toastykitten

I have the day off today, but it's not for fun - I have a couple of doctors' appointments today, and apparently no doctors are ever open on weekends.

Things I pondered this week:

How the hell am I going to cook the giant zucchini my mom gave to me last week? It is about a foot long and five inches wide. I am not exaggerating. She's been giving various giant zucchinis from her garden, and I am seriously starting to run out of ways to cook them. I've baked, roasted, grilled, fried, stir-fried, etc. And I really need to make us eat this one this week, otherwise it'll just go bad, and I'd hate to waste fresh food.

Mark and I have been trying to plan our meals - 1. to eat better, 2. to force ourselves to cook, 3. to save more money. It worked okay the first week, but we're running into some snags. The most annoying being - Mark hates leftovers, and he hates having the same thing twice in a row - like if we have Chinese food for dinner, he doesn't want it again the next night, even if it's not leftovers. He needs novelty, even though he's not necessarily a picky eater. The other thing I'm running into is that we're not eating enough of the groceries we get for the week. We always seem to want to eat whatever's not in the kitchen. Yesterday I caved and we ordered take-out, because I didn't eat lunch until nearly 2 o'clock, and that led to me being cranky and not wanting to cook. We're trying.

If you're in the Bay Area, you should pick up this week's SF Bay Guardian, because it's their food issue, and they have a pull-out magazine listing a bunch of different places to eat at. In their weird foods section, they recommended Yank Sing and said, "When's the last time you had chicken feet?" To which I thought, "Wusses! I ate that two weeks ago!"

Watched Project Runway last night. I *heart* Michael. You can look here for the Fashion Week presentations. Some of them did swimsuits this time, and yes, there is proof that Uli can design something other than halter dresses. I hated Jeffrey's. Laura's was pretty but boring.

Anyway, time for me to head out.

Hells yeah! Michael Knight won! I was starting to get pissed off at the edits (or lack thereof) he was getting for the first couple of episodes, and I was really annoyed with how they treated him when he came to the auditions, but this episode challenge was made for him. I totally loved his outfit, even if I could never wear it in a million years.

Anyway, stoner Bradly Baumkirchner got kicked off. I will miss his stoner commentary - "I am a squid without an ocean."

We went to the San Carlos Farmer's Market and picked up a bunch of food. Mark kept me from getting distracted, and we bought tomatoes, pierogi, fresh corn, fresh tomatoes, salad mix, and green onions. The green onions we bought from Safeway a few days ago are pretty much dead, and it bugs me. Green onions should last at least a week! It's that same way with other Safeway produce, too. Don't get me wrong - I get the majority of my groceries from Safeway, but I am going to be very, very sad once farmer's market season is over. There's just no comparison between fresh, local ingredients that don't taste of pesticide and Safeway produce. Oh, and we also got artichokes! I love artichokes, even though you can't really do much with them, and it's kind of complicated to eat.

My mom's tomatoes are starting to come in, too. ^_^

I got asked by my manager to attend a training conference in October. It's in exciting Kansas City. Anyone know any good places to eat there? I'm on my own for dinner, although I will be compensated. I heard ribs are a good bet. I could also use tips on schmoozing - the Dale Carnegie class helped a bit, but I'm supposed to build a relationship with these people whose software I just want to take a hammer to and force them to build a new program. That works. I think I might be getting a little burnt out on work, too - there's going to be another person in our department leaving and that leaves me as the only current, full-time employee under my manager. Until we hire another person. My workload has increased ten-fold, and that's fine, because previously I was seriously scrounging for work to do, but I'm starting to get disorganized. I need to get back on track.

Maker Faire was awesome. It was really more of a Nerd Faire, with plenty of people making stuff and selling the things they made. We met the guy who built his own backyard monorail, talked with members of the Bay Area LEGO Users Group aka BayLUG, got a free ReadyMade magazine and a tote bag for the faire, and watched some people who should have been at RenFaire fight and helped Diana Eng and her partner Emily Albinski hand out programs for their fashion show debut (thanks to Blogging Project Runway. I think they should have made more, but who knew how popular the Maker Faire would be? I wish I had brought my camera, but oh well.

There was another fashion show before Black Box Nation, called A Recycled Fashion Show, featuring clothes that had been altered, remade, reused in true DIY fashion. It was very cool, and my favorite part was when one of the designers transformed a boring office outfit onstage with just scissors into something really cute and fashionable.

Edited to flesh this part out:
So Diana is exactly like the way she was on Project Runway - very sweet, soft-spoken, nerdy, sort of spacey, and actually shorter than me. Emily is much the same way, and quite possibly nerdier. Of course I kept a program from Black Box Nation!

The Lineup - the first up were the "biomimetic clothing" - which meant that the clothes themselves could transform into different silhouettes and shapes. One model pulled a shawl out of her purse, another transformed her shirt into a different, cuter shirt by moving a few folds, and the last reversed her black skirt and pinned it up to reveal a bold print underneath.

Next up were the functional jewelry - unfortunately I don't remember what they were, and it was hard to get a good look from where I was. (I need new glasses.)

I'd seen the mathematical knits before - these knits were based on number patterns. The other dress featured a ruffle running down the dress based on the Fibonacci sequence.

Then there was the PCB Radio, which was a bunch of jewelry, when properly adjusted, would turn your head into a radio. Okay, not literally. The necklace became a piece that attached to something else to become an antenna, and these really cute earrings were actually speakers, which you could flip up to become headphones. This Flickr photo explains it better.

There was the heartbeat hoodie, which she used to enter Project Runway. It looked much better now that you could see it close up.

Next up was the mobius strip bag, which unzipped to turn into a bag with a longer handle. (I was kind of hoping that it would actually turn into a bigger bag.)

The next models wore Emily Albinski's jewelry designed from electronic fuses.

Their show featured the famous inflatable dress, which was hacked from a hand vacuum.

It was a lot of fun, and I hope to see more stuff soon!

I'm listening to Tim Gunn's podcast about the finale, and he's talking about Chloe and her 7 sisters, and says that her mom was trying to have a boy.

I KNEW IT!

For most of the day I've had David Bowie on a loop in my head. Of course, there could be worse musicians to be stuck in my head, but I'd like a change already.

I got my MightyLeaf tea today at noon. My confirmation was sent at 11:30am yesterday. The Mountain Spring Jasmine is already my favorite; the smell is so soothing.

Project Runway - Reunion show - good lord, does this show love to milk the finale or what? It was a more entertaining than usual recap show, because it featured a coked-out Lupe (I don't believe it was just weed), more singing, Zulema's bullshit alter ego "Shitangy" and a confrontation between her and the model she ditched, and Santino. They should have just called it the Santino Show, since over half of it was clips of him singing, doing Tim Gunn impressions, and generally being a dick to everyone on the show. My favorite clip of him is the one where he says "I WANT TO EAT YOUR SOUL!" to Andrae because then I just pretend he's Zod trying to take over the world. Oh, and Daniel F.'s "I love you, Heidi" was the creepiest moment ever. Is he stalking her or something? He looked like he wanted to cry.

Inside the Actor's Studio - Dave Chappelle - This episode was two hours long and totally worth it. It's one of the best episodes ever. He talks a little bit about why he left for Africa, about how he got started, the usual, etc. I just love how smart he is, and how genuinely nice he seems to be. And yay for him saying "You may not be racist yourself, but you benefit from racism."

That's What I'm Talking About - In honor of Black History Month, TV Land made three episodes of this show, hosted by Wayne Brady, in which black people talk about the black experience. I think it was only rerun once or twice, so I only caught the second episode, called "Movers, Shakers, and Playmakers", about politicians, athletes, and comedians. Guests included Spike Lee, Reverend Al Sharpton, Wanda Sykes, John Ridley, and Greg Anthony. I couldn't really stand Spike Lee, even when I was agreeing with him. I liked what Sharpton and Sykes had to say, and I don't really remember who the other two are, except one of them went so far as to call Kobe Bryant a "hero" and I was like "wuh?" There were times when everyone got really passionate and talked over each other, and I thought Wayne Brady could have been more effective as a mediator, but overall it was a really interesting discussion.

I wish I could have caught the other episodes; but I guess they got replaced by more important things, like reruns of Cheers.

1. WTF??
2. Michael Kors needs to shut up with the dumb-ass similes.
3. Does Kara have any ideas of her own?

Now here's an interesting project - designers were given digital cameras, and instructed to take pictures of what inspired them, and use one of those pictures as inspiration for their next outfit. Tim Gunn gives a pep talk, because their last couple of projects have been really lackluster. Tim is right, of course.

The models got switched this time, because Zulema won the last one, and because Zulema wishes she had the bitchiness of Omarosa. Then she wonders why everyone's hating on her. She steals Nick's model, Tarah. Nick, even though I sympathized with him, acted like a two year old who's had his candy taken away from him. And dude, when it takes 24 year old Daniel V. to snap 38 year old you out of your funk? I think there are maturity problems.

If I was Rachel, Nick's new model, and I was watching this particular episode, I would want to go jump out a window because of Tim's shocking description - "elongated marshmallow", "Gumby legs"? Good lord, man, tell us how you really feel.

According to Tim's podcast, he warned Santino at the fabric store that he'd chosen the same fabric as Austin in Season 1. So his shock on the runway when Jay pointed it out was utterly fake. Does Santino know any women? Does he know where a woman's waist is? Every dress he makes is totally unflattering, and it's the same damn dress he made for Nicky Hilton, without any trim. His Tim Gunn impression was hilarious.

I liked Andrae's dress better than Daniel V.'s. I also thought that Daniel V.'s, while elegant, was totally ripped off of some Japanese designer like Yohji Yamamoto or Issey Miyake a few years back. Andrae's was much better, although imperfect, and I liked it because it wasn't quite so literal an interpretation of his photo as the others.

Zulema lost and good riddance. God, her bitchiness was not even good television, and the fact that it happened illustrates exactly why I love Project Runway. For all her talk about strategizing, the show is ultimately about tangible talent under enormous time pressures, and she proved she couldn't handle the time pressure. (I'm not so sure about the actual talent, either.)

I watched Brokeback Mountain last night, and surprisingly, I didn't cry. I think I was distracted by all the hype (even though I don't think it was undeserved) and I kept waiting for certain moments that I got impatient and underwhelmed when they did arrive. Heath Ledger was excellent. A lot of it reminded me of what Ang Lee tried to do in Hulk, in using quiet space to enhance the emotional aspects of particular scenes - but that doesn't work in a comic book world.

Also, the love scenes were totally worth the price of admission.

Project Runway 2 - Daniel V. and Andrae win the Banana Republic challenge, with a dress I could see myself wearing. However, knowing Banana Republic, they will charge $250 for it when it probably only costs $45 to produce, if that. (It will eventually go on sale.) Santino insults the people who are judging his work, and finds himself on the same chopping block as Diana and Marla. How many eye-rolls did you count? I won't miss Marla, but I liked Diana, nerd-girl, and I think she was probably just way too young for the show and in over her head.

For once, the Asians on reality show have not embarrassed me in any way. How is that possible? Chloe's outfit was actually interesting this time, but I hated the fabric she chose for the reversible jacket. And how cute is it whenever she talks about how she's trying to make the cheap fabric look expensive? The girl has seven sisters (ha! she beat my family); she knows how to be resourceful. And because I would totally do that.

Scrubs - my favorite fucking sitcom ever has returned, and there are two episodes each week. Yay! It seems like they went all out this season, as we have a Bruce Lee parody scene where surgeons wear their masks like ninjas with Kung Fu Fighting as the soundtrack. I was laughing my ass off, as they nailed all the cliches perfectly. This is my second favorite episode after the one with Brendan Fraser.

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen - I've been reading this on the train ride to and from work, and it's pissing me off that it took me an entire week to finish this book. Mostly because I expect that short a novel to only take me a day or two to finish. Anyway, I really liked this book, but wow, did I hate the protagonist, Fanny Price, that I was supposed to be rooting for.

Fanny Price has no faults, other than being too gentle. She's moral and easily fatigued and has a lot of passion that is apparent to everyone and that's what they fall in love with - the fact that she feels things exquisitely and she's so damn moral. She's a total Mary Sue and I generally expect better from Austen. Fanny Price gets what she wants in the end, but not because of any real action on her part - it's mostly because everyone else flames out spectacularly that changes other people's mind about Fanny. If we are to believe that Fanny is such a perfect person, then the guy she does wind up with doesn't even really deserve her, as he's a dumbass. Upright, moral, but still a dumbass easily fooled by flirting.

I loved Mary Crawford's character, as she is everything that Fanny Price is not. She becomes a two-dimensional caricature at the end, but for most of the novel, she's charming, manipulative, smart, perceptive, and calculating. She seems to be genuinely nice to Fanny, and thus have a trace of humanity within her, and to care for her suitor, but have a difficult time deciding whether her love or her quest for comfort comes first.

Next up for reading is Sense and Sensibility, which, incidentally, is another Ang Lee movie. Hmm. I think Ang Lee needs to do more Chinese movies. I miss them.

This review of A Million Little Pieces, stolen from Long Story, Short Pier sums up my thoughts on Frey exactly and saves me the trouble of actually reading the damn book:

Frey sums up his entire life in one sentence from p. 351 of this 382-page memoir: "I took money from my parents and I spent it on drugs." Given the simplicity and familiarity of the story, you might wonder what Frey does in the other 381 pages. The story itself is simple: he goes through rehab at an expensive private clinic, with his parents footing the bill. That's it. 400 pages of hanging around a rehab clinic.

...

There they are, the most childish dreams of every little rich white boy: being down with the brothers and the Mafia. The tough guys. The Jazzmen. Having friends with connections in those two equally artificial cities, Vegas and New Orleans.

There, now you know why he couldn't get his book sold as fiction.

I have to go to the dentist in a few minutes. Having to use money for essentials hurts.

I caught up on Project Runway last night. During the first season, I didn't really get why everyone was so picky about their models - I mean, all they had to do was look pretty and walk down a runway for about 30 seconds. How could you possibly fuck up walking?

Then Season 2 happened. Last season's models had personalities in addition to their walks; this season, they all seem sedated. I can't tell you which ones made an impression on me or who I liked, because I didn't really see anyone that was that special. And several of them made the designers' clothes look worse, especially Marla's model. Marla already had a bad design, but her model did it no favors.

Anyway, I think Daniel V. was robbed. The dress he made with the sixties-ish print was beautiful. It gave his model an hour-glass figure. Santino shouldn't be so smug about winning the challenges, because Jay won exactly 0 challenges and went on to win the entire competition. There's no versatality to his "vision", and his one trick seems to be to find a beautiful fabric and throw shit at it until it sticks. Nick's dress was far more gorgeous and flattering than his was.

Chloe's dress was boring.

Funny highlights:

Nicky Hilton: "My standards are high and my taste is exquisite." Ha!

Chloe, to Diana: "That looks like something Stevie Nicks would wear."
Diana: "Who's Stevie Nick?"

Lupe, to Tim Gunn: "It looks like crap."
Tim: "I'm not going to debate that."

So I finally got my phone fixed. The first time I went to the Sprint store, the guy there wouldn't look at my phone unless he had a password and could confirm that I was an "authorized user". Since the phone is under my sister's contract, and she was working at the time, I didn't have any of that information on me. I left, annoyed.

I went again this weekend, to be greeted by a friendly guy with dreads. I showed him my phone and he didn't even ask me anything, just said, "Oh yeah, it's fixable", and went in some room, came out in a minute and voila, fixed phone and new charger, free! Same store. WTF?

Noted - there is a Nijiya market in that same strip mall, and a used bookstore in the area. For some reason, the Nijiya market is not listed on their company site.

I otherwise had a pretty lazy-ass weekend. We gorged on Project Runway episodes. My favorite contestant so far is Diana Eng, a fashion nerd so fucking nerdy that she wrote in her blog:

How do you explain good design? I lay in bed at night with my "good design" stuffed animal (a well proportioned monkey who's head, body and legs have a 1:1 ratio, and his arms have a 1.5:1 ration to his body) reading my "good design" magazine (ID magazine). And ID magazine is indeed the ultimate all around good design magazine. I was flipping through it on the subway and some man was like, "what magazine is that, it is so colorful and pretty." I'm such a sucker for the aesthetically pleasing. But does it come down to being a mathematical ratio? Even matching colors are mathematically related on a color scale. Or just something eye catching. Or is it the mathematical ratio that makes things eye-catching? Well, we'll find out when someone writes a program to replace graphic designers.

She is like the anti-reality-show contestant. On one of her outfits, she was having trouble because the "polarity of the magnets got reversed". She is probably not going to win, but I want to see her stick around for a couple more episodes.

We have taken to calling Santino "coke/crackhead Zod" because he looks like the evil guy from one of those Superman movies. Zod's really into ruffles.

Emmett is a pretty gay robot, who makes really pretty clothes.

Chloe is cute!

Those are the only ones I remember so far. Why is it that most of these people (with a few exceptions) can create such beautiful clothes, but have personal styles that say "homeless person" or "crackhead"?

Warning - rant about San Franciscans - not applicable to my friends who live there - You know what really annoys me? San Franciscans who don't own cars and are really smug about it, but then bum rides off of you anyway. Don't you know you're only transferring your "environmental footprint" onto me? In the same category, San Franciscans who own cars but refuse to leave the fucking city because they have to "cross a bridge". It's too far, they say. Boohoo. Dude, if you can afford to live in San Francisco, you can afford to cross the bridge every once in a while. So much for openmindedness.