|.:.| polka dot zebra |.:.|

This blog has moved to www.margaretmaloney.com.

A— Age you got your first kiss: 14. On a Friday evening in March in Natick, MA.
B— Band listening to right now: Not a band, but Cab Calloway (ooh, and then Crosby, Stills & Nash came on!)
C— Crush: Plead the fifth?
D— Dad's name: Mark
E— Easiest person to talk to: At the moment, Sarah. Usually, Sam, but I think that's changing.
F— Favorite band at the moment: Don't have one.
G— Gummy worms or Gummy bears? Bears, but it's a HUGE tossup.
H— Hometown: Decatur, AL
I— Instruments: None. I sing, though.
J— Joints smoked: Um, none.
K— Kids: I LOVE KIDS. I even loved the horrible ones at camp two years ago.
L— Longest car ride ever: The LONG GREEN DRIVE of canola fields from Calgary to Winnipeg.
M— Mom's name: Gay
N— Nicknames: Mags, MDM, Maggie, Margo, Ma Malo, Ma Mo. Never Peg or Peggy.
O— One wish: to end up in a career that isn't a job.
P— Phobias: being alone.
Q— Quote: I just finished "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck, and I really liked this sentence: "There was only this perfect sympathy of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods."
R— Reason to smile: I think I'm just going to keep that one private.
S— Song you sang last: "Wicked Little Town."
T— Time you woke up today: 6ish. I had to go to New Haven.
U— Unknown fact about me: I love romantic comedies. Especially those with John Cusack.
V— Vegetable you hate: cauliflower.
W— Worst habits: General procrastination, failure to motivate myself.
X— X-rays you've had: Teeth and ankle, so far as I know.
Y— Yummy food: fried okra, creme brulee, any combination of tomato, mozzarella and pesto, bananas foster, peanut butter (especially the delicious organic kind), diet coke
Z— Zodiac sign: Cancer.

And I bet none of you have any idea what this stuff means...

You Know You're From Alabama When...

You have a party or a barbeque whenever Alabama plays Auburn in football. You go to Gulf Shores every summer. You call the Atlanta Braves baseball team "us" like they're actually from Alabama. You would much rather visit Florida than California. You don't "take", you "carry" or "tote"... as in "You want me to carry you down to the 7-11?" A soft drink isn't soda, cola, or pop, it's Coke. You call it a "buggy" and not a shopping cart. You've said "fixin' to," "might could," or "usetacould" during the last week. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date. You know the meaning of the phrase "Fobbed again." You can properly pronounce Eufaula, Opelika, Bayou La Batre, and Oneonta. The Talladega 500 is the biggest sporting event of any sort during the entire year. You know exactly what chitlins and mountain oysters are, and you know someone who eats them anyway. You think that people who complain about the humidity in other states are sissies. You aren't surprised to find rental movies, groceries, ammunition and bait all in the same store. You've missed a wedding or a funeral to go to a football game. Asian food is always "CHINESE" regardless of the fact that it may actually be Korean or Japanese or Thai You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Alabama.

None of my LJ friends have commented on my new blog. So switch already! Look, I've even got an enticing photograph. Oooooooh....

Since I've moved my blog to margaretmaloney.com, I've created a syndicated feed for my friends on livejournal to use so they can still read my blog on their friends page. Just add polkadotzebra to your friends list.

Check out my (tentative) move to Typepad: http://www.ocherdraco.typepad.com/polkadotzebra/

This Friday night was the oh so wonderful HRG&SP Wine and Cheese which was hosted by the ever lovely Cambridge Ridley and where fun was had by all. Fun was had by me until I got a look at myself in Cambridge's bathroom mirror-- there was no denying it: I've gained weight! So, Saturday morning, I weighed myself for the first time in a good long while, and sure enough, there were about ten more pounds sitting on the scale than I had thought were there. That brings me back to where I was in the fall of my junior year of high school, before I lost forty pounds in the spring and summer. That time I did the Atkins diet (or a slightly less intense version, at least). But I've heard too many bad things about it between then and now, and besides, as my mother pointed out "it's not something you can live with." So, this time I've started with WeightWatchers, and if I'm lucky, it'll stick.

In other news, I'm thinking of switching my blog over to Typepad. It has a monthly fee ($4.95 for the lowest end service, and $8.95 for the middle one, which is what I'm thinking of switching to) but my inability to use some of the better things about blogging (things like TrackBack, and photo-hosting, and just a whole lot of other good things). So I'm going to set it up and try it out (they have a 30-day free trial) and we'll see in a little bit if I like it enough to switch or not.

It is very much a rather blustery day today here in Cambridge.

I saw Seamus Heaney in the bookstore this morning. It's kind of nice to see a really good poet walking around, appreciating my favorite bookstore as much as I do. While there today, I bought American Gods, a novel by Neil Gaiman which I've just started reading.

After the bookstore, I walked back to Dunster. To my great surprise, a large tree had split across the Dunster end of the Dunster-Leverett walkway. I miss trees very much when they die-- it's like there's a hole in the sky. The wind must have blown it down. The wind has been blowing tornadoes of leaves around in the courtyard all afternoon.

To quote Alexander:

It's been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I think I'll move to Australia [or maybe Canada].

Have you ever heard of a children's book called "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst? There were times today when I felt like Alexander.



The morning started off with a midterm (for "The Portrait") which didn't go all that badly (memorizing slides of art is something I do pretty well) but a midterm is really never a good beginning for a day. Then, I had a problem set due at five, so I couldn't go to the Ultimoose game, and botched the whole thing up pretty well in such a way that Dunster ended up forfeiting. After that, I was supposed to have a meeting with Mike and Alan to (finally) get the design for our set approved enough to get in a wood order, but I realized about an hour and a half beforehand that all my drafting tools were in Mike's room and that I wouldn't be able to do drawings of the flats in time.

I called Mary Alice. She helped me de-stress.

I went to my meeting, which turned out beautifully in the end (Alan even said "This seems really cool!" and said that he thought the Harvard Theater Archive would want to have my Hedda Gabler model from Griggs's class), and the tide turned. When I got back to my computer, there was a surprise. On my RSS news aggregator there was a new entry from Neil Gaiman's journal feed:

Short but sweet

After you said that you had written "positively the last word on iPod batteries (unless someone discovers that iPod batteries can cure cancer, transmute base metals into gold, or levitate frogs)," I couldn't help myself. Mosey on over to http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mdmalon/images/levitation.gif to see the Neil Gaiman iPod Special Edition.

So I went and looked. You should too.

I had created the image in a momentary whim, and now everyone gets to see it. It's kind of nice when famous authors turn out to be quite exceptionally real and do things like respond to comments you make on their blogs.

And now it's time for the opening of the Dunster Grille...