April 2003 Archives

Okay, so, like I said, I'm doing this blogshares thing. It's like the stock market, but you have "stock" in blogs. So, I bought shares in this blog, and then for whatever reason it was devalued, and I lost money, and that makes me sad. So really, this entry, in which I reference the devalued blog, is really just a pitiful attempt on my part to see if I can revalue the blog that I have now repeatedly linked to. Which may or may not be cheating. I haven't played the blogshare game thingy long enough to know.

I actually bought it for really good reason. The owner of the page, Fuzzy Gerdes, is an improviser who I've seen perform and when his site came up in a random search I was doing, I thought, why the hell not? So I have some shares - not many, mind you, but enough that I was disappointed to find that they were worth nothing at all. So we'll see if this cheating thing works. I'll let you know. Because if it does, maybe it's not cheating at all, it's just a creative solution.

Or maybe I'm inherently evil, I can't tell yet.

Through a friend on the Wedding Channel message boards, I found this site, which purports to be the home of "the premier Chainsaw Wood Sculptor in Minnesota."

Well, la di da.

On Easter, my sister-in-law Barbara introduced me to the wonder of The Wiggles. They are an Australian band that has their own kids' show which is apparently very popular in the Carletti household. Well, that Carletti household, anyway. In any case, The Wiggles sing a song about fruit salad with the catchy lyrics, "Fruit salad, yummy yummy." Don't go looking for the song on the web - you can find it, of course, but the song will imprint itself on your brain and the only way to get it out is by either singing another of their songs (like, for example, "Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car") or by singing the theme to "The Facts of Life." Neither of these is a particularly appealing option.

Anyway, the whole fruit salad singing business was extended into dinner when it turned out that the first course was - you guessed it - fruit salad. While eating his fruit salad, my five-year-old nephew Zachary posed an interesting question. "Why do you call it salad," he asked,"when it's just fruit and no SALAD?" We tried to convince him that salad was just a mix of a whole bunch of different vegetables, and fruit salad was just a mix of a bunch of different fruits. We also pointed out that pasta salad doesn't technically have salad (as he understands it) in it. But in the end, despite our explanations and protestations, it didn't seem like he was buying it.

Of course, because I am a big geek, this got me thinking about the etymology of the word salad. I mean, was the word originally supposed to mean just veggies? Was the kid onto something?

Well, surprise, surprise. It's not vegetables that make a salad apparently. It's the dressingto salt! So, when you look up the definition of the word salad, its primary definitions are as follows:

a : green vegetables (as lettuce, endive, or romaine) and often tomatoes, cucumbers, or radishes served with dressing
b : a dish of meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, fruits, or vegetables singly or in combination usually served cold with a dressing

You notice the recurring theme of dressing?

So, apparently, throughout my childhood when I refused to let dressing cross my lips, I was just eating a hodgepodge of raw vegetables, but not salad. And nowadays, when I go pick up my bowl-of-vegetables-cheese-chicken-and-croutons, it does not actually become a salad until I add the Caesar's dressing. And fruit salad is not really salad unless there's some sort of dressing - and who puts dressing on fruit sal... I mean, on fruit.

My whole view of the world is just shattered. And all because of the innocent question of a five-year-old.

So, I found this CD swap thingy over in Kymberlie's blog and I thought, "Oooh! I want to burn myself a fun springtime CD!" And now I am planning in my head how I can plan a CD full of good driving music when I don't drive... I'll manage somehow, I suppose.

I saw the coolest dog today.

As I've noted, I walk to the T via the bike path in Somerville. This morning as I was getting onto the path, there was a black lab there, probably not quite fully grown, with a big stick - well, more like a branch. This branch was easily eight feet long and the dog was clearly thrilled by his find. He was prancing around, head held high, the stick held up with no part of it touching the ground. He kept running up to people with this look in his eyes, like, "See my stick! See what I've got!! This stick is GREAT!!" He came bounding up to me and was so obviously pleased with himself, I almost had to laugh. It put a huge smile on my face, that's for sure.

I so want a dog.

So, they put Dolly the cloned sheep on display at the Edinburgh Royal Museum.

It's odd: I like natural history museums, but Dolly wasn't exactly natural. And I like science museums, but for goodness sake, she was a sheep. So I'm not sure how to feel about a stuffed sheep that will forever live in the hearts and minds of museumgoers.

But since I'm going to Edinburgh this fall, I might check it out, see how I feel in person!

So, while my life is bliss, others'... not so much.

My roommate's sister Dorney died of a brain tumor this afternoon. She'd had the tumor for several years, had two surgeries, but it kept rearing its ugly head, and finally beat her. She was 32.

The thing that gets me is this: it wasn't even cancerous. It was a benign brain tumor that killed her. It grew too fast so radiation wasn't helpful enough. It got tangled up in blood vessels so surgery couldn't remove all of it. So ultimately, calling something benign means nothing if you die because of it.

The world is an unfair place sometimes.

I'm crap, I know.

I haven't blogged in a week. I've been packing every night and finally, FINALLY, we moved on Saturday, which is fabulous. Rod and I are officially living in sin now. I LOVE our apartment - it's spacious and light and OURS.

It is also pretty much full to the ceiling with boxes.

Rod and I are pack rats - moreso, it seems, than I would have thought possible. The number of DVDs and CDs that Rod owns is astronomical - those boxes take up a large section of our living room. I have more books than some libraries, I think, and those take up a large part of the dining room - which we will not be using as a dining room, but as a library/computer room. We also won't be using our kitchen as a kitchen, but as a den. Sort of. We don't actually own a kitchen table, so for the moment we have a futon and a coffee table and armchair in the kitchen. And, of course, many boxes. It's cozy. Well, except for the boxes it's cozy.

For me, the most exciting part of the move is that there is a washer and dryer in the apartment. Right off the kitchen, I have my own little cleaning corner. I have been doing laundry pretty much since the movers left. Yes, we have that much dirty laundry. And of course, there is still more to do. but there is something terribly luxurious about having a washer and dryer at your disposal. That sounds sort of dumb, but after over nearly fifteen years of living off laundromats and coin-op basement washers, this is FABULOUS.

We have a longer walk to the T now that we've moved - 16 miuntes as opposed to 12, whoopee, but part of that ttrek is down the bike path, which is jsut NICE. WHen I was in college, I used to say that the things I missed most about the real world were dogs and babies. On the bike path, there's people walking their dogs all the time. And there are a number of toddlers on our street.

Life is bliss.

This weekend was spent packing for The Big Move that's happening next Saturday. Packing is really an astounding thing, because you wind up finding things that you never knew you had, stuff you were keeping for sentimental reasons that no longer have any significance in your life whatsoever, things you borrowed from people but now can't remember exactly who, and stuff that sparks memories of events that spur warm memories - or perhaps are better left forgotten.

Packing is both cathartic and frustrating. I find myself continually wondering why I own so much stuff. Why do I need three copies of the same book? Why do I have all this yarn - do I REALLY think I am going to learn to knit one day? Why do I still have unopened mail from my last address - where I haven't lived since September 2000? It's AMAZING how much crap I have. I have packed box upon box of books and there is no end in sight.

The one thing that I have really enjoyed about packing was going through all the stuff that was tucked in the sides of my mirror. Plane tickets, concert tickets, movie stubs, postcards, flyers, pictures. Everything holds a memory... the stub from going to Second City with my friend Jeff, my plane ticket for coming home from my vacation to attend my brother's wedding, the note that was attached to flowers that Rod sent me after my grad show. These are things I'm sad about discarding, but I can't convince myself that there is any real reason to keep them outside of nostalgia.

Memories are weird. I was talking to my dad last night; we were chatting about betting and gambling. I came in second in my office basketball pool for this year's March Madness, knowing nothing at all about basketball. My dad was telling me about having gone to Buffalo in the fifties and gambling away $300 at the racetrack. I have a really vague memory of my dad taking my brother and me to Newport when I was about 13 to see jai alai. I remember that I won $28 - knowing nothing about jai alai. I have NO idea why I remember this event outside of that jai alai is a very weird sport and it was a one-time thing... but going to Second City was a one-time thing and I didn't really remember it until I pulled the ticket stub from the rim of the mirror.

The mind works strangely, and today it's causing me to ramble on about weird sports and philosophical packing and I don't really have any point at all, except to say I haven't gotten enough sleep lately and so my head's a little groggy, my arm hurts from lifting so many darned books, and I don't have a whole lot of confidence that I am going to be completely packed by this Saturday.

Calgon, take me away.

Whoever leaves the next comment will be my 100th commenter.

Act now!

It could be YOU!!

Rather than dwell on my sad inability to complete the simplest of tasks, such as creating an entry for each letter of the alphabet during the month of March, I am simply going to take a big quiz that I found in my friend Josh's journal.

On a side note, I think I have a pretty freakin' good excuse - several, in fact - in that I am packing to move, planning a wedding, attempting to actually do WORK at work, and having shows or rehearsals or general improv activities at least three days a week. So, I'll do the second half of the alphabet in April.

Probably.

In the meantime, here's the quiz... (Side note: I have removed some questions which appeared to be aimed at your average 15-year-old. Then again, I've left some in. Really, there's no rhyme or reason to it. )