Most of today was spent whipping up tomorrow's Superbowl frenzy. We bought the beer and sodas and we made the Superbowl bingo cards, and I discussed with "R" (curse you, Tizzed, for indirectly making me refer to one of my friends in a manner befitting a British secret agent) the cake that she's making, which will be shaped like a football and have figurines on top. I'll try to get pictures. Now all that remains is to make seven-layer dip and twenty-four servings of chili.

I think it's safe to say that the next two days of my life will be pretty exciting. First there's tomorrow--not only do I get to eat seven-layer dip, but I get to take on Tizzed in Trivial Pursuit. I anticipate a fine matchup. Then Monday we're going to Punxsutawney to see Phil (this is what convinced me to go--be sure you have your speakers on). I'll post pictures of that too.

Robbie and my dad tried to fix my parents' mailbox today, but the wood was frozen and they couldn't drive nails into it. If that doesn't sum up everything that's wrong with this season--having the snowplow driver take out your mailbox and then not being able to nail it back up because it's too cold--I don't know what does. They finally had to take it into the garage and bring out the drill. Apparently there's a small possibility that when everything thaws the nails will fall right out, but that's a good six months away as far as I can tell, so there's no point worrying about it.

Comments
Dr. Tizzed: I think there should be some sort of super-bowl triathlon. Tirival Pursuit + Chili Eating + Beer Belching... Or something to that affect...But I'll have to give you a handicap on the latter two...

Jess: I can't imagine why...

Tizzed, LiveJournal has decided that comments from my type of server are a frequent source of spam, so it won't post them. Oh well.

About the agent, from yesterday--I'm really not disappointed that I got rejected, because it was only my second try. However, a surefire way to make me disappointed is to tell me how sorry you are, because then I feel I've let you down somehow. (You should've seen me at Christmas, after I got a request for the rest of my book from the other agent, and a few extremely well-meaning people I barely knew kept congratulating me and telling me we'd have to have a great big party, and I knew they meant well but I really, really wanted them to go away. And then when I got rejected, I was totally fine except I was dreading anyone having to tell these people that I might not be the next major literary celebrity of their acquaintance.) I would've liked to get some comments, and didn't, so I am disappointed about that, but I'm not taking it too personally.

Anyhow, onwards and upwards. The squirrel guy came today and took away the dead squirrel and patched the roof. The squirrel had about four inches of snow on top of it, and I was worried that it had frozen to the grate ("Hey, what're these pink chunks?" we'd be saying come March. "And why are all these cats outside?") but it came off without a hitch. The squirrel man deduced, using his wildlife-management expertise, that that one was the only squirrel actually living in the hole, because there were no tracks on the roof, and so he patched up the hole with a metal plate. It's true that I haven't heard any more squirrels, so I believe him, but I know there was more than one running around in the wall. Maybe this one was entertaining.

There's a wind chill advisory here. I was gratified to hear that this is an unusually harsh winter, because I was thinking that I'd just turned into a total pansy, but now I feel justified in my weather-related discomfort. Two days ago I was watching the news, and the weatherman said very perkily that people had been asking him to predict when the snow and cold would end and he was now ready to say, conclusively, without a doubt, that it would be better by June, and I thought, shut up and go to California, you annoying little man. They don't need real forecasters there anyhow.

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Dr. Tizzed: I'm sorry that you think that if we're sorry that you'll feel bad. Sorry. I won't feel bad. Wait..that's not what I mean....

Sorry, but this has been one of those rare days that will only work in list format. A fair amount happened, but none of it happened in great detail.

- We have a dead squirrel. Tomorrow I'm going to call the guy to come take it away.
- Ethel is in the hospital, but she's doing OK.
- The agent turned down my book.
- I got the fabrics for our quilt. They're blues and whites, and are very pretty.
- The snowplow man knocked over my mother's mailbox.
- The hospital cafeteria is actually quite good.
- I'm exhausted and I don't know why. I had to dig the car out of ten inches of icy snow this morning, but other than that it's been pretty sedentary.

Ah, one thing happened that does merit a paragraph. At lunch today, Dottie explained to me her new theology. Evidently, God sent me (me, specifically, not just all little children) to earth to demonstrate what really smart people can do. I must say that I find this view of God unnecessarily depressing. Then she explained that my mother was a little dickens, and also evidently not sent by God, which seemed unfair because my mother was sitting right there, but she seemed to take it pretty well.

The wildlife man came over today to set traps for the squirrels. He said as he was setting them up that they weren't humane traps, and although I wasn't thrilled about that, he raised the very valid point that in this weather a humane trap would be horribly inhumane because the squirrel would freeze. And our landlords really want to get this fixed, so I don't really have a choice in the matter. He set up the trap on our fire escape, right outside our living room window, and told me to call when there are dead squirrels in it. Fine. I'm not squeamish.

But then he left, and I remembered that about a month ago a cat showed up on the fire escape, twice in one day. I'd never seen her before or since, but now I was terrified that we'd catch a cat. Robbie suggested that I call the wildlife man, and I did, and he called back and said that they've set traps up there before and never caught a cat, which is not a completely reassuring statement. It's true that you'd have to be an idiot to let your cat out in this weather, anyhow (I'm of the opinion, which I know sharply diverges from that of at least one of my blog readers, that unless you live on an actual farm you'd have to be an idiot to let your cat out at all, but that's neither here nor there). But since the cat, and not the idiot, would be the one caught in the trap, this doesn't really fill me with a sense of justice.

Anyhow, I finally got out some cardboard and string and blocked off the fire escape. I think it'll deter cats, since even if they could clear it, I know they won't jump places they can't see. I also think it would appall our landlords, but in case of fire I could kick through it in about four seconds, so I'm not too worried on that count. However, it's occurred to me that there's a flaw in the cardboard plan--the trap is in between the window and the cardboard, and the cardboard will need to be removed for the man to come get the trap, and although I genuinely am not squeamish, I'm also not enthralled with the notion of slithering out the window over a squirrel carcass to take it down.

It's times like this when I'm most depressed, on a purely selfish level, that my grandfather died, because he would know exactly what to do. In fact, I can totally picture my grandfather here now, wearing a jaunty hat and clearing his throat, out there on the fire escape rigging up some catproof netting or something. Although the other men in my life are really, really good at other things, I suspect Robbie would completely defer to my wisdom in this situation, and my dad would just hit the trap, or maybe the fire escape, with a hammer. Oh well. (Interestingly, the next person that I would think to turn to is Dr. J, but she's 5000 miles away and thus not liable to come over to my fire escape anytime soon either.)

(By the way, imagining what various men of your acquaintance would do in this situation is a fun game. For example, I've decided that Matt would stoically sit on the fire escape all night, wearing only a windbreaker, to bar any cats from coming up, and Tobias would stand down on the street, where all the cats and every other living neighborhood being would then be lured by his magnetic charm.)

It snowed giant, sticky, ice-producing flakes today. Does anyone have a rough estimate for how long winter lasts? I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be over about three months ago.

Actually, I soon may be going to the source for winter weather predictions--Tizzed is organizing a trip to Punxsutawney next Monday for Groundhog Day. Despite the fact that it's one of the few bona-fide yearly media events in western Pennsylvania, I've never been, and so I'm kind of tempted. On the other hand, I'd have to leave Pittsburgh at four in the morning, and it's possible that no rodent is worth that, meteorological or not.

The weather kept me in most of the day, and it was pretty slow. We all know what I did all day, right? Yep--worked on my outline, read, crocheted, did laundry. I did have a lovely conversation with Blog and the City, who has a new resolve to update her blog more frequently. She's enabled comments, and spiffed up her site, so I urge you to stop in. I'm not exaggerating when I say she's one of the greatest literary minds of our time, and this is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something big.

OK, tonight's "24" looks pretty good, so I think I'm going to go watch that. That show, though very good, often exceeds my capacity for blood and gore, but so far this episode looks OK.

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JR: Great literary minds! Something big! I am experiencing emotions so dramatic that I am forced to use emoticons. Praytell, what does my impending literary empire look like from your Western Pennsylvania vantage? And on an unrelated note, I went to camp once with a guy from Punxsatawney who was named Phil. That's like naming your kid David Davidson or something. Mean.

Jess: My great-grandma went to school with someone named Daily Gass. This was in, oh, 1901 or so, and we're still talking about it. From my W. Pa. vantage, your blog is certainly casting a shadow. But I can't remember if that means six more weeks of no traffic or not.

EV: You should totally go to Punxsatawney. That would be rad. And I need to figure out what happened on 24, I only saw the first 30 minutes.

JR: I laugh so hard it sounds like panting. You're a funny one, Mrs. S. I agree with Evie. Go to Punxsatawney if you can. You can do a Punxsatawney vs. Aliquippa photo essay.

It's recently come to my attention that approximately 90% of my current blog traffic is coming from the mothers of my friends. If blogs had existed in 1988, this would have totally been one of the cruel but accurate taunts hurled at me by other seventh-grade girls. But no matter--welcome. I'd like to say, also, that whenever I'm faced with a difficult decision, I say to myself, "What would (insert name of your child here) do, with his/her stunning genetic profile, complete lack of bad or illegal habits, and overwhelming good sense?"

There was a snowstorm here overnight, and as a result, we had the gym nearly to ourselves when we went this morning. It was very nice. We picked up our new photo IDs, and I asked when the next blood drive was, because there are signs up all over the place saying that January is National Blood Donor Month. This was supposed to be a friendly question, but it turned into a minor brouhaha, with most of the staff trying to find information on when the next blood drive actually is (February, as it turns out), so now I think I have to go. Oh, well. I don't enjoy giving blood by any means, but it's a good excuse both to eat doughnuts and to lie on the sofa motionless for 24 hours.

My mom called today to say that evidently Ethel is severely anemic, and is possibly going to have to get some blood transfusions later on this week. That's alarming, but more alarming is that they think she might be anemic because she's bleeding internally. I don't totally understand how this works, but it doesn't sound like all that much fun. Anyhow, Dottie said that if anyone should be anemic, needing blood transfusions, and bleeding internally, it should be her, not Ethel.

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Dr. Tizzed: I went to the gym this morning and it was closed. (Got there at 8:10, was supposed to open at 6:30) Kind of set the tone for the day.

EV: I know for a fact that one of those mothers is my own. Hi mom. And I swear to god, I'm going to start writing the Dotty and Ethel series if you don't.

JR: I think 90% of the traffic on my blog is coming from you, Jess.

A late-breaking update: I don't know if this has anything to do with the squirrels, but our entire apartment is pulsing with the odor of turkey. It's so much turkey. It's turkoriffic. Robbie came into the bedroom about an hour ago, where I've been hiding since dinner to avoid the squirrels, and mentioned that he smelled turkey, and at first I didn't, but then he managed to walk towards me at the exact rate that the turkey odor was spreading towards the apartment, such that he appeared to be bringing the turkey odor with him, and so eventually as his face got closer to me it appeared to be emanating from his nose, and I said, "It's your nose. Your nose smells like turkey," and we both laughed so hard we couldn't breathe, and now he keeps popping in and saying "Smell my nose!" and I say "It smells like turkey!" and then we laugh again until we can't breathe, and I honestly have no idea why this is so funny, except that we are high on turkey fumes. Not to sound like that commercial that says that marriage should be like a great big slumber party and happiness is being married to your best friend and so forth, but this does kind of rock. Although between the lack of breathing and the breathing in of great gulps of turkey odor, I think pretty soon we're going to pass out, and in a few weeks someone will find our bodies, half-eaten by squirrels.

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EV: So, uh, where's the turkey coming from?

Jess: I'm guessing that it came from our downstairs neighbors, although what their apartment must have smelled like to make ours smell so much, I can't imagine. I'm still not time-adjusted, and I was also strung out from the squirrels, so it struck me as totally outrageous that they'd be cooking a turkey at that hour, by which I mean 8:30. I had a good mind to go hit them with my cane, damn kids.

JR: You're just renting right? Like theoretically you can move away from the squirrels if need be?

Jess: Yeah. They've actually been pretty quiet for the last day or so, but I suspect that's because they're holed up under 18 inches of snow.

What good, I ask you, can come of a Sunday in which I wake up at 5:45? And then lie in bed thinking peaceful thoughts for an hour or so, until our house is attacked by some sort of squirrel bomb going off on the roof inches above my head? And then get out of bed to find one email in my inbox, titled "Oh shit"?

Yeah, I don't know either. Well, I do have one answer--we had brunch with Tizzed and the person he's been referring to in his blog as "R," and they're pretty adorable. They told some long story about him playing Trivial Pursuit last night at her friend's party and beating the pants off everyone, and you could tell that she thought this was the coolest thing ever. I haven't spent any time around a new couple in a few years, and I'd forgotten how cute it was. (They were also light on the PDAs, and although I'm certainly in favor of DAs in general, PDAs don't really do it for me. So that helped.)

Then we came home and found the hole in the roof that the squirrels are climbing in and out of, which was helpful, though depressing because we hadn't been actually positive that they were in the walls until that point. We called the landlord, who gave us the number of the wildlife-control guy, who apparently said to Robbie, "Well, I'll come out and take a look, but yanno, some people have squirrel infestations for years." Helpful, no?

To look on the bright side, I've learned a wide range of squirrel noises in the past four or five hours. I think we're all familiar with the chatter, and possibly the bark, but they also make a tiny-incoming-missile noise, over and over again, which was new to me. Also, maddening. I think I'm hard to drive crazy in general, but one thing I absolutely cannot stand is any sort of repetitive noise, and so I'm really hanging on by a thread here.

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Dr. Tizzed: Jess, can the title of your next book be "The squirrel whisperer"

EV: Sorry about the Oh, shit email. And we have squirrels too, lousy bastards.

Jess: Oh, I'm not saying the title wasn't quite possibly warranted. Just that when you see that, you just know there's bad news coming your way...

Well, I finally figured out how to get Sitemeter to show me my referrals. It was pretty easy to figure out what I needed to do, but not so easy to do it--Evie, you'll notice that I visited your page approximately three thousand times this afternoon trying to figure out what my code was missing that made it not work. Now, however, it's all squared away, and I can start playing the Google-hits game like all the cool kids do. I also changed the counter style so it gives my total, for your edification and mine.

That was the major accomplishment of the day, but I also worked on my outline, crocheted a bit on this blanket I've been making, and made shrimp risotto for dinner. I've been cooking a dangerous amount lately, eh? I also tried to get Shutterfly to let me upload all the photos we took in SB, so I can buy copies and make albums, but something got tweaked with the utility that lets me upload hundreds of photos at once. it was working earlier this week, but now it just hangs in place. I can still add them in bunches of ten, and it's not any slower than the hundreds-of-photos option, but it does eliminate the overnight uploads, which are really nice when you're trying to upload 400 photos.

I also read some of To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf, which I like despite its being really odd. I find her writing style both completely not like mine and completely contagious, which may explain why I kept writing Heather emails yesterday that went something like "And then I had the dream. The dream, the dream! But what did it mean, I wondered. The house filled with a wonderful bread smell." She stopped writing back eventually, which I think is the only sensible thing to do when you have that sort of flagrant literary abuse on your hands.

It's wrong to go to bed at 7:30, right? I seem to be actually moving further east with my jet lag--this morning I woke up, had some water, forced myself to go back to sleep, and dozed off and on until the bright hour of 6 am. Sheesh.

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Helen: Hi JEss! I am experiencing teh fun of your blog through Heather''s new website. I think that going to bed early is good... that much has not changed. Chris is having difficulty opening the second bottle of wine for this group... and the fact that we are already one bottle down has begun to show. Nothing like white wine tasting (I am not pouring for one thing), but humerous none the less. W

Helen: Jess - Sorry for the typos. It is the wine. Off we go! Bottle number two. Matt is trying to catch up with my pouring prominence. We will see how it works. Hugs, HCHD

EV: Hey man, it's all about the numbers, right? So visit my page as much as you want :).

Jess: Hey, Helen! So between finding out about the new TJ's yesterday, and finding out that Heather has a new website two minutes ago, I'm wondering what else I've been missing. Has SB been leveled by a tsunami or anything? I fear my chief correspondent, though charming, is falling down on the job news-wise. But now, due to the magic of referrals, I can find and link to said website. How felicitous!

Heather: I just made the website Friday evening, so you're not behind on much. How news does travel, though!

Heather: Also, for anybody who cares, Jess links to our "links" page. The main page is: http://mysite.verizon.net/res77m70/index.html Verizon informed me that our username was res77m70, and I didn't take it nearly seriously enough until I saw what our URL was.

Jess: Whoops--yeah, I copied it right off the referral, but you're right, it isn't the main page. I'll fix that.

Here's a life lesson: when you go to a bar downtown to attend the All-Ivy Happy Hour, and your husband approaches a group of late-thirtysomething women and asks if they are the All-Ivy Happy Hour and one of them says "We can be if you want us to be, baby!", give up your search for the All-Ivy Happy Hour and just stay with them. We didn't, and it was pretty definitely a mistake.

Actually, there were some cool people there, although none of us had as much fun as the Faux-Ivy Late-Thirtysomething Women seemed to be having, and there was only one person whom I had to fight the urge to beat about the head and face. And it was good to get out of the house and go downtown and do something social, even if I did get Smithfield Street mixed up with Stanwix Street on the way there and hoosh Robbie off the bus way too early and then traipse him around in a driving snowstorm waiting for some sort of primal ur-knowledge of the geography of downtown Pittsburgh to kick in.

Other than that, yesterday was pretty slow. I worked on my outline for my second book, because I've decided that this way of writing whatever pops into my head, although fun, is making for a very dull story. I also made bread, and mailed Heather's mother the St. Joseph's medal I got blessed for Heather's grandmother in the Vatican. (It's a birthday gift, and the reason we got a St. Joseph's is that she was born on St. Joseph's day and is therefore named Josephine, so it's an important saint to her. I don't know what St. Joseph is the patron saint of, but I bet it's something like "generally being a good sport about things.") Oh, and I got email from my old company saying they'll have freelance for me very soon. I spent some of yesterday pricing flights for all the trips Robbie and I decided we wanted to take after having such a great time in Rome, so this is extremely good news.

Finally, Robbie found this for your reading enjoyment. This is totally the way I get through my day, which worries me because I think it's supposed to be a joke.

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Robbie: I don't think it was supposed to be a joke. I think he is stone-cold serious.

EV: I have never once gone to one of those all-Ivy or some-Ivy or even Princeton social things. And now I definitely won't.

Chi: neither have I, EV, neither have I... and I guess I should acknowledge that I've been one of the new lurkers on your blog the last couple weeks, very nice indeed! That article on procrastination is sheer genius. I have already finished reading every major and semi-major article on cnn, the new york times, and the washington post and it's only 1 PM, so I have plenty time to work on my paper now...

EV; Aw, thanks Charles! I can't even remember what I wrote about procrastination. Which says something I think.

Jess: I think he means the article I linked to today...

JR: I went to an all-Ivy party once, but it was a gay all-Ivy party. I went as a friend of the gays. I signed in just cause some guy told me to, and then the next day I get an email from the New York Dartmouth gay group that's like "We're so happy to have found you! We need more lesbians!" I've never had to be in the position of dissapointing someone because I'm not gay. Funny.

Italy was wonderful. I could blog about it for weeks, but I can just sum it up by saying that everything was fantastic, the food was great, and you should go.

So there are a few things I wanted to tell you all about specifically. The first is Pompeii, which is really neat. Sad, but neat. It's very well-preserved city and so much of what we saw in the city was so similar to the way people live today, and then at the end you see the plaster casts of the bodies of these people that died in horrible agony (a lot of them suffocated before the ash got to them, and some of them were bent over with their hands over their noses trying to breathe), and it's hard to detach yourself from it at all, even though it was two thousand years ago. And when we were leaving, it was foggy and we could see the modern city of Pompeii on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, and it looked unsettlingly like Santa Barbara (we took pictures, so you'll be able to see what I mean soon), and that made it especially strange.

I also really liked seeing the ruins in Rome, especially the Forum but all the other ones too. I hadn't realized that the Forum had so much packed around it in a really small area--the Senate building, temples, the funeral site of Julius Caesar, the temple of the Vestal Virgins, and a lot of other things are in the area maybe the size of a football stadium. We also found some ruins just randomly while walking around, and I thought that was the greatest thing. We were looking for a shop one morning and kind of wandered straight into an archaeological park (the theater of Marcellus, I think) without noticing. I'd noticed this when I was in Paris too (although their historical sites were all much newer), and it's so different from the United States, where you'd be hard-pressed to just wander into anything of any historical significance.

The last thing that I thought was really neat was the Vatican. St. Peter's and the square are so big and ornate, and I really liked all the pomp that goes along with it. We went to the Castel Sant'Angelo, which was the fortress of the pope until the 19th century, and it made me curious about the age of the really powerful popes. I saw the current pope, and he seems like a very, very nice old man, but I wished I could have also been around to see the era when popes had armies and intrigue and unlimited power. Although I suspect it wasn't much fun to be anyone who wasn't the pope back then.

Comments
Dr. Tizzed: If I ever met the pope, I bet i'd do something (like give him a high-five or an extraordinarily long handshake) that would get me excommunicated. Assuming I was communicated in the first place, that is.

Jess ; Yeah, we never actually met him as it turns out, just saw him from a reasonably short distance at the concert. (Which was still pretty neat--I caught him reading his program at one point. There's a story behind why we never saw him, but because I'm paranoid I'll only communicate it to you verbally. It's not that interesting, anyhow, trust me.

Helloooooo! I'm back. I had a wonderful time, and I'll write more about it tomorrow, but I'm really, really tired. To whet your appetite, however, I will now provide a list of five things about my trip.

1. Rome is as far ahead of Pittsburgh in terms of toilet technology as it was 2000 years ago.
2. A good slogan for Alitalia would be "We land like we drive."
3. Let's say, and I'm not judging you here, that you have some statuary of your genitalia. Sure, you've been meaning to get rid of it, maybe before the in-laws come over or before you have kids, but you just never get around to it. Throw it out now. You never know when you, your home, and your erotic statuary will get buried under 25 feet of ash, and 2000 years from now some enterprising individuals will be standing outside the gates of your former town, selling postcards with your genitalia on them.
4. My new favorite commercial is by Emirates Air--they play it on BBC World. It has two African men playing in the snow for the first time, and makes me want to cry.
5. I never realized until this week that Robbie has a tremendous capacity for spontaneous French production. Inappropriate in this case, yes, but tremendous.

Someone downstairs is playing the guitar. This is what happens when we leave our house unattended for a week.

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Chi: welcome back!

EV: What he said! And also, I don't find the idea of postcards of my genitalia so unappealing, especially when I'm dead. It's kind of an honor, really.

Jess: Well, if one's really into genitalia, then it's different. But (and this isn't an original thought, but I forget who came up with it first) it's like if one day you happen to decide to try knitting, and as you're trying to figure it out your house suddenly gets buried in ash, and 1000 years later the archaeologists are calling you The Knitter. It may not be representative of you as a total person.

Adam: What does "spontaneous French production" mean? Sounds like a euphemism for passing gas or something.

Jess; Well, sure, but I'm pretty sure I realized that before this week. He spoke French to several clerks and the passport-control guy. They were pretty surprised.

Robbie: I think a better slogan for Alitalia would be "Up to3 free mini-bottles of wine per flight" On the genitalia issue: it is important to note, that is not a postcard of your own, personnal genitalia, but a postcard of the stone statuary genitalia that you used to own.

I had this wonderful, wonderful dream last night that Jess decided to stop by Santa Barbara on her way back to Pittsburgh from Italy. (Apparently in this dream Robbie's sense of geography was better than Jess', because he wasn't there.) Anyway, in my dream Matt and I were walking from the car to the physics building just like any other old day, when I spied Jess walking toward us (near the iQUEST trailer, for all you who know UCSB). At first I didn' t believe it was her, as you might imagine, but then we got closer and there was no doubt. And I was so happy and I didn' t go to work and Jess and I planned to hang out together all day. And then I woke up to the realization that it really was a Wednesday morning like so many others, except that I don't think there's even a new West Wing on tonight. I'll check to be sure, but I don't think so.

But Jess and Robbie really are coming back today, according to the itinerary that Jess sent me, so we can probably expect to hear from this blog's true writer in the coming days. Welcome back!

Oh, I checked and not only is the West Wing a rerun, but it's one of those dreadfully emotionally draining ones where they're trying to find the president's kidnapped daughter. No way will I watch that again.

Today is Matt's 28th birthday. That means, according to what my father told me about a decade ago, that he is officially a grown-up. More recently (last week), my father told me that you can be grown up and younger than 28 if you pay your own car insurance and file your own taxes. I guess if you are 28 and don't do those things, you're still in. I kind of expected over the years that as I got closer to 28 the magic age would increase, but it hasn't. But anyway, today feel free to wish Matt a happy birthday.

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Dr. Tizzed: Happy 28th (to matt) You old fart.

matt lippert: Matt, let me tell you that, from nearly three months of experience, 28 is a great age. I feel quite grown up. Happy Birthday!

Jess: Following this formula, I've been an adult since I was 21. That's very gratifying, although I do worry that I might have a midlife crisis coming up.

For the record, this week I was the only person who remembered group meeting. And that includes the professor. My dedication is staggering.

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the campus is dead. It's relaxing. We went off campus for lunch and I drank about 64 ounces of soda, I think. No, that can't be right. 32 ounces, maybe. In any case, it was a lot, and it was really good. They had my favorite combination: Coke, cherry syrup and lemons. You have to be careful not to put in too much cherry syrup, but if you get it right, it's heavenly. For me, anyway. I know lots of people who wouldn't like it. Anyway, I'm sure the soda will go down as the highlight of my MLK Day, which is nothing to complain about.

I have group meeting in fifteen minutes and I'm going to try really hard not to forget it this week. Yikes, actually it's in seven minutes. OK, now six. Time goes by really quickly when you read and reread what you've just written in a blog.

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Dr. Tizzed: I love silvergreens. I wandered around SC searching for a comparable salad to the 'El Capitan'. COuldn't find it.

Heather: Oh, you clever boy. I figured SB people would know where we went based on the clues, and nobody else would care. You get a chocolate chip coookie now with the purchase of almost any lunch, it looks like. Add that to the make-your-own soda thing, and it's almost too much.

Thank you, Evie, Megan and Tizzed, for sharing your career-related information and advice. It alarms me how attractive law school is starting to sound. Not as attractive as being legal partners with Tizzed, but attractive nonetheless. And by legal partners, I mean partners in a law firm. I think Matt might be my legal partner.

Anyway, I am excited to report that I got word today from the organization that is sponsoring two of the science policy fellowships that I applied for. Sure, the email was to tell me that my application was incomplete because one of my letters of reference was missing, but I was happy to hear anything from these people. And when I emailed the rogue professor, she immediately contacted the organization and faxed them the letter, and then sent me reassuring email.

And Matt and I split a burrito for lunch. And we're having sushi for dinner. And tomorrow night we're going to see Return of the King again, this time with Craig, who hasn't seen it. (If any other SB readers-of-this-blog would like to join us, please do. Email me.) Could this weekend look any better?

Comments
Dr. Tizzed: You and Matt split a burrito? He must've been hungry in the afternoon... I better stop about burrito eating lest we start into bets again.. I would give my left nut for a super cuca's/El sitio burrito right about now...

Heather: Yeah, he was, and I was too. But we also had a banana and apple each for later in the afternoon. We only split a burrito because we didn't have enough bread to make sandwiches. I'm not that wild about El Sitio. It's all right, I guess. They only have refried beans, which I don't like. I'll take a Chilitos burrito over El Sitio any day.

Dr. Tizzed: The el sitio Burito Cubano is the best burrito in Santa Barbara. More dead animals than the waiting list for Noah's Ark..

Heather: Hee-hee. Maybe I'll try it. I definitely have not had that one.

Matthew Lippert: I have to agree with Tizzed on the beauty that is the el sitio burrito. Make sure you gets some rajas in yours, and lots of green salsa. Too bad they're not open right now.

So, Tizzed says he's looking forward to my guest blogs. That makes me nervous. Really nervous. Here's the sad truth, Tizzed: If I had witticisms to share with the world, I'd start my own blog. If I had interesting stories of my life to share with the world, I'd start my own blog. There's one thing and one thing only that leads me to believe that I should be guest-blogging for Jess, and that is that I remembered my Blogger password. On the first try. So here I am, world, ready or not.

I want to know what people think of their jobs. I've been undergoing what I consider a career crisis for quite some time now, and I'm looking for ideas. Or at least the comfort of knowing that maybe everybody hates their job, and I'm not alone. So, to start what I hope becomes a discussion, I'll explain why I don't like my job.

I work in a physics lab where I am alone each and every day. Seriously, the only job-related human interaction that I've had all week was when I called my advisor to apologize for forgetting group meeting on Monday. And I suppose that group meeting could be considered a venue for human interaction within the sphere of my job, but really, it isn't. There are three people in my group, and I am the only physicist. We don't share ideas, thoughts or really even pleasantries. Now, here's the thing. I think that if I found my work inspiring in itself, I could get beyond the isolation, but I don't. On a basic level, I simply don't care about the results of my experiment. I mean, I want it to work, but I'm not interested in the results. I'm not creating anything, expressing myself or helping a single person. I applied for three fellowships for next fall in Washington, D.C. to do science policy. I think that I might like those jobs, but I don't know because I've never tried anything like them. More to the point, these fellowships are competitive, and I have no idea how good my chances are of getting one. And if I don't, I need some new ideas. So, please, if you have the time and inclination, comment about your job! What you do, what you like, what you don't like (obviously only what you're comfortable sharing in a public forum).

So, here it is, 11:30 already. I knew that guest-blogging was a good idea. It's almost lunchtime!

Comments
EV: I work in higher ed administration, and I love it, but it's kind of hard to explain why if you're not me. However, I can say that my darling hubby, a fellow physicist as yourself, decided that he loved the basic discipline of physics but hated working alone in a lab, so he teaches high school physics, and loves it. Think about it. You'd find a job ANYWHERE.

Heather: Evie, that's a good idea. Did he have to get a master's in education to teach high school?

Dr tizzed: Heather, you're a wonderful blogger. I'll respond to your question tomorrow (tonight) in my blog... cuz the character limit here is bad...

Megan of Switzerland: Hey fro-- I have been looking into electrician's apprenticeships in Alaska. The social interaction isn't the problem... I have a lot of that here. But I spend only one week out of eight being passionate about my work. And sometimes I go months without any inspiration. I think I am not self-motivated enough. And too easily discouraged. I would love to have a job where I don't have to evaluat

EV: He got an MAT in physics education while he was teaching full-time... I don't know the details of other states, but in MA you only have to pass a teacher test to start teaching, and then you can work on your certification and masters. Anyway, the point is if you have a Ph.D. in physics, you will have zero problems, and you'll get the top of the pay scale.

Robbie: I don't care about the results of my research. I don't think I've ever cared about the results of my research. I am often interested by the methods and procedures, but I feel like a lot of physicists arn't interested in this and don't want to hear about it in talks/papers. I'm hoping that I can find some area of physics where I care about the results.....self-modivation is also a problem :)

My Feelings About Pittsburgh's Bankruptcy and Receivership
By Jessica Sedgewick, Age 26 1/2

It's like this. You know how you have a hobby that other people think is classless and stupid? Like listening to Britney Spears, or truck-bed surfing, or eating salt right out of the box?* And then, one day, you read a long article in the New York Times confirming that your hobby is not only classless and stupid, but it's going to kill you? And you're angry, because now you can't even argue that other people should just try it and see if they like it, because now it seems all sad and doomed and honestly you can't fault other people if they stay far, far away? That's how I feel about Pittsburgh's bankruptcy and receivership.

But you wanted nuanced political analysis, didn't you? I anticipated that, and so I asked my dad, a lifetime Pittsburgh resident, what he thought. He said that he thought the mayor, Tom Murphy (who, I'll throw in just to add local color, stole my dad's prom date, or stole my dad's girlfriend to be his own prom date, or something like that) made too many promises to the city unions, which are strong here, to oust his rival in the Democratic primary. In Pittsburgh, the Democratic primary is the real election, since Republicans never, ever win the general election. So he's had a very hard time making necessary budget cuts. When the city turned to the Republican-dominated legislature for help, they got a deaf ear, because the city is so strongly Democratic. (I find this troublesome, but to be honest I would feel more worked up about it if I wasn't dead certain that the city would do the same thing to a hypothetical Republican mini-city if one happened to be located within the city limits.) Thus, the current situation.

(My dad also says, just for the record, that he doesn't like the sports teams, doesn't think we need them, and wouldn't care a fig if they all disappeared, tomorrow. So don't try to get him on that count. You can't trick him out like that. He will call your bluff.)

I personally have felt very few effects from the city's bad financial situation. They've cancelled some of the major city events, like the marathon and the Great Race (a 5K race that's pretty popular), and they're reducing street cleaning. Last summer they closed a lot of the swimming pools and summer recreation programs, which is pretty rough on a lot of families who relied on those things to occupy their children. Ah, and I read that they're closing several of the city-run preschools. So there are definitely serious negative effects for many people, but it's not like raw sewage is running in the streets or people are shooting little old ladies on every corner.

What Pittsburgh really needs is young people to come here, and I don't really know why they haven't, except that many people have outmoded stereotypes about what the city is like. Housing is cheap (really obscenely cheap), the city is clean and, I think, quite beautiful, and there are tons of things to do. Seriously. The universities attract a lot of cultured intellectual types, and there's a wonderful symphony and great museums. I can understand why people aren't moving here right this second, since it's clearly going through a bit of a rough patch, but I don't know why they haven't in the past. I predict, though, that it will be the next Seattle, and someday soon. (I was told on good authority just last week, though, that Baltimore is the next Seattle, so maybe I'll have to settle for it being the next Baltimore.)

So, I'm going to the, how you say, Italy tomorrow. I'll be back next week. You'll have your regular sitter, so don't worry and leave her nice comments.

*I only have one of these habits, and only occasionally. Interestingly, Chi has one of the other ones.

Comments
Dr tizzed: Was this in today's NYT?

Jess; Nah, over Christmas. The masses have been clamoring for my thoughts on it, though. (And, by "masses," I mean Evie and Matt Lippert.)

Dr tizzed: Oh.. I got that after re-readin some old comments. I wish I could read me the article. Bon Voyage! And I've changed by mind on the olive oil. I'd prefer a Sangiovese... (But I'd make you a dinner to go with the sangiovese, scout's honor!)

Chi: much like eating salt out of the box once does not a classless-and-stupid-hobby make, neither does having a Britney Spears song on one's iPod... can one of the intelligentsia that frequents this blog please fix the grammar of above sentence?

EV: Thank you very kindly, Miss J. Very illuminating. Oh, and be careful bringing back olive oil, my old boss had a bottle break all over her suitcase. Bad, bad thing.

Well, my query was ready, until Robbie discovered that the rightmost quarter-inch of text was cut off the cover letter. I'm glad he found that, but it turned out to be the portal to a quagmire of printer diagnostics that's eaten up the last hour of his life. (Yeah, yeah. I tried to help, honest. However, our radically different diagnostic styles made this unproductive.) Tizzed will recall that it was printing pretty slow at Christmas, and it's still doing that, and nothing else is really working all that well either.

And that's it. I packed and cleaned and none of that was especially interesting. I'm going to help my parents move my great-aunts into respite care tomorrow, though, so I'm sure that will generate some hair-raising tales. I've already been instructed that, no matter what, Dottie is not allowed to bring any pajama pants, because they will cause her to break her arm.

Comments
Robbie: According to the HP website, it is because the ink cartridge contacts are "unclean". I cleaned them, and now the printer doesn't work at all.....

Chi: is this an inkjet? If so, get a Canon printer -- they are much much nicer...

Matthew Lippert: Now that EV has piqued my interest, could you write about the situation regarding the financial troubles of your city?

EV: Chi, I have to disagree, we had a Canon that bit the pooch, and now we have an extremely nice HP. But whatever. And yeah, she's avoiding that Pittsburgh bankruptcy thing like dog poo on the sidewalk, isn't she.

Jess: I've been composing my thoughts. Well, kind of. I can sum up my feelings about the financial state of the city in one word: sad.
But i'll try to elaborate on this tonight.

Chi: ergh, too late. not that this would have made a difference: for the record, I have no idea whatsoever about the financial state of the city of Pittsburgh and I actually don't care at all. on the HP vs. Canon debate: I guess I'm just really happy with the photos I print on my printer. (Canon i850)

Today was productive in the HVAC direction, but not really in any other sense. We installed a new thermocouple on the gas heater in the living room, because the old one was getting a little panicky and cutting off the heat a few times a day. Also, Robbie discovered that we have storm windows already installed, and now we've shut them (they work like regular windows, and have been open since before we moved in). I can't tell you a) how much warmer the apartment seems now and b) what monumental idiots we feel like.

Also, my parents came over and took us out for dinner. They also offered to drive us to anywhere we needed for last-minute trip supplies, and I was going to go get a new umbrella, because I don't have a suitable one. Although theoretically I could share Robbie's, there's a possibility--maybe even a likelihood--that when we needed to share he'd be already off wandering down the street singing "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard" and not listening to me, and I'd be stuck in the pouring-down rain. But as it turns out, my dad has an extra small black one, so I'm all set. I really should get a new, adult umbrella at some point, though. The positive spin on my current umbrella is that it will never be mistaken for anyone else's and accidentally stolen, but on the downside, it makes me look like Peachy the My Little Pony.

Other than that, it was a slow day. I have a decent rough draft of my synopsis now, although it's a little long. With some revision tomorrow, it should be ready to go out, and I can mail the package on Tuesday. I also talked to Heather, and did some crocheting on an afghan I've been making. I do a sort of freestyle crochet stitch, and so I don't think I could follow a pattern if I tried, but I can make blankets just fine. This one should be nice and cozy, too, if I ever get it finished--it's made out of very soft brown and cream yarns, and it's been keeping me warm just working on it. Or maybe that's just the storm windows.

So everyone else is going to stay up until Tizzed posts about his big date, right?

Comments
Dr. tizzed: Big Date? The packers *^%$*%^ing blew it

Robbie: Yeah, we turned on the game just as the packers started to choke. That was an impressive self-destruction.

Dr. tizzed: Huh. So you turned the game on the _exact_ same time I did...

Robbie: Looking at the summary on your blog, I see we missed the begining of the self-destruction. We tuned in right when McNabb got sacked to make it 4th and 26.

Dr tizzed: I hate the number 26

Heather: 26 is one of my favorite numbers.

Jess: Hmm, maybe those last two comments are connected...

Julie: Jess is 26. I am too, but only for 6 more days.

Tizzed, we opened up the Trivial Pursuit you gave us tonight. It was a hotly contested game, and ended with both of us in the center, going head-to-head. I lost the game on four sports questions in a row. I thought I had Robbie nailed by choosing People and Places for his last question, figuring it would be a question on the geography of Zimbabwe or something, but it was "What Iowa county still had five of its famous bridges in 2002?" Sheesh. Why do I always come here? I guess I'll never know.

We broke out the vichyssoise that we made on Thursday for dinner tonight, and it was pretty good. I had mine heated, because it's approximately four thousand degrees below zero here, and it was quite tasty. We were storing it in a big pitcher, because there was a lot of it, and it looked exactly like a pale, creamy smoothie. I think the potato-and-onion smoothie could be a big hit in your Rust Belt cities, actually.

I've already shared the following observation about the temperature here with several people, but as you might expect, when we moved back from California I was pretty worried about how I'd readjust to the cold weather. In early December, though, when the temperature was hovering around freezing, I was relieved to discover that I actually wasn't all that cold. Sure, I didn't want to linger outside, but if I put on a wool coat and some gloves, I was comfortable as could be when I walked to the grocery store or the bookstore. No problem. I felt like the northeastern tough guy I'd always said I was when I lived in southern California.

Well, news flash--thirty degrees is nothing. It's balmy. What we're in now is serious, cheek-burning, eye-watering, don't-touch-any-metal cold. For some reason, although I knew that the temperature usually got down to zero here at several points during the winter, it never occurred to me that zero degrees is as much colder than thirty degrees as thirty degrees is colder than sixty degrees. There is nothing fun about this.

Comments
Dr. tizzed: I remember I used to be the same way about pink in the original TP as you are about sports.. I played TP yesterday, too. I got waxed ;3 teams, and when I showed up we were already down 2 pies. The players agreed that I answered the most questions, but I only had 3 pies. And I couldn't answer a blue question to save my life. But I always went for sports if available..

Robbie: Well, It's cold, but it's still not as cold as SF during the summer....

Dr. tizzed: Thank you Mark Twain

matt lippert: Jess, thank you for making me appreciate our beautiful, sunny 70 degree day here that much more.

EV: Living in this cold, I realize I still really am the Southern California pussy I've always said I was since I've lived out here. By the way, I notice you have not yet discussed the bankruptcy and receivership of the City of Pittsburgh.

Chi: hmmmm, we had a beautiful, high 60's, sunny day yesterday here in SF... of course, we did have a crappy month of rain before that.

Robbie: Well, sure it was warm in SF: it's the winter.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a shocking announcement--Pizza Hut is not an especially high-quality restaurant. Robbie and I were going to my parents' tonight to go exchange Christmas presents with my grandma, and we needed to get some dinner beforehand, so I proposed we stop at Pizza Hut, because when I was a little kid my parents and I used to go there every Friday. I thought it would be nostalgic. There are no sit-down Pizza Huts in California, so it's been a while.

An interesting thing about Pizza Hut, although not one directly relevant to our experience, is that apparently no one without kids goes there. I never noticed this when I was a kid myself--I thought they were all just people. Well, they aren't. Most of them are very small. But this wasn't the problem; the problem was that our waiter had to come back three times because he forgot our drink order, twice because he forgot if we wanted breadsticks, and then eventually, about half an hour after we placed our pizza order, came back to tell us that he'd forgotten to put it in the queue, but if we were willing to wait another twenty minutes the pizza would be free. We weren't, though, so we left. I suppose we could have made a fuss and gotten a free pizza out of it, but it would have required coming back to redeem it, which at that point I really didn't want to do. (And everything else was free, anyhow, which really is the least they could do.)

So, we went to my grandma's for Christmas. I'm pretty excited because I threw out all of my random bath supplies when I moved out of Santa Barbara, and tonight I got a supply from her to replenish it. There were even bath salts. We gave her a new vacuum cleaner, and I think she was pretty happy with it. She also gave us some tips for meeting the Pope (not that she has, but she was raised Catholic so she had some opinions), and we all did a very good job of not discussing the Patriot Act. It got brought up, because people were talking about it on the TV when we got there, but I think all five of us sensed a danger area and backed away.

Then my parents took us out for our second attempt at dinner, which thankfully was successful, and then we came home. I slept in this morning and took a nap this afternoon, so I think I'll be up for a few more hours. Maybe it's time for a cup of tea.

Comments
matt lippert: No to nitpic, but although there are no sit-down Pizza Huts in Santa Barbara, there's one in Ventura. I do, however, unhesitatingly agree with your assesment of that particular chain

Jess: Yeah, I wondered about that after I wrote it. I do have a tendency to assume that what was true in SB is true for the rest of California, which in many cases is probably unfair to the rest of California. I am surprised there's one so close, though, because when we asked about it once at a take-out Pizza Hut in SB, they looked at us like we had three heads.

Chi: Actually I don't find Pizza Hut all that bad, sounds like you guys had a bad experience though. In high school (or possibly freshman year in college) Robbie and I had an AWESOME meal there. And I know it is (was) a favorite of (the old) Niki as well...

Sorry for the lack of blog last night. Robbie and I went out to hear his brother's friend's band, which is touring and came to Pittsburgh, and we got back on the late side. We had a great time, though. It was held in a converted theater, with the first few rows of seats removed to make a dance floor and the back several rows taken out for tables and chairs. We sat in regular theater seats, which was nice because they had the built-in cupholders. The band that played before Robbie's brother's friend's band was really good too, and they threw Dinty Moore Beef Stew Ski Watch (yeah, I don't totally understand that either) hats to the audience, so we each got one.

Other than that, yesterday was pretty uneventful. We went to the tailor to pick up the magic pants, but she wasn't done with them yet, which was pretty disappointing. At least this way they'll be fresh and new for Italy, I suppose. The other big thrill was just driving the car, with its new accurate alignment. I kept taking my hands off the wheel (only at slow, responsible speeds, of course...) to observe the way the car didn't immediately pull to the right and hit a row of parked cars. It's pretty great.

The big task for the day is to get a synopsis of my book ready, because this next agent wants one. Once I get that done, I'm pretty much ready to submit to her, so I'll get it in the mail before we go to Italy.

Comments
EV: Is the brother's friend the one with the almost-porn star name who plays a mean trumpet?

Jess: Why, yes. Yes, it is.

Dr tizzed: Signs your blog is taking over your life #217 : You feel you need to apologize when you miss a day...

Here's an interesting observation on my psyche: I got the car back early today, and so I picked it up from the mechanic and took it to the tire place, where I got a new set of tires and a realignment. The total cost for all repairs (power steering belt, other part the name of which I can't recall, tires, and realignment) will be represented by a nonzero (very, very nonzero) variable x.

So, today I shelled out x dollars on the car. Yesterday, I got paid roughly x-$200 for last week's freelance assignment. The work came up suddenly and with no initial effort on my part, so in a sense it's like the money fell out of the sky, and if I'd never gotten it, I'd've gone on my merry yet frugal way, never the wiser and really not feeling especially poor.

So, why is it that I'm quite annoyed now at losing x dollars, but if I'd never gotten the freelance work in the first place, and had managed to pay only $200 today for two new car parts, a new set of tires, and an alignment, I'd feel like I'd gotten a steal? It's the same net effect overall--we're $200 poorer than we were this time last week. But it's bothered me all day.

Comments
Dr tizzed: Its called money-karma and it happens to me all of the time. Win at poker, get in a car accident. Get money from PhD, spend it on moving. Other times something random would happen (like blowing a tire) soon after some poker winnings, too...

Well, I hope that all of you who did not cross your fingers yesterday when I requested it (and events have led me to suspect that this was many of you) will feel what my old minister would call a "deep and profound" sense of personal guilt when I report that our car repair is expensive and will take three days. Evidently, the noise is due to a faulty belt, which in turn is due to a faulty thing in between the belt and the engine, which rubs against the engine if the belt is replaced. Also, we need new tires--I would think they were scamming us, because the tires look OK to me, but the mechanic told me not to get it fixed at his place and go to the cheaper place down the road, so I think he was being sincere. So, I'll do that when I get the car back on Thursday.

Also, the agent turned down my book. She did give comments, though, which I'm really happy about. My current plan is to submit to the other agent who was at the top of my list without modifying the book at all, and if she has similar comments, I'll look at revising. Basically, this agent said that because a lot of the book is dialogue, it was hard to get inside the characters' motivations. There is a lot of dialogue, so I can see where she's coming from. (Evie, was this something you noticed too? If you have any thoughts on this, you can email or comment or whatever, I'd appreciate it.)

On the up side, my mom and I went to Target, and she very kindly bought me a spring coat that I can wear to Italy. It's black, my mom says it's slimming, and it was very reasonably priced, so it was a good deal all around. Now I think I'm all set for the trip, clothing-wise. Also on the up side, for the drive home in my parents' car I borrowed my mom's Outlaws tape, which was very spirit-raising after a dismal day.

Comments
Dr. tizzed: What belt? The timing belt? Thats what it sounds like, and should be replaced every 60,000 miles on a car. If they're charging you more than 400 for it, you're getting robbed. And do get new tires. Don't befall the same fate that I had driving to Riverside when I thought 'eh, they're just trying to get me to but tires..'

robbie: Not the timing belt, It was the power steering belt. I had never heard of it before.... Sounds like a bad thing to break though.

Jess: Right--and actually, the power steering belt isn't very expensive at all. It's this thing that goes in between the belt and the engine (which does have a name, but I'm forgetting it) that's expensive. I took it to the dealer, so I suspect that I'm getting a steep markup on things I do need, but not that I'm getting ripped off by being sold things I don't need.

EV: I will send requested email :).

Today we went to the informational meeting for our trip to Italy. It was in the hall downtown where the symphony performs, and since it started at 5 and neither Robbie nor I felt like driving or parking downtown at that hour, we took the bus. We walked in, and there was a coat check and a complimentary bar and a guy in a tuxedo greeting us and the ladies were all wearing fur coats, and Robbie pointed out that we were clearly the only Italygoers who'd come to the meeting via public bus. I think he's certainly right, but several others may also have been driven there--our limo was just extra-beefy.

The big excitement at the meeting for everyone else is that our group may have a private audience with the Pope. I think that's neat and all (although I suspect I'd be much more hepped up about it if I were Catholic, obviously) but my personal highlight was hearing that Father Ron Lengwin will be coming with us. Father Ron Lengwin is the diocese spokesman and has been for a very long time, and when I was a kid he had a talk show every Sunday morning. I never really watched it, but it'd always be on when I was flipping through the channels, and he has a very soothing voice and I always felt better after seeing him on TV. So it's kind of like finding out that I'll be flying with Captain Kangaroo.

After the meeting, we tried out the new Indian restaurant down the street. It was good, although Robbie and I had a debate on the way home about whether the portions were too small. We had a bag full of leftovers, but you get used to having two or three days' worth of food after you eat at an Indian place, and it may not have been up to that level.

Tomorrow I'm taking the car in, so keep your fingers crossed that it's something cheap or, if not cheap, at least quickly fixable. Also, I'm going to see how much it would cost to get the alignment fixed, since now when we let the steering wheel follow its natural course the car pulls to about two o'clock, and I think I'm starting to get carpal tunnel in my right arm.

Comments
Dr. tizzed: Just don't get sucked in at the auto repair shop into buying the tru-coat...

Matthew Lippert: I've never left an Indian restaurant with more than a midnight snack worth of leftovers. Either you guys are under-eating (see EV's question from 1/2) or you order like royalty (again see the EV's question). Indian portions are always too small, and hence the utility of the buffet.

I'd like to point you all to Tizzed's blog entry for today, in which he discusses which software version he would be if he were a software version. I've decided that I'm Jessica Version 4.2, for the record--version 4 came out sometime in 2000, and .2 when we moved to Pittsburgh.

Tonight I made dinner, so I think I'm off the hook until 2005. It wasn't bad, either--I made chicken with a creamy salsa-esque sauce, and there was a slight problem when the salsa in our fridge was moldy, but I improvised a new salsa using items found around the home, and it turned out pretty well. I did seriously consider just scooping out the moldy part and using the rest of it, but I'd finished the food-toxin part of my house book yesterday and I couldn't do it.

Now we're sitting around watching "Queer Eye." There's a mint-julep-related nightmare in the offing. Robbie pointed out, and I agree, that although this show is entertaining when it goes well, it's much better when things go poorly.

Comments
EV: I watched that one last night. My favorite part was when the guys mimicked the awkward family drinking scene. And yeah, he was a bit of a disaster.

Jess: Robbie and I have been saying, "It's like some sort of _Irish mojito_" to each other ever since.

We played squash today for the first time in about a month and a half. I did better than I would have expected, especially in the last game, but still not all that well. I think once I make a legal serve, I play almost as well as Robbie--definitely not as well, but enough to be fairly competitive. It's the non-legal serves that wear me down. If I really cared about it, I'd go to the gym and practice some afternoon without him, but apparently I don't.

Other than that, today was quite leisurely. I woke up to my mom calling to tell me that our freelance client couldn't read our files, but eventually that got worked out. We finished our New Year's good-luck breakfast pretzel, and I talked to Heather for about an hour, which was very nice because I hadn't talked to her for more than thirty seconds in the past week.

I also organized some of our Santa Barbara pictures, in keeping with my New Year's mini-resolution to get our photos framed or into albums. It's amazing how good-looking and happy all of us looked, all of the time, even at times when I know personally that I was miserable. (I wasn't miserable all that often, of course, but there were one or two parties where I really, really, really wanted to go home, and I still look happy as a clam.)

I've also been reading the home maintenance book that my great-aunts got me for Christmas. I'd put it on my wish list, but only after reading a page or two at Buebbles' house, so I wasn't really sure what it would be like. Some of her suggestions are pretty strange--I don't see myself ever taking out the trash daily, for example--but she also gives tons of information on fabric care, for example, so I can see me using that part a lot in the future. (She also has a whole section on food and cooking, but I don't think even that will motivate me to become any sort of cook, although I do know a lot more about botulism now than I ever really wanted to.)

Our car is making a woobly noise, not unlike the noise made by my sonic toothbrush. It makes the noise when the brake is pressed and when neither the brake nor the gas is pressed, but doesn't make the noise when the gas is pressed. The car can either be moving or stopped, as long as it's in gear. Any ideas? My dad thought it was maybe the fan belt, and I thought maybe it was the brakes.

In what I fear will become related news, I'm going to get paid on Monday for this freelance work. I'm pretty excited. I made $20 proofreading a paper for my high school friend a few months ago, but other than that this is the first money I've earned in five months. My mother and I are going to try to get some more grant-proposal-editing work, though, so hopefully this will soon be a frequent occurrence. And my freelance for my old editing company should be starting soon--if I don't hear from them, though, I'm not going to worry about it until we get back from Italy.

We gave my cousin's kids their Christmas presents today. My cousin's son, who's almost four, told Robbie that the hunters in his prehistoric-beasts book were just scratching the woolly mammoth with long, pointed sticks because it was itchy. I don't know what we're supposed to do with that, pedagogy-wise. On the educational bright side, my mother taught my cousin's daughter, who's one and a half, to say "Nobody puts Baby in the corner." It was sort of an accident, but she really took to it.

Comments
EV: I think you say, "no dear, man is evil and brutal and will kill anything. Don't ever forget that." And congrats on the freelance $-- which reminds me, if Robbie's a postdoc and you've so far had a monthly salary of $4, what are you eating?

EOL: Woolly mammoths, possibly?

Dr. tizzed: Lots of chocolate fondue from my experience... you guys have chocolate fondue like other people have ice cubes....

Jess: That's funny, because last night we were saying that we needed to have chocolate fondue on hand whenever you and R come over, because you two really seem to like it... I think she's been present for all but one of our Pittsburgh fondue experiences.

Happy New Year, everyone! We had a very nice, though fairly tame, New Year's Eve. The most edgy thing we did was stop at a Giant Eagle in a pretty rough neighborhood to get pound cake and strawberries on the way to dinner. Other than that, we just had a great dinner at a German restaurant, and then had dessert at home and watched the ball drop. I think I was asleep shortly after 1.

This morning, we spent some time with Tizzed before he left, and I also worked on this freelance project that my mom and I have. I was feeling a little stressed, because I had this work to do and we had a guest and the apartment was filthy, but by dinner Tizzed was gone, the project was done, and the apartment was passable, so now I feel I have things under control. We also watched the Rose Parade to see the float that Heather and Matt worked on. They volunteered with the rest of Matt's family to work on a Lutheran-themed float (which, as far as I could tell, never appeared in the televised portion of the parade), but there were too many Lutheran volunteers so they got shunted to the City of Los Angeles float, which we did see.

I suppose I should address the issue of Tizzed's date. As most of you know, last night was Tizzed's second date-like event with my high school friend, and you're probably all wondering how it went. I honestly have no idea. I thought that date-wise, things were going terribly last night (although they were certainly enlivened by Ted's recounting his history of Santa Barbara man-crushes), but then she asked to see him again for lunch today. Then evidently she was equally ambiguous at lunch, and they parted without even a hearty handshake, but she made plans to see him next weekend. Dames.

Comments
Dr. tizzed: Your apartment was by no means filthy, and your hosting was beyond reproach. Dames, indeed.