Morning Routine

I freaking love Cynical C and his morning routine. Here's mine:

5:45: Alarm goes off, beeping quietly at first but gets progressively louder. Pretend to be asleep until the alarm is loud enough to wake Tom so he gets up to turn it off. Tom shuffles off to make coffee. The girl cat sits on me to make me stay in bed until I have to get up to pee.

6-6:10: Roll out of bed, stumble into living room for coffee and local morning TV news, ABC 7. Cardio routine: 15 minutes of vigorous vocal disagreement with what the local news is reporting on instead of actual news.

6:15: Go outside and frown at the yard. Water herb garden that wilts every other day.

6:20: Coffee and Internets: post daily round up, skim NY Times headlines, read Questionable Content O' the Day.

6:30: Shower, contacts, brush teeth.

6:45: Makeup and hair. Get dressed and load purse up with bananas and granola bars, maybe yogurt for breakfast at our desks. Curse when I realize cell phone is dead because I didn't plug it in to charge last night AGAIN.

7-7:30: Watching West Wing rerun on Bravo and more Internets! until Tom is ready to leave for work. Sitting down to work just before 8 AM.

happy friday!

Poll: Does this bother people? I don't think I care for the most part, but I do prefer the printable PDF menus to pass around if we're hosting a group.

This does no good until we're all motivated to actually DO something.

Fundie FAIL

There's no hell fierce enough waiting for these bankers.

Blecch. Safe or not, I think I'd rather drink pondwater.

Behold the amazing sound of no one caring AT ALL.

Dionne SMASH!

Oooookay... More from Chris Hayes here.

Noam Chomsky on the manufacture of consent.

Sweet! I still haven't seen Helvetica but Objectified was outstanding.

Bears in the News.

Zing!

thursday!

Breakfast!

Meaning vs. Value.

Our shiny new police state.

I set this aside awhile ago and forgot to read it until yesterday. It's definitely worth a look.

Wait, what universe am I in? Maybe it's a non-universe.

WOW

Spicy. Odds are the local orgs that are supposed to vet all their candidates fell down on this one or underestimated what one disgruntled kid can do.

Proposed SAT answer: The Jungle is to Upton Sinclair as Wikileaks is to Julian Assange. I feel like the history books may back me up on this one.

YUP

A win for the regular guy! And fzck homeowners associations, they are the worst.

Kind of a big deal that didn't get nearly enough press, frankly.

Pretty great, minus all the pics of Beck's face.

Yup. I don't think *anybody* likes Jody Weis.

#1: This is hilarious, and #2: Modern medicine for men's eyes OK, not so much for ladyparts. Got it.

Nom! And bonus Carnitas!

WOMBATS

Tons of celebrity pussy (Totally SFW).

wednesday!

Good arguments for both sides. I still lean toward Kill Them All, but maybe we can science up a replacement first that's not into blood or something.

Say bye-bye to the Goodbye Gun, for now.

Part Two of yesterday's lynching conversation.

File Under: Laughing, Crying

On dung beetles. I dunno, they still make me pretty mad.

Fzck it, I'm sending this guy ten bucks.

Well of course they did.

I know in this particular case the child is 7 months old, but I really think stories like these speak to John's point about mandatory public schools, so things like this aren't hidden from view and thereby implicitly condoned in the name of religious tolerance. I am more intolerant of child abuse.

PSA for the professional photographers.

Worst Little League Third Base Coach Ever. /rimshot

Financial FAIL, part XIX

Oh, this is all coincidence and not blatant evidence of a racist society whatsoever.

tuesday!

"So maybe we're just doomed no matter what." And more, related here.

Bill Kristol lowers the bar so far I think it may have skipped into another dimension.

Newt Gingrich is trying to kill me with his arguments. I think I'm having chest pains.

Doctors are just as dumb as you are: "About three-quarters believe company marketing does not influence their own prescribing (72.7%) or use of devices (74.4%)."

Oh Tom Tancredo, you so crazy.

File Under: Things That Are Not Surprising At All

(Re)defining lynching. Sickening. Sorta-related here.

BwaHaHa!

Kant on Dinner Parties. Hotness.

Poetry break! Click through, it really is that good.

This is cute and all but I think this lady needs some grown-up friends?

monday!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaay Bad Universe!!!

Good, GO ALREADY.

Holy sh1t I hate us.

/headdesk

Write better and you might improve your RAS.

I'm feeling like less of a conspiracy nut every day.

I think about this all the time.

I'm a little divided about this, solely for the application during air travel. If the kid's acting up in your car, they're only bothering you. On a plane, they're bothering everyone. Plus, depending on the age of the kid, air travel is terrifying and being doped up may not be such a bad thing. We flew down to North Carolina when my sister was about 18 months, and on descent her ears popped and she started screaming like someone was killing her, and there's no way to rationalize that or quiet a kid down at that age under those circumstances. But certainly it's not a good idea as a matter of habit.

Related (?) to the above.

/speechless

Woodhenge!

Really? Well let's move right along then.

FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.....

I don't know what this is, but I like the happy music. And this is awesome (and there's a surprising number of them in the Youtubes).

Please don't squish Gizmo!

Garden Update: Gorgeous Greens

The tomato and tomatillo bed, from the front and behind.

The tomatillos are basically taking over the deck.

Garden Update: Blushing Beauties

Cilantro Delfino

I grew this cilantro from seed this year. It doesn't look at all like regular cilantro, which I expected based on the description in the seed catalog. But the catalog description focused mainly on the fine, feathery leaves and not so much on the stems, which are suprisingly robust. It looks like they crossed cilantro with either dill or Queen Anne's Lace, no? The flowers are surprisingly resilient too. I've been pinching them off every couple of days and they spring right back. Not sure yet if this will make next year's cut.

happy friday!

What the fzck is this supposed to mean, exactly? Sorta-related here.

Keeping the public option on the radar.

Maddow FTW.

Nice.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaamn, it's getting all kinds of Infralapsarian up in here!

Sorta love this.

Maru + box = fun

thursday!

On the "progressive" label.

Finally! I was waiting for someone to point out that the last Pope got shot and all.

I feel the same way about Chicago, and the public schools in particular. I *loved* going to school in a WPA building.

Penny wise, pound foolish.

Good lord, Elmhurst, take a pill or something.

File Under: Fiskul Reesponsuhbillity!!

YUP

We hated on Daley pretty good yesterday, but it might time for round two: this is a pretty gross use of funds. Also: Dammit!

The ladies of MadMen are powerful business.

/snort

wednesday!

Pshaw, go about your business, citizens.

The largest theft in the history of the world.

Fzck, incredibly sad.

Chicago: going to straight to Hell.

Louisiana: Wow. (Now with bonus New Hampshire Wow!)

Fzck I love Alan Grayson.

Because apparently they're aren't enough lawsuits against hospitals and medical professionals.

Given my recent family events, this is intriguing data. More here.

File Under: Helpful Hints, That's A Lot of Monkeys

PANDA

Nice.

CANNOT UNSEE

tuesday!

Secrets, secrets are no fun...

Interesting meditation on the blogosphere in general.

Closing Line of the Day.

/headdesk

The bananas and the corn are particularly hypnotic.

Yup.

OMFG, they have Eko's jesus stick. WANT.

monday!

TNC FTW

Fun comment-fight about Stimulus Signage.

'Merica: Nice While It Lasted

Pro-life policy will kill women.

Irony defined.

The ongoing WTF that is the black market drug economy.

I am disappointed in Aaron Sorkin.

Peter King makes my head hurt.

Grayson is untouchable!

Hey, *I* like reading! And naked girls!

Awww, Stinkers.

Genius.

happy friday!

Hotness. Dave Weigel really needs a new permanent home.

Russia: Wow.

/sneeze. You are now joyful.

WHAT

>hurk<

Love your bellybugs.

I have no idea what sort of opinion I should have about this. I am universally Pro-Rock in all its forms.

Hot.

Interesting. We're definitely experiencing a spike in garnishments at our place.

Yeah, best theoretical blogger evar. Best tweets, too.

Full Disclosure: I *LOVED* Beavis & Butthead when I was 13. Srsly. Like loved them so hard that my 13 year old self wrote effing Beavis & Butthead fan fiction. But they do not need a reboot. Please, MTV, stop.

POW!

Protocat! I want one. And I want a baby hippo and a baby walrus for Protocat's playdates.

I loves you, watermelon.

thursday!

Dunno how I feel about open primaries. It certainly makes it a lot harder to target the voters you want to speak to when you're running for office or working for a campaign, and without that targeting, you have to spend a lot more money to reach the folks who need to hear you and you waste a lot of time and money bothering the people who wouldn't have voted for you anyway.

Don't worry, Josh Lyman says the president has a secret plan to fight deflation. #westwing

FAIL. And II.

Bonus: EMR FAIL

Chile should not be beating us to the punch on anything. Pathetic.

File Under: Beating a Tasered Horse

/hateful

Wrong and Wronger.

Ow, my colon.

Great news!

YEAH

(sticks fingers in ears) La la la la la la.....

Monkeybusiness.

The Fishing with John theme is now playing in your head. You're welcome.

Petfinder is so evil: WANT

wednesday!

Oh hell no.

"Pro-life" is anti-woman, forever and always, in all its forms.

Our awesome media, part XXIV.

Continuing our "Fzck the Rich" theme...

This, a thousand times.

Irony, thy name is DeMint.

Headline of the Day.

I updated my blog with pictures of my garden and Cash being awesome!

Johnny Cash and the Great Outdoors

Tom and I did not do the usual sort of honeymoon. We pretty much just bummed around Chicago for a couple of days and went back to work. A monthlong backpacking-through-Europe kind of thing was not in the cards at the time and anything else seemed uninteresting by comparison. So we spent a day at the Art Institute, did some much-needed relaxing and kinda called it a day. But the following weekend we drove to Indiana to meet Tom's best man Justin and his now-wife Maggie to go apple-picking, and right about there is where we begin our story.

The apple-picking itself was the usual mix of good old fashioned fun and binging on cider donuts. We finished the day with a late lunch trip to the local Culver's, and when we were nearly finished with our meals, I spotted an orange cat outside, just beyond the patio dotted with picnic tables. He was squatting in the mulch and doing his catly business. I pointed him out and hoped aloud that the chocolate lab laying at the feet of the folks eating outside didn't see him and eat his face, since he seemed like a nice orange fellow.

We bussed our table and headed out to the parking lot, and the orange cat was still lingering near the scrubby mix of daylilies and spirea that live in nearly every commercially engineered green space. I knelt down and made little smoochy noises at him, and he trotted right past me and proceeded to rub himself against Tom's leg. I should've known then he'd forever and always be Tom's boy.

I knew I had to have him. He seemed so loving and so lost--an angry pink bald spot on his shoulder made him all the more pitiable. I scooped him up in my arms and he immediately sunk his front claws into my shoulder.

Once in the car, Tom and I looked at each other and said something like, "Now what?" We had second thoughts. We already had two cats at home, a bossy female Russian Blue who had laid guilt trips on us since the first day we brought home a male kitten who grew into a Maine Coon mix with the sweetest little personality you could imagine. We drove to the county animal rescue to turn him in. They were already closed for the day.

After the attempted drop-off, during which the orange cat sprang from Tom's arms and tried to make a break for it, and we all somehow managed to herd him back into Maggie's car, we'd resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to take this cat home with us. Maggie offered up her dog's carrier for the trip back to the city. We'd get him fixed up and find him a good home, we agreed. We work with tons of cat lovers. Someone will want him, we said.

On the ride back we decided the cat should probably have a name. As if the universe itself had decreed it, the iPod switched on I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash, and I was done. Johnny Cash the Cat was on his way to the 24 hour emergency vet at Belmont and Clybourn to get checked out before we brought him home.

The veterinary assistant who set us up in our exam room gave him a once-over and said to Cash, "You found a couple of suckers, huh?" before leaving us briefly, to reappear with the doctor who said he was 2 to 3 years old, and was pretty much healthy aside from the intestinal parasites, which we affectionately dubbed "buttworms". He sent us home with a two week course of antibiotics and instructions to isolate him from our other cats, a neat trick in a one-bedroom apartment. And of couse, after you bond with a creature over buttworms, he's yours forever.

***

Needless to say, the more humble and downtrodden the beginning, the more loyal and loving the beast. Cash the Cat is a love machine, and is generally very much content to be a housecat who constantly begs for attention. But despite his now-domesticated ways, he often yearns for the outside world.

In the apartment, Cash's wanderlust was an issue--the landlords had a large dog that was not cat friendly, and we are generally opposed to an outdoor cat scenario in an urban environ regardless. So there was a quite a bit of him scooting past our legs on the way out and getting halfway down the stairs before throwing himself down deadweight like a political prisoner when we tried to pick him up and put him back in our space.

Now that we have a yard which is mostly secured, he gets short, supervised visits, and it is the BEST THING EVAR, PEOPLE. You would not believe how happy this cat is in these pictures. Fuzzy cuteness:

Cash gives the milkweed plants the hairy eyeball.

That shit growing all over that looks like grass, by the way? Garlic chives, that came over from the neighbor's yard. They're freaking everywhere. Luckily, Cash likes garlic.

And he likes catnip, Precious.

tuesday!

Legislation, pls.

Horrible. I have no idea what the fzck we're doing anymore.

/coughcoughbleed

STFU. People who make hundreds of millions of dollars not slaves, ever. And this is not a thing either.

River redux.

Capital idea. Vote Paul! (not this one)

Timmy and the Real Turtle (too esoteric?).

Whooo! Whooo! Whooo!

Cuteness

MOAR cuteness!

monday!

FZCK

I just...I don't know what to say anymore.

WHAT

This totally reminds me of the rant my mom went on when they changed Cheerios.

Smart, simple idea that probably has no hope of actually happening.

The next time I hear someone b1tching about how they don't want to pay for fat people to have good healthcare because it's a "choice", I'm busting this ridiculousness out.

Party discipline navel-gazing. And related.

On stoning.

And some nice wordplay.

New on the reading list.

Does anybody here watch Friday Night Lights? Should I be watching it? It sounds not terrible.

It's Marmot Monday!

OK, I give up, I have to buy an ice cream maker. Because I need to make and eat the hell out of this like NOW.

/warmfuzzies

Garden Update 1

Tomatillo

Roma Tomatoes, two clusters

A pretty pair of peppers

happy friday!

No Candwich, pls.

Between Sharron Angle and this thing, lemons are having a really bad week. New Band Name: Capitalist Rape Lemon!

Oh Rod Blagojevich, you're adorable.

Lebron: Who the fzck cares?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Your Word of the Day: dirigisme

FYI

What's up with Populism.

Graphic of the Day.

Scienceblood! Trafficmath!

They're making bears!

Panda chill, Panda SMASH

thursday!

Quick Poll: How am I doing on the Depressing-to-Cute ratio? Does this thing need more kittehs or what?

File Under: NO SH1T, and We're All Pretty Much Screwed

"It's uniquely American in that no matter what you are doing there is always some nosy jerk yelling out the window of his car about how you're doing it wrong."

fight! fight! fight!

More like this, please.

Joe "Dead Intern" Scarborough, folks.

Why should we expect food manufacturers to be honest about what's in their "food"? Surely the free market will enforce corporate responsibility in the form of not poisoning people....

Corporate responsibility, cont'd. And creeping dominance.

Unsettling...

Nature is good for you.

I can't wait for MadMen to come back.

Brilliant.

Hot.

wednesday!

The ongoing Fzcked SCOTUS.

WTF indeed.

Our awesome budget deficit.

I think about this all the time.

I am now terrified of our bathroom.

Point - Counterpoint.

Well surely he's classified as a cult leader NOW, right? Right?

Colicchio = awesome.

Squrl!

Spooky sea.

Sweet, soothing cuteness.

tuesday!

Oh really? Well, I'll bust out the tiny violins then.

Destroying the Gulf: we're all helping!

IB Schools have been around for at least twenty years, they're not just "catching on." I had friends in IB programs in the CPS in 1994. Also, they are truly awesome programs.

So this is all hideously depressing. More here. And here.

File Under: Wearing Us Down to a Nub Vote by Vote

We just signed up to volunteer with our local ward Dems.

/rock

Beautiful: Tea Party Jesus

Food Blogging Ahead

Ordering a new digital camera today so I can share pics of the garden and stuff I make from the garden. We found our first two wee little tomatillos on the vine this morning, and we've got little green tomatoes and peppers all over. Having a garden is pretty much the best thing evar, excepting the side effect of Tom's sunburnt neck, which hurts like the dickens.

I wish I'd had a camera to take some shots of the frozen yogurt pops I just made:

Berry Fig Frozen Yogurt Pops

I used these molds because they're BPA free and totally sweet. I'm pretty sure I'm going to pick up another set in a groovy shape like these or these. Fzcking rocket ships, why are they so awesome? So proportions are meant for six 1/2 cup molds.

2 Cups of Greek Style Yogurt
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract (to taste)
1/2 Cup berries--I used blueberries and black raspberries
1/2 Cup fresh figs, torn into pieces
2 Tablespoons Honey, or more to taste

Stir everything together until well mixed, trying to leave fruit chunks and berries intact if possible. Does it taste delicious? Pack the mix into your freezer molds and chill until set.

happy friday!

I did NOT know this, and that doesn't seem fair at all.

I have no idea what reasonable is here. Three? That seems pretty generous to me.

/Sad

John Cornyn is ideologically opposed to you eating your veggies. Related.

Size doesn't matter, except when smaller is better.

With "learning tools" like these, I can't see how homeschooling is anything short of abuse.

Everyone's seen this, right? Wow.

Dammit, first Zappos and now w00t? /shakesfist

Yeah, I definitely need some kind of smoker soon.

Scienceteeth!

Nooooooooooooo....

Leviathan!

Nope, no misogyny here.

want!

thursday!

Yeah, screw you, Eric Zorn.

Dexamethasone: one and two

Fzck I love Chris Hayes.

(Love of) money will kill us all.

Aww, spoilsports.

/snicker

Grill and eat!

Japan!!! indeed.

I remember you, yes.