FunnyStrange.com

When I got this job at Ipas, my old friend Kevin said "That's health-freedom-tastic"! I promised him I would make a sign for my cube with that motto, and here it is.

I have no idea what the real-life Amitabh's position is on reproductive rights, but the imaginary Amitabh in my mind thinks they're wonderful. And he will kick the ass of anyone who restricts a woman's reproductive choices, and he'll dance and sing a catchy number while he's doing it. Dishoom!

(If you don't get the "Cheers, gentleman" reference, watch the first 20 seconds of this clip.)

I try not to impulse buy plants. So many times I've bought a plant that just did not work, because it caught my eye in the store.

So, yesterday when I saw a big shelf of clearance orchids at Big Blue, I passed them by. Sure the price was good, but what do I know about growing orchids? I used to have a couple of orchids: there was this nursery that would take care of them for me, and every year they would send me a postcard when an orchid was in bloom. I'd go pick it up, pay the nursery fee, enjoy the flowers, then when it bloomed out back to the nursery it went.

That nursery closed down years and years ago, and I haven't had an orchid since then. And I couldn't stop thinking about the poor sad clearance orchids at Big Blue. I searched online and found out that lots of orchid people buy them and nurse them back to health. And oftentimes the plants aren't unhealthy; the store just can't sell them when they're done blooming. On the other hand, the people at the big box stores don't usually know how to take care of orchids and sometimes they're in very bad health. It's hit or miss.

So I read online about how to identify a problem orchid vs. one that will be okay, went back after work today, and bought a cattleya. I also bought a bag of orchid potting mix. Before dinner I repotted it, with help from this fantastic photo tutorial.

The pot it came with was covered with a thick layer of sphagnum moss. In the store I had pulled away some of the moss and seen enough healthy roots to feel comfortable buying it. Though I was expecting to find rotten roots also, since it was clearly being over-watered in the store. The surprise was that the orchid had been very recently potted up from a much smaller pot. But all they had done was yank the orchid out of its original pot, stick it into a bigger pot, and stuff sphagnum moss all around it. It was still potbound in the shape of the original pot -- this mass of roots in the shape of a small pot, sitting in the middle of soggy sphagnum. Poor cattleya!

I read that orchids don't like having too much space, they prefer to be slightly potbound. So Georg found a smaller pot out in the shed that would be a better fit. I had to cut away about 1/3 of the roots, and I think I got all the bad parts. The weirdest part of the instructions was to sprinkle cinnamon on all the cut ends! Apparently cinnamon has anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties, and it's used to prevent opportunistic bacterial infection.

The cattleya is all potted up, though I think I might pull it out and try again. Orchids get potted in this really loose mix made of bark chips, chunks of charcoal, even bits of styrofoam. No soil at all. You just have to poke and tuck the bits in and around the roots. And that tutorial said to plant it really firmly, and I think I might have left too many air pockets in there. It's kind of wobbly and they said that's bad for the plant when it starts to grow fragile new roots.

So the best case scenario is that it will like my sunny desk, and it will grow, and in a couple of years it will flower again. It came with a tag that identified it as Burana Beauty, which is a dramatic yellow and red flower. I read that a lot of orchid growers mislabel them though, so I won't count on it being any particular color until in blooms. If it ever does!

Today I learned that ergonomics are something one should think about immediately when starting a new job. I never much worried about it before, because no matter what kooky desk setup I was working at, I knew I'd only be there for a couple of hours and then onto the next job. Now I sit at the same desk for 8 hours or more, and the ergonomics were apparently terrible. The desk is way too high for me, and the chair way too low. Last night pain in my left wrist woke me up in the middle of the night, and I couldn't get back to sleep for over an hour. (Thank you, I think, to the Sleep Cycle app for providing a cute graphic of how long wrist pain kept me awake last night).

This morning I contacted HR and within an hour I had a taller chair, and a plan to install a keyboard tray on my desk, replace my keyboard with a standard size that will fit in a keyboard tray, and give me a foot rest. It will be next week before the keyboard tray and foot rest come in. In the meantime they gave me a wrist pad so at least my wrists get some relief, and a temporary foot rest (it's kind of broken but it works as long as I don't put too much weight on it). I have to say, I've felt more than a little culture shock coming into this environment. But there's definitely something to be said for working in a place where there's a whole department whose job includes making sure my desk is comfortable and will not injure me.

For a long time I've slept with a brace on my right wrist, and today on my way home from work I stopped and got one for the left. I wanted to knit tonight, even had a project all ready to start, but I couldn't because of my wrists. I've been wearing the braces since after dinner & I hope the soreness will be gone in the morning.

Since I couldn't do anything craftsy tonight, here's a photo of my last project. A katamari! I had made one as a gift last Christmas, and now that I have a desk I wanted a katamari of my own to use as an office supply caddy. I splurged and ordered rare earth magnets so it would hold a lot of stuff.

I looked up rare earth magnets because someone asked what they are and I wasn't exactly sure, to be honest. Except of course stronger than regular magnets. According to Wikipedia, rare earth magnets are made from alloys of rare earth elements. Thus the name.

Wikipedia mentioned the danger of careless handling of rare earth magnets, and I can confirm it. The ones I used were only 5/8" diameter and 1/8" thick -- like a stack of 2 pennies -- and I pinched myself pretty bad when I let two magnets get close enough to jump together and catch my finger. I thought I was going to end up with a blood blister but the next day it was just a red spot. After that I learned to carefully separate the magnets. When I needed to join two together, I would put one inside the "bump," (which was like a little cup until sewn in place) hold it open from the back, and let the other jump inside without coming anywhere near my fingers.

Wikipedia says that rare earth magnets larger than a few cm can break bones. Also, I did not know that they are more brittle than regular magnets, and if you let big ones jump together they can shatter on impact and then you can be hurt by magnet shrapnel. Magnet Shrapnel would make a great band name.

I am officially a Lunch Geek. I love making my lunch every day. It's so much fun to pack everything in the little Ms. Bento containers. And I got my spork back! It had disappeared during my first week at work. I guess someone saw it in the dish drainer and thought it was part of the communal kitchen supplies. I wrote out a note with a drawing of my spork crying because she had gotten lost and missed Ms. Bento!

The note disappeared from the kitchen last Thursday and I figured that was it, my spork was gone for good. Well it turns out the note was removed when the spork was returned! I found it in my pencil cup on Monday, it must have been there for days. I thought it was a letter opener, pulled it out of the cup and it was my spork!. I left another note with a drawing of the spork laughing and saying "thank you."

While the spork was missing I ordered a set of travel silverware that all fits together. The knife handle is hollow and the fork and spoon fit inside. It's a nice set; I'll set it aside in case I ever need a knife for my lunch. I also picked up a set of cloth napkins at Ikea. Super inexpensive and now I don't have to use paper napkins every day.

The past couple of days I've packed a hot lunch instead of cold. I filled the containers with boiling water to preheat them while I heated up my lunch. When I got to the office I set it in the windowsill so the sun would help keep it warm. Ms. Bento works as advertised: I packed my lunch at 8:30, and at noon it was still, well not so hot it burned my mouth, but about like I'd expect a meal right from the stove. I had put peach cobbler in the smallest container, which is the one intended for soup & therefore the best insulated. I had the cobbler at 2:30 and it was still kinda hot.

I was so excited about Ms. Bento's heat retaining abilities that I took a photo of yesterday's lunch and posted it in the Mr. Bento group on Flickr. And now I have written an entire blog post about my lunch.

I've been trying a new app on my phone, called Sleep Cycle. The idea is that you program in the time you want to wake up, and then leave the phone on your bed overnight. The phone tracks your movements and figures out when you're in deep sleep, when you're dreaming and when you're awake (or nearly so). In the morning, starting 1/2 hour before your awake time, the phone looks for a time when you're close to being awake and then sounds the alarm. It wakes you when you're ready to get up, so you feel more rested than if you had slept 15 minutes more and then had to wake up from a dream.

I've used it for 3 nights now and I'm mostly impressed. The first night was the best:

It looks like a pretty accurate representation of my sleep that night. Deep sleep at first, then dreaming on and off. I remember getting up to use the bathroom around 5:30 which caused the tall spike in the graph. Then at about 6:40 I woke up, pulled out my earplugs and the alarm went off. (I had told it to wake me by 7.) It worked as advertised and I found it easier to get up than usual, even 20 minutes early.

The second and third nights weren't as accurate -- there were times when I remembered waking up and sitting partly up to look at the clock, which the phone indicated as dreaming. The problem, I think, is that it's not truly measuring your level of sleep. It can't because it's not measuring brain waves, and I'm not quite ready to give my phone that kind of access to me. It's just measuring how much you move. I've trained myself over the years to move as little as possible when I wake up during the night, so as not to disturb Georg. And so the phone can't generally tell when I'm awake unless I get out of bed.

The other problem is that it can't make you sleep better, and the trick of waking you when you're ready to wake up won't work if you're just plain still tired in the morning. For instance, here's last night:

As you can see I woke up around 4:30 and had a really hard time falling back asleep. And when I finally did fall asleep, the clock ran out on my wake-up time so the alarm went off when I was still tired. I think it was wrong about me being in deep sleep, but it was pretty hard to get up. I don't know why I set the alarm on a weekend anyway. I should have just slept in!

So far the first morning was great, the second morning the dog woke me before the alarm could, and the third was a bust. I'm going to keep trying and see if it improves. One out of three isn't great, but then again that first morning really was wonderful. It felt so refreshing to get up and not feel tired or groggy. I sat in bed and web surfed until it was time to get up, and felt like I'd had extra time that morning, for free.

Our big event this weekend was a trip to Charlotte to shop at Ikea. We started with lunch at Dish, which was marvelous. It was kind of a funky diner. Like a much more subdued Lynn's Paradise Cafe. We shared a potato cake appetizer, then I had the meatloaf sandwich and Georg had a pimiento cheese burger. I wish Dish was in the Triangle so we could go there more often. There were other things on the menu I really wanted to try.

Ikea itself ended up being a bit much for me. On Saturday afternoon it's insanely crowded, babies screaming constantly, people bumping into you constantly. And we made the mistake of walking the entire layout of both floors, although almost all of our shopping list was for small things on the lower floor. By the time we got to the things we needed I was feeling so frazzled and overwhelmed that I would have just left, except that we still needed to get the things we needed.

So it's wasn't the most fun I've ever had at Ikea. I often stop there on my way home from trips to Delaware, and in those cases I have a short list of things to buy, go straight to them, and then I'm done. Wandering around the entire store and stopping to remark on everything that we might someday want, or reminds us of something, or just looks interesting ... Ikea is just way too big to do that. At least when it's that crowded.

On the bright side we got almost everything we wanted. A new set of cheap knives (it's nice to have inexpensive knives for tasks where you don't want to use your good knives). Plastic cuttings boards. A pack of cloth napkins which I can take with me to work, so I don't have to use a paper napkin every day. A bath mat. A flower pot. A really big wood cutting board, big enough to roll out pastry dough. And best of all, enough fabric to completely cover the walls of my cube:

They actually had one I liked better, with a big leaf pattern that would have been easier to hang because it could go in either direction. (This one has to go vertically and one of the panels in the cube is wider than the fabric, so I'm going to have to do some sewing.) But there wasn't enough of the other; it was a discontinued print and they were down to the last bolt. At the time I was bummed out about that but the more I think about it, the more I think it turned out for the best. The other print was really dark, and might have been depressing to be surrounded by every day. This tree print will be bright and colorful. It's going to look so cheerful!

This afternoon after my show we're getting together with two friends who are visiting for Nasfic. Really looking forward to it. And then tomorrow it's back to work!

I was going to write about something else this morning. Then I watched this clip of Stephen Colbert handing Laura Ingraham her ass on a silver platter:

I took my plants in this morning. Though it took three trips to carry everything upstairs, it actually went faster than I was expecting and I ended up starting work a little early.

The gerbera daisies look so cute, I really hope they do well in the window:

They get full sun in the morning, up until about 11:30. By noon they're getting just a sliver of direct light, and after that it's bright indirect light for the rest of the day.

I hope the Kimberly Queen fern gets big enough to drape over the walls of the cube.

It's seriously potbound, and I need to get a new pot for it. The purple pot is to hold water overflow, it doesn't have drainage holes. So the fern is still in the pot from the store, just sitting inside the purple pot. I guess I could drill holes in the purple pot and get a plastic tray for underneath it.

These two -- the rubber plant and the aralia -- will be small enough to sit on my desk for awhile.

The aralia was the only plant I bought that wasn't in my book. I really liked the leaf shape, and from the tag in the store I thought it would end up a bushy shrub, 2-3 feet tall. Today I googled the plant and it's actually a tree that grows 6' tall in containers! And it grows straight up, hardly any branching, so I couldn't prune it into a bushy shrub like I wanted. And it needs bright light, which I won't be able to give it once it's too big to sit on my desk. And it hates cold temperatures, and I've been warned repeatedly that our corner of the office gets cold in winter.

In other words, aralia is completely wrong for my space in every way. This is why I got the book! So I wouldn't make mistakes like this! At least the plant only cost $3. I've been thinking that maybe I could attempt to turn the aralia into a bonsai. I've always wanted to learn about bonsai. If I could keep the aralia small then it could stay on the desk where it would get adequate light. And I do really like the shape & color of the leaves.

One last photo: on my first day they gave me this awesome page of stickers. I hung them on my wall. Aborto seguro!

This weekend was taken up with catching up on sleep, housework, yardwork, and shopping for work. Some practical things like hand sanitizer, and just for fun, plants! In my first week at the job, I've been impressed by the plants some people have in their offices and/or cubes. Some of the plants have obviously been there for years. Like a gigantic begonia in the library. And someone has a pothos in their cube, with 6-foot long vines trained to grow along the outer wall of the cube.

Since I have a nice big window with morning sun, I had to get some plants. Yesterday I drove to Big Orange to browse, and was sorely disappointed by their puny selection of house plants. I also managed to dump about a gallon of water on myself! Here's a tip: after a heavy rain storm, don't go to an outdoor nursery and pull down a planter box from the top shelf. The sad thing is, even though I was thoroughly drenched -- I mean wringing out my clothes while I was still in them -- this time of year is so steamy, by the time I finished my errands I was almost completely dry. And it wasn't even very hot yesterday!

Not finding any nice plants at Big Orange, I went to the library and got a great book on houseplants called How to Grow Fresh Air. The author tested 50 houseplants to see which were the most effective at absorbing toxins like formaldehyde from the air. The book has a little chart for each plant, ranking them according to toxin absorption, how easy they are to grow, light requirements, and resistance to pests & disease. Last night I read through the book and made a wish list of plants for my cube. I guess it's kind of a nerdy thing to get a book and do research on houseplants, rather than just go to the store and pick the ones that look nice. But it seems to me that if all goes well I'm going to have this job, and therefore these plants, for years. And what if I got the wrong plants for my space?!? I could spend years trying to nurse along plants that I should never have gotten in the first place! (My new boss is really into Myers-Briggs, and I think she would say this is a sign of how "J" I am. I prefer to think of it as deliberative.)

This morning, armed with my list, we went to Big Blue. The big one on Roxboro Road. And they have a fantastic selection of houseplants! Much better than Big Orange. I got everything on my list:

1. For the front of my cube, away from the window and under a fluorescent light, a Kimberly Queen fern. It looks like a Boston fern and is much easier to take care of. According to the book Boston fern is far and away the most effective absorber of toxins, out of all the plants they tested. Kimberly Queen fern isn't far behind, and is better able to deal with the dry air in the typical office. Still, I bought a little mister and will try to remember to mist it regularly.
2. For my desk next to my computer, a variegated rubber plant. It was a toss-up between that or a dracaena Janet Craig. Both are easy to grow; I just happened to see a rubber plant with nice colored variegation. The rubber plants at Big Blue were being horribly overwatered: they were in cache pots that had no drainage holes and were sitting in several inches of water. The soil was completely saturated. Several hours later when I repotted it, it was still dripping wet. I'm going to have to keep an eye on it, be sure not to overwater, and hope the poor guy recovers. If it does survive, when it gets bigger I'll move it to the floor next to my desk.
3. For the sunny window sill, a window box with three gerbera daisies! I love them so much, it was a thrill to find them on the list of best plants for absorbing toxins. And the book says that if properly cared for, they bloom all winter! I'm not actually surprised by that. The ones we have outside go dormant in high summer, then when it cools off in late September they start blooming again. In mild autumns we've had flowers on the gerbera daisies well into November. Even when it's not in bloom, I love the foliage too. Anyway I've had really good luck with this plant outdoors, and I'm hoping I'll be able to grow them inside as well.

So those are my plant purchases! I've never grown houseplants before -- our house is so dark, there just didn't seem any point -- and I wanted to start with relatively easy ones. I potted them up this afternoon after my show, so they'd be ready to go in the morning. I forgot to get a drip tray for the rubber plant, but it's so wet already that I've got at least a week before I need to water it. I'll take photos tomorrow when I get them situated. I'm going to try to get to work early because it's going to take three trips to get them up the stairs.

Week 1 of gainful employment is completed! Successfully, I think, and I hope my employers think so as well. The first couple of days were completely overwhelming. So much information to absorb all at once, and such a different environment from what I'm used to.

I was expecting the change in workplace culture to be disorienting. It's such a larger organization than I'm used to, and while it's informal compared to a lot of corporations, it's by definition much more formal than my former clients. Like the company of 6 people where everyone set their own hours. Or the place where employees were not just allowed but encouraged to use the shop facilities for personal projects, or even to run their own side businesses. (I'm still bummed out that I have no woodworking skills so I couldn't make use of that perk.) This just isn't like that at all.

What I wasn't expecting was to be disoriented by my own lack of knowledge. Until a week ago I was Ms. Fix It. I was the person that people would be waiting for me to get there because something was wrong and they knew I could take care of it. Even if I had no idea how when I got there, by the time I left it would be solved. (Does that sound like I'm bragging? I don't mean to. I just like figuring stuff out. And after years of managing a system, when something happens to it you usually have a pretty good idea what it's about, even if you've never encountered that exact problem before.)

Now I'm the person who doesn't understand anything and is confused all the time. Actually it's not that bad, although it felt like that for the first couple of days. By the end of the week I'm starting to get the hang of the physical layout, starting to remember people's names, and most importantly, getting to do some actual work. It's amazing what a difference that makes. Not only the quiet time, but doing something I know how to do. It feels like a mental anchor. Funny story: on Wednesday my group had a longish meeting to review an ongoing project with me. Near the end of the meeting my boss suggested that in the afternoon maybe I could do task xyz. This was the first actual work they'd given me (so, 2 1/2 days of almost non stop meetings at that point) and I jumped at the prospect. They looked a little surprised so I explained "There's so much to learn, it would be a nice break to just sit and do some work." My boss said "Aw, she wants to code!"

Plus I've been going back to Hillsborough every evening to help out with one of my jobs -- one of my former jobs I guess I should say. That wasn't hard to do, it just added several hours onto the day. On top of the new job being overwhelming on its own, and I've had difficulty sleeping because there's so much to remember and think about. The end result is a very tired me! Last night I finally slept soundly, and woke up late this morning. I plan to do the same tonight.

I also have a shopping list of things I want to get for my cube. Hand lotion, a potted plant, that sort of thing. I was also going to get tissues, until I mentioned my list to my coworker and she showed me a whole cabinet full of tissue boxes that we can take whenever we need! It's right next to the cabinet full of pens! There's something to this office thing.

After years of working mostly at home in my pajamas, it's a bit of an adjustment to sit at a desk in a cube. (For one thing, until three days ago I didn't know they're called "cubes" now, not "cubicles." Those extra syllables are so 20th century.)

The good news is the office isn't laid out in a vast expanse of cubes. There are small groups of cubes here and there, like little neighborhoods. I'm in a row of three cubes and the people on either side of me are fairly quiet.

The best part is that I sit in front of a huge window. Right behind us are some apartment buildings, though we're up high enough that I can see the woods behind the apartments. I have to keep the blinds down until mid-morning to keep the sun off my computer screen. After that the sunlight is indirect and I can open the blinds all the way. This afternoon I watched a hawk circling over the woods.

I need to measure the window sill for a planter box. The previous occupant had plants -- I can see faint water rings on the sill. I also got permission to cover the beige cube walls with my own fabric, which will make the space much more cheerful. This was my first effort to brighten up the cube:
I made two Flying Spaghetti Monsters as gifts last winter, and clearly it was time to make one for myself. Right now he's sitting on my desk between the computer and the phone. There's a bookshelf in the front of my cube, and this afternoon I noticed that it's just the right height that I could put the FSM up there and have his eye stalks peering out at people as they walked by. I think I might have to make something else for my desk and move the FSM to sentry duty.

I started my new job today! It was exciting and a little overwhelming. Spent the whole day on orientation and meeting people. I asked what the policy was on blogging about work and they said it's okay as long as I don't give away trade secrets or anything. So I will stop being coy and say that I work for Ipas. According to the web site Ipas "is a nonprofit organization that works around the world to increase women's ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights, and to reduce abortion-related deaths and injuries."

My team leader took us out to lunch, woo! Nice way to get started on my first day. We had lunch at the famous BLT place whose name escapes me at the moment, then went to Sugarland on Franklin Street, which I had been wanting to try since seeing them on Food Network. Really fun selection of cupcakes. They also have gelato in interesting flavors like blood orange. While we were there, a group of three came in to get gelato martinis. Unfortunately they take a bit of time to make and we left before I could see what the finished martinis actually look like.

I didn't want a cupcake right then, so I got two to bring home for Georg and me: pumpkin chocolate, and boston cream pie. We shared them after dinner and they were both wonderful. The pumpkin chocolate was my favorite, because while the cake part of both was extremely good, the icing on the pumpkin chocolate was better. It was a really light cream cheese icing, I think they must have whipped it to get such a light texture. The icing on the boston cream cupcake was a thick ganache which was kind of too rich for me. My new team leader says she loves icing; to her cake is an icing delivery mechanism. I feel the opposite: I often scrape the icing off and just eat the cake. I think we'll get along well at office parties.

After my first day at Ipas I drove back out to Hillsborough to the furniture company. The owner is out of town all week so I'm going over there to check the email, write quotes etc while he's gone. (My replacement doesn't start until next week.) I rather stupidly took the most direct route, which sent me right through the middle of downtown Chapel Hill. Fun traffic! Tomorrow I'm going to detour through Carrboro. It will make the drive longer in terms of distance but probably faster.

We just got back from seeing Shen Wei Dance Arts at ADF. Wow. They did a performance called "Folding" which blew me away.

This video fails to capture how special "Folding" was:

That first segment, where they're wearing red and running across the stage. They had this odd, fluid way of running so that the upper part of their bodies didn't move at all, as if they were being pulled on a moving platform (like that famous hallway scene in Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast). And the lighting was dim at first, and with those large white headpieces and white body makeup, at first I honestly couldn't tell whether they were moving forward or backward. At times it seemed like the headpieces were masks and they were moving backwards. But then I would think that they had to be going forwards, to move that quickly and smoothly. The effect was eerie and almost a little disturbing.

Besides "Folding" they also did a beautiful piece set to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." There's a video for this which for some reason has no sound, so I'm not bothering to link to it. And a short solo work by Shen Wei called "A Solo Work By Shen Wei." Which was odd and kind of .. funny? I wasn't sure what was going on.

Today I said goodbye to two jobs I really loved. The first one gave me a little party with a cake. The second gave me the gift of treating it like an ordinary day thus preventing me from having a complete meltdown. Which would have embarrassed everyone.

At one of the jobs, the boss's daughter works there too. She has Down syndrome and this afternoon she presented me with a card she made for me:

I asked her to read the front for me and she told me it says "Getting Ready to Have a Party for Sarah." With that translation as a guide I was able to read the inside.

She wrote out goodbye messages for me from everyone who works there. I've seen her make these cards before so I know that she wrote the whole thing herself, imagining what people would say. These are the messages:

from Allison (the author): You left and have a new job. I miss you.
from Katie: Sarah, you have a great time.
from Arin: Sarah, you have nice [?] work days.
from Brooks Ann: I am so happy for you.
from Louise: Like you, we miss you.
from Edward: You have a nice time.
from Donna: I miss you and I like you, Sarah.

The best going-away card ever. I have to say, I was a little surprised by her reaction to my departure. She just never seemed that interested in me. She knew my name and would always say hi, but there were other people there that she was much more excited to see. The day she found out I was leaving, she cried. And today, when she gave me the card she said "Don't cry! No crying today!" I promised her I wouldn't cry, and I didn't. Well, maybe a little misty. While I was driving home, when no one could see me.

So I have a new job, full-time, which starts on Monday. It's with a non-profit that promotes women's health and reproductive rights. Not only will I be doing interesting work, but in support of a cause that means a lot to me. I'm pretty excited about it.

The past week has been taken up with preparing for, well I guess it's going to be a pretty big change in my daily life, after being freelance for so long. Taking care of errands, enjoying "one last time" of things I used to do on weekdays, etc. I bought the lunch box last weekend, and today I bought work clothes. I had forgotten how much I hate clothes shopping. Especially when it's a million degrees out. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I won't have to wear hose.

Speaking of the lunch box, I heart Ms. Bento. When I first saw it, the containers looked awfully small. I was worried that maybe I should have gotten Mr. Bento, which has four containers. But Ms. Bento turns out to be perfect. I fill one container with a protein (like barbecue chicken), one with vegetables (like spinach salad, or cherry tomatoes and mozzarella) and one with fruit. I should take photos but my lunches often taste better than they look. It would be a good motivator though. And I have a lunch box buddy!

RuPaul's new show, RuPaul's Drag U, premiered last night. Georg and I were both big fans of her hit show, RuPaul's Drag Race, of which this is sort of a spinoff.

RuPaul's Drag Race is basically America's Next Top Model with professional drag queens instead of teenage would-be models, and RuPaul instead of Tyra. If that description doesn't appeal to you, you probably skipped this entire entry and aren't reading now. Trust me, it's fantastic.

The concept of RuPaul's Drag U is less interesting to me: in each episode three former Drag Race contestants give a drag-style makeover to three biological women. The women have to wear big costumes, big wigs and big makeup, walk the runway, and do a lip sync performance. They are judged and the winner gets $10,000.

I don't generally watch makeover shows. I'm kind of put off by the tearful confessionals & the conceit that a TV show can improve someone's life by giving them a new outfit and some makeup tips. That said, if I had the opportunity to get a new outfit and makeup tips from a drag queen, hell yeah I'd do it. I'm, shall we say, a fan of elaborate costumes, and no one does costumes better than a drag queen. And most of the Drag Race contestants I really liked are on this show (everyone I had hoped for except Jessica Wild). So of course I watched Drag U.

It's almost by definition not as good as Drag Race, simply because more time spent on the makeovers means less time spent on the drag queens. It seemed like the drag queens weren't exactly sure whether the show was about them or the makover-ees. For instance Jujubee seemed to focus on the woman she was helping, while Raven clearly wanted all of her face time to be all about herself.

What I liked: Most of all, RuPaul's sense of humor. The funniest thing in the entire episode was when RuPaul advised one of the women to "Take a page from my book. No, really. [takes autobiography off a shelf] It's right here. Take it." I only wish she'd made the woman actually tear out a page. RuPaul also used that creaky old "walk this way" gag to great effect. And Jujubee had a funny exchange with her makeover-ee, who put on a tight dress after wearing nothing but pants for years:

"Do you feel powerful?"
"I feel like a sausage."
"Do you feel like a powerful sausage?"

What I didn't like: the idea, implied throughout the episode and stated outright once or twice, that the makeover subjects, all "tomboys" who never wore makeup, were not fully women until the drag queens taught them how. I'm all for playing around with the expectations of gender roles. A man who wears dresses, acts out an exaggerated version of femininity, and calls himself a queen is no less of a man. Likewise a woman who rides a Harley, hates dresses and makeup, and calls herself a biker chick or a tomboy is no less of a woman.

When Raven said "They were boys when they walked in here, and now they're women," she couldn't have been more wrong. Whether they were in jeans or gowns, they were always women. No one can give womanhood to them because no one can take it away.

I was also deeply uncomfortable when one of the makeover-ees said that she never wore dresses because she had a history of sexual assault and she felt unsafe in feminine clothing. That was where I felt the show crossed the line into exploitation. (A line that Drag Race never crossed in my opinion, because the contestants were all professional drag performers using the show to promote their careers.) That woman needs counseling, not a reality tv show.

I'll continue watching Drag U, just to see more of favorites like Nina Flowers and Pandora Boxx. But I'll be glad when this show is over and the next season of Drag Race starts up.

Ms. Bento arrived today! As I was told by a Ms. Bento owner, the containers look a bit small. I put a spice jar in the photo for scale. Apparently the Japanese don't eat very big lunches. I think it will be a good amount of food when it's filled. Which will be tomorrow!

I ran the smoker today. Smoked a chicken, ribs and pork butt. (Plus a sausage I had for lunch today. I love those cheddar brats from Whole Foods.) We'll have the ribs tonight and I'll pack some chicken in Ms. Bento. It comes with a bag that looks big enough to also hold my sport cup that I use for iced tea. And the spork has a little carrying case too. I'm so excited about having a lunch box. It was expensive, but will pay for itself in a few weeks if I use it every day.

I bought a lunch box today! Well, I ordered one. It will arrive on Monday.

Years ago I had a Tupperware lunch box which was wonderful. It was a big box with several small bowls that fit inside, and a sandwich box that stacked on top, and a handle that held the two together. I rarely eat sandwiches for lunch, but the sandwich box was the perfect size for a portion of leftovers. Then the bowls could hold a small salad, snack, whatever! The big box also doubled as a regular large Tupperware container for storage at home. I loved that lunch box so much. I had it for a long time -- 15 years? 20? and gradually lost almost all the pieces. I looked in the cupboard last night and could only find one of the bowls, sans lid.

Anyway, soon I'm going to have to start packing a lunch every day, so I need a lunch box. I did a little poking around and I was amazed at how much lunch box technology has improved! They have insulated lunch boxes which will keep your food warm (or cold) until lunchtime, no need for refrigeration! Why didn't I find this out years ago? I've been spending my lunch hour a couple days a week in a place with minimal fridge space, and so have been buying lunch. All this time I could have packed lunch in one of these newfangled lunch boxes!

I decided to get a Ms. Bento lunch box. It's a metal jar like a thermos, with three containers that stack inside. According to the Amazon customer reviews, it will keep your lunch either hot or cold for hours if you preheat (or prechill) the containers. And the plastic containers are BPA free, which makes me feel much better about eating hot food from it every day.

I had a hard time deciding whether to get Ms. Bento or the larger Mr. Bento, with four containers. It's kind of expensive, and I didn't want to get the wrong size. Lucky me, there's a flickr group devoted to photos of lunches packed in Mr. or Ms. Bento. (There's a flickr group for everything apparently!) Looking at a bunch of photos let me get a better idea of how much food each one will carry, and Ms. Bento was the clear winner. I think filling a Mr. Bento would be way too much food. It would work if I made a big production out of lunch, with lots of different foods every day, and didn't try to fill up the containers. But that's not what I want to do.

It's kind of ridiculous how excited I am about getting my new lunch box. It even comes with a spork!

Had a funny conversation today with the Scottish guy from the other end of the building.

me: Are you following the World Cup?
him: Of course I am!
me: Who are you rooting for?
him: I've thought all along that Spain could win it all. But then again, Holland will be difficult to beat.
me: They're the best team that never wins.
him: That's true. .. No! Scotland is the best team that never wins!

I've never seen Scotland's national team play so I can't comment on that. Georg says that the Netherlands and Spain are both described as "best team that never wins." One of them will have to give up that title on Sunday.

I got to use science yesterday!

I was baking a pie, and didn't have enough butter in sticks to measure the crust. All I had was a giant tub of clarified butter, about 5 pounds, that Georg had gotten from work. The problem was measuring the butter: sticks come with measurements marked on them, and I needed exactly 1 cup. How to get a cup of butter out of the giant tub eluded me.

Baking requires precision, so I couldn't just scoop out some butter and moosh it into a measuring cup. The air pockets would throw off the measurement. The most accurate way would be to melt some butter, pour it into a measuring cup and wait for it to resolidify. Which would take forever and I wanted to make the pie that day.

I thought maybe I could weigh the butter and convert weight to volume. Unfortunately, a quick google told me that different butters have different densities based on fat content. So a weight conversion wouldn't work unless I had an accurate volume measurement to start out with. And if I had that, I wouldn't need the conversion! (This method would have worked, however, if I had a big restaurant-sized block of butter that hadn't been cut into. Because the total volume would be marked on the label; it just wouldn't have tablespoons marked like the sticks do.)

However, googling the weight of butter provided another suggestion: water displacement. I got out a 2-cup measuring cup, filled it with 1 cup of water, and added butter until it measured 2 cups. Poured off the water and voila! Exactly one cup of butter.

Water displacement is very accurate, as good as if I had melted the butter and poured it into a measuring cup. And much faster! I just had to put it back in the fridge for a few minutes to rechill. In honor of Archimedes I said "Eureka!" out loud when I got the measurement. Unlike Archimedes, I did not run naked down the street.