Category: NaBloPoMo

the downward spiral

phoebe_park_jeep.jpgPhoebe and I got to have a leisurely day together today, after a long week of not having much time together. We celebrated by going to the local playground. It was a bright beautiful day. I had fun following Phoebe around on her rounds.

I didn’t have the camera with me this time, but I did get some pictures from the last time we went, about 2 weeks ago. This seems as good a time as any to share a couple of them. It was a bright warm day last time, and the trees were showing their fall colors. (Most of the leaves are off the trees now.)

phoebe_park_fall.jpg

And here’s a very short movie, showing Phoebe going down the big spiral slide. (See how much fun I have following her around?)

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What with participating in NaBloPoMo, on top of all my other life duties, this promises to be a busy month for me. I have all sorts of things in mind to write about this month, but I expect I’ll have little time and energy to follow through. And just to help keep me from letting my posts degenerate into a series of posts about what I had for breakfast, or possibly worse, posts that are just lists of stuff I meant to write, I figured I should jot down a list of my more honorable intentions.

Stuff I Mean to Write:

  • a bit of a wrap-up of my CSA adventure
  • at least one post on some language topic
  • at least one post of some redeeming social value.
  • at least one addition to the kick-ass women project
  • four more Themed Things Thursday Posts
  • at least one post on pants. A week.

under the wire (or what I had for breakfast this morning)

Here it is, past 11:00 at night on day 3 of NaBloPoMo. And I’m (moderately) at risk of not getting out my requisite post of the day. There’s a conference I’ve been attending this weekend that is put on by my program, so I haven’t been home a lot.

Mind you, I did have a moment, whilst I was sitting on the floor at the back of a talk, when I considered whipping out my laptop to compose a post. I did manage to control the impulse, in large part because it would have seemed a terrible breach of etiquette. I felt a bit like a junkie, though. “I’ll just post this once. It’ll only take a couple of minutes. No one will notice.” After the talk, I went with some friends to visit a friend who is in the hospital with her new baby. As we sat and visited, I looked longingly at the ethernet cable hanging out of my friend’s laptop. Again, I controlled the urges. And I waited till I got home. I even talked to John and ate a bit of dinner before getting out the computer.

But now this means it’s late. And I’m tired. So I should post something. And seeing as people have been known to joke about having their daily posts degrade to the level of “what I had for breakfast this morning,” I thought I might take up that topic myself. Because this morning, I had a really good breakfast.

    Brown Rice and Berry Breakfast
    1-ish cup of cooked brown rice (short grain brown rice is best)
    1 third-ish cup of frozen berries (this morning I had blackberries)
    a drizzle of real maple syrup (I like Grade B, the darker kind)

    I usually use leftover brown rice, that has been cooked in a rice cooker with a bit of salt and oil (vegetable or olive oil). I take a serving of rice, put it in a bowl, and drizzle the maple syrup over it. I then pop it in the microwave, uncovered, for about a minute and a half. (It’s important to get the rice really hot all the way through, otherwise the texture will have that pasty cold rice texture.) After the rice is hot (and removed from the microwave) I next microwave the berries in a separate bowl for about a minute, or until the berries are thawed and juicy. I poor the berries and juice over the top of the rice, and let it stand for a minute or two to cool. Then I eat it.

The taste is a bit like a fruit cobbler, but with a somewhat chewy texture. It seems almost too dessert-like for breakfast. But it’s very filling and nutritious: high in fiber, low in sugar (depending on how much syrup you drizzle), with a decent amount of protein.

Is the glass half empty, or half full?

You are probably familiar with the age-old question, usually intended to determine whether you are the type to see things in a positive or negative light. The traditional answers are “half empty” (you are are a pessimist) or “half full” (you are an optimist). However, I find these traditional interpretations a bit too simplistic for the complexity of personality types and moods that individuals exhibit. Or that I exhibit on a given day. So I offer to you…

Alternative Answers to the Question
“Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?”

  1. Probably.
  2. Who drank half my drink?
  3. The glass is half full. But what is all that crud floating around in there?
  4. The glass is half full of ice so they can rip you off when you buy a soda.
  5. I think it was half full, but I spilled it. On your couch.
  6. I’ll take mine straight from the bottle.
  7. That’s no glass, that’s a sippy cup.
  8. Are you trying to poison me?
  9. The glass is cracked.
  10. There is no glass.

water_glass.jpg

squirreling away

squirrel_nutkin.jpgInspired by yesterday’s squirreliness, this week’s Themed Things Thursday is brought to you by squirrels.¹

A Stash of Squirrely Things

  • The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. A book by Beatrix Potter.

    This is a Tale about a tail–a tail that belonged to a little red
    squirrel, and his name was Nutkin.

  • Squirrel Nut Zippers a band. Takes its name from a candy.
  • For Squirrels. A band. Has a song entitled “Mighty K.C.”²
  • “Secret Squirrel,” a song by Marcy Playground

    Tune in next week and see
    Secret squirrel save you and me

  • The Flying Squirrel from The Tick (The animated series.) A superhero whose battlecry is “I like squirrels!”

    • rocky.jpg

  • Rocket J. Squirrel, aka Rocky, of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The clever one of the “moose and squirrel” pair.
  • Bubbles, the Powerpuff Girl, can talk to squirrels [clip on YouTube]
  • “Squirrel Boy” (2006-??) A Cartoon Network cartoon about a boy and his pesky squirrel friend.
  • Azqueeral. In a 2002 Daily Show episode, a man who has invented a birdfeeding hat describes a harrowing attack by a squirrel. Or by an azqueeral, as the subtitles show. It sounded a bit like “shquiddle” to us.
  • “I kicked Thumper’s ass” A t-shirt worn by a tough squirrel in Gary Larson’s book There’s a Hair in My Dirt
  • Squirrels have also been featured in American Hovel Magazine, the magazine dedicated to lowering acceptable neatness standards in the American home. See our featured interview, and the front cover of the April 2007 edition, below.

    • —–
    ¹ With apologies to KC.

    ² KC, I kid you not. Here’s YouTube proof, even.)

    ³ This footnote doesn’t match up with anything, but I felt I should toss out there that this marks my first official NaBloPoMo post. 1 down, 29 to go!

    more than I can chew?

    bagel.jpgUm…I have a tendency to throw myself into things with great enthusiasm. And sometimes, this leads to me going a little bit crazy with the amount of things I commit to doing. This is one of those times.

    Part of me thinks it’s not a terrible thing. When I get hyper-busy I often tend to get more productive and even overcome hurdles that have been holding me up.

    I have thrown myself into several research projects for work/school, with goals of meeting deadlines for submitting to conferences in the next few months. One is even in the next few weeks.

    I have commited to co-teaching a class in January, which I’m very excited about.

    I told my violin teacher that I would play in the recital in early December.

    And then not only did I sign on to blog every day for the month of November for NaBloPoMo, I’ve gone uber-crazy with enthusiasm for it. I’ve added a bunch of blogs to my feed-reading, and started a “group,” complete with its own blog.

    You may also recall that I have various other roles that I play, such as “mother” and “wife,” as well as “daughter,” “sister,” “friend,” and “blithering idiot.”

    What all of this means is that I will be spread particularly thin for the next few months. Like too little cream cheese for a really big bagel. Though there are some parts of the bagel that really require more cream cheese than others. It’s just possible that some parts of the bagel may get virtually no cream cheese. And I can only be thankful that bagels have a hole in the middle, meaning that at least some parts won’t require any cream cheese. I mean, if a Kaiser roll were the chosen baked-good metaphor for my life, there would be all that much more surface area. But why you’d want to go spreading cream cheese on a Kaiser roll is beyond me. It would probably totally fall apart, since it’s not as sturdy as a bagel. And I’m really hoping that the act of spreading myself around too thinly won’t lead to my life crumbling apart.

    Who’s with me?

    Because I am certifiable, I have signed on to NaBloPoMo. Don’t worry, it’s not a cult. (At least I don’t think so.¹) November is National Blog Posting Month. It involves commitment to posting every day for the whole month. That’s 30 days in a row.

    The NaBloPoMo website lets members² make groups. To hang out. Like in cliques, I guess. Lots of people have started regional-based groups, like New England Bloggers³, Tennessee Bloggers, or Blogs from Europe.

    Many others have created groups reflecting special interests. And perhaps some are especially interesting. Such as bikers, or brides or pregnant bloggers. Or pregant biker bride bloggers. Or knitters. Or (judging by their limited enrollment⁴ so far) even more specialized special interests, including Bichon bloggers and Kevin Spacey Bloggers.

    I found myself with an urge to join a bunch of groups. Just because. And what’s more, I had the urge to start my own group: The Ministry of Silly Blogs:

    Our chief functions are threefold: a) to identify silliness on the web, b) to create silliness on the web, c) to promote silliness on the web and 4) to encourage the promotion, creation and identification of silliness on the web.

    And while filling out the form to start the group, I noticed a box to fill in an existing website for the group. “Damn,” I thought. “The Ministry of Silly Blogs deserves a website.”

    So I made one. With some Official Ministry Bling, even.

    And 3 other people have already signed on to be part of the Minsitry of Silly Blogs. 3 people who are total strangers even. (And quite possibly, 3 people who are totally strange.)

    So, anyone else out there care to join me? Either at the Ministry, or just with NaBloPoMo in general?

    I also have in mind a number of other groups, which I may or may not decide to officially form:

    • Pants Bloggers: For bloggers who write about pants, like to say the word pants, and/or who wear pants while blogging
    • Homo Sapiens Bloggers: For bipedal primate bloggers who consider their brains more highly developed than your average baboon
    • Genji Bloggers: for bloggers who like to write about having read the 11th century novel The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, often known as the first novel ever written.
    • Linguistics Grad Student Bloggers with 20-month-olds Named Phoebe and Who Like to Write Lists and Make Stuff Up: For bloggers who are named alejna

    ———————————
    ¹ I followed Magpie over there. But how well do I really know her?

    ² Why is that I get uncomfortable with that word?…members…Sounds a bit like card-carrying members. Or perhaps cult followers…

    ³ Well, “Bloggahs,” which I joined in spite of my non-native tendency towards rhoticity.

    ⁴ N=1.