ase

Last week I started working for a car-share program in San Francisco. It's nice to know I'm slowing down the savings hemorrhage, and the employee discount on vehicle use is a major perk, but being physically instead of mentally exhausted by 7 PM is a significant change in how things are done.

( SF Pride parade, with bonus annotated Mayor On Parade snapshot. )

I think I made a friend! We're hanging out tonight! I've been terrified that I'd get out here and discover all of my friend-making skills have atrophied, but apparently I have a few left.

Lilith Fair will be at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View on July 5th. I'm tempted to nab a couple of $10 tickets, reserve a car (see "perks of working for carshare program") and fill up the car. Locals, anyone in? Lilith Fair trip canceled on account of missing the window for $10 tickets. Whoops!

( In 480x640 under the cut )

Today I went to Ocean Beach (see first picture) and people were setting up fires and parties on the beach. I'm torn by the intrinsically awesome combination of beach fire and the logical consequences of fire plus ocean winds. Peanut butter in my chocolate, or mint in my orange?

I promise more beach pictures: a significant moving incentive was learning I could get to the beach on public transit in less than an hour. Going by my "don't spend more time in transit than at the destination / activity" rule of thumb, this works out to significant beach time.

Or, what happens when I am out of work four days running: I get creative in the kitchen.

( Recipe under the cut. )

Notes: this was an attempt to combine a bland recipe with rice with a spiced version of lentil soup. If I were going to do this again, I would either reduce the amount of rice and lentils, or I would try doubling the spices (except the garlic and chile de arbol - the chile was doubled, oh my dripping nose) and using more sausage. Also, the picture isn't great. Next time I must remember to remove the soup to an attractive bowl before trying to get a snapshot.

Tonight I had brownies and soy milk instead of dinner. If you'd had my day you might have done the same.

Also, they were delicious, gooey brownies make from scratch. M. - not an unbiased audience - was appreciative.

( Delicious pictures behind cut. )

On further consideration, I like about half of one album of Jordin Sparks. Also, I didn't realize she sang "Tattoo", which I loathe nearly as much as "Teardrops on my Guitar". I am not in high school, and I was a cynic when I was.

Today's adventures: thunderstorms, rainbows, biking to the library on damp streets, picking up holds, getting drenched in the second line of storms, and getting called in for roommate whatever nearly before I got the bike back in the house. I'm not sure if M wanted a wingman for her drive to Border's, or if she sincerely thought putting more books in my path was a favor, but at least I got to wash the road spatter off before we drove to Border's. M. walked out with a journal, and I walked out with The Best Science Writing of 2007, discounted to $4, which pretty much encapsulates the roommate vibe.

Rainbow pictures are pretty similar, but have ( today's rainbow. )

Biking was absolutely the right thing to do; I may need to get back on the library exercise program (put book on hold, bike to library for pickup) to make myself do it more often.

Okay, it all makes sense now: Teardrops on My Guitar was written by Taylor Swift when she was seventeen. Love Story has no excuse. But the arrangement stands up in piano and cello mashup.

(It turns out I like my country a little bloodcurdling, like the Dixie Chick's Goodbye Earl and SHeDAISY's A Night to Remember.)

Also known to show up on my music playlists: Lonestar ("borrowed" from my sister several years ago), Big & Rich, LeeAnn Womack. It turns out I really like country-pop crossover.

I left my mp3 player at my desk when I broke for the door today, which is probably for the best, since I'd just load it with ridiculous quantities of guitar.

I went looking for a topically appropriate picture and found nothing. I need to go to more concerts. In the meantime, can I break for an ode to macro settings? I use mine to fake depth of field all the time when I'm taking small-scale pictures. Macro is my favorite setting on my camera. So have a pretty flowering plant of known species. If I just killed your bandwidth dead, tell me and I will stop posting 640x480 pics unless they're behind a cut.

I've only taken 400 pictures with my new camera! I've had it... okay, almost a month. But I must use my camera more!

According to reviews, the SX-110 is programmed to shoot a bit warm, but I am biased toward cooler casts - especially in winter - so I tend to use the "full sun" and tungsten white balance presets a lot. I'm also prone to shooting a bit dark, since I blithely assume I can recover details and brighten shots in Photoshop. Just about the only thing I leave to the camera is the focusing, because trying to manually focus a point and shoot doesn't seem worth the effort. Dad has agreed to let me borrow his camera "for a weekend" at some point, so I'm going to try to kidnap it sometime before May.

In the meantime, pictures.

( Four for starters. )

Hypochondriac and prone to TMI, maybe, but probably not suffering from chemical imbalance.

How long does it take to eat a pound of strawberries? If you're me, about 18 hours from arrival in kitchen.

The week-long search for the DVD remote unearthed a missing chain and pendant that disappeared right after Thanksgiving. I'll be wearing it this weekend. For the record, midnight is not the time to suddenly wonder if hostels carry 1.) towels, 2.) bedsheets, and realize 3.) your overnight kit does not commonly include soap.

I offloaded my first batch of pics from the new camera, from Friday night's party, and - wait, what party? The party I thought was Saturday night, until I got home from work, and thought to check the address on the evite. I persevered in the face of tragedy, called a cab to meet me at the metro, called the hostess twice to get directions when the cab driver got lost, and got to the party, where I had a really great time, but the pictures that looked fine on a 3" LCD are unacceptably grainy on the laptop's 15.4" screen. So the ISO 800 and 1600 settings are right out except in times of crisis. (I guess I'm going to have to get past that flash hate. Way to destroy the sneaky party picture-taking.)

Also, my camera's movie mode has no audio. Since this is supposed to be my all-purpose camera, this is a big problem for parties. But hey, cheap camera today, expensive bells and whistles with flourishes camera in 2010.

I object to academic writing. Fine, your discipline has no useful vocabulary, so stop repeating the same words with different emphasis and invent some vocabulary. I encourage the lit-studying crowd to make like science and steal words from dead languages. If you have to, make portmanteaus and other mashups, though I will mock you in the margins. (Science has its own problems, like the linguistic path that gave us metabolome, or like when the syndrome and the gene and the protein are all named different things, and you wind up with equals-this tables on stickies peeling off the sides of your screen, but I digress.) I guess I fail at academic writing, because I am entertained to a certain point by interrogating the narrative, and then I say, "So, feminism, activism, other isms, but do you know what would be awesome? What if there was an accident with an alien device, and Johnnie Rico and the rest of his platoon grew wings?" and I'm back in popcorn-throwing mode.

(For the record, if Johnnie Rico grew wings, you be out of Starship Troopers aca-mode and into Gundam Wing fanfic. 'Tis a far, far better thing I do in anime fandom than I have ever done in the Western SF canon.)

Off to catch a bus, or try to. I will have my cell phone but no internet access until Monday night.

Dear beloved external hard drive (late April 2007 - about now),

When I named you after Rosalind Franklin, I had no idea what I was intimating for your lifespan. Please cough up my music mixes. Now.

Sadly, A.

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Now that I have my bonus in hand, and have hit my minimum savings goals, it's hardware time. Since I can get a 1 TB external now for the same price I paid for 350 GB in 2007, the only question is: can my ancient desktop handle modern peripherals?

The other big hardware purchase is the camera. (Camera!) I'm looking at the Canon SX110is with a thoughtful eye. ( Angst by analysis follows for the photo junkies. )

If anyone has anything to say about the SX110, now would be a really good time to weigh in.