sundries

[rm]

Hello world. The paper is currenly at 3,164 words, which means I can stop for tonight, but Patty's doing some writing too, so I'll probably go for as long as either of us can stand. Right now my feelings about the paper are:

- it's pretty good
- it hasn't been as hard to write as I'd thought
- Ianto Jones, you do have to go and make everything fucking difficult, don't you?
- I'm never, ever going to get those hours rereading TWU, who_anon and torch_wood for July and August 2009 back, am I?
- Why can I still not find the right fucking citation about fucking tattooing?
- I coined a term!
- jeez, this thing is a bucket of fucking footnotes.

Patty and I spent the day writing in a cafe together and then went to Risotteria for dinner. Upon leaving Risotteria and walking by a woman in an extremely short dress that I didn't even notice, we have the following conversation:

Patty: "That was the shortest dress I have ever seen."
Me: "Didn't notice it."
Patty: "It was just... I don't even know how someone walks in that, much less sits or anything!"
Me: "You always notice these things."
Patty: "It was so short."
Me: "I believe you, I'm just saying, I think you like checking out chick's asses."
Patty: "Hey!"
Me: "It's a reasonable thing. I mean, some people are going to walk down the street and look at faces or tits or whatever. I think what I'm trying to say is that you're just a leg man."
Patty: *laughs*
Me: "Don't worry. In this conversation, you look sane. I look like the crazy one who described you as a leg man."

Thanks to a friend of Patty's we inherited a fabulous new dresser (it's this blue-washed wood -- very Jack) and a leaning bookcase thingy this morning.

Then we went to the farmer's market and bought some more tomato plants and a pepper plant, all of which we're going to keep inside for a bit until they are larger, as our three tomato starters were ENTIRELY EATEN, although their barren stalks are now starting to sprout new leaves so maybe there is hope? We even put out the big rubber snake we were sent to protect them. *sigh*

Yes, there will be a report on the Hewitt reunion soon. But that deserves real writing and all my real writing is reserved for this paper right now.

Flag football as varsity sport and whether it's a dead-end for girls.

After writing about the over-diagnosis of allergies, The New York Times counters by also talking about the high financial, time and emotional toll of severe allergies on families.

Why you can't win: Women who ask for raises are viewed as less attractive and a whole bucket of other stuff.

A week in the life of 311, New York's non-emergency information line. Didn't you always want to know whose job it was to deal with a dead seal floating off Brighton Beach?

Comments

[marcmagus]

Is Patty [sometimes] a man?

I do feel there's a difference between a leg man and an ass man...

[rm.livejournal.com]

Patty's all woman (although there's a long digression about this, the pick-axe under our kitchen sink and my gender identity in an essay I've just submitted to a book regarding the Whedon fandoms).

And yes, there was an ass-man component to the conversation that Would Not Die as well.

[marcmagus]

I really hope it's ok with both of you that I'm cracking up here, because I am.

...and noted, thank you.

Errr, hope your sink doesn't leak.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahah*sink*hahahahahahahaahahahah.

Oh you are so terrible!

And the point of that story was to make peopel laugh while we're both loopy here from all-day/all-night writing

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Flag football as varsity sport and whether it's a dead-end for girls.

What a bizarre argument - there's no "future" beyond occasional fun for any sport for 99.9+% of anyone who plays them, and it seems very odd to worry enough about the well less than one in 1,000 people who might have a hope at college scholarship or a professional or Olympic sports career to advocate against expanding a sport. I really don't get that logic at all.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

I dont get the logic of sports at all. In my history the 'sports' people tended to be abusive , self centered, self important types who seem to think that throwing a ball makes them some kind of higher life form. I completely agree with the 1:1000 point, and I think that this should be used for reduction in funding and to channel that money into something useful in the educational system.

[bare-bear.livejournal.com]

I wish you the best of luck on your illegal fire escape garden. I loved hearing about it last year, and I'm excited to hear of your gardening adventures/battles this summer. :D

Also, I came across an interesting post on a sewing blog that made me think of you. Not sure why, exactly, beyond that it has an interesting guide to clothing etiquette for women from 1928, and it seems like the type of thing you might be interested in looking at. As someone who is learning to sew my own clothing and often gets stuck on what she should be sewing to complete a wardrobe, it definitely made me think about the types of clothes needed now-a-days. Anywho, I hope you enjoy. And good luck with the paper!

http://www.colettepatterns.com/blog/inspiration/what-to-wear-and-when-to-wear-it

[nekosensei.livejournal.com]

Is it possible for you to put some Shake Away out by your illegal fire escape garden? I put it around my garden every year and it works beautifully. Alternatively, and I know this sounds gross, if you don't want to buy Shake Away you could put cat litter out there. Both of these things work because the ground smells like a predator marked it so critters tend to stay away from it.

Oh...two years ago when I was just setting up my garden, I saw a plastic owl decoy that had a motion detector and would make noise any time a small animal approached. I should have bought it when I first saw it because I haven't seen it at that store since.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

You can have the real snake that appeared on my living room last night. ( I don't know how it got in there, and I sort of feel like it was wizard ghost fucking with me. ) Of course the cats immediately decided they wanted to play with it. So I look up from my book, and wonder why they are playing with a bell pepper slice and just where the hell did they get a bell pepper, did mentioning the bell paper lady from the theater conjure it up from thin air? Then it fucking moves and I realize it is a snake that our cat seems to think is a new noisy toy and I yell in a most undignified way.

The 311 story made me laugh and laugh. I know exactly how that feels.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble stopping myself laughing about the short skirt/Patty's a leg man story. Fortunately it's my lunch hour and I can be as crazy as I like.

[rm.livejournal.com]

That was rather the point!

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Well, yes.

It's just that these things tend to stick with me for a while beyond the reading. So later today, when I burst out laughing for no apparent reason in front of someone, it's going to be a lot of me gesturing and trying to explain what's wrong with me.

(Seriously, I'm at that stage of fatigue where I do a lot of eye-closing/hands in the air thinking when I try to speak aloud to people. My whole summer staff probably think I'm a lunatic.)

All of which is to say that the explanation for this kind of incoherency will likely be the words, "Patty's a leg man. No I have no explanation. Now, back to [work thing]."

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Hah! Me and a (female) friend had a whole talk about Short Skirts On Girls and our differing relationships to our observations of them yesterday too.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

Re : " Why you can't win " , the way you presented it made it sound all negative , but when I read the article I think it gave some positive pointers to overcome known problems. Hell I think even I could benefit from some of the advice in that article. I've never had to negotiate raises per se , usually they come with the annual review. The one time I did object to a smaller raise , well it did not go well, and this is where I think the things outlines in the article might have helped me.

All in all, it seemed like some good advice to help score a win, instead of saying there is no way to win.

[rackmount.livejournal.com]

My best (female) friends and I formed a band 10 years ago for about five minutes. Called The Ass Men.

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

A mystery chomper on my tomatoes drove me crazy for a while till I figured it out... Its easy to get tomato hookworms (the moth will lay eggs on the tomatoes, so your fire escape location doesn't make them safe from these pests) and those little buggers can chow down like you would not believe. Plus they are the exact same shade of green so they're hard to spot especially when they are only about five millimeters long as babies.

You can find out more than you wanted to know by googling on tomato hookworms.

Only way I've figured out how to get rid of them is to regularly visually inspect the plants for them and remove them by hand.