10 things that make me happy
March 1, 2010
This cup of grapefruit juice*
I like orange juice and tomato juice, but I love grapefruit juice!
This lovely sunny day*
It is the last day of February. On days like this, you believe that spring is truly right around the corner, even though it’s Minnesota and you know there could easily still be stretches of sub-freezing temperatures.
Watching my cat spaz out with the twirling rainbows on the wall*
I have solar powered twirling crystals in my south window. Poor Dasie just never figures it out.
Saving 10–15 minutes in the morning by neither combing nor drying my hair*
On February 13, I stopped both combing my hair and giving it the tiny bit of blow drying that I do, just to see what would happen. I am not in the early stages of dreadlocks and my curls twist up less frizzily and more curly. The only downside is that all day I shed the loose hairs that were formerly removed during combing. Having that ten or fifteen extra minutes is well worth it to me.
Classical music on a Sunday afternoon*
In my quest to watch less tv, I have returned to doing something I used to twenty years ago, which is turning on public radio in the morning and enjoying it as the backdrop to the whole day.
How it’s light so much earlier in the morning
I know the time change will soon come and darkness will get another hour of morning time, but for now I’ll enjoy that it’s light when I should be thinking about getting up. It has been light when I do get up all winter …
That my rabbit feels better after having his teeth trimmed a couple of weeks ago
The watery eye has cleared up and Robbin seems to be in a better mood. I can even pet his head, something which he had shied away from for years. Now I know why.
The thought of planning my trip to London
I really must make time to do my tax return so that I can get going on this.
Video chat
It has been very satisfying getting to see people who I would otherwise have no opportunity to interact with “in person.”
Coffee in a paper cup
I don’t know why it is, but I really love drinking coffee from a coffee shop paper cup.
*pictured above
Rabbits and Pooh: it started when I was a baby
February 22, 2010
Well, of course it did, because I get it from my mother. She claims to have wheeled a bottle of Brer Rabbit Molasses around in a baby buggy when she was a girl. And she began indoctrinating me when I was just a baby. This is the earliest photo of myself that I have seen with regularity. It wasn’t enough for her to have her cute, happy baby in the middle of a giant bed. No, she posed a rabbit toy alongside. The osmosing of rabbit love began.
As I have gotten these photos together this week, I have remembered that when I was photographed as a child, these “candid” shots always included some prop to make the picture “more interesting.” If you think that stuffed rabbit just happens to be peeking out from behind the ottoman, you are mistaken.
I was just the right age to get in at the beginning of Winnie-the-Pooh’s popularity. So there was often a Pooh in the photo. This is Rubber Pooh that you’ll see in a few shots. He was—wait for it—rubber and jointed. He was a friend for a long time. He would wave to my mom while she was snapping the photo or just generally be a bystander in the shot. We really liked those big boxes.
Rabbits were never out of it for long. I can remember riding that rabbit-horse around the house. I sort of remember that I wasn’t allowed to take it outside so as not to “ruin” it. I may be wrong, but that’s how I think it was.
We have the quintuple bonus picture for my sixth birthday—Poohs and a rabbit, and opening a Winnie-the-Pooh stencil kit. That was back in the day when things didn’t have to have a screen and beep and vibrate for a kid to be entertained. I wore out my Spirograph. I can’t quite tell from the photo if I had melted Rubber Pooh’s nose just a little yet or not. I was playing with matches.
When I was a youngster, we summered at Indiana University while my dad worked summers only on his PhD. The campus featured a cute little stream where my mom and I spent a lot of time playing Poohsticks.
The rabbit thing came to fruition with the first live rabbit that either my mom or I had lived with. I’d tell you her name, but then you’d be able to steal my identity. We came to have this rabbit, Rabbit C, because the neighborhood papergirl, Penny W, brought along a box of baby bunnies one day when she was delivering the news. My mom got suckered in.
I was eight in that picture. I’m trying to remember if Rabbit C made the cross-state move with us when I was almost fifteen. I know a couple of years after the move, we had a different rabbit. I’m kind of thinking—yes, now I remember. She did not make the move with us and was interred in the front flower bed where I always used to plant marigold seeds. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I still love marigolds.
But within a couple of years after we moved, there was a new rabbit, and there has been one in my life ever since, whether successors to Rabbit C with my mom or, beginning when I was, I’m going to say, about 25, a rabbit of my very own.
Kelly D: what???s in a name?
February 21, 2010
Who were you named after? Your grandmother? Your uncle? I was named after a cartoon opossum. Okay, not exactly. I was named after an opossum’s cartoonist. Walt Kelly, to be exact, author and artist of the Pogo strip.
Pogo ran during the 1950s and ’60s; my mom was quite a fan. I guess there was little debate about what my first name would be. For my middle name, it was between Ann and Lynn. I’m glad Lynn won. I think I remember hearing that if I had been a boy, they would have named me Paul.
My mother corresponded with Walt Kelly for a while. It was at least long enough for her to report that I had been named for him. In return, he sent us his original pen and ink artwork for the strip from my birth day, pictured above. (For those of you who know me, isn’t it fun that the character Bun Rab appeared on that day?) When I was a youth, I remember its hanging on the wall where the hall took a little jog to my bedroom. Now that I think about it, I can’t say that I remember that it’s up anywhere in my parents’ current house, to where we moved when I was 15. No doubt it’s in a box in the basement.
As for our last name, no one’s quite sure of its origins. Our bloodlines are very majorly German, with just a wee dab of Scottish and Irish (in this context do you say Scottish or Scotch?). As near as we have figured it’s Bohemian, which is the more romantic-sounding way of saying eastern Slavic. But as I understand it, the first namesake to come to America traveled from England.
Oh, the things you learn when you call your parents to quiz them for information about your blog topic. An hour later and I now know the following.
It turns out that we’re fairly sure our D last name is Welsh. Bohemian was just one of the theories bandied about. The original D namesake, John, son of Henry and Elizabeth, was English and lived from 1728 to 1808. But that’s not the interesting part. He didn’t just “travel” to America from England. No. Young Master John, it seems, was kidnaped at age fourteen from a wharf in England to work as a ship’s helper on a vessel that was sailing for the New World.
“You mean as a ‘swab’?” I asked.
“Well, you could dress it up a little more than that,” replied my mother.
The ship landed in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, where John met a girl and proceeded to father fourteen children. In 1804, they migrated to Belmont County, Ohio. I grew up in Hardin County, Ohio. I had no idea about the details of this part of family history. My Grandpa D was born in 1907, so figuring 30 years per generation, John was my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. Not a close enough relative to get me a British passport.
My Grandpa D’s parents were D and Emery. My Grandma D’s were Zimmerman and something else German which I didn’t note quickly enough to pass on here. As I mentioned in the tale of my cuckoo clock, my mom’s side of the family is exclusively German. But yay, I have more English in me than I’ve been under the impression all these years. Instead of one-sixteen Scotch-Irish, I am one-eighth so. But still not enough to get me a British passport.
After I had all the D facts straightened out, I went back to my name. I asked my mom if she really liked Pogo that much or if it just makes a good story to say that they named me after Walt Kelly. She said, “Oh no, I was a big fan when I was younger! I wanted to name you Kelly, so your dad chose your middle name.” The boy name would have been Bruce Allen, my dad’s middle name and my maternal grandfather’s name.
I’m just glad they didn’t name me Pogo.
Well, someone had to say it, it might as well be me.
Pogo cartoon from this source. Check out page 27 for all the comics. It was a different time.
Perform a good deed
February 18, 2010
I am not a generous person. I have a hard time giving up my time, and an even harder time giving up my money. So when it came time to perform a good deed last week, my cavalier side came to the forefront. I noted that February is Pet Dental Health Month and that Robbin Rabbit was at the vet’s to have his teeth trimmed.
Rabbits’ teeth tend to overgrow, and it turns out that Robbin had a couple of doozies. For a while (like, a couple of years), I had seen that his one cheek seemed a little puffier than the other. He has had a chronically watering left eye as well. A few months ago, it began to occur to me that maybe these two things were a result of renegade teeth.
Due to a scratch in his right eye, I finally took Robbin in for a checkup (he’s an active, ridiculously healthy rabbit otherwise). The vet agreed that he needed to have his teeth done, which we scheduled after the course of antibiotics and ointment to treat the scratch.
Early in the day, I interpreted this as my good deed, as it was for a creature other than myself and it would make him feel significantly better.
It didn’t take long for me to begin feeling kind of shallow and frivolous presenting Robbin’s dental work as some sort of altruistic achievement. Maybe I would feel more fulfilled in life if I volunteered and did more good. Yet I don’t get around to it.
So inspired by someone else, I took a rare action and donated to Doctors Without Borders. It was a little baby donation of $20, less than the smallest amount that’s given a radio button on their online form. I could afford to give more, or to give similar small amounts to a number of causes.
I don’t want it to seem like I’m looking for congratulations or pats on the back, but at least I did a little something, and that’s way out of character for me.
[Note: because I haven’t figured out how to replace a photo on an entry, this is a repost with a larger image.]
1000 Paces: home to office
February 16, 2010
Here is an unprecedented look at my morning commute! The assignment was to walk 500 paces from your home and take a picture. That’s the big one in the middle. But I learned something unexpected—it is exactly 1000 paces from my home to my office coffee pot.
100 paces: I’m almost to the sidewalk along Cedar Avenue. That’s neighborhood institution Palmer’s Bar across the street and the Riverside Plaza highrises in the distance. (Pop culture note: In the Mary Tyler Moore Show, those highrises were where Mary moved to from her first apartment in the large house.)
200 paces: I’ve crossed the street and am walking along Cedar Avenue. On my right out of frame is the blue side door to one of the neighborhood mosques.
300 paces: Cutting through a parking lot at the edge of the highrises on my way to the light rail station.
400 paces: Taking a short cut through the driveway and between two other apartment buildings. (Pop culture note: some tiny indy movie was filmed here because these buildings were deemed to look like European apartment blocks. It’s more striking when you’re close-up, and I don’t know the name of the movie.)
500 paces: On the other side of the apartment building. There isn’t usually a truck blocking my way.
600 paces: About to cross onto the Cedar-Riverside Station light rail platform.
700 paces: I’m on the train!
800 paces: I’ve just left Nicollet Mall Station downtown and crossed the street.
900 paces: Approaching my work building which is out of frame on the right. I purposely looked to the left a little so that I could include the Shubert Theater in the frame. You may remember the Shubert Theater as a character in one of my early posts.
1000 paces: In the building, up the elevator to the 11th storey, into my office, and through to the kitchen. My coffee pot is the little one. In the almost fifteen years that I’ve worked for my company, I remain the only person who drinks decaf. But that’s in the morning. I enjoy regular coffee after lunch.
And there you have my ten minute journey. That was fun. I might have to do a series of these 1000 pace walks.
Collection: tasty beverage photos
February 15, 2010
My interest in taking photos of the beers and wines that I’ve sampled began in the summer of 2008. I’m trying to remember what the catalyst was, because I’ve liked better beers for a long time. I think I simply realized that it was an easy way to keep track of what I’ve tried.
So the first time I have something, I make a photographic record. You will notice a lot of five brands of beer—Lagunitas, Bell’s, Sierra Nevada, Summit, and Surly—because those are my favorites and there are many regular varieties of each, plus a steady output of seasonals and limited editions. And as I acquired the branded glassware for each of those breweries, I have retaken some of the photos so that the beer can be pictured in its native glass. I usually take three shots, so that if the focus is off, I have others to choose from. The top half of this photo are the ones that are already posted to my Flickr set. The bottom half is the unsorted backlog of new photos.Minnesot-ah: summer hoorah!
February 14, 2010
These photos sum up a lot about Minnesota. There is my Minnesota Twins baseball cap. There is a large fiberglass golden gopher (the state rodent). There is Summit Beer. There is Summit Beer on a stick. It is a gorgeous, sunny day at my perfect temperature of about 75°F/24°C. And all of this is happening at the Great Minnesota Get Together, otherwise known as the Minnesota State Fair.
If the temperature doesn’t go above 80°F, I love summer. If the relative humidity stays reasonable, I’m great. The Twin Cities are full of bike trails, golf courses, festivals, lakes, outdoor bar and restaurant seating, and everything else that takes advantage of our three week summer.
But the climax of the summer that everyone looks forward to is the State Fair. Probably the first thing anyone with experience would tell you is that at the State Fair, you can find just about anything on a stick. Sure, it’s mostly food items, but some non-solids find their way to stickdom, too—just look at my flight of little Summits (that’s Oktoberfest Red Ale, Extra Pale Ale, and Red Ale for those of you keeping track). There is a wide variety of music, exhibits, a sizable midway, and other entertainment. There is a grandstand. There are animals and agriculture. One wing of a building is dedicated to seed art. The Aquatennial Queen (a midsummer festival revolving around the Mississippi River and the many area lakes) has her head carved in butter. Or is that Princess Kay of the Milky Way? The downside to the State Fair is that it also signals the end of summer. It finishes its nearly two-week run on Labor Day (the first Monday in September here in the US). Summer work hours end, the kids go back to school, and you pack away your white clothing. Fortunately, winter doesn’t hit until at least the end of the month.Minnesot-ah: winter blah
February 12, 2010
I have said for a long time that winter is my favorite season. And this was after I moved to Minnesota. But this year, winter’s buggin’ me. Just take a look at my front yard.
I don’t know when I began actively liking winter. I remember enjoying snow as a kid in Ohio, especially that one year when there were snowdrifts up to the eaves and I burrowed out a snow cave in one of them. That was back in the days when parents still let their kids do stuff and didn’t freak out about safety or germs or whatever.
From Ohio, I went to Wisconsin, then to Minneapolis for a few years, back to a different part of Wisconsin, and then back to Minneapolis, where I’ve been since fall 1994 (my word, where does the time go?).
It must have been in the last ten years or so that I decided winter was my favorite. This probably coincides with aging and generally getting overheated more easily, so the summer heat became less appealing and easy cooling more so. I know it’s not because I adore winter sports such as ice fishing and snowmobiling.
A lot does go on during the Minnesota winter, as people try to embrace this thing that happens for half the year. St Paul has a perfectly nice Winter Carnival with activities such as an ice castle and medallion treasure hunt.
I think what’s annoying me this year is the below average temperatures that are keeping everything crusty. We haven’t had any more snow than usual, and certainly not even close to what has happened on the East Coast this year. But we have been suffering with those well-below-freezing temperatures. I’m sick of bundling up (though I’m quite fond of my sleeping bag-esque down coat that makes it more bearable by about 10°F; in other words, I can wait ten more degrees before I have to add the long underwear), I’m sick of slipping on icy patches created by 24-hour “warm-ups” followed by immediate freeze-downs, I’m sick of darkness, and I miss sitting on my front step for Home Happy Hour.
Summer, where are you?
The robot is in the mosaic
February 10, 2010
It started out as a simple homage to my favorite color which, other than black, is green, I guess, of the lime and chartreuse varieties. Green Robot is a little darker green than I prefer, but it seemed a pity not to invite him into the picture to liven up the Post-It and note pads. Can you see him? It’s easier when it’s thumbnail sized. Or maybe it’s just because I know what the original looks like.
I had uploaded the original, unadulterated photo. Then my friend uploaded his own homage which was in mosaic form and I was off to the races. I realized that making mosaics is an interesting way to develop color palettes and that for me, a graphic designer, it could be a useful tool. I certainly don’t think I’m the first one who ever thought of doing that, but to paraphrase the NBC network’s former marketing slogan, if I haven’t done it, it’s new to me.
So I went back and mosaicked several other photos, in both 50 pixel and 100 pixel tiles. It was fun! You can see them here. I like the larger tiles better. If you want to see the originals, you’ll have to look back at various days on Tweak Today—I’m too lazy today to make any kind of effort to pull everything into one location. The image titles in Flickr roughly correspond to the mission titles on Tweak Today.
Stacks and piles
February 10, 2010
I like to say that I never finished moving in four years ago. I suppose it’s more accurate to say that I never finished unpacking. It’s entirely true that I simply have too much crap.
Meet my kitchen table. I used to eat meals on it, back when it was in my former apartment. But ever since it moved into my condo, it has pretty much been in this state. I have yet to sit at it and eat a meal. There is plenty of room to put all that stuff elsewhere.
It just hasn’t seemed very important to liberate it. It is in a disadvantaged location. I informally envision that I would sit at the near end in this photo, which is out of eyeshot of my main television. If I sat at the other end, I’d be able to see my small, auxiliary TV. I have never though that I’d sit at the long side, because who wants to face a blank wall?
That I live alone also instills no sense of urgency about the project. I have a quite large desk that is in eyeshot of the big TV and that makes a very nice dinner table. Even the cats eat there (though that’s because my desk is the only stable, easy-to-get-to location for their food that is inaccessible to my mountain goat of a rabbit).
It becomes inconvenient when my parents visit, but we have gotten used to gathering at the coffee table in the front room for those group meals. On their last visit, though, my mom brought a little TV table because she had gotten tired of bending over to her plate on the low coffee table. (We were never plate-in-the-lap eaters.)
The kitchen table isn’t the only location that suffers from piles of stuff. Even the high-traffic front corner of my desk is always fighting off a stack. This one developed over the course of a 24-hour stretch when I thought I was going to get to some writing, which I do on my laptop. There was the envelope of related work materials, a catalog from our main client, a new book that I’m trying to get to reading, and the TV and stereo remotes and my iPhone, which always live on that corner. Then I grew the stack by adding nearby items, just for fun.
I have been trying to gear up to follow along with the Fly Lady, who gets you to declutter by tackling it 15 minutes at a time. Seems pretty reasonable, if I’d only actually do it. Maybe tomorrow. Probably not.
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 