notes from home

1.
After a visit to the Mall it would appear that sequins and animal print are big for this season. I am beside myself.

2.
We made a sweet potato casserole with pineapple this year. It was yum. It's a variant of recipe called Yankee Sweet Potato Casserole found on www.cooks.com


Cook a mess of sweet potatoes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degs.
Peel and mash them.
Add honey, pineapple juice, brown sugar, butter, salt, amaretto, pecans.
Grease a baking dish.
Layer canned pineapple rings on the bottom 5 rings for an 8x8 dish.
Pour in the sweet potato mixture.
Layer canned pineapple rings on the top (5 rings on top as well).
Bake for 20-30 minutes.

The tart of the pineapple and the sweet of the sweet potato make surprising and lovely pair.

3.
Last week I finally came to the conclusion that my pants are too baggy. Probably because I've been listening to Katy Perry sing about her skin tight jeans in the track "Teenage Dream." That lyric has seeped into my subconscious as: girls in skin tight jeans find true love. Rationally, I understand that this is bull. But I have always irrationally believed that clothes hold the answers to many of life's problems.

At the Limited, I tried on a size 8, 6 and 4. The size 6 and 4 felt exactly the same except that I think the size 4 makes my muffin top look more pronounced. Naturally, I bought a size 4. I have not worn a size 4 in years. The prospect was irresistible, even if caused by size exaggeration and stretchy fabric.

They are not skin tight. But they are much narrower than all of my other pants. Bring on the love!

4.
I only read the New Yorker when I come home to visit my parents in C-ville. Excellent quote:

When Mary Jo talks about the experience[of rebuilding her restaurant], she says she tried to keep in mind something Provino Mosca used to say:"Without trouble, there is no life."

-Calvin Trillin

The article made me want to eat my way through New Orleans, or at least make a pilgrimage to Mosca's for Oysters Mosca, Chicken a la Grande, Mosca's Sausage, Shrimp Mosca, Spaghetti Bordelaise, Crab Salad and the Chicken Cacciatore. Because that's what Calvin gets when he goes there. Despite or perhaps because of the Thanksgiving holiday, I have a new dream vacation to plan.

5.
My mother put an electric blanket on my bed. We turned it on and noticed that there are two controllers - one for each half of the blanket. Couples can share an electric blanket and a bed while independently regulating the heat. Ingenious.

life littlest victories

I have been obsessively playing Minesweeper for almost a week now. It is a fixation that I fall in and out of. I played at the beginner and intermediate levels and recently been banging my head against the expert level. It's a 16x30 grid with 99 bombs.

This is not a pastime I would necessarily recommend. I have been spending a lot of time getting blown up which is discouraging.

When I play, sometimes I tell myself that it is an analogy for life or at the very least, my job. I hope that none of you has a situation in your life, the experience of which could be modeled or mirrored by Minesweeper.

The pace of the game allows a mind too much time to fret about things that are not game related which is distracting and makes one more likely to make a mistake.

Mistakes often made:

I click without thinking.

I don't pay attention to the whole board and I overlook available information.

I don't think out possible scenarios or become enamored of one possible solution and neglect to sketch out all the others.

I make false assumptions.

I make decisions based on previous games instead of focusing on the game in play.

I accidentally click on a spot that I intend to flag.

Sometimes I lack motor control. My fingers revolt and disregard the instructions sent by my brain.

Sometimes there are two configurations that will work, based on the information available and I pick wrong.

I generally tell myself that if I get down to 30 or fewer bombs on the grid, I am doing well. A few times I have gotten down to 4-10 of them.

But today, I won.



Yup. It was a pretty straightforward board. Not so ambiguous. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe I have finally learned something.

I am tempted to quit playing forever. But if I do where is the reinforcement for possible lessons learned? I might just take a break and play again later.

declining marginal utility, more is not necessarily better

Just finished reading, "Stumbling on Happiness," by Daniel Gilbert. This is not a book that will help you be happier. But it is a book that will explain how the brain deludes us thinking that we are both happier and unhappier than we really are.

The section that hit me between the eyes was towards the end, on money.

"False beliefs that happen to promote stable societies tend to propagate because people who hold these beliefs tend to live in stable societies, which provide the means by which false beliefs propagate."
-Daniel Gilbert, "Stumbling on Happiness"

"Economists and psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness, and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter. Americans who earn 50,000 per year are much happier than those who earn $10,000 per year, but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year. People who live in poor nations are much less happy than people who live in moderately wealthy nations. Economists explain that wealth has "declining marginal utility," which is a fancy way of saying that it hurts to be hungry, cold, sick, tired and scared, but once you've bought your way out of these burdens, the rest of your money is an increasingly useless pile of paper."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"People in wealthy countries generally work long and hard to earn more money than they can ever derive pleasure from."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, wrote in 1776:

"The desire for food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary."

"
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"If no one wants to be rich, then we haver a significant economic problem, because flourishing economies require that people continually procure and consume one another's goods and services. Market economies require that we all have an insatiable hunger for stuff and if everyone were content with the stuff they had, then the economy would grind to a halt. But if this is a significant economic problem, it is not a significant personal problem."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"...the fundamental needs of a vibrant economy and the fundamental needs of a happy individual are not necessarily the same. So what motivates people to work hard every day to do things that will satisfy the economy's needs but not their own? Like so many thinkers, Smith believed that people want just one thing - happiness - hence economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy. If and only if people hold this false belief will they do enough producing, procuring, and consuming to sustain their economies."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"In short, the production of wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves as a network for the propagation of delusional beliefs about happiness and wealth. Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only strive for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being ... this particular false belief is a super-replicator because holding it causes us to engage in the very activities that perpetuate it."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

Can you imagine if everyone just stopped? What would happen if governments decided that the happiness of people before the state of the economy? What would happen if corporations, institutions and organizations did as well?

I am so tied up in the idea that a little more money would = a little more happiness I can't imagine it myself. If the relationship between money and happiness is not linear, or infinitely exponential upwards, it is silly of me to pursue more of the same for less of my aim.

Perhaps my Dad's right, I have been looking at this all wrong. I should check if I am "hungry, cold, sick, tired and scared." When I am none of these things, I need to remind myself to stop chasing the cash and just bask in the sunshine munching on grapes. I really should. It's just so hard to imagine.

To the question of happiness, I should first ask: "Am I bleeding? no. Am I dying? no. Am I starving? no. Am I terrified? usually, but mostly it's all in my head. Am I tired? often, but it's because I love on the internet until late at night."

Okay, then it's not about the money and what I don't have that can be bought. It must be about something else. Like the internet.

telephone game

I left my phone at home today.

It felt like leaving home with no pants on, breezy and exposed.

As I walked, I thought to myself, "It's fine. I can go one day without it. I lived for years and years without knowing that I needed it. I have a watch on. I will know the time."

Except of course, that today I would go up to my US Senator's office only to discover that I needed to call the office, only to discover that I needed a phone and the guy at the security desk was not going to let me use any of the five on his desk, the payphone "around the corner" was non-existent, and I didn't have any change for the call anyway.

There was an answer to this problem. I borrowed the landline of a restaurant using the old,"Hi, I need to call my US senator's office and I forgot my cell, can I borrow your phone for one local call, I swear it won't last more than 5 minutes."

If you are ever in a pinch this might work for you too. And then you got back to standing in the lobby of the building haranging the security guy to call the office for you a few more times until someone friendly and well dressed comes down to shake your hand, give you a card, take your documents and smiles politely, listening to your rant.

And then I would make spontaneous plans with CK and have to try to figure out how to coordinate the old fashioned way but setting a specific time and a specific place and sticking to it no matter what.

It wasn't soooo bad. I kept reaching for the pocket of my purse where the cell phone lives.

But it was all fine, I got to tell Sen Gillibrand's aide that I and 11 of my neighbors are NOT in favor or extending the Bush tax cuts.

I met up with CK and we had burgers and wine.

And when I got home, I didn't have any calls or texts anyway. I saved myself at least 40 minutes of the day that I would have wasted checking my phone for calls or messages. The only thing I didn't get to do was further torment my parents with a call.

Maybe I don't need a smartphone. Maybe I don't need any phone at all.

I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough

Top 40, Sweet Cheeks.

Yes, I love the show Glee. It is rare that I am so transparently emotionally manipulated by a TV show. And what's worse, I love it and cry out for more.

But it does lead me to the uncomfortable decision to no longer diss on Pat Boone. I do love Glee and I love this cover by Gwyneth Paltrow, but I can't help but feel that it's the contemporary equivalent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1_B9FCZJMA

vs:

Cee Lo Green (cussing intact - not work/radio friendly)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU

In place of what I started to want to say

I want to complain.

I am not supposed. Apparently I am supposed to either suffer in silence, retrain my thoughts and perspectives to turn that frown upside down, or I am supposed to take action to improve my situation. Complaining is not allowed by friends, colleagues, family. I am allowed to complain silently to myself in my head but not on my blog. I am not even supposed to sigh. Sighing is apparently complaining. And there is no complaining.

Other people complain. But either they have good legitimate reasons to or no one likes them because of it. And because I want to be liked. I am not supposed to complain.

But I really want to.

So instead I have decided to do that thought redirection thing. I have decided to give myself a medal 4 breathing.



You can have it too. Let's share it.

I am awarding us this medal 4 breathing. According to today's wikipedia, the average human breathes 12-20 times a minute. 720-1200 times an hour. 17,280-28,800 and hour. That is a lot of air. Good job. High five to meritorious breathing. Keep up the good work.

Reality or Perception?

"Experiments ... suggest that we do not outgrow realism so much as we learn to outfox it, and that even as adults our perceptions are characterized by an initial moment of realism."
- Daniel Gilbert, "Stumbling on Happiness"

no good deed

A man in a wheelchair dropped his bag of groceries. He was right by the curb in the street kind of stretching back and forth reaching to pick up the bag. The woman standing next to me asked him if he needed some help.

He told her to go F herself and started cursing at her.

She said, "Oh," broke eye contact and started walking away.

I laughed and crossed the street.