in transit

I got up super-early to get to the airport, and then my plane was delayed about an hour. So now I’m in Las Vegas waiting for my next flight (a five-hours-later version of the connection I missed. It’s not so bad, though: the wireless here is free. I’ll be in to Boston around midnight—we get in just before Santa.

A couple weeks ago I started making a quick movie on my Netflix habit; in three months this fall I watched 35 movies. This is how it went:



Click To Play

Starring Seven Samurai, its Netflix envelope, and my red hands. (2 minutes, 14 seconds)

Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, etc.

3:56 pm Sun Dec 24 (0)

year o’ travel

I just saw kottke’s list of places he’s been this year, and it got me thinking: hey! I’ve traveled this year. Here’s my list:

  1. Ellsworth, ME
  2. Portland, ME*
  3. Kittery, ME*
  4. Vancouver, BC
  5. Boulder, CO
  6. New York City, NY
  7. Dublin, Ireland*
  8. Cloonacool, Co. Sligo, Ireland*
  9. Sligo, Ireland*
  10. Galway, Ireland*
  11. Inish Mor, Ireland
  12. Belfast, Northern Ireland
  13. Glasgow, Scotland
  14. Isle of Skye, Scotland (all over it)
  15. Edinburgh, Scotland
  16. Tisvildeleje, Denmark*
  17. Hillerød, Denmark
  18. Ashford, Co. Wicklow, Ireland
  19. out on the Western Way, Co. Galway, Ireland
  20. Kezar Falls, ME*
  21. Starks, ME
  22. Greensboro, VT
  23. Boston, MA
  24. Sacramento, CA*
  25. San Francisco, CA*
  26. Pacific Grove, CA
  27. Redwood City, CA
  28. Berkeley, CA

(places I’ve stayed one or more nights; * means I’ve visited on multiple non-consecutive days.)

Also, I want to thank everybody for the birthday presents; I had a great birthday. Heck, beyond great, I was grinning all day (but wearing a fedora does seem to put my grin on a hair trigger).

9:20 pm Thu Dec 21 (0)

birthday list

Things I want for my birthday:

If you want to give me something(s!) from this list, you can email things to me with “birthday list” in the subject and I won’t open them until I turn 23 on the 18th.

my list is all about ‘you’ because I’m curious who will answer, what you will come up with, and because it will mean that on my birthday I’ll be thinking about people thinking about me, which is a cozy thing to think about.

7:30 pm Tue Dec 12 (0)

food stamps

Little did I know that a 7:30 am appointment at the Sac. Human Assistance office means that you show up and get in line at 7:30; they have all day to actually conduct the appointment. I got called in just before noon, and my case worker was great, so things went quickly after that. I got fingerprinted again and got out of there around 1pm. That’s 5 and 1/2 hours, for anyone who was watching the clock. Finally I have my food stamps.

10:20 am Sat Dec 9 (0)

welcoming the end of November

November was pretty much a bummer, though there were some really good parts (Thanksgiving, film noir, some San Francisco). Come to think of it, November is always a really rough month for me. It’s over, which is good, but I’m still pulling myself together, which means things are still a little crummy. As an exercise in renewal, I redesigned my blog tonight. (Also: an exercise in amusing myself without watching a movie.) Those are my three most recent photos from flickr on the left; everything else is pretty much the same. (note, though on the right: I fly home for christmas on the 24th!)

now that it is nearing the second week of December, it is really, really time to start the christmas baking, make the christmas card, and do some christmas shopping/crafting. and, to use brendan’s phrase, “get my shit together” at work, and also stop being a hermit. can I do all that at once?

as an aside, I read a NYTimes article the other day about a writer who walks a lot. Mainly I sympathize with the walking, but also the article quotes him as saying, “It’s all I can do to keep myself from being isolated all the time.” It’s easy for me to slip into isolation as default. But I’m working on that. (the article)

11:37 pm Thu Dec 7 (0)

two weeks of food

two weeks of food

As a followup to yesterday’s post, I took a picture of myself with about two weeks of food; I won’t eat all that rice or cornmeal in the next two weeks, and I will eat more fruit and vegetables than are pictured. I am holding a block of cheese and a donut.

4:16 pm Sat Dec 2 (0)

quinoa pancakes

I’ve added beans to my leftover pancake batter before, but last night I made pancakes with quinoa in them from the start. if you are up for some weird (but delicious) food, here’s my recipe (feel free to just read it and say “urhm… I definitely will not be making that” ):

microwave the oatmeal and water together for 1 minute (or: boil water, pour over oats, let soak 10 minutes. or: use leftover cooked oatmeal)

mix everything together. add more water if it’s too thick. cook like pancakes. eat them with blackstrap molasses or beans.

this is a pantry recipe: it has things that are in my pantry all the time, and not very many perishables like eggs and milk, which are both a hassle to transport and a pain in the butt to keep in stock. a thing I’ve been thinking about since I started doing car-free shopping: buying liquids is dumb. I get the occasional quart of soy milk, but jugs of juice? gallons of milk? broth? water!? it makes it easier that I don’t use these things anyway. party shopping (portland) has been a bit of a hassle: glass bottles of alcohol (not much beer at my parties…), plastic jugs of cranberry juice.

possibly you’ve seen pictures of families from different parts of the world with all of their belongings; check out these pictures of families with a week’s worth of food. my pantry is probably more similar to the pantry of the family from Mali than to the pantry of the family from the United States: mostly bulk products, not in meal-size packaging, not very processed, no bottled liquids, with possibly a little dairy in the foreground? Though certainly nowhere near as austere. and without the bowls.

8:04 am Fri Dec 1 (1)
my flickr photos