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March 31, 2008

Iz lake.

Falls Lake is well and truly a lake again, with more water visible than land. Still obviously low, but a dramatic change from a month ago when I made my last observation.

Posted by lisa at 06:04 PM

March 26, 2008

Do me a solid.

Okay, I kind of like that phrase, but it also reminds me of...

well...

poop. I don't know why, but it just does.

So do me a solid, and don't ask me to do you a solid.

Posted by lisa at 12:08 AM

March 25, 2008

bad habits

watching all of my sex & the city dvd's in less than a week.

baking cookies and cake.

BUT hey. soon the three-weekends-out-of-town marathon will begin and i'll desperately miss the shoes and the baking.

Posted by lisa at 12:04 AM

March 22, 2008

A slight correction; cleaning out

We're well into the territory of interesting to NO ONE but me, but I found another vet invoice today from moses' early years that lists his birth date as June 28, 1991, which is probably his for-real actual day of birth.

This was in the process of cleaning out my basement. Today I attacked the stuff that has, historically, bothered me the most-- boxes that i packed at my old apartment, moved to this house eight years ago, shoved in the basement and never unpacked. they've been sitting right in the flood zone so i knew it would be an ugly job.

Most of it's in the trash now-- it wasn't worth keeping anyway, even if it had not been ruined-- but i deemed a surprising amount of stuff salvageable and worth salvaging. most of that will need to go to goodwill. Besides moses' actual birth date, I think the best thing I found was a Fluevog catalog in decent condition that has my favorite Lift Offs as the centerfold.

each box was like a time capsule (of crap) from different points in my life. it was mildly interesting to see that stuff but man, i really used to have a problem discerning what was worth keeping and what wasn't.

tomorrow i'm going to attack the section that is stuff i set aside for goodwill, shoved in the basement before a party, and is probably mostly trash now.

Posted by lisa at 04:55 PM

March 21, 2008

very smart.

saw my second smart "in the wild" today. much more satisfying than the first one; this guy gave me a big grin when i passed him and gave him the thumbs up. the drive of the first one was too busy shoving fries into his mouth to notice my affirmation.

seeing them running around makes me want to be in on it and have one of the first ones, but i got my deposit back from smart yesterday and deposited it today. i'll be smart about it (ha!) and wait. what with the imminent collapse of our economy and all, i should probably save what i can.

Posted by lisa at 05:58 PM

March 20, 2008

beetle parts

would the person who left a little baggie of beetle parts at my front door today care to come forward?

Posted by lisa at 11:48 PM

The closet project

Well, it took a month but the closet project is pretty much basically done. I won an awesome vintage flatware chest on ebay almost two weeks ago that finally arrived today, so my grandmother's silver now has a proper home:

Safe and sound

This weekend I start on the basement, a much larger and more sordid project altogether. But then, it's that time of year again: Discardia.

Posted by lisa at 06:49 PM

March 18, 2008

my civic duty, part two

as of 4pm, none of us had been called in to a courtroom for jury selection, even the people who did not get to go to lunch early.

the judge came into the jury room to explain. there were murder cases on the docket that plead at the last minute. the judge said that if he had not had a room full of jurors ready to go, the pleas would not have happened, and he thanked us for our service.

so basically... someone who is a murderer keeps about a hundred people sitting in a room doing nothing all day while they try to decide if they are going to plea bargain or go to trial.

okay, i am still very in touch with the fact that there are countries in the world where no one gets a trial with an impartial jury of their peers. i'm glad we have this system. it has flaws but it's fairer and more just than what a lot of the world has.

but a big FUCK YOU to the assholes who KILLED PEOPLE and then put a hundred people's lives on hold for the day. our productivity is going to be giving you a place to live and three squares for the next several decades, too, so BITE ME. next time just cop the plea and serve your time.

Posted by lisa at 04:24 PM

my civic duty, part one

at lunch i wrote:

Jury Duty - 8:30am, Judicial building.

Charles Kurault.

too noisy to read in the Jury Room. CNN on, people talking.

when Obama comes on to give his speech on racism, the room goes almost silent. one man stands throughout the speech. i find it riveting and put down my book. i think, this man needs to be president.

near what must be the end, the TV's shut off. the clerk calls our attention and starts calling names. mine is called and i resign myself to being selected. i've seen the docket and it's pretty ugly. murders, at least one rape. drugs are the best i can hope for, or conspiracy w/o violence.

after many of us are called, she tells us to go to lunch! for three hours! i go to Toast.

it was delicious. i appear to be the target demographic-- the majority of patrons were white women, often alone or meeting each other, around my age or a bit younger. i suppose that describes the woman behind the register who i think i recognize, maybe from back when i went to a lot of rock shows. she looked extremely happy.

my painini was described as "proscuitto, tomatoes, mozzarella", which doesn't do it justice. the tomatoes had been roasted, the mozzarella was fresh. the ham was so salty and thinly sliced.

if i had reason to eat lunch in downtown durham, i'd probably go there every day. but, i'm still hoping i won't have such a reason.

Posted by lisa at 12:53 PM

March 17, 2008

my civic duty, addendum

Q. What should I bring with me to the courthouse?

A. Bring a book or other reading materials, or needlework, crossword puzzles, stationery, or other materials to occupy your time.

yes, i'll bring my stationery. that's what i'll do.

Posted by lisa at 11:12 PM

my civic duty

i have to admit, now that the day is nigh, i'm not looking forward to the jury duty at all. i am amongst the jurors who have to go in tomorrow. i hope i'm not chosen for a jury.

Posted by lisa at 07:32 PM

March 16, 2008

waffle report

I preferred the bacon waffle. J preferred the sausage waffle. we put whole pieces of bacon or sausage into the waffles. i think crumbling the pork product would be a better approach, in both cases.

on saturday night we cooked small bits of fish and shrimp in broth over a live flame-- fondue, but not cheese. a very civilized, slow way to have dinner.

Posted by lisa at 10:13 PM

March 13, 2008

iPhone debate

Pros:

Cons:

Posted by lisa at 07:12 PM

March 11, 2008

Fully waffle-enabled

Waffle irons get a bum rap from proponents of de-cluttering and home organization, but you know what? When I owned a working waffle iron, I used that sucker all the time.

I've really missed my waffle iron, but wanted to hold out for a model with removable plates that I could clean easily. Surprisingly rare!

So. I found one:

wafflebaker.jpg

I think it may be the exact same model my mom had when I was growing up. The plates snap out, flip over, and then you can make awesome grilled cheese sandwiches that are all pressed flat. Since I grew up with pressed flat grilled cheese, this is how I believe grilled cheese is meant to be eaten. Even better was when you'd forget to flip the plates before heating the grill, and you'd have to make a grilled cheese on the waffle plates. Awesome.

This one also lays flat, giving you a perfect flat surface for, say, pancakes. A little minimal if you're doing pancakes for a lot of people, but still probably better than trying to do them on the stove in a frying pan.

So, a little pricier than I thought a waffle iron would be, but it's not just a waffle iron, so I guess that's okay.

This weekend's plan is to replicate the bacon waffle I got on my sole trip to Vegas. J says he'll eat pretty much anything I cook, so he's in.

Posted by lisa at 09:18 PM

Moses is 16 - I can prove it!

Okay, so no one cares about this except me, but I find it somehow reassuring to have definitive proof of Moses' age.

While working on my filing tonight I found a vet invoice from November 2, 1991 that describes "Male, Tabby, 4 months". That puts Moses' birth date at around July 2, 1991, and his age is definitely 16.

Posted by lisa at 12:04 AM

March 10, 2008

I need a battery indicator

I need to know when I need a recharge so I don't spend my last few minutes of energy when I get home on stuff like sorting mail.

I was sorting away (I really had many days worth of mail that had not been properly dealt with) and was thinking about dinner when all of a sudden... yeah, I'm sitting on the couch now.

Posted by lisa at 06:40 PM

March 09, 2008

trinity lofts

i went to an open house at trinity lofts today. these are urban lofts built on the foundation of a small warehouse in my neighborhood.

the price is pretty astonishing. from the price list they gave me, they range from $211 - $225 per square foot. for this you get a reasonably nice urban loft, but basically no outdoor space at all. I guess they're banking on the fact that it's right on the greenway and central park is walkable.

so that translates into the big end unit being $443k at 1965 sq ft, and one of the, um, more modest units being $250k for 1182 sq ft.

for perspective, my house, which is about four blocks away, is 1100 sq ft and was valued at around $153k last summer. that 1100 sq ft doesn't include my attic, my basement, or of course, my yard.

so for an extra $100k, you get brand new construction, yes, but way less space, all told, and a lovely view of the parking lot.

they have actually sold a couple of the units, and when i was walking around in the one really large unit that was open and staged (around 2000 sq ft) i could see the appeal. it has a really nice modern feeling to it.

nice energy efficient and sustainable touches; bamboo flooring up in the loft, nice double pane wood windows and sliding doors, and the big unit had a pellet stove with a fair amount of exposed chimney-- although it would have been nice to see the chimney run horizointally across the space to get more heat out of it. i was also surprised that they didn't use tankless water heaters. with the cramped spaces, that seems like a no-brainer.

they're having open houses almost every week, and the realtor on duty said they are mostly trying to reach people "in the neighborhood", i guess so we can, like blog about how expensive they are, or something.

Posted by lisa at 10:55 PM

March 07, 2008

spring

i laid out the full calendar for april and may. aside from my usual visits to (and imports from) virginia, i'll be visiting atlanta, miami, and indianapolis this spring. another weekend will be spent on dan's graduation, resulting in much jubilation and dinner at everyone's favorite massive local barn-like steak house.

i'd had it in the back of my mind that i might want to volunteer for the obama campaign in NC, but looking at that calendar, i realized there's no sane way i can do that. there's no way.

i'm also going to have an interesting time working out cat care. all of the trips are short, and moses is in pretty stable condition right now. provided i can give him fluids on the days i leave and return, i think my usual cat care buddies can handle everything else. that's about a thousand miles away from where i was four months ago, when i didn't want to spend even one day away from him and made his care a full time job. but he's good now. and if he's not good when i go, dr. c has assured me that he can stay at the vet and will be given tons of attention and care.

this is all happening against a backdrop of I'm Getting My Shit Together, which has been a general theme in several parts of my life, and which seems to occupy an awful lot of my free time. it's focused on my finances to a large extent; an offshoot of that is dealing with the fact that my "filing system" is failing to scale and i now have a table full of loosely organized stacks of paper which, to the untrained eye, might appear to just be strewn about haphazardly.

because we'll be getting an entire drought's worth of rain over the course of the day friday and saturday, forcing me to stay away from yard work this weekend, i hope to emerge into the sun on sunday with a fully functional file system and a newly organized closet in the dining room. you'll see. i'll post photos.

I'm Getting My Shit Together has also lead me to order a certain organizational book that the geeks all love. Even though I haven't read it yet, I'm dangerously close to Inbox Zero and even Desk Zero. Co-workers have actually commented on the extreme de-cluttering of my desk at work. I'm going to have one of those moments soon where I sit at my desk, not a loose paper to be seen, and say, oh my god, i am so organized! It will be like the first time you get really drunk and you think oh my god, i'm so drunk!

and in other news, there's a very large, very dead tree in the railway easement adjacent to my back yard and it's sending hunks of its rotten trunk into my yard every time it rains. i'm actually a little worried that it's tall enough to fall on my house. i have a tree guy coming to look at it as soon as the rain stops. why it never occurred to me to do anything about it before, i don't know. i remember looking up at it in the warmer months and noticing that it had no leaves-- and in fact, no branches. the neuron that would have told me that it posed a danger to my house apparently never fired.

Posted by lisa at 12:12 AM

March 05, 2008

careful what you wish for...

my basement is fully flooded today-- from each entry point where water comes in, not just from a couple. so basically there is water streaming across the floor from seven different points along the walls.

i haven't seen it like this in probably a year-ish. i had forgotten how gross it is! ugh!

we got about 2 inches of rain yesterday, putting us within spitting distance of an average rainfall amount for the year, although we still have a significant deficit from last year to make up.

Posted by lisa at 08:04 AM

March 04, 2008

here comes the big rain

i bet i see some flooding in the basement tonight. in a way, i hope i do.

Posted by lisa at 09:56 PM