Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

It may be time for breasts to start pulling their own weight.

This week a very interesting topic came up in the Technology section of Slate: Breast Power! No, nothing like that… get your minds out of the gutters. We’re talking about green energy - harnessing the kinetic energy of the common breast! (Well, uncommon breast since you would probably need larger-than-average breast to make efficient use of the hypothetical system.) “Victoria’s Circuit: Harnessing the untapped power of breast motion” is both an amusing and technical article. Our future will probably come from this type of daydreaming about better ways than plugging into the grid to get energy. And if that future includes turning my breasts into a power plant, well, finally they’ll be making up for the high cost of quality bras.

“Per sotto, per farli combaciare,” meaning: “For the hair down there…to make it match.”

So here’s something I never thought of doing: coloring the “hair down there” (as the Betty Beauty website cutely calls it) pink or blue or any other color. The blue is specifically marketed to brides for their “something blue.” Personally, I imagine it would be a hoot to surprise one’s spouse on the wedding night with neon blue… and the options for embellishing are extensive. Betty Beauty also sells “CharmCils” for shaping the “hair down there”. I think it would hilarious to see the look on some guy’s face when suddenly a bright pink peace sign is unveiled where there was nothing but natural before.

It’s probably telling that I look at color for the “hair down there” as a means to mess with a significant other rather than a means to achieve sexy hotness. No, I will not be doing a product review.

[All links in this post are safe for work… assuming you don’t mind getting caught surfing frivolous hair color sites and Slate at work.]

tags: , alternative energy, betty beauty, bras, breast motion, breasts, energy, green energy, hair color

• Most creative tribute to George Carlin today at Indexed.
• King Arthur Flour has an awesome baking blog. Complete with step-by-step photos for the tricky (and non-tricky) bits. I can feel like I’m baking even if I’m too hot or too busy to actually do it! Seriously, it’s an awesome blog. Late summer there will be baking motivation!
• Here’s some random Neil Gaiman. Just because.
• I have a large amount of basil growing fiercely in my raised beds. I have a Fop who likes hazelnuts. Has anyone ever tried hazelnut pesto? I see a couple of different recipes floating around the web. (And if anyone in the area wants some fresh basil, let me know!)

tags: baking, basil, gardening, george carlin, indexed, king arthur floure, neil gaiman, photographs, tributes

Components to a bad day:

• Finding out information too late to save time for yourself and others. Twice.
• Having to force people to answer your questions directly rather than deflect. Twice.
• Getting stuck on an annoying, soul-sapping conference call without much hope for extraction.
• Not having any tasty pudding-yogurt left for lunch.
• Needing to go grocery shopping desperately.
• Being exhausted and fearing the grocery store and therefore procrastinating it. (good and bad really)

Bonus round that almost makes up for the day:
I put in the deposit for our new yurt. It’ll be ready in a couple weeks! Sadly, we’re only getting it in time for Pennsic because someone else had to drop out of the yurt queue… but at least we can give their yurt a happy home!

tags: bad day, communication, meetings, tired, work, yurt

Components to a good day:

• Beautiful weather
• Not getting caught speeding on the way to the airport (rental Subaru + no traffic = fun… it was an accident, I swear)
• Free wireless Internet at the Providence airport (FREE!)
• An e-mail from the new yurt guy (we should be able to get a new yurt for Pennsic!)
• An on-time departure of my flight (remarkable!)
• A rather exciting, high-speed landing… also on-time
• Finding my car in the parking garage with no trouble
• Popcorn for dinner (shhhhh! don’t tell!)
• Dairy Queen for dessert
• Home

Bonus round:
Indicator #31 that summer has arrived: the soft, smoky smell of questionable substances wafting across the street from the group of teens hanging out on the church steps.

tags: airplanes, cars, dairy queen, random, travel, weather, yurt

We had some fun thunder and lightning earlier and the heat has finally broken a bit. It’s down to 75° F out there right now. If it weren’t nearly midnight I might be more excited by the low temps.

I ordered from Threadless again. I blame my dear friend and coworker Andy who mentioned them casually the other day. I popped over to learn that my favorite t-shirt now comes in their super-soft custom brand and it was all down hill from there. I even got The Fop a shirt, because I’m just that kind of darling girl. And the package you see pictured here with Mr. Paw? That’s from Threadless. There’s nothing like being awesome.

Work is being its usual adventure. I got bogged down with spreadsheets that I’m pretty sure I still don’t fully understand as well as miscellaneous other “do this now please - it’s urgent” items. Always fun even if these things derail my usual plans.

I already feel like summer is flying by and it’s only June 10th - in many ways, summer has barely begun! I really need to readjust my mindset to Pennsic being the middle of summer instead of the end of summer.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print tonight!

tags: heat, t-shirts, threadless, weather, work

Doom is the new black.

tags: black, doom, doom is the new black

The following is an excerpt from a conversation with slyppi last night… this morning, far past our bedtime.

Me: Perhaps the use of “reliquary” when referring to a wedding keepsake box connotes something they don’t want to connote… [referring to the wedding reliquary box]

Slyppi: “felt-lined to hold jewelry, coins, small objects and, of course, wedding keepsakes.”
Such as, your groom’s ring finger.
Minus his flesh.

So technically reliquaries are for holy relics and wedding keepsakes could be considered holy… but most often, when I hear about reliquaries they’re holding bits of saints. Usually little, dried out bits that still resemble the original bits…

tags: late night conversations, reliquary, unfortunate english, weddings

• The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee has adorable new itty bitty kitties!
• Mike posted the latest comics of his superhero kids over here.
• Weregeek’s IKEA comic is adorable and so very true: IKEA is a dungeon crawl.
• Cat Yoga from today’s Rose is Rose.
• Silly t-shirt of the day: Clownfish
• And finally, President Bush has made a name for himself - he now has a 71 percent DISapproval rating. He’s catching up to Truman and Nixon.

tags: open tabs, random, silly

So I have several favorite quilts from the International Quilt Show as well as several I was heartbroken that I couldn’t capture about because they had “no photography” signs on them. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to most of you that one of my favorite quilts is a winter tree quilt. It’s a little quilt - 9×11 inches - and the stitches are very intricate! In the close-up version you can see the tiny stitches that make up the graceful snowflakes. I really love the shimmer of this quilt too. Just pretty… very pretty. :) I love that a lot of very careful work went into this small work of fabric art.

Happily, in other news, the week is half over! 2 more days then I go on a vacation with no firm plans other than our plane tickets! YAY! I have a huge list of things I want to edit or write not to mention a large pile of books to read on the trip. I will whittle down my lists and still not accomplish much on vacation I’m sure… which is probably how it should be. I still really need a vacation so I should take the time for a proper recharge.

I did get the Bernina embroidery software installed on my laptop last night. The delay was because I had to install Windows first. (Boo!) It all seems pretty stable so far. I opened a few designs that were pre-installed and decided I should probably go through the tutorial. That’s right… I’m going to do the tutorial for a piece of software. Why? Well, it’s essentially high-end graphic design software and that’s not something I’m very good at and the icons often make absolutely no sense so it’s hard to punt. I’ll figure it out probably half way through the tutorial, get bored, quit the tutorial and be off and running.

tags: bernina, chicago, embroidery software, international quilt show, quilts, snowflakes, vacation, winter

One of my favorite things to procrastinate is packing - packing for a trip, packing for a move, packing for a day at the out or whatever. If it’s just me, I will procrastinate until the cows come home and insist I put things in a suitcase. (I’m a bit better when someone else is relying on me or if I don’t want to make everyone wait on me while I figure out what else I need to pack.) I used to pack for business trips to Vancouver at 5 a.m. before hopping to the airport for my 7:30 a.m. flight.

The trick is to procrastinate properly.

One of the best ways I’ve found to procrastinate packing is to do laundry. (Procrastinating laundry is a whole other topic…) I could have started packing this weekend for the trip I’m leaving on tomorrow. That would have been quite clever. Instead, the past 2 days I’ve been doing laundry pretty much non-stop. Well, as non-stop as my job will let me - it’s really quite inefficient for me to try to do laundry during the workweek despite working from home. Everything (except one towel and stuff worn during the laundry marathon) is clean now and even has made it up to the bedroom.

So, I have achieved the joy of procrastinating by doing something productive as well as tricked myself into preparing for my trip at the same time. Now that everything is clean, I can just pick out the exact clothes I want to take with me on the trip. It will be completely easy!

Of course, I’m not leaving for another 18 hours, so I have plenty more time to procrastinate! (Example: this post.)

tags: laundry, packing, procrastination, random, travel