May 2013
5 posts
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Seattle to NYC road trip: Day 2
Montana is forever, you guys. We may be trapped within this state’s borders for the rest of our lives. Send help.
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We didn’t get as far as we’d wanted to today. My idea was to zip to the eastern side of Yellowstone – specifically, to Cody, Wy. - check into a hotel and drop off our stuff (and the cat), and then head into the park cat-less to explore and hike and take photos of MOOSE and...
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Seattle to NYC road trip: Day 1
Writing this from the lovely Super 8 in St. Regis, Mont., a little over 400 miles away from Seattle. Not bad considering we left town barely before noon.
Here’s something meaningless I’m going to read into: We moved around a lot when I was a kid, and every time we left a house, I would turn around in the backseat and stare at our old home out the rear window until it disappeared from...
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April 2013
13 posts
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“Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running...”
– Not just running from somewhere, but running to somewhere. These are the first few lines of one of my favorite books from childhood, “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler.” I read it for the first time on the recommendation of my 2nd grade teacher, and in the years after...
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“By the author of ‘Swamplandia’? Why do we let Constance pick book club books?”
– - OH on the bus, said in a bewildered voice, like “Swamplandia” was some small, unknown title.
Isn’t seattle supposed to be a bookish city? Because that … has not been my experience.
(Also I really wanted to turn around to ask what they were reading. Was it “St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised By...
Melissa has entered text.: Have decided my... →
tylerpedia:
melissadahl:
Have decided my spring/summer project will be Learning To Keep Score At Baseball Games. This was the start of my first attempt last night while watching the Mariners. (We got to our seats halfway through the 2nd inning, hence the blanks.)
It was exactly the kind of mindless, repetitive…
Yesss
Welcome to the club. I can’t really watch a baseball game live without...
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Have decided my spring/summer project will be Learning To Keep Score At Baseball Games. This was the start of my first attempt last night while watching the Mariners. (We got to our seats halfway through the 2nd inning, hence the blanks.)
It was exactly the kind of mindless, repetitive activity that my weird brain sometimes finds really soothing. Planning to watch the game from home tonight...
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About this time six (!!) years ago, I feel like I spent most of my free time constantly refreshing Craigslist, looking for house shares in Seattle, a city I’d never even visited. In one house I found I’d have a bunch of dude roommates, which 22-year-old me could not handle. Another house required me to fill out a survey with questions like, “How strong would you say your current...
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Brief thoughts about recent reads
12. “How to Be a Woman,” by Caitlin Moran Have added Ms. Moran to my list of Imaginary Best Friends.
13. “Tiny Beautiful Things,” by Cheryl Strayed Actually ole Cheryl should be on that list, too.
14. “Nickel and Dimed,” by Barbara Ehrenreich If nothing else this book is a reminder to Always Tip Well.
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"Well, there'll be more to do than there is in...
I visited NYC in November, and met some friends for happy hour after an afternoon of exploring the Upper East Side. That afternoon I’d had an informal meeting with a broker, who for some reason was really pushing the UES. It’s nice, I told the table that night, but I just worry there won’t be much to do there, to which one of them replied, “Well, there’ll be more to...
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“They amble around the world and stare at things, they sail across the ocean as...”
– A line I just came across in Margaret Atwood’s “Alias Grace” and am noting here completely out of context, but whatever. It caught my eye.
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Party on, George!
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
George the 545 Bus Driver’s spirits seem to be back. “Well, here we are folks. Have a fantastic Friday and party on. As you exit the bus, you’re welcome to reply, ‘Party on, George.’”
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Have a terrific Tuesday, George.
Every morning for the last several weeks, I’ve caught a 545 with the same bus driver, a youngish guy named George. And every morning when we reach the Microsoft campus, where most of the passengers disembark, he’d say, “Well, folks, have a marvelous Monday/terrific Tuesday/wonderful Wednesday/etc. As you get off the bus, you’re welcome to reply, ‘Have a marvelous...
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BELLIGERENT!
Ahem. *pushes up glasses*
I’ve recently noticed that people seem to believe the word “belligerent” is a synonym for “very very drunk.” It seems to be spreading, and it’s time someone put a stop to it.
Because actually, “belligerent” is an adjective that means the following:
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: waging war; specifically : belonging to or recognized as a state at...
March 2013
7 posts
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I wrote a thing today on “black henna” tattoos, which aren’t really henna, or at least, not entirely. It’s most often henna mixed with an ingredient used in hair dye, and the FDA is advising consumers today that in some people it causes some crazy skin reactions: the skin reddens or blisters where the tattoo was applied, and in some cases, it can even cause permanent scars....
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10. “Your Voice in My Head,” by Emma Forrest Lovely lovely book that I ruined for myself by googling “Who is G.H. in Emma Forrest’s ‘Your Voice in My Head’” halfway through. Discovered it is likely Colin Farrell and could not focus on anything else the rest of the way through. I am Part of the Problem. (But will likely reread this one someday soon.)
11....
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I just started to panic, actually panic, that I’ve lived THIS CLOSE to Alaska for six years and never made it up there. What is wrong with me?! AHHH
Frantically Googling “long weekend in Alaska” and looking at airfare now …
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I’m leaving Seattle soon — no departure date yet, but I’ll be gone some time in May. I guess because that’s looming ahead of me, I keep remembering little things about what it was like to move here - to a real city, if a mid-sized one, and one with considerably more Earth Mother tendencies than the suburbs of Sacramento, where I’d spent the previous seven years.
...
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9. “Divergent,” by Veronica Roth Ugh, I don’t know. I mean - yes, I devoured this entire thing in like 36 hours, and I stayed up until nearly 2 a.m. reading it on Tuesday night, but. But! Do we really need this? Do we really need another teenage dystopia trilogy? (Because of course it’s a trilogy.) No, we do not.
I did like one of the overarching themes - that becoming...
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I didn’t finish a single book in February and now March isn’t even halfway over and I’ve already finished three:
6. “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” Katherine Boo Let me be the eleventy billionth person to tell you: READ THIS! I started it, about a slum in India called Annawadi that neighbors the international airport in Mumbai, thinking it was going to be a little...
February 2013
10 posts
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“I love this city. I want to stay here. That’s why I want to do this. I...”
– Felix Hernandez said this today after signing a 7-year, $175-million contact with the Mariners. I went on a little King Felix Wikipedia binge this afternoon, and discovered Seattle was the only place he ever wanted to play, because that’s where his childhood hero played. He’s been with...
“At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the...”
– The Fellowship of the Ring, J. R. R. Tolkien (via literarynerd)
Love it.
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Kids today!
It would be easy to dismiss this new APA suvey declaring “Millennials” (awful, awful moniker, that) Most Stressed. But a) economy b) no one can figure out relationships and/or marriage anymore and c) we are all trying to figure out this garbage in front of everyone we have ever known, thanks to Facebook/Twitter/etc.
Also, the psychologist I talked to for the story made the point that...
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Things I wish I knew when I was a waitress.
1) Customers tend to leave higher tips on sunnier days.
2) Even if customers are in a windowless room and can’t see for themselves whether it’s sunny or not - if the server simply tells them it’s sunny outside, they were more likely to leave bigger tips.
3) If a server writes a fake “weather forecast” on the back of the bill predicting sunny weather, the customer...
January 2013
15 posts
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5. “The Fault in Our Stars,” by John Green Read it if you’d like to have YOUR HEART RIPPED OUT. (But, oh, you do, you really do.)
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“A month ago I asked my best friend to marry me.” - some dude on Tumblr
“I marry my best friend in two months!” - some chick on Twitter
“Today I marry my best friend.” — some lady on TheKnot.com
I am creepily linking to these strangers’ social media profiles to prove a point: Calling your significant other your “best friend” has...
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4. “I Knew You’d Be Lovely,” by Alethea Black I read about this book in a NYT profile of Anne Lamott, a sort of “What Is Anne Lamott Reading Now?”-type article. She called it a “wonderful collection of stories … which reminds me so much of the late, great Laurie Colwin,” so, mental note to pick up something by Laurie Colwin, because I really enjoyed...
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2. “Clash of Kings,” by George R. R. Martin Same experience I had with the first one - I raced through the first half, realized I still had 500+ pages to go, got discouraged, put it down for a while and read another book, then picked it back up and ended up racing through the second half. They’re fun, they’re exciting, but allllso have a touch of tl;dr.
3. “Natasha:...
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Two years ago around this time, I started training for a marathon. I was obsessed back then. Obsessed! Obsessed with running, with my pace, my shoes, my little Nike watch, my little blue Shuffle. I worked, ran, slept, worked, ran, slept, and if you were unlucky enough to see me in between one of those activities, I would blab blab blab all about how all I did was work run sleep.
And then I ran...
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“I don’t remember the drinks I had, or the clothes I bought, the cab rides I...”
– I just made myself reread Mike Dang’s wonderful lovely Billfold post from last year, “What it Means to Save: A Year in the Life.” I’m embarking this year on my own Year of Austerity and it is harrrrrrrd but it’s about time I did grown-up things like a) set up a 401(k)...
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1. "Girls in White Dresses," by Jennifer Close
If I’m not careful about it, this is the kind of book I end up reading over and over again - essentially a rom-com in novel form. It’s funnier and smarter than the title would have you believe - basically, just a perfectly pleasant read that I finished in two nights.
(I’m trying to keep track of the books I’ve read this year, just for the heck of it. This was the first!)
Favorite lines from the NYT Lohan article, in no...
1) Lindsay Lohan moves through the Chateau Marmont as if she owns the place, but in a debtor-prison kind of way. She’ll soon owe the hotel $46,000.
2) (She would make it through “Liz and Dick,” a Lifetime movie, with the paramedics having to be called only once during the shoot. This was progress.)
3) “I said, ‘Hello, stripes after jail, so not a good idea!’ ”
4) The next day, Lohan arrived...
@julesdwit: Oscar movies that are on Netflix and... →
julesdwit:
Beasts of the Southern Wild (streaming on Amazon, DVD on Netflix)
Moonrise Kingdom (streaming on Amazon, DVD on Netflix)
How to Survive a Plague (streaming on Netflix and Amazon)
The Invisible War (streaming on Netflix and Amazon)
Searching for Sugar Man (streaming on
Useful!
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