Tuesday, July 6, 2010
I’ve been reading a thread on Ravelry avidly. A lady just found out that she is pregnant, and the pregnancy was totally unexpected and unplanned. It has been interesting to read her initial reactions to it (dread, fear, shock, etc), and to see how they have evolved as she has processed the news further. Her whole life has turned upside down, and it’s not just the pregnancy that has done it, although it seems to have been a catalyst for a few of the events. She has discussed some ideas with people in the thread, talking about all manner of pregnancy and labor-related things with those in the thread who are interested in contributing. I haven’t posted in the thread myself. Instead, I have contented myself with reading the thread and learning from those sharing anecdotal stories of their varying experiences with pregnancy, labor, birth and rearing a child. I’m not ready to have kids yet, though more and more lately I feel like it’s something I want to do. I don’t have a reason why, which is part of what keeps me from saying with absolute certainty that I want to be a mother at some point. It was interesting to read the posts of those who have gone through it, and especially of those who have not only gone through it but assist others in doing so. I mean, these people see a lot more than one person who only goes through it a few times and has a biased experience based on her own body’s capabilities and chemistry.
People feel very strongly about what the “right” way is to give birth (natural versus with the assistance of drugs versus c-section), and what the right way is to nurse your child and bring them up. There are the people who feel like breastfeeding should be out there in the open for all to see, arguing that the baby shouldn’t have to be hidden just because it eats “naturally.” The people who think that those who bottle-feed for any reason are lazy and gave up on the natural way. There are people who very obviously look down on anyone who had to have a c-section for any reason, or who had drugs to assist the very painful process of vaginal birth. The more I read, the angrier I get, not because people aren’t entitled to their opinions about what is best for them and their child, but because they are projecting those beliefs onto everyone else and making bad situations worse by making women feel guilty who, for one reason or another, did not or could not do it the way that the advocates believe is the best.
I am not an expert when it comes to having children. The closest I come is having a monthly period, and that’s, well, exactly the opposite of pregnancy. So I’m as close to it as the north pole is to the south pole, really. I do, however, have some strong opinions about it, despite not having done it myself. I was around for all of my step-mother’s first pregnancy, and also around for the early stages of my older half-sister’s life. I witnessed the nine months of morning (noon and night) sickness, the changes that she went through, and then the “aftermath”, so to speak. (She was born by c-section because she was breech and they couldn’t turn her, so right there, her pregnancy gets discounted by a lot of people online. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, you know?) I was there when the lactation specialist visited, and I was there helping when we made baby food for the baby. She wasn’t my child, but I was a major part of her life for her first ten months or so until I moved out after my graduation. So I was there for that part.
It doesn’t take a genius to take in the norms that emerge when it comes to having a baby. For instance, babies are going to poop. It happens. They spit up, they pee, they poop, they drool, they snot, they make messes with their food. It’s normal. They pretty much control the schedule for the first part of their lives, too. The fully-developed humans work around the schedule of the baby and go through sleep deprivation and lack of showers in order to facilitate the normal growth and development of this tiny, in development human being. These are the things which seem to be standard across normal early parenthood. And that’s where the “norms” stop. After that, everyone has their own way of dealing with aspect of it. Cloth diapers or disposable? Breastfeeding or formula? Jars of baby food or homemade? Do you do baby swim lessons? Do you listen to Mozart for hours to facilitate development? At this point, I have to shrug and say, “Hell if I know.”
What really bugs me is that it seems to me that parenthood is a very personal thing. I can understand giving advice and anecdotal evidence when requested to do so, but there are so many people who are willing to give out advice without being asked, or going far beyond the request so as to be pushy about it. The thread I was reading devolved into a bunch of people going back and forth about what they experienced and what was the “right” way of doing something. All of this, of course, without taking into consideration that there are plenty of reasons that it might not work or be able to work that way for any other person. It takes all kinds of people and situations to make up the world, and for as many pregnancies there are, that’s how many different parenting and child-rearing styles there are likely to be. I feel like as long as the child in question is growing up as healthy and strong as possible, it shouldn’t matter whether mom is able to breastfeed or whether she used disposable diapers to catch the refuse.
This kind of advocacy bothers me more than any other kind. It is the same as evangelism in that it doesn’t consider what the audience wants, instead pushing its own view of what’s right regardless of extenuating circumstances or differing opinions. I’m not saying that these people aren’t entitled to their opinions and views. They are every bit as entitled to theirs as I am to mine, but I should be entitled to feel differently than them without feeling persecuted by them for the difference. I guess this comes down to my dislike of someone touting any one idea as the only truth and asserting that all around them should agree.
Ultimately, I had to stop watching the thread. I ignored the user who was pushing the hardest and who started the “argument” (it was very civilized, but I didn’t understand why it had to happen at all), but that doesn’t stop the conversation from happening. I wish the lady who started the thread all the best, and I sincerely hope that she has a smooth pregnancy and that parenthood suits her perfectly. I can’t read the preaching and pushing anymore. That particular user, it seems, is just not willing to let the subject drop until she has somehow proven that she is in the right on each issue on which she believes herself to be an expert. And maybe she is an expert – I have no way of verifying or disproving this claim. But whether she is an expert or not, she is giving her expert advice in a venue that is really inappropriate, since she can have no way of seeing whether her advice is the most appropriate for the people in question. And frankly, it comes across as very judgmental for those who do not adhere to the way of behaving during pregnancy, of birth or of child rearing that she believes is best.
Opinions are all well and good, as is active and healthy discourse about those opinions. It can open up people to ideas that they maybe hadn’t considered before. However, I think we should draw the line at making actual statements of how things “should” be and what is the one and only “best” way of doing anything. Whatever happened to live and let live?
Monday, June 28, 2010
Wednesday, as I have already mentioned, was my birthday. It was a pretty normal work day, as far as they go, until the early afternoon. Suddenly, it felt like my chair was swaying a bit. I looked around, and then others began to react the same way. Their chairs were swaying, too! We figured it was probably an earthquake. My first reaction was, naturally, to post it to twitter. It was there that I learned that there were others who felt it – someone in Toronto and someone in New York. This was apparently far-reaching! The reports began to pour in on twitter, and even though I couldn’t yet find any information about it online, I knew that people down as far south as Cincinnati had felt it, and people in Vermont, Connecticut, New York and New Hampshire were stating they’d felt it.
Later, news articles started to show up stating that the epicenter was in Ontario. Or else it was Quebec. Nobody was really sure yet. But they were pretty sure it was either a 5.0 or a 5.5. Really specific, right? Still later, they finally narrowed it down to the Ottowa area on the Ontario/Quebec border. The consensus seems to be that it was a 5.5. It is amazing to me how far away the quake reached. Down to Cincinnati! That’s quite a distance.
Earthquakes aren’t totally new to me. We got a couple in Oregon when I lived there. It was, of course, nothing like what is experienced in California, but we got a few. I remember one that was strong enough to merit evacuating our school until they could assess whether there had been any damage that could endanger our precious teenage lives. It was otherwise unremarkable. We stood on the football field, whining and bored until they deemed the school safe for us to re-enter. This one wasn’t even that remarkable. Being on the third floor, we experienced some swaying, but people who were on the ground floors of buildings sometimes felt nothing. Johnathan was driving at the time and didn’t feel it at all.
The little earthquake was kind of a fun diversion. There was no real damage to speak of, even, apparently, closer to the epicenter, and nobody died as a result of the shake. We did get a little excitement with people texting friends and relatives to find out whether they felt it or not, and scouring twitter and google for results that would tell us the epicenter and more about how far-reaching it was. Nobody was scared; we all got excited instead. It was kind of like a birthday distraction from the average humdrum of everyday working.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
The only thing I asked for as a special thing for my birthday was to go to Fiddler on the Roof (and a cake, but that hasn’t materialized yet; who knew Giant Eagle didn’t always carry red velvet cakes at the bakery?!). We got tickets in the balcony, which usually seem to be the right balance between nosebleed inducing height and price. When we bought the tickets, the show was part of the farewell tour for Topol. I learned only a week or so before we were to see the show that he was no longer a part of the tour. Initially, I felt misled. How could they just change performers like that? I had really looked forward to seeing him live. I’ve watched the movie more times than I can count. I know every joke, and every second of timing that went into the performance that made it into the finished film. (I watched it almost as often as I watched The Sound of Music when we were living in Canada the summer I turned 13. I’m pretty sure my mom hasn’t watched either of those movies since.) I was disappointed to find out that he was being replaced, even if it was with Harvey Fierstein, who played the role in the most recent Broadway revival. It turns out that the reason Topol was no longer a part of the tour was that he was injured in November and was unable to complete the run. Okay, I can understand that. So I readjusted my thinking and got excited about seeing another person whose career has been interesting and varied, and also a part of my life, although not for quite as long.
The theater was pretty full for a Wednesday night, probably owing to the celebrity draw and the well-known and loved show. The seats are still tiny, but I’m working on becoming tinier so that it’s not quite so much a squeeze. There was a family next to me, and thankfully they were willing to seat their small-ish son in the seat next to me so I didn’t have guilt for being fat and taking up a little more space than a normal sized person. He was too precious during, too, taking in so much of the show as well as the mechanics of it. At one point, he had a conversation with his dad about how it would be a nice place to take someone on a date. I just about melted after hearing that. Yes, little boy. Take someone to the theater on a date. That is a fantastic idea! I didn’t jump into the conversation, but it was very touching.
Harvey Fierstein is an interesting Tevye. He is not Topol, that’s for sure, and his voice… took a little getting used to. The actresses who played Tseitel, Hodel and Chava were very good. They had reasonably strong voices that blended very well together. The acting was pretty strong, which was nice. All in all, what is there to say about Fiddler on the Roof? I love it from start to finish. It’s long, emotional, and entertaining. Harvey Fierstein’s portrayal of Tevye is very interesting in that it is much more loose than I am accustomed to seeing. There was a certain… flair to it that is a bit hard to describe.
Johnathan says he was unable to get past Fierstein’s voice as far as the gravelly sound and really low pitch. That did make him hard to understand on occasion. At least I already knew what the lines were supposed to be! This could usually be a disadvantage, in that I could get bored, but he delivered the lines differently than Topol did in the movie, which made “old” jokes new again. It was, for me, a different version of the same thing, and I loved that. There have been other shows that I’ve seen twice or three times and it has been the same experience each time, because the roles are played in exactly the same way. I think it probably takes a truly good performer to take an established role and perform it in a different way, while still maintaining the core of the character.
I loved the show. It reminded me why I love Broadway and the theater to begin with. I had those thrills of the “curtain” going up, of the orchestra starting and just in general of enjoying a musical. I sometimes forget exactly how much I love going to see shows. It was a wonderful “gift” for my birthday.
As a side note: the spell check in Firefox really doesn’t like anything to do with this show! Lots of red.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
I really don’t like doing laundry. Especially when we have to pay to use the machines. It’s a real drag. Until we can afford to move into a place that comes with a washer and dryer, though, we’re pretty much stuck with the apartment complex’s machines (expensive) or a laundromat (more work all at once, but less expensive). We’ve tried three area laundromats, trying to find the one that would work the best for us.
One laundromat was in a city a couple of miles away. It was… okay. Sketchy and old, but cheap. Unfortunately, our very first time there, we ran into disaster with one of the machines. We ended up with some snags on some of our work clothes. The clothes were salvaged, but that was the last time we ever went to that laundromat.
The second is one that Johnathan went to relatively frequently before I moved, and it was our laundromat of choice for a while, for being 24-hours and less expensive than the machines at our complex. It seemed that there were often many broken machines when we were there, though, which made things hard when you need three of washer size A and only two are functioning, particularly if someone else is already using them. So we kept looking for our perfect laundromat.
Johnathan found Leo’s. We gave it a shot because it seemed newer than the other two places and, hey, it was worth a shot, right? They had a card system which served to simplify things as far as needing quarters. The washers were newer and faster, and there were more of the larger sizes. The dryers were faster. Heaven? We thought so. We saw their ads for laundry drop-off service, and an idea started to form. It seemed extravagant, though, so until a post on Get Rich Slowly about outsourcing parts of your life, we didn’t really consider it. The post talked about how outsourcing daily tasks (cleaning for some, cooking for others, etc) could be financially beneficial in the sense that it frees the person from the hated task, and he or she regains the time that would otherwise be spent on that task. It seemed like an endorsement for us to go ahead and try the laundry drop-off service that was offered. So we did!
The first time we tried it, we had to buy the bag. That was $5, which isn’t really so bad. Then it was about $25 to have the load done. We left it with them and went on our merry way, intending to pick it up the next day. We picked it up and took it home. We were met with a bit of an unpleasant sight when we started to unpack the clothes. A lot of the clothes had mysterious stains on them that looked like grease or oil stains of some kind. We had some irreplaceable shirts stained and some of our work clothes. I was not happy. In fact, I was livid. We took the clothes in, or rather Johnathan did, and talked to the people there. Ultimately, he ended up on the phone with the owner of the place, who offered to send the clothes off to be claimed for insurance (which meant we’d get a lot less than they’re worth and be out the clothes), or we could let one of the attendants try to get the stains out and he could offer us some credit. We took the latter since it meant we might be able to wear the clothes again. The girl was able to get the stains out for the most part, so that was a satisfactory resolution.
The next time we brought in our laundry, nothing went wrong. Hurrah! Unfortunately, the next time we brought the laundry in, we were informed that we couldn’t drop laundry off after 7PM. Really? That seemed odd. The attendant explained that his coworkers would accuse him of not doing his work if we brought it in after that, because he wouldn’t have time to complete it before closing. Well, we thought it was a stupid rule, but accepted it and went home with our full bag of laundry. We dropped it off the next day and got a clean bag of clothes back. A person could get used to that!
Then we had another problem. We dropped off and paid for our laundry to be done and got back… a bag of unwashed clothes. It didn’t get done. This was apparently due to a miscommunication where one employee put the bag in the wrong place and the other didn’t bother to check whether the work had been done. So, more fussing to make sure that the load got done. Then we would get our clothes haphazardly folded. Overdried. Not even folded at all, on occasion. Smelling like no detergent was used.
The last straw came in two parts. The last time we dropped off our laundry, the lady asked Johnathan if he was “the one who tips.” He kind of gave her a funny look, and she went on to say that, oh yeah, people tip all the time! This statement doesn’t jive with the first, since the question was, “are you the guy who tips?” He said he would talk to me about it. I should state now that I think tipping for a service that we are paying for is stupid, so I was absolutely against tipping these people for the consistently inconsistent service we’ve been getting. I tip servers at restaurants because I know they don’t make even the minimum wage that everyone else is paid. I think tipping as a rule is stupid except for when exceptional service is given, and the people at Leo’s Laundromat were certainly not giving it. I mean, we still haven’t gotten all of our credit for our original problem because apparently only one employee even knows how to use the computer. Our name is in the system something like ten times because nobody knows how to use it and apparently nobody cares to learn, either. These people were not helping their case.
We were going to drop off a load of laundry on Monday, and the same lady with the tip comment was there. The first words out of her mouth were not “Hello” or “How’s it going?”, but “Did you talk to your wife about tipping?” Johnathan restrained himself from saying what he really wanted to say (“HOW RUDE!”) and just said, “You know what? Nevermind.” And then we became former customers.
Being expected to tip for a service that we are paying for is a bit ridiculous. I don’t tip the guys who change the oil on my car or the service technician who comes to install internet service at my apartment. I am not tipping for inconsistent laundry service that I am paying for. It is an advertised service that they don’t even do very well. We won’t be going back except maybe to use up the rest of the money on our cards if we absolutely have to do that. We won’t be going back otherwise. We’re going back to the 24-hour place with the creepy lady who asks too many personal questions because at least we know what kind of service we’ll get there.
I’m sad that it happened this way. I still don’t like doing laundry because it takes so long and, well, I just don’t like doing it! But if it means we know our clothes are cleaned, unharmed, unstretched and we don’t have to tip someone for a service we’ve already paid for, I’m for it. We’ll look out for another service, but I’m not hopeful we’ll find any reasonable alternatives. The owner of that laundromat was so nice, but I have to think he must be really disconnected from his property because things there are not exactly running smoothly. It’s a great idea, and their machines are nice, but would I recommend it to anyone else? Not a chance. The swank machines are not worth the headache of dealing with the staff.
Friday, June 25, 2010
We’ve been riding bikes on and off since late March when we got a false early spring (temps dropped into the low 40′s a couple of weeks later and lasted into May), and so far, things have been okay. I whacked my shin on my bike pedal once, which didn’t feel awesome, but otherwise there haven’t been any major disasters. Neither of us has fallen off yet, nor have we crashed into anything or anyone.
Until Sunday.
Sunday, we decided we wanted to go to Panera for an early dinner. We also wanted to go for a bike ride, but wouldn’t really have time because we wasted the morning away sleeping, and our day didn’t really get going until about 3PM. I suggested that we combine the two endeavors, and Johnathan thought that was a pretty good idea. We’ve never ridden our bikes in town before. Whenever we’ve wanted a bike ride, we’ve gone to the metroparks and ridden on the trails there, which is fine, but those aren’t very flat, and well, we’ve seen all the close ones enough before that it’s boring to ride the short lengths. Four or five miles of trail really isn’t much, and the one to Oberlin isn’t very feasible for a weeknight or a short ride. So, this was a nice change, sort of.
It’s about 2.25 miles to Panera from our house. There are sidewalks the whole way, which is nice because there’s a lot of traffic on the streets between our apartment and the restaurant. No problem, right? Most of the way there was okay. We almost had to wait two light cycles because a bunch of cars decided that, despite the fact that we had a “walk” signal, they were more important and had to turn first. I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t feel like risking my life just to be able to cross the street. We did go across, but we had to run to make it before the light turned red. I have to say, that really annoyed me. If they had let us get going, they all would have been able to go, and we wouldn’t have had to run the bikes across the street.
We ran into more trouble when we got to another fairly busy intersection. People have a habit of ignoring crosswalks and limit lines alike. There were four cars in the crosswalk to go across a street. We could probably have crossed in front of them all, but the point of the crosswalk is that it’s the safe place for pedestrians (and cyclists, hi!) to cross. If I got hit outside of the crosswalk, even if it’s because I couldn’t walk in the crosswalk because someone was a jerk, it’s ultimately my fault as much as the car’s. The crosswalk is my safe haven as long as I’m crossing when I’m supposed to (walk sign). Cleveland drivers don’t seem to think that the limit line is the first warning to stop, the first line of the crosswalk is the second, and the second line of the crosswalk is the third. And then there are the really big jerks who continue to creep into the intersection on red lights, as if that will cause the light to turn green faster. I’ve seen cars get totally out into the intersection, the whole vehicle past the crosswalk. I mean, really. Don’t be a jerk.
Anyway, once we got past the perils of cars and safely back onto the relatively safe sidewalk, we rode up behind the restaurant. I decided to ride up the tiny grassy hill and coast into the parking lot next to the Panera. It would have been okay if the grass were the same height as the curb, but there was a little dip. It happened really fast, so I’m not 100% on what happened, but I suspect one of my pedals bottomed out, and then my heel did, too, and my bike kind of shuddered and I came to a stop. In the process, I banged up my left index finger. I usually keep the finger on the handle while the other three fingers hover over the brake handle, so when my hand jerked off the handle, it jammed into the mechanism that holds the brake handle up onto the handle. I nicked my knuckle (good gash on it), and I really jammed my finger. I think something hit the muscle in my finger pretty hard, too, because it swelled up and it looked ready to bruise up right away.
An injury on one finger is relatively minor as far as injuries go. I mean, it was the index finger of my dominant hand, but ultimately, it wasn’t broken or anything, and it certainly wasn’t as if I broke my wrist or something. I had some range of movement, and it wasn’t excruciating to try to use it, but any pressure caused pain. So that was fun. I had to figure out how to eat my early dinner without using my left index finger. It was… interesting! I had a feeling of inner instability afterward, as if everything would go wrong if I didn’t stay very, very still and try to do as little as possible. It was a very strange reaction to have to something so simple as jamming a finger. Somehow that simple injury influenced the rest of my day, however.
We did ride our bikes home, but I did everything I could to avoid actively using that finger. It wasn’t as hard as I expected, at least as far as riding home. Typing was interesting, because it hurt to use the finger very actively, and I learned quickly that I had to pay close attention when I was picking things up, because otherwise I would tweak my finger by trying to use it too much. It’s true that you never realize how much you use a part of your body until you can’t anymore. Johnathan was worried that I didn’t just bounce back from the injury and that the swelling didn’t go down much, even after taking ibuprofen. He said that if I hurt enough the next day, we needed to go to the urgent care to get my finger looked at and possibly x-rayed. I agreed. I’ve never been to an urgent care, or at least not in a very long time, so it’s not something I think of doing right away.
Well, I woke up on Monday morning and my finger did not feel at all better. I loaded up with painkillers and it took the edge off, but it certainly wasn’t better. I decided, since it wasn’t feelinf even a tiny bit better, that a trip to ugent care was, after all, necessary. After I got home from work, we headed up to the nearest urgent care center, which also happens to be the facility where my GP’s office is. But that has absolutely nothing to do with this story. I checked in, and probably waited about 20 minutes before they were able to see me. The very nice nurse took me to an examination room and started to get the dtails of what was wrong and what happened. He joked with me a bit, which I appreciated.
We established that my finger was now turning a lovely shade of reddish-bluish-purplish-blackish. In other words, I was developing one major bruise. And it was a beauty. He checked my pulse-ox… stuff, and my blood pressure (better than it was at my last physical, whoo!), and then did a pregnancy test – just in case – before I went off to get some x-rays done. The good news is that I am not pregnant and that I did get some x-rays done.
I went back to my exam room and waited for the doctor. This is the part that amazes me most. The doctor poked and prodded my hand a bit and told me that, thankfully, the x-rays didn’t show any broken bones in my finger. Since I hadn’t fallen, my wrist was given the all-clear, too. He told me it didn’t look like I had torn any ligaments or muscles and that I didn’t appear to have punctured anything. Just a bad bruise. He told me he’d have the nurse come in and put a splint on my finger, and I was to wear that for three to four days, just to help the finger heal, and keep it elevated whenever possible to help with the swelling. And that was that. Then he left. He touched my finger and poked at my wrist, and that’s what he gets paid the big bucks for. Oh well. That’s the system.
The nurse came back, put a splint on my finger and I was free to go. No pain killers – I’ll just use OTC stuff as necessary – and just a splint to help immobilize it. It’s helping with the pain already. Although, I have to say, I kind of look like a dweeb.
So, this has been my adventure this week. Do you know how hard it is to type when your dominant index finger is in a splint? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s really hard. I can’t wait until my finger is healed. You can bet I won’t be haphazardly riding off any curbs, however short, in the future.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
I love making hats. Hats are easy to make. They don’t take very long – even the more complicated ones – and they require very little work to make them wearable after they’re finished. There’s also just something cool about creating a head-shaped object with knits and purls. Knitting still fascinates me when I think about it in terms of its inherent simplicity. Considering how much I love hats, though, I need another one like I need a hole in my head. Since I picked up knitting again over a year ago, I have made twelve hats (thirteen if you count the one I had to rip out because it wouldn’t fit anybody I know – even Johnathan). Eight of them have been for me. Eight! Well, make that nine, because I ended up with a lot of extra yarn after making my Grove mittens, and decided that I needed to make something to go with them. Enter the Buttercup Beret.
I have had this pattern favorited for a while, and it was the only thing that I could see coordinating with the Grove pattern, which required the yardage that I had, was free, and was at least sort-of fitting with the style of the mittens. I probably could have made up a hat to go with the grove pattern, but I didn’t want to get into designing when it comes to hats. I’ll stick to scarves for now.
I started the hat on Monday. I must have cast it on about ten times that day, with my last attempt garnering me a fairly uneven cast on of 95 stitches. I needed 96. So I started over on Tuesday. I got the right number of stitches cast on the first time, and it didn’t look like crap! Hurrah! So I started the brim.
K1, P1, K1, P1. I got two rows into the pattern before I realized that I was not knitting, I was knitting through the back loop, which produces a different kind of stitch than a regular knit. Oh well, I’ve decided to say that’s a custom design element, meant to go with the twisted stitches on the mittens. Now it coordinates! Totally planned, I swear.
The rest of the hat was a trial at best. Not because the pattern was bad, because it wasn’t. I just couldn’t seem to pay enough attention to it to do it right the first time. I would knit two rows, realize I had done something wrong, then go back to fix it. This went on for almost the entire duration of the hat. On Saturday night, I was finishing with it, and by the time I got done, I realized that my decreases had somehow gone wrong. I ended up with twenty stitches when I ought to have had sixteen. Well, crap. So I just did a ssk, k2tog around and finished with ten stitches. That was good enough for me, and threaded the yarn through the remaining stitches and called it done.
There really was only one problem when I finished. It neither looked nor fit like a beret. I know that the Swish yarn from Knit Picks relaxes a lot when it’s washed, but I did not expect it to relax quite that much. I washed it anyway, and pulled out a plate to see what would happen. Much to my surprise, the hat fit over the full-size plate! I guess it was going to be a beret after all.
After blocking, the hat was definitely a beret. It’s not a very floppy or loose one, and it stays fairly close to my head, but it’s definitely not a beanie anymore. I love how it turned out, even with all of my mistakes.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
It’s my birthday! Today, I am twenty-five years old. That’s a quarter century. Sounds like a lot to me! I can now rent a car without paying extra fees. Our car insurance dropped again. Other than that? Well, there’s nothing big about turning twenty-five except that I’m another year older. I survived another year.
Tonight, we’re going to see Fiddler on the Roof with Harvey Fierstein. That’s all I asked for this year. I asked for some posters to be framed last year, but we still haven’t managed to go and make that happen, so it’s still outstanding, and that’s okay. (It’s a couple of Singin’ in the Rain posters that I’d like to hang either in our bedroom or our computer room.) Other than that? Low-key. We’ll get a half-cake from Giant Eagle, maybe, and Joyce brought in brownies for everyone to celebrate my birthday.
I love my birthday. It’s the one day of the year that I feel absolutely okay with making demands for things and being absolutely selfish. After today, I’ll have to turn around and be normal again, because it won’t be my birthday anymore tomorrow. It’ll be someone else’s. But for this one day of the year, it’s all about me!
Here’s to another year and more!
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Rotten Tomatoes is a pretty decent movie review website. I’ve found that it gives me a fairly accurate representation of what people in general think of the latest and greatest films. I’ve been excited about the release of each new Pixar film over the last few years, watching to see what everyone else thought of the various Pixar films both on the user side and the professional reviewer side.
Until the release date of Toy Story 3, it was at 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes according to the professional reviewers (T-Meter Critics). Enter a few contrarian jerks. On the release date of Toy Story 3, long after many of the reviews had already been posted, a couple of stray reviews were posted, stating that Toy Story 3 was rotten. This has ruined Toy Story’s perfect streak on the website, with both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 remaining at 100% fresh ratings, robbing it of the chance to be the only trilogy ever with a perfect 100% rating. Another negative review showed up on Sunday, making Toy Story 3′s rating a sadly imperfect 98%.
If the reviews were genuine, if they had real criticisms about the movie, I wouldn’t be so incensed by this. I admit, the Pixar fangirl inside of me would be annoyed, but if they were real reviews, that would certainly mitigate the fury that I feel right now at these three men, who can only really be characterized as assholes. Yeah, I said it.
One reviewer, Armond White, has a history of giving contrary reviews. If everyone loves it, inevitably, he hated it. He criticizes Toy Story 3 for having too much product placement, though he gives no explicit examples of how Toy Story 3 has any more product placement than either of the other Toy Story films. The blurb on Rotten Tomatoes reads: “Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination — the usefulness of toys — and strictly celebrates consumerism.” In the full review, his main point seems to be that the movie is about toys, and that’s just not a good movie! Wow, how useful. He has gotten a lot of attention for his negative review, something I suspect was not on accident, and has managed to say absolutely nothing about why he has cursed the movie with the “rotten” rating. What is the point of a review if the reviewer cannot actually tell his readers why he did or didn’t like it? That’s left for us non-professional reviewers, who are allowed, by dint of not doing it professionally, to have an opinion of “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.” We don’t have to ascertain whether the movie is good, merely whether we enjoyed it or not, and those are two vastly different things. He has cheated us all out of a real review by preferring to have a different opinion than everyone else on this and other popular films. (It’s not the first time he’s panned a fan and critic favorite.)
The second reviewer who posted his negative review on Friday is Cole Smithey. His blurb is this: “Once you get past paying the inflated price for an animated “3-D” movie where nothing floats in front of your eyes as with quality 3-D films, the story that unfolds is more sad than joyful.” I am amazed at how he has managed to say absolutely nothing critical about the movie itself other than the fact that it was sad. Really? A movie is sad? This makes it bad, apparently. His opinion of the 3D is equally ridiculous, since it seems like he wants the gimmicky 3D with things “flying” at his head. (That’s the first time I’ve seen anyone other than a kid want that experience.) Smithey’s website claims he’s the smartest film critic in the world. For a man that smart, one would think he’d be able to come up with more than a couple of short paragraphs about why he hated this otherwise universally loved film. “‘Toy Story 3′ is about neglect, betrayal, and the planned obsolescence of plastic toys that end up as so much toxic landfill.” And this is a bad message for the film, apparently, to have. Maybe if he spent his time focusing less on the fact that Andy had enough sentimental attachment to keep his childhood toys until he was 17 (I still have my Holly bear, and I’m 25 in two days. What does that say about me, eh?) – Smithey implies that Andy can’t possibly be getting any dates as a result of his emotional attachment to toys that he’s had since he was a small kid) – he would have seen that the movie is less about the sad reality that eventually we all have to put away toys and do grown-up things for the majority of our lives. His review is forced at best, and he says nothing about what makes the film other than it includes themes like abandonment and the danger of planned obsolescence. Gee, definitely not things that people have to deal with in real life! And he totally ignores the ending, claiming that the film is sociopathic and promotes the wrong message to kids. Definitely don’t donate your toys to daycares or other smaller kids, folks! Definitely don’t do what you can to ensure that your old toys don’t end up in landfill, but instead go to other kids who will enjoy them as much as you did! Definitely don’t form emotional attachments to your toys that give you fond memories of your childhood, or you’ll never get any dates! Yep, I totally see it.
The third negative review that Toy Story 3 has been smacked with is by Jeremy Heilman. I’m not really sure what I can say about his review except that he totally pans Toy Story 3, calling the plot threadbare and accusing it of being a rehash of Toy Story 2. This man gave a more favorable review to a movie called The Human Centipede, in which people bite the butts of a person in front of them, forming a long line – in essence, a human centipede. What the hell? How can a movie like that garner more favor than Toy Story 3? He accuses: “Toy Story 3 frequently indulges in the cheap brand of crass humor that has defined that series, with fart jokes, ethnic jokes, and gay jokes throughout its run time.” I’m not sure what movie he was watching, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Toy Story 3. This smacks of attention whoring to me – giving a negative review late, destined to be on the front page of Rotten Tomatoes, and scarring the reputation of an otherwise well-loved film.
These men do movie reviews at least semi-professionally. They are the ones that the rest of us look to (in theory) to help us decide whether a movie is worth our time and money. How are we supposed to trust any reviewer when there are those who are willing to give negative reviews simply for the sake of doing so, or for the attention that will inevitably follow for being in such a minority? There ought to be a level of integrity expected from those whose job it is to tell us whether something is good or bad. These reviewers should have some kind of check and balance to keep them from habitually panning fan and critic favorites for the sake of being contrary. You like a specific genre better than others, yet you review all genres? You are not a reviewer whose opinion should be broadcast to the general public, because what you are spreading is a false representation of the truth. Perhaps you don’t like this film (and that goes for any film), but if you have a history of disliking specific kinds of films, how is that a real review? It isn’t a criticism of the film itself, it is a criticism of the genre, disguised as a review for a specific film.
In the case of Toy Story 3, these reviewers have gamed the system and gotten away with it at the loss of something that Toy Story 3 and the Toy Story series deserve: a perfect record. The people at Pixar have poured their hearts and souls into this film, and it shows, just as it has with all of the ten films released previous to this. They strove to tell a good story, and they did. The only people in the world who disagree are these three assholes who can’t even manage to say anything real or valid about why they don’t agree that it was a cinematically well-told story.
Roger Ebert called Armond White a troll last summer for his inconsistent review history, and I’m going to go one further: Armond White, Cole Smithey and Jeremy Heilman: You are all trolls of the worst order. You don’t deserve to write reviews that other people are expected to take seriously. I hope Rotten Tomatoes yanks your T-Meter Critic status.
Disclaimer: I loved Toy Story 3. I am very incensed by what these men have written, but I think you should know that my bias in the other direction regarding this single film may affect your view of my thoughts here.
Monday, June 21, 2010
A couple of Christmases ago my gift to myself was a digital SLR camera. I had been wanting to take up photography for a few years and after about six months of saving I was ready to take the plunge.
I got myself a Canon Digital Rebel XS with a kit lens and a Flickr Pro account and started taking pictures. I haven’t taken nearly as many photos as I would have liked to by this point two and a half years later. My skills haven’t progressed much past “dude who recently bought a camera,” either.
See, I have this problem where my passion for things I like fades. I love taking pictures, but I just can’t get into it sometimes. The same thing happened for me with riding roller coasters. I’ve ridden about 180 different roller coasters and have been fascinated and thrilled by them since around the time of my earliest childhood memories. Recently, though, the passion for coasting has faded.
I’ve managed to get a few photos I’m really proud of. I’ve gotten many, many more that I’m not proud of in the least. But that’s how photography goes. For every 10, or even 100 photos you take you might get one or two that you really like.
Part of the reason my passion for taking pictures faded is self doubt. I’m sure I’m not a very good photographer. There are plenty of good photographers out there! Why do we need more? (For further reference and to see the trend of why I don’t do things, check out my previous post about blogging.)
I manage to convince myself that the creative works that I do are sub-par and shouldn’t be done. I have a dusty guitar two dusty guitars. I have unfinished code in at least three different languages. I have two draft blog entries saved on this very site.
I have a goal this summer. Laura was kind enough to put together a bit of a challenge for me. Each week she’s giving me five things to take photos of. Some of the prompts are concepts, some concrete things, some adjectives. The interpretation of the prompts is up to me. By the end of each week I will have taken at least five photos that I am proud of.
Now I just need to get around to starting. I’ve pushed back zero day on the project for the last month or so, which brings me to another thing I have a problem with: procrastination.
But I’ll write about that later.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Warning: Spoilers Ahead
Fifteen years ago, the very first Toy Story film came out. I was ten years old, and I remember going to the theater to see it. I remember being amazed at how real everything looked, and loving the story. I thought Woody was the best toy ever, and Rex was one cool dude. I remember getting toys from Burger King, of all places, and playing with them a lot. (They were hand-puppets. Possibly the coolest kid’s meal toys that ever existed.)
In 1999, I was 14. Toy Story 2 came out and my mom again took us to see it. I remember being amazed that not only was it good (and sequels had a bad reputation by that time), but it was just as good if not better than the original! How could they manage such a feat? And then they released it with bloopers a couple of weeks later, and back to the theater I went, for the sole purpose of seeing it with the blooper reel at the end. It probably didn’t hurt that I loved the movie.
For the last eleven years, I’ve been enjoying both Toy Story and Toy Story 2, thinking that was all there was to the franchise, and thinking that was just fine. I was okay with Andy staying a kid in my imagination. And then I heard that there was going to be Toy Story 3. I was immediately skeptical. I mean, Pixar managed to capture lightning in a bottle twice with the Toy Story, erm, story. Could they really expect to do it a third time? Some of my fears were put to rest when we accidentally got to be part of a Q&A with Lee Unkrich, the director of Toy Story 3, at a screening of The Pixar Story at the Cleveland International Film Festival in March, 2008. He was so excited about Toy Story 3, about 3D, about all the things that both Disney and Pixar would be doing in the future, that it was impossible to decry the company as an imminent failure and the movie as dreck. (Not that I would ever, ever say such a thing! Perish the thought! Ahem.)
Since I now follow Lee Unkrich on Twitter, it was only natural to get excited as I heard him enthusing about the various stages of production over the last year or so. He posted countdowns, letting us know that Toy Story 3 was only months away, and then weeks, then days from release. How could I not get excited? Excitement, however, only leads to more worry, as it can often lead to the horrible feeling of anticipointment. (See: Ponyo.) I knew that we would have to see the movie on opening day, though. I couldn’t risk having the movie spoiled for me, and I definitely wanted to enjoy this movie without any expectations as to what the plot had in store (other than as seen in the trailer, of course).
On release day, we showed up at Crocker Park for our 9PM showing maybe a little early. We’re talking two hours early. Whoops. Radio Disney had a booth set up outside the theater where they were giving away prizes and encouraging all the kids to come and dance. I’m sure it was a major boon for the theaters those kids were in that they’d been dancing in the hot sun for a while and were likely to be slightly more subdued by the time they got in to the movie. Or maybe it just riled them up even more. Who knows? We hung out in the Borders next door for a while, and then about an hour ahead, walked over to the movie theater. We got a drink, and sat for a few, expecting to be let in probably forty to forty-five minutes early. We tried to go in, and the boy said that it would be about twenty minutes before he could let us in. Oh! Eventually a line formed for the Toy Story 3 showing in 3D, theater 6. We got let in at around 8:45, and some people ran to the theater as if all the seats would run out before they got there. We got seats in the back and settled in for the start of the movie.
First, I’d like to commend those who worked on the short. I loved it. Day & Night was charming and interesting, and while it’s obvious that it was Pixars traditional computer animation, it also had a feeling of some of the drawn cartoons that I watched as a kid. The combination was really neat. I loved the use of sound effects, too – it was clever and well-done.
We saw Toy Story 3 both in 2D and 3D. We saw the 3D first, so that factors more into my thoughts about the film at the moment. The opening Pixar logo in 3D was really fun. It had such depth, and the way that it was rendered wasn’t gimmicky at all. Really – one of the things that stood out to me was the opening logo. Weird? Maybe. But it was cool! Then, after waiting for three years (since hearing of the film at The Pixar Story), it was finally time to see Toy Story 3.
The movie starts with an action-adventure feeling, featuring all of Andy’s toys. It’s difficult to know why this is going on at first, but it was exciting to watch the toys in action sequences more fitting for the kinds of characters that they are. Wild west, anyone? We find out later that it’s Andy’s imagination as he’s playing with his toys, and then he gets interrupted by mom with her video camera. It’s a sweet opening sequence, reminding us of the Andy that the toys (and we, by proxy) loved in Toy Story and Toy Story 2. Then we come to real time. Andy is grown up. He has graduated from high school and is off to college in a matter of days. The toys make a last-ditch effort to draw his attention to the toy box in which they have languished for years, waiting for him to realize how important they are to him. And it doesn’t work.
Andy’s mom shows up and gives him an ultimatum: he needs to sort through his stuff before he leaves to college. College, attic and trash are the categories he has to choose from, and with a heavy sigh, he decides to make some hard decisions about his toys. They’re going into the attic, with the exception of Woody, who’s going to college with him. But then – disaster strikes! Of course it does, it’s a movie! Andy is silly enough to put the toys into a trash bag to put them into the attic, but he is distracted by Molly, who is taking a box of her own old toys downstairs to be donated to Sunnyside daycare. He helps her take the box downstairs and leaves his bag on the floor, right under the stairs to the attic. Mom finds them and assumes the bag is trash. Because … it’s a trash bag. And it’s on the floor. What else is she going to assume?
The toys are being thrown out! They start freaking out! They manage to use Rex’s tail and escape from the trash bag, just in time not to be picked up by the garbage man (cameo: Sid Phillips! I love how self-referential Pixar films are). They do their usual “hide under something and run” trick to get into the garage, where they get into Andy’s mom’s car and deposit themselves into the donation box. Woody tries to talk them out of it, assuring them that they were meant for the attic, not the dump, but nobody believes him (as usual!), and they all end up en route to Sunnyside.
Now we have the plot and the conflict, and I’ll leave you at that. I don’t want to summarize the whole movie because it feels much more clinical than actually watching it. No amount of summary could do justice to this movie.
Toy Story 3 is really a celebration of everything that Pixar is capable of, and of how far it has come in the fifteen years that they’ve been producing feature films. It’s amazing to me to watch and see that the screws on Buzz look so real that they could have been film instead of animation. The attention to detail is, as always, incredible. It’s a beautiful movie as far as the rendering is concerned. But the beauty doesn’t end there – it also has a beautiful story. Andy grows up and goes to college, but the toys are given new hope for the future; hope that they’ll be played with and enjoyed for years to come by a kid just as wonderful as Andy himself. (I know, I spoiled that bit. I gave a warning waaaaaay up at the top that I would!) It was so sweet to watch her, and also to think about the precious toys that I have had packed away since I grew too old to play with them and also too old to have them on display. (It’s maybe weird for a married alm0st-twenty-five-year-old to have her stuffed animals out for viewing.) I pulled Holly bear out of her box when I got home after seeing the movie on Friday night. I slept with her for the first time since probably high school, maybe longer. She smells the same as I remember – like whatever fabric softener my mom used to use when she’d wash the bear for the umpteenth time. I thought about Andy giving up his toys, and it made me emotional all over again. Could I do that with Holly? Not a chance.
Two days later, I can’t even adequately describe how the movie made me feel. I laughed, I cried (3D glasses are good for hiding the tears, but they do nothing for muffling the sniffles that accompany), I got nervous and excited. It was 103 minutes of movie bliss. We saw the movie again yesterday with Johnathan’s mom, and I’m going to suggest we go to see it at the drive-in next weekend (we did the same with both Wall-E and Up), so that we can talk during the film and nobody will get mad at us for it.
My favorite moment while watching the movie for the first time came not from the movie itself, but from the two or three year old girl who was sitting next to us. She really didn’t have a whisper voice, or even an inside voice, which was pretty annoying most of the time. She redeemed herself only by saying possibly the most funny thing I’ve ever heard a child say at just the right moment. In reference to a scene with Mr. Potato Head: “He looks more like Mr. PoTaco head!” I had to stifle my giggles because the moment onscreen was definitely not as funny as what I had heard. Yes, little girl, he did look like Mr. PoTaco head!
I loved Toy Story 3. So much. There’s really nothing else I can say in praise of this wonderful movie. Can you believe that Pixar has done it eleven times now? Eleven successes! Way to go, Pixar!
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