p i x e l s c r i b b l e s – Page 20 – the thoughts and experiences of Heather Meadows

A belated gift

There’s a box of beauty items in our master bedroom. I packed it when we first moved to Atlanta nearly two years ago. The items used to reside in a white cabinet I bought at Bed, Bath & Beyond, but there was no place for that cabinet in my new bathroom, and its current location in the master closet doesn’t quite lend itself to storing beauty items…so the box has remained mostly untouched all this time.

The other night I went looking for some cuticle oil I remembered owning. I never did find it, but seeing the box again inspired me to go through it some more today. I started to sort, pulling out things I might still use, tossing out things I’m not sure why I kept. A row of lotions emerged. Two bottles of sunscreen went under the sink. A perfume tester went next to my bottle of Sensuous Nude. And then I opened a white Beauticontrol eau de toilette box, and discovered a wad of $20 bills wrapped around the bottle.

Oh, Grandma.

My grandmother had this habit of slipping us cash whenever we’d visit. A $20 in the hand here, another in a purse or pocket there. One time a check while apologizing profusely for not having any cash.

She also kept and parceled out beauty items, canned goods, organizers, and any other treat she thought the people she loved might enjoy. Her stairwell was a treasure trove.

I knew when I found the eau de toilette that it was from her, even before recognizing my name in her handwriting on two sides of the box. I was excited to have one last present from her, and never imagined that she’d slipped another gift inside.

That’s so you, Grandma. Thank you.

I miss you.

Yes.

A new look, again

I’ve removed the Christmas customizations I had made to WordPress’ Twenty Eleven theme and replaced them with a look based on a photo I took at Roche Abbey in England. Here’s what the Christmas theme looked like:

I actually forgot to screencap the design before I changed it, so I had to guess on the background color and link color, but this is essentially what it looked like. I created the header in Photoshop using this photo of our Christmas decorations. This look went live on December 9, 2012.

Here’s the new design:

The background color is #3a3d3f, the link color is #1c67b2, and the color scheme is Light. I made the header in Photoshop featuring this photo from my birthday in 2009, which was spent with my friends Brooke and David and the Kenmore family at Roche Abbey in South Yorkshire, England. It was a wonderful day of picnicking and exploring and kicking a soccer ball around. :)

Since I’m not sure if I ever actually archived the other looks my blog has had this year, here they are. First up is my fall theme, which went up on October 16, 2012:

The background color is #47240E, the link color is something like #CA3026, and I made the header in Photoshop based on this photo I took on a walk to Kroger in North Augusta in November of 2008. My profile picture is a crop of this photo of me from AJ’s birthday.

Before that, this is what my blog looked like, starting July 15, 2012:

Unfortunately I don’t have a full page version of this one, so you can’t see all my sidebar stuff. The tiled background and large graphic element in the header came from a site that I really want to credit, but I can’t find the link now. Just know that I did not create them. My profile pic is a crop of this photo from the 4th of July.

Before this design, I had left Twenty Eleven pretty much alone other than swapping out the header. Here’s a picture I used for quite some time; it’s the view from the front yard of the family farm.

The Internet Archive hasn’t grabbed a snapshot of my blog since July of 2011; I don’t know if I have messed up a setting or if something else is going on, but I’ll try to fix that, because I really like being able to step back into my design history. I’ll also keep trying to archive my designs myself.

Almond chicken

Sean and I have had trouble finding a go-to Chinese restaurant since we moved to the Atlanta area. He’s very particular about his almond chicken: he wants it to have thick gravy, and he also likes the chicken to be breaded and fried as a whole breast and then sliced afterward.

One of the restaurant managers I talked to said most restaurants here do a thin soy sauce because their customers are concerned about fat content. We have found one Chinese place near us that does the thick gravy, but they fry small pieces of chicken individually, and the quality of their food isn’t great overall.

I finally decided I would try to create the dish at home and see if I could satisfy my picky husband. Since in terms of cooking I’m a relative n00b, I searched around online awhile for tips. The first recipe I found that involved thick gravy was actually from a vegan blog: Crispy Fried Almond “Chicken” with Gravy (Soo Guy). Using that blog entry as a reference, here’s how I made dinner.

First, I started a cup of white rice in my rice cooker. The thing takes forever to cook rice, but always with delicious results.

Next I started cooking two frozen chicken breasts on my George Foreman grill, 13 minutes on each side. I decided against trying to fry the chicken, especially since I didn’t have time to thaw it, and I knew the chicken would come out nice and tender on my grill.

Then I toasted the almonds. I had a bag of snack pack almonds, so I just used one of those packs. I hammered the pack with a meat tenderizer until the almonds were broken up, then seared them in my wok-like pan. Unfortunately I let them toast for too long, so I had to be careful to pick out unburned almonds when I was finished.

Next I made chicken broth. I boiled some leftover chicken for 3 minutes, then scooped the chicken out of the water and added the soy sauce and butter. (I actually messed up the first time by putting in way too much soy sauce; I started over with the amount listed on the vegan blog and it worked great.)

In a larger saucepan I combined cornstarch and water, then slowly added the broth/soy mixture over medium heat, continually stirring until the gravy formed.

Next was simply plating: I put down a foundation of white rice, cut up the grilled chicken and laid it across, drizzled the whole thing with gravy, and then sprinkled roasted almonds on top.

It turned out that I hadn’t made quite enough chicken, but Sean loved the gravy. He loved the entire meal. Apparently frying isn’t necessary; he just likes the nice tender chicken combined with the thick sauce. When he was done with his plate he went back for the leftover rice and as much gravy as he could put on it.

Cooking for me is always such an iffy prospect, especially when it’s something new. I’m really glad this turned out well. It is always so satisfying to score a win in the kitchen.

I think next time I’ll cook more meat, and I’ll also make a side of steamed or stir-fried vegetables.

Self-disenfranchisement

I found this unposted musing in my Drafts. It was written on June 15, 2012.

Sometimes it feels like my entire generation subscribes to a feeling of self-loathing. We didn’t have to go through the hardships our parents did, the “logic” goes, so we feel that we grew up soft and incapable. We cripple ourselves by believing we can’t achieve, and we apply our disgust at ourselves to everyone else in our generation too. Oh, we don’t know how to work hard. Oh, soldiers today aren’t as heroic as the ones in Vietnam or World War II. Oh, everybody wants a handout. We can be so hard on ourselves and others that we begin to hate ourselves and each other. We don’t respect each other because what do we know? We grew up having everything given to us by our parents.

When you look at the world this way, you’re being ageist and classist and rendering an entire generation inhuman. You stop thinking people have basic human rights because you don’t think they’ve earned them. This is a dangerous opinion, because human rights aren’t something that can be earned in the first place. They are the things every human being on the planet should have, regardless of when they were born or how they grew up. Our generation is willing to disenfranchise ourselves out of self-loathing. We’re not thinking about what this means for future generations.

Thanksgiving #1

Thanksgiving is pretty spread out for Sean and me this year. We spent Thanksgiving Day at home watching TV, then going out for sushi. Family Thanksgivings were scheduled for different dates.

Our first Thanksgiving of the year was really just mine. I was home in Kentucky for a visit from October 31 through November 8, and as we were celebrating Halloween, Connor’s birthday, and Daphne’s birthday, we decided to throw in a Thanksgiving dinner too. (Sean didn’t come on this trip as he had to work.)

I helped Mom decorate the dining room, setting up the dining table and the card table with placemats and accessories.

Mom made her signature rolls (and I helped). She also tried a different, faster way of cooking the turkey.

I made the corn casserole, a tradition we’ve had since I was a teenager and we first got the recipe from a lady at church. These days Connor often makes it, but as this dinner happened on a Thursday during the school year, he didn’t have time. I also made the pumpkin pie. I forgot to turn the heat down after the first 15 minutes, but it seemed to turn out fine anyway.

At dinner I sat with the boys at the card table.

Dinner was great. Mom, Dad, AJ, Faye, Connor, and Logan all came. (I got to see Ben, Manda, and Daphne the next day when I went up to the farm with the parents for Daphne’s second birthday.) While it wasn’t a full-blown Thanksgiving dinner, it was close: turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn casserole, rolls, pickles, olives, pumpkin pie, and blueberry pie. An amazing spread and a wonderful time with family :)

Our second Thanksgiving of the year, the one with Sean’s parents, hasn’t happened yet. Stay tuned! ;)

Goal stuff

Since it is counterproductive to announce one’s goals, I wonder if it would be helpful to respond scornfully to other people’s goals? That way, they wouldn’t get the feeling of having accomplished something, and they’d be motivated to prove me wrong.

Maybe it’s the happy shiny absence of adversity that causes me and others to fail.

;)

Oops

I like just read that it is counterproductive to announce your goals, because the act of sharing makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something, making you less likely to actually work on steps to achieve the goal. So why did I go and write goal-related stuff in my blog? Argh.

More and more

To start my new tradition of working out when I get up, I just did the TurboJam 20-Minute Workout. I chose that video because I wasn’t sure I could make it all the way through Cardio Party, which is about twice as long. But I found myself doing the entire video “high impact”, jumping around, punching and kicking full force, positively overflowing with energy. I sweated and got a little out of breath, but I never felt like it was too difficult or that I couldn’t finish. If anything, I felt like I could do more.

This stands in stark contrast to my previous experiences starting up this video series. I always found it challenging and had to build up to where I could finish a workout at low impact. I never did an entire video high impact, not even the 20-Minute Workout.

My weight loss surgery has given me an amazing gift. Losing those 120 pounds has made me able to accomplish things I never could before. It’s given me a huge leg up in physical fitness. I feel like I can do anything now!

Not everything is going to come this easily, and I will have to keep planning and working toward my goals step by step. But today’s workout showed me just how far I’ve come, and how much I have to be thankful for.

Traditions and willpower

In the course of rearranging and organizing everything in my life, I’ve dusted off some goals and study materials that have been foundering or never even used and started making clear plan lists for using them. My Japanese language plan is the most robust so far; it includes steps for my WaniKani reviews, TextFugu, the collection of study materials I purchased from TheJapanShop, and reading and translating various Japanese-language manga and short stories I own. When I logged back into TextFugu for the first time in months, it reminded me that I had purchased the 30 Day ebook, a system for making oneself a better Japanese learner. So I added that to the list too and read Day 1.

The first day’s assignment is to make a task I dislike into a tradition rather than a chore. The idea is that if you have to force yourself to do something, you’re using mental energy that could be used elsewhere, and the more you can turn tasks into traditions, the more you’ll be able to achieve. I find this extremely interesting.

Since willpower is a finite resource (meaning the batteries only have so much juice before needing a recharge), being able to not use willpower becomes very important especially over time. If there’s a task you do every day with your Japanese, creating a tradition for it will essentially allow you to use your finite willpower to do something else, increasing the amount you can do and get done. Over time this adds up, so there’s no better time to start than now.

The mission is to pick any distasteful task, Japanese-related or not, set a time for it, and make it happen. I’ll probably go with “When I get up, I work out.” I don’t have a problem with doing laundry or the dishes these days…I just sort of do those things. (They’re already traditions!) But working out has always been a struggle. If I can turn that into something I just do, I bet I’ll feel a lot better about doing it, and I’ll have mental energy left over for other tasks.

I hope I haven’t chosen too difficult a task to turn into a tradition.

I like rearranging

I got home from a visit to family in Kentucky on Thursday and immediately started moving stuff around in the apartment. My brother lent me his electric piano, so I found a place for it in the second bedroom/office, moving the wingback chair to the master bedroom and the file cabinet to a new spot under a desk.

Yesterday I went a little crazier and moved my computer and standing desk to the office as well. I now have three desks in here: the lawyer-style desk my laptop is now on; my hutch desk for paperwork; and the standing desk, which is now a multipurpose project area. These desks are arranged in a three-sided square, and I sit in the center. The piano is off to my left, next to the bed. It would be ideal to have it right next to my computer, but this will do for now.

Then today I decided to clean up the set of shelves in here. I took Sean’s comics down and sorted them and ordered some more binder sleeves and backing boards. Then I started rearranging books in the living room to make room for the comics out there so I could put books more relevant to my goals in here. Now when I look past my monitor I see rows of Japanese-language manga and light novels, Japanese study materials, and a selection of English-language books I’ve been meaning to read.

In between bursts of moving and organizing, I’ve been playing the piano. I have a book of Clementi sonatinas, two of which I learned as a teenager, so it’s been fun revisiting them. I also have a copy of Clair de Lune, which is not coming back as easily as I’d like. I first learned that piece at the request of my late grandfather, so I definitely want to get it back up to performance level. Of course I still know Fur Elise, so I play that whenever I start to feel overwhelmed. There are a couple of other pieces from my former piano days that I halfway remember, so I’ve been playing what I can recall of those as well.

Today I also finished up the coursework for the introductory Python course I’ve been taking on Coursera. All that’s left is to take the final exam sometime before November 19. I’ll start reviewing tomorrow and see how I feel about my grasp of the material. As usual, I’m least confident about designing algorithms, but I think that sort of ability would come more easily if I spent more time learning the features of the language. You’ve got to know what tools you have to work with before you can expect to efficiently solve problems, after all.

I’m really happy with my office arrangement. I think this environment will be more conducive to getting things done. As I continue to add goals and plans, I’ll start looking at filing systems that can help me keep track of where I am and where I’m going.

A breath of fresh air

I spent this past week in Kentucky with my family, and while there I didn’t check ADN, Twitter, or Google Plus at all. I got on Facebook about three times total, to check private messages and make sure no one had posted anything important to my timeline. The day after the election I tried Facebook again, but a quick scan through the news feed made me wonder why I ever used Facebook to begin with.

I realize a lot of this is just election exhaustion, and that will pass. But I truly enjoyed spending a week not checking social media obsessively. I left my phone in my purse most of the time and didn’t use it for anything but one phone call and maybe three text messages. (I may have also played a turn in chess, but I don’t remember.) I also didn’t unpack my computer right away, and when I did I mostly used it to review Japanese on WaniKani and to watch lectures and do assignments for my Coursera Python class. I also added to my Goals document, which I started working on in October. It’s a simple list of ideas I’ve had that I want to see to fruition.

The rest of my time was spent with family members, talking or playing games or enjoying meals. I got to celebrate Halloween, Connor’s 13th birthday, an early Thanksgiving, and Daphne’s second birthday. I didn’t really go anywhere beyond my parents’ house and my brothers’ houses, but it was relaxing, and I didn’t get too stir-crazy. (When I started feeling antsy, AJ took me to a cool walking trail so I could enjoy the fall leaves. It totally rejuvenated me.)

While I was staying with my parents, I also wrote a few entries in a journal, by hand. It takes a lot longer for me to write by hand than it does for me to type. I found that I was doing more crafting so I wouldn’t write anything poorly. I also found that I had no desire to share the brief brags, complaints, and jokes that I normally would post to social media without hesitation.

I used to despair that all my thoughts were lost to the ether. When social media came around, I thought it was my salvation. Finally there was a way to chronicle everything that went through my head. This was important to me, for some reason. I’ve always wanted other people to understand me, but I’ve rarely felt like anyone does. I suppose I thought the more I shared, the more others would learn about me, and maybe eventually they would come to understand me. (This might be a large reason why I have such a problem with lying or with being misrepresented.)

I’ve gone overboard with sharing here on the blog, and I think my social media participation is probably even worse. It’s so much easier. Just taking a week off from it, I feel very different…like I have so much more time.

I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do. As a professional in the web world, I probably need to maintain a social media presence of some sort. And it would help to stay on the cutting edge with things like ADN. But of all the social media I abstained from this week, the only one I really worry about quitting completely is Facebook, due as I’ve said before to the possibility of losing touch with far-flung friends and family. Maybe I will find a way to limit my participation, perhaps by scheduling a time each week or so to “catch up”. Or maybe I’ll do something else. For right now, I’m putting that decision off, as I don’t really have any desire to get back on social media.

The Feigning Innocence Grand Prix

I set my Twitter to Japanese some time ago, and since then I’ve developed the habit of saving each new Japanese ad I see in the sidebar. Some of them are really cute. I enjoy it when I can read some or all of the text without looking it up, too.

Today I spotted one ad that included the phrase グランプリ (Grand Prix). This phrase is often used in marketing to mean “campaign”, at least if Twitter ads are to be believed. For those of you unfamiliar with katakana, the romanization is guranpuri.

I posted on Twitter, “I wonder if any Japanese marketing campaign has ever used the phrase 知らん振りグランプリ…”

知らん振り is a phrase I learned from Detective Conan. It means “feigning innocence” and was used to great effect to determine who the native Japanese speaker was in a group of three Western-looking people. They were all told to stand in front of chairs, and then the police inspector said “知らん振り”…and two of them sat down. This is because 知らん振り is roughly pronounced “shiranpuri”, which to a Westerner might sound like a Japanese person trying to say “sit down, please” in English. The native speaker of Japanese didn’t sit down because he knew what 知らん振り meant.

Since “shiranpuri” totally rhymes with “guranpuri”, it’s a natural fit!

After wondering whether any marketing companies used the phrase I’d come up with, I googled it. While I didn’t find any ad campaigns in the first few results, I did find videos and articles using 知らん振りグランプリ as a tag, and blog posts with 知らん振りグランプリ as the title. Score.

Juggling social media sites

I’ve mentioned before the problems I’ve had with various social media sites. In an attempt to see if I could improve my experience, I started using Google Plus and ADN, but neither of those could replace Twitter or Facebook…so for the past few weeks I have been using four social media sites instead of two.

This is a huge time suck, and I’m not sure I’m really adding much value to my life.

I’ve mainly found Google Plus to be a decent place for news links, but I’m flummoxed by the lack of a “send to Instapaper” button. I despise having to open the link in Safari, copy it there, and then paste it into Instapaper. There are also occasionally some interesting discussions on Google Plus, but I don’t have enough people in my Circles for this to be a frequent occurrence.

ADN is a different animal. There are plenty of interesting people there, but a lot of the ones I’ve interacted with seem to have a lot more time to dedicate to ADN than I do. I tend to dip in and out; they’re there for longer blocks of time, holding up numerous conversation threads with sometimes dozens of people at once. ADN sort of feels like a microcosm of a party, where the extraverts are flitting around happily and I, the introvert, am observing, trying to interact, feeling overwhelmed, and ducking out early. I often feel like I’m missing everything, that I am not “cool” enough for ADN. Sometimes I attempt to broach what I consider to be important topics there, only to be either ignored entirely, or briefly engaged and then ignored. I guess I wouldn’t say that I have made any real friends on ADN. There are a few people I enjoy chatting with, to be sure, but for the most part it just feels really hard to interact on ADN.

I do try to keep in mind that it took me many years to get Twitter and Facebook curated such that I was comfortable with them. At first I would just follow anyone on Twitter who seemed interesting, but after awhile I would feel left out because these interesting people weren’t following me or talking to me. Eventually I learned to follow people who would actually interact with me, which made the experience much better. I also learned to temper my expectations, so I could follow bigger accounts and know that they have so much interaction to deal with, there’s no way they could respond to everything people said to them. I kept my following list as small as possible, so I wouldn’t feel like I was missing the party. I have a sort of balance on Twitter that gives me information and interaction. I have to remember how long it took me to get there.

Facebook is a different animal. I use it to keep track of actual friends: people from school, people from IRC, people from the AMRN, people from work, and family members. These are people I actually want to keep up with, not just random acquaintances. I use Facebook as the contact list for my personal life, essentially, which is why it is always distressing when someone decides to close their account, and why I have so much trouble with the idea of closing mine. The archivist in me loves that I can collect information about myself and my friends all in one place, and this built-in need usually wins out over my privacy concerns. I realize this is probably bad, but I don’t know what else to do. There is literally nothing else out there that can replicate what Facebook does for me.

I’m starting to wonder, though, if there isn’t a way I could try and quantify the benefits of the various social media platforms vs. the drawbacks. As I said, checking these four services takes time. What might I be doing with that time otherwise? Couldn’t I use my blog to chronicle my life, rather than depending on Facebook? Couldn’t I create an address book of the people I care about and contact them in other ways? Couldn’t I use RSS feeds to read news? Would these things save time? Would they free my mind for creative endeavors?

I have a few options for evaluating my social media use. I could stop completely for a given amount of time and see what happens. I could limit my use to a certain amount of time per day and see what happens. I could continue as normal, but track my time on social media the same way someone evaluating their diet would track food. That last would be the hardest to implement, but it might provide the best data.

Ultimately, I think social media has become habitual for me, a way of having something to do when I’m not sure what to do next. (Chores are also like this for me.) It may be distracting me from achieving goals, because working towards something is harder than taking a routine action. To achieve a goal you have to come up with a plan, and you have to break it up into steps, and you have to constantly figure out what the next step is. With habits, you just do it. No wonder habits are so hard to break. You feel like you’ve accomplished something, even if you haven’t.

Maybe instead of focusing on social media, I should focus on my goals. As I invest more time into achieving goals, the unimportant stuff will start to fall away naturally.

Regardless of how I change my social media habits, I do know this: things can’t stay the way they are now.