Can it be? Is it true? Yes! Doc C has found a hotel on Manhattan Island with free wi-fi in the rooms! It's incredible, but true. Do you know that the hotel in Washington wanted $12 for a day's worth of internet? Outrageous! I think we need to stand firm on these sorts of charges, and work towards making hotels understand the importance of being able to browse the internet in the comfort of one's own room. This is ofcourse the only reason that I broke my run of daily blog posts, I managed over a year but in the end that's what got me. Ah well!
Fortunately, our hotel in Tribeca is much more progressive on the internet front; AND they have a cafe downstairs. They thoughtfully provide a copy of the menu in the rooms, which I have perused carefully and tomorrow morning I intend to eat a breakfast of porridge with maple syrup & fresh fruit, most likely with a pot of tea. Lovely.
Oh, and there is a detective novel shop just round the corner. This place is perfect.
p.s. I will be posting my Christmas Day report at some point soon, hopefully before the start of the New Year but we will see. You can't rush comedy.
This is my 2050th post, and with it I have successfully completed over an entire year of NaBloPoMo, which means I've posted at least once a day since the 1st of November 2008.
That is a lot of blog. However, I seem to have fallen off the blogroll for November, which is weird because I could have sworn I was on there, so I'm not eligible for a prize. Le sigh.
Oh well, I bought my own prize! Some really cute badges (American translation: Pins) from Nut and Bee, which I found today and I warn you now everything is just lovely. All this stuff is so adorable, and there is even a little Happy Crochet badge, it's so difficult to find crochet stuff! Everything's always knitting, and you know I like knitting too, but crocheting deserves some cuteness too. After all, without crochet there is no amigurumi, and that is the very epitome of cute in crafting.
I'm reading "Arthur Conan Doyle - A Life in Letters" which is just fascinating. I particularly loved the letters he wrote as a school boy; they are so hilariously Victorian in tone with their fascination with health and mortality, mixed with the abrupt changes of subject that you can expect from any 8 year old. It's all, and I only paraphrase very slightly here, 'Sadly two boys died last week of the croup. 50 new books were bought for the library which is very jolly now'. Brilliant!
At present I'm reading the letters he wrote as a struggling young
doctor trying to earn some extra money by writing short stories for
magazines whenever he had a spare moment. He hasn't created Holmes yet, but he is en route.
I only bought the book because it was on the sale table last time I had the pleasure of being in a large book shop, and I wasn't sure what to expect from it. So far my affection for Conan Doyle has remained untarnished; even though I'm completely sure we would disagree on any number of subjects my impression of him remains charmingly avuncular. Of course I'm not even half-way through the book yet, I may still end up throwing it across the room in disgust. (I'll try to remember to update this post when I've finished it.)
It's the first of November, which means to bloggers everywhere it's time for (Inter)National Blog Posting Month! As it happens, I started posting daily on the first of November 2008, and I didn't drop the ball for a whole year.
So what's happened in the past twelve months? For those of you joining us now, lets have a quick recap:
November '08: America got a new president, and I got my beloved iPod Touch.
December '08 : Bettie Page died, and I discovered Constant Comment tea.
January '09: John Mortimer and Patrick McGoohan both died, and I gave up trying to train the cats to use the toilet like humans.
February '09: Edith killed our romantic Valentine cupcakes, and I ran the first Alien Spouse Mystery Crochet Contest. I must do another one of those sometime...
March '09: We began to go to the gym before work, and I discovered the internet wonder that is Hulu.
April '09: Doc C learnt to make crumpets, and we went to Philadelphia.
May '09: I went whale watching in Province Town and got a tattoo of a key on my right wrist.
June '09: Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died. The media went insane, I'm just surprised no-one's yet claimed it wasn't all an elaborate hoax to jump start Jackson's come back.
July '09: Doc got his iPod Touch and a new bike.
August '09: I passed my learners permit test (first go and no wrong answers) and signed up for my MA course in English Literature.
September '09: Keisha left the Sugababes and I went for my two year anniversary of coming to America to be Biometrically Tested
October '09: I got Mono and slept through October. No really, I did, and I still blogged every day, that is commitment.
I suppose the biggest change was that I started calorie counting, using a free app on the iPod called "Lose It!", and since November last year I have lost around 45 pounds (That's over three stone) and two dress sizes. That makes a huge difference to my body shape, and I really wish I'd bought that iPod sooner, so I could have done this ages ago! Seriously, I LOVE my iPod for this; not only does it count all my calories for me but it keeps me motivated on the eliptical in the gym as well. The iPod Touch seemed like an indulgence before I got it, but really it's been very useful.
That was 2009, at the beginning of the NaBloPoMo cycle I taught myself to crochet and for 2010 I'm teaching myself to knit. Well, I actually could already knit never ending scarves, but this time I intend to knit actual things. To your left you will see the first few rows of a red cotton circular thingy, which is going to be a cowl, assuming that I've actually made it big enough to go over my head.
Still no news about my blood tests, but I can report that I was at work for a grand total of two and a half hours yesterday. This was just enough time for four colleagues and two students (one graduate, one undergrad) to tell me I looked terrible. Mainly they thought I looked pale, which considering I am a blonde who avoids the sun isn't exactly news, but apparently I was even paler than I usually am. Imagine, I must have bee practically translucent. Doc brought me home, and I napped for a couple of hours, before setting up my work computer laptop so I can access most of the software I need to do some work from home.
Not exactly a strenuous day, but I was so tired by the time I went to bed that night I actually dreamt about settling down to go to sleep. It's quite something when even your sub-conscious is nagging you about accepting you need to get some more rest.
Apart from making sure I can keep my job, I'm also trying to keep up with my class work. I have a 2-to-3 page paper to write, which is a close reading of a quote from "Frankenstein". I've chosen the description of a painting in the Frankenstein library, which is only two sentences in the seventh chapter (page 76 for those of you with the Bedford/St. Martins 2nd edition), but I think it explores a lot of themes of the novel as well as indicating a much darker possible reading of the romantic relationships within the text. It sounds quite good in theory, doesn't it? The problem is that it seems to be coming out like that weird post I wrote the other day, I just can't seem to articulate my analysis clearly or, more to the point, provide solid textual evidence. I am going to go through an look up each and every word in the OED and hope that gives me something to hang the whole essay on. Keep your fingers crossed.
Today was a very good day! Doc made crumpets! And I read "Frankenstein" from beginning to end!
Actually my personal best is still having read "Wuthering Heights" cover-to-cover in a single day, but that's not the point here. Whilst reading Mary Shelley's best known work I was also underlining lots of passages in the novel and made a couple of pages of notes, which is guaranteed to make a girl feel like she's been doing some serious thinking.
One of the best things about buying second-hand text books is when the previous owners have already underlined bits, or made notes in the margins. Whoever it was that owned this book before me started off annotating the text quite emphatically, for example there is a star in the margin that was drawn in ballpoint pen with such force that it's impression goes through the next three pages; but that kind of intensity is hard to maintain, and the notes stop a third of the way into the book.
It turns out I am, like, totes naive when it comes to the world of blogs. Recently Dooce has started an archive of her hate mail Most of it is has been attributed to one particular woman, which piqued my interest, and a quick google revealed that this one particular woman also had similar issues with a few other "mommy-bloggers". It was at this point that I went through the self-reflexive looking-glass of blogs.
It turned out that a lot of the poison-pennings were originally posts and comments from a blog that's whole purpose is to be scathing and critical of a few other people's blogs. And, AND, it's not the only snark-fest out there! This is a self-cannibalising blog trend that I was completely unaware of before today, and I'm sort of bemused by it. It seems like a lot of mental and emotional energy to expend on extreme snarking. Can't we all just post photos of kittens and unicorns?
If you are even considering starting a blog I would not go looking for these web critics, not because they aren't amusing some of them are very funny, but because some of it is pretty vitriolic and quite depressing really. If I'd seen this stuff before I started blogging I would have been trepidatious about publishing that first post. Now I'm just hoping to never do anything to draw any ire from that quarter of the web. I cry really easily.
About five minutes ago I found a really simple organising website called Now Do This (via Stumble Upon, which is also dead good). If you click "Edit" under the latest task, you can add or remove tasks, as well as putting them in order of importance. I also went to their blog and it's REALLY easy to add in tabs so you can have several lists on the go.
Plus you can have "Now Do This" open in a sidebar on my homepage, so it can sit there quietly all day. This is going to be SO useful, or I could simply add "Look at Pictures of Kittens" for every other task.
When I was 9 I suddenly developed a taste for Agatha Christie novels. I'm fairly certain the first one I owned was "At Bertram's Hotel", but I don't remember if I got that before or after seeing the BBC adaptations of the Miss Marple stories. I could still hum you that theme tune, and for me Joan Hickson is the definitive Marple.
I must have been about 12 when the film "Agatha" (1979) was shown on TV, but I was thrilled to be allowed to stay up and watch it with my parents because I was fascinated by Agatha Christie's 11 day disappearance in 1926, which she never really gave a proper explanation for. Dad teased me that there was bound to be a sex scene in the film because it starred Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman, and, as I was a very pure minded 12 year old, the mere suggestion was completely outrageous to me! I don't actually remember much about the film now, except for the main plot twist, and it being the main reason I developed a distaste for Timothy Dalton that I've never quite got over. He's probably very nice in real life, but as Archie Christie he was a cad and a bounder so I could never buy into him being a romantic lead after this.
Last week I spotted the book that the film was based on. It was published two years after Agatha's death, so she didn't have a chance to respond to the solution posed by Kathleen Tynan. I'm only on chapter three, so she's only just vanished mysteriously and there isn't any indication of where she might have gone.
The art work on this is particularly 70's film tie-in, isn't it? Hideous, yet intriguing. Those are great portraits of Redgrave and Hoffman, but it's a weirdly composed image and I have no idea why they are peering off in different directions through wet glass. I'm pretty sure that doesn't end up being a plot point, but I could be wrong there.
During orientation schedule building one of our advisors used the phrase "...smiling from ear-to-ear", and the student he was talking to said, entirely dead pan, that she thought that if one did that "...it would be very painful, and possibly the top of your head would fall off".
So today's Questionable Content was too good a gift not to share with the group. It made my entire office giggle, after I'd tweaked it a tiny little bit. I do hope J. Jacques doesn't mind me changing the first speech bubble, and chopping off the last panel to alter his strip so it would fit the anecdote more closely.
Today's top tip, should you be about to drive route 81 through Pennsylvania, is to bring gas masks and some sort of air freshener because OHMIGOD there is a stretch of about fifteen miles that stinks to high heaven. I am not even joking. I found myself hoping for a skunk to become enraged at one point. Funnily enough this stink was very close to the town of Hershey, I will say no more. *cough* chocolate-should-not-taste-like-that *cough*
Our trip was further enlivened by Doc C noting that his beef jerky purchase, far from adding to his manliness, in fact indicated that he was "...not a real man of the road...I went for the low sodium option."
To round up this post of dubious taste I'll just add that I have been reading "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" which combines the classic tale of romance with a plague of reanimated corpses. It's very fun, and the conceit does explain why there is a garrison of soldiers permanently stationed by a sleepy English village. Unfortunately Miss Austen's co-author rather stretched my credulity by adding a scene in which chipmunks scurry across the Bennet girls path, followed by several other animals, including a skunk. That's just taking things too far! Zombies? Yes. Misplaced wildlife? No. You have got to have limits and that would be mine, it's exactly the same issue I had with the live version of "101 Dalmations" frankly.
Doc is in the middle of a end-of-semester final paper grading frenzy. This is usually unrelenting misery, but occasionally his face will light up with pleasure at what he's reading.
As happened yesterday evening, when he turned to me and said:
"I love it when a student uses the word 'biaatch' in an essay!"
Which is actually justified in this instance, because it was used in the context of a paper on the aesthetics of hip-hop culture. That particular essay made him considerably happier than the one page paper that was written in what amounted to text message speak, and should have been ten pages long.
This morning when I came down to feed the cats I immediately noticed that the cat tower had been knocked over, because I am perceptive like that. What I don't understand is how the thing fell on it's side without waking me or The Doc up. I mean it's pretty big, wouldn't it have made some noise?
Anyway, then Doc made me crumpets for breakfast. This time I had jam on mine. It was nice.
Then we went food shopping and on the way we stopped off at the pet shop. We wanted a food container, but they had none in stock. However they did have cat harnesses and leads. More of that later...
On the way to the supermarket we were walking passed a small bookshop and I spotted Tori Spelling's autobiography "Stori Telling" on the sale table. It is now mine. It turned out that it was actually a bookshop, newsagents and cigar shop. We browsed the magazines, and Doc asked me who the little old lady sitting outside was doing out there; on the way in I'd seen that she had a stack of books and a sign saying she was doing a signing. Doc went back outside to chat with her, whilst I was asking about the empty cigar boxes they had on top of the shelves. It turned out they were all for sale, and I have found a fantastic square box with a open front to it for $3. I have no idea what I'll do with it, but it just looks really useful for something. When I went back out, Doc had decided to buy two books from the author outside, she was a Russian emigre who had moved to the US when she was 8. Her first book was about that experience, and the second book was a collection of the letters she and her husband wrote to each other before they married. Doc asked her to sign the second book and bought it for me; she also gave him a copy of her husband's poetry, I think just because he was interested in it.
After doing the food shopping we came home, and put the harness on the cats one at a time. They had no idea what the hell was going on, and as you can see Nancy looked particularly comfortable in it. Poor Nance liked the going outside part, but hated the harness, so she kept walking backwards to try and get out of it. Edith mainly just rolled around on the front path.
Then I came back in for my movie marathon. "I Married A Monster from Outer Space" was fun, Doc went so far as to say it was "Rocking", mainly because of the surprisingly good special effects and some good solid performances. As planned I then watched "Cheaper by the Dozen" which Doc wasn't interested in, so he cooked and just caught the odd scene. Straight after that on TCM was "Funny Girl" OMG! Doc lasted about 15 minutes before declaring he had enough. I can't think why. I mean I'm not a huge Barbra fan, but her early movie career was pretty good, so I watched the start and end around the "Ashes to Ashes" finale. It was a very good evening for film and TV.
Oh, That picture in the bottom left hand corner? That would be Edith killing her crinkly shiny ball toy, because I think it's hilarious when she does that. She takes it so seriously!
I am a big fan of Picnik, today I thought I'd see what treasures the fancy collage package has and I found the perfect backdrop for my photos of The Signer.
This statue commemorates the signing of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, but it is not of one specific person. Bearing that in mind, and with all due respect to those makers of history, I would love to know how the man depicted here is intending to sign the thing? For one thing he's going to get ink all over his sleeve if he is not careful.
Ok, so Doc has finished messing around on the laptop and looking up his silly conference stuff, so I'm back now to give you a longer post.
Now usually I would just have cobbled something together on the iPod, and then gone back into the post from the laptop to edit if necessary. I can't do that though because the hotel doesn't have wi-fi. I know. We actually have been forced to connect the computer to the internet via a cable. What is this? The dark ages? It's just barbaric.
True, the room is comfortable, there will be a free breakfast tomorrow and they do serve complimentary afternoon tea with cookies every afternoon at four, but if we can get wi-fi three thousand feet up a mountain in a place that doesn't even have a Starbucks for crying out loud (which is good, I know, Starbucks are corporate bullies blah blah blah) then I really do not know what Philadelphia's excuse is.
Anyway, the main problem is that without wi-fi I can't use my iPod to blog, or Twitter, or check my e-mail, or the weather, or look at maps, or breathe. I've set up my Twitter account so that I can send updates to it from my mobile phone, and I will just have to wrestle the laptop from Doc C occasionally to blog, because I am not going to drop the Nablopomo ball now just because I'm on a city break. You don't get me that easily Philadelphia! This is one British woman that you shall not defeat, whatever your history books may lead you to believe!
By the way, because of the difficulties of being a vegetarian when on a road trip, today I have eaten carbs pretty much exclusively, which also happened to involve a fair amount of sugar and caffeine. Can you tell?
I have some exciting new additions to the links category in the sidebar, which I'd like to bring to your attention.
First of all I added Mental_Floss a few weeks ago, and I think it's a very interesting web destination. It's full of great nuggets of geekitude, with some fun quizzes. You can easily convince yourself that it is in fact educational, and it must be helpful for your Trivial Pursuit or pub quiz scores.
I also recently discovered Questionable Content, via Cuteoverload (I don't need to link to that do I? It has to be in your favourites, and it's in the sidebar anyway), which is a web comic. I first visited on February 26, and I finished reading my way through the complete archives about a week later. This is an archive of 1362 posts, representing a new strip every weekday since 2003 and it may be addictive.
Most important of all is Brokeback Monkey, which is written by someone who I may possibly think is one of the loveliest and most talented people I know. I will warn you though, he's just started posting installments of a short story. and the prologue gave me very surreal dreams about a sinister inner city windmill. Like you do.
I have just got back from seeing "Twilight" (2008) which I enjoyed immensely, because it was so very very bad. It's hard to know where to start, but I think the plot and the dialogue were probably where the problems began; you know according to IMDB the script was written in six weeks. And, even though it was based on a book, that time frame explains a fair bit actually; however I think the director took that half-baked mess composed of equal parts creepy teenage obsession and flawed reinterpretation of vampires, and really made something special out of it.
Of course the director is only one part of the creative team and she was very ably supported in her efforts here. I particularly enjoyed the quite appalling pale vampire make-up that made the entire audience at my screening laugh every time a new vampire was introduced, and that Jill pointed out actually stopped at the chin, and left a nice tanned neck on all of the vampires. I also feel I should mention some very fine smell-the-fart acting on all counts, but with special mention to Robert Pattinson in the first biology class scene and Cam Gigandet in the decoy chase scene. I was slightly disappointed that the vampire stand-off during the thunderstorm didn't turn into a Jets Vs. Sharks style choreographed rumble, because for a moment there I was fully expecting it too. That would have been spectacular.
I can't wait to see it sweep the boards at the Oscars tomorrow.
When writing a blog you also tend to be a regular reader of other blogs, and then you tend to find yourself experiencing post envy. Sometimes the blog you are reading is about a lifestyle that you wish you had, but more usually the envious reaction is triggered by a nicely turned phrase, or a particularly good observation, an excellent joke or even just a well chosen subject.
The reading blogger then thinks to themselves "Damn it! I noticed [...Fill in suitably fascinating observation here...] too, but did I write about it? No! I wrote a post about how my cat chatters at the birds when they land on the bird feeder, as if no other cat has ever exhibited this behavior!"
To add to my feelings of blog envy, I have recently been reading "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" by Jerome K. Jerome. It is a damned shame that man died in 1927, because that necessarily means he couldn't have even considered the possibility of the existence of blogs, and yet, I firmly believe, he would have been a phenomenal blogger.
It's quite something to be envying the blogging capabilities of a man who has been dead for over 80 years, especially as you'd think observational comedy from 103 years ago would lose a little something, but it is still hilarious. Not to mention free to download from the Guttenberg Project (if you are in the USA, if in other countries your copyright laws may vary), which is another distinct point in it's favour.
Recently I've been getting breathless letters from domain name providers letting me know that my registration of Alien Spouse was due to run out! In March! That's only three months away! Oh My God! Hurray! Sign up with us now! Ignore the fact that this letter came completely unsolicited from a company you never heard of before! Send us money!
I waited until my actual domain name provider sent me a polite and calm e-mail reminder, then I popped over there and registered Alien Spouse Dot Com for another two years.
Hello, and Welcome to 2009! If you will look to your right you will note the new NaBloPoMo badges in the sidebar; one announcing that I successfully blogged everyday in December, and the other indicating that I fully intend to do the same thing in January!
So far every time I've put those buttons up in the sidebar I have had a small panic because I can never remember how I did it last time, but when I put the new ones up this morning I couldn't find the instructions and I just worked it out for myself. Hoorah for trial and error!
Other projects for this year include learning to drive on the wrong
side of the road, crocheting a creepy/cute amigurami, and making a
short video of Edith to record one of her more eccentric but
definitely charming habits. We shall have to see if she feels like
performing to command, but since she adores getting any sort of attention I am
fairly confident she will.
Today I plan to get to know my new phone better (I will be posting the story behind how I finally got it, but I didn't want to start the new year on a rant), and maybe try to work out a way of making my own non obnoxious ring tones. So there will be a lot of tinny electronic music in my house today, which will absolutely delight Edith if no-one else. My favourite ever phone let me record a sound-bite with it, and then set that as a ring tone, so I had Fred Astaire tap dancing as my ring tone for ages. I can also highly recommend having the sound of the TARDIS as your ring tone, which I downloaded it from the BBC website, but I'm not sure if you can outside of the UK. That was a great ring tone because every time my phone rang people would literally stop in their tracks and look around hopefully, it was as if for one split second they believed Dr Who might be real. Which would be brilliant!
It's New Year's Eve and as we are approaching 2009 it's a time to take stock and, I have to be honest here, I'm not particularly chuffed with how Alien Spouse has been over the last few months.
What happened was that I mentioned that I blog to someone I didn't know particularly well, and I sent her a link. She then proceeded to tell a bunch of other people. Who I work with.
Actually she told them before I even got the job. She suggested they read my blog when they were, in fact, preparing to interview me because my blog is just "so funny!"; I only found this out after I got the job, when they all assured me they hadn't read it. When one of them first mentioned it to me I honestly felt my heart stop for a moment as my mind raced to think of anything that I might not want them to have read and I did go back and edit some of my archives.
Now it's always been a rule of mine that I don't blog about work directly anyway, but somehow knowing that your Departmental Director might just be bored one day and decide to check out what you've been blogging about recently really makes me think twice about sharing my thoughts on some subjects. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't do that, but I can't know for certain, particularly as I must admit that if I knew one of my colleagues had a blog you can bet your bootstraps I would read it. And please don't think for a moment that this is because I don't like any of the people in my office, they honestly do all rock! But since knowing they are aware of Alien Spouse I have felt slightly uncomfortable, purely because I don't really know them very well yet, and I would have preferred to be the one who told them about my blog if I wanted to. I suppose it's mainly that I am wary of offending anyone inadvertently, because I make a joke on my blog that they don't find funny, or that I'm having a bad day and rant about something that I don't think is in any connected to them, but, because this is a very small town, it turns out I'm actually saying something rude about their cousin.
Of course I know full well that this isn't controversial blog by any stretch of the imagination, it's written mainly for my mother's entertainment after all, but I certainly never meant for it to be primarily about my cats! I was envisioning the odd cameo when they did something particularly cute, but lately they have taken over and I don't want to write a crazy cat lady blog (Although Nancy actually just play fought with me! It's a breakthrough! She even rabbit kicked!).
I'm not sure what to do about this situation, hence this slightly passive-aggressive post on the subject. I haven't told anyone at work that I would feel uncomfortable knowing they read this, because that would probably be the quickest way to raise their curiosity about it, but I've kept an eye on my stats and there don't seem to be any new local readers lurking so I'm assuming they've simply forgotten all about it.
It's funny how over time the sense of anonymity has become something I
really wish I had protected more. At first it seemed restrictive, but now
that a large chunk of it has just been removed without my being able to do a
thing about it, I realise how liberating it really was to have the opportunity to say pretty much anything I wanted. It's most frustrating. So much so that I have created a secret side project blog where I go off to scream rude words occasionally. And, no, I'm not telling anyone where it is.
On an old episode of "House" (I don't know what season, but Cameron still had brown hair and was lusting after House, and Stacy's husband could still walk) Dr. Gregory House noticed that an elderly couple, who had come to him with a matching set of medical complaints, were wearing wedding rings that did not match and he therefore deduced that they were lovers who were married to other people. This is odd, but even odder, I've seen exactly this plot device in "CSI:Miami" too. The non-matching wedding rings again denoting an extra marital affair. I realise it's just a bit of business to indicate that the central character has amazing powers of observation, and that even a detail as tiny as rings that don't match can have significance to these deductive geniuses that mere mortals cannot divine.
I hope that this fairly weak plot device doesn't become an urban legend, or recognised bit of folk lore because Doc C and I wear totally different wedding rings; mine is an lovely antique gold band, whilst Doc's is a silver ring he bought for ten bucks after his original wedding ring started to turn his finger green. There are excellent reasons why we have different rings; both my wedding ring and my engagement ring have histories that are important to me personally, and Doc C just doesn't like wearing gold. That's all there is to it, no hidden drama.
Really I hadn't thought about the fact our rings don't match until I saw two quite different TV dramas put such significance in it. Does this mean that all other married couples always have taste so similar they will be easily able to agree an matching jewelry that they both want to wear every day for the rest of their lives? Isn't it more likely that people usually don't always have the same taste in jewelry, which would mean that one of our hypothetical couple would be secretly unhappy with the symbol of their relationship?
No-one has ever commented on our lack of matchingness, but maybe they are just being polite. I wonder what the script writers of "CSI: Miami" and "House" would say.
On a blog housekeeping note, I've been beta testing the new Typepad Connect comments accounts and I had some feedback asking what the heck was going on!
Well the idea was that you could sign up for a Typepad Connect account which keeps track of your comments, and when people click on your user ID it takes you to a profile page. If you comment on my blog when signed in that way anyone can then click on your ID and see where else you
have commented, and that might introduce them to a new blog or just give them a
better idea of who you are (Not your name and address or anything like that, just a better idea of your personality). Setting up an account also means that you can select an image to have next to your comment instead of those spirograph images, although I do think those are pretty cool. Essentially it's a way of creating ownership of comments, and making commenting much more of a community thing.
However I found that people didn't like having to set up an account, and it seems a bit buggy in relation to non-typepad blogs, so I've played with the settings so that you don't have to sign in to a Connect account anymore. I mean you can if you would like, and I do use mine because it's just a really nifty idea, but it's not mandatory on Alien Spouse!
Comments will still require a name and an e-mail address, but I have also decided not to moderate so they should now come up straight away. Although, please note, any comment that doesn't meet my strict guidelines (on both commenting and chocolate) will still be smite down with a stroke of the mighty delete key.
When I got up this morning at 6:30 (EST) the first thing I did was to call my mother to wish her a Happy Birthday. She was a bit surprised by this because her birthday is actually tomorrow.
Which is good because it means her birthday card has a marginally better chance of reaching her. I posted it yesterday.
Add to that that I still haven't posted any of my Christmas cards that need to reach the UK in less than a week and you could accurately conclude that I'm just not on top of things this festive season. My apologies.
Bettie Page saved me from skipping a day of NaBloPoMo posting because I was so sad to read that she had died that I posted first thing in the morning, which is unusual for me. I meant to post after work as well, but we were going for drinks at a friends house, and I was so tired (is it just me or has this been a really long week?) that before we left I opted to take a nap. Doc said he'd wake me in 10 minutes, but acually I got in 25 minutes of Zzzz Zzzz Zzzz before he came to get me. It was a lovely nap.
In case you have ever wondered about my position on napping I can tell you that I am in favour of them, and I particularly like to curl up fully clothed on top of of the bed covers with an extra pillow and a light cotton throw for maximum napping efficiency.
I read a very interesting article about napping here. I have since taken the advice to heart and will nap on the sofa in Doc's office at lunch time occaisionally. It's not ideal, because it's a two person sofa, and I really am more of a three-to-four person length woman so there is some small difficulty in getting optimum comfort.
Anyway, so after my nap I just had time to get changed, put on some lip stain (Benetint: Making me look less washed out since 2006) and rush out of the door. It was a great to be out on a Friday night and we were introduced to some really nice people, who I believe I will be facebook friending later today. It was so much fun, but by the time we got home it was almost one. So if I hadn't posted that morning, this experiment in blogging keepie uppie would have ended in failure.
And that is how Bettie Page saved Christmas NaBloPoMo.
Ugh. What is it with mobile phone companies? Why must they go out of their way to be annoying? And when will they learn that I am more than happy to send scathing e-mails to them should I deem it necessary?
So, as I believe I may have mentioned, I do not like my phone. When I went to the local shop for our network to get my number changed a couple of weeks ago, I asked how long it would be before I could change it, and I was told it would be another six months. Not really what I wanted to hear, but fair enough.
Then I got a text telling me that I was eligible for an upgrade, and urging me to log on to the phone company's website to do so. The website said I was not eligible for an upgrade.
Again fair enough, one might think. Except that since then a bit of my phone's hinge just snapped off, without any provocation I might add, and it's now difficult to open the thing. Meaning it's essentially becoming an even more useless and annoying collection of plastic, wire and glass.
So we went back to the shop and showed them both the broken hinge and the text message, and they told me I could not upgrade but I could either pay the full retail price of a couple of hundred dollars for a new phone or $50 for the same model of phone that I have and hate. Hmmm. Add to that the saleswoman told me it was one of their best phone, but when she called head office to verify things I actually heard her say that this particular phone is prone to this type of problem. Double Hmmmmm.
Personally I think it might be worth a slightly snippy e-mail to my network provider, don't you? I mean they don't even pay lip service to the idea of honouring the text that they sent me saying I could upgrade, AND they know this phone has a design flaw and they still wouldn't let me change the model even if I did make an insurance claim. I call that pretty poor customer service personally.
I have completed NaBloPoMo 2008! Look I've even got the badge in the right-hand side bar.
In fact you may also have noticed the yellow and pink NaBloPoMo December badge just above that, well that is because November was just so much fun, that I think I will keep going. Let's see how long I can sustain it for! It'll be like blog posting keepie uppie!
I'd love to manage a whole year, but that might be a little ambitious; my main hope is that the cats really step up and start doing something very entertaining.
The theme for December is "Thanks!" and let's kick off by saying thanks to my Mother, who I know read every single one of the November posts. That's one of the things they don't warn you about before you have kids.
Sometimes I have great ideas that I am just not in a position to actually implement, the oft quoted example being the lavish mini-series of "Mame" and the sequel "Around The World With Auntie Mame" starring Megan Mullally (I'm going to keep mentioning that one, until someone steals the concept. Unless McG is reading this. In which case: Yikes).
It's mainly casting, which would have been my dream career, but I do also develop product lines in my head sometimes. Most recently I've been mulling over an idea I came up with when I was a teenager that I still think would be a winner. When I was studying "Hamlet" for my Eng. Lit. A-Level I thought that work-out gear that had the quote "Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew", would be great. I'm sure I've seen that phrase on t-shirts before, but I am thinking of a whole range of clothes specifically designed for exercise with that and other appropriate literary quotations. You know track suits or yoga gear with lines from Dostoyevsky on, that type of thing.
The market would be intellectuals, or just people with intellectual pretensions, to wear their brains on their sleeves whilst on the elliptical machine. Of course the range would also accommodate those people who want their tracksuits to say more than "Just Do It" whilst they are slumped on the sofa watching telly.
Just so you know I have signed up for this year's NaBloPoMo.
That means I will be blogging every day through out November. Which is pretty much what I would have done anyway, so there should be no perceptible change to our scheduled programming; although I am hoping that being part of a big group blogging event like this inspires me to write about something other than cat poo, and I am reasonably confident that you are hoping that too.
You may already be aware of this, but you can do NaBloPoMo any month you like now, but November is still the big one with prizes for different categories. I'll be brutally honest here and say I would absolutely love to win a prize for blogging, that would be brilliant!
Actually I'd love to win something full stop; I spent ten minutes filling out a questionnaire for the University's library last week, even though I have yet to check out a book from it or use it to do anything except attend meetings. I did it purely because they e-mailed the thing to me and said I would be entered into a prize draw for an iPod Touch if I graded their performance on a scale of one to ten.
Alright then, I'd say you were, oooh, about an 8 as far as Libraries-that-I-don't-use go. Could perhaps do a little bit better, but you're not bad at all really. Carry on!
It's Fall Break, so the faculty and students had yesterday and today off, unfortunately office staff aren't so lucky. So Doc C dropped me off at work this morning and went to get something to eat at our favourite breakfast place.
Whilst he was there an enormous pink SUV pulled up and two guys got out, and came to get breakfast too. As it happened they sat at the table next to Doc, so as the two of them were chatting to each other Doc realised that one was a former professional surfer, and the other was probably a writer for a magazine. He was tipped off by their discussing surfing with Tom Cruise.
When he told me about it, I asked him to describe the surfer and all I got was "He was huge! He was just this really muscly guy, so I didn't laugh at the car!", so I tried another tack "Was he bald?" and The Doc said yes he was.
As it happens I can only name one former professional surfer and that is Kelly Slater; which was why I asked if the guy was bald, so I found a picture of him on-line to show Doc. And Doc was pretty sure that was the same guy he'd been sat next to at breakfast this morning. He thinks. Maybe.
No clue what a surfer is doing 3000 feet up a mountain though.
So the second presidential debate is on this evening, at the same time as the "Project Runway" season five finale. Obviously I'm going to be watching "Project Runway", and I thought I may as well live blog it!
If you haven't been watching the show and you want to play along at home you can go to the show's website here, or the Fug Girls attended the Bryan Park show and actually handicapped the contestants in New York Magazine. They have pictures of the runway show, bless their coal black hearts.
If you'd rather follow the debate, may I direct you to Defective Yeti? Matthew Baldwin is live blogging this debate, and I can virtually guarantee you will find him immensely entertaining.
9.00 - I missed the first few seconds of the "Previously..." montage, but that's ok I'm up to speed.
9.03 - Tim Gunn's first appearance! Hoorah! Swiftly followed by Kenley-Disagrees-With-Tim shock.
9.17 - A model brought her puppy to a fitting and cleaned up the inevitable poop whilst wearing Leanne's evening gown. It seemed a bit weirdly staged really.
9.20 - I would love to go accessory shopping with Korto, she has a great eye for a striking piece.
9.21 - Michelle Trachtenburg alert!
9.26 - Jennifer Lopez pulled out of judging the finale because of a foot injury. When I first heard that I thought it was a joke, but, no, it's true. Anyway Tim is doing it instead. Kenley made a comment about how she should have worked on her attitude. Umm, yeah, that might have been good. Kenley starts the show.
9.28 - Shot of Rachel Zoe in the audience. Nice product placement there Bravo!
9.34 - Korto's collection is a lot stronger with her new dresses. Well played!
9.35 - Index tags! That's what Leanne's collection reminds me of! In a good way!
9.42 - Judging panel. Let's hope Michael and Nina have been working out their bitchy muscles in preparation.
9.47 - Korto kicks off the crying for this evening with a few discreet tears, Leanne was completely self-possessed and under control but Kenley actually blubbered.
9.56 - Kenley's out. And crying again, and complaining about how unfair everything is. Poor baby.
9.57 - Leanne wins Season Five! And a hybrid car! And Leanne's model wins her own magazine spread too, which is nice.
9.58 - Korto is the runner up, but we already know that she won the fan's favourite so she'll be getting $10 000 anyway and her little girl is super cute, so Korto's doing pretty well too.
9.59 - Is that it? I feel like that was a bit of an anti-climax really.
Ok, well that's all for Alien Spouse's live coverage for tonight, but in real life I will now be watching "Top Design" with India Hicks. I love Bravo...
Here is the last book in our series. This is Ngaio Marsh's autobiography and I have to say I think they did her proud with this cover. I love that the white band in the middle, with the same typeface and layout has been used to integrate it with her novels; whilst the image in the oval is the only photograph in the range which I think subtly indicates that this is not a murder mystery. I also think they chose a nice picture of her, and that it all works together really well.
I read the autobiography, which I like very much, after I read an incredibly boring biography. I forget who wrote the biography now, all I remember is that it was a woman, but she was very scathing of "Black Beech and Honey Dew" as a source of hard facts whilst committing two unpardonable sins of her own which made me dispose of the book before I moved here. First the biography is really boring (and that is definitly the fault of the author and not the subject) and long winded, secondly she gave away spoilers without any warning whatsoever! By way of contrast the autobiography Miss Marsh writes about her own life is very interesting and has some great colourful stories, even though it's true she doesn't address all of the questions one would want answered.
Doc C and I are at the supermarket on the way home, and as we wandering down the canned vegetables aisle Doc turned to me and said:
"Do you want to stock up on tins of beans in case the economy crumbles and the fabric of society splinters? Oooh! M&M's!"
He then zoomed off to grab a large bag of the peanut and chocolate treats. Do you think that's what happens at script meetings for "The Daily Show, with John Stewart"? Someone is right in the middle of an amusingly scathing riff about the current political situation, when they get distracted by sugary snacks?
So this is the cover that should have been on "Spinsters in Jeopardy", and the blurriness of the photo is nicely atmospheric I think. It also has one of Miss Marsh's most enigmatic dedications; what looks to be a hand drawn triple X.
(Limited SPOILERS from this point - Killer not revealed.)
This book really encapsulates what I like about Ngaio Marsh mysteries (This particular plot is set in the ultimate in remote and secluded settings, a cruise ship), with one of the aspects of her writing that I find most difficult to read and almost impossible to defend: blatant homophobia. Several times in her books she has secondary characters who she specifically indicates are gay, and they are always described as having almost no redeeming features. In this title a gay character is killed in a case of mistaken identity, and it's actually received as good news by the other characters when this plot twist is finally revealed. I fully understand that an unpleasant side effect of reading vintage fiction is that it will necessarily feature vintage prejudices; however Miss Marsh was heavily involved in theatre and there is no way on earth that you are telling me that she didn't have contact with gay men and women in that sphere of her experience if in no other. Of course another possibility is that she was gay herself, and is expressing her self-loathing through her work; but really homophobia is an ugly, ugly thing no matter what the reason for it.
This is quite a fun cover I think; it's very much of it's time and it's just creepy enough without going overboard. There is just one problem: This image has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of "Spinsters in Jeopardy", and neither does the blurb on the back.
It's not until you read the inside cover description that what you are reading has any relation at all to the plot of "Spinsters..." I found this very confusing the first time I read it and it didn't become clear until I read "Singing in the Shrouds" which is three books later on in the series, and is what this cover art should have been on.
Oddly enough I have the edition of "Singing..." which fits into the same Fontana re-print run as this book, and that's where the cover art ended up for this one. It's most odd. It's not just that they put the wrong jackets on, because the titles are actually correct on the covers so it is just a major mistake on someone's part. This pair are for that reason one of the prizes of my collection and I am so glad that I have both of them.
Is it not ironic that this cover has such a limited palette when it is for a book called "Colour Scheme"? It also feels very nineties to me, in that it wants to have it's cake and eat it too by bunging a melodramatic cover illustration (which seems to have been nicked from a poster for a low budget zombie film) into a very stylised cover design. Just pick one, and go with it! Jeez!
This was written in 1943, and it's a great example of one of the things I find fascinating about the Queens of Crime; which is how they observed and recorded the period of history proceeding, during and following the Second World War. Marsh set the majority of her mysteries in London, but clearly couldn't travel to the UK to do the necessary research during the war, her ingenious solution is to have Alleyn doing undercover secret service work in New Zealand. It makes no sense that he would be doing that if you think about it for any period of time, but it is a very nifty fix to Marsh's real life problem.
One other thing I would note is that this happened to be the first Ngaio Marsh mystery that I read when I was still at school, and I didn't like it at all. Fortunately I completely forgot about it until I re-read it, having then read some other Alleyn mysteries. Once you are familiar with Alleyn it is fascinating to see him out of context, but it's not the ideal book to kick off with.
I'm not really a fan of bland TV tie-in covers for books.
It's not that I don't like Simon Williams, or Belinda Lang and I thought they were very well cast actually; however I really don't see why we need exactly the same image of them on the front and back cover. It seems lazy.
This was actually the first title that the BBC filmed in the series, I assume mainly because they wanted to kick off with a story involving Troy (played by Miss Lang) and this is the first one in which that character plays a major role. The thing is though that Troy isn't in all of the novels, and by starting with this one they really made a rod for their own back in the later adaptations. I recently saw the adaptation of "A Man Lay Dead" which is the very first novel, and it had been shoe-horned in after this one very clumsily with Troy replacing a totally different character (Not to mention they had re-cast Alleyn with Patrick Mallahide of all people). Personally I hate that in a TV version of a novel I know well, and it loses my goodwill as a viewer.
Anyway, back to this cover. Umm, it's very blue isn't it?
Ooh! I just had my first vaguely unpleasant comment! That's a real right of passage for a blogger!
The details are that apparently I "suck" and Malteasers "rule", which as insults go isn't particularly stinging; especially as I happen to be very secure in my own opinions on confectionery. So, thanks for that perspective Abby, but you'll notice that I have deleted your comment. Why? Because this is my blog and, as I already suck, I may as well be a controlling cow too.
Alien Spouse is not a forum for random strangers to fling drive-by insults at me, or anyone else. This is precisely why I have that convoluted sign-in set up for comments, and why I'm moderating comments before posting them. Perhaps this particular comment was meant as a joke, but as I don't know Abby I really have no idea how she meant her comment to be taken; and frankly to be told you suck, even in jest, first thing on a Monday morning is a bit bloody much.
To be clear I do not have a problem with constructive criticism or debate, but I definitely reserve the right to delete any comments left on my blog. What gives me the power to censor the comments section? The fact that I am the one paying for the server space, and because I would never do that to someone else, so I don't see why I should have to put up with it here.
And for the record, if Abby had actually bothered to read the post she commented on she would have noticed that I was saying that I personally believe that Malteasers are vastly superior to Whoppers. In actual fact I believe that pretty much all generic UK chocolate is superior to generic US chocolate, because US chocolate, particularly Hershey's, tastes to me as if it had large quantities of parmesan cheese in it. This, fortunately, doesn't apply to the high-end stuff like Green & Blacks and Love Chocolate, otherwise I would not be able to live here.
There, I've said it. I've insulted Hershey's Chocolate.
Something unusual happened on Thursday, I had an e-mail from a nice lady called Daphne who works for BBC America and wondered if I would be interested in writing a post about "Skins". I hasten to add that I am not being paid to write this, and, although I did use to work for the BBC, I no longer have any professional connections with them.
That out of the way, here is a thirty second trailer (with what sounds like a middle aged American man doing the voice-over, which I find odd):
"Skins" is a drama about a group of friends aged between 16 to 18 who live in Bristol, and although it's about to begin it's third season in the UK, it has only just reached the US.
As it happens I was very pleased to see that the show was coming, because I didn't really get to see much of it when I was living in London and it's good to get a second chance to see it. The only reason I didn't watch the first two seasons the first time around was frankly because Doc C didn't want to watch it. I think he was put off by the marketing, which is weird because that was precisely what I found fascinating. It had a fantastic poster campaign (despite one image being banned after complaints), and the website emulated an internet social network idea to introduce all the characters. Very clever I thought. The BBC have used the same Facebook-esque format on their website for the show, and you can see that here.
So far I've seen two episodes that I hadn't seen previously, and I honestly enjoyed them both (Doc C, however, left the room). Whilst I wouldn't say that it's my new favourite show, I would be interested to know what is going to happen next to the characters and I will try to see it again. I particularly liked hearing the Bristol accent, and the fact that some, but not all, of the dialogue has been deemed in need of subtitles! I can understand all of it perfectly, so to me it seems to be pretty much at random, but I'm sure it is just the thicker accents, or perhaps a more regional use of slang, that's being picked up on.
(Click on image to go to the Skins Flickr set)
If you are at all easily shocked by teenage sex, drugs and bad language than probably you won't like "Skins", (for example Doc C doesn't like it, because he doesn't think the characters have any moral sensibilty and seem unaware of how selfish their actions are). However if you think you might enjoy watching a group of articulate intelligent teenagers who are definitely not the saccharine, boring, cardboard cut-outs of the "High School Musical" type, than just maybe this is a show you would like. At the very least, it's nice to see a drama not set in London and the fine city of Bristol is most definitely worth a look.
"Skins" is showing on Sunday nights at 10pm/9c on BBC America, and/or is available to purchase on iTunes
This afternoon I was in the local bakery buying cookies for an event for work (I got to use my University credit card for the first time! I have never had a credit card for work before, it's thrilling!) On the counter they had displayed a copy of "Walter the Baker" by Eric Carle. Being a former children's bookseller and, indeed, a former child, I love Eric Carle, so I picked up the book and flipped through it.
On the fly leaf I noticed it had been signed by Eric Carle himself, and the signature was dated 2008. I mentioned this to the guy serving me, and he said off-handedly "Hmm?Oh yeah. He's a regular here."
Wait, Eric Carle is a regular in the bakery across the road from my office?
Oh. My. God!
The man who wrote "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" buys slices of focaccia from the same place I do. "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" has to be one of the most iconic children's picture books of the last forty years, and I remember it very clearly from my own childhood. This may well be one of the most exciting things I've heard since I moved to North Carolina.
I blurted this astounding news out to Doc C, and then rushed back to the office to tell my colleagues. No one knew what I was talking about, until I spoke to the department Director and she was just as thrilled as I was. We may have to get one of the staff to tip us off next time he's in, and, Mum, if you still have my childhood copy of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", now would be the time to un-earth it!
I had an idea for a children's book today, I don't want to write it but I would really like to read it - So if you know Diana Wynne Jones, or a writer of her caliber, please pass it along. Or if someone has already written this, please let me know!
The basic idea is a business that specialises in covering up ghosts, by providing something that would provide a rational explanation for the phenomenon, to prevent staff and customers from getting spooked. So if an office were haunted the ghost cover business would supply a particularly noisy photocopy machine to cover a clanking of chains. That sounds pretty dull, but that's just the maguffin I'm sure there is some potential in there for some interesting plot development.
British readers of a certain age are encouraged to imagine a reverse "Rentaghost" but with far fewer corny jokes.
Just to keep you in the loop, I thought I'd confirm that I will be maintaining radio silence about the day-to-day details of my new job, which has been my general policy on the subject since I started blogging; because I don't think it's an appropriate subject for me to be cracking jokes about.
Plus I discovered yesterday that my manager and colleagues knew all about Alien Spouse before I even interviewed for the job (they hadn't read it though), which is, you know, something to bear in mind.
I will say that everyone has been lovely, and although there is a lot of information for me still to process about the job, I can quite confidently say they will be keeping me busy. For example this morning I had some accounting training, then I helped choose a cake (Lemon Poppyseed Pound Cake, with the department's name in dark yellow icing) for an event next week, and in the afternoon I sat in on a branding meeting, which was fascinating.
So it's all good, and that is the last I shall say on the matter.
We are all packed and the bags are in the back of the mini ready for us to go to Washington DC. I've packed the laptop, the Skype headset, the camera leads and every single recharger cable I could lay my hands on. I have the technology and I will be blogging whilst we are away, but I can't commit to my usual two posts a day because I may well be having too much fun!
At the moment I'm blogging from Doc's office while I wait for The Doc to finish teaching his last class and then we will leave town for the weekend. In the meantime I nipped back to my old desk to do one or two things that I had forgotten about that I felt needed to be taken care of. You see? I am a very responsible employee!
I was planning to leave you with a nice picture to look at whilst we are on the road. Unfortunately the pictures I was going to post were all out of focus, which is annoying. You will just have to see pictures of the fabulous, framed, Day-of-the-Dead wedding diorama (which includes an adorable skeleton dog) that Randy and Laura brought back from Mexico for us. I think it was the reflections on the glass that confused my poor little point and shoot, so I'm confident that I can get a good picture once I fiddle around with some lighting.
Oh, I think I forgot to mention where we will be staying. Doc C is great at finding on-line deals on travel and accommodation, so he was clicking around and found a four star hotel for $90 a night. Bargain. So we will be in the Hilton, which is two blocks away from the White House! We looked at their website and it looks really nice; the only thing I was slightly confused by was why they had a Presidential Suite when they are only two blocks away from the White House. Is that where the President goes when he has a row with the First Lady and is sent to sleep in the spare room?
I was paying some bills on-line, and I decided to pay my Typepad bill for the next year. Previously I was paying month to month, but as I'm pretty certain I'll be blogging for a while to come, I thought I may as well pay for the year and get two months for free.
I'm sorry that I'm posting so late in the day, but you see Doc C played on-line poker for 16 hours straight, and out-right refused to let me have internet access.
Ok, that's not strictly true. In fact he was writing a lecture about feminism, and he refused to let me have the computer.
Well, I suppose it's probably more accurate to say that he was writing a lecture on feminism and occasionally interrupted my enjoyment of "Law and Order" to check whether I was feeling oppressed and to ask for my opinions on the education of women and some snippets of appropriate celebrity gossip.
And if I'd asked he actually would have let me use the computer, because he is a sweetheart like that, but crocheting got away with me again. What can I tell you? It's absorbing, especially when paired with a good detective drama.
Garfield Minus Garfield is being turned into a book! And apparently Jim Davis who created Garfield really likes it!
I feel all warm and fuzzy. I love when things I like become more successful then one would have thought and I was so worried that Jim Davis might lawyer up and do to GWG what Hasbro have done to Scrabulous.
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