weapons of massdistraction

We’ve been particularly busy lately, with our social lives set to juggernaut mode. But sometimes that’s preferable to hiding and hibernating throughout the long winter. All or nothing! Finally going through the backlog of hundreds of photos I’ve taken this last week and recounting our adventures for posterity’s sake. In reverse order…last night we hung out with the lovely Maria, who is in town from Berkeley, and her adorable siblings. That was after an afternoon spent at the Art Shanty Projects on Medicine Lake. Highlights here and the full photoset here.

Saturday was extra hectic. The boy stayed over with the ex, for the first time in months, so I crammed in far too many activities. Haircut at Rouge Salon, The Book of Eli (with its WTF ending), dinner with friends at Ginger Hop (good food but overpriced small portions and bonus terrible service), a ridiculously crowded art opening at Fox Tax Gallery, a brief stop at a bday party for my boss at the also crowded Bulldog NE, then over to Uptown for The Chambermaids / Red Pens show at an also packed Sauce Soundbar. It was nothing but armpit all night (I’m so short, I’m generally trapped at the armpit level of others) but still an enjoyable evening. Until I got home to find a court summons, courtesy of my jerkwad neighbors who want to sue me over tree branches. Pffft.

I’d been looking forward to my lady date for the Low show Friday, but the band canceled. Instead our friends had us over to check out their new house and the little man was full on hyper until midnight. Exhausting. And he’d been up late-ish Thursday night, at Clockwork’s “Learn to Sew” workshop.

Last week’s news, but still of interest:

• Giant hand-sewn giant squid is giant!
• I’m still a bit sore from my stupid wipeout and want Lush’s Wiccy Magic Muscles Massage Bar. Bet it smells better than my tiger balm.
• Behold, the Nerdiest Sweater Vest in the World.
• Netflix Instant will be available on Wii by Spring! We already have a Roku box, but if the interface is decent enough on Wii I might be willing to part with it.
• “Planes land in hot water on frozen lake” - two pilots landed their planes on a frozen Lake Calhoun for a hot lunch date. Apparently this will fly in the burbs, like on White Bear Lake, but not in the heart of Minneapolis.
• Sad that he’s passed away, and especially how he died, but it was interesting to read about “The Great Joe Rollino, Bender of Steel (Dead at 104)”
• Tomorrow night’s Café Scientifique topic is We Are What We Ate: Human Evolution and the Cooking of Food.
• Check out Needs/Wants. Trust me.

Lastly…while reading about this research that links autism to sound processing delays I couldn’t help but nod my head. Yep, this sounds like my son. Sometimes I wish the world would just slow down a little to let him catch up. And today we are slowing down, finally. We’re home for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. And planning to take care of business around the house. The first order of business? Locating some teeth. The boy woke up and informed me that two of his baby teeth fell out in the night. Hmm.

Moving right along…despite my silly leg injury and the glimpsing of Saturday’s unpleasantness, the weekend still had its moments. Good ones, I mean. Like vegan-friendly brunch at the Triple Rock with friends and our assorted kidlets. And visiting with an acquaintance at the coffee shop where he works, just before taking my son to the free Physics Force event. The weather has warmed up too, and yesterday my leg was feeling less gimpy, so we found free parking in Dinkytown and hoofed it over to Northrop Auditorium (the walking felt good at the time but today my cheeks are wind-chapped and my leg is all hurty again). Once the show got going the crowd, comprised of grade school aged kids, remained rapt. Even my own squirmy little man paid close attention to the professors and their antics. And I was thoroughly entertained too. Bonus? When we returned home the boy decided he wanted to watch Bill Nye the Science Guy episodes rather than some entirely mindless entertainment. This is a thing to be encouraged.

Five more good things:

• My friend Maria is coming to town very soon, for her family’s annual “Christmas in January” event. Parker and I are looking forward to seeing her for a spell.
• This Friday night I’ll be attending “Quiet, Please”: An Evening with Low at the Varsity Theater, with one of my wonderful lady friends…while her husband, also a dear friend, hangs out with my son. WIN-WIN!
• Saturday night I will be going out again - for a second night in a row! - to see The Chambermaids and Red Pens. At a newer venue that I have not yet experienced the weirdness of. Sauce Soundbar opened not long ago, in the location that used to house CyberX, the 90s era cybercafe. Should be interesting.
• The Art Shanties open this weekend! On Saturday, the 16th. We may be too busy for opening weekend but the weather will be perfect. Either way, we plan to visit more than once over the next few weeks.
• This is just hilarious…”Under The Influence: He-Man Available Artwork. Here’s a sample.”

And now for two items to be filed under “life’s little indignities” - 1) yesterday I discovered that my most favorite restaurant, NYC’s vegetarian Red Bamboo, will be no more after next month. The owner has changed his ways and has decided to overhaul the whole thing. He’s renaming it Poppa’s Place and adding meat to the menu. Boo hiss I say! 2) I am still going through Wii Fit withdrawal. I want to exercise dammit! But my knee and ankle aren’t in agreement with the rest of my body, and my brain. So I’d better be patient and stay put while the leg heals up. And eventually I’ll get back on track. I actually look forward to the day that dancing balance board character scolds me about my absence.

“I never did get the hang of Thursdays.” –Douglas Adams

Yesterday I’d had a decent enough day and had been looking forward to a productive evening. Parker and I planned to have a push-up contest when we got home, before hitting up the Wii Fit for our daily workouts. But I realized that fresh batch of snow needed to be shoveled first. So we ditched our backpacks in the house and went back out with shovels. It was the dry, powdery stuff, no big deal, right? But it was coating a chunky, uneven ice layer beneath. When we’d cleared most of it I realized I ought to roll the garbage can back from the curb (Thursday being trash day and all). Though in these conditions it’s more like drag than roll, as the wheels don’t work over snow and ice. So down the driveway I went. And I mean down. I lost my footing, with my body pinned between a wall of snow and the trash bin, and twisted my knee and ankle while falling. I could feel and hear something crunching in my leg. Wound up laying in my driveway, in pain, like a turtle trapped on its back. While some neighbor kids stared on my son approached me and asked if he should call 911. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” It wasn’t as bad as all that, but I had to give myself a moment before trying to get up. One of our only friendly neighbors, the woman across the street with the amazing landscaping, came over to assist. She helped me limp my way up the front steps and into the house. I’ve been in sloth/gimp/pity party mode ever since. At least the lad has been helpful, feeding the cats and himself, and hanging out with me. Last night I got myself to sleep with some Tylenol PM and woke up feeling hungover. Now I’m going through Wii Fit withdrawal and am not at all pleased.

Still, I’ve kept myself distracted. With work and life stuff, like paying bills and planning a potential trip. And with the escapism, as usual. Lately I’ve drifted away from the plain old terrestrial supernatural fiction and into alien territory. Watching Doctor Who, Torchwood, Invader Zim, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the old BBC version, and the newer one with my boyfriends Mos Def and Sam Rockwell). Then there’s this amazing gem from Italians La Bionda: “Riding In Spaceship… 1984.” That mustache. Those outfits. The animation. The keyboards. The guy lip syncing the “I Wanna Be Your Lover” line looking so awkward and uncomfortable. Stellar.

Four good things for Friday, mostly gleaned from twitter, and one lame one:

• A friend tweeted about The Childhood Goat Trauma Foundation. But I love goats!
• Ahhh, the cleavage caddy. My grandma Betty could have used one of these. I remember her stashing cash in her bra when I was a kid. And if you haven’t got cleavage, there’s always the Cap Sac.
• A short film: “People In Order” Age 16 is deeply unenthusiastic but others are peppier.
• An iPhone controlled quadricopter.
• China shopping centre builds ‘car park for women‘ - because women have a different sense of distance? BS! Sigh.

Unfortunately this ridiculous injury is already interfering with our weekend plans. No sledding. No taking down the Xmas tree. No errand-running. I’d meant to have the car’s oil changed today, get a replacement headlight and pick up a few groceries. But it’s nearly 4pm and I’m still hobbling about in my PJs. Swimming could conceivably be done, if I can hobble my way into the pool (or hot tub). Perhaps tomorrow. But Sunday we are not missing out on brunch with friends, followed up by an event at Northrop Auditorium:

The Physics Force, made up of U of M professors and local high school teachers, shocks and mesmerizes audiences every year with their daring physics demonstrations. For example, imagine dropping a physics teacher from a 20 foot tower while shooting a billiard ball at him that he then catches on his way down!

With a mixture of grand-scale props, science experiments, and slapstick humor, Physics Force educates thousands of K-12 students with their own hour-long unique teaching philosophy on a larger-than-life scale.

Who doesn’t want to be shocked and mesmerized by science geeks? If only they had some slam-bang solution for my bum leg. Alas, only time will heal that. But hopefully I’ll be back on both feet before too long.

So here we go again. Another new year. I am still refraining from making any resolutions. No need to set myself up for failure. But I do have a handful of solid, achievable goals. And I’m already making some headway with each:

• Continue helping my son, as best as I can, in becoming more comfortable with and excited about reading. Recently a combination of Mad Libs and scavenger hunts around the house (with progressively more verbose clues) have been helping him a great deal.
• Begin baking my own bread regularly. Necessary ingredients have been procured.
• In the Spring, do some raised bed gardening in my yard instead of spending more money on a CSA share (as much as I loved last year’s CSA farm and farmers).
• Finish writing my werewolf cop novel and get it into a readable format to share with friends and my Dad.
• Get in touch with my inner Strobist. I’ve always gotten by with natural light photography and have played around a bit with my external flash, but I need to learn and grow to work well with off camera lighting. It’s been on the To Do list for a while now, but 2010 will be the year I really have at it.

This year has already had a better start than last. On New Year’s Day 2009 the little man managed to break the living room picture window with his head. Or possibly feet. I was in the other room when I heard the crash and his “uh oh.” He came away unscathed thankfully but it was a huge scare, freezing cold and expensive to repair. The beginning of twenty ten has been far more relaxed. We’ve already spent a good deal of time with friends, sharing meals and hanging out, while also lounging at home and playing Wii. Not too effing bad. The chaos kicks in again tomorrow with the return of the dreaded alarm clock, wrangling the boy out the door earlier than we’ve been waking up lately, getting him back to school and myself to work. And posting to flickr again! My account has gone stagnant as I managed to leave both of my functioning USB camera cables at the office last week. Doh.

Bonus: Some twitter folk gave me the heads up…that Wired’s Geek Dad used one of my photos in a post the other day. Not one of my best, but still kinda neat.
Plus: You know you live in Minnesota…when January’s sub-zero temperatures strike and you spend a good chunk of a Sunday morning looking around online at insulated window coverings - oh the excitement - but would rather be out sledding, only it’s too cold for sledding. Bah.
And: Pink Tentacle’s Greatest Hits of 2009 is worth taking a gander at.

We’ve had a fairly quiet and relaxing Christmas / Giftmas / Boxing Day but I feel like Sisyphus what with all this shoveling. And the degree of difficulty has only increased, thanks to the freezing rain that pelted down in between layers of snow, making it like the ice planet Hoth out there. We are effectively marooned at home. There’s nothing much within walking distance and our chances of leaving in the car anytime soon are slim to nil. My poor Mazda is frozen into the driveway. The lad and I went out this morning to chisel away at the ice blockade. It was utterly exhausting work but we barely made a dent. Which meant we had to pass, yet again, on sledding with friends this afternoon. We do have a tentative date to go tubing tomorrow (with another boy named Parker) provided we can finish clearing the driveway. And then have any energy to spare afterward. Seems unlikely. If only we had magical ice-clearing flamethrowers. What we do have? A defective Tony Hawk Ride skateboard. And a functioning Wii Fit Plus that tells me I’m 53 years old and overweight. Boo hiss to all that. At least the Wii Fit games are fun. Warmed up with some basic aerobics and rhythm Kung Fu. And I don’t even mind having the kid heckle me when I screw up. Apparently I am encouraged by such feedback, from him and from the game itself.

Now for five good things:

• An incredible animated short: “Having been struck by a 150-ton meteorite, Henry has to adapt to living precisely ninety-one centimeters from himself.”
• Roger Franklin, 83, is one of the city’s longest-running Santas at any one location. He has served for 21 years at the South Street Seaport.
• I’ve only reconfirmed my Smitten Kitchen groupie status by making a veganized version of the spinach strata and the pear bread today.
• And, not because it will ever be relevant to me, but because it’s fascinating and Saleem is an entertaining writer: HOW TO: Party With Your Japanese Boss. I love his dispatches from Japan.
• Finally gave Torchwood a chance and got myself good and hooked, despite dodgy special effects (nearly stopped watching during the terrible Cyber Woman episode with the very obviously plastic cyborg bits). But there’s so much to love. Captain Jack Harkness! And Welsh accents! And James Marsters in season two!

In unhappy news, Vic Chesnutt has passed away. Many years ago I saw him open for his good friend Kristen Hersh. I’ve been following her on twitter and she is just devastated by this awful turn of events:

To say this is a difficult day for those who knew and cared about Vic Chesnutt, the singer-songwriter who died yesterday at age 45, can only be an understatement. “I miss him more than I’ve missed anybody ever,” Kristin Hersh (of Throwing Muses and solo fame) tells EW.com’s The Music Mix today, her voice heavy with emotion. “Fifteen years was not enough time to prepare for this. It’s just hard to imagine a world without Vic.”