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Wax poetic
2008-03-16 18:19:00
Rick Astley Originally uploaded by klutzoboy Actually, since it's been a pretty horrible weekend and I don't really feel like complaining (for once), how's about I just regale these here Internets with some stupid stuff:1. (see above) The Flickr Song Chart pool. As Swissmiss puts it, have a look, and just accept that you aren't getting anything else done for the rest of the day. None of them quite approach the logistical genius of the XKCD '90s Flowchart, but a fair few come awfully close.2. Simon's Cat:Part of a series of short animations by Simon Tofield of Tandem Studio. Cute; furthermore, doubly entertaining when your own cat hears the ani-cat miaoing out of your computer speakers, and freaks out.(This reminds me: I just bought a Roomba. And while I'm not 100% convinced by the performance of this year's must-have lazy housework gadget, it was worth the purchase just to watch the cat interact with it. I am telling you, it's better than television, and television doesn...

One down ...
2008-03-09 18:59:00
Well, we made it through another one - this time around it was the Cyclone Ballroom Classic, a few hours away at Iowa State University in Ames. A small comp, so not much actual, well, competition, but we did walk away with first-place ribbons in all our events and, as a fun surprise, a scholarship award. We've got some bigger competitions coming up in the next few months, so the whole thing was a nice, relaxing experience as preparation for what's to come later in the year - and, as always, it's good to see the same group of couples and spectators that you run into at all the area events. Some of the dancers I knew from Moline had come out for the day, too, so the end result was sort of a big-happy-family thing - which is a nice contrast to feeling old and out of place, which can be a real danger when it's just you, your partner, and 27,000 18-year-old college kids.Iowa State is S's alma mater, so after the whole shebang was over (for us, at least) we wandered around the campus...

Mixed bag
2008-03-02 06:16:00
Right, then - I've been busy being all dancery in preparation for next weekend's Cyclone Classic, so I'll just wimp out and share some links. Fortunately, they're tasty links courtesy E the P, so thank him for his kindness in providing you with this:[Photo removed per Flickr's auto-post-to-blog feature lacking correct attribution, er, attributes - but worth clicking on the link below anyway. Really.] Er, um, what is it again? Answer: a sleeveface, whereby you apparently rifle through your old LPs for albums with people's heads/arms/backsides on them, substitute them for your own, and snap a photo. Which is just about the best thing I've heard of all week. Now, I just need to get my bad self down down to a used record store, since I don't want photos of Me As Jon Anderson From Yes floating around on the Internet.Or, if superposing Cyndi Lauper's head on your own isn't artsy enough for you, there's always this:Okay, or maybe not. But the point is that the folks at the Londo...
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One big happy
2008-02-25 04:54:00
Because it's supposed to snow AGAIN this week - maybe all week - and just because, we interrupt this week's irregularly-scheduled blather for a big ol' list of things that make Dzesika happy.Try it yourself. It's a good experience. Or, if you're feeling particularly generous, add your own in the comments below.CatsSunshineSitting by the fireWarmth in generalFeeling restedPost-exercise endorphinsYogaAny kind of dancingJuxtapositionMusic with textureMusic with rhythmMusic with sparse instrumentationVintage clothesHippie shopsPedestrian mallsGoing for walksCreating things - anything, reallyMountainsBeachesReally nice hotelsVinyl recordsQuirky used-record storesBookstoresInteresting shoesHerbal teaHeavy blanketsHot tubsSaunasLooong showersUnscheduled tourismFreethinkersFeministsSecular BuddhismLive musicCoffee housesEclectic decoratingSilversmithingPlanetariaBike ridesBeing near the waterSummer road tripsKCRW-style radio stations (or KBCO before they sold out)Twirly skirtsDangly ea...
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Big generator
2008-02-18 02:00:00
Stupid snow. Stupid, stupid snow. Apparently, we're pushing the limit for the most snow Iowa has ever seen in a year, ever. I spent an hour today digging the driveway out of a good foot and a half of the stuff, and came in to find that I couldn't much feel my fingertips. Also, my wrist hurts from having to sling the snow four-odd feet up and over the mini-glaciers that have accumulated on either side of the driveway (the end result of which means that pulling into the street, visibility-wise, kind of feels like being launched from the ramp of a pinball machine. Especially if there's ice.)In desperation and a desire to get some circulation back into my fingers, I checked the long-term forecast on the Old Farmer's Almanac, which tells me we're going to be hit hard until the second week of March, at which point it might let up now and then. Into freezing rain. Oh, that is just so exactly what I wanted to hear.At least the bulk of all our travel-related stuff has more or less happe...
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Rest in peace, C6904
2008-02-11 03:40:00
So this weekend, I managed to destroy not one, but two pairs of dance shoes. The first went gracefully - or, rather, wore out due to a combination of too many hours on the floor (heh) and the fact that they were, quite honestly, rather cheap and nasty shoes from Apple:Despite the fact that the company got my credit card information stolen, and the shoes are just poorly-made knockoffs of real manufacturers' models, I've still bought, what, three pairs from these guys? ... just because they're comfortable, and I know what size works for me in what models, and even at the accelerated rate at which they wear out, at $65, they're still cheaper than the $150 you'll easily drop on a pair of real shoes. Like, say, the other pair that died this weekend, the standard-issue Supadance court shoes that were the first pair I ever owned (bought off eBay, bad idea) and have been terrible since they day I first put them on.Anyway, they're my spare emergency shoes, and they came to Chicago this...
More About: Peace , Rest In Peace , Rest

Serenity becomes you
2008-02-05 04:44:00
Rather a void of non-newsiness on this end, spare that I was utterly incapacitated by some sort of flu-beast last week, which also happened to be the (exponentially) busiest week of the year at the office, and so when I wasn't flailing about trying to get stuff done, I was just flailing about in general, and now I'm all flailed out and just want to go to sleep for about a week. Except that life goes on and all of that, and there's stuff to do and a lesson in Chicago this weekend to prepare for, and ...Actually, oddly enough, I've been in a ridiculously good mood the past day or two, owing to my newly-rediscovered ability to breathe, taste food, walk without wheezing, etc etc. It's amazing how good normal can feel when you don't have it for a while.S was amazing in the midst of all this influenza-influenced chaos and did things like drive to the store in a giant windstorm to buy me drugs, so in some small gesture of recompense, we're going to go see Laura Love perform at Legio...
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Lists: making unrelated things seem related
2008-01-28 01:45:00
Real quick now, here's three things that make me happy:1. A few years back when I was still in London, I made up some sheets of stickers for the should-exist-but-doesn't HMDPI, aka Her Majesty's Design and Typography Inspectorate. They got passed around to a bunch of friends, and the idea was to keep a few in your handbag or wallet and stick 'em up when you found some poorly-kerned concert poster, an egregious use of stock photography in some shop window or - worse yet - any occurrence of Comic Sans, anywhere, for any reason. It was fun, but, well, we didn't get arrested.Anyway, someone definitely one-upped me on this one, namely design-police.org, where you can find (and download) your own warning stickers and put them, well, everywhere. Favourites include The inch glyph is NOT a speech mark and Microsoft Word is not a design tool:I realise I'm committing a design-related offence by displaying a poorly-resized and illegible rendition of these stickers. Pot kettle black.2. If ...
More About: Lists , Things , Related

Projection
2008-01-21 02:00:00
So I get all fired up about something that sounds like fun, and start a project involving whatever it is, and then I twig to the fact that I'm doing eleventeen thousand different things. Such as ...1. Knitting S a scarf out of fantastic, soft brown-and-cream twisted wool from Crazy Girl in Iowa City. I finally learned how to do a decent stockinette stitch, which is brilliant (OK, I know this doesn't take much: knit one row, purl one row, repeat ad infinitum. But for Little Miss Knits-once-a-year, this is kind of a Big Deal.)2. Fixing my topline. Ever since our lesson a few weeks ago, I've been suspiciously paranoid that my back has been crafted with the somehow inexplicable exclusion of lat muscles. Because I can't feel them yet, and I need them to dance with any degree of stability in my topline. Remember that part in 'Dirty Dancing' when Patrick Swayze went on about 'your dance space. My dance space'? Well, actually, that's kinda true. So, these last two weeks at the offi...
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Dancing with 'Dancing with ...'
2008-01-13 20:13:00
We're good enough actors to not let on that it's -15 degrees on that stage.So, the day after I throw my little pity party about The Dancing , I get this e-mail from the owner of a studio I used to go to when I worked in Moline, trying to get together some local amateur couples to perform in the 'Dancing with the Stars' tour as it comes through town. And, having no real sense of reason or propriety when it comes to random glittery events, I manage to convince S that competing against a bunch of other local couples, in a style we don't do (apparently, Latin is much sexier than our own kettle of fish, International Standard, when it comes to the ticket-buying general public), at a big arena in front of thousands of people, on five days' notice, would somehow be a Good Thing.And, actually, it kind of was. Although we didn't win, and I didn't get a kiss from Wayne Newton when he trawled the crowd later in the show singing 'Danke Schoen.' (Although I suppose that, now that I've ...

Two step
2008-01-07 02:26:00
Just got back from two days in Chicago, and a drive there and back that for once didn't involve either rain or snow - just a nice, relaxing trip, good dancing and good food and a good night's sleep in a decent hotel. Our coach and his partner have just moved their studio to a new location, and they had an opening party to celebrate - they showed off some very pretty new American Smooth routines, and some of their students did their show numbers, and there was tons of good social dancing and a giant bowl of tiramisu, which now I've decided all good dance parties should have: more tiramisu, please.Anyway, S and I haven't had a lesson in a few months, because we can only get out to Chicago once a month or so ... and then, for our last scheduled coaching in the beginning of December, there was a giant ice storm and we had to cancel at the last possible second, what with the cars running off the road everywhere and all. And it all kind of went downhill from there - holidays and busy-...
More About: Step

Year in revue
2008-01-01 16:15:00
First thing first: the lemon polenta cake I mentioned below. In the end, I (of course) went with the simpler of the two recipes, hacking it up a bit by baking it in a springform pan (no aesthetic reason; just figured it would be less likely to break up when I tried to get it on a serving plate), swapping the lemon extract for fresh lemon juice (you'll need more than the 2tsp suggested, since lemon extract is stronger than real-life lemons) and throwing in some dried orange peel (because that one real-life lemon does not create the six teaspoons of zest the recipe called for. Not even close). Anyway, I sliced the remaining fruit into thin slices and floated them on top of the batter before the cake went in. It turned out beautifully - the polenta adds a really unique texture and it's just sweet enough to avoid being cloying. (Actually, the recipe's quite simple, and if it didn't have a stick and a half of butter in it, it would be rather good for you.) Next time, as my springform...
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Eat your heart out, John McCrea
2007-12-29 19:06:00
Well, not really; I'm actually talking about cake the food, not Cake the band:One of the worst things about the holidays is having to cope with the omnipresent goodies (yup, me, six pounds up and counting this season), but the exception is that Christmastime always brings cake. Lots of cake. And I love cake, enough so that it became sort of a long-running joke at my last office, to the point that whenever anyone dropped some off in the break room I'd get a handful of e-mails within five minutes informing me of the happy fact. Mmm, cake. (And ice cream. That's two of your food groups right there.)Anyway, my plate this week has been graced by homemade red velvet cake with boiled icing (S made the beast, I iced it, and somehow managed not to get too many red cake specks in the white icing), and homemade white chocolate cheesecake with fresh raspberries (I had nothing at all to do with its preparation, which is probably why it was so delicious - cheesecakes flummox me). And, since th...
More About: John , Heart

That was the week that ...
2007-12-28 06:41:00
Well, so, yes, post-Christmas summary, because I'm sure no one else is bogged down by the boring details of their own lives:1. I finally got a library card, after having to get my driver's license renewed (so I had proof of correct address - out of area, it's $150 a year to check out books), visit two branches (one had dead computers) and do a few donuts in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen (because I cannot follow directions to save my soul, even when my destination is pointed out by big green signs marked 'Library' and bearing an icon of a little man reading a book).2. Which means I have lots of new CDs to try not to sing along to at the office.3. Which means I must have my laptop back, or else I'd be forced to actually play the CDs instead of throwing them on my iPod. (Library police, please don't come and get me.)4. And this meant realising I'd lost all the documentation for my laptop, and therefore not remembering whether the bloody thing was still under warranty, and ...
More About: Week

Lull
2007-12-22 03:23:00
Ah, Christmas. Finally I have a few days off. Finally no interruptions. Finally, I can write about all the stuff I've been meaning to write about, in grave and beautiful detail, for weeks and weeks.Ah, the time of year when the power cord for my laptop just ups and dies, at complete random. The time when, even if you can manage to order a replacement power supply the same day as this catastrophe, the postal service won't be able to get it to you in any reasonable time period, it being the holidays and all.I guess that means I can't work from home, though, which is decidedly an up side.

Saturday: so cheap and juicy!
2007-12-16 02:01:00
For the longest time, I couldn't listen to any music at work (apparently, getting your InDesign on with your headphones on is somehow Severely Disrespectful), and so now that I've got a shiny new job and I can break out the iPod in full view of others (or just crank up the turntable that's in the corner of the office), I'm feeling severely music-blighted. And, since iTunes is finally owning up to the idea that offering only a few items in their shiny iTunes Plus format (not to mention at twice the price) is pretty damn dumb, I've been hitting the downloads a little too hard. Still, it's great to have (a) some new music (b) some time to enjoy it.Latest purchases: Regina Spektor's 'Begin to Hope' and Jesca Hoop's 'Kismet', both of which I've been playing on a semi-endless loop for most of the week. Both are gorgeous in an alternately hyperactive/strung-out, Bjork-meets-Fiona-Apple sort of way - a sound that's becoming a bit too popular to really be what the cool kids are...
More About: Saturday , Cheap

Focus your group on this, buddy
2007-12-09 15:52:00
What happens at the company Christmas party, because you're all a bunch of designery types, is you're reminded of stuff like the below video, which is a little bit funny if you've never worked in design, and a lot funny (and a little painful because it's too true) if you have:And while on the subject of geeky videos, check out this sad-but-true account of what happened when a real, live ad agency ran Apple's iconic '1984' Super Bowl spot past a real, live focus group of people (who apparently never watched the 1984 Super Bowl). To spoil the punch line, apparently one of the most talked-about ads of all time would have been drastically improved by the addition of a chimpanzee and, of course, making the logo bigger.And one more, courtesy of Randomday Industries: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs duke it out in the clean white space of the Mac TV adverts, plus a surprise visit from a wizened legend.Anyway, between the office party and the going out to buy a Christmas tree (and realisin...
More About: Buddy , Focus , Group

Save us, Gaussian Avenger
2007-12-05 01:23:00
You know, because there have just been so many nights I've stayed up late wondering 'What if the Adobe Creative Suite were actually a breakfast cereal?', the good folks over at Photoshop Cafe did us all a huge favour by sponsoring a contest to that effect, viz:Hungry to find out what your favourite filters look like when anthropomorphised into box-top superheroes (because, after all, every cereal worth its modified corn starch has a mascot)? Hop on over to the Cafe for a second helping.On a completely unrelated note, because it is cold as hell (no, wait, that doesn't make sense) here in beautiful Midwesternania and there is nothing nice outside to do until, say, April, a few of us from the office went to go see No Country for Old Men last night; it turned out to be one of those films that I'm glad I went to go see even though I spent most of the two hours (and it really was a two-hour film; when did movies go full-length again?) digging my nails into my arm at just how unflinch...
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(Not tasty) freeze
2007-12-01 18:56:00
We had to cancel our lesson today because driving five hours to Chicago in the middle of a giant ice storm was probably a bad idea. And I mean serious ice storm, as in make sure you've got batteries for the flashlights and lots of blankets and spare non-perishables to nosh on.At least for the time being the power is still on, so I can Fight Boredom on the Internets and make plans for what I want to do to the ice storm, e.g. punch it in the kisser as below:Yeah. Stupid ice. Pow. I need a blackboard.
More About: Freeze

Turkeyed
2007-11-23 20:50:00
Still high on Thanksgiving tryptophan, and I'm thinking about other sorts of turkeys, namely the fact that I'm sadly ignorant of just about every single potential candidate in the upcoming presidential election (and no longer have the expat excuse for apathy going for me). So, ahem, I figured I'd read up on the issues this morning since I've got a rare day of utterly nothing to do. Sure. Whatever. After all, election coverage = complete melee. Fortunately (and I say this with tongue planted firmly in cheek), we've got Web 2.0 to save us! For those of us who are too busy (or have too short of an attention span) to actually get out and do the research, the '08 election offers pick-your-candidate quizzes galore, from the seemingly unbiased but highly simplistic Glassbooth to the definitely-has-an-agenda Catholic Voting Project. I'm of two minds about this whole phenomenon: on the one hand, voting for someone is a whole lot better than voting for no one, but on the other hand, it...

Atumnal mumble
2007-11-19 05:19:00
Hard to believe, really, that Thanksgiving - my second one back in Americania - is upon us as soon as, well, this week; stranger still that (a) I'm still in Iowa (b) spending the holiday with a boy (c) and his extended family. Not that I'm terribly nervous about it or anything; truth be told, it'll probably be less chaotic than the extended-family Turkey Day bash I've been to most other years I've been here. It's just ... a little bit unexpected. (And nice.)Went back and spent this weekend with M&D, as I won't be having the holiday with them this time around, and had a nice time, but also realised that, after a month away from theirs, 'home' was now a bit more in Cedar Rapids than it had been at their place. Interesting. Suppose a lot of it has to do with the fact that I've been trying to keep myself busy; haven't managed to find a lot of doing-stuff-with-other-people stuff yet (unfortunately there's no Stitch 'n' Bitch in CR), but so far have been able to track down a...

Frankie say ...
2007-11-11 14:22:00
This week I've been having dreams about London. And I'm always playing out the same scene: seeing the last bits of the city before I move back to these parts. And I always wake up with the same mix of emotions: relieved that it's already happened and I don't have to go through it again, delighted at all the silly American creature comforts, and gutted at having to replay leaving my favourite city behind ... yet again.It's been a little over a year, which means I'm starting to forget things (in the last rerun of my dream, I couldn't remember the overland route from Marylebone to King's Cross), and most of the sting has faded, but it still gets me every time. And I do wonder if maybe I hadn't returned to the glowing, pulsing-with-ham-salad heart of the Midwest, it wouldn't be so bad, at least conceptually, because even though I know somewhere in the centre of my mind that being here is a good strategic decision and the people are nice and the cost of living is really reasona...

Get down
2007-11-04 17:34:00
If, someday, S and I ever manage to run the World's Greatest Dance Studio Ever, Volume 43 (the plans are all down on paper, there's just this little snag about funding the place), I want a version of the above, which is apparently a dance floor that converts energy from being trod upon into electricity that you can use to, well, power the studio some more (so the parties can last longer, natch). This thing actually exists at the Sustainable Dance Club in Rotterdam, where it's apparently huge news, and therefore hopefully by the point in time where having one of my own would be even a distant possibility, they'd have addressed the central problem, namely: It's kind of difficult to dance on a floor that moves up and down to your weight. But anyway. Maybe we can have a disco room off the back of our SuperDuperDreamStudio or something - that would give me an excuse to buy that 20-foot mirrorball I've always wanted.So I'm back to Cedar Rapids again, cat on lap next to laptop, reco...

Startup
2007-10-28 16:31:00
Okay, so, I've adjusted fairly well to a first week of this whole living-with-someone thing, except for one part, namely, the bit where S sits there and reads all the recipes out of the French cookbook at 10.30 on a Sunday morning and makes me hungry.But yes. It's been a while since I've lived with someone who isn't just a flatmate, i.e. someone you have to coordinate things like shopping and cleaning and cooking with rather than just doing your own thing all the time. When you've got a flatmate, you can get home from the office three hours late and have a bowl of cereal for supper and leave all your clothes on the floor; when there's someone more important than a roomie waiting around for you, that doesn't fly quite so well. I think I'm not very good at this. But I suppose it's a start.Work's going well, I'm settling in, have interesting projects to work on and a new copy of Creative Suite 3 that features buttons in funny places and no Adobe GoLive, due to application-ce...
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Continuity
2007-10-23 04:57:00
Well, here I am, ten p.m. What day is it?Finally settled in, post-moving, post-first-day-at-new job, currently thoroughly confused about mechanics of new workplace (but no worries), full up on black bean soup from lovely night cooking with S, all muscle-stretchy from doing the New York City Ballet Workout, relaxed from a nice glass of Viognier, etc etc.And honestly, coming here to say hello is a bit of a stretch. I've kept this journal for what, four years now? It's seen me through a lot. I hate to give it up - if only for the sake of the five or six friends who read it on a regular basis - and I don't plan on giving it up, but I have the feeling I'll be a bit in absentia while the patterns of my life shake out over the next few weeks.In any case, all's going well. Learning where certain essentials are (Lowe's for picture hanging materials, Perkins for Forbidden French Silk Pie), figuring out exactly how long drive to office takes (nine minutes), and all that good stuff.Odd ho...
More About: Continuity , Nuit , Conti

Get your toe shoes on
2007-10-17 04:06:00
Apparently, if you haven't yet seen Gary Brolsma do the Numa Numa dance, you've been hiding under a rock (or doing better things with your life than hang out on YouTube) ... apparently, it's the second-most-watched viral video of all time, though I have absolutely no idea how anyone would gather a statistic like that.Anyway, there have been about eleventeen million parodies made of this whole Numa Numa phenomenon (which, by the way, also works rather well as an uptempo hustle), but by far - by far - the best is this one. Now excuse me while I go sign up for more ballet classes.
More About: Shoes

Going postal
2007-10-16 03:55:00
Open letter to whoever at the U.S. Postal Service went and opened my mail:You, sir or madam, are a jerk and a bully and a spoilsport. Because Sofie came all the way to America, and my dad got all hopeful because he thought she might have brought me some Jelly Babies, being that they're his favourite of all the crazy British food I used to bring back when I came home to visit. And being how getting Dad to say five words in a row is kind of a stretch, Sofie was sufficiently impressed to go home and buy him some Jelly Babies and put them in a box and mail them to me so he could get his glucose fix.And then you, U.S. Postal Service Bully, had to go and spoil the fun by opening her parcel and confiscating the Jelly Babies and not even leaving a note - just some sort of sticker saying something like 'opened on the authority of USPS.'I am not pleased. Actually, I am hungry. So is Dad.Apparently, not rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor dead of night, will keep these carriers from messing abou...
More About: Going , Goin

Rockin' da 319
2007-10-13 05:10:00
So I promised some photos of NYC a while back, which I was woefully lax about following up on until now: there are two albums, one here and the other here. They're both hosted on Facebook (since my Flickr account expired a few weeks ago and I'm too cheap at the moment to renew), so if you're not part of the Facebookcenti it'll probably pester you a bunch of times to register. If you do, friend me (grr verbing nouns grr) ... and, incidentally, welcome to the biggest time sink on the whole Interweb.The Sönic Death Hämster above wasn't included (this time) on our NYC/Iowa/Chicago extravaganza, but the whole week was such a good time that we've decided we're going to repeat it on the west coast in '10 ... as a road trip. T-shirts of said hämster (complete with superfluous röckdöts) will, of course, be mandatory. Want to come along?In the meantime ... it's Friday, I have one more week at the office and (partially due to the fact that we had a leaving lunch today, which made...

Clear as ...?
2007-10-09 23:17:00
On my lunchtime walk today, glittering up at me from the little fissure between two squares of sidewalk, was a tiny, perfect crystal ball. Okay, actually, it was just a renegade marble that at some point in the past had come to a stop between a few slabs of concrete, but when I picked it up, dusted it off on my shirt cuff and held it up to the light, I had a second's chill down my spine that maybe I could see the future. (Or, at the very least, some really fabulous orange leaves drifting down from a tree on the next block.)Sure, I'm a die-hard sentimentalist, and sure, I'm waxing poetic here, but I did carry the marble all the way back to the office, where it's now leaned up against the spine of my to-do notebook. It's a scary book at the moment - 53 unfinished projects and counting - because I've got another two weeks here, having called the office from a waiting lounge at JFK airport last week and handed in my notice. I came back to a big ol' list of stuff that needs to get...
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Natural mellowing agents
2007-10-07 15:28:00
I'm playing catchup (ketchup?) from my holiday, which apparently (like ketchup) had Natura l Mellowing Agents , because I'm well-rested and fat and happy from all the food and touristy stuff and too much laughing with S and S. We were in NYC for a long weekend (which deserves a post all its own, and photos), and in the interest of showing Sofie both extremes of the States, came back to Iowa, where we hung out in Cedar Rapids for a while (yo yo rockin' da 319! Or something!), bought tchotchkes at the Amana Colonies (and made bad jokes about the creme horns at one of the 5,012 bakeries), went charity-shop-hopping in Muscatine (where I almost bought an entire marching band uniform for seven bucks, then regained my sanity) and similar good stuff. Returned Sofie home via O'Hare, which involved an actually very nice Holiday Inn, some slightly scary CTA rides, a distinct lack of getting Sofie her birthday Cosmopolitan (so she'll just have to come back, right?) and deep-dish spinach at G...
More About: Ural , Gent