Places in my apartment where cats sleep:
On the desk.
Annoyed that she is no longer sleeping.
On the bed in the sun.
In a file box on my socks.
Again, annoyed I woke her up.
At the threshold to the bathroom.
Yep, also annoyed.
These are not the only places the cats sleep.
No, these cats are pros, and can sleep anywhere.
Finally got the basil in:
Okay, so I should have taken the picture before replacing the screen.
I would have done this earlier in the week except that I was a) sick, and, as a result of a, b) tired. And it was rather cool here last week.
Anyway, I only planted 6 plants this year and it seemed a bit sparse, so I checked last year’s blog posts (search=basil), and it looked like I crammed in more plants (which, given that they pretty much gave up the ghost by mid-summer, might have been too many*).
I’m thinkin’ that the nursery last year sold them in 4-packs (and I bought 2) and this year in six-packs, hence the six.
(I did have two 6-packs in hand at one point, but was dubious, so I finally read the little plastic info thingy the nursery sometimes includes in plants, and it said to *plant ’em 8″ apart. Yeah, 12 plants in a 16″ box woulda been too many.)
Anyway, the basil box is back. One of the few unreservedly good things about summer.
I can get fed up with snark—it’s often obvious, lazy, or just plain jerkish—but sometimes it’s so well done I can only say “Ahhhh”.
I “ahhh” a lot when reading C.A. Pinkham’s “Behind Closed Ovens” series—and these are the types of stories for which you definitely want to read the comments.
Anyway, that’s the happy news.
The less-happy news are the terrible conditions under which restaurant staff too often labor, which Pinkham also (righteously!) highlights:
Afternoon Delight:
Almost the exact thing happened to me. I was working at a cheap sushi restaurant and got food poisoning in the middle of my shift. I began vomiting over and over, about twice an hour. I was literally running in and out of the bathroom between taking orders because I couldn’t stop, I was so ill. What did my manager say when I asked if I could go home? He said no, we were short staffed because he’d already let a girl go home because she’d stayed up too late the night before doing cocaine. It took 4 hours from the point I started vomiting for him to finally let me leave, and he demanded I apologize to all my coworkers for “making them work harder”. Btw I didn’t even make it the 6 block walk home without vomiting in the gutter. I didn’t get fired right away, but I mysteriously stopped getting shifts about two weeks later despite being the oldest and most experienced server (at 20 years old, btw). Fuck the way restaurant workers are treated in this country.
catslightly:
Not surprised. I came down with the flu once when I was working at a cafe and they told me I couldn’t leave. When a customer complained that I was clearly ill, my manager just moved me to the kitchen so the customers couldn’t see me infecting them all.
acornprincess:
This reminds me of one of my roommates in undergrad who worked at the dining hall – She somehow got pink eye and tried to call out sick after going to the doctor, since, you know, pink eye is hella contagious. They said she couldn’t and that they would just keep her in the back on dishwashing duties so she would be “out of sight”…like, as long as the other students didn’t see her inflamed, seeping eye as they were being served their fucking turkey tetrazzini all would be well. Anyway, there was a subsequent MAJOR breakout of pink eye. Enough so that the President of the university had to send out a campus-wide email about it outlining tips/directions about what to do to prevent the spread and how to get treatment. Fucking ridiculous.
jennnnn:
I once worked super sick through my lunch shift and went to a minute clinic on break for a strep culture. Came back positive, with a dr’s note, and my boss sat and watched me call everyone off that evening to cover my shift. No one would so I sat and cried, feeling terrible, sick, and defeated, and shaking from my fever. Finally after watching me crumble he said go home. What a dick.
There are many many many more, in both the post and in the comments.*
We Americans have an awful attitude when it comes to wage-work, namely, that more is always better** and too much is never enough.
Madness.
~~~
*If you don’t want to feel terrible, stop after you read the “Strega Nona” comment. That one’s nice.
**Of course we also rebel against this puritanical sensibility by pretending that we’re busier than we are. Because busier is always better, natch.
Many years ago, when my friend T. and I were both broke (she no longer is, I’m, well, I ain’t at her level), we’d fantasize about how we’d support ourselves in old age:
“Let’s rob banks, and if we don’t get caught—helloooo Costa Rica. And if we do, then it’s at least three hots and a cot.”
That’s if the lottery didn’t work out for us.
Well, it seems some seniors have beaten us to it:
Never was much of a golf fan.
Nope.
Three signs of summer in the absurd household:
1. Sheer fabric in the windows:
2. The summer quilt:
3. The shaving of the legs (human, not feline) twice rather than once a week.
Nobody needs to see a picture of that.
Oh, and the heat, of course, the fucking heat.
How could I forget.
There are three issues for which American presidents will always—despite campaign promises, previous votes, and party positions—go their own way:
Trade, energy, and security.
Presidents will always seek expanded trade agreements, greater access to energy resources, and whatever is necessary to secure what we now, alas, call the Homeland.
Democrats and Republicans will vary in how they go about this business—Dems may talk more about renewables and Republicans may project a greater hawkishness—but in the end, each of them, as president, will sign the trade deals, drill for oil and gas, and sop up every last bit of information flowing through the leaky pipes of cyberspace, all to “strengthen America”.
This cuts across interests in both parties. Environmentalists and labor activists will get screwed by Dems on energy and trade, perhaps placated with a few wilderness set-asides or anodyne words in trade deals; hawks and nativists will be unsatisfied by Republicans daunted by popular opposition to extended wars and willingness to open borders to both people and products, respectively; and (civil) libertarians will be screwed by presidents of both parties when it comes to the ever-expanding national security state.
Thus, the more ideologically-minded partisans on either side of the divide will be forsaken again and again, the everlasting Charlie to President Lucy.
~~~
As one of those ideologically-minded partisans, I have some sympathy for those who want to believe that this time, this time things will be different, and who disillusioned when they are not.
But as a fan of Machiavelli, I think it is better for us not to have illusions about power.
The promises are nice–necessary, even, to move us to canvass and call and get out the vote—but they go only so far as politics will allow them.
And on trade, energy, and security, that ain’t very far.
I’m so glad Rick Santorum is now officially in the race (which he’ll lose) for president.*
Why glad?
Because, while he has no chance of winning, he, like Mike Huckabee (who won’t win), can make some fun trouble for the candidates who do have a shot.
Carly Fiorina (who won’t win) might bless us with more ads featuring diabolical livestock, but is otherwise uninteresting, as is George (just plain “who?”) Pataki. And Ben Carson, who is a truly terrible candidate, will likely simply be politely ignored by the rest of the field before he retires to the Fox sinecure for which he’s auditioning.
Ted Cruz (who won’t win)? He might be fun to watch just to see how much he pisses off everyone else, and I’d bet dollars to donuts that Huckabee or Santorum will be able to needle him into a highly entertaining aneurysm.
On the Democratic side, I’m glad Bernie Sanders (who won’t win) is running. He, along with Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb (neither of whom will win), won’t give Hillary Clinton much of a workout, but hey, a few laps around the track are better than none at all.
In any case, I make no predictions as to who will ultimately prevail in either the Republican contest or the general election. Clinton’s a strong candidate, but that’s no guarantee of nothin’: whoever the GOPpers pick will likely also be a strong candidate.
Which means that, a year from now, my sang froid will be gone and I’ll be reminding myself to Take deep breaths.
*Yes, it’s officially the race (which he’ll lose) to be the Republican nominee, but we all know the point of winning the primary (which he won’t) is to run for president.
Don’t ever change, Donald.
Two things:
1. The reasons I want to be on Twitter are the reasons I shouldn’t be on Twitter.
2. Want to make something relatively small relatively big, and then small again?
Easy: Don’t do that small thing, day after day after day, until it looms so large that you can’t not do it, after which it shrinks back to smallness.
Bonus thing! Delay checking enrollment on your summer session-I course, and then, upon finding out it’s so low it likely will be cancelled, think, Huh, guess I should put up a freelancing ad, and then not do it.
You know, on the off chance that in the next 10 days enough students will sign up and everything will be all right.
Because nothing like doing nothing to make sure everything will be all right.
AbsurdBeats 