and i promise this is the last you’ll hear about it

maura @ 5:04 pm

Whew, this has been one long week! Many things happened, some of which required dressing up*. It was exciting, if tiring.

* Could I be more vague? You’re smart, interwebs, I think you can figure it out.

Will the weekend be restful? Why no! For a variety of complicated (and boring) reasons (that are all my fault, to be honest) this weekend will be spent painting a bedroom. A big bedroom. The fun never stops here at mauraweb!

Anyway, I don’t have much more to say right now, so I’ll leave you with a Good Thing and a Bad Thing.

Good thing about writing a column for the Chronicle: Fun! Thrilling to see my name in “print”!! Added to my vita!!!

Bad thing about writing a column for the Chronicle: Extremely high potential for obsessive vanity googling/google blog searching. Which has at least been keeping me from obsessively trying to get my blag to show up on the NaBloPoMo Randomizer.

and it’s dinnertime and i’m sitting here

maura @ 8:55 pm

Today I had a somewhat-formal-business-wear-type-event, so yesterday I went to the drugstore and bought some knee-his. Does that phrase not send you careening right back to the ’70s? Say it with me: KNEE-HI. I can almost feel the polyester strawberry-print flares I sported as a wee tot.

But I digress.

At my old job folks dressed anywhere from jeans + sneakers to suits + stockings. I tended to hew to the middle — shirts with collars, mostly skirts in the summer, standard business casual pants in the winter. So it’s not that I don’t have any formal business type clothes.

Right now it’s the shoes that are tripping me up (har). I have a few pairs of nice flats that I wear in the summer, when things are all warm and sock-free. But in the winter I favor wing-tip Doc Martens. Just dressy enough for work, and so very cushiony, plus they go with everything.

Everything, that is, except when you are trying for just a smidge more formal than usual. Yesterday I realized that I probably didn’t want to wear the Docs today. It’s currently in the mid-40s here — brrr! — hence the trip to the drugstore. Those knee-his should give my feet and ankles a modicum of protection from the wind as I dress it up a little with my flats, right?

Technically, the answer is yes. But only if you weren’t hoping to wear the knee-his for the ENTIRE day. Reader, I had a run in those knee-his by lunchtime. Luckily it was on the heel, thus more or less invisible unless you really knew where to look for it. Who knew knee-his were single use items? BOO on them and their fragility.

Stockings, meh. What I need is the equivalent of knee-hi tights. Do these exist? For some reason the words “trouser socks” are popping into my head. A quick google search returns retailers named Therawear, Silkies (!), and Hue.

Hue! OMG! How very high school. They always had tights in the most excellent colors. I think I still have some lime green ones from the early 90s. Xmas is coming, off to make my list!

think before you speculate

maura @ 9:34 pm

We’re doing a bunch of rearranging and painting and other home improvement-type things this month, and it’s provoked yet another archaeological expedition into the closets. Break out the trowels! I think I’ve mentioned before that our closets are really great: ample in both volume and number. Yes, I am indeed bragging about the closets, but we don’t have a yard, parking space or vegetable garden, so I think I’m entitled to some closet pride, doncha think?

I’m slightly ashamed to admit the depth of our packrattery in such a public forum, but what good is the interwebs if not for self-mockery?

Here’s what I found in a bedroom closet:

2 kitchen garbage bags of styrofoam packing peanuts

Here’s what I found in the front hall closet:

1 kitchen garbage bag of styrofoam packing peanuts
2 boxes (each 24″x18″x11″) filled with packing peanuts
1 kitchen garbage bag of bubble wrap

Let me also point out that these are the discards, the bags and boxes that are leaving our apartment very soon! This is all IN ADDITION TO the 4 bags of packing peanuts and bubble wrap that we are keeping for mailing packages.

Thank goodness the mailing store a few blocks away accepts donations of packing materials. Maybe that’s the reason we kept them in the first place, unwillingness to send them to the landfill? More likely we thought we’d keep them just in case.

and the hours and the minutes too

maura @ 6:51 pm

Blog, blag, bleg: day 6 here, and I’m dragging with the blagging. Somewhat suddenly I am having a busy this week and next week, and the 2.5 days off school that Gus has are not helping it one bit. So the blag, it drags.

Jonathan made cheesy polenta tonight topped with beef stew and broccoli. Yum, but making my brain a little sluggish right now.

It’s finally cold here. I’m hoping that this month I’ll have a chance to ice skate at Bryant Park, since I couldn’t seem to finagle it last year.

Aaaaaand yep, that’s it, pretty much the entire interwebs-friendly contents of my brain this evening. I’ll sleep on this whole blag thing and make it up to you tomorrow, promise.

walked the sand with the crustaceans

maura @ 10:17 pm

Usually I am all about elaborating on the fantasticness of living in New York City, but today I am here to tell you about one mighty horrendous aspect of city livin’: the post office.

Over the summer I went to the post office near my mom’s house in the suburbs, and I was completely amazed. Flabbergasted, even. No lines! Everyone friendly and smiling! In and out in 5 minutes! Even with media mail!

Nope, that’s not the way the post offices are here. Nearly every one I’ve ever been to has the same huge glaring issue: regardless of the time of day that you visit, the lines are seemingly eternal and only 20% of the windows are staffed. I have seriously NEVER waited less than 30 minutes at any post office in NYC.

Also everyone is grumpy. Staff will nitpick about the requirements for media mail with you (I once got into an argument about computer software vs. video games, BOTH of which were on CD!). Patrons have all manner of complex requests including mailing 20 packages at once, drawing up money orders, picking up packages, and getting passport applications.

Post office locations are also weirdly inconvenient here, or have been for us, at least. We’ve lived in 3 different zip codes in Manhattan and 2 in Brooklyn and it’s never taken us less than half an hour to get to the post office. Combine that with the overcrowding and I’m thinking we just need more post offices in the city.

I will admit that things got a little better not long ago when the automated machines were introduced to many post office locations. Though as I found out recently when mailing some ebay + half packages, the machines won’t mail to Canada and do not do media mail. So it’s back to the eternal line for those items.

Today’s post office outing took the cake. I went with a media mail item, thinking that if the line was crazy I’d just eat the extra ca$h and pop it in the automated machine. But there was no machine! How medieval! Okay, so I have to schlepp that package around the whole day, blargh.

But we needed stamps too so I headed over to the stamp machine. No credit cards: okay, I’ll use paper money. I tried to put in two $5 bills, only to discover that you can only put ONE piece of money in, then you had to make your selection and get the change! And once you put the money in the largest number of stamps you could select was 10! So I put in $5, bought 10 stamps ($4.10), then bought 2 stamps with the remaining money.

THEN the machine spat the stamps out one by one in a long line, and they were lickable, not self-adhesive! Who knew they even made those kind of stamps these days? SO last century.

i want to sing along

maura @ 3:12 pm

Here’s the thing about falling back: long ago it was such a great thing, that whole extra hour of sleep, what a treat! But now, not so much. Because kids don’t care if we are in daylight savings time or not. Even if we keep Gus up later, he rarely sleeps in. So what always happens is that I stay up for an extra hour, fooling myself that it’s my time to spend, and then lose an hour the next morning. Bah.

Time for coffee.

you said describe to me the hairstyle of the devil

maura @ 6:51 pm

We’re doing a lot of home reorganizing this month, moving stuff around, painting the bedrooms, etc. In preparation for all of this I’m trying to get rid of everything I don’t need, all of the accumulated detritus of my past selves.

Today’s mission: reprints! Man, do I have a lot of article reprints. On paper. You know, from the before-time, when journals weren’t all newfangled and electronic.

We have a giant 4-drawer file cabinet that historically has been mostly mine, but I’d like to give some space to Jonathan for his files. The bottom 2 drawers are all reprints from my archaeology days, so I thought: no problem, I can clear out AT LEAST one of those drawers, I don’t need those articles and isn’t everything on the interwebs these days anyway?

(JUST KIDDING! I didn’t believe that even before I went to library school.)

Some of these articles are easy to toss. Anything having to do with the Paleolithic or physical anthropology is gone, because of all the new subspecies and other data that seem to be turning up every few minutes these days. And anything on the scientific side is out, too — do I really need a 20 yr old article about a “new” dating technique*? I don’t think so.

* Har, sometimes it is funny to be an archaeologist: I had a whole folder of articles labeled “dating techniques.” First, invite your beloved out to dinner…

But you know, I am having a hard time getting rid of some of these articles, though I know it’s unlikely I’ll ever read them again. It’s not a surprise that I’d have trouble parting with articles I used for my dissertation, but it turns out that I’m loathe to toss reprints from my masters’ thesis, too. Which was 13 yrs ago (eep!).

All of these articles represent an investment in time, money and labor. I used to spend HOURS xeroxing articles to read for classes and research, and I’m sure that is influencing my willingness to chuck them out.

My masters’ thesis was an overview of Iron Age/Early Christian sites in Ireland. While researching and writing it I consulted a vast number of site reports from all manner of obscure Irish archaeology journals from the 1940s-1990s. Many of these were stored at the NYPL’s annex on 11th Ave., which I don’t even think is there anymore (I think their old stuff is all at offsite storage in New Jersey).

I always felt kind of excited to go to the NYPL annex for those journals, like I was mining a secret resource. I was often the only patron there. It’s definitely one of my happy library (and archaeology) memories, despite the drudgery of hours of xeroxing.

But even though I’ve identified the nostalgic basis for my unwillingness to get rid of these reprints, I’m still no closer to actually being able to get rid of them. Maybe the pain of unloading the whole file cabinet to move it into the other room will spur me on.

these promises were made for us

maura @ 8:27 pm

Last year I helped out once a week with kindergarten lunch + recess for the first few months of school. It was a nice way to get Gus (and me) settled into his school, figure out where everything is, etc. And I also got to see what the school lunches are like.

I know that you will be shocked — shocked! — by my report that school lunches are awfully yucky. Lots of fat + salt in food that just does not look all that appealing. I mean, I am all for fat + salt, but at least spend your fat + salt allowance at the store with the GOOD stuff, you know, the pistachio meringue cookies or ravioli drowning in butter.

Anyway, last year school lunch made me really sad. Most of the kids don’t eat the fruit or veggies that are required to go on their styrofoam (!) trays. I wouldn’t eat the latter, either, as they’re criminally overcooked. It was the breaded cheese slab on a roll that really pushed me over the school lunch edge, though. I nearly cried.

Gus is a picky eater, so I was quite surprised this year when he said he wanted to have school lunch. But only on Fridays, which are pizza days. He has pizza and chocolate milk and ignores the mushy vegetables and even the option for fruit.

And you know, I do feel guilty, really I do. But I must admit that Thursday nights have become my favorite school night of the week. No lunch to make! No lunch desires to drag out of my uninterested son! We are in a phase right now where Gus is very very VERY bored with the 4-ish foods he deigns to eat (hmm, wonder why?) yet will not try anything new. So the removal of lunchmaking responsibilities once a week has been a most welcome change.

Extra bonus: his backpack is lighter and easier to carry. I could get used to this school lunch thing.

not much here today, more elsewhere

maura @ 8:29 am

What good is a blag if not for a little shameless self-promotion? No good at all, I say!

it was easy to get carried away

maura @ 7:17 pm

Aiieee, I can’t believe it’s already Halloween! That means tomorrow starts NaBloPoMo. Will the candy I swipe from Gus keep me going through a month of postings? Stay tuned!