blue girl

relocation

2006-01-03T08:51:00.000-08:00

So I started this blog in the fall of 2004 as we were approaching the 2004 presidential election. I was thinking a lot about politics then, and fervently hoping that Bush wouldn't win. I originally intended for the blog to be more politically oriented, but it appears that although I still spend quite a bit of time thinking about politics, I'm not really that great at putting it down on paper. I named the blog what I did because it seemed strange to suddenly be living in a red state after growing up in a state that has been solidly blue in the presidential election for decades.

But, this isn't a political blog, and about 6 other people have stolen the name, blah blah blah. I don't like it anymore, so I'm moving everything I've written over to seejanebee.blogspot.com. It's my internet pseudonym, it may as well be my blog name too.

fear and loathing at the mall

2005-12-02T11:08:00.000-08:00

There is a mall a couple miles from our house where D. and I usually go for a walk several evenings a week. Why do we walk at a mall, you ask? Because it is either 97 degrees with 97% humidity or (like right now) it is 23 degrees outside and I consider both of these weather extremes to be unacceptable for outdoor walking.

But I digress. This mall is rather yuppified and contains a Brooks Brothers, a store that sells incredibly overpriced and horribly ugly yuppie-wear. The women's store window display currently contains a sequence of plaid skirts in at least 4 or 5 equally hideous and matronly styles (including a floor length one), paired with things like shapeless navy blue cardigans. The overall effect is of someone who loved the catholic school uniform so much they couldn't let it go and are still wearing it at least 30 years after graduation from high school except now they want it to cover all their fat instead of to show off their legs.

The men's store has some equally horrible offerings, including something that appears to be a blazer made out of 1 inch squares of mismatched plaid patched haphazardly together.
I'm sure they charge at least $200 for this work of art. However, the worst offender, one that sticks with me, is embroidered pants, for both men and women. In the warm weather, I saw hot pink shorts embroidered with what appeared to be butterflies...for men. Currently all I can find on the website is women's corduroy pants embroidered with...ducks. Who wears this stuff? It makes me loathe Brooks Brothers, everyone who shops there and everything they stand for.

it's about the money, assholes

2005-11-21T12:11:00.000-08:00

		Ever since abortion became The Big Thing with respect to the current and recent Supreme Court nominations, I've wanted to yell at each and every person who is anti-choice: Not everyone can afford to have a baby. From what the Census Bureau tells me, 45.8 MILLION people in this country didn't have health insurance as of 2004. That number is going down, not up. The median household income as of 2004 is $44k. The cost of having a baby in a hospital plus the 2 or 3 day stay, will be about $10,000 if you're very lucky and considerably more if you need the emergency C-section, there are complications, or if the baby requires special care. If you have reasonably decent health insurance, you might be responsible for $1,000-2,000 at most. Plus all the doctor's appointments during the pregnancy will have been covered at say, $20 per appointment. While a couple thousand dollars isn't something to sneeze at, it's probably doable, even if you have to work out payment with the insurance co. Then think about paying for it yourself. 10 or 12 or 20 thousand to have a baby, that's close to a quarter or half of that median family's income, isn't it? What poor, lower-middle or middle class family can afford that, especially if they already have a kid or two? What if dad or mom just got laid off (and lost the health insurance) right before mom found out she was pregnant? What about the mom who makes $60 a month too much to qualify for Medicaid? The health care system in this country disgusts me, the haves and have-nots. When we were in England, my mom had a minor stomach bug. She called my grandmother's doctor (who had no prior knowledge of my mom) first thing in the morning, and asked for an appointment. They told her to come in at 10:30, saw her for 20 minutes, prescribed anti-upset stomach pills, and charged her (my mom not being a member in England's national health service) the equivalent of $40. How long would an uninsured person have to wait for an appointment with a doctor who has no prior knowledge of her in this country, and how much would she have to pay? Conservatives like to speak of pregnancy as if it's entirely the woman's fault for getting pregnant when she can't afford it. I'm sure they really believe that married couples should give up sex for years at a time because they don't have health insurance. Let's think about birth control for a moment. The pill (one of the most effective methods of birth control) will be 99% effective when it's taken correctly. A woman can become pregnant approximately once a month, or 12 times a year. Let's say she starts having sex when she marries at age 24, and can no longer become pregnant when she reaches menopause at age 45. That's 252 separate times she can become pregnant, and with a 1% failure rate, that's 2.5 unintended pregnancies. I don't want to hear any more conservatives saying ANYTHING about abortion until they start advocating for universal health care as fanatically as they advocate against abortion.

more travel

2005-11-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

		I'm going to Chicago this weekend. There's been a lot of traveling recently; D. is in Toronto right now for a conference. My travels should be interesting as four separate transit systems are required to reach my final destination: St. Louis Bus, St. Louis Metro, Amtrak and Chicago Metra. I know St. Louis Metro and Chicago Metra are fairly reliable as far as being on time, but Metra did have that incident a few weeks ago where they derailed a train at 65mph in a 10mph zone. Amtrak...well, I'm not holding out hope, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. I've never used the St. Louis buses either, but I have no reason to think they'll be too bad, especially at the time of day I'll be on them. So I'm crossing my fingers that I'll avoid derailed trains and make my connections somewhat on time. Note: I've never really lived anywhere before St. Louis where public transport was much of an option. Sure, I took the bus to the mall half a dozen times in college, but that wasn't exactly a major urban transportation system. And I guess with the aforementioned never taking the bus here, I don't really utilize public transport other than in cases when parking is a nuisance (i.e. taking the metro to the baseball stadium). But I really love trains and I'm not intimidated by figuring out how to get from A to B using different systems, so I'm looking forward to this trip. (Speaking of A to B, I figured out how to get D. from the Toronto airport to his hotel to the conference center to the other couple of places he has to go via bus and subway. I'm wondering how many of his fellow conference attendees will be enjoying some rather expensive cab trips.) (P.P.S. I've been to Paris a couple times and Le Metro is a thing of beauty. Seriously. I love the Metro.)

travel (sigh)

2005-10-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

		I got back from England last night, but my suitcase did not. It appears it has taken up residence at O'hare for the foreseeable future. I will be willing to forgive United for this error as long as said suitcase arrives today, because it contains every pair of underwear I own. Dammit. I tend to be unlucky with respect to suitcases that don't make it to their final destination with me. Last Christmas I flew from Boston to Chicago via Philadelphia, and the Continental baggage handlers in Philadelphia all pretended to be sick (but were really striking). For five days. Which meant my suitcase arrived the day AFTER Christmas. Which meant I wore the same clothes for 5 days, had to buy new underwear, and attended Christmas eve church in tennis shoes, jeans, and a blazer of my mom's that didn't fit. It was classy.

condo watch 2005

2005-10-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

		The condo next door is still holding steady at $237,900. I think it's been on the market for 4 months now. Sources indicate that housing prices are starting to head slightly downward, which probably doesn't bode too well for condo guy.

mmm....fudge

2005-10-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

		Last weekend we were out and about and ended up at the Thias House. It was a little weird, it's a house (and apparently from the website, a B&B) that's decorated mostly like a normal house except everything inside is for sale. The important part, which isn't mentioned on the website, is that they also have a fudge shop. I bought vanilla fudge with pecans, and it's gone now, and all I can think about is how to get my hands on more.

cafe de france in clayton

2005-10-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

		D. and I went to dinner at Cafe de France on friday night, and my overall impression was that it was tasty, but perhaps not a 4 star place. I'd probably give it 3. Obviously from the name, this is a french restaurant. To start, a single roll appeared on our bread plates. D. said his was good but mine was chewy and possibly stale. It was not good, one gets better bread from Panera. This is a small quibble, but one expects good bread at a fancy restaurant, especially a french one. Also, a bread basket would have been better. I would have liked another roll but couldn't be bothered to ask the waitress. D. had french onion soup which was very good, and I had lobster bisque. The bisque was good, but not as good as that which I had earlier this summer at a wedding in MA. I think the MA bisque will be the gold standard forever and I'll probably never have any that lives up to it. We also shared a garden salad which was nice, not over-dressed and with tiny crumbles of what I think was blue cheese. For the entrees, D. had chicken in some sort of lemon and mushroom sauce that was oh so lemony and delicious. He loved it. I had salmon in some other sort of sauce. The salmon was very moist and fresh, but the bottom was a little overcooked and chewy. Overall both entrees were excellent, though, and came with mixed vegetables and some sort of small pasta/large couscous. Somewhere in here we also both had a glass of Reisling - very tasty, not too sweet or dry and apple flavored. Dessert was kind of funny because we inquired about the souffles and the waitress looked kind of alarmed. "Those take 25 minutes", she said. "You're supposed to order them with your entree, I guess I forgot to ask". We said we didn't mind and ordered one anyway, but we were wondering if she thought we weren't having a good time together or something, and couldn't stand to chat for another 25 minutes. The souffle was worth the wait, it was raspberry flavor and had some sort of liqueur flavored sauce that we poured inside it. It was light and fluffy and very good. I had never thought of souffle as a dessert item before but it worked really well. We also had a creme brulee. That was good too, but it was a little too sweet and the bruleed crust was a little too thick. We were stuffed by that point and probably could have done without the brulee. A waitress also tried to snatch it away before we were done, which irked me a little. Overall verdict - very tasty food, needs to work a little on the details (rolls, plate snatching waitresses).

rain

2005-09-28T11:54:00.001-07:00

		The changing of seasons seems to inspire St. Louis to...rain. I think it rained every day for the first two weeks of June, and then approximately twice during the rest of the summer. Now it's been raining just about every other day for the last two weeks. The forecasts keep predicting large hail, which we (fortunately) have yet to see. We moved here last year right after a large hail storm and all the car dealerships were having "hail sales". Good if you want a new car for cheap and don't care if it's a little dinged, bad if you have a car and want it to stay in decent shape. At any rate there's another big storm headed our way this afternoon, but it's ok because all this rain is getting me prepared for a trip to a country with a reputation for all rain all the time: England. I've only ever been there in June/ July before, so it'll be interesting to see it this time of year. More on this later. The condo next door is still for sale, but the realtor's website doesn't seem to be working so no update there.

nothing to do here

2005-09-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

		Overheard last weekend while eating at Kayak's after the Great Majestic St. Louis Balloon Race Extravaganza: (She was an 18 year old asian chick with a valley girl voice) "You guys, do you ever think there's nothing to do here besides eat ... and watch movies ......... and talk??!!" D. kept asking me the very same question all the way home, in the very same valley girl voice. Then followed it up by saying if that's what she really thinks, she's going to gain the freshman 50, not freshman 15.

i need, a little inspiration please

2005-09-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

		I think it's been about a year since I started writing this whatever-it-is. I'm not very good at it. At the beginning of 8th grade, my English teacher assigned us a journal. We had to, I believe, produce one notebook page a week. She didn't read them, just skimmed to make sure the requisite page had been produced. I filled approximately 12 spiral bound notebooks that year. I toted them with me everywhere, wrote in them in class while pretending to be taking notes, wrote in them in study hall, wrote in them at home while pretending to do homework. I had a journaling addiction. This process continued through high school, although with a little less fervor. I filled a couple of notebooks a year. I kept writing a little bit into the first few months of college, but I stopped shortly after I began talking to D. The last (paper) journal entry I ever wrote said something along the lines of: I met a wonderful boy, the love of my life. I never knew it would be like this, and I don't really have anything more to say here. It was true. The thing is, all the thoughts and ideas and emotions and jokes and...stuff that I put into the journals, I gave to D. instead. It was wonderful to be able to do so then, and it still is now, 4 1/2 years later. I think this is the reason that I find writing here to be a continual struggle; I think about a lot of things and have every intention of writing them down, but then D. gets home and I tell him instead and then I've moved on to something else. So this is my uh, end-September resolution. I want a record of my life, something more permanent and less fleeting than memories. I will write, something, anything here at least twice a week. We'll see how it goes.

it would possibly please me to move to wales

2005-08-31T14:49:00.000-07:00

		I believe this is the cutest real estate listing I've ever read. From johnfrancis.co.uk Freehold Terraced house 2 bedrooms 1 reception room 1 bathroom Offers in the region of £149,995 We are pleased to have received instructions, to offer for sale Tan-y-Graig, Goginan. The property is an end of terrace two bedroom cottage, which has recently been upgraded by our client and has oil-fired central heating, partial double glazing and adjoining low maintenance garden to side, with two store sheds and separate car parking area on the opposite side of the road with timber-deck enjoying open views over the valley. The village provides for a public house, whereas Aberystwyth is set some eight miles miles distant.

i would be at the head of the evacuation line

2005-08-31T12:20:00.000-07:00

		I haven't had a lot of experience with hurricanes, and I hope not to have any more. Last summer when D. and I were moving out here from North Carolina, we hadn't chosen a definite departure date. Then the news indicated that a hurricane was headed towards NC, and we decided at about 8pm to pack everything and leave the next morning, as we didn't want to be faced with the choice of driving in hurricane rain/wind or being stuck there for another 3 days. We left Durham by mid-morning, but unfortunately the hurricane was moving faster than we expected or the path wasn't quite as predicted, and the edge of the storm hit us on I-40 about halfway between Winston-Salem and Asheville. The wind wasn't too bad, perhaps 30mph with some gusts, but I have never seen anything like the rain. It was the rain equivalent of a whiteout, windshield wipers could not keep up, and visibility was limited to about 15 feet in front of one's vehicle. We could not see the tail lights of the car in front unless we were that close, which was obviously a dangerous distance. Pulling over and stopping wasn't really an option as none of the road markings were visible and it was likely that you would be hit by another car that couldn't see you. It turned into this bizarre situation where all the traffic was in (more or less) the right lane driving 20mph with hazard lights on. If you got too close to the car in front the blink-blink of their hazard lights made them visible from a little further away. We drove like this for perhaps 40 miles at which point the rain decreased to normal heavy rain. It was the scariest driving experience of my life (minus recent accident, but I wasn't driving), and if that's what a minor hurricane looks like 300 miles inland, I hope to never experience a major one near the coast. I can only imagine what the damage from Katrina is like; my thoughts go out to everyone in New Orleans.

condo watch 2005

2005-08-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

		The condo next door is still for sale and down almost 5% to $237,900. Not too surprising as the guy moved out a couple weeks ago and must be getting more desperate to sell.

hi ho honda

2005-08-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

		FYI, we did eventually get a new civic after looking for about a month. The new one is a 2000 with 40k miles on it and remote entry instead of power windows. We paid a little more for this one than the last one, but we knocked off 6k miles and the transmission is smoother and the gas mileage better (rather relevant as gas shoots up to $2.75/g.). Sadly, no flaming tail pipe (although I do have the flaming piece off the dead one sitting in my living room. I call it modern art.)

everlasting email

2005-08-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

		Last summer when I was working at Duke they assigned me an employee email address. D.'s email was also transferred to employee status and now I'm pretty sure the IT department didn't notice when we left their fine institution. So we both still have Duke email/server space and no idea if it will ever be deleted. Both addresses have started to get a lot of junk mail though so I'm kind of glad I don't have to use it for work anymore.

cat blogging

2005-08-05T12:24:00.000-07:00

What can I say, the cat loves its box.

apparently everyone wants a honda

2005-07-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

		I don't know who these people are who think they can sell a 2002 Honda Civic LX with 33,000 miles on it for $15,900, because last time I checked you can buy a brand spanking new 2005 model with approximately 33 miles on it for $15,000ish. In other news, trying to buy a car again is (and no doubt will continue to be for a while) a big pain in the ass.

i'm melting

2005-07-21T11:48:00.000-07:00

		The heat here is so...hot. I don't know if it's the sun, the humidity, or what. It's just that 97 with a heat index of 107 makes me want to fill the bathtub with cold (or what passes for cold coming out of the tap) water and lay in it until I shrivel up. I might be shriveled, but at least I wouldn't be hot. Every day now, it hits 90 by 11am, and does not drop below 90 until 11pm (we will not discuss the 99s and 101s in the middle of the day). Even when I drive D. to work at 9am it's 85 and feels like 90. Between the neverending sun and the lack of AC in my car, there is no acceptable time of day to be outside. It makes me miss the weather in NC, which I whined about to no end when I moved there - little did I know it would be worse here. My new goal: move to Colorado by 2010.

ha.

2005-07-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

		The price of that condo next door only took 5 weeks to go down...from $249,900 to $242,500. That's almost a 3% reduction! Such a bargain! Stupid condo-purchasers.

vacation by the numbers

2005-07-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

		Number of days we were gone: 11 Number of days it takes to drive to Colorado from here: 1.5 Number of times in the same night we tried to set up a tent in Kansas and were defeated by high wind: 2 Number of elk we saw in Rocky Mountain National Park: at least 20 Number of elk we saw in a brewery parking lot in Estes Park, CO: 1 Elevation of the tallest mountain we hiked up: 10,400 ft. (Or something like that. It was over 10,000) Number of hydroelectric plants we toured: 1 Number of hours late the train we wanted to take a scenic ride on was running: 1 Number of days we stayed with friends: 3 Number of hours we waited for a meal to arrive at our table while eating out with them: 1.3 Number of times we went on an AlpineCoaster/SledBob: 2 Speed that most Coloradans drive on the interstate where the speed limit is 75mph: 67mph Number of different wildflowers at Betty Ford Alpine Gardens: hundreds Number of 1950s cars made into school buses we saw: 1 Number of miles out of our way we drove to see Great Sand Dunes National Park: at least 300 How cool the sand dunes were: pretty fucking cool Number of prisons in/around Canon City, CO: at least 7 Number of prison museums we toured: 1 How bad Royal Gorge sucks: hugely Number of fossilized trees seen at Florissant Fossil Beds: at least 7 Number of forest fires we saw while at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs: 1 Number of feet we went up to get from Colorado Springs to the summit of Pike's Peak on a cog railway: almost 8,000 Pieces of Pueblo pottery we purchased: 2 Number of times we ate at Quiznos: 2 Number of high speed car crashes we were involved in: 1 How fast we were going when we drove off the interstate in Kansas to avoid a head on collision with a car that had crossed the median and was headed straight at us: at least 70mph Number of fence posts we hit after driving off the highway: 3 Number of times the car rolled: 2 How far we were from the nearest hospital: 6 miles Number of concussions between us: 1 (D.) Largest bruise I had: 3x5 inches Number of broken anythings: 0 Number of bruises on D's head: 15 Number of bruises below D.'s neck: 1 Number of black eyes: 2 (both D.'s) Number of cars totaled: 1 Number of hours my family drove to pick us up: 13 Number of hours they drove us back to St. Louis: 8 How grateful I am: very How glad I am that we're both alive: infinitely Number of miles we drove: 2,400 Number of miles on the totaled car that we bought 3 months ago: 46,000 How sad I am about that: small tear

beautification

2005-06-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

		More than a month ago, D. and I went outside to take a walk around the neighborhood. We found a middle aged couple wearing Home Depot shirts (at least it wasn't Lowes) peering throughtfully at the bushes in front of our porch. They introduced themselves and said our landlady had hired them to remove weeds, trim the bushes, put in some flowers, etc., sounding as if this was all going to happen soon. We said oh, that's nice, and went on our way, expecting to come home one afternoon and find that poof! flowers had appeared. This never happened, and just this morning I was thinking that I must have misunderstood something, because clearly they weren't coming. But I was wrong, they showed up half an hour ago and seem to be doing things to the driveway with a weed whacker. (I don't think this will keep the driveway weeds away for long, if the project were left to me I would use roundup, but still.) Now I'm just waiting to see if flowers will have magically appeared next time I go outside.

the end of cheap plane tickets

2005-06-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

		I've been driving myself crazy this week trying to find plane tickets to Denver for less than $350. One of my good friends lives in Colorado and we're hoping to go visit her and her boyfriend for a few days and then spend a few more days seeing some other places in the area. I guess maybe Colorado is just the place to be in the summer, but I was hoping it wouldn't be that expensive. When D. and I flew to see each other during college (a similar distance), tickets were under $180 nine times out of ten. Another factor buoying my hopes was that after a week looking at $330 tickets to Boston (for another trip this summer), I found some for $160. Fingers were crossed that the same thing would happen for Denver, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get that lucky twice. I guess the ever upwards creep of gas prices means that plane tickets aren't likely to ever be that cheap again.

real estate

2005-06-07T12:04:00.000-07:00

		One of the condos in the building next to us is for sale. On this street, all of the buildings are upper/lower unit duplexes. Three of them (6 units) are condos, and the rest of them are apartments (about 35 buildings). The condos are a very recent addition, they were finished last fall in 3 empty lots that had not been wide enough for the a standard size duplex with a driveway along the side. The condos solved this lot size problem by putting the garages underneath. The single guy who bought the condo next door arrived in October, and I wonder why he's selling so soon. I found the listing on the internet, and while everything inside is fancy (read: granite counters, built in plasma tv), the layout is kind of weird. In the front there's a living room the width of the building, with a central hallway to 3 bedrooms and a kitchen (each half the width of the building) in a 4-square pattern. There is no dining room, the only public areas are the living room and the kitchen. This seems like a strange choice of plan for a single guy, but who would it work for, really? A family with two kids? The adults would never be able to escape from the kids. A couple with lots of guests? They don't even have somewhere to put a dining table. (Living in a building the same size, we could fit a dining table in our living room, but it would be very cozy.) So now that we've established the layout sucks, the asking price for this place is $250k. Yes, that's right, we live next door to a building evidently worth half a million. (When new, the asking price was $260k, so I can only assume Single Guy didn't pay that much originally.) In addition to the lousy layout, this condo makes even less sense since three blocks from here you can buy a 3 bedroom house with living room, dining room, family room AND basement space for the same amount of money. Sure, you might have to maintain the yard and exterior, but the yards are small and 98% of the buildings are brick. Even worse is that this condo is surprisingly...cheap. (Perhaps it's because one portion of the concrete path to the front door is not level from side to side OR from front to back.) Three miles from here you can buy a 2-bed condo for $500k or more. There are also $500k houses, but they tend to have 5 bedrooms. Moral of the story? I have become obsessed with real estate and I think that condos are ridiculous.

friday cat in box blogging

2005-05-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

		My mom brought me a few things in this box and the cat has become absolutely entranced with it.

recycling shame

2005-05-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

		D. and I believe in recycling. Not as the all encompassing solution to this country's resource and energy problems, but as Something Good People Should Do Instead Of Throwing All That Stuff In The Trash. We get a lot of junk mail and grocery store flyers, and then there are all the empty wine bottles and assorted plastic containers that food comes in. I make a special effort to wash these containers and put them in the box in the kitchen from which they are transferred to the official box on the porch once the kitchen box gets full. Problem: We don't know when recycling pickup day is. As a direct result of this problem, the official porch box is full, the kitchen box is full, and I have stuffed something like three bags of paper and one bag of containers in the sun porch because I didn't want my mother to see our recycling shame when she was here last weekend. I used to think recycling pickup day was Thursday, same as trash day. I was relieved of this notion several months ago when lo and behold, the recycling didn't vanish on Thursday. It did, however, vanish on Friday. But I never hear or see a recycling truck on Fridays, and sometimes (not yet with any discernable pattern) I see my neighbors' empty recycling boxes on hm, Thursday afternoon. I'm starting to suspect it's something like the third Thursday and first Friday of the month. All in all, we've only managed to get the recycling picked up about twice since we've been here. The current recycling shame is not, however, as bad as the pre-Christmas recycling shame. Before Christmas, I don't think we achieved ANY recycling pickups, and as a result we had something like 11 bags of papers, 7 bags of containers, and 6 giant kitty litter boxes stuffed in the corner of our kitchen (the sun porch idea had not yet struck me). After we finally caved and drove it all to the recycling center, we were amazed by how large our kitchen actually is. I'm sure I could just call the garbage department or someone and get them to tell me the schedule, but now it's become something like a challenge. Will I fail to solve the pattern and let the recycling once again smother our kitchen? Or will I emerge triumphant with our paper products vanishing on a regular schedule? I'll keep you posted.

the ladies can't resist the fresh scent of...lysol?

2005-05-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

		I find it highly disturbing that the Country Scent Lysol TM with which I just cleaned my toilet smells exactly like the cologne (?) one of The Boys I Made Out With In High School wore.

why i won't be going to my high school reunion

2005-05-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

		Writing yesterday about AP tests and classes in high school led me to thinking about my high school experience. I don't think a lot about high school, It's been 5 years (!) since I graduated and I only keep in touch with a handful of people I know from that time. I hated high school. I went to the same private school for elementary and middle school. It was a small but very good school with only about 25 kids in each grade and very individualized learning. Each year we were all split up into at least three groups for things like reading and math, and I never felt forced to work below my level. I took Algebra in 7th grade because hey, I knew how to do the math. Especially once we got into middle school, we were offered a lot of freedom. There were no bells for classes, you knew that you had 5 minutes to do what you needed to do and were expected to show up at your next class on time. And you know what? People followed by the rules. During lunch we were allowed to play in the gym or go outside (but not leave the campus), and due to a 6 day schedule we could take art AND choir AND band AND TWO languages. My parents decided to switch me from this school to a Catholic high school with 1,300 students when the time came. I'm still not entirely sure what their reasoning was, I think they believed my original school was too small and I needed to be exposed to more people and a larger variety of classes before I went to college. I spent the first two years there being absolutely miserable. I only knew 2 people out of 350 in my freshman class; both boys, one of whom was borderline learning disabled. Everyone else coming into the school arrived with their classmates from the feeder Catholic elementary schools or with a large group of people they had attended the public middle schools with. They didn't all know each other, but they basically all arrived with a group of friends. In addition to not knowing all those kids in their preformed cliques, I was placed into french and math classes with juniors and a biology class with sophomores. This meant I was only spending half the day with kids in my own grade which gave me even less of a chance to make friends. I spent two years dreading getting out of bed in the morning and I had very little that resembled a social life. Now, had I been a different person, it might have been a little easier. I'm not a social butterfly today and at the time I was rather shy. But I had been friends with just about all the kids in my grade in middle school, plus half the kids in the grades above and below me. In terms of that school, I was one of the popular kids, and it was a great shock to my system to suddenly become invisible. One might wonder why I didn't just hang out with the kids I was friends with at my old school, but circumstances conspired against it. Having kids leave for larger high schools was kind of a rite of passage for that school, and less than half of my original class remained at the start of freshman year. Being an excellent private school, kids had come from perhaps a 50 mile radius to attend. Many of them returned to their local public high school, one good friend's family moved to Atlanta, and my closest friend left for boarding school in, funnily enough, the St. Louis area. Had I remained at my original school no doubt I would have become friends with those new kids, but I was suddenly an outsider there. Perhaps even more than not having friends, I hated the atmosphere of that school. We had uniforms, and I still resent the fact that girls had to wear skirts year-round, even when it was -5 degrees outside in January. Demerits and/or detentions were issued for many violations such as: having your shirt untucked, being just a moment outside the door when the bell rang, speaking quietly to someone in study hall, or not having white socks for gym class. I hated being treated like we were all a bunch of little delinquents who had to be kept firmly in check. I once received demerits and detention for needing to use the bathroom between classes, having to wait for a stall, and being 5 seconds late into the classroom. The passing period was only 6 minutes despite the fact that the furthest classrooms were almost half a mile from the gym. We were not allowed outside under any circumstances between the first bell and the end of the day. I had played volleyball and soccer in middle school, but was no longer allowed to participate in either sport because my mother didn't want to deal with the practice schedule and number of games required for the competitive division that the largest schools played in. I hated the inflexibility of our schedules, we had the same classes at the same times every day, and you could only choose two electives. Depending on the year, science was seen as an elective. We had to take religion classes. Half of freshman year English class was a mythology unit, which I had already covered in far more depth in 6th grade. The biology and chemistry teachers were ridiculously bad. Again, I repeat, science was an elective. The only year I paid attention in English class was AP English senior year, the other years I spent my time reading the 3/4 of the textbook that we didn't cover in class or reading other books on my lap. Come to think of it, reading other books was how I spent most of a year in chemistry, too. At that school, everything was this giant high school cliche. The big social events were basketball and football games and the 'mixers' afterwards. The football players hooked up with the cheerleaders. Looking back it makes me throw up a little. At my old school, there was no football team or cheerleaders. And dammit, I LIKED it that way. That paragraph of whining is ridiculously long, but i REALLY hated it there. I never rebelled or anything, I was a very well behaved kid who cooperated with the system, but it didn't mean I wasn't miserable. I did make friends junior and senior year, and I got pretty good grades and took all those AP tests and got a scholarship to a pretty good university, but still. I occasionally have nightmares where I have to go back to high school. Perhaps my complaints aren't that bad, considering that some kids are bullied, beaten up, neglected by teachers, etc., but oh, what a soul-sucking prison it really was. If I had to go to that high school, what I learned could have easily been taken care of in two years - 3 years of history, 4 years of science, 2 years of french, 4 years of math fits neatly into two years of 7 classes a day - and then spent some time in community college. If I had the chance to do it again, I would have gone to my original school. They offered a better variety of better classes, and if it meant I ended up with a small group of friends - well, my eventual group of friends was no larger than 25 anyway. Making friends in college would have been no harder since everyone is new, and I would have been better prepared academically. It doesn't really matter, though, because I can't take it back, and even if I could I wouldn't really, because I met D. through my best friend from (the big, awful) high school. I'll just consider him my reward for putting up with those four years of misery.

AP testing, one two three

2005-05-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

		Today, I read this article (and ensuing discussion here) with some interest. The assessment of school rankings merely by the percentage of students taking AP or IB tests seems pretty lazy, when there are many other pieces of information that could be included to more completely rank a school. What does taking AP or IB tests tell us? Not much other than the schools push it and can cough up the $75 or so to pay for the tests. It seems that even taking into account how well students do on AP exams would be a better indicator of school quality. I took 5 AP tests in high school and did well enough on all of them for some sort of college credit except for French, although I later tested out of the 3 semester language proficiency so there you go. (I ended up with enough college credit to finish a semester early, although this did not actually happen due to changing my major rather late in the game). Not a lot of kids in my high school took AP tests, probably about 25 out of 300 seniors sat the ones for which there was a specific AP class (English, Calculus, American History, and Psychology), with a few people taking the language ones or a science one on occasion. My high school had three tracks: remedial, regular, and honors, with about 1/3 of the kids in honors, 1/2 in regular, and 1/6 in remedial. AP classes and the test at the end of the year were only for the brightest students, the ones at the top of the honors track. It seems highly unlikely that having more of the honors kids or the average kids take the AP tests would have made my school better in any way. That said, my high school was and still is private, so it wouldn't really matter in this case as private schools were not included in the listings. I believe the point still stands, though - that having lots of kids who are not on an educational track to do well on AP tests take those tests does nothing to indicate that a school is 'good'.

the show me state

2005-05-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

		Missouri's subtitle (tagline? slogan? theme?) is "The Show Me State". Since moving here, D. and I have been trying to figure out exactly who is supposed to be showing what to whom, without ever coming up with a good answer. But now, I think I'm starting to figure it out. Missouri has a surprising number of things to do and sights to see that I never expected to find here, and I imagine this is true for a lot of other people too. So the exchange goes something like this: Me: I like wine. Not like there's going to be anything to do with wine in Missouri. Missouri: Oh, I'LL SHOW YOU wine! Me: I like caves. Got any caves, Missouri? Missouri: I'LL SHOW YOU some badass caves! Me: I like climbing mountains. How bout that one. Missouri: I got nothin'. Anyway, the point being that there are lots of cool things to do around here that most people aren't expecting, so the slogan seems to be along the lines of hah, I'll show you what not to expect. Kind of feisty of them, really.

big surprise, this one

2005-05-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

Jolly good, wot! Anyone for tennis? That'll be ten ponies, guv. You're the epitome of everything that is english. Yey :) Hoist that Union Jack!

How British are you?

friday is cat day

2005-04-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

		Going in for the kill.

copycat

2005-04-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

		So someone started up a blog as bluegirlredstate at typepad. Not that I was intending to move my blog there, but still. Doesn't it seem like a little bit of a coincidence, given that prior to starting this blog I googled bluegirlredstate and got ZERO results? It just seems that stumbling on a blog name you like, whether at blogspot, typepad, or a domain, and then taking that blog name as your own on a different service is oh, incredibly lame. Just as I certainly would never dream of starting up dooce.blogspot.com or dailykos.typad.com (for example), it makes someone seem pretty uncreative when they do it with a non-famous blog.

week in review

2005-04-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

		So, all the houseguests are departed, and we did all have a very nice time together. I may have thought a few silent "arrrgh"s, but none of them came out and I wasn't too cranky, overall, due to the total lack of 6am showers - which let me get enough sleep. Hallelujah. Highlights of the week included: Dinner at Zia's on The Hill (the Italian neighborhood of St. Louis). Zia's has a reputation for being one of the best restaurants there, and it was DELICIOUS. Meeting one of D.'s best friends from elementary school - she's really nice and has a great sense of humor and we had a fun time hanging out with her. Spending an afternoon at the Missouri Botanical Garden - tons of plants and bushes were flowering and we just strolled around enjoying a beautiful day. Everyone else would vote for a Cardinals game where one pitcher pitched 10 innings, but not me. I was too cold. Where'd that 80 degree weather go again? Spending an afternoon scenic driving through the rolling hills west of the city out to Hermann, MO. Settled entirely by German immigrants in 1800something, it's the center of Missouri's wine producing region. I didn't know they made wine in MO until we moved here, but we did wine tasting and tours at a couple wineries there and now have about 10 bottles of wine in our liquor cabinet. Again, DELICIOUS. P.S., D. got drunk, because his dad doesn't like wine very much and kept giving his samples to D. So in effect, D. had a double wine tasting, which he very much enjoyed in an inebriated fashion. Yep, those were the highlights. And I am feeling so kindly towards the past week that I won't even bother with lowlights. Actually, I can't really think of any lowlights, unlike when my family was here. Oh yeah. It rained a lot. And it was unseasonably cold. There could be far worse things.

just leave me alone and i'll be happy

2005-04-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

		D.'s parents are coming to visit and I'm feeling eh about it. His parents are very nice people, we all get along well. It's just that they're coming for a WEEK, and staying with us. In our apartment with only one bathroom that shares a wall with our bedroom and wakes me up when someone takes a shower at 6am. Gah. In general, I am a person who needs a lot of alone time. I can stand, and even enjoy, being around D. for days straight, but he's the only person I've ever been able to tolerate like that. With most people, after a day or two I just want them to leave me by myself to think my thoughts and do what I want without having to socialize with them or be entertaining. It's not so much that D.'s parents expect entertainment, but that I have to constantly be "on": friendly, smiling, enthusiastic about the activities they want to do, participating in lots of conversations, etc. That just wipes me out, and with the 6am shower wakeup I become frustrated and grouchy and then even more so because I am still pretending to be "on" (see above). I don't know what to do about this, and it's not constrained to D.'s parents, it's my family too. However, my family only visits for 2 or 3 days at a time, which more or less stays within my limit of tolerance. I never had a chance to suggest that D.'s family come for a shorter time, because they just went ahead and bought plane tickets. I don't think I can suggest (in future) that they stay in a hotel, because D. will be hurt that I don't want his parents around and his parents will no doubt be insulted in some manner. Thinking about it further, I don't really feel eh, it's more along the lines of actively dreading the coming week. Sometimes I really regret getting an apartment with a second bedroom.

love, Britney and K Fed

2005-04-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

		So, Britney got knocked up. That is almost unavoidably going to be one messed up kid, and who wants to make bets on how long it takes Britney to become a single mom? I took an informal poll of friends on whether it would be worse to be Britney or Madonna's child and it was nearly unanimous that Britney would be way worse. Why? Because while they both have the weird, Britney also has the trailer trash and (probably) the desire to be overinvolved. Madonna seems like she leaves everything to a couple of expensive British nannies, who would probably manage to raise a fairly normal kid. The best take I've seem on it is here and here. I have a suspicion this is exactly how these two converse. Enjoy.

what big EYES you have

2005-04-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

		The "Please feed me, I'm trying to look cute" face.

now i want a flaming tail pipe too

2005-04-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

		We bought a new car a week ago. Technically, a used car, but new to us. D. had been driving a bright teal colored 1993 honda civic coupe since his junior year of high school. As of last week that car had 264,893 miles on it. The transmission sounded like it was struggling, it needed about $500 in exhaust repairs, and the speedometer had stopped working. For example, when driving 60 mph the speedometer spasmed between about 45 and 80, which made highway driving especially exciting. Conclusion: time for a new car. Since that one held up so well, we bought another civic. I make fun of D. for continuing the string of girly cars, since the official color name of this one is "Metallic Wild Plum". However, it has tinted windows and one of those little muffler pipe add-ons with flaming cut-outs, which makes it more bad-ass. For a civic anyway. Ahem. Plus, only 40k miles! And if we drive 15,000 miles a year, it should last until I'm 36. How could you get a better deal than that in the car department? Plus, it has AIR CONDITIONING. Now that's what I'm talking about.

blogging the cat on fridays

2005-04-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

		Sometimes the cat gets really interested in the flashing lights and clicking buttons on the camera.

the thing about highways

2005-04-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

		Driving in the left lane of a 4-lane road today, I was doing 40mph in a 30 zone. A cop going at least 10 mph faster than me passed me in the right lane, and then proceeded to swerve into my lane without using a turn signal. Instead of staying in that lane, he edged back to the right until he was straddling the white line. He drove this way for at least a couple blocks before he ran a red light and I lost track of him. This is why people hate cops. Driving in St. Louis was a little bit of a big deal to me when we first moved. Around here, to get most anywhere outside of your immediate neighborhood you have to take the highway. I had never lived in a city where one had to drive on more than a 4 (ok, maybe 6) lane road to get anywhere useful in town. No onramps, speed limit 45, traffic lights every 1/4 mile, etc. Definitely no highways with 3-5 lanes in each direction and a posted speed limit of 55 but a (busy) traffic flow going 70. Even in North Carolina, the local highways had traffic lights here and there and very little traffic in general. D., having driven in Boston on a semi-regular basis, thought the highways around here were great. I thought trucks were going to merge into me and I was going to die. Don't get me wrong, I have done quite a bit of highway driving in my life, but it was all of the variety where I got on the uncrowded highway at point A and proceeded calmly to destination B and exited. Around here, there is so much traffic - you merge on to one highway; change lanes to avoid the swerving guy; change lanes some more to avoid garbage trucks; merge off the highway onto a ramp while avoiding the cars that have just exited the highway you want to get onto and are sharing your ramp except they're trying to go right while you want to go left; merge on to the highway; merge onto another highway, and so forth. And this is just to get to Target. Having been here 8 months now, I think I've finally come to terms with the highways. I don't clutch the wheel with a death grip anymore, I don't get all freaked out when I encounter the merge on/merge off ramp situation, I keep one eye on the rearview mirror in an attempt to make sure i have an out when the swerving guy decides to merge into me. I appreciate how the highway makes Target a 10 instead of 20 minute drive in the middle of the day. Regardless, I still let D. drive every time we go somewhere together.

summer is here! (and bringing the potheads out to play)

2005-04-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

		Just to note: it's EIGHTY ONE degrees here. It seems that summer directly followed winter, without bothering with any of that spring nonsense. Tying in with the nice weather, last week D. and I walked 8 blocks down to the local Qdoba, ate dinner, and walked back just as it was getting dark. Maybe 7:15pm. On the way back we passed through a neighborhood park, and just at the entrance were 4 or 5 teenage boys, smoking the reefer. D. and I laughed at their audaciousness, but I thought about it in a more sober light later. I used to have a lot of sympathy for the people in jail for marajuana related offenses. After all, the goverment is hysterical about drugs, and it's a victimless crime, right? But seeing these kids made me think that maybe those people in jail only have their own stupidity to blame. How easy is it to smoke your dope in your basement, away from prying eyes and noses, and never get in trouble for it? How much trouble are you asking for when you smoke weed at 7pm, right next to a neighborhood full of yuppies and their young children? No doubt there are people in that neighborhood who are super paranoid about how drugs will ruin their kids' lives and who would not hesitate to call the cops upon getting a whiff of weed. The smell drifted after us for a good two blocks, so there were certainly other people in their yards or with open windows who could smell it. It just seemed so stupid.

blogging the girth of the cat

2005-04-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

		The cat has become more and more rotund as of late, so we put her on a diet. I'm not sure it's working.

how i went from loving to hating Lowe's home improvement warehouse in under 3 minutes

2005-03-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

		Yesterday D. and I went to buy a grill. We had seen one at Home Depot that was a possibility and so we decided to go inspect the selection at Lowe's after seeing one on their website that looked promising. We won't get into how we missed the turn because we were peering at a Shoe Warehouse and then drove another 15 miles past the Lowe's before realizing (as we drove past subdivision after subdivision that all looked the same) we definitely should have been there by now. We started to realize our mistake as soon as we got back to the Lowe's parking lot. Saturday afternoon in the suburbs is prime shopping time, and this plaza had not only a Lowe's, but also: a Walmart, a Target, a TJ Maxx, a Home Goods, and the aforementioned Shoe Warehouse. Basically it was an everything-you-could-want shopping heaven for the inhabitants of the suburbs and SUPER crowded. Undeterred, we said 'let's just go have a quick look', so we parked and approached the entrance. Right by the entrance was one of those huge radio station promotional event trucks, so we walked behind it in what looked like the shortest line between where we were and the door. Right as we were coming out from behind it, about 10 steps from the door, we heard a noise that sounded like an explosion - about 2 feet away. We both jumped sideways in horror and scurried away from the truck; at which point we saw the source of the hideous noise - a nascar car. Parked no more than 10 feet from the Lowe's entrance. And having its engine revved at top volume by some asshole. I'm going to assume you've never heard the noise a nascar car makes from a distance of approximately 4 feet, but it is deafening and explosive and I'm 99% certain it caused some sort of hearing damage. D. and I were pissed, people. Our nice relaxing grill shopping afternoon was interrupted by a bunch of asshole rednecks and their stupid earsplitting nascar bullshit. I maybe could have understood if they'd put it at the other end of the parking lot and people could park near or far as they desired, but to put it 10 feet from the entrance to the store so everyone was subjected to it whether they liked it or not was ridiculous. I'd like to say we left then and there, but we really wanted a grill, so we went inside to look. We were both in a rotten mood by that point, so we walked around muttering about how we hate asshole rednecks, nascar, and Lowe's, and pointing out how shitty all the grills were. I suspect we could have seen a grill blessed by the almighty hand of god and we still would have called it a piece of shit. Needless to say, we did not buy a grill then, nor will we be buying a grill from Lowe's. And I strongly suspect we will never go back to a Lowe's. Home Depot has all my love from here on out. The afternoon was somewhat redeemed by lunch at Pizzeria Uno and the successful acquisition of new running shoes for both me and D. from the repeatedly mentioned Shoe Warehouse, but we've learned our lesson. Avoid shopping in the suburbs on the weekend at any cost.

friday cat blogging

2005-03-25T06:58:00.000-08:00

highlights and lowlights of the weekend in a somewhat chronological order

2005-03-21T12:32:00.000-08:00

		Thursday: Family arrives bearing plants, girl scout cookies and easter candy. Easter candy includes my favorite, cadbury mini-eggs. Also accompanying family is the aforementioned Dog That Belongs To My Sister's Boyfriend. In general, I don't have a problem with dogs, especially when they are small and cute. But the distaste quickly grows when the dog in question seems hell-bent on terrorizing the cat. Not only that, my sister's earlier statement that the dog would spend a significant portion of time in its cage appears to be a blatant lie, told solely for the purpose of getting me to allow the dog to come along. Thursday night really sucked because my sister and the dog were sleeping on the couch in the living room, and she insisted that the cat needed to be kept out of the living room or else the dog would bark all night etc. Unfortunately, the only rooms in our apartment with doors are the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Locking the cat in the bathroom for the night didn't seem like a viable option, so we shut it in our room instead. We found out that it really hates being stuck in one room, especially as it's usually allowed free run of the house day and night. Result: we woke up every half hour, cursing the presence of dog, and then I was woken up for good by the dog barking for no reason at about 6:45am. Friday: We had a private tour of the Missouri Botanical Garden courtesy of my mom's old boss, which was pretty cool. We got to see lots of the behind the scenes stuff (including books printed in 1470 that we were allowed to TOUCH and their collection of 15 billion plant specimens) and we were given a couple of orchids. We found a really tasty kabob place on South Grand, and a Vietnamese restaurant that D. and I are planning to try out sometime. On the downside, my mom wanted to spend about 6 hours at the gardens. Gardening is her all encompassing hobby and while the gardens are cool, not much was flowering yet and 6 hours was just way too much. I was tired and cranky from not getting nearly enough sleep the night before, and by 2pm all I wanted to do was take a nap and pretty much everything my family said prompted me to think hateful thoughts about how they should just shut up and go away and ARGH. Saturday: Went much better since we told my sister she would just have to deal with the cat because we were not keeping that goddamn door shut ever again. So we actually managed to sleep and the cat spent most of the night on the foot of the bed anyway. We finally got out of state plates off and MO plates on to mine and D.'s cars, although this was a minor ordeal that involved drilling 3 holes in the new plates. We went to the Soulard farmer's market and bought a pineapple and other fruits and veg., then on to an antiques district that was amusing for a while. My sister seemed to think it was perfectly okay to bring the dog into antiques stores, and amazingly no one said anything about it. One store even had two hyper dogs of its own, which didn't seem like the most brilliant plan ever for keeping the merchandise in good shape, but I digress. For lunch we went to the snotty restaurant at a nearby mansion, where we ate delicious crepes and creme brulee. Our waiter was an extraordinarly pompous individual whom we all made fun of, but I should give him some credit since he brought us rasberry coulis to put on the creme brulee and didn't charge extra (I was certain he would). We then went on a tour of the mansion attached to the restaurant, and it turned out to be the best and funniest house tour I have ever been on and it in fact deserves its own post. So more on that later. Later in the day we went on a walk around nearby neighborhood and had excellent indian takeout for dinner. Looking back, saturday went much better than friday. Although, the dog was still fucking annoying, and my sister knocked a glass lamp onto the floor where it shattered into 10000 pieces and I then spent half an hour obsessively trying to find all the shards so the cat would not ingest/get impaled by them. I understand it was an accident, but my sister didn't apologize and indicated that it was entirely my fault because the cord was slightly within kicking range instead of, I don't know, buried under the floorboards. Sunday: Everyone slept in, had breakfast, went for another walk, ate lunch, and then the family departed. I'm kind of hoping they'll come back again sometime soon without my sister or the dog. I tried not to sound too bitchy while writing this but the truth is, my sister drove both D. and I fucking crazy all weekend long by acting like a spoilt rotten 12-year old and showing practically no interest in anything besides the damn dog and shopping (my mom vetoed the shopping). If I ignore the parts that involved sister/dog, I had a really nice weekend, but it's still nice to have it be just me and D. again.

friday (ahem, i mean monday) cat blogging

2005-03-21T10:11:00.000-08:00

		Somehow the cat manages to suspend itself on the vertical part of the couch cushions.

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

2005-03-20T19:53:00.000-08:00

		My computer speakers just started intermittently emitting something that sounds remarkably like rapid-fire morse code. Is this some new and bizarre type of virus? Intermittently emitting. Try saying that five times fast.

weekend in review

2005-03-20T16:03:00.000-08:00

		General theme of the weekend was as follows. Me: ARRRRRRRRRGH. DIE DOG, DIE SISTER, FAMILY (AND BY FAMILY I PRETTY MUCH MEAN SISTER AND DOG) PLEASE LEAVE RIGHT NOW. Because even when I'm slowly being driven insane, I'm polite and I say please.

cat, meet dog

2005-03-17T14:30:00.000-08:00

		So this morning my sister basically told me that she'll be bringing her boyfriend's dog along for the weekend. Technically she asked, but it was the kind of asking where she implied I'd be a really big bitch if I said no. I don't really mind the dog, but D. doesn't like dogs and I couldn't get hold of him at work to ask about it; and as far as I know the cat has never met a dog. Will it freak out? I supposed if it does, the dog will just have to remain in its cage, since it is the interloper. It was just kind of one of those imposing on someone things that irritates me, especially since the reason that her boyfriend can't take care of the dog is that he wants to go to U of I and drink all weekend. Ah well. We'll see how it goes. They should be here soon.

thinking

2005-03-16T10:26:00.000-08:00

		Sometimes I wish I'd chosen the type of vacuum cleaner with bags. Sure, it's nice not to have to buy bags every week or so, but cleaning out the bagless filter is DISGUSTING.

family time

2005-03-15T12:56:00.000-08:00

		My family is arriving on thursday for a long weekend visit. This means between now and then I will be cleaning, cleaning, and cleaning some more, since they will have to occupy the walk in closet and it's even junkier than usual right now. My family should be OK to have as houseguests though, they're fairly good at entertaining themselves by going off on walks and whatnot. My sister will be the biggest problem - what do you do with a 20 year old with a fake ID while parents are around? Yeah. My sister and I look fairly alike - I was taken aback by how much a recent photo of me resembled her. When you put her and my mom and me together, it's obvious that we're all related. She and I would look even more alike if a) I wore makeup and b) I didn't weigh approximately 50lbs more than her. I don't believe she ever goes anywhere without doing makeup and hair, and I've worn makeup approximately twice in the past 6 months. We're on opposite ends of what passes for a 'normal' weight; she's the pointy hipbones kind of thin, and I'm on the curvy side just shy of overweight. The similarities more or less end with looks. She likes to party and go to bars with friends, I need a compelling reason (read: a good band) to set foot in a bar. She loves to buy clothes and more clothes, I find shopping to be boring. I was an economics major, she's thinking about changing her major because it requires her to take three econ classes and she 'just can't do econ'. Unfortunately we don't live close enough for me to help her with said classes. The differences go on, but regardless of such, she's my sister, I love her, and we do get along really well. Sometimes it's just hard to find a common ground, things to have a meaningful conversation about. Perhaps I'll feed her tequila when my mom isn't looking.

i like your pants around your feet

2005-03-14T12:11:00.000-08:00

		I kept hearing a song on the radio that was all about 'liking your pants around your feet' and 'loving the way you smack my ass' and every time I heard it I thought huh, that's a little kinky. Turns out that it's not one song, it's two; one by Nickleback and one by Puddle of Mudd. I'm still impressed by how they managed to write such similar kinky-style lyrics and also set these lyrics to very similar music. Excerpts: I love the way you look at me I love the way you smack my ass I love the dirty things you do I have control of you I like your pants around your feet And I like the dirt that's on your knees And I like the way you still say please While you're looking up at me You're like my favorite damn disease You can see how I would mix these up, yes? I don't like either of the bands, but the Nickleback song is certainly the better of the two. Sometimes one wonders how the FCC doesn't get people complaining about hearing songs like these on the radio, because you know there are those people out there who think it's a sin to use the word 'ass'.

Won't you be my partner?

2005-03-12T08:06:00.000-08:00

		Two separate but related thoughts: I generally call D. my boyfriend, it's an easy description that doesn't elicit much in the way of questions. This, though, is just a matter of convenience - D. is really my living together life partner - but in this country it can be awkward to phrase it that way. Whereas in the UK it is much more common to hear unmarried but committed heterosexual couples refer to each other as 'my partner'; here it carries the implied meaning of a same-sex relationship. If I were to make passing reference to my 'partner', I suspect a lot of people around here would think D. stood for Denise, not a boy name beginning with D. This leads me to wonder, what's the difference? Is it just that Europe in general doesn't see same-sex relationships as a big deal and thus it doesn't really matter which gender your 'partner' is? Does the word just not take on the same association? Here, obviously, same-sex relationships are a really big deal, which is perhaps why we've adjusted our language to very carefully identify such. As for calling D. partner or boyfriend, perhaps the best substitute term I've heard yet is a slip of the tongue my mom made: when introducing me and D. to a friend of hers, she said 'Joe, this is my daughter, and her husb - boyfriend, D. I thought this was quite funny, and I've been calling him husboyfriend since; but I suspect I'd get some funny looks if I used the term around other people. D. and I will have been together for four years on March 21st. This is not a long time in the grand scheme of things, but it's a fairly long time for a relationship started by college freshmen. The concrete number of 4 years aside, it feels like we've been together for as long as I can remember. It seems strange to think of the time before D. was part of my life, in that I sometimes think to myself 'he wasn't there for that? I didn't tell him that in 1998?' When I was 18, I didn't think I wanted to get married. I never thought I would find one person I would want to stay with for the REST OF MY LIFE. Boyfriends and not-boyfriends always got on my nerves eventually and I conducted this mental test: was there a good possibility that one morning sometime in the future, we would get up and sit at the breakfast table and have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say to each other. That was the image floating around in my mind that represented marriage. Then I met D., and we started talking and never stopped. Neither of us are very outgoing or talkative people, but we always have someting to discuss with each other. I couldn't (and still can't) remotely imagine waking up when I'm 60 and having nothing to say to him. And there, just like that, I had found my partner. By July of the same year he asked if I'd like to get married, and amazingly, I did. I certainly didn't expect it to happen when I was 18, and I won't lie and say that the 3 years we were going to different schools 900 miles apart was easy. But I believe that if we could make it through that, we can and will make it through whatever else life tosses our way. Note that we're not married yet. D. has asked me to marry him and I've asked him to marry me on more occasions than I can remember. I've worn a ring for the past 2 years. In all honesty, being legally wed is the least important part; neither of us are interested in a fancy wedding, or really any sort of wedding. We have family and friends spread from MA to CO and a lot of places in between and the thought of the effort required to organize a getting married event is a little overwhelming. So for now we'll stick with husboyfriend. Too bad wifgirlfriend doesn't have the same ring to it.

(slightly belated) cat blogging

2005-03-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

		This is the cat right after we adopted her. I enjoy this photo because her limbs look unnaturally long, kind of like a baby monkey.

lasagna

2005-03-06T09:02:00.000-08:00

		I really like to cook. Sometime in the next couple days, I will be making what is known in our household as the best lasagna ever. When I still lived at home, I often used to order lasagna at italian restaurants because the closest thing to lasagna my mom ever made was the Stouffer's frozen kind. Yuck. However, once I found this recipe, I can't remember the last time I ordered it anywhere. Because why bother, when I can have even better at home? So, for any of you who like lasagna, here's the recipe. Note: it's a vegetarian recipe, but I usually use chicken broth instead of vegetable broth because it has more flavor. And for those of you who really really like meat, I dare say it would be just fine if you threw some ground beef/turkey/whatever in with the sauce. Ingredients: 9 no precooking necessary lasagna noodles 1 good size onion, chopped 4 cloves of garlic, chopped 1 14oz can vegetable broth 1 teaspoon oregano (chopped, powdered, whatever) 1 14oz can of artichoke hearts, drained and chopped into about 4 pieces per heart 1 10oz package frozen spinach, defrosted, drained, and squeezed dry 1 28oz jar tomato pasta sauce (get GOOD quality sauce) 2 1/2 - 3 cups shredded mozarella cheese 1 small size tub of ricotta cheese 1 4oz package garlic and herb feta cheese, crumbled 9x13 in. baking dish Commence by sauteeing the onion and garlic until the onion is tender-crisp and nicely browned. Stir in about 2/3 of the can of broth and the oregano, bring to a boil. Stir in the artichoke hearts and the spinach, cover, allow to simmer for 5 minutes. Then stir in the pasta sauce and if it's really sloshy, simmer a little longer. You want it to be a little more watery than your average pasta sauce. Season with salt and pepper if you feel like it. (This is also where you'd put in the browned meat if you were feeling so inclined). Preheat oven to 350F. Start assembly by spraying the pan with nonstick, and then spreading 1/4 the ricotta, 1/4 the mozarella, 1/4 the feta on the bottom of the pan. Place 3 noodles on top of the cheese. Place 1/3 the sauce on top of the noodles. Repeat layers of cheese/noodles/sauce 2 more times, and then top with the last 1/4 of cheeses. Pour whatever amount of remaining broth will fit down around the sides of the dish for the noodles to absorb. Bake covered for 45 minutes and then uncovered for 15 until hot and bubbly. I don't usually bother to cover it but hey, that's what the original recipe indicated. Keep an eye on it for the last 15 minutes or so to make sure it doesn't overcook, but sometimes cooking time will be a little longer than an hour. You can stab it with a fork to make sure the noodles are done. Take it out of the oven, let stand for 10 minutes (definitely wait that 10 minutes), and then eat. Delicious! It also freezes really well, and makes 6-8 servings.

friday cat blogging

2005-03-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

		The cat's favorite place to sleep is our dining room chairs.

and now, i ramble a bit

2005-03-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

		Not much new here. D. has been sick for the past couple days with some sort of fevery coughy disease and I'm hoping I don't get it. I've been reading The Grand Tour, which is a very funny account of the author's mishaps in Europe. It's especially funny if you're british (I am) and get all the random references to british culture. I've also embarked on a knitting project with some dread. I haven't knitted since I was, oh, maybe 10 (although I was pretty good at it at the time). But, my mom found this hat she really liked and I told her I'd make it for her birthday. Her birthday was in January. I'm thinking maybe it'll be done in time for her next birthday. Suffice to say it's been slow going and I keep forgetting where in the pattern I am and having to count it out from the beginning of a row. The weather here at this time of year is kind of spastic. We'll get a string of days in the 50s and think that spring is here for good, and then we'll get a couple days where it gets up to 34, and we cry. It's supposed to be really nice the rest of this week and through the weekend, and then next week is supposed to be cold again. This is disappointing as D. has some time off next week and we were hoping to have a small vacation somewhere semi-local; but that option sounds less appealing if it is freezing cold so we will probably just stay warm at home. An odd thing: most people who have lived in at least a medium sized city will be familiar with Panera Bread - purveyors of sandwiches, bakery goods, etc. Well, in St. Louis all the stores are called St. Louis Bread Company. They're absolutely identical to the Panera stores and have all the Panera leaflets inside, the only difference is the name. The only thing we could conclude is that the company started out in St. Louis and then when it spread, they decided to go with a more generic name. Does a name including St. Louis have subpar marketing value? Apparently the Panera people think so.

if i owned a business, i'd try to drive away customers too

2005-02-25T11:45:00.000-08:00

		Today I'm looking for new car insurance for D. His current insurance expires approximately today, and it sucks, so something has to be done about it. When he lived in NC he paid something like $400 A YEAR for car insurance, so when we moved here he stayed with the same company after making the reasonable assumption that if they were that cheap there, they had to be pretty cheap here. Sadly, that wasn't the case - his insurance was something like $700 for SIX MONTHS. It doesn't sound all that bad until you consider that's for the minimum coverage on a 1993 honda civic that's about 500 miles from death. We just assumed that was the price to pay for city living, until I transferred my insurance and paid $550 for excellent coverage on a newer civic in considerably better shape. Then we had one of those 'crap, guess we got shafted' moments. Thus, I've been gathering online quotes and I did the quote for progressive - the company whose big gimmick is that they'll provide you with quotes from their competitors too! For free! I got the quote and looked at the competing rates - and I was thoroughly surprised. It seems like it would only be a good idea to offer other people's rates if, you know, yours were going to be lower. However, when compared to 5 other companies, progressive costs at least $130 more and up to $509 more - and that's if you only have average credit. So what could be the rationale behind this apparently self-defeating business decision? Is it possibly that somehow, for someone, they could be more affordable? Perhaps the problem is the near-death civic; if they only insure brand new BMWs I could conceivably see how their rates would be higher. Even so, would they be cheaper for said BMWs? I was an economics major in college, which makes me a big dorky mcdork dork who finds stuff like this really interesting. I'm tempted to run through the quote-bot with different kinds of cars, but I've got better things to do. Still - FIVE HUNDRED AND NINE dollars. That's INSANE.

friday cat blogging

2005-02-25T08:38:00.000-08:00

		This is my cat. One of her favorite activities is sharpening her claws on the rug under the dining room table.

can you spell anonymous?

2005-02-24T14:14:00.000-08:00

		Writing here, I'm having a hard time deciding how much and what type of information to make publicly available. Some people (for example, dooce) have their name, where they live, how many times a day they poop, etc. available for anyone who wants to know. On the plus side, that amount of openness makes it easy to put up photos and write about people and events without having to disguise them in some manner. It also makes for interesting content when you are willing to discuss almost anything about yourself. On the down side, it can lead to problems with family and friends who don't like what you write, internet stalkers, and there's always that fun possibility of getting fired (again, I reference dooce). Currently I'm anonymous, complete with pseudonym, no real identifying information, no photos of me, etc. This is the easy way out. If I'm anonymous, I can write whatever I like without the possibility of friends or family who don't share my views reading it and being pissed off/insulted. The only reason I don't want to do this is so those people I'm not in touch with very frequently have a way to see what I've been up to, but I don't think I'm ready to go for it yet. Even beyond how I write it, what stuff is okay to write about? Pooping? Sex? School? Family? Friends? Work is a definite no. Politics? Where does one draw the line? I guess it just comes down to what one is individually comfortable with, and right now I'm not sure what that is.

my valentine's day roses

2005-02-18T14:28:00.000-08:00

walk in closet

2005-02-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

		We're not entirely sure when our apartment building was constructed - my best guess would be the 1st or 2nd decade of the 20th century. As such, we have a problem many inhabitants of older buildings are familiar with - a general lack of closet space. It's not completely abysmal, there's a fairly decent sized closet under the stairs, but it's a funny shape and largely taken up by coats, golf clubs, and camping equipment. The closet in our bedroom is big enough for all of D.'s clothes, but the shelves in the closet in the 2nd bedroom are stuffed full of towels, sheets, and other crap. I have a dresser in that bedroom, but I have to rotate summer and winter wardrobes, which is pretty funny, since by no means do I have a lot of clothes. One of D.'s friends has a girlfriend who apparently just filled up her third closet of clothes (leaving no available closets in their apartment) - but her dad is buying them a house so she should be all set pretty soon. Anyway, about the closets. We have two bedrooms, the original intention being that the 2nd bedroom would be the office. That didn't work out when we discovered that bedroom had the worst heat flow in the apartment, and neither of us wanted to huddle in there to use the computer. So, the office is now along one wall of the dining room, and the 2nd bedroom, well, it's been filled up with all the junk that would normally be in a closet but isn't because we don't have that closet. We've dubbed it the walk in closet and quite honestly, I've never encountered a more spacious walk in closet. The only thing that would improve it at this point would be one of those custom shelving/organizational setups. Getting all the junk out of the way is definitely worth the tradeoff for the small amount of shame encountered when we have guests and we tell them they'll be staying in the walk in closet. I have a friend who was a philosophy major in college, and was afraid that she would never find a real job where she could afford an apartment. I told her that I would get an apartment with a spacious walk in closet, and she could live in it. It became a running joke that anyone who thought they would end up destitute after college would plan to move into my walk in closet. It turns out that they wouldn't have gotten such a bad deal after all.

valentine's shmalentine's

2005-02-15T14:06:00.000-08:00

		For years I've written off Valentine's day as a lame holiday invented by greeting card companies in an attempt to get people to buy stuff (read: expensive jewelry) in February, a time of year generally not associated with high spending. In addition, I believe that if you love someone, you should do your best to show them that every day, not just on one special holiday. D. and I have been dating for the past 3 Valentine's days, but were never together for the day and never did more than at most send a card. This year we talked about going out for dinner, but we kind of thought it would be a hassle on a day where EVERYONE goes out to eat, and then D. forgot to make a reservation anyway. Instead, he came home early from work so we could go for a walk before it got dark and we ordered pizza and were lazy all evening. He also brought me roses and a bag of York peppermint patties, which I appreciated because D. is so thoughtful about it. He didn't get the standard red roses, he got ones that are a beautiful yellow edged in reddish-orange (and told me later that he tried to pick the prettiest). He didn't get the standard heart shaped box of chocolates, he got my favorite kind. In return I am cooking his favorite dinner tonight - ham and cheese stuffed chicken breasts. Happy Valentine's day to my darling D.

it might still technically be winter...

2005-02-15T10:42:00.000-08:00

		Right now it's 72 degrees and rising, and beautifully sunny. I've never lived anywhere before where it reached 70-something in the middle of February. I don't like hot or cold weather, my ideal climate is somewhere between 65-72 degrees and partly sunny, so I probably won't like being here as much come July, especially since neither my car nor D.'s have air conditioning. Summer in the south always feels like the only things people should have to do are lying in the shade in front of a fan drinking iced tea and floating down a river in an inner tube. How did anyone got anything done before the advent of air conditioning? (On the other hand, I just looked at weather.com again, and it's supposed to get down to 31 degrees tonight. So much for that.)

i can't figure out where that damn dictionary went

2005-02-14T00:39:00.000-08:00

		When I need to look up the definition of a word, I usually go to dictionary.com - it's what i've always used, but their format irritates me. A while ago I stumbled across a different online dictionary, one with a much cleaner interface that was pleasing to the eye. Stupidly, I didn't bookmark the site, figuring that I would remember the name (it was apparently something I found distinct at the time). Well, now I don't remember the name, and can't find a trace of it by googling 'online dictionary' or various forms thereof. So, if anyone uses an online dictionary they think is awesome, let me know.

i can only call you if you live in my amoeba

2004-11-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

		When we moved to St. Louis, I had expected to call the phone company and get the phone turned on within a day or two. This was the how it worked at the last two places I've lived, and I saw no reason to expect it would be any different here. So, D. called up the phone company and requested local service only, at which point we were told it service wouldn't be turned on for at least another week. That was strike #1. Although D. specified we wanted local service only, the guy repeatedly asked him if we wanted long distance or if we wanted to sign up for DSL. I'm sure it was just part of his job to do so, but damn, it was irritating. Strike #2. Before D. hung up, he asked what our local calling area would be, as we weren't sure if it would just be the area code we live in or parts of the suburban area codes. As the phone guy told him, he started frantically typing and by the time he was done, our local calling area looked something like this: Locust Page Stratford Kingshighway 3rd Main Richmont Jackson Westville I'm making the names up because I don't remember which streets they really were, but when we looked them up we were horrified. Our local calling area was 28 blocks in the shape of an amoeba, with us located towards one of its top left arms. That was definitely strike #3. After much searching on the internet we did find that AT&T could provide local service instead, and I have nothing bad to say about them. In fact, I love AT&T because they gave us local calls to our entire area code and cheap DSL. I won't name the first company, but they provide phone service in St. Louis and I just want to say, people, don't get sucked in. Say no to the amoeba.

why i'd hate to work in customer service

2004-11-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

		When we moved into this apartment, we signed up for DSL and got rid of the cheap dialup we'd been using over the summer. To do this, we signed into our account and clicked on 'cancel your account', which took us to a page with an 800# to call to cancel said account. So, D. called the number, and got an automatic message telling him the web address for account cancellation. At this point if we had still been using dialup I would have been pretty irritated, what with all the disconnecting and the reconnecting. Once we got to the cancellation site, the first screen requested that we select one of about 12 reasons why we wanted to cancel the account. D. clicked on the "have DSL/cable modem/etc" option, which took us to a page saying: "Connect 5x faster with dialup premium!!!! This does not apply for uploads, downloads, images, or anything useful. [click here to keep your account]" We tried out all the other options, and for every reason you selected for cancellation, you were taken to a new page full of exciting reasons to stick with their service. So, we chose "other", which opened a blank box for you to enter your reason. D. proceeded to fill the box in as follows: I hate the way your little ad screens sometimes don't disappear and then cover up 23.8% of the viewable image. Also, your ads with sound are extremely irritating. I keep getting in trouble for looking at porn when your stupid noisy ads wake my girlfriend up. But thanks for being cheap. And that pretty much sums up our feelings towards the dialup, right there. Those few months without high speed internet were like our own little form of purgatory.

how to register one's car in st. louis

2004-10-06T11:05:00.000-07:00