Month: October 2010

A fun game.

I’m building up a bit of a cushion to my food budget. I want to leave a little left over every month, partly so I don’t accidentally bounce a check and partly so I have enough to get my quarter of beef next August. So here is what I ‘m doing.

I’ve made a list of staple food I eat each month. At the beginning of the month I am doing a “big shop” so I have all my basic food. My goal is to only shop one other time that month, however now that the meager amount of vegetables I harvested this year are beginning to peter out, I may need to go more often for vegetables.

I’ve done my “big shop,” as I’m calling it, for the month and have figured that to have an extra $10.00, I need to keep my spending on food for the rest of the month to $45.00. Is this possible?

Yesterday I bought thyme (they never had it in bulk and I had to give up and buy a regular jar) for $1.99 and a cup of dried beans for $0.48. This leaves me with $42.53 for the remaining 25 days in the month.

I’ll report in now and then, so you can follow along. In my opinion, the only way to save is to make things fun. It’s a fun test for me, and it will also probably keep me from spending $3.00 on cookies at The Pearl Bakery. Every time I do that I picture my grandmother rolling over in her grave. Sorry grandma, sometimes that shortbread just calls to me. Perhaps not this month, though, eh?

Three sentence movie review: The Social Network.

I’m deeply divided about this movie so you are getting six sentences, three each from two different perspectives.

From the general movie going public perspective:

This was just a fabulously gripping movie. From the first scene to the last the creation of the Internet site that changed all of our lives is mesmerizing–and we are talking about a lot of coding, i.e. people staring at screens. Top notch acting by everyone, especially the “we must see more of him” Jesse Eisenberg.

From a slightly-aware female perspective:

Where are the women? The movie starts with a great female character, but she quickly exits stage left and the women we see are reduced to object status (or slightly unhinged girlfriends.) Surely there must have been a few women involved in some aspect of the creation of Facebook

outside of the interns and the young things with flat stomachs for Sean Parker to snort cocaine off of?

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2010/social_network.html

What now?

So I’m still not caught up, what now? Now I will publish one post per day until I have caught up to present day. I’ve just placed all of September’s pictures into draft posts. I’ve made sure all the movies are listed. I’m ready to whiz through these….Shoot. I’ve got 16 posts in September on this blog alone. Never mind. I’m going to try and do two per day. Or a bunch on weekends. My oh-so-free weekends.

Results?
162 posts completed and published since August 20. That’s approximately 4 posts per day, which is a huge effort. Good job me.

Motivation, brought to you by Excel and Desktop Printing

It’s amazing what a nice looking piece of paper will do for my motivation. This was the sheet I created so I could keep track of my blog posting. Back in the day before desktop publishing, I would have hand written this out and it would not have been as pretty. It also would have taken me forever. I created this in about two minutes, printed it at school and was on my motivational way. There are so many wonderful things about this modern world.

The thing in shadow in the lower right-hand corner is the pin I got at the Romanian wedding Matt and I went to in August. I wasn’t sure where to put it and didn’t yet want to throw it away, so I stuck it on my motivational paper. Sentinel notices it every once in awhile and attempts to pull it down, so I should probably move it somewhere else. I think I will leave my piece of paper up for awhile, it feels so good to look at.

Poem for September: Permanently

Permanently
Kenneth Koch

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing—for example, “Although it was a dark
rainy day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure
and sweet _expression on her face until the day I perish from the
green, effective earth.”
Or, “Will you please close the window, Andrew?”
Or, for example, “Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window
sill has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from
the boiler factory which exists nearby.”

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, “And! But!”
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat–
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

You might say that I am a fan of declarations of love which meander through the mundane before confessing their fondest feelings. “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen is perhaps my favorite song mostly because of the line “You ain’t a beauty, but yeah, you’re all right.” It may be the type of people I’m attracted to, or it may just be the unrealistic expectations scripted drama creates, but I find most declarations of love in my past to be something along the lines of the following: “Did you get the peanut butter at the store? Shall we go to see that play? When was the last time we cleaned the house? Have I mentioned that I find you quite attractive and I love you? When do I get to have a new job?”

I also love the idea of the parts of speech having a whole lives we don’t know about. Can’t you picture the nouns, pimply and with poor posture, standing together near a streetlight? And the poor conjunctions, what of their fate?