Some musings

There is a quote from I THINK Toni Morrison where someone asked her where she writes and she said "I type at my desk. I write all over the house."

I'm thinking about that in relation to this blog, because while I don't post to it much I compose posts to it all the time in my head. Most often this seems to happen while I'm walking to or from the gym, probably because that's the longest regular walk I have these days (now that I live approximately 1,000 feet from the bus stop, WOOOOO). Then I get home and never post, because I get distracted by, usually, the following:

1. getting the mail;
2. seeing if there are any unsettling mortgage-related things in the mail I need to worry about;
3. feeding the cat;
4. searching for and then cleaning up any messes the cat has made during the day (she's on a diet and, well, she's been having some tummy trouble, I'll leave it at that);
   
5. being frigging balls-ass hot (at least today, and often if I've just gotten home from the gym -- I usually cool off a little on the bus but then warm up again walking home and up to the third floor);
6. being starving (again, if I've gotten home from the gym usually) and deciding whether I will suck it up and eat a salad;
7. taking out my contacts as fast as humanly possible;
8. checking my e-mail and seeing if anybody has written me back about whatever thing is currently going on with my bathroom renovation, or alternatively, freaking out because I have to write somebody back about my bathroom renovation;
9. wondering what's on TV; and
10. generally, getting into my pajamas (particularly if No. 5 is especially prominent).

So then I've lost my groove and I don't remember what I was going to say and then I think "Eh, it wasn't anything exciting." So today instead of trying to remember what I was thinking about while walking home from the gym, or worrying that my post will be random or not exciting (which it will not be, but -- who cares, if you're looking for excitement you're probably not reading my blog anyway) I thought I'd just post some general observations from my day.

1. (oh, Ordered List, you are a delight) The Law School area smells like fish today. I wonder if it can have anything to do with the gigantic dumpster that's been out behind Littauer for about the last six months. I'm not sure what they're doing in there, but every day is a new and delightful scent.


2. It's chestnut season in Harvard Yard. I'm a bit obsessed with the chestnuts -- what I love the most is to find an unopened seed pod and open it and there are SHINY LOVELY CHESTNUTS inside that are UNTOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS. So this year I picked up a few pods a couple weeks ago, but it was after a stormy weekend and they clearly weren't actually ready to come down, because I could BARELY get them open and the chestnuts inside were white in parts. Actually it was fascinating -- I'd never seen them "undeveloped" before. They were much less woody, and the part that's different-colored is the part that attaches to the pod -- like the bellybutton. As I kept them on my desk for a few days the white parts turned brown. They shriveled more quickly than the ripe ones do, though. Anyway, today I went walking behind Lehmann Hall to see if I could find some intact pods -- because there are TONS of pod pieces on the ground now, and tons of chestnuts -- but I couldn't find a single one. Bummer -- but tomorrow's another day of chestnut-hunting. Why I like them so much, I'm not sure -- they're smooth and shiny and nice and it's so nifty to open up a pod and there they are. It's like a treasure. I love them.
   
   Please note, by the way, that I only pick up chestnut pods from the Yard, not from the street. There usually aren't any on the street, but even if there were I wouldn't pick them up. Because I am gross, but not that gross. I thought of this because I passed some pod-y looking thing today by the T and I thought, "Nooooo." Though I did pick up a brochure about female Marines the other day from the street. But it looked clean, and I washed my hands afterwards. I was just curious to see what it said. It seemed pretty much the same as a brochure about male Marines would be, except all the pictures were of women and all the quotes about how awesome the Marines are were from women. (Funny story, BTW. When I took my PSATs my junior year of high school, I started getting college brochures. I didn't know that getting your PSAT scores is basically the signal for colleges to send you assloads of brochures, and I didn't know I was about to get about five trillion of them. The first one I got was from West Point. I was flattered that they might be interested in me, and I read the whole brochure, and for a few minutes I really thought, a little bit, that maybe West Point was the school for me. This...probably would not really be the case. Plus, I don't think I'd be allowed in the military because I'm five feet tall. And then I realized that EVERY college has a slickly produced brochure that kind of makes me want to go to their college. But, way to get in there early, West Point. I thought about it. I did.)


3. I'm reading a COOOOOOL New Yorker article about giant machines that dig tunnels. I have been fascinated by giant tunnel-digging machines ever since I watched some documentary (probably on PBS) about the digging of the Chunnel. They used four of these machines, which are absolutely humongous -- I guess two for the eastbound side of the tunnel (they start at the ends and meet in the middle) and two for the westbound side. These machines were insanely expensive and fancy (and likely made by the company I'm reading about in this article) and basically the only thing they were good for was digging the Chunnel. Once the Chunnel was dug, they became completely useless. My favorite part of this show or whatever it was was what became of the digging machines. I think one of them was given to some other project, one of them is in a museum or something, one of them they just sort of let rust forever on the side of the road, and one of them fell into a lake and they left it there. Hee! I just find that amusing (and possibly apocryphal since it was a while ago and I may be remembering it wrong). Poor suddenly useless giant insanely expensive Chunnel-digging machines. So, anyhoo. This article is neat. I [heart] The New Yorker.


4. Pizza is SO DELICIOUS. (I had it for lunch.) We now have, by my calculations, a total of SEVEN pizza places in the Square: Pinocchio's (old-school, the original, the granddaddy, super delicious and cheap); Crazy Dough's (meh, I have never liked this place -- I think mostly tourists go here, because it's in the Garage); Cambridge 1 (I looooooooove their pizza but you can't really get it to go, plus it ain't cheap -- regardless, it's probably my favorite pizza place in the Square, or anywhere); Uno's (it's Uno's...I sure do love that deep-dish pepperoni, though, which is the lunch special on Thursdays BTW, and also my sister and I went to the bar downstairs at the Harry Potter midnight release thing and had butterbeer, which was...beer with something called ButterShots in it, and was gross); Bertucci's (it's Bertucci's -- I am partial to the Florentine, which was prosciutto and plum tomatoes and mozzarella and which THEY DON'T HAVE ANYMORE, though they used to make it if I asked); Oggi (which is inside Holyoke Center and is nice and all, but their pizza has a very specific FLAVOR!! and sometimes I'm not in the mood for it -- but the guys who work there are nice and once they made a steak-and-beans-and-rice dish for a special and it was SO DELICIOUS and I WISH they would make it again -- I mentioned it to them and they said they would but I kept going back and they never had it); and now Upper Crust, on Brattle Street. I went there today to check it out. I got a slice of cheese and a slice of pepperoni (I am a pizza traditionalist, y'all), and it was pretty delicious, and HUGE. Like, one piece was approximately one quarter of a pizza. I showed some restraint for once and ate half of each piece and saved the rest for tomorrow. So, I did like it, but I have heard that this is like the fanciest, upscaley-est pizza place around, and it seemed like a pretty standard pizza joint to me. And it wasn't cheap -- $6.30 for two slices; at Noke's you can get two Sicilian slices for $3.95 and they're better, frankly. Maybe not as huge, area-wise, but mass-wise they're probably pretty comparable. So, Upper Crust wasn't anything super spectacular, but it IS pizza, and I love pizza, so I loved it. Mmmmm, pizza. Pizza is one of those foods that I'm always hungry for, no matter what. I would be pretty content to live on pizza.

Well, so. Just some of the thoughts that have drifted through my head at various moments in the day. Now I think I'm going to force myself to eat a salad and make some Sim pants in Photoshop.

This is straight-up evil.

Call me a Communist if you must.

This is a print ad for Morgan Stanley from the Sept. 15 issue of The New Yorker (BTW, check me out: it's Sept. 26 and I'm reading the Sept. 15 issue. Getting there). I couldn't find a great picture of it online, but here it is for visual reference.





Of course, at first glance I thought it was an Absolut ad (part of the idea, I would assume). Next I see that it's a giant building inside a water bottle. Dubai? Likely, or in any case it's a blank slate of a location where Free Enterprise is flourishing. The top says "World Wise" (this is Morgan Stanley's little catchphrase of the moment, I guess). I'm thinking, "Oh, it's one of those ads where the giant corporation explains how, paradoxically, even though it's an oil company, it's actually helping the environment in some unspecified way." Like the Phillip Morris ads where they talk about how much smoking is terrible and evil (except those were mandatory). A sop to the liberals who read The New Yorker to make them feel less guilty about being millionaires. You know.

The text under the big header begins:

Demand for water is growing twice as fast as the population. New methods of sourcing, purifying and transporting water will be essential to meet these demands.

So I'm assuming the next lines will be some shit like "Here at Morgan Stanley, we're using our global reach to bring water to the people who need it, so we can all move forward together" blah blah blah. Not that I would necessarily believe that a giant investment bank or whatever the hell Morgan Stanley is (not something I especially need to know, since I don't have assloads of money that I have to figure out what to do with) was actually doing any of that, but I sure would believe they were spending money on PR people to make it look like they were doing stuff like that.

But I got a surprise. Instead of that kind of thing, the next lines read:

But what could these innovations mean for you? Speak to your Morgan Stanley Financial Advisor about where potential opportunities may lie. To find the smart investments today, you need to be world wise.

So, essentially, this ad is saying: "Dear rich people: Are you running out of ways to be rich? Well, check this out. The desperately poor are going to start running out of water pretty soon. As you know, humans need water to survive. Luckily, we control a ton of infrastructure that these losers are going to depend on to get their water. Man, are we going to make a shitload of cash off of that! Woo-hoo! We can totally get you in on the ground floor of that shit. Are you psyched?"

I mean -- they're not even TRYING to appear not to be terrifying, world-controlling psychos. There's not any kind of stuff about microloans or local entrepreneurship or bringing up the poor by teaching them bullshit about home equity. They are literally like, "We're about to make a ton of money off the poor. We can give you a cut."

It's this kind of stuff that makes me want to move to a tiny stone cottage in Connemara and raise sheep for a living.

Boring update of grown-uppery

So, part (not all, but part) of the reason I haven't posted in a while is that I've been preoccupied with the twin projects of refinancing my home loan and renovating my bathroom. Basically one or both of those has been constantly on my mind for pretty much the whole summer (and a good deal before that, but not as intensely), and I hate posting about stuff that's IN PROGRESS, because of...some neurosis that I probably have, and I've basically been in one of those ruts where if I stop thinking about it, I start thinking about how I stopped thinking about it, and then think about it again.

I am very terrible with logistical crapola, and there's been a lot of it to deal with and it makes me tired and I come home and just want to do something stupid like play Civilization or watch Ace of Cakes. Anyway, you wouldn't believe that something like this could stress me out this much, but this is why I would be a horrible, horrible event planner.

And, I mean, it's not like I CANNOT POST AT ALL because of this stuff, but it's like, I think "I should do a blog post" and then I think "What should I post about? Let's see, what's going on in my...ARGH BATHROOM ARGH REFINANCE ARGH I HAVE TO GET THAT THING SIGNED ARGH HOW AM I GOING TO PAY FOR THIS ARGH I HAVE TO CALL THAT GUY ARGH WINDOWPANES ARGH" and then I go play Civilization or watch Ace of Cakes and try not to think about it. I am a champion avoider.

The quick basics on the renovation are: My soapdish fell out of my wall in the shower, which led to the realization that my whole shower/bathtub wall area is totally rotted. The nine billion ants that also cluster horror-movie-like in my bathtub in the spring are another good hint about this. I also live in one of those old houses with a window in the shower. This window currently has a wooden frame, covered in paint that really should not be getting wet every day. Nowadays, it is not considered good building practice to put a window in a shower with a wooden frame, lead paint (probably), wooden everything else except the glass, and glass that's easily shatterable. So I'm getting a new window and new shower walls, and while I'm at it I'm taking down the hideous pink tile that covers most of my bathroom. Then I will paint the non-tiled walls whatever color I want. It might be white. It might be purple. We shall see.

One part of this that's actually been fun (if time-consuming and expensive -- though nowhere near as expensive as the actual bathroom renovation) has been buying new towel racks, a new light fixture (mine will be too wide because the shower wall needs to be moved out a teense), a new cabinet that will hide all my cough syrup and mouthwash and other unattractive bathroom necessities (I have a pedestal sink), and a new shelf for above the sink in lieu of the toothbrush holder that the toothbrushes of today no longer fit into, and the soapdish that just serves as a precarious resting place for my liquid soap dispenser. Slightly less fun has been buying tile (white! I know, it's a little crazy) (the tile is only for inside the shower, BTW) and grout. I've pretty much been carrying up a box of tile or grout out of the trunk of my car every time I go upstairs (if I think of it). There is one last (hopefully) obstacle, which involves the look of the window and the approval of other members of the condo association, which will hopefully be resolved soon. This is the thing that's currently causing me the most stress. But it's on hold for the moment, and I am so fine with that I can't even tell you.

The B plot of this saga (or, really, maybe the A plot) has been the refinance. That sort of thing does tend to require a lot of paperwork, so that's been the focus of most of my stress lately. However, things are finally marching on, because I finally closed on that last week. (In addition to getting me out of the interest-only loan I initially bought the house with -- but on which I've been paying extra principal every month so as...not to have an interest-only loan, which is a bad thing -- this is to allow me to have enough cash to pay for the bathroom reno.) Sure, the first time didn't take because the loan amount was wrong (that was Friday) so I had to come back Monday. Then, rates dropped drastically overnight so I asked if there was any way I could redo it at a slightly lower rate. There was, with a lot of scrambling, which we did, and I closed again on Tuesday. Woo-hoo! Despite my having to go three times, it all went very smoothly, and I actually have a SLIGHTLY lower monthly payment than what I've been paying (which included the extra I was tossing at the principal -- but I did that every month, at least partly to train myself to pay that much in the future when I got a 30-year fixed), which is excellent.

So someday I'll have a new bathroom, hopefully, and that will be nice, and hopefully there won't be too much more of the asking people for favors and the calling of various people and companies and the filling out of forms and the hunting down of forms I filled out long ago and the organizing of finances and the budget analysis and all the other stuff that make owning a home so much fun. I suck at being a grown-up sometimes. So! That's that, and once the actual renovation starts I'm sure I won't be all, "Woo, I'm NOT AT ALL stressed!", but, at least the planning/logistics part will be over, and an end will be in sight. (Next up: Electrical. Groan. My house is old, yo.)

This weekend I went to a yoga workshop that was almost literally called Yoga For Total Idiots Who Have Never Heard Of Yoga. Because I'd really like to do yoga, I think. And I don't know what I'm doing. I found out that I can't tell without the mirror whether my back is straight or not. That's the biggest thing I have to work on, form-wise. But anyway, after we were mostly done she made us all lie on the floor and sort of relax and stuff, and she was talking about being in the moment and how right now, we're here in class and we should enjoy it and let go of all the stuff we're always stressing about, etc., because we don't have to worry about it for a few minutes. And one thing she said was "you don't have to answer any questions...you don't have to worry about wording something properly..." and I promptly teared up. Because...I do a lot of that. In my job, but also in general in my life, I worry A LOT about how I word something, how I present anything I say, and...it's stressful. I think this is partly because I'm an oldest child, because I see myself as the family peacekeeper/fixer of problems, partly because I tend to be insecure/defensive and want to be quintuple sure I can own whatever I'm saying in case I get questioned on it, partly because I'm a perfectionist who fears regretting a decision (and therefore has a hard time making decisions, even a small decision like about how to word something)...who knows. Anyway, I've been doing an extra lot of it lately because I've had to talk to a whole bunch of people about the loan, the reno, about getting forms signed by other people who have to vouch for me or whatever, about the condo association biz, about my insurance, etc. etc. etc., and man, it makes me tired. Very little makes me as tired as having to ask people for favors over and over again, even if the favor is something as small as "look at this and tell me what to do." So...it was really nice to lie on my back in a yoga class and not have to figure out how to say something to somebody without sounding pushy or overly wussy or hesitant or strident or unsuitable in some way or not fully committed or whatever else. So thank you, universe, for bringing me that yoga class precisely on that Saturday -- it was nice to have.

And then it was nice to have one weekend, the first in a while, where I didn't have to do any loan paperwork or have the contractor come by for some reason or another or have an electrician come by (that one is still in the pre-planning stages -- I just wanted cost estimates) or go to Home Depot or Target (well, I did go to Target, but not to the towel-rack section), or call my neighbors and ask them to do something or look at something or answer something. Instead, I installed OS 10.5, played a bunch of stupid demo games from Macgamestore.com, watched The Dog Whisperer and Saturday Night Live and a Nickelodeon movie starring Chris Meloni as a gym teacher (WHICH WAS AWESOME -- that man can attain OLYMPIC levels of sustained mugging, and Amy Sedaris was in it too), and evolved from a cell to a tribal civilization in Spore. It was a niiiiiiiice weekend. The least stressful I've had in a while.

I'm not done, not by a long shot, but it was nice to have a respite. And, like the yoga lady said, I'm trying to be in the moment.

In this moment, a freshman-y-looking kid is sitting outside my window smoking a pipe. Oh, Harvard.

Things I bought at Target today

(oh, and also: *blows dust off of blog*)

1. anti-wrinkle moisturizer

2. Dr. Scholl's insoles

3. a teapot

4. SPORE!!!

I just find that to be an amusing shopping list. Ah, Target.

I will totally, like, post again sometime and stuff. It's been kind of a crazy summer.

Meanwhile, I can't wait to stay up all night and play Spore.