La, la, la. I don’t know anyone at all like this. La, la, la. I’m hard at work on my research. *cough* La, la, la. *cough* I have no idea why John would have sent me this comic.
along came some spiders
Halloween’s around the corner. One thing this means is that people break out the creepy crawly decorations to get festively creepy. It’s harder to get much creepier or crawlier than spiders. So I offer you a whole mess of festively creepy crawly eight-legged critters for this week’s Themed Things Thursday. Enjoy. (Or shield your eyes, depending on your feelings towards spiders.)
A Few Spiders
- Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White. A novel featuring a very smart spider who could weave a remarkable web. One of my favorite books of childhood.
- Little Miss Muffet
A nursery rhyme about a little girl who was frightened off her tuffet by a spider. - “The Spider and the Fly”, a poem by Mary Howitt. A poem best known for a first line that doesn’t actually appear in the poem: “Step into my parlour, said the spider to the fly”. Here’s how the text actually begins. (You can read the full text here.)
Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,
‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve a many curious things to shew when you are there.”
Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.” - Seven Spiders Spinning, a kid’s novel by Gregory Maguire, an author best known for writing Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
- Anansi: A spider who is a trickster character in many West African folktales.
- Spider-Man. (Or Spiderman.) The superhero of comics, cartoons, and the more recent live action movies. A man was bitten by a spider and got spider-themed superpowers. Such as a spider sense. Which tingled. (When I’ve been bitten by a spider I’ve gotten a red welt. I guess you could say it tingled. But I wouldn’t.)
- “Spider-Man,” the song. The theme song from a cartoon version of Spider-Man. Since performed by a variety of artists, including Moxy Fruvous and the Ramones.
Spiderman, Spiderman,
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size,
Catches thieves just like flies
Look Out!
Here comes the Spiderman. - “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” A children’s folk song. About a small spider, itsy bitsy even, who went up a spout. Then down, then back up.
- “Spiders,” a song by Joydrop
When love was fresh like a web we’d mesh
Nothing felt better than your flesh against my flesh
One fatal slip one rip a tear
Touch me now and every single hair on my body stands on end
So don’t touch me anymore
‘Cause it feels like spiders
Like spiders all over me
Like spiders
Like spiders all over me - It: a book by Steven King and miniseries based on the same. Involves a big evil spider. (And a clown.)
- Shelob: A giant, nasty spider from the Lord of the Rings
- Aragog: A giant, nasty spider from the Harry Potter books and movies
- Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
A TV movie with William Shatner, about evil, venemous spiders that infest a town. - Arachnophobia (1990)
A movie about evil, venemous spiders that infest a town. - A few other random spiders include: spider(a type of pan, basically a frying pan with legs), web spider, Alfa Romeo Spider, Spider (2002), and spider veins.
my head is stuffed full of cotton wool
I’m a little shaky on cranial anatomy, but I’m pretty sure that some of the nooks, crannies and othr empty chambers inside my skull are currently stuffed full of cotton wool. Or cotton balls. Or maybe cotton candy.
I have a wee bit of a cold, making my head (more than usually) foggy. Yesterday was very foggy, due to the impending cold, and also due to 2 nights in a row of insufficient sleep. Because Phoebe got the cold first, and perhaps has been teething on top of that. We had mulitple night wakings. (Plus I never get to bed on time.)
Ideally shouldn’t have been driving yesterday. But I had to go into work, and wasn’t particularly sick (yet). I had planned to take the train in, but my autopilot kicked in, and I started driving towards Boston instead of towards the train station. And since I was running a few minutes behind, didn’t want to risk turning around only to miss the train anyhow. And then when I got off the Pike, the autopilot kicked in once more, and steered me into Boston instead of into Cambridge. Later in the day, when I actually did have to go back across the river into Boston, I was additionally rewarded with a parking ticket. Not for an expired meter. But for expired registration. I renewed my registration online last minute, but I hadn’t gotten the new sticker in the mail yet. And while it’s legal to drive as long as you have a printed copy of the email receipt in the car, the meter checkers apparently do not care about this. (And what’s especially irritating is that had I managed to actually take the train in, I wouldn’t have gotten the ticket. And I might have gotten a bit of a nap, potentially leading to clearer-headedness.)
Whine, whine, whine.
Anyhow, today was much better. Today was a “work from home day.” But I spent much of the day napping, figuring that I will work much better once I manage to remove the cotton balls from my head. (Don’t worry. I’m not planning on trying the surgery myself.) I did try doing some reading, but that is what (inevitably) led to the napping.
——
In other news, the wedding this weekend went very well. The hitching was quite hitchless, as these things go. Phoebe did a wonderful job as flower girl (did I mention she was going to be flower girl?), my pumpkin-colored shoes were surprisingly comfortable, and my strapless bridesmaid dress didn’t fall down. I got my hair and make-up done by professionals, which was a novel experience for me. And I think I cleaned up pretty well. John got some great pictures, too. (I’ve mentioned before that John is a very talented and skillful photographer. )
He’s posted one of me and Phoebe over at his blog that I like a lot. (Don’t I look girly in that picture, by the way? Especially for someone who has written about often wearing men’s clothes. I was tempted to entitle a post “I like to wear women’s underwear.” I don’t know why that amuses me so much.)
this list goes up to 11
Today has been declared Blog Action Day, an event in which bloggers around the world can participate in writing about a common cause on a common day. This is the inaugural year of the event, and the cause that has been chosen is to tackle issues relating to the environment. I feel strongly about the environment. It must be stopped! Down with the environment!
No, wait. I’m all for the environment. I was confused. I must have been thinking about uncomfortable shoes. Can’t stand ’em. Or overcooked pasta. Yick. That just shouldn’t even be legal.
Where was I? Oh, right. The environment. I should write about how we, as a society, can make progress in protecting the environment. But I’m afraid I don’t have time for that. I have a work deadline looming, and I shouldn’t be blogging at all. So I must be quick, quick. Like a bunny. In a threatened ecosystem. So I give you a list.
Here is list of things that I should be able to manage to improve my own impact on the environment, improve my knowledge of the issues, and to help generally support environmental causes. What’s more, I will set myself a timeline to accomplish these things. I plan to do these things by the end of the year. There are 11 full weeks of 2007 left, so 11 seemed like a good number to aim for.
11 planet-friendly resolutions for (the rest of) 2007
- cancel 10 catalogs or other junk mail items
- explore additional local food options, such as for dairy and eggs
- block drafts in windows in doors to reduce heat loss
- give holiday gifts that minimize shipping and packaging
- watch Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” (I’m sorry to say I haven’t yet seen it)
- write at least one letter (or email) to a company or politician about some action
- Change our electricity options to include use of renewable resources
- Give support to an environmental action group (whether with money or by way of petitions)
- line-dry 1 load of laundry a week
- reduce my usage of disposable products (I may try keeping a cloth handkerchief in my pocket instead of a tissue. At least if I leave it in my pocket when I wash my pants, it won’t dissolve and decorate the rest of the load.)
- Cook my pasta al dente. This will both fight the evils overcooked pasta and reduce the time I have my stove on. (Okay, you caught me. I ran out of time, and don’t have a good 11th item in mind. But if I manage all 10 of the above items, I think I can feel like I’ve made some personal progress.)
refueling my optimism
I have to say, yesterday’s news made me happy. I believe I have already expressed my enthusiasm for Al Gore. So it should come as no surpise that I was happy to hear that he, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Happy may even be a bit mild. I actually got goosebumps, and got choked up while reading a news stories about the award.¹ (Tears don’t come too easily for me these days, either.) I felt moved by the acknowledgment of the impact that climate change can have on human populations. I felt pleased that scientists are being honored for their research into climate change.
I don’t have time to write more tonight, but I wanted to share my excitement about this news.
And speaking of reading that gets my idealism revved up, the September Just Posts went up earlier in the week. This month’s round-up of posts on topics of activism is the biggest yet, and are once more hosted at One Plus Two, Under the Mad Hat, Creative Mother Thinking, and Truth Cycles. Have a look!
————
¹ I can’t find an article I thought I read from the New York Times. The NYT article I found from later yesterday had a very different tone. The one I remember was more in line with this AP article.
turning into a pumpkin
I mentioned briefly that I’m going to be a bridesmaid in a wedding coming up soon. Well, that “soon” has now become “this Sunday.” Which is, technically, very soon. As is the standing tradition, in U.S. weddings at least, I will be wearing a dress chosen by the bride. As it will be an October wedding in New England, the bride has chosen fall colors. My dress is in burnt orange, a very pretty color, though a somewhat unusual one in my wardrobe. And is also often the case for such occasions, I am to have shoes that match my dress. This means that I have needed to get some dyed. I picked up my shoes yesterday afternoon. And I have to admit that I was quite startled to see them. You see, they are orange. I now have shiny orange shoes. I don’t think you can ever be fully prepared to see orange shoes.
Anyhow, this weekend I will be donning the orange, and perhaps as such, feeling a bit like a pumpkin. Hopefully an elegant pumpkin, mind you, but a pumpkin nonetheless. But seeing as it’s October, pumpkins are all the orange rage right now. And in honor of their orange pumpkiness, I bring you a pumpkin-based Themed Things Thursday.
A vegetable. Or a fruit. Depending on your choice of taxonomy. Generally eaten cooked. Used in lots of baked goods, like pumpkin pie.
A movie starring Christina Ricci.
A song by Tricky off Maxinquaye (YouTube video)
In many versions of this fairy tale, Cinderella’s fairy godmother turns a pumpkin into a carriage to carry Cinderella to the ball. Cinderella must leave the ball before her ride turns back into a pumpkin. Leading to the expression turn into a pumpkin, meaning depart, go to bed or otherwise turn in for the night.
A ghostly character from Washington Irving’s story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow“, who carries around a pumpkin head.
A character from the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. Later had his own book, Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, though it wasn’t by Baum.
A horror movie involving a demon dug up from a pumpkin patch.
a song by XTC. (YouTube video) Later covered by Crash Test Dummies.
A nursery rhyme. Also a song you can play on the piano using only the black keys.¹
Peter Peter pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well
A mythical holiday character that never appears in the animated Peanuts special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
A character from Tim Burton’s animated movie The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).
It’s a Halloween tradition to carve a face into a pumpkin. These are then typically set outside, with a candle inside. It’s also a Halloween tradition for mischievous kids to steal other people’s pumpkins, and smash them.
A band. Performs songs such as “Tonight, tonight” and “Tarantula” (YouTube videos)
An endearment or nickname based on the word pumpkin, which is sometimes pronounced without the word-medial [p]. Gives us [pʰʌŋkɪn] (Where the nasal has then assimilated to the place of articulation of the following consonant, a velar. Not that you asked.)
¹ I admit that I’m recycling this particular item from my vegetable ThThTh list. But recycling is good, right? Or should I be composting, since it’s vegetables we’re talking about?
unread, unread
This here is a meme (or whatever you like to think of it as) based on the top 106 unread books from Library Thing. (At least as of the date when this was started. The earliest I could find was a post from October 1st at Once Upon a Booshelf, saying the meme had been found at Lady Strange. I couldn’t find, it there though.) I myself found this at Lori’s Book Nook, and then re-found it shortly thereafter at casa az.
Here are the instructions, as found chez az:
Bold what you have read, italicize your DNFs,
strikethroughthe ones you hated, put *asterisks next to those you’ve read more than once, and put a + cross in front of the books that are on your bookshelf.
(Note that DNF=”did not finish”)
My Reads of the Unread
+ Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
+ Anna Karenina
+Crime and Punishment
+ Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
+ Wuthering Heights
+ The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
+ The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
+ Moby Dick
+ Ulysses
+ Madame Bovary
+ The Odyssey
+ *Pride and Prejudice
+ Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
+ The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
+ War and Peace
+ Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
+ The Iliad
+ *Emma
+ The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
+ Great Expectations
American Gods
+ A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
+ Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
+ Quicksilver
+ * Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
+ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
+ Foucault’s Pendulum
+ Middlemarch
Frankenstein
+ The Count of Monte Cristo
+ Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
+ The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
+ * The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
+ The Inferno
+ The Satanic Verses
+ Sense and Sensibility
+ The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
+ One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
+ * Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
+ Gulliver’s Travels
+ Les misérables
+ The Corrections
+ The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
+ The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
+ Dune
+ The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
+ The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
+ Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
+ A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
+ The Unbearable Lightness of Being
+ Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
+ The Scarlet Letter
+ Eats, Shoots & Leaves
+ The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
+ Lolita
+ Persuasion
+ Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
+The Hunchback of Notre Dame
+ Freakonomics
+ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
+ *Watership Down
+ Gravity’s Rainbow
+ The Hobbit
+ In Cold Blood
+ White Teeth
Treasure Island
+ David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Notice that I haven’t crossed out any books to mean “I hated them.” It’s hard for me to say that I hate a book. The only book I can think of, off the top of my head, that I really hated was The Horse Whisperer. Piece of total crap. I wanted my time back.
On this list, there were a couple of books that I found painful to read, though I could appreciate the writing and the storytelling: Crime and Punishment and Confederacy of Dunces. I seem to have trouble with anti-heroes. I had the same problem with The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Notice also that I have marked a lot of books with a plus (+) that I have not read. This is partially John’s fault. I have marked them as “on our bookshelf”, even if they are not books that are ones that I selected. And even if they are not technically on a bookshelf. (We have a lot of books. Some of them live in stacks on the floor.)
cereal: it’s what’s for dinner
Menu
Alejna’s Busy Day Bistro
Appetizers
Corn on the Couch
A paper bag filled with freshly popped kernels of corn. Skillfully microwaved, and usually not burned. Available with butter-like flavor or “natural” flavoring. Served on the sofa.
Lowering the Bar
A protein bar, grabbed out of cabinet. Eaten while driving to catch the train, or while otherwise multi-tasking. Hasty unwrapping leads to bits of chocolatey coating to be found stuck to clothing, providing a treat for later.
Entrées
Early Bird’s Special K
A bowl of cereal, eaten at the kitchen table.
Life is a Bowl of Cheerios
A bowl of cereal, eaten while standing in the kitchen.
Variety of Life
A bowl of cereal, regular or cinnamon flavored, eaten while sitting on the kitchen floor.
Multi-grain Pillows
A bowl of cereal, eaten while slouched on the sofa cushions.
Chef’s Gourmet Specials Tired
Cheddar Broccoli Pot Pie
Tender broccoli, carrots and potatoes in a rich, savory cheese sauce baked in a hearty whole wheat crust. Baked Fresh Daily.Purchased from grocery store, removed from freezer. Box opened, pie microwaved on high for 5 minutes.
Harvest Medley
Portobello mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and fresh asparagus in a garlic cream sauce a box of crackers served on a bed of house-made linguini, and garnished with micro arugula.
Napoleon de Goober
Alternating layers of sliced bread, ground peanut spread, and orchard fruit preserves. Cut in half and served with a fresh fruit garnish.
Desserts
October’s Bounty
A bag of miniature chocolate bars, purchased in advance for Halloween, hidden carefully at the back of the cabinets behind the dried beans. Eaten 1 or 2 3 or 4 at a time throughout the day, bag replaced in hiding place. Repeated until bag is empty.
Frozen Guilt
Pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Half-cup serving size presented in bowl, and served at dining room table. Once this is finished, the rest of the pint is eaten directly out of the container while sitting on the couch.
——-
This week’s Monday Mission placed orders for posts written in the form of a menu. Please note that I don’t always eat this way. But, well, there are days when the farm-fresh vegetables stay in the refrigerator.
half-brained
Tonight, my brain is tired. Very tired. Sleep deprived. Stressed.
We’ve come down to New York to visit John’s parents, since we haven’t been down here since before our big trip to Europe. It’s been about 2 months. We drove down last night. Left later than we meant. Hit more traffic than we anticipated. Arrived after midnight.
Phoebe slept in the car on the way down. And I largely did, too. (You’ll be happy to know that I wasn’t the one driving.) So the car sleep was dandy. But then, we were up. And visiting with Phoebe’s Grammy. And there were new toys. (Actually, some old toys that were John’s when he was little. But exciting and new to Phoebe.) There were delays of getting our stuff together, and putting together the travel crib.
Before we knew it, it was 2:00 a.m. While this may still be before last call at some bars, it’s a time of day that some might consider to be late for a toddler to be up. So we worked on winding back down. Pajamas. Reading books. A sippy cup of milk.
But Phoebe would not wind down. NOT. Nope. Nuh-uh. She was Awake. Wired. And when she realized that we were conspiring towards getting her into bed, she was also Not Happy. We had screaming and sobs the likes of which we had not seen or heard in many a month. The long and short of it was that it was 4:00 before she (and we) got to sleep.
She did sleep as late as 8:00 this morning, but all in all, it wasn’t enough sleep for her. So it was a bit of a rough day. And then tonight, we got home late too. (From visiting John’s dad and then picking up dinner from my favorite restaurant in the universe.) Not as late, but Phoebe had fallen asleep in the car and was Unhappy to be Awake, but Unwilling to be Asleep.
So the upshot is that now I am tired. And feel that I barely have half a brain left with which to function. But I did come across this test at Azahar’s place that lets me know a bit more about the halves of my brain. (Apparently, I’m supposed to have two halves.) It looks like I’m more right-brained. I thought I was more half-and-half brained. Or perhaps sometimes just half-brained.
|
You Are 30% Left Brained, 70% Right Brained |
 The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you’re left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. |
collecting tokens 