Interesting aesthetics

Last weekend DH Jeff & I went with a friend (and a puppy!) to her mountain place for a relaxing weekend. On her property was a deer carcass in the late stages of decomp - so of course we had to take pictures. I printed a shot of the deer head, then inverted the colors to make a "negative" image. Then framed them. Weird and spooky - and very cool. Jeff says he wants me to frame a set for his office to properly set the tone. Heh. Here, let's see if I can upload them:



Inverted:



Cool, huh?

Realization

No matter how small a residence is, there is always housework to do. Mewl.

Reaction: pick yer battles; tackle the worst spots and accept the not-so-bad spots until tomorrow.

Random things about me

Instead of responding to the myriad requests for 25 random things about me on Facebook, I'll give my dear readers five:

5. Love horseradish.
4. Born to organize.
3. Member of Phi Beta Kappa in good standing.
2. Feel guilty about not blogging more.
1. Detest Facebook surveys, challenges, applets. Sorry friends.

There may be more random things. I'm not sure.

Random thoughts on Inauguration Day

1. How can you screw up the Presidential Oath? Yes, Pres, just stop at "execute."

2. Realization that Geithner's tax "error" is more than I earned last year.

3. "Brown, stick around"? Is this an amnesty cry? And/or an open borders affirmation?

4. "White, do what's right"? You mean like paying debts, paying taxes, not expecting the Guv'ment to take care of me like an infant? [In case of snarky comments, I've paid for my unemployent compensation for the last 20+ years - so buzz off]

5. Good luck, Mr. President, now reality sets in.

Happy New Year!

Well, DH Jeff & I are about to take off for a weekend in the mountains with friends. So I don't have time to do an actual list of resolutions at this time. Let it be said, though, that the first one is "Get a Job, Layabout!" Ok look for an actual list when I return.

Happy & Safe New Year's celebrations!

Merry Christmas to all!

I'm so ready for Christmas! Gifts bought, wrapped and either mailed or ready to go! I have a good bead on life & am grateful for so many lovely people in it.

So, let's have a wonderful, safe Christmas (or whatever) and start the New Year on a good foot.

Peace out,
Your humble hostess

Decide what you're willing to eat, then just order

Discuss amongst yourselves already. Don't ask me to choose, because I don't have the incredible number of food exclusions that you do, so I'm likely to order something you don't like or refuse to eat. And I don't mean allergies, I mean plain choice exclusions. Here are only some:

- no red meat or pork
- no meat at all
- ew, raw fish
- no seafood or fish (even cooked)
- no tomatoes
- no onions
- no spicy food
- no mushrooms
- no vegetables or salads
- I'll order my own entree at a tapas place instead of sharing whatever you order
- [add your own]

Seriously folks, if we were out in the wild, you would die (and I would live) because you wouldn't bring down that antelope and eat already.

This food discrimination has been an increasing annoyance to me. When entertaining or eating out with folks (esp at tapas places), one ALWAYS has to provide and/or order food that lands in between the NARROW range of acceptable food. It's no surprise that we don't have any vegan friends. And, it's actually a HUGE relief to eat with folks who say (and mean), "I eat everything." You just know DH Jeff wouldn't have lasted a week (vs nearly 14 years) if either of us were picky eaters.

That said, here are a few kudos:

- thanks to our parents who had us try a variety of foods as children, so that as adults, we're pan-food-friendly. As a matter of fact, as I grow older, my range of likes is expanding, not shrinking.

- thanks to those friends and family who look at food as an adventure, and gamely try anything.

- thanks to DH Jeff for not only being a great and willing cook, but one who isn't afraid of experimenting.

- thanks to Pete for generously giving us his hunting overflow (yes - we love venison!). Now if you'd only come over so we could cook some for you. :)

- thanks to God or whatever powers-that-be for creating so many edible and appetizing things. Vive la variété!

Arghhh!

Just finished my resume on the DC Employment Services Site (I'm required to look for a job using their site for my unemployment pay), and I'm exhausted. Totally wiped out. And I haven't even applied for any jobs on the site. I should want to workout, but all I want is a drink. And I have completing the USAJobs.org site to look forward to. Clearly not tonight.

And then, I'll have to write COVER LETTERS - ARGGGHHH! I'd like to put a one-liner: See attached for resume. I suppose prospective employers want to see more "personality" and "enthusiasm," and so I'll have to make something up, but seriously, folks, most of the jobs for which I'm qualified are not going to be exciting. And do employers really want a taste of my cynicism? Do they really want to know that I detest meetings & am not overjoyed by the prospect of overtime? That I suck at office politics and prefer just to do my job (Heaven forfend!)?

Oh well, you know I'll slog through these things, because, you know, I have to.

Too much stuff

Because I [we] keep losing track of all of our stuff, and because I'm a bit OCD, I'm going to create a searchable list of where stuff is. For instance: doorstops removed from our 100 or so doors so we could fit more stuff into 980 square feet: in the cabinet above the fridge; removed door from study: under bed. You get the picture. Yes, I am serious.

Disturbing science moment

Just because you need to see this for your general edification, check out this YouTube clip of a centipede eating a mouse. I personally felt nauseous.

Rambling on Tuesday

Ok, so I'm totally burnt out on politics & news in general that I'm simply not going to comment about it. Sick, sick, sick of all of it.

Well, maybe a little: Obama's "Infrastructure Plan." Slogans & gimmicks but no real substance. Like that's a shocker. BTW, I cheated and just read DH Jeff's assessment of the "Plan." You too can read it here.

Obama smokes. What a wonderful and life-affirming example not only his daughters, but the nation's youths as well. Yeah cigarettes!

I often toy with the idea of buying stock in Philip Morris or one of those Evil Empire cig companies. Why, if I'm so against smoking? Simple: observation & the potential for financial gain. In other words, I see people smoking downtown every day & in bars here in unenlightened Virginia; ergo, folks are still buying the things for their daily poisoning, and since smoking is unlikely to kill them right off, those companies must still be making money. Look, no one's holding a gun to smokers' heads - they can conceivably quit. Why shouldn't I profit from others' stupid choices? After all, I'm already paying for people's stupid choices, so...

On another topic, I've finished a very interesting book & I'd like to review it - yet I've been avoiding it. Hmm. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I seem to be incapable of coherent, succinct summary as of late.

Do you ever get the impression that when folks (of all ilks) say "Middle Class" they mean "having kids, a mortgage and car payments" and not "child-free, renting & dependent on public transportation"? Just saying...

Ok, must go work on my resume. Pooh.

Stuff on parade [long post]

Ok, so, in order to make my job search easier (less painful), I've decided to do an "application resume," ie, take my regular resume and insert all the crappity-crap that these online applications require so that I could just copy & paste instead of having to research the stuff from scratch each time.

Good thing I'm OCD, because I actually HAVE all data going back to my first job, in classification folders. Heck, I have tax records going back twenty years, neatly filed. I'm that sort of girl.

Yesterday, DH Jeff calls out to me, "um, Scooter, come here a second." He'd found my classification folder with all the WaPo "Second Glance" puzzles I've ever done. You know, the ones where there are two pictures and you have to identify the twelve differences between them? "Why are you keeping a file of these?" Well, I had no plausible answer to give him that didn't include impending alien invasions and coded messages imbedded in the images. He gave up that query after I said something like, "because."

One application requests the reason for leaving each position. While I'm tempted to put, in the one case,* "I quit before the unethical, snake-in-the-grass asshat could procure an excuse to fire me, after side-lining me under one of his quintessentially mediocre lapdog administrative hires and making my work life completely miserable," I have the time to craft a more palatable and succinct reason: "was planning to leave the area with fiance," which was also true at the time.

More on that boss: I once ran into him outside of work with his two small children and he made this grand gesture, like, "see the children! aren't they wonderful? don't you love them (you're a woman, after all)? aren't I wonderful - I'm playing Daddy?" Uggh. It might come as a great shock to you, dumbass, but I don't melt around children, especially if I know they're growing up under your influence. And the thought that the sight of them (around you) would make me more positively inclined towards you doesn't work because I know your wife is raising them, while you play executive. Ahh, vitriole of the past.

So, yesterday Jeff & I were moving furniture and stuff in advance of some ADA-required modifications to our apartment which started this morning. I'm a pretty good housekeeper, but one thing I've always neglected is this set of metal trays under the stovetop grill thingies, which catch the splatter & cooking detritus. Once the stuff gets on the trays, it's loathe to come off with anything weaker than concentrated acid. As a result, they had become pretty disgusting. I've soaked them in hot soapy water & scrubbed them with various abrasive cleansers, to no avail. Yet last night I was on a mission to overcome this particular obstacle to stovetop cleanliness bliss. Guess what worked? Scraping off the gunk with a small screwdriver. Desperate situations...

After this feat was accomplished, I started getting kind of manic, because I started seeing other things in dire need of cleaning, lest the workmen get the impression that we're (I'm) slovenly. After I finished cleaning to an acceptable level, I told myself sternly, "get a hold of yourself - they won't even be looking at the top of the fridge and probably don't care either way." Then, I congratulated myself on this useful exercise & how much I learned about myself in the process." Yeh.

Alright. I believe the workmen have finished for the day, so it's time to reclaim our apartment.

Next effort: solving the mystery of the "self-cleaning oven."

*This was a LONG time ago, so back off!

Project or exercise

Well, since I've been unemployed, I've started a project or "exercise" which I've wanted to do for a while. I call it "exercise" because if it doesn't turn out, I can tell myself what a valuable experience it was & how much I've learned from it. If it turns out awesome, I'll call it a quilt or duvet cover (not sure which yet). Hah!

Ok, now I'm going to file for unemployment...mewl. Did I mention how clean the apartment is?

A big Bravo Zulu goes to...

DH Jeff for completing a novel for NaNoWriMo the second year in a row! This is especially praise-worthy & awesome because he wrote most of it in the past week. Wow!

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a contest - for bragging rights really - in which one endeavors to write a 50,000-word novel during November. Yes, that's right, a novel in a month. The benefit (besides bragging rights) is that one then has the first draft of a novel.

It's very cool. I have yet to participate in this because I'm just not that disciplined and have the attention span of a five-year-old. So I'm very proud of Jeff for having done this a second time - AND, he has also written a screen play for a similar contest.

Evidence of my looming domesticity

Last night I (1)made stock from a chicken carcass...from (2) a meal I cooked on Friday. By myself.

(3)I hemmed a pair of jeans. With blue seam tape. By hand.

(4)I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping, wrapping, and it's creative. (5)Also decorating gift tags. Using glue.

It's gotten downright scary.

5 people to thank today

Ok, so today I went into my former office & boxed my computer to transport home. No, I didn't steal it - I bought it from the organization because it's closing shop permanently & had to do something with the computers. Now, those of you who know me are wondering - how was I going to get these things home since I don't have a car? Did I have some car'd friend willing to give me a lift? Well, I do have lovely friends who would have helped had I asked them...but that would have taken forethought, common sense and planning. And I'll have none of that. Short story long, I "planned" to metro in, pack up, then catch a cab home. Brilliant huh? Well, that's exactly what I did. Fortunately, along the journey, I encountered some very nice souls who helped in various ways & should be thanked here:

1. The office building security lady who watched my boxes while I returned the hand-truck to my office;
2. The young man who volunteered to carry the heavy box to the curb so I could hail a cab;
3. The African cabby (accent, people, it was the accent) who carried the box from the curb and later to my doorstep, & admonished me that lifting heavy boxes was not a woman's job but a man's job. Amen to that;
4. The young woman who held open the apartment building doors for me even though she didn't even live in my building;
5. And last but not least, the concierge who lifted the box onto the cart so I could easily take it up to our apartment.

My computer is now home safely, my back intact, my mood cheery. Thanks guys!

Grapes in Maryland

In the Metro Section of today's WaPo is an article about how some southern Marylanders are trying their hands at viniculture in areas that historically grew tobacco. Challenges abound: weather & climate, expense, predation (deer, beetles, mildew), legislation - not to mention all the time & effort required to produce a viable crop of grapes.

I'm whole-heartedly behind wine-making in general, but certainly its supplanting tobacco. But in a larger sense, it's good to see adaptation in commerce from one industry (or market) to another, seeing that change as an opportunity (instead of becoming a dinosaur in a dying market). Interestingly, some previous tobacco growers used settlement money to start their vineyards. Sounds like progress.

A cool science moment (aren't they all?)

Today in WaPo was a really interesting article about how a bunch of scientists are reconstructing the genome of the woolly mammoth using samples from 20,000-year-old and 65,000-year-old specimens. They are 2/3s done & it seems that this genome varies from modern elephants on by 0.6%, which is approximately half of the genetic difference between humans & chimpanzees. This is a fascinating concept because although mammoths lived in very cold climates, elephants live in very warm climates. So...what were the adaptations to enable this switch? Anyhoo, it's nice to hear of these findings because they raise further inquiry/research & potentially, render profound discoveries that advance our knowledge of life.

A Tiny Little Miracle [Caution: irreverent post]

Well, as the observant and thoughtful God that He is, Jesus miracled my dental floss to become endless (see “loaves & fish”). He knows I’m currently jobless, want to conserve money, yet value healthy gums. And I really appreciate that – I do! – except for one thing: I cannot stand this floss. It’s supposed to make one’s teeth whiter, but I think that’s code for “abrasive,” “not waxed” and “causes gum irritation.” I’ve had this same spool at work for the last year, trying to finish it up (conserving!) at my post-lunch brushing. It just doesn’t decrease - ever. Ah well, off I go to “make my teeth whiter.”

Movie Review: Blood Diamond

The storyline is thus: diamond smuggler (Leo DiCaprio) helps man (Djimon Hounsou) to reunite with family [which were separated during a child soldier raid] with help of activist journalist (Jennifer Connelly). Smuggler has motives other than purely altruistic.

Ok, I couldn't even get through this one (thank goodness for Netflix). The dialog was stupid, DiCaprio's "Africaans" accent was all over the place (sometimes sounding British, sometimes Southern drawl, mostly indeterminate) and performance lame, Connelly's activist journalist was stereotypical and worse, phoned-in. I could go on, but why?


Too bad, because there were themes of the barbary of child soldiery, forced labor/slavery involved in the conflict diamond trade, and generally the savagery of man with the absence of rule of law. Compelling issues in the right hands. Painful in the wrong ones. Now I like all three actors above, but not in this venue. Save your time, energy & money on something else; even the Bond film that involves conflict diamonds (Die Another Day) is a more compelling experience.