Category: me

Indulge me?

Last summer, WordPress made a change to my blog. They decided to phase out the theme that I had been using happily for several years for my blog, and replace it with a similar looking theme with more bells and whistles. They announced this change ahead of time, sending an email assuring me that I wouldn’t notice any changes to the appearance of my blog.

As it turned out, they overlooked a few differences between the themes, and my formatting got all whacko. One of the things that happened was that most of my sidebar widgets got seriously messed up. I recovered the contents of a few of the widgets, and eventually even put a few new images in the sidebar. Then WordPress realized what they’d done, and automatically restored my widgets, thus leading to some of the contents showing up twice. (If you scroll down, you may notice that my blogroll shows up two times. I haven’t bothered to fix it. How many people scroll down that far, anyhow?)

However, at least one of my widgets seems to have disappeared completely: my list of “favorite posts.” This was a list of links to posts of which I was particularly proud, and which I’d modified a bit over the years. There is still an automatically generated list of my “top posts,” based on frequency of views, but those are generally just ones that get a lot of search engine traffic from people looking for clipart or some such. That list is not really representative of what I consider to be my favorite posts.

So, I wanted to put a list back up. I could probably reconstruct the list myself, but I was wondering if you, as a regular reader or occasional visitor to my blog, could indulge me. Are there any posts that you remember that you feel would be worth highlighting on my front page? Or types of posts that you have enjoyed? Every once in a while, someone has mentioned to me, sometimes days or months after I posted, that they found themselves remembering something that I wrote. This has really meant a lot to me. (Someone remembered what I wrote!) Or if you are new to visiting this place, you could instead tell me what brought you here.

And then I also just want a bit of indulgence. Today is my birthday, and comments in my inbox would make a great gift. [Hint, hint.]

p.s. I also just added something new to my sidebar: a link that goes to a random post. I wonder if you might come across something you like that way. [Hint, hint.]

I heart artichokes

Having just posted pictures of artichokes two days in a row, I might as well go one further. In fact, I might as well come right out and confess: I love artichokes. My list of 40 things I like would be incomplete if I did not include artichokes.

I don’t remember the first time I tried an artichoke. I was born in California, where artichokes grow on trees. Well, not really. They grow from the ground in big spiky plants. (They are thistles, and the part you eat is a flower bud.) But in California, they do at least grow. And so it was that I got to have them on occasion. I loved them. They weren’t just my favorite vegetable, they were my favorite food. (You may recall my anecdote about being featured in a class newspaper under the headline “Girl Likes Artichokes.”)

I’m not terribly fond of marinated artichokes. They are okay, but not at all in the same league as fresh artichokes. My favorite way to have artichokes is steamed, accompanied by a small bowl of melted butter for dipping. (I’m even appending my own instructions.)

I can’t say what it is about artichokes that I love so much. I know what it is, but I’m not going to say. (No, not really.) They are just ineffably yummy.

Some people don’t understand the appeal of eating a vegetable that is so much work. (In case you’ve never eaten a fresh artichoke, the typical way to eat one is to peel off the leaves one by one, and scrape the small tender bit at the base of each leaf with your teeth.)

For me, the process is part of the appeal. You start of by eating the outer leaves, which are typically a bit tougher, and work your way in to the more tender and flavorful ones. Then you pick up speed, as the leaves get soft enough to bite through. Then you pluck off the ring of spiky inner leaves, and then scrape out the hairy choke with the utensil of your preference, finally reavealing the heart, which is worth all the trouble. I cut it up and roll the pieces around in whatever’s left of my little bowl of melted butter after I’ve dipped each leaf. Then I try to eat it as slowly as I can, because it is always over too quickly.

How I cook artichokes:

  1. Wash the artichokes
  2. Cut the stem close to the bottom of the artichoke. The stem, while close to the heart, is usually pretty tough and fibrous.
  3. Trim the spikes. I use a combination of a knife and kitchen scissors. With the knife, I saw through the tightly bunched tops of the artichoke leaves. With the scissors, I go around to the outer leaves and snip off the tips. Cutting the spikes off is not necessary, but may prevent bloodshed during dinner.
  4. Steam in a covered pan. I use one of those metal steamers that has sort of petal-like bits. I place the artichokes with the stem side down.
  5. To start, I fill the pan with water to just about the bottom of the steamer surface. Typically, I have to add water before the artichokes are finished. (It is not uncommon for the water to boil away.)
  6. The amount of time it takes to steam depends on the size of the artichoke. For a big artichoke, about 40 minutes is probably typical. I’ve had small artichokes take more like 20 minutes.
  7. You can tell that they are done by pulling at the leaves with some tongs. If a leaf come out easily, it is proabably done, but you should probably test it to be sure. You can also try poking at the bottom of the artichoke with a fork, but this involves lifting out the artichoke, which can be tricky.
  8. Serve with the dipping sauce of your choice. I vote butter.
  9. Share your artichokes with me.

A note of warning: whatever you do, wash your hands after you handle a raw artichoke. The residue is extremely bitter. If you, say, lick your fingers, you will get a nasty shock. On the other hand, some people may like this bitterness. I once bought a bottle of Cynar, the liqueur flavored with artichoke. I was curious, naturally. I can safely say that it was one of the nastiest tasting beverages I’ve ever tried. It tasted like licking a raw artichoke. (Not that I’ve ever done that.)

This post is the second in my generally unordered series of 40 posts about things I like.

shades of gray

The world is a complicated place. Many people find life easier to see good and bad as clearcut cases of black and white. I’m much more likely to see both sides of the issues, to see good in the bad, bad mixed in with the good. To see that both sides of a conflict can be both right and wrong. All of this has nothing to do with my affinity for shades of gray.

When I was a little girl, I loved bright colors. I liked to be surrounded by color. The more colors, the better. I even went through a rainbow phase. I still love color, love to find it in artwork and nature, but I’m less inclined to wear a lot of colors. Bright colors make me feel a bit too on display. Most often, I like to wear black and gray. Especially dark gray. Charcoal gray. Most of all, I love items that combine black and charcoal gray. Or black with varying shades of gray.

My affinity for gray and black clothing items sometimes borders on compulsion. I find myself wanting to buy any shirt I can find with black and gray stripes. I own, at this time, at least 3 shirts and 4 sweaters with variations of gray and black stripes. I have 2 winter scarves with black and gray stripes (but they have different widths of stripes! They are different!) and another scarf that is a plaid of grays and black. Okay, I have more than 3 scarves with grays and black. I’m not sure how many. (It’s fewer than 30. Really. Maybe only 6.)

There was the longest time that I was hunting for just the right charcoal gray and black scarf. I learned to knit at one point in part so that I could construct that perfect scarf. (But then I found 2 scarves that were close enough.) I’m sure that at some point, I will acquire more black and gray striped scarves, maybe one that is more gray and black than black and gray. (Have you ever watched Despicable Me? I coveted Gru’s scarf.) Sometimes I will buy items that are gray with white stripes, or gray with other color stripes. But these items always feel somehow lacking. They do not have the magic for me of charcoal gray and black.

Here I am wearing Theo, who is wrapped up in one of my black and gray sweaters.

This was a picture from yesterday with my current black & gray sweater favorite.

One thing I realized, while digging through my photos looking for me in my various gray and black clothing items, is that I have many very unflattering photos of myself in those gray and black clothing items. Those you don’t get to see. But I did find this cute picture of me that John took when we visited London in early 2005. Notice the charcoal gray jacket and black and charcoal gray hat. At that time, my quest for a black and charcoal gray scarf was as yet unfulfilled (though that was the trip when I found the gray plaid scarf). My scarf in that photo appears to be only gray.

(This is my first installment of a project to write 40 posts about things that I like.)

forty somethings

In less than two weeks, I’ll no longer be a thirty-something. In anticipation of this transition, I’ve decided to give myself a present. Not a thing, because as I’ve said many times before, I have way too much stuff. What I’ve decided to do for myself instead is to do so some blogging. Because, though you can’t tell by the frequency of my posts (only 2 the whole month of March, and 4 in April!), I still really enjoy blogging. What’s more, I still really like my blog. What I have in mind is to put together 40 posts about things that I like: things I like to do, things I like to eat, things I like to see, and categories of things that I like to categorize.

There won’t be any particular order, nor will there be any strict time limit. I just want to write some of the posts that have been rattling around in my head since I started this blog over 4 years ago, and write about some things that make me happy. (And if I don’t get up to 40 by the time I hit my 41st birthday, then I’ll just shoot for 41 things.)


I wanted to put some sort of photo in this post, but spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out which. Here are some pomegranate seeds on the palm of my hand. I took this photo a couple of years ago.

digital hoarding (possibly part 1 of a multi-part series)

While I don’t like to consider myself a hoarder, I certainly have packrat tendencies. In the past few years, I’ve gotten better about getting rid of stuff, as in physical objects, as long as I know that they aren’t being wasted. (Whether it’s passing things on to friends, donating or recycling.) However, I’ve also realized that in the past few years, some of my real-world tendencies to hold on to things have passed over and firmly entrenched themselves in my digital world. Case in point: digital photos. My iPhoto library is getting embarrassingly large,¹ and with this daily photography project, it is growing at a frightening speed. While I am committed to posting one new photo a day, I don’t just take one photo. Most days, I take lots. Like 20 to 50 on an average day when I’m out and about, or trying out something new. On a day when we have an excursion, I’m likely to take well over a hundred. And while I’ve gotten better about deleting some of the total duds right away–I try to make myself delete a good 25% of a batch after I import it–my library is full of bad and mediocre photos from years past that really aren’t worth even the virtual space they are occupying. But it takes time to go through them, and I don’t want to accidently delete photos that are precious to me.

I’ve also realized that of the photos that I like, and those I want to share, if I don’t manage to post right away, I find myself wanting to “save them for later.” But what, exactly, I mean by “later” is unclear to me. I suppose if I were posting regularly on themes, like I have fantasized about doing, I could share the photos along the way, in a meaningful way.

This is all to say that I am going to share some of the photos I’ve been holding on to. Starting now.


Phoebe holding a shiny rock. Photo from July of 2010.

I was also going to write about my other digital hoarding tendencies, such as with emails, but I don’t have time tonight. This post has already taken me 24 minutes so far, according to my shiny new timer app. And I have yet to actually publish. Ack!

¹ As in over 10,000.²
² And when I say “over 10,000,” the number is actually well over even 20,000.³
³ As in 34,100. And that’s before I’ve imported today’s…

the lazy photographer

I remember my first camera well, though I can’t remember what it was called. It was a little flat black thing that used 110 film, the kind that came in a plastic cartridge. It had no settings, no special lenses, no way to adjust the focus. You could use a flash with it, a separate cartridge with maybe 5 or 6 individual bulbs which you could plug in on top of the camera, and which you’d throw out once each of the bulbs had flashed exactly once. The camera was passed down to me in maybe 1978 or 1979, when my sister was given her first 35 millimeter camera. I was thrilled with my camera, and used it for many years to take an assortment of grainy, blurry, badly composed pictures that were, nonetheless, precious to me.

I had various other cameras in later years (including, eventually, that same 35 millimeter that had been given to my sister). I would periodically take pictures of things to remember where I’d been, or what was going on. I would take snapshots. What’s more, my camera would sit untouched for months at a time.

About 6 years ago, before a trip to Japan, I got my first digital camera.

It was on that trip that I had an epiphany about taking photos: I had never consciously made an effort to consider composition. Composing had meant little more than “getting what I wanted to take a picture of in the frame before pushing the button.” However, having taken painting and drawing classes for several years, various lessons had apparently sunk in. About color. Light. Contrast. Composition. Negative space. Suddenly, I actually paid attention to the image that was in the frame as a whole. The photos I took started to look more like interesting images, and not just images of interesting things.

About 5 years ago, John started getting serious about photography. He read, he studied, he really learned the technical aspects. It didn’t take long before he had completely surpassed me in terms of photography skills. Watching him work, and seeing the results, I started learning, too. The photos I was taking started looking worse and worse to me. For one thing, my little point and shoot couldn’t hold a candle to SLRs. At the same time, I just couldn’t see myself lugging around a camera that was 10 times the mass of what I was used to. I mean, that would require effort.

After Phoebe was born, I started taking a lot of pictures. And I do mean a lot. The quantity of photos, however, didn’t much improve the quality. I just had more chance of getting lucky with a good shot. I used my little point and shoot because it was small enough for me to keep handy.

In the last couple years, I progressed a bit more with composition. I learned to change my position to find more interesting angles, and it’s not unusual to find me squatting down or climbing up. I notice the light, and the background even if I don’t make efforts to manipulate them.

When John got me a shiny new camera last year before our Spain trip, I wasn’t convinced I’d really use it. It had an intimidating array of options. Figuring out what they were seemed like it would be effort.

But, you know, I haven’t gone back to my point and shoot. Not even once. The improved quality of the photos, just by virtue of having a better lens, made me not want to turn back.

Even so, while I take quite a few photos that I really like, I take almost none that I really love. Of the ones that I love, almost all are happy accidents, flukes in the midst of a gazillion bad and mediocre shots.

My photos rarely look the way I want them to.

Part of why I have undertaken this daily photography project is to change that, and get my photos to more closely resemble the images in my head.

As of a few weeks ago, I hadn’t done much with settings. I hadn’t fiddled around with lenses and serious lighting gear. I’d barely entered the realm of manual focus. I could probably count the number of times I’d used a tripod on one finger.

I’m happy to say that in the time since then, I have made progress with changing settings, have mounted a flash, have used manual focus regularly, and have swapped my lenses back and forth.

A couple of nights ago, I even grabbed John’s tripod. (It’s okay. We’re married.)

—


John sent me a link to this graphic a few months ago. I find it fascinating, and a pretty good portrayal of my own path. I haven’t been able to track down the original author of it, as it’s been posted all over the place. But the link from which I grabbed it is here.

Holy crap. I totally missed a decade.

It’s 2010, the start of a new year. What’s more, as you may have heard, it’s the start of a new decade. The 10s. This has lead to plenty of people reflecting on what’s happened in the last 10 years. How things have changed, how far we’ve come. What we’ve seen and done as individuals.

Let’s think back 10 years…

In the year 2000, way back then, I was in grad school.

Oh, wait. I’m still in grad school. Fuck.

In the year 2000, I was living here. The couch was less dented, the carpet less stained. But it is the same couch, the same carpet. It’s funny to think that there are probably things in this house that have not been touched in 10 years. There have certainly been projects on the to do list that have not been touched in 10 years.

Living in the same place has lifted the landmarks from my memory. The years have almost totally blurred together.

I can hardly remember movies of the decade. When I think back on movies I love, the more “recent” ones, I’m shocked to see that they are often years old. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Was from freakin’ 2000. I’ve hardly read any books in the past decade. Most of my music is from the 80s and 90s. (Hell, I probably still wear clothes from the 90s. I’m just getting the jump on retro chic.)

Anyhow, I find myself having trouble being nostalgic for the past decade. Because apparently I barely noticed it.

Oh, fine. I guess I did have some changes. I mean, 2000 was when I started grad school, so that was a change. And I did get a master’s degree. And I had 2 children. And I guess there were some other events and accomplishments along the way. I mean, hell, in 2000 I didn’t even have an iPod, let alone a blog!

—-

In other news of nostalgia, I’ve been working on putting together a list of my favorite posts of the year. I may well put together more retrospective lists.

Speaking of which, Holly and I are going to be putting together a list of the best Just Posts of 2009. And we need your help! We’ll be taking nominations for the best posts of the year, orchestrating some voting, and even awarding prizes! We can’t do it without help, though, so let us know if you can help look back at a few of the posts of months past. To see the lists, you can check out the Just Posts category. To learn more about the Just Posts, check out the info page.

celebrating 5+ years of marriage in Massachusetts

ring_exchangeFive years ago today, John and I stood before a room full of our friends and family to express our commitment to each other, exchange rings, and celebrate our love.

We didn’t get married that day, though. This was a day of ceremony and festivities to supplement our rather unceremonious entry into the state of legal marriage almost 5 years earlier.

The reasons for our 1999 wedding-that-wasn’t-quite-a-wedding are a story for another day, and one that I have briefly told before.

While we had planned to have the wedding ceremony soon after the legal marriage, it wasn’t until 2004 that the pieces finally fell together. Meanwhile, in May of 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to legally recognize same-sex marriage. We were very pleased with this news, and I feel real pride in my adoptive state about this issue.

John and I are not exactly religious. (This may actually be an understatement.) As such, we don’t belong to any church or other religious organization. However, as religion is an important part of the lives of many people who are important in our lives, I wanted to have our wedding be at least spiritual, if not overly religious.

When it came time to pick an officiant for our own wedding ceremony, I also wanted to find a person who supported marriage equality.

I remember driving past Unitarian Universalist churches displaying rainbow flags and messages supporting same-sex partners. Living in rural Massachusetts, in an area where churches and even some homes will sometimes display sayings of hellfire and damnation, it made me smile to see the progressive messages so boldly and proudly displayed.

Not only did the UU church support marriage equality, but members of the Unitarian Universalist church fought actively to bring about the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

Choosing a minister from a Unitarian Universalist congregation seemed a clear choice, and it was one that I was very happy with.

Our wedding ceremony added something to our relationship. To have a joyous celebration that we shared with our friends and family, a public acknowledgement of our commitment, was a rite that I appreciated in ways that are hard for me to pinpoint. Our legal marriage, on the other hand, added things to our relationship that are easy to identify. The possibility of being able to share a health insurance policy, for a start. Plus many other rights and benefits:

There are over 1,400 rights that come from being legally married in the eyes of the government. (source)

I am happy to be married, both for the symbolic union with the partner that I love, and for the benefits that this union affords us.

I am also happy to live in a place where couples are not denied the right to marriage based on their gender.

                    777px-Gay_flag White Knot

gathering moss

The first time I ever moved was when I was three years old. My family lived in a rental house in Sausalito, California. It was a tiny house built into the hillside overlooking the San Francisco Bay, with 30-odd steps leading up to the house from the sidewalk. One of my earliest memories was of moving day. The movers put down big pieces of plywood over those steps so that they could slide the boxes down to the street level.

That move sent me and my things in two directions, as my parents were separating. My mother rented an apartment a few towns away, and my father rented a house in a neighboring town. My sister and I would go back and forth. A couple of years later, my mother left the apartment for a rental house in another town, and my father rented the same apartment vacated by my mother.

When I was six, my mother, my sister and I moved our things in with my new stepfather, into a big newly built house. My father died that same year, and my mother and stepfather cleared out the apartment that had been one of my two homes for three years. I remember trying to save all I could get away with.

When I was nine years old, my mother, my sister and I moved to France to start anew. We packed up what we could fit in a few suitcases and a big trunk, and headed to Paris. We travelled a bit, stayed in hotels here and there, and finally settled in an apartment in a Paris suburb, near the school my sister and I would attend.

We stayed there a year before returning to the US. We moved in with my Grandmother in her house in a small, rural town in the mountains of Colorado. The following year, we moved to another Colorado town, where we rented a log cabin-style house.

We stayed there for just over 3 years, which up to that point was the longest time I’d spent in any one residence. Part way into my freshman year of high school, we moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. We got rid of lots of things, put some into storage, and moved over with little more than a few suitcases. A few months later, it was back to the mainland, where we settled once more in California. A couple of years later, my mother married a Frenchman and moved back to France. It was the spring of my junior year of high school, and I moved in with a friend’s family for a couple of months to finish the school year. That summer, I moved to France with a few suitcases, though I recall I had my mother’s full sterling flatware set in my carry-on bag.

The next year, I headed back to the US for college. Over the 4-ish years of college, I lived in 2 dorms and 4 apartments. I also had a semester studying abroad in Brazil. If I’d had a car at that point, I could easily have fit all my belongings into it.

In addition to the homes I lived for stretches of months or years, there were more temporary places. Hotels or friends’ homes for a few days here, a few weeks there, filling in the gaps between moves.

How can I count the places I’ve lived? 5 US states and 2 other countries? (Do I count differently the times I moved back to a place after moving away? That happened twice. Unless you count coming back from Brazil, then it was 3 times.) Was it 15 towns, or do I count those other transitional towns? (There were at least 2.) Was it 9 schools during K through 12, or do I not count changes in the same district? (That happened once.) There have been 8 different houses and at least 11 different apartments. (And that one apartment where I lived twice.) Or do I just count the number of times I packed up all my belongings? (Because I doubt I can figure that one out.)

When I was 24, John and I moved up to Massachusetts. When we moved out of that apartment, four years later, it was the longest time I had ever been in one place. Amazingly, that was 10 years ago, as of last month. In May of 1999, we bought our house. That was the last time I moved.

I’ve been in Massachusetts for 14 years now, in New England for nearly 20 years. I never imagined myself staying in one place for so long. (And I never imagined how much stuff I could accumulate.)