Sickeningly cute favor idea

Oh look, a broken promise.

Since the modern strawberry is a cross between Fragaria virginiana (the mountain strawberry, found in Northern California) and F. chilensis (Chilean! You would never guess!) we should have lots of strawberries at the wedding.

This is the result of the stupid poster- I had trouble believing there was a Virginian plant growing in my meadow (there is!) and I was reading about its range. And then I needed to type about something other than data entry for a while.

Oh also my grandmother was named Virginia. Oooooo.

When I was three, I helped fold laundry by stacking all of the washcloths. When I was five, I was allowed to fold napkins, handkerchiefs, and dishtowels. Now I am 27, and my repertoire has not expanded at all.

Pa-rum-pa-rum-pum

I forgot to mention my visit to the Conquistadors. It went well, in that there were no fights and got to study at the feet of the ceviche master. It went poorly in that they play Christmas music ALL THE TIME. I saw the basement- heck, after eight years, a girl gets to see all sorts of exciting things. After beholding the neatly wrapped, labeled, and arranged chaos, I hope they live forever. It's the size of my college apartments, and it is full of things. Said things include at least 100 neatly collapsed and stacked boxes.

There can always be a secret raffle

I've been posting and talking a lot on weddings recently. It has been occupying prime brain real estate and fret cycles- when I cast around for topics it is close to the surface. This was a little awkward while I was hanging out with old friends, partly because I used to date half of them, but mostly because weddings are very boring.

Now as of tomorrow I will be shifting focus to throwing together a poster on meadow restoration. I expect it to go very badly so you all can expect frequent updates here. Also I will probably go to the gym every day- anything to resist career building. However, my main point: last wedding planning post for a while. Even I'm bored of this stuff.

I've been complaining freely about my mother- her wedding can be summed up as city hall, park, potluck, jeans, special brownies, best volleyball game ever. It is thus not fair that her dreams for my wedding are, in the words of Amy, "grand". I proposed some stupid things as decoys- leaving the reception in a hot air balloon and a handmade silk dress- and she agreed. I suggested a barbecue at the rehearsal dinner, or lawn games at the reception- and that is ridiculous.

Certain parties have suggested that I should cut her out of the wedding planning. Said parties indicate that their fledgeling event planning business would be only too glad to pick up the slack- for a reasonable price.* I've been using possible recrimination as my reason why this is a bad idea- this is a lie. My mother has planned more events than you can shake a stick at. Some of them have been unmitigated disasters, but most of them have been very nice. I think one result of all those blasted fundraisers is a nice sense of perspective. We might be a little confused about hosting an event without a raffle, but I think we can come to an accord on the detals. That is to say, I hope I can wear her down.

The other reason my mother is so very involved because she has some kind of crazy intuition- an uncanny sense of how future events will unfold. For example; last night there was a power outage. She had emergency candles ready, of course- but she'd also planned an elaborate dinner that just happened to need only one working burner- and she'd pulled the camp stove out of the attic when she decorated for Christmas. I want that on my team.

*Sadly, these people are also on Team Grand. Or Team Grand and Tacky. My notes from our first meeting have a lot of asides saying "consider compromising your principles". Of course, there are also a lot of notes saying "This is stupid. Ignore." Lawn games, people. Really good cake. Dancing. If we get that right, no one will care about table favors and seating arrangements.

Yes I know I built a castle out of table favors at the last wedding.

I have a wedding with plans and notes. And I just wrote a post without a single reference to the groom. It can only decay from here.

I'm visiting SeNor C...

and these are all things he's said to me in the last few hours.

"Sure, you've lost weight, but it's probably all muscle mass."

"Holy balls, are you wearing an actual bra?"

"You may think triggering my neuroses is amusing, but I assure you that this is not so."

We missed each other sooooo much! It's actually kind of disgusting.

My Dad used to tell bedtime stories with the Prodonata- which is technically in the Carboniferous period.

I went to a dinner party last night with a few people I can't help but think of as "the cool kids"- they were 6-10 years older than me when I was a child, and always seemed the epitome of the glamour of early adulthood.

I worked very hard to suppress the bouncy ebullience of a child who gets to hang out with all the older cousins. I got the invitation by being exceptionally pathetic, so that's on theme. However, I've just discovered that I was going off on the Devonian to a geologist, and that I was wrong about something. I've written him a note- nothing makes friends better than apologies for misrepresenting vertebrate evolution.

All of this is because I don't have enough to do

I'm a full contact Facebook user. I have stupid Zynga flash games out the wazoo, I stare blankly at the photo albums of people I will never meet, and I keep track of all the causes my friends join.

So I guess sending someone who lived in the same building freshman year a bouquet of fake flowers or some imaginary cell phones is encouraged. (Hi, Mafia Wars friends! I need the Ace of Clubs!) Many people do the uneasy half laugh when they recall the long afternoon where they clicked through the photo album of their high school boyfriend's roommate's church group's river rafting trip. I like to think of it as research on the good social groups.

The problem is if someone- not even a close someone- joins a interesting cause, I will read that cause's Facebook page. And then any relevant Wikipedia articles. And then any recent news stories. Then I'll check the whole thing out on snopes. Two hours later, I'm immersed in old textbooks on water law and wading through the text on the congressional website. Also, I know where the honorable gentlewoman from Connecticut got her master's.

I take it back. That's a problem. That's my problem. But crossing the invisible social boundary by surprise rebuttals is not encouraged on Facebook. (Much like real life!) The poor people who are on record as opposing HR875 really just clicked "support" to get it out of their inbox. It's like my support for ShastaBoyz Productions- based entirely on peer pressure. They don't really want to debate their decisions with me. :(

This is the other side of my boundaries post. Heaven forbid you reach out to your social network in a time of trial, but I would love to argue with you about... well... Food safety. Labeling GMO. Grammar. Global Warming. Proper respect for humans. Sturgeon's Law as it applies to the Singularity.

So hey, I joined the gym. I think that will help with the spare time. A little.

Would anyone want to discuss the Food Safety and Modernization Act of 2009? I am chock full of information on the topic, and I want to justify my support for the bill. I'd also like to chat about my gut feeling that Monsanto is not quite evil enough to outlaw vegetable gardens. Oh, and that a woman with a master's in sociology from New England is probably not going to support outlawing farmer's markets. Just the merest inkling. A supposition.

Do y'all have anything for me to research? Anything productive?

Old West

Living with my parents is nice and all- there's a reason I did it for 18 years- but sometimes it gets a little bit draining. Under stress, they suffer from paranoia and obsession (complementary!) and I am cross and flaky. Also, they persist in being inside the house. What's with that?

So I went to visit friends. I expect they'll be a lot of this in the coming months, because my unemployment check is ridiculous. I could probably pay rent with this baby.

Cuervito and Cuervita have a very nice home in the middle of the arctic tundra. It was so cold that the deer came and huddled under the dryer vent at night. It was so cold the gasoline wouldn't vaporize in my car and I couldn't leave if I wanted to. It was so cold that I stopped pretending to be tough and admitted I was cold. I was going to help them move but there were circumstances, so we sat in front of the fire and read about population dynamics.

We also went to three craft fairs! I was looking at some rocks (I like rocks) and a man with only one visible tooth was enchanted. Apparently, more young ladies should like rocks. More young ladies should ask about where certain rocks come from. After the better part of an hour, I escaped with two fistfuls of free pretty rocks from all over California (and a sedimentary rock supposedly from the Sierras, but probably from some Devonian deposit in the Midwest) and a set of tips- a la Hints from Heloise- on how to polish and display said rocks to advantage. There's a fatal flaw in my consort specific sign language- no one else knows the sign for "extricate me from this situation" no matter how decisively I curl my pinky finger at them. On the plus side: I got rocks this time, instead of pamphlets on becoming a Seventh Day Adventist.

We went out for breakfast with the only other South Texans in the tundra- they are delightful people although I suspect we agree on practically nothing. The husband and Cuervito usually circle around each other like Scotsmen on a battlefield, listing relatives and hometowns, hoping to find a common link. I think there's a very small chance of anyone getting bisected by a claymore here- but I hesitate to say that it's a cultural thing, this search for a shared relation. However, I do know that C's cousins have instructed me to invite handsome single uncles and cousins to my wedding, but they are uninterested in handsome single friends.

PS, I expect to have many temporary cousins for about a week.

Editor of DOOM

My favorite columnist says marriage is many things, but at its core it's someone who will drive you to the mechanic's and the airport whenever necessary. Otherwise, what's the point?

I was raised to think pretty much the same core belief applied to editing. Your spouse should be your fiercest editor, your polar opposite in writing style, the spice to your dry litany of facts, the tether that keeps you from exaggerating too much. Then I went to college and met the rest of the world.

As my brother the journalism major will tell you, I am not a nice editor. My notes on his articles read "Bad hook, crap, filler, dumb, wrong, nice sentence here, filler, crap, stupid quote, crap." My mother's notes say "I love it! You're such an excellent writer!" (This is the woman who made me return assignments to teachers when she thought my grade was too high.) He has me do all his editing because after I break his spirit, there's nothing his editors can do to him. If they object to something, he'll pull out a rejected theme and rework it in minutes. He never fights them, because he's already lost hope. (Best sister ever)

C gets something similar. Most of the rest of the world gets less yelling, because they aren't obligated to like me. But I just found a circumstance where I should think before yelling "Trite, stupid word choice, passive voice!". Is the circumstance heartbreaking? Are you helping someone write a Christmas letter about moving her husband to an assisted care facility because he's suffering from Alzheimer's? Then you should be quiet, Jane. You twit.

Ryan has a Phenotype Friend!

Right, of the subset of people who read my blog, about three know Ryan. One of them can't watch youtube videos and one of them sent me this link. I should have just passed this along to Amy.

But hey, someone playing the shamisen for a viral video about the news? That's so nerdy I look normal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0oAdL02jMk

PS The old west is cold. More to follow when my parents finish their online shopping and the losing of documents.

Fickle Internet Identity.

So I'm reading the blog of one of my Facebook friends. We went to high school together, and right now we're both living with our parents and chewing pensively on the insides of our cheeks. Her blog is less with the blithe and more with the searching emotional truths, though. While she often posts links on her profile, I'm pretty sure I'm not the target audience. Some of that stuff is pretty personal.

I saw her in person yesterday, and I totally talked like my mom. (My mother is not exactly famous for monopolizing the conversation, but she will return from dinner parties full of people's reactions to my exploits and with no idea if the host's children are, you know, alive.) Partly, I was afraid of yelling "I READ YOUR BLOG AND I AM SORRY YOU ARE SAD." and part of me figured I already knew what was going on in her life. Why should I ask?

I have a similar problem every time I see Daniel's parents. He's doing a sneak visit home for Christmas (he lives in Germany) to surprise them. "Hello guys, I live with my parents now. Nothing remotely interesting is happening in my life, so I'm going to talk about cats for five minutes. Oh, I have to go now." They must think I'm very self absorbed (and dull) but as least I didn't blurt out "It's weird that Daniel's coming home for Christmas when you're Jewish."

Google Zeitgeist

Hey look, Google Zeitgeist 2009 is out. For those of us (like me) feeling unimaginably old, let me clarify a few things.

tuenti is sorta like Spanish Facebook

sanalika is sorta like Turkish Second Life

I have no idea what dantri.com.vn is- some sort of Vietnamese news site?

torpedo gratis is a Skype like site in Portuguese. They send people torpedos.

Wherein I demonstrate my ignorance.

So C is a programmer, though he's not super enthusiastic about the progzoring. However, we have adopted a few programming terms for common use. I thought I'd share them because programming and computers are really interesting. Yes.

I tend to get anxious about very trivial things, things like buying the right paper towels. There are 20 kinds, there are widely ranging prices and qualities and percents of post consumer recycled paper, we live in such a absurd consumerist culture where people think that all these products are necessary, my parents do just fine with dishtowels and rags, my fiance insists on paper towels with adequate quilting, and paper towels are a stupid thing to get anxious about. I tried to explain this to C. Instead of commiserating, agreeing to switch to rags, or taking over buying paper towels, he taught me about bubble sort. Bubble sort is an awesome way of selecting items when you must compare multiple variables. First, one forms baseline requirements for selection; say your paper towels must have 250 sheets per roll, be at least slightly quilted, less than $2.00 a roll, and contain at least 20% post consumer recycled paper. Next, one methodically scans the available products. If there are no products that meet the minimum requirements, change the minimum requirements. When a product that meets the minimum requirements is found, grab it. Compare all future products that meet the minimum requirements to the product you are holding. If the new product is superior, grab that product instead. Eventually, you will be left holding the best damn paper towels in the store, you lucky person. Buy ten rolls so you won't have to do this again anytime soon.

Now let's talk about priority inversion. Both C and I are INTPs- the delightful hors d'oeuvres of Myers/Briggs personality types. (flaky and crabby and sweet) We are bad at setting priorities. Priority inversion refers to situations like this: One's top priority is to go and see one's boyfriend this weekend. One's second priority is to finish the absurd amounts of work at the job. One's third priority is to figure out why one's car is leaking brake fluid. (in this example, one lives less than 100 feet from one's office.) One must have a car to visit the boyfriend, but work supersedes going to the mechanic. All sane people know that one must temporarily give fixing the car the same priority as visiting the boyfriend- hey, it's an example I don't have to explain.

I hold that I am more important that C's work, and C's work is more important than video games. He reluctantly agrees. However, after a difficult day of work, he holds that he must play video games before he is able to be an attentive partner. I concur, but largely because my own third priority after a long day is sitting on the floor, staring into middle space.

Also, when we are packing or planning a trip, we often yell "Priority Inversion! Go Do Laundry!" or such things at each other. It's better for the ego that explaining the "Hole in the Bucket" logic involved.

Our last programming term is very common- debugging. When your significant other tells you about their fear that the closed shower curtain hides a dead body, do you propose using a transparent shower curtain? Then you are debugging. Another example; look at C's response to my paper towel freakout.

Mostly this one is used when I hit him in the solar plexus and say "Stop debugging, asshole."