we bike pretty much everywhere, I've only filled my gas tank a handful of times since moving here -- so to me it seems like the price jumps by $1 every time I pull into a gas station.

Happy Birthday K and X!

Here's to a wonderful first shared birthday (although I guess K's 4th and X's 0th were shared, sort of.  With maybe a little more focus on X).