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.

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!

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.

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!

i couldn’t show you but i hope to one day

maura @ 10:42 pm

A bunch of little things recently have gotten me thinking about bones. All of my (2 or 3) regular readers probably know that I used to be an archaeologist and that my research focus was animal bones. But you might not know why. Of course, you might not care why either, but it’s my blag and I can blag what I want to blag, dammit! (And also I can type “blag” as often as I want to.) (And use lots and lots of parentheses.)

So, bones. When I was little I wanted to be a doctor. From what I recall it seems like a mostly undifferentiated desire, “doctor” as category. And my dad’s a doctor, so that’s probably a big factor.

In my later childhood (what the kids these days call tweens) this general thinking coalesced into a specific interest in bones, and I decided I was going to be an orthopedic surgeon. I’m not sure when, exactly, this coalescence happened, but it’s likely roundabouts age 10 because in 5th grade I had a friend who had a problem with low calcium levels in her body and thus would break at least one bone every few months or so.

Now, leaving aside for the moment the shudder of horror that typing that sentence produced in me now that I am a grownup and a parent (eek! can you imagine? her poor, poor parents), when I was 10 this scenario was pretty dang cool. She practically always had a cast (like Nona Mecklenberg!), and kids would want to sign the cast, and I was the shy type so this seemed real neat to me.

So I did what any envious kid would do: I courted potentially bone-breaking accidents. I “fell” down the stairs. I rollerskated fast in the street. Of course none of it worked: I ended up with a few sprained ankles + wrists, that’s it. I did manage to convince my dad to take me for an xray or two, just in case.

When I got to high school I became obsessed with being “arty” (and all the mid-80s mope-rock that comes with it), and the doctor thing faded into the background. But it’s funny to think that I came back to bones later. Even now when we go to the AMNH and see the animal skeletons I have a hard time restraining myself from naming the different bones to Gus. Luckily he’s too young to blow me off quite yet.

i am the girl with the velveteen pearl

maura @ 3:36 pm

Hi internets! Sorry to have been ignoring you recently. As usual I’ve got no real good reasons, just a pile of semi-lame ones. I’m nearly at the end of my first summer session and schoolwork has been intense. Gus is nearly at the end of kindergarten (!!!) which means lots of half days and field trips. I’ve got my typical things-will-change-soon malaise, anticipating the real start of summer when Gus will go to camp for the first time and I will have the very last class of my whole degree.

Today Gus is home sick from school — he’s been spiking fevers off and on since yesterday afternoon. But I think he’s feeling better: right now he + Jonathan are using the computer’s camera to take pictures of Gus’s head using weird effects. I have to admit that I don’t mind the fever illnesses nearly as much as others.* Having a fever completely takes the piss out of him, and there are worse ways to spend time than snuggling on the sofa watching the Complete Works of Pixar with your 5 1/2 yr old.

* Barfing. There’s nothing good about barfing. And pinkeye is just awful: he can’t be around other kids but usually isn’t sick enough to want to lie around on the sofa all day.

And that’s about all I have to say. I’m still ruminating on a post about grades and competition, but I’m too tired after last night’s fever watch to do it now.

I leave you with the state of things in our house.

i was only reading a pamphlet

maura @ 8:36 pm

Wait, I was supposed to share my spazzy feelings about method shower spray, right? Right! Okay, so about 4 1/2 yrs ago we embraced our inner stinky hippies and joined the Food Coop. Soon after that I started to think that it was probably a bad thing that the awful toxic fumes from our bathroom cleaner made me want to pass out, and that maybe a clean bathroom wasn’t worth killing brain cells.

So I never cleaned the bathroom again. The end.

Just kidding! Of course I cleaned the bathroom again! A clean bathroom is a wonderful thing!

Anyway, while I love the eco-friendly lavender-scented nontoxic bathroom cleaner we get at the Food Coop, the truth is that it doesn’t really bleach away all grubbiness from the tub + tile. Probably because there is no bleach in it! Hence the nontoxicity.

The real problem is our grout. See, a few years ago it became clear that the shower tile needed regrouting. I’m a little handy around the house (just a bit). I enjoy caulking. And the interwebs told me that grouting was really not that much more complex than caulking. DIY, here I come!

Except that grouting is really NOT like caulking. Not even at all. It is much much much harder, messier, more time intensive, and did I mention more difficult? And the grout, how it is not at all neat, nor easy to scrub off the tiles? The end result was that I wasted 5 hrs of a Saturday with my mom watching Gus while I did a shitty job of regrouting our tile.

So the grout is too low, and it’s hard to clean. Like scrubbing-each-individual-grout-line-with-a-toothbrush hard. I love to clean, but nobody loves to scrub grout with a toothbrush, it’s like a prison punishment or something. Grim.

I’d been wishing for a nontoxic spray-on bathroom cleaner for a while, but they don’t sell any at the Food Coop and I am usually too lazy to go anywhere else because I hate shopping. Then a few months ago we were at a big box store and walked by a display of method shower spray.

I snapped it right up, though I was immediately suspicious of its pleasing, eye-catching bottle and label design. Nothing eco is designed this well! Also, the ingredients include water and some other known stuff, as well as surfectant. What is this surfectant, exactly, and how do we know it is eco? But there was an outlandish claim on the bottle: spray this on your shower and you will NEVER HAVE TO CLEAN IT AGAIN. I couldn’t resist, I had to buy it.

And you know what? I don’t care if surfectant is a code word for weapons grade uranium and puppies’ blood, it WORKS! It totally cleans the shower without scrubbing. The grout still looks like crap, but at least now it’s CLEAN crap. Huzzah!

this is the story of a water drop

maura @ 3:33 pm

Here at mauraweb! we’re not just getting older, we’re also getting better. (Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves.) Yesterday was my birthday! Our friends + neighbors came over + we ordered tasty Mexican dinner. There was prosecco and sangria. The boys made delicious chocolate cupcakes w/vanilla buttercream frosting. I took a small afternoon nap. Lovely presents of books and music and foodstuffs were bestowed upon me. Friends and family called from timezones both near and far. And Anne dedicated the Sunday News to me, which makes me feel like a rockstar. A rockstar full of burritos and cupcakes, mmmmmm.

Today it is not my birthday, and it is pouring rain. It’s also about 20 degrees cooler than it has been recently, which is a welcome change. We went from snow in April to a chilly mid-May to temps over 80 degrees every day for the past 2 weeks. And I’m sad to say that few days ago we finally turned on the air conditioner. I’m sorry Al Gore, really I am, but we all get exceedlingly cranky when it is too hot! Soon we will have ceiling fans installed, and will bask in the light of Al Gore’s approval once again.

Over the weekend we also made a few small attempts to buy a Nintendo Wii, to no avail. We’ve always planned to buy one someday but recently started thinking it’d be nice to have during our beach vacation with my family in August. Inevitably one week of family togetherness produces a few tough moments, and why exchange harsh words when you can just open up a can of Wii Tennis whup-ass on your relatives? Sounds like a plan to me!

The Wii came out last xmas, but apparently there is still a supply and demand issue. I don’t know whether Nintendo is doing this intentionally but it is very annoying! Poking around online reveals that no one has just the console for sale, but plenty of retailers will sell you a package w/games, accessories, etc. I’m not automatically opposed to the package concept, but I am when the package consists of games we don’t want (the Wii comes w/5 games), controllers we don’t need (we have a GameCube already), and Nintendo’s play money (Wii points). AND when the price is nearly 200% of the cost of the console itself! Lame.

Not that it matters, as our Nintendo displeasure is ever-fleeting. Nintendo, we could never hate you, not when Gus is still playing Wind Waker over 6 months after we finished it. Good thing, too, as we will not be letting him play Twilight Princess even when we do get a Wii. No sir, not ’til you’re 12, son.

pressing buttons every day

maura @ 6:25 pm

You may be wondering, how was the popfest? It was great! I wish I’d been able to make it to more than 2 shows, but honestly just going to those wiped me out. A huge incredible amount of work went into pulling the whole thing off, the organizers are amazing superpeople!

I’d only heard Bunnygrunt and Pipas before going to the shows, so it was fun to catch some new (to me) bands. The Saturday show was HOT but fantastic: indiepop + Astroland + hot dogs + vaguely confused people walking by = fun. Yay Scary Monster! And seeing Bunnygrunt at Coney Island was utterly perfect.

Sunday night’s show was also great, if a little more tiring. Seven bands, who knew I could stay up that late? Of course Pipas were swoon-worthy, totally worth the late night.

But my biggest surprise of the popfest was Best Fwends — where have I been all their lives?! When you say their name out loud it kind of makes you want to punch them. They’re 2 spazzy kids from Texas who plugged in their electropunkpop ipod and instantly had everyone bouncing around, flirting with heatstroke. They also attracted the most random passersby of any band, including a semi-toothless grandpa-age guy dancing and throwing the devil horns. It was AWESOME.

Gus liked them too! I think he was spellbound by the realization that actual grown-ups can dance crazily and sing loudly in public. Imagine when he grasps that sometimes those grown-ups can even make money that way!

he’s not ironic, he’s devoted to rock and roll

maura @ 6:38 pm

The popfest is here! I’m going to two shows. Tomorrow is Bunnygrunt at Coney Island. Jonathan and Gus are coming too! Though they will likely spend more time on the rides than rocking out. Whatever am I going to wear? I am fretting like a high school prom date, it is silly. It doesn’t help that it’s going to be 8 zillion degrees and the show is outside. Will my floppy old lady hat look stupid? Has it been so long since I’ve been to Williamsburg that I’ll need to study the subway map to get to the Pipas show on Sunday night? Probably the better question for Sunday is will I be able to stay awake til 11pm (when the show ends and the young folk head off to an aftershow party and I head home to sleep)?

Music and concerts have been swirling around my head lots recently. In 2 of my internships I’ve been making podcasts of library tutorials, which has activated an advanced case of college radio DJ nostalgia. It was so much fun to be a DJ, even if I usually had the 3-5am shift. There is no good way to sleep if you have to do something from 3-5am. If you try to sleep beforehand you will feel like a big pile of crap when you wake up. And then if you try to sleep afterwards it’s all light out soon and everyone else starting their days wakes you up.

The record library was unreal, it seemed like every record in the world was there (and could be borrowed!). And sometimes there was good swag, like comps to shows. I am pretty sure that Jonathan was the only person that ever listened to the show, though occasionally a call would come in. I have some tapes of the show that I made for posterity but I’ve been too embarrassed to listen to them. I’d been pretty shy in high school: it was oddly liberating to sit in a small room talking to no one at all yet potentially everyone.

When we came to New York for grad school I tried to get a radio show, but that university has a real communications department and thus filled their station with actual aspiring DJs rather than (academic) nerds who happened to be (music) geeks + old South Side blues and jazz guys. Probably just as well — I couldn’t have continued the early morning shifts for long after college without disintegrating into a krabby patty.