Liz Talks About Stuff

Last Names

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 14 May 2013 23:02:00 +0000

How to be equitable about last names without getting hyphenated names that are miles long (me and some friends figured this out over a decade ago, and I thought I'd share it):

This is best explained with an example. Amy Jones marries Mike Smith. They have two kids, Lisa Jones-Smith and Kyle Jones-Smith. So far, so good. A two-name last name is a bit long, but worth it for gender equality. But what happens when Lisa and Kyle grow up and want to marry people?

Let's imagine another family. Nora Johnson marries Ed Gibson. They have two kids, Ella Gibson-Johnson and Nate Gibson-Johnson.

The kids grow up and meet each other. Ella falls in love with Kyle. Coincidentally (to make our example easiest, without inventing more fake people), Nate falls in love with Lisa. What will their last names be?

The girls take the last name that originated with their mothers, and the boys take the last name that originated with their father, and they combine them. So we now have two couples, Ella and Kyle Johnson-Smith and Lisa and Nate Gibson-Jones. Easy!

Useful points:

Although they are taking either their mother's or father's name with them when they get married, they still have a name-link to BOTH their parents (since their parents hyphenated their names).
Although the brothers and sisters now have different last names than each other, this would be true if the traditional patriarchal naming structure was followed, as well, when the girls got married and changed to their new husband's name.
In the above examples, the order of the last names was decided simply by the alphabet. Couples could default to that, or decide which sounds best.
Gay and lesbian couples could decide which of their parents' names to take with them when they get married, or they could do a default alphabet scheme (for example, choosing the names that occur first and last in the alphabet, out of the four).

It's a plan that totally works! The only issue, of course, is that everybody, or at least most people, need to adopt it. Otherwise it falls apart. So consider it, people.

My Year Without Buying New Clothes--My First Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:20:00 +0000

It's been tougher than I thought to not buy new clothes! I am happy with my wardrobe when I'm at home, but then if I'm in Target or somewhere, I'm filled with clothes-lust. "A beige sweater with little hot pink seahorses on it!" screams my brain, "I don't yet own a beige sweater with little hot pink seahorses on it! I must acquire it!"

Then I leave the store, and it mostly passes.

The intensity of my desire for clothes has been manageable, mostly. I went shopping with my mom and sister today, and was a little jealous as they tried on and bought some cute outfits, but the jealousy itself is sort of interesting. It's my experiment, my decision, after all, so I can monitor myself like a scientist and note "subject feels jealous of black flapper-style dress that sister is trying on. fascinating."

I DID actually break down and buy something, but it was for a different reason. Recently me and my friends were at a restaurant sitting outside. It had been a nice day, but had grown chillier as night approached. I hadn't thought to bring a jacket. I really wanted to be able to sit outside, though, and tried to tough it out. I got colder, and I noticed a little shop by the restaurant with a sale rack outside. I darted over to it, found a cute beige cardigan with red embroidery that was 50%, bought it, and ran back. (At which point the group as a whole decided it was too cold out, and we went inside.)

So I kind of wish I hadn't bought that sweater, but I am just trying to take it as a data point in my experiment, just take note of it without judgement. The fact that I was super cold at the time makes me feel a bit more justified, too.

Going to Europe for 2.5 weeks soon. Not sure how I'll do on my clothes ban there...

My Genius Dishwasher Move

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:55:00 +0000

I came up with this idea awhile ago, and thought I'd share it. It works AWESOMELY.

If you've ever lived with others (as I'm sure you have) and also have had a dishwasher, you've probably experienced the issue of not knowing whether the dishes in it are clean or dirty. You put away dirty dishes, or rewash clean ones. It's easy to screw it up.

My simple fix: I lodge a shot glass in a container in the silverware compartment. When the dishwasher runs, the shot glass fills up with water. When I empty the dishwasher, I dump the water out of the shot glass and replace it in the silverware container.

So it's a quick check! Shot glass is empty: dishes are dirty. Shot glass is full: dishes are clean.

You're welcome.

Final Creme Egg Update

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:20:00 +0000

It's been weeks since Easter, and I've been meaning to post this since then. Here's the final number:

Way fewer than last year. (Last year was really a bit out of control.) Maybe next year I'll try one of those recipes, or, if I'm actually vegan at that point, try making my own vegan ones.

Cadbury Creme Egg Recipes

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:57:00 +0000

I recently became aware of recipes inspired by Cadbury Creme Eggs and/or using Cadbury Creme Eggs. These are amazing and ridiculous and inspiring. I'm so glad to see others are as obsessed with Creme Eggs as I am, or more so. Check these out!

Cadbury Creme Eggs Benedict

Deviled Cadbury Creme Eggs

Homemade Vegan Cadbury Creme Eggs

Another Type of Homemade Cadbury Creme Eggs

Cadbury Creme Egg Chocolate Pancakes

There are more out there, too. I found the ones that use the creme eggs like real eggs to be the most endearing-looking and tempting, but there are also Cadbury Creme Eggs baked into donuts and put into s'mores.

Creme Egg Update

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:08:00 +0000

My Clothing Endeavor

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 01:11:00 +0000

It's March 6th, 2013. I decided today not to buy any new clothes for a year. What prompted this? I think it was the combination of having just moved--packing and unpacking my whole wardrobe--and listening to Macklemore's Thrift Shop on the radio, and watching Michael Palin's Sahara documentary.

I love clothes, I love shopping, but sometimes the rampant consumerism of our culture makes me uncomfortable. In the third episode of Sahara, Michael Palin spent time with a group of nomads in Niger. I was busy packing around the time I was watching this. Let me be clear: I don't want to walk around the desert. I like tea shops and watching Breaking Bad on Netflix and hanging out with my dogs in my temperature-controlled house. But it's amazing how little stuff those people need! I CERTAINLY do not need as many clothes as I have. See below:

My drawer full of tank tops

My drawer full of jeans

My closet: sweaters and sweatshirts on top, then, from left to right, shirts, skirts, dresses, and pants

In addition to all this stuff, I have, of course, socks, tights, leggings, bras, underwear, pajamas, and workout clothes. I have jewelry and accessories. I have 26 pairs of shoes. (Including these new ones!)

My new shoes! (Seen before I bought them, when I texted a picture to my mom to get a second opinion)

So. Here are my rules/caveats:

No NEW clothes.
That means clothes from thrift shops are A-OK. If the idea is to reduce consumption, buying from thrift shops makes sense. I also hope it will make me more creative and skilled in modifying clothes/
Likewise, sewing my own clothes is okay. So I can buy material and a pattern.
I am going to buy a new bathing suit. I had a fabulous retro-styled one, but I lost it. My current suit is a leopard print bikini top and men's orange swimming trunks.
If I need basics like socks or underwear because they've worn out, I can replace them. REPLACE, though, not add more.
I can buy jewelry/accessories. This is like a release, to make it easier, particularly because I'm going to be traveling around Europe in May/June and I know I'll want to buy myself things to remember little boutiques. This won't be a big deal, as I already have rules for myself regarding jewelry. I only buy jewelry if:

It is made by an artist and is rare and special and high-quality OR
It is really, really cheap

That's it! We'll see how it goes!

Fahrenhot!

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:54:00 +0000

I invented a word! It's a really useful one, too. Often when eating dinner you want to say that your food is hot, and you need to specify whether you mean "temperature-hot" or "spicy-hot." Well, now there's a way to say "temperature-hot": Fahrenhot. (Fahrenheit and hot, obviously. I love portmanteaus.)

Anyway, Fahrenhot. Use it.

I'm still working on a clever word for spicy-hot.

Creme Egg Update

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:02:00 +0000

I've decided to keep a running totally of all the Cadbury Creme Eggs I eat this Easter season. (Really, for me, Easter is an event that marks the end of Creme Egg season.)

So far the total is 3, which includes the one I bought for my boyfriend. He put on the counter and said he'd eat it later. The next day I asked if he still wanted it. He said we could split it. I ate my half. A few hours later he still hadn't eaten his half, so I ate the rest. Now I'll have to buy him a new one, and somehow not eat it...

Fall 2012 Tea

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 23:40:00 +0000

My latest results. Didn't drink as much tea last semester, only 11 bottles. Not sure why. Maybe it was colder out than usual, or I was in a bigger hurry and so went to Driftless less? Anyway, I only have a few semesters' worth of info, and, as a responsible scientist, shouldn't be trying to draw any conclusions from a small data set.

Another Weird Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 03:40:00 +0000

I had another weird dream the other night. Here we go:

I was staying in a house with several other people, including the Dalai Lama. He had gone out for awhile, and I knew he wanted to eat some leftover homemade soup when he came back. There was only one bowl left in the refrigerator, and it was a really good, hearty vegetable soup. In his absence, this other girl came in, ate the soup despite me telling her not to, and then left the empty bowl on my bed! When the Dalai Lama returned, of course he thought I had eaten it. He was pretty mad. But then he meditated for a bit and realized he should believe me and that I truly hadn't eaten his soup. And all was well.

I have been watching Michael Palin's travel documentaries, and recently watched one where he interviewed the Dalai Lama. (Those documentaries are AMAZING, by the way. They are currently streaming on Netflix, and if you haven't seen them, you really ought to.) I also found an old book called "Separated at Birth" that compares different celebrities it claims look related. The Dalai Lama and Jiminy Cricket were one pair.

As far as the soup, no idea. I do like food.

Three Days of Weird Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:53:00 +0000

People sometimes say they have weird dreams because of something they ate. This has never made sense to me. I have weird dreams no matter what. However, this week I've basically just been eating that chocolate cake I described in the previous post along with falafel chips and hummus, and I've had some unusually intense dreams.

Night 1: My dog Theresa was digging in the dirt, and this triggered her evolution into a worm. (Even in my dream I thought "this wasn't my understanding of how evolution works...") The worm was small (worm-sized, not dog-sized) but had the same yellow and brown coloring as Theresa. I picked it up, but before I could get it somewhere safe, Evie, my other dog, ate it! I was horrified!
Night 2: My sister was going to dogsit for Evie and Theresa. A common enough occurrence, except in the dream she lived in Florida instead of Wisconsin. "Just put them on the bus!" she said. We laughed about how it'd be funny to have greyhounds riding a Greyhound Bus. But I was concerned about their safety. She assured me that when she'd recently dogsat for my mom, my mom's dog Fitzie had also ridden the bus.
Night 3: My mother found the Holy Grail! It turned out to be in a park in my hometown in Illinois. It also turned out to be a large root vegetable. We told the government, who said they would award my mom $90,000 and we were free to eat the root vegetable. It was delicious.

Chocolate Cake with a Secret Ingredient

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 02:53:00 +0000

The secret ingredient isn't weed, first of all. :)

I got this recipe from a food blog. Check it out!

A Tasty Love Story

OK, the secret ingredient? Black beans! And I swear, you would NEVER know they were in it. It makes a dark, moist cake that's intensely chocolatey but not cloyingly sweet. It'd be great with homemade whipped cream, but I didn't have any of that, so I doused it in powdered sugar.

Also, I know I haven't updated in quite awhile. I don't want to swear I will update more, because it's always disappointing to see a blog where the last entry, made years before, is a promise that the blogger will write more. So, how often will I write? We'll see.

Anyway, next time someone asks "How do you get protein as a vegetarian?" I'll say "Chocolate cake!"

My searches, other searches

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 04:31:00 +0000

What I typed...

"How can I meet"

What Google suggested...

"How can I meet Justin Bieber"
"How can I meet a girl"
"How can I meet One Direction"
"How can I meet Theresa Caputo"

What I was actually searching for...
"How can I meet a dolphin?"

---------------------------------------------------

What I typed...
"Different types of"

What Google suggested...
"Different types of weed"
"Different types of braids"
"Different types of birth control"
"Different types of flowers"

What I was actually searching for...
"Different types of dolphins"

---------------------------------------------------

I was re-reading an old Madeleine L'Engle book with a dolphin in it. Also, Theresa Caputo is apparently the star of TLC's Long Island Medium.

More Iced Tea Data

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:44:00 +0000

I finally took pictures of the Honest Teas that I drank in spring semester of 2012, as well as the few I had on my visited down in the summer of 2012.

The results? Spring semester I drank 20, summer I drank 7. Fall of 2011 I drank 21, so there was a slight decline from fall to spring. (Keep in mind I don't teach in the summer and drive down less than once a week.) However, there is still not enough data to come to any conclusions. I must continue to drink my teas, keep them, and photograph them. I'm already building my fall collection.

Spring 2012

Summer 2012

Favorite Books

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 18:56:00 +0000

I just made a quick (about two minutes) list of my ten favorite books, as part of an exercise on creativity that I was doing. I thought I'd share it, with the reminder that it's not meant to be a serious, well-thought-out thing: it's my top ten great books that occurred to me while sitting at my desk (away from my library) on a Friday afternoon.

In no particular order:

Open House by Elizabeth Berg
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Goneaway World by Nick Harkaway
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The City and the City by China Mieville
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
PopCo by Scarlett Thomas
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
This one about memory, about this guy in London...I LOVED it, and I can't remember its title off the top of my head, nor its author.

I just noticed that I chose five books by men and five by women. (Curtis Sittenfeld is a woman, and the person who wrote the book I can't recall is a man.) Unintentional gender equity.

Anyway, if you've read any of these, please, let's discuss them! I love to talk about books I've read!

The Prisoner of Heaven

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:22:00 +0000

I just finished reading The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It's the third in his "Cemetary of Forgotten Books" series. I loved the first one, and really enjoyed the second as well. This one was pretty good, but not as good as I'd hoped.

Fermin, a side character from The Shadow of the Wind (book one), has a big problem in this new novel. He wants to get married to his pregnant girlfriend, but there's a problem with his legal documents. Due to some events that happened during World War II, he's recorded as having died years ago. Then a figure from his past appears and leaves him a threatening message.

The bulk of the book is a flashback to the events that happened when he was in Montjuic Prison during World War II. He tells it to Daniel (narrator of book one), to explain why he's so afraid of this figure from his past. When he was in prison, he met David Martin, the writer main character of The Angel's Game (book two). He also met the cruel, pompous governor, who was in charge of the prison at the time. The story concerns his relationship with those men, and his attempt at an escape.

My first problem was just that I thought I was missing a lot because I didn't remember the plots of the first two books very well. Despite a note in the beginning of the book that says the books can be read in any order, I felt I was constantly struggling to recall the importance of different characters. So if you're going to read this, I recommend reading the first two books first.

The second problem is that the book felt short and unfinished. It seems pretty set up for a sequel, with some unfinished issues, which is fine. But really I felt like there was no huge climax. No complete resolution. And it was shorter than the previous books, so it wouldn't have hurt it to go on.

Should you read? If you've recently read the first two books, sure. But I wouldn't bother to buy it on hardcover, like I did.

Canning Label!!

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 00:20:00 +0000

Check this out! My friend Jess made me this amazing design for my future canning projects. Isn't it hilarious and awesome? I will print it on round stickers to put on the tops of the jars (which aren't reused much), rather than on the glass part, where I'd have to worry about scraping them off after each use.

Isn't the eagle fierce? Aren't the talons serious?

The Canning Eagle

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 03:09:00 +0000

I tried canning this weekend! My friend Rachael and I had been planning it for awhile. She'd grown up canning with her mom and grandmother; I'd wanted to do it for years but had been too intimidated to try on my own.

It turns out it isn't hard at all! (Although I did joke that we should make cute little gift tags for our jars that list the symptoms of botulism.) I made an Indian curry simmer sauce (it's just the base for most of the curries I make: onions, garlic, ginger, a bunch of whole spices, and tomatoes), and Rachael made a berry/peach jam.

The most difficult part was that I'd bought 25 pounds of tomatoes at the farmers' market, and that's a lot of tomatoes to wrangle. But I took them down, because I'm the Canning Eagle (my new canning nickname. what, you don't have a canning nickname?).

OK, here's how we canned: We cooked our foods while simultaneously sterilizing our jars and lids by washing them in the dishwasher. Then we filled the jars with our sauce or jam (I used a canning funnel to make it easier), sealed them up, and dropped them in boiling water for ten minutes. We used a special pair of tongs made to grab jars, but you could use regular tongs. Anyway, after they were pulled out of the water, they cooled, and as they cooled, they sealed! You can actually here a popping sound when they seal sometimes. To test them, you just push on the top, and if the lid doesn't snap back, it's sealed! (If it does snap back, just put it in the fridge and eat it semi-soon, instead of keeping it in the cupboard.)

In summary:

Sterilize (in the dishwasher or in boiling water for ten minutes)
Fill, wipe the sides, seal
Drop in boiling water for ten or so minutes (time depends on the recipe), remove

I made 16 pint jars of sauce! And then, tonight, I made 6 pint jars of applesauce! I am truly the Canning Eagle.

Photos!

So many onions!

Delicious jam!

We can can!

The finished product!

MTV

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 03:55:00 +0000

I just finished a marathon read of I Want My MTV, a history of the network from its start in 1981 till 1992. It's by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum, and comes from interviews they did with nearly 400 people.

I was obsessed with MTV when I was a kid and a young teenager. I used to fill VHS tapes with recordings of videos I liked, stay up late waiting to see my favorite bands' new releases--I once threw a viewing party for the Video Music Awards. So, as you can imagine, the book was the perfect topic to grab me.

There were tons of hilarious and horrifying anecdotes. I found out David Fincher and Michael Bay both started as music video directors. I found out Kurt Loder used to rip on MTV as a Rolling Stone writer before they hired him. Most of the guys in metal bands come off as sexist in a naive way, like they have no idea why the things they did and the way they portrayed women would be offensive. (Except Sebastian Bach. He comes off like a cool guy.)

The only other book I've read in this style is Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk, by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me is one of my favorite books. When I first read it at 17, I wanted to move immediately to New York City and start a band. I Want My MTV was not quite as inspiring, not quite as shocking, not quite as amazing. Maybe because a lot of the characters involved were just filthy rich. Not the artists, at first, anyway, but the executives and directors and producers. It made it harder to care about their fates. (Even if they got fired from the network, they still remained filthy rich.)

Even with that caveat, the book was still a great read. Lots of fun. I wondered if the year chosen to end it would seem arbitrary, but it didn't. Things did change in 1992 for MTV. "The Real World" debuted. Grunge dominated hair metal and pop. I still watched it for years, though. I think the last time I watched it in any significant amount was, after a long gap, in 2003, in a hotel room in Amsterdam. (I wanted the TV on while I got ready to go out--I was not just sitting around in a hotel for lack of anything better to do in Amsterdam.) They aired episode after episode of "Jackass" and "The Osbournes." No videos. It's too bad. I think if they showed videos, I might still want to watch it sometimes.

I Require A Ghost

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 19:23:00 +0000

Published again, yay! I have a short piece called "I Require A Ghost" published at punchnels.com (which is an awesome website you should probably read anyway). This is the first time I've had nonfiction published. Very exciting.

Check it out: www.punchnels.com/first-person/i-require-a-ghost/

Candy Innovations

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 06:24:00 +0000

OK actually it's not an innovation. It's the same irresistible chocolate egg that I get so excited about every spring, except now the "yolk" is green instead of yellow.

We found them at Walgreens yesterday. The sight of them is disturbing for two reasons. Most importantly, this spring I ate enough Cadbury Creme Eggs to make at least a dozen candy omelets. They're so good. (Very inspiring, too.) This version is like Green Eggs and Ham--weird looking, still delicious. I've had one so far, half-hoping it wouldn't taste as good as the original. It did.

The other disturbing thing, of course, is that Halloween candy is out in August.

Airport Delays

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 19:37:00 +0000

How to survive massive airport delays without losing your mind or humanity (as determined by my recent experiences):

1. Don't let yourself get too hungry or thirsty.
I had a little baggie of emergency almonds in my purse.

2. Remember that the flight crew probably has nothing to do with the delays.
They don't want to be stuck on the tarmac any more than you do. Telling them that they should be embarrassed, as one man on my flight did, just makes you looks like a jackass to the rest of the passengers. Be nice to the flight crew, because then they will be nice to you.

3. Bring more to read then you would think you'd possibly need.
I still prefer actual paper books for day-to-day reading, but for traveling, nothing beats my Kindle.

4. Pretend you are a character in a light-hearted movie.
Perhaps a farce or a romantic comedy about a young woman trying to make it as a professional dealing with comically terrible travel luck. Just don't imagine the movie is a thriller or a horror movie. The Philly airport at 1:30am is pretty creepy if you're in a horror movie.

5. When other passengers irritate you, think that your excellent behavior can set a good example for them.
Not for any noble reasons. It's so you get to feel all superior and smug with yourself.

6. Imagine telling it to people later.
"And then we were told we'd be sitting in the plane for another hour! Can you believe it?!"

7. In the words of Donna and Tom from Parks and Recreation, "Treat Yo' Self!"
When I found out I'd be arriving to my hotel at 2a.m. at the earliest, I canceled my early-morning meeting for the next day. I dropped money on a delicious dinner snack thing once I got to the hotel, and I realllly enjoyed it. (Seriously, are you familiar with GoPicnic? I just had one last night. They are so delicious and clever and yummy, and come with little Sudoku puzzles for you to do while you eat.) Then I slept till noon the next day.

Gone Girl

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 01:55:00 +0000

Yes, it's been awhile. I've been traveling a lot, and I've been reading a lot. What do you NEED to read? Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It is an absolutely addictive, unputdownable mystery novel.

Nick's wife Amy is missing, and Nick is the prime suspect. He's definitely suspicious, but it's unclear if he's the one behind her absence. Chapters alternate between his point of view in the immediate aftermath of Amy's disappearance and Amy's journal entries from earlier in their marriage. There were probably at least six times in the book where I set it down and shouted "What?! Seriously?!" to whoever was nearby.

Go read it. Now.

Giveaway Winner!

noreply@blogger.com (Liz) — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:14:00 +0000

Congratulations Nancy! Nancy won a copy of The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller from my first-ever blog giveaway! Nancy's favorite book is Anne of Green Gables, one that I'm particularly fond of, myself.