at your book launch party

maura @ 6:31 pm

I haven’t been walking to work much recently. I had this strangely persistent low-ish level head cold for much of the second half of March and early April, during which I convinced myself that it was better to take it easy. Then there was the break. But this week I’m trying to get back on that horse and I’ve walked each day (so far!).

There’s some newish art in the public/corporate plaza I walk through, but other than some flags made of black, white, and silver lamé fabric, which are kinda Hunger Games-ish, the rest is fairly uninspiring. I did take an alternate route yesterday which let me see the other side of the cool word art painted on that garage, but it’s sunnier on that street so I think I won’t make it a regular part of my day.

Today’s walk was nice: cool and crisp, finally, after the early awful heat of this week. And I saw a couple of weird things too. The first was a man getting on a bike near the preschool* I walk by who was wearing a full lower leg boot cast. He just got on the bike and rode away like nothing was wrong. Are you allowed to ride bikes with a broken leg? Call me crazy, but it just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. (Of course this made me wonder how he broke the leg in the first place…)

* This is the preschool Gus went to, which is now only 3 blocks from our house but when Gus went there was a couple of subway stops away. Commuting would have been so much easier back then if we could have walked! OTOH, 3 yr olds are skilled in making even a short commute into a long one.

The second weird thing was a woman pushing a dachsund in a baby stroller. The dog had a jacket on, and she was tucking a blanket around it. Looked like a normal baby stroller and I dunno, maybe she just dropped off her kid and was giving the dog a ride for the fun of it? I’ll also admit that, weird as it is, this made me wonder if we could put the cats in a baby stroller to take them to the vet. Probably not — I don’t think they would feel as adventurous about riding in a stroller as a dog would.

spring broken

maura @ 11:17 am

Spring Break is late ’round these parts — my university follows the public school schedule and while the alignment is super-convenient it does mean that the semester’s usually at least 2/3 gone by the time the break happens, and everyone’s feeling a little frayed. This year wasn’t as late or frayed as last year, but we were all looking forward to a couple of days away. We’d planned to visit my family in Delaware and also spend a couple of days in Baltimore ogling the octopus and chambered nautilus at the aquarium and swimming in the hotel pool, still a huge draw for Gus.

But it was not to be. Late last week the cat got sick (not that one, the other one), and one of the awesome side effects was that he started peeing all over the house. Yay! We took him to the vet and they fixed him up, but they left us with liquid meds to be given twice/day and the warning that it might take a few days for the cat to get completely back to normal.

So Jonathan stayed home with the cats, and I went to Delaware with Gus, and we canceled the trip to Baltimore. I definitely got the better end of the deal — while it’s not exactly restful hanging out with my 5 nieces and nephews, we hadn’t visited since xmas and it was lovely to see everyone. And I didn’t even have to mop the floor once! While Gus was disappointed to miss seeing his favorite marine invertebrates, we’re already scheming plans for a quick trip to Baltimore sometime in the not-too-distant future.

By the time I got back on Tuesday evening I hadn’t really shed the frayed feeling I’d left with. But luckily one part of our original plan still held: for Gus to spend the rest of the week in Delaware with my family, and for my mom to drive him back on Friday. I could have caught up on all kinds of things on Wednesday, but instead I took a vacation day. We went to a new place in our neighborhood for lunch and ate fresh donuts. Then we walked through the Botanic Gardens, where the cherry trees are almost there, lilacs are starting, and no bluebells yet (phew!).

Then on Wednesday night we went to a show! Like young’uns! The Chickfactor 20th anniversary show. It was a 3 night fiesta but even with Gus out of town I knew I could only handle one late night in the middle of the week. We picked night #2, which with the Legendary Jim Ruiz Group and Pipas was the best venn diagram of my and Jonathan’s favorite music of the shows. I ended up wishing I could mix-n-match a bit: I’d take Small Factory from night 1, Honey Bunch from night 3, and while we’re at it, Lilys from the Arlington shows earlier in the week.

The show was amazing, with the Ledge and Pipas as charming and incredible as ever. I’m sure every single person on the Indiepop List has written a better review than I can write, so you should go there to read them. There were lots of folks there from out of town (and from in town) who I hadn’t seen in somewhere around 10 years, perhaps a bit more or less, though I was sad to miss a couple of folks who only went to nights 1 or 3 (I’m looking at you: Kat, Maura, and Kardyhm). There was this moment soon after the Ledge started playing when I looked around to find myself standing next to Jen, Ed, Keith, and Jonathan, and it was the purest essence of nostalgia: suddenly 1996 all over again. I still haven’t quite been able to process those emotions, but I have found myself with the Ledge on repeat in my brain since then, so there you go.

it’s all in the details

maura @ 5:23 pm

I needed new work shoes recently. Because I hate shopping (and fear change), I just wanted to get another pair of my same old Dr. Martens black wingtip oxfords that I wear practically every single work day between October and April (except if it’s a skirt day — then I wear Dansko Mary Janes). Since I am decidedly Not Good at Fashion it’s just easier to have few choices, and those Docs are just nice enough to make it seem okay to wear Docs when I’m trying to look all professional, while still being super comfortable w/that bouncy air sole.

As you can probably guess, if I’d just bought another pair of the same shoes I wouldn’t be writing this right now, would I? Of course Dr. Martens has changed their styles in the past 5* or so years. And you can now buy gray suede wingtips and purple suede wingtips, but not just plain old black leather wingtips unless you have bigger feet than I do. Which is to say that they’ve decided that only men deserve plain black wingtips. The purple are gorgeous and tempting, but really they are far too expensive for something I decidedly wouldn’t be able to wear every day.

* This is totally an estimate — in fact I have no idea when I got those old shoes. Maybe they’re even older? Which makes it even more amazing that they’ve lasted this long.

So I somewhat sadly ordered up a pair of very pedestrian Gibsons in black, those most basic Dr. Marten’s ever. I used to have them in the mid-calf boot version in green, which I’d gotten for something insane like $5 somewhere like Marshall’s a million years ago, but like so many of my shoes I had to get rid of them after Gus was born and my feet got permanently bigger, sigh.

Then the Gibsons arrived, and they looked and felt, well, weird. A little too big, a little too clompy. I suspected that the next size down would be too small, but these were so big that I felt like I had to try on the smaller pair. There’s a Dr. Martens store in Manhattan, so one day after a meeting a few weeks ago I made the trek. Damn, those wingtips that are too big for me look even nicer in person. I moped around for a while looking at all of the options (the store was very crowded). I picked up a pair of gray Gibsons and a pair of green ones, both of which are pretty but not what I need.

And then I saw them: plain black oxfords, but with slightly different details that makes them look a bit smarter. Black stitching on the sole rather than yellow. Only 3 holes for laces, with the grommets on the inside rather than the outside. Black leather interiors rather than tan. All of which combine to give the shoes a bit more formality and make them seem better for work to me. And they’ve added a bouncy insole as well!

Reader, I bought those shoes, even though it meant I had to send the other ones back through the mail. Strangely enough they even fit better than the mail-order shoes, even though both are Gibsons. Which is something else that totally gets me down about shopping — that sometimes even the same size in the same brand has a totally different fit — but that is another rant for another day.

i want to believe

maura @ 8:51 pm

I finally read Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal. Maybe you’ve seen her TED talk, which is 20 pretty enjoyable minutes; I recommend it. The book, which is well-written and fun to read, expands on the basic themes of the talk: lots of people spend lots of time playing games, games make us happy, how can we channel that energy and repurpose that time into solving the big hairy problems facing us and our planet today? The strategy she suggests is to figure out how to make games that can save the world, so we can all spend lots of time playing games and saving the world.

Okay, I’ll grant that I just wrote a really, really simplistic summary of the book. In fact, it’s fairly well-argued and cited, and full of details. And I’m glad I read it. But am I convinced? As you may remember, I’m kind of a fan of games. I should be easy to convince, right?

But I feel like Mulder: I want to believe, so much. But something about it just doesn’t sit right with me. Maybe it’s all of the positive psychology research included in the book. I think of myself as a fairly optimistic person, but I just read something (which of course I can’t find now) which asserts that too much optimism (a strangely American condition?) can actually be bad, because inability to seriously consider the bad things that could happen means that you’re less likely to be prepared if a bad thing does happen. So I guess I feel like it’s good to be optimistic, but not too much, and which makes me less willing to buy in to positive psychology.

I’m also uncomfortable with the corporate ties and funding that such big, giant, world-changing games are almost guaranteed to require. McGonigal’s developed lots of games, some with corporate backing, and some not. I’d rather play a game that grapples honestly (if whimsically) with what’s required to be a global corporation like McDonald’s than play a big game sponsored by McDonald’s.

Unfortunately, finally reading the book reminded me of the negative press it got last summer when it was released. My CUNY Games Network colleague Carlos Hernandez wrote a post about it on our blog, which hits the high points well. Lots of that negative press was pretty sexist, which bugged me at the time and bugs me even more now in our arguing-about-birth-control world. The sexism inherent in the game development industry (about which this is only the most recent piece I’ve read) hardly a secret. But I can’t help but wonder, would the press have been so dismissive if McGonigal were male?

dids and didn’ts

maura @ 6:14 pm

Hey, it’s the weekend! But I’ve clearly got Sundaynightis, because despite spending the day hanging ’round the house there are still Things That Remain Undone, and that vague feeling of not having enough time to do them in. Perhaps I’m being infected by Gus’s gloominess at returning to school tomorrow after last week’s Midwinter Break (not that we can even have a Midwinter Break when we haven’t even had Winter yet, but I digress).

Lists will make me feel better!

Things I’ve Done Today (not necessarily in the order of doing):

– Sent two (2) longish personal emails
– Ordered a birthday present for my sister and one for a pal
– Called my nephew (who turned 4 today!) and sang “Happy Birthday” to the answering machine
– Dusted + swept the shelves + floors
– Washed + hung one load of laundry, folded + put away another
– Changed the cat litter
– Took out the trash
– Drank too much coffee
– Ate breakfast, lunch, and a snack
– Read 2 articles and wrote 2 emails about a conference proposal I’m mulling over submitting
– First-level triage of work email (= read + deleted what could be read + deleted)
– Watched an informative video about botfly reproduction with Gus
– Looked online for a new scooter for Gus, who’s getting too big for his current scooter (sniff)
– Tightened the drawer handles on the china cabinet
– Loaded the dishwasher
– Blagged

(And, in the inbetween times: read today’s paper on my phone, kept current w/twitter, tripled my town(s), got my feedreader down to 2!!)

Things That Remain Undone (but the day’s not over yet!):

– Make a birthday card for a pal and pack her gift in a box for mailing tomorrow
– Finish part of a book chapter I’m writing (due Thursday!)
– Work on a presentation with my research partner (not actually scheduled for 16 whole days! plenty of time still!)
– Start blagging some thoughts I have on developing a game for library orientation (probably over at my other blog)
– Eat dinner
– Empty the dishwasher + wash the dinner dishes
– Pack my backpack + lunch for work tomorrow

Later gators, time to get back to it.

you can’t blame me for trying to win

maura @ 11:43 pm

Since getting back from the games in education (un)conference a couple of weeks ago things have just felt, well, gamier around my brain. Which is good, I think: there’s usually lots of stuff in there about my library work and my grant work and my big research project and (and of course all of the non-work stuff too), and sometimes it feels like games get relegated to the backest* in the car that is my brain.

* When I was a kid we had an AMC Hornet Sportabout station wagon, and while other kids used the term “way back,” in my family we divided the seating zones into front, back, and backest. Huzzah for the seatbelt-free ’70s!

So I’ve been thinking about and even (casually) playing more games in the past few weeks. One is a newish game that Jonathan made me download when it was free on the App Store not long ago called Triple Town. It’s your standard match-3 game** but much more visually detailed and appealing than these kinds of games usually are. Bunches of grass combine to make bushes combine to make trees combine to make cottages and big houses. Annoying (because they move around) but cute bears combine to make tombstones and churches and cathedrals and treasure chests (hmmm…). When the bears growl, the little people wandering around the board jump up and scurry fearfully into their cottages. It’s really, really cute, and really, really satisfying, too.

** Actually I don’t think this is the best definition of match 3 games — I would never have classified Tetris that way — but the joining like things to remove them from the board game mechanic is definitely a common thread.

Often match 3 games are kind of time wasters, but this one feels like it requires more skill. I glommed on to it pretty hard the other day and was brought up short, suddenly, when I ran out of moves. (See image above.)

Here’s the other, somewhat hidden mechanic to this game: the in-game purchase mechanic. I could spend $3.99 to buy “unlimited moves” for the game, and play and play until the cows come home. Or, I can wait for my moves to replenish, then continue playing. I don’t know how many moves the game starts with but it *seems* like I played off and on for a while — maybe a week or so? — before it hooked into my brain enough that I ran out of moves.

And now I am living move to move like the cheapskate thrifty person I am, running out mid-game last night only to have to wait to finish up until tonight (dang ninja bear, always dogging me!). Then I had some left over and couldn’t resist starting a new game, only to be stopped about 7 moves in.

So the game now inhabits two levels for me: can I beat my high score, and can I stave off spending $3.99 for unlimited moves? Game on, ninja bears!

if it’s okay i’m going to the rocky garden full of stars

maura @ 9:08 pm

Okay, the train was kind of a bust on the way home last weekend: we had some mechanical problems, were stuck in Philly for 90 minutes, and ended up having to transfer to another train for the rest of the trip. It was kind of comical actually: on the first train I was in the quiet car and had no seat neighbor, which was brilliant, while on the second train I was on a crowded noisy car. Oh well, them’s the breaks.

I discovered on last weekend’s trip that Amor de Dias is the most perfect train music ever. It’s Lupe from Pipas (a band I lovelovelove) and Alasdair from The Clientele (a band I’m kind of meh about). They are poptastic: quiet and dreamy and just perfect for watching the scenery slip by and relaxing your brain and feeling a little sad about Baltimore but also a little happy about the little bit of snow and the waning afternoon light. Go to their website and listen to Late Mornings right now! (Esp. the ‘oooohs’ that start around 0:57 — so dreamy.)

Today is the first day of the semester. It’s been a long month full of deadlines and much, much busier than a January *should* be, I think. Of course there are always deadlines but I think the busiest bit is past, which seems funny to say on the first day of the semester. But I’m optimistic, and thinking of that train ride makes me evermoreso.

street of the love of days

maura @ 5:18 pm

I’m on the way home from a conference right now which means that I’ve probably eaten far too many sandwiches over the past few days. I love sandwiches, I really do, and toast with butter and pretty much anything else bready.

When we first moved to New York we lived in Little Italy, what I guess the realtors now call Nolita. The apartment was kind of weird (2 bedrooms each had 1 glass wall!) but the neighborhood was fantastic: funky shops and buildings and really walkable and not too far from where we needed to be (and very near a good selection of subways too).

I don’t know why I started thinking about this the other day, but I had the most bizarre nostalgia flashback about the neighborhood. There was an Italian bakery on the next block south of our apartment. Not a fancy bakery but the working kind — they baked kaiser rolls and hoagie sub sandwich rolls and those sorts of things.

Now it feels like a dream, because how could it possibly be real? But sometimes we would be out late, too late, being our just-out-of-college selves at a concert or bar or whatever. The bakery would be baking, and the smell was amazing, you could smell it all the way up the block. And if we walked down to the bakery they’d sell us a warm roll fresh out of the oven for something ridiculous like a quarter.

Just so you know, a freshly-baked roll is about the most delicious thing you can eat at 2 or 3am.

Edited on 1/27/12 to add: I wasn’t lying to myself after all! Jonathan found a photo of the bakery on the interwebz. Except that he remembers it as loaves of bread rather than individual rolls.

dispatches from the rails

maura @ 4:12 pm

Look, I get it that lots of people like cars. But those people are stupid. How can they possibly resist train travel? The scenery slipping by, the ability to read/write/nap, and (of late) plentiful electricity and usable-if-pokey wifi.

Yes, there are other people, egads! But there’s something kind of comforting about the we’re all in this togetherness of a train, as opposed to the hurtling by at high speeds in our own personal metal coffinness of cars.

(Though like a good 49% [or is it 51%?] introvert I am wearing my headphones but not listening to anything because I don’t want anyone to talk to me.)

I can see you suckas on the NJ Turnpike right now! Ha! You are not typing on a computer, you are paying attention to the road! And hoping there’s not any early rush hour traffic in Philadelphia! (And if you were me as a passenger, you’d be feeling barfy and carsick probably right now, too.)

I do wish that the tray tables were a bit lower, though. Or that my laptop didn’t run as hot as it does. Makes for toasty knees.

Dear Amtrak, please don’t go bankrupt. Please figure out a way to score a huge investment of funds so you can build more track and speedier trains and make it so I never ever have to drive or fly anywhere east of the Mississippi ever again.
Yr pal,
Maura

don’t forget to breathe

maura @ 9:30 pm

Just like all of the other resolution-makers in the world we up and joined a gym a couple of weeks ago. We’d been eyeballing the gym where Gus takes swimming lessons for a while now. While it’s not the closest gym to where we live, it’s really inexpensive for a family membership and since 2/3 of us were already there for swimming on Saturdays it seemed like a good idea to morph that into Family Exercise Time. So we did. Jonathan swims while Gus swims and I do various machine-based exercises like the old lady non-exercise fan that I am.

(The Y is also kind of close to my work, though it remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to figure out a way to bend the space-time continuum and take advantage of that.)

Exercise for heart rate + sweat’s sake remains extremely dull to me, but I’ve definitely gained some weight since I quit our former gym when I started working full time again so it’s become a necessary evil. For the rest of the day I’m still in the feel-like-dying startup phase but hope to crossover into the feel-pretty-good settled in phase soon. I’d forgotten how much hungrier I get when I exercise — so far I tend to just want to eat and collapse after getting home, which is hardly a productivity booster.

Today it was lunchtime when we finished and we were all starving and the new Brooklyn Shake Shack is located perilously close to the subway stop we had to go to, so despite all best efforts we were sucked in by its tasty tractor beam, thus undoing all the good we’d done at the gym. Next time we’ll invest in burger blinders.