Here (well, down there, since it's breaking my layout) is the map of the states I've been to:
Looks like I need to hit the upper third of the country next. And Alaska and Hawaii, of course.(Create your own here.)
I considered doing a world map, but it'd be pretty boring: USA, Canada, Mexico and France -- England if you include the hour spent in Heathrow on the way to France.
My little brother, Danny, says some pretty amazing things. We would never have expected it five years ago -- Dan is mildly autistic and has other learning problems. Ten years ago you could barely get more than a couple sentences out of him; five years ago he was still very shy, preferring to talk only to family. Most of his coversations revolved around the weather, his computer game and phrases parroted from my mom.
Something changed when puberty set in, and now he's downright chatty. He calls all his friends in the evening to talk, and he's hard to shut up when we come out to visit. It's like he enjoys small talk.
But he also whips out some amazing statements and turns of phrase, bespeaking some sort of wisdom behind the mask of his disabilities. Or at least a budding Yogi Berra. Some examples:
(This Christmas in Arizona)
Me: "What's on your mind?"
Dan: "Not much."
Me: "Why not?"
Dan: "It's all back home."
"Life will always be with you, every step of the way."
"Let's just drop the shoe."
(Said to my mom, trying to get her to drop the subject at dinner one night.)
That last one I find particularly intriguing. Is he playing off the cliché "waiting for the other shoe to drop," or is he admonishing my mom like a dog chewing on a shoe? I've been mulling this over, and I just can't decide.
Mind you, it's not all deep thought -- his favorite way of indicating an extremity of something is to the bone, as in "I'm hungry to the bone!"
My mom likes to refer to him as Mrs. Malaprop.
The car, she is ours!
We spent a couple hours at Evanston Toyota last night buying our Prius (whose name, as you may have guessed, is Sparky. Thanks AmyC for the suggestion way back in October.)
It drives quite nicely, and has super bright headlights (though not as bright so as to blind our fellow drivers). The only noticable difference in the drive compared to a "normal" car is that there's a slight lag when you press the gas coming off a stop (at a red light or whatever) -- basically a split-second hesitation as the computer governing acceleration figures out what to tell the engines.
The fact that I don't have to unlock it or put a key in the ignition (both benefits of a special keyfob that alerts the car to my presence) is novel, and I suspect after a while with Sparky I'll forget that other cars don't offer this convenience. The shifter and push-button parking will take some getting used to. And I averaged approximately 40 miles per gallon on my drive to work this morning. That average will no doubt improve once I'm not driving through snow flurries.
The stereo is not quite what I was hoping for. The standard speaker package is a bit muddy, with not enough bass definition; I'll have to check whether there's an equalizer. I can always upgrade them later, of course. And really, it's a minor quibble.
My car, she is coming.
I head from the Toyota dealership today at lunch. After two-and-a-half months, we finally have word on our Prius: red, package seven, by the end of the month. I'll decode that for you:
• Red = "Salsa Red Pearl," a somewhat dark metallic red, slightly sharper than the standard, say, Chrysler minivan red.
• Package Seven = Rear wiper, side curtain airbags (in addition to the usual front ones), Smart Entry & Start system, "High Intensity Discharge" headlamps, fog lamps and Vehicle Stability Control.
• By the End of the Month = They don't have a firm delivery date, but they know it'll be before February 1.
We don't get the superduper stereo system, but I can always upgrade if I want to. We also don't get the DVD navigation system or the Bluetooth-enabled hands-free phone capability, but we weren't too worried about either of those -- we generally know where we're going, and I've got a speakerphone on my cell.
I am so ready to be out of the Aerostar. It's just about the worst automobile possible in the city, and I'm going to have to drive the Prius for several months before I make up for the incredible amounts of gas the van swallows.
[UPDATE] 1/22: We get the car tonight!
As I revisited this Ask.MetaFilter thread about baby names to which I contributed, I realized that a couple of the names I like for girls will be very out of fashion for several years.
When a name gains notoriety in the news, it can go two ways: Depending on the positive or negative associations, the name could become insanely popular (how many Britneys do you think were born since 1999?) or very, very unpopular (I bet very few American muslims have named a son Saddam or Osama in the last couple years).
Therefore, the name Chelsea has probably been on the decline recently due to the Clinton scion. And Paris, which I think is a pretty cool name, was turned down by my friends as a name for their daughter, despite having given her that name while she was in the womb -- even before the P.Hilton scandal, Paris Jackson (daughter of Michael) had ruined it (for the father, at least).
The thing is, 20 years from now, who is going to still have these associations? Most people have already forgotten Chelsea Clinton (although the tabloids haven't), and Paris Hilton will have faded away by then, or at least become our generation's Zsa Zsa Gabor. Paris Jackson? Most people don't even know she exists.
OK, so some adults will likely smirk or raise an eyebrow. But little Paris's classmates? The only Paris they'll know is the one sitting in class with them. And besides, she certainly won't have to have her last initial after her name, unlike the two Mackenzies, three Brooklyns and five Jakes and Connors.
It's interesting to see how many people are willing to change their meat eating habits in light of the recent mad cow disease scare, yet how few people are willing to drop the amount of sugar in their diet. In a Wall Street Journal poll, 78 percent of respondents said they'd eat less beef and 16 percent said they'd quit eating beef altogether, despite there being no cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease connected to mad cow-tainted beef reported due to the recent "outbreak" and something like a million to one odds that anyone ever will.
In the meantime, schools are bowing to pressure to remove sugary sodas from school vending machines -- and are replacing them with drinks like Snapple, which have as much and sometimes more sugar in them than the sodas they replace.
"Consuming all these calorically sweetened drinks -- soft drinks, juice drinks, sports drinks -- they all contribute to weight and obesity in the U.S.," says Barry Popkin, nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "It's all just sugar water."Much of the problem stems from the idea -- instilled months after birth -- that the liquid we consume should be flavored and sweet.
"One of the first questions a new parent will ask a pediatrician is 'when can I start juice?'" says Robert Murray, professor of pediatrics at the Columbus Children's Hospital and principal author of the American Academy of Pediatrics statement. "We've really created the habit of dealing with thirst with sweetened drinks."
My friend Damon used to be a Snapple addict. One day he realized just how much sugar he was consuming and how sick it was making him feel...and just quit. After a little time to detox, he felt great.
I'm going to do the same. Starting now, whenever possible I will no longer drink sugary drinks, be they soft drinks or sugar-added juice products (I will still drink pure juice). This dovetails well into my resolution to eat healthier, and I have other avenues to indulge in my sweet tooth. Chocolate is far more satisfying, and delivers the sweetness with far less sugar per serving.
This prank is just too cool. I'm trying to imagine what that would look like -- too bad there's no photo to accompany the story.
I think I've mentioned here before that my grandmother is a little crazy. The reason I bring that up again is because this story reminded me of her. She once wallpapered her bathroom with tinfoil. (I've probably mentioned that before, too.)
Contrary to the title of this post, it was more of a proto-Martha touch than a paranoia thing...as far as we know. She said she thought it would look neat. And it did, at least to a little kid's eyes. It was crinkly and semi-reflective, and she also had painted the old cast-iron tub and the pipes under the sink silver. I recall there also being a lot of purple touches in the room as well.
I liked seeing my vague silhouette on the wall, strange and alien. Other than "killing" Wile E. Coyote (a stuffed animal my brother and I would pretend to torture whenever we visited), there wasn't much else to do in Grandma's apartment. Well, we could read her Beatrix Potter books, but that lost its allure at around age 8.
What I don't remember was the nearly unbearable fumes from the rubber cement she used to put the tinfoil up. Apparently it was hard to be in the bathroom for very long the first few months after she did it, or else you'd get dizzy or headachey. But hey, she was willing to suffer for fashion.
There will be some changes around me3dia.com in 2004 -- primary among them is that I will no longer be posting every day.
That doesn't mean there won't be times when there are daily posts, just that I won't put pressure on myself to come up with something to say every day, regardless of whether there's something I want to write about or not.
There will be other changes, but they'll be mostly graphical, and therefore self-evident when they're introduced.
Thank you.
...sittin' in a tree, P-U-B-L-I-C-I-Z-I-N-G.
It was difficult to escape the news the last couple days that Britney Spears got married, then un-married. Starting today, it will be hard to escape Pete Rose's admission to betting on baseball.
So why are we hearing about these things? Publicity, pure and simple. As a pop star, Britney needs to stay in the news, and with no concert dates set for a while, the quickie marriage was a good way to do it. Pete has a new tell-all book out and only one year of Hall of Fame eligibility left, so coming clean about betting on baseball (he still swears he didn't bet on his own team's games) will not only boost book sales but also might get him the forgiveness he needs for induction.
As much as some celebrities moan about the constant barrage of media attention and intrusion into their lives, it's a pretty disingenuous complaint. The celebrity-watch is essential to their careers: it's what keeps them from fading away in between projects, what makes them regular water cooler conversation. It's a function of branding, just like the product placements in all your favorite TV shows and movies. Pay it no mind.
We made our way south, speeding down the highway and then darting off onto a local road, the frigid winter air creeping through the cracks in the shell of the old minivan. A weak glow of moon filtered through the cloudcover to barely illuminate the pastures and stubbled cornfields as we whizzed by.
As we neared the junction of Routes 11 and 14, the 93.1 FM of Madison began to lose its grip on our radio, and the 93.1 of Chicago gained its strength. After the turn, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and "Welcome to the Machine" blended eerily, static-ly mixed into a lonesome nighttime durge. The minivan rushed on, headlong into the Pink Floyd, leaving Meat Loaf behind to fumble in the darkness of a cold Wisconsin Saturday night.
The orangish glow of the City on the horizon beckoned us home.
I'm taking today off, so as to complete various projects at home. (I spent a good portion of the 01/01 "christmas" shopping for members of Cinnamon's family -- we're heading to Columbus next weekend to visit them and exchange presents -- and formatting the GB staff's Top Ten lists. That is, after getting up around noon.) Therefore, this is it for me3dia today. Enjoy your weekend!