I have seen WALL-E and now I am going to bed. Since wiki can tell me what I skipped last year, I can start putting DVDs on hold at the library first thing tomorrow.

It looks like LJ skipped checking feeds for a day or three there, but the only thing I really needed to know was the SIGG water bottle flap. Short version: animal studies indicate BPA is on the "Bad chemical! Consumer panic!" list, everyone ditches their polycarbonate BPA-leaching water bottles for metal SIGG bottles, several years later SIGG mentions their bottles have BPA in the lining, so SIGG says it doesn't count. Outraged bloggers express outrage about this interpretation. I'm going to take mine to Whole Foods - the other betrayer of the left - and try to make them replace it, since mine is something like two years old and has huge dents from the innumerable times I've dropped it. I'm not going to get pissy, but you know, I've dropped that bottle so many times it's got interior denting. That sort of makes me question the integrity of a "safe" lining, but not enough to make me stop using it this weekend.

Tomorrow: sibling chill time, gigantic East Bay shenanigans (I'm debating flaking out, since I'm looking at one networking item sandwiched in either a lot of travel time or a lot of zipcar money, and I didn't make it to the Museum of Modern Art today), maybe more beach time. Next summer: three day weekend, Outer Banks, with something approaching my age cohort to share costs.

Look! It's an XKCD comic written just for me!

The comments on the LJ feed are crazy awesome. Why don't we do k-maps in addition to Punnett squares? Why?

I cannot deny it: I love the power ballad.

Possibly I created a Pandora station by the power of typing "Holding Out for a Hero" and clicking, "thumbs up, thumbs up, oh hit me!" in quick succession to celebrate this.

Confession time: I think I like ABBA a little bit. Also I like Lady GaGa, because 1.) we listened to the same Queen songs, and 2.) she's about performance for the sake of glittery performance. (And, okay, I like Boys Boys Boys a little too much.) It probably helps I listen to The Fame and mostly ignore the music videos, because she cannot, alas, gyrate like Britney Spears or demonstrate Rihanna's dancing chops. And maybe I have a thing for Jordin Sparks' "Battlefield", for which I totally blame Pat Benatar, which brings me full circle: if I could make a 2 hour mix of power ballads from the '70's to today, I totally would.

The really cool thing about work this week is that, since I was on holiday and vacation two days of this week, there are only three working days to push through. I am relieved, since my sleep debt is still significant.

I am super behind on all my social stuff - journals to read and subscribe to, emails to rely to, pictures to pop to people in 'em - but this will not stop me from post a Cubs vs Pirates scorecard from May 25. With bonus rude commentary. norabombay and I had seats in the club box behind the visitor's dugout, so had a view sports fangirls would consider worth objectifying when the leftie hitters were at bat.

Tonight: dealt with actual people on f-list. Tomorrow: writeups, pictures.

If tuberculosis is the vampire disease (pale, "romantic", lingers for way too long), can malaria be the unkillable zombie disease? Or would one of the hemorrhagic fevers (brief, violent outbreaks, gross bodily fluids) fit better?

ETA: Good lay description of cancer, with bonus content.

PSA: Me at Dreamwidth. I will be cross-posting for the foreseeable future.

This is the t-shirt I want: Make awkward sexual advances, not war. Truly a motto for my snarky PC-except-when-we're-not generation. Meanwhile, as well as conservatives are making unintentional double-entendres that might be well-served by that t-shirt. The thing that kills me is that I'm not sure I disagree with their fundamental agenda: more debt spending strikes me as a dumb way to get out of debt. (When individuals do that with credit cards, your fiscal plan is mocked. When you do with a federal budget, it's... Keynesian economics? The heck?) However, this is not how I would debate that agenda. At all.

Speaking of fashion, we'd buy it if you'd make it: high fashion continues to pretend the average American woman doesn't exist. (via cofax7)

Easter bunny dissection. All I can say is: wow. (via lab_gripes and BoingBoing)

Instead of doing my homework, I am playing with my cash flow. I will not complain about my student loans 1.) because they're just not that bad, and 2.) until I can do so in an entertaining manner. Instead, I will draw from Michelle Singletary's favorite money quotes (that woman is one of my role models). "Credit cards have three dimensions: height, width and debt." - Shelby Friedman

The logical thing to do, when you get your Zipcar membership card (convenient portmanteau: zipcard) is to reserve a car Friday night and make plans for errands the next morning. (The 1 AM slightly tipsy part? Let's pretend that it was part of the plan. Like Ron Moore's plans!) So instead of dodging rain-slash-mist and single tracking, I drove all over the place for four and a half hours on Saturday. It was fun, and more exciting, I can do it again. On weekday evenings! When I want to see friends who live 30 miles away! Or are really inconvenient to get to via public transit! Also, since I can reserve time on any vehicle in the Zipcar fleet, I get to try different cars if I want. I am super tempted to rent one of the Tacoma pickups for an hour and just drive it around the parking lot scaring myself silly.

I also live for the day I can drive a bass-booming monster sound system down the road, but that's going to be a different day: I had a base model on Saturday, and I bet the rest of the fleet is similarly economical. Now I know that a left-hand mirror I have to reeeeeaaaach across the car to adjust is kind of a deal-killer for any car I buy. Another no-go: speedometers organized so that the 20-40 mph range is hard to read or makes me take my eyes off the road. This may seem petty until you consider my problem with 25 mph zones and speed cameras. Also, eyes off the road? Not on.

One of my college friends called out of the blue this evening, and we killed her phone catching up. It is so cool to talk to people who you haven't seen in a while. Also, now I have an excuse to go to Ann Arbor this summer! (Because what I really needed this summer was more people to see. Augh. I can't take two weeks and a couple thousand dollars so I can couch-surf my way across the USA. Darn those pesky expensive plane tickets!) Someone should do a linguistic study of "anyway" as a bridge to a new topic; we were both doing it.

Oh! norabombay: DW money numbers. Just FYI. Also so I can find it again.

Inspired by roommate M.'s urgent need for a burger last night, I told her to get a margarita too and took her keys. Hey, I can still drive!

I've been saying for a while that I'm going to get a car when it gets hot and sticky, but I really like a positive cash flow. Does anyone have any experiences with Zipcar they'd like to share? I need to run the numbers, but it's worth investigating the costs of instant gratification vs not

Poll #1370858 Four Wheels!
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

Options!

ETA: Closing poll because I did the deed.

M fortunately is in less need of burgers tonight: I say fortunate because I got to make dinner while roommate H related her distress that her boss doesn't want to give her two weeks off in June. At length. I have drowned my low blood sugar in red meatsauce lavished over pasta and fresh spinach, with a possibility of hot chocolate to follow, while rewatching House (the one where House and Wilson go to House's dad's funeral), and laughing myself to tears. The comedy and bromance are awesome.

I spent this weekend doing nothing - except the biweekly WSFA meeting, laundry, groceries, library returns and pickup, finding a new-to-me thrift shop, and finding out the used book store of my childhood has been sold. My winter coat is in storage, and I'm caught up on most of my TV watching. House and NCIS are predictably amusing (especially episodes Doris Egan is involved in), Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles is two-thirds incoherence and one third awesome, and I watched the Kings pilot. Since my knowledge of Biblical events comes filtered through things I have learned from Unitarians or things I have learned from the internet, I'm watching this from an "updating the historical context, and oh, God may appear in this piece of fiction". So what I find interesting, as I read Guns, Germs and Steel is the movement from a tribal scenario (limited accumulation of wealth / kleptocracy of specialists), to a state scenario (much more developed specialization, more tech, reproductive technology like paternity testing and the Pill, etc etc etc) and how the show plans to reconcile a "modern" setting with divine intervention anointing an autocratic ruler. Sadly, there's a theme in my TV viewing: I get interested in the worldbuilding, but bored with the execution. This means I'm willing to watch a lot of pilot episodes and very few full seasons.

Speaking of GG&S, Corn domesticated once, around 9000 BC. . . . the researchers discovered a trove of prehistoric grinding stones to which phytoliths and starch grains from maize were still adhering. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found with the earliest of the stones pegged the corn as 8700 years old, bearing out the genetic dating by Doebley's group. I'm sort of questioning the corn-char linkage, but I still think this is cool.

I accomplished the errands by biking around, and today tried to go jogging after work. My quadriceps may never forgive me.

So that is my life: both roommates in upset, and me considering the benefits of library study time to avoid both of them. They are both, in their own ways, nice people, but I wish to set their dramas on each other.

Briefly:

Work interrupted by extended lunch. Yay IT for connecting the internet, the laptop, and the break room projector, even if the internet failed. Yay people with radios for coming through!

Is really painful and deliberately unnatural poetry recitation is a skill-loss inflicted in grad school? I think Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem would've been moving if it had been spoken in real English or oratorical voice instead of Srs Bsns English.

Having a President I don't disagree with from square one is going to be so cool. I'm going to start with the civil rights agenda with side trips to the blog and the robot.txt file and make happy faces. (Though I am also trying to make a puzzled face about the HIV microbicide thing. That's... not the place I would've started.) I'm actually looking forward to Obama doing things I don't agree with, because he's smarter and works harder than me, so I'm willing to do research and ask why, and be a more informed person as a result. I guess that's what inspiration is.

Who's POTUS? George Walker Bush Barack Hussein Obama!

I am disappointed I didn't get to wish anyone a merry frelling Christmas, but as 2008 disappointments go, that one's pretty small.

2008 book roundup: 41 novels, 16 nonfiction, 11 graphic novels, 2 short fiction collections, 1 unfinished. 54 (+1 unfinished) new, 16 old. Total: 70. I beat the 50 book challenge I didn't join! Looking back at my 2007 resolutions (avoid romance novels not strongly recommended; read more nonfiction) I totally rocked my objectives. I read one hideously bad romance, and doubled my nonfiction. For 2009 I have no special reading resolutions: more nonfiction again, I guess.

Doing a best/worst books of 2008 isn't my thing. I liked the academic tomes with footnotes a lot for educating me (except when it didn't); I liked the fiction for entertaining me (except when it failed to).

Closing some tabs:

Google images from LIFE magazine. It's by decade; I picked one decade totally at random. (Um, not.)

My joy cannot be expressed in ranges audible to the human ear. Shame about those howling dogs, though.

Anyone have experience with Swaptree? I have five boxes of books I want out of my life. And a 24" TV. Anyone want a TV?

How do you get tea stains off your cups? I dumped my favorite cup in the sink with pork marinade, and I can't tell if the soap, vinegar, oil, spices, or alchemical combination did a number on the stains.

The last time I made my favorite butterscotch walnut cookies, they came out flatter than pancakes. Adding twice as much flour as usual soaked up the grease, but messed with the flavor. I blame that evening's pouring rain, and also the brown sugar, and possibly the butter. The batch before that - made with margarine - turned out fantastic. Obviously, I need to set up a controlled experiment. Yum, cookie experiment! For reference:

( Butterscotch walnut cookies )

Having navigated Christmas dinner, I'm getting ambitious: since it's dough and assorted toppings, homemade pizza might actually be free of

Wow, it's truth on the internet! I'm third-gen American, and I still think, "how are you?" is supposed to be answered honestly. Bluntly, even.

Dear Mr. Bush, I hope health care providers refuse to treat you on moral grounds. If you don't believe in treating patients, don't go into medicine. Super headdesk FAIL!

This is probably a really harsh judgment, but it's the head-on collision of two people's rights to hold a moral position. Someone has to give; I'm inclined to force the doctor to make way, especially in regions or health care programs where there isn't a choice to see someone else. Who should enforce "morality"? What is morality? I'm inclined to sacrifice codes of should and should-not to compassion for the currently living.

I don't care what the pedants say, it's winter. Cold, dark winter. The day starts late with gray clouds. Sometimes they don't completely cover the sky. By lunch, they've thinned enough that the sun is only masked by gauzy clouds. After midday, the sun falls back into clouds; the difference between indoors and outdoors is temperature (sometimes) and how high the "ceiling" is. Tuesday night I hitched a ride home with two of my coworkers; we saw two accidents on the road, and then the drizzle tapping on the roof shifted to ice.

Took today and tomorrow off work to kill use-or-lose. Finished 90% of my holiday shopping last night. Today I have spoken less than five sentences to other people all day, finished The Fellowship of the Ring, and made dents in two other books. Fabulous, fabulous introvert paradise.

Monday I got to participate in cool bonus offsite training, and ultimately put in a ten hour day plus dinner after work. Call it twelve hours of coworker interaction. It was good, but a lot of face time. So I am super glad I'm not at work for the the rest of the week. Besides all that holiday stuff to do.

This will be my holiday present to me. There is a strong possibility I will scream like a little girl and take a day off work when Regenesis ships to me. I got bored and made a playlist for this book! Okay, so it's getting redone now that I have Dresden Dolls and Coin-Operated Boy in my life (and by the way, is it just me, or is the Dresden Dolls discography tend to the really creepy?). But the point is, I have inappropriate love for Cherryh's novels. If I finish the other books I'm in the middle of, I'm going to reread Cyteen before Regenesis. I haven't been this excited about a book in a while.

1.) Farmer's market (Okay, Bethesda Women's Co-op.)
1a.) Grape tomatoes in rubbermaid
1b.) Semi-impulse purchase: replacement silver necklace chain. (Original chain busted... July.)
2.) Bethesda library
2a.) Three Octavia Butler novels; neither of the pair I wanted
2b.) The Parable duology is not required reading during election season
2c.) Maybe it should be!
3.) Taste of Bethesda
3a.) Crush of humanity + backpack = annoying
3b.) Blood sugar drop: crankiness is the nicest adjective
3b1.) Uggs in DC are the triumph of advertising over sense.
3c.) Desire to kill young female hipsters carrying fluffy fashion dogs mitigated by chicken and rice. Bless you, Tara Thai, and your short line!
3d.) Cover bands win.
3e.) Cookies for the road.
4.) TJ's and Whole Foods
4a.) How to annoy customers: lie about being out of tortillas.
4b.) How to lose customers: jack Luna Bar prices 20%. Five snacks for the price of six!
5.) Next library
5a.) Parable duology: score!
5b.) How to suggest a book from the comfort of your laptop.
6.) Chili in the crockpot! Laptop + TV roommate bonding time.
6a.) Discover four hours later that crockpot was turned on, but not plugged in.
6b.) Someone's getting up at 4 AM to turn off the crockpot.
6c.) Didn't say anyone was staying up at 4 AM.
6d.) Snack on tomatoes and cookies. Thanks to rubbermaid, sitting at the bottom of the grocery backpack did them no harm. Yay! Pleasant change from last week's smashed, wet, seedy masses.
6e.) Everything that didn't hurt from walking all over two municipalities now hurts from laptop + futon anti-ergonomic principles. Ow.

Also, the weather was every kind of fantastic. I am tempted to use next week's midday dental appointment as an excuse to take an entire day off.

Finally, second picture from the bottom: welcome back, Hamlet.

Three day weekend, and I totally forgot to replace the Sansa's playlists! Augh!

While I'm deleting 1.5 GB of music and replacing it with a completely different work-safe bouncy 1.5 GB of music, see Magic: the Addiction: Electoral Wars expansion. By blending contemporary American politics with one of my high school hobbies I still remember too much about (and may still have in deep, deep attic storage), Mightygodking wins today's award for awesomeness and lives up to his username today.

Tree shrew lives on beer. The researchers observed seven mammalian species feeding on the [bertam palm] nectar. The pen-tailed tree shrews guzzled the stuff longer than they did any other food source, for an average of 138 minutes per night, in the process helping to pollinate the plants. Yay science!

Sunday I modified a pork recipe to "work" (not be inedible) with ribs, and lo, it was pretty good.

( Pork and Potatoes with Rosemary )

Recently got in a conversation with ashcomp and lj-free wife J. about Mozilla and add-ons, so I'm posting my current set of add-ons for the curious.

( Most used add-ons bolded. )

So. What are your favorite Mozilla extensions?

Converter: highlight text and right-click to convert units.
Leechblock: blocks your favorite time-wasting websites for time periods of your choice.
Nuke Anything Enhanced: save your ink - stop printing ads!
Research Word: highlight an unfamiliar term and right-click to query Wikipedia or other sites.
Zotero: magic research bookmarking / collation tool. Still trying to figure out how this one works.

Bonus: IE Tab: switch the tab of your choice from Firefox to Internet Explorer. Perfect for those backwards sites only compliant with IE.

I want to say somethng about when private or intended semi-private throughts become public speech (see also Jo Walton does not respond to a review and mamadeb misses the start of Yuletide signups*) but it comes down to me gossiping about which authors' public faces I like more.

*Nota Bene I am not inviting people to re-open associated political or/and religious discussions. I am commenting on the phenomenon of semiprivate LJs going semipublic, or being invaded by the masses. Anyone who wishes to discuss fascism, Jewish holidays and American culture, or topics related is welcome to do so in their LJ.

Final thought: if you put cop buddy flicks, horror movies, and action films into a blender, then set the blender on "comedy", Hot Fuzz is what you'd get out.

Madeleine L'Engle, 1918 - 2007. I'm trying to think of something to say about this, and I keep thinking of tesseracts and the capital of New York state and that four-letter word love and dolphin skin like resilient pewter. L'Engle left a rich legacy, and will be missed.

The nice thing about having hobbies is that when things are crazy at work, you can find some solace in Frost and photography.

Sometimes, though, you have to admit your complete amateur status.

( The dust of snow / From a hemlock tree )