lemons on sale again

maura @ 2:49 pm

Happy Spring! It’s in full force here, as our trip to the botanic gardens this morning can attest. There are 8 zillion gorgeous different pansies and tulips, and even the lilacs are starting. The cherry blossoms are about 30% there, which means they’ve timed it perfectly for next weekend’s festival (which we will not be attending, since the entire rest of the city will be. Plus I have extra recycling to take to the food coop, stinky hippie that I am.). Unfortunately it’s set to rain tomorrow and Sunday, bah. Jonathan’s dad is visiting so that means lots of crazy ordering the grandpa about by the little mister inside rather than out. Hope the neighbors are ready.

We had a nice easter weekend visiting with my family, including my brother, sister-in-law and 10 week old niece. Gus was a gas with Baby Ellie — kissing her head (“she’s softer even than a cat!”) and cooing over her various tiny extremities (“she’s like a little doll!”). It was insanely cute.

I, on the other hand, felt a little bad to be the only family member not to arrive bearing gifts. Since when did easter morph from a candy holiday to a candy-and-presents one? As the only a former catholic in my family I must admit that I feel a bit weird about easter. I am completely fine with christmas, since there’s really been a tradition of secular christmas in America for many many years now. Plus just because I’m not christian doesn’t mean I don’t think that Jesus was a good guy whos birthday deserves celebration. But easter, weeeeellllll…hard to cut the christianity out of it. I think next year we should have Aunt Maura’s agnostic easter egg hunt. Is there candy in the eggs? Are there even eggs to hunt? Maybe, maybe not.

So I finally got off my butt to redesign this site. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that the frames are gone, hooray! It’s not quite the exact way I’d like it to be yet: I need to go clean up the excessive tables + font tags in peas & carrots, and I want to add a graphic to the nav, and I am annoyed that the green in the nav will not go all the way across the screen on the blog pages, but it’s a start. I’m not the best photoshopper in the world and the wordpress stylesheets are cornfusing, so this will all take time, time, time. Someday.

looks as though they’re here to stay

maura @ 9:42 pm

I’m sick, bah. Gus and Jonathan are sick, too, but I have it worst this time (even took a sick day today). This is a bad time to be sick: Gus’ 1.5 week spring break starts tomorrow and I am taking a bunch of days off work to run around town with him and do crazy things like go to Staten Island (the ferry is free!) and to the science museum in Queens. Also we are going to my mom’s this weekend to meet my 10 week old niece, and I don’t want to give her all of our evil germs. Bah.

I’ve been listening to a lot of early Bowie lately, mostly Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane but then last week we watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou* and I remembered that I hadn’t ripped Hunky Dory so I brought that into work this week and listened to it repeatedly, like the obsessive that I am. It’s funny, most music I love makes me reminisce hard about a specific time or place, but Bowie is different, I feel like it’s sort of always been there. Which is patently untrue: unlike Steely Dan or Fleetwood Mac or Carly Simon or Cat Stevens, my parents did not listen to Bowie. I think my first exposure was around age 9 — my best friend at the time had 2 older, jr high + high school age brothers, and we’d sneak into their rooms and take their records, one of which was ChangesOne. But other than that my most nostalgic Bowie memory is listening to (and singing along with) the factory tape of Hunky Dory in my car in high school (also Janet Jackson’s Control, so hot). It’s strange, though, the melodies feel burned into my soul in a way that’s just not like other music.

* The movie was nice: sweet, funny and swell but also kind of slow. Jonathan liked it more than I did. But we both looooooooooooooooved those crazy Portugese acoustic Bowie covers. Loved them! That CD is going right on our wishlist, to be sure.

While convalescing on the sofa today I finished Cosmopolitanism. It was so so so good, everyone should go out to their local library right now and pick it up. His writing is clear and incisive and the subject is so thought provoking. I’ve come out the other side sort of envious of philosphers, and their ability to sit around thinking and writing all day.

Another thing that’s struck me with this is how much better prepared I am to read theory of any sort these days than when I was actually reading it for school, in college and grad school. While I loved the idea of reading theory and primary sources (nerds love doing things that are nerdy), it seemed so far from everything in my life then: friends, parties, music, travel, games, etc. Now that I’m older, a parent, and more mature (in some ways, at least), all of these deep thoughts and heavy ideas seem far less foreign.

Not that I’ll be delving back into Durkheim anytime soon, but I’m quite sure I’d have an easier time with it if I did.

EDITED 8/4/06 TO ADD: Man, those blog spammers are just crazy! The title of this post *used* to be “homo sapiens have outgrown their use”, but the homo is just a blog spam magnet, so I’m changing it in hopes of putting them off the trail. Sheesh!

there’s other fish in the sea

maura @ 9:19 pm

This week I finally went back to the gym after taking a month-long hiatus for various reasons. The cardio didn’t really faze me, but I am sore from the (meager) weights that I lift. Also, it appears that they’ve changed the radio station at the gym to some sort of lite soul station. Much as I do love the smoove grooves of Sade and the greatest hits of Pebbles, they’re not really good for getting that workout blood pumping. I much prefer the brainless, 140-ish bpm dance music they played in February. Harrumph.

Most hilarious thing Gus said this week: “Mommy, are my elbows heavy?”

And speaking of fish, we had a pretty excellent (if too short) time in Florida. Gus liked SeaWorld, though he was a bit disappointed to discover that there was no place for him to swim there. But the hotel pool was really nice. It was hoooooooot at SeaWorld, though the orcas and manatees were really, really cool.

So here’s a question for you: should I shave my head? No, this is not because of Natalie Portman, though she is a cutie and I am so so so happy that the whole Star Wars fiasco hasn’t ruined her career. And actually I don’t really mean shave, I mean just buzz it really short. I’ve never had hair that short before, and it seems enviably easy to deal with. On the other hand, I’m a wimp. And while my long hair is often a pain to deal with, I think it flatters me. And it’s been this long (with a retrospectively bad though blessedly short phase when I had a sort of long bob) for the better part of 20 yrs. And I might look like the opposite of a dalmatian: it’s getting pretty grey, but it’s hard to tell where the grey is: what if it’s in spots all over my head? Also, Gus might freak out.

Thoughts?