Recipe and phone number

I’ve got a three-ring binder of recipes. Sometimes it needs to be culled.
This recipe was hand copied from a cookbook my roommate had. It was back when I had to walk to the library, or use the copier in the grocery store, to reproduce something. Digital cameras were just getting started so most of the time it was easier to hand copy. I don’t think I’ve made Michael’s Peanut Butter Cookies since I left Massachusetts, so it’s time to let this recipe go.

I did want to capture some other things that used to happen. Jotting my roommate Jill’s work number on this piece of paper shows a few things. One was calling people at their place of employment used to be a thing you had to do if you wanted to talk to them during work. When I worked for Whole Foods in the late 90’s the woman who answered phones hated how many personal calls she had to transfer. Though some people had cell phones, not enough of us did that they could make a blanket “no personal phone calls” policy. There was strong encouragement to only have friends and family call in case of an emergency. But we had to make our plans for our life outside of work, so calling people at work happened. The other thing is writing phone numbers down. While I still do tend to copy phone numbers to paper in a pinch, the only reason to do that now is so I’m closer to my end goal of getting them into my contacts, an electric file stored in the GoogleLand and available on my phone.

Also back in the day, if you had a phone number and didn’t know what it was for, you could go to the library and use a reverse directory to find its owner. I never did that, but it got brought up a lot in the era when caller-ID was first rolling out. Now, you google. This phone number seems to belong to something called TC Systems. I’m pretty sure that’s not where Jill was working in 2000.

One more observation: incomplete doodle around the phone number. If I was talking with Jill, our call must have ended before I finished shading my wavy line.

Trucks. 90% not needed

Reading all of Mr. Money Mustache’s posts has changed me in several ways, but profoundly when looking at what cars Americans choose to drive. And while sometimes Mr. Money Mustache can seem a bit blame-y when it comes to haranguing people about their debt and lifestyle choices, I’m totally there with him re: cars. And I’m completely there regarding trucks.

I love a good truck. When my parents inherited money while I was in my teens they paid off the mortgage and my dad bought a truck. I loved driving it. It was driving stripped down to the basics: standard transmission, rough cloth upholstery. To this day, something about a bench seat still gets me. Trucks are handy for hauling things, and they’re big, without being as asshole-ish as large SUVs.

However, I think in 99% of the cases, they are completely unnecessary. The above three trucks are parked in these spaces every day that I walk this way to work. I’m guessing they belong to the construction workers who are building the big tower down the block. But these trucks aren’t used for construction. They’re used to get the construction workers to their job.

As Mr. Money Mustache points out in this post, the two things to worry about  with vehicles are fuel economy and passenger/cargo space. These two trucks fail on both counts. Assuming the construction workers are driving themselves to work, they could be doing so in a much smaller car, even something as small as a Smart Car. (Which cost a lot of money, now that I’m looking at the price.)

Yes, these construction workers may use their trucks for other things like hauling things on the weekend, or an after-hours job. But they probably do not. Like most cars in the USA, they drive us to work and back home again.

And do these construction workers own these trucks free and clear, with no car loan? Possibly, but not probably. If there’s one thing all the Financial Independence reading has reminded me, it’s that car loans should be avoided at all costs. If the people who drive these cars are paying loans plus interest, that makes them even more inefficient choices.

I don’t currently own a car, though I do pay for the use of one. I take public transportation to work and use it to get me to other places when the car isn’t available. It’s easy to say that I’m lucky–that I’ve got it easy, with a quick commute downtown. Not everybody has that option.

But I would also say that I arranged my life in this fashion. When I last looked for work, I applied for jobs that were close to my house, at least via public transportation. If the job hunt hadn’t turned up anything, I would have expanded my search, but I’ve done the hour-commute-each-way-via-public-transportation thing, and I don’t want to experience that again, if I can help it.

These trucks may make their owners very happy. But they also might be inflicting needless financial pain. At any rate, they aren’t a good choice for the planet. I’d like to see us, as a country, move away from big vehicles.

Postcards from California and New York City

Another day when the postcards maybe hung out together and had a beer before arriving in my mailbox.
Jan sent me this very fun postcard from the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, California.  She says it’s such a cool museum she is thinking of volunteering there.  I’ve looked at the website and it does look quite cool.  Nice find, Jan.  The postcard is cool too. Very retro.


Kelly recently visited New York City and reports that the Met was awesome and that visiting the Cloisters was totally worth the trip.  As I recommended the Cloisters, I was quite glad to hear that.  I was also glad to get this sunny David Hockney postcard on a cold January day.  Thanks, Kelly!

Three sentence movie reviews: Pariah

Thanks to the excellent Mudbound, I found Dee Rees and was able to see her first film, which is an excellent portrayal of a young woman’s coming of age; one complicated when she doesn’t fit in the boxes her parents have checked off for her.  Adepero Oduye is a controlled (and frustrated) Alike and Kim Wayans brings it as her trying-to-be-oblivious-while-also-controlling mother. This movie is a good reminder that even as our culture becomes increasingly queer positive, there are still a lot of harrowing individual journeys.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2011/pariah.html

Three sentence movie reviews: A Star is Born

This 1937 version* is yet another 1930s movie that is fabulous to watch.** In this non-musical version, Janet Gaynor is charming as the fresh-faced aspiring actress while Fredric March charms as an actor on a downward slide.***  There’s a lot of good stuff about love****, and the trappings of alcoholism, back when it was something to be hidden.

Cost: free from library via Hoopla (for this movie, I figured out how to watch Hoopla via the app on the TV.  It’s a little bit wonky, but works great once you figure out all the steps.)
Where watched: at home.

*Regular commenter Jan watched the 1954 version and alerted me to the fact there will be four versions, once the 2018 one is released.  Four versions of the same movie? With the exact same title?  There was no way I was leaving that alone.
**Though it presents a very different lifestyle than my previous 1930’s movie: The Grapes of Wrath.
***Also very good was Andy Devine, playing Gaynor’s friend Danny.
***Both of career/movies and romantic love.

Poster from: https://alchetron.com/A-Star-Is-Born-(1937-film)

Postcard from NYC via Minneapolis


Another odd-sized postcard from the Whitney Museum.  Are modern art museums the place to go to find odd-shaped cards?  Test my hypothesis. Visit modern art museums and send me postcards from there.

The translation is “a giant tomato”

Sara writes that she’s doing the tricky process of revising a piece and also dealing with computer updates that took long enough that I got a postcard out of it.  Thanks computer updates!  And Sara!

Three sentence movie reviews: The Grapes of Wrath

A “classic film” that is gripping to watch, rather than something to be gotten through so you can check it off your list.  Henry Fonda is good, but Jane Darwell as Ma Joad steals every scene.  Also interesting: to see how different things were 35 years before my birth.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1940/grapes_of_wrath_ver2.html

This is one of my favorite scratch-offs so far.
The first time I watched this classic was at a free movie showing on Boston Common.

I found this one rather predictable.

Three sentence movie reviews: The Meyerowitz Stories

He’s a straight white male mostly telling stories from the limited perspective of well-off, neurotic straight white males.*  So why do I find his movies so delightful, more often than not?  You’ll watch this movie for stellar performances from Sandler** and Stiller, and if you are me, you will ignore all the parts with Grace Van Patten’s student films (which were a repeating joke that wasn’t really funny the first time.)

Cost: Netflix charge
Where watched: at home

*Most of whom I wouldn’t be that interested in spending time with in real life.
**If all of Adam Sandler’s performances were as good as this one, he would be an actor I sought out more often than one I took a pass on.

Poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2017/meyerowitz_stories.html

A walk on Mississippi Ave.

I spent a lovely morning walking on Mississippi Avenue looking for Help Wanted signs for Job Spotter.  I found none on Mississippi.  Maybe the stores there are too fancy for help wanted signs in the window? I also took some pictures.  Here they are:

On the lower left, ghost stairs that are probably not long for this word given the pace of the development.  You can see a new building that has gone up, looming over the original house.  Will something else be built on its other side?

Some great side-of-building art.

 

Someone has repurposed a disco ball into a very large Victorian-style garden looking glass. That’s a really big disco ball.  I wonder where it once was?

New construction happening where there once were ghost stairs. In fact, I have pictures of those ghost stairs.  See them here.

 

I love this gate.

Here is some art embedded into the side of building with a QR code to go with it.  I did not scan it, but you probably could.

 

Amen to this statement.  @UnzippedPDX turns out to be two strippers who talk about whatever they want.  Here’s a link.

 


I liked this oddly-shaped bumper–or back panel–sticker.  The internet tells me it’s a famous line from Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” which also led to a discussion of if Bob Dylan coined the phrase.

Overall, this was a good day for a walk.

Three sentence movie reviews: I, Tonya

Margot Robbie is amazing as Tonya Harding, in this funny and hard-to-watch story based on interviews given by Harding and Jeff Gillooly, her husband at the time of the ice skating.  It’s tough to watch the abuse both from a parent (an excellent Janney) and the domestic violence* (by the also excellent Sebastian Stan). There is greatness and tragedy in a story that everyone who lived through it the first time has an opinion of plus, the wigs are really on point.

Cost: free due to gift cards
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12 with Matt

*”I have never seen so much domestic violence depicted on film before,” said with a sense of awe by Matt, the DV counselor.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2017/i_tonya.html