Quotidian Quotes

While doing everyday, average things, I ran across three quotes today that impressed or entertained me enough to write them down, which is not so usual.

"While making decisions, one must be both a citizen a consumer."
It was from NPR about choosing what fish to eat or not eat, but I think it speaks to a larger sentiment about why sometimes "market forces" aren't the best answer for solving problems. Because "the market" doesn't always, or even generally, reward citizen behavior in the short term. We find that treating people and our environment better improves things in the long term, but those EPA regs and code updates can be a PITA today. A 20 year homeowner has a different payout on the geothermal home heater than a house flipper does.

"He knows when to turn the lightsaber on"
David Plouffe on the Daily Show, responding to Jon Stewart's crack about Obama being a Jedi knight, as a response to Obama's conservative, measured (perceived slow) steps.

Nuts, there's another one, but it'll have to wait until I check my post-it board at work. (When at a loss, there's my perennial favorite of Beavis saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna get me some N-m-Ns and spank my monkey".) EDITED to add the quote in question:
"The old tunes, played more loudly, are all that's needed."
referencing the assumptions made to direct political strategy of right-wing Republicans. Unfortunately, IMHO, this strategy can work pretty effectively in the short and mid-terms. It's only when the response falls outside the "did not/did too" level of interaction that this starts not to be true, and that has been something most Democrats don't seem to grasp. So I liked the quote but the explanation is depressing. Back to thinking about, "I wish I was a baller/ I wish I was a little bit taller/ I wish I had a phone and a girl/ I could call her." which was the video B&B were critiquing that generated the N-m-Ns quote.

The Decider

good things today

Instead of waiting until the last minute, before lunch I prepared both my (very quick) power point slides for tomorow morning's presentation. This gave my boss an opportunity to give them the once over and tweak any awkward phrasing to be more politic, even though she was in meetings most of the day. And the documents that get signed off after the presentation? Also good to go and submitted before 5pm, so I'm not here late because I have to be, but because I'm surfing the web *just long enough* that I will make it to yoga at 7:30.

On another project that has annoying complexities, it's been a struggle to figure out how to route a particularly pesky procedure through our tracking system. Most of the options involve way too much work, so the project is lingering and is not something anyone wants to do. I sat down with some people today and hammered out a reasonable solution that will be both quick to implement and not too terrible to live with. We can always change it later, but I think it's the most gain for the least pain. Having a solution has already reduced my stress level. Yay! Decision made!

I'm feeling appreciably better today, even after deciing to go back for allergy shots yesterday. (I skipped twice in october due to flu shot and illness. Usually I don't skip.)

I'm on track for visiting friends in Boston! Through some fluke email search I ran across a listing I'd made about a year ago of all the people I miss pretty regularly. It hasn't changed much and brough tears to my eyes, so even though a weekend trip the week before a holiday might seem odd and rushed, it'll be good. I decided to go, bought the ticket, and now it's a done deal.

I really like my shirt combination today. I bought some heather-type-purple jobbie made of very thin knit at Anthropologie recently. It's got a floppy cowl neck and flared sleeves.
Like this only more purple. The sleeves and neck look great on me, but the belly region is a disaster. This is ok as I bought it to layer with. I totally love it.
I unconventionally paired it with brown slacks and a rust orange short sleeve Vera Wang number (from recent Kohls shopping extravaganza, though it must be last season's because I can't find a picture anywhere) and a simple silver herringbone necklace (gold would have been better but I don't have a gold necklace in that style) and my usual rings. I love this outfit. I'm not sure how it looks to anyone else, but to me the colors compliment rather than clash, and the flared sleeves are fun. Their length extends the wearable days of the smaller shirt. I think I'll keep it as an outfit.

Time for yoga!

You Say Potato

With the troop levels in Afghanistan partly dependent on a stable Afghan government, there was lots (and lots) of jabber on the news today about how the Karzai regime and Afghans in general need to "be free of corruption" in order for the government to work. Am I the only one who finds this to be utterly ridiculous as a near term goal?

Wikipedia, for one source, goes into the many, many paths of political corruption and reminds us "In some nations, corruption is so common that it has gained normative status." meaning that pretty much all transactions occurring between two (or three) parties are contingent upon bribery, nepostism, cronyism, graft, kickbacks and the like. Forgive me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Afghanistan one of those places that literally functions on the extra cash being funneled under the table?

When we ask for them to remove "corruption" from their government, who is defining the corruption? If the transaction involves a "normative" level of extra-legal grease that is so routine that it occurs when one buys coffee or fixes a bicycle, why would someone think it was odd to also require it for drawing government forms or getting a job? Now don't think that my incredulity here is in some way condoning corruption as a way of life or governing. I think removing corruption is a fine goal and especially necessary if the repressed and minorities have any hope of living a decent life. But I think corruption is defined much like pornography and speeding: anything more than what you do is illicit and crazy; anything less is amateur if not obstructionist. Corruption is a moving target. One could discuss its removal day in, day out for years but unless specific rules are laid down (fishing licenses cost $35, no more, no less, yes for you too), investigated, enforced, and treated seriously, it'll be business as usual.

Add to that, changing a normative behavior generally takes a generation. In the case of countries where the average age of the populace is less than 15, there's a hope this could cycle faster than ours where the average age is over 30 and a large number of voters are over 65. But it's not going to happen this year, next year, or during our next political cycle. And making demands for reform to happen now, Now, NOW! just strikes me as being infantile and pandering. But I guess jabber about setting up incentives to strive for measurably reduced corruption years from now doesn't lead the infotainment headlines. And may not even be something we ever have any say in, if the government actually resumes autonomy.

Goes Wriggling through the Grass

I'm not sure if I slept too much or if I needed to sleep too much but my weekend has been lousy with a lot of sleep. To counter the slugs, I went on my usual hike. (The hike which I skipped for most of the summer due to snakes - saw a teeny tiny rattler today who took his own sweet time getting off the trail.) I climbed for 15 minutes, including stopping to breathe and chat about snakes with fellow hikers, and reached my lowest elevation yet for that milestone but was still plenty ready to turn around and head back, being totally winded.

I was reading some stuff online and came across a really concise definition of buffers in the blood and cells, and how we alter the acid/base levels in either. The bit that interests me most is this: when the acid levels from lactic acid get too high, we breathe harder. It mentions breathing harder after climbing several flights of stairs, but even living in a 4th floor walkup, I was often feeling winded after one or two flights, even when in shape. My mom is that way too. We also tend to build muscle really easily. So I wonder if my heavy breathing is more from making more lactic acid than I ought to, or from being astoundingly out of shape. Or a combination of both. Anyway, it's something I'm ruminating on.

Also, it has occurred to me that it's been a while since posting my happy items. Here are some recent ones:

• The local mechanic found something to fix while my car is still under warranty, and the look-see only cost about $20.


• I have a job with sick days. My vacation might not be as advertised, but the job pays the bills and doesn't force me to work when sick.


• I seem to have avoided the worst of the plague going around. I'm sick, and it appears to be lingering, but I can still breathe (mostly), and talk, unlike many of my colleagues who have gotten clobbered by this thing and have gone hoarse from a sore throat and/or coughing. Me, I'm mostly feeling stuffy (helped by sinus rinse) and sleepy (helped by sleeping), and thus that I'm not living up to my potential ("I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and goshdarnit, people like me" or "being sick is not vacation"), but it's clear I'm getting off easy.


• It looks like I will be able to see friends AND family this november
  
• One more- I don't think it can be overstated how much better life is with in-unit laundry.

Trick or Treat

Colleagues came to the rescue in the party photo arena. I snatched the pictures of the fun food to share here. Longer account is in going green.

First, my favorite fruit salad, Demon Eyeballs!


Less scary, but the winning food, ghostly meatloaf


My sister's fingers! (I went as a green witch)


And the hardest thing to actually dig into...
Kitty Litter Cake!


Enjoy, enjoy!

Phantom Tonsilitis

I'm not sure if I caught the office bug from the colleague's Halloween party or if I was a little sick last week and relapsed this week, or if I just really, really, really want a sabbatical. But I've been out sick for a couple days this week, mostly sleeping. And trying not to puke. My main symptom seems to be feeling nauseous. I'm tired, my throat hurts where my tonsils used to be, I get a little dizzy at odd times, and I'm sucking down papaya pills like there's no tomorrow. The papaya enzymes are working their magic, but they wear off. I feel good for 4 hours or so, then I try to remember to pop more papaya (and fail), then feel horrible for an hour or so then feel ok for a while, then horrible. The grims sort of sneak up on me and catch me by surprise.

Which is to say that I wore myself out today by going to work, then felt grim for a few hours, then felt just fine for a couple hours, and am now confused. I'm going to head to be "early" (it's 11...) and hope for the best. But when the only thing I feel like eating for dinner is beer (one Sam's winter), a dozen pringles and a couple of ritz crackers, it doesn't make me think I'm firing on all cylinders. To back that up, I also bought my first box of wine!

Going Green

I've continued my non-fiction reading into why and how people make decisions. I'm reading an insightful, if clunky, book right now that is basically despairing over our need/desire/expectataion to find the optimal solution for every decision. The despair is because when you give too much attention to every one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions you make every day, the fear of making a sub-optimal choice can be paralyzing. I identified very much with his assessment of someone who spends too much time reaching for an ideal solution instead of settling for and being happy with a solution that is sufficient - it meets all necessary criteria and gets the job done. May not be the best, most creative, most elegant, shortest, longest, or cheapest solution, but it will serve and the solution doesn't require more than that.

I was reading this on tuesday when I realized that the reason I didn't have a halloween costume picked out for tonight's party was that I hadn't picked the *best* costume. I didn't want to recycle Medusa or the cactus. I didn't have time to make Maleficent - and I don't have the paint on latex the headdress, as I envision it, requires. (someday... someday!) I thought about what I did and didn't have available to me and decided just to be a regular ol witch. I had black clothes, I figured I could make a hat, and I had an embarrassment of green eye shadow just waiting to be used as foundation. Dressed up with a black cat pin, a black and silver bat and spiderweb table runner as a wrap, and a homemade hat, I made it to the party in costume, got positive feedback, and had a perfectly good time. I did not win best costume, but I did not feel the need to win, nor did this detract from my enjoyment. Top costume honors rightfully went to Jon&Kate+2 (my part asian co-worker and his blonde wife were rocking the look so well it was truly frightening) and Princess Leia (who came with Darth Vader and their two Jedi Knights with light sabers - yes, Darth dad had a light saber!).

I probably put more effort into the food which people enjoyed too. I made witches fingers and demon eyeballs. The fingers are breadsticks - dye dinner roll dough green, roll into small logs, slash twice across the middle for the knuckle and use egg wash to stick an almond half or slice on the end as a fingernail. (This dough wasn't as tasty as it could have been, but they tasted ok and looked really eerie.) The demon eyeballs are lychees and/or longans from a can stuffed with cherries from canned cherry pie filling. I put them together the night before and covered with lychee syrup, then today I transferred them to a decorative bowl with a few ice cubes and a squeeze of lemon. They go pretty well as a sangria-like addition to party wine.

My foodstuffs got honorable mention. Runner up was a fantastic box of kitty litter. In truth, devils food cake with crumbs on top to make it look like litter, decorated with distorted tootsie rolls. It was served in a (New!) cat box with a litter scoop. It looked tasty when sliced and put on a plate, but straight up, there was some serious "I don't wanna!" going on. Top food honors went to the J&K costume winners for a Good Eats meatloaf shaped into a ghost and 'frosted' with mashed potatoes. I'm not sure how they blackened the ketchup to draw on the eyes and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing not to know.

To sum up. My costume, while not the best ever, was actually pretty good. Certainly sufficient to the task. I really enjoyed doing the green face makeup, even if it did take a while to scrub off. My witch fingers, while not the best ever, looked fantastic and were sufficient to the task. The lychee eyeballs were fun and delicious. I have a couple pictures but not the means to upload them just now, so I went with yet another text only post. My costume probably looks better in your imagination anyway.

Let me know what costume ideas you've got for this year and if it's your best possible effort or just enough to get by and still enjoy yourself.