27.2.08

Bad Sign

Um, is it a problem that i think therapy made me depressed today? I left thinking, "What a waste of time / who cares about my boring stories / why do i talk with my hands so much? it's really annoying / could I start ONE FREAKING SENTENCE with something besides 'I don't know'?"

paying my bills. THAT will make me feel better, I'm sure.

25.2.08

green slime

Anna Thomas in The New Vegetarian Epicure adores nopalitos, so when d's grocery store was having a sale on the little bags of chopped, de-needled cactus paddles, i bought some. Anna Thomas has provided me with some lovely food after all.

I used store-bought salsa instead of making my own, but i did separate eggs and cook griddle cakes while my nopalitos boiled away. In their viscous liquid. ew. I had high hopes, but they were shattered.

It looked so beautiful, my yellow corn griddle cakes heaped with green nopalitos, red salsa, white yogurt and sprinkled with toasted pine nuts. And it was- except for the nasty slimy texture of the nopalitos from the black lagoon. Which made the whole time-intensive meal really inedible. I still have a sort of film of slime in my mouth. Totally gross. I'm NOT saving the leftovers.

23.2.08

adventures, polar and otherwise

first, YES INDEED liz, i am going to girlyman. in fact, deb and jr are also going- his first concert experience. so excited to hear you're coming to visit- look forward to seeing you then!

d and jr and i actually had an activity today. We went to Northerly Island's polar adventure days. All those little kids! but it was lovely, warm (for February) and icy/muddy. we created snowflakes out of pipecleaners, went on an adventure walk, drank hot chocolate, petted siberian huskies, did science experiements and watched owls. i felt really good about getting out of the house. i look forward to going to northerly island again in the summertime- it's so strange to have this big open field so close to downtown. i mean, the landscaped pristineness of museum campus is one thing, but a bit of prairie is another.

Oh, and can I just say- Ch and I are learning the new system and it is not fun. We both feel like we've been speaking strange languages in a foriegn country. I know someday we'll get it- but I don't know if we'll ever love it. We're also transitioning to upper and lower case. And since I now have to deal with it at work, I think it's time for me to type like a grownup. So from now on, I'm going to attempt to use the shift key. Let's journey together into this new land.

18.2.08

google reader

so i've switched to google reader from bloglines. it seemed to be what all the cool kids were doing. and it also seemed like a good time to tell you about the blogs i read. because i want you to read them too. more importantly i want you to tell me about the blogs i SHOULD read. because i know there are more people with facinating lives who will let me spy on them. who am i missing?

In Alphabetical Order:
below the eight. i started to read because she left a comment about my kitty once. Fraulein N is funny and lives in philly and now wears skirts- what's not to like?

cta tattler. an essential read for any chicagoian, especially a public transit rider, ESPECIALLY a red line commuter. this is my life.

disconnected train cars of thought. my friend pam's blog. i miss going to school with her- i believe in reading any blogs of people i know and like in real life.

dooce". come on. you could TELL me you don't read dooce, but i probably wouldn't believe you.

(en)gender. "she's not the man i married" is on my booklist, but until i read it i'll just read the author's blog.

from the mayor's desk my mother, with her taste in older men, i think is a little in love with the mayor of reading. and please, who doesn't love a mayor with a blog, especially an elderly one? it makes me feel a little charmed towards my hometown.

girlyblog i'm a girlyman fan, and so i read a girlyblog.

here be subtletyjamie's blog, my first blogging friend. i' so glad she's back online again! these are the new friends i want to meet, bloggers like jamie.

misanthropic tendencies" sarah's blog, which though i enjoyed before, keeps getting better and better. i want to be friends with krista and sarah in real life. i should really get on the moving to philly thing.

monochromatic girl krista's blog, which i keep on my blogroll in hopes she will someday update again.

my girl purple the girlfriend's blog. where you can catch everything i'm too lazy to write about.

one shoe offliz's blog, another blog i miss. a blog i seem to ALWAYS click through to leave comments on.

pesky apostrophe more philly, more knitting, more local veggies. i never have to worry about mac not posting.

smartypants diary secret confession: i look for mz. smartypants everywhere i go. she just lives a mile or so due west of me. she rides the redline to work. she takes the devon street bus. i keep hoping i'll bump into nora on the street someday. reading a blog that's set in your city is even more exciting than watching a movie set in your city

the panopticon again, i secretly imagine spotting franklin at hydrate or cocktail some night. and i'll actually recognize him since he's a celebrity blogger i've actually met! i NEVER leave comments for him, though, because all those knittin ladies worldwide leave so many twittery comments that by the time i scroll all the way to the bottom it seems it's all been said.

postsecret. again, if you don't like postcards, you must at least like art. if you don't like art, you must at least like secrets. i can't imagine anyone not getting sucked into postsecret.

womenfolk one of jamie's great suggestions, the free downloads have given me some amazing new artists. i hope it gets up and running again soon!

finally, i have a whole folder dedicated to comics, since i finally don't get the paper anymore. it's such a pain to click through i won't post links unless you really really want them and can't be bothered to do a google search yourself, but i read:
a softer world, agnes, doonesbury, for better or for worse, frank & ernest, opus, pearls before swine, and real life adventures.


ok, that's what i read! what do you read?

17.2.08

free!

and on vacation! oh, the weekend feels so wonderful! there was SUN today! actual sun BEAMS coming in through my windows onto my bed! which i stayed curled up in! it made me feel full of exclamation marks! i read and read! and ate granola bars! and talked to a! and stayed in bed!
then ch called, and invited me over, so i took a shower and crawed into sweats and went to his house for sunbeams and peppermint tea and cookies and chocolates and video games! and then hugo didn't have rehersal so he came over too!
and then i came home and i finished spinning my yarn! and then i blocked it!

but now it is late. and dark. and i stayed up too late wasting time on the internet. trying to get an overdue credit card payment made. not uploading pictures. not making a laundry bag or reading my book. oh well. there is only so much one can get done.

15.2.08

i'm BACK!

i've read my email, i've caught up on google reader, next thing you know i'll be uploading pictures to flickr! the holiday went really well. amazingly well, considering it was all on paper. our system worked. we hung together. we had a great team. everything got made, everything got delivered. we had one box of roses left in the cooler a the end of yesterday. we rock.

and my gf was super sweet and gave me just the kind of v-day i can most appriciate. (see her blog for details) you've got it good when you're loved in the ways you want, regardless of how the lover feels.

oh! need to email about that sewing teacher job! it may come to be something, yet!

11.2.08

the week begins

i feel like i can already blog about the next few days. tomorrow: wake up, yoga, breakfast, work, snack, yoga, bed. wake up, yoga, breakfast, work, snack, yoga, bed. thursday, wake up even earlier, yoga if motivated, hearty breakfast, work....

who knows what my life holds after that? i'm at the point of the holiday where i can't imagine life after it.
actually, i'm at the point of the holiday where i've spent so much time anticipating it, i can't handle it actually BEING here, working of 38 the next 72 hrs. my feet hurt already. however, i've been ddoing all paperwork, and so have no thorns in the hands yet. i feel like it's been days since i've touched a flower! it's all card messages and credit cards for me.

10.2.08

last weekend

oh, it's been nice. friday night was d's actual birthday, and i'd spent more money than i had on taking her to milwaukee, so i just cooked out of my share for dinner for her. she had nasty traffic taking jr to his dad's, so i had a nice leasurely time cooking myself before she came. i made my favourite new recipie,the delicious cauliflower basil soup. and i had more lettuce to use up, so i tried anne's much hyped all recipies dot com. and there i found this little salad which delighted and astounded us. i'd never melted sugar on the stovetop before, and i was quite proud of myself. it was stupendously delicious... especially for a SALAD, featuring LETTUCE.

saturday we slept in, and were lazy. lots of book reading happened this weekend. d's into harry potter right now, so she's had a tome she's been lugging around for a while. and i started devil in the white city again, and i think i'm going to finish it this time, even if i don't have a crush on erin mckeown anymore. i cleaned up my hotspots in my house, which was very good for preparing my house and mind for vday, and then d made dinner while i went to the laundromat. (thank you liz. now instead of focusing on the laundry part of the trip, i can rejoice in the automated-ness of it. instead of being grumpy about pushing my laundry over the icy sidewalks and through the snow, i can be glad i'm not out at the river with a washboard or boiling pots on my stove. instead, it's remincient of that fabulous german slang for atm, bankomat.)
after dinner we went to the valentines day square dance and had just a great time. hugo showed up to take ch home, and d and i ended up having a party over at ch's, and we drank, stayed up late, ate cheese fondue and played elfenland. whoo hoo!

this morning was pretty much more of the same. i'd finished most of my list yesterday, so there was little i HAD to do today. i put away what laundry was dry, did some mending, and then d and i made yet another meal- my fridge is stocked with lentil-y dishes and other yummy sustainance. we played more games- rook and cribbage- and she took my recycling for me, since we didn't manage to leave the house today. so everytihng on my list is ready for the holiday.

bring it on!

7.2.08

milwaukee

d's typing all about milwaukee on her blog so i don't feel that compelled to give you the minute by minute here, too. it was VERY different for me to plan it because i couldn't ask her advice. i didnt' realize how much of my travel planning is compromise, bouncing ideas off my fellow travelers. but i did have a great time doign it with my two new resources. first, i love virtual tourist. better than any travel guide one can check out of the library. my other obsesion became google maps. i think that link will take you to the map i made for our trip. it includes not just the bus stop, hotel, and every museum, but also every place we ate every meal. can we say overplanned? but we had a good time. it was a great get away and i didn't think about the computer once. which is more than i could even ask for on a trip the first weekend of february.

wired neighbor

a strange thing happened yesterday morning. about two weeks ago, i was leaving the house with full hands- i don't remember where to, work or the grocery store or something, and i noticed my wired magazine had come in the mail, and it was sitting on the floor under my mailbox. nothing could fit in my mailbox at this time because it was STUFFED full of of judge advertisements. i'm so glad the primary is over so i can get my mailbox back! so i was excited to see my dad had renewed my subscription for another year, and so was dismayed when i came home to find it GONE! since our front door locks, i knew it had to be a neighbor. and since there was ephermera scattered about the vestabule, i knew it wasn't that someone had accidentally thrown it away with the trash. so i was all upset and posted a note, "would whoever stole my wired magazine please return it? thank you! -caitlin in ##."

so the note's been up for two weeks, and i'm thinking it's time to take it down because looking at it just upsets me. and then suddenly, yesterday morning i open my door and there's wired magazine on my doorstep. i was so shocked and pleased my note worked! i hope whoever took it enjoyed it. i wonder if i should offer them my back issues when i'm done? or maybe it wasn't my copy at all, but someone took pity on me and bought me one new. i have many elaborate stories i've made up, you can be sure.

4.2.08

quickie

thanks for the comments, yo.
unfortunately past my bedtime, and i have to get up 4 more times this week. so no long blogging for me. but you should know:
1. meet my therapist tomorrow
2. d and i had a fabulous time this weekend... in milwaulkee!
3. wow. you haven't heard ANY of the computer updates. the geeky guy came by, ran his tests, and said that our harddrive's fine- but our motherboard is dead. really, there's no replacing it on a system that old. so we called teleflora about the little toyota of floral software instead of the cadillac- and THAT is going to cost us $13,000. i said we'd go with the $10.000 version, thanks, but then he reminded me we pay $300 a month to maintain our software, and the new toyota version is only $150 a month. so we went with that. we'll get our hardware and three days of training as soon as we can get dsl.

the floral situation keeps getting worse. our software people won't train us unless we have highspeed hooked up. dsl was promised BY friday, but now they say it won't get hooked up till next monday. so we said fuck you to our phone company and called rcn and are getting cable. hopefully. dude comes by tomorrow to make sure we can. as ch says, we are totally due for some good karma. it started out by hoping we could get it done before the weekend so we wouldn't have to work sat and sun. now we're hoping we CAN work over the weekend, because mon-tues-wednesday training in the midst of v-day is a nightmare i won't fathom.