I learned just now that Tony Hillerman, New Mexico mystery author and a former neighbor of my family, died on Sunday at 83. (We moved — I think the Hillerman family still lives in the house that we used to live next door to.) My parents really like his books. I never read them (not […]
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Test post from my phone.
Test post from my phone. My phone also plays my music now. I feel so 21st century. Added later: Regrettably, it looks like it’s much harder to add pictures to the blog directly from the phone. One needs a plugin, and I have had very little success adding plugins to my WP installation. Really it’s […]
Back on bike: Crystal Springs-Cañada-Portola
Today was my first recreational ride since Waves to Wine. It ended up well, but I had a really hard time finding my legs for the first 10-12 miles. I finally found them somewhere on Cañada, when I noticed I was chatting and pedaling on auto-pilot, and felt better than I had. By the time […]
Rocket!
According to Michael Pollan, rocket is also the “proper American name” for arugula: It is true you might want to plant iceberg lettuce rather than arugula, at least to start. (Or simply call arugula by its proper American name, as generations of Midwesterners have done: “rocket.”) Arugula is the Italian name for it, so I’m […]
Arugula!
After my first year of employment (I think first full year, but it doesn’t really matter to this story) I had saved more money than I expected. I was telling my mom this and that I really wasn’t sure how I’d done it, since I didn’t keep a good budget (I still don’t; it is […]
Strawberry frustration
I love strawberries. The best ones are fragrant and sweet with a hint of tartness. I want to describe them as a “flavor burst in the mouth” but that sounds unfortunatey like a commercial. I buy them almost every week in the summer when they’re available. I freeze them to keep for over the winter […]
magnitude of the Central Valley
I hear people all the time talking about the Central Valley, and I thought I had a pretty clear idea of where and what it is — inland of here, a big area where there are a lot of farms plus some of the major inland cities, the nation’s major supplier of various fruit and […]
A cooler title
I really enjoy being a bona fide professional linguist, with said title on my business card, but I have found a title that is, I think, even cooler, belonging to Jesse Sheidlower (whose surname I would dearly love to know how to pronounce). Jesse is, according to his byline on this Slate article about Sarah […]
And: tax cuts? are you kidding?
Say what you like about the original bailout bill, it did not get better with the addition of tax cuts (yes, tax cuts at a time the government is proposing to give away $700B it doesn’t have anyway) and unrelated items. Write or call and urge your rep to vote against it. Strangely, those of […]
Hyperbolicity
It’s sort of unfortunate when people who may have a point undermine themselves with hyperbole, hand-wringing, and inaccuracy. I got pointed via BoingBoing to what should have been an interesting article about the people behind the sources of Facebook’s funding. I’m no particular fan of Facebook, especially because it just seems to get more and […]