One of the pairs of well-fitting jean shorts I bought claims to be "curvy fit ex-boyfriend Bermuda" shorts. I can't help feeling that these pants are unsure of their gender identity in a profound way. I wonder what the manufacturer was thinking.

This entry has
( Read more... )

So I owe 2013 Q2 wage tax, but I accidentally put all those silly revenue coupons in an envelope which is in a filing cabinet at the back of a storage container, supporting a massive pile of all our worldly possessions. But there is a way to pay online, right? All you need is your city tax ID number. Which I don't have, of course, because I've been ( Read more... )

Assuming you already have a ton of pre-cooked pinto beans (say, because you for some reason decided to boil something like 2 lb of beans last week), this bean burger recipe is much faster than the enchiladas. Make quinoa, sautee onions, add cornmeal, mash everything together. A pastry cutter worked really well for the mashing. Shape into burgers, ( Read more... )

We made vegetable enchiladas for dinner tonight, and it took forever, but when it was done they were like the grown-up version of the canned hot tamales I miss and haven't had in the twelve years since I went vegetarian. Dude. Apparently the flavor is all from the sauce and the corn tortilla, not the meat ( Read more... )

Catherynne M. Valente, a brilliant writer whose books I occasionally rave about here, because they often feel like the distilled insides of my head made magical, recently wrote the first of a series of entries about her weight-loss journey recent adventures in and with her body. I found both the posts and the ensuing discussions really interesting ( Read more... )

It starts off with a spaceship, and a group of people I am going into space with. There are acceleration couches, and in addition to being on the couches, which are on the floor for some reason, we are supposed to attach ourselves to the floor with electrical tape so we won't float around too much when we get to the zero-g part. I struggle with the ( Read more... )

Last summer I was attending a Modeling Physics workshop while trying to read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan, and getting righteously indignant on behalf of science as I went. I wrote a long, beautiful rant which DW's "restore previous draft" feature accidentally ate; for the sake of tying up that loose end, I am going to include it here. My ( Read more... )

I followed the news from Boston mostly via the Guardian and the Atlantic, and it's been surreal even from here. ( ... )

While Wednesday night's SEPTA hearings apparently ran late enough that I could have gone after all - they started at 5 and I don't get to Suburban until 5:45 at the earliest, but apparently they ran after 7 - going to tonight's hearings in West Chester after work was totally the right choice. I got the whole panel of five officials all to myself. ( Read more... )

As we drove back from last night's unsuccessful aurora hunting attempt, the conversation turned to cities and suburbs, and the effects of the decline of American manufacturing on America's population centers. Even Philadelphia - a "real" city, a top-six city, an iconic American city with an actual rail-based transit network - even Philadelphia in ( Read more... )