The usual suspects social committee for our department at work decided that although we may not have any budget for festivities (or, really, much else), we can still have a good time. So they encouraged everybody to wear red, white, and blue to work today, and at lunch those of us who wanted to had a parade around our floor, then visited three other floors and paraded around there too.

BossLady was the parade marshal, complete with high hat with whadayacallit on the front (see userpic for example). As one of the tallest people involved (I'm five foot six, for pete's sake — this group just skews short) I chose to be one of the flag carriers so I could ensure it didn't drag on the ground. We had a boom box with patriotic music and a crowd of about 20 by the time we were done. (At one point the music segued from the national anthem and the Marine Corps hymn over to "What do you do with a drunken sailor". There was much hilarity on the part of the marchers at that point.)

Surprisingly, considering I'm Ms. I-Don't-Do-Audience-Participation-So-Don't-Try, it was an awful lot of fun. It was interesting to see people's expressions and responses as we went by. Some were like "what the... oh, a parade! How great!" Some were like "darn, here I am stuck on this phone call." And some... some looked like we'd spat in their potato salad. Oh, well.

Planning to do it again next year. And next year, we're going to say "damn the torpedos" and go parade around the floor that the executive suite is on.

BossLady just got back from a business trip that included time in London and brought me a souvenir — a box of Charbonnel et Walker Pink Marc de Champagne Truffles.

"Wow," I said. "I'll have to think about whether I like Pirate enough to give him one."

"You don't," she said cheerfully.

Just got back from the first Summer Sounds concert at City Center this year — Motown soul by Pure Ecstasy — and am currently in a state of "I love everybody, especially Oakland."

At a couple of points, they had the audience singing along with them. "This is Oakland!" exulted the leader. "Of course we got a choir in the house!"

Two adult peregrine falcons (dubbed "Clara" and "Esteban Colbert") are raising four babies on top of City Hall in San Jose, California. They can be seen on webcam here.

One good reason to buy honey in glass bottles is that if it crystallizes, you have to heat it to get it liquid again. Glass would be better to be immersing in simmering water than plastic is.

Looks like we need to be buying the bigger bottles.

I say "bigger", not "big". These are the big bottles.

So I'm reading a story on xenophobic reactions to the H1N1 flu outbreak, and I come across this sentence:

In an interview, [talk radio host Michael] Savage, who says he has a Ph.D in epidemiology and human nutrition from the University of California-Berkeley, said his remarks were based on science.

I'm sorry, "who says he has a Ph.D."? Who says he has a Ph.D. from UCB?

Did nobody pick up the damn telephone to call the registrar at Cal to verify this?

Well, maybe they couldn't figure out how to reach the registrar. I mean, it is awfully difficult to find their contact information.

And to be pedantic, the name of the school is University of California, Berkeley or UC Berkeley or UCB or even Cal. Not "University of California-Berkeley". See page 14.

Dinner last night was tossed together from what we had on hand, and turned out remarkably tasty.

Eggs à la Lexi (portioned for one):

Take a rock-hard slice of stale bread (I used a slice of a Semifreddi sour batard) and break into bite-sized pieces. Sauté over medium-high heat in a bit of butter, tossing regularly, until golden brown. Remove from pan and set aside.

In a little more butter, sauté some sliced green onions. When they start to get tender, add some spinach. (Frozen would work fine; we had the tail end of a bag of baby spinach intended for salad, so that's what I used.) Cook, stirring, until spinach wilts a bit.

Add 2 eggs, lightly beaten with a splash of cream (optional). Cook, stirring frequently, until eggs are almost but not quite done. Remove from heat and mix in grated cheese to taste (I used Parmesan, or maybe it was Romano). Add fried croutons back to pan and mix together.

Serve with a generous amount of freshly-grated black pepper.

Note to self: if BoingBoing or anyone else has a thread on the topic of "did this artist rip off the original designs of that artist?", do not read the comments. It will just annoy you.

One design strongly "inspired" by another artist's work? Might be spontaneous co-invention (as discussed in James Burke's series Connections, as well as elsewhere).

Two designs strongly "inspired" by another artist's work? Well, could be coincidence, I guess.

Four — possibly more — designs strongly "inspired" by another artist's work? Nope, starting to look suspicious here.

And of course, the commenters are trotting out all the usual weak arguments. "They're not line-for-line exact copies; therefore they weren't ripping off the original." "I vaguely remember seeing clip art at some point in the past that seemed to bear a resemblance to this; therefore they weren't ripping off the original."

Gaaahhhhh. I want to go dive into back issues of American Craft magazine as a palate-cleanser.

"Gosh, Lexi," you say, "I'd love to have a garden and grow some of my own food, but I don't have a yard. Is it really worth the effort if all you can do is pots and planters?"

I dunno, you tell me:


That's harvested from the roughly 4'x6' patch of dirt we have in the oversized planter by our apartment building's parking lot. Two varieties of lettuce, parsley, cilantro, mint, lemon balm, lemon verbena, and nasturtium blossoms. Plenty left on the plants (I go for the cut-and-come-again varieties), as well as a fair bit of empty dirt that needs (lots!) more plants in it. Mwa-ha-ha.

Lunch today was salad with lettuce and parsley from the garden. Yum.

There's a new book out called No Regrets: The Best, Worst, & Most #$%*ing Ridiculous Tattoos Ever, with a 20-image gallery currently available online.

After a look at the photos, my verdict is "don't bother". There's nothing that even comes close to "fighing Irish", "you bleed just to know your alive", or even "beautiful tradgedy"...

Really, just skip the book and check out Horrible Tattoos or Hanzi Smatter instead.

Lemon curd is basically hollandaise sauce with sugar; hollandaise is unsweet lemon curd.

No wonder I love them both so much.

(And I highly recommend the Fine Cooking recipe for foolproof lemon curd. I polished off the last of a pint of lime curd last night... and ooh, look, the monkey has brought home more surplus limes!)

If spiritualmonkey still had a Facebook account, his status would say "Pirate is currently weirded out by his cats drooling on the kitchen floor."

Well, yeah. That's what happens when you feed them freeze-dried chicken liver.

Heh.

The first gosling is hatching right now (as I type) on the Contra Costa Times' goose cam.

At the booksigning last night for Brad Warner's newest book, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, one of the audience members asked him what he thinks about reincarnation and what happens after death.

After explaining that he's a Zen Buddhist, not a Tibetan Buddhist, he said, "If you believe in reincarnation, this is the afterlife. So now what?"

Guess you might as well sit down and shut up.

I just finished updating my Yankee-geeky spreadsheet comparing fish oil prices at Puritan's Pride. The latest version is here for anyone who's interested.

They're currently running one of their "buy 2, get 3 more free" sales, conveniently.

The Center for American Progress has an interactive quiz up: How progressive are you?

I scored 369/400 — unsurprising.

As usual, I had quibbles with the phrasing of some of the questions, like #25: "The primary responsibility of corporations is to produce profits and returns for their shareholders, not to improve society." That depends on whether it's speaking about the way things are (because US law, as interpreted by the courts, is pretty clear that the answer is yes) or the way I think they ought to be (because, well, NO).

The bartender in the photos accompanying this article may look familiar to some of you...

This television ad for an Argentinian bank blew my mind:

I love stumbling upon a really good seed for a Last.fm station.

'Scuse me, gotta go back to dancing around the kitchen while I finish making my (fashionably slackerly unstressedly late) dinner.

You know all those jokes about horrible, critical, interfering, you'll-never-be-good-enough-for-my-precious-son-and-don't-think-I'll-ever-let-you-forget-it mothers-in-law?

Completely alien to my experience.

spiritualmonkey's mom, WarmheartedMonkey, has never been anything other than loving, caring, welcoming, and generous to the weirdo Californian her (weirdo) son married.

I just wanted to say that.

pecunium's latest post got me thinking about some of the memorable concerts I've been to. In no particular order:

Nick Lowe at Slim's. I was crashing with a friend/co-worker at the time, due to an unfortunate roommate situation. (When I moved in, my roommate said "oh, the landlord doesn't want to put you on the lease until you've been here six months, so you should give me the rent money and I'll write the rent check." You can probably imagine where this one goes — I came home from work one day to find a 3-day eviction notice on the door. She'd been pocketing the rent and not paying the landlord. My co-worker John and his partner very generously let me and my cat crash in their extra half-bedroom for a couple of months — way above and beyond the call, if you ask me.) I had two tickets for the show when I came down with a bad case of bronchitis. Couldn't find anyone to sell or even give the tickets to, so John and I went. I was half-zonked on cough syrup and spent the evening propped up against one of the pillars. (John stuck to vodka tonics.) Nonetheless, it was a kick-ass show.

The Blue Nile at the Great American Music Hall. The most acoustically perfect show I've ever been to. If you closed your eyes, you'd think you were at home listening to the album on headphones. Amazing. It was kind of sweet — they played all the songs from their one album at the time, then left the stage. The audience kept applauding, whistling, and stamping their feet. Eventually the band came back on stage and said, somewhat sheepishly, "Um... we don't really have any other songs to do... but we could play something over again..." and the audience went mad. So they reset the synths and played the singles again. Woot!

The Jazz Butcher with Max Eider at the Great American Music Hall. OMG OMG OMG. I've been a Jazz Butcher fan since about age 14, when a friend of a friend shoplifted a cassette of Bloody Nonsense. I figure the Butcher came out ahead, considering that from that one shoplifted cassette he wound up with at least five dedicated fans who went to multiple concerts and bought t-shirts and everything. (They played San Jose in July of 1988, a week before my 18th birthday... at an 18&over club. I don't think I've ever been more persuasive in entreating someone than I was that night, talking the doorman into letting me in. "It's my birthday next week! And my friend's 40+ father is even here to keep an eye on us! Please please please please please!" They let us in, we had a fantastic time, and one of my friends even managed, after the show, to swap t-shirts with the drummer, Dave's "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" t-shirt for the drummer's tour shirt (which were not on sale at the show)... which he gave me as a birthday present a week later. He did wash it first, luckily.) When the Butcher and Max parted ways, most of their fans thought they'd never see them together again. When they reunited for this tour, it was amazing. Even introvert-girl wound up in spontaneous conversations with other people in line: "OMG! Can you believe it? I never thought I'd get to see them together again!"

...I'm realizing it's been a while since I've been to see live music. Gotta fix that.

Just got home from the vet.

The most beautiful word I've heard all week is neovascularization.

The most beautiful phrase I've heard is "Bella's eye looks so much better!" (Second most beautiful phrase: "Ya done good.")

Excuse me, I have to go do a happy dance around my living room now.

Yay yay yay yay yay!

And the icing on the cake is that the meds schedule steps down from once an hour to once every four hours. I get to sleep for four hours at a stretch tonight! It's going to feel like a vacation. *grin*

It wasn't until I read this thread on Ask Metafilter just now that I remembered that today would have been my mom's 68th birthday.

...I'm beginning to think that forgetting is not such a great thing if it means I keep getting sandbagged like this.

Maybe I should mark February 19 and September 5 on the calendar.

Time to go listen to music and cry for a while.