What If

I changed my blog template and no one noticed for days?

Californiiiiiiiia . . . (Part II)

Best quote from last night's The O.C.:

"Is that Tori Amos covering Radiohead?"
--my housemate Rob, from the dining room

Onward and UPSward

Today was my first day as a "man in brown, oh wait, I'm sorry, woman in brown" as I was identified this afternoon by a woman explaining to her friend on the phone who she was opening the door for. After three days of being on call not getting called in to work, this seemed to be turning into just another non-job. But today I got the call. One of Santa's other elves hadn't shown up for work. I put on my brown UPS shirt, brown UPS pants, brown UPS pullover, and brown hiking boots. Waiting for the brown UPS truck to pick me up, I grabbed a purple pen off the dining room table thinking it would be good to have a pen, looked at it and saw it said "Queering femininity Seattle 2005" and decided maybe I'd find a different one to use on my first day of work.

Californiiiiiiiia . . .

Best line from tonight's episode of the O.C.

"You'll be in school and I'll be slinging baba ganouj on Thayer Street."
-Summer, explaining to Seth why she doesn't want to move back to Providence with him after getting kicked out of Brown

16th Grade (three years later)

Just found this. I wrote it right before I gave up trying to get the BDH to publish my columns . . . three years later and kind of funny that it's still relevant . . .

If you are a senior, you might already be certain that you are ready to graduate and move on. But maybe you are more like me and sometimes you wonder whether or not you are really ready to leave the haven of college life in four short months. You know that you’ll miss living within a half-mile radius of all your friends; you’ll miss the four (or five, or six and a half) year period that is the only time in your life when the independence: responsibility ratio is tilted in your favor. But even though I know I will miss many things about college, I have also realized that it is time to leave. Embracing the identity of a senior means you recognize that you are at the end of a stage. Maybe being called a senior doesn’t have any effect on you. After all, we were seniors before, and, when we hit sixty-five, the only remaining birthday to look forward to after turning twenty-one, we will be seniors again and once again will be able to take advantage of discounted tickets. But think about it this way—as seniors in college, we are actually in the 16^th grade. We are 16^th graders. That sounds ridiculous. It is clearly time to move on. Not only that, but think about this: when it actually becomes “next year” people will have to stop asking you what you are going to do next year.

Back when we called them grades, instead of years or semesters, everyone always asked us, “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” Now that we are second-semester seniors instead of third-graders, that has turned into “What are you going to do next year?” I don’t remember if I even liked being asked about my future plans when I was little. I’ve never had a dream job—I never went through the “I want to be a firefighter/doctor/astronaut” stage and I missed the wave in 5^th grade when suddenly everyone wanted to become a marine biologist. But the consequences of being undecided on a career were not as great then. When asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you randomly picked a profession, drew a nice picture of a dentist in your journal and everyone was happy, even though you depicted your future-dentist-self with arms coming out of your head. It shouldn’t be any different today. What we want to be when we grow up will always be a dream for the future, and the future is not now. It never is. There will always be a next year, which means that technically people could keep asking you what you are “going to do next year” for the rest of your life. But they won’t because it won’t be an issue after college; you will no longer be part of the artificially-constructed stage of life that is our society’s extended adolescence and so periods of your life will no longer have imposed definite endings.

So there is no reason that not having a clear idea about what you are doing with your future should prevent you from feeling ready to leave Brown. Like any relationship, you should break up when it feels over, even if you don’t have a new prospect lined up. There is no need to be what one might call a “serial dater,” and there is no need to feel unprepared just because you might have a little bit (or several years) of down time between Brown and your next prestigious engagement. When I tell people I want to travel next year, they say, “Oh, so you’re taking time off?” Time off from what? The expected further education or career progression of an Ivy League graduate? I know I am ready to graduate because I am ready to stop thinking about life in terms of “time off,” which presupposes that there is something else you should be doing.

Regardless of what you end up doing right away after college, it is still going to be a little difficult at first to transition from Brown. When asked to write my name on a list next year, I’ll probably draw an underscore between my first and last names out of habit. Tired of walking home on some night, I’ll probably attempt to climb into an unsuspecting white minivan stopped in traffic. And there are definitely things I haven’t done yet, or formally prepared myself for. Living in a dorm all four years that I’ve been away from home, I’ve never had to buy my own toilet paper. But, you know what, I think I’ll be able to handle it.

Cecilia Kiely ’04 wants to be an adult when she grows up.

Thanksgiving. Again.

In case you were having trouble visualizing . . .





Photos courtesy of BPJ (wearing the brown shirt . . . in the middle).

Santa's Helper

Yesterday afternoon I went to my first interview in a month of job searching. It was a group experience. There were about twenty five of us, representing quite the range on the spectrum of "dress up-edness"--from a gray Seahawks t-shirt with the sleeves cut off to a few buttondown and slacks combinations (some more successful than others). We stood in a large circle in the mechanics' bay waiting for our screening interviews to be "Driver's Helpers" with UPS. Now, I understand that a driver's helper does exactly that, and, in an age where we have sanitation engineers and the like, I do appreciate the straightforwardness of the job title. But it sounds somewhat silly to me and I think this is because all I can think of when I hear the phrase is "Santa's Helper." That may be the only case in which a job title that includes the word "helper" sounds more sophisticated than what you would normally call the person-- that being "elf." And so every time I say "Driver's Helper" it reminds me of David Sedaris' Santaland Diaries and I entertain the thought that maybe this will be the seasonal employment experience that will launch my career as a humor writer.

There's a Lightbulb in Your Blender

Of course there is. It's a blamp.

Apparently the line “there’s a little lightbulb in your blender” is a great parody of the lyric “make a little birdhouse in your soul.” The only reason I even know this “Birdhouse in Your Soul” song at all is because Meg used to sing it. I also think she even used it once as evidence that “not to put too fine a point on it” was an actual expression. Using the fact that a phrase is used in a They Might Be Giants song as proof that it is a common expression strikes me as the equivalent of using a word’s appearance in a Dr. Seuss book to suggest that it is an actual word. But I digress. The point is (not to put too fine a point on it) that Thanksgiving was amazing.

The reason that my Thanksgiving story begins with an anecdote about the blamp (blender + lamp, for all of you who are not either already into your third glass of cheap red wine or operating on less than three hours of sleep) is because Becca said that my next blog post should be called “There’s a Lightbulb in the Blender.” And for some reason it seems to explain our Thanksgiving. It was truly a twentysomething’s Thanksgiving of four New Englanders transplanted to the West Coast, involving a group food preparation effort fueled by a very cheap Pinot Noir (I found it to be very watery but Alden disagreed. He didn't think it was watery, just lacking flavor. I’ll spare you the details of the ensuing debate about whether or not a liquid lacking flavor is necessarily watery.) Becca had just finished an overnight shift at the hospital, and for some reason cooking brings out my natural insanity/ADHD tendencies. So this was hilarious, the blender light in our kitchen. And it was only 1 p.m.

The preparations had started the night before when Alden and I joined everyone and their mother* at the Safeway to buy Thanksgiving. Some things that we bought that were particularly fun to carry on the mile walk home included the eighteen bottles of Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve, the 10-pound sack of potatoes, and the turkey-sized foil roasting pan. Fortunately I had already bought the 15 lb. turkey on Monday when, in a rare burst of forethought, I realized that I only had three days until Thanksgiving and it would take me that long to safely defrost a frozen turkey. (I knew this because I had googled “how to cook a turkey” that morning.) Although I ended up buying a fresh one, I was still impressed that I planned ahead. I could easily see myself waiting until the night before Thanksgiving only to have them be all sold out of turkeys and then thinking, “Right, obviously that was dumb.”

I was initially a little overwhelmed by the idea of roasting a turkey. It seemed completely likely that I’d screw it up—after all, every holiday sitcom episode involves a burnt turkey or some other horrible mangling of the turkey preparation process, like on Friends when Joey gets it stuck on his head. But the more I looked into it, it seemed that it was a time consuming process, but pretty straightforward. No one mentioned that before throwing it in the oven at 325° for 4 to 4 ½ hours and basting it every half hour, I’d have to reach in and pull out various turkey organs from the various turkey orifices. I easily found the neck and some other part that Alden identified as the heart even though it looked more like a brain to me. But I couldn’t find the bag of giblets. I read the directions aloud again and Alden’s like, “Oh, the neck cavity!” Apparently I was rooting around in the “ass cavity.” (The cavity that contained the dismembered neck was not, in fact, the neck cavity.) I found the giblets in what was actually the more disturbing of the two holes, what with the loose hanging flap of excess neck skin I had to peel away just to find it.

When all was said and done we had managed to cook an entire turkey, stuffed with stuffing, as well as gravy, corn, sweet potato casserole with an entire bag of marshmallows on top, twice-baked sweet potatoes with pineapple and maple syrup, salad with avocado and pomegranate, turnips, mashed potatoes, two pumpkin pies and an apple pie. Becca made all the dishes that included tropical fruits; she also made me baste the turkey in orange juice. She made the turnips & mashed potatoes as well, and these did not involve fruit, tropical or otherwise, but the amount of cayenne she used definitely evoked the cuisine of a much warmer climate.

We ate. It was good. We had an overly long debate about emoticons and when the winky face should be interpreted as flirty vs. sarcastic (Well, what do you think? ;-) Then we played through the entire box of Taboo while the pies re-baked themselves in the warming drawer.

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving.

-------------------------------------------------------

*Not everyone’s mother was physically in the store; some were just available via cell phone to answer questions like, “Where would I find Gravy Master?” This was the call that Alden made. I called my mom later that night when we finished peeling the apples and I figured I should check on how to actually make them into pie. Becca’s call to her parents was to determine whether or not you cooked the turkey with the thermometer in it or just stuck it in after to get a reading—apparently you can do both—and what type of spices to season the turkey with, because obviously there needs to be as much spice as possible on everything.

Kites. Pretty Kites.

On September 2, 2006 at 2:06 AM, I promised a picture of the Seattle skyline. I know this because I just wasted a half hour re-reading my entire blog, mainly to see if it has always been this bad but also to avoid filling out a questionaire for the one and only job I have actually succeeded in applying for during my three weeks of unemployment. The questionaire includes questions like, "Is journalism a career that you have long sought, or a career that found you?" and "Explain the terms: public meeting, public workshop, public hearing" and asks me which lens I would use for various assignments, including a boat sinking in Port Townsend Bay, a night football game under the lights, and an Arbor Day tree planting. The only one I can actually answer is "Have you ever lived in a small town before?" But even that gets trickier as the second part is: "How would you go about incorporating yourself into the fabric of the community?"


(Help. Me.)

Wow

That might have been the worst blog post ever.

To Do

So "write blog post" was on my "To Do" list for today, and since I haven't accomplished anything else (except for buying plane tickets, which was actually on my "To Done" list--and by that I mean my list from yesterday) I decided that I will write one. In case y'all haven't given up checking this. I feel especially bad that Kenli is actually still reading all the way from Kenya! (Only just now do I realize that Kenli and Kenya are very similar words. Interesting.)

Anyway, I'm sitting in a diner-type of establishment listening to Johnny Cash and drinking PBR out of a can, but I've got to go to dinner now in another eating establishment. Actually, I should be there now, so I will blog later (next time I have internet.)

happy new years. i mean halloween.

Last night I was standing next to a campfire, drinking cheap champagne from the bottle, watching the sparks fly up to the stars.

Welcome this is a Farmhouse

So the only anecdote today worth blogging about didn't happen to me, it happened to Laura. I should write about it, though, since she didn't get a picture of the cop, meaning that the incident will not make it on to her blog, not falling into the whole "laura and camera" category, but I really don't think I could do justice to the brilliant story of Laura, in her Americorps sweatshirt, being reported as a suspicious person and there being not just one but two cop cars called in, because my cell phone reception was less than stellar and so I'm still a little unclear about the details of the prescription drugs being stolen from the mailboxes, which I think added to the ridiculousness of it all.

So instead I will post some more pictures. I could write another offensively run-on sentence, though, if you really wanted.
These are some pictures from the 40 mile bike ride that I went on Saturday where halfway down the bike path we ran across a random sculpture park that appeared to be someone's backyard but actually contained over 100 crazy sculptures.
















































And a farmhouse.

Driving Down the 101

cecil and camera

Some more pictures of 2209 Washington = approximately 3,000 words. Who says I'm not writing?

Look

My new place. Isn't it cute?

BED.

I have a bed now. I had just got home from Seattle this afternoon when my roommate pulled up with a twin bed in the back of his station wagon. His boyfriend is moving and got a new bed, so he is going to leave it here. Meaning I get to sleep on it. Sweet.

And it even has drawers underneath so I can start unpacking.

Home Sweet Empty Room

I have a room of my own. It is cute and hardwood floored and completely empty except for an air mattress I borrowed from the roommate of the kid whose couch I was sleeping on for the past few weeks. I also borrowed some drum sticks, a drum pad, and a book called "Stick Control for the Snare Drummer" with a picture of a colonial drummer on the front.

I think this is the first time in two months where I don't feel like I'm still at work.

Six Reasons the NW is Great

1. Tubs of gourmet cookie dough in the supermarket that is safe to eat raw.

2. You order something online from REI and it shows up the next day.

3. Beautiful.

4. Home of Oregon Chai.

5. Amazing microbrewed beer.

6. The fuckin' Oregon coast.

Welcome Pam

My twin sister just promised that she'd read my blog. She said that she had read it once, only because she saw the link on Laura's blog. So, Pam, if you're reading, thanks :) and welcome to the super-small community that is This Is Not a Blog (population: Laura).

I Lied Again.

This is actually my second Saturday in Olympia. The first Saturday I woke up in a random dorm room after getting drunk off my ass on Bailey's, Jello shots, and beer.

1st Saturday Night in Olympia

Ok, so I'm in downtown Olympia looking for a coffeeshop with wireless so I can chill with my new laptop. I see a sign: "Espresso/Internet Cafe." It's called Veritas.

Looking back, this should have been a warning sign, but I interpreted the name, as I do with most of Olympia, as kind of pretentiously faux trendy and semi-hipster. Like the restaurant "Le Voyeur" down the street. After all I associate the idea of veritas more with Harvard than I do with Truth and the word of God. Anyway, I get a chai, take out my new laptop, and after an hour or so of web surfing and listening to the Nirvana CD I bought this afternoon, this band starts setting up and I see on the door that there's live music every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday at 7pm.

Since I have nothing to do tonight and since the band sounds decent, I stick around. The band is done sound check and music comes on. There's something a little different about this music.

"I'm asking for forgiveness, I see you loving kindness. Lord, my God, creator of my heart, make me clean again."

Ohmygod this Christian music. Is the band going to play Christian music? Is this a Christian coffeehouse?

Thanks to Google (and my new laptop, have I mentioned it?) I find the Answer.

And now that I look around, it all comes together. The t-shirt for sale that says "LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN." The angel statue next to the menu boards. The bumper sticker on the drumset with the name of the band-- SoulFill. The lifesize crucifix above the espresso machine.

They're starting their set now. They just called themselves a "praise band." They said that they're going back to their roots and if we know the songs we should sing along.

Gordon College has followed me to the west coast.



(I lied about the lifesize crucifix above the espresso machine. It was a cappuccino maker.)

The Bus

You get a different crowd out west, I think. Most of the people getting on the Portland to Seattle bus were going much farther-- Idaho, Montana, Wisconsin-- and the bus was already half full with people travelling through when it pulled up two hours late. The girl in front of me was coming up from California and had already been on the bus for 16 hours. A generally amicable group, a few families, lots of joking around in the back like we were on a rugby trip or something, not a completely random bunch of strangers.

A row back on the other side of the aisle there was a guy in a black cowboy hat trying to convince his seatmate to join Americorps. Or maybe he was just selling the idea in general because every time I tuned in he was listing another benefit. "They give you $1000 a month and pay for your travel."

The guy next to me in line at the gate was obviously intoxicated. But in a friendly, semi-stranger you might meet at a friend's party way, not the sketchy guy on the street way. He was headed to Billings, going home after three years of living in Portland, and hey, if I had that many hours on the bus ahead of me i would have shown up drunk, too. At that point I was so sleep deprived I was probably less coherent than he was anyway, and it reminded me of the time I spent the night in the Atlanta airport and had a conversation with the cleaning guy at 2 am trying to explain why I had been in Florida, because I was on the rowing team. Not the growing team.

Asked if I was backpacking, I said no, I'm just going back to Olympia.

Marmot

want to be

sitting on a porch drinking a beer listening to van morrsion. summertime. as a permanent state, though, not just an occasional glimpse of relaxation. a hammock is always nice.

not sure when this blog turned into a journal for random thoughts. must have been around the time i abandoned capitalization (a few minutes ago).

ME

You'd think I'd post a picture of Seattle or Portland or maybe even Olympia, where I'll be spending the next eight months. But since I'm still doing the whole film thing, here's a picture of Maine.

I think I have some good ones of the Seattle skyline on this next roll, though, and also one of I5, REI, and then the mountains in the background.

Where in the Pacific Northwest Will Cecil Be?

Olympia, WA. Evergreen State College. Come visit.

Competition

Ok, I know Laura's blog has fun pictures and she updates it more than once a month and it's new and shiny, but I hope that you can find room in your hearts (and busy internet schedules) to keep on checking my humble blog and I promise you will not be disappointed.*

*As long as you have very very low expectations.

A Short List

Things that might be different were the folded-up dollar bills that I receive on a nightly basis given to me for pole dancing rather than driving a boat . . .

• Parents probably wouldn't find it as cute to have their kids hand them to me
• I might be more offended when people didn't tip

"the laziest blogger ever"

Would the laziest blogger ever write a title for a post (and by that I mean cut and paste a quote from an email that her "friend" sent her) and then be too lazy to write an actual post? I think she might.

The Source of My Career Problems

This must be it.

Are flip-flops damaging your career?

Thirty Days

Have September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty-one. Except February, it has twenty-eight.

The Non-Job

Not only do I have a non-blog, but now, as my mom pointed out to me yesterday, I also have a non-job. "Doesn't that just mean you're unemployed?" you ask. Well, no. Being unemployed is much better than working a non-job. While having a non-job is like being unemployed in many many ways (i.e. you're not working and you're not making any money), the key difference is that with the non-job, your non-employer keeps telling you that your non-job will start tomorrow. Two weeks and several more unfulfilled "We're opening tomorrow or the next day at the latest" promises later you are still not working and you are still making no money, but at this point it's too late to find another job, so you sit around hoping that the non-job becomes a job as soon as possible.

It's like when I was waiting in line to get hot dogs at the Phillies game on $1 hot dog day. By the time I realized the line was not moving because they were out of hot dogs, I had already been waiting in line too long to just walk away (10 mins). After all, how long can it take to make a couple hot dogs? (15 mins). And since there were fewer than ten people ahead of me in line, I knew it couldn't take too long after the hot dogs were ready.

This would have been the case had each person in line not been buying a minimum of fifteen hot dogs. But by the time I realized this, I had invested way too much time (30 minutes) to walk away without a hot dog. When I finally made it to the counter (45 minutes) to order my two hot dogs, I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment. Just an absence of failure, which, much like the non-Fenway frank, was not that satisfying.

SFB (June 23, 2006 8:33pm)

Because I am bored, and because I find myself incapable of writing anything new these days, I would like to share a poem with you that I wrote on April 16, 2003, which I came across this afternoon as I systematically went through all my college notebooks, ripping out the pages and throwing them into the recycling bin, not out of misplaced anger but the need to downsize my life to fewer than six boxes of accumulated crap (I forget what the assignment for this exercise was, but I think it had something to do with a poem we read that had definitions in it and maybe defining words that appeared in one of the scientific essays we read in a poem of our own. At least that's what I did, if I remember correctly) :

what fine definition, have you been working out?
tidal: moon pulls
ocean: waves good-bye

as
life: (cinnamon cereal, and needed by those who define:
  organic: not as exciting as Herbal Essences would like you to believe
  precursor: before the blinking line in your Word document
  hydrothermal: quick-dry long underwear
  synthesize: to make soulless music using an artificial drum beat)

goes on
as
  atoms: make up cells (jails of our DNA): creating origins: the endings of nothing.



Note: This was not part of my prize-winning poetry manuscript, but sadly it contains a similar level of quality. All I can say is that you should be thankful I don't have a scanner or you might be subjected to full-length reminiscing, like my ten-page analysis on using language to create racial and ethnic identity on MTV's Dismissed.

I Don't Pink So

It's time to admit that there is no longer anything about this supposed non-blog that distinguishes it from any other mediocre blog out there these days. (I don't think there ever was, but I was hoping there might be at some point.) But instead of fighting back, I'm going to embrace this, which means that like every other amateur blogger lacking a focus, I will now use this space for pointless rants.

Pink baseball caps. What is the deal? The whole point of being a fan is that you wear the team colors whether or not they go with your outfit. This is why historically men are more likely than women to be sports fans.

Ha, look, I just made a joke based on gender stereotypes.

Really, though, as someone who once wore a shiny brown spandex unisuit with regularity, I simply cannot understand, say, Red Sox fans, who get to choose from two very attractive colors-- red and blue-- but can't handle it and buy a pink hat instead. But the popularity of this whole pink "girly fan" clothes thing is not surprising when you think about it in the context of the whole sexism thing.

It's now ok in this post-Title IX era to like sports if you're a girl. Heck, they'll even let you play most of them. But being a real sports fan is still something that's a "guy thing." And as with most "guy things" there are women who have no problem taking part, either because they could care less about societal expectations or because they think it's fun to be that girl in the "one of the guys" kind of way. I think true fandom should be left to these women, the ones who can handle wearing the team colors. I don't think there should be an option to mark yourself as a "girly fan" and allow yourself to simulatenously enjoy the best of both worlds-- the wide world of sports and the wonderful world of enforced femininity.

It Annoys Me Too

I hate it when I check my blog and it hasn't been updated. This happens with embarassing frequency. Embarassing not only because of how often I check my blog, but how every time I actually think that it may be different than last time I checked, even though I AM THE ONLY ONE WRITING. Yeah. I guess deep down I refuse to surrender the hope that in my absence the blog fairy has paid a visit and deposited a witty, well-written gem on my website.

Alcohol & Hair Gel

It has been a few days but there are still some quality pictures to post, thanks to our awesome readers. As promised, this one features people you know (although you may not recognize them with their stylish fauxhawks).




Photo courtesy of Shaw.

Happy Father's Day

I know it's not today because today is Monday and Father's Day is always on a Sunday. But then again it wasn't yesterday either and apparently I'm the only one who didn't know this.

I had started thinking several days ago about what I should do for my dad, but of course I couldn't think of anything good. So on Friday I decided to head to the mall to see if I could find something. There I ran into Ellie Dixon in Lord & Taylor (they're having a large store closing sale) and I mentioned that I was looking for a present for my dad (not in Lord & Taylor, I just stopped in because they were having such a massive clearance sale). She said that her family didn't really celebrate Father's Day, not with presents or anything. Hmm, I thought. Since my family is extremely low-key when it comes to holidays (even the big ones like Christmas-- while the Dixons get all dressed up Christmas Eve and eat in the formal dining room, we make French toast the next morning and eat in our PJs), it seemed odd that here on a Hallmark holiday I would be one of those people in the mall thinking I needed to find a gift at the last minute.

Then (several minutes later) I had a revelation. I realized that we don't really celebrate Father's Day either, save for a pan of brownies (which we make for my dad on any occasion, which I guess would just be his birthday and Father's Day now that I think of it), a card, and maybe some lobster rolls out on the boat for lunch. I remembered that I didn't get my mom a present for Mother's Day; I had just sent a card.

So, the pressure off, I decided I would just whip up a batch of brownies and make a card. I had talked to Pam a few days ago and she said she would send a card we could both sign but it hadn't come yet and I figured she had been too busy with work to send it off in time. That night before I went out I made some brownies, joking about how it was hard to do surprise cooking when the kitchen was in the living room but then again how surprising was it anyway that I was making brownies when tomorrrow was Father's Day. When the brownies were done, I gave them to my dad with a card, wished him a happy Father's Day, and went on my way.

Yesterday afternoon my mom happened to mention that she had been talking to her friend the night before and had wished her "Happy Father's Day," which caused her friend to exclaim, "Oh no! It's not tomorrow is it?", concerned that it had somehow snuck up on her. My mom looked over at the calendar and saw that no, it wasn't until next week.

But you already knew that.

Photo Contest?

It looks like Laura was the winner of the recent photo contest. Why? Well, basically she was the only one competing. Not that she was the only person who sent a picture, but she was the only one to identify her email as "Photo Contest!"

However, this is not to say that Laura's submission would not have won on it's own merits had there actually been a competition. Especially if the contest was called "The Scariest Photoshop Collage Ever." If you thought "Amy & the Pigs" was a disturbing use of digital alteration technology, wait until you see this.

Laura submitted a photo collage, but unfortunately it was too big to upload in its entirety. Although fortunately it was a .tif (whatever that is) instead of a compressed high resolution .pdf, so at least I was able to open it and extract the key picture.


Tomorrow we will see the winners of the "Best Drunken Picture of the Blogger and 1/2 Her Readership" and "Best Random Google Image Search" categories, as well as the winner of "Best Napoleon Dynamite Spoof Video."

Smoke

Met one of our new neighbors, Clarence, in the shared hallway last night when I opened the door to try to fan some of the smoke away from the multiple fire alarms that were going off when I filled the house with smoke trying to make sauteed chicken cutlets with lime sauce. He was standing there with a newspaper trying to do the same thing. Apparently the smoke detectors are hardwired and so there is no removing the battery to get them to stop. So we just had to wait an insane amount of time (it seemed even longer because I had set them off and was hoping it would all just quietly go away) while they beeped and beeped until they were satisfied there was no more smoke in the house. So that was fun. Not exactly a great anecdote but I am making myself write something every day and I have to go paint the porch now before it gets cloudy and rainy again.

Can someone send me a picture for tomorrow? I like pictures and I haven't posted one in a while so the blog is looking boring (in addition to actually being boring).

Back in the 'Burbs

There are trees and lawns and yards. I don't have to wake up and go to work. The house is comfortable but unfamiliar (I keep turning doorknobs the wrong way). I feel like I'm staying at a bed & breakfast.

Last Day in Philly

Last day of work. Kind of surreal. Took a cab home from work. Even more surreal.

Good housecooling, though. All the cool kids were there. kenli, shaw, becca, emily, meredith, cat, marissa, meg, caitlin, peter.

Happy Thursday

What I just typed when in my head I was thinking "I have a question":

• I was q

What I drank last night (evening, really):

• 2 "Big Azz" (22 oz.) margaritas, a Little Butt (12 oz.) mango margarita, & a pint of Magic Hat #9

What the waitress brought me when I ordered sopapillas (fried dough dessert) in an attempt to soak up a few of the 56 total ounces of margarita I had just consumed:

• A glass of tequila

What we did about it:

• Each took a shot of the tequila and then sat around wondering A.) why the waitress had just brought us complimentary tequila and B.) why the waitress never brought my sopapillas, never thinking that these two mysteries might be related.

Actually, I'm Irish.

I was getting tired of the Canadian flag, so I google image searched my name and came up with this logo for the bed & breakfast that I run. Ever since I started googling my name some years ago, I have been fascinated that only one other person on the whole world wide web (wwww) shares my name. She sounds very nice ("Cecilia Kiely will surely lighten your visit to the Irish Republic with her boundless energy and special Irish humour") and I've always thought I should go visit, although I think it might be a little awkward to make the reservation over the phone (I picture it like something out of a Fawlty Towers episode).

http://www.claraghbnb.com/

One Week and Counting . . .

Oh, I'm going to miss being cc'd on emails that contain questions like, "Did you buy my arguments in the mail to Ian on Smolyak's alg?" In a lot of ways, the world of applied math professors reminds me of the culture of high school debaters.

It's Official, Folks. I'm Canadian.

I decided to write about this today because I thought the Canadian flag would clash nicely with the magenta pigs, eliciting further comments about my lack of design skills. But really this revelation occurred over the weekend when the hairdresser stopped me midsentence to ask, "Are you from Canada?"



Now these days it is much more common for me to be misidentifed as male, as you can see in this list of things I am often mistaken for:

1. a man
2. a Canadian
3. a Canadian man*

which means that lately any issues with my national identity have been put on the backburner**. But when the hairdresser became one of the countless people in my life who have posed this question to me, I realized I needed to address the issue.

It baffles me. Hockey is my least favorite sport and I can't figure out where I would have picked up this subtle Northern North American accent. But I kind of like being Canadian. It makes me feel special. It lets me be different, but not in a way that causes awkward situations. I've never gotten looks that say, "Why are you, a Canadian, in the American bathroom?"

-------------------------------------
*This is less common because most gender judgments are made before hearing my at least somewhat-feminine voice while most Canadian judgments are made after hearing my at least somewhat-feminine voice (with it's oddly Canadian pronunciation).

** Although I accidentally turned on the front burner instead when I went to boil them.

Why I Haven't Written Lately

. . . I've been exploring other media.

From Our Readers

This morning I received the following message from approximately 12.5% of our readership, so I thought I should post it:

Hey, here is a fun page. Maybe it could get onto your blog. It reminds me of your study of rugby. http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

Enjoy. I wish I could read fake science papers all day, but unfortunately these mathematicians insist on writing real ones that are not funny at all unless you get a kick out of "asymptotic expansions and Richardson extrapolation."

Blue

OK, so apologies to all of you who were subjected to what Laura calls "a long hard look at [yourself]" the other day when after happily clicking on your favorite colors you were told in no uncertain terms by a computer with a very loose grasp on the English language that you were a failure with one or more "actual problems."

I was just interested to see if any of you thought that perhaps the Color Quiz was onto something, because both Meg & I felt ours were freakishly accurate. But then again, the few key differences between my "asessment" and Meg's that seemed to correlate pretty well with our actual personality differences were probably coincidental.

So, here's another one. No surprises here. Answer a few random questions and you are assigned a color and presented with a nice blurb about some of the more pleasant aspects of your personality.

BLUE You give your love and friendship unconditionaly. You enjoy long, thoughtful conversations rich in philosophy and spirituality. You are very loyal and intuitive. Find out your color at Quiz Me!

"An Unadmitted Lack of Confidence"

Directions for today:

1. Take the

2. Discuss.

-------------

Directions for tomorrow:

1. Bend

2. and snap!

Folk Rock & the Red Sox

just heard this on XPN . . . amazing.

Get It Like You Like It
Written by: Ben Harper

throw your hands up to the sky
and scream out loud i'm free
'cause wrong is the new right
so we can cut loose tonight
it costs a lot to look this cheap

fire makes it burn and water makes it turn
we must still be here living on earth
they keep telling me jesus walked on water
he shoulda surfed

in 1918 the great bambino
kicked a piano into willis pond
but johnny damon swung a bat
grand slam that was that
an 86 year curse is gone

throw your hands up to the sky
and scream i'm not alone
is it irony or fate
don't become what you hate
we've all got stardust in our bones

get it like you like it


Speaking of getting it like you like it, following the Sox has never been easier. Sign up for @bat Insider and get daily game summaries and weekly report cards . . .

Sometimes It's Best Not To Look Too Closely

I just took out my work ID badge and really looked at it for the first time. Mostly because there was gunk on it and I was trying to clean it off. Anyway, doing this I noticed that the "Sc" (Science Center) logo has a little "21" in the upper right-hand corner. Yup, it's an atomic number. The logo of my workplace has been made to look like an element on the periodic table (a real one, too, apparently):

Sc - Scandium
discovered in 1879 by Nilson in Sweden.

Not to mention that the motto of the University City Science Center is "Developer of Knowledge Communities." All this time I thought I was just proofreading, but really I am part of a much larger scheme. I am developing knowledge communities. I should put that on my resume.

Free Cone Day '06

I took this opportunity to try a new flavor, "Bananas on the Rum." Despite being a sweet combination of banana ice cream and brown sugar swirls, it is probably the worst Ben & Jerry's flavor pun yet and it took me a while to figure this one out. "On the rum" was fairly obvious, but I couldn't figure out why bananas of all fruit would be on the run. I know there are the "Bananas in Pajamas"* and similarly I can picture bananas wearing those black & white striped prison uniforms that resemble sleepwear, but I think I just made up that image. So it's got to be playing off "Band on the Run"-- a song that has now been in my head for an hour and a half.






*Back in the day it also took me a while to figure out why the bananas were in pajamas since the word has always been (pa-JAH-muz) to me

Ambiguity & Construction

This graphic is an approximation since I couldn't find an actual picture of the sign that I saw coming back from lunch today. Looks like their catchy slogan hasn't caught on quite yet in the world of OSHA signage, even though it unquestionably increases compliance. It's hard to be in violation of this safety code.

CAUTION
Hard Hat Area

Wear It or Leave It!

. . . and speaking of construction, I have a little remodeling news myself.

***Coming Soon to the Blog***
Actual writing! More than a sentence at a time! Perhaps even something interesting once in a while! Thank you for your patience
with this ongoing project.

Spotlight on Mixed Messages

Today's Featured Country Song: "Pearls" by Shannon Brown

Someday I'm gonna give my little girl these pearls
I'll teach her about makeup, boyfriends and breakups
I'll share all the wisdom I've ever learned
Like beauty's on the inside . . .

How I Can Tell It's Raining

At work:

• There is a picture of a raincloud on weather.com

At home:

• Water is dripping from the bathroom ceiling

Outside:

• People around me are carrying umbrellas

Remember the Alamo?

I saw him in San Antonio last week. He said to say hi.

Things I Ate on Friday 3/24

• 1/4 rack of baby back ribs
• approximately 4.5 sandwiches consisting of: Wonderbread, pickles, onions, creamed corn, barbecued pork and turkey, drowned in Rudy's bar-BQ "sause"
• chocolate pudding
• not much else for the rest of the day

Things I Ate Yesterday

• yogurt
• noodles & peanut sauce
• tofu
• beef jerky
• a chunk of challah (pronounced "hunk")

Or Not

Yup. There will be no more pleas of any type for comments as it appears that certain readers may have been confused by my use of the word "explicit," taking it to mean not that I was expressly soliciting comments with my post, but that I was asking for comments that were themselves "explicit."

Roll Call

Is an explicit plea for comments effective? Discuss.

Things on My Desk

• stapler
• mouse pad featuring a map of the Tube
• staple remover
• Koosh ball
• Fast Dry liquid Paper 22ml (.74floz)
• paper clips
• rubber bands
• "Modeling Test Responses by Multivariable Polynomials of Higher Degrees" by JiGuan G. Lin

Austin

I don't have any pictures of my trip yet, but this gives you a pretty good idea of what Austin looks like-- a sea of people wearing Longhorns apparel. It's not surprising given that there are over 50,000 students at the University of Texas, not to mention all the faculty, staff, and alumni, and the fact that Austin residents who have no ties to the school (if that's possible) root for the Longhorns anyway like Bostonians root for the Red Sox. In addition to an abundance of UT pride, Austin also has a high concentration of cars with "Well behaved women rarely make history" bumper stickers. It's like hippie city meets Texas. Good times.

Last Thursday

ATM fee to take out cash to pay cab: $2.00

Cab fare: $26.25 + tip

Getting to the airport on time to make your 7:25 AM flight despite the fact that you woke up at 6 AM, five minutes after the train that you were going to take to the airport had left, because while you set your alarm the night before you forgot to turn it on: Guess it comes at a price

But . . .

Net net (at the end of the day): Totally worth it

My Morning (as a McSweeney's list)

If I were to actually order beer for my horses like the heroes in Toby Keith's catchy song about vigilante justice:

• Definitely pitchers. Cheap pitchers. Watery. Maybe PBR.

First song I heard this morning that could be made into a bad animal pun:

• "You Oughta Know" by Alanis

A short playlist of songs that always get stuck in my head because they accurately describe the 3 emotional states I go through during an average workday:

• "I Should Get Up" Teddy Thompson
• "Hunger" Nicolai Dunger
• "Worn Me Down" Rachael Yamagata

When I Grow Up . . .

. . . I want to be a recapper.

Check out my dream job. Too bad it's in NYC.

If I Could Turn Back Time

Oh, and I can. It looked a little messy to have two very short posts right next to each other and I thought to myself, "If only I could go back in tiiii-ome, perhaps by using the reversible clock that I am getting Meg for her birthday (ssshhhh, don't tell). Then I could write a longer post, one of length not less than six lines, to better balance the chi of the blog." I clicked my heels together three times, clicked on "Post and Comment Options," and here we are, back at 9:40 AM Mar 21 2006. I could stay here forever. (Or I could even go all the way back to 1990. Although that would be suspicious and you might guess that I couldn't really be writing this blog in the early 90's, a period of time when my computer time was limited to an hour per week of playing Oregon Trail on floppy disks. And the dead giveaway would be that the deep insights contained on these pages definitely could not have been written by an 8-year-old.) But if I stayed right here, in this artificially constructed moment in time, I'd miss seeing my little Speedster grow up. I'll see you in the future.

I forget what my philosophy on humor is (I know I have one, though, because I remember using a stapler to try to explain it to Sophie), but I think that last paragraph violates any principles I might hold; namely, it's not at all funny but it looks like it's trying so very hard to be in a way that is pretty painful, which can only mean one thing: I actually have succeeded in turning back time to circa 6th grade when I wrote a script called "Tire of Fortune" starring Matt Wajack and Vanna Orange. It's also possible that I've actually gone insane. It happened.

Blogging

I'm not in it for the money. I do it for the comments.

St. Patrick's Day

I wanted to make the whole blog green. Because that's how you celebrate St. Patrick's Day-- by making random un-green things temporarily green. When we were little it was the mashed potatoes in the cafeteria at lunch and now it's the beer in the keg at happy hour. But it turned out to be much more of a pain than I anticipated to change the color of the whole thing so you will just have to imagine that when you loaded my blog today-- SURPRISE! It's GREEN! HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY! Anyway, my cubicle neighbor just commented on my lack of St. Patrick's Day spirit as evidenced by my blue-and-white plaid shirt and jeans, but I pointed out that his olive cargo pants, while they are technically a shade of green, are not exactly a GREEN "HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY" green. I figure if you're not wearing something that is obviously green for the sake of being green then what's the point? For example, I still am not completely sure whether aforementioned co-worker was attempting to be festive or whether those pants were next in the rotation.

I always feel kind of lame when halfway through the day I realize that I just happen to be wearing an article of clothing that nominally fits the holiday color scheme because then it doesn't look like you forgot or didn't care-- it looks like that's the best you could do. That hasn't happened to me in a while, but interestingly enough I had an exactly opposite experience just the other day when I got to work and realized that to the objective observer it looked like I was all decked out to celebrate Carrot Day (yeah, I don't know either, but for what holiday would you wear lots of orange and a bright green vest?).

It's a lovely day for a Guinness.

From Our Readers

For all of you who were wondering about the half 897 in the header, here are some words from our Google champion (some call her carol'):

here's some 897 info... it's the name of that blog "skin" (format) . . . http://www.stopdesign.com/portfolio/web_interface/blogger_temp

897 is also the year that some stuff happened . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/897

but it's not an area code . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_area_codes

Whole Foods, Half Brain

I was going to write about finding a rotting pepper in my backpack the other day because it seemed like the type of anecdote one would blog about. Then I thought that if I were going to tell a story about finding produce in unexpected places, it would be better to write about the time when I found the orange in the freezer. Unlike the story about the pepper, which has a predictable ending, the orange in the freezer remains a mystery.

Day Two

It's only day two and I have run out of material. Not a good sign.

The Beginning

Apparently the journalism school at NYU has already taken the name "This Is Not a Blog," but theirs appears actually to not be a blog.

But about the pipe, I thought it would be appropriate to start off the blog with a pseudo-semi-pretentious reference that tips its hat (a top hat, probably, given the look of the pipe; or perhaps it's a beret given the "ceci n'est pas") to the idea of questioning representation. What is a blog? What does it mean to blog? How does one become a blogger? These are the questions we will ask as we problematize the notion of blogging as a modern day medium for informing the general public how fascinating you are by posting your unique and insightful thoughts, revealing your innermost feelings to complete strangers, and commenting on whether or not your roommates take a vacuum to the dog-hair-covered couch regularly enough for your liking.