I bought a Slap Chop. I walked into the drugstore, innocently in search of shampoo, and there it was. If you watch much tv, you've probably seen the ads for it. The Slap Chop itself isn't something I'd ordinarily see and think I needed (so little one sees on infomercials is), BUT the infomercial itself is hilarious. (As others have noted.) At any rate, it was worth a few chuckles when I brought it home.

So, how does this impulse buy stack up? It's not built for the ages, but for $9.99, I wasn't expecting all that much. And if you want your vegetables evenly cut, you will do far better to bust out your chef's knife, which will have the added benefit of being approximately fifty-four billion times easier to clean. However, for recipes where the veg need not be the same size (pizza sauce comes to mind, as does the salsa the infomercial mentions), the Slap Chop does make things faster.

Its highest and best purpose is mincing garlic. With a knife, this is fiddly and gets one's fingers sticky. With the Slap Chop, it's a matter of seconds and your hands are still clean -- although I'd peel the garlic first, despite what Vince tries to tell you about onions and garlic not needing to be peeled. All in all, it works much better than my last purchase from the as-seen-on-tv aisle, the ShamWow, which, sadly, shammed, but did not wow. Thanks a lot, Vince.

I am the kind of person who gets stuck on verbal tics. I always have been. From a very young age, I would fixate on a phrase that I thought was cool or entertaining, and beat it to death. TO DEATH. Sometimes I still do that. Sometimes without meaning to. Anyway, lately I've found myself beating a phrase to death whenever something even slightly good happens. I confessed this tic to a friend of mine, who then confessed that she gets stuck, too, but on a different phrase. Each of us thought her own phrase was dumber. So I open it up to you, livejournal:


Poll #1381601 goofy things to say
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 0

Which is the goofier thing to say whenever something good happens?

Anyone else get stuck on these kind of things? It can be anything. I spent most of the early nineties saying "dude," and it still slips out occasionally.

writerjenn is hosting a library loving challenge, so head over there and leave a comment, and she'll donate to a library. Awesome!

jpsorrow has some more great thoughts on first person. I especially like the thoughts on unreliable narrators.

Also, I wish the city would move on this. This is an amazing piece of history, commemorating a guy who wanted to help people, and did something about it. We went to see the Rescue Ship at the fairgrounds last year, and it is in need of serious restoration. If Perry's family wants it, they should be able to have it.

Not a link, but who knew how many Thomas the Tank Engine toys there were? THERE ARE THOUSANDS.

Exciting things:

1. We're going to see Amanda Palmer tonight. Huzzah! I haven't heard her Dresden Dolls stuff, but I've been playing the hell out of Who Killed Amanda Palmer? And a big thank you to the internet, because without you, I doubt I would have heard of her. It would have been like that time Jane's Addiction played the Nick, when I was thirteen. Five or six years later, when I got into the band, I was bummed I'd missed that show. (Still kind of am, actually, not that I would have been able to get into the venue at the time. I guess what I missed was being the right age at the right time.) If I was ever ahead of the curve, in terms of hearing about cool music, that time is long, long in the past.

2. I ordered skins for some of my cool new electronics. I'm more excited about this than perhaps it warrants.

3. All the beautiful flowering trees and plants I saw on my walk this morning. They were even more beautiful because it's about to rain hard for several days and flatten them all. Ah, ephemera.


Less exciting things:

1. My sourdough starter died of neglect.

Wednesday, my parents had a Christmas party. I helped decorate: I made the flower arrangements. In a former existence (the pre-baby one), I worked as a florist. Every once in a while, a well-meaning customer would say something along the lines of, "Oh, how wonderful it must be to work here, surrounded by all these flowers. I bet it's so relaxing."

Making arrangements at my parents' house Wednesday, that was relaxing. Clients inclined to be easy-going, no time limit, and I got to make them on site. Making them in a flower shop, especially this time of year, not so much. Florists deal with a product that has a very limited shelf life, and you're often working on deadline. Most of your arrangements need to be delivered, and you risk the blooms when you transport them. This time of year, half the staff is out of the shop decorating people's houses for the season, or for a party. ("I'll do a house," one employer told me, "but I do not do Christmas trees." And frankly, the idea of having someone else decorate your tree is a little weird to me, but lots of people do it.)

Everyone put in 10-15 hour days for most of the month. Your hands are chapped, and permanently sticky with sap and itchy from fir scratches and holly punctures. You're half frozen from walking in and out of the cooler. You spend all day listening to Christmas music, and not the good kind, but the 24-hours-of-Christmas-radio-station kind. Your own home has neither a tree or a wreath, and you haven't bought, much less wrapped, a single present. By December 18th, you want to punch a pine tree in the face. (I've enjoyed the holidays a lot more the last two years.)

It's the same for a lot of people working in restaurants, or working in retail this time of year. (Or at least I hope it is, given the economy.) 'Tis the season to be kind to people in the service industry. They don't get a break until January.

We're going to D.C. to spend Thanksgiving with family. This will be the Tiny Person's second ever plane trip- this time he understands that he'll be Up In the Sky, on one of those planes he like to watch. He's very excited. So am I.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone that celebrates it. :)

There are few things more enjoyable than watching a not-quite-two-year old take in a fireworks display. To say he thought it was neat would be to waste the word enraptured.

Every year my father-in-law reads the Declaration of Independence aloud. It's an annual reminder of what an amazing document it is.

Wordcount for June: 23,427, not counting a few hundred in my notebook which I am too lazy to go count right this second. That gives me a daily average of 780.9, which is 219.1 under my daily goal, so boo hiss me. Days I hit or went over wordcount: 11/30. Days I wrote not at all: 2/30. It helps me to admit that there are some days when no writing is going to happen at all (or very little-- I had 2 days in which I wrote under 100 words, but I wrote those down, even though I felt a little lame) due to matters unavoidable.

Still! There's always July. And, in less than 700 words, my book will reach the 80k mark, which: woo hoo! Ever onward.

And this is my current earworm.

Which is not a bad thing at all.

... I found my fountain pens. Yay! I'm super enjoying having them again. One of them leaks like the devil though. My right pointer finger is very ink-stained. There are worse fates. :)

Also, the internet keeps distracting me with its shiny. Stop being so shiny, you.