The debate of Northern Virginia vs. the rest of the Commonwealth isn't new, you know. It's been going on for quite a long time- It started to really rumble again of late, with the recent passing and subsequent striking down by the VA Supreme Court of the "Regional Transportation Authority." It's been making enough noise for campaign rhetoric to find and seize upon. Now, it's a rolling boil, and I wonder how "real" Richmond will seem should the capital end up going for Obama.

( rant on 'WTF is real, anyway' behind the cut, for brevity.Collapse )

HAPPY BIRTHDAY sivrid!!!

When you fight and struggle against something, and emerge victorious, it's often appropriate for some sort of memorial event.

If one has caught a giant fish, one might pose for the camera, holding it up. Of course, someone's got to be there, with a camera.

Holding up a giant fish, perhaps holding up only one's hands, to indicate the one that got away can be commemorative, but you have to have a reeeally nice frame, I think, to get away with that particular shot.

Some people like to mount the fish and put it up on the wall in the local pub, for all to see:.

They finally rested upon a dusty old glass-case, fixed very high up above the chimney-piece, and containing a trout. It rather fascinated me, that trout; it was such a monstrous fish. In fact, at first glance, I thought it was a cod.

"Ah!" said the old gentleman, following the direction of my gaze, "fine fellow that, ain't he?"


======

Today I did some yard work, and wrestled a bit with this extremely annoying tree stump. I have now commemorated the struggle in what is no doubt an appropriate manner. Unfortunately, however, we find ourselves in this house without a mantel, or a large entry hallway with lots of room to hang trophies underneath the chandelier.

I'm out of plaster, too, so I just had to use wood.

Off and on, I've played with doing stock photography as part of my photo-biz. I haven't committed one way or the other, but I did decide a while back, it'd be tourist spots and critters, but no people. What you put up for stock, you're going to have little or no say- maybe even knowledge- of how it's used.

Subjects in stock photography need a model release- any use in a commercial application is an implicit tie between a recognizable individual and a product. And whether I know a person or not, I'd feel a BIT bad if they turned up in an ad for something that might prove awkward. ( Very awkward.Collapse )

So Phyllis Richman, former food critic for the Post, has a bit of a diatribe up about plate snatching in restaurants. I probably wouldn't have followed the link, except that when we went out last week for dinner on our anniversary, the diving, bobbing and weaving of hands for plates was so stark, I was a bit taken aback. The part that struck me:

Dining is a communal activity, and table manners were designed to reflect that. Just as it is considered impolite for one person to start eating before everyone at the table has been served, it traditionally has been seen as rude for a waiter to remove one diner's plate before everyone at the table is through.

But manners change. Or in this case, restaurateurs are trying to change them. Servers are removing dishes one by one, as soon as they are emptied -- or even before. Rest your fork for a second, or lean back for a moment's stretch, and your dinner will disappear. The slowest eater is left with her plate a lone island on an empty table. The justifications are lame: Either the kitchen staff wants to pace the dishwashing, the dining room staff is trying to keep the meal moving along, or the busboy is trying to look busy. By now, a few diners are so accustomed to it that they've started to feel offended if their plates sit empty before them.

Ok- so I didn't spend much growing up time in the states, and my manners are probably yet another round peg on a square placemat. I eat Continental Style, not American Style. While I can strip fried chicken to nothing with my knife and fork, I totally cannot sit to the right of someone eating American Style (me being a lefty compounds this.) And the rule is, when you are done with your meal, you lay your knife and fork, placed together with handles resting on the plate rim, but straight through the middle of the plate. Since your knife is always on the right, the fork always on the left, that they're together signifies that you're done, and the waiter may pick up the plate at his or her convenience. I guess I'm coming across as horribly provincial, here, but I do find this a bit baffling-- don't people do that in the States? Is there some subtle hint one is supposed to use that I'm clueless about?

It makes sense- that means the waiter isn't carrying a catastrophically huge pile of plates back when everyone's done, it helps get the table cleared faster for the next table occupants, and yet it manages to not make the person eating feel rushed. As someone who has chronically eaten more quickly than others at the table, it certainly does make me feel more awkward when I've got no plate in front of me, it points out something I'm not necessarily comfortable with- instead of letting me fidget a bit with the plate, knife and fork, and put them down for plate pickup when it's closer to the end of the meal for everyone. (This is further enforced by ending up eating a bite or two of DS's food if he doesn't want to finish- something that's one of those Mom-punishments, and harder to do with no cutlery or plate..)

I guess, If nothing else, this makes me feel better about telling waiters, "I'm not ready for my plate to be picked up, yet." Would that they were just plain psychic.

Wikipedia's clearly achieved a certain amount of legitimacy- I'm more and more seeing Wiki cited as a reference for something, without any other correlating references, so I guess of course, if it's in Wikipedia, it must be accurate, right?

[Mmmm, lovely kool-aid.]


Anyhoo, in a TOTALLY unrelated (natch) note, little over a week, DH and I will be celebrating 19 years of weddedness. (yay!) I like the idea of anniversary themes. I so totally suck at picking out gifts, and the more the person means to me, the harder it is to chose the perfect one. So I tend to go into thrashing spins when it comes time to getting something for DH. Nothing's ever quite RIGHT! Having anniversary themes (first- paper, second- cotton, etc.) not only provides some structure for me to work with, but also takes some of the pressure off of me.

DH helpfully did some research to help out (thanks, honey!) and came up with...

( WTF?!?!?Collapse )

Now that the web's getting better at searching- rhetorical questions fired to the universe at large get answered. Typing "WHY haven't my tomatoes ripened yet?" returns major echoes of the same answer- basically: "They can't ripen when it's over 85 degrees." Hopefully with this weather cooloff, (not to exceed 85 all week) I'll have several tomatoes in the near future.

One day, I won't have to type it. I'll just get frustrated, stand in my garden surrounded by green tomatoes, and growl "Why aren't you red, yet?" at them- and my personal tech will deluge me with 50 zillion answers, temperature sensing, and a weather forecast to boot.

But if I ever just shout "WHY?!?!?!" rhetorically to an uncaring universe... it had better know not to answer.

( How I spent my weekendCollapse )
( Lesson in 'choosing a useful unit of measure'Collapse )

This week's mega-food-scare brought to you by the nightshade family noble Tomato.

Of course, this means they'll be harder to find anywhere. And the ones in my side yard are still green. So when I've been out running the soaker hose, or weeding, I've been thinking 'red' at them. They're still green.

Today's attack on via science: Hasten the ripening of the little greenlings by tossing them into photoshop.



I'll be sure to post if this works.

Meanwhile, from today's WaPo:
Food safety officials are trying to track the source of the contaminated tomatoes by interviewing people who became ill. Some of the people could report nothing more specific than that the tomatoes were round and red. (Ref: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR2008061003019_pf.html)

Well, at least I'm on the right track... The square ones must not be tomatoes.

So,

Now that the oak pollen has come and gone, I can start biking over to Giant/Target. The rules now need to be "no car to Beacon Mall unless I'm getting something too big or heavy to safely pedal it home, there's lightning, or I am wheezing." At least until it gets cold again.

The difference between a road bike with thin tires, and inner tubes, carrying a couple hundred pound load and a automobile tire, no tubes, carrying a couple thousand pound load: Cars get ~30psi. Mountain bikes get ~50-60. Road bikes can get, depending on the tire, 80-100 or some even higher. This is good, the rims don't get knocked out of alignment as fast, you get "there" faster and with less pedalling effort, and you don't need as much absorbing the shock of rolling over roots and rocks and small rodents, like if you're on a mountain bike.

Had to stop by local oil-change-place to get some air, 'cause my back tire was way low, and got a look I haven't gotten in a while. Translation: "Dumb lady doesn't know what she's doing, wanting to blow up her tires." So I had "help," meaning I got a slightly underinflated tire- the guy wouldn't fill it up as much as I wanted, (I could still push my thumb into it,) didn't let me see the gauge on his pump, I'm sure he was convinced if he dared put in that much, I'd have a blowout. "Wanna read the sidewalls, man?" Unfortunately, my tires had the PSI ratings printed on, not molded in... and they're old enough it's worn off. But it was far better than the oh, about 10 that was in there before, much faster ride coming back home.

Looking the tires over for the PSI rating did bring to my attention, tho- I need to replace the ones on my beater/shopping bike before dry rot sets in. When I get the new set, I should dry brush neon paint over the sidewalls where it says "80-100 psi." Some people seriously CANNOT believe I know of what I speak, which bugs me far more than the amount of tire pressure I could get. Last I checked, REI had those Continental commuter tires with the reflective sidewalls. Most tempting.