Hello BEDA Buddies!!

Hi Dave, Kasey, and Shecaptain! Welcome to my sorry excuse for a blog. I though, maybe, that a fun way for us to begin getting to know each other would be to come up with 5 questions each, and then answer both our own and those submitted by the other three. I've been having a hard time coming up with topics for posts, but I love love love asking people questions, and I definitely enjoy answering good ones myself. So this is a very self-serving suggestion, but I hope a good one as well.

What do you three think? If you're all in we could take the night, and post our 5 questions tomorrow.

Why so gloomy, Batman?

So, color me embarassed. I've just gone over my sorry attempt at keeping up with BEDA and, not only have I not blogged every day, but good golly, have my posts been whiny. And ranty. Which is funny, because April has, so far, actually been a pretty great month. So far I've:

1. Started a new job with great coworkers in a pretty, pretty building stuffed to the brim with lovely books.
   
2. Frolicked in the sunshine.
3. Looked longingly out the library windows at OTHERS frolicking in the sunshine while I was stuck behind the circ desk.
4. Looked gloatingly out the library windows at others scampering miserably through the April showers.
5. Read, and adored, Girl at Sea by Maureen Johnson.
6. Rediscoverd my all-consuming passion for Lord Peter Wimsey.
7. Seen one of my all-time favorite singers in concert.
8. Met baby Annabel!

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head, in terms of good things that have happened this month. I know I could come up with even more if I thought about it. But all I have written here is grousing. My cupcakes turned out poorly, I hate the ads on the MBTA, etc. etc. Who knew I would be such a dour blogger?

NO MORE, though. I'm turning over a new leaf. I will blog more regularly, and more cheerfully. Really, I promise.

Welcome Annabel Kristine Buenaventura Halloran!

As Jeremiah has ever graciously pointed out, I am *decidedly* behind on my BEDA entries. Maureen assures me that this is okay though, and I agree-- there's nothing to be gained by feeling defeated, only something to be gained by actually blogging as often as I can bring myself to. Today, I am very lucky because the world, via my friends Greg Halloran and Katty Buenaventura Halloran, has provided me with an unimpeachably awesome subject:

Annabel Kristine Buenaventura Halloran, their brand spanking new 8-pound bundle of adorable newbornousity. She is the first baby my group of close friends has produced and, therefore, is guaranteed to be adored by one and all. I cannot wait to meet her and shake her teensy, tinsy hand. In honor of her birth, I'm going to make a list of 5 things I already like about her:

1. 1. Her totally awesome name-- Annabel Kristine! In addition to *sounding* pretty, Annabel means "loving", so it's great on multiple levels. Also, all the best people have four initials.
2. 2. She has excellent taste. I mean, you Boston people, take a look out your window-- can you imagine a nicer day to be born? I couldn't.
3. Even though she's only 12 hours old, she's already established herself as completely crafty. Her parents were determined to be surprised by her sex, and she really committed to obliging them. From small, folklore-ish signs (being carried high in her mom's womb) to more definitive medical ones (causing a rash that indicates a boy 70% of the time, possessing a slower heartbeat), she really tricked everyone into thinking she would be a boy. I am hoping this is a sign of great things to come-- like an illustrious career as an international super spy.
   
4. Even though her hands are absolutely bitsy, she has one hell of a grip. Even though she's barely a day old, she's already strong!! So that's awesome.
5. She will provide me with an excuse to buy SO MANY CHILDREN'S BOOKS! I've already given her four board books-- Down By The Bay by Raffi, Quiet LOUD by Leslie Patricelli, Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Allsburgh, and The Monster at the End of this Book By Grover (as told to Jon Stone)-- and I will soon give her ever so many more!! Every picture book I've ever been unable to justify purchasing for myself, I will give to her. I am ATWITTER with ideas already!!!
   

So-- there we are. Five things about the utterly remarkable baby I met today. May her awesomeness grow with every passing day!

The Red Velvet Cupcakes OF DISAPPOINTMENT

Dear readers, I am in a pickle. As a nascent baker, I have encountered a problem I've never had before: I have made a batch of markedly mediocre cupcakes, and I have no idea what to do with them. Just yesterday afternoon, when I carefully chose my recipe, full of hope and anticipation, I had been planning on giving them to my friend Elissa as a belated birthday present. They were going to be Red Velvet Cupcakes of Atonement!

The blog I got them from seemed so confident-- they were going to be bright red and full of real delicious chocolate flavor. They were going to be decadent and magical. One commenter described them as "dense and cakey" and so I imagined them dense and smooth and, you know, velvety. But readers, I was led astray!! Although I'm sure our $13.98 Proctor-Silex hand-mixer (the "low" setting on which whirs away fast enough to chop off fingers) can't have helped matters, I'm confident the recipe is largely to blame.

There were so many problems with it that, looking back now, I almost feel ashamed I didn't know IMMEDIATELY this would go poorly. For starters, the recipe had been HALVED, a clear sign of idiocy. I mean really-- what person in their right mind would want to make TWELVE cupcakes when they could have 24??? That way lies madness!! The new proportions threw me off and kept me from realizing that the recipe was all wrong. Not enough egg, butter, and other fattening things to make it awesome. Nothing to give it levity or richness. There wasn't even enough food coloring to make it truly RED, the true goal of a red velvet cupcake. There was only enough to make it a pallid and unappetizing mauve, a color which matched the cupcakes' leaden consistency. Their flavor was good enough, and they made acceptable vehicles for my cream cheese frosting but over all they were such sad, disappointing little things. A cupcake isn't supposed to be the kind of thing that sits around until, with a shrug, you say "Well, I guess I'll have one." They are things of dreams and happiness, of light and adorableness. If they don't fill you with longing, if they are anything less than tantalizing, then they can hardly be TRUE cupcakes.

These Cupcakes of Disappointment were no ones' dream. I couldn't bring them to Elissa, that much was clear. She deserves better than pallid Cupcakes of Disappointment. No more could I bring them into work to get rid of them, for fear of making my new coworkers think I was a terrible, terrible baker. I couldn't even bring them into my old work-- it would be like going out see an ex-boyfriend in sweats and unwashed hair. They may not be your boyfriend anymore, but you never want to think "Man, she sure has let herself go. What did I ever see in her anyways?" Only, you know, with baked goods rather than hotness. I couldn't give them away to someone I liked, because I hated them myself, and I didn't want to give them to someone I didn't like, for fear that they would come to expect cupcakes in the future. So they just sat about, Disappointing me like it was their job. Thankfully, before they could become fossilized emblems of my failure, Bruce the roommate manned up and ate them all. But it's certainly not a recipe I'll be returning to any time soon.

My Thoughts on Productivity Timers...

I'm reading about a million blogs, and writing precisely zero of them myself but here-- a link with some commentary.

This how-to from LifeHacker teaches you how to make a productivity timer on a Mac using Apple Scripts. You basically set your computer up to ask you, once every 20 minutes, "Are you sure you're spending your time wisely?" If you click "Yes" the timer starts over again, and you continue what you were doing before.

On one level, this seems like the greatest idea ever. If I had I known this existed while I was writing my thesis senior year, I would have made about 82 different varieties of it. Every 20 minutes "Margaret, stop searching for terrible music videos on YouTube. Your facebook competition with Kjero and Terrell is not as important AS GRADUATING. Click YES if you value your future." Every 10 minutes "No, Margaret. You aren't hungry. You have 8 trays of food from the dining hall. You have NO EXCUSE to go to the market. Click YES because you know I'm right." Every 2.5 minutes "You know, Margaret, looking up EVERY. SINGLE. WORD. in the built in OpenOffice Theasaurus might SEEM more prodcutive than trolling YouTube. But it isn't. So stop. Some acceptable synonyms for YES you could use to answer this reminder are 'Affirmative','Amen', 'Beyond a doubt', 'Indubitably', and 'Without fail.'" I would have thought they were the ANSWER TO ALL MY PRAYERS.



But you know what they really would have been? Another meaningless form of procrastination. Because when that little window that I'd probably spent 4.5 hours making popped up and said "Margaret, you can't sit here playing ColorJunction on your iGoogle home page, waiting until your iGoogle theme switches from its "Late Night" color scheme to its "Sunrise" color scheme just because you're curious exactly what time the change happens. YOU HAVE REAL WORK TO DO."? I would have been like "SHUT UP WINDOW! YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE! Yes, I'm spending my time valuably!" And then I would have been like "....well. Just one more game of ColorJunction then..." It may have made me weep tears of frustration (SO MANY WINDOWS TO CLOSE! All these subscripts are making my computer SO SLOW!) but it would have done NOTHING to motivate me because? Anyone useless enough to need PRODUCTIVITY REMINDERS is probably too useless for them to be effective.

I also like how, basically, these grown-up computer programmers are crafting little widgets to behave like their mother. "Honey, shouldn't you be in bed now?" "Honey, are you sure sitting in front of that computer is the best way to spend your time?" "Honey, shouldn't you go out and enjoy the sunshine?" If they wanted this kind of treatment, why don't they just move home and live with their mothers? It would be less effort, save them the expense of an apartment, and allow them to be nagged to their hearts' content.

Things I Think Too Much About: Ads on the MBTA

As an individual without a driver's license, I spend a lot of time on the MBTA. As someone with a BA from a liberal arts college, I spend A LOT of time analyzing things that, ultimately, were never meant to be analyzed deeply. When these two qualities combine, the outcome is obvious: I spend a lot of time on the T over-analyzing really stupid ads. Sometimes, this habit of mine is relatively benign-- I'll joke with my roommate about how ill-suited the image of a girl staring dreamily out at a blue sky is with the ads copy, which is trying to track down hypochondriacs for a Harvard Med School study. "Worried you have brain cancer? Heart disease? A tumor?....well, it sure doesn't look like it, but hey: call us anyways." More often than not though, they make me really deeply annoyed.

A couple months back, Kaplan test prep bought, like, every third ad on the Red Line and Oh. God. Did I hate their ads. The tag line was "You'll be a different kind of _____. But first, you have to get into ____ School. " and it had the DOUCHIEST MODELS EVER. Like, apparently, being a "different kind of lawyer" meant you MEDITATED. In a BUSINESS SUIT. In THE MIDDLE OF A COURTYARD. "Different kind of doctor"? Daisy in your lab coat pocket. "Different kind of business man"? Look like a douchietty douche face and don't wear a tie. And call business school "B-school." HaaAAAaaaaaTE. The mere sight of these ads practically enraged me-- they were so SMUG about their pseudo-nonconformity. You could just imagine the douchy douche who they were obviously meant to target, the person who was like "Oh, I'm going to Law School, sure, but just to SUBVERT THE SYSTEM. But I won't consider anything that's not an Ivy." And they'd tell all their friends they were going to do Legal Aid or whatever, and get all self-righteous in people's faces about how they weren't just ANY Law School Clone they were there to DO SOMETHING MEANINGFUL. And then they'd end up working at, like, Goldman Sachs doing copywright law. But still be insufferably self-righteous. Those ads were directed act the kind of person who, while doing EXACTLY what all his peers are doing, still thinks gloatingly that he's some kind of daring individual. And good, dear lord, did I ever hate them. Even thinking back on the ads now, with them gone for MONTHS, they STILL annoy me.

Sometimes. however, there is a bright spot among all the rage. Something that consistently makes me laugh, even though it's not trying to. Like this ad:


Which never, ever fails to make me think "FART ATTACK!" and snicker to myself. Seriously. I defy you to see *anything* else when you look at that picture. It amuses me so much, so consistently, that it almost makes up for the Kaplan ads.

Almost.

I'm still doing BEDA, I promise...

So, here it is, seven days into blog "every" day April, and I have made just three posts. That's pathetic guys. Not necessarily surprising or anything, but still pathetic. I sit at my library desk, and I know there are plenty of things I could write about, but oh, look at how many articles there are in my google reader feed, and I mean, jeez, I shouldn't just write ANYTHING just to meet some kind of arbitrary deadline, unless I have Deeply Important Thoughts on a matter, what's the point. So on, so forth. But deep down I do know there's something worthwhile about just putting fingers to keyboard and banging something out-- maybe I don't have something to express at the beginning, but I can find things along the way.

SO. I am sticking with it. I will try to make up the missed posts throughout the month, but I'm not going to use them as an excuse to quit. That said, I am going to try to write a post for today.

Falling down on the job already...

I know, I know. I'm not even THREE DAYS IN before I miss a post. I am such a BEDA failure. But I am planning two posts today, to make up for my laxness. BUT WHAT AM I GOING TO POST ABOUT? I am feeling singularly uninspired. All I want to do is sit here at my library desk and online shop. I mean, just look at all the adorable things I'm finding:

I know, guys. It's hard to believe your eyes. But they're REAL SNEAKERS made to look like WATERMELON. And more importantly, they are sold in GROWN UP SIZES!!! I don't just have to sigh longingly over itsy-bitsy child footwear and long for the halcyon days of 1995 when my feet were small enough to fit them. I can buy my very own pair RIGHT NOW for just $43.00 and recapture the sartorial glee of a toddler who's just been given permission to dress herself!!! Maybe I'll even wear them with a tutu-- WHO KNOWS? With grown-up sized watermelon sneakers, the sky is the limit! And if anyone wrinkles their nose up at my taste and calls it immature, I can pretend to be grown up about it too, by describing them as "witty" shoes, or saying they are "inspired by the same Dadaist spirit that guided Elsa Schiaparelli." So, in summary:

Awesome Watermellon Shoes: $43.00

Employing you liberal arts education to justify your love for thoroughly ridiculous footwear: Priceless.

Super Quick Recipe Post

This is cheap, but I just had a 45 minute discussion with my mother about the vagaries of coming home from work at Midnight and what buses am I taking and do my coworkers walk me to the train and well if they drive couldn't they give you a ride and you know what? I am bone tired of it, and just want to READ and be anti-social.

But I am Blogging Every Day in Blog a Day April, so, blog I must. And I am going to do so by detailing my super uncomplicated recipe for my-- apparently-- legendary Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting. I used this to frost my Valentine's Day cupcakes and brought it into work and subsequently discovered from my now former coworkers that this frosting was a huuuge hit. So I promised to write it up and send it to them...and am doing it on my blog. Two birds! One stone!

disclaimer: I didn't take this picture, or cook this cupcake
I deleted all the pictures I took of mine, and just stole this from a blog
it sure is pretty though, isn't it?

Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

1 (8 ounce) package of cream cheese
1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Between 6-8 strawberries, I used frozen, but I imagine fresh would work just as well

1. Take the frozen strawberries, microwave them till they're defrosted, and mush them up with a fork (the poor girl's food processor). Refridgerate newly-made strawberry goo.

2. Soften cream cheese and butter so they're easy to mix. I usually do this by putting them in a plastic bag, and then submerging that bag in warm water in a metal bowl. This can leave the butter a bit melty, but it sure is easier on my mixing arm.

3. When cream cheese and butter are pliable, mix them together thoroughly in a big-ish mixing bowl.

4. Add the powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time until it's all encorporated.

5. Add the vanilla.

6. Retrieve refrigerated strawberry goo. One tablespoon at a time, add it to the frosting mix. Stir carefully after each one, and taste for strawberry intensity. If the flavor isn't strong enough, add another-- I don't know how many I used, because I wasn't this exact when tomfooling around in my kitchen. You have to keep an eye on it, though, because if you add too much goo, you compromise the structural integrity of the frosting and end up with a glaze. So, go a tablespoon at a time, mix, eyeball it, and taste, until you have the right balance. I bet 2 or 3 will do it.

7. Carefully lick clean all implements and bowls used to mix the frosting. If you just wash them, the frosting will turn out wrong, seriously guys. I promise.

And that's it folks. That's the strawberry frosting that brought you all joy. Use it well

Blog Every Day April?

Well, Maureen Johnson is doing it, and so... I might as well try, right? I have LOW EXPECTATIONS of success, much like Ernie and the Automatics and their debut album. But I dig Maureen, and I'm trying to blog more, and this seems like a harmless way to do so.

So, my subject for today: my profound gullibility, and the number of April Fool's Day pranks I've fallen for, and then been really disappointed were, you know, pranks. ThinkGeek has left me particularly bereft today-- their April Fool's day products are great. Many people were disappointed to discover that the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag was a fake,¹ I, however, think I might be one of few disappointed about the Buzzword wristband being fake. I mean, like, how neat an idea is that? I *know* I use like too much, and maybe some mild electro-shock therapy is exactly what I need to get better. Jeremiah Graves, on the other hand, would probably be crushed to know that the advertised Squeez Bacon is not, in fact, available for purchase. I think he would have had to buy a gross of it, had it been real.²

All in all, these pranks are more heartbreaking than funny. When will I get my Buzzword? What will Jeremiah do without his Squeez Bacon? And without a Tauntaun sleeping bag, what will warm my heart from the Hoth-like cold of these crushing disappointments?

Only time will tell, friends.



1 Actually, SO many people were disappointed, that ThinkGeek is going to try to make it for real. Which is kind of outrageously awesome.

2 Can we also agree, officially, that if Squeez Bacon ever becomes real, the collective noun for a large group of Squeez Bacons would be a gross? Example conversation:

Person 1: Oh, I was at the supermarket, and a gross of newly-sentient Squeez Bacons attacked a pregnant woman and devoured her whole.

Person 2: You mean ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR bottles of Squeez Bacon came TO LIFE??? And ATE A PREGNANT WOMAN????

Person 1: *eyeroll* Dude, they were eating a PREGNANT WOMAN. I couldn't get an exact count. With Squeez Bacon, a gross just means a whole bunch of them-- you know, like a flock of sheep, or a murder of crows, or a hush of librarians. Duh.