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Office: Exodus, melancholia, the curse of getting exactly what you want
At work we've had construction crews building out a new space for the past few months. Last week they took down the temporary walls, and rigged up "do not cross" lines with yellow police-tape (which, of course, we crossed, trespassing in the new space like foraging deer). This Monday they formally opened the space, and a wave of people moved from ( Read more... ) -
Signs of the apocalypse
1) Why We Banned Legos.
The saddest sentences in the article: 'In preparation for bringing Legos back, we held several meetings with the children to generate a set of key principles for Lego play. We met with small groups of children over snack or as we walked to and from the park, posing questions like "If you were going to play with Legos, ( Read more... ) -
Tucking in
I don't often tuck Gwen into bed anymore. She's almost fifteen, and her room is a shrine to non-bourgeois aesthetics. I actually admire this. I tend to line things up into Catholic-looking piles, with a big thing in the middle and two smaller wings flanking it, but I am proud to have produced a more Bosch-like daughter who lets entropy take its ( Read more... ) -
Impersonating an early-riser
Over-generalization: late-risers as a group are depressive, over- or under-weight, cynical, "creative," anti-authoritarian, bohemian, disorganized, and dependent on caffeine, nicotine, sugar or alcohol. The night tribe in general lacks for politicians, religious fundamentalists, hardcore yoga enthusiasts, athletes and dog-people. Apparently there ( Read more... ) -
Rustling behind the veil
Friday: Post-work happy hour at Mardi Gras. Great bar for low-key or elderly boozers who don't care to mask their drinking with karaoke or the roar of televised sport. Strong drinks, good music. Later: met the Tantric Master's trainee femme fatale. I don't think she's brave enough to do any lasting harm, but she is toying with the TM and I find ( Read more... ) -
Blonde Experiment
Tonight my Gwen dyed her gorgeous thick chestnut hair a greasy shade of yellow. She was going for white-blonde like Marylin Monroe, but apparently crayon-yellow is what happens when you put Manic Panic Flashlightning on ten or fifteen pounds of very thick, very long, very tangly brown hair. It looks "cool," I guess, but I think we'd both feel ( Read more... ) -
Review: Dozen Cupcakes
Short version: 1) A single cupcake at Dozen(tm) costs $2.50; 2) The Dozen Cupcakes enterprise is vaguely sinister in a Disney-slash-porno way; 3) You can get the same or better cupcake experience by whipping a stick of butter with granulated sugar and eating it with a spoon while looking at the pictures on the Dozen Cupcakes website.
Long version ( Read more... ) -
Use every part of the salad...
I spent six bucks on a pre-packaged Asian Chicken Salad from Wholefoods. It's a huge salad, but after I've hoovered all the chicken and cashews off the top, I'm left with what seems to be a common theme among store-bought and restaurant salads lately -- Easter Basket Syndrome. A ton of dry shredded cabbage, carrots, radishes and other vegetables ( Read more... ) -
Gender Genie and You!
I've seen this thing before and it always gives me the creeps.
"[T]he Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more at nature.com."
I tested some of the LJ entries in my friendlist -- ( Read more... )