Ode to Tashia

Oh Tashia, how delightful thy are in the workplace. How I love to bother you with pointless questions regarding the scent of my shampoo or possible VPL. You are always so patient with my awkward ass gyrations and so soothing in your promises that no, you cannot see my pantyline. You are a source of inspiration to bleach and cleaning supply manufacturers everywhere. Thank you one thousand times for loaning me your Dave Chappelle dvd and for never failing to keep it real. Your delight in the Panini is a constant source of delight to all, and your disgust with the hair care practices of white women with mixed children will be a source of contemplation for me in the years to come. Let your shoes always match your outfit and may you never fall false victim to the WMDs again!

Fun Fact

AD&D - 2 meanings

1. Accidental Death & Dismemberment

2. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Crazy, huh!

Sarah B. is so funny. Surprisingly, my favorite part of this post is the one about “party like rock stars” which I actually say all the time. Normally though when I say it, I'm talking about doing something like yard work or watching Lifetime, The Network for Women and Dudes Who Like Made for TV movies (Brian). My possible favorite part is when "random" is spelled with three "r's," that's exactly how they say it.

I guess it's a compliment when the anorexic lady at the gym says she thinks you've lost weight?

My Fall gardening goals (and yes, I know no one else cares about this but I have to put it somewhere I won't lose it):

1. Till dead lawn.

2. Slay unwanted shrubberies in the front yard. It is only our shrubberies which separate us from the animals. Try going to North Carolina, you'll see what I mean.

3. Seed green manure.

4. Plant verbena and butterfly bushes in the front of the front yard. This may require beauty bark (wood chips to everyone else, my family is weird) which I hate.

5. Plant everything else that's going in the front bed by the house.

6. Finish the blue garden, whatever that may be.

7. Make sure all of the plants I've bought are in their new spots and not still in the nursery pots.

8. Make strides toward not being the neighborhood blight this time next year! I want to be able to say "it's the house with the partying garden," instead of "it's the house with the dead lawn and two dead trees."

I can't really believe this just happenned. I ordered some plants via mail order from Mountain Valley Growers. I posted about this before, I was really excited. Here's the response I got:

Good morning, and thank you for contacing us.
Your package was returned to us due to an incomplete delivery address.
If you feel this to be in error, you may place a claim with UPS for the amount of your package.
We will be happy to supply you with any information you may need.

Unfortunately, when the plants were returned they had expired.
Our gaurantee does not cover delivery failures due to an incomplete address.

We are sorry there was a problem.
Customer Service Mountain Valley Growers, Inc. The Nation's largest supplier ofcertified organic herb and perennial plants.

What this means is that I am out $50 and all of my faith in local organic businesses offering better service than glossy chains. Actually any service: I paid for something I never received and was never contacted about, but apparently that is my fault. I want to cry.

OK, I just spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out where I can get Joanna Newsom's two self released albums: Yarn and Glue, and Walnut Whales. I finally found somewhere I think has them and now I'm not even sure if I want to order them. For posterity, I believe Aquarius Records may have both. Here's the page that makes me think that.

interest via Largehearted Boy

Autumnal equinox: talk about a liminal moment and boy am I feeling it.

p.s. the in-office gym is looking like a distinct possibility today.

for a certain someone who likes Garden State, here is Zach Braff's blog.

via fig and plum

Many thanks to Keirsten for clueing me into what a great job Doonesbury has been doing with the election. Here is a particularly delightful post about the media coverage, and here's a link to see the comic daily for free. I don't think I've looked at Doonesbury since my Dad read it and they had Quayle as that cute little waffle.

p.s. I totally spell checked Quayle, how embarassing would it be to spell that wrong?

Beside the point of the post, but I love the decorating idea in this picture from Apartment Therapy. Why not have curtains over your inside doors to make your house feel sort of like a Moroccan harem with special mysterious twists and turns. Even if you don't have a harem. Which I don't.

I am very excited for Elvis Costello's new album to come out. Apparently all of the songs are about one story, like a musical. I love the stories you always get from Mr. Costello's songs so this should be fun.

Also, I don't consider myself to be someone who really likes musicals, but I bought the CD of Paul Simon's Capeman and listened to it everyday for a year, so I guess I'm kind of into it.

My friend Allyn is always asking me what the point of blogging is. This article finally has an answer.

In other news, Paris Hilton will be Daisy in the Great Gatsby. I am torn between being appalled and thinking it's perfect. Her voice does sound like money, but not in an attractive way. No one ever seems to talk about Nick though, and he is the whole story to me. I once dated a guy who told me he had been Gatsby for Halloween. I said Gatsby is terrible, why not be Nick. He said I'm pretty much Nick every day.

A theme at Sparklehearts will be hanging lamps. I currently have one hanging lamp. Way to kick off a theme.

Ultimate Donut Party 2000!!! There are three boxes of Krispy Kremes and one GIANT box of regular donuts here!

p.s. how lame will I be when it's 2060 and I still call everything "ultimate party 2000?" Maybe exactly as lame as I am now since it's not 2000 now either?

I really like the moral of James P. Pinkerton's article about blogging:

"But if the bloggers have power, it's because they form a robust intellectual marketplace, in which assertions must prove themselves before a jury of cyber-peers. In the words of James T. Smith, of critical-thinker.blogspot.com, "The blogosphere is the people." To be sure, the marketplace can make mistakes, but on the whole, like democracy itself, the more folks participating, the better the functioning."

Lately I have been considering my responsibility in the upcoming election. I feel pretty strongly about the whole thing but I know I don't like other people dumping their political opinions all over me. (This is also because I usually think they're wrong and I'm right, but that's beside the point) So,I've decided to participate via comments in the side bar and leave the normal content of this site how it is.

I like the idea in this post of having an annual garden party so your friends can admire your hard work and you can recharge on the beauty of what you are creating instead of always finding fault.

This post from Cold Climate Gardening made me wish I loved pears enough to wait 100 years for perfect ones. Of course I'm envious of an established garden this year.

Hey, you know how I hate people affiliated with Iowa? Well there's this girl who I interviewed to be my roommate before I found the best roommate ever. I liked her and I asked her to live here and she decided she wanted to live in white-carpet-land over by the Galleria. Fair enough, but it pissed me off. And she's from Iowa. That was in February and I have seen this girl all over town, including at Starbucks, the grocery store, DMV, and tonight at my step class. And she parked her step right next to mine way closer than necessary. She never remembers me and I never introduce myself but I feel awkward all the same. Ok, I have to say it: this town's not big enough for the both of us!

This is the purse that kicked off my little pursey phase. I wish I would've made the handle holders longer. This purse already looks like crap, apparently I am not the type of person who can carry a white purse without getting it all dirty. I just realized though that I've gotten many more compliments on this purse in the last week or so than I did when it was cleaner. Weird.

Fall Knitty is out and boy is it great! I love clapotis, zigzag, and unbiased, though I doubt I'd actually put in the effort to make zigzag. I know I don't knit anymore lately, but finishing Rogue is my FIRST priority of the fall, right after the front yard. So it's my SECOND priority of the fall!

I got an email this morning from Robot K. Synagog about "best erection treating problems at our site." I don't really have problems with erections (except for there being no men for them to be attached to) but if I did, you can bet I would go see old Robot about the cure! I also think that Robot K. Synagog would be a good name for a geeky boy rock band for me to fall in love with.

Why is it that the end of winter and the end of summer are so unbearable? I find the end of Spring and the end of Autumn quite delightful.

p.s. if you are on ebay and you are trying to outbid me on glass towel bars, you are going DOWN!!! I want all the towel bars for me!!

p.p.s. we all have our priorities

Alright, my newest foray into trying to get dates any way I can is called myspace.com. It was reccommended to me by my hairdresser who gave me dorkbangs. But she is really cute and she does have a boyfriend so who am I to argue. Here's my profile (warning, you have to be a member to look at it, but it's free to join and I'll add you to my friend's list, promise!) Anyway, I was about to bitch about how I put my profile up yesterday morning and still nobody wants to be "friends" with me but now I have one message and one "friend request." So that's more like it.

And on a similar note, here's how Mary Blaire is dealing with the search for a date. She's a bit more goal oriented than I am though.

Here's another ridiculous cutsey word reference that I just found:

"milk, a ripe banana, strawberries, maybe some yoghurt and/or honey, whizz it all up and you have the best summer brekky drink."

Note the use of the word "brekky."

I should admit that use of the term "bisky" is very prevalent in my family when discussing a dog biscuit.

This is the tomato garden a couple of days ago. Tall, huh? They are in a bed that used to be the home of two big shrubs so I filled in the holes with compost and some manure and stuff. I think that is why my tomatoes are taller than I am but not overly productive: too much nitrogen. I'm still hoping for late season development though since I only planted these in May and late May at that.

p.s. I cleaned my kitchen top to bottom last night and it really, really needed it. Now I can't stop daydreaming about going home to be in it. Dirty much?

look how awesome this review of Crayola Crayons is! Spider Man is the reviewer and he is serious. Apparently coloring the shit out of stuff is his hobby, who knew? The review is very well done and thorough.

via ljc