Bug!

 


I saw this bug on my tire this morning. It was about the size of my thumb, so around 2 1/2 inches long by 1 inch wide. That's what I call a big bug.

Love Carrots

I found a little budding romance in my CSA basket.

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About Victorian Genre Literature

Who can resist an era in which first aid for any trouble begins with a
shout of, "Brandy! For God's sake, bring her some brandy!"

"All the Dead are Vampires," by Michael Sims for The Chronicle of Higher Education

An R&B production

When toy skyscrapers, baby pictures, and sleep deprivation come together, this is the result.

Uberstix Skyscraper

I got the "Uberstix Starter Set" from the local game store (One-Eyed Jacques) recently, because it seemed like plastic construction doohickeys with a clever twist: they are designed to interlock with other plastic construction doohickeys (like Lego, Erector, and suchlike), and also work with recycled materials (like plastic bottles for boat flotation devices.)

These are just from the starter set, and aren't all the pieces. (I did use all the red and yellow stick shapes for this, though.) There's something very satisfying about a construction set that gives you enough stuff to build a freestanding structure that goes all the way to the ceiling.

Veggie Hunter

 

The hunter came home victorious; the whole village will feast tonight!

More of the bounty available at the link below.

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Back from the Great Virginia Race

Bob, Rebecca, and David (Chan, not Kelman) went on a Ravenchase across Virginia. Our first day time was, um, not so good. Our second day we did quite well, however, so we award ourselves the "Most Improved" trophy.

Spring = Pretty and weird

I've been given flowers recently. Daffodils from my grad student who's husband is allergic and flowering shrub cuttings from neighbors (for helping them move a piece of furniture.)



(You can just about see my cute elephant salt and pepper shakers in the background.)



I made chocolate cream cheese cupcakes, which were too salty, but still edible.




The shower is draining slowly and so when I wash my hair, there are strands remaining in the tub after the water drains out. The other day, the hair spelled my initials.






A pair of morning doves are trying to procreate on our windowsill. The first attempt sadly ended in disaster, with broken eggs on the ground. They are trying again, but seem to be having extreme difficulty figuring out how exactly to rebuild a nest. Not that their first attempt was nothing to brag about.

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AA to the stars

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stephenfryOh yes indeed Happy Pi Day. Und Alles gute zum Geburtstag, Albert Einstein, Schatzi 29 minutes ago from Tweetie

bobwiemanHappy PI day! Happy Einstein's birthday! Happy start of spring break! (Okay, that last one's probably mostly for me.) Still, happy day! 36 minutes ago from web

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Yes, that's me reminding Stephen Fry of the important holidays today. I try to keep him updated on the important things, so he seems connected and "with it" on his various public appearances. I'm like his personal assistant.

Auto-update from stephenfry.com: Thank you, bobwieman, for twittering Stephen Fry. And thank you, readers of bobwieman, for reading about twittering Stephen Fry. In the interest of strict veracity, please replace "personal assistant" in the above post with "twittering stalker", and again, thank you.

Collaborative Short Story Robbed

Art Gallery Fabrics recently started a blog. To promote said blog they had a contest. To enter one had to post a comment containing the answer to the following question.

What was the most funny/weird situation that you have had at your sewing room when about to start sewing?

The two most funny answers would win.

No funny/weird situation had ever occurred in my sewing room when I was about to start sewing. That setup is just not very ripe for comedy. Reading through the first fifty or so comments confirmed my hypothesis. One consistent trend was the interruption of sewing initiation by pets, especially cats.

So I presented this conundrum to my brother via instant messaging. Over the subsequent hour or so, he and I composed the following story.

I was trying to perfect my curves following your Belle Epoque Garden quilt pattern when I heard a knock at my sewing room window. I opened the window to find three little green men who very politely explained that they crash landed in my backyard and, seeing my Bernina 440 QE through the window, knew I could help. In English punctuated with buzzes and clicks, they communicated that they travel by manipulating the Warp and Weft of the Universe (not to be confused with the Fabric of Time). But they took the wrong left at the corner by my local quilt shop, and couldn't find their way back to the wormhole (apparently, even if they're little, green, and have antennae, men still refuse to ask for directions). They begged me to sew a topological impossibility for them (Euler characteristic of pi) which, like piecing a Lone Star quilt, looks really complicated, but it's not so bad if you use Jan Krentz's strip piecing method. They said that if I sewed the topological impossibility for them, they could transport their broken spaceship home through the resulting wormhole and darn the hole in spacetime from their side.

I sat down at my Bernina 440 QE to start sewing the first set of strips for the topological impossibility together when I was struck by the idea that if I just made a few subtle tweaks I could alter the alien design so that it would not only function as a topological impossibility but would totally make the coziest, cuddliest, cutest throw pillow EVER! I knew I would have to break all the rules (quarter inch seam allowance be damned!). I would have to alter the design on the fly, right there, as I was sewing, because it was only at that moment that I would be able to keep the trick to its execution in my head. I dropped the presser foot and put my foot on the pedal. I could see it all laid out before me.

Then my cat Ripper (short for Seam Ripper) started batting the strips as they moved through the machine in his typical "one, two, THREE WITH CLAW!" pattern, taking the whole thing with the third strike. You see the pattern coming, and yet, it's always too fast to react to. Next he spied the pile of strips I had meticulously stacked in the order I had to sew them for the topological impossibility/coziest, cuddliest, cutest throw pillow ever. Thinking he could make them move like the strips I was sewing, he hopped onto the sewing table and scattered the strips everywhere.

The End

(This story is fictional. I don't own a cat.)

---

Sadly, we did not win. Whether this was because it was obviously fictional (which was not expressly prohibited by the rules), or because we were in the top 20 from which they ended up drawing two winners randomly, or . . . well all other possibilities involve speculating that someone somewhere could possibly not find this story HILARIOUS, I don't know.

Regardless, I enjoyed the creative process with Bob and hope we can parley it into some sort of short story writing career in the near future.

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Round Up

In this round up: schools of rock, loathsome people, eyebrow dancing, cardboard airplane, greener gaming, upon which foods to spend your organic dollar, industrial produce not as nutritious, reused mini-greenhouse, tax breaks for energy efficient home improvements, and who killed the plug-in hybrid.

Oh, yeah, and I added a couple more resources to my parenting resources page.


Carrie Brownstein, one of the members of the awesome band Sleater Kinney, posted her highly insightful and entertaining thoughts on rock schools.

Some blog called The Beast posted a list of The 50 Most Loathsome People, which Kottke recommended with a delicious excerpt of his favorite entry. (Thanks for sharing, Rebecca!)

Serious Eats posted an hilarious video of two kids doing an eyebrow dance. (Thanks for sharing again, Rebecca!)

I ALWAYS loved playing with cardboard boxes when I was a kid. When my friend Leslie Goodrich's parents got a new refrigerator, I invited myself over just to play with it. I felt sorta bad for her dad who had spent like two years making a huge Victorian dollhouse from scratch and it was sitting right next to the cardboard box and we didn't touch it once. And when my friend Todd Lawrence moved to town and we discovered we both had a love of cardboard boxes, we went to all the shops on Lake Street asking for their leftover boxes and carried them to his backyard and built a HUGE fort out of them. It was one of the highlights of my childhood. So when I saw CardboardDesign's cardboard airplane over at Re-Nest, I had the most pleasant of flashbacks. Check out all the other fun stuff they have for kids, like a castle and a rocket.

I know SOMEONE who might read this is a wee bit into games. So when I saw Re-Nest's post about greener games I thought it might be of interest to our readers. Would that same reader have any more suggestions for greener gaming? Any game manufacturers particularly ecofriendly?

In these trying economic times sometimes cutting back means not buying exclusively local organic food. When you have to make that choice, check out The Daily Green's list of fruit and veg that are lower on pesticides and their list of foods that have the heaviest burden of pesticides, chemicals, additives and hormones. The fruit and veg on the dirty list might also be good to prioritize in your home garden since growing them will be more economical than buying organic AND you control the pesticides. Via Consumerist.

Another plus in the grow your own fruit and veg column: industrially grown produce is less nutritious. Tom Philpott over at Gristmill posted about a recent article that compiled a number of studies that found declining nutrients in fruits and vegetables bred for higher yield. For the home gardener, this also suggests that true heirloom varieties are probably a better choice than high-yield hybrids.

As we've been talking about starting seeds for our herb garden and I keep our house pretty cold, this post about reusing plastic packaging to make an indoor seed-starting greenhouse at Re-Nest caught my eye.

Consumer Report's Home & Garden blog has a great post about the federal tax credits available for homeowners who make energy efficient improvements to their homes including installing alternative energy sources, tankless water heaters, natural gas heating systems, and insulation. Via Consumerist.

Gristmill referred me to an article in the East Bay Express by Robert Gammon about the California Air Resources Board's efforts to institute a regulation that would prevent the conversion of hybrids to plug-in hybrids. It's like Who Killed the Electric Car: The Sequel (subtitle: Who Killed the Plug-in Hybrid) by Michael Scott with Dwight Shrute. OK, not that last part. Sorry, lines from The Office just pop out sometimes. I can't control it. Once you get all anxious and righteously indignant reading the East Bay Express article, go read CalCars.org's update on the CARB hearing. In sum:

The Board detached the aftermarket conversion issues from the general test procedures for new PHEV manufacturers and then approved the latter. For retrofitters, the Board Members directed its staff to review options for rules that would promote innovation and foster new business and job formation.

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Microcow

The New York Times Magazine's Eighth Annual Year in Ideas issue came out today. The first idea that caught my eye: Minicattle. So I went over to my friend April's house to get an image to go along with this post about minicattle.

Specifically, I wanted a picture of her dog Talula, an obese Chihuahua who has white fur with black spots. We call her Microcow, Vaquita, La Petite Vachette, you get the idea. But then I remembered Talula, who is 19 years old, has arthritis. So in the winter she wears a sweater, which keeps her warm and spry. Unfortunately, it also covers up her cow spots, which sort of defeats the purpose. But she's SO cute, I just had to share these pictures anyway.

Also, if any knitters out there would be willing to knit a white sweater with black cow spots, Talula and April would be VERY appreciative.
Updated on 4/3/2009 to add a:
I just took a picture of Talula without her sweater so you can see her full cow-ish-ness.

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Christmas party penguins

So, we're having a cookie party this weekend. Here's some of the VIPs on the guest list:

(Closeups below the fold)

But Rebecca's mad skillz extend beyond the edible -- here's the first of _many_ squares she's knitting for a blanket for her sister:



This is Rebecca's favorite, because of his rakish beret.

These are mine. The one on the left is supposed to look like a baby emperor, and the one on the right is meant to be an Adelie. (In both of these, the beaks aren't really supposed to be orange, but I invoked artistic license because the color makes them cuter.)

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You're a Turkey

I am in Hilton Head, South Carolina, for Thanksgiving. Twelve years ago Bob joined me for Thanksgiving in Hilton Head with the in-laws. That was when we developed the "game" "You're a turkey." In honor of that monumental occasion I have composed a brief recreation.
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: ...
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: ...
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [furrows brow]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [continued brow furrowing]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [add "huh?" mouth to brow furrowing]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [attempts to ignore Bob & Sarah in the hope they will stop or go away]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [returns to reading book]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [concentrates on book and ignoring Bob & Sarah]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [scowls at book]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [looks up from book scowling]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: >sigh<
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: >mumble< >sigh<
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: [stares at Bob & Sarah in disbelief]
Sarah: You're a turkey.
Bob: You're a turkey.
David: STOP IT!

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Kaffe Fassett Biopic

Caveat: This might be the result of catching up on all of my GoFugYourself backlog in one sitting.

I hate to steal another blogger's picture, so open up True Up's Quilt Market Fall 2008: Kaffe Fassett post in another tab and come back.

Thanks for coming back!

Now, based on that photograph, don't you agree that someone should develop a Kaffe Fassett biopic starring Bill Murray as Kaffe and Kathy Bates as Liza Prior Lucy? Or maybe just use those two actors playing those characters in the next, say, Wes Anderson film?

Eduslang

The other day I mentioned to a non-academic (on so many levels)

"trying to lower my DFW rate." Said non-academic, who we'll just call

"Sarah" for the sake of argument, was completely baffled by my

eduslang. Sarah seemed to think I was concerned about the frequency

of my travels to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Silly Sarah. DFW are

grades; it means the percentage of the class that gets a D, F, or

withdraws. (D is typically equivalent to failing; most majors that

require algebra (or higher) make it a requirement to get a C or higher

in it (which is known as a "C-Wall")).

This is the sort of jargon that you'd either pick up on your own, or you'll never need it. But perhaps this post will either ease some confusion at a future department meeting, or just amuse you. I'm sure many sadly geeky jokes could be made about C-walls, for example.

Except for "eduslang", which is my own invention and therefore extra useless. :)

In a nutshell

(12:06:16 PM) Reb: i can get free coffee at 2, but i'm not sure i can stay awake until then

(12:13:17 PM) Bob (Goog): Hm. You need to like get coffee now, and then _sell_ your free coffee at 2, which should pay for the coffee now.

I'm pretty sure that's how Lehman Brothers does it. Um, did it.

Sunday Morning Conversation

NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson: This is Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reporting from Afghanistan.
David: I have a Soraya.
Sarah: I think there's a ointment for that.
David & Sarah: [totally inappropriate extreme laughter that may or may not have involved snarfing Earl Grey all over the Sunday New York Times]
Sarah: Oh, you mean you have a student named Soraya? I thought you were changing the "You're a [insert funny sounding noun]" game to the "I have a [insert funny sounding noun]" game.
David & Sarah: [totally inappropriate extreme laughter that may or may not have involved snarfing Special K all over the Sunday New York Times]
Sarah: Dude, you are never going to be able to deal with that student again, like ever.
David & Sarah: [totally inappropriate extreme laughter that may or may not have involved snarfing something else that rhymes with "K" and "Grey" all over the Sunday New York Times]
Sarah: Ow, my lungs hurt. We have to stop. I want to call Bob [originator of the "You're a [insert funny sounding noun]" game].
David: No one will find this as funny as we do.

Creative Writing

Via Serious Eats, Rebecca found this little piece of brilliance. Matching the dark mystery of chocolate with the yet darker stylings of H.P. Lovecraft leads to horrifyingly delicious reading.

Exciting opportunity!!!!!

So, most of our posts are directed at our Gentle Reader (fear not! more about you further down!), but this is primarily directed at Sarah&Spouse.

You like food. You have a car. You now live, more or less, in Los Angeles. Clearly, this was meant to be. (Hat tip to Serious Eats, via Researchin' Rebecca)

The Food Network is currently casting foodies of all kinds in the Los Angeles area to be a part of a fun and exciting new TV series!

The show focuses on two teams who race through many of LA’s culinary hot spots competing in challenges in the ultimate chowhound smack down!

And this could be just the beginning...

I am absolutely confident that everyone who reads these words will agree that Sarah&Spouse would generate the dramatic excitement that this "Amazing Race of Galloping Gourmets" thing is obviously going to need. And we all know that every possible form of success is achieved in this day and age through charismatic chutzpah on reality shows. Ask Judd Winick.

And after the first strike, what happens? A follow-up reality show, of course. More of a "Life with those kooks you loved to watch on that other show" thing. But instead of fizzling out like all the other follow-up reality shows, this one will keep it fresh with new characters, like the House Leech -- I mean, the Gentle Reader! Literally EVERYONE wins!

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