I thought I'd share a useful tip I figured out. I picked up a bunch of great children's books at the thrift store and wanted to clean them up. I used a bottle with a spray top that mists and filled it with rubbing alcohol. I mist the covers and even the pages with alcohol and fan them out to dry. Ta-dah! Germ-free books! (Most of those books will be saved for when leftie is old enough to read her books instead if destroying them.)


In a similar vein, I keep a bottle of alcohol free hand sanitizer in my diaper bag. When I need to wash leftie's hands but don't want to grapple with a yucky public restroom I spritz her hands with hand sanitizer, rub in and then wipe off any residue with her baby wipes. This way I figure I get her clean of germs but can feel okay if she decides to stick her fingers in her mouth (inevitable).

eating local

I'm so excited about this that I had to write it up on my facebook page AND here on my blog.

I try very hard to eat as locally as possible. Living in southern California affords me with a lot of fresh produce to choose from. After reading Animal Vegetable Miracle I got really pumped on the idea of thoughtful eating - really thinking about my food and where it comes from and what might have gone into the production of it. M and I rarely eat fast food (and the times we do we're more apt to go to a local kebab shop or noodle bar instead of a global burger chain or taco joint) so I felt like we were off to a good start. But I'm guilty of buying strawberries in November because I want to have some dipped in chocolate after dinner. Or buying a tomato whenever I want a tomato salad. And it never occurred to me before Animal Vegetable Miracle why those fruits just tasted so-so.

So I set off to buy produce that was only in season, but my markets provided no clues. Year round, I can buy any fruit or vegetable that my heart pleases. I thought the farmers markets might be a better choice, but as M pointed out these farmers might be local to me, but they might also be shipping their goods across the country. So there was no way to know for sure that their produce wasn't 100% organic and pesticide/growth hormone free. A careful look at the booths confirmed that only a handful of the merchants posted signs boasting of 100% certified organic. Then again, as Barbara Kingsolver mentions in her book, the best organic farmer she purchased from wasn't certified as an organic farmer because (if I remember correctly) she couldn't afford the certification fees.

I have a point and here it is. I just read on Apartment Therapy's cooking blog that the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has a tool on their website where you can enter information like your location and time of year and they will provide you with a list of produce that are in season for the region and time of year(!). How awesome is that? It will also provide a list of what's fresh in bordering states so that you can find produce that might be grown just a little farther than your homestate while still staying local. Naturally for my area it lists northern California as the "bordering state."

Buying local organic produce isn't cheap and I know I am lucky that I live in an area that is condusive to this with a partner who agrees with my lifestyle practices. We pay a lot more money for our fruits and veggies and meats than your average joe because that's important to us. But we cut back on things like going out or mega-cable packages because those things aren't as important. If you have a chance to try out high quality whole foods maybe just once a week or so, I think you'll notice a difference in taste. Most of the time when I cook I don't make any special sauces or use any fancy seasoning. I think the food I cook tastes good because the ingredients I use are good. So there's no need to do anything to my squash soup because the squash is so darned tasty.


Okay, enough of my soapbox. I just wanted to tell you about the NRDC website is all. Use it if you choose it.

sewing tip

Image via Threads magazine

I can't afford Threads magazine, but I do subscribe to their online newsletter. When they aren't flooding my inbox with promos of their latest book or another subscription offer, they sometimes send links to some useful tips. Today's useful tip is about sewing seam finishes for silk fabric, but I thought it was a nice overview of finishing techniques that could apply to other fabrics.

tip of the day

Vogue.com is having a one day sale on their sewing patterns. Everything is $5.99 which is a pretty sweet price for sewing patterns. Their shipping rates are so-so, but if you buy under three items, the shipping is only $4, so with today's sale you'd still save a bit of dough.

They have a few vintage patterns too which I find exciting. Maybe one day I'll try my hand at a mid-century style dress.

And a few knit fabric patterns too for those of you cagey Sew-U fans who have scooped up Wendy Mullen's latest and greatest.

This sale seems to be only for Vogue patterns as sister companies McCall's and Butterick's
don't have this special rate listed on their sites.

Happy sewing!

music?

My friend Sancho posted something about iTunes the other day that got me thinking about music. I'm always on the search for new music to listen to. My music knowledge is a hodge-podge of stuff I hear on my local public radio station, reviews from the various npr shows I listen to and sometimes, someone I admire (a friend, a stranger who I think of as a friend, a musician, artist, etc.) will mention something about a band they really like or an album that they can't stop listening to. And so I'll check it out and often add a new favorite to my growing list. My music knowledge has a lot of holes in it. So while I am a fan of the song Like a Rolling Stone (even before the Pepsi ads, thank you) I have never listened to the album it originates from (Highway 61 Revisited, thank you wikipedia). But that's okay. It just means that there's a bunch of new-to-me music to discover and fall in love with.

I want some new-to-me music to check out and curious to know what my friends are listening to these days? Maybe a little top ten of the stuff that's been feeding through your ears into your head? Shout out. Be creative. Here's mine:

jean's top 10 recent listens

1. KCRW's Morning Become Eclectic (every morning)
2. npr type programs throughout the day (The World, Marketplace, All Things Considered, This American Life)
   
3. John Mayer (um, all his albums)
4. Tom Waits' Mule Variations and Beautiful Maladies albums
5. Yesterday I hit shuffle and iTunes thought the Eurythmics' Greatest Hits and Marvin Gaye's Greatest Hits were one album so I listened to songs alternating from each
6. Radiohead's last 4 albums (I wish I could go to their concert)
7. Elvis Costello and the Attractions Best Of
8. Old Crow Medicine Show (self titled)
   
9. Robert Johnson The Complete Recordings (which I had to cut off after about an hour, because even though I love the blues, man was I getting bummed out)
10. Announcers and cheers from the Celtics playoff games
    

here it is

So this has been bugging me all day and now I need to get it off of my chest.

If you ever say Voilà as an American English speaker, please note that there is a V at the beginning of the word and not a W.

Here's an audio example of how to correctly pronounce this word (look for this audio link partway down the page).

Though if you want to be a really anal retentive linguistics nerd, this isn't absolutely correct either for nit-picky reasons like midi files not correctly capturing the tension of the accent at the right moment. But it'll do. Just remember that voila is pronounced with a V not a W. Unless perhaps you are from Austria or Germany and you are speaking English but for that one word. Then I have no reason to correct you. Really I suppose I have no reason to correct you regardless, but that's my problem.

Please carry on with your lives.
Thank you.

today is tuesday

And I'm "in class" learning all manner of things related to websites. It's been good so far. I have several hours yet to go. But during my "lunch break" I was checking my email and found this in my inbox:



How cool is that? If you want to check it out, you can go to ReadyMade's April/May online issues here.

And happy earth day everyone!

help?

Friends,
Can anyone point me to a pizza dough recipe? I've tried a few from different sources with less than stellar results each time. Usually when I try out a new recipe, I can get it spot on (meaning it tastes and looks good) from the first go, but with all the pizza dough recipes I've tried I just get bleh. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I can't blame it on bad yeast every time.

For reference, I've tried recipes from the Joy of Cooking, Martha Stewart Living, Mark Bittman, epicurious.com and the foodnetwork.com. No good.

And I like my pizza dough to be chewy with some bubbles in the crust, a little thinner where the toppings go, but nice and thick and chewy on the ends. Not cakey.

What do you think?

survey

If you are my friend and you live in this country, I think you might be interested in taking this survey. I couldn't link to the post directly, but if you go to the website now you can read the info on the survey and how to take it (should you so decide).



I don't know how much I need to endorse this to you guys. Would it be like preaching to the converted? I've had the fortune of attending a live event with Ira Glass twice in one year. He is a spectacular speaker and a wonderful storyteller. Any opportunity you have to see him in person is a treat. But since he is terribly busy with his television show and the radio program (last we saw him, he said something like how he has been working for 6 months straight without a single day off. whew! that's tough) and since he can't very well clone himself and polarize, I guess a satellite screening to a live show would be the next best thing.

Capitol Press

I'm researching printers and sort of re-stumbled across Capitol Press's business card in my address book. I was lucky enough to be able to take a tour of their facility years ago while in graphic design school. Very cool. I remember particularly enjoying their letterpress section. One of my designer friends used their services speaking well of them and more recently another colleague mentioned that they use Capitol Press with happy results.

I just checked out their website and was pleased to see that they offer a really nice guideline for graphic designers who work in print. It's called their Printing Essentials and includes useful things like paper grade classifications, a chart of folds and scoring,

Folds


Scoring

a conversion table for points, picas, inches and millimeters and much, much more!

I have a feeling that they may be out of my price range for the kinds of printing services I need at this time and place. But it's good to remember that they are out there and I'll definitely be checking back in the future.


5306 Beethoven Street
Los Angeles, CA 90066

Interesting...

Have you guys heard of this? (via Swissmiss)

And can I tell you how excited I am about this?? This could totally revolutionize my litter box dilema!

free music

You probably know about the free weekly download at iTunes. But there is also good free music to be had at my favorite local radio station (for music, that is. I prefer news content from ).

The only downside is that there is no automatic daily download. I find that if I open up iTunes on my computer every day, and have the podcast set up to download, it will do so for me. I usually hit refresh to get it going, but if I don't load iTunes on my computer, there doesn't seem to be any other way to get the music automatically.

I've been faithfully downloading KCRW's daily top tune for a few months now and I have a great selection of music that I can listen to. A lot of it is stuff I've never heard of which is great since it exposes me to new music that I wouldn't be able to find on my own.

And then there is also Pandora which I have not been keeping up with in a while because...well, because m started messing with the settings and so now I feel like the music they find for me is based on his tastes as opposed to mine. I've told him to quit touching my music settings on Pandora, but really I need to set him up with his own account instead.

social graces

So I need some advice: How does one get out of accepting an invitation without insulting the invitor?

M and I both do not enjoy social activities where we are called upon to make small talk. That covers everything from “social” work functions to parties to…well most anything that involves talking to people other than each other. It’s a weakness. We are both decent conversationalists and when we are enjoying ourselves we could even be considered fun. This causes problems because on those rare moments someone catches us being fun they think: Hey these two sure are fun. We should invite them to more social events.

Inevitably these people will say something that makes both me and m shudder in our party shoes, something that makes us break out in sweats, bring our respective hearts to a screeching stop, something that causes us to pause mid-cocktail sip or hors d’oeuvre bite with that deer-in-headlight glaze in our eyes. These people will say: We should get together again sometime. What are you guys doing next Saturday?

Oh how m and I dread that question.

How do you sidestep it gracefully? How do you agree that the person is extending an honestly kind invitation that you have no desire to accept? How do you do it without hurting their feelings? Because probably these invitations come from people that you see all the time at the office or with mutual friends.

Usually what happens next is I respond brightly, something along the lines of: Oh yeah, absolutely! Saturday? Um, can I let you know? And then hope that by the end of the evening, the asker will have forgotten or won’t have our phone number and that we were able to escape another dreaded social obligation. But this kind of clumsy dance just doesn’t work out. In the last week I got two such invitations that I just did not know how to respond to.

A little background: M and I aren’t total morons. We enjoy conversations with other people and we like to have fun as much as the next person. Sometimes we meet people who we click with right away. People who are interested in the same things we are, who can enjoy themselves without social hangups (er,…kind of like the one we have that I am writing to you about), people who we feel comfortable with. Those are the people we enjoy spending time with. Unfortunately, most of these kinds of people in our lives live far, far away and the other kind? The kind that we don’t click with? Where we have to work to make conversation with them and make our time spent with them somehow not feel like some kind of cruel archaic form of mental punishment? Yeah, those are the types that keep inviting us out.

Last week, I happened to be on the phone with the fiancee of someone we work with. As we were wrapping up our inconsequential chat, she said: Oh we should get together sometime. That time we ran into each other and hung out for a few minutes was so much fun, I’d like to do that again. I’ll let you and Roger* work out the details, okay? And of course like a dumbass, I agreed cheerfully. What Roger’s fiancee heard from the tone of my voice was probably that I couldn’t wait till we got to hang out again. Which sadly, couldn’t be further from the truth.

But now I’m stuck cause we work with Roger and talk to him every day. And I get the feeling that he wants to be better friends with me and m. Like plan vacations together and raise our children together and stuff. And m and I don’t even like running into them in our neighborhood for fear of the dreaded small talk. Basically I am sweating till the day comes (and oh, it will come) when Roger catches up with me at work one day and says: What are you doing next Saturday?

Help me. I need a strategy in place to deal with this assault.

*Names have been changed to protect the boring innocent.