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Beijing, day 1 (posted belatedly)
So I was on this twelve-hour flight the other day, and I got bored and wrote some things...- Twelve and a half hours ago I stepped onto a shuttle bus in front of my house. Nine hours ago I walked down a jetway at the San Francisco airport. At this moment I'm about seven miles away, vertically, from Siberia. In another three hours I'll be on the ( Read more... )
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guitar lessons: a metaphor
You've been driving since you were 15. Your parents taught you the basic rules of the road and how to avoid driving into stuff, and since then you've figured out the rest of it yourself. You don't think of yourself as a great driver or anything, but you can get around town okay ( Read more... ) -
right up there with "hand me that piano"
Something I never ever imagined I would hear anyone say:
“Those protests on the U.C. campuses were the tipping point,” the governor’s chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, said in an interview after the speech. “Our university system is going to get the support it deserves."
Seriously. What? I mean, high fives all around and everything, but... what?! -
What I learned today
Putting on the suit and tie and dressy shoes at the beginning of the wedding: uncomfortable, like always.
Drink eight or nine glasses of champagne at the reception, and it feels like a second skin.
I speculate this is why all those Mad Men guys drink so much. -
That guy from that show, interviewed in MAKE magazine
Paul: I think of enthusiasm as the opposite of coolness, and adolescence is a turning point for this. Children are all enthusiastic, they're into what they're into, and it's great and they love it. But then something happens, and suddenly some of the kids start looking down on that enthusiasm and seeing it as immature or dorky. So they invent ( Read more... ) -
I amuse myself
It's so cute when they ululate insanely beneath the cold, uncaring stars, driven into shrill and unholy madness by the knowledge of Things That Preschoolers Were Not Meant To Know. Ia! Rainbow-Brite! Sparkly Pony of the forest with a thousand young! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Thomas the Tank Engine wgah'nagl fhtagn! Dead Rl'yeh Lego Playset lies sleeping, ( Read more... ) -
The very first thing I thought when my cell phone was missing:
"Hey, where's my phone? I'd better call Willa and ask her to look for it... hey, where's my phone?" -
observations over the past few days
1) 16 hours of driving for 9 hours at Disneyland is actually not quite as good a trade as I remember thinking it was when I was 23.
2) The thing they do now of turning the Haunted Mansion into a Nightmare Before Christmas ride during the holiday months isn't exactly terrible, but... no, I take that back, yes it is, it's terrible. Guys, if you ( Read more... ) -
retail hacking
So yesterday I went shopping with my friend A, who works at a big-box store (she'd offered to get me her employee discount for Ben's birthday present). It was awesome. Like having a high-powered Retail Attorney ( Read more... ) -
recent purchases
1) One dining table, solid oak, 50 years old, with leaves and six matching chairs, $150 at a garage sale down the street 'cause the finish was wrecked.
2) One can of of Restore-a-Finish and one bottle of orange-oil/wax, plus assorted rags and #0000 steel wool, ~$20.
Result, photographed halfway through the process:
( Read more... )