A brief interlude

I know we're in the middle of the moving story and all, but:
I just bought a pitchfork.
Do you all agree with me that that makes me just a tiny bit hotter?

A moving story, Part 3

(Part 1 here.)
(Part 2 here.)


Many thanks to the first two commenters on Part 2 for giving me such a good jumping off point for where I was going with the pregnancy thing I mentioned at the end of Part 3. You both think just like me, as it turns out.
In reverse order:

For the sake of a good story, we'll just ignore the fact that pregnant does not mean infirm or unfit to work.

That's true, and I know it intellectually just as well as any other good former women's studies minor. Women can do physical labor, even while pregnant, and whether they can handle certain tasks at any point, for any reason, pregnant or not, is really a matter for them and their doctors, not me or anyone else, to decide. Where the hell do I get off? For that matter, old also does not mean infirm or unfit to work. Like I said, ageist, sexist. I had all of these thoughts immediately after I realized she was pregnant.
Because also:

Oh dear. You definitely don't want your moving crew to be less physically fit than you are... you might feel obligated to help them carry something. You might as well just rent your own truck at that point ;-)

See, you'd be hard-pressed to find a moving crew less physically fit than me personally. And also, I am a bad person. Because you would think that if I had sexist thoughts about my pregnant mover, they would come from some misguided patriarchal sense of protection of the delicate flower, some concern for her or her fetus, some sense of obligation to help. They mostly did not. They came from here (not in the comments, this is just in my own head):

If she miscarries, with only herself and her dad doing my move, 500 miles away from where they live, I am never going to get moved. Does that make me a bad person? I am a bad person.

Luckily, I had plenty of time to think about how bad a person (and feminist) I was, because "no rush" meant a lot of things besides showing up an hour late. It meant taking hours and hours to get most of my stuff into the truck. But I am getting ahead of myself.
I should say that, unfit as I am, I have always, before now, rented or borrowed a truck to move. The biggest reasons I did not do that this time were:

• the drive was so long and I needed to move my car, too
• my house was not ready to be moved into
• my new job was willing to help with my moving expenses
• I had, since my last move, acquired a large, heavy desk that was a family heirloom and that I was sure I could not move myself without breaking. The Guy's moving company had already moved it safely several times.

Part 4 coming soon, I am sure. You still with me?

A moving story, Part 2

(Part 1 here.)

You may recall that when we left off, there was a plan:

The movers would show up at my house between 8 and 8:30 on a Friday. They'd be able to move me out in about an hour and a half (which I thought was optimistic, and so rounded up to three hours) and then hit the road. I would spend the rest of the day cleaning my apartment with a friend (we'll call her Bread Truck Grrl) who'd fly down to help me drive my car up. Then I'd go out to dinner with two of my close friends, BTG and I would crash at their house, and we'd hit the road bright and early Saturday morning. My new job would start on Tuesday, I'd close on my house on Wednesday, my things would be delivered on the following Saturday.

OK. So. I prepared to move. Badly, as is my custom. It was made much more bearable by folks who came by to help, featuring most prominently one friend we'll call "kay bailey," who put up with a lot from me, considering she was also plotting to prevent me from moving but cheerfully packed box after box anyway. Another friend we'll call "nyczoo" also abandoned her family and helped for a few hours. And eventually, the Thursday night before that Friday morning, I picked up BTG, who also helped into the wee hours. We did not mind the wee hours, see, because we had most of Friday to take naps and clean.
And then, at 8:30ish, I had a call from The Guy. He was in a hotel nearby, and he'd be at my house in about an hour. There was no rush, he explained, since "we" weren't trying to do the 500-mile trip back in one day. I had not known before that that The Guy would be doing my move at all; I assumed he was sending other movers. But if he wanted to be part of my team of movers, right on.
I also, foolishly, assumed that the lack of rush meant he was showing up an hour late. It irritated me a little, but I dismissed that as irrational on my part, since I was only actually mostly ready to go. I could use that extra hour for frenzied packing, and I did.
And about an hour and twenty minutes later, there was The Guy. He was ready to move me. The Guy is. Well. Here is the part where I am totally ageist. The Guy is probably in his mid-sixties.
But whatever. He'd probably mostly be supervising, right? He had disregarded my instructions on where to park, so I came outside to see where the truck was and show him where a better parking spot might be. And, obviously, to check out the crew. Which consisted, it turned out, of the one woman I'd spoken to on the phone, who, as it turned out, was probably in her twenties and who had just moved away from D.C. herself not long before.
And she was. Well. Here is where I am probably sort of sexist, and also where she gets that name I promised you: We'll call her The Guy's Visibly Pregnant Daughter.
BTG is reading over my shoulder, and suggests that "Preggo" would be better. I will acknowledge that it is at least shorter, so we'll go with that.
And that, my friends, was my whole moving crew: The Guy and Preggo.
Stay tuned for Part 3.

A moving story, Part 1

So, I've been hinting about telling you all this story for a long time. The problem with it is that it's a really long story, even by my standards, and so I am simultaneously too lazy to write it and worried if I write something that long, no one will read it. Probably, I need to do this in parts.
So, here goes.
There is a moving and storage company up here that my family has some history with. In general, they have done a great job of both moving and storing our stuff. It was, until recently, owned by a guy we'll call The Guy and a woman we'll call His Business Partner. His Business Partner is, in addition to being a good business person, from a family my family has known for generations, though we don't know her personally all that well. So when I was moving from city to country, I hardly shopped around at all. I called around a little and found that these people we trust were actually at the low end, pricewise, of the normal range.
So, naturally, I hired them to move me.
I dealt entirely with The Guy and a woman who will get a name soon enough, but not His Business Partner. There were some things that I thought of as sort of country quaintness to our business dealings, that in retrospect were giant red flags.

• There was no contract.
• He had to keep calling to ask for my address.
• He asked for a list of my stuff, and then, when I gave it to him, said he wasn't sure the truck he was planning on using would be big enough (So? You're a moving company. Bring a bigger truck.).

But whatever. He was a known quantity and he knew the area I'd be moving to.
We made a plan. The movers would show up at my house between 8 and 8:30 on a Friday. They'd be able to move me out in about an hour and a half (which I thought was optimistic, and so rounded up to three hours) and then hit the road. I would spend the rest of the day cleaning my apartment with a friend (we'll call her Bread Truck Grrl) who'd fly down to help me drive my car up. Then I'd go out to dinner with two of my close friends, BTG and I would crash at their house, and we'd hit the road bright and early Saturday morning. My new job would start on Tuesday, I'd close on my house on Wednesday, my things would be delivered on the following Saturday. Callooh, callay. Perfect.

Watch this space for Part 2.

Privacy and teh internets

So this is not a brilliant story, but I read all of it anyway. It's about some smart Alec who really likes having people pay attention to her, except when they're mean about it, and you know, who can blame her? She also habitually disrespects other people's privacy meanly because she is young and does not get that that will come back to bite her in the butt. She appears to continue doing that throughout this magazine article, in fact.
Read it or don't as you choose, and regardless, wonder why that is a story for the New York Times Magazine.
And then tell me if you have a philosophy on how private to be on the Internet.
Most of you who read my blog know me already, in real life. There are a few lurkers and even fewer commenters who don't, and those people would have a hard time stalking me. Most of my philosophy has been based on that, actually: I don't want anyone stalking me.
But there is also the secret agenda that many bloggers have, I think, which is that we want the whole world to stumble on how totally awesome our blog is. We:

• are smart, or
• are funny, or
• write brilliant reviews, or
• have the best recipes, or
• can enlighten the world about something, or
• make the coolest things, or
• have the very most interesting life story.

For some excellent examples of many of those kinds of blogs, poke around my blogroll. Some of those bloggers are famous, as bloggers go, and some of them are not, but I like them enough to make them a little more famous on my blogroll.
And you will see, there are as many strategies on openness as there are blogs on that list. There are people with their names, or their pictures, or titles of things they're already famous for. There are people with none of that, and all of it. There are also several people who've struggled with how much to share, and with how mean people can be when they think of you as A Writer, rather than as a person who is essentially putting things of interest out there.
I am one of those people who wants to be a famous blogger without having to be a famous person, therefore having my blog standing up to scrutiny on its own poor little legs.

I'll get back to stories about blackberry bushes or squirrels or something soon. In fact, the world's worst moving company is bringing me some stuff tomorrow, so that should be hilarious. But this privacy business was already on mind somewhat because I haven't been posting much, due largely to (positive) stuff going on in my personal life, which I specifically decline to blog about.

But, well. Hm.

Campfire Grrrl

This morning, I did not have time to wash my hair.
And also, I did not have inclination.
Because I spent yesterday evening at a campfire with twenty sixth-graders, a few of their parents and teachers, and a few of my pals.
Some of the highlights:

• The "I've Got Peanut Butter in My Pants" song
• The "Invisible Bench" skit
• The "Doctor's Office" skit
• The commercials: three of the sixth-graders singing the "Free Credit Reports" ads from TV
• Our resultant awareness of how very good it is to get those sixth graders out into the woods for a week
• A poem, consisting of the one line, "I hate podiums!"
• The "Gigolo" song (not to be confused with the classic "Just a Gigolo,") sung by five girls who clearly do not know what that word means
• S'mores
  
• The realization that the two people (one of them me) responsible for putting out the fire had neither a bucket for water nor a flashlight to find their way back into camp

So today, my hair smells like woodsmoke. A lot. And I like it just fine.

Question for you: If you were a woman in her mid-30s, trying to cast someone as your husband for a skit, would you find it less awkward to ask an 11-year-old boy, or the father of one of the 11-year-olds?

Office-meets-nature moment of the day

On her way out of the office, one of my colleagues asked if the bird she could hear singing was sitting on my shoulder. She actually assumed it was on my computer, since it was so loud and clear and my window was closed. I'd only been vaguely aware of it, actually, but I got up to look out the window and scared off a beautiful scarlet tanager.
Here is what we have learned from this:

• I work in a place where birds come and twitter right by my ear.
• I apparently know what a scarlet tanager looks like, even if only spotted for about half a second, as it flies away.

Cool.

For more adventures in office nature, see here and here.

Gambling problem

"See a man about a horse"

or

"see a man about a dog"

?

Both are apparently acceptable, but we think the difference in which you use may be regional. With which expression are you more familiar, and where do you come from?

These, my friends, are the really important questions.

Accentuate the positive

So... New England accents.
There are lots of different ones. For the best examples in films, see The Depahtid and The Russians a-Comin, the Russians a-Comin.
Other New Englanders do not generally think I have too much of a New England accent.
Southerners generally think I talk like a Yankee. I have no problem with that. I did not, in fact, know that "Yankee" was considered a pejorative term in the south until a well-meaning southerner called me one and then apologized.

But here's the thing: Due to years and years of living in New England, I somehow just discovered yestiddy that "pejorative" is not, in fact, "perjorative." God bless spell-check.

I finally get that brother I've been asking my parents for since I was five

So, maybe you heard, we had a Wedding up here.
I know some of you are dying for news of how it went. It was beautiful and fun. The reception was lovely. My sister and her new husband were both calm and cute. Such a delight.
A few key (or just funny) moments:

• The tea ceremony, which went off without a hitch (and I got a dress and a pair of scissors out of it. No, no one knows why scissors).
• The priest plotted with the happy couple about when the H.C. would kiss, against the presumed wishes of the parents of the bride (also priests)
• An aunt of the bride referred to my dad as the "F.O.B.," for father of the bride. That made him wonder aloud what I was to be called. She assured him we'd go with "M.O.H." (maid of honor).
• The heavy summer-camp influence included a brilliant and very successful game of human bingo designed by the maid of honor, and a massive group of camp people singing their camp song.
• I did, indeed, get to drink beer with my cousins and consume it on my new patio furniture.

Some of the things that seemed like crises for a minute, but were easily resolved:

• The misspelling of the groom's name on the cover of the wedding program
• The disappearance of the bride's dog the day before the wedding (turns out, I just accidentally shut her in a closet)
• One sweet and very hungry child who was not brought her food for an insanely long time (the bride fed her some of her own rice)
• Three winners of human bingo, with only one planned prize (the mother of the bride kindly donated some of the centerpieces, which were live plants destined for her own garden, to the cause)

Really, if these are the biggest problems, we're all OK.
Needless to say, I have not yet started on any of the things on my After-The-Wedding to-do list.
Oh! And I almost forgot! The marriage is of course the most joyous news of all, but there is a runner-up piece of joyous news: As my brother-in-law says, "the US Government has officially welcomed [him] to become a permanent resident of the USA," despite his confusing number of names. This is huge. Yea green card!

It's Electric (boogie woogie woogie woogie)

So the word on the street is that PBS is reviving The Electric Company, which was pretty much the greatest television show of all time.
And the new one will be more plot-driven, and it presumably won't have Morgan Freeman or Joan Rivers or Bill Cosby or or Tom Lehrer or Rita Moreno (oh, wait! cameo by Rita Moreno! excellent), and maybe it will suck.
But also, maybe it won't.
And also, I will take any excuse to watch old bits from the old Electric Company and share them with you.
Here:

And here (special for my newly-married sister):

And here:

And one more, with some actual celebrities in it (did you catch Morgan Freeman as the voiceover in "Hot Shot," though?):

Great Interview, Batman

So the premise of The Great Interview Experiment is that bloggers will interview each other, because if we have something interesting enough to say to write a blog, we probably ought to be interviewed about it. Go check it out yourself, and if you're interested, hop on board that train.
I was interviewed by the excellent, if bitterly indifferent, PMJG. He is a very entertaining interviewer, I must say; I hope he enjoyed our experiment as much as I did. I am in the middle of interviewing someone else, too. When that's done, I'll post the finished product here. Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see what it looks like when someone interviews me. Here it is, exactly as it appears on his blog.

What's your story?
I lived in D.C. for a year after college, moved to New Hampshire (which is where I sometimes grew up) for several years, and left in my late twenties because I was bored. I moved back to D.C. because I think it's a fantastic city and because I still have friends there, but after eight years, I was looking for a job and found myself increasingly drawn back north. I don't mind "bored" as much as I mind "shoved," and maybe that is the difference between my twenties and my thirties.

How did you find the Great Interview Experiment?
Through She Just Walks Around With It. She apparently did this experiment a long time ago, but just got around to posting the results.

How did you choose your screen name? How does it fit in with the theme of your blog? Are you using that spelling of "girl" ironically?
Not ironically, but maybe nostalgically. That screenname dates way, way back, to maybe 1997, when I was director of a day camp called Hornets' Nest, which allowed me to simultaneously be a camp director (which I loved) and feel like a badass (which I craved). That wasn't so long after I'd been sort of tangentially into the whole riotgrrl thing in college. I just sort of kept using it. So, you know, hornets, feminism, summer camp, badassery. All of that probably fits in with the theme of the blog, but only because it fits in with the theme of my life.

Why did you decide to start a blog?
The idea for the blog came up when I moved. My D.C. friends got very wide-eyed, asking me about all the things I'd surely miss and how cold it would surely be. I found myself e-mailing mobs of people about what it was actually like once I got here, and a blog seemed easier.

What would you say is the single greatest challenge about moving to the country?
Not knowing anything. It makes for funny stories, which is good for the blog, but the sheer amount of stuff I don't know is overwhelming. I need a roof rake? Really?
Oh, and also the move itself was a tremendous challenge. Because I hired the worst moving company ever, and the owner, who is oldish, and his daughter, who is pregnant, showed up to move me. I am not sure I am ready to blog about that experience, even yet.

How did you get such a hefty blogroll in just six months of posting?
The big honkin' blogroll is largely blogs I was reading before I was blogging (bloggin'?). And now, of course, Google tells me what to read.

How do you feel about Google, and their sinister Google Everything(tm) project?
Now you're gonna get us both killed.
I am, unfortunately, exactly the kind of person Google dreams of (That is not anthropomorphism. I actually believe that Google has a brain, and it frightens me.). I dislike everything this giantness stands for, and yet, it's so eeeeeeeeeeeasy. And yeah, parts of it suck, but, well, I'd rather do something else than think too hard. Do you hear me, overlords? I WELCOME YOUR TELLING ME WHAT TO THINK. Plus, the maps are excellent, I find.

Do you hate technorati nearly as much as I hate technorati?
I do.
As do all right-thinking folk.

Between your posts and your links to sites like the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks, you appear to be a fan of punctuation and correctly written words. Do you have a literary background?
"Literary" may be pushing it. I am a writer and editor, and I'm a former copy editor. I like my language and communication fairly precise.

Are emoticons in fact ruining America?
I think it is both lazy and useful to have something to indicate, in writing, that you're kidding. I have little use for emoticons with devil horns and sunglasses, but I use smileys probably too much. Actually, now that I think about it, it strikes me that smileys are OK, but probably winks are ridiculously lazy. How little game do you have if you need a symbol to say "I'm flirting with you"?

What do you miss most about moving to the city (besides the May Day dancing)?
Specific people. I was there eight years, I made friends, and I miss them, often. But really, that's about it. Also, this is where I totally reveal my blog for the sham that it is, but country folks know that there are lots and lots of degrees of country-ness, and I am in one of the easier types to move to: the college town. So there are still lectures and sports and arts, just in a town of many fewer people (about 23,000). So that eases the transition some.

Would you describe your neighbors as hicks, hillbillies, hayseeds, or bumpkins?
Mostly, I would describe them as "professors." I might also describe them as "uninterested in meeting me."

Did it turn out that those were mice making noise in your house, or were the Agatha Christie books actually preparing you to deal with a real, honest-to-god serial killer who happened to be lurking around your house?
Oh, the mice are real, which does not mean the serial killer isn't. The problem with Agatha Christie is that all she really prepares you for is solving the murder after it happens. If you're a victim, you're doomed, and nothing can prevent that. All I can hope for is that the serial killer waits until after The Wedding.

[As bzzzzgrrrl is still alive, and The Wedding concluded successfully, we can assume that the killer is either nonexistent, or very considerate.]

Pimp your blog in 25 words or less.
Mostly, I tell stories at my own expense. Also, I'm hilarious. And in general, things are spelled right.

No, I mean really pimp your blog. Pretend you have a gold tooth, and a diamond-headed cane, if it helps. Right now that description could apply just as easily to She Just Walks Around With It as it could to yours. Make me want to pay money to sleep with your blog.
OK, first of all, I would pay money to sleep with Kristy's blog, if it wouldn't create complications with my existing relationships, so if I've given the impression that my little fish-in-different-water story is anything like that, I'm good with it.

But I'll try again, anyway:
• Hot lettuce
• David Gregory
• Cheap drinks
• Pregnant movers
• Hippie Birkenstock Silver Jewelry Guy
• Squirrel-wrangling
• Candidate spouses
• Contra dancing
• Explosive dust evaluation
• and very many bulleted lists.
Better?

Yes.

Updates: Wedding edition

So, when I wrote about The Wedding, I had the beginnings of a list of things to do. The Wedding is now just a few days away, and here is where we stand:

• get a haircut: Done! OK, and there might have been some dyeing along with the cutting.
  
• hang pictures: Done! I am not certain all the pictures are hung where I want them, but at least some of them are on the walls.
  
• get dryer: Done! The delivery guys who said they'd be here between 8 a.m. and noon showed up at 7:30 a.m. I have already dried one load of clothes.
  
• get dishwasher: Done! It arrived with the dryer, and is already storing dirty dishes.
  
• go to Nashua: Done! Who doesn't love a trip to Nashua?
  
• move furniture: Done! Boy howdy, has there been a lot of furniture moved around here.
  
• figure out placecard thing: Done! By someone else, granted, but done nonetheless.
  
• finish viewbook at work: Stop pressuring me. I still have tomorrow.
  

Old home day

So, it's one of those times of reconnecting with the long-lost. Some of that is to be expected, just by virtue of my having moved back here.
And coincidentally, at around the same time, I started reading the blog of an old college friend, who also reads mine, and who has sent pictures to a few of my other college friends, so there's been that reconnection.
And coincidentally, there's a new social networking site for alumni of the camp I used to work for, which has reconnected me to still more people.
And coincidentally, my sister is getting married this week (maybe you've heard about The Wedding?), which is naturally bringing together people I haven't seen or talked to in years.
And less coincidentally, I have reinvolved myself with a local nonprofit, which has put me back in touch with even more people I used to know.
So that's me. It's amazing to connect so quickly with people you used to have ties to, and it's weird to have to tell them what you've been doing for the last ten years. Blah, blah, blah.
You know this.
Because it's happening to you, too. Virtually everyone I talk to these days has a story like this, people who are suddenly drifting back into their lives. If you think I mean you, I do. But not just you.
Tell us about it in the comments.

City things I miss that seem like they should be country things

This is likely not to be a recurring feature. If I can only think of one thing for this category in six months, it's probably not so much a "category," as it is a "thing."

• The opportunity to go out at dawn on May Day and see folk dancers.

I am sorry, friends in D.C., that I only thought of this later this morning. If I'd thought of it yesterday, I'd have told you where to go see it. Here's what it might have looked like:

Google Reader

I am trying to decide if I love Google Reader or hate it. There is a lot to hate, and yet, I don't, quite.
But here is the thing about Google everything that amuses me most, and also often insults me: Recommendations and targeted ads.
Yeah, like you know me so well, just because you know what I read and also what I blog about and search for also what every e-mail is about. But you don't. Like that one time with the cougar stuff? Way out of left field.
Here are some of the feeds Google Reader thinks I would like:

• Boston Globe -- Front Page
• It's like I'm... mmmagic!
• BroadwayWorld.com Featured Content
• UnionLeader.com - RSS Feeds
• Apostrophism
• washingtonpost.com - Miss Manners
• TheaterMania.com
• Apostrophe Abuse
• Blue Hampshire
• RED PEN, INC.
• Polymer Clay Daily
• Charming, but single
• Dorothy Surrenders

Shut up, Google. I would never read two apostrophe blogs.

An open letter to Kevin B. at Wal-Mart

First, thank you so much for your help with my patio furniture last night. I am sorry that you had to leave your post in sporting goods to help me, but, as you said, it's as if they gave everyone in lawn and garden the same night off. I hope you did not lose too many ammunition sales. I was very grateful.

Second, I lied, and I was wrong. When you asked me, at 9 p.m., "You gonna put this together tomorrow?" and I said, "Yep," what I was thinking was, "Hell, no. I'm going to put this eight-piece set together tonight. I've been waiting weeks to get some patio furniture, and I'm not going to wait any longer. But I'm not going to tell you that, just because you sound so reasonable." Also, you kind of remind me of my friend Addicus, which may not have helped in this case. Addicus's plan would never have been the most reasonable.

Needless to say, you were so, so right. The only reasonable thing to consider doing was to wait until daylight, especially since my screwgun wasn't really charged, but I now have a sunroom full of plastic bags, styrofoam, and partially-put-together patio furniture. Your way would have been better. I'll finish up after work tonight.