Have you seen this commercial?

I really don't enjoy alcohol of any kind and I particularly dislike beer. But this commercial makes me want to drink THIS beer. I was beginning to worry that I was past the age of the target market of all things cool, but this commercial seems to be written just to get ME to drink beer.

The song is great and the message totally appeals to earthly liberal peace-lovin' girls like me: this beer brings about kindness among humans; sharing and interaction between seemingly disparate groups; understanding, peace, harmony!!! It reminds me of the coke commercial from the 70s. (Remember? "I'd like to teach the world to sing...").

I SERIOUSLY considered running out and buying a six pack for half a second before I snapped out of my momentary media coma. Great ad.

Falling stars?

Earlier this week I noticed there is a little gold sticker star on the floor of the BDO. I've no idea where it came from or how it got here. To the best of my knowledge, I don't own such stickers and don't think I have anything in my office from which it could have become un-affixed. I'm not much of a housekeeper to begin with, but I have no intention of removing it. The universe has given me a gold star for something and I'll take it.

Filling the Empty Hours

I have been known, in the past, to liken the life of a freelancer to being "semi-retired." It's true I have more flexibility in scheduling my days and once you cut out all the inefficiencies of working in an office and the time it takes to commute, I find I actually have a little more free time than most folks, but recently I realized that I am SOOOO NOT retired. Semi or otherwise.

Not only have I been wrestling with a sweet overabundance of work, which forced me to sacrifice some "fun" plans this weekend and actually work on a Sunday (I believe God will forgive me for making sure the mortgage gets paid), but I have no time to figure out what's going on with my Strawberry Orange Oxheart tomatoes.



All of her friends and neighbors in our tiny garden already have ripening fruit (see snaps below), and although she has produced many, many flowers, they all seem to be turning brown and falling to the dirt un-pollinated. Someone said it's because of the bee shortage, but that doesn't really make sense since all the other plants around her seem to be doing really, really well. Will says the bees just didn't like her pollen, but I can't imagine they care much. Someone else suggested she might just be sterile. How sad. (Especially with all her neighbors producing - must be tough). Even the cheap-o bag-o-cherry tomatoes I bought from one of our niece's school fundraisers is going wild, producing very large fruit for a "cherry" plant.

I keep looking at the dead and dying buds with despair. I even tried shaking the stems like we did with our hydroponic tomatoes to see if I could encourage non-bee pollination (it worked in the kitchen). But no dice. And as I went out this morning to take pictures and document all the plants' growth, I thought "I wish I had time to really research this and figure out what's happening and how to fix it. But I really can't because I have three three-minute video scripts to write, four short employee profiles, one long employee profile, two more interviews to schedule and conduct to finish that case study that was due two weeks ago, and about 20 pages to edit and get back to various clients."

I will be a dedicated gardener in retirement. That is my promise to the plants. For now, sadly, I have no time to care as much as a I should. (And don't even get me started on all the books I want to read right now.) I will have no trouble at all filling eight+ hours per day with gardening, reading... OH and COOKING! How could I forget cooking! A restaurant-quality feast every day in retirement. Yes. Ah, yes.

Our '08 babies as of July 21, below.

Gold Medal Yellow:

Green Zebra:

Brandywine:

Black Prince:

Riesentraube:

Cherry (in hanging bag):

39

I just don't "feel" like I think "39" should feel.

I still feel ... frankly... very young and stupid. Like I still have so much to learn about life and people and things. Which then makes me think I must be REALLY slow or something, to not have picked up a few more big answers by this point.

I really feel like I'm not ready to be a grown-up either. And yet, all evidence points to the fact that I AM a grown up. How can that be?

Shocking. Strange. Unfortunate?

I'm sorry. It's that time of year.

In an earlier post, I mentioned in passing that my mom had ordered some tomato plants for Will and I as a Christmas gift. They are from White Flower Farm and arrived in great shape. We quickly put them in the ground and they almost immediately started flowering (I think one arrived with buds on it). It's an heirloom collection, which is all new to me.

At this point, they all pretty much have fruit on them already, so I decided I needed to know what they look like ripe so I can pick 'em! They have names that lead me to believe I could get confused, like GREEN Zebra and BLACK prince. So I went out on the web and found pictures of what they will look like all grown up!! This is what they will look like (these are NOT my tomatoes):

Green Zebra


Black Prince


Orange Strawberry Oxheart


Gold Medal Yellow


Red Brandywine


Riesentraube


I'm now sort of freaking out with excitement about these tomatoes. They all look SOOO yummy and I really dig yellow and orange tomatoes, but have never grown any. (Not to mention black tomatoes!!!) A little disappointed in myself that I didn't figure out that the "riesentraube" would be a grape tomato variety (Frau Haas would be so saddened).

The final harvest

The end of the hydroponic garden ended up on my lunch plate last Thursday.



They are so photogenic with their little leafy hats, don't you think? But of course I popped those off before adding a few tiny chunks of feta and some oil and vinegar. And there you have it.

I'd rather be blowing bubbles

(I know I haven't finished the Desk Reference list, but since no one is clamoring for it, I thought I'd share this quick thought.)

Working today out on the glorious UCBPAO (UtterClarity Back Porch Annex Office) and every time I get up to go inside and refill my beverage or take some other union break I have to walk right past the bubble bucket.

I'm consumed with tempation. So I gave in (just a little):

I know I should be working, but I'd rather be blowing bubbles.

My Favorite Desk References and Why

This list actually changes over time. At one point, my absolute favorite desk reference was the Cambridge Factfinder (which later became the Penguin Factfinder). This was when I was doing a lot of work for very global companies and needed to look up things like what kind of currency is used in Brazil (Cruzerio Real, abbreviated Cr$) and what’s the country code for dialing Hong Kong (852). At another time it was the Wired Style Guide for definitive answers about when and where to cap web (as in “the Web,” but not webcam, which is preferred as one word says the guide) and whether online was one word, two or hyphenated. Of course those Wired-ish things have evolved and changed since my first edition was published in (gasp) 1999, as really all language does given enough time, but the references listed below are sort of timeless I think.

1) The Elements of Style, Strunk and White. I’ve seen people online argue about whether or not this is a worthy reference, but I’ve got so many stickie notes hanging off the pages I really couldn’t live without it. (OK maybe “live” is dramatic… I certainly couldn’t WORK without it. And let’s never confuse living with working, eh?). I’ve stickied the explanation of serial commas (which, btw, is the American English explanation – British English is the exact opposite, which you can learn in The Economist Style Guide, which did not make this list, but is worth having if you do any writing for people who speak original English vs. ours), the “that, which” entry (also opposite Amer./Brit.), and the “avoid fancy words” discussion. This is my favorite bit of advice in this book: “Utilize. Prefer use.” This is a paraphrase, but basically, it says there’s never a good reason to use “utilize.” “Use” will always work and keeps you from sounding like a pretentious jerk. OH, and I can’t finish up this blurb without nothing that somewhere in the past few years, some very clever person named Maira Kalman created illustrations to accompany this book and it was published as The Elements of Style (illustrated). A VERY fun book to own.

2) The AP Style Guide and its little buddy The Associated Press Guide to Punctuation (which is included in the full guide if you get the fatter version). This is “house style” for a lot of big companies so I finally caved and got one. And I'm really glad I did. The book is exceptionally well organized alphabetically to cover everything, so after explaining the difference between collide and collision and a lengthy explanation of colloquialisms, you’ll find “colon” with a reference telling you to look in the punctuation guide. Further down on that page it has the proper abbreviation for Colorado in print (Colo.).

This is taking much longer than I expected and I need to get to work. I have two more books I want to mention, but it will have to wait.

to be continued…