Casa Highland

way past Dunbar...

2008-06-09T19:29:00.005-05:00

in the early 1990's, an anthropologist named Robin Dunbar came up with what he believed was the magic number in social groups. not a theoretical number, or an imaginary number, but an actual hard number. 148 to be exact. by researching monkey brains, and monkey behavior, Dunbar came to believe that a basic social group could be no larger than 148 without a breakdown in core values. groups larger than 148 had to rely on an increasingly complicated series of norms, rules, and laws to keep the community intact. 50 monkeys need no rules. 500 do. by rounding off 148 to 150 (since we humans love round numbers) we have Dunbar's Number.

evolutionary psychologist have done what evolutionary psychologists do, and they have extrapolated from little monkeys to great big human monkeys, and said that much of the same exists in our cultures. deep in our monkey brains, when our groups get too large, our rules get more complex. or anarchy breaks out. or crime increases. or more people start paying attention to britney spears and lindsey lohan like they matter.

david wong, in a stroke of what i consider to be utter brilliance, has dubbed the number of monkeys in our world to be our individual monkeysphere (and no, this is nothing like the ball you run around in in the game Monkey Ball, although in my mind it looks as such). i have a monkeysphere, and so do you. and much as you exist in my monkeysphere, i am apparently in yours. david wong is not in my monkeysphere, nor i in his. so he's just not a real monkey to me. he's a theoretical monkey, and i will care about him a little less because of this. monkeyfilter, anyone?

craigslist used to be a very small monkeysphere, particularly in boston. the boston CL was the first to break off of san francisco, and for a long time it was very small. i think at one point the forums (my community, my monkeysphere) was probably no more than 10 people. the laid back community policing policy of CL allowed this to remain a stable group. sure, we fought. we bickered. we drank together. we dated. and slowly the size of our community began to increase. these days, it's hard to go more than 24 hours without hearing a reference to craigslist. it was mentioned on my morning radio, and in the news, and on Twitter. i am mentioning it right now, and i assume you know what i'm talking about. and you probably do.

the monkeysphere of craigslist became increasingly crowded... and the Terms of Use became increasingly complicated. what was started as a side project for Craig in 1995 has ended up as a web site that gets over 10 billion hits a month. yeah. that's billion-with-a-b. and i can see why. i have made friends there. i have sold furniture. i have found, uh, six different boyfriends. i got my tenants that way. i gave away a studios worth of yarn. i have used it to hear about people's deaths and to celebrate their lives. i get info there. and give advice. craigslist is a one stop shopping site in a way that amazon hoped to be and probably never will be. in a world where google is king and yahoo is queen, craigslist is the unquestionable and irrepressible jester.

but i think it's too large for the feel good "fighting evil one post at a time" philosophy that has ruled it for the past 20 years. with it's small staff, and community moderation, it still attempts to live within the monkeysphere. and yet i believe that it went way past the threshold for Dunbar's Number somewhere in the early part of the century. just a quick look at the fact sheet shows how boston was created in 2000, and then each year the number of new cities grows. by the time the timeline gets down to 2006 (just six years later!), the sheet simply states "More than 130 new cites were added". They don't even name them. because these cities are no longer Real Monkeys!

and the moderators can't keep up. the people who flag inappropriate posts can't keep up. and the trolls keep multiplying because we are not real monkeys to them. people throw the n-word around because they can. people call each other "homos" and "fags" because they can. hitler is widely used to begin, or to end, arguments (please see "Godwin's Law"). people are sexist, racist, classist, elist, pain in the ass jerks, because we are well past Dunbar. and in the end, unless craigslist keeps up, it will kill the website for useful content and it will become another 4Chan-like free for all website. it will still be current, because of it's huge hulking mass and power, but it will have no real impact for the goals that the website claims to espouse. sadly, imho, craigslist will either need to give up it's faith in "community moderation" or give up it's belief in mission "restoring the human voice to the Internet".

craigslist is no longer the human voice. and why? because it has one too many monkeys.

what would you pay?

2008-05-12T18:22:00.002-05:00

at work today, i got to place an order with one of our vendors for "human semen". what does human semen cost? apparently $359.10 for 25 ML.

which sure seems like a lot.

but it got me thinking....

what does NON-human semen cost?

for comparison, i checked on bull semen. i picked this for a few reasons. mainly, i was pretty sure i could find the answer on the internet without stumbling across some pervy bestiality porno site. but also because my grandfather was an (attempted? failed? i dunno) bull breeder of his favorite big-ass bull. it seemed fitting somehow.

a little research showed me that bull semen costs about $20 a straw. a straw is roughly equivalent to 1/2 a ML. so some fancy math shows me that bull semen costs about $1000 for 25 ML.

a few thoughts on this:

is bull semen more expensive than human semen because the bull doesn't donate voluntarily?

$20 is the cost for semen from a mediocre bull. the fisher scientific catalog does not specify the quality of the human. can we assume equally mediocre?

we recently purchased something at work called the Ultra SpermFinder. it's mission is to allow slides from rape victims to be scanned electronically for sperm, which is an incredibly time consuming thing to do by hand. the hope is to help clear up some of the DNA backlog. but it made me wonder..... could we use the Ultra SpermFinder to... well.... find sperm and perhaps not have to pay through the nose for it? and, if so... could an enterprising young scientist perhaps devise an UltraBullSpermFinder and really make a fortune? go ahead and do it! i give you the idea for free!!

i've been getting in the spring spirit...

2008-04-13T20:40:00.003-05:00

it's always surprising to me that i am a born and bred new englander. the winters are incredibly hard on me. i don't know if it's true seasonal affective disorder or not, but winter bums me out. i spent a few years hunkered down in front of a light box. i usually up my anti-depressant medication. but at the end of it all, i just get mopey. i forget what it's like to have fun. to have energy. i just want to sit down in the dark and eat buckets and buckets of cheese.

and then the weather turns. the sun gets warmer. my mood brightens. and suddenly i want to eat salad. i realize that i miss my friends. and i start to feel better.

this year i celebrated the turn of the seasons by heading to canada. not the obvious choice for how to welcome back spring. i didn't plant new growth to honor persephone. i headed to where it was colder and darker. and watched the red sox play the blue jays.

baseball is, i suppose, as much as a sign of spring as cadbury easter eggs are. and it's more my style. and less fattening.

so my boyfriend, his sister, and i, made a pilgrimage to watch the sox. we drove up to toronto and explored the city. we watched our team lose. and yet still my heart was lighter upon my return.

maybe it's time for me to put away the cheese and remember how much i love lettuce.

when uniform & rhythmic is wrong...

2008-03-12T19:40:00.004-05:00

most of us are raised to believe in a natural order of things. we believe there is a rhythm and a back-beat that everything is pulsing in concordance to. phi, the divine number. the golden ratio. the divine proportion. mathematics teaches us that certain uniform standards repeat over and over again. we can witness this in nature. in religion. in the arts.

but what about when chaos is the norm?

i, along with approximately 3 million other americans, have epilepsy. a part of my brain kind of goes into spasm, and creates wave after wave of neurological connections. the problem is that the brain is meant to behave randomly. the sharp, jagged, messy lines of an EEG are the norm, as we are messy and complex beings. the sharp, rhythmic, syncopated spikes on an EEG are evidence of a disorder.

but when you tell people that you have epilepsy, the first thing they offer to do is to shove a checkbook in your mouth if you go into convulsions. um, folks? this is very VERY wrong. stay away from my mouth. i have a form of epilepsy that never has a single convulsion. so back off! and even if i did have convulsions, the well meaning folks who want to pry your mouth open and shove stuff in it under the misguided belief that they are keeping you from swallowing or biting off your tongue -- they tend to do more damage than good. by and large, your frenulum (how's that for a college word!) is the membrane that keeps your tongue from falling down the back of your throat. okay, technically when you are unconscious your tongue can fall to the back of your throat and block your airway. but i'll risk it.

if i ever do have a convulsive seizure, i have more faith in my frenulum than in your checkbook.

having epilepsy doesn't have much of an impact on me. i stay away from strobe lights, and thus will never see the Blue Man Group perform, and i can't go see the Big Apple Circus. i can't donate blood in most states, even though epilepsy is not a blood born disease. i need to have a note from my doctor that states i am safe to drive. and if i don't take my medicine i can see and hear things that aren't there, and everything starts to taste like sterno.

i have taken drugs for this condition for the past 13 years.

the meds make me groggy. make me gain weight. damage my skin. make me terribly likely to develop a sunburn. make me heat and cold intolerant, like a little lizard. they can mess with my sleep and my alertness and can make me feel a little muddle-headed. if i didn't have health insurance my epilepsy medications would be costing me $480 a month. for one prescription. that doesn't even have a street value. no inner-city kids are popping handfuls of neurontin for fun.

but i take them like clockwork.

i take them to keep my brain messy and complicated, like nature truly intended.

behind the scenes at Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

2008-03-01T20:52:00.004-05:00

(WARNING: for those of you who really really care about the show and cry every week, you should probably stop reading now!)

for the last week or so, my work has been overrun with do-gooders in blue shirts and hardhats. in their quest to build a house for somebody in every state, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition just finished up a house in Maynard, MA. Paul Giunta was severely injured in a car accident when he was driving home from the hospital where his wife had just given birth. he was paralyzed and has been living in a house that can not accommodate a wheelchair. Paul Giunta was forced to live with his parents since getting out of the hospital, while his wife raised their three kids in their non-accessible house.

the Giunta's live just down the road from the lab, and the empty lots around us were used as staging areas for the over 500 volunteers and contractors who came to tear down the old house and build the new.

i learned a lot about the show just by sitting on the sidelines, chatting with the security guards, and secretly letting some of the crew use our bathroom.

having EM:HE come to town is a bit like having the circus come to town. everybody dresses up in their finery (matching t-shirts and hardhats) and their is an infectious aura of good will. huge trucks roll in non-stop. many are delivering, or removing, building supplies. but some bring soda to the volunteers (pepsi and coke both came), some bring things the family will need (an entire truckload of lands-end clothing), many bring the media, both local and national, and tour-buses and a fleet of golf carts drive the spectators and VIP's to and from the build site.

needless to say -- it's chaos.

some of my staff were devastated to get a behind the scenes look at the show. it had never occurred to them that they would do the "surprise early morning door knock" more than once. i think they did it five times, over two different days. ditto with the trademark "MOVE THAT BUS". they often bring in a fake family in a limo to get the shot just right. and they move the bus a few times.

to me, this was as expected. this is, after all, pageantry. but to my staff, it was a little like learning that there is no santa claus.

what did surprise me, however, was the length EM:HE went to include the entire community. the goodwill is genuine. and in a country where people are jaded and sarcastic, everybody was genuinely happy for the Giunta's. So they did the bus trick a few too many times. at the end of the day, a family that has seen hard times got a new handicap accessible house. the neighbors who put up with the mess and the noise and the chaos? they all got presents. every neighbor was given either new appliances from Sears, or cold hard cash. it's hard to begrudge those around you when you hear the hum of the ice-maker in your new stainless steel fridge. the show planted one of their security guards at the entrance to *our* parking lot, just to make sure that our meager parking wasn't poached by onlookers. and over 50 different local tradespeople were given a part of the project, so at the end of the day, even though workers and security and staff were bussed in by the truckload, we could all feel like we were part of a little Home Makeover magic.

many congrats to the Giunta's. we wish you all the best.

if lolsecretz was the mashing of my two favorite memes

2008-02-16T12:18:00.002-05:00

then icanhazcheezburger has finally mashed one of those memes with... well... casa highland!

in an adorable string of pictures, a young man proposed to his sweetie on valentines day, by using his cat in lolcat photos. the cat had a mouse. and a ring box. and when i saw it that day, i thought "aw, those are the same ring boxes that jade uses".

then, in the follow-up, i learned that it *was* one of jade's ring boxes, as well as jade's ring.

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/hascheezburger/510213.html

and jade is a founding member of casa highland. we had two previous apartments we gave that name to, as we moved up and down the same street. the name finally settled here when i bought this house.

it's like being close to royalty!

a tale of two cities...

2008-02-04T18:31:00.001-05:00

as i am coming down (or is that coming up?) from the depths of the post-superbowl depression, i try to remind myself that this is just one more step taken in the endless Boston-New York rivalry. we win, they lose. they win, we lose.

on the upside, i have discovered ryan parker, and he makes it all seem okay. this is my new favorite song:

sometimes it's hard to say goodbye...

2008-01-28T12:37:00.001-05:00

one of my favorite, stupid, blogs has decided to end it's run. lolsecretz has decided that it is time to call it quits and move on to other endeavors. it's a silly little page that blended the memes of lolcatz and post secret to create a mashup of emotions and dumb animal pictures.

was it the secrets of animals? of owners? the answer was never clear. and like postsecret it could essily delve into the maudlin or the innane depending on the given day or week.

so long lolsecretz.

thanks for all the lolz.

my job has some odd perks sometimes...

2007-11-07T20:23:00.001-05:00

yup. i got certified in firearms safety. this is the first step to being able to get a license to carry. do i want a gun? probably not. owning a gun is one of the best ways to get shot. i am incredibly klutzy, and a wee bit paranoid, which seems like a bad combination when you add a gun into the mix. i am likely to shoot myself. or the cat. so i don't really want a gun. but i would like to have the right to have a gun.

a permit for mace, in the state of massachusetts, costs $100, and involves getting a background check, finger-printed, etc. all to carry a non-lethal weapon. a license to carry a firearm, on the other hand, costs $100, and involves getting a background check, finger-printed, etc. and at the end of it you can have mace in your purse, a shotgun in your car, a revolver in the bedside table, and a pistol shoved down the back of your pants.

to me, the choice seems clear.

but keep watching this space. i am likely to get denied for a license to carry. it is going to be interesting, i think.

again, i don't want a gun. but i am going to be hella pissed if they tell me i can't have one.

greetings from Halifax

2007-09-21T12:25:00.001-05:00

i (understandably) get a lot of crap for having gone to Australia and never blogged about it. in order to do a preemptive beat-down of the smack-talk, i thought i should do a little halifax update. jessamnyn and i have once again gone on a Great Tour of Libraries, with a bunch of sightseeing and vacation thrown in. this time we headed north to halifax. on the way we have hopped over to Prince Edward Island, wandered through a corner of New Brunswick, and we just might still make it over to Cape Breton tomorrow.

i don't think i vacation like a lot of other people. for example, i didn't go see the Citadel in halifax, or Anne of Green Gables house in PEI, and i may eat no seafood while i am here. what i have done, however, is seen a little how people really live. i have drank coffee at the local coffee house. i have seen the libraries and parks. i got to stay in a weird converted antique train caboose. i have taken the commuter ferry across the bay. i went to some of the smaller and lesser known museums, and skipped the flashy pirate museum, that the locals seem to scorn as a fad museum that is hopping on the Pirates of the Caribbean bandwagon. i have met people from all over canada, and heard what they think about the war, the economy, the Patriot Act, and OJ Simpson.

i'm not being preachy. for many people, this is their idea of a terrible and boring vacation, which i could have probably taken without ever leaving somerville & my laptop. but for me, this kind of noodling about leaves me happy and at peace.

it's been great so far. not quite as epic as cuddling a koala, but then again it's not a 36 hour flight home.

north carolina is trying to kill me

2007-08-28T21:24:00.001-05:00

two weeks ago, i concussed myself on a cabinet door at my summer job. one week ago, i threw my back out when i dropped my car at the mechanic to fix the muffler. and today, i went over my handlebars on my bike after my hand slipped off the handle (biking to school in 95 degree weather is sweaty work). more pics on my flickr page.

i hope this degree is worth it.

milestones in living alone...

2007-06-20T20:41:00.000-05:00

there are few times i miss having a roommate more than when it's time to get rid of the Really Huge Bug (RHB).

my friends and family know that i have a mild case of entomophobia, and tend to shriek and hyperventilate when i get too close to bugs. i'm working on it, but honestly, the treatment for phobias is often worse than the irrational fear itself. let's see -- i could use gradual desensitization, where i get closer and closer to scarier and scarier bugs, or i could use flooding, where they just toss me into a vat of bugs. no thanks. so i live with it.

but when i woke up this morning, and a totally terrifying RHB was in my tub, i realized i now lived alone. there was no one else to get rid of the bug. fine. i didn't really want to shower anyway. then i realized i would come home, and the RHB would still be in my tub.

and while i could skip showering for a day, more than that was just silly. i had to be a grown up. i had to get rid of the RHB myself.

so i did it! i got rid of the bug myself, and rewarded myself with a long, hot, shower. and i kept one mistrustful eye on the drain, lest anything else crawl out of it.

the RHB in question, btw, was a common house centipede. i have to say, now that wikipedia has informed me that it injects poison venom through it's fangs, i don't find it all that common. and at 6:00 am it was downright terrifying.

a weekend at the ridge...

2007-06-17T17:36:00.001-05:00

i accidentally wound up spending fathers day with my father this year. like mother's day, it's not a holiday my family is particularly gung-ho about. but weeks ago i got myself on his busy calendar, and the chosen date just happened to be fathers day. my sister came down, and we decided to make a family weekend on it. my family is not normally chummy like this, but it was a pleasant way to pass the time.

tom (my dad) and cindy (his wife) live in a beautiful and sunny house in westport, ma. which is named The Ridge. they have converted the garage into a wonderful guest cottage, where the fridge is always stocked with soda, the bed always has fresh linens, and the wifi and cable come in beautifully. downstairs in the cottage cindy runs a new business called westport shells, where she makes these intricate sailors valentines.

they had just gotten two new kittens, in addition to their older cat, casey, and their dog, decker. for those of you who can do the math, this totally breaks the N + 1 rule of pet ownership. however, i figure when you're older, and retired, and living in a quaint seaside town, you can get away with breaking a few rules.

when we weren't playing with the kittens, we spent out time eating way too much food, walking along the beach, searching for stuff on the internet, and listening to my dad expound on his various crackpot theories of the world. my dad is, without a doubt, one of the smartest and funniest people i know. however, this does not mean that me and my sister give him any slack when he starts to bullshit us. we spent a lot of the weekend calling bullshit.

for fathers day we took him to his favorite breakfast venue of choice, ihop, and called bullshit with a smile.

happy fathers day, dad!

the more things change...

2007-06-11T18:19:00.000-05:00

it's been a busy month and a half, and there have been big changes here at the casa. shayne graduated with style, and without a lot of fanfare she moved down to NC where she will be attending graduate school. i am staying at the casa and am going to try living alone for a while.

i have owned this house for nine years now, and it has seen a lot of changes. people and pets have come and gone, and the only constant variables are me and boo. i moved in here with jade and andrew, and our tenants were dan and sadie. andrew moved out, and corey moved in. then corey moved out and frank moved in. jade and frank moved out, and shayne and whiskey moved in. in between we had a revolving door of wayward boys and girls and pets and guests who needed a place to crash.

this house has been a home to many people, and i assume it will shelter a few more before i am done. it is my nature to try to take care of others, and feeding them and giving them a roof over their head and a floor under their feet is the best way i know how.

and yet i am going to go it alone for a while, and maybe work on taking care of myself. there will always be more strays to take in and more wayward kids who need a place to crash.

in the meantime, i expect my baking to go very very overboard!

i gots the crazy eyes...

2007-04-24T18:38:00.000-05:00

so i was emailing a friend the other day, and happened to list all the places on my body that have scars. the list included: surgical scars on my breast, arm, wrist, and belly, as well as injury scars on my hands, arms, legs, ass, belly, back, and chin.

i can now add something new to the list -- my eyes.

a routine trip to the eye doctor resulted in me learning that my eyeballs are scarred.

those of you who know me, will not be surprised. for example, i have temporarily blinded myself twice (once with laundry detergent and once with paint) and given myself paper cuts on my eyeballs twice. twice! apparently this has all had a little wear and tear on 'em.

what this meant was that when they did my exam, they were extra careful to use the super-duper dilators on my creaky old eyeballs. and i walked around all day with the crazy eyes!

good news -- my eyesight is apparently getting better. huzzah! way to go little scarred eyeballs! keep up the good work!!

how late is too late...?

2007-04-17T19:27:00.000-05:00

on December 15, 1992 i was home for winter break from Earlham College and listening to the radio, when a news program broke in and i heard that my friend Galen Gibson had been shot and killed at Simon's Rock of Bard College. this was many years BC (Before Columbine) and the first real school shooting of the 90's. it was shocking, and i didn't really know what to make of it. Galen and i had been in the same Unitarian youth group, and while we were not close, and i was a few years older than him, we had many friends in common and knew each other reasonably well. and on the day previous he had been gunned down by a classmate named Wayne Lo.

i never wrote a condolence card to his family, and i didn't go to the funeral. his father wrote a very inspirational book called "Gone Boy -- A Walkabout" that i devoured and cried over, and i still never wrote. i was embattled in my own fight with Bard College and coming to terms with my own life changing events, and i simply couldn't face it. he had other friends who were closer who i know showered the family with love and with memories of Galen, and i wasn't needed.

over the years, i have crafted many letters to Gregory Gibson, Galen's father. and i have never posted a single one. too much time had passed. right now, i believe that Galen, had he lived, would have been 33. and we probably wouldn't still be in touch. but since he was forever frozen at 18, he has stayed with me. along with all the unposted letters to his father.

today i decided that it is never too late, and i sent an email to Gregory, saying that i was thinking of Galen, and that i was sorry for his loss. the events of this week reminded me that it is never too late to send condolences.

guess who's going to grad school for free?

2007-03-23T18:18:00.000-05:00

*thumbs*

this girl!

that's right, folks - i'll be attending UNC chapel hill in the fall (for library and information science)!! i received a fellowship that includes: FREE tuition (!!!), a job working for the IT department for 20 hours per week during the school year, student health insurance, and a small stipend for each semester.

huzzah!

come visit me in chapel hill!!

this place just keeps trying and trying...

2007-02-20T20:51:00.000-05:00

the first year i owned the casa, the porch got condemned and the tenants furnace got a cracked heat exchanger, which filled the place up with carbon monoxide. ever since, i've thought that the casa secretly wants to kill me. every few years it musters the courage to make another run at it. this year it's making a valiant effort. for the second time, we sat in the dark, feeling the place get colder and colder, as we waited for repair dudes. this time it was the electricity, not the furnace. and there was no dead bird. and it lasted hours, not days. but still.... anybody want a slightly used house with a small blood lust problem?

Dear Fox25 News Undercover...

2007-02-13T21:03:00.000-05:00

okay, so the Fox 25 News at ten hasn't even been on yet, but i have been watching the upcoming promo's for it. and i wrote them a letter. here's what it said:

Dear Fox25 News,
I have an even greater undercover story for you than the ability walk right into public schools. It's shocking, and very troubling (especially in these dark times), but apparently you can ALSO walk right into the post office, city hall, and **gasp** the public library!!
I can think of more pressing news right now (especially in these dark times) than the fact that you can walk into a public building.
Sincerely,
-- bandit

so what i got back (so far) was an autoreply, thanking me for writing, and they seemed to feel awfully sorry that they couldn't personally write back to every person. they gave me some useful phone numbers. here they are:

MA Office of Consumer Affairs: 617-973-8787
Attorney General's Office: 617-727-2200

what do you s'pose would happen if i called up the Attorney General to say that i was very concerned that people were allowed to walk RIGHT INTO A PUBLIC BUILDING?

my year by the numbers

2007-02-05T13:25:00.000-05:00

-quit smoking: 2 times
-started smoking: 2 times
-welcomed: 1 new nephew and 1 new niece into the world
-read: more books than i can remember
-made: 5 new friends at school
-earned: $13,060 total for the year
-baked: roughly 50 dozen cookies
-ate: roughly 40 dozen cookies
-tried: 75% of the frozen novelties available in the grocery store
-skied: once in utah for the first time ever
-fell out of love: 1 time
-fell in love: 0 times
-kissed: 8 people
-cried: about 156 times (working average of 3 times a week)
-laughed: about 1424 times (working average of 4 times a day)
-made loved ones cry: more times than i would like to count
-made loved ones laugh: more times than i can count
-applied to: 5 different grad schools
-bought: 30 new pairs of underwear, about 1/2 of which actually fit
-had: 1 root canal
-glued: 30 more rhinestones onto my car
-turned: 15,398 words of my life into essays
-wrote: 46 pages of academic work
-pub crawled: 70 miles on easter sunday
-made: 10 tshirts
-gave away: 1 blankie (i hope you like it, louisa)
-played: 9 days, 18 hours, 47 minutes of world of warcraft
-attended: 1 funeral, 0 weddings

and the stuff that can't be calculated in numbers: i'm less broken than i was at 18 and less grief-stricken than i was at 23. i'm more confident than i was at 22 and have a longer life expectancy than i did at 19. i'm more single than i was at 24 and more content with my current life and hopeful about my future prospects than i think i've ever been before. i have a nasty case of tonsillitis right now and the wind chill outside is -2 degrees fahrenheit, but these cruel realities aside, things are pretty good. i'm better than i used to be. let's hope the trend continues.

red tag of death...!

2007-01-26T19:45:00.000-05:00

so shayne was sitting at home tonight and she noticed that the furnace was singing. quietly. seeping out through the vents. it was like a slow dirge. a funeral dirge. josh (aka "mustache guy", but now sans-mustache) noticed that it smelled like an elementary school. it smelled like crayola crayons, or a cheaper generic maybe, like a Rose crayon maybe, melting on a heater on a muggy day.

i came home and confirmed the funny smell. checked the cats. checked the oven. listened to the serenade of the dying furnace.

bravely i went down to the basement to check on the condition, where i tripped over a dead starling. impressively, i didn't shriek. most of you prolly know that i am terrified of the basement at night. killers with rusty axes lure down there. they pull the fuses to lure me down there. i refuse! i send Shayne down instead. she's my canary in a coal for mile for axe murders.

but i digress.

the upshot is that Josh took care of the dead bird, while i called the Gas Company. they warned me that it sounded dangerous, although still safe to stay in the house so long as we didn't turn on any appliances or lights. i peed by flashlight since we didn't want to brave flipping on the light. we crouched in fear that somebody would ring the doorbell. we didn't touch the cats for terror of static electricity.

the road filled up with fire trucks soon after i called. alas, it was not for us. i was oddly disappointed.

the gas company finally came out, investigated, and slapped on a Red Tag of Death. they cut the gas and disconnected my furnace.

on the coldest night of the year.

this is how old people die. Joe For Oil warns me on tv all the time. check on the old folks!

and tonight it's my turn. please, friends of the casa call to check in. as i type the temperature is plummeting. my fingers are getting cold, but still i soldier on... growing weaker... i hear it's like falling asleep.... oh so sleepy....

(okay, actually we have a space heater running and the gas company should be out tonight at some time after midnight to give me a new motor).

you can't make up this kind of drama, kids.

thank you bernard derriman

2007-01-24T23:21:00.000-05:00

for giving us a loveable animated bunny i'm completely mesmerized by.

your arj and poopy cartoons are pretty damn funny, too.

case: solved!

2007-01-22T15:33:00.000-05:00

first of all thanks to loyal reader banky edwards for being the first to come up with definitive evidence proving that the owner/chef of the new city slicker cafe in somerville is in fact the orginal owner/chef of urban gourmet - you can check his work in the comments section of this post.

and in one of those weird and cosmic coincidences that the universe sometimes serves up, i had my very own personal confirmation of the connection this afternoon, when i ran into the owner/chef's wife (who i used to work with years ago at a local university). she confirmed that her husband just opened his new place on thursday and was glad to hear that some of us old customers had found our way to him so quickly :)

so for all of you urban gourmet lovers, get thee down to 588 somerville ave and pick up a menu! or just call them at (617) 625-0700 and order something (i highly recommend what used to be called the urban cowboy pie and is now dubbed the chicken club - white pizza with bacon, red onion and tomato.... ~drool~).

the case of the puzzling pizza!

2007-01-21T20:28:00.000-05:00

that's right junior super sleuths -- we need *your* help to solve this crime! you might think you're not ready for field work, but i say that all your training has MADE you ready. get out there, hit the streets, and figure out what the heck is going on!

it's like this. many of you have heard out piteous laments about the burning down of Urban Gourmet, our favorite pizza joint. what we didn't mention is that Urban Gourmet was under new management when it burned. we are not sure where Jen and Rich went when they sold Urban to the owner of Soundbites (another fine Somerville establishment), but they wandered off into the sunset.

recently, a new menu was left in our mailbox (thanks Swissy!) for City Slicker Cafe. the offerings were eerily similar to our beloved Urban Gourmet. who else makes a shrimp and bacon pie, fer christsake? we were told that Jen and Rich were running the joint.

shayne immediately called in an order, and questioned the man who answered the phone there. what ensued was the most confusing ten minutes ever shared. it seems a simple thing, right? to find out who the owners are? nope. this dude wasn't going to tell us. no way. no how. he talked circles around shayne until she gave up in vexation.

"TO THE INTERNET!" we roared. there were numerous references on ChowHound, but they had all been deleted. in fact, there were no references to the new City Slicker that hadn't been deleted. City Slicker's own website isn't live either, even though it's mentioned prominently on their menu. there are no mentions anywhere.

so Junior Super Sleuths, we implore you... do any of you know the answer to this puzzling pizza pie?

tales from the couch...

2007-01-19T18:14:00.000-05:00

so i have been informed recently that the blog has become in grave danger of TMP (too much paladin) and that perhaps i might want to tone down both the crazy cat lady antics and the geek gamer stories. apparently both of these things means that i will be doomed to be single for the rest of my life.

while that proclamation doesn't exactly make me quake with fear, it did give me pause. one of the girls at work is reading "the girlfriend's bible" and has been tossing out interesting tid-bits about everything i have done wrong in my 35 years. she didn't even scratch the surface. other friends of mine have informed me that i need to get off my couch more.

since i am currently home sick on the couch, now is not the time. but here's what the world looks like from my couch... not too shabby. i have a house that i love, overflowing with friends, with a guest room that is often full (did leave a toothbrush here recently?). i have pets i cherish and a roomie who makes me snort with laughter. i have wireless which allows me to relate to the world even while i am crawling with germs and snifflier than a coke addict. i have a cell phone which allows me to know that one of my staff quit while i was out today (good luck in your new job, courtney!) and a landline that i rarely answer (sorry for letting my membership lapse ACLU!). i have music on in the other room (currently playing "if i were a moose" by Fred Small), and a sweet smelling candle burning on the side table. i have three different email inboxes open which tinkle often with merry dings and bells when i get mail.

i could, if i really wanted to, easily find a boyfriend without even leaving my couch. there appear to be a million men out there who are looking for a "partner in crime", a line which if posted in a personal ad will rule that person out automagically even if they are a doughnut baking, pub quiz playing, book reading, llama raising, smart, sexy, big, bald guy who wants nothing more in this world than to make me happy. partner in crime? forget it. he's out.

so, see? why do i need to leave the couch at all? i have it all right here.