(no subject)

Morningness ... got up at 7 this morning, got out of the house shortly after 8. I kinda want to start making breakfast again but I don't want to get up earlier. Decisions...

It's like I can't settle into work until I update my commute calendar. It's not just the "yes I took the bus" checkbox, since I do it when I drive or telecommute too. Maybe it's seeing the time pass, or the patterns on the calendar (red for driving, gray for bus, green for telecommute, etc).

This week's Cathy is shaping up to be good. :) Betty, meanwhile, has moved from outrageous into surreal.

If fonts were people:

I can only say that Century Gothic's been my primary font for over a decade now....

hee hee hee

Carrie Fisher's one-woman show is coming to the Seattle Rep.

Subscriptions are on sale now, single-show tickets go on sale Aug 18.

Note to self: Get tickets!


Illustration by Julie Giles for Berkeley Repertory Theatre's program for Carrie Fisher's "Wishful Drinking"

"I always say, 'If my life weren't funny, it would just be true — and that's unacceptable.' So please come to see my show, otherwise I'll end up talking about myself alone in the dark. Again!" — Carrie Fisher

:)

Plastic or cash?

From an interesting article on spending came this "what the what?" moment:

"Duncan Simester, a professor of marketing at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, conducted experiments asking people to bid on certain items. Those in one group were told they could use only cash as payment — with access to an A.T.M. — while a second group could use their credit cards to pay. It turns out that the participants in the latter group bid significantly higher than those limited to cash."

The implication in the article is that plastic didn't seem real and cash does. Um, how about the fact that ATMs limit how much you can withdraw in a day to much less than my credit card limit? Or that if you've already withdrawn the limit you're stuck with what's in your pocket?

It could also be that cash (in the form of ATM limit+what's in the wallet) forms a practical spending limit, not just a budget one's decided on but could reconsider. "Not having any more money to spend" is a harder thing to argue with than "I don't want to spend that much."

Maybe they started bidding at a dollar, maybe they were bidding at low amounts, and so on. Maybe withdrawal limits weren't a factor. But it seemed weird to me.

(I do agree with the cautions on debit cards, and that thinking in terms of "I would have to work X hours to buy this shiny" can be useful....)

oven food

One of the "miracles" of modern times is that we no longer have to have fire to cook. Even if we choose a gas stove, we decide how much fire and when. This is not only safer than cooking in a fireplace, but much cooler than a cast-iron stove. In hot weather I may not always feel like a hot meal, but if I do, simply turning on the stove top to make dinner is not overly hot.

The oven, on the other hand, does tend to warm the kitchen up. So does some stovetop activities, like boiling water. But in summer these can be skipped - which also says something about the variety we have available. Sure, you might miss some dishes that call for the oven, but it's a tradeoff that works most of the time.

Yesterday & today were the first days in quite a while that were in the low 70s. Yesterday I made my ziti-with-rotini (big pots of boiling pasta & simmering sauce, finished in the oven) and a pan of peanut butter cookies from premade dough. Tonight was pizza. Thanks to jw1776 reminding me that tomorrow will be 80F, I baked another pan of cookies & batch of scones. ;)