Because I'm unoriginal

To follow up/expand on Red Fraggle's post on vegetarianism, I must admit that I too am one of those vegetarians who gets worked up when non-vegetarians either try to ride on our coattails or denounce our choices. I'm a vegetarian not for health reasons but because I'm an animal lover in the extreme, and as I learned more about the meat industry, I simply could no longer reconcile my love for animals with my eating or wearing them. (OK, I still wear the leather and suede I already own, but I make a concerted effort to avoid buying new articles made of animal skin.) Of course, if I were less lazy I would be an all-out vegan, because the egg and dairy industries are really no better in the way the animals are treated. Sigh...one step at a time.

Either way, it's a personal choice, and one I don't wish to foist upon anyone else. I'm always very touched when friends (and The Dude, who is very good about this) go out of their way to accommodate my meatless diet, since I can pretty much find something to eat wherever -- except maybe a Brazilian churrascaria joint. And when people express regret over eating meat in front of me -- that's sweet! It's really fine...and honestly I wish they wouldn't even point it out, because if I start thinking about it too much then I will get upset -- not at them, but at the industry's mistreatment of the animals. So I guess you could say my approach is a combination of ultimately ineffectual personal quasi-boycotting and burying my head in the sand. But whatever I'm doing, I'm not doing it to send some political message or to get attention. I'm just doing it because to not do it makes me feel sad and disgusted with myself.

I do get so worked up about blanket dismissals of vegetarianism/veganism, however, that when I first read this satirical "article," I thought it was for real. I feel silly about that now, and now when I reread it, I laugh pretty heartily:

VEGANS: Modern Day Witches
...One needn't look any further than Christ's words to see that so-called "vegans" are nothing more than sorcerers and demons, mocking God while spitting on His Son's final supper....

And yes, I do own that messenger bag. Buy yours here!

Da winnah!

I don't usually win things, but at my firm's staff appreciation day happy hour-and-a-half yesterday (yes, I work for a very cool firm) I won one of the biggest raffle prizes -- a $150 Visa giftcard! Heck, I would have been happy to win one of the $15 Starbucks cards, and I don't even drink coffee. Add my winnings to the $100 AmEx gift cheque they gave to each staff member earlier in the day (did I mention my firm is really cool?), and that equals me ending the day $250 richer than I began it. One of my coworkers -- who I thought knew me pretty well -- advised me to use the Visa card within a year to avoid being penalized. Ha! As if there's a chance I would wait even a week to spend it.

Yessss!

No longer can I do the kind of math that got me a 5 on the Calculus AP exam, but!

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Who's my Mr. Kitty...

Well, I believe it is time for the post you have all been waiting for -- some of you without realizing it. Yes, it's the Mr. Kitty post!

Everyone who knows me knows I love animals, and cats in particular. When I moved halfway across the country after college, I planned to adopt a cat as soon as I was settled into my new apartment. About a week before I would have done so, a cat adopted me. This scrawny (no snickers from the peanut gallery!) little calico was sitting on the staircase outside my apartment entrance when I came home one evening, and meowed at me demandingly. I won't say "befriended me" because that's not really her M.O. It was more like she decided to allow me to address her, take her in, and feed her. I posted a few signs around the community, and when no one claimed her after a few days, I paid the apartment's pet deposit and called it official.

Now, Anna (who, at the time, lived in the same apartment complex with her felines, Simon and Seymour -- and only them, no husband or kids) likes to think I named her Mr. Kitty because I thought she was a boy. Apparently this is amusing because everyone knows calicos are almost always girls. OK, I admit, I did not know this, and I did think she might be a boy, mainly because of how loudly she meowed. But -- I would have named her Mr. Kitty anyway. Those of you in the know are aware that she is named after Cartman's cat on South Park -- who is, by the way, a girl, as the Cat Orgy episode proves.

It's been almost seven years now. Mr. Kitty is decidedly less scrawny, but no less loud, demanding, or cute.

Flower power

There has been a lot of talk of flowers this week between me and friends. It started during the day Wednesday, when the Hoyden's sweet hubby brought her a yellow calla lily plant -- callas are her favorite, as is yellow. I told Red Fraggle, as we are often talking flowers (we like to plan our imaginary weddings...shhh, don't tell our boyfriends -- although actually, hers kind of knows, although maybe not the true extent), and she too loves calla lilies and is strongly leaning toward featuring them in "her wedding." I decided to reveal to her, after all this time, that I cannot stand calla lilies, nor, indeed, any sort of "lilies" (whether part of the lily family or not) except lily of the valley. I love the latter so much that I intend to feature them prominently in "my wedding." But Fraggle loves all manner of lilies, particularly stargazer. She was shocked -- shocked!! -- to learn that I do not. She said she needs time to get over it.

Then that same evening, The Dude bought me roses just because. We were at a supermarket and I wandered to the flower section to look around, and he came and found me there, asked what I liked best (roses -- OK, I'm boring), asked which of the roses present I thought were the prettiest, and bought them right then and there. Aren't they lovely?



They're even prettier today now that they've opened up more. He was so excited by how excited I was by this that he indicated an intention to have roses sent to me at work on occasion. !!

The next day, Fraggle, another friend, and I were IMing about "our wedding flowers" (at least the other friend is kind of closeish to getting engaged) and we were exchanging photos of bridal bouquets from wedding sites. The almost-engaged friend loves calla lilies too, as it turns out. Why? Why?? Anyway, apologies to the lily-lovers out there, but you can keep 'em!

Just plain wrong

Public-address announcer Bob Sheppard's distinctive voice was missing from the New York Yankees' home opener for the first time since 1950...

Full story here.

It just isn't a Yankee game without Sheppard! Here's to a speedy recovery and return.

Someone call Anti-Pesto

Thanks to my Wallace-and-Gromit-lovin' friend Alice (with whom I saw the movie, W&G: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit) for sending me this:

"Monster rabbit" targets vegetable patch
LONDON (Reuters) - It sounds like a job for Wallace and Gromit. A "monster" rabbit has apparently been rampaging through vegetable patches in a small village in northern England, ripping up leeks, munching turnips and infuriating local gardeners....

So true

You are Spider-Man
You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.



Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Mr. Men and Little Miss

A friend and fellow aficionado of the Mr. Men and Little Miss books sent me a link to an article reporting the 35th anniversary of the "birth" of the books/characters. There's also an exhibit of art from the books at the Animation Art Gallery in London.

Even though the books are from England, it seems as though most Americans around our age whom we surveyed remember the books fondly from their youth. Most of them don't still read them or keep up with them, but I guess we're not most people. Every so often we do an eBay check to see what Mr. Men- or Little Miss-themed goodies are up for auction. And we're slowly rebuilding our book collections, since our moms got rid of most of our originals, although I do still have my original Little Miss Tiny and Mr. Greedy.

We enjoy guessing which character will have been someone's favorite, since they usually correlate either to how the person was, or wishes he or she was, as a child. My favorite was always Little Miss Shy, followed by Little Miss Plump (now Little Miss Greedy, at least in the U.S., because of course it's not acceptable to be plump without attaching a negative connotation to it). I was, to be sure, always both shy
and "plump." Said friend's favorite was always Little Miss Bossy, which she acknowledges is quite appropriate, and we share a favorite of the guy books: Mr. Messy. We also share our dissatisfaction with the ending of the book -- SPOILER!!! -- where Mr. Messy becomes neat and Boring. Yes, Boring with a capital B.

Ah, memories. And lately I've been buying some of the books for another friend's now-seven-year-old, in hopes of passing these wonderful stories on to the next generation. Keep it going, people! Read the Mr. Men and Little Miss books to your kids.

Nothing special in the air

I had to go to New York at the last minute this weekend because my mom is in the hospital. (Don't worry, she's OK in an immediate sense. She'll probably get out soon but then might go to a rehab place until she can come stay with me for a while to rest.) Normally I drive home, but each of my parents separately implored me to fly and offered to pay for my flight. I didn't take them up on the latter, as I found a cheap fare, and on my formerly preferred airline even.

Getting there Saturday morning was uneventful. However, coming back Sunday evening...another story. The flight was to leave at 7 p.m. I checked in, admittedly cutting it close, around 6:20. Perhaps because I was one of the last to check in, I had no seat assignment. I just got a boarding pass-like notice (at the self check-in kiosk) telling me to see the gate agent for my seat assignment. I knew this did not bode well. The gate agents were harried and rude, in true New York fashion. One told me and another similarly situated passenger that the seating thing was due to "weight and balance restrictions" or some such nonsense, and that they'd call our names at boarding time. Oh, p.s., the flight was now scheduled for 7:45 p.m., instead of 7.

Eventually they started boarding -- probably around 7:45. No one called any names, so I and a number of other people went back up to the desk. The gate agents ignored everyone and just talked frenziedly to each other about seat numbers and such. I learned, as I stood there being ignored, that the plane we were supposed to be on was switched for a smaller plane, so there were about fourteen more ticketed passengers than seats.

WHAT?! How can this be OK to do?? It's not like they're doing us a favor...we pay (a lot of money, relatively) for the opportunity to be crammed into uncomfortable seats and hurled through the atmosphere and treated poorly. I realize it wasn't the gate agents' fault, although they could have been more polite about it. (But I keep forgetting, it was New York.) But still, if a certain number of people paid money to be uncomfortably hurled through the atmosphere at that particular time to that particular destination, is it so much to ask that the airline plan better and accommodate them all?

The gate agents finally figured out they had five more seats they could fill. They put two couples on (one with a baby, but I guess the baby went in a lap) and then the agent who'd lied earlier about the weight restrictions and calling out names did call my name. Well, he just said, "Sally?!" Maybe there was another Sally-something, or there was someone with the last name Sally since every other person who's paged in an airport is done so by last name, but I stepped up. Meanwhile he also waved one other lady on. I thought this didn't add up, but figured maybe they knew something I didn't, unlikely as it seemed. The flight attendant told me to "take any empty seat" -- as if there would be several. The window seat in the very back row was open, and I took it. The lady behind me found there were no more seats and the flight attendant escorted her off. I hope they compensated her handsomely.

Of course, we had a long, long wait for a runway, due to what the captain called "Sunday-night rush-hour traffic." I think we took off at 8:30. And randomly, I was sitting next to the same lady I sat next to on the way there Saturday.

I usually love to fly, but after some setbacks flying to and from Australia and now this, I'm getting a little disgruntled. If Mr. Garrison hadn't been shut down by the government for competing with the airlines, I'd consider buying one of his alternative travel machines. Because even though it has controls that go in and out of your ass and mouth, it still beats flying.