Pre-quitting elation

Well, not much to report except that work is not going well. Things are situated so that I could potentially get more responsibility and training in the field I want to go into, and that may or may not happen, depending upon which way the wind is blowing. More like "may not".

I think if I had the genital "dangly bits" or was a blood relative of the owner it wouldn't be an issue, but guess what? I'm not a guy or a blood relative, and I'm always going to be seen as one of "the girls" who answers the phone. It doesn't matter that I have mad database skillz. They're not good enough to get me a really technical job and no one here understands them, so I might as well not have them.

This sucks.

I'm not going to look super-actively, but I'm going to put my resume up on Monster and keep it updated. I'm going to use my vacation time and sick time. Of course, the economy is about as hideous as it could possibly be, but strangely, I'm not worried. The spousal unit's work situation is precarious also, and worst comes to worse, we'll conclude our Cape Cod adventure and go to greener pastures. It's all good.

Meanwhile, I need to work on my presentation (since I'm horribly shy), get some clothes that would be appropriate for a more formal workplace, and practice interviewing. I want to be able to make small talk. I want to find an awesome, fun-with-responsibility job in a slightly larger and more professional company than the one I'm currently working at.

Update on the Chai recipe

Okay, I finally made some chai from the getcrafty chai recipe. Here's the verdict:

I followed the GetCrafty recipe closely, and was somewhat cautious with the sugar and spices measurements. Very different from the commercial chai experience. Much less sweet (I'd add more sugar next time), the spices were not as intense as I thought they were going to be (I'd add more spice mix next time), much more of the tea flavor comes through. It reminded me a tiny bit of Thai iced tea, which is a good thing, but miles away from the super-sweet, intensely flavored commercial chai I've had.

All and all, it was like the difference between a pre-packaged "coffee drink" and making a cup of coffee at home. Both of these are good, but bear little resemblance to one another. I do think if I was making the mix in the future, I'd look around a bit more and try to find a fresher source for spices.A pinch of salt while making the chai might be a good thing too, I think I'll try that.

In other news, I finally tacked the horrid decaying wall above the tub and shower. Where the drywall meets the tub and shower had pulled away just a little bit, and was starting to peel and crumble from moisture. It sounds small, but fixing it was surprisingly time-intensive, especially since I didn't really know what I was doing. I hacked away the decaying bits with a screwdriver, sanded to get rid of peeling paint, pulled down the peeling joint tape, and put up this sticker fiberglass mesh tape in its place. (I had new joint tape, but couldn't seem to make it work, the fiberglass mess stuff was much more effective.) Then I spackled the whole thing.

Keeping in mind that we are talking about a very narrow strip of wall, the whole thing including clean-up took me approximately four hours. (I watched three episodes of Trading Spaces and two episodes of Daria during the process.) The wall will have to be sanded and probably re-spackled, that's going to be another time suck and very dusty. However, I am starting to visualize what the wall will eventually look like. It's rougher now than I would like, but that's going to get worked out in the sanding and re-spackling. I still need to work on the peeling paint and spackling in other parts of the bathroom, but the section above the tub was the really horrible part, so I'm feeling pretty good.

Friday Five

1. What was the last TV show you watched?
Trading Spaces, a repeat episode with Vern and Laurie, about five minutes ago.

2. What was the last thing you complained about?
Not getting a real raise along with increased responsibility at work.

3. Who was the last person you complimented and what did you say?
My spouse. I hadn't realized that a problem still existed because it was sufficiently big that they couldn't tackle all at once, and I told them I had great trust in their genius. :)

4. What was the last thing you threw away?
I just cleared all sorts of random trash out of my car, tissues, gum wrappers, old brochures and other assorted car trash. The most substantial item was probably a holder for a small satellite dish.

5. What was the last website (besides this one) that you visited? A very good Neo-Pagan forum called The Cauldron.

Too funny!

Clothes for your cat.

Hot air postal experiments. (Stolen from Mimi Smartypants.)

Grocery Bag Project

Now, I didn't just sit glued to a heating pad in front of the TV all weekend, and watch Trading Spaces and Cold Case Files 24-7. Oh no, I sewed while I was doing that.

I found out just how easy-peasy making a grocery bag holder is. This person gave pretty detailed instructions, but all I really did was rip a yard of this fabric in half, french seam up the long side, put elastic in the bottom and sewed two loops to the top. Voila!

This would be a great project to whip up and add to a gift basket, especially a house-warming gift basket.

I also figured out that this stuff would be perfect for kitchen curtains. I know, I know, the bathroom still needs painting, don't remind me okay?

Bend it Like Beckham

I haven't been posting because my shoulder is really screwed up, and it seems related to using a mouse, so I'm trying to be good and not do web things. But, I wanted to say that I saw Bend it Like Beckham the other night at the Cape Cinema. What a fun movie! Really a good time, although I wonder if anyone but myself and the spousal unit got all the jokes.

I got curious and looked up some reviews, and was amazed by a) how popular it appears to have been in England, and b) how disliked it seems to have been by "elite" American reviewers. Best I can tell, you're not supposed to make a movie that addresses ethnic assimilation and sexism unless it's very boring to watch. Then it's okay. Screw that. I think fun movies that raise issues have their place.

Dear co-workers,

We do not have to hold a conversation to determine whether an email should be forwarded to me, followed by a print-out of said email, followed by a follow-up conversation to determine if I received the email.

Heard from old friend!

Much to my astonishment, I received a card from an old friend Friday. I was very sad when I lost touch with this person, and haven't heard from her in ten years.

A few months ago, I finally figured out the correct spelling of her last name through some mad websearching skillz and looked her up on Google. I sent off a letter (not knowing if it was to the right person) and included a post office box that's checked very irregularly, just in case I was sending a letter to some sort of nut. The spoual unit visited the box last night and brought back the card.

She seems to be as sorry to have lost touch with me as I was to have lost touch with her, which greatly relieves my mind. (You'd hate for these feelings to be one-sided.) I really feel all weird and emotional about this, I shared a great deal with this woman when I knew her, and haven't seen her in so long and really have missed her. I'm going to get it together, write a letter back and when I've settled down, give her a call.

All I can say is "wow".

Listening to: "The Very Best of Duke Ellington".

Friday Five

1. What was the first band you saw in concert?
An absolutely terrible concert by (I think) the FabuIous Thunderbirds at the University of Massachusetts. My next concert was Suzanne Vega, and thousands of times better.

2. Who is your favorite artist/band now?
I don't have a favorite artist or band, it's very dependent on mood. I explore and get obsessed by a particular artist or genre as the mood takes me.

3. What's your favorite song?
"Small Blue Thing" by Suzanne Vega or "Mother of Pearl" by Roxy Music or "Red and Gold" by Fairport Convention.

Edited to add, how could I forget "Very Good Year" by Frank Sinatra?

4. If you could play any instrument, what would it be? Penny whistle.

5. If you could meet any musical icon (past or present), who would it be and why?
Possibly Frank Sinatra, for the pure iconism of the experience, plus he'd be fun to drink with for the evening. Or, one of the really wild old time blues ladies like Bessie Smith

Viking Princess Barbie

In all her Wagnerian glory. I think she'd make a good centerpiece for a pop-art Freya shrine.

My gyn visit

Went to a gynecologist today for the first time in three years. I was really dreading this appointment for some reason, I don't really know why except that doctors make me nervous. I always feel like it's a schoolish, "pass-fail" issue, not a benign look at my health. This woman was great though, nice gentle touch and I got out of there in under an hour.

Maybe I just have a wacked sense of humor, but I found it very funny that the gyn was close to the Naked Oyster. There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm neither Vagina Monologues nor frat-boyish enough today to pull it out.

While I was at the doctor's, I was informed that there's a new way of processing pap smears, and that this particular clinic used it, or more accurately their lab does. I just nodded like I had any notion of what she was talking about, and she was nice enough to clue me in that it has a much better accuracy rate than a conventional Pap smear. Maybe I should pick up an occasional women's magazine, I hadn't heard anything about this, conventional women's magazines do manage to mention things like this, and frankly, I think Bust (the nearest thing to a women's magazine I read) is getting fluffier, and not in a good way.

Freakout moment. Next year is my first recommended year for a baseline mammogram. 'Cause I'm getting to that age. Eeep!

My tits are pretty tough, so I'm wondering about all the horror stories I read about painful mammograms. Right now, I'm at the end of my cycle so mashing breast between two metal plates would hurt like an s.o.b., but most of the time, it'd have to be a really hard mashing for me to be bothered by it. However, Pap smears are usually described as not causing discomfort, and I'm sorry, but I find the part where the nurse practioner jams the giant q-tip RIGHT INTO YOUR GODDAMMED CERVIX to cause plenty of discomfort. I have absolutely no idea how any woman has ever had a D&C without being knocked out, I know I wouldn't be able to stand it.

Just another day.

It's a Tuesday. There's nothing really going on to speak of except that there's snow on the ground and it's April. Bleh.

Spicy Canned Pork

I always read the porno spam in my email box to get insight into the state of the porno spam world. The latest picture ad (courtesy of MIME) is a weird eighties throwback, it makes me wonder if someone delibarately staged this shot to look eighty-ish, if this is really a saved picture from that era (unlikely) or whether the look is coming back.

The title is Power Suit Porn. (Power suits? Cripes, no one has said the word power suit since Nancy Reagan was in the White House.) And, Hot Corporate Takeover! Corporate takeover? That was like three corporate trends ago, we're post-dot-com these days.

Pictured prominently in the ad is a blond woman kneeling on an executive desk, a nice solid one of the type that bankers and lawyers still have and no one else does. Not a computer or keyboard in sight, another cue that we're not looking at the office of today. She's wearing these thigh-high stockings that have a rubberized band hidden under the lace that grips your thigh and leaves a sweaty, itchy red line when you take the stockings off. These thigh-highs do stay up (unlike every other thigh-high on the planet), but that's about the only good thing you can say about them. I haven't seen these in years.

On her head is a black straw hat, that reminds me of that hat worn by the woman in the "Going Back to Cali" video. I owned something very similar to this in 1993, and it wasn't exactly a hot fashion then. She has silver high heels with an ankle strap, and an ankle tattoo dimly seen through black pantyhose. Hey, I remember when all the biker chicks just had ankle tattoos! And maybe a tit tattoo. Instead of, you know, fifty gazillion tattoos over each and every body part. (Did tattoo guns really come dramatically down in price about a decade ago? I mean, what started tattoos as a standard accessory?)

Anyway, back to our daily emailed porno spam, she's kneeling down and gripping the tie of a startled greasy looking guy in a pin-strip suit. The tie is very narrow of course. And his hair is very hair-gelling and rumpled in that uptight way I remember the jocks hair-gelling and rumpling their hair in high school.

It's not just the clothes or the makeup, or the lack of any computers or psuedo-corporate porn clothes trying to evoke an era before casual Fridays. It's a whole glossy, stylized look that I haven't seen for a decade and a half. A Nagel poster in the background would make the scene. Is this really fantasy material now?

Chai Ingredients

Okay, I mentioned wanting to make chai from the Get Crafty recipe. I needed the following ingredients,

Whole coriander
Cinnamon stick
Cardamom pods
Cloves, whole
Nutmeg
Whole Star anise
Allspice
Whole peppercorns
Dried orange peel
Ginger
vanilla bean

Usually bulk spices are cheaper (and fresher) than the spices you buy at the supermarket, so I went to our local health food store to have a go at the bulk herbs. I go in there a few times a year, usually on a similar expedition. (Herbs, oils, Kiss My Face products.) I probably wouldn't go to this particular store except that it's very close to where I live, and after this experience, I won't be in a rush to go back.

I enter the store and peruse the spices. It's the usual set-up from Frontier herbs with the bulk spices in glass jars. It looks as if someone started to alphabetize them and then became indifferent to the process, so while what you want is probably in alphabetical order, it may not be. This means I need to read the product labels in an annoyingly careful manner to find what I want. I finally find my first spice (whole coriander), locate the little plastic bags, and look for the labels. There are none. I look around for about a minute more, because these earthy-crunchy places all have their little ways of doing things, and I don't want to embarass myself in front of the cashier by asking for something that turns out to be ridiculously obvious. There are no labels. So, I head to the cash register.

At the cash register, my amiable but oh-so-clueless clerk asks me what I need.

Me: "Hi, do you have any labels for the spices?"

Clerk: "Uh, no we don't." After my incredulous look, she adds cryptically, "But I can find some for you."

Labels in hand, I head back. There appears to be no device for scooping spice from the containers, so I do the best I can, gingerly shaking spice from the glass jars into a slippery little plastic bag. And, the selection is not as good as I'd like. Whole coriander, cinnamon stick, whole pepercorns, vanilla bean okay. Cloves I have at home. But no cardamom pods, star anise or whole ginger. (There's a need for damiana leaf, but not for cardamom pods? Please.)

The clerk is wandering in my general vicinity, so I ask her about cardamom pods and star anise. No dice. I go for powdered cardamom, and while I'd been worried about its freshness, I am gratified to sniff at it, it smells sweet, strong and absolutely wonderful, my fears about its freshness subside, and decide to figure out the star anise later.

I head up to the cash register with my little bundles of joy, and we almost immediately hit a snag.

For starters, the Clerk is moving with all the enthusiasm of a woodland creature preparing for hibernation. I did not think it possible for a human being to move so slowly. It's like watching the Star Trek episode where Kirk encounters the aliens that live at hyperspeed, and you see the rest of the Enterprise crew moooovvvvinnnggg vvverrrryyy slllowwwwwllly....

Clerk: "I'll have to check on the price of the vanilla bean".

Fair enough, I'll sniff at the aromatherapy oils for fifteen minutes. I'm starting to feel bad for the customer behind me. It's not her fault that my purchases have derailed the health food store's entire sales process.

Clerk: "Oh, I can't find it in back. I'll need to make a phone call." (Phone call?)

She calls (I assume) the owner. Some time later, after the heat-death of the universe has progressed, it is established that my vanilla bean purchase is almost $10. (ack)

I'm convinced I can get a better deal at Stop'nShop, so I pass on the vanilla beans. I even pass on her chirpy suggestion that I buy the super special organic vanilla beans for only $5 per bean. What are they, magic beans?

Finally. I'm all rung up. And paid. And done. I've rarely been happier to leave a store. As I go, I can hear the customer behind me asking the clerk,

Customer: "Do you sell coffee?"
Clerk: "Yes."

After a pause in which new universes are created and new creatures evolve, it suddenly occurs to her that this was not in fact, a rhetorical question.

Clerk: "It's in the back". Oy.

I still need to get more spices, but my nerve was gone after that ordeal and I was unable to face the rigors of Stop'nShop. Perhaps tomorrow.Meanwhile, my entire kitchen smells of spice, and the scent is insinuating gently down the hall so that I can almost smell it from the office. Mmmmmm. Soon I will have chai.

The Friday Five

1. How many houses/apartments have you lived in throughout your life?
Including childhood houses, 14. Houses that I've lived in as a adult, 10.

2. Which was your favorite and why?

Probably my two favorites are the little house I live in now on Cape Cod (because I own it, and get to live on Cape Cod), and the decaying apartment in a decaying mill town in Western Massachusetts. (The mill town was said to have been cursed, and that would explain a lot.)

The little house I live in has wood everywhere and what's optimistically phrased as lots of potential, plus it marks a new stage in my life. I'm back in New England after being away for too long.

The decaying apartment is associated in my mind with all the new people I was meeting at the time and new things I was doing, it was my first real apartment as an adult. Also, parts of the house dated from the late 19th century, and there were all sorts of neat shelves and other details in the interior.

3. Do you find moving house more exciting or stressful? Why?
Surely you jest. Stressful of course.

I suppose the aura of new beginnings is a tad exciting, but I hate everything packed away and upheaved.

4. What's more important, location or price?
It's usually worked out to be price. (Although living where I am now is really one of the greatest financial sacrifices I've ever made for a location in my life.)

5. What features does your dream house have (pool, spa bath, big yard, etc.)?
A sauna, preferably wood-fired and with a nearby pond to jump into. A fireplace, more land than I have currently (two or three acres would be about perfect), and about three or four or five more rooms than I have currently. More built-in cabinets and cubbies than I have currently, and more skylights. A sunroom to turn into a jungle of houseplants. A small greenhouse.

I envy people that have boulders in their yards, so I would like a boulder as well. I climb boulders when I encounter them on hikes, and want one for my own.

For day-to-day living, I go for a lot of Scandinavian style and clean lines, but I'd like to set aside one room to decorate like a New Orleans bordello.

Singer Comparisions

Listening to Dido again. Before, I was comparing her to Sinead O'Connor, but thematically, I think she may be more like Suzanne Vega. Vega is much more poetic and folky, Dido is more pop with a techno-flavor, but they inhabit the same emotional territory. Emotional pain and loss becomes a glimpse into the evil that we inflict upon each other in intimate relationships, their heroines are hurting and make poor choices, but are never victims.

Candle Baby Heads

These are disturbing. But I want one.

I'm still thinking about doing some sort of a project with Sailor Jerry tattoos, but having dones some reading, I now realize that Sailor Jerry has a sort of hipster appeal right now. I don't want to do a project and have everyone thinking that I'm doing it part of manufactered cool. Although a Sailor Jerry drinking horn has possibilities that must be contemplated.

Right now, I should really get back to finishing the bathroom. Or you know, starting the bathroom, seeing as it's still in that partially scraped paint stage.

I do have a cool idea for making a slipcover for the pillow in the office though...damn, what is it with me and my love of thinking up new projects and not finishing them? Did I mention I also really want to make the Get Crafty chai recipe this weekend?

Completely unrelated, the weather sucks. WHY IS IT SNOWING IN APRIL!? I'm telling you, don't come to Cape Cod for the weather.

Color forcasts for 2003. Let's see which of these colors actually show up in the stores.

Oh yuck.

I just licked what I thought was a crumb on my hand, and it turned out to be lint.