| Girl Detective | ||||||||||||
|
Monday, July 26, 2004 ( 10:06 PM ) Girl Detective The agony of defeat Our offer on the house wasn't accepted. Going out to one more property, raising my hopes yet again only to be confronted by rotting wood, old windows and that ubiquitous off-white speckly carpet that every seller seems to think will look better than whatever it used to be--I just don't know if I can do it anymore. Yet we close on our place in a few weeks, and we have to go somewhere, so we have to keep looking. My husband's idea is sounding better all the time: take the proceeds from the sale of our place, buy a Winnebago and drive around the country solving mysteries. | Saturday, July 24, 2004 ( 11:09 PM ) Girl Detective Househunting It feels like we've been househunting forever. In real time, though, it's been just under three months since we began. We took a month or so off in the middle to prepare our place and sell it, then we jumped back in. It's an exhausting process, and I'm reminded a lot of dating. There's a lot of selective presentation and artful camouflage. Each time we go look at a property, I wonder, is this the one? I begin to evaluate before we even open the door. How is the neighborhood? Are there other families with kids? And then there's the reveal when we open the door. Is it an instant wow, as a handful have been? Is it homely, needing a bit more time to discover its potential? A few days, I've come home and collapsed in tears, crashing after getting my hopes up, only to be confronted by rickety, hodgepodge properties that would never work. Today, though, we saw a house that finally seemed to have most everything we were looking for. We made an offer. Tonight, we found out that two other people did as well, so we're well and truly in a multiple offer situation. Every so often, a part of me wonders "What if we don't get it?" in a panic. Then another part of me shrugs metaphorical shoulders and says, "Then we don't. Someone else does, they get to worry about the few question we did have, and we'll find someplace else." I'm not quite sure where this philosophical part came from, since I usually operate my life by crisis management. So while today we're in multiple offers, tomorrow we plan to attend two open houses and do some neighborhood scoping if the baby is in a good mood and up for the car time. And who knows where we'll be in a month? Literally. We sure don't. And, for the moment, I am actually doing a reasonable job handling that whopping uncertainty. | Wednesday, July 21, 2004 ( 10:12 AM ) Girl Detective This year's election Two friends said to me recently that they didn't know for whom they were going to vote because they hadn't researched the presidential candidates. While I support being informed, I don't think there's a lot to decide on in the next presidential election. Our current vote counting system does not support more than two candidates. While our nation allows for third party candidates, in practice they undermine the election process because they split the vote on whichever side of the spectrum they're running. When Ross Perot ran, he drew votes away from George Bush the elder, and Bill Clinton won. When Ralph Nader ran, he drew votes away from Al Gore, which allowed the race to be close enough that George W. Bush ended up in the White House on technicalities. So when intelligent, politically liberal friends of mine say they don't know for whom to vote, I'm surprised, because it seems very simple. If you want to vote for Bush, vote for Bush If you want to vote for Kerry, vote for Kerry. If you want to get Bush out of the White House, then Kerry is the best candidate, so vote for Kerry. If you're not wild about Kerry and want to make a statement about the validity of third parties, then what? Go out and do something about campaign reform, and how votes are counted. But don't kid yourself. This election is between Bush and not Bush, and not Bush equals Kerry. If you don't want Bush and vote for someone else than Kerry, then you're voting for Bush anyway. This is a two party, two candidate race. Pick one. | Monday, July 19, 2004 ( 10:05 PM ) Girl Detective Embracing mediocrity Ikea just opened a store in MN. What did my fellow statespeople do? They didn't wait hours to get inside a big box of a store that features cheaply made items that aren't that cheaply priced, though some of them are cleverly designed, did they? They did. Wait hours. Don't you people have anything better to do? Come over to my house. Help me clean it. Watch the baby while I exercise, or read a book, or write, or nap. Hours to get into Ikea. I shake my head. | Thursday, July 15, 2004 ( 4:46 PM ) Girl Detective My suspicions, foiled Did anyone else surmise that the blond daughter of Peter Parker’s landlord in Spiderman 2 was Gwen Stacey? It seemed too odd to me that I didn’t remember her being named, she was blond, and she offered Peter cake, which, as my husband G. Grod noted after his second viewing, was the turning point for Peter. He did not notice what I recall, which is that the cake was not actually chocolate, but yellow with chocolate frosting. I could be wrong, both on her not being named in the film and the cake, but imdb.com lists her credit as Ursula, so I guessed wrong. Damn. I was feeling all geeky and clever. I noticed, and G. Grod confirmed and expanded upon, several pop film references: Evil Dead when Doc is in the hospital, Jurassic Park when he’s coming for Peter in the coffee shop, Matrix when Peter jumps off a building and Superman 2 when he reaches for his uniform that isn’t there. | ( 4:46 PM ) Girl Detective Bad blurbs My recent dislike of a novel that most others seem to like has left me newly aware of blurbs. I have a background in marketing, so I’m quite familiar with using what is said and unsaid to imply great things and cover up lame ones. The book I disliked had a slew of blurbs, from both newspapers and other authors. I recently came across an article about a British author who candidly (brazenly?) admitted to giving favorable blurbs to books that she hadn’t read or that she didn’t like. She said that it was a nice thing to do, it gave her and her books exposure, and someday she might want the favor returned. This somehow didn’t surprise me, yet still disappointed me. It affirmed my stance on blurbs, which has stood me fairly well: Ignore all those by individual authors. Attend only to those from reputable news sources (for me, New York Times and Publishers Weekly for books, NYT and Roger Ebert for movies.) | Wednesday, July 14, 2004 ( 4:32 PM ) Girl Detective Why the shellac? Did anyone else notice Jennie Garth’s makeup during last week’s episode of Celebrity Poker Showdown? It looked like someone had laid down a quarter inch of spackle. Why, why? She’s cute, and if I remember correctly, she has very fair skin with freckles. During the show she looked as if she had on a mask. When I am queen of the world, there will be far less hair straightening, that is as long as the natural curls and waves are attractive (I’m talking to you, Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Julianne Moore) and absolutely no covering up of freckles (again with you, Ms. Moore.) | ( 2:37 PM ) Girl Detective I never thought I'd write this, but Another problem of being contrarian (see yesterday’s post) is that it becomes humbling when one changes one’s mind. I’ve been visiting my folks in central Ohio for three weeks. Ohio, that I have said I hate visiting, the only reason to go there is for family, and I would never live there. Yet the baby and I are surrounded by family and friends, and while organic food is a little tougher to come by in Minnesota, I’ve spent time on two lakes (Erie and Buckeye, respectively) and continue to have a lovely time. I’m seeing more of my best friend than I have in years, and yet I still haven’t run out of things to talk about. It drove me crazy to be an adolescent here. Was that because of Ohio, or because of me? An ex once joked that the town I grew up in is like Twin Peaks--we’d just stopped to admire a robin frolicking in a puddle in the driveway. Yet is there a dark underbelly, or were we just being young and cynical and bitter? Why am I looking at real estate listings here? I’m sure my husband will put a stop to this as soon as I get back to Minneapolis this week. | Tuesday, July 13, 2004 ( 2:28 PM ) Girl Detective Countering popular opinion, a losing battle? I recently finished reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, and find that I am one of the few people who disliked it. And I’m not just talking about Jane Q. Reader, but even The New York Times and Publishers Weekly liked it. Here’s why I didn’t like Kidd’s book. I didn’t think she sustained a believable voice for her 14-year old narrator throughout the book. Sometimes it was good, but sometimes it was not. Also, the main character is a white girl who comes to self-knowledge and acceptance through the help of African American women, one of whom is not just a metaphorical nanny, but was the actual nanny to the girl’s nervous, unstable mother. Can we do away with these clichés that do no group any credit? Finally, there was nothing surprising to me in the book—a sad thing happens, it is a common sad thing and it happens to the type of person that this sad thing always happens to. Other predictable things happen, the end. This wasn’t a bad book. It was a fine book with some issues that bothered me so much that I can’t recommend it. But now whenever someone gushes about it, I’ll either have to fib, evade, or expose myself as the weird person who disliked this book that others have found so enjoyable and heartwarming. I had as similar experience recently with Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. It was fine. Annoying in parts, funny in others, but overall I can’t recommend it. I wrote a review at amazon.com that they still haven’t published, and if it is published, I’m certain I’ll get unhelpful votes from all the many people who disagree with me. Some movies I’ve disliked include E.T., Circle of Friends, Braveheart, Gladiator. On the other hand, I know lots of people who hated Moulin Rouge, and I loved it. I think that there’s a lot to be said at taking things in context, and not expecting something to be more than it is. Old School, for example, is a good, funny movie that’s a good rental. I’m not going to evaluate it in the same way that I would a complex film. I think a lot of people disliked Moulin Rouge for its clichés, yet I found that the clichés worked for me—it told a predictable story in a manner that was anything but. Moulin Rouge was a spectacle, not an original drama. Of course, the fact that it had my boyfriend in it might have also made it a little easier for me to digest. But I can’t disagree with those who didn’t like it because it was trite. Having strong, minority opinions is tough. It’s easy to be shrill or conflictual. As cranky and grouchy as I can get, I don’t actually like playing the part of contrarian. It’s tiring and there’s not a lot of personal satisfaction in it. | Monday, July 12, 2004 ( 2:02 PM ) Girl Detective Simple, supposedly Every so often, I’ll have a specific thing in mind that I want or even need. I go to look for it, though, and it’s impossible to find. Either it doesn’t exist, or it exists in a form that is not what I want, or is more than what I need. My husband and I recently had to replace our toaster oven, since the old one had been through more than one kitchen fire. (During which I always had the presence of mind to unplug, then throw baking soda.) We wanted something small, inexpensive and with a pull-out, rather than a flip-down crumb tray. We could not find it. The smallest, least expensive model had the annoying flip-down tray, which I blame for the previous fires. Models with pull-out trays were usually large enough to roast a chicken and expensive as well. We finally settled on one that wasn’t so big, and wasn’t so expensive, but I’m left annoyed. What I want in a toaster oven is simple—the ability to toast. Conventional toasters don’t work on muffins and other non-bread shaped goods, and even for those they’re not ideal. I don’t want to spend over $100, and if I’m going to roast a chicken, I’ll do it in my self-cleaning oven, thank you. Another item that I find is overfeatured is SPF in lip stuff—gloss, balm and colors. SPF in lip stuff makes mine peel, but I have a really hard time finding stuff without it. Stupid merchandisers latch onto certain features then flood the market with them. And perhaps stupid consumers purchase them, either not caring, surfing the fad, or not noticing, leaving persnickety folks like me to our frustration. A few years ago I searched for a new shower head—I wanted one that I could remove the water saver on for good water pressure. I have a lot of hair and regular water pressure makes washing a time-consuming and frustrating event. I also wanted one that was detachable for easy rinsing when I cleaned the shower. When I went to look, though, I could find reasonable (not good, and not tamper-able) attached heads, or detachable ones that were not at all tamper-able, and had 89 different massage features. I didn’t want. We settled for an attached shower head, and cleaning the shower has been more a pain ever since. I find this all very aggravating. For all the simplicity movements that are out there it’s ridiculous that we have to be barraged (and pay for!) stupid features we don’t want, we won’t use, and endure products that don’t really do what we want. I think there’s a market out there for reasonably-priced stuff that does what it does simply and well. Why is that so hard? | Thursday, July 08, 2004 ( 8:46 AM ) Girl Detective Get outta town Sorry I haven't posted. My husband and I hired a pro to stage our condo before putting it on the market. She went down the details of which book was on which table. The thought of maintaining that, while juggling baby feedings and naps with showings was simply too much, so the baby and I are staying with my parents for the first few weeks it's on the market to give it it's best chance. I've not been writing, but I have been reading. I finished The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead, a meaty read that I sank my mental teeth into, but the ending of which I found vague and disappointing. Next was Rainlight by Alison McGhee, a book so nearly unbearably sad that I didn't know if I could continue. It was beautifully written with characters that lurk still in my consciousness, plus it had a redemptive ending; I love those. I borrowed the copy of Julia Strachey's Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, a Persephone book that I'd given to my mom. Although billed as a bittersweet comedy, it was too sad for me. I think I should have instead got Mom Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson, also from Persephone. I'm currently reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, which many people have recommended to me, but I'm ambivalent. The main character's voice, that of a fourteen year old girl, does not ring true for me, and periodically jars me out of the reading experience. I seem to be in the minority of people who don't love this book. But I'm still in the middle of it, so I hope things improve. | |
|
|||||||||||
