want

A time-turner could be handy here

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Mel just asked me for book recommendations, and while we were talking about that, she remembered reading something of mine the last time she visited that turned out to be scary.  She couldn’t remember the title or the author, and her description of the book didn’t ring any bells for me.  While she was checking with Corey (who read it, too, after SHE recommended it), I fell down the rabbit hole that is my Kindle library.

Guys, I have 711 Kindle books, and I haven’t read most of them.  I WANT to read them all – I was just browsing to see if any of the titles reminded me of the book Mel was talking about, and instead I was hit with this overwhelming desire to quit my job and hire someone to take care of Jack and just read all day every day until I can catch up.  If only we could win the lottery…

Part of my Kindle problem is that I can’t SEE the books.  I have plenty to read, but it’s hard to decide what’s next (unless I have a specific reading project) because I forget what I have, and there’s no easy way to view it all.  I want a holographic bookshelf.  I would like to project the title pages of my Kindle books onto a wall so I can browse through them as if they were on a bookshelf, not just a list, and decide what to read next.  Maybe that’s our million-dollar app idea!  Projection would be the hard part… (Yes, I know I can view my Kindle contents as a grid.  It’s not the same.)

Let’s shelve that idea for now, and get back to the point which is I DON’T HAVE TIME TO READ.  I’ve got a bookshelf overflowing with dead-tree books I don’t have time to read, either.  More on this in the near future.

The books Mel was thinking of (Corey identified it) were White Silence and its sequel, Dark Light, by Jodi Taylor.

Resist the urge

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With a new house comes new stuff, even when we’re trying to avoid buying stuff.  I mean, we’ve been buying (and receiving) PLENTY of baby stuff, but most of that is kind of necessary.  But then we bought a new stove because the existing one was a fire hazard (our new one is so pretty!), and then – THEN – I may have gone a little overboard.

I knew I didn’t need it.  I almost bought one months ago, but talked myself out of it.  Too frivolous.  I’ve lived without it for 39 years – I can live without it now.

Except, apparently, I can’t.  There’s a coffee shop nearby that makes a chai latte that is the closest I’ve tasted to the BEST one I’ve ever had (from Shoe’s Cup and Cork in Leesburg).  They specialize in coffee, not chai, so I asked them what mix they use for the chai and promptly ordered it.  But that’s not all.  Boiling water into a powdered chai mix doesn’t recreate the latte experience.

I ordered a milk frother.

I KNOW.  I’ve become one of THEM.  It makes my chai so good and frothy!  I’ve gone off the deep end.

But that’s not all.  You know what came yesterday?  THIS!

I can hardly contain my glee, I love it so much.  What’s next?  Well, I’m eyeing these super-cute rocket and robot nightlights from Uncommon Goods for the baby’s room, but NO.  THIS HAS TO STOP.  They’re expensive and fall exactly in the category of things a baby doesn’t need (certainly not for that much money), especially when my salary is about to be cut in half, and we’ve been trying so hard not to accumulate things after three years of living light and damn it, I’m not going to ruin our streak because of night lights!

But seriously, how cute are these?

I could have been cool AND warm

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I guess I was paying more attention to the forecast in Kentucky than I was to our forecast because I had no idea it was supposed to snow last night and this morning.  We only got about an inch, but it was coming down when we woke up and that was enough to convince us to skip the gym.  (It shouldn’t be that easy to convince us to skip the gym.)  I had a moment of welcome-back-to-the-east-coast panic (everyone from Texas to Maine got snow last week – it’s not just New England), but then I remembered that this is the year (or maybe next year – we’ll see) that I get real, honest-to-goodness cold weather stuff.

I can’t have the coat I WANT because it sold out in less than 30 minutes the day it came out.

John wants this one.

Columbia made 1,980 of each of these (plus a Han Solo parka we don’t like as much), and even though they were $400 each, they were GONE.  The website said they were totally sold out online, but stores had a limited number, so I called three different stores.  I only got through to one place (in Minneapolis).  The guy said they had one XS Leia and one 2XL Luke left, but “I’m looking at a customer who has them both in her hands right now.”  It was 10:20 in the morning.  The store opened at 10.

John and I are holding out hope that they’ll make more of them someday.  Until then, I’ll just have to be cold in my totally not awesome normal coat.

How did I miss this?

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A friend of mine at work casually dropped into conversation that he’s seeing a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail followed by a Q&A with John Cleese and WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY LIFE THAT I DIDN’T KNOW THIS WAS HAPPENING?

It’s totally not okay that I didn’t find out this was a thing until the tour had passed me by.  I am bereft.

But YOU don’t have to be.

Here’s the tour schedule.  (Hint: it’ll be in DC soon and Louisville the week after.)

I need you all to go and have a wonderful time because I need to live vicariously through you.

Love at first sight

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I have fallen in love with a pair of shoes.  They’re the ultimate Disney princess shoes, and my heart aches for them.

I saw them on Tom & Lorenzo’s site, and for the first time in my life I was compelled to go to the designer’s website to see more.  If it’s possible to fall further in love, I did when I saw them in midnight blue.

They’re calling out my name.  “Buy me, Zannah!  We’ll be so happy together!”  I don’t have anywhere to wear them or anything to wear them with, but those are tiny details.  Are they comfortable?  Who cares?  (Okay, I do, but let’s put that aside.)  Do they come in narrow?  Probably not.  Are they more than I pay in rent?  …..Yes.  Yes, they are more than I pay in rent.

Drat.

I love them, I do, but the don’t-buy-them factors are adding up and the practical side of me says I don’t get to be a princess in $2150 shoes that don’t go with anything I own, that probably aren’t comfortable, that probably won’t actually fit, and will sit in my closet unworn because I don’t have any occasions to wear them.

I will have to find some other kind of princess to be.  Like this one.

But oh, those shoes.

I want

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When we were in California, Erik took us and the kids to the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose.  Cool museum, lots of stuff to play with, good for kids, but I’m mentioning it mostly because I tried a virtual reality painting program and OH MY GOD I WANT IT SO MUCH.  Why I want it has NOTHING to do with the painting part – I am as bad a virtual artist as I am in the real world – although that part was pretty fun.  You can paint AROUND you, like you’re standing in the middle of the room and painting on the air, and then you can move through it or change your perspective and see if from a completely different angle without moving yourself.  Very cool.  I’m not sure of the point of it the 3D aspect of it once it’s finished, though.  It’s not really 3D unless you have a floor or ceiling projector, and there’s no way it looks as cool in 2D.  Anyway, again, the art part is not what I got excited about.

You can choose from a variety of built-in backgrounds or landscapes or environments or whatever.  The one I spent the majority of my time in was the default one, sort of a reddish flat area with mountains in the distance, dark and dusky.  The girl running the demo suggested I try the space environment and how I wish I’d done that sooner.  As soon as I switched over, it was like I was standing on a clear platform in space, stars and blackness above and below and all around me.  I think there was a planet – I can’t tell you for sure now.  I can tell you that I didn’t want to leave it.  It was incredible.  Like, emotionally incredible and I’m getting a little choked up remembering it.  I have no idea if it was remotely realistic, but now I have something I want.  Not necessarily the painting program, although I’ll take it.  I want space.  I want space in virtual reality.  I don’t need the zero gravity part (although I think it would be cool).  I want to sit on the floor and be able to look in any direction and see stars and planets and galaxies and comets and asteroid belts.  I want to be immersed in it, in the comfort of my own home.

In real terms, I can have it.  VR gear is between $600 and $800.  Not easy, but attainable if I really want it.  (I don’t need a new laptop for a while, right?)  That paint program?  $20.  But the gear is necessary.  I googled a bit to see what space VR programs might be out there already, realistic ones, and I found SpaceVR, a company that is about to launch 360-degree cameras into orbit around earth to provide real images of space to anyone who subscribes to their feed.  The subscription is reasonable, but again, you need the gear.

Here’s my quandary: is it good enough now?  Is it too early in the VR technology cycle to be worth it?  I’ve never been an early adopter.  I’m happy to let other people iron out the kinks before I spend a lot of money on something.  VR has been around for a long time, and it used to really suck.  I’m sure it sucks less now, but how much less?  I don’t say “I must have this” about things very often, so this feels odd.  Comforting that I still feel as strongly about it three weeks later, but three weeks isn’t that long.  I’ll probably wait.

But I really want this.

Is it here yet?

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Package tracking is such a tease.  My new phone is being shipped all the way from Long Island.  It hopped over to New Jersey, and then it landed in Ohio, then Iowa, and as of Saturday evening, it was in Nebraska.  Where next?  Why isn’t there an update after Saturday?  Is it still in Nebraska?  We drove here faster than my little phone is moving.  The worst is when you can your package stuck in a post office one town over…and now I’ve jinxed myself.  That is going to happen to me.

I want it now!  Yup, me and Veruca, best buds.

Support your local muppets

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I found how muppets earn extra cash!  If they live in this area (and many others), second jobs may be necessary.  In their off-hours, when they’re not taking Manhattan, capering, or hanging out with kids (none of which pays much, I’d imagine), they’re washing cars!

Tell me those brushes couldn’t be the cousins of these guys…

Yiiiiiip yip-yip-yip-yip

I would TOTES* pay more for car washes if the muppets sang me a song while they did it.  In the meantime, this will have to do.

*I apologize for my unironic use of “totes”.  I got carried away by my enthusiasm for muppets.

My new obsession

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The new Athleta catalog came today.  I want everything in it.  (I bought a sleeveless dress last spring – love it.)  They have a whole travel clothes section, and just looking at the pictures makes me want to pack up and GO.  I’d like to be a well-dressed (but still comfortable) traveler.  I want to go for walks in fields and hikes in forests and strolls on wintery beaches wearing the chicest of chic travel clothes.  (Hell, I’d dress like the Von Trapps crossing the Alps if I thought I’d be warm and comfortable enough.  Who needs chic?)

I would totally wear Liesl’s hat.

Of course, there are some ridiculous assumptions in their descriptions.  They’ve got a cowl neck tunic-length cashmere sweater (beautiful, of course, and not cheap), but the description assumes you’re going to want to wrap yourself in it after your workout.  Who would put that on when they’re still sweaty from a workout?  Maybe they mean you’d want to wear it after you shower, but then it’s just clothes, not post-workout clothes.  And the picture shows a woman in a yoga studio with her mat hanging from her shoulder while wearing that sweater.  I get sweaty during yoga, but maybe she doesn’t.  Maybe if I had 15 cowl neck cashmere sweaters, I’d feel comfortable designating one to be my sweaty post-workout comfy sweater.  Maybe.