Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a wonderful family, friend, and food filled day.


Life has been well, consisting of work, work, work, reading, Matt, the Neencat, my four-month-old niece, and alternately cleaning and neglecting to clean the apartment.


I have had a big time crush on the prints from Keep Calm since Alyson Fox did a post about them on the D*S guest blog; the crush then intensified when Joy at Oh Joy! posted about the "Tea Revives" prints earlier this month. Not only are the prints well-designed and accessible-- tea DOES in fact revive!





From Keep Calm. Prints by Lucas and Hayley, Keep Calm's founding couple, unless otherwise noted:



To go next to the stovetop, to remind the tea kettle of its duty.


( To go next to the front door, as a last reminder for the day ahead. )

Not that I'm about to start rooting for the Cowboys or anything, but I really appreciate the way Mike Gundy hands arguably the lamest sportswriter ever, Jenni Carlson, her head on a plate. It's been called a tirade and an outburst, but I'd agree with a Deadspin commenter on this one: as he put it, "He was borderline eloquent."

My super awesome work schedule (for all three jobs combined) is as follows:

Sunday 12:30-6:30
Monday 7:30-11:30, 12:30-6:30 plus about 6 hours for baking after we close
Tuesday 7:30-11:30, 12:30-3, 3-7:30 (usually it's only 12:30-4:30, but this week I went into Forward Foods since Suzy and Wampus were in New York)
Wednesday 7:30-11:30, 12:30-4:30 (This felt like a weekend. I didn't know what to do with myself, besides get a haircut.)
Thursday 7:30-11:30, 12:30-4:30, 5-7:30
Friday 11:30-7:30 (oh, sleeping in.)
Saturday 9:30-5:30


I know you all wanted to know that. The real reason I'm posting this is because I'm working something like 68 hours this week. Next week, I'll be working only 66!

It's fine, though, because it's only until August, and then I'll have three days off in the middle of the week-- until August 15th, when I go back to North, and then I guess it will be pretty similar, except no Monday or Friday shifts, plus working at North isn't exactly strenuous. Also, I got a raise, so I'm going to be sort of not poor, at least for a couple of months.


I like proving to myself that I'm not a total lazy bones, just sort of a little bit of one.

I'm ready to skip right over the Libertine collection for Target's Go! International line and dive into the Erin Fetherston delights, in spite of their creepy Lolita-esque qualities. It doesn't look like Target has officially announced Erin as the next Go! designer after Libertine, but given that the images are up, I'm setting my heart(handbag in red, $29.99) on an Erin Fetherston landing soon.

Also, happy Norman Day (and Fourth of July to all you non-Normanites)! Three cheers for Norman (and also America, if that's your thing)! Go Thomas Jefferson! Boo King George III!

Matt would also like to extend a cheer for Richard Jefferson, who I'm sure had little, if anything, to do with our reasons for celebrating this, a most glorious day.

Thank you.

Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are gonna win today!

The sunny lazy summer I'd been planning hasn't really panned out, but the baseball's coming along just fine.

I just watched the ninth inning of the Cubs-Brewers game three times, (yay, TiVo!) and I can feel the rain-induced grumpiness starting to life. Suddenly, life feels worth living. Add to that the fact that it was the Cubs seventh straight win and that now that Michael Barrett is gone the Cubs have stopped beating each other up, and we might as well have won the pennant. Or something like that.

Probably any other baseball fan wouldn't get excited about these things, and probably the Cubs will make me want to throw something larger than a baseball at them next week, but for right now things are great. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

I'm going to let one of the kittens write an entry.

He says,
"vbb4rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzggg.

Love,
Roy, Jr."

Hey, look, he tagged it, too! He's so good at typing!

Why don't we have Checkers? Why did I just learn of this?



Rap Cat's music video:




The website is nothing short of amazing.
http://www.rap-cat.com/


Thanks to Margo for enlightening me.

Silly bangs again.

Silly new bangs

We've got kittens! Menina went into labor at around noon, and we've got six kittens so far and probably a seventh on the way! They are SO ridiculously cute-- two grey stripey ones and four black and white ones.

Yay!

Today was the Saturday I've been waiting for since spring started.

We went to the Farmers' Market and got some homegrown asparagus (I'm a woman obsessed), as well as some dill, flat leaf parsley, jalepeno, and Thai eggplant plants. They are all planted in their containers and out on the patio, though the eggplant and peppers are going to need to be repotted soon-- their pots will be a little small here pretty quickly, but they were my last two pots!

My tomatoes have four little babies already and are doing really well, but I've left my basil and thyme out on the patio for the last couple of weeks during the rain, and I think they are overwatered. The basil is all wilty, and the thyme just looks kind of sad. Thyme is supposed to be ridiculously easy to grow, and I kicked ass with my basil last year, so I don't know what's up. Eh, whatever.

The apartment is coming together really well-- we finally found a couch, most everything has a place, and we have been hanging the wall stuff slowly but surely.

We've been adopted by a little cat from the neighborhood, who comes by four or five times a day for a few hours. She's ridiculously friendly, and she doesn't look at all like a stray, but she came over after it had been raining earlier this week all wet and muddy and meowing for food. Matt went and bought her some Iams and dishes, and she ate two bowls of food in a matter of minutes. She spent the night that night, and has one other time since, but she has stayed out the other nights, and leaves for a couple hours at a time during the day. I have no idea if she has another home or not, but she is totally old enough to have kittens, so if she doesn't have another home we really need to get her spayed. I don't know if we should adopt her as ours or what. Matt thought about tying a little ribbon around her neck with a note that says, "Owner, please call (our number)", and then if no one calls for a couple of days, taking her to get spayed and get her shots. Of course, she may already be spayed and have her shots, but if she is going to be ours, I'd rather not take any chances.

If I can pick up the house a bit and drag myself away from taking a walk and watching Grey's on tivo, I'll post pictures of the apartment and the kitten later.

Hey, Fox News, fuck you.

That makes me want to punch something. Like James Rosen's groin.

Columbia Journalism Review responds.

[via Blog of a Bookslut]

Edited because my dumb ass posted the wrong link for the CJR response, but, hey, at least I didn't talk shit in a celebrated literary figure's obituary!

You know how sometimes women get baby fever, and they think about babies all the time and shriek every time they see a baby and they ooo and ahh over little tiny baby clothes?

I've it so bad right now, except not for babies. For credenzas.

I want a credenza more than anything right now, and I've gotten to the point where I may just go ahead and risk the trusting relationship I have with Matt and trick him into getting one. I've been dropping hints here and there, but I'm not so sure that he's getting it. It may be time for more drastic measures.

Seriously, I spend ridiculous amounts of time drooling over credenzas, buffets, hutches, whathaveyou, time that could otherwise be spent on more productive things like, I don't know, arranging the other bookshelves chromatically or using my Magic Eraser. It's getting to be a problem.

We don't even have room for a credenza, I know this logically, but I've already figured out three places for it to go, and filled it with records and vases and unframed prints.

I need a life.

Watch a segment of This American Life (T.V. version!), as illustrated by Chris Ware.

[via Blog of a Bookslut]

Read, from the New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs, "A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table".

an excerpt:
MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.

DAD: O.K.

GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.

DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.

Oh, man. If you had been here just now, when Matt put on the Big Lebowski and then realized he did in fact have all of the ingredients for white russians and then jump SO HIGH that his feet literally came up higher than the countertops-- if you had been here, well, you just might have tried to steal him out from under me.

We went house/apartment/overpriced condominium hunting today. Matt wants someplace close to campus, big enough for our junk, with a washer/dryer and dishwasher, pets allowed, lots of counters, for $500/mo or less. As I was typing this, he just added a big window and hardwood floors. He's out of his mind. I'm willing to hold out for this non-existent home for another two weeks, and then we'll settle for five of seven. Anyway, keep an eye out, and if you see anything that looks adorable, let us know.

Off to bed.

Also, does anyone want a virb.com invite? It's about a thousand times less annoying than the other social networking sites. I've got a few invites if anyone would like one. Just comment and let me know.

Lately I've been really overcome by an itch to bake, which is odd because in a battle to the death of cooking versus baking, I would totally have cooking's back to the point where I might cut baking's face. Which is to say: I'm not a baker. The only thing that will give me a panic attack faster than Crank Yankers or trying to visualize distances in my head is imagining myself as a pastry chef.

Anyway, I must be pregnant or something (ha!) because I've been buying bittersweet chocolate and active yeast like Michael Graves designed them for Target. Tonight I gave into my completely unnatural urge and made cupcakes. I made the Cuba Libre cupcakes from Coconut & Lime, and they turned out to be incredibly delicious, though fallen. See, that's why I don't bake-- because baked goods are fucking pansies who decide they just can't live life with full levitation if you just so happen to open the oven door. ONCE. Bah. Anyway, they were yum, and the lime garnish was really cute, even though once we started to eat them we didn't really know what to do with it.

Next up in my grudging baking life: bread, brownies, more cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes, and cupcakes.