Not A Verb

I've found a site that I want to print out and leave at everyone's desks at work: notaverb.com. It makes the case conclusively that "login" is not a verb (if you don't want to read the page, use it as two words). This makes me unreasonable happy--as does the conclusion on the "login" page:

If you take only one thing away from this page, take that one fact: "login" is not a verb. Educate others. Correct manuals, software, and web pages as you find them. Tell everyone you know that "login" is not a verb. You will make a pedant (me) happy. You will earn the respect of grammar nazis. Most importantly, you will know the truth.

Toby Says:

"Do we have to get up today?"

Baby, I wish we didn't.

(I was counting last night and realized I'd cranked out 12 voiceover scripts in three weeks. No wonder I'm not excited to go to work!)

Tuesday Project Roundup: The Summer Of The Skirt Continues

Hey look, a pencil skirt in a bright print--bet you haven't seen anything like that before!
It's the same Burda pattern that I used on all the others, and it goes together in under two hours now. The fabric is a print from designer Heather Ross' collection inspired by fairy tales. I went with generic roses, but the Owl and the Pussycat fabric was tempting.
I have one more dress planned for summer, but lately all I can think about is fall and fall sewing--which makes me feel kind of disloyal to the season. I was secretly happy about the rain and the coolness last night. (Sorry, summer.)

Mad Men Music Monday

How great was the first episode of Mad Men season 4 last night? I loved seeing Peggy like that and the ending was fantastic, with Don and his whiskey and this song:

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Today is Raymond Chandler's birthday. Here's one of my favorite quotes, talking about Phillip Marlowe setting up a chess problem for himself:
[It was] ...a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

2. With the windows open at night, I've been hearing some rustling in the front sometimes. It's not human-sized rustling, but I've wondered what creature is doing it (mice? snails? there are a lot of snails here). This morning at 4:00 it woke me (and Toby) up again and I looked out to see a mama raccoon and FOUR big babies. They seemed to be eating snails. Carry on, raccoons.

Thursday Poem

I like today's poem; it sounds like the blues. (A minor seventh is the interval between the opening two notes of "There's a Place for Us," by the way.)

Minor Seventh

by Jeffrey Bean

Foghorns, grackles, wheat fields sighing in wind. The night
hawk's ricochet. You better come on in my kitchen. Mixolydian
trumpet runs boiling up the Mississippi, turning into urban
blues and smokestacks over Gary, Indiana. Hymns. Grief.
The hiss of sprinklers in timber yards, brawl of log trucks
crawling up Mt. Hood. Chainsaws, see-saws, sneakers,
squeaking in high school gyms. Have you driven a ford lately?
Field hollers. Sorrow. Fat fathers riding their mowers' thick
Chords. Throngs of Santa Clauses all across Wisconsin ringing
bells in snow in front of Wal-Marts. Musac at Costco, Osco,
Piggly Wiggly, Winn-Dixie. Arawaks' shouting, the Santa
Maria creaking onto shore. Cell phones, car alarms, laptops,
the air raid siren's range. Achy Breaky Heart in the flamingo
light of roller rinks. The wheeze of progress. The forests of
Mississippi echoing with Me and the devil was walking side by side.
Grind of church organs, cotton gins, sledge hammers
knocking into granite. No one listening to Monk play
Crepuscule with Nellie at The Open Door. Toyotas starting,
crows screaming, a rabbit snatched by an owl. Gimme a pigsfoot
and a bottle of beer. Reverend Dimmesdale speaking in tongues
of flame. Michael Buffer crooning Let's get ready to rumble!
Chants at NBA games. Weeping. St Louis woman, where's your
diamond ring?

Happy Birthday, Papa!

No, it's not my father's birthday--it's Papa Hemingway's!

Hem and his cat.

There are a lot of old interviews with him floating around the internet--one from The Paris Review has this gem:

HEMINGWAY [asked about the amount of revising he does]: It depends. I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.

INTERVIEWER : Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?

HEMINGWAY: Getting the words right.

Amen, brother.

Tuesday Project Roundup: Vacation Wear (I Wish)

Here's that button-back top pattern from last month again. I tweaked the fit a little (lower neckline, longer sleeves, more room all over) and made it in a good cotton, and indeed I like it a lot more now.

I was going to add a collar, too, but I decided the print was enough. I also like how the plain neck makes it look like vacation wear from 1963:

Now I just need a vacation...

(Screenshot from Mad Men taken from the fabulous Tom and Lorenzo blog. If you're not reading their posts on "Mad Style," you should be.)

Hot

I don't know why the heat is bothering me so much this year--maybe because it's hotter than it ever got last year? Because it hasn't been cooling down at night? Anyway, here's something from Dandelion Wine about the heat in Greentown:

Air ran like hot spring waters nowhere, with no sound...Tar was poured licorice in the streets, red bricks were brass and gold, roof tops were paved with gold. The high-tension wires were lightning held forever, a threat above the unslept houses.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. The Writer's Almanac tells me that "It was on this day in 1951 that J.D. Salinger's first and only novel, The Catcher in the Rye," was published." His only novel that we know of, that is.

2. I don't really understand this but I love it when science seems like magic (i.e. the Large Hadron Collider, space): Quantum Entanglement Holds DNA Together, Say Physicists

3. My friend Jason linked to this "writing style analysis" page this week--you copy in some of your writing and it tells you who you write like. Except I tested the system four times and got David Foster Wallace, Chuck Palahniuk, Margaret Atwood, and Dan Brown. So I'm saying that it's not really accurate. (Because I don't write like Dan Brown! Right? RIGHT?)

New Desk!

Internet, look! I finally have an adult-sized desk!
The saga of the desk began months ago, when I decided it was time to retire what I'd been using since I was ten. Then came the deciding what to buy, then came the deciding if I should just wait until I get a house and have something new delivered there, and then I saw a project that involved decoupaging filing cabinets, and everything clicked.

My parents had two filing cabinets in storage and my handy father offered to make a desktop (since the options from IKEA were the wrong size). So for the cost of paint, Japanese paper, and some shelving--plus a week of free labor from my dad--I have a new desk!
We (I use "we" loosely) decided to use spray adhesive instead of Mod Podge, and it worked out great. I'm glad I went with a subtle pattern, since there's already a lot of pattern in the room.

And LOOK--there are no visible cords. My dad rigged up a brilliant system for mounting the power strip on the back support.
I love the desk (Toby does too!). Thanks, Dad!

If Only

I've had a hard time writing this week (and I have the bitten fingernails to prove it). These solutions would be PERFECT.

Speaking of smoking and drinking at work, 1.5 weeks until the new season of Mad Men!

Tuesday Project Roundup: Sewing For Toby

Toby had a brown donut that he slept in all winter, but the velour on the top was getting ratty. So I recovered the top in a plush leopard print for him.
I debated re-doing the entire cover, but there's a zipper all around the bottom and a zipper going in a circle seemed like more effort than it's worth. The new top does have piping around the edge, though.

He jumped right in and had a bath, so even though it's been too hot to sleep in it, I think he likes it.

Happy Birthday, Pablo Neruda

The Writer's Almanac tells me that today is poet Pablo Neruda's birthday, in 1904. (His first book was called Crepusculario [Twilight], ha.)

Here's some Neruda to start the week--it reminds me of going to see the lava and the ocean in Hawaii:

"It is Born" (trans. by Joel Gallo)

Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Are you bothered by people writing "alot" instead of "a lot"? This is the post for you, from a blog with really funny illustrations.

2. The beginninng yoga class I'm taking includes some background on how yoga fits in with Hindu philosophy, and last night we were told that the heart is a deep well of generosity (my inner hippy loves this, by the way). I had to remember a quote I found from the Upanishads that I posted a long time ago:
The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightning and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.

3. Check out ten pages of old WPA posters on the Library of Congress site.