Vegan Zombie Attacks

How awesome is this review? 

When I posted this on Twitter, a friend sent this tweet:

Needed empty capsules to put meds in for a sick cat once - called @Rainbow_Grocery and they asked if my cat was vegan.

To which I say, do not, I repeat, do NOT let your cat read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

Just. wow.

This week's Berkeley Parents Network newsletters were so insane, so target-rich, I didn't know where to start. David very helpfully leads the way by citing this one in the comments to an earlier post.

Husband want to take MY child on trip
-------------------------------------------
My husband and I got married when my son was 10 months old, and he did not adopt him. My son is
now 14 years old, and my husband wants to take him cross country to visit his daughter. My son
wants to go, but, for various reasons - one being that my husband has anger management issues - I
do not want him to go. My husband is insisting and says that he'll take him despite what I say.
If he does, can I have him arrested for kidnapping?
Worried in Bay Area

The only thing that makes this nonsense okay is that, as of this morning, people who WANT to be married, CAN be married.  This lady is unaffected by today's Supreme Court ruling. Congratulations to the rest of us!

Where Do Baby Names Come From?

My friend Jenny has a new post up about trying to choose a baby name. Naming your kid is a big deal, because this person has to live with this name for their whole life (probably) but you want it to communicate something about what you intend for them, which is why many of us avoid stripper names. Whatever those are. I'm sure there's at least woman professionally stripping who goes by the name Andrea, which makes my name definitionally a stripper name, but you get my meaning.

So finding a name is tortured. And it should be. So you can have long meaningful conversations with the other parent and all your friends about what the name "means". But I think, in the end, the most successful names are almost random. And not forced random. Here's an example. Naming our first kid was an ordeal, right up until it wasn't. The father of my children wanted to name our son Buckaroo, after Buckaroo Banzai. He thought Roo would be a cute nickname (it is, Jenny) and that Buck would be a strong adult man's name. I agreed, with the caveat that he would have to explain the name to the judge for whom he was clerking. The idea of naming our son Buckaroo quickly passed. It was too forced, too "random".

The back-up plan: I had off-handedly said, in April 2003, that if the Red Sox won the World Series, we could name our son after the Red Sox player of his choice. It seemed like a harmless gibe at the time. The Red Sox had not won a World Series in 85 years. But as my due date (October 27) approached, and the Red Sox hung tough, I found myself arguing about the virtues of baby Nomar versus baby Johnny. Little Wakefield? Jason? Manny Dooley? Thankfully, I never had to eat that crow, and when Johnny moved on to the Yankees, the error of naming a child after a baseball player became clear. Again, too not-random.

Once my due date passed, my husband's panic (about everything, but channeled into the baby name) rose. On November 1, after a Halloween party I will not soon forgot, he said, "how about Liam, after my buddy Liam T--?" I said, "sure, sounds good with our last name." And that was that. It was sort-of random, and it works. Another learning about that name: in Alabama, it was so weird and different, people couldn't pronounce it. In the Bay Area, you cannot throw a dream catcher without hitting a Liam.

For number 2, I literally ran a search in a baby name generator website. One or two syllables, Celtic. I got about 8 names. Emailed the ones I like to my husband. No response. I casually mentioned which one I liked best at dinner. No response. We go look at a house to buy. The house is great, but it is across from an Indian restaurant. I think the odor is too strong. He and the realtor think I have super-smell sense because of the pregnancy. After we look at the place a second time, husband says, "If you will agree to put a bid on that house, I will agree to name the baby Quinn." I say, "okay, I can go for that. I like Indian food." The next morning, he wakes up and says, "I just realized, I don't want that house, but I do like the name Quinn." BOOM. Done. Practically random.

Where do baby names come from? I think they come from the place you least expect them to. Good luck, Jenny, and all the other pregnant moms I know!

A Really Good Turn of Events for the Athletics of Oakland

I can't believe it's taken this long.

From the Chronicle yesterday (h/t to BD)

Norris is the latest A’s player to sport an unusual hair style. He asked Coco Crisp what he should do with his hair, and Crisp suggested a mullet. So that’s what Norris asked for “business in the front, party in the back” in Danville yesterday – a first for the hair stylist, but she told him she’d learned every style in school even if she’d never actually met anyone who’d wanted a mullet before.


“It’s a work in progress, but it’s definitely going in the right direction,’ Crisp said, noting that the back isn’t really to the ideal length yet. “It takes (guts) to change your hairstyle, so I dig it.”

“I think I look good, pretty darn good,” Norris said. “It’ll get there, give it time. I’m a catcher, I’m not supposed to be pretty.”

Closer Grant Balfour, standing nearby, said loudly, “It’s beautiful. I’m a fan.”

Oh, and . . .

For the friend I have who refuses to join Facebook but is not so much of a Luddite that he doesn't read my blog:

Home Economics Post

If Home Ec was taught in my high school, I definitely gave it a pass. If I knew what retrograde meant, or even suspected, I surely would have used that word. And what would nuns have been able to teach about home economics? I can't answer that, but I do wish now I had learned a bit more of the womanly arts. So does everyone else, which is why, when I am finally free to quit my job, one of my many business ventures will be to open a Home Ec themed set of stores/learning centers. But I digress from what I really intended to post.

A friend, who occasionally reads this blog, has signed up for a sewing class. I share her utter terror at this experience and can't wait to live vicariously through her blog posts. Until she updates us, I thought I would share with all of you the basic instructions on how to make a skirt. I have not made this skirt but a friend has made several of them (since she lives in a country where they do not seem to sell women's clothing in a size 8) and I can tell you, they look great, especially for having been made by another home ec avoider.

Now on to our cooking project. This one is super-easy. It's the basic skirt of food, actually. Pasta with sausage. Mark Bittman recipe from basically every cookbook he's ever written. Boil water. Crumble 1/2 lb of italian sausage in a melted Tb of butter on med-high heat. Add 1/2 c. water to simmer. Cook pasta (like the whole box). Reserve 1/2 c of pasta water. Drain pasta. Mix sausage and pasta. Add water back in if you need to (you won't). Add 1/4 c of parmesan cheese. Also really good if you add broccolini but not completely necessary. Every non-vegetarian in the house will eat this, I promise.

Why am I telling you this? People (like, one person) is always asking me what I feed my kids, and that recipe there is on the menu probably twice a month. So now she knows.

This is all practice for my Home Ec empire.

Maxwell's Memories

News is out and all over my Facebook timeline that Maxwell's of Hoboken is closing. Maxwell's is a music club in Hoboken which had the most amazing shows, including all ages shows, that I've ever seen. Although I was too young for what some fans believe was its heyday (the mid-eighties), I went to literally dozens of shows throughout 1991-1996.

My first show: Love Battery. The lead singer from the Screaming Trees was there, flail-dancing around, but the show was not that full. I think it was a weeknight, Love Battery really wasn't well-known enough to headline, and the guy was huge and had plenty of room to move around. Ted Leo brought me and his younger brother Chris. Possibly, it's more accurate to say that Ted brought Chris and Chris brought me, but whatever. It was awesome. I didn't love Love Battery but I did love Maxwell's.

High point of junior year: We managed to score fIREHOSE tickets. Like 8 of them. It was me, Bridget, Jeanne, Chris, Danny, Dan Gomez, Gary and Maureen, I think. We took the train to Hoboken and then walked to the other end of the city (not actually very far) to Maxwell's. We were way too early for the show, and had no money to eat (at least the boys didn't), but we saw Thurston Moore eating inside at Maxwell's, and freaked the hell out. Then a guy (who I've actually recalled to be a "bum named Jackie") bought us a 6-pack of some lite beer, which we shared before the show. fIREHOSE was A-Fing-MAZING. My teeth still feel the bass.

I saw Shudder to Think there at least 3 times. I saw Tsunami there at least 3 times. I saw Fugazi there at least twice. Ted Leo has it exactly right describing the room during a Fugazi show. These are among the greatest memories I have of early adulthood. It helped that the club was in the shadow of the Maxwell House Coffee factory. The blast of coffee smell as you left the club at 2:00am was enough to drive home awake.

The last show I saw was Barbara Manning. I went with Dave McMahon. It was hella fun, but since I had relocated to Chicago I suspected I might not be back. There are efforts afoot to preserve Maxwell's but I think it would be weird for a punk club to be historically preserved. It's definitely a "you can't go home again" kind of thing.

Guest Blogger Dispatch 3: Totally Different and Unrelated Sharing

A friend shares this email from her child's preschool director:

Dear Families,

Our 11 year old son was saying things which seemed to me to have a generally negative turn to them. Jonah told us he had overheard us having a disagreement, and that's why he was now negative. I remembered reading in Raising Happiness that if children see you reconcile with your partner,that really helps mitigate any harm they experience.  I told my son that Tim and I had made up after our argument, and were fine now. He seemed to perk up. 

SEND FRUIT FOR OUR COMMUNAL FRUIT SALAD

On Thursday and Friday we will assemble a fruit salad with the kids using the fruit you send in.  Organic preferred!

THIS WEEK'S SNACK

A.M.: hummous, chips and carrots or celery (Mon-Wed). Snack on Thurs and Fri will be fruit salad

P.M.: dates

Okay, my friend shared this with me for the first part of the letter, which is just way too much information, and also veers very close to an admission of make-up sex without actually saying it. Or am I reading too much into it? Anyway, I continued with some other components of this newsletter because two OTHER things completely grossed me out besides the over-sharing: 

1) communal fruit salad prepared by preschoolers

   a) of course organic is preferred. Why did that need to be mentioned?

   b) Why isn't this just called germ salad or immune booster salad?

2) dates

   a) ewww

   b) no non-Hellenic (and I do mean from ancient Greece) toddler has ever like dates, because no one does, and also, aren't they a choking hazard? I guess its better than the toddler-prepared fruit salad they will be getting in the mornings

Thanks for oversharing, guest blogger!

Guest Blogger Dispatch 2: Read the Other One First

Mudcats Suffer Setback; Still in Playoff Hunt

June 2, 2013 (AP) – To invoke the motto of ABC’s Wide World of Sports, the Mudcats went from the “thrill of victory” to the “agony of defeat” in less than 24 hours.  One day after winning their opening round playoff game in walk-off fashion, on Sunday the Mudcats surrendered a three run lead to the Volcanoes in the top of the sixth inning and then gave up a whopping eleven runs in the top half of the extra frame to go down to defeat 16-7.  After scratching out a 5-2 lead against the Volcanoes ace pitcher Smiley – so nicknamed by the Vols coaches for his stoic demeanor – the Mudcats took the field in the top of the sixth needing just three outs to advance to the next round of the winners’ bracket to play the top-seeded Dragons.  Unfortunately for the ‘Cats, some untimely wild pitching allowed the Volcanoes to knot the score at 5.  The ‘Cats had a chance in the bottom of the sixth for back-to-back walk off wins, but William struck out on a check swing on a tough inside fastball, stranding a Catfish at third and sending the game to extra innings.  In the bonus round, the wheels came off the bus for the Mudcats, as none of a series of Mudcats’ pitchers could find the strike zone, allowing eleven runs to score on walks.  Down but not out, the Mudcats managed to put two runs on the board in the bottom half of the sixth, but could muster no more.  Liam Dooley, the hero of Saturday’s game, played a solid game in the field at first and behind the plate as catcher and went 2-4 at the plate, putting the bat on the ball each time he came up to hit.

The Mudcats next play the fifth-seeded Redwings in a win-or-go-home game on Tuesday afternoon.  With many of the Mudcats regular starting pitchers limited due to league pitch count rules, Liam is expected to see extended action on the bump for the ‘Cats.  First pitch is 5:00 PT. 

Dooley Dazzles; Turns Double Play

June 2, 2013 (AP) – In a late afternoon tilt, the Farm A Cardinals continued their solid play in the field and at the dish in a Farm A match up with the Mariners.  Although league rules do not allow for score to be kept in the Farm A division, unofficial reports had the Cardinals winning 17-12 in a four-inning slug-fest.  The game saw several smart plays in the field by Danish transplant Daniel Kvaerno, kindergarten call-up Xan, and surprise defensive whizz Diego (known more for his prodigious strength at the plate than his play in the field ), but none could match highlight reel catch of first baseman Quinn Dooley.  In the fourth inning, with runners on second and third, and nobody out, Quinn stabbed a sharply hit liner out of the air and deftly doubled off the Mariner on first who had taken off with the hit.  Reliving the play in his backyard the next day, Quinn reported that his play “was totally easy.”

The Cardinals return to the field Sunday, June 9, for their season finale.

Guest Blogger Dispatch: Mudcats Win; Dooley Awarded Game Ball

June 1, 2013 (AP) – The second-seeded Mudcats survived a scare from the seventh-seeded Grays in the first round of the NOLL Division AA playoffs, winning on a walk off, two-run single in the bottom of the sixth inning to cap a six run  come back.  Coach Chuck awarded the game ball to young Liam Dooley, whose stellar pitching performance in relief kept the Mudcats in the game.  In the top of the fifth inning, with his team already trailing 7-2, Liam was brought in to pitch with the bases loaded and nobody out.  In the bleakest of circumstances, Liam brought the Mudcats fans to their feet by shutting down the Grays, striking out two and deftly fielding a ground ball for a force out at home.  After the Mudcats put four runs on the board in the bottom of the fifth inning to narrow the deficit to 7-6, Liam again shut the Grays down in the top of the sixth.  Liam struck out the side, giving up only a harmless single, to set the stage for the Mudcats to complete their comeback.  Liam lead off the bottom of the sixth inning with an infield single and moved to second on a misplayed pop fly hit by Keeshan.  Then, after advancing on a wild pitch, Liam and Keeshan scored when Eli hit a single over the head of the center fielder to end the game in dramatic fashion.  Liam, who also played two solid innings at catcher, finished the game 2-3 at the plate with two runs scored.  The Mudcats advanced to play the Volcanoes at 11:00 a.m. PT today as the NOLL/SOLL Division AA double-elimination playoff tournament continues.