Friday, December 30, 2005

What the F*^% Happened To My Link?

Does this ever happen to you?

If you look at my post of December 7th, 2005, the headline "Testify!" originally linked to an article on Boston.com that described testimony in which New Orleans residents said they had rifles trained on their children by National Guardsmen who had been sent to "protect" them. The article specifically quoted Christopher Shays, a Republican Senator from Connecticut who told a witness that he did not believe her testimony since he could not imagine such things happening. Overall, the article gave the impression that a bunch of Republicans did not believe that a bunch of lower income people could have negative interaction with law enforcement during a crisis. Unfortunately for the Republicans, there have been numerous eyewitness accounts from different sources that describe what the testifiers saw.
BUT, if you were to follow the link today, here is what you find. A rather bland description of how several Republican members of Congress are concerned about how Federal aid is being distributed. Of course, tracing funds is something Congress should be on top of, but why doesn't the article match the headline or the photo of Mama D?
Just curious.
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You know you're pregnant when...

1) Getting out of bed in the morning takes planning and manuvering.

2) You realize you have been standing in the "baby needs" aisle at the grocery store for five minutes just staring in disbelief at the sheer amount of crap you have to buy to sustain a seven pound human being.

3) You have to resist the urge to run after someone with a baby stroller and ask them
where they got it and for how much.

4) Looking at fashion magazines becomes an exercise in futility.

5) Your nephew asks your mom for more pickles at dinner and you think:
"What pickles? WHERE?!"

6) On your day off from your job, you spend five hours on the sofa watching episodes
of Six Feet Under simply because you are aware that soon you will never have that
much free time again.

7) You spend that same five hours staring at everything in your living room and
wondering how you are going to childproof it.

8) Your husband talks to your belly more than your face.

9) Everything you want to eat or drink is bad for the baby. Everything good for the
baby tastes blah.

10) Your cat has begun to avoid sitting on your lap. There is not as much room and she doesn't understand who keeps kicking her.
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Thursday, December 22, 2005

Frivolous Rant of the Day

Props to my Salem neighbor, Dan Cederholm, for his packaging design critique. Funny how the "conveniences" of modern life often end up being somewhat of a pain in the ass. My personal pet food packaging peeve is health food that comes in NASA grade therma-sealed plastic with no reclosable pouch. Does the company think that their product is so good that I will eat all of it in one sitting? Tofurkey ain't bad on whole wheat with a little provolone and mustard with baby spinach, but damn, it ain't that good. Since I often end up making a sandwich with Tofurkey at 7:45am with seconds to get out the door, the poor packaging design is a definite drawback. There's the cardboard outer layer, securely glued together on both ends with no perforation, then the thick plastic inner shell with no detectable tear-off strip. And after one has managed to hack open both, there's no way to seal the packaging back up, so one end's up with a small bag of Tofurkey Jerky in their fridge after a day. Luckily I happen to have that "Anal Retentive Chef" gene, so I seal the whole mess up with a Ziploc baggie before I put it back in the fridge. And another thing, there's no friggin' expiration date on the package! I don't think you can get Listeriosis from tofu, but the tofu you get in the white plastic tub ususally goes slimy after about 4 days. How is Tofurkey any different?

If you are a carnivore and still actually reading this, let me let you in on the vegetarians' dirty little secret; "Health Food" is only called that because you bought it in a store with better lighting and Miles Davis playing over the speaker system instead of Madonna. Even though soybean is probably the world's biggest legal crop, and simply needs to be grown,harvested, processed and shipped, rather than fed, slaughtered and processed, faux meat products cost almost two and a half times what actual meat costs. It's as if the entire health food industry has assumed that the only people who don't want to eat meat are doctors, lawyers, and real estate brokers.

You want to know the secret to finding healthy, easy open food without taking out a lien on your mortgage? Shop at asian markets. There's something oddly satisfying about paying $1.09 for a good sized package of pre-fried tofu (trust me there's no other way you want to eat it) while someone yells for a pricecheck on chicken gizzards over the loudspeakers in Vietnamese. If you are a vegetarian on an actual budget, don't go to Whole Foods for anything except Burts Bee's Foot Balm and meatless gravy, go here:

Mei Tung SuperMarket: on that weird no man's land strip between Chinatown and the Ladder District. Everything from incense to Nutella at low,low prices.

Super 88 Markets: These are starting to crop up everywhere. Lots of selection, usually they have a deli too.

Ming's Groceries: Washington St., near the Herald building: Absolutely the best if you have the time to really poke around. Most of the packaging is in an asian language, so it helps if you find something good to remember what the packaging looks like. They also have the cheapest porcelain figurines and vases in town! Recommendations: Sun Silk brand shampoo and conditioner, vietnamese rice vermicelli noodles, Nong Shim instant noodle soup and the bulk spices.
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"And the Most Unconsciously Ironic News Item of the Day Award goes to...


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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Could this be the end of crappy maternity wear?

Just to bitch, vent, kvetch, whatever:

So far I have been to over 5 stores to find maternity clothes that do not make me look like, a) a total ho or b) a big fat Mary Kate Olsen wanna-be. I am going to name names and dish the dirt and here it is:

Old Navy (Liberty Tree Mall): Pregnant friends tell me that they have a great maternity section, but the store I go to seems to only carry clothes to fit tiny waisted teenage girls.

The Gap (North Shore Mall): For some reason the Gap gives me hives every time I go in a store. It could be the obnoxious in-store marketing. I don't care how Kelly Rowland gets inspired by how her chemically aged boot cut jeans remind her of her favorite song or whatever, I refuse to pay more than $9.00 for a cotton t-shirt made in Guatemala. Besides that, their maternity section consists of a couple of cotton blouses, a khaki A-line skirt (YAWN) and the usual maternity jeans.

Bob's Stores (Route One Saugus): There's a big sign hanging in the middle of the women's section saying MATERNITY, but if they mean that one circle rack stuffed with XXL pepto-bismol pink and day-glo green t-shirts and XXL sweatpants, they should hire a new buyer. Extra boos for putting the rack in the middle of the "Euphemistic Term for Big Chubby Girls" section so you can't tell if the clothes are really meant to be for pregnant women in the first place.

H&M Clothing (Downtown Crossing): On the plus side, they have a good sized section that says "Maternity" and the clothes have labels that say H&M Mama, but there's usually only two colors of a style, actually no colors since the choices are white and black, and there's about 20 variations on the t-shirt, but only about two or three styles of pants. Note to H&M, most pregnant women get by with buying knit shirts the next size up. It's the pants that are the big thing. Make more pants.
On the negative side, the sizes tend to run pretty big, from Large on up. Also, there are a couple of dress designs but they are in black and cut low in the neck. I don't need to flash everyone my breasts. I'm already pregnant.

Kohls Department Store (Liberty Tree Mall): Usually this store fails to disappoint. It's like Target, good range of stuff, low prices, but with better lighting. That's why the maternity section surprised me. There were the usual big billowing t-shirts in XXL, but virtually no "office clothes". Everything I looked at(and I looked at everything since I was desperate by now), was either along the lines of a velour tracksuit in pink, white or black, or a lengthened tank top with "Oh Baby" emblazoned across the front in rhinestones. There was one half rack with black elastic waist polyester trousers. EVERY SINGLE PAIR WAS XL OR L! People, please, wake up, pregnant does not equal fat and tall. That is the "Euphemism" section. This is supposed to be the maternity section. Small girls get pregnant too.

I don't need to swath myself in yards of hot-pink velour and cute phrases that tell someone the obvious. I need three pairs of wool pants, black, grey and striped with the "basketball pouch" sewn in, 5 button down shirts with gathers to accommodate my enlarged abdomen and breasts, and some NON control top hose so I can breathe. Maybe a cardigan, nothing fancy.

Or, if Gwen Stefani decides to do a L.A.M.B. maternity line, some black stretch velvet flares and leopard print smocked t-shirts, whatever, I'm not picky, just trying to stay employed and clothed.
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Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Testify!

Remember the Richard Pryor Live in Concert movie where someone in the audience was heard shouting "Preach, n*****, Preach!"? Richard Pryor starts laughing and then muses about what a white person would hear, and says in a "white guy" voice, "It's just some Negro talk dear, don't worry."

Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn)gets the raspberry of the day for telling survivor Patricia Thompson after hearing testimony about seeing troops train a machine gun laser target on a little girl's forehead, "I just don't frankly believe it." "You believe what you want" she replied.

Unfortunately, that's how we got into this mess in the first place.

For more news updates about Hurricane Katrina's impact on New Orleans, go here.
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Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Needle in the Haystack

A while ago I did a really scary grown up thing. (no not THAT, but close)
I had a financial advisor come to my house and help me to go over some financial planning. (Confession time, this is one area of my life where I am a total and complete nerd) Somehow, the idea of a stranger sitting in my living room and asking me questions about my short term and long term goals didn't faze me at all and I responded that in five years I would like to run a web and graphic design business from my home (which we would own) and look after the kid(s). It seemed like a normal answer. Who doesn't want to be their own boss and own a home? I did a quick google for "mom blogs" hoping to get some insider information on moms who might actually do this. Now I know motherhood is like a little club where the members share secrets about breastfeeding and grape juice stains, and as someone who is pregnant, I am a junior member, but damn! do grown women really sit around blogging about little Taylor or Emma's bowel movements?

So, like a lot of information that is supposed to be out there on the web, there is a lot of chatter about parenting, along with a ton of huckstering, but finding actual, real and useful information is like finding a nugget of gold. At this point, I am still employed by an actual company, so I thought that the responsible adult thing to do would be to set up some kind of daycare in case I am not earning enough to pay the bills in a few months with freelance work. What I've discovered: there are a few sites out there that act as resources, but most of them just go for a simple alphabetical listing of every licensed provider in a 50 mile radius. Every daycare center that may actually have a website, will have lots of big photos of cute kids playing with clay and coloring or "exploring" but not list their rates. Almost every facility has it set up so you have to call them and even then they won't tell you the flat rate, you have to give them a "profile" and then they call in a while (days, weeks, months) with a price quote. Most of them charge almost $300 bucks a week. If they charge any less, it's because they are open "bankers hours" and any money you would save would be eaten up by the work hours you would lose leaving work early.

So www.masskidcare.net wins a "Webby of the Day" award for being easy to navigate and providing a well thought out search function to find the nearest daycare in a particular zip code. All I had to do was print the list out and then start playing with map quest!
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