Category: silliness

late-night line-up

Yesterday I crossed the finish line for my commitment to daily blogging, and even met a deadline for a conference submission. (Remarkably, I submitted the paper even though the deadline was extended, in part to accommodate confusion over date lines and timezones, since the conference organizers are in Shanghai, and probably most of those submitting papers are from timezones that are lagging behind. But they added several days, which may be overkill…) And now I’m trying to get things in line for another submission. The timeline is quite tight, since the deadline is Monday. As it is, I’m pretty wiped out from pushing myself for that last submission. I think I’ve been running on adrenaline the last few weeks, which is actually not a kind of line. And while I should be working on an outline for the next deadline, or some other more productive line of activities, I find myself goofing of online. And thinking up line things.

This list is but a scratch on the surface of all the things with line. (There sure are a lot of meanings of the word line, for a start.) If you have more line items to include in the line-up, drop me a line in the comments.

The Spud Who Loved Me

James Bond: Do you expect me to chop?
Auric Goldfingerlings: No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to dice. And then panfry with some onions.

The Bond Franchise meets the fast food franchise in these lesser-known action movies. Hold on to your seats and grab your ketchup.

  • Licence to Peel
  • From Russia with Latkes
  • Octopierogi
  • Quantum of Solanaceae
  • On Her Masher’s Secret Service
  • Dumplings Are Forever
  • The Living Homefries
  • Dr. Gnocchi
  • Live and Let Fry
  • Thunderbulbes
  • The Hashbrowns Are Not Enough
  • A View Tuber Kill
  • The Man with the Golden Spud Gun
  • Moontater
  • Goldfingerlings
  • You Only Bake Twice
  • Tuber Never Dies
  • Kartoffel Royale
  • Yukon Goldeneye
  • The Spud Who Loved Me
  • Fry Another Tater
  • For Your Eyes Only

No time to include synopses this time, as I’m beat and need to get my synapses some rest. Please feel free to contribute any plot summaries in the comments.

Ceci n’est pas une pomme de terre

(Et ceci n’est pas une vraie blog post, non plus. I have a big deadline coming up this week, and I have to get crackin’. This will have to stand in for my NaBloPoTaTo post of today.)

houseplants

I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep a houseplant alive to save my life. Happily, I have never had the need to, nor can I envision those scenarios. (Well, actually I can envision them. My imagination likes to come up with all sorts of improbable scenarios. Like one in which my very life is tied to the life of a spider plant. Or maybe a ficus. Like some sort of living, leafy voodoo doll. A bug climbs on a leaf, I feel my skin crawl. I get weird cravings for plant food. I forget to water it too long, and suddenly I don’t even have the strength to reach the watering can…I imagine I’d last 2 weeks, tops.)

Seriously, though, we have no houseplants. I have killed many houseplants over the years. I like plants. Don’t get me wrong. I just seem to be unable to consistently remember their existence for a long enough period of time to keep them alive. Pets I could handle, because they would typically make their needs known. Well, not itemizing their needs. But they would make it known that they had needs. By making noise, or looking at me with sad faces, or chewing on things, or getting smelly. Or piddling on the floor. Houseplants are just too quiet and too immobile. They just sit there in a pot. They might drop a leaf here and there, especially when they’ve gone a few weeks without water, but beyond that they don’t intrude. And then before you know it, you happen to glance over at the shriveled corpse of the thing.

Surprisingly, I’ve had some success in my life with gardening. Not that the plants are any noisier, but somehow the greater needs of a garden are easier for me to remember than the occasional needs of a potted plant. I wouldn’t call myself a gardener, by any stretch, but the handful of times I’ve gardened, I’ve kept the plants alive long enough to get some sort of rewards.

I also seem to have a remarkably green thumb when it comes to growing vegetables. Not vegetables that I’ve planted, but those vegetables that I have purchased with the intention of using them as food. But then they grow into plants. In the house.

That makes them houseplants, right?


We kept this sweet potato around for several months, and it was the healthiest looking plant this household has seen in years. It stayed on the kitchen windowsill for several weeks. (Eventually, though, we released it to the wild.)


This is our current project. This rutabaga sprouted while I was in California.

How about you? Have you the thumbs of green? Or are you a plant-killer like me?

mug shots

This shifty-looking character was discovered at a Massachusetts farm stand this September, trying to pass itself off as an ordinary eggplant. It was taken in for questioning regarding the brutal dicing of a carrot, the decapitation of several fiddleheads, and the deflowering of a cauliflower. It was eventually implicated in the death of sweet potato, and was convicted of yamslaughter. While the tubers all demanded that the eggplant should fry, it was instead given a life sentence in the cooler.

It’s after 11:00 p.m., and I needed something to post for my daily posting commitment. I’m trying to focus on work and I need to get to bed so that I can be productive tomorrow. Naturally I did what most people would do: found photos of ridiculous vegetables in my photo library.

Seriously, though, who does this guy remind you of? I do see a bit of Nixon in the top photo, but the profile reminds me of a cartoon character that I can’t quite place.

…and that’s when I realized I’d forgotten my pants.

You know that dream that you sometimes have where you show up for a job interview, and you’ve spent a lot of time rehearsing the answers to the standard questions about how you like to solve problems and you’re a go-getter and a team-player and how your biggest weaknesses are really strengths and how at your last job you invented a miracle flavor of gum that not only cured bad breath and herpes but brought about peace in the Middle East, and you’ve paid lots of attention to make sure your hair is just right and that you don’t have any spinach stuck in your teeth and then they call you into the office and you look down and you realize that you forgot to wear pants?

You know what yesterday was? My blog’s birthday. This blog is 5 years old now.

And one day.

Not only did I neglect to bake my blog a cake yesterday, I also completely failed to prepare a post. Here I’d been shopping around for weeks for the right pants for my blog to wear on its big day, and then what with life’s distractions, I just forgot. I mean, I guess I got my blog a flower yesterday, but given all we’ve been through together, it still feels a little cheap. Sadly, I did remember shortly after posting last night, but I was tired. I went to bed. My poor blog probably felt all mopey last night, thinking I’d forgotten. Thinking I didn’t care. Going over all the times that it had been there for me, tirelessly putting up with my whining and crankiness and embarrassing dorkiness and occasional neglect. My blog probably was thinking about packing up and moving in with some other blogger, one who would buy it a full dozen flowers and bottles of wine and write it love poetry.

Wait, was this a birthday I missed, or an anniversary? (Clearly the relationship I have with my blog is complex.)

So, um, happy belated birthday/anniversary, dear blog. I bought you a card, but it must have gotten lost in the mail.

oil and water

They say that oil and water don’t mix. If two people just don’t get along, someone might just say “they are just like oil and water.” Which would you rather be? Probably water, right? Water gives life. Water is clean. I mean, who really wants to be oil? It’s all greasy and oily. On the other hand, when you pour oil and water together, which one ends up on top? Yeah, you think about that.

But here’s something else to ponder: if you pour oil and water into a glass, they separate. But who would want to pour oil and water into a glass? Really, what kind of recipe is that? Who comes up with these things? You’d be far more likely to try to mix oil and vinegar. Why isn’t the expression about that? Because of salad dressing, I’m telling you. People really want that oil and vinegar to mix, so they shake it up. They make them mix. If you said “those guys are just like oil and vinegar,” people would be all like “Huh? They taste good on mixed greens? That doesn’t make any sense.” That’s what I’m saying.

You know what else? If you put oil and water into a bowl with a package of brownie mix and 2 eggs, they do mix. Then you bake them together in a greased 9 x 13 inch pan at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean. So if you ever meet a couple of people who just can’t get along, that’s what you need to do. Bake some brownies with them. Or stick a toothpick into them.


If you put oil and water into a rice cooker with some rice, then they do end up kinda mixing. But only after the rice is cooked.

—-
This post was brought to you by Tiredness™ and a 2-year-old photo chosen arbitrarily from my photo library. For the record, I have not been eating any brownies. I did, however, bake some cookies. And some squash. But not together. Because you know what else doesn’t mix? Cookies and squash.

Home Alone

Home Alone 5¹
Synopsis: A 40-year-old mother of two is left behind when the kids’ father takes the family to the grandparents’ house for the weekend. Mayhem and hilarity ensue.

That’s right, I have the house to myself this weekend. John took the kids down to his parents’ last night, and I stayed home. (Except that I wasn’t home, I was at a conference hosted by my program in Boston. Minor details. I still came home. And was alone.) John’s brother is visiting my in-laws, and leaving tomorrow, so John wanted to get down there while he was still in town. I, however, had committed to being in Boston for the conference. The miraculous result is that I have a whole weekend free of parenting responsibilities.³

Can you guess what it is that I most fantasize about doing?

Not setting the alarm.

I didn’t get to do that this morning, my first morning home alone. I had to leave the house by 7:30 to get back to the conference, as I was scheduled to chair the morning session. But tomorrow… tomorrow, I have not committed to going in. In fact, I have committed to not going in. I have committed to sleeping in.

I realize that there is a strong possibility that my sleep binge fantasy will not be realized. I can envision any or all of the following happening:

  1. I will wake up early with a cough or cold
  2. I will wake up early with a headache or a stomachache
  3. I will wake up early with leprosy or rabies
  4. I will dream that the house is on fire and wake early in a panic
  5. The power will go out, causing the smoke detector to beep, which will make me wake early in a panic
  6. I will dream that I am back in high school and it’s finals day and I haven’t been to a class all semester and I don’t even know what room it’s in and wake early in a panic
  7. The kids will figure out how to use the phone and call me at 6:30 in the morning
  8. I will get a wrong number phone call from India at 5:30 in the morning
  9. Bumbling burglars will attempt to break in at 4:30 in the morning
  10. Aliens will come and abduct me at 3:30 in the morning

I can only hope that if it’s aliens, they put me in a quiet cell and let me sleep some more.

Beyond the goal of sleeping in, I also plan to work up some data, review some journal articles for a paper I need to write, read up on logistic regression and maybe mixed models, as well as clean out the refrigerator, bake some muffins and do some laundry. Hilarity and mayhem will ensue.

¹ Can you believe that there have been 4 Home Alone movies? I haven’t actually seen any of them.²
² Can you believe that Macauley Culkin is over 30 years old now? Holy crap.
³ I suppose I will have to parent again when they come home tomorrow evening. But I’ll have most of the day, right?

stopping time

I’ve often found myself wishing that I could somehow stop time. As I’ve grown older, I’ve felt, more and more often, the sense that I am standing still and the world is moving around me. I want to stop time so that I can have a chance to catch up. (To catch up with sleep, to catch up with work, to catch up with all the things I like to do but don’t seem to find time for anymore.)

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a button you could press to stop time?

It turns out I’ve had such a button all along. Or at least for a few years. I just hadn’t noticed it:

Unfortunately, while I have found button (on my stove, of all places), I haven’t managed to work out the interface. I have yet to successfully stop time. I’ll continue with my efforts and keep you posted.

Meanwhile, it’s late and I need to go to bed. It’s time to stop.