don’t cover my footsteps

maura @ 9:39 pm

So there’s this place, which shall remain unnamed, that I currently need to visit a few times per week. It is not an airport. But it seems to be extrapolating threat level orange from airports to itself. Which seems odd to me because really, aren’t airports the most miserable places in the world? Why would anyplace strive to be more like an airport?

Let me explain. You see, this place has a rule about cellphones: you can’t use them. Fine, lots of places have that rule, no big deal. But does that mean that when they search your bag at the entrance they will throw your cellphone in the garbage? No! It just means that they will yell at you if you use your cellphone there. (Cellphones annoy me so I am all over this rule, actually.)

This place has another rule: no food or drink. Used to be the rule was enforced identically to the abovementioned cellphone rule. But recently there’s been some sort of sea change and the guards are now making people throw out their food and drink upon entry!

This is a problem for me. I tend to bring my lunch when I’m going to be out for the whole day. And hydration is very important to me. You never know when you will be stuck on a subway or something similar — it’s good to have some water and a snack just in case.

So recently I’ve been obsessed with figuring out a way to stash my lunch + water bottle invisibly. There’s a thin pocket on the back of my bag (perfect for a magazine), so this morning I packed only flat things* for lunch: a sandwich, a granola bar (instead of a container of trail mix), and a bunch of grapes off the vine in a plastic bag, arranged into one layer. I took a smaller-than-usual water bottle, wrapped it into my sweater (it gets cold in this place, too) and stuck it waaaaay at the bottom of the bag, under my visor and pencil case and hat and sunscreen.

* Which reminded me of that part in Microserfs when that guy was frantically coding in his office for days and his friends slipped flat foods (cheese squares, etc.) under his door for sustenance.

And it worked! For today, at least. Really I have spent entirely too much time recently strategizing about this issue. Send your favorite flat food ideas to me now, before I get a cavity from eating only dried fruits!

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loiter the whole day through

maura @ 9:00 pm

Man these summer classes are short. In less than 2 weeks it’ll all be over. Intense. Last week I powered through a bunch of assignments, plus did some time interning and freelancing. Yay for accomplishment! Yay for coffee!

Except that the house needs cleaning, again. Sigh. I love to clean, but even I sometimes wish for the self-cleaning abode. But if we could set the apartment to autoclean, how ever would I be able to kick Jonathan’s ass at Chore Wars? The name says it all, dude. Say it 3 times fast with me: chore wars, chore wars, chore wars.

Of course, everything has its downside. I wonder if we could maybe get Gus hooked on this game, how sweet would that be?

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argh, politics

maura @ 10:29 pm

Hi interwebs. I am angry. Why? Because the stupid state government couldn’t get it together to agree to the mayor’s congestion pricing plan. Yeah, I know that the mayor was antagonistic. And Republican. But I would be too (the former, not the latter!). How can there possibly be any question as to whether this is a good idea??? As a person who both breathes the air AND will be paying more to ride the subway, I am hopping mad!

If you’re not convinced that NYC needs fewer cars, check out the NYC Streets Renaissance. It’s chock full of testimonials from other cities that decreased car traffic, and great ideas for helping NYC do the same. If you’re in Brooklyn, head on over to the Central Library (you know you are going there for books, anyway!) and check out the Livable Streets in Brooklyn exhibit.

Okay, end of rant, I’ll silence my inner Al Gore now.

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just because you wanted sid vicious eyebrows

maura @ 8:49 pm

I’ve got homework to do. I should be doing my homework. What I mean to say is, I have to go do my homework in a few minutes. Or even now.

But first I will throw out a little link love, because it’s been so long:

1. You may remember that I (mostly) hate shopping. Don’t like spending my time + money on it, plus I’m a humorless anti-conspicuous consumption hippie. But Kelly from The Office has a hilarious blog called Things I’ve Bought that I Love and I cannot stop reading it. It’s more or less written in character, plus there are cute puppy pictures and cool pens, and when we were in Indiana we saw those crystal light packets IRL and they are completely tiny, which freaked me out.

2. (Repeat above shopping disclaimer, and add something about buying things made from recycled materials.) But if I were rich + frivolous I would want everything in my whole house to be made by Kerf. Maybe it could be a small house, like one of those ultratiny houses there keep being articles about in the paper*. The tiny house that we are going to get when we retire to New Zealand. I bet they could even make us a murphy bed, which would be so, so cool.

* Link may be expired if you’re not a subscriber, so use this one if so.

3. Continuing with the yin and yang of shopping vs. antishopping: a used kids clothing store is opening soon near us! Huzzah! I have a ton of old Gus stuff I was going to have to schlepp up to a shop in Williamsburg. But this is closer, and I am lazy, so that is good.

Hmm, I seem to have run out of steam here. And I do still have the aforementioned homework to do, plus lunch to make and bag to pack for camp tomorrow. Bye!

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wii are the champions

maura @ 10:52 pm

Hey there, internets. Sorry for the radio silence, but things have been busy here in mauraweb!land, what with our weeklong midwest vacation at Camp Grandma + Grandpa, the start of my last and final library school class, throwing a little freelancing into my own personal schedule mix, and Gus going to day camp for the first time. I did get started chipping away at that iceberg of owed email, and even hung out with a few of my friends from high school that we haven’t seen in 5+ years.

And in the meantime, there’s the Wii! If you are a close reader of mauraweb! you may have suspected that yes, we finally got our grubby mitts on a Wii. It was truly a fluke. We’d looked online and even tried in the midwest, to no avail. Then last week Gus and I were at the “mall” (my neighbor calls it The Big Ugly, which is so true) shopping for some last minute camp supplies. And I thought, why not stop into the game store, just to see?

While we’re waiting at the counter for the shop assistant to check in the back, I’m giving Gus this whole speech about how the workers at the Nintendo factory are working really hard, but so many people want the Wii that they haven’t been able to keep up, so we probably won’t get one today, but don’t worry because we will at some point, blah blah blah. And the guy comes back hoisting a box in the air, saying “this is the only one!” And you could have knocked me over with a feather, seriously.

Of course I had to schlepp the (heavy) box around throughout the rest of the shopping excursion because we’d stopped at the game store first. And Jonathan nearly passed out when we walked in with it, too.

So far Gus is not nearly as into it as the rest of the household. He has recently been heavily into Pikmin on the GameCube, and even was briefly pissed off before he realized that the Wii is backwards compatible. J+I, on the other hand, are an awesome doubles force to be reckoned with in Tennis, though Gus is the champion of Boxing. Baseball cracks me up because the little dudes have no arms, just a body w/legs + head with a bat floating off to the side of it. I need to make me a Mii, too, to replace the generic one w/a green shirt that J made.

Really, I have too much work to do right now to deep-end on the Wii. But come August 4th (my last class) IT’S ON.

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hearing nature talking

maura @ 1:51 pm

So I’m on my school break between summer sessions. Which means that the LAST class of my WHOLE library degree will start in a few days. Yipes, this program has zipped on by! Which means that I’m looking for jobs now. Right now. This very moment, in fact, in another tab in firefox.

(Which means that if you know of any reference/instruction jobs in academic libraries in NYC, please send ‘em my way.)

Which, of course, makes me think about other places. Non-Brooklyn places. Usually my thinking goes something like this: “I should really check to see if there might be jobs I’d like coming open in other places. But I love Brooklyn, I don’t want to leave! So I won’t look for jobs in other places. Well, maybe just this once I will look. Hey, look at that, we could move to [insert name-of-a-small-town-somewhere-far-away-from-everyone-we-know here]! Or not.”

So here are some reasons (in no particular order) why I love where we live and don’t want to leave:

1. The Subway.
The subway is awesome. It goes almost everywhere, usually in a reasonable amount of time. It’s fairly weather-independent. Sometimes it’s elevated and has nice views. It runs 24/7. And I hate driving — honestly I would much rather spend a bit more time on the subway than spend less time driving a car.

2. Our Neighborhood.
We live right near the park, central library (see below), museum, botanic gardens, a small zoo, and 4 good subway lines (see above). We’re not too far from the food coop and there’s a great farmer’s market on Saturdays. The neighborhood is a smidge playground-poor, but a new one should be opening soon. The sidewalks are wide and uncrowded for easy walking, kid-chasing, scootering, and biking. And we finally have a yummy coffee shop + bakery a few blocks away.

3. The Library.
I cannot overstate how spoiled we are to live near the central branch of the library. The collections (for all ages) are fantastic. It’s enabled me to impose my dictatorial Try Before You Buy strategy for book readership and home organization on my family (down with overcrowded shelves!). Plus they have rotating art exhibits in the lobby, often show kids movies on weekends, and let you place a hold on a book from the comfort of your own home.

4. Our Building.
I think most people think that New Yorkers don’t know their neighbors, but we do! We have a courtyard in our building which is a natural meeting place for kids, parents, and gardeners, among others. It’s nice to know that there’s always someone around to borrow a cup of sugar from, or for spontaneous playing after school. We even have a small library, in the basement, of books that folks have discarded. And the apartments are nice, too.

5. Gus’s School.
I could go on and on, as I have before. It’s a great school. Devoted teachers, progressive ideals, active learning, lots of field trips, no homework in kindergarten. Also a beautiful old building in a quiet pretty neighborhood. And a philosophically similar middle/high school on the top 2 floors. We totally lucked out, and we are all really happy.

All that, and I didn’t even mention all the other fun stuff to do in the city. Moving? I’m not moving!

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