Unrelated rantlets

Rantlets are tiny little rants hardly worthy of the word rant. So here we go:

I’m tired of the meme first world problems. Yes, I know others elsewhere have it a lot worse than I do. I get it. But these are my problems and hey, guess what—I live in a first world country complete with first world problems.

I’m also tired of applying for jobs with companies that use antiquated web sites. I'm talking about web sites that can't accept documents in Word 2010 and won’t run in Chrome. Hey, a job application is also a chance for me to evaluate you, company who has the job posting. So don’t use Web 1.0 technology and do update your site so I can upload my resume into the dark abyss of your company never to be seen or heard from again.

Also this week I ran across a company with a career section of their web site that was in such bad shape regarding security certificates that both Chrome and Internet Explorer had absolute fits about me going there. And yes, this was one of the companies whose site flat wouldn't work in Chrome. Please for the love of God join us in the 21st century and make your web site compatible with the major browsers.

That leads me directly to the dark abyss of no answer or response to a job application. Seriously, it’s not all that difficult to set up a script to let all the non-winners know you filled the job. If tiny companies in Iowa can get that script up and running, so can you, big giant companies in major cities. It's the polite thing to do.

Finally let’s talk about the TSA. Ah the joys of either getting virtually strip-searched or else patted down before I can fly. I guess I slept through the  biology class that covered the parts of the human body, because for the life of me I never heard of a body part called resistance. The TSA sure has and they love to karate chop me there every time I fly.

Friendsgiving

We went to our friend Fiona’s third annual Friendsgiving Saturday evening. She provides the turkey, plates, utensils etc. and we all bring everything else. I usually bring my cranberry-port sauce, the one my friend Shima calls the boozy cranberry sauce. This year I found a recipe for honey roasted almonds so we made a batch of those before we headed over. Oh my goodness those were tasty. They are also all gone.

The nice thing about Friendsgiving is it provides the perfect kick off to the holiday crush and ensures we see all our friends while we are still sane. I love it and I’m so glad she does this every year.

The freak

I’m sure you’ve heard of the whole Penn State/Paterno/ Sandusky mess. I think the two most chilling stories I read were about (1) Penn State students rioting over Paterno being let go and (2) the story about the grad assistant who saw something, reported something but not until the next day and then . . . nothing?

I think I’m the freak here.

I have reported people for things done against those who have no recourse, not something I think happened or something I suspected happened but events I saw. Here are my bona fides:

• I reported a woman whose children slept in urine-soaked playpens who were also fed mold-infested food.
• I confronted an “abusive” man berating a woman at Murphy Hall at KU. That ended up being some freaky theatrical experiment and when I figured that out, I hauled ass into their little debrief and confronted them about the dangers posed by pretending to be abused when in fact they were not.
• Last week I stopped a tiny, no more than three year old girl from being hauled down a super long escalator by her slightly older big brother. I think her mother was pissed but too bad. I’ll take pissed mom over injured kid any day, thanks anyway.

So I don’t understand why on earth Paterno didn’t do more. For that matter, WTF, grad assistant who saw the inappropriate shower. What were you thinking? Were you afraid your career would be damaged? How about the life of the boy in that shower, did you think about that?

At this point, I'm OK with being the freak.

Strange dreams

The last month or so I’ve had a lot of very strange dreams. Some are just odd, and some are flat out nightmares. Last night’s dream was bizarre.

I was wearing bright red elasticated waist pants plus a short, red jacket-esque kind of thing. Think bolero length and you’ll get the picture. Now you should know that I don’t wear elasticated waist pants ever, and I never ever wear red because I look like I’m dying in it. I'm not kidding. When I've worn red, friends and co-workers have asked me if I'm getting sick, that's how awful I look in it. I don't even own anything red. But in my dream last night, I wore elasticated waist pants (yuck) that were red (double yuck), plus the red jacket (barf).

In the dream, I'd be walking by a mirror or a window or something reflective and I'd catch a glimpse of my big as a barn butt in these God-awful red pants. The bolero length jacket only emphasized the awfulness. It was mesmerizing and more than a little disconcerting. I have no idea what I was actually doing in the dream, all I know is I kept seeing my big ol butt larger than life and twice as ugly.

No idea what it means, but man it was weird.

Tick tock says the clock

How can I be so busy when I’m unemployed? And my deadlines aren’t even self-imposed. I’m almost glad Kent is out of town this week because otherwise I don’t think I’d be able to finish everything.

Odds and ends from Idaho

My parents’ dog is pretty darn cute and also super sweet. Like our cat, Chloe, she doesn’t photograph well so you’ll just have to take my word for how cute she is. She’s also a lot smaller than I thought she’d be. When they got her, she weighed a scrawny 25 pounds and now tops the scales at 29 pounds. That’s pretty small for a Brittany.

I lust after my mother’s sewing room. It would be a fairly small bedroom but it’s perfect for her desk, sewing machine cabinet, and ironing board. Plus she can store her fabric in the closet. Best of all, if she wanted to shut the door—say to keep nosy, curious animals out of there—she could.

We drove to Boise yesterday and stopped by an amazing fabric store which was almost overwhelming. The fabrics at Caledonia are to Joann's fabrics as clothing from Macy’s is to Walmart clothing. I bought an amazing wool/mohair sweater knit in purple plus another, more summery fabric for a dress.

Then we went to the holy grail—the Bernina store. That store was overwhelming in a different way. I love my sewing machine and to be in a store with all the latest and greatest (and very expensive) Berninas just took my breath away. Seriously, one machine cost as much as my Honda Fit. I bought three new presser feet and dropped more money there than I did at the fabric store. Crazy.

It’s been a fantastic visit so far and I’m so glad I came out here.

Edited to add that the post makes it sound like I'm having fun because we are doing things. Actually I'm having fun because I'm hanging out with them, but that doesn't make for a very scintillating blog post.

YARL*

1. Kent says he likes these kinds of posts.
2. Good thing. I write them when I have bits and pieces to say but nothing substantial enough to merit a whole post.
3. I solved the problem of how to finish the lining in my wool skirt so I can keep the kick pleat.
4. I did this while I was asleep last night.
5. Kent says I’m weird because my brain never stops. I thought everyone was this way.
6. Apparently I’m wrong.
7. I fly to Idaho tonight to visit my folks. I haven’t been there in eight years.
8. I’ve seen my parents every year—just not in Idaho.
9. The high desert climate is tough on my nose and sinuses.
10. Yes, I know. Supposedly I would adapt to the dryness.
11. No thanks. I’ll take humidity.
12. Except in the summer when it’s really hot. Yuck.

*(Yet another random list)

Sewing and stuff

Or Stuff if you prefer to capitalize it.

One of the sewing forums I’ve been reading holds sewing contests throughout the year. One is called a SWAP (sewing with a purpose) and that always intrigued me because I like the idea of having a plan for my sewing. I want everything to go with everything, mostly, and I don’t want to have clothing orphans that just sit there never getting worn.

But I’ve realized these SWAPS are done a few times each year, maybe even each season. I don’t remember. Each one includes seven to 11 items of clothing. Now you can do the math as well as I can—if you sew seven pieces each season, you’ve got 28 new items of clothing every year. I don’t have room for 28 new pieces of clothing in my closet. What’s more, even if I did have that room, I don’t want that many items. That much clothing makes my brain hurt.

Here’s another ongoing projects—a jacket a month. Wow, 12 jackets each year?? My last job required professional business dress, not business casual, so I wore suits or suit-equivalent clothing every day. I owned just four jackets and that was plenty. I don’t need or want 12 of them.

I’ve realized this forum isn’t a good match for me. Those women are amazing sewists/seamstresses/sewers/whatever and are very generous with fitting/cutting advice. They really know their stuff. But I don’t fit in. From my perspective, they just never stop sewing clothing for themselves. Then they complain that their closets are full and they have massive stashes of fabric.

So that’s why I capitalized stuff. I think that kind of sewing becomes another way to accumulate things that end up cluttering my life and my brain. No thanks.

I have one final item to sew for my own, retooled wardrobe: a wool skirt that has a bit of stretch in it. Then I'm done sewing for myself until something wears out or somehow gets ruined. The rest of my sewing will be for others or for gifts or for the house.

Imaginary friends

Did you have any when you were a child? I didn’t, not really, although I did like to sit at my bedroom window on the second floor and look across the driveway to the abandoned house next door. I populated each window with girls I could play with. This was when I was five or six years old.

Today, I have a lot of virtual friends which some might consider to be the same thing as imaginary. I disagree; two of my best friends are people I met online gaming. I’ve known John and Angie since 2000. Kent and I stayed at John’s house and got to meet his wife the first night of our honeymoon (John and Brenda lived in Calgary then and we honeymooned at Lake Louise). About a month later, we went to Angie’s wedding. They’ve been friends with me through eleven years of good and bad times and are no less important to me than people I met in more conventional ways. Edited to add that those were the first times we'd met John and Angie face to face.

Tomorrow I’m having lunch with another virtual friend, one I met through Facebook. We figured out that she works very near where I live in Boston and she’s originally from the Kansas City area. I'm looking forward to meeting her face to face as well.

What about you? Do you also have virtual friendships that are as important to you as your face to face friendships?

I laughed

 We have a cat that destroys paper. This isn’t the same cat that eats cardboard boxes—that’s Eddie and he can eat his weight in cardboard. Wally is obsessed with paper, primarily paper towel and toilet paper. So we can’t keep our toilet paper on a roll holder or whatever they’re called like normal people do. We have to keep ours in one of those storage canisters. Even then, he's gotten a roll out as you can see from the picture on the left.


Of course that means we have to take the roll out each time we need to do our business. I can’t speak for Kent but I tend to put the roll on the edge of the sink until needed, although sometimes I just put it on edge of the tub or the floor. The floor isn’t the best option, though, because once I forgot I left it there and Wally found it.

Yesterday I heard Kent swearing up a streak in the bathroom and I knew immediately what had happened. He did what I always feared I would do: he dropped the roll (a brand new one, by the way) straight into the toilet. Yes, I laughed—partly with relief that I hadn’t done it first, but mostly I laughed because it was funny.

Two years

Eddie in the crack house hotel
the night we flooded

Two years ago that 35-inch water main ruptured and our apartment flooded, along with about another 50 or so apartments. I wrote about it in 2009 and 2010 and I guess I’ll keep writing about it as long as it affects me the way that it does.

That was the start of a really long stretch of awfulness for us. We flooded on October 28 and had to find temporary quarters to live in. Then after returning from visiting our younger son and his family for Thanksgiving, Kent was told he would be getting laid off (I still didn’t have a job). Our trifecta of awfulness concluded a week later with us receiving notice of the condominium lawsuit that continues to prevent us from selling our place (no, the suit has nothing to do with the water stuff, and the reason we can’t sell is that banks won’t lend money for condos involved in lawsuits because of the potential liability).

Today, Kent has a job but I got laid off this summer. The lawsuit looks to be done but the arbitration that should conclude this whole nasty mess won’t even be scheduled until January or February. And I’m still jumpy when I hear unexpected water noises.

I think Wally was affected the most. He was never what you’d called a mellow cat even before the flood, and that day only made things worse. I wrote about how he ran into the rising waters to try to get to his safe spot and came tearing back into the bedroom absolutely terrified. Today he remains far more high strung than the other two cats. He’s really skittish and hides in inaccessible places when people come over.

As for me, I keep a charger near my phone which is near my handbag. My passport is easily accessibly (and well above a potential water line). The cat carriers are not stored under anything, they are very easy to get to in a closet that doesn’t have a door. If there were a next time, I wouldn’t waste a moment throwing towels at the back door as I did two years ago, and I wouldn’t call 911 until after I got the cats in their carriers and out the door. But I would still remember to get the Scotch.

A wadder

What’s a wadder? I’ll tell you at the end.

Last night I made a pasta recipe from a pin I found on Pinterest (if you want an invitation, let me know in the comments). I was intrigued by the balsamic reduction and hey, you can never go wrong with butter. I even thought it might be something to add to my son Ben's food blog.

It looked so yummy.

I always follow the recipe the first time I make it because I figure I won’t know how it was supposed to taste if I run around altering things right out of the gate. The one exception is that I will cut a recipe in half—there are just two of us and unless I’m positive we will love a new dish, I don’t want to risk having a lot of food we don’t like sitting around in the fridge.

And I had my doubts while making this dish. Partly it’s because the vinegar smelled awful while reducing, even though it was good vinegar. I was a little worried too that the combination of vinegar and brown sugar would lead to a sweet and sour taste, which I don’t care for in the least.

It didn’t taste like sweet and sour, I’ll give the dish that much. But it was awful. I asked Kent for his take on the dish and he said all he tasted was a thin sweet taste plus a very sharp bitter taste. I was less eloquent and said it was gross.

We always talk through dishes we’ve made for the first time, looking for ways to improve them or create alternatives so the dish is even more versatile. In my opinion, this dish would have been better served to have no vinegar or sugar, stick with the butter and put in a few hot pepper flakes. But then it’s changed beyond recognition from the original recipe and has become something else entirely. Something I might actually eat.

And here’s your weird word for the day: a wadder is what you call a ruined sewing project. You just wad that sucker up and move on. That’s what I’m doing with this recipe.

Old man winter

About two years ago, we ordered new windows for our place here in the South End.
That’s not as large of a purchase as you’d think since we have just three proper windows. We also have a glass brick window (three bricks wide and three tall, so it’s a rectangle) and we have our back door which is nothing but glass.

The windows dated back to when this brownstone was renovated, or possibly to the second round of renovations. Regardless they were at least 20 years old and probably older so they did very little to keep out the cold or the heat, had no storm windows and no screens either.

We'd ordered the windows right before we flooded, and they got replaced during the reconstruction. Even then, before we were able to move back in, we could tell how much more efficient the new windows were and are.

So that’s a passive bit of winterizing we do. The active bit involves our stairs to the first floor.

Our place

In Boston, all apartments and condos must have two ways to escape. That code is to protect people from getting trapped in their homes in case of fire. We use our glass door, the one that leads out to the patio, about 99% of the time. It comes straight into our living area but more important, we have just three locks to undo: the patio gate, the iron grate and the door itself and they all use the same key.

Our second entrance is at the top of the stairs, which leads to the street level door. When we do use that door, we have to unlock our door, the common foyer door (which has two locks) and the iron gate (all that takes two keys). Yes, this is the same common foyer that the Ferals like to store extraneous microwaves and dressers in. Apparently they do not understand what being a good neighbor means.

Before

As you can imagine, the stairs act as nothing more than a giant heat suck or chimney. That’s great in the summer, we like it that the hot air collects up at the top of the stairs. It’s not so great in the winter.

So I’ve hung the curtains to enclose the stairs. It’s surprising how much difference those two el cheapo curtains from Ikea make. Not only does the heat stay downstairs where it belongs, I also don’t feet a chilly breeze coming down the stairs.

After

I don’t like spiders and snakes

Yesterday I made a slow cooker faux beef bourguignon, and I have to be honest. I didn’t much care for it. I’ve never had the real deal but I suspect I wouldn’t like it either. I tend to prefer my food to be simpler and less complex—when you start mixing things like bacon with beef, well that just tastes yucky to me.

Kent will tell you he doesn’t know all the food rules, he just knows they exist. And I do have food rules; well not exactly rules, but there are food pairings I find utterly disgusting. I guess in a sense those are rules. Granted, they tend to be don’t ever do this rules, but I have positive food rules, too.

Anyway. Bacon is a breakfast food, and in only one case is it suitable for a non-breakfast item: the lovely BLT. You can even put a slice or two of a really good Cheddar cheese on there and I’m OK with it. But I don’t like bacon on burgers or meatloaf or anything else.

The recipe I made yesterday called for six slices of bacon, and that flavor permeated everything. It left such a taste in my mouth that I had to eat some saltines to get rid of it. I’d make the recipe again, because it’s easy enough and other than the yucky bacon taste, I liked it. But I would ditch the bacon and put in a lot of baby bella mushrooms instead.

Boring and mundane

That was my weekend. Also very sweet and affectionate because (gag warning ahead) Kent and I just reveled in each other’s company. He travels a lot for work but it’s sporadic. So last spring when I was mostly gone, he was here. This fall has been a different story and he’s been gone each week for the last three weeks. We’d braced ourselves for not seeing each other for about five weeks when he left last Monday. That things changed just made the weekend so much better.

Yesterday I paid for the tension and stress of last week. I’m normally a high energy kind of woman, especially in the morning. But not yesterday. I woke up tired and got more tired as the day went on. Plus my head started pounding around noon and nothing I did made that headache go away. Low energy days are quite rare for me and I don’t like them one bit.

Now I’m back applying for jobs, filing for my pitiful unemployment and knocking out sewing projects for Christmas gifts.

While I was waiting

That’s the story of this week.

I’ll summarize:

I’ve passed three interviews with a company—let’s call them Company A—I would love to work for. I had two interviews last week and then an interview on Tuesday. My contact there knew I had a contract I needed to sign and return for the KC job.

And the KC job is through a dear friend of mine. I’d told her a couple of weeks ago that I was still looking for permanent work, and that I was still in the running for the job with Company A. She didn’t seem to care. Well when things heated up more this week, I dropped her an email because I didn’t want to screw up her project by coming on board and then maybe ditching her in a month or so.

We talked briefly right before lunch today and I gave her some names of people in the KC area who might be interested in the job. I just heard back from her about 20 minutes ago that she was able to find someone local.

So on the one hand, I just cost myself a job opportunity. But on the other hand, I am staying home where I belong.

Gotta say my head hurts and I think a glass or two of wine may be in order.

Oh and the waiting bit? Between noon and 4:30 today, I’ve sewn up a fleece jacket. That’s what I did while I was waiting.

Today I

Finished a skirt and jacket (skirt, view E, jacket, view B but without the belt). I added two inches to the length of the skirt and also lined it even though the pattern doesn’t call for it. I didn't line the jacket. Both are made from a dark gray almost denim material that has a tiny bit of stretch in it. I used my serger to finish all edges on the jacket and most edges on the skirt—some of the skirt edges became entirely self-enclosed once sewn so I didn’t need to worry about any unraveling. This material does want to unravel.

And today I kissed Kent good-bye. As I wrote yesterday, he’s off to Poland this week and won’t be home again before I have to leave.

I’m trying to decide if I have it in me to make one more outfit this week before I absolutely must buckle down on a packing/organizing frenzy. Stay tuned.

It’s like a bad knock knock joke

Only I have no idea how to make it funny.

Kent leaves for Poland tomorrow. I am almost certainly leaving for KC Friday morning. Kent gets back from Poland Friday night.

We’re both pretending tomorrow isn’t good bye for a while. We’ve been taking turns telling the other one “hey no getting sad” and so far it’s sort of working. It probably won’t work so well later tonight.

Ahem—I have an announcement to make

I don’t want to leave Boston.

There, I said it. I mean it. I want to stay. Now of course I will probably be leaving, and isn’t that just the way of it? You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone (and yes, they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot).

Kent and I have been talking a lot over the last month about what makes living here hard. We have met some fantastic people who are now very dear friends (hi Fiona, David, Mikael, Daniel, Shima, Steven, Kathrine, Andrew and the rest of you). They’ve stuck with us through good times OK well not so good times and most definitely the bad times. So it’s not really the people.

Well it’s not most of the people. It’s where we live, not our neighborhood but our building, and a few of the people who live here too. Plus let’s not forget the fun we’ve had with water. Oh and the utter lack of light. That’s a big deal. I’m tired of taking massive amounts of vitamin D.

Earlier this month, we had a brief moment of hope when we thought we might actually be able to put our place on the market (alas for our futile hopes), so we talked about where we’d like to rent. Yes, rent. We’re done with owning for a while. Given the economy and our precarious job situations, we need more flexibility. Anyway—we started talking about where in Boston we would rent.

I realized I don’t really want to leave the South End. I like it here. I would love it if I were on a second floor with big ol windows and nice or at least beta neutral neighbors. Heck if they were just not utter turdballs, that would be an improvement.

Now let me also say very quickly that a couple of the other folks in our building have been wonderful (hi Peter and Tony). And they’re also stuck here until the nastiness is settled. It’s just that the Nasties and the Ferals are so, well, nasty and feral that it completely drowns out how nice Tony and Peter are.

And of course I don't want to leave Kent and the kitties. That's the biggest reason of all.

But all my wishing is for nought, at least right now. I can’t find a job here and I have an offer of a six to nine month contract in Kansas City. The money is decent and pays a heck of a lot more than unemployment. So it looks as though a week from today, I'll be driving my trusty little Fit halfway across the country. I’ll wave at you all as I pass through your states.

A tale of two woes

Jury duty was mostly boring and a little chilly because the 28 of us sat for nearly three hours in a drafty room before anything happened. I was prepared for boredom and a long day—I brought both my Kindle and my lunch.

We were on tap to serve on one of three cases; by 10, one of the cases had been resolved short of a trial (exact words from the Officer of the Court). Around 11, we were taken upstairs to a court room to be empaneled for a criminal case.

The empanelment process is pretty simple: the judge asks a series of questions, some of which are specific to the nature of the charges involved and some are just basic questions about things like innocent until proven guilty, or the burden of proof being on the prosecutor. If you need to answer yes to any of the questions, you raise your little juror tag which has your number on it (mine was 29—there were a fair number of no shows and the numbers actually went all the way up to 46).

This trial involved some sort of vehicular misdeed although not homicide. I felt a little sad for the defendant because he wasn’t dressed very well at all, so I’d guess he didn’t have money for a really sharp attorney, and his (probably court appointed) attorney was older than Moses. I could have served on that jury and been fair about everything. But my number wasn’t called, I think the highest number called for that case was 23.

We all trudged back down to the jury pool room and waited some more. We got called back upstairs for a second criminal trial around 12:45. Keep in mind we hadn’t been given our lunch break yet either, so people were getting hungry, grumpy and chatty. I was really glad I’d brought my lunch and I wolfed down my PB&J right before we went upstairs for the second time. Good thing too, since that empanelment took over an hour.

This second case was different, at least for me. The defendant had been arrested for loud and disorderly behavior in her home, keeping a disruptive home and resisting arrest. The question that got me had to do with whether or not I could be fair to the defendant given the nature of the charges. In all honesty, no I couldn’t. We live beneath loud, obnoxious people who are never bad enough to cross the line into a police call but who negatively affect the quality of life here.

I was called to the side bar and asked about my answer to that question. I told the judge, the assistant DA and the defense attorney that I wished I could be fair to the defendant but in complete honesty, I wasn’t sure that I could.

I felt sorry for that second defendant too. You’ve seen her before, she’s the one with brassy blonde hair and horribly dark roots, smokes cheap cigarettes, wears jeans from the 80s, and lives in a trailer in a bad section of town (or she would if there were trailer parks in Boston). She’s probably never gotten a break in her life, people have probably always been crappy to her, and she is one angry woman. Something happened, something snapped and now she’s looking at jail time. And I still didn’t think I could be fair to her.

There were 21 of us for that second empanelment. The judge wanted a jury of eight but had to settle for six. For one reason or another, 15 of us didn’t think we could serve on that jury. Sure, at least one guy was saying anything at all to get excused (seriously he held his card up for every question—jerk), but most of us had given just one reason.

On the T ride home, I realized it’s probably a lot tougher to seat a jury for cases like that. Chances are good most people in Boston have lived near a really loud obnoxious neighbor who made things miserable. That's part of what happens with this kind of urban density.