DOTD (Design of the Day)

Project83.com is actually one of the few design companies I've come across that actually practices what it preaches. The design uses a beautiful color and upon landing on the home page, you can instantly figure out where you are and what you are looking at.

I really can't stand sites that seem to be designed with the philosophy that if you don't know what the site is about, then you shouldn't be there. That is so Studio 54.

BTW, if you follow the last link, you will find a website that is a total "Goofus" of web design, but I swear I looked at every link that Google threw at me for "studio 54" and this one was the least offensive. Trust me.

DOTD (Design of the Day)

Canadians get desperate when the temp climbs above 50 degrees

Have you ever noticed how the same people who bitch about how F*#$% cold it is all winter long are the first ones to crank up the ac when the thermometer hits above 80 just so they can shiver for another 3 months?

Canadians get desperate when the temp climbs above 50 degrees

Geeks are Sexy!

You know what's sexy about them? They are not only not willing to ask for directions, they will create custom software for their cellphones to pinpoint where they are by triangulating the signals from cell towers with a bluetooth enabled GPS device. Mmmmmmmmmmmm
Anyway, it's an article on Wired's site about the Where 2.0 conference. It sounds like more fun than a shoe sale.

Geeks are Sexy!

I Knew It!

Apparently every real programmer knows that there is a new language born every week. At least the birthrate is not as bad as the one for suckers.

I Knew It!

New blog on the block

I decided that rather than stuffing jennsweb chock full of a bunch of different topics, I'm going to focus up a little bit. So here's a brand new blog about where I live since I'm constantly finding cool stuff there and looking on the web for local things. I have a squidoo lens about Salem as well.

New blog on the block

This coffee goes to 11

The office I work in has one of those custom coffee Flavia machines and I've been selected as the test monkey for the new Intense Dark Roast Coffee. They have a number system on the coffee packets to tell you how strong the coffees are on a scale of 1 to 5. The IDR is rated as 7. I've had 3 sips so far and my desk is now clean, my purse is organized and I've walked the length of the office delivering things twice.
This is some damn good coffee. If only I could stop the ringing in my ears.

This coffee goes to 11

Ice Cream Review

I know it's been a long time between postings. I could blame the baby, but she's really not that high maintenance. The fact of the matter is that I'm pretty lazy when the weather's nice...
Anyway, run, don't walk to the nearest grocery store and pick up a pint of Haagen-Daz Mayan Chocolate Ice Cream. Spicy chocolate never tasted so good. Even my niece, a textbook picky eater, loved it, even if she did insist that she get it on a separate plate, not touching anything else.

Ice Cream Review

Unleash your inner migrant worker

For those of you who miss feudalism, check out this site where you can find out where you can pick your own produce around Massachusetts. And if you're nostalgic for the days of child labor, learn about places where kids can pick along side of you. Fun for the whole family!

Unleash your inner migrant worker

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

It's when I look at these all together that I realize how much Chloe is changing.2 months
1 month
1 week

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Feature Fatigue

Why waste time ranting when Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe has so considerately done it for us?

Feature Fatigue

Parenting LOTD

I found this from a link at the previous post. I'm not an all-the-way vegan and I still eat tuna and sashimi, but I thought this would be a good resource for all of those parents out there who are trying not to doom their kids to a diet of pizza and chicken nuggets.

Parenting LOTD

Blog Ho

I admit it. I read almost the entire article that Steve Pavlina wrote on how to make money from a blog. There's a lot of useful stuff in there without a lot of hype. It was a good antidote to all of the crazy "EASY $$$$$$$$$!!!!!!!!! WORK FROM HOME!!!!!!" crap that's out there. I won't name names but you people know who you are. (cough, cough, craig's list, cough, cough)

Blog Ho

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle-literally.

According to researchers at the Broad Institute based out of Harvard and MIT, humans and chimps split apart from each other millions of years ago, and then, just like Kim and Eminem came back together for a brief evolutionary second before splitting for good.

The tiny little popping sounds you hear are Creationists' brains collectively exploding all over the country.

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle-literally.

Online Childcare Search Engine

Thank you Mandy of Little Star Buddies daycare! I put a post on Craig's List a couple of days ago asking about good sources for info on daycare in Salem. This site, www2.childcarecircuit.org has a pretty decent system where you fill out a brief on-line form and get listings of places with openings for daycare. Pretty cool!

I think I will go ahead and put together a Squidoo lens for Salem parents though.

Online Childcare Search Engine

9 dollar MP3

A few months ago, I went on a mini-rant about the cult of IPOD. I think someone heard me because now a company called Evergreen is hawking a $9 1G MP3 player.
(thank you Digg!)

9 dollar MP3

The Real Parent Trap

This is one of those things that really makes me want to do more database/type web design. I spent about 2 hours today looking for daycare via the web. I can't think of a better topic for a database driven website with clean nav and dynamic pages. Instead , every site I went to was a candidate for "Web Pages That Suck".
So I think I'm going to have to do a new Squidoo lens on Salem daycare. At least until I can develop a site that 1) gives information on what one should ask a potential daycare provider 2) puts the cards on the table about rates and 3) provides solid information about openings, hours, and locations. I want a site that functions like bostonworks.com. I want to be able to type in my address, my cost range and the age of the child and the hours I am looking for and then get listings that fit my criteria along with e-mail links to the providers.
Stay tuned!

The Real Parent Trap

Parenting LOTD

Eureka! A childcare site that "gets it"!
I've spent the past 3 days looking for affordable daycare for Chloe for Mondays Thursdays and Fridays. After googling and looking thru the yellow pages, I resorted to a list that I had printed out when I was in my 1st trimester and basically I'm reduced to calling every name on a 3 page list since there is no website I can find that will match seeker to provider. So far, about 1/3 of the numbers I called are either not in service, or shoot me into a caller ID system. The next third have been answered by people that barely speak english and the rest are either booked up or don't take infants.

So, thank you, littlestarbuddies.com for posting your rates, your hours, location, and basically all the information a parent is looking for when they try to arrange child care!

Parenting LOTD

Rain-a haiku

Rain comes pounding down
Our basement room is flooded
beautiful wet green

Rain-a haiku

It Figures...

My housekeeping heroine is really a man in color coordinated 1960's vintage hostess' clothing. I've been a stay-at-home mom for about three weeks now, and I have yet to dust the picture frames while wearing heels and a colorful flower print shift. Not that I feel like a failure, but it's ironic that the cultural imprint that we all seem to aspire to would be so perfectly personified by Brini Maxwell.

On a side note, if you feel the need to "get out with the girls" and you don't want to mess up your manicure by bowling, try this. for a change. You might even win a ham!

It Figures...

A Beautiful Oxymoron

If you really, really, don't like the clash between your plastic candy colored streamlined computer and your Zen temple or Early American themed decor, then try one of these out.

A Beautiful Oxymoron

Radio Dharma

Links to teachings of the Dalai Lama. Also, a collection of MP3 recordings of Tibetan chants and teachings of the Dalai Lama in both Tibetan and English.

Radio Dharma

"Spit and Baling Wire"

A repair foreman at the MBTA realized that he could tape a 5 cent hairnet to the intake filters on subway trains so they don't get clogged with melted and re-frozen snow. It should save the T $126,000 a year in repairs. It's a great idea, but it begs the question; Why weren't the motors fitted with internal filters by the manufacturer in the first place?

"Spit and Baling Wire"

A Modern Modest Proposal

Okay, by now I'm sure you've realized that a large portion of our country's population likes, well, large portions. Visit any shopping mall, grocery store, sporting event or schoolyard and you will witness large herds of obese human beings thundering across the landscape, eating everything in their path, staggering their way towards a life sentence of heart disease and diabetes. Seating has become too small for most of us on public transportation. Airplanes have fallen out of the sky because, although the passenger list was regulation, the average weight of the passengers was not. Ferries have capsized due to the combined tonnage of their passengers shifting suddenly to starboard to get photos of surfacing whales. We stand a good chance of making ourselves extinct due to a deadly combination of eating a high-fat diet and driving to the supermarket in our high volume, gas guzzling SUV's to buy MORE food to shove down our already engorged gullets in a futile attempt to conquer the stress of being overweight, unhealthy and in debt up to our ears because of car payments and high gas prices.

So, you can imagine my relief, when I read the article in this month's Wired about the New Zealander who built a boat that can run on human body fat. Here is the perfect solution to most of society's problems. We will use our own ass fat to power our fat asses around.

A Modern Modest Proposal

Going with the flow, part 2

Good news! Chloe went to the doctor's last Wednesday and had gained a whole 2 ounces! I, on the other hand, have gained 2 pounds. She's eating about every three hours and if I time it right, she's usually done with her "dinner" feeding before 9pm so I can watch the "Sopranos" in relative peace.

Going with the flow, part 2

And now, a word about our sponsor,

I really wish I knew how blogger.com came up with the constipation remedy ad that you see above this post.

And now, a word about our sponsor,

Hecho en China

Interesting article on Zhou Tiehai, an artist in China who doesn't paint himself, but farms out the work to his assistants who create the actual art.

Hecho en China

Phong.com

Remember all those articles you read about web design mistakes? This site has them all, from mystery meat navigation to lack of information to tiny tiny print two shades lighter than the background! But somehow, I couldn't help but fall for all the little mouseover noises and flash animation.

Phong.com

Something I've always wanted to try.

This photographer exposed one piece of film 37 days out of the year to track the sun's position at 8:30 am. Very cool idea!

Something I've always wanted to try.

Going with the flow

Just a few words about breastfeeding. Just needed to get this off my chest, ha ha.
Right now Chloe is sleeping like what she is, a baby. She woke me up at 3am, I jammed my left breast into her mouth, she clamped down like a velociraptor and fed for about 5 minutes before falling back asleep. Great, now my left breast has flow like Eric B and Rakim and my right breast is tingling and engorged and she's sleeping like the dead. I think I gave birth to a vampire. I expressed what was left into a bottle and stored it in the refrigerator. Good thing, since she woke me up two hours later and wanted more, more, more. Luckily, Chloe will take the bottle, but I learned the hard way that she will gorge herself in a couple of minutes with the entire bottle if you let her and then spew it back up like Lindsay Lohan. So I sat there on the bed giving her sips at a time, fighting back sleep. This morning she let me sleep until 9:30 am and now that it's noon, she's fallen back asleep after just an ounce of expressed milk mixed with Infamil formula.

That's right, FORMULA! And, if you really want a reason to call DSS on me, EXPRESSED MILK MIXED WITH IT! I'll admit that I have fed Chloe directly from the breast, with music playing, in a rocking chair, just like the pictures in a La Leche League pamphlet, but DAMN if doesn't feel like a bee sting when she latches on! So I tried reading up about this and there is too much advice about everything to do with breast feeding. If I tense up from the pain, she'll get a complex that will likely lead her to the therapist's couch until she's forty. If I don't do anything, she won't realize that it hurts and I'll be the one on the couch. Anxiety about the pain of latching on will affect my milk supply. Not feeding her from the breast will cause my milk to dry up. Worrying about my milk supply will impede my flow.

You know what? I don't care. Just as every baby is an individual, every mother is too. My first feeding went great, it hurt a little but the student nurse who was showing me how, was currently breastfeeding herself and when I asked, she said it does hurt a little. When "a little" turned into "OW GODDAMMIT!" I asked another nurse for an icepack for my nipples, which, (I had read) was what you are supposed to put on sore nipples. She asked me why I wanted it, I said I was sore and showed her. This battlehardened nurse sucked in her breath in horror and ran to get me some Lasinoh. You would have thought that I was going to end up as some sort of entry into a medical textbook from her reaction. So now I was convinced that it was NEVER supposed to hurt and I was doing it all wrong. I asked my OB what to do, since she still had to eat. He told me to just nurse Chloe for 10 minutes on each breast. Then, I took her to the pediatrician and she hadn't eaten enough to gain weight. And, the pediatrician told me to try mixing in formula with my own milk as a kind of weight gain supplement. I even tried to use a breast pump, but it hurts almost as much as when the baby latches on and works about as much as expressing by hand.

So here we are, one day from another weigh-in at the pediatrician's office. Chloe's on about an every three hour feeding schedule, sometimes the breast, sometimes the bottle, sometimes formula in between. She's eating about an ounce at each feeding, which seems to be enough. I'm resolved to stop freaking out about every little detail and just go with what works for now. I feel kind of bad, since the nurses at the hospital loaded me up with La Leche pamphlets and my husband's niece gave me her book on breastfeeding, but honestly, the more I read, the more stressed out I get. I think, in the end, if we've survived this long as a species, without electronic $500 breast pumps and textbooks, then instinct is probably the way to go. Then again, if she still hasn't gained any weight by tomorrow, then I am perfectly happy to let modern medical science give me a hand.

Going with the flow

Yeah, what he said... Update

An update on Mr. Butch, currently residing in state custody for trying to direct traffic. Well, he IS the mayor...
(see post from March 21, 2006 for photos and video of Mr. Butch)

Yeah, what he said... Update

Raja the Elephant Update

Raja the Elephant, who had too much candy and cookies during a Buddhist holiday, is doing better and is on a strict diet of leafy greens.

Raja the Elephant Update

Things I wish I had known

I really tried to be a good mom-to-be and read the right books. But "What To Expect When You're Expecting" was pretty frustrating by the third month. Basically, my complaint was that the tone of the book was like the ultimate "gore-crow" type old relative that can't wait to mention the latest horror stories in the news whenever you talk to them. Apparently, every month I should have expected to experience vomiting, dizziness, constipation and bloating. Very fortunately, I experienced none of these so I felt kind of guilty.

There were things that I didn't expect and don't show up to often in books so here's the scoop on what to really expect for labor and delivery and postpartum:

1) You may be having contractions 5 minutes apart for hours and still be sent home after coming to the hospital if you are not dialated enough. Ambien is good for getting some sleep despite the pain. It can make you feel a little out of control of your body, but you need the rest for the next stage of labor.

2) Nurses will hook you up to several monitors and then spend 20 minutes asking you every question that you have already answered on your pre-admittance form that you filled out a month ago. Just go along, the question and answer thing is actually kind of relaxing.

3) Don't expect the doctor on call to remember anything from minute to minute, even if they've been treating you for 9 months. Doctors work 12 to 14 hour shifts on call and may be dealing with as many as 5 active labors at once.

4) Expect to be asked to sign important paperwork whilst in the midst of a Level 7 contraction. If at all possible, ask to have your labor coach/husband glance over what you are signing before you do. Most of the forms are strictly routine though. A friend told me that she signed something without reading it in the hospital and it turned out it was a waiver of her right to an at-home visit from a nurse!

5) Even if you've been asking for an epidural and actually get one, if you are so high you can't feel the second stage major contractions, the medical staff may turn off the feed so you will be motivated to push. Warning: don't ask if they did. Believe me, you don't want to know if they do.

6) Post delivery, do not watch the local news for about 5 days. Every single story involving babies in dumpsters, car wrecks, fires and general mayhem will make you cry uncontrollably.

7) Expect to have absolutely no peace for about a week. The hospital stay will be jam packed with blood pressure checks, baby checks, floral deliveries, food service, trash service, linen service and family members coming in to see the new arrival. Be patient, it'll be over soon.

8) Once you're home, don't try to schedule your day. Just give yourself one goal at a time. Some days it can be a major accomplishment just to get out with the baby for a trip to the mailbox and back. Just try to relax and enjoy the time to get to know the baby.

Things I wish I had known

Advice on Advice

Nothing gets people going like the sight of your bulging belly. Mom mags always have at least one mention in each issue about unsolicited advice, how to deal with it, blah blah. Since this was my first pregnancy, I just took everything people told me and filed it away in my memory in case it came in handy. After 9 months, delivery, postpartum in the hospital and being home for a week, here's my advice about advice:

1) Just like with a medical diagnosis, always try to get a second or even third opinion. One lactation nurse told me that a "little pain" is normal when the baby latches on. Another reacted in horror when I told her it was hurting a little and said it was NEVER supposed to hurt. Every mother I've talked to says it does hurt a little.

2) Take every opinion with a grain of salt. Remember, every nurse is different with different experiences. Every baby is different. There is no "typical" pregnancy, delivery, or baby.

3) The best advice I got for the entire experience came from a man who told me not to worry over anything, but just to enjoy every moment for what it was.

Advice on Advice

My Good Deed for the Day

FireFox security flaws. Info can be found on bbc's website.

My Good Deed for the Day

One Week Down...

An extremely rare photo of Chloe crying. Her dad and I were kind of freaked out her first few days because she was easy to deal with. Too easy. The first night I tried sleeping with her in her bassinet next to me I kept poking at her to make sure she was breathing. She slept 6 hours straight that night. I asked the doctor if it was normal and he said that it would change soon enough and to enjoy it while I could. The only problem is that she's so easy going that she actually waited for me to offer to feed her and she slept through some feedings her first few days home. So for now, my only job is to bring her weight back up to 7 pounds 14 ounces which was her birth weight. Since I'm vegetarian, I have to pound down a lot of Ensure and cottage cheese. I feel like a boxing trainer who's trying to get their fighter to move up a weight class. Right now she's at Bantam weight, but hopefully in a couple of days she'll get up to Feather weight.

One Week Down...

Dairy Queen

By some cosmic coincidence of events, I purchased an Avent bottle on instinct while I took Chloe for her first walk in the stroller. Lo and behold, Avent bottles are integrated into the Avent Isis Breast Pump system, so not only did I luck out by spending six bucks on something that works with an inexpensive pump, but the last book I read before delivery was the "The Da Vinci Code" which mentions the whole Isis nursing Horus, Madonna and Child analogy.

Dairy Queen

Good Morning, Hello Kitty, How may I direct your call?

I knew this day would come. It's a good thing I know how to operate heavy machinery too. Although, I would like to see a Hello Kitty robot try that too.

Good Morning, Hello Kitty, How may I direct your call?

Talk about making an impact with your presentation...

And yes, let's all say a prayer for a Kennedy, AGAIN.

Talk about making an impact with your presentation...

Spawn of Jennsweb II

April 10, 2006. 7:24pm

Spawn of Jennsweb II

Elephant Eats Scores of Cookies and Gets Sick

See the things you miss when you're in labor?
I hope poor Raja gets better though. Maybe it's the hormones, but the picture of this made me pretty verklempt.

Elephant Eats Scores of Cookies and Gets Sick

Contraction City!

I am currently coming out an Ambien induced sleep after being up all night with contractions. Forget the classic water gushing out in public, panting screaming for 4 hours, ending with the screaming baby scenario. I spent Saturday from 10 am until Sunday at 2 am on the couch watching tv and writing down the time that each cramp started. Of course I felt like a nervous nelly having my doctor paged, but I kept thinking if I try to tough it out, and my water breaks and I end up giving birth in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot at 3am, I'm not going to feel to good about that either.
By about 2 am I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, so we made the call, packed up the hospital bag, diaper bag, insurance cards and boom box and drove over. I had a bad contraction right as I walked through the front door and had to hold onto the desk as I gasped out my name. We got settled into a room and two nurses came in to prod around my cervix for a while. I'm getting used to it by now, but I still feel like a farm animal when someone does that. I drank a glass of water, then a glass of cranberry juice and then they asked me to walk around the Labor ward for an hour to get my cervix to open.
So Chris and I shuffled around in circles for about an hour like a couple of centengenarians, stopping in the middle each time to check out the incubator room to see if we could see any newborns. Finally after an hour and about 10 more contractions I still wasn't dilated so the Doctor sent me home to sleep with a couple of tabs of Ambien. Things got foggy after that. It seemed like every time I turned my head to change the direction I was walking in, it would take my body a bit to get the drift. I should be a responsible adult today and finish my taxes before I go back into the hospital, but I don't trust my math right now.

Contraction City!

Another Good Photo Site

Trekearth.com. Go places, take pictures, post them here. Just make sure they're good, because these are great!

Another Good Photo Site

It's a sandy day in hell...

Stumbled across this via FireFox's Stumble! function. I was going through a bunch of photography sites and becoming increasingly annoyed at slooooowwwww llllloooaadddinng over designed sites when I came across these amazing (and fast loading!) photos of an approaching dust storm in Iraq from last year.

It's a sandy day in hell...

For Dads

I noted in a previous post that most parenting magazines are actually aimed at the mom, so here's one for the other person changing the pampers!

For Dads

D-day is tomorrow!

As in DUE DATE. Of course this doesn't mean I start pushing at the stroke of midnight, but I would really like to! Today was my last day at work and by 10am I was ready to pack it in. It feels like the baby is gearing up by doing push-ups and crunches in there and she got a good case of the hiccups around 2pm. When I got home, the next door neighbor's baby was screaming on the other side of the bathroom wall and I listened for a couple of minutes trying to get used to the sound.

D-day is tomorrow!

Gives new meaning to "Drunken Flower Plum Stance"...

Gardening just took on a whole new appeal for me.

Gives new meaning to "Drunken Flower Plum Stance"...

Speaking of order coming from chaos...

There is now such a backlash against all the lamb/bunny/ducky baby wear and "mommytribe" group think, that sites like this are cropping up like mushrooms. I predict that in 2 months it will be so "normal" to be seen in public breastfeeding your mohawked little one under your Minor Threat t-shirt that the cute lil' fuzzy wuzzy aesthetic will come roaring back by September.

Speaking of order coming from chaos...

Something else you always knew-

But never had the nerve to ask about in science class.

Something else you always knew-

Iraq war statistics page

Link via the bbc site that has maps showing civilian and police casualities broken down by location and other maps showing population figures.

Iraq war statistics page

What Goes In...

Must come out! Dogfish Brewing Co. has a new beer; Golden Showers Pilsner.
Talk about a niche market.

What Goes In...

The Disco Bar is Open for Business

Courtesy of the Geeks are Sexy blog.

The Disco Bar is Open for Business

I'm a Zen Mommy!

At least for now. I took this quiz on areyouaslackermom.com and thankfully nothing exploded on my computer. I never take online quizzes because I'm always paranoid it will expose me to every spam device out there. This one was pretty harmless though.

I'm a Zen Mommy!

Minti Fresh!

Get advice on parenting from actual real parents. You can dish out your own too.

Minti Fresh!

How to Change Your Oil

Good blog about DIY car repair. Great photos too!

How to Change Your Oil

LOTD

I wasn't planning on learning guitar, but since I was talking to a friend the other day about the sad fact that I'm 36 and can't read music, despite piano, guitar and banjo lessons, this is a pretty good thing to check out.

LOTD

How the other half lives

I found this via Kottke.org. It's a really amazing article about a woman who tries to go undercover as a man for a month and learns what it's like. The weirdest factoid is that men don't make eye contact with each other in public.
Personally, I've always noticed how men who go to the movies with each other don't sit next to each other if they're straight.

How the other half lives

Dishing the Digital Dirt

I read a few lines of this and then looked for my name on Google. Under my married name, the first entry is some kind of Scientolgist score card. What a relief when I saw what comes up under my maiden name.

Dishing the Digital Dirt

Just a thought...

This just popped into my brain. If you have any input, let me know...
The link above takes you to an article that talks about why people are moving out of Massachusetts in droves. A lot of the people who contribute have the opinion that the economy here is "piss poor". Okay. I did a search once on Craig's List for web design jobs in the South Carolina area. My mother had told me that my grandparents' huge, southern colonial with full garage, basement and front and back yard was on sale for $150,000 asking price and it hadn't sold yet so the price might come down. Guess what? NO JOBS. Go look on Craig's List New England. JOBS GALORE.
So,
If you take into account the fact that test scores have plummeted in Massachusetts, people are complaining more and more about lazy undisciplined parents and their spoiled kids, maybe the key to the whole mystery is the fact that the level of education in Mass. has seriously declined over the past few decades. Bad education=bad employment potential. Bad employment potential=bad jobs. Bad jobs=bad pay. Bad pay=not being able to afford a house in Massachusetts anymore. Has this state managed to shortchange its taxpayers so badly in the education department that they can't afford to stay here and keep paying more and more property taxes, therefore, forcing them to leave and further depopulate the tax paying pool?
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Just a thought...

US Census Bureau Income Info

Very handy reference if you are thinking of joining the Massachusetts Exodus.

US Census Bureau Income Info

LOTD

This guy gets an "E" for enthusiasm.
I checked, it is a guy.
Who gets really excited about stewardess uniforms.

LOTD

101 Cookbooks

I love it when I'm randomly flicking through the web and find something that I was looking for, without actually searching for it.

101 Cookbooks

Two Sides of the Coin

So I'm exactly 10 days away from having a kid and I log onto Boston.com hoping for the temporary vicarious thrill of some breaking news about about the earth opening up and swallowing an SUV (talk about poetic justice, Earth First has nothing on the actual Earth itself), and I come across an online forum about people who let their kids run rampant in public places. Not a forum for the faint of heart. Forget the war in Iraq, forget property taxes, forget immigration, if you really want to see what's going on in peoples' heads, throw out a question like "How do you feel about parents today not disciplining their children?" and step back and watch the fur fly between the breeders and the non-breeders. I didn't leave a post on the forum because there were enough people who had already expressed the same opinion, ie; You decided to have 'em, you've got to be the one who tells them to be quiet and behave.
On the other hand, there's an article on the Boston Globe's site about Augusten Burroughs' memoir, "Running With Scissors". Apparently, some people are trying to make him into the next James Frey, but his brother is backing him up and saying that not only is everything true, but he might have held back a little bit. So there you go, someone who is the product of a completely unsupervised childhood turning into a talented writer, albeit with a few stumbles along the way. (go read "Dry")
I think that's really the dilemma that a lot of parents face. On one hand, you have people who impose their will on every aspect of their child's existence. I honestly forget where I saw it, but there was an article online recently about countries in Asia where parents put their kids into boarding schools by the time they are 3. Maybe that kid will grow up to be the chairperson of Toyota, maybe they will turn out to be walking timebombs of repressed emotions.
On the other hand, you have (as people call them around here) the Cambridge Parents. "Cambridge" seems to be a code word for head-in-the-clouds knee-jerk liberalism that only works on one side of the Charles River. The theory being that if you raise children to "experience the world creatively and actively" then they will grow up to be wonderful well-adjusted adults with bucketfuls of compassion for everyone. Have I actually known people who benefitted from this approach? Maybe a couple. Most of the time when I come across the full grown results of that parenting style, they have an irritating habit of expecting the world to revolve around them. Ironically, this is the same outlook on life that most people are complaining about, but what can you expect when the Republican Party behaves the same way?
Ultimately, I think some of the best parenting advice I've ever heard came from on of the worst fictional parents in television history, Livia Soprano;
"Babies are like animals. Someone has to teach them right from wrong."

Two Sides of the Coin

Parenting LOTD

Whether you are looking for a "stylish potty bench", (and who isn't?) or a way to stay lucid during long car trips, this is a great site. I just looked at it again and realized what's missing; tons of blinking diaper ads! It's refreshing to find a site that actually has content and is not just a glorified billboard. (babyzone.com, I'm looking at you!)

Parenting LOTD

Whole Foods is Full of It

Pretty good article on the whole organic food debate. Funny, until 9:30 this morning I had no idea there was a debate. I like to stay informed but I don't like to obsess over anything (see previous entry). The article does support the theory put forth in my Dec. 22, 2005 entry though.
Thrifty mom's hint #101: You can find organic produce at Market Basket. I don't know why something grown nearby in a naturally occurring substance (cowshit) is more expensive than the overpackaged, trucked-in from two timezones away "regular" produce, but since most of the stuff you buy at Market Basket is ridiculously cheap, the price difference is negligible in the end.

Whole Foods is Full of It

Parenting Scares Me

Man, ask a simple little question about whether you should let a baby watch television...

In the past eight months I've gone from total ignoramus about parenting issues, to info-accumulating nut, to apathetic incubator. There has to be some kind of happy medium between Lili Taylor's character Lisa on "Six Feet Under" and the moms that I watch on "Nanny 911". Basically every blog, internet article and parenting magazine will tell you that everything your precious one encounters is potentially harmful and/or fattening and you should monitor your kid every second of their existence, but don't worry! A Relaxed Mom is a Good Mom, whatever that means.

Incidentally, why is it that parenting magazines always direct everything at the mom? My husband is actually the one who suscribed to the one we get and so far I haven't seen him try a single one of the Make-Up Tips For Frazzled Moms. He's getting ripped off!

I watch television, but I don't watch whatever's on. Luckily we have HBO, so by the time Chloe's born she'll be very familiar with such quality programming as "The Sopranos" and "Real Time with Bill Maher". She'll probably even recognize Jim Lampley's and Larry Merchant's voices from "Boxing After Dark". Even though I'm only a parent in utero, I know I'm not going to be the most sheltering mother on the planet. The only objection I really have to a kid under 3 watching TV is that I have a sneaking suspicion all the quick frenetic editing and frequent shrill commercial breaks you see on channels like Nickelodeon might give a baby sensory overload and an attention span that maxes out at 30 seconds. And I know from my own childhood that it's really hard to concentrate on anything with a television on in the same room.

Check back with me in a few months after I've been dealing with a fussy baby all day. I don't want to do it, but if I get desperate enough I'll see if I can get her to sleep by letting her watch "Big Love".

Parenting Scares Me

Yeah, what he said...

Great video clip of the One and Only Mr. Butch of Allston/Kenmore Sq. fame.


Allston was one of the neighborhoods I lived in while going to school at Mass Art. The first year I lived there (1990), there were three used bookstores and two amazing indoor yard sale type junk shops on Brighton Ave. alone. Kenmore Sq. still had the Rat, the Wursthaus, and the cafeteria on the corner by the T that served trays of baked potatoes and macaroni and cheese.

I haven't really had a reason to go back to either neighborhood for years, but even though both are allegedly sterilized by chain stores and community zoning, I'm glad Mr. Butch is still going strong.

Check out Bill Miller's pictures of Allston while you're at it. Worth the download time!

Yeah, what he said...

The Pour

New blog about wine. Check it out!

The Pour

Link Love

Found via the t-rage link. Well done site and I just wanted to spread the word. Rhetorical question of the day; Why are most martial arts websites so badly designed? I'm only asking because I went to the Boston Martial Arts forum on this page and it was a visual soup of purple and gray that just screams 2001. It's either that or you get some "Web Pages That Suck" candidate with the flying eagle .GIFS and the bright primary color banners and blinking green text.
Here are some of my theoretical answers:
1) It takes a lot of time to run a martial arts school so there's less time to spend on a website.
2) A good portion of schools' sites are done on a volunteer basis by a student of the school. So you get what you paid for, and we all know what happens when you design on a "volunteer" basis.
3) Even though martial arts schools don't tend to make money hand over fist (see reason #2), it's not really in their best interest to do a lot of marketing and advertising. I think most respected Sifus would say that they would rather train 10 students the right way than 50 students in a half-assed way.
4) I've always been tempted to try a flash animation of a martial arts form from my school which, btw, has a better than most site, but good schools tend to view their techniques as copyrighted material and you don't want to give away too much of a good thing.

Link Love

All the Rage that's Fit

Blogging about everyone's favorite "red-headed stepchild", Boston's MBTA.

All the Rage that's Fit

Final Countdown!

Just a quick update at 36 1/2 weeks. 147 pounds and only 2 pairs of pants still fit. I've officially given up on wearing tights because they are living painfully up to their name. Gravity is no longer my friend. I took a stab at thinking about a "birthing plan" like all the books tell me to, but when I asked the doctor about standing while going through labor (I'd seen it on the Discovery Channel and it made sense to me), all he had to do was put the words "perinium" and "tearing" into the same sentence and I was fine with being flat on my back, hopefully with a strong epidural kicking in. Every mother I know has described what it was like when her water broke, everyone at my office freaks out when I lift more than a pencil and the estrogen/blood pressure changes make me look like I've been swimming in bong water. I've had to switch to wearing my glasses which, combined with the 30 extra pounds makes me feel like I have officially turned into my mother.
Not that I'm complaining...

Final Countdown!

Potty Brain

Better than boston.com, more fun than the Boston Herald...Boston Online's guide to Wicked Good Restrooms is an invaluable public service. Being eight months pregnant will quickly teach anyone the value of plentiful public restrooms and once the little one is out and about with me, I'm going to want to know where every diaper-changing facility is within my immediate perimeter.

Potty Brain

Fun with Google

Went to the Reuters News site and came across the headline "Bush Denies Iraq Headed for Civil War". That's funny, I thought, Bush seems to have to deny a lot of stuff lately. So I googled the phrase President Bush Denies and got over 9 million listings.

Fun with Google

Design so bad it's funny

Long boring yet hectic day at work. I've been trolling around looking at sites all day trying to get good links for more Squidoo lenses. Sometimes I feel like I want to find the simplest thing on the web and discover that for all the billions of sites out there, nothing fits the bill. At one point I clicked onto three sites in a row that were spider traps. I would try to use the back button to surf away from the site and the page would simply keep loading. Really evil!

I found webpagesthatsuck.com on J. Jeffryes' lens on web design. Thank you J!

Design so bad it's funny

Can't Stop, Won't Stop...

I can't wait until 2011.

Can't Stop, Won't Stop...

23 Squidoo!

After having gone through a state of being del.erio.us for the past couple of weeks, I found a link to squidoo.com on Pye in the Face and now I'm hooked. This is a natural progression that was just waiting to happen. Del.icio.us is pretty addictive. I have to confess that I've spent way more time than I've meant to collecting links about everything from baby care to RSS. I've become a virtual pack-rat.

Apparently so haven't some other geeks out there, so thank you to the fine folks at Squidoo for coming up with the perfect outlet for all that tagging and posting out there. Sign up for free and you become Lensmaster of what ever domain you wish. List your favorite links relating to a particular subject and include a brief description of what you are linking to. So far I've only done one lens which can be viewed here.

More lenses coming soon!

23 Squidoo!

Cool Slideshow on BBC site about Jain Festival

Since I'm currently reading the book, "Color, A Natural History of the Palette" by Victoria Finlay, I thought this was a pretty cool demonstration of what she talks about in the book. For a book that's an exploration of the chemical discoveries in history related to pigments like indigo, cochineal, and indian yellow, this is a real page turner.

Cool Slideshow on BBC site about Jain Festival

The Web Way WAY back machine

The very first web page, by Tim Berners-Lee.

The Web Way WAY back machine

It's a small world after all...

Doing the usual lunchtime browsing and I found this site on kottke.org.

I get a ton of charitable solicitations in the mail every week so I bookmarked it in my del.icio.us account for future reference. I love it when I find a site that is something I was always thinking would be a good idea. charitynavigator.org rates charities on an impartial basis so one can see how they do with distributing your hard earned cash.

Then, lo and behold, I'm scrolling down the page and I see that the site's search engine optimization is done by Spidersplat, an internet consulting firm located in the building I work in and staffed by Dave Pye of Pye in the Face fame!

Between all the tagging and posting and blogging people do, it feels like that Six Degrees of Separation thing, just with a few degrees less.

It's a small world after all...

Did IQ's just drop sharply while I was away?

To see why this question popped into my mind, click here.
I'd love to say more, but it's a busy day and the article speaks for itself.

Did IQ's just drop sharply while I was away?

Apple Drops I-pod prices

See? someone out there is reading this blog! ;)

Apple Drops I-pod prices

5 Reasons why I do not own an I-Pod (yet).

I'm not a Luddite, but I play one in real life.
As I've stated before, I use a cell phone for things like calling my husband after someone sideswiped my car and as an alarm clock. I suppose if I was ten years younger I would use it for things like taking photos of me and my friends as we careened drunkenly around the subway and/or at concerts, or I would download episodes of "Friends" to watch as I wandered down a crowded sidewalk like a confused cow in Mumbai.
Apparently having just a cell phone is not enough these days. Now I NEED an I-Pod to join the rest of humanity. I see those white cords hanging from everyone's ears like mental floss EVERYWHERE. I have gone around town with a cd player and headphones once in a while and it's a nice vacation from having to listen to other people's conversations. But now we've reached the stage where, if one is out in public, everyone else is: A) Tuning out on their I-Pod. or B) Talking in a language that I can't understand anyway.
After a few short years, the I-Pod accessories market has reached one billion dollars and websites are springing up like mushrooms to feed on the mania for downloading and filing one's entire human existence.
Here are the 5 reasons why I haven't donned the white earplugs yet:

1) The price. Apple sells refurbished I-Pods on it's website at the "low low price" of $199. Since I will be spawning in a couple of months (see: Spawn of Jenns Web), shelling out anything over 5 bucks on myself seems kind of self-indulgent right now.

2) The time. Closely related to reason one. I will have a baby in a couple of months; screaming, eating, spitting and otherwise eliminating every few seconds. Downloading The Perceptionists' entire back catalogue will probably be low on my list of priorities for a while.

3) I want to save my hearing. Not that I would plan to listen to Swedish Death Metal at ear-drum piercing volume 12 hours a day, but I'm sure the baby will do enough damage to my ears as it is.

4) I need to be able to hear what's going on around me. I just mastered walking and chewing gum for chrissakes. I know myself well enough to know that I would be the type to be bobbing my head to something and forget that I'm in the middle of an intersection.

5) If I don't have the initiative to spend two hundred bucks on the inital hardware, then I am not going to want to shell out for all the little trinkets that come with it. Then again, I can see myself knitting a little I-Pod pouch, given the right circumstances.

5 Reasons why I do not own an I-Pod (yet).

In A Nutshell

"The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's passenger count hit its lowest level in a decade during the first half of last year, with average weekday boardings of 1.12 million, down 8 percent from a high point in 2000. While T officials blamed the cancellation of the National Hockey League season and station repairs, riders blamed shoddy, undependable service and an aging fleet of vehicles."

Sometimes you just have to love the dry cool wit of boston.com.

In A Nutshell

A Trip Down Memory Lane

cnn.com's home page on Sept. 11, 2001.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

More Nostalgia

AKA the web wayback machine. List the url of any website in the search field and an archive of that site's various incarnations pops up.

More Nostalgia

Nostalgia

The first computer I remember was IRAC on "WonderWoman". Every episode would show Diana Prince/Wonder Woman interacting with IRAC the super-computer at IADC. Diana would say something, the tape disks would start spinning, bulbs would light up in yellow and red and eventually an answer would come out.

IRAC seemed like a miracle from the future until an article in "The Weekly Reader" in 3rd grade described a "super computer" that took up an entire room and ran on magnetic disks. There were people the article called "computer technicians" who stood by the machinery in white lab coats reading printouts.

The first time I saw a computer in person I was at my friend Ellen's house after school and she showed me how to play Pong on a computer her older brother had built himself. He spent hours alone in his room writing programs. I started associating computers with fake wood paneled rooms that smelled like marijuana and old tube socks.

Our grade school got computers in the 5th grade (1980). We sat in front of enormous beige plastic monitors that threw off about 100 degrees typing commands like "if then/GO TO in blocky orange letters.

I wonder how far we are from a retro-phile backlash against all the brushed aluminum and paper-thin plasma screens. Maybe Apple should come out with a line of 70's style desktop models with the faux wood panel inserts and chunky beige buttons with a gigantic ENTER key.

Nostalgia

Searching for Mummeleh

After re-reading "Adventures in Knitting", I wanted to add a link to a definition of the term Mummeleh. I typed it into Google and got 2 links. And, Google politely asked me if I was looking for Mammals. So I did a search for Yiddish Dictionary and came up with this.
I stand corrected. Apparently it's spelled "Mommellah" and it means "an affectionate term for a little girl." I guess I meant "Bubbellah" which means grandmom.

Searching for Mummeleh

I Knew It!

This might explain why George Bush II always has that dazed smile on his face.

I Knew It!

Go Rent this Movie

I stumbled across "The Yes Men" last night on cable and it beats the pants off of most of Michael Moore's work. Watching Mr. Unruh unfurl his giant inflatable video appendage before a stony faced collection of WTO executives who were actually taking him somewhat seriously was the funniest thing I've seen so far this year.

Go Rent this Movie

Adventures in Knitting

I'll be the first to admit it. I spend way too much time watching TV. It's a bad habit I picked up when I worked in the film industry and realized that I could write off the cost of Direct TV on my taxes because it counted as "research and development".

I kind of miss being able to deduct reruns of "Married with Children". I learned so much about lighting from watching the way Al Bundy's bald spot was carefully back-lit from every angle. It brought so much confidence to my work realizing that if you could shoot the back of someone's shoulder from an interesting enough angle, any actor could play the menacing killer in a televised re-creation of a crime.

Now I need something else to justify countless hours spent staring at HBO re-runs, so I thought I would try and take up knitting. After all, there's only about 50 books on knitting and crocheting on the New Non-Fiction rack when I go to the town library, so at least if I needed to learn from a book it would be easy. I'm not even going to address the whole "Celebrities who knit" phenomenon. Suffice to say that the last time I cared what Kristen Dunst does while she's waiting on set was on "Mona Lisa Smile" when I had to wrangle cable around her. Besides, I think every woman needs to have at least one "girly" hobby to balance out all the extreme sports and other crap we tend to get suckered into. So I googled "learning to knit", printed out some pictures of the steps, and went to the craft store.

The site that I went to said that the basics to get started would be #8 knitting needles 14" in length, a small pair of scissors, worsted yarn medium weight and a yarn needle. I got to AC Moore on a really warm Saturday afternoon and found the knitting aisles jam packed with sweet little old ladies trying to locate just the right kittens and/or puppies-themed sweater pattern for their next great-grandchild. The knitting needles were clumped by brand in little islands through-out the knitting section so it took me about 15 minutes to find the pre-requisite #8, 14" needles. They looked like something Zhang Ziyi would use to fight off a horde of Mongolian bandits. Yarn needles were not in the sewing aisle. Eventually they were located in the knitting tools rack, deep in the heart of Yarn Country, being guarded by a bored 7-year-old who had apparently not been given her daily dose of Ritalin. I reached over her one woman performance of "Unicorn Princess Pony Saves the Day" and grabbed whatever said Yarn Needle in the biggest type. Now all I needed was to find some basic yarn.

This was like telling a woman to go into DSW and walk out with a pair of basic black pumps. There were 3 aisles of yarn, as well as, two floor to ceiling wall units stuffed with yarn along the wall. The only problem was that what looked like Medium yarn came in either black or day-glo reds and pinks. I wanted to knit something simple like a baby blanket and I couldn't picture swaddling the baby-to-be in black and nuclear red and day-glo pink. Finally I found a rainbow tie-dye yarn that said MEDIUM, WORSTED and one in a non-blinding rose. $22.10 and I was on my way home to learn how to knit.

I realized after a few minutes that who-ever had written the instructions I had printed out, had obviously never seen one of those "how to tie a knot" diagrams. There were drawings of a section of yarn in what looked like some kind of Book of Kells configuration, but no indication of which end came from where. Slip knot was easy enough to understand, but terms like "Purl" and "Casting on" were making me wish that there was some kind of "Rent-a-granny" service that one could call when faced with things like knitting and baking bread. During an episode of The Sopranos I managed to wrestle about 12 inches of yarn in some kind of configuration around my left knitting needle. I sat there looking at it thinking; "What now?"

I was under the mistaken impression that knitting was a process that had been set in stone for millenia and that there was one, inexorable way it was done. As I looked at my left needle and then back at the picture labelled "Basic Knit Stitch" I realized what the difference was. The needle in the picture had several neat rows of stitches dangling off it. My needle had one sorry-looking tangle of pink yarn secured by a shaky slip-knot. How did the extra rows come into being? Apparently, after I checked a couple of other websites, there were as many methods to "basic knitting" as there were kinds of yarn. One site would tell me to cast on one way, one site would have a slight variation, one site would be completely different. I tried a couple of different methods to transfer the cast-on stitches to the right needle to get a row going, but then remembered that our office Mummeleh is one of those people who sits on the commuter rail and makes afghans, I packed a knitting bag and hauled everything into the office to ask her. Turns out she only does Crochet, but at least she pointed me to a decent website.

Maybe this one will work. I need to do something constructive with my time while I'm watching 24 tonight.

Adventures in Knitting

What A Girl Wants...

A much better idea than gookbox.com.
(See previous post)

What A Girl Wants...

What the-? LOTD (link of the day)

I found this around 1pm on the del.icio.us site.
Secret Asian Man is going to love this one.
Oh, and by the way, it's spelled "musical" people, not "musicail"
Just what the world needs, an downloadable music application to organize all your other downloadable music applications. This kind of reminds me trying to alphabetize all of your phonebooks. At what point do people stop trying to download and upload and streamline everything and just listen to the damn music?

What the-? LOTD (link of the day)

Here a list, there a list, everywhere a meta-list

As I noted somewhere in the last paragraph of the previous post, I had a to-do list that I tried to get to all weekend. I know it involved doing some web design stuff, getting to the end of the Illustrator tutorial book that I bought, and starting to work on the site design for a new project. It was in chart form, with each project in its own row with columns labeled "by tomorrow", "by Sunday" and "by next month".

I was very proud of my to-do list. It was exactly like the ones you see in all of those "how to get your life organized" articles that sites like msn.com are always posting. The only problem is that while my birthday is July 26, I am a closet Gemini. One side of my personality makes a list, files it away with the other lists, memorizes it, and plans to execute it. The other side finds the list, laughs hysterically and says "What are you, some kind of geek? Grab a beer out of the fridge, sit your ass down on the couch, and watch some OnDemand for chrissakes. You are paying for cable tv right? Might as well enjoy it."

In a good week I might get one or two things done, shove about 20 other things into the back corner of my head, and pat myself on the back for getting to the grocery store with an actual list of stuff to buy. For extra credit, maybe I'll sift through two weeks of mail and throw all the junk mail out.

So where does all of this lead to? If you really want to know the awful sick truth (and you must if you are still actually reading this), I get a charge out of getting something tangible accomplished. All I want is to be able to pick up my mail at night, see the department store credit card bill, and know that in 5 seconds I can see the bill from last month with the "paid" note written on it, sitting in a file folder, in chronological order and filed alphabetically. The war in Iraq could go on into the next decade and I would be able to sleep soundly knowing that all of my downloaded articles on how to get the best mortgage deals are indexed in a 3-ring binder. No wonder my first job was in a library.

Of course I know there is more to life than filing away credit card payments and information that will be outdated by the time I actually read it. Probably the best way to exploit my inner nerd is to narrow down the obsession a little so I'm actually focusing on what really matters. Life is too short to worry about having matching labels on the spice jars, but it's also too short to let stuff that I really want to get done drift by the wayside.

Here a list, there a list, everywhere a meta-list

New Year, Same S^*@

"Main Course: What would you do if you had 3 months off from your job?
I would develop several of the 800 domain names I've purchased on impulse, devise some revenue streams and generate more of a supplemental income. I have the skills and the know how, I just don't have the free time. I'm lying - I actually could find the time if I really wanted to. They say you can make time for anything. Unfortunately, Celebrity Big Brother 6 started last night, so I'm pretty much booked for the next 60 evenings."

Muchos Gracias to David Pye of Pye in the Face fame for putting it so succinctly. I wish I had the time to purchase 800 domain names.

I had one of those bizarre bursts of energy that one gets at random times during a pregnancy and coupled with an overflow of the nesting instinct discussed on June 3rd, 2005, I was up at 8am after falling into bed at 2am Sunday morning. I got my Six Feet Under fix out of the way, went to Target and walked around for an hour just looking at stuff. You know you are turning into a suburb dweller when you can admit to yourself that you actually enjoy walking around Target mentally cataloguing all the different products they have created using Isaac Mizrahi and Hello Kitty as their inspiration.

I actually had a list of stuff I wanted to get done on the computer, but decided to put together our new bassinet, which involved cleaning out a corner of the bedroom, which then involved taking a load of laundry down to the basement. After that, I had to assemble the frame, which involved finding W-40, which involved digging around under the kitchen sink and discovering a forgotten box of electrical tools from my freelance film days. Now I wanted to drop everything and organize under the sink, thinking ahead 9 months down the road when the baby will start crawling everywhere. I took a deep breath and managed to stay on track. The frame was assembled and now the next step was getting a crescent wrench to tighten the eyebolt. Now I was stuck. I quickly realized, after looking through three boxes of old tools spread out between two floors that there might be 2 big flashlights, 3 hammers and 50 screwdrivers deposited throughout the house, there wasn't a crescent wrench to be found. The only ones we had were outside in my husband's tool bag in the trunk of his car and it was starting to get icy in the driveway.

I decided that the eyebolt tightening step could be skipped and put the rest of the bassinet together. At this point it was taking up so much of the bedroom that I had to finish it. And now I was ready to finish the laundry and bake cookies. First I had to organize the baby's dresser drawers. Fortunately, no tools were involved and it took about 5 minutes.

Now it was on to the living room and the mountain of papers that I had accumulated over the past 2 months. I had figured out that the reason I don't file much at home is because it's a pain to shove the folders back and forth and stuff the bills in. So I made a decision to clean out the old paperwork from the files while I finished watching a DVD of Six Feet Under, season 4. Another box of worms, but I plowed through and collected a pile a foot and a half high of paperwork that could go down to the basement. By now it was 8 o'clock and I wanted to eat dinner and watch the Simpsons. After that, finally, I made cookies and put the laundry in the dryer.

So it was 10 o'clock on Sunday night and the house was clean, there were chocolate chip cookies cooling on the kitchen table and the laundry was almost dry. Now I had a whole 2 hours ahead of me to do everything on my list that I had put together on Friday. The giant pile of assorted tools in the middle of the bedroom floor could wait another day.

New Year, Same S^*@

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.

What the F*^% Happened To My Link?

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.

You know you're pregnant when...

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.

Frivolous Rant of the Day

"And the Most Unconsciously Ironic News Item of the Day Award goes to...

"And the Most Unconsciously Ironic News Item of the Day Award goes to...

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.

Could this be the end of crappy maternity wear?

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.

Testify!

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!

The Needle in the Haystack