This week, I have mostly been eating…

Buffalo steak, green beans, yellow squash & onions, and lone half new potato

Beans and rice cooking

Beans and rice–done

friday the 3rd

How fantastic is it that even though the 4th is on Saturday, the government says you have to take a holiday during the week? So I get tomorrow off. (It’s the government’s doing as far as I’m aware, feel free to correct me.)

Alan’s artsy neighbor told me about an annual American folk festival on the National Mall all this weekend, so the plan is to check that out in the afternoon, with study, possible exercise, and relationship maintenance aka Matthew skype time on the big morning agenda. Then Saturday is the day of the famed fireworks and dinner party (chez Alan’s Afghani friend and friend’s French wife), where if I’m lucky I’ll get to speak a bit of French, although I’m hoping not to stick my foot in it by volunteering and then mentally freezing, frantically searching for the word for paté. (It’s pâté in case you wanted to know.)

Momentary insecurity…gone. Moving on: to Matthew–sweet poem. I found it when looking for the piece on Strunk, since part of it describes me very well: I violate the conciseness rule. This is why a blog is better for me than Twitter.

Really enjoyed hearing about Strunk and White, as read by Garrison Keillor, and re-reading it for myself. While I understand both sides of the argument over the English language, I lean toward the grammarians. As is abundantly evident, without rules, the language disintegrates. I agree that there must be freedom in a language to express thoughts in one’s own voice; however, if you want to break the rules, you should first know which rules you are breaking. You can’t build without a framework. If you don’t understand the rules, your writing ends up stupid.

dinner

Making this tonight. I just took pictures of it cooking, and I’m sure it will look different when it’s finished, so I’ll take more then.

Post run tonight: I are pain. Can’t tell yet if it’s the nasty sort of pain. I’ll keep myself updated, thanks for checking in with this instalment of I have no idea why I even blog anymore.

customer service much?

I recently ordered 10 books from 10 different people on Amazon. Consistent with past experience, I got a few different emails telling me my orders had shipped, and most of them have arrived. However, not all of the sellers sent an email saying they had shipped the books. I was particularly worried about one of them, since I gave my current address as the shipping address, and I’m only going to be here two more weeks. (I know genius right shut up. I’ve never had to wait more than a week for an order.)

So, I sent an email to the seller, asking if he had shipped the book, completely unaware that Amazon’s sellers are required to ship things within two days of the order. (Of course, how can you be sure something was shipped within two days of an order? Can that rule be enforced?) Since he hadn’t responded by the next day, I sent another email. Both emails were professionally polite but not necessarily friendly. He finally responded very rudely by telling me that he had shipped it and the information I was looking for was on Amazon and had been since the day the book was shipped, since Amazon has, according to him, an “arraignment” whereby he doesn’t get paid until the book ships, which I’m pretty sure is bull. No greeting, no closing.

How rude! However, I am lucky in that the other sellers have been pleasant. In fact, one guy found out that the book I ordered wasn’t exactly in “new” condition, so he tried to contact me, and when that didn’t work (email address typo, or maybe I managed to overlook the email, it happens), he contacted me through Amazon just to let me know he had reduced the price of the book AND upgraded my shipping for free. Talk about customer service! When I got the book, it was wrapped in paper and in bubble wrap inside the package. So, my faith in humanity? Restored.

airplane!

The French [Transport Minister] Bussereau ruled out any link between the crashes of Yemenia’s A310 and Air France’s A330.

“It would be as if there were two accidents with Clios and we withdrew all Clios from the road,” Bussereau said in remarks televised from Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris, referring to the model from carmaker Renault SA. (From this article.)

Quoi? Perhaps you would not withdraw Clios, but you sure would inspect Renault’s factories and test Clios more rigorously if just two Clios had been involved in single-car crashes killing 381 people in total. I hope to god I never have the bad fortune to fly in an Airbus.

In other news, reading Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run has renewed my interest in running plus paying attention to technique. So far, fewer sore muscles and no injuries, not counting the tick in the belly button. However, I haven’t been running very far, so I could be deceiving myself here.

We had buffalo steaks with yellow squash, green beans and undercooked new potatoes the other night. It was all pretty tasty. The potatoes were a little crunchy, steaks a little chewy. But on the whole, a success. Except for the volume of wine consumed.

ankle injuries

I have a nagging ankle injury from a couple of months ago. I think it causes me to walk funny so that my back hurts. Because my credit card information was stolen about a month ago and my insurance premiums were charged automatically to that card, it is possible that I do not have insurance at this time.

Anyone care to raise funds for the get-Allison-a-new-ankle fund?

In other news, if you’re interested, check out where I’ll be living in Austin for the first month and probably for the rest of the semester or year:

Ella would like to point out that that is how it looked when she first moved in, and it is not typically that messy!

And no, you may not have the address. And don’t be internet detectives.

thanks andrew

Jenny Sanford is the one really running SC

Sanford jokes hidden (not very well) in The State

Thanks me:

Even The Onion is picking it up. Read it all the way through.

not the belly button!

I have only ever found two ticks on me. The second one bit me last night, and I only found it after work today when I got home. Where was it you ask? In my belly button! That’s right, inside my belly button! Are you shuddering in horror yet? Because I sure was! And by shuddering of course I mean screaming. Maybe they’re not that big a deal but I’m new to the sensation of small animals attaching themselves to me BY THE MOUTH.

By the way the skin around my belly button is all sore now. Gadblasting ticks.

mark sanford: facepalm.

Mark Sanford admits extramarital affair in Argentina.

More commentary possibly to come. For now I will say that if you, as a high-profile person, wanted to reveal an affair, leaving on an unannounced trip and not even telling your wife and four kids where you were going is possibly the worst way to do it.

Also, good timing. Did you and Sen. Ensign plan this?

two unrelated videos

No wonder mom thought Scheherazade would be good floor routine music: it is!

Train crashes into spent nuclear fuel storage cask.