The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
I Read the News Today. Oh, boy.
Two stories that freaked me out on usatoday.com:
First, Fidelity Investments is reporting that the number of workers taking hardship withdrawals from their 401k) plans is at a 10-year high. So, not surprising, right? Here’s what got me:
“What’s also eye-opening is that 45% of participants who took a hardship withdrawal a year ago took another one this year”
I haven’t taken any statistics, but I’ve been seeing this this trend in my own 401(k) plan. This validation doesn’t feel very..validating.
Second, it seems that bed bugs are showing up in the workplace. I am cautious about bed bugs when I travel. I use the luggage racks and don’t put my bags down on the floor or on the bed. I make a cursory check of the mattress. I am happy to say that I have not, to my knowledge, encountered them yet. But at work?! I didn’t need to hear about that.
So, of course, I had to share. Happy Friday.
Counting Down
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the Library tonight was an empty bookcase. And then another and another. It appears that they have emptied all of the displays of featured books. Like the Oprahs and the Wallflowers and my personal favorite, the one that had the books other cities had chosen for their book clubs.
I’ve said that I don’t normally check out books from the Library for fun. Research and travel, yes. But not anything recreational. But since we are now in the “extended checkout” window, I am thinking of getting something. As of this week, any books that we check out have a two-month loan period.
And, you know, it is one less book that someone has to move.
There are some pictures up on the website showing the progress. My favorite is of the “eyebrow windows”. When the project ran into budget problems, these windows were part of the “do we really need this?” discussion. My answer was no, but whatever:
Processed and Melted
Another Weekend Assignment Rewind (Because I am tired and cranky and don’t have anything nice to say.)
Weekend Assignment #311: What is your favorite kind of cheese and why? Do you have it often, or just occasionally?
Extra Credit: Is there a kind of cheese you hate?
I actually thought that I was a serious fan of cheese. Then I discovered Whole Foods. I tried different types of cheese and hated plenty. Then, because I wasn’t done with the game, I started trying every variety of Cheddar – Irish, Australian, you get the idea. It turns out that I like Vermont Cheddar and Hoffman’s Super Sharp Cheddar the best. And I think you can get both at Costco.
I find this utterly ridiculous because I love cheese. Love it. I have rejected Five Guys because it does not have cheese sauce for their fresh cut french fries. Seriously? I don’t care how good your burgers are, Five Guys – I am going to Meatheads. And having a grilled cheese sandwich.
Wait. I just did that for lunch.
This is where my mother says, “I keep telling you. You just do not have gourmet tastes.” In my defense, I have outgrown Velveeta. I think. I haven’t had it in a really long time, anyway. The cheese I have most often is parmesan. On my pasta. At Noodles & Company.
I actively dislike stinky cheeses. I enjoy blue cheese on a cobb salad, but that is about it.
Have I answered the question? What is my favorite cheese? The kind that comes from Wisconsin. Pasteurized.
20% Done and Starting to Babble
Last week, my friend Jodi posted on Facebook, “Tuesday: Better than Monday at least.” And someone responded with, “And 20% closer to Saturday.”
I didn’t even have a bad day, but Summer Hours have this side effect: When you don’t have Friday off, the week drags on forever.
I took Spooky to the vet for a semi-annual check iin. His labs are all in the normal range, though his potassium is low. But it seems that without dropping $1500 on a full nephrological panel, anything is normal until the kidneys are really shutting down. So where we began with trying to get him to eat some canned food (he pretends to eat beef flavored Gravy Lovers Fancy Feast), we have added on trying a potassium supplement. It is in paste form, involves maple sugar and many cats eat it straight up.
Ha.
When I drop his treats into a pile of said paste, he may or may not eat it. However, I am not relying Spooky’s treat whims for a twice-a-day supplement. So each night, I take the plastic syringe and try to shoot it into his mouth.
Ha. Ha.
My entire bedroom smells like pancakes, and Spooky is not speaking to me. Of course, he wouldn’t be speaking to me anyway, as pre-season started on Saturday.
The Bears played Saturday night. It is notable because on Friday, Alex told me that his daddy was grounded from T.V. shows for three days. Because he was mean. Dude – if I told my father that he was grounded from bloody anything, my butt would have been kicked. But they humored him. OK, then so here’s me:
“Alex, that’s pretty harsh. You know, the Bears game is tomorrow night. Is Daddy really grounded from the Bears game?”
He said. “Maybe..grounded for two days. Then done tomorrow night.”
Quite the merciful child.
From lugging the kids around or whatever, my back was killing me. I went for a massage yesterday. You may know that a deep tissue massage is not relaxing. It can be painful when someone is grinding out every knotted muscle in your back. And when it is over, you feel rather bruised for a couple of days, because your skin takes some abuse in order to help the muscle tissue. And you keep going back because at least the knots are gone.
People. My back is actually bruised.
This really is going to be a long week.
The Answer is Cake
Weekend Assignment #331: Cake V. Pie (A Scalzi Flashback)
Which is better — cake or pie? Explain your reasoning. Will you choose the moist sponginess and frosting-topped goodness of cake? Or will you side with those flaky crust-adoring, fruit-filling fanatics of the pie nation? You must choose one — and only one! No trying to suggest that Boston Creme Pie is really kind of like a cake, or how cheesecake is actually not unlike a pie. Take a stand! Be true to your pastry orientation!
Extra Credit: Having chosen cake or pie, now admit your favorite variety of the dessert you did not choose. So if you chose cake, tell us your favorite pie. Prefer pie? Tell us your favorite cake. – J.S.
This was slightly more difficult than I thought. I consider myself a cake person. Actually, I consider myself a frosting person. But I am really a recovering frosting person. The last..half dozen times I have had cake, I have said out loud, “Someone please remind me next time: I am not twelve years old and I don’t really want that much frosting.”
I have made a game of testing out every cupcake place in the District of Columbia. It seems that some have better cake and some have better frosting.
I think part of the reason that I prefer cake is that you generally know what you are going to get. There are a thousand ways to make a pie. In fact, the current debate in my family is whether the apples in an apple pie should be mushy or “maintain structural integrity”.
The answer is “maintain structural integrity”.
I enjoy the fruit of the pie more than the pastry. In fact, when dessert is ordered at any given restaurant, I often order whatever passes for the apple pie/crisp/cobbler. And I generally have the same critique:
“Too much pastry, not enough fruit.”
And then there is the risk that it is all too syrupy. I have that problem with the strawberry pie at Baker’s Square – which happens to be my father’s favorite. So whatever I order at a restaurant, I am really thinking that I would just prefer a normal slice of cake. Yellow. With chocolate frosting.
However, if I can’t have that, the apple pie will do. Heated. With ice cream on the side.
Twix Java
I don’t normally buy the impulse candy in check out line, but I saw this Twix Java, which reminded me of the Coffee Crisp in Toronto, so I gave it a try.
Washington Misc 2
Seriously, people. Don’t come to this town in August. It is 98 degrees. I tried to go out after work and made it as far as the Air and Space Museum – across the street. Thankfully, it is open late in the summer. I haven’t been there in a very long time. I like it a lot, but not enough to fight the crowds on the average day.
I have this weird habit that I imagine is the last breath of my maternal instinct coming out: I find myself looking around wherever I happen to be and asking whether Alex would like it. At that moment, I happened to tilt my head in the direction of the 747 and thought, “Whoa. Yeah. He would.”
He’s still too young. I think we have agreed that I will bring him here when he is 10.
There were too many kids running around and I started to smell dirty diapers and had to leave. So I sat down on the steps facing the mall and saw another artistic structure that I hadn’t noticed before:
Then I gave up and went to find something for dinner. Which reminds me. At lunchtime, Stef took me over to Chinatown to the other cupcake bakery that everyone talks about, Red Velvet. These cupcakes are $3.25, where I seem to recall the others are an even $3.00. But they come in a nice box:
Washington Misc
I am back in Washington DC. Things I forgot this time around:
- My personal cell phone. (As opposed to my employer’s cell phone.)
- My iPod
- My Metro card. I think it had $12 on it.
- The turn off to Long Term Parking at O’Hare. So I am paying the regular Daily Rate. This isn’t actually a terrible thing, since it was pouring rain when I got to the airport and I would have been most cranky wandering the airport soaking wet.
Because Stef is now working out of the empty office I used to squat, I commandeered a conference room in Accounting. Would you believe that someone ordered a whole bunch of cupcakes from someplace new and I was locked in with them all afternoon? What is it with this place and the cupcakes?
Falling Out of Fashion, by Karen Yampolsky
As a result of Googling Jane Pratt, I found that her former assistant, Karen Yampolsky, wrote a roman a clef about the rise and fall of Sassy and Jane magazines. But she did it from Jane’s point of view.
It is total chick lit. I found myself cringing an awful lot at the behavior of the people running Nestrom – the stand-in name for Conde Nast Publications. Apparently, it is all just like high school. And Anna Wintour really is that bad. There are enough juicy pieces in the book to make one wonder where the line was between fiction and reality. Such as – did Jane Pratt really have a one week groupie fling with Michael Stipe in college? So that was fun. However.
I don’t see much reason for anyone that isn’t familiar with the magazines to read this book. Unless you really, really like chick lit.
HP Tech Support
I was just talking with some friends yesterday about the concept of a “first world problem”. Stuff that you know that you shouldn’t complain about because your little inconveniences can’t possibly compare to the real problems of the world. But still.
For several months, I have been whining that I need a network printer in my house. Every time I have to print anything like..boarding passes, or driving directions, I have to do it from my mother’s room. So she picked one up for my birthday. I started the setup this afternoon.
I followed the instructions and loaded the software. Wi-fi worked and it was all connected. I got all the way to testing the printer when the machine started making a horrible noise that wouldn’t stop and it gave me an error code with a note to “Refer to Printer Documentation”. I went back to my little manual. Couldn’t find anything. I went online and searched for the error code. Nothing. I was forced to call customer service. I thought I was calling to get someone to tell me what the code means. Um..no.
Long story short (too late). Over an hour later they decided to send me a new printer.
I am not pleased with the experience because:
1. The stuff should work in the first place.
2. I should be able to look up every single error code know to man on the website.
3. By the third time I correct someone calling me “Sarah”, they should learn my name.
But mostly? I very much got the impression that HP was looking for a way to blame me for the problem. I lost track of the number of times I said, “No. The product is new. I just took it out of the box.” I had to give them my credit card number for collateral and the estimated delivery date on the new printer is August 18.
Unacceptable.
The Next Dark Age 