Not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be

No jet plane involved

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 02:07:07 GMT

So as was noted on Twitter and elsewhere, yesterday was my last day with Onion, Inc. I've been debating how or whether to mention this here for a couple of weeks now, ever since I gave notice, but given how crazy Twitter and the site were yesterday, it's clearly good that I didn't spill any possible beans earlier. Several other people have also left the site. There's been a lot of guesswork about what's going on, much of it off-base, though I can't get into it at all here. There's been a lot of personal contact, too, much of it very gratifying and humbling.

I've worked for Onion, Inc and The A.V. Club for 15 years, 13 of it as a full-time writer and editor, and I've identified myself very heavily with the job, to the point of basing a lot of my significant life choices around it. For the most part, the tradeoffs have been worth it — I've gotten to work with a lot of immensely talented, tremendously intelligent, highly dedicated people who've taught me a lot about writing, editing, and critical thought. But I didn't realize how much other people identified me with the job until I quit.

It's been exactly as though I faked my own death and am attending my own funeral. So many of the people contacting me via Twitter and email have taken a past-tense tone of "We loved you and you will be missed." It's slightly awkward — I'm still right here, guys — but given how often we only see the negative side of commentors, how often people only speak up when they're angry or disagreeing — all the compliments and praise and well-wishing has been incredibly touching. It isn't just strangers who know me through my writing, either — I had some long, fascinating conversations yesterday at our send-off party with people I've barely talked to before. And I've gotten some phenomenally kind and complimentary emails from people I know but rarely see, or have worked with in some capacity over the years. It all amounted to a This Is Your Life episode, stretched out over the last 24 hours. It's so easy, writing for print and the web, to feel like I'm operating in a vacuum. Yesterday, I was reminded that people care, and it was incredibly energizing.

But this was the best part for me. This makes me think I peaked yesterday: Some stranger who's clearly very well versed in our website made this as an instant response to yesterday's announcement.

Hulk shrine and high-fives

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:25:21 GMT

Back in Chicago. Last night, I went to the grocery store, and when I came back to the car, there was a 9-inch articulated plastic Incredible Hulk toy sitting on the roof of my car. Both parking spots around me were empty, so I presume someone in one of those spots put it down for a second while wangling kids and groceries, and then forgot it. I momentarily considered taking it home for a particularly Hulk-identified friend of mine, but I've had some recent experiences with small children and lost beloved toys, particularly of the "love it so much it has to come to the store with me" variety, so it seemed kinder to leave it where it might be found. I placed it upright on the concrete base of the parking-lot overhead light closest to my car. On that same base, someone had left about a dollar's worth of uniformly grubby, rusty pennies for some esoteric reason. I put Hulk next to them. They made a weird little shrine together. I hope Hulk found his way home.

On my last day in Oklahoma, we went to the zoo for four exhausting hours. It was perfect weather for it — sunny but breezy — and most of the animals were out and active. The 6-year-old was in balky mode and only wanted to go to the park and play, but the 8-year-old was as calm and settled as I've seen him, and we stood together and watched animals and talked about them, and sometimes made up voices for them. It was a good day.

But the best part was when he demanded we go into an odd little Colonial house on the grounds, which turned out to be a little one-room museum of the zoo's history, with old photographs on the walls and a video continually projected on one of the walls. There were four rows of carpet-covered boxes serving as seating for people to watch the movie, but no one else was in the place, so both kids started running a circuit of the rows. I sat in a corner at the back, and when they finished the full circuit and got to me, I high-fived them. They enjoyed it enough that they did the whole run again, for the high-fives.

And then it instantly, easily became a game. The 8-year-old ran half the circuit and then came straight to me and told me he'd taken a shortcut, so I gave him a high two-and-a-half. They ran the circuit twice without stopping and got a double-handed high 10. And we did this over and over, with me coming up with something new every time — three high ones, "antler high five" with my hands coming out of the side of my head, "unicorn high five" with one hand extended from the middle of my forehead, and on and on. It was easy and simple and they loved it. I'm not sure anything in the world is as gratifying as making someone else immensely happy by doing something creative and extremely simple.

Thoughout this whole trip — and really, throughout most trips to Oklahoma since the kids were born — I've been wondering how they'll remember me when they're grown up, which moments will stick with them. Most won't; I'm not a big part of their lives. But when I think of my own aunts and uncles, I have a patchwork of memories of specific scattered moments that add up into portraits of my relationships with them, and every time I interact with the kids, I think "Will this be one of those memories?" If anything sticks, I hope the high-five game does. It certainly stuck with me. When we got back to the truck at the end of the day, I complimented the 8-year-old on making the whole trip without griping or whining, and to celebrate, we did a 5-4-3-2-1-explosion high five. And when he and his mom saw me off at the airport Tuesday morning, I offered him "an upside-down high five for luck until I see you again," and his face just lit up. I can live with none of this staying with him; no one can control what other people remember about them. But I hope the look on the kids' faces as we were playing that game is still with me in the old folks' home, when I can't remember what I had for breakfast, but can't forget the good ol' days.

Kookaburra screams on the YouTube tree

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:00:02 GMT

Today was looooong and exhausting and I'm headed for bed. But here's a thing: We went back to the zoo today, which involved four hours of walking in perfect sunny but cool spring weather, with the animals largely out and alert and doing interesting things. The birds were often singing, the cats and lizards were out basking, the elephants were doing interesting elephanty things. We were in one of the habitats watching a superb starling explore its entire musical repertoire at length when we heard a godawful racket of screaming and shrieking and uproarious laughter, and thefirethorn said "That's a kookaburra!" So we ran back to the kookaburra cage, and saw both the kookaburras leaping from branch to branch and vocalizing like crazy, this immense booming sound that ranged between hyena laughter and screams. I grew up on the kookaburra song ("Laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra, gay your life must be") but I'm not sure I'd ever heard one actually laugh before.

So all five of us — me, Thorn, her husband, and their kids — stood there gaping as they jumped around yelling and making that distinctive guffawing mockery nose. When they calmed down and were quiet, we were all very excited at each other over the fact that we'd never heard such a thing before. And then a woman walked up to us and said "Oh, they're just agitated because my son played them a YouTube clip of another kookaburra." And the teenager next to her pulled out his phone and played this video:

And 10 seconds into it, the kookaburras started going nuts again, throwing themselves from side to side in the cage and screaming and laughing their heads off. It was no less impressive the second time, but now it had the unpleasant tone of watching an animal freak out because someone is jabbing it with a stick through the bars of its cage. The teenager wandered off, but the noises continued for another couple of minutes before the birds settled again.

It all reminded me a lot of the fascinating YouTube video where a man showed a cuttlefish an image of itself through his reversible eyepiece, and it darkened and started stalking the image, and every other cuttlefish in the tank came over to see what the big deal was. In theory, it shouldn't be hard to call up the sound of a lion's mating call or territorial roars and play it at a zoo lion to see if he responds; I wonder if a lot of that goes on all day at zoos at that point. And I wonder how long before there are prominently placed "Do not torment the animals with technology" signs to go with the "Do not feed or tease animals" signs.

On penises, and the hating thereof

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:46:12 GMT

Assorted things I've heard since I've been in Oklahoma:

"Why is there a brownie in the clothes hamper?" "I dunno."
"Are you crying because the computer program won't work?" "No, it's probably because I got mad and kicked him."
"Why are you suddenly naked?" "I dunno."
"Tasha, do you mind pee and penises? Because I don't."

I wasn't going to blog about that last one, but thefirethorn insisted. The kids sometimes come across as a wee bit obsessed with their genitals, though nothing tops the first day, with the foreskin-puppet and the question above. We were trekking through the wilderness, heading to a hidden duck pond, and the 6-year-old had to pee, so Thorn said he could do it in the trees, and that it was okay to pee outdoors if no one was around who minded. After peeing, he asked me that question in all earnestness, in the exact same tone he used five minutes later to ask whether I liked peanut butter. Problem was that I laughed at the first question and said "No one's ever asked me that before." So when the 6-year-old did his penis puppetry at me that night, the 8-year-old said, also in all seriousness, "You have to stop, because Tasha said she HATES penises."

Right now, both kids are in the living room, singing a song to "Old McDonald" that goes like this, with them alternating lines:

"Old McDonald had a sucks, EIEIO."
"And on his farm he had a poop, EIEIO."
"With a poop poop sucks…"
"With a poop poop poop…"

Some say my cousin's house will end in fire, some say ice…

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 19:59:44 GMT

In addition to setting my cousin's kitchen slightly on fire, I slightly flooded it a couple of days ago. Thorn went off to a PTA meeting at 9 a.m. on Friday, and then came back and napped til afternoon, so I wound up entertaining the kids. There was some Frisbee-playing, and running around outside, and making Angry Birds with Play-Doh, and making up stories on that Google collaborate-with-dead-authors thing, but eventually, I decided it was too nice to not be outside blowing bubbles. Except there weren't any bubbles in the house. So I looked up a recipe online and made a couple of cups of bubble fluid. Which worked fairly well, but not super.

So I came back in and put the bubble solution by the sink and started doing dishes, thinking I'd fill up the dishwasher, then run it using the bubble solution as detergent, so as not to waste so much soap. Except midway through doing dishes, I managed to knock the cup over, spilling bubble solution all over the sink, the floor, and the open dishwasher door. I cleaned up the counter and the floor, but didn't much think about the dishwasher until we got home from dinner that night and her husband informed us that it was broken. It wasn't until later in the evening that I overheard him talking about the specifics — it had welled up with bubbles that spilled out all over the floor. He wasn't actually sure whether it was broken, or he'd dropped in an extra detergent ball.

Oops.

So I went in to check the kitchen, and there were wet towels all over the floor because there had been so much stray bubbling. So I sheepishly fessed up to that as well. I have learned ~~two three~~ four things from this experience:

I should stick to commercial bubble fluid, which is cheap and works better… and comes in bottles with screw-on lids.
I should not be trusted with other people's kitchens.
Unsolicited foam parties are not the funnest foam parties.
Having attacked their kitchen with fire and water, I need to figure out how to come at it with earth and air. The former will be easy enough, and might just involve obliviously tracking mud in everywhere. I have a good model in the kids, who tracked in tempura paint all over the rugs the first day I was here. I'm not sure about the latter. Maybe some sort of toxic aerosol spray made from equal parts shame and mortification? I have the base ingredients already.

Somebody left the cake out in the fire

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 05:02:02 GMT

Sooo I kind of set my cousin's kitchen on fire today.

See, there were all these bananas in the house… Yeah. Bear with me.

There were bananas in the kitchen, going bad. I said I'd make banana muffins with them. They had most of the ingredients on hand, and I bought the other things I needed yesterday.

Yesterday, incidentally, was fairly miserable. We went over to the University Of Oklahoma campus with a laundry list of plans: feed the ducks at the local pond, ride the glass elevator, visit my other cousin at his new library job, ride a bus around campus (which the kids were super-excited about). But the kids were immensely fussy. They whined that it was hot, they whined that they had to walk, they whined when we were going to leave the duck pond, they whined that we weren't leaving the duck pond fast enough. They whined that it was hot in the car and they had to wait 30 seconds for the air conditioner to kick in. They whined that we weren't going fast enough, they whined that they wanted ice cream. They whined that they wanted fast food instead of ice cream, and then when they got it, they whined that they hadn't gotten ice cream. Most of this was the 8-year-old, but they tag-teamed a good bit. Ultimately, we rode the elevator, got food, and then called it a day and went home. Thorn introduced me to the concept of "stable sour," where a horse has spent so much time in the stable that it's balky and hard to manage when anyone tries to take it out. This was the first really nice day in a while, she said, and the kids were stable sour.

This made a lot of sense. I've been there myself. But when we got home, I really wasn't in the mood to bake. So we took the kids to the park and let them run around like wild things for a long time while we talked, and then we unceremoniously dumped them on Thorn's husband, and she and I went out to have a long, talky dinner with my other cousin and his wife.

Today was much better. We went to the zoo, and the kids were pretty chill, even when we had to wait forever in a traffic jam to find parking because everyone else also noticed that the weather was nice and the zoo existed. And even when we had to walk for 10 minutes across a baking parking lot. And even when we had to wait in line for another 10 minutes for tickets, only to be informed that we were in the wrong line to buy a family pass, and had to start over. And even when we chose to not go on the tram, which is their favorite thing, and we wound up hiking all over creation instead. And even when we wouldn't take them on the safari boat ride they'd been semi-promised, because we were running late and had to get back home so I could do a phone interview with Danny Boyle for his new film. I mean, when I was their age, that level of compounded disappointment would have sent me into meltdown mode, but they largely took it in stride. What a difference a day makes.

So even after a day out in the sun, with everyone weary and footsore, I was in a good enough mood to try the banana muffins tonight. I'd wanted to try some hands-on cooking with the kids as a bonding experience, largely because I have such vivid, positive, and important memories of my dad's sister showing me how to make pancakes, and letting me help. But neither of the boys are particularly patient or focused, so year after year, I've dropped the idea. But as soon as I started assembling ingredients, the 6-year-old was mesmerized, and when I told him what I was making, he was flabbergasted and thrilled by the idea of mixing bananas into bread. And even though he tends to be the cuddly, quiet, non-vocal type, he got very verbose very quickly, explaining how his favorite bread is cornbread, and he loves bananas, and bananas in bread make no sense. And he asked me why I had my computer open, and actually listened to the explanation about recipes, and even waited raptly by the ingredients bowl while I went off to the garage to get eggs from the spare fridge. We actually had a conversation, which was lovely. And in the middle of this, I turned on the oven to 350 degrees and went back to showing him how the consistency of the batter changed ingredient by ingredient. He opined that this was the neatest thing ever, but wanted to know how this goo would become bread. I explained about baking it, and he wandered over to look at the oven.

And he asked "What's all this stuff in the oven?"

And I said "Oh, there's nothing in the oven yet, I haven't put anything in there yet OH CRAP."

By this time, there was already rancid smoke coming out of the oven.

And when I pulled it open and the air hit the sullen, oxygen-starved flames inside, we both got a nice big whoof-ing fireball to the face. The 6-year-old, who is often fairly timid and frightened by many things, just thought this was totally cool. I, however, could see that the oven was full of pans and skillets, plus a couple of plastic tray covers which were sitting directly on the heating element, and were thoroughly on fire. By this time, the 8-year-old had showed up to share the excitement, so I evacuated the kitchen of kids, got all the burning plastic into the sink and put it out, and got it all outside. Burning plastic is surprisingly hard to snuff, and the two lids had fallen into at least four pieces at this point, all of which were on fire.

SO THAT WAS AWKWARD. On the bright side, the kids now think I'm awesome: I make actual bread out of mere flour and bananas, and actual fire out of nowhere. On the other hand, who wants to be the houseguest who burns the host's property and fills their oven with drippy melted plastic? Somewhat to my surprise, Thorn's husband was entirely cool about all of it. Apart from letting me know about 20 minutes later that I have some teasing coming my way, and he isn't planning on letting this one go anytime soon.

Turns out they have a SEPARATE stove they actually use for the baking. I'd turned on the storage-stove that's only used at Thanksgiving. And I hadn't even thought to check inside it for flammables first.

The banana muffins, by the way, were delicious.

Miserable party games for fun and profit

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:57:50 GMT

Been googling around for creative games for 8-year-olds, and mostly finding loud, running-and-yelling party games. And then there's this:

Whipped Cream Round The World
Have children stand in one line. Two plates of whipped cream are passed from each player along the line whilst players are dancing to the music. When the music stops, the player must rub the plate of whipped cream 'round the world style' (start at the front and rub the plate around the head back to front), on their face. They are then out. Plates are replenished and repeated until the last player is standing. Obviously the last player get the 'world treatment.

This sounds more like a punishment than a game — first, a punishment for the kids participating, and then a punishment for all the parents who have to get whipped cream out of their kids' eyes, ears, noses, hair, and clothes, and then finally a punishment for whoever's hosting the party, because there's going to be whipped cream everywhere. This reads to me like the equivalent of a fun party game called "Dump the honey on the rug."

Oklahoma again

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:21:48 GMT

So I am visiting Oklahoma, where my cousin, thefirethorn, has ordered me to blog about our adventures because she loves reading about her family.

She may wind up with cause to regret that, because easily the most memorable thing that happened today was that her 6-year-old wandered in post-bath, wrapped in a towel, jumped onto my lap, and said "Hey, look at this!" Then he opened the towel and puppeteered his foreskin into a mouth, which said "I hate you for no reason!" I am really glad to say this is the first time a dude has done this to me. Gentlemen, I do not advise trying this move on your lady friends.

That aside, it was a pleasant day. It was in the 30s in Chicago when I left. Here, it's 80 degrees. (The weather forecast forecast for my visit ranges between 39 and 81. That was… fun… to try to pack for.) Thorn picked me up at the airport and we went to a ridiculous Chinese buffet where, for $10 apiece, we got access to all the usual mega-Chinese stuff, plus a cake bar, a sushi bar, a dim sum bar, a steak bar, a Mongolian grill, a gelato bar, and a variety of fruit meant for use with the chocolate and caramel fountains, though we just ate naked bowls of strawberries and blackberries and called it good. We sat and got caught up on The State Of Everyone for a couple of hours, then got Thorn's two boys from school, went for a walk to the local pond, and fed the Canadian geese and a couple of reluctant ducks. My fish-white, Chicago-winter skin didn't know what to do with all the sunlight, and I passed out on a chair the second we got back to the house, and I slept til dinner.

Post-dinner, Thorn showed me this silly but giggle-inducing "Collaborate with famous writers" site, where you start typing a story, and a text editor jumps in and replaces common words with highfalutin vocabulary, identifying the edits as coming from Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, and others. The edits never improve the stories — they're slanted toward exactly the type of writing we learned to avoid around 6th grade. They constantly add unnecessary verbiage and plug in extra adverbs and replace "said" with "assuredly declared." Also, Poe always replaces "fire" with "halo of hell." And if you stop writing for a minute, Dickens or Dostoyevsky or Nietzsche will slap in a random sentence. The best part is that actually mentioning a couple of the authors in your text — Dickens or Shakespeare especially — will set off little pre-programmed edit wars. It's a minorly amusing site.

But the kids loved it, and it turned into a collaborative game that went on for well over an hour, with me starting stories and demanding they take turns adding to them, and our invisible editors jumping in to muck things up, which sent them into gales of laughter. We wrote a story about the narrator becoming a dog that turned into a phoenix. We wrote a story about the narrator's face falling off in school, and everyone turning into zombies. We wrote stories about the boys in school, and a black cat who could fly. Granted, their story contributions were really heavy on poop (still their favorite word) and bloody mayhem, but they were also funny and surprising, especially as the 8-year-old showed me the growing expanse of his vocabulary. And engaging with kids on a creative level is The Best.

That said, damned if I know what else we're going to be able to do on this level while I'm here. I was looking for exactly something like this — an imagination-intensive game with a specific focusing device to keep them from wandering off every two minutes. So if any of y'all have other specific suggestions for keeping a 6-year-old and an 8-year old captivated for a couple hours, I'd love to hear 'em.

Eventually the Arnold mod will say "Ice to meet you."

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 07:27:22 GMT

Another note about last night's RPG meet-and-greet: This morning I got up to a handful of emails that said "It was good to see you!" It turns out Meetup.com has added this function where, if you RSVP "yes" for an event, then afterwards, it'll show you the user icons of everyone else who RSVPed "yes," with a button underneath each icon that says "It was good to see you!" If you click on that button, it sends the other user exactly that message. And when they get that message, there's a button in it that says "Good to see you too!"

Not to be alarmist or anything, but WE ARE ALL DOOMED THIS IS THE DOWNFALL OF SOCIETY EVERYTHING IS RUINED FOREVER.

Look, there's a great deal to be said for basic politeness. And there's a little bit of charm in the idea of everyone at these meetups hitting all these buttons at each other and sending all these ridiculous rote messages, the exact same impersonal, low-effort, lazy ones each time. It's the equivalent of two people meeting in My Fair Lady and mechanically repeating "How do you do?" to each other: Well-meant, and kinda funny to watch, but a little stiff, and ultimately entirely empty. It's a mockery of an actual exchange of meaningless pleasantries.

Mostly what chafes me is the idea that this button-pressing is mimicking something meaningful — actual expressions of goodwill — and it's supposed to be taken on the same level. In the same way "lol" is now a punctuation mark meaning "this thought is complete," and "Like" can mean "I saw this" or "I would like to win a prize from your company," "Nice to see you" in this context means "I have enough positive feeling for you as a person that I'm willing to click on a thing." It's actually grosser to me than exchanging no post-meeting words whatsoever.

So it was lousy to see all of you, so there. Where's my button for that?

Five unrelated things from two busy days

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 05:32:31 GMT

Holy crap, y'all, are you reading Order Of The Stick these days? What's up with these daily updates after years of erratic updates and illness-or-injury-related downtime? More to the point, holy crap, the current plotline and the end of the latest strip.
I've been reading a lot of YA novels lately. Seriously, a lot. Ever since I started the YA books column, publishers have been sending them to me by the boxload. Here's the one I wrote up for February, the one that stood out amid the whole batch: A novel about a teenager who kills himself over and over and can't figure out why it doesn't take.
Yesterday we had a thoroughly enjoyable day of playing board games at some friends' house in an all-day birthday celebration. Then at night we went to the Chopin Theater with Julia the birthday girl to see The Magnificents, a stage play about circus performers that doubles as an impressive stage-magic show with an aerial segment and some clowning. It's charming, well-acted, sweet, and sad, and I'm very glad I saw it. It felt more than a little like The Fantastics with magic instead of music, and more of a narrative arc. Highly recommended for people in the Chicago area who enjoy close-up magic.
I got mansplained at today! My CTA pass unexpectedly expired — turns out I needed to click one thing on their website to confirm that my address is still my address — and it didn't work on the turnstile when I left work; the message "expired" kept coming up on the turnstile. There was a lady CTA worker by the gate who came out and checked it for me, and then ran it through her employee scanner and pointed out that it said it expired March 1, and I needed to go to the website and update my address and get a new card. Then she held the gate open so I could walk through. As I did, another CTA guy who'd been sitting in his booth silently watching this whole thing suddenly emerged and SNATCHED my card out of my hand and said "I'LL tell you exactly what's wrong with that card, let ME check it!" and proceeded to re-scan my card, which once again said "expired." He said "You see, that's it right there, your card's expired! You need to go online and update it!" I said "Yeah, I know, I —" and he interrupted to say "It probably just expired sometime in the past couple of days! You should go to the website and check! There's a place where you can access your account and find out…" He kept rambling, giving me the same information but vaguer, while I made eye contact with the CTA lady, who just looked weary. Finally, I took my card out of his hand and cut him off with "Yeah, I know, this lady checked it and showed me. It expired March 1 and I didn't realize, but she told me exactly what to do about it. She's got it covered and she knows exactly what she's doing." Then I thanked her directly and smiled at her and walked off. I do not want to think about what her days must be like.
Tonight I went to a thoroughly delightful meetup for RPG fans looking for groups or players, and heard an upbeat lecture from a local comic-book-shop owner who runs D&D games for large groups — sometimes 15 players at a time — and for autistic kids. He described how in the former case, he streamlines by going fast, taking suggestions ("What are the walls in the castle made out of? Like, quartz or something?" "Sure, why not? You'd know better than me — that's why you're here in the castle with a pickaxe, right?"), not rolling separate initiatives for each round, and giving people just a few seconds to declare their actions, as though they're playing speed chess. It sounded odd, but he was so upbeat and cheerful and funny that I want to actually try his crazy D&D speed variant.

The case of D&D for autistic kids was even more intriguing. He got into it because of parents bringing kids to try his public-meetup D&D game because they were looking for social stimuli, but it's been so beneficial to the kids he plays with that now he runs special sessions for them, and gets paid as if he were a tutor. He says essentially he incentivizes interactions with the kids who have trouble acknowledging other people — like, there's a bonus to an action if it can somehow involve other players. He encourages them to read each other's reactions to events and gauge behavior accordingly, e.g. "You just fireballed your own teammate. How does he look now? Does he look happy? Maybe you shouldn't fireball your own teammate." (Cass says he can think of 40-something gamers who would benefit from this same learning-to-read-other-people routine.) The overall idea is that he's encouraging the kids to have fun in a social setting — as opposed to at home, interacting with people on computers — and they learn behaviors that they associate entirely with fun, as opposed to the stressful, negative lessons they can get at school. So they're more likely to model the social-interaction behaviors for a couple of weeks or a month after each session, and he's made a lot of progress with them. Again, the whole thing sounds so neat, I wish I could see him at work.

The same guy owns a comics store here in town, and runs a lot of strange events, like a "wine and comics pairings" event which sounds like weird fun. (On the menu this time: What wine goes with Saga?) I'm going to have to try some of those things out as well. And the meet-new-gamers thing went swimmingly as well; I walked away with enough email addresses to fill out an entire game of Dread, the system I'm most into these days. Now I just need to find a free weekend to actually play. Sigh.

The unexamined Oscar party is not worth having

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:39:59 GMT

Oscar parties are weird. At least, ours is. We throw it almost every year at Cass’ parents’ place, a split-level that can accommodate two separate parties: Us and 20 or so of our friends in the couch-and-chair-crammed TV room with the wall projector, and Cass’ parents and their friends and relatives upstairs with a giant flatscreen. It involves a ton of prep, what with me making and displaying enough food to keep dozens of people going for five hours, and Cass writing up the second TV and designing and printing and collecting ballots and coming up with prizes. But then the actual party itself is an exercise in immobility. Almost no one really mingles. There are wisecracks and conversations, but since we’re all pinned to specific chairs and couches, everyone talks with the little group nearest to them. We had guests last night who are friends of mine who I was happy to see, but I barely spoke to them at all.

Last night we had somewhere around 35 people, not counting the neighborhood kids who sequestered themselves in the kitchen to draw and color, or the one wiggly toddler who really wanted to be exploring the house. And this year I noticed more than ever how the ones in the basement formed their own separate parties. My party consisted of our work liveblog and the people immediately behind and in front of me. Cass, on the other side of the room, was at a different party altogether, with a different group of people, plus ballot-grading duty to distract him. There was a small party of co-workers and former co-workers in the back row, and I’m not sure they associated with anyone else, though I did come back to check up on them midway through the ceremony. I visited the outpost of Upstairs a few times. But given that when people first came in, I was running around pulling things in and out of the oven, there were people at our party for five hours whom I maybe said five words to.

And usually by hour five, people are tired and ready to be gone, so the second the last award is announced, people are out the door. Given that most parties feature lingering and chatting and a few tail-end stragglers and sometimes 4 a.m. conversations, I’m always a little amused and surprised by how quickly 35 people can retrieve 15 Tupperware containers and 35 coats and 70 shoes and get themselves out the door. This year one of our Oscar-tabulation winners was out the door so fast, he didn’t learn that he’d won until he returned half an hour later for something he’d dropped.

So my experience of the Oscars is always a day of baking, two hours of setup, a blur of Hello-your-coats-go-here-the-food-is-here-the-booze-is-here-help-yourself, a blur of online and offline witticisms, a blur of bye-thanks-for-coming-hope-you-had-fun, and then a social hangover that feels like “What just happened?” In spite of watching the whole thing, I often look at the results in the news the next morning and think “That won? Really? Huh.”

I hope everyone enjoyed themselves at our seven different Oscar parties in the same room.

Tectonics

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:24:46 GMT

The weekend ended for us at 11 a.m. on Monday, after checkout from the cabin, as we sat beside the compound’s koi pond and took a few deep breaths before heading back to the city. It was well above freezing, but the pond was largely iced over, except in the center by the fountains:

Me: Look, I thought the surface was just a sheet of ice, but there are sections moving against each other. I can’t see the dividing lines, but there’s clear motion.

Cass: Huh. Plate tectonics on a koi pond. I can’t actually see the plates either, but I can sense them moving.

Me: Wait, I didn’t realize you were Tectonics Man, and you had a special Tectonics Sense.

Cass: *innocent whistling*

Me: Were you bitten by a radioactive tectonic plate when you were a teenager?

Cass: *more innocent whistling*

Me: Huh. I hope not, because an entire radioactive tectonic plate would probably imply extensive exposure to radioactivity. Wait, is this why we don’t have children?

Cass: Actually, it was exposure to a radioactive tectonic bowl.

Me: Urgh.

Cass: I used to go tectonic bowling all the time when I was a teenager.

Me: Someone in this relationship is silly.

Cass: I suspect everyone in this relationship is silly.

Me: Huh. That explains a few things.

Cass: Like this relationship, for instance.

Me: Yeah, that’s one of them for sure.

Cabin sweet cabin

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:29:47 GMT

Cass and I spent the weekend in a cabin in rural Illinois again — our third time going back to this particular place. It was very relaxing, and a much-needed step outside the world, as it always is. The particular place where we rent cabins is so far off the grid that there’s no cell service, and the place doesn’t offer any kind of Internet connection, so we’re essentially unreachable for a couple of days. Which makes me twitchy — what if there’s a family emergency? What if the world burns down? — but also makes it impossible to blow a weekend on mindless Internet games or surfing, or fiddling with work stuff. In the winter, when outside is not hugely hospitable, it’s forced relaxation, with nothing much to do but read, watch films together, talk, cook, hot-tub, and sleep.

Especially sleep, this time around. We got in on Friday night and I slept in on Saturday — and then took a late-morning nap. And then we went hiking around the area and down by the local river, and when we got back to the cabin, I slept most of the afternoon. It’s disconcerting to do that — normally, I don’t nap, since I usually get up from naps groggy and out of sorts, and I’m too Type A to want to spend part of a perfectly good day asleep. When I commented to Cass about it, wondering if I was fighting off a bug, he just said “I hope you’re just getting rest.” Which took me aback a little. I’ve been trying to be good about eight hours of sleep a night, and while I don’t always manage, the days of staying up til 3 a.m. working are long gone. It hadn’t occurred to me that after a couple of months of fairly intense work-related stress, I might need sleep as much as I needed downtime.

Anyway. We went hiking Saturday and Sunday, though Sunday’s jaunt was fairly ridiculous: We went to a local wilderness preserve to hike the trails, which were listed on the none-too-helpful map as Orange (designated with a yellow line), Red (also a yellow line), Blue (blue line), Green (green line), and Brown (also a green line). The map didn’t give any indication of the distance involved in any of these loops, and there was no “You are here.” And then when we set out, the first intersection was with the White Trail. Which didn’t exist on the maps. So we walked for about 90 minutes with no clear idea of where we were. We only found one other map along the route, and it also lacked a “You are here.” I was fairly sure about roughly which path we were on, although the route I’d picked involved three different trails (“orange,” blue, and “brown”). The big problem was that at least half the hike was along muddy ground, and we spent a lot of time walking along sharply angled, crumbly dry ground adjacent to the trails, or walking on the mud and skidding a lot. And much of the mud was concealed under leaves, so we couldn’t always tell how stable the path was, whereas the sides of the path were guarded by thorny bushes of various kinds. Between that and the uncertainty of whether we’d set out on a one-mile walk or a five-mile walk, the whole thing felt a little fraught.

But we made it back to the car alive and well-exercised, and the weather was more accommodating than we’d expected — outright cold but not very windy, so 15 minutes of brisk walking and sliding was enough to get us warmed up. And then it was back to the cabin for Sons Of Anarchy and Glee and Smash and How I Met Your Mother and Community and reading three books in one weekend and starting a fourth.

We last did this in December, and it was so sanity-inducing that I suggested we should just go ahead and book another excursion for a couple of months out, before our schedule got full. Now I want to do that again. They’re nice cabins, and cheaper than Chicago hotels, and the people who run the place are tremendously friendly while rocking an attitude of “You’re here for privacy and quiet, we are going to check you in and then leave you alone until you check out, unless you come looking for us.” It’s the most hands-off, adult-friendly place I’ve ever stayed.

That said, it’s a bit on the kitsch side, with a little box of Valentine’s candy and an actual Valentine awaiting us when we checked in, and homemade art featuring sayings like “What happens in the cabin stays in the cabin,” and leather-bound journals in all the cabins where people can leave their compliments on the place. I read through some of the entries in our cabin’s journal this morning, and found them heavily skewed toward “What a lovely place, and our dog loved it so much!” In fact, the signatures on the first 10 or so entries included dog names: Things like “Patrick & Lucy & Barky & Fluffles.” Sometimes the writer would also draw a pawprint after the dog’s signature. In one case it was “Charlie & Mabel & ‘Babies’ (Puddles & Norma).” Urgh. I suspect we aren’t actually cute enough for this place, or at least cute enough for on-site journaling. But it is rapidly becoming my favorite thing to do with a spare weekend.

Random encounters with train conductors

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 02:21:32 GMT

Hey, remember back in September when I went to the earliest available Chicago screening of Resident Evil: Retribution, because it didn't screen for critics beforehand, and we needed a review? And two different guys wound up explaining things about the movie to me?

This morning, I did the same thing with the also-not-screened-for-critics Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which was mostly just boring and repetitive. And during the credits, the second guy, the one who saw I was bored with his rambling explanation and stopped and then we had a real conversation, came up to me afterward, very excited to see me again. He was there with a buddy, who looked politely disengaged, and when I asked if he often came to movies on Friday mornings, he said yeah, he and the friend are both conductors on the Burlington Northern train line. They bring trains in for the morning rush hour, and then they have a six-hour layover every day of the week, and they have to find ways to amuse themselves in town until their trains go back out at 3:30 in the afternoon.

To me, that sounds like hell. I mean, there's a lot to do in Chicago, sure, but there's much less to do in the winter, once it gets cold enough that you just can't be outdoors, and there aren't a lot of public spaces where you can spend a lot of time comfortably without paying, unless you really like libraries. I said as much, and he said it wasn't necessarily fun in the winter, but it's great in the summer. In the meantime, Friday is movie day every week, when they go to the first show of whatever.

It seems like such a weird and interesting way to live. But I suspect he's lonely, based on how obviously excited and pleased he was to see me again, and how much he wanted to chat. I had to get back to the office and bang out my review and do about 20 other things before the end of the day, so I wasn't in a very talkative mood, but we talked for a little while, and his enthusiasm was certainly catching. Talking to him was generally more fun than actually watching the movie had been. We went our separate ways promising to randomly bump into each other again at the theater someday.

Moved

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 06:33:03 GMT

Office move accomplished! Granted, we had to move everything ourselves. My day started with me going to the old office and picking up a bag of books, my monitor and all the cabling, and my water bottle, and walking to the new office. I made a couple more trips later in the day to load up more boxes and bags of books, with significant help from Scott, but by the end of the day, everything was either unpacked and in its place or in the recycling bins. So that was all pretty satisfying. We've been specifically enjoined to bring as little stuff over as possible and to not clutter up the office with huge piles of accumulated films and CDs and books and whatnot, and I have to admit that everything looks very nice in its present fairly barren state.

The new office is weirdly samey — three big separate work areas all filled with the same long brushed-aluminum tables, and we have to walk by the other two to get to our work area, so I'll basically see everyone in the office every day — but it's much brighter and cleaner and newer than the old place, with higher ceilings and giant windows and so much more light. My fears from the pictures and diagrams about having enough room for me and my elbows were unfounded; I could lie down full-length on my desk if I wanted to. Plenty of room for book stacking and sorting. I've promised various people pictures, and I'll get to that when I can.

We still need a giveaway shelf in a place the rest of the office can access, and the printers still aren't working, but otherwise, we seem to be pretty much up and running. As of tomorrow, we're down one man for possibly a month, as Editor Josh goes off to be on a jury, and that is going to be a tremendous pain in the ass. But at least we'll be experiencing our ass-pain in a much brighter and airier environment.

Oh, and I'm leaning toward the fondue idea for the move-in party, but it didn't happen tonight; it was put off because the originator didn't get enough responses and didn't have time to corral people, so he suggested a different date, and was then told the kitchen isn't finished yet and it'd be a bad idea to fill the kitchen with slow cookers on that particular date because we've got an important guest visiting the office the next day. So who knows when or if it'll happen, but when it does, there may be chocolate. And come to think of it, it'd be a good chance to get rid of the gigantic supply of wooden skewers I somehow ended up with due to buying them for satay… and then forgetting I had some, and buying more, and then forgetting I had those…

Comfort food, eh?

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 22:49:18 GMT

We're moving to a new office on Monday. It's going to be an interesting process: I'm going from a cubicle with two cloth walls covered with notes and art and a calendar to a shared table with no walls, where I'll be looking across a divider at a co-worker all day. I'm going from an L-shaped desk with a lot of space to sort and store the 20 or so books I get in the mail every day to a table section where, as far as I can tell, I'll basically have enough desk space for my computer, my monitor, and my elbows. It'll certainly be good in terms of pushing me to be more organized and sort things more quickly and efficiently, but I do worry about just plain not having the space to fulfill my job functions. On the other hand, the new office has giant walls of windows (I'm currently in a space where like most of us, I get no natural light) and much more space, and significantly better facilities in many different ways. So we'll see.

Monday night, once we've moved in, we're supposed to have a "comfort-food Crock Pot cook-off" in the new space to celebrate the move, and I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to make. I've been making chili since winter kicked in — black bean mushroom chili, beef burgundy chili, chili verde until I finally ran out of tomatillos — and I'm a little tired of soups. And I'm not sure soup qualifies for me as comfort food anyway. I'm leaning toward just searing a roast and making beef barbacoa. Though our outgoing former production designer who used to win all the office cook-offs wryly said that whoever just threw a couple of blocks of Velveeta in their slow cooker, melted them, and provided chips was automatically going to win.

Anyway, I'm curious whether any of you have a slow-cooker recipe you swear by and identify as comfort food. The problem is that I really don't have that comfort-food vibe so many people seem to have: I don't like mac-and-cheese (I'm not the world's biggest fan of cheese in general), and I don't have warm childhood associations about mashed potatoes or pasta or other starchy foods. To me, comfort food is something I don't have to cook, meaning I can curl up with a book or a good movie and eat dinner without a bunch of prep time. Alas, there is no recipe for that for slow cookers, unless I buy a bunch of Campbell's and empty it into a cooker and spend the day reheating it. (Popcorn is also a big comfort food for me, which is the secret real reason I became a film critic, but it's also hard to do that in a slow cooker.)

So I'm fine with the barbacoa plan, but I'd also be fine with someone giving me a brilliant idea I'd entirely overlooked until now. Any can't-miss recipes out there?

Resolution

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:16:52 GMT

There are some basic things I learn over and over and over throughout my life, and yet I still never seem to internalize them and live my life accordingly:

I feel better when I exercise daily. My appetite drops, my energy goes up, my mind's clearer, I'm more comfortable in my skin. My body fizzes pleasantly after exercise. I feel good about myself.
I'm happiest when I'm engaged in a creative endeavor. And creativity begets more creativity. The more I work on things and trust my own creative instincts and don't let doubt creep in and overtake me, the more confident I get and the easier things come.
It never hurts to leave five minutes before I think I need to leave to go anywhere. It generally helps.
I'm less likely to say something awkward or confusing if I think before I talk.
That said, I'm happier when I actually express what I'm thinking to people, when I don't hold back or swallow my opinions out of a fear of confrontation, or leaving myself vulnerable, or both.

These are really simple, basic things, so why are they so hard to learn? I've been re-educating myself this January, not exactly wanting resolutions, but wanting some resolution. So I've been going back to the gym regularly, and trying to write more, and eating better, and feeling better about life than I have in a while. And to the degree that I do have a 2013 resolution, it's basically just "Try to remember these five things, and act accordingly.

Books/Films/GN/DVD 2013

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 18:23:05 GMT

Books Read In 2013

Now hosted at Goodreads.

Films Seen In 2013

1/3 — 56 Up (2013)
1/4 — Cosmopolis (2012)
1/5 — Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009)
1/5 — Since You Went Away (1944)
1/8 — The Moth Diaries (2011)
1/13 — Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (2012)
1/13 — Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)
1/14 — Tales Of The Night (2011)
1/15 — Mama (2013)
1/25 — Horror Express (1972)
1/30 — Mulan (1998)
2/3 — My Man Godfrey (1936)
2/6 — Identity Thief (2013)
2/8 — The Emperor's New Groove (2000)
2/10 — Hardware (1990)
2/11 — Side Effects (2013)
2/12 — John Dies At The End (2013)
2/15 — Escape From Planet Earth (2013)
2/17 — Hipsters (2008)
2/19 — Valentine's Day (2010)
2/19 — Stoker (2013)
2/24 — The Quiet Family (1998)
2/25 — War Witch* (2012)
2/26 — Jack The Giant Slayer (2013)
3/2 — The ABCs Of Death (2013)
3/3 — The We And The I (2013)
3/7 — Upside Down (2013)
3/11 — Trance (2013)
3/11 — Stories We Tell (2013)
3/20 — 7 Faces Of Doctor Lao (1964)
3/24 — Rubber (2010)
3/25 — Wrong (2013)
3/27 — The Host (2013)
3/27 — Simon The Magician (1999)
4/8 — Cabin In The Sky (1943)
4/12 — Upstream Color (2013)
4/12 — Primer (2004)
4/14 — John Dies At The End* (2013)
4/15 — Oblivion (2013)
4/16 — Christine (1983)
4/20 — The Woman In Black (2012)
4/21 — Graceland* (2013)
4/25 — Ishtar (1987)
4/27 — Toys In The Attic (2009)
5/1 — Tiny Furniture (2010)
5/1 — Dredd (2012)
5/3 — The Stone Tape (1972)
5/4 — Dunderland (2012)
5/4 — Solomon Kane (2009)
5/5 — La Herencia Valdemar (2010)
5/5 — La Sombra Prohibida (2010)
5/7 — An American Werewolf In London (1981)
5/8 — The Shining (1980)
5/9 — Room 237 (1981)
5/10 — Killer's Kiss (1955)
5/11 — The Great Gatsby (2013)
5/11 — Iron Man 3 (2013)
5/12 — D.O.A. (1950)
5/15 — From Up On Poppy Hill (2013)
5/17 — The Shining (1997)
5/17 — Gaslight (1944)
5/18 — Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)
5/21 — The Way, Way Back (2013)
5/22 — Cleopatra (1963)
5/23 — Now You See Me (2013)
5/23 — Pain & Gain (2013)

Non-film DVDs Seen In 2013

1/13 — How I Met Your Mother Season 6, disc 2
1/13 — Being Human Season 1, disc 1
1/15 — Boardwalk Empire, Season 2, disc 1
1/22 — How I Met Your Mother Season 6, disc 3
2/4 — How I Met Your Mother Season 6, disc 4
2/14 — Community Season 1, disc 3
2/15 — How I Met Your Mother Season 7, disc 1
2/16 — Sons Of Anarchy Season 1, disc 1
3/2 — How I Met Your Mother Season 7, disc 2

Graphic novels 2013

1/14 — Sandman: World's End*

* Denotes something I'd already read/seen at least once before.

Past book/movie lists:

2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005

Polar-bear plunging

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 05:59:47 GMT

I've heard for years about Polar Bear Plunges, where crazy people jump in frigid bodies of water in January, but I'd never actually been to one, so when some friends issued an open invite to come watch them take the plunge, I figured what the hell.

I had no idea it would be such a scene. I went down to North Avenue Beach at 11 a.m. on January 1st, which involved a certain amount of reluctant crawling out of bed five and a half hours after crawling in post-New Year's parties. Standing around waiting for other people to show up, I saw a wide cross-section of people repeat the same cycle: Show up, psych up, strip down, jump in, leap out, suit up, and run away. It was bitterly cold, with a reported wind chill of 15 degrees F, and a stiff wind coming off the choppy lake. I could barely stand to have my gloves off long enough to take pictures, let alone stripping down to a bathing suit.

But so many people did. One group went in in cocktail dresses. Another in bright neon anime wigs. One man was dressed as the New Year's baby, in a top hat and a diaper. Two buff guys went in covered in body paint that made them look like they were wearing skin-tight Batman and Robin suits. One group showed up dressed as Darth Vader, a Hoth Rebel pilot, a sandperson, and an Imperial trooper. It was a wild party where no one lingered: Every 15 minutes, new groups cycled through.

Here's our group. I hung back and held robes and towels and took pictures and boggled:

The thing is, I'm normally a joiner. I see people having fun, I want to have the same fun. I see people doing something wacky, I wish it was me. I see people doing something that fosters camaraderie, and I feel deeply left out if I can't get involved. This may have been my first-ever experience at watching a group bonding by being wild and brave, and not remotely wanting to join in. I want to go back, and I want to see more of this amazing good time. But jumping in that water? No matter how many times I watched people do it, I couldn't imagine doing it myself. Brrrr.

Back to memory, and disappointing exploding chickens

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 01:51:04 GMT

Practically every auto-parts store I've ever visited has a big sign out front forbidding people to use the parking lot for car repair. They presumably do this to keep people from taking up space and getting in the way of further customers, while possibly leaving unwanted motor fluids or car parts behind.

Last night I made Puppy Chow for the New Year's party I was attending (apparently known as Muddy Buddies in some states, which set off a near-violent debate between attendees at that party), but I was a little short on powdered sugar, and the results were a bit too chocolate-sticky and clumpy. So I went by a grocery store on the way down to the party, and bought powdered sugar, and stood out in the parking lot in the bitter wind, doctoring my snack mix and laughing to myself because it was the equivalent of buying a new distributor and then installing it in my car in the parking lot. Fortunately, grocery stores don't have equivalent bans. Probably because it isn't an ongoing problem for them. Which is too bad; I would have liked to have been joined in the parking lot by people adding just-purchased tarragon to their chicken and assembling deviled eggs after adding the right amount of just-purchased mayo to their mix.

The party was thrown by a co-worker and it was lovely, just the right mix of high energy drunkenness and general good humor. At midnight, we ran outside and they set off a series of anticlimactic fireworks. Our drunk, ebullient host S. received a couple of small chicken fireworks from her boyfriend, and got extremely excited, yelling "Chicken chicken chicken!" When my coworker A. and I said we had no idea what those were, she screamed "THEY'RE THE BEST! THEY LAY EGGS OF FIRE!" Then she put them down and lit them, and they each farted out five seconds' worth of sparks, and that was it. They looked like tiny versions of this chicken firework, and did about the same thing — but only once. Given the buildup and the alcohol, it was, at the time, approximately the single funniest thing of all time. It was a good way to start the year: Laughing and cheering and joking and celebrating in a big crazy group of unselfconsciously happy people. Here's to much more of that in the year to come.

My primary goal for 2012 was that it be better than 2011. It wasn't terrific, but it was significantly better. I haven't been updating here much because most of what goes on in my life these days isn't appropriate for public posting, particularly if it involves work in any way. I don't expect that to change. But I would like to get back to posting here more regularly. One thing that would greatly improve my 2013 is if I can find my way back to writing for fun, and make more of a point of journaling to preserve some sense of the day-to-day. Last night's grocery-store parking-lot silliness and chicken explosion are things I'd like to still remember a year from now, and that means I need to start keeping better track of the days. Most of 2011 was a year I just want to forget entirely. 2012 had its moments worth preserving. I'd like 2013 to be a year worth remembering and looking back on fondly. Let's see if we can make that happen.

In which I get my sister to whitewash the fence for me

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 01:28:07 GMT

Got a non-stick springform pan for Christmas, which clearly means it's time to try out this recipe. Which I'm trying to do, with my sister's help, to the degree griping comedically is helpful.

Tara: Haven't you finished that thing yet?

Me: Still haven't started. Remember the part about two minutes ago where I said I was going to start it but I wanted your help?

Tara: I'm pretty sure you also said the most helpful thing I could possibly do was to stay out of your way and play games on your computer while you made a delicious dessert?

Me: No, I said the most helpful thing you could do would be all the work. The least helpful acceptable thing you could do would be to help.

Tara: SIIIIGH. Doing what?

Me: Step one: Find me the rolling pin.

Tara: [Rummaging through drawers.] It isn't here. Failed at stage one, don't have to do anything else, right?

Me: Wrong. Failed at stage one, keep looking until stage one is accomplished.

Tara: [Holding up mini springform pans from a deep dark cabinet.] Why don't you just make miniature ones?

Me: Not enough of a proof of concept.

Tara: What?

Me: Not enough of a proof of concept?

Tara: Can you translate that into dumb-ese?

Me: I wants to try use-ding MY one.

Tara: Why didn't you just say that in the first place? [High-pitched mocking voice she's used to indicate my ridiculousness for like a decade now.] Oh, my name is Tasha, I'm so smarty-smart that when normal people would say normal stuff, I say it in a smarty-smart way instead.

Me: I don't sound anything like that at all!

Tara: Yes you do. Only smarter.

[Note: I'm sitting on my butt typing this while she's doing all the prep work of grinding graham crackers into crumbs for me, so clearly I AM the smarty-smart one. Nyah.)

And now she's complaining that we might get snowed out of the house

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 17:39:53 GMT

Back in Maryland for the holiday season, like I do.

Back in the loving arms of my sarcastic sister, leading to many conversations like this:

Tara: Why aren't you ready yet?

Me: Still getting ready. Here, read this article while I finish.

Tara: Awwww, READING? Reading is HARD. Why can't you read it to me?

Me: You wanted me to get ready so we could go.

Tara: Why can't you read it to me and get ready at the same time?

Me: Because most of what I have to do is put in my contacts, and it's hard to read while poking things into my eyes?

Tara: Man, you complain a lot.

ETA: Showed this to her for her approval, and she complained that I didn't use her "usual pseudonym, Busty Galore." Also, "I like that story, because it makes me look awesome, and makes you look like the big complainer you are."

It's a beautiful day in the toilethood

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:18:15 GMT

Me: So I had this dream last night that we'd moved to a gigantic house, but every room was packed so full of useless junk that we could barely move. Like, there was a broken mannequin propped up in our bed and piles of broken furniture everywhere and a couple of toddlers' toilets full of water in the bedroom, one of which was a pink Barbie toilet with endlessly cycling water. And when I saw them, I realized you'd put them out thinking the cat would drink more if there was water everywhere. But I think it's pretty easy to interpret what prompted this dream and what it means. I'd really like you to stop filling the house with unnecessary toy toilets.

Cass: [From another room.] STOP SUFFOCATING ME!

Me: Look, if you really think you need that giant toy toilet collection… Hey, wait. Is this one of those ironic things where you're currently being murdered but I'm misinterpreting? Am I going to walk in there after a big misguided speech and find you on the floor as the Mad Suffocator comes for me?

Cass: Glurk, thud.

Me: Well, crap.

I gave it up cold turkey when I was like 11

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:13:40 GMT

We are SO BUSY at work. Busy enough that while Cass and I ran off to a cabin in the woods for my birthday again, I still spent much of Saturday and Sunday writing, watching movies, and writing about them. Busy enough that Editor Genevieve is going mildly crazy. I know it's bad when she doesn't feel she has time for capital letters or punctuation in IM chats:

Genevieve: i'm toying with the idea of sleeping at the office and pulling an all-nighter this week

Me: Not until they move cots in here. I'm not sleeping on that floor.

Genevieve: i'll get one of those hammocks that hang from the ceiling

Me: Ooh, get me one too! Office sleepover!

Genevieve: this iz us:

Me: I would not sleep in those shoes.

Genevieve: quitter

Me: …what exactly am I quitting here? Quitting wearing clogs to bed?

Genevieve: being FABULOUS

Oh yeah, THAT one rule

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 07:39:53 GMT

I don't even know how to contextualize this one, except that it made me laugh like a crazy person. We were watching Glee — we don't hate-watch it so much as strip-mine it for the bits we like, while griping about what a crazy, inconsistent, profoundly illogical show it is, and how badly the characters behave. And we fell into a pop-culture-reference K-hole:

Rachel on Glee, bossing her ex around: "Don't let them give up on their dreams. And promise me one thing —"

Cass: "I just want you to do one thing. Dedicate your life to doing whatever it is that I want you to do."

Me: "I promise that I will never die, or have any goals other than the ones you lay out for me."

Cass: See? That was just one thing! Because I only have one rule: Everybody has to fight, nobody gives up, nobody gets left behind, everybody gives their all —

Me: — and Rachel wins no matter what the competition is, and Kurt gets to compete even though he isn't a student, and wasn't even invited to this competition —

Cass: — and the person whose middle name starts with a letter that's alphabetically closest to the current day of the week feeds the hamster!

Me: …I don't think I remember that part of the rule.

Cass: THERE'S JUST ONE RULE! HOW COULD YOU FORGET IT?