January 2012
2 posts
Too Much Stuff
As Mike and I prepare to pack and merge our stuff from two apartments into one, I’ve been skipping all the terrifying planning and organizational steps in my head to jump forward to decorating and wrangling all our stuff.
I’m obsessively reading Apartment Therapy, but I need realistic, less than perfect ideas, blogs, directions, etc.
I need solutions for too much stuff - too many...
Dine LA: Waterloo +City - Gourmet British Food?
theairstreamturkey:
Usually, the words ‘gourmet’ and ‘British food’ don’t end up in sentences even remotely near each other, so the idea of a restaurant like Waterloo + City is potentially abhorrent to those who are unable to conceive of it. Andreanna and I joined another couple, also foodies, to give it a taste drive during the opening week of Dine LA, and we were more than pleasantly...
December 2011
2 posts
Ideas for Holiday Gifts
I spent a lot of time stressing out about what to get my boyfriend for Christmas this year (in part because my default gift to everyone is always books, and it didn’t seem to be enough on our first Christmas). Also, he’s a genius gift giver, so it’s also a competition (only on my end). So I’m putting together a list of potential gifts for anyone you love that’s a...
Prime Suspect
I was reluctantly excited for the US version of Prime Suspect in part because I loved the original so much and I wasn’t sure how the concept would translate nearly 20 years later. I was less worried about the story lines and more worried about the datedness. Of course, I don’t actually think that women facing sexism in a predominantly male environment is a dated concept. But in terms...
November 2011
3 posts
Tequila is Not for the Faint At Heart
theairstreamturkey:
First off, I know a lot about gin – due to the enthusiastic consumption of it. I know a little bit about whisky (due to similar indulgences and a few tastings). And what I know about bourbon, I know from research for this article: Bourbons for your Budget. But I don’t know diddly squat about tequila. So when a rep from the Thomas Collective saw my article on Cocktails 101...
October 2011
6 posts
Freelance food photographers!
socalfood:
Please send links/portfolios to kspiers at kcet dot org if you’re looking for Los Angeles assignments. Thanks!
Isn’t this all of Tumblr? Or is that just my crowd?
The Airstream Turkey: Fall on the West Coast Means... →
theairstreamturkey:
Here in Los Angeles, we trick ourselves into thinking that we have seasons by looking at the calendar and determining what the appropriate response would be if we lived someplace where there was weather. It was this thinking that caused Andreanna and me to whip up a hearty Fall evening…
Introducing The Airstream Turkey blog! We (or rather Mike) kicks it off with...
6 tags
August 2011
1 post
5 tags
LA Whiskey News: @ThirstyCrow and @BigfootWest →
cocktailtease:
The two 1933 Group bars will be only two of five LA bars to carry newly released product from @BuffaloTrace - Single Oak Project, the bourbon maker’s most ambitious endeavor yet.
It helps that these are two of my current favorite places in Los Angeles.
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
4 posts
Reasons I Should Stick to Cats
So Ulysses S. Fish (who was initially named after Roman Ulysses, who is really just a poor man’s Odysseus, and this fish is definitely a poor man’s Odysseus, but one who had a really rough night, and is now really just named after the slightly terrifyingly incompetent former president because he doesn’t do much) is still alive.
And was living in a fish-cell with filthy water,...
Today in California World
Things I did today:
1. Bought a romper. Shut up. I had to get it out of my system.
2. Wore a total hipster outfit of slightly age inappropriate flowered dress, tights and jazz shoes/oxfords.
3. Discovered TheBloggess.com (I swear to god I have no idea how I lived without this blog before now). Shari, we are making that giant chicken thing happen.
4. Tried to figure out if I could write a...
Rambled Musings on the Nerd Question
In response more to Liz’s tumblr post: http://lizlet.tumblr.com/post/6769273233/bullet-points-about-being-a-girl-and-a-nerd-at-the than the actual question of the co-opting of geek culture by the mainstream (meaning that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hot girls pretending to like comics, or liking them, or putting out into their PR that they have a “geeky”...
The True Value of Higher Education →
A great rebuttal, by the President of my alma mater, on why higher education is more than a commodity.
For the record, I went to college, in the words of my dad, “to get an education, not to get a job.”
I went to Macalester (and Bennington before it) to be a better citizen of the world: more compassionate, smarter, more informed, more engaged, more traveled and more fearless. Not,...
May 2011
3 posts
Swimsuits are the Devil
I have many fine qualities. I’m smart, stubborn, a reasonably good writer, a person with a sense of humor, with kindness and compassion.
But I’m also prone to staggering, crippling self-concsciousness, something that an entire lifetime of both dance and sports/physical activity seems not to have cured me of. Sure, I can be half or fully naked in a dressing room, a stage wing,...
April 2011
11 posts
Yeah, I'm Just A Girl
Not strictly true. I’m a grown woman. And I don’t much take offense at the term girl, because that means to me a joviality and lightness that I didn’t have when I was a girl, and it’s the inherently feminine part of me that I think about when I think about the “girly” aspects of myself. I’m tough, and cranky, but also sappy, sparkly, cruel, deeply...
No, I'm Not A Monarchist
So I’m old enough to have been a wee little impressionable girl when Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. It made a HUGE impression on me. It was intensely pagenty and huge and at the time seemed weird and romantic (and it didn’t take many years for me to think, “eww, he was old and she was a child and what a mess.”) And then my aunt and uncle ran off and eloped in...
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us...”
– Ira Glass (via nefffy)
I couldn’t add anything to that if I tried. I’m still there, I think, struggling between my taste and my talent and my output.
“You actually have cases of people being diagnosed with brain tumors only to find...”
– - Amy Stewart, talking about the pork tapeworm in a discussion with NPR about her new book, Wicked Bugs.
If there were ever such a way to get me to not eat bacon, this is clearly it.
***Josh, hate to break to you, but she notes that non-pork-eaters can also acquire these if people who eat pork...
When She Was Good, She Was Very Very Good
Things that are good, which are also bad:
1. I finished All Clear. It made me cry. And cry. And now I am done.
2. There is so MUCH tv out there to watch: The Killing, Game of Thrones, Treme, Doctor Who, Community, the whole part of the season of Drag Race I haven’t seen. It is bad because when will I ever watch all this? When?!?!?
3. Cats. Evil rotten peeing Siamese cats. Lazarus cats....
Stuck Between Stations
It used to be that I’d mourn the end of something - whether an era of my life, a relationship, whatever it was - with music directly from those moments. Whether that meant a slew of baudy Celtic ballads at the end of our junior year of college or a P.I.L. song that played when I started on a very bad road with a very bad boy that turned out very badly but still seemed like such a good idea....
“Terrifying Fact Number Two, is that I’ve just watched Matt Smith carrying a...”
– Steven Moffat, DWM Production Notes (via shakingtambourine)
This is too delightful. I wish I was this delightful. Mission for April: be more delightful.
(via nerd-gasms)
There’s something terrifyingly adorable about the image of Matt Smith nearly decapitating people with a guitar he may...
Nerds Are Going Big Time
There is a giant billboard on Fairfax Avenue, near Melrose I believe announcing the return of Doctor Who. There’s no imagery. Just the words “Doctor Who” and a tagline that I was too giddy to read as I commuted by.
My April is starting poorly on other fronts. At least I have something to look forward to in the midst of this month.
Cool Things I Heard on the Radio
I spend a lot of time listening to the radio during my commute. Sometimes that means podcasts of prior broadcasts, and sometimes it means actual real-time live radio from my local station. I know, crazypants.
I always learn something weird and wonderful. It’s such a strange experience sometimes, alone in the car, with this flood of information, and no one to turn to and discuss it with....
Covering Cash →
I’m a big fan of the Coverville Project, and this particular podcast is just so full of the things that make me happy, including but not limited to the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds cover of “Long Black Veil.” I must have 10 versions of this song, and I’m not sure I could pick a “best” version. But Nick Cave always makes things better. 40 Years after...
March 2011
8 posts
Hookers, Guns, and Money - The Atlantic →
Great interview with Dennis Lehane on character as story. Which I love, particularly because Lehane writes such stellar noir. The short story “Until Gwen” is also in the The Atlantic’s archive.
Be a Patriot, Drink American: Small-batch Bourbons... →
This is definitely one of my favorite articles so far. The research was fun, everyone I contacted to interview was wonderful, and I learned a lot.
Earthquake Preparedness Kit →
tumblangeles:
It’s a good time to remind ourselves that it could be us next. Be prepared.
Seriously. Get yourself to a CERT class. Be ready. Have a plan.
Disaster Response: CERT-ainly Better Prepared Now →
Go! Get your training in! Be useful in the world!
A Sampling of the Strange Things I Have Won in...
1. A goldfish at the school carnival when I was 7. This started off a long line of unhappy goldfish in my possession, none of whom appreciated me picking them up in my valiant effort to have them be as fun as a puppy.
2. A Rubick’s Cube from a different school carnival. Possibly the best, most coveted random prize of my existence.
3. A cake, although this was from a game of musical chairs, but...
Nick Cave Reissues Four Classic Albums →
In case anyone’s looking to buy me a present, I can’t find my copy of Murder Ballads or Let Love In. I’m just sayin’…
February 2011
10 posts
CERT Training, Let's Try This Draft Again
Ship week for the big magazine is not the week to get my seriousness on and write a comprehensive, brief paragraph about disaster. It began so well, but clearly I will need to start over:
Emergency Responses to Emergency Situations
This has been the year of earthquakes (I suppose technically last year was the year, and this is just the year adjacent), but the devastation of regions like Haiti,...
Holy Shit: They’re Making Atlas Shrugged Into A... →
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Ayn Rand makes online dating so much easier (not to mention real life dating). If she’s listed as a favorite author, that person gets rejected. I have many rules, I have liberal politics, and I can overcome some of those much more easily than I can an admiration for The Fountainhead.
Go Wisconsin Unions!
My father was the head of the CSTA (Colorado Springs Teachers Union) for a while, or a union rep, something official that meant that once a week, I had to go sit in a green chair outside of an office and talk to the CSTA secretary, Renee, while he met with other union organizers.
I’ve always been pro-union, even with the vast amount of waiting around I did because everything with my dad...
Words Are a Revolution
For anyone who’s ever asked me, “Why use Twitter?” “Why do I care if you’re going to the store and talking about it online?” Go listen to Biz Stone’s interview on Fresh Air.
When you put inexpensive technology in the hands of the people, when you facilitate their usage of it - finding ways around government censorship and shutdowns; when you let people...
Animal Rescue Goes 21st Century, Sets Tongues,... →
So, everyone knows I’m a sucker for animals of all sorts. My cats certainly know it. But there are thousands of animals out there looking for homes, and many wonderful organizations who tirelessly advocate for them, give them comfort and shelter, and place them with new families.
If you can’t bring a new pet home, consider donating. Many of these organizations are using social media...
