New Glasses!

Y'all. Seriously. These are the funnest glasses I have ever owned. Also, suddenly things are really REALLY clear. I didn't think that this prescription was drastically different from my old one, but WOW WAS I WRONG. It's like somebody cleaned my windows after 30 years of sandstorms. It's like God touched His Very Own finger to my eyeball. It's like... okay it's like I got new glasses.

Wanna see?

OF COURSE YOU DO. You'll just have to excuse my less than appealing post-workout hair:


Another look? Okay!I crack me up.

The lighting on the ol' web cam is not fantastic, so just so you know these are silver and PURPLE. They're light and really comfortable- I don't even feel them and I JUST got them. And best of all?They have MAGNETIC snap on sunglasses. Seriously, I might never wear contacts again. Especially after the woman at the eye place told me that contacts change the whole shape of your eye over time and that sort of grossed me out. Oh who am I kidding? I'll probably be back to wearing them by Friday.

Aaaaanyway, I had to share. Hope you're having a good week my little ducklings!

Jumping on the Bandwagon

I am not a police officer, so I have been hesitant to put forth any thoughts about the case of Cambridge professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. who was arrested for disorderly conduct shortly after he "broke into" his own house. But then again, the president isn't a police officer either, and he got to air his opinion on national television. So I think I can write a little bit about my opinions for my own little blog.

I will say first of all that I have not read everything I can find about this particular incident. I read a few articles on CNN about the initial arrest of Gates, the officer who arrested him Sgt James Crowley, and a few opinion pieces. Everybody is jumping up and down trying to point out how wrong it is that Gates was arrested, how it was racially motivated, but I am having a really hard time seeing it that way.

For the record I am a white woman and the only contact I've had with a police officer where he was being a police officer was when I got a speeding ticket 10 years ago. I am not someone who would hesitate to call the police when there is a problem. I was brought up to believe that the police are trying to help the average person and not out to get the average person. And while there my be a few bad apples on a power trip within the profession, that is true of any profession where people are given the power to control others and maintain order.

So I tried first of all to put myself in the position of Professor Gates. When I come home to pick up some things on the way from point A to point B, I quickly come to the conclusion that my front door is jammed, and that gets me pretty irritated pretty fast. So I have to go around the back of my house, make sure the door is unlocked, get a friend to help me try to get the door open, and call my landlord. Then I go inside, only to be met minutes later by a police officer who questions whether or not I belong in my own home. WELL. That would make me even madder than the door thing, so I might start yelling at that point too, maybe refusing to show my ID and getting really pissed that this police officer doesn't believe me. If I were acting that way, I'd probably, in retrospect, not really be that surprised that a cop was going to handcuff me and arrest me for disorderly conduct.

Because, let's look at things from the point of view of Sgt. Crowley, whose main job is to protect the average person from crime and violence. If I am a trained police officer, and I get a call that there's possibly a robbery in progress, I would be pretty edgy. Criminals can be violent. Criminals might have weapons. Once I get to the house and the owner is inside, I would absolutely want to see his or her ID and make sure that the right person is in the right house. But how would I know that this is the person who the call came in to 911 about? I wouldn't. So I would need to clear the house of people and make sure that there isn't a robber waiting in a closet somewhere to beat up the homeowner and steal all of his stuff the minute I leave. If I had somebody yelling and screaming at me about how I'm being racist and not respecting their rights to be in their own home, while I'm trying to keep an eye on the closets or other hiding places, I would probably cuff them and get them out of the house because they would be interfering with my job of protecting them.

What we have here is not a case of racism on the part of the police officer. What we have is presumed racism in the eyes of the professor. There's the police officer's job to keep people safe, then there's the presumption on the part of the professor that this white man is out to get him because he is a BLACK MAN. So who is being racist? And why did news agencies pick this up so fast? And how in the world is Gates now feeling like he can sympathize with criminals in prison when he was in a holding cell for a few hours? I know that racial profiling happens all the time, no matter where you are or which way it is going. But when you immediately jump to the conclusion of "RACIST" when someone is trying to do their job and protect you, then you are expecting and maybe inviting racial profiling. How is that going to change people's thoughts and assumptions about the problems of race, not just in this country, but around the world? You have to be the change you want to see. If anyone deserves an apology, it is Sgt. Crowley and the Cambridge Police Department, who are wasting time and resources defending themselves for doing what they are supposed to do: protect people and property.

Who Knew Crime Was So Funny?

So tonight I was randomly googling some stuff when I came across the Metro Police Department's website. If you browse through that for a while you will come to the Community Oriented Policing reports for the East Precinct which I am finding hilarious. Because while criminals are dumb, victims are dumb too. Here are some quotes:

"....at two in the morning, a guy said that he and his girlfriend were ‘parking”
in his car when 2 suspects approached the driver’s window and pointed a black handgun at him
asking where the money was. The victim and his girlfriend stated they had none.
So, the suspect took his cell phone and a book of CD’s from the vehicle. The
man exposed his girlfriend to risk. Get a room."

"....approached them from the concealment of a dumpster and attempted
to rob them. The friend fled on foot and the victim got into a fight when them. The
suspects then fled on foot down the alley. He did a great job, but we don’t
necessarily recommend fighting your attackers. However, if you can whip ‘em,
more power to ya. Also, try to find friends that won’t leave you to die alone in an
alley."

"....a man said that someone knocked on his door at 2:15 am. When he
went outside, he was confronted by 2 suspects armed with guns. They took his
wallet and fled on foot. The victim later heard a car speed off. Maybe, you don’t
answer door knocks in the dead of night by exploring outside. Oh, and leave your
wallet inside."

"1/3 of the cars stolen last week had the keys left in them. In an interesting
statistical coincidence, 33% of the auto theft victims were irresponsible."

I know, it's bad but also FUNNY. I like the sarcasm. This same guy has also put out a list of very common sense safety tips that are good for anyone to remember.

Ahhhh the power of google to waste buckets of time....

Weekend Update

Where oh where did the weekend go?! It's almost gone and I feel like I haven't been very productive at all, but that's okay I guess because that's what weekends are for, right? Right.

I've seen two - TWO - movies in theaters this weekend. On Friday night I saw Harry Potter, which I thought was excellent. It occurred to me that I hadn't seen the 5th movie somewhere in the first 4 minutes of the 6th movie, but for the most part I wasn't too lost. GORGEOUS movie, visually. There are a couple of parts where Harry is supposed to be looking at someones memories and they start as swirling ink in a bowl of water and the swirls turn into the next scene and it is just so COOL. And of course all of the amazing shots of Hogwart's School and the wizards offices and classrooms are just so much fun to look at because they're filled with so much stuff. I was also relieved that the acting skills of the main kiddos have improved by about 300% since the last movie I saw.

Today I saw Public Enemies, which was just ok. It had all of the makings of a really excellent film- the cast was right for the most part, the sets and costumes were really incredible. But I think that the tone was all wrong for what the movie was trying to be. Johnny Depp was not great as Dillinger. He could have played it so much, I don't know, flirtier? Cockier? More tongue in cheek? They were trying for sexy but the tone of the movie really didn't go that way at all. They also could have cut about 30 minutes from the thing and it would have been fine. There's one gun fight that goes on for what feels like 30 minutes, and I was starting to get a little bored.

Lately all I see in movies are costumes, makeup, and sets, even more than usual (and for me, that's a lot). I thought that the costumes in Public Enemies were impeccable, maybe just a hair TOO good. The suits were perfect on everyone, but I have a feeling that an average soon-to-be FBI agent in 1933 wouldn't have had such well-fitting suit. I'm just saying.... Marion Cotillard was really well dressed, which doesn't make sense at all for a coat check girl in Chicago unless I missed a part where she's a call girl or something too. At one point she says that the people in a restaurant are staring at her because they're "not used to seeing a girl in a $3 dress," but I don't think that was it. It sure didn't look like a cheap dress since it fit her like a glove and the color was stunning. I just don't buy it Marion. In another scene she had a reverse french manicure (half moons left nude or white at the bottom, and red up the rest of the nail), and you saw it for all of 4 seconds but that sort of detail is so nice to see in movies. And the banks that were being robbed... wow. I don't know where they filmed, but I am hoping it was on location so I can go see these buildings. Amazing art deco styling all over the place, I really enjoyed it. So the movie wasn't a total wash since I had so much to look at through the not-so-wonderfully acted parts.

Yesterday morning I took my Little to the art museum for a Big Brothers Big Sisters activity. We wandered through some really great exhibits, one was Chuck Close who does prints, mostly portraits. Some were made of paper, some were on grids and some were made out of metal, all were fascinating. At a couple of points they showed the entire printing process, through all of the colors and templates used. I learned a lot there. Another exhibit was the art of Dean Byington, who does these enormous intricately detailed pieces which were amazing to look at. From far away most of them just looked like a wash of color on canvas, but once you got up close you saw that they were huge collages of things like ants and bees the size of your thumb and mushrooms and their houses, it was like a fairy tale. The kids really liked those, but hurried us right through because there were all sorts of fun activities upstairs in the Artquest Gallery where they could make all sorts of art. They had printmaking and painting and different interactive exhibits of how to think about art and what art means. I was super impressed with all of it. I was also pretty impressed with the cute guy working at the printmaking table... but that's another story for another day. Wink wink.

Soooo, those are the highlights of my weekend. Work again tomorrow, but at least I'm done sitting through vendor demos. My car has been a little finicky today so I will take it to the car place tomorrow if I get a chance. It's coming up on 57,000 miles and probably needs new spark plugs or something. At least, that's what I'm going to assume until the people at Firestone tell me otherwise. Soon enough it will be time for the 60,000 mile service, maybe it's cranky and wants some extra attention now. I don't know, I'm not a car person.

Long Days

Toe-Up Sock- I'm done with all the hard parts!

Lately I've been in 4 hour conference calls at work. Every day. For two weeks. They are product demos and they are deadly boring. So I've been knitting because #1 it is something to do when I just sit and stare at my computer screen and #2 I listen better when my hands are busy. I'm almost done with a sock. I'm pretty sure I'll have a second one done by the end of the week.

I've had 2 trainer sessions at the gym so far this week (my next one is Thursday). Last night was the first one and we did cardio/lower body work which was EXHAUSTING. Step intervals and sprints, for an hour, followed by crunches. And tonight was arm weights which means that tomorrow I pretty much won't be able to move any part of my body without groaning. So I'll really enjoy that 4 hour conference call doing nothing. OH and I just remembered that I have a 1.5 hour conference call in the morning on top of that. So I'm glad I won't have to travel all over the building but when am I supposed to do work again?

Last night after the gym I watched Brideshead Revisited which isn't all that fantastic as far as plot goes, but it is BEAUTIFUL. The sets and the costumes and how it was filmed is just, well, beautiful. I can't think of another word. It's my favorite sort of costume drama- lots of conflict and feelings and longing and all that. It reminded me a bit of Atonement but not nearly so heartbreaking. I thought that movie was amazing but I don't want to sit through it again.

Tonight in the shower I was washing my face and scrubbing away and totally not paying attention to what I was doing when my pinky finger flew so far up my nose I think I touched my own brain. One would think that doing something as mindless as washing one's own face would not be so treacherous. It is. Be careful.

Yes, I know. There's not much going on here. 4 hour conference calls people! They rot your brain and then you share things like accidental nose digging.

Concord and Lowell, MA

A week ago when I was staying with my mom we took a drive over to the other side of the state and spent some time checking out places I'd been wanting to see for a while. We started with:

Lowell
This is a town in Massachusetts that is really where the industrial revolution started in North America. I remember reading about it in college, how this guy memorized the plans for mechanized equipment and brought it all back from England in his head, and how farm girls were shipped in from all over the state to work in the mills. At first everything worked out really well- the owners ensured that strict morals were upheld and the girls worked hard for fairly decent wages considering the times. Then they'd earn enough and go home and get married. It wasn't intended to be life-long work. Eventually the whole operation changed though, and immigrants moved in and started trying to support entire families, the mills got bigger and bigger, and the whole thing sort of spiraled out of control as competition grew and the town's population got poorer and poorer.

So there's your little history lesson. Once mom and I got there we went to the visitors center, and then walked along the canal up to the Boott Cotton Mill, which is run by the Parks Service and gives a good idea of what it was like to be a worker in a mill. Mainly, really LOUD. It was a slow day in Lowell, so we were pretty much the only people there and they started the looms up once we got there. Actually, they started up about half of the looms and the noise and still deafening. I don't think there was a way for girls to keep their hearing in there. There was a little museum that we sort of tore through because we were going to go to the American Textile History Museum.

So we walked back down the canal to the other museum, which was GREAT. Sort of confusing to get around (the girl at the counter said they are getting maps made), but really well done with great displays and interesting videos. I enjoyed that one, although we got so hungry that we pretty much gave up before we'd seen everything. Next time I go I have to see the room of spinning wheels and the gift shop. My mom gave me dish towels from there a long time ago and they have held up really well. So I'd like to see what else is in there one day.

We were pretty tired and punchy by the time we were done in Lowell. We headed over to Concord, looking for food, any food, but I have a little bit of advice for anyone hungry heading to Concord: you won't find much to eat. So once we got there we zipped right by our destination and headed into town and pretty much flew into the little Main Streets Market & Cafe and ordered sandwiches and sat there until we could take on the next stops.

Concord
If you've ever been a bookish girl or had bookish sisters, you probably know who Louisa May Alcott is. She wrote Little Women, which has been made into at least 2 movies. She wrote a bunch of other books too, but Little Women is what she's famous for. She based the book on her and her sisters, Anna (the character Meg) was the oldest and the sort of boring one, Louisa (Jo) was the tomboy, Beth (Beth) was the one who died (just giving you the high points here), and May (Amy) was the artsy one who went to Europe and painted. Their father in real life was the philosopher Bronson Alcott, who we were told would expound on the virtues of something like a pear at the dinner table and go on for 3 hours about it, tying in history and philosophy and whatever else he thought of. Our tour guide at the house seemed to think that was enchanting. I'm pretty sure I would have found it really self-centered and irritating....

ANYWAY.

The thing I was repeatedly thinking as my mom and I wandered around Orchard House on the guided tour was, "This belongs in a museum!" I was having some serious Indiana Jones moments the entire time. Anna's wedding dress is laid out on a bed. May's paintings are everywhere, and the sketches she drew on the walls are still there. Books, furniture, costumes from "theatricals" and small items like Louisa's sewing supplies are not just in direct light but but laid out for inspection, and although you are told flat out not to touch them you certainly could if you wanted to.

I was torn. On one hand it is really cool that you can walk through the house on a guided tour, and touch Louisa's desk and see all of Amy's work up close, and brings people a sense of connection because you are really THERE. On the other hand those costumes are in direct light by a window. Dust and oils from hands inevitably gets on all of the old textiles and will eventually damage them. The house is very old and the foundation was reinforced a few years ago, but with thousands of people moving all around it every year it is going to suffer wear and tear. The entire operation feels very young and inexperienced with things like preservation, and while I am no curator I really was concerned that some of these items will be damaged or God forbid stolen in time.

So what is the solution? I don't know if there is one that wouldn't take tons of money and they clearly just don't have that. A residence down the street, Wayside House (another house with major history), is a historic landmark and run by the National Parks Service. They do a much better job at preservation and education. If you combined the Wayside and Orchard Houses on a single ticket, set up Wayside House as a museum and the Alcott's house as a place you could enter on a self guided tour with most of the rooms roped off but still in view, and got items at least out of the sun and out of the range of curious fingers, you would probably solve many of the problems I had with the place.

The tour itself was pretty good, even though I kept getting the feeling that the guide had so much information in her head she was having trouble getting it all conveyed to us. The funniest part was when someone on the tour (half of a very annoying couple I might add, they kept asking questions about the littlest things and then practically shoved everyone out of the way to see whatever they wanted- manners people!) asked if the Alcotts and the Emersons and the Thoreaus and the rest of that transcendental philosophizer set swapped wives. And the tour guide was sort of baffled by it, which was great, and the woman who asked remained convinced that there was some seriously crazy sexual stuff going on in Concord in the 1850s. (Of course I googled that the minute we got home, and found nothing.)

Concord in the 1850s to 1880s was a hotbed of thinkers, writers, and artists. The famous ones (Louisa May Alcott, her whole family including her father, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau- oh YES we did drive past Walden Pond) are all buried on "Author's Ridge" in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord. It is a beautiful old cemetery, sort of creepy because people leave little things like pens and pencils and whatever else they can find by the graves (including little piles of rocks that were very Blair Witchy and got me freaked out pretty fast).

I thought that Concord was beautiful. The town is clearly proud of all of its history, from the Minute Men during the revolutionary war to the famous writers it produced. I always find it interesting how great minds come to a place at the same time and are so influential. What starts that? The Founding Fathers were like that- John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Ben Franklin and all of the others had a shared vision and they were smart enough and articulate enough to make it work. How does it happen?

Invincible!

Tonight I hung my room darkening shade in the bedroom. It took about 10 minutes (and most of that was finding the right drill bits), and I don't know why I didn't do it, oh, 4 years ago. NICE.

I went to the gym after work, and despite eating wonderful things like strawberry shortcake with real whipped cream (the strawberries are perfectly in season up there in New England and soooooooo good there's not even a word for it), and quesadillas and cheese and pesto and hotdogs and wonderful local bread and paninis and drinking lots of margaritas, I STILL lost weight when I was on vacation. HA! I think part of why that happened is because we were eating real food. Yes you can eat 100 calorie snack packs but they taste like chemicals and you are left unsatisfied. You can eat fat free reddi whip but it is still not quite right so you eat more hoping that the next bite will give you what you are looking for. Real food is where it's at.

The other part of vacation weight loss is that my mom's place has stairs inside and mine does not....

Tonight I am eating a tomato, avacado, and mozerella sandwich on honey whole wheat bread from Publix (which has 5 ingredients- hard to find in grocery store bread). It is a really perfect summer meal. I am going to hold on to this vacation feeling for as long as I can.

What I Learned On My Summer Vacation

I'm back! I had a great vacation up in Massachusetts with my mom. We took mini-trips to Plymouth, Lowell, and Concord. We organized and held a yard sale. We painted. We drank wine and beer and margaritas. We decided that hula hooping is an art and we need to learn it. We cooked out hamburgers and hotdogs on the 4th, and then my little sister showed up for a surprise visit with her pilot friend. Overall I had a great time, and Plymouth and Concord deserve their own posts. So for now I will tell you what I stuff I learned about on my summer vacation.

• Margaritas from Mama Iguana's in Northampton are the best in the world.
• But if you can't get there then the Jose Cuervo margarita mix from Costco is pretty darn good too.
• Miracle of Aloe foot repair cream is fantastic stuff and will make your feet lovely and soft again if you've decided to wear flip-flops and sandals for a week straight
• Teva strappy flip-flops are the bomb.com and I ordered some before I even came home.
• Room darkening shades ROCK. I am getting some today.
• I sleep great and don't have any stomach issues when I'm on vacation. I went to sleep around 10:30 or 11:00 every night and woke up between 6 and 7 most mornings (hence the early post). I didn't need the drugs I brought with me just in case things went all haywire. I never even used my heating pad.
• I'm going to make socks out of delicious sock yarn I found at Webs. I'm not sure what I'll do with the fantastic alpaca yarn I got but scarf and wrist warmers come to mind....
• I'm not really sure what I'll do with the beautiful fabric I bought at the quilt store that went out of business last week, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.
• Northampton is a great place if you want to just be yourself. I wore mascara a couple of days, but I was completely comfortable wandering around makeup-less with dirty hair if that's how the day went. I wouldn't do that down here. Women look different up there- hair goes gray and people are ok with that. If you want to dress like a hippy and not wear any shoes, go for it. If you are straight, gay, transgendered- or somewhere in between- that's ok too.
• People in New England (or maybe it's just Northampton) are a lot more aware of the environment and what we do to it. It's a refreshing change. There are also a lot more local stores and local food eateries around. I've had trouble finding that in this corner of the world, but I've made up my mind to look harder.
• Apple computers are fantastic and so well designed down to the littlest detail and now I'm used to using one and keep screwing up my shortcuts on my PC. BOOOOOOOOO.

I will write more later. Now it's time to go back to work.