January 2012
10 posts
Lessons in Sizing
Though the world of clothing is strange and mysterious, here are two truths:
Clothes available in even sizes are for women and are fairly reliable, though you’ll want to check every season to make sure you’re still the same size, because vanity sizing totally exists.
Clothes available in odd sizes are for juniors and girls and none of the universal truths of sizing will apply, as in,...
“We shouldn’t be criticized for using Chinese workers,” a current Apple executive...”
– Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class - NYTimes.com
Though I realize that in using the term “producing people” they’re referring to educating and training people with particular skill sets, I can’t help but read this and think: AMERICANS! Why can’t you just make a...
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Living in the Midst of Crashed Ice
So, I live within shouting distance of the beginning of the Crashed Ice event. As in, I can see the wall of the course start from my bedroom and kitchen windows. Hey, do you wonder what that is like? This is what it’s like:
My block has been closed since Christmas, and they just recently put up more barricades which means I have to walk through road closure signs just to get to the front...
“Look, if you don’t want to make your bed, don’t make your bed. You’re an adult...”
– Ask a Clean Person: Tackling a Major Clean-up, Part Two - The Organizing | The Hairpin
I’m not lying when I say that the existence of Ask a Clean Person has made a positive impact on my life and has also gotten me to wash my dishes every day this week. To cleanliness!
Goals, New Year Edition.
I’m a fan of setting goals and having ideas on how to make life better - I’m also a fan of being able to changing and abandoning goals if I feel like it. Here are some goals, sort of for the year, but more just in general.
Do a pull-up. Cardio is sort of ingrained in me at this point but building strength has never been a …strength. Heh. Heh.
Start looking at houses for real....
Missing Esme.
wornwhite:
Lots of people have stories about their journey knowing Esme Barrera, because she knew everyone and was the very best. I think writing and sharing helps some through such a terrible time. And for others, they have a private journey. This is just my story. Part journey, part grief, part guilt.
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This is a really touching story about Esme and the Weezer board. I’ve...
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Eleven years ago, I started posting on a Weezer message board. It sounds trivial, but this space in the internet changed and affected so many parts of my life. I often forget about it, because friends are friends however you meet them.
Yesterday I woke up, hungover, and checked my new iphone to find out that one of my Weezer friends, who is also an ex, is engaged. This wasn’t surprising...
December 2011
8 posts
1 tag
2011 Mix
On Christmas Day, after taking a nap on my aunt and uncle’s living room floor, I started to question why driving to Madison the next day - four plus hours all by myself, to stay for less than 24 hours - seemed like such a great idea earlier. I realized that in order to survive, I would need a new CD. (Yes, CDs! Because that’s still how I listen to music in my car!)
So I made a mix...
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Heart you, USPS
I started this earlier but then I came home, after a night of drinks with friends, to check my mail and find four more handwritten cards to add to my pile, which only fuels my goodwill. A handwritten card in the mail speaks so much more to me than the millions of words we type into text boxes every day, a mailed photo means so much more than the pictures on my facebook feed. I don’t need to...
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Thao - Gift Card →
Here I am, stressing out about Christmas and all the things I should buy and bake and write and address and lick (ENVELOPES, sheeeze) and wrap and AHHHHH. Then I remembered that Thao had this great song called “Gift Card” and it calmed me down a bit and then I thought, I have to share this on tumblr so two people will listen to it! But then my file was 0.5 MB too big and long...
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Food Gifts and Essays About Vegetables
Do your friends, family, or others love food? Do you love giving consumable gifts way more than toilet shaped mugs? Here are some gift ideas for food lovers:
My New Roots gives the gift of a simple granola recipe and also provides lists of cookbooks, foods, and gadgets for those most interested in natural foods.
Simply Breakfast has a nice list, and might I also recommend a calender she made?
...
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A Short History of My Love of Grapefruit
February, 2007: made a salad with spinach and grapefruit and apparently it “looked better than it tasted.”
December, 2009: wrote a thing about how winter makes me all “EFF THIS LOCAL EATING BUSINESS AND GIVE ME SOME CITRUS!”, which includes grapefruit, which is wonderful.
December, 2010: ate some grapefruit and got excited about it, which caused me to ask the crucial...
November 2011
11 posts
Things I Have Written About
I said I would write every day and that is sort of working. I’ll just say, it works better when I have something to write about. Some of those things that are unfinished, unedited, or unsharable are listed here:
The National and how “Fake Empire” is their only song worth paying attention to, while the rest are really great background music
Mormon fashion bloggers and the true...
What's Wrong With #FirstWorldProblems →
ekf:
“All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.”
This hashtag has always irked me too, mostly...
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It started this weekend: the sound of spinning tires that cuts through the thin walls of my building; the sight of cars attempting to get up the hill, backing up and gunning it to no avail, then giving up and turning around. A pessimist might see this as a metaphor for life: you can keep spinning your wheels and it won’t do shit, man, something is always going to hold you back whether...
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Pros and Cons of the Friday Afternoon Happy Hour
Pro: One stiff drink and a scant selection of appetizers will leave you feeling ready for the deepest of conversations and also, a glass of wine
Pro: the food to drink ratio will facilitate easy-going ruminations on topics such as roots and their superficiality (or not), the existence of “non-voters”, and how to plan for the next five to seven years of your life
Pro: you will come...
“Somehow, one of humankind’s most practical, utilitarian inventions has been...”
– My piece about “invisible cyclists” was just published on Twin Cities Runoff. (via thedependentclause)
Whenever I read anything about bike culture I will always be reminded of the terrible article in [redacted local mag] where they put bikers into four groups, three of which were men, one of which...
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Turning Sad Foods into Delicious Soup
Part 1: The Sad Vegetable Bag
At all times you should have in your freezer a large ziploc bag. Your ends and butts of onions, carrots, potatoes, celery, leeks, maybe squash, probably not broccoli but you get the point - they will all go in this bag in the freezer, where they will stay eternally young but look sad, hence, sad vegetable bag. Their happy life as vegetables is put on hold until that...
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Happy November!
I’m here to inform you that I will not be writing a novel this month, nor will I be growing a mustache, nor will I be attempting to update my blog every day. What I AM going to attempt is to write every day for a concentrated amount of time (and it’s a really short amount of time, so short that I’d feel rather pathetic saying it) and okay, it’s actually only 15 minutes,...
“Finally, to those parents who are offended by our Day of the Dead celebration,...”
– Day of the Dead or Halloween? : The New Yorker
October 2011
8 posts
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Things to Do on My Upcoming Two Day Break
clean out tank top drawer
find clothes to give away
try on those shoes with every pair of pants I hate to discover that I should return them because they don’t have retractable heels and why don’t these exist
go thrifting and find millions of cute, unique clothes to stave off my current state of wardrobe ennui
failing that, go to the mall, find lots of boring shit
failing that,...
“The Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood kids warned Sage Holben not to put a Little Free...”
– An oasis for developing readers, community in Dayton’s Bluff. | StarTribune.com (via neighborhoodr-saintpaul)
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Ridiculous Reasons to Buy a House
This desk is too short for my new desk chair so I should buy another desk AND ALSO A HOUSE.
Soup party! Doesn’t a soup party sound delicious and fun and something THAT CAN ONLY HAPPEN IN A HOUSE?
I live by this church and maybe this isn’t even related to the church but all I’m hearing is the “Hail Mary” prayer over and over again and things like this just happen...
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What's Happening
Work! Oh man let’s talk of none of that here!
Choir! I joined a lady choir! We are singing at the Zombie Pub Crawl tomorrow, which will be my first (and likely last) time ever being near a zombie pub crawl.
Karen class! I am taking a class on the Karen language and MAN it is the hardest thing ever.
Running and stuff! Maybe my leg is stupid again or maybe it isn’t! Maybe someday...
Savvy Mom: The New Breakfast at Victory 44's... →
Yes! YES! Go to breakfast at Victory 44, it is delicious and you can get said deliciousness for $8. $8 for eggs done by some sort of REAL CHEFS who never eff up their eggs. $8 for no wait and a cute little courtyard, should you care to take advantage of the last summery days of fall. You know they use local ingredients because some of the potatoes are purple! $8 for a meal that is filling but not...
September 2011
7 posts
1 tag
Cantaloupe.
Every year I have to do an online health assessment in order to get health insurance at a slightly less-inflated rate. There is a section on diet where there is a list of foods (spinach, blueberries, cantaloupe, to name a few) and you check off if you have eaten them in the last week.
The first time I took the test, I was feeling good about myself because look at all these veggies I eat! Hooray!...
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Teaching Immigrants Here Vs. There
There’s a really great long piece in the NY Times magazine this week: My Family’s Experiment in Extreme Schooling. Short story: a reporter moves to Moscow and decides to enroll his three kids in a private Russian school as opposed to an English speaking, international school.
Initially I sort of scoffed at a lot of the assumptions by the author and his friends, mostly at some of the...
LCD Run
“Dance Yourself Clean” You head outside and do your warm-up stretches while your Garmin attempts to figure out where in the world you are. (Hint, dear one: the exact same place as last time!) This will take a few minutes, which works out perfectly since you’ll start right around the time the song gets loud.
“Get Innocuous” You are not quite done with the first mile...
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State Fair Food Report Card
Pronto Pup: It was too early for cheese curds and way too early for sweets and WAY too early for beer and I was trying to find veggie fries but then I settled on this because they are on every corner and WHY NOT? I had never had one before! Also, settle is entirely the wrong word because it was super delicious and I felt like I had been missing out on this amazing, simple, and not ridiculously...
August 2011
14 posts
lily of the city: hi, I also read that Gizmodo... →
muguet:
I remember being young and self-important and thinking my hobbies and interests were better than some other people’s hobbies and interests. In fact, I know for a fact that I’d had a handful of dismissive conversations with people about how I would just never hang out with anyone who didn’t…
A nice response to that stupid Gizmodo piece, which isn’t even that great of a...
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How to Pack for a Four Day Trip to Texas
Check the forecast. TRIPLE DIGIT HIGHS EVERY DAY ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Formulate a plan of attack: skirts and dresses and absolutely no pants or sleeves.
Worry about the flights. Planes are always cold. They are like their own climate!
While running, envision the brilliant solution to this problem: throw a pair of leggings in your carry-on purse. YES!
Think of your most lightweight, favorite...
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Musing on Muses
Hey careful readers, remember last summer when there was this site where you could copy and paste your writing and it would magically spit out what famous author you write like? And I kept getting David Foster Wallace, and then James Joyce, which is funny because I haven’t read a thing by either of them and so I wrote about how that was funny.
There was an article in the Times recently...
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Book Crush
Seeing as how I majored in Sociology, my alma mater (UW-Madison) likes to track me down and send me newsletter updates from their department. It’s sort of fun, because I’m like, oooh that one professor is still studying gender politics in Europe! Keep it up, lady! And that other professor is indeed still teaching classes about racial inequality, and winning awards for it! Good work!...