Look, a post!

blogging every six months means that you have to fit a lot into each post, so here goes: short updates on various happenings.

I’ll start with my usual refrain, which is that in combination with a full time job, graduate school sucks the life (literally, I lose lots of weight) and free time out of you, and the time pressures of work make it impossible to put more than a token, last minute effort into your studies. But that don’t mean I can’t still pull of A’s.

Megan and I bought a house a few months back, after a few months of looking. Romanticism about more historic neighborhoods gave way to concerns over taxes, renovations, affordability and convience, but those worries largely faded once we found our place in Solon. Cutting down our commutes and being walking distance from the gym, library and two (TWO!) ice cream parlors helps. So does not having to drive 40 minutes each way to do laundry.

Modest renovations have begun, although we are still somewhat occupying the old apartment. Flowers and vegetables have been painted, bushes have been pruned, chimnies have been tarred. Inside, attempts at painting have been stalled by the necessity of removing layers of paint, wallpaper, adhesive and more paint.

For the past two years, we had 4 channels of tv, all of which were fuzzy. As of May, we have 300+ channels, all available at our convience thanks to the miracle of DVR. Its amazing how quickly a luxury turns into a necessity, although our views differ on the subject. Megan watched a lot of tv for a few weeks and has since retreated back to her evening pursuits of making dinners, reading and staring at the cat. My more easily seduced brain has left me staying up to all hours, sitting at attention captivated by the sheer maginitude of options vying to command my attention. Deadliest Catch is the clear winner, although I’ve become somewhat numbed to the potential dangers and drama faced by Alaskan crab fisherman, and have taken to spending a fair amount of my evening hours watching bad movies, fast forwarding through dialoge to view implausible action sequences accented by dubbed in exclamations of “shoot”, “darn” and “crap”.

My  littlest sister is all graduated from college now. I’m very proud of her, and the graduation day/ceremony was lovely. Although after brunching on the lovely lawn of the university president, watching her walk onstage, and talking with all of her very complimentary professors, I think that the one indelible memory of the day will be watching my well-educated sibling, in full graduation regalia, ordering a round of late morning shots in little plastic cups at what was probably one of the least sophisticated bars I’ve ever set foot in. And this is from someone who has spent a lot of time in some pretty shitty bars.

My other little sister is getting married. I guess I need to get a tux. And start planning all of the wonderful ways I’m going to trash the newlyweds’ car. I used some firecrackers and a toilet plunger on Melissa and Nick’s, but I think I can easily top that now.

I’m typing this while enjoying the panoramic view outside of my 17th story hotel room (free upgrade to deluxe king suite!), partly cloudy skies topping the chaotic skyline of Southern Bangkok. Pink Mitsubishi taxis flit around closely packed detached houses and small apartment buildings, punctuated by 20-story glass and concrete  office buildings and hotels. The sheer volume of greenery is incredible for a city. Megan is sleeping off the cumulative effects of a 13 hour time change and 36 hours of travel, while I’m grogging but not quite able to get much sleep. I’m spending the weekend preparing for some client meetings and finalizing a looonnngg presentation I have to give on Tuesday morning to a client, while Megan relaxes and explores, and then we’ll have a few days to play full time tourist before heading back to Tokyo, Chicago and home.

Working with companies on getting into the “green economy”  was always something I had hoped to do years down to road after finishing school and gaining a lot more experience. I never expected to be sent on a solo business trip to the other side of the world to do so this quickly. I’m very excited about this trip, which is, minus a few smaller projects, the first time I’ve been able to put my international studies, economics and environmental background all together in a big way. I’m a little nervous too, in part because I really want to do well on this – if I can pull it off, I may just have a good future in this sort of green business consulting gig.

I guess I’ll close on noting that if you ever want to catch someone by surprise, send someone completely unsuspecting a plane ticket to a trip to the other side of the world a few days before their departure. Megan was somewhat flabbergasted.

Random Crumbug Thoughts

When I logged in to wordpress tonight, it helpfully told me that 48 million words had been blogged on their site so far today, in 285,000 posts. At that rate, somewhere in the blogosphere (I hate that word) the complete works of Shakespeare are floating around, disguised by out-of-focus pictures of housecats and a collective recording of the fact that everyone went to work today, where their lives were made miserable by that one coworker that’s out to get them out of sheer spite. I hate that guy.

Two day’s before the deadline on a huge project for work, I get sick. I blame Megan, also sick, mainly because she is the most conveniently located to offer sympathy, and really easy to get on a guilt trip.  More hot tea with honey, please.

The previously referenced deadline has ruined the fun of being sick for me. If I’m going to use up a personal day, it needs to be spent on the couch watching bonding with the tv and eating crackers, not stuck in my home office banging away at a keyboard (except the brief breaks to watch Home Alone, Shrek, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Three and a Half Men, Charlie Brown Christmas, etc). Either way, today will be counted as “working from home” on my timesheet.

I not actually going to be cheating my company, since I’ll be working late tonight once I finally get some data from a collegue of mine who’s auditioning for the coveted role of “coworker out to get me”. Seriously, in the last 24 hours before a deadline, mid-afternoon and ten pm are not the same time.

Everybody Loves Raymond really isn’t that funny when Ray’s parents aren’t on screen.

Everyone has different reactions to being sick. I tend to like to be left alone and ignore the world for a few days. Megan likes to play “hide the used tissue” in couch cushions,  between bedsheets, under pillows, etc. The only thing worse than waking up to a wad of used tissue stuck to your neck is waking up to a wad of someone else’s used tissue….

It’s hard typing with one hand

But since my other arm is twisted behind my back from all you people bugging me to post, I’ll have to make due.  Seriously, its only been six months since my last post…

I guess an update is probably the easiest thing to do here. With that in mind, in the last six months I have:

a) started a new job at the company I used to work for, and had been consulting to for the past year or so. As of June somethingish, I am a “senior research analyst” doing “client-directed industrial market research”.  Thanks to my company’s rather rigorous expansion plans, I spent my first 4 months on the job sitting at a card table in what was basically a hallway.  Then I got to share an small office with three other people, seperated from the rest of the building by a construction zone. But as of Wednesday, December 3rd at 8:40 am EST, I officially have my very own cubicle. Score.

b) finished up my second degree, in economics. Three weeks later, I was back in the classroom, since I still have at least another year to go until I finish my environmental studies degree. School has begun to drag more than somewhat, but come January 2010 I will getting home from work at 6:00, not 9:00, without any homework to do.  All those extra hours will be used to do something productive, like becoming the greatest tetris player the world has ever seen.

c) watched the global economy kinda slow down, a little bit.  Seriously, reading the wall street journal these days is like looking at some sort of financial mad lib. “Financial markets fell (adverb) today, with the crash brought about by investor concerns over (noun). (number) stockbrokers jumped out of their (number)-story windows today, while in the housing market, a 4,000 square foot tudor-style home was bought in (city) for a dozen (fruit, plural) and a small (farm animal).”

d) procrastinating adding more commentary about the economy to part c) above. I’m sure I’ll get motivated eventually, but since much of the past few months at work have revolved around this sort of thing, I don’t feel like it right now.  Deal.

e) Beyond these exceptions, continued my day to day life as before. The cat still wakes me up three times a night. I still sneak off to Wendy’s and McDonald’s when Megan isn’t looking. And I still visit mom every week or two to do my laundry and mooch food.

f) Oh yeah, I bought a new car.  The valiant white Saturn has come to an untimely end, or at least was sold at auction to someone with a thing for plastic door panels. At the end of the summer, I started looking for a practical replacement for the Saturn…some reliable, cheap car that would get me too and from work.  I looked at some small Fords, Hondas and Toyotas. However, through some creative rationalization, justification and some spirited test drives, I ended up buying this:

2009 Nissan Maxima.  Three times the horsepower of the Saturn. All leather interior with something like 38 Bose speakers. Push button starter. $400 performance tires (at least, $400 to replace. Some cars are too much fun to drive).  0-60 in 5.5 seconds (or so wikipedia says.  I never take it above 55).

sidenote: I found it extremely ironic that of all of the cars that I looked at, the only one not made in the US was the Ford Fusion, which is made in Mexico. My Maxima was made in Tennessee.

Since everyone thinks I won’t do it….

Favorite person (outside family)? I’m pretty much obligated to mention the girlfriend here.

Favorite food? Apples and peanut butter, if I’m cooking. The list is longer if someone else has to do the grunt work.

Quirks about you? I can’t leave a rubik’s cube unfinished.

How would the person who loves you most describe you in ten words or less? (Ask them) – In the interest of convenience, I asked the cat and she looked away.

Any regrets in life?  Not being able to watch Top Chef due to a lack of cable.  The show is addicting.  And I regret admitting to liking cooking shows and the Bravo network.

Favorite Charity/Cause? I give to the Cleveland Foodbank every month.

Favorite Blog recently? Probably Melissa’s, if only because she updates it constantly.

Something you can’t get enough of? Food of all kinds. Except mushrooms, ham and anything coffee-flavored. And those cereals with the freeze dried fruit in them – its like eating expensive chalk.

Worst job you’ve ever had? There were elements of lifeguarding that I could have done without – generally the parts involving fishing floaters out of the pool.

What job would you pay NOT to have? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to quit if the job was that bad?

If you could be a fly on the wall, where? Your bedroom, just as you are trying to sleep…bzzzzzzzzzzz

Favorite Bible verse right now? I like the one about the bunny that brings candy in little baskets and lays colorful eggs.

Guilty Pleasure? Food that I can purchase without leaving my car.

Got any confessions? I’m supposed to be writing a term paper right now. Its probably not going to get done today, but I’ll tell the professor I had “software problems”.

If you HAD to spend $1,000 on YOURSELF, how would you spend it? If I HAD to? Geee…. As much as I talk up wanting a plasma tv, I really don’t need one. I’d probably use it to do some kind of travel adventure.

Favorite thing about your house? Its walking distance from a movie theater, a grocery store and a dozen restaurants.

Least favorite thing about your house? To come home, I have to stop my car, unlock the garage, open the garage, park my car, close the garage, lock the garage, unlock the outer door, unlock the third floor door, unlock both front door locks, lock both front door locks, remember I left my bag in my car.

One thing you are bad at? Keeping to other people’s timetables.

One thing you’re good at? Rationalization. The art of convincing yourself that things that you screw up are unimportant.

If you could change something about your circumstances, what? I’d like to be working. Or going to school. Not both. Winning the lottery would be nice too.

Who would you like to meet someday? The champion hot-dog eating guy. We could do lunch.

What makes you feel sexy? My Homer Simpson boxers. Or the ones with the little penguins on them. Maybe even the Bullwinkle boxers. It would be hard to pick a favorite.

Who is your real life hero? Batman. Yes, he’s real. You just never see pictures because he’s that frickin’ good.

What is the hardest part of your job? Haven’t shown up in two months, so I guess its remembering not to go?

When are you most relaxed? Beer number 3.

What stresses you out? My internet/computer combination doesn’t work half the time. Frustrates me to no end.

What can you not live without? Contacts. I hate wearing my glasses outside of the apartment.

Do you agree or disagree with the recent article that reported that blogs are authored by narcissists? Who isn’t a bit narcissitant these days?

Why do you blog? Peer pressure. How do you turn off italics on this thing? No seriously, I love these “meme” things, whatever the hell “meme” means. Especially all the people bugging me to write about what makes me feel sexy, or my favorite bible verse. Which is kind of an odd combination.

Okay – rules:

1. Answer the questions

2. Link back to whoever tagged you

3. Tag eight bloggers to do the same, 2 from each category.

• New/newer bloggers —

• Bloggy friends –

• Bloggers you’d like to get to know better –?

• Bloggers you don’t think will respond, but you hope will –

(I refuse to do this stupid little rule things. I answered the sexy question, isn’t that enough?)

I miss my market

One of the great things about where I live is the weekly farmers market 50 yards from my front door.  Anything you could want, produce, milk, cheese, eggs, potatoes, grains, sides of beef, honey, chocolate cake…all there, all fairly cheap and its all just…food.  I’ve been trying to get more interested in my food lately, beyond thinking about just what I want for dinner (pizza, obviously).  It amazes me how little we know about food.  Not just the intricacies of what particular diet is the secret combination to good health (Atkins!  South Beach!  Grapefruit and Pistachios!), but what it is I’m eating, where it came from, how it go so darn tasty, etc.  I was reading an article about our food system the other day, and the author pointed out that as kids grow up they get the founding of the United States pretty much every year, but are never really taught simpler everyday wonders, such as how to make bread.

So, here are a few unconnected thoughts:

It amazes me to go to a grocery store.  Beyond the sheer variety, and the huge number of things that, until a recent advance in chemistry, wasn’t even FOOD, its just the idea that out of a few hundred or so plants and animals, we can have tens of thousands of different types of food, all carefully formulated, packaged and advertised for each of our carefully segmented demographic markets.   And the ingredients are amazing too…its all chemistry.  I’ve been trying to avoid eating too much sugar/corn syrup, and its impossible to find stuff without any in it.  Bread, crackers, juice, soup – the other day I was looking for corn, and almost all of the cans had corn syrup or sugar in them as well.  It’s a frickin’ vegetable, not a Snickers bar!

I’m always amused watching M cook, because we have very different styles.  I stare at the recipe carefully, get out all the ingrediants before starting, and slavishly follow the rules.  She’s more of a “this needs more leavening to account for the humidity, and then I’ll need to eyeball this much of this weird spice and heat it for, oh, this long and then stir counterclockwise until I can see Orion’s Belt, because its a Tuesday” type of cook.  Recipes shmecipes.  But when you think about it, cooking is really becoming a lost art.  60 years ago, most people could cook, and do so with whatever is at hand.  “A little butter, some flour, two onions and a chicken…I can work with that.”  Last weekend M made spaghetti sauce from scratch, I think because we had diced tomatoes and some peppers.  But if you think of a typically spaghetti meal, the one everyone can cook, are we really cooking it?  Pre-made sauce, noodles, bread, parmasean cheese, wine….none of it is really being cooked.  What if it was wheat, a cow, some tomatoes and a plot of grapes?  We don’t really know how to make food anymore, unless you work for Lean Cuisine.  I think real cooking is becoming a lost art.  Not that I’m going to rush out and milk a cow tomorrow.

I have a bunch of other little thoughts like these, but that will have to wait for another day, cause I need to go to class.

meh.

I am trying to break myself of a serious case of school apathy right now.  Not very successfully, as I’m writing this when I should be in a class.  I just can’t seem to get my butt motivated to have anything to do with school, or at least the parts of school that involve sitting in a class having a textbook summarized for me, as a two of my professors tend to do.

It was easier to attend my mid-day, very easy environmental economics class when it gave me an excuse to cut out of work.  Less so, when I have to spend all afternoon on a campus without a student center (due to construction) to catch an hour lecture on things I’ve already had a half dozen times.  When faced with going to campus at 1, sitting through the class and then spending FOUR hours sitting in hallways, random corners of buildings and the occasional overcrowded lounge because the school closed the building that contained most of the study rooms and all of the food,  staying home doesn’t sound so bad.

And I feel productive staying home.  I went running, cleaned, read for a useful class, played with the cat and caught up on sleep.  I think I’m starting to drift back toward one of my phases where I start judging things moreso on where they fit in my priorities versus where I’m told they are supposed to fit in my priorities.   This can have benefits – it tends to make me less stressed and more satisfied with my life.  Drawbacks include just not getting some things done and feeling guilty for that fact.

Where is Spiderman when you need him?

I wasn’t going to get into this anytime soon, but what the heck.  Last December, M and I had our apartment robbed.  Majorly.  We lost two laptops full of years of work, M’s camera and jewelry (some very sentimental pieces), my luggage, watch and change jar, our checkbooks, and probably a few other things I am repressing the memories of.  All told, something like $7,000 of stuff was taken, for which we got  $3,500.  And none of this compensates for lost laptop info, identity theft issues and being very skittish in our own home.

The whole thing was made worse by the fact that our door was UNLOCKED by whoever broke in.  Upon investigation, we found out that our realty company, Montlack Realty (who sucks, by the way), doesn’t change locks in any of its several thousand apartments when they change hands.  And the previous tenants of our apartment still live in our building!  It costs $1.00 to copy the keys needed to get into our place.  Also, Montlack Realty told us it is their POLICY to NOT tell new tenants that the locks aren’t changed, so that they don’t have to change them out.  Montlack Realty’s response to this mess?  “Sorry, not our problem.”  We didn’t sue for negligence only because we didn’t think it would be worth the legal fees.  (I keep repeating Montlack Realty so that maybe someone doing a google search checking them out will catch this.  Montlack Realty Montlack Realty Montlack Realty Apartments Cleveland Ohio Rentals Shaker Heights Montlack Realty.)

This morning, while going to the basement to do laundry in our crappy machines, I cound that the dryers had been pried open and the controls smashed all over the floor, so someone could get at the quarters inside.  Once again, a theft in our supposedly secure building.  I’m thinking some of my free time in the next few months will be spent hassling the leasing company.  I should be looking for a new place, but for all its faults our place is big and cheap in a walkable and historic, if crime-heavy, location.

Still, unnerving to be presented with more evidence that its likely that one of the 16 apartments in our building is home to the likely robber of our apartment, and that in addition to losing my laptop and all of my graduate work that was on it, I now have to go to the gym wearing dirty shorts.

p.s.  Montlack Realty Ohio Montlack Realty Cleveland Montlack Realty Apartments Bedrooms Cleveland Ohio Rentals Shaker Heights Montlack Realty

Digging out

We had a blizzard the last few days, which, despite all its inconveniences, such as M going stir crazy, did afford the opportunity to spend 36 hours hunkered down ignoring a work deadline.  Although I probably would have ignored the deadline if it was nice out too.

Waking up this morning, the bedroom was like being on a beach, it was so bright.  Even with the shades down, clear skies and snow everywhere have turned every glance out the window into an accidental glance into the sun.  I’ll be needing sunglasses when it comes time to dig out the cars.  Sidenote: you know a storm was impressive when you still have to dig out the vehicles despite having indoor parking, because the garage itself resembles a snowbank.

(not our car, but I don’t reckon its going anywhere soon)

Today will be laundry, working, shoveling and a trip to the gym.  And the grocery store…we usually run pretty low on food supplies by the end of the week anyway, and with the Saturday farmers market closed, we have very little food left.  We’ve been drinking water and eating what’s left in our freezer for two days.

Tech-savvy am I

Cause I figured out how to do pictures. And despite my fatigue with the long hours, things are going well right now. In pictures:

Here is M eating chili. We make chili a few times a month on Sundays so that we have something to eat during our hectic weeks. Plus its crazy cheap. We usually get at least a half dozen meals from an $8 crockpot of beans and vegetables.

She also likes to eat all of our girl scout cookies when she thinks I’m not looking…

Bean the cat likes to sleep all day, so she can wake us up to play at 4am. This only occasionally results in thrown pillows.

M has lots of late-night work to do too. I help by taking pictures.

I’m realizing that posting random pictures and attempting to come up with funny lines about them is too much work. Future pictures will probably be related to actual things.

And I’m back

A month of moving, working, and heat waves has come to an end.  I’m nearly done setting myself up in the apartment with M, although I still have a few things to get settled in my office/man room.  Mostly getting a new desk, since my new computer comes with a monitor that is wider than my current desk.

July and August have been a little crazy.  Part of it was just the heat, 90 almost every day, high humidity.  Overall not too bad, but it left me less than enthusiastic to sit at my computer.  Laying on the floor under a fan seemed a more appropriate way to spend my time.

M and I bought a three year membership to Bally’s earlier this month.  Four days before the company declared bankruptcy.  Now, they claim that this won’t affect our services at all, but they also plan on doing a massive restructuring/cost cutting campaign.  Curious as to how that’ll happen without affecting customers at all.  I will say this about Bally’s: the people in the gym bear little resemblance to the people in the commercials.  I have yet to see a large number of lightly sweating 20 year olds with idiot grins on their faces laughing as they jump up and down.