Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
If you see a minty-green blur in a pink helmet going down the Avenues, that would be me.
And if you see a girl in a dress having to walk a minty-green bike back home because so far she can only ride two blocks up a hill without having to stop–well, at least she look stylish.
I highly recommend Bountiful Bicycle Center. Nice bike dudes, fair prices, and good inventory.
*French for, “Nice bike!”
1. Have you discovered Martha Stewart’s blog yet? It’s often unintentionally hilarious, but always fun to read. She’s been blogging from Warsaw (where she’s waiting to get into England), and was taking pictures of a cafe’s coffees, baked goods…and customers:
Her caption for this one: “A very handsome Polish customer at Bilkle’s.” Go, Martha!
2. I’ve been thinking my apartment needs more art…and then I saw this goat print. How cool would that be if it weren’t $250?
3. Here’s your George Orwell quote for the week: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns … instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
June 24 was the birthday of Alan Turing, called “the father of modern computing.” I only have a faint idea of who he was–mostly from reading about the Turing test for artificial intelligence in a sci-fi book, I think–but BoingBoing mentioned his birthday in a post which continued to say, “that he was persecuted for his homosexuality to the point of suicide is a crime and a tragedy.”
Wait, what? Like I said, I really didn’t know about him. Turns out he was, of course, brilliant; received the Order of the British Empire for his work on cracking codes in WWII; developed the first computing model; and in 1952 was convicted of “homosexual acts,” a crime still punishable at the time in Britain by hard labor (think Oscar Wilde). He was given the choice between that and probation, on the condition he submit to an estrogen implant to “curb his libido.”
God, no wonder he killed himself. And what more could this guy have thought of? A new energy source? A way to jump into hyperspace? Guess we’ll never know. Good job, 1950’s Britain.
Anyway. I was amazed I had never known this about Turing, so thought I would share. I don’t mean to depress anyone–it’s not like that NOW, at least–but sometimes I think, “This was only 50 years ago” and my mind just reels.
As I said last week, I want to get a bike. I want to ride it to work and to the farmers’ market and around the neighborhood in the evenings. I’ve looked for a month now, getting recommendations from my brother, the former bike mechanic, and my father, a crazy roadie who can put in 130 miles a week on his Kestrel. (Hi, Dad! That’s crazy in a good way!)
Following their advice–and my own experience that tells me yes, cheap things are cheaper but not necessarily a good investment (true of shoes, cooking equipment, mechanical things)–I decided not to get the $99 Target special and instead get a cruiser with a light frame and some gears.
I rode the bike I had in mind Monday, but Tuesday, instead of calling and getting a special order in, I just second-guessed myself. This is a lot of money for someone who makes her own clothes. Was I sacrificing functionality for style? Should I get a mountain bike? And if I insisted on a cruiser, should I get something cheap so I wouldn’t feel bad about not riding, if I couldn’t make it up the hills? And would I hate storing it in the apartment’s Minuscule Vestibule?
I thought I had decided, but my internal crazy monologue (crazy in a bad way) hadn’t. Fortunately, work was slow yesterday and I could let the internet convince me. I found this post on Copenhagen Cycle Chic:
When she bought her bike at her local bike shop she didn’t have a “fitting” at the “full service workshop and showroom”. She probably walked into the shop and said, “I need a bike”…
She doesn’t know how much it weighs…Likewise, she doesn’t know how far she rides each day…She rides at a good pace, not too fast to cause a sweat, and the ride is nice enough. She likes the fresh air…and seeing the transformation from season to season. That will suffice.
She doesn’t wake up and make a decision to “commute by bike to work today”. It’s just a part of her day. She just walks out of her flat and gets on her bike. If it has a puncture, she’ll walk it down to the local bike shop to get it repaired and then take the bus or train to work. Picking it up in the afternoon.
Yeah. It really isn’t that hard. It’s a bike; it will be fine. I have the money, I won’t outgrow it, and the hills will make me toned. Even if I have to push the bike up them.
I’ll get my order in today.
Today’s project roundup is a cliffhanger!
Sewing hasn’t been going well, so I’ve been knitting instead. (Knitting is also a lot cooler than sewing, because it doesn’t require crawling all over the floor to cut out fabric and having an iron hot for the duration.)
I’m almost through with this in a khaki color; I only have the ribbed trim around the front edges to do. I thought I could even get a good start on it last night during some more Battlestar Galactica–but no, two episodes later I had only picked up the stitches I needed to knit and put them on the needle. Also, I’m not sure if I have enough yarn left…
Will I finish? Will I run out of yarn? What will happen in Season 3 with the Cylon occupation? Check back next week for the thrilling conclusion!
Mr. Isbell and I watched another installment of the new Battlestar Galactica last night–the “Razor” extended episode. I never saw the original BSG, so I’m not sure if the Cylons (the evil robots) spoke in an evil robot voice in the series, but last night in Razor, they did. And I turned to Mr. Isbell and said, “How come I’m expecting to hear the Beastie Boys break into ‘Intergalactic’ now?”
So for your Monday morning, here’s the Intergalactic video, complete with robot voices.
1. After more than a decade, I’ve rediscovered Mystery Science Theater 3000 (viva Netflix!). People who have seen this will understand. If you haven’t, run–do not walk–and find episode 424: Manos: The Hands of Fate.
2. The cocktail of the moment is the Gin Rickey: 1 part Rose’s Sweetened Lime Juice to about 1.75 – 2 parts gin (depending on your workday), over ice. Mint sprig garnish is optional.
3. The summer solstice is TOMORROW; does it strike anyone else as sad that after just a week of feeling as if summer has finally begun, we’ve already reached its high point?
4. And speaking of summer, alpacas know how to stay cool: Play in the sprinklers!
Cria season is starting at Blue Moon Ranch! Check the barn cam for daily updates–most due dates are in late June and then again in August, but there are a few that have arrived already.
Here’s Willie Nelson:
And here is Shiloh:
I think my experiments can be summed up in a phrase: It’s a good thing I live two blocks from Smith’s.
While I didn’t expect my garden to fill all my produce needs for the summer, I did expect it to add some nice salads by now. Out of two rows of lettuce I planted, I have grown two lettuce plants, one of which bolted yesterday while I was at work. (Well, quickly.) I don’t know if my seeds were bad, if the last month of cold had something to do with it, or if the snails ate both rows as soon as they came up out of the ground.
I’m thinking it was the snails, because after they ate my lettuces, they discovered my beans. The beans had come up easily, almost with a cartoon-y “SPROING!!”, and they were doing really well…for a day.
Obviously, poisoning the snails wasn’t an option, so I looked into natural deterrents. I tried some copper tape around the rows–the snails laughed*. I tried some coffee grounds around the beans–the snails laughed and ate some more.
Last weekend my mother offered me iron phosphate snail bait (named, fabulously, Escar-Go!). Iron phosphate is non-toxic and naturally occurring; snails eat it and then their hunger mechanism shuts down and they starve to death. Don’t laugh, but the thought of snails starving over three to six days seemed too sad for me, so I tried a beer trap as a last resort:
The snails got drunk, had a party, ate some beans, and laughed.
All my snail compassion disappeared. Monday night I re-planted the lettuce rows with beans and filled in the holes in the existing bean rows, and I Escar-Go!’d my garden within an inch of its life.
So I think I’ve won the snail battle but my beans will be three weeks behind schedule. At least radishes grow safely underground, far away from snails:
*I think the issue with copper tape on the beans was I couldn’t make good border around the whole row. I have copper rings around the base of the tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplants and they’re happy and un-eaten.
Projects are still continuing here at Chez Crafty; they’re just going a little more slowly now that I want to be outside, have to control the snail plague in my garden (more on that tomorrow), and need to learn how to ride a bike again (yeah).
I’m working on a denim dress that should be finished soon, but I’m much more excited about the next project in line: finding a use for some truly awesome vintage fabric my grandmother in Nebraska gave me.
Here’s the fabric:
(Approximate time from laying down of fabric to arrival of cat: 2.2 seconds)
And here’s what I’m considering making with it:
It’s a robe/housedress from what looks like the very early 70’s, to put on in the morning and putter around the house in. I could even make a matching headscarf! (Hey, I already wear muumuus; I might as well embrace my inner 80-year-old.)
My only reservation is that a robe wouldn’t get as much public wear time as a dress, and that’s a shame because the fabric is SO fabulous. So I’m still considering.