Art & Soul Macaroni and Cheese

By now I've had a lifetime's worth of "Meh"caroni and cheese. And that's what I got at Art & Soul.

The curly noodles were cooked to perfection. The cheese was real, gooey, baked, and topped with breadcrumbs. All of which I like.

But I just didn't really taste anything from this macaroni. It didn't tickle my palate.

While it was not bad by any stretch, it was neither mind-bogglingly good. It filled me up when I needed food, but I would not return to this restaurant with the express purpose of eating macaroni and cheese.

Rating:
1 Happy noodle for having a good texture.
1 Sad noodle for having little flavor.


The Mood Noodle rating system is not based on a fixed scale, but is a much more subjective system based on what makes me happy and what makes me sad.
Any number of happy noodles and comparatively few sad noodles constitute a good rating.

Mother's Day cookie from Whole Foods

I do indeed love my mother, and since I couldn't be with her this Mother's Day, I figured the next best thing would be to honor her remotely by eating a Mother's Day cookie.

Sadly, this Mother's Day cookie wasn't quite as perfect as the mother it stood in for.

The pink icing was a weird tough sheet with a quite chewy texture that I can't say I've ever encountered elsewhere. It was unique, and I liked it, but it didn't seem to have any discernible flavor.

By contrast, the lettering was still gooey and soft 3 days after purchase. Since I first tucked into this cookie when I had a cold (not the best circumstances to adequately judge food,) I saved part of it to eat later when I could review it more fairly. And 13 days after purchase, the icing was still soft. It had the texture of mayonnaise, and the flavor of...sweet nothing? Well, at least I can be thankful it was not mayonnaise. But there was far too much of it to get away with being so tasteless.

Especially for someone who likes to break off little pieces of cookie one at a time, this was a messy cookie to eat. The gooey lettering got all over my hands, and the pink sheet did not stay attached to the cookie whenever I broke it, typically falling back onto the cookie and its mess of frostingaise.

The cookie itself walked the border between crunchy and chewy. It was fine, as far as sugar cookie bases go, but much like the frosting, it seemed to have no flavor except a tiny hint of butteriness.

All in all, I feel this cookie sends the message, "Mom, you're sweet, but kind of bland."

The Bottom Line:

Taste:
Texture:
Price:	(2.28¢ per gram)

Macaroni from the Right Proper Brewing Company

When a beer-hating macaroni blogger finds herself at a brewing company of all places, what else can she do but grab a menu and hope for macaroni?

This macaroni was, fortunately, everything I could have hoped for.

It was salty, not mushy, topped with not just real cheese, but real cheese that was delightfully crispy in spots, and...it was not beer!

I may just have to rate the Right Proper macaroni as my favorite macaroni and cheese to date.

However, considering how much desperate hunger (and a mortal fear of beer) might have played into my review, I will give it another eat sometime before I crown it with such a dramatic title. I will, however, rate it 3 happy noodles for all the qualities above-mentioned.




The Mood Noodle rating system is not based on a fixed scale, but is a much more subjective system based on what makes me happy and what makes me sad.
Any number of happy noodles and comparatively few sad noodles constitute a good rating.

Peanut Butter Cookie from Woodmoor Pastry Shop

On Easter Sunday, searching for a lunch spot that was actually open, we ran across Woodmoor Pastry Shop in Silver Spring. They seemed to be doing a bustling business, and though I would conclude from their website that they specialize in wedding cakes, there was a good variety of baked goods at their shop, including several cookies.

There was only one variety, though, that qualified as "giant," and it barely squeaked by at 10.5cm. I have no information about its weight or price, considering my boyfriend bought it, and I ate it at work where there is no scale. So this review will be limited to taste and texture. I also forgot to take its picture, so this will be a very boring review indeed. To go with the boring cookie.

It was dry and floury for a peanut butter cookie, and the flavor didn't wow me. This is the kind of cookie that really needs some kind of icing or filling or embedded chocolate to make it worth eating. Maybe if you're the type who dips your cookies in milk, you'd like it. I just found it acceptable.

Taste: 3 stars
Texture: 3 stars

Fashion Fast: a Recap

Now that Lent is over, I am allowed to go shopping and plan my outfits again. Naturally I'm excited about this—I've already bought a pair of grey pants that fit better than my old ones, a pair of nude pantyhose in a more natural color than my old ones, and a pair of pastel pink sunglasses.

I thought I'd take a moment to share the insights that I have gained from my Lenten "fashion fast."

Speaking of "fashion fast," I've been spending a lot of time thinking about "fast fashion," fair trade, and sustainable clothing. I'd like to start investing in quality clothing that's ethically sourced, and I'm still seeking out the best way to do that. To be continued.

On a more concrete note, Lent was a good opportunity to jettison the ballast from my hot-air balloon of life. I donated 4 boxes (probably about 6 cubic feet total, if you want to be precise), mostly of clothing and shoes, and I still have a full closet. It was kind of liberating, knowing that I really didn't want those red peep-toe shoes taking up space, and that I could just cast off that burden and help other people at the same time!

During Lent, it became obvious what I had kind of already known: eBay shopping was a pastime better left in the past. Before Lent, I shopped on eBay almost every day. Over the month-and-a-half leading up to Easter, I never once performed an eBay search, and I never really felt like I was missing out. eBay has long been my time-killer – a rather expensive one – and it turns out that there are lots of other things I can do to kill time.

However, not everything about my fashion habit is bad. I've also concluded that self-adornment in itself is not a vice—for me, it's an art. I take pride in concocting outfits that are flattering and inventive. Where I used to get my aesthetic kicks from drawing or crafting or desktop backgrounds, I increasingly fill that need with clothing. I am my own personal canvas, and I get to create a new work of art every day! I enjoy that. It doesn't feel like vanity, just a creative activity.

Granted, those times when I spend an hour in front of the closet struggling to find the perfect getup, I think could be better spent doing something else and waiting for the muse to come upon me. Even the most brilliant artist doesn't create a masterpiece daily, and it wouldn't kill me to wear something tried and true once in a while.

In short, I've learned a few things from my month-plus on hiatus from my self-adornment hobby. I don't think I'll be giving it up again any time in the near future (I've got new hair colors to try, at least two outfits already planned, and a small mountain of summer clothes that I acquired over fall and winter to try out!), but I will make a concerted effort to keep the recreational shopping to a minimum.

My choice: Myspace

Sometimes, a friend will ask me, "Hey, want to go this concert?" and I will say, "Uhhhhh..." Even if the artist is a popular musician, it is likely I will only know one of their songs. And I'm certainly not paying exorbitant concert prices without knowing what I'm getting myself into. So I turn to the Internet to help me learn more about the performer. But this is a frustrating exercise indeed.

I can always try YouTube. Find a video that looks like it might be the right artist, watch an ad for a minute, then hear a song that someone recorded with their cell phone at a concert. Or some teenager's basement performance. Or the dreaded acoustic version! Spotify gives a lot more predictable results, but the ads that take over the entire screen every 10 seconds are a dealbreaker for me. Yes, you can buy a subscription, but for someone who only uses the service every couple of weeks for pre-concert research, that's overkill. MOG is a decent alternative, but their spam-your-friends-or-pay pricing structure is a huge turnoff.

That's where Myspace comes in.

Remember MySpace? The site you stopped using in 2007? Well, it's back! Technically, it never left.

After years of languishing in semi-obscurity as the washed-up star of the aughts (broken only by those brief moments when it was resurrected to be the butt of everyone's jokes), Myspace reinvented itself, converting from the Big Social Network That Couldn't into what I'd like to describe as (for the sake of parallelism) the Medium Media Network That Can!

It's not cool these days to use Myspace, but I'm here to tell you why you should! And no, no one's paying me for this endorsement; Myspace is just one of those things that recently made me stop dead and think, wow, I really like it!

Myspace is no longer the crazy cluttered marketplace of narcissism, questionable friend requests, and garish profiles that it used to be. All that has been replaced with cleanliness, simplicity, and what seems to be a single purpose. As far as I can tell now, Myspace is music.

Using this site, you can connect with artists and discover artists, you can get alerted about upcoming concerts, you can even, if you're still into that, post statuses and connect with friends, but most importantly, you can listen to songs. It seems simple, but of all the music sites I've tried, Myspace is the one that makes it easiest to actually listen to music.

It excels at letting you build your own playlist of specific songs from various artists—especially handy when you're thinking of going to a music festival.

Just yesterday, after my friends asked me if I wanted to go to the Equinox music festival here at UMD and I replied with my requisite "Uhhhhh," I pulled up the headliner's profile on Myspace...and I was like, "Wow! I really like Paper Diamond!"

It's been a long time since I discovered new music that I actually love (although since I didn't do a 2013 Musical Revue New Year post, I should at least mention that Martin Garrix's "Animals" was pretty cool, and Avicii's "Wake Me Up" grew to be one of my favorites after I originally dismissed it) so I am thrilled that I finally discovered a new artist to be a fan of, and I'd just like to state again for the record, Myspace made it happen.

P.S: If you become a rabid Myspace user and you figure out how the "affinity score" works, will you please let me know?

Cuisine-bashing

I really don't like Asian food. By Asian, I don't mean all the food that originates from the continent of Asia, but more precisely, food from anywhere east of India. There are a number of reasons why Asian food fails to tickle my palate, but I think the main reason is that it seems to be highly lacking in my two favorite food groups: bread and cheese.

Chinese food bores me to pieces. I liked sushi the first time I tried it, but now I'd rather eat anything else. I've tried Thai, but it is a solid meh. My boyfriend is Indonesian, and every time I go to a cultural event with him, I starve a little bit inside because almost everything is too spicy.

These predilections of mine make things difficult when eating with others. Sometimes people want to eat at an Asian restaurant, and I am never happy about it. I usually tolerate it for the sake of the team, but there is one Asian food that I will never bother with again. It's pho.

Have you ever eaten pho? If you are anything like me up through last year, you have not. I had never heard of it until I moved to Maryland, but around here, it seems to be everywhere. I lived here for 7 years without ever trying it (and, knowing how I feel about Asian cuisine in general, I didn't feel any urge to do so), but eventually I was dragged along by some coworkers to a new pho restaurant in town.

Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup, and apparently it's pronounced "fuh." Basically it consists of rice noodles in water with some vegetables thrown in. If you are a meat eater, you get meat in it, and maybe you will taste something. But if you're a vegetarian, you might as well drink a bowl of hot water. You might be able to get it with tofu, but tofu has no flavor.

My coworkers go out to get pho at least once every couple of weeks. I never go with them. Instead, I sit in my office feeling lonely. Sometimes I write blog posts deriding the food that has ruined my social life. If I had to pick the single Asian food that I dislike more than any other, it is pho. Pho sure.

Unsliced

Thirty-one days of the Slice of Life Challenge have passed. At the beginning, I was gung-ho, excited to be able to share my thoughts and to have an excuse for blogging daily. But now that the month is over, I admit to being a bit worn out.

In 31 days, I never failed to post, though as I exhausted my stockpile of partially written posts and struggled to fit writing into my seemingly ever-busier schedule, my Slices published later and later, and the comments were fewer and fewer (could it be that other Slicers were getting tired just like me?). So yes, over this month, I have run out of time and energy.

But I have not run out of ideas! There were so many things I wanted to Slice about that I never quite got around to.

I wanted to discuss buying clothes online—specifically a cost-benefit analysis of the value of the clothes versus the likelihood of having to return them. Sounds thrilling, right? That entire topic fell by the wayside when I gave up self adornment for Lent.

I did think it might be interesting to share what I was doing instead of self adornment—things like learning Indonesian, putting together a Wordpress site, using my old nail polish collection to decorate a cookie tin....and of course, blogging—but there! I just told you in a sentence.

One day, I wanted to share the song I had stuck in my head. That cheesy country song about how life is like a game of poker. If I had to be listening to it in my mind, shouldn't everyone else as well? Oh, well, if you know it, you're probably hearing it right now. You're welcome!

This morning, I had a crown put on my tooth, and I really wanted to blog about that singular experience—but since I have a follow-up appointment in two weeks, I thought I might wait until then. And besides, I had an SOLSC recap to write!

I wanted to talk about web-development geekery: how much I love coding, and the pronunciation of "favicon" (that's also language geekery, by the way), but I decided given the audience of mostly non-developers, I could do more interesting things with my platform.

Speaking of my audience of non-developers, I was struck throughout this challenge by how many Slicers are teachers. I came dangerously close to a teaching career, so their stories were simultaneously impressive and terrifying to me. I wanted to say something about that, but I could never figure out exactly what.

Other half-formed topics are multitudinous: the similarity of the SOL logo to that of Slice soda, a the long-lost soft drink of my youth. The interesting phenomenon of my always-increasing need for sleep, and maybe my absolute awe of the people who can get up before sunrise and survive the day. The way gory movies are horrifying even when you can't see what's going on (like when someone in the room is always watching them on the iPad while you try to go about your day). My tentative attendance at AwesomeCon next month, and in a similar vein, a question: What is it that makes Game of Thrones mainstream while any other similar show would be considered geeky in the extreme? Speaking of shows, why are there no homely and/or anxiety-ridden TV heroines for me to relate to? Speaking of non sequiturs, is my ongoing consumption of dairy products contributing to animal suffering?

The questions go on and on. Serious and silly alike, every topic has a home in my blog. Stay tuned and you might see some of these aforementioned subjects dissected (or I might decide that my one-paragraph summaries here were good enough). The Slice of Life challenge may be over, but the Slices will forever keep coming—on a more sporadic schedule, thank you very much. 

The Prodigal Jacket

Last night, I arrived at the bar wearing a pretty snazzy jacket. Black pleather and fabric sleeves with an off-center zipper, it was getting compliments from everyone who saw it. But it was also getting hot. Pleather jackets are not ideal for dancing in. So I hung my jacket on the hook beside the booth, tucking it behind the trash can. Then I thought better of keeping it so close to a trash can amidst a crowd of people who are probably not at their most graceful. So I laid it down on the booth seat and got back to dancing.

I don't know how it happened, because I never traveled more than an arm's length from the table, but when I next looked at the seat, my jacket was gone.

Instantaneous panic!

I peered under the table; I checked the other seat; I ran my hands over the cushion, as if maybe my jacket had simply turned invisible. I checked the hook where I'd originally hung it. Nothing. Someone had stolen it!

I made my way out of the bar, followed by my friends. The night had been drawing to a close anyway, and my sartorial tragedy was just the last nail in the coffin. While my boyfriend went back inside to seek out what I knew was long gone, I stood on the curb weeping openly. At this point, I would like to acknowledge my opportunity to reference a song lyric by stating that the clothes I wasn't wearing (girl) were causing public scenes.

My boyfriend came out with another coat, which clearly wasn't mine, but he said he'd found it on the floor, and we were all too flustered to go back in and look for that jacket's owner, so I wore it to the car. My friends tried to comfort me by telling how great I looked in the new coat, but it was a poor second to my missing jacket, which I was elevating in my mind every moment to a right astronomic status. I had gotten it for only 10 dollars, and everyone loved it. Where would I ever find another jacket that cool for 10 dollars, not to mention it was my only black jacket and you can't just not have a black jacket! It was probably the greatest jacket the world had ever known, and now it would be mine no more.

But there was still hope. In all the hubbub, my boyfriend had forgotten to close his tab and had left his credit card there. So we had to go back today. Besides, I could not in good conscience keep the jacket he had stolen for me, so I wanted to return that to the lost and found. Maybe even, if miracles really do happen, I would find my own coat there.
The bartender directed us to a closet where all the lost coats were unceremoniously stored in a large garbage bin. We examined one jacket after another. Oddly, they were almost all black leather jackets, but they were all completely inferior to mine—which was not there. But the bartender had said one more thing before she left us. "There's another black leather jacket upstairs."

I made my way up there with a sense of resignation, and saw, across the room, a black shape draped over the back of a booth. I approached. I saw glossy black pleather and matte fabric. I picked it up. I squealed and jumped up and down. It was my jacket! My wonderful, beautiful, trendy, doozy-of-a-bargain jacket!

I still can't figure out how it made its way up to the second floor, though I wonder if some game of musical jackets was going on, and some other well meaning boyfriend had scooped it up for his lady love, only to be told that it was not the right one.

But then again, this jacket is not just any jacket. It's the greatest jacket the world has ever known. With credentials like that, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it had somehow managed to teleport upstairs all by itself.

To sweep, perchance to clean

There comes a time in every blogger's life when she just has to put aside her lofty goals of introspection, erudition, and other big words, and simply talk about her day. This is mine.

It started out, at least, as that favorite term, a "lazy Saturday." I got up about 9 after having gone to bed about 11.

But there the laziness ended. Once out of bed, I sprang into action, starting off the morning with a half-hour of yoga.

I was planning to take a shower and then eat breakfast, but I decided that since I was rolling, I'd better stay that way (and since I was sweaty, I might as well do the other dirty work on my agenda as well).

So I outfitted the bathroom with a box of baking soda for future cleaning, carried the pile of dirty towels into the basement for future laundering, swept the living room, and tackled the small tan spot on the floor that might have been a previously unnoticed puddle from the bad dog.

Having conquered the living room in quite short order, I then triumphantly returned to the bedroom, brandishing my feather duster and preparing for battle.

What was that smell? I don't know, but I vanquished it with vanilla scented wax in a small lamp.

About this time, my boyfriend rolled out of bed and warmed my heart by – completely unasked – dragging the vacuum cleaner into the bedroom to purge the rug of dog hair.

After a quick break for breakfast, I marched onward to the bathroom, where my baking soda awaited me. Sprinkling it liberally around the tub and following that with a generous spritzing of vinegar, I scoured the shower with the foaming mixture and a scrub brush. I was delighted to see the grey spots that I thought were permanent decorations on the bottom of the tub begin to disappear. While my scrubbing skills are prodigious, my attention span is not, so I considered it a job well done when the spots were "less grey than before."

I left the bathroom feeling like a conquering hero. I might still have bills to pay before I can call the day complete, but even that can't stand between me and the satisfaction of having finally finished the cleaning.

Pet Pleasures: Another 10-List

As promised, today I take the optimistic side and talk about some of the things that make me happy.

I've been compiling this list for almost 2 years, as evidenced by the date of my last post on the topic, yet yesterday it still had but 7 items. I tend to only add to this list when I'm so blown away by something that I stop whatever I'm doing and think, "Wow, I really like ____." Obviously that doesn't happen very often, but since I promised write this post, and since the Slice of Life challenge is almost over, I figured I had better get my appreciation engine in gear. I added three items to the list today, and now I'm ready to share my joy with the world!

The sound of music from far away

When I am in Dupont Circle in the summertime, I sometimes hear the mournful notes of a saxophone played a few blocks away, or the sound of a percussion group jamming to the rhythms of rhythm alone, somewhere off in the distance. This always reminds me of when I was in college, and I would come home after class to the sounds of the marching band practicing in the field behind my dorm. This in turn reminded me of the times when my family used to go to Civil War reenactments when I was a kid, and I could hear the fifes and drums across the field. Listening to music played nearby doesn't have the same impact. I love the muffled effect of sound filtered through large volumes of atmosphere. It gives the music the same hazy distance as the happy memories it brings back.

On similar musical note (haha, get it?)...

Arpeggios

It's not uncommon for me to wax ecstatic about music. Many of the songs that I've gone crazy over have made the list because they feature cool, weird electronic sounds. But another musical element that gets me going is the arpeggio. I gave this sound the credit it's due in my review of Muse's "Take a Bow," but other songs I love with arpeggios as a key (or more often, subtle background) feature include The Last Universe, Haleakala, Break Your Heart, Hung Up (especially my favorite remix by AY Riders), and an old favorite that somehow seems to have escaped mention on my blog: "Resurection" by PPK. During the melody, this features arepeggio-like sequences of notes in both the bass and the treble simultaneously! I think (OK, I knew it long ago) I'm in love!

Returning merchandise

If there's anything I like as much as shopping, it's returning what I've bought! Well, almost. I do enjoy the feeling of being liberated from the need for possessions. And once the return is completed,  I feel like I have just received some free money! Well, almost.

Driving an employer's car for work purposes

At the university, we have these things called "state cars," and when we need to drive somewhere far away for work, we are allowed to use them. I myself do not like driving, but when I'm driving a state car, it's positively enjoyable! First, I'm getting paid for my time whilst doing nothing but listening to music or stories or thinking my own thoughts, and it's like getting free miles! This time for real, not just almost!

Time Lapse Films

My first experience with time-lapse photography was a movie we saw in 7th grade science, of which my most vivid memory is the scene where the dead fox decomposed. I liked it anyway. There were also plants in the movie. I love watching plants in stop-motion, where they grow and follow the sun and every imperceptible motion is jerky and magical at once! I still want to make a time-lapse film of my own, but I don't think I have enough space to keep a setup in place for long enough.

Dill

If I had to pick a favorite herb, hands-down, it would be dill. Every time I eat something with dill in it, I feel like my day has been made! It may seem simple, but nothing's dull with dill!

Likewise in the food sphere, how could I neglect to mention...

Chocolate!

I'm always amazed when I'm feeling blah at work, and I gobble a couple of chocolates and all of a sudden I'm on cloud nine. This isn't just because I like chocolate and eating foods I like makes me happy, although that's true. Chocolate has more than that. It has magic powers, commonly known to the more scientific folk as serotonin, dopamine, and caffeine. But the real magic is that it tastes good, too! I think chocolate might be the only drug that's just as enjoyable to consume as its end effects are.

Window-prints on the wall

The sun is so talented! All it does is shine through a window, and suddenly an ordinary wall is a work of art!

Every time I see window-prints on the wall, I want to take a picture of it! The only thing that stops me, is it usually turns out something like the one on the left. Not nearly as awesome as it appeared in real life, I assure you.

Leaves blowing across the road

Fall used to be my favorite season. Once I started hating the cold, that quickly changed, but one thing didn't. No matter how cold it gets, I never get tired of seeing cavalcades of leaves tumbling across the road. A few days ago, I was driving behind a truck carrying a load of leaves (heaven only knows why at this time of year!) but they were spilling all over the road and giving me the biggest case of happiness! Even though it's several days into spring and it still felt like January.

At the risk of being totally cheesy, the final thing on the list of things I like is...

My Boyfriend

When I told him my blog post today was a list of things that make me happy, he asked me what was on the list. When I told him, "Well, for example, #10 is you," he said, "What!? I'm only number 10!?"

I said, "I saved the best for last."

He said, "What!? I'm last?"

After we had argued about that, he told me he didn't believe that he was really on the list at all. I showed him the note I'd been compiling the last couple years, and his next question was "What? I'm lower on the list than Dill? Who is Dill?"

When I showed him what I had written about this conversation, he said, "That's awesome." I agree. We have fun times together, especially when we're playing at being obnoxious and egotistical. He and I have been together for almost a year now, and I mean "together" literally. We live together, we work together, we spend our weekends and vacations together, and still, we haven't gotten tired of each other. Every time I see his face, I just want to grin like a doofus. Yes, it hasn't been that long in the greater scheme of relationships, but so far I'd say it's a resounding success.

After the conference

Since Tuesday evening, I have been at a conference. It's been a busy couple of days, and I still have a lot to do before work tomorrow, so this will be just a quick post!

I did a short presentation at the conference along with a coworker. I have to admit that during all the week that we were planning this talk, I was not enthusiastic. I wasn't thrilled about the subject, and I felt like we didn't have anything worthwhile to say. But we made a couple of tweaks to the slideshow in the hour before our talk, and by the time it came to present, I was almost excited.

The talk went fine. A couple of times, I even made the crowd laugh — and not just by being clueless. Of course, if I hadn't been excited about presenting the talk, I sure was excited when it was over! After we were done, I was in a better mood than I've been in all week.

A couple of people came up to me later to say how much they'd appreciated our talk—one even said I – me, not the talk – was "motivating."

Wow, I was so happy to hear those words! They gave me a whole different perspective.

Usually when I attend a presentation, I slip out the door as soon as it's over, and that's it. No matter how much I might have learned, or how much I enjoyed the talk, it would never occur to me to go up to the speaker and tell them that! Why, that would be social interaction! Self-initiated social interaction, no less!

But being on the other end of the projector has made me realize how nice it is to get some positive feedback on your work. I think I will make a concerted effort in the future to personally thank the people who work hard to make things happen.

Bad Dog

My boyfriend's dog  (we'll call him Jack, because that's most of his name) recently regressed in his toilet training knowledge and began making messes in his home. What do you do when your dog suddenly becomes unmanageably messy? Of course, you bring him to your almost-OCD girlfriend's house for retraining!

I'm not bitter; I like having a furry creature around—especially one who's a little more cuddly than my decidedly independent rabbit. But I'm less appreciative of my new role as dog janitor.

Now, Jack is well known to have a selective incontinence problem. At first, whenever I would see him after an absence of a day or more, he would get so excited, he would wet himself (and my shoes, as he was usually jumping all over me). My boyfriend says he only does this for "pretty girls," so I guess I should be honored. I feel like a veritable Cinderella, scrubbing his urine off the floor after every overenthusiastic greeting.

I quickly learned that if my first action upon arriving home was to cut short the formalities and quickly herd him to the back door, I could get him outside before disaster struck. But Jack's real problem is what he does when no one is around.

When he was spending the day in his tiny dog crate, he never had an accident. He knows better than to poop where he sleeps. But as soon as my boyfriend upgraded his lodgings, things got messy.

One day, he tried to confine the dog to the kitchen (blocking the doorway with a chair and his cage). In a very short time, Jack pushed the cage and chair aside and proceeded to root through the trashcan in my bedroom before depositing a turd in the middle of my floor.

Jack was downgraded to the bathroom, which has an actual door. I came home that day to find the garbage can upended, used dental floss and Kleenex all over the floor, and several yards of toilet paper unrolled into the midst of the chaos.

Yesterday morning, after Jack had spent several days in the bathroom with no further destruction, my boyfriend started setting up the food and water bowl in my bedroom. "Are you keeping him in the room today?" I asked. He confirmed he was. "Move the garbage can somewhere where he can't get to it," I suggested. I also warned him that if his dog messed up my room, he might not find a dog at all when he got home. I alluded to the burying of a body. And then I went to work.

When I returned that evening, I entered my room with dread, asking, "Jack, were you good today?" After several weeks of toilet training in my house, Jack knows the drill. He scrambled out immediately to grovel, quivering and shamefaced, in the living room, providing me a perfect view of the small puddle in the middle of the rug.

I did not kill him.

Instead, I decided to take a deep breath, get out the vinegar spray (again) and blog about it.

SOL and proud

Let me tell you about my coworker, a new and very earnest employee who wants to do his job perfectly. He's frequently stressed out, and can be heard at times dashing through the hallways muttering "I'm SOL."

Now is the time to point out that I have no idea what SOL means. But generally the things one says while scurrying around and awaiting one's doom are not chipper exclamations of joy. And I have indeed heard the term used in other contexts, mostly to refer to a person who is about to experience something unpleasant.

Now is also the time to point out, if you haven't already noticed, that "Slice of Life" could easily be abbreviated to "SOL." Many times during the March Slice of Life Story Challenge, I have been tempted to refer to it in just that way. However, considering how those letters are used by my coworker and friends, I've always decided to take the high road and not use them. I haven't bothered to try and find out what SOL means—It's a lot easier to just tack an "SC" onto the end of the acronym than to actually engage in research, so that's what I've been doing.

But since today begins the final week in the March SOLSC, I'm going to finally investigate its shorter cousin, the phrase "SOL."

The first Google result for "sol" — even before the Wikipedia entry about our sun! — is the Urban Dictionary definition, S.O.L. (seems like I've been getting a lot of my education on Urban Dictionary lately).

According to Urban Dictionary, I had been quite right in deducing that SOL was a phrase with negative connotations. And of course, as you might expect from anything you find in Urban Dictionary, it involves an expletive! What a relief I haven't been plastering such smut all over my blog!

For future reference, naïve Slicers such as myself, if you do choose to abbreviate the name of the challenge as SOL, people could interpret it to mean you're talking about being S*** out of Luck. So maybe you'll want to avoid that particular acronym. Or maybe you won't.

I, for one, am tired of having to avoid certain phrases just because they could be interpreted inappropriately! I think, just to be contrary, I'm going to use the short version of "Slice of Life" as often as I can!

I hope you enjoyed this SOL! Here's to one more week of SOL posts from the entire SOL community!

Pet Peeves: A 10 List

Since yesterday's post was an upbeat ode to the campus geese that bring joy into my heart, I feel justified in turning around and making today's post a quite curmudgeonly rant about all the things that ... don't.

The airing of my grievances is a fairly regular feature on my blog, so I think it's only fair that all the Slice of Lifers out there get a taste of it.

1. Distorted aspect ratios

When you upgrade from an ancient CRT monitor to a fancy-pants new widescreen LED, but do not upgrade your graphics card to handle the new display, you get a horrible-looking picture where everything is stretched out horizontally. I can't stand this, but what I really can't stand are the people who can.What do you mean, you don't notice that everybody's face looks like they've gained 10 pounds? How can you not see that the typography is all distorted? Argh! Why are you not bothered by this?

2. Spaced ellipses

Sometimes – apparently, often even – style guides will tell you that to create an ellipsis in your text, you should type 3 periods separated by spaces . . . like so. Do you know what happens when a line break falls right in the middle of your ellipsis? It gets broken up into three meaningless dots. Far better, in my opinion, to use the ellipsis character (which MS Word conveniently creates for you whenever you type three periods in a row) … like this. Not only do I prefer the compact look of the ellipsis character, but it completely avoids the problem of mid-ellipsis line breaks. Ah, if only every style guide would get with this program.

3. Pre-dressed salads

A salad is supposed to be healthy! Healthy, I say! How can I get my fiber and vitamins in a low-calorie format when it is slathered with a concoction of sugar and oil? It is not that hard to allow diners to choose how much dressing they want, if any, by serving it on the side. Oh, how I dream of the day when I don't have to always remember to order my salad without dressing.

4. Hiccups

Does anyone love these muscle spasms from hell? Sometimes when I have hiccups, I just want to break down and cry... but that would probably cause me to get hiccups.

5. Using periods mid-sentence for emphasis

Maybe this unconventional form of punctuation was cool in 1998, but now, I'm So. Over. It.

6. Facebook guilt trips

I'm not much into re-posting things I see on Facebook, or really, posting much of anything on Facebook at all, other than occasional one-liners, but when someone's post begins with the sanctimonious, "99% of you won't repost this, but..." that's pretty much a guarantee that I'll never want to repost it. Even if I think it's the coolest thing ever shared.

7. Auto-correct not reading my mind

Everyone hates auto-correct. Always taking your (correctly spelled) words and twisting them into something you didn't mean. But just as annoying is when it fails to auto-correct my legitimate mistakes. Just because I typed "bit" doesn't mean I actually wanted to say "bit!" I meant "but!" Come on! Read my mind, already (or at least read context clues. I know that's within your capacity, if someone would just program you right)!

8. Opening the windows in winter

I don't care how much you need the fresh air, or how bad the bathroom smells—no odor could be worse than suffering hypothermia every time I go to use the toilet. We live in the 21st century, and we did away with outhouses for a good reason. Just spritz some of that air freshener and let me keep my body heat.

9. Hashtags

I don't think I can escape them, but I don't have to like them. I can barely read my Twitter feed because the real content is buried under such a mess of hashtags. Do you think that counts as #firstworldproblems?

10. People who don't read

This has been a problem that has plagued me from the beginning of my working life. People call me asking stupid questions that they would have found the answer to if they'd spent 10 minutes searching the website. People contacting me with the very first question on the list of "Questions we can't answer" on our contact form. Potential Airbnb guests asking things like "Is the room private?" When "Private room" are literally the 2nd and 3rd words of the listing. I always think when I get a new job or start a new venture that maybe I won't have to deal with lazy idiots any more, but I always do.

There, now that I've got my grumpy on, I promise to follow up soon with a list of things that I do like!

The campus geese

The first two winters that I worked at the University of Maryland, it did not have any geese. This year has been entirely different. A flock of Canada geese took up residence on campus in late fall, and they have been there all through the winter.

Although some of my coworkers are not impressed by the little greenish brown gifts they leave all over the sidewalks, on the whole, the geese have been quite well behaved. Compared to the geese at Lake Artemesia, who will mob you and terrorize each other if you throw them a bit of cereal (I know, I've tried), these geese are positively angels.

They gather in front of the engineering and math buildings, foraging for food in the grass, occasionally ambling up the sidewalk as if it were their own designated thoroughfare. They honk amiably at each other (no hissing like the Lake Artemesia geese!) and regard you without hostility when you pass.

The other day, whilst driving past the gaggle of geese with a coworker, I exclaimed, "I want to hug all the geese!"

He thought that was inordinately funny. I just thought that the geese are the perfect size for hugging, and with their apparently laid-back natures, it just might be feasible!

I have not yet attempted to hug the geese, and I probably won't ever try, but at least I got some pictures of them before they make their journey back north for the summer!

It's the little things

I think everyone likes to believe they are a little obsessive compulsive. It shows attention to detail and just a hint of charming quirkiness. Of course, when it veers into "disorder" territory, that's quite another matter, and that's when it ceases to be charmingly quirky.

I am not OCD, but I do believe I'm a little obsessive compulsive. Little imperfections in the environment around me drive me just a little nuts. I can't keep my eyes off the minor flaws that I really, really, really want to fix!

Here are a few. Maybe by sharing them, I will finally be released from my obsession with them. Or I'll at least have some company in staring at the things that aren't quite right.
 

In the not-too-distant past, I had the unfortunate experience of having to see this crooked exit sign every time I looked up from my computer. I thought I might die! Or at least have to start closing my door...but fortunately they fixed it. Also of note, the angled line at the bottom of the picture? The one that isn't quite perpendicular to the vertical lines around it? That's the top of my monitor. Can you imagine how much distress that caused me on a daily basis? Until I got the monitor replaced, anyway.

The tape in the dispenser in my office used to always become detached from the little cutting ledge, as shown above. Every time I saw it, I would patiently stick the tape back down where it belonged, neat and tidy. And then the next time I came by...surprise! Rogue tape making its escape! I finally solved this problem by getting a new tape dispenser...

But then my tape dispenser and my stapler didn't match any more! That was almost just as bad. Finally, I am pleased to say, I got black stapler to go with my black tape dispenser, and all is right with my world again.

Except when I have to look at these recycling bins in the Metro stations. What kind of nincompoop designed these things? Why did they pair the huge extra bold initial caps with the italicized normal text next to it? Why is that newspaper just kind of cut off at the bottom when all the other icons on the bin fit in their entirety into a small square space? These are the kind of things that especially bother people who have been to design school. Kind of like bad kerning and leading.

You can bet I'm not the one who drew that little clover on my whiteboard, because I never would have returned the red marker in such a haphazard manner! No way!

And last but not least, I bring you my ceiling fan! What's wrong with the fan? Well, it has 5 blades, but only 3 lights. Whenever I sit under it, I look up and wish that each of the lights would line up perfectly with one of the fan blades, or fit exactly into the gaps between them. Alas, this is a mathematical impossibility. This might be the worst of the bunch because I have to look at it every day, and unlike office equipment, I can't just swap it out for something less distressing.

Hello, Hello?

Regular readers of my blog are probably well aware that I hate talking on the phone.

In the past, my phone phobia was mostly limited to calling other people on it, but lately, I have discovered reasons to dislike answering it as well. At work, phone interruptions annoy me because they are never conveniently timed, always interrupting me unnecessarily when I'm trying to concentrate on something. In my mind, work-related phone calls should be for emergencies only—everything else can wait for an email.



However, now I've found a way to find fault with personal phone calls as well. Specifically, the hellos.

When I pick up the phone, I answer "Hello?" Now that I think about it, now that caller ID is ubiquitous, why we are still answering our phones with a question? Why not something more like, "Hello, Bob!"? Now that I think about it, I might be the only one I know who does answer my phone with a question. My male friends seem to pick up with a "yo." But that is beside the point. The point is, that's how I answer my phone. "Hello?"

What drives me bonkers is when the voice on the other end then replies, "Hello?" And waits for me to talk.

What are you, an echo? Did you not hear me? Have you forgotten that you called me and should probably have something to say?

At this point, I can choose to either start the conversation, which is difficult because I don't know what the caller wanted to talk to me about, or to join them in their game—I just ask "Hello" again, which usually results in the other person asking "Hello" and me asking "Hello" and them asking "Hello," which gets very tedious after several rounds. I've done this with several people, and I'm always the one to get bored first and finally break the cycle with a different question (like a cheery "What's up?" while in my head, I'm snarling "What do you want?"). It annoys me that the caller has forced me into a position where I must make the first move.

Obviously, I can do little to change the rude behavior of my callers, although I could just ask point-blank, "Why are you asking me hello again?" Maybe there's something going on that I don't understand. But even if I get to the bottom of it with one caller, it won't prevent the same thing from happening with others.

Maybe the answer is to change the way I answer. "Yo" seems to work well for my friends. I never hear them getting into hello matches on the phone. But yo is not really my style. Maybe "Hello, Bob!" is the way to go. How do you answer your phone?

That's what she wondered

In a recent post, I described my difficulties in comprehending adult jokes, which reminded me of the story of my introduction to the country's most popular adult joke, which completely eluded my comprehension for months.

It was about 4 years ago. I had heard the phrase "That's what she said" a few times by then, but I still hadn't picked up on its meaning. People always laughed when it was said, but I had no idea why. That fateful night, I was standing with a group of friends in a Metro station as we waited for our train to take us home when one of them broke out his "That's what she said" app on his phone. At that moment, after months of wondering, I finally had the meaning of "that's what she said" explained to me.

Well, the explanation didn't help much because it still didn't make sense to me, but I learned to accept it for what it is—something you say when you want to turn an innocuous comment into a sexual allusion. When I hear this phrase, (and I hear it often, because I am usually the one making the innocuous comment) I know it is once again eye-rolling time for me. It doesn't really matter what the allusion is supposed to be to, I just know that it's dirty and that's enough for me.

But, four years later, the linguist in me is still curious. I still can't figure out why everyone else but me seemed to innately understand what it meant. And if, maybe, at some point in its early usage, its meaning was somehow obvious. What was its early usage anyway? Anyone else out there as befuddled as I am? If so, check out this article on Know Your Meme. It's fairly comprehensive, and believable.

But it still doesn't explain how people who are not me always understood what "That's what she said" means. I guess some things are meant to remain a mystery.

Simpler Fingers

Well, it's been 2 weeks since the start of Lent, and as is usually the case, my Lenten resolution has not proved nearly as hard to keep as I thought it would be.

Certainly, I have those moments, where I think for no reason, "I wish I were shopping." And almost once every day, I still find myself trying to plan my outfit for tomorrow. But on the whole, I haven't felt deprived—and I've had a whole lot more time in my schedule for Slicing and for learning.

One definite upshot to giving up Personal Adornment as Hobby for Lent is that I have realized it won't be that painful to kick the nail polish habit.

Chips ahoy!

I love nail polish...in theory, at least. But the reality is that whenever I put it on, I waste 30 minutes trying not to touch anything for fear of smudging it, inevitably smudge it anyway, then lose the entire manicure to irredeemable chipping within 3 days. After that, my nails start flaking and breaking, and it's usually 2 weeks minimum before they are recovered enough to put on another coat of polish. Today it's been almost 6 weeks since I last wore nail polish, and my nails are still wrecked. I think it is safe to say nail polish is not the cosmetic for me.

So I think I will bid adieu to my nail polish collection. Maybe I'll keep the clear polish because it's good for so many things (fixing pantyhose of course!) but on the whole, I think my life will be happier without 35 bottles of destruction cluttering up my shelf.

I wonder if you can donate nail polish to charity. If so, I have a lot to share!