I think I’m a Glamour “don’t”
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over the last two weeks or so I’ve been documenting my outfits over at Flickr on a daily basis. I kept going until I ran out of outfits. It took a surprisingly short time. And when it happened, I was tempted to just start photographing myself in various modes of ridiculous dress — bridal gown, bikini, three piece suit, monkey costume — but in the end, sanity and modesty won out. As it typically does with me. (Iain says the last one should have been me in a barrel with a sign saying “Laundry Day.” Only he didn’t say “barrel,” he said naked. But I left that bit out for your sensitive ears.)
(and your sensitive eyes.)
Anyway, here’s the set. You may marvel at my monochromity, my apparent devotion to Gap Inc., and my increasingly haphazard attitude toward footwear. You may also marvel at my credenza. And maybe my size 9 feet.
Library haul: oh cool! edition
So last week I left the kids with Iain and wandered off to the library, as I love to do. I picked up a copy of Miranda July’s short stories (No one belongs here more than you) and ran out of ideas. As I was browsing the posted list of New York Times bestsellers for ideas …
A DINOSAUR CAME OUT OF THE MEN’S RESTROOM AND ATE UP ALL THE PATRONS! OMG
Just kidding. Duh.
… PAT ROBERTSON BEGAN SINGING KARAOKE UPSTAIRS BY THE DISPLAY OF GOSSIP GIRL NOVELS!
Hee hee. As if.
… A HIGHLY LOCALIZED WEATHER SYSTEM SOAKED EVERYONE IN THE BIOGRAPHY SECTION WTF!
Whatevs, that would never happen.
No, what happened was that a lovely woman named Paula, a librarian, recognized me from my blog. From my blog! A real reader out in the real world. Even better was that she sent me home with an armful of good picks to last me a couple weeks.
Without further ado, last week’s haul:
In order of reading, from the bottom:
- The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, Ann Packer
- Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
- No One Cares What You Had For Lunch, Margaret Mason
- Lost and Found, Carolyn Parkhurst
- One Hundred Demons, Lynda Barry
- No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
- Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst
- The Ivorybill Hunters (Iain still reading)
- Schuyler’s Monster
- Life of Pi
- The Stolen Child
Not pictured: yet another issue of Entertainment Weekly
Goodbye Blog Baltimore, hello Mobtown Wire!
So last Tuesday our friendly neighborhood telephone repair technician came out to our house and fixed our staticky phone line. That was the good news. The bad news is that he made the DSL juju go away. Perhaps it leaked out. There was some cable splicing, that’s all I know. So for the last (omfg hectic but that’s another post) week, I have had no internet. It was a bad scene. And that’s why I couldn’t tell you about the launch of the Mobtown Wire, formerly known as Blog Baltimore, which was my pet project circa 2004.
Obviously, having a child or two kind of saps your energy, as does dealing with the bizarrely difficult-to-use RingSurf web site that I was using to manage the participants, which is why my leadership of that ring dwindled and dwindled to pathetic, barely-comatose levels. So I finally gave up Blog Baltimore’s ghost, handing it over to Brian Tomasette and stepping out of his way. Please give him a hand for taking up the reins.
For its next incarnation:
the Mobtown Wire is a collection of Blogs and Independent writers of Baltimore, Maryland. Previously Blog Baltimore, the Mobtown Wire will be aggregating blog writers and providing a central news source written by and for residents of charm city.
*and Supa exits stage left*
Back on that crazy tweeting train
Twitter took me back! I love how it’s all like, “Yes, Ma’am, I’ve deleted your account,” but when you go back, hat in hand, to beg for another chance, it winks at you and says, “Of course, Ma’am. I’ve just been saving your username behind the counter right here, in case you came back,” and hands it over to you with a bow.
Lovely Twitter. I still don’t have enough time to Tweet and blog, but I’ve been feeling kind of weirdly out of the loop since it’s been gone. So I thought it couldn’t hurt to get back on that particular horse, see what’s the haps, you know. Plus, I was still thinking in 140-character phrases. Tweets would still come to mind throughout the day. Now I have somewhere to put them.
Sayonara twitter
I think I’m going to quit Twitter. I barely come up with enough time or blodder to post here, I’m not going to waste it on Twittering.
Though if I WERE going to twitter right now it’d be this:
Am reading Bridget Jones’s Diary again (Moby Dick too whaley, gross). Keep thinking: Stop complaining, B. Look at all your free time. Am jealous.
Just need a character-counter — think that was under 140?
Morning update: I opened my feedreader to see whoorl and schnozz talking similar things. That schnozz post — man, do I get it. And I am not even as on as often as i used to be. I’m totally behind on blog posts and comments and Flickr friends and now Twitter but you know what? MEH. It’s OK because then I can, say, take my kids to the zoo and finish the laundry.
Supafine admin: Upgrading.
After a hard day wrangling two children at the beleaguered Baltimore Zoo, there’s nothing I like better than to unwind by backing up my MySQL databases and upgrading to WordPress 2.5.
If things are wonky on this site, it’s because I’m drunk. No, wait, it’s because I’m elbow-deep in chmod’ing/deleting files/scratching my head/alcohol.
Update: Success. Patting self on back. Things I like about 2.5: superly-duper easy to use the widgets now, even for me, who had a pretty customized sidebar and hated the last widget iteration. Also the admin design has been improved. Also the automatic upgrade option for plugins. So easy. Also the new toolbox on the post page.
But where’s my post preview?
Update: My post preview is right there in the big blue box on the right side of the edit-post page. On an edit page for an already-published post it says ‘View This Post’, and on a blank post page it’s an empty blue box until you start writing, then you can choose to preview. It opens in a new window, which I find annoying, though. But anyway, glad it’s still around. I find it insanely useful.
Also, am not really drunk, unless you count a high blood-casein-level as being drunk on cheese.
Holiday Domesticity Protection
Have a safe Easter, my Supa friends.
(p.s. I always take every precaution.)
One of those annoying meta posts
Was reading Reader’s Digest today. On page 154, there’s a story about cleaning up your online presence for present and potential employers’ benefit — for example, taking down that photo of you totally wasted on Cinco De Mayo, or whatever, so that you do not come across as a complete inhibition-lacking tippler to people who may want to offer you gainful employment.
They make a good point.
If you are my age or younger, a great deal of your socializing and network-maintaining is done online. The internet, and one’s presence thereon, is something that comes naturally to us and that brings us a lot of enjoyment.
Many people of a certain generation will not understand this, the drive to keep on social-networking, to post public photos of yourself looking stupid. To them, it’s airing dirty laundry, it’s embarrassing, and it’s improper. I get that, too. I’m closing in on 30 and while that is, by most accounts, Spring Chicken territory, I have also felt the first confused breezes of being surpassed by the next generation and of no longer being the Youth that the Youth Culture is talking about. I have yet to fully grasp how the hell one uses Facebook, for example. It makes no sense to me and I suspect it never will.
But blogging is also, as noted previously in my five-year-anniversary post, one of my favorite and longest-standing hobbies. I like sharing what I’ve cooked or sewn or thought about. Sometimes those things are not appropriate for a business setting. Sometimes those things include copious low-class language. But — and here’s the thing — I believe it’s OK to have hobbies that don’t adhere to the dress code.
This line is a line I continue to walk. It’s difficult; I believe the best bloggers — the best writers — are those people who bare it all, who dig deep and offer up all sorts of honesties and truths. Those are the best people to read, and they are the people I always go back to. I don’t feel comfortable in doing that, in being embarrassingly honest. I admire those who can but I tell you right now that I don’t have the balls. I don’t regret that, either; I know I share enough as it is, and I also know that I end up sharing more than I consciously realize.
But look where it’s gotten me. Scores of new friends and acquaintances, a lucrative blog advertising deal (oh wait), the chance to catch up with the girl who used to give me a ride to high school in tenth grade, the opportunity to flex my creative muscles (even if I find them weak and flabby, it’s good exercise). I wouldn’t keep doing it if I didn’t get tangible, positive results.
All this to say: Yes, we know. This generation does get it. We put a lot out there. But we get a lot back, too.
Though maybe it wouldn’t hurt if we hid the camera, put down the beer and tucked in our shirt.
Nablopomo: Two weeks in
I have run out of steam with the lists, you guys. Seriously. Come on. They are twice as boring to write as they are to read. And usually they are only one item long.
Things I baked today
- Pretzels
Places I went today
- Mars (the grocery store, not the planet, although I hear it needs moms)
Times I nuzzled Cormac under his chin today
- Twenty seven
See?
On a totally unrelated, random, and 6-days-late note, my blog, Supafine, which you are reading right now, is five years old. I have been writing about my incredibly, award-winningly boring life for five years. (It’s true, I have an award for being the most addictive yet boringest blog in town. I framed it and hung it over my eMac.)
I know I am no longer addictive, but I sure clung like mold to the boring. Thank you to each and every person who has ever stopped by to read what I have to say, and especially thank you to you people who leave a comment or send an e-mail or forge a more personal relationship with me, even though you are left sockless by the end of the exchange because your socks, they were done bored right off. I love you, but not in that way.
Tomorrow’s TV — today! Or in 6-8 weeks!
Read a really useful article in the Sun today: Mike Himowitz: Act soon to try out your TV’s converter.
Apparently the government is offering up to two $40 coupons toward a digital signal converter box for our perfectly adequate television, with which we use a set of rabbit ears to catch PBS Kids, Martha Stewart’s TV show, and the local news. I did not know that.
Also news to me: that the digital-signal switch, which happens less than a year from now (February 2009), does not force us non-cable-havin’ people to buy a whole new compatible television set (darn!) — just a converter box. Still, Himowitz makes a good point:
Never before has the government, by fiat, declared obsolete a perfectly good, working technology that’s almost universally available and so critical to public safety. And with so little real-world testing of its replacement.
Damn government.
Anyway. I am applying for the coupon today, intent on taking his advice and seeing whether I can get, say, NOVA to come in in high-def. If so: Sweet! If not — well, I’ll take the other part of his advice and let my congressmen know that this idea of theirs was crap. Only time will tell!
recent flickr
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my sewing tutorials
See my tutorials featured on SMS' Handmade Holidays!
Me, elsewhere
- del.icio.us bookmarks
- flickr photolog
- last.FM music profile
- please send vodka
- ravelry knitting notebook
- twitter tiny updates
Et cetera
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