Month: June 2008

in real life

As I was saying, we just got home from a grand trip out to California to visit my sister and mother. I hope to share a bit more about the trip soon, but as Jen went and wrote some lovely things on her blog, I wanted to share a bit about our Monday-night visit, too.

Because, you see, I got to meet Jen (of one plus two), someone who I have long admired (or perhaps hero-worshipped) from afar. Since I won’t be able to go to BlogHer, where Jen and other fine bloggy folks will be gathering next month, and since Jen will be moving to Belize in a few short months, I felt compelled to make the effort to stalk Jen in person while I had the chance. Happily, she was open to being stalked, and even invited us over for dinner.

Jen is just as warm and beautiful and down-to-earth and magnificent as you might gather from reading her blog. And M and J were equally wonderful and charming. But I got to learn more than that. Jen is also a damn fine cook, and served up some tasty gnocchi with home-made pesto, some fantabulously delicious oven-roasted vegetables, and garlic bread made from bread that she baked herself. The littler diners were served a classic grilled cheese dinner (crust removed upon request) and a big bowl of strawberries. (Phoebe may have eaten more than a few strawberries.)


Phoebe and M, frightfully cute together.

Ten o’clock rolled around before we noticed, with our little ones romping and cavorting around us, up well past their bed-times. We stayed later than we’d planned, caught up in comfortable conversations, sitting on the living room floor. We talked about life and work: kids and travel and family, friends and blogging and bloggy friends, non-profits and language and disaster recovery. And a dozen other topics that I can’t even recall.

This was the first time I have met someone in person who I’d previously only known online. It wasn’t at all awkward, though. Instead, it felt like we were old friends, just picking up the conversation where we’d left off last. Even though, before this meeting, I could have passed Jen on the street without ever recognizing her.

I’ve thought quite a bit recently about the distinction people sometimes make between online friends and real-life friends. I’ve realized that the distinction is remarkably fuzzy, because the people behind the blogs I read are unquestionably real people. The joys and pains and tidbits they live and share are real, and they affect me in real ways. Through our conversations, the friendships become real.

Of course, it’s hard to beat the pleasure of getting together with friends in person. Especially when there is real food involved. (So I hope to meet more of you out there, too. I might even cook.)

home again, home again

We’re back home now, after our week-long trip to California. It was a good trip, but tiring, and I’m glad not to be having any more big trips on the horizon.

I have some work deadlines looming now, so I can’t write much till I get a few things done. But here’s a picture to distract from the continuing lack of content:

(Yes, we did let Phoebe drive the rental car. But we didn’t let her get on the freeway.)

where I’ve been, where I am, where I’m going to be

I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about my frequent online absences again. I have lots to write about, but…you know the drill. I’ve been reading blogs, but once again, rarely can find the time/energy/coherence to comment. I’m sorry if I haven’t appeared to visit lately. I’m still visiting, just stealthily. I get dressed up in a ninja costume and everything.

In case anyone is wondering, here’s what I’m up to these days:

  • We just got back last night from a weekend trip to my in-laws. The way down was harrowing. It’s usually 3 and half to 4 hours, but took 6 due to traffic. Phoebe was awake for the first 5 of those. The visit was good, but (as always) led to very little time to even think.
  • I’m heading to California in less than 48 hours for a family reunion in honor of my mother’s 70th birthday. (This will make the third long trip by air in less than 2 months. Yes, that is too much.) I’m excited about the trip, but I know it will be tiring, too. I also have to find some time to do a few party-related tasks I’ve signed up for. (Right now, for example, a box of photos sits beside me on the couch, demanding some sort of action to become an album or slide show.)
  • I would have liked to have taken it easy today, but my day was pretty scheduled. Mondays I take Phoebe to her early intervention play group and one-on-one meeting. Phoebe loves going, and I hate for us to miss a day. Especially as we’re going to get booted out in a few weeks due to Phoebe’s delinquent and criminal tendencies. No, wait. Due to her startlingly rapid progress in expressive language.
  • Then I have my violin lesson Monday afternoons. I usually try to do some stuff (and practice the violin) before my lesson, but today I could only manage to nap. This probably had mixed results on my performance during the lesson, but was likely the better choice for my health and sanity.
  • Tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment first thing in the morning after I take Phoebe to daycare. Doctor’s visits are becoming more frequent now.
  • Then I drive to Boston for a work meeting. I’m hoping to make some progress on designing an experiment before the meeting. Which means tonight.
  • Work deadlines have still been pressing. I’m feeling a bit panicky about reaching my own academic goals before my impending “confinement.” I’d really hoped not to be working frantically right up to my labor. My goals of getting to ABD (all but dissertation) by mid-July have already been adjusted somewhat, but I haven’t quite decided how.
  • Which reminds me. I’m not quite sure when I’ll be finishing this here degree I’ve been working towards, though I still intend to finish. It’s pretty common for people to ask when I expect to be done. Lately, I’ve had this answer: “I’m expecting further delay.” I think that has a nice ring to it. Maybe the little guy will end up being named Further Delay.

    • having my cake

    I got to have me some cake this week.¹ I ate it, too. And this cake-having inspired me to think about cake. So I’ll be serving up a list of cake-oriented things for this week’s ThThTh.

    Bon appétit!

    A Cake List

    1. Cakes are used for lots of holidays and celebratory events in many cultures. Some examples include birthday cakes, going away cakes at office parties, French bûches de Noël or German stollen at Christmas. Also…
    2. Wedding cakes. Usually elaborately decorated multi-tiered cakes meant to serve all the guests at a wedding. They can be quite tall, and easily knocked over or smashed for comedic effect in movies or sitcoms.
    3. stripper in a cake. A tradition (if it really happens outside of TV and movies) of having an exotic dancer jump out of a large cake-shaped container. (You can make your own, if you like.) (I toyed with making a list of movies/shows where you see a stripper cake, but could only remember “Under Siege,” where the stripper fell asleep in the cake. Anyone have any others?)
    4. sexy cakes. A sketch on Saturday Night Live with Patrick Stewart as a baker of cakes decorated with erotic images. That is, erotic if you have similar ideas to the baker as to what’s “sexy”. (The video seems not to be up on the SNL website, but you can read the transcript. Come on, go read it. It’s funny. Especially if you imagine Patrick Stewart’s dignified stentorian voice for the baker’s lines.)
    5. “Let them eat cake!” A phrase attributed to Marie-Antoinette, reflecting her insensitivity to the hungry masses who could not afford to buy bread. It was likely not really said by her. (And certainly not in English.) Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote of someone using a similar phrase under similar circumstances in 1767, several years before Marie-Antoinette even arrived in Versailles.

    6. the icing on the cake. An expression meaning an additional bonus, benefit, or other desirable thing. As in something good on top of something else that’s good.
    7. cupcake. A small individual serving-sized cake. Also an endearment.
    8. babycakes. Another, even cutesier, endearment. (Want to see something creepy? Check out this YouTube video of someone making a realistic sculpted baby cake. Perhaps not as deeply unsettling as bread made to look like dismembered body parts, but creepy nonentheless.)

    9. Pat-a-cake. (or Patty-cake). An English nursery rhyme. Also used for a clapping game.

      Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.
      Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
      Pat it and roll it and mark it with “B”
      And put it in the oven for Baby and me.

    10. a piece of cake. An idiomatic expression meaning “easy.” As in “eating up all that chocolate was a piece of cake.”
    11. have your cake and eat it, too. An expression describing a desire to have things 2 different ways that are not compatible. More along the lines of “save your cake and eat it too.”
    12. takes the cake. An expression meaning “the most extreme example,” such as the winner of a contest or other comparison. As in “I thought Martin was a geek, but his brother Andy really takes the cake.”
    13. Cakewalk. A game, set to music, where the winner gets win a cake. I hadn’t realized it had origins as an actual dance:

      Cakewalk is a traditional African American form of music and dance which originated among slaves in the Southern United States. The form was originally known as the chalk line walk; it takes its name from competitions slaveholders sometimes held, in which they offered slices of hoecake as prizes for the best dancers.[1] It has since evolved from a parody of ballroom dancing to a “fun fair” like dance where participants dance in a circle in the hopes of winning a free cake.

    14. Cake. A band. My favorite song of theirs is probably their cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive.”

    —–

    ¹ Actually, what I technically had was a celebratory fresh fruit tart, with a preamble of a couple of donuts holding some candles. But these were symbolically cake:

    Dude, where’s my chocolate?

    Okay, okay. I’m terribly slow to get around to things. Last week I put up a post wherein I announced that I would randomly select a commenter to receive a box of Brazilian chocolate in the mail. The deadline to enter this drawing was almost a freakin’ week ago, and I still haven’t announced a winner. But here’s the problem: once I announce the winner, I’ll feel compelled to act upon that announcement, and get my lazy ass over to the post office.

    So here goes. We have a winner! (Ding ding ding!)

    Madame Meow of
    A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm

    …is not the winner!

     
    Oh, no, wait. She is the winner. (Ding ding ding!)

    And as soon I get her snail mail address, you can bet that I’ll be heading right over the post office. Within the fortnight. (I also have a return gift for the lovely Dragonfly, who got the chocolate ball rolling.)

    As a consolation prize for those of you not soon to receive chocolate in the mail, I offer you this scene, in honor of the meow-ness of the winner’s name. Meow! (It’s from the movie Super Troopers.)

    Update:
    Because Flutter asked about it (“um where is the chocolate?”), I will share some more details on the chocolate in question. It is currently on my kitchen counter, all boxed up and addressed and everything. It almost made it to the post office, but I ran out of time. I managed to get a couple of photos before I closed up the boxes.

    Mme. Meow gets this batch: a box of various Garoto brand filled chocolates, a couple of small candy bars, and a whopping big bar of Lacta’s Diamante Negro (“black diamond”), which is milk chocolate with some sort of crunchy cashew bits.

    Dragonfly, who has expressed a desire to visit South America, gets the slightly more tropical Garoto mix, which includes some banana and coconut chocolates, as well as two candy bars and a roll of guava cookies (which are not chocolate, but looked good).

    Can we, or can’t we?

    It’s been a great relief to me that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination has finally ended. I am thrilled that Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate. (At the same time feel some pangs of sadness of what could have been. I still like Hillary Clinton, overall, frustrated as I was with her campaign and some of her positions.¹)

    I am both excited and optimistic about the idea that Obama can be the next US President.

    I am also, at least equally, frightened and a bit nauseated by the possibility that he will not be.

    I know many of you have seen these videos. They came out in February. But it’s come to my attention recently that some of my friends have not yet. This seems as good a time as any to share them myself.

    First, the “Yes we can” video by Will.i.am and others, which was distributed in February or so. It takes parts of Obama’s speech, and integrates them into a powerful song:

    Next, the response videos, which came out only days after the Obama “Yes We Can” video. (If you haven’t seen the above video, or haven’t seen it in a while, you should at least watch a bit of it before seeing the responses.)

    Here is john.he.is:

    In looking up john.he.is, I also came across this other video that came out right around the last one, but which I hadn’t seen: “No, you can’t.”

    —————————

    In somewhat related news, you have probaby realized that I’m a self-proclaimed bleeding-heart liberal. Magpie has put together a badge which she has encouraged others to steal and share. I thought I’d oblige:

    ————————-

    ¹ I was going to put this bit as a footnote, rather than a parenthetical. But a friend has suggested that I am “headed down the wrong path” with all my recent footnotes. I don’t know what she means. I can stop any time I want.²

    ² Really, I can.

    leaping lepidoptera!

    Here we are, moving from Spring towards Summer up here in the Northern Hemisphere. The days are getting longer, the trees are getting leafier, and the bugs are coming out in force. Excitingly for many small people, this includes large numbers of caterpillars. Around here, we get lots of Eastern tent caterpillars, fairly big brown hairy things with patterns of black stripes and blue dots. It is not uncommon to hear a gleeful cry of “I found a cater-pidder!” from Ms. Phoebe.

    This army of furry future moths¹ has inspired this week’s moth ThThTh list.²

    1. Arthur: The Tick‘s sidekick. Wears a white moth suit in the comics, cartoon and live action TV show.
    2. Gypsy Moth, a moth character from A Bug’s Life voiced by Madeline Kahn
    3. Luna Moth, a fictional comic book character from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. That is to say, the fictional characters in the novel created a comic book character named Luna Moth, a mothy superhero. (I just saw that there is going to be a movie based on the book. It was a really good book by the way. You should read it.)
    4. The giant luna moth from Dr. Dolittle. Carries Dr. Dolittle back to England at the end of the movie. (I’m not sure if the moth is in any of the books.)
    5. Mothra/Mosura: a (fictional) giant moth monster. Fought with Godzilla in a few movies, like Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) and Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992)

    6. Silence of the Lambs (1991). The serial killer in the movie raises imported Death’s-head hawk moths, which are noteworthy for the skull-like pattern that appears on their back. The moths shown in the movie were apparently actually another type of moth, in costume.
    7. silk A fabric. The fibers come from silk worms, which are actually caterpillars of a moth that is now completely domesticated. The cocoons are boiled to unravel the long, continuous strand of silk produced by the catepillar. The boiling must happen before the moth emerges, as the moth would otherwise make a hole, making the fibers too short.
    8. Boiled silkworms are eaten in some places in the world. In Korea, it’s called beondegi.³
    9. The Moth, an episode of Lost.⁴
    10. The Moth, by Aimee Mann. A song:
    11. Bedtime for Frances, by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Garth Williams. A picturebook about a little badger who has trouble going to sleep, and imagines all sorts of possible dangers and adventures. It ends with her deciding that a moth going “bump and thump” against her bedroom window is not a real threat, so she goes to sleep.

    ——————–
    ¹ Can I mention that I have a bit of a moth phobia? Maybe I’ll share it later.

    ² I was going to include butterflies, too, but the list was getting out of hand, and I do need to get some work done tonight. Also sleep. So perhaps butterflies will flutter back this way next week or so.

    ³ A friend of mine from college was somewhat scarred by having tried them as a child when visiting Korea. There was a certain kind of carob-flavored soymilk I got which she couldn’t stomach, as the flavor reminded her of beondegi.

    ⁴ I’ve never actually seen Lost…

    sweet tarts?

    Here’s something else I wanted to share that I came across in Brazil: this package of little snack cakes. Not so much the snack cakes, but the packaging:


    A package of Bauducco Gulosos, Bolinhos Sabor Morango (Strawberry-flavored little cakes)

    Recognize the the cartoon characters?

    Bubbles, is that you?

    In case you are not familiar with the Powerpuff Girls, a animated TV series from Cartoon Network, this is what they usually look like.

    The Powerpuff Girls looking more like sweet-looking little girls. (image source)

    However, it would seem that in Brazil, the little kindergarteners are not quite sexy enough to sell snack cakes. So they have been tarted up a bit.¹

    This is, of course, not the first time the little superheroines have been given a more grown-up makeover. In Japan, they were transformed into leggy anime teenagers:


    The girls from Powerpuff Girls Z: not in kindergarten anymore. (image source)

    Anyhow, my package of snack cakes unabashedly displays both the Cartoon Network and Powerpuff Girls logos. The transformation of the characters is somewhat mysterious to me, and is possibly only snack-cake-related. I haven’t been able to find any other similar images of them. Even on the Bauducco website itself, the same product is shown this way:

    —-
    ¹Anyone else reminded of Xuxa, the scandalous sexpot hostess of a kids’ show?

    (By the way, this post title is in part inspired by a recent post I read involving a whole hell of a lot of Sweetarts.)

    chocolate: it’s what’s for breakfast

    Tomorrow I will eat a chocolate bar for breakfast.

    It’s the day I’m going to get to have my glucose test at the doctor’s office. This is the test to screen for gestational diabetes. Usually, one is made to drink a seriously syrupy “drink” that is reminiscent of soda syrup without the addition of carbonated water. Then an hour later, they draw some blood to check blood sugar levels.¹ I was quite pleased to learn that, at this medical group, I can opt to eat a Hershey’s bar instead of drinking the nasty syrup. So around 9:00 tomorrow morning, I’ll break my fast with chocolate. Sweet. (I must bring my own chocolate, though.)

    I must confess that chocolate in the morning is not an entirely novel experience for me. You see, if there is chocolate in the house, I will be nibbling at it no matter what time of day or night. And recently there has been quite a lot of chocolate in the house.

    About a month and a half ago, Dragonfly (who is living in Germany) offered to send a bundle of German chocolate to a randomly selected commenter on her 100th post. And I was that lucky commenter. Here is some of the bounty I received a couple weeks later:


    This is the photo that she posted on her blog. There was actually quite a bit more, too. I meant to take a picture of it, but mysteriously most of it…um…disappeared. (Did I mention that it was weeks ago?) And it was some pretty wonderful chocolatey goodness.

    I have to say, getting a package of chocolate in the mail is a real treat. And I would like to pass along the experience. I mentioned that I managed to stop by a grocery store to load up on chocolate during the last few hours of my Brazil trip. And you, yes you, could get some of this bounty. I plan on selecting a random commenter to be the recipient of a stash of assorted Brazilian chocolates. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post by midnight on Thursday, June 5th, and I will enter you in the drawing. To make things a bit more interesting, leave the name of a chocolate bar (or other chocolate treat) in your comment.

    Oh, that reminds me. Speaking of chocolate and comments. My chocolate-themed list has been getting some attention from a horde of bored 12-year-olds (judging from the content of the comments). Or perhaps mostly from the same 12-year-old, judging from the IP addresses. What did I do to deserve such attentions?

    ———————————
    ¹ I actually failed my first glucose test when I was pregnant with Phoebe. It was very annoying. I have a rant about it that I buried away when I realized that the footnote was getting as long as the rest of the post. But a quick word of advice or anyone faced with an upcoming glucose test: don’t load up on carbohydrates right before the appointment.