Making a tarte tatin is tricky. Round one: burned carmel. Round two: less-than-optimal amount of caramel, still delicious. (note: the link does not point to the recipe I used.)
Lessons learned this weekend: I am uncomfortable with pathos, and I don't particularly enjoy movies like Wonderland which arouse this feeling in me, even when they are really good. I am even more uncomfortable with improbability, and I definitely don't enjoy movies like Armageddon whose sole intent is to show you flashy action and sappy love with a complete disregard for reality.
"That's just the way it is," is my newest hated expression, and you know why? Because it reeks of complacency, because it says, "This is how it's always been done and I don't have the guts or balls or will or interest to change it." Just because that's how it's always been done doesn't mean that's always how it has to be done. What if Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, "Women don't vote, that's just the way it is." What if Rosa Parks said, "Black people sit at the back of the bus. That's just the way it is." The United States would be a different place.
Everytime a person says "that's just the way it is," it's a resignation. It's an acceptance of the status quo. Who cares if that's the way it is? Does "the way it is" make sense? Should it continue to be that way? Next time someone tells you that's "just the way it is," I encourage you to ask, "why?" Then ask yourself if the answer makes sense. And if it doesn't, work to change it.
megnut: where it's all about revolution, Comrades!
Drool. Must pay off debt. Must pay off debt.
Today feels miscellaneous, ungelled, lots of disparate posts. Is this a warning or a forewarning? I'm not sure, but this I do have to say: Phantom Power by the Tragically Hip is so great and rocking. The Hip is some of my favorite coding music. If you like programming, you should try listening to the Hip while you do it. The code you write will ROCK!
(As if any confirmation were needed.) The Webby nominees were announced today and it looks like those in the "Academy" have overlooked, once again, some of the most vibrant and interesting content online. I speak, of course, of the Personal category.
One thing that was nice about last year's awards is that at least the sites in the category were personal! (even Diaryland is run by one person.) This year only two qualify: douglaspearce.com and boar.com. (I'm not including fray in my list for two reasons: 1. I think it's more-aptly categorized as "community," for which it's also received a nomination, and 2. In my mind, I picture "personal" as a singular effort. I could well be wrong on this point).
Moving on in my complaint, Blogger?! Blogger?!! Ugh. I'm happy that Blogger's been nominated, but it's not a personal site. It enables personal expression, but it's not a personal site. I know why it's there though, because the Webby's still don't have a "Web Applications" category. I'm not sure how one expects to salute "stellar...Web sites as the ultimate bookmark of the Internet for this year" without acknowledging web apps.
Even a portion of some people's sites are more worthy of being nominated. Take for example the beautiful stories written by Jeffrey Zeldman in the My Glamorous Life section of his incredible site. The content contained therein could be its own site, for Crap's sake. Zeldman.com is what I think of when I think of personal sites that deserve recognition, or the hundreds of other sites out there done by people who push themselves everyday to release beautiful things into the world.
Oh well, I don't know why I expected quality sites would receive the recognition they deserve anyway. Congratulations to the nominees!
My grandmother and great-aunt are visiting my mom now in Paris. I'm having so much fun keeping up with everything via my mom's blog. If you keep up with it too, you may see some familiar faces visiting her in another week or so.
One step closer to restoring faith in humanity: Sylvia's incredible duckling rescue story.
Metatorial? I'd forgotten about that word. Leave it to the press to dig up the forgotten tidbits of a blogged life.
Have you heard of this new startup? The Titanic Deck Chair Rearrangement Corporation. I know more than one company that could benefit from their services...
It's sad when a few bad apples spoil the whole barrel, as is the case over at the 5k contest. Apparently some folks have created a bunch of bogus accounts to vote up their own entries, and vote down entries that had been in the lead.
Last year there were so many entries in the contest, it took a lot of time for the judges to go through the finalists. The approach this year was to let the visitors rate the entries and then pass the cream of the crop on to the judges. Next year? I imagine it will have to work some other way, since people can't be trusted with this method.
What I don't get is, well, two things: 1. There's no cash involved here, why are people cheating to win? and 2. Do the cheaters think the judges are so stupid that if their lame entries are voted the best, they'll automatically win?
I like to have faith in humanity, but sometimes it's so hard.
I can't tell you how many people emailed me last week, as I observed "No TV Week" to let me know that "next week is tv turnoff week." I appreciate the sentiment, I do, and I appreciate people taking the time to write me, but you know what? We can all turn-off our TVs whenever we want. And we don't need a magazine or a website to tell us when to do things. We can quit smoking on any day of the year, or vow to shed 10 extra lbs., not just January 1st. We can make decisions to improve the quality of our lives each and every day.
Let's not wait for our birthdays to start eating healthier food. And please let's not wait until we hear about someone's heart attack or another person's accident to make changes in our lives. And let's not for a website or a magazine or a friend or a lover, to tell us to change. It can be as simple as saying, Today I'm going to start eating more vegetables, without waiting for Vegetable Awareness Week.
We don't need New Year's resolutions, we need "New You" resolutions.
I shall place the blame squarely on a vagary in the language, "No TV Week," for last night's viewing of Nurse Betty. It in no way was due to a collapse of character, nor a weakening in moral fiber. Indeed my moral fiber is as strong as ever.
It's just that more attention should have been paid to the crafting of the statement, No TV Week, for the reference to TV is ambiguous and indeterminate. Does it refer to the instrument itself, the cool big box on the corner of the living room? Or does it refer to the images transmitted through the device, the programs pulled out of thin air, reassembled, and beamed out as "Must See TV"? With such a lack of clarity, it's only natural some confusion would occur. And in this instance, said confusion resulted in the viewing of one DVD.
I ate the rest of the tuna salad for lunch, the tuna salad that had been sitting in the fridge for several days. It was so good the first time around. I'm beginning to feel that it wasn't quite as good the second.
I saw a bumpersticker this morning that said, "Wouldn't you rather be drinking a homebrew?" and I remembered back to college, and the days when I dreamt of being a homebrewer...
I used to like beer, and drank it fairly often. I liked the microbrew stuff, especially Harpoon Ale, and I also liked cooking. And I also was very poor. What better way to address all three issues than becoming a homebrewer? There was even a brewer's supply store near my apartment. Surely the universe was harmonizing before my eyes?
A few weeks later, I journeyed to Vermont to visit an old friend, and I shared my homebrew dream with him as we quaffed his own concoctions. "The hardest part about homebrewing," he told me, "is acquiring the bottles."
"Really?" I said, thanking him for his sage advice.
Upon returning to Boston, I spied an empty case of Rolling Rock long neck bottles awaiting redemption. Obviously they needed to be cleaned, so I rinsed them all out and ran them through the dishwasher. I was on my way to homebrewing heaven.
Several weeks later, my housemate was making a run to the liquor store and taking the old bottles with him.
"Don't take the Rolling Rocks, I'm using them for my homebrew!" I said.
"Riiighht," he said.
This scene replayed itself many times over, accompanied by a soft hazy voice from memory, "Acquiring the bottles is the hardest part." Month after month after month. For a year. Maybe even two. The bottles never moved. I never added more bottles to my stash. And I never redeemed it either. The bottles sat next to the fridge in the kitchen, off limits to anyone trying to scrounge enough money to buy another case, until I moved out of the apartment.
I learned one thing about homebrew while I was in college: acquiring the bottles is not the hardest part. It's getting to the store to buy all the supplies and actually brewing the beer.
I've been observing No TV Week this week, just to see what it's like. I never used to watch TV at all, or hardly at all. And this No TV Week is reminding me how nice that is. When I'm "watching" TV, I feel a sort of pressure to watch every night, lest I miss something. I think TiVo adds to this pressure because I know there's a limited window in which to watch my programs before they're deleted.
But frankly, I don't like TV. I like cooking when I get home. I like eating at the dining room table. I like reading in the evening, or talking, or doing something else aside from turning off my brain and sitting in front of the TV.
I think I may want every week to be No TV Week.
Everyone else is linking to their dissolution of Pyra write-ups, so I will too. Of course mine, as usual, is just about how I was feeling. And it doesn't go into the details of what really happened at Pyra, nor explain why we all left. But it's what I wrote at the time. And it seemed like the safest part of the story to share.
Happy Patriot's Day! If you're not sure how to celebrate appropriately (or perhaps even why to celebrate), this handy guide will help you out. This afternoon I plan to marshall the work-troops onto the Sand Hill Road green to re-enact the battles. I shall play the role of William Dawes, who is always forgetten because everyone remembers Paul Revere instead.
I've started a new project recently: the Secret Garden project. Out behind my apartment building is a backyard: lots of poured concrete, an old run-down outbuilding, weeds, overgrown flowers, and collapsing fences.
I'm cleaning it all up. All of it. I've wanted to do it for ages, but I didn't, because I wasn't sure I'd ever spend time out there once I was finished. I wasn't sure the weather would be nice enough (it's pretty foggy and cold in my neighborhood), I wasn't sure of a million things. And then I realized something, I realized who cares? Who cares what the end result is? Who cares if I ever step out in the yard again once the project is finished?
What I've craving isn't sitting in a perfectly appointed English garden on a sunny afternoon. I've been craving the smell of damp soil, the exertion of pulling weeds, the thrill of planting seeds and watching as the first tiny shoots of green poke through the surface. I've been craving gardening, not a garden.
Silly trite breakthrough? Perhaps, but enough for me to get out there. I've filled three bags of old branches and cuttings and weeds. I've planted two basil plants and three little tomato plants. I've tamed the blackberry brambles creeping over the wall, and freed calla lilies from the choking ensnarement of grassy weeds.
This week there's more pulling and planting to be done. And the next, and the next. Estimated completion date of the secret garden? Who cares?
I finished reading Fast Food Nation the other night, what an incredible book. I highly recommend it to everyone. One thing I'm thinking about a lot is the treatment of workers described in the book, both at the meatpacking plants and at fast food restaurants in general. And thinking about my experiences now as a worker, rather than a manager or a company leader.
There's nothing to be gained long-term for any business by making your employees feel like shit. Nothing. One employee may leave. They may all leave, as is the case with most McDonald's, within three or six months, and you may say to yourself, "I'm saving money! I'm not paying for those slackers with no committment." But you know what? That's bullshit.
I believe most people want to work. They want to contribute to something and feel good about doing so. Human beings are social and they like to belong to something. After school ends, the workplace takes over as a place to "belong," it's where people form new relationships, socialize and interact, and contribute their piece to the "whole."
When a company treats people with respect, when they value their employees' contributions, when they listen to what their employees have to say, when they trust, the company is rewarded. Everyone feels better. Everyone works better. Have you ever worked someplace where people are excited and challenged and free to express themselves? It's magical.
But too many companies and corporations think the road to financial success lies in cutting costs, in mistreatment, in disrespect, in keeping employees in the dark, in keeping employees silent. Corporations steamroll their employees as they head down that road.
If I could change the way people are treated at McDonald's, I would. If I could revolutionize the conditions in the meatpacking plants in Nebraska and Colorado, I would. Part of me wants to buy a franchise right now, and do it differently, or to fly to Columbus, Nebraska and slow down the line and yell at everyone, yell, "What are you doing here? How can you treat the people who are making you your fucking money like this?!"
When Evan and I founded our company, one of my biggest hopes was to create a place where people would be happy coming to work. I wanted to create that special environment I'd yet to experience in my career, and to share it with other people who thought such a place should exist. And you know what? Even after everything that's happened, I know we succeeded. We didn't have the soundest business plan, we didn't manage as well as we could have, we messed up, a lot. But we also built something really special, and for a brief time, there was a great place to go to work. And it was called Pyra.
You've been reading Megnut, a personal blog by Meg Hourihan. You can poke around the Archives. You can read more About this site. You can say hi@megnut.com.