I seem to have been overcome by winter lethargy lately. Not severely so, but enough that I’ve noticed my demotivation. It’s funny because I am not a fan of the concept that winter is not ‘cycling season’, but I really just don’t feel like riding in the cold and rain very much. I’m missing the […]
Snowclone: A maze of twisty little X, all alike
Language Log likes to talk about snowclones. In fact, they popularized the term “snowclone” (though they did not coin it, as you can see by the entry). Here’s one I don’t think they’ve looked at, even though they have used it, which has an intriguing distribution: You are in a maze of twisty little X, […]
Election 2008: two linguistic moments
This is my personal blog, not a topical blog, but I find myself unable to say anything terribly original or interesting about the election per se. Like many Californians, I am thrilled by Obama’s election, and terribly disappointed that it looks like Prop 8 may pass. However! They have not counted my ballot yet (vote-by-mail […]
Wet ride
It was raining like crazy all day yesterday. I had agreed to go to a party in the evening, so I decided, in the spirit of adventure, to find out whether my bike raingear was up to the task of keeping me relatively dry and comfortable on a 9.6 mile ride in moderate to heavy […]
Tony Hillerman
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 […]
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 […]