Monday, January 31, 2011

2 Little Kittens have lost their mittens

How know if you are both overly lazy and overly crafty? When you find yourself halfway through winter with 3 mismatched kids' gloves and you can't be bothered to shop to replace them, so you sit down to make some new ones.

I can't bear to face the hunt for winter accessories in a retail world that is already unloading swimsuits. It's painful to think about.

Here is the pattern I was given by the local Crochet Guild just picked bits of mystery yarn that vaguely match the kids' coats. One red pair and one variegated pink pair. Well, by pair I mean balls of yarn, one of which is attached to a partial cuff already.

*** Updated to add pics of the finished products:

How know if you are both overly lazy and overly crafty? When you find yourself halfway through winter with 3 mismatched kids' gloves and you can't be bothered to shop to replace them, so you sit down to make some new ones.

I can't bear to face the hunt for winter accessories in a retail world that is already unloading swimsuits. It's painful to think about.

Here is the pattern I was given by the local Crochet Guild just picked bits of mystery yarn that vaguely match the kids' coats. One red pair and one variegated pink pair. Well, by pair I mean balls of yarn, one of which is attached to a partial cuff already.

*** Updated to add pics of the finished products:

Product review: Google Notebook Chrome OS - First impressions


I've been meaning to blog about the many samples that come my way for only the cost of spam. I've signed up for everything from oatmeal, to makeup, to dog food, and more. Each package is a a mini surprise as the 4-6wks delivery time ensures I've completely forgotten clicking on the "try for free" button.

The box that was waiting on my doorstep this past Friday was bigger even than the 3.5lbs of free Purina (thanks Purina!) and seemed more like an Amazon.com purchase.

"What did you buy?" My fiscally minded hubsters asked, not amused.

"Nothing! Really!" I said, trying to wrack my brain just in case. "Probably only something we needed in any case." The perfect defense for shopping.

"You bought more mouse traps??" Hubsters gestured to the inner box that showed an elaborate diagram of a mouse and a disassembled rocketship.



Puzzled we stared for a bit longer, until we saw the packing slip. It was a Google Chrome OS notebook, and I was a lucky tester. The screaming, jumping, dancing, and whooping baffled the children and sent my downstairs neighbor running up to make sure we weren't seriously injured.



I was busy cooking for shabbos, so like any good wife, I let hubsters have the pleasure of the first test drive. Good thing too, since my perusing of other reviews says that one must connect to a secure network connection from the guest account and then set up the user account, which hubsters did by default as he was the guest, and I was the triumphant user/Googler.

The notebook is sleek, black matte, and minimalist.


It's light, as it should be. There is only one USB port, one video out, one headphone jack, an SD card reader and the power jack.

Well it was sleek, black, matte and minimalist until I tricked it out using the included decal kit. Now it looks a bit like something a middle schooler would use, but my excitement at my new toy overrode any sense of style and restraint my inner decorator would have tried to establish.




There is no software loaded into the system beyond the Chrome OS. It is built around cloud computing. Want to make a document? Use Google Docs. Want to play music? Stream some. There is an option to download apps from the Chrome Web Store. Some are addons to Chrome similar to the ones that work with the Chrome Browser, some are web apps like Tweetdeck, and others are basically bookmarks to webpages, while handy are not the same as an app. There is everything from browser games that pop down from the toolbar, to photo editing, basically anything you'd expect in an app store.

The idea, as laid out in the intro page, is that if your current laptop were hit with a steam roller, you'd lose everything. If a google machine gets hit with a steam roller, no biggie, just log into another google machine and it's like the steam roller was one bad dream, all your setting exist in the cloud and nothing is lost.

I quickly tricked out with some basic necessities. Web Of Trust to vet the links as I surf and protect my machine, bookmarks to my usual places, an add on for blogger, one for sharing across my social networks, and Tweetdeck. Now I've been using the desktop app for a long time now and the web based one took a lot of tweaking and fiddling to approximate the settings and features I'd been enjoying thus far. I wish it had just "poof" imported my settings, but such is life.

I will be posting more about my experiences in a series to keep the length down to just below War and Peace and "too long didn't read," I know ya'll appreciate it!


I've been meaning to blog about the many samples that come my way for only the cost of spam. I've signed up for everything from oatmeal, to makeup, to dog food, and more. Each package is a a mini surprise as the 4-6wks delivery time ensures I've completely forgotten clicking on the "try for free" button.

The box that was waiting on my doorstep this past Friday was bigger even than the 3.5lbs of free Purina (thanks Purina!) and seemed more like an Amazon.com purchase.

"What did you buy?" My fiscally minded hubsters asked, not amused.

"Nothing! Really!" I said, trying to wrack my brain just in case. "Probably only something we needed in any case." The perfect defense for shopping.

"You bought more mouse traps??" Hubsters gestured to the inner box that showed an elaborate diagram of a mouse and a disassembled rocketship.



Puzzled we stared for a bit longer, until we saw the packing slip. It was a Google Chrome OS notebook, and I was a lucky tester. The screaming, jumping, dancing, and whooping baffled the children and sent my downstairs neighbor running up to make sure we weren't seriously injured.



I was busy cooking for shabbos, so like any good wife, I let hubsters have the pleasure of the first test drive. Good thing too, since my perusing of other reviews says that one must connect to a secure network connection from the guest account and then set up the user account, which hubsters did by default as he was the guest, and I was the triumphant user/Googler.

The notebook is sleek, black matte, and minimalist.


It's light, as it should be. There is only one USB port, one video out, one headphone jack, an SD card reader and the power jack.

Well it was sleek, black, matte and minimalist until I tricked it out using the included decal kit. Now it looks a bit like something a middle schooler would use, but my excitement at my new toy overrode any sense of style and restraint my inner decorator would have tried to establish.




There is no software loaded into the system beyond the Chrome OS. It is built around cloud computing. Want to make a document? Use Google Docs. Want to play music? Stream some. There is an option to download apps from the Chrome Web Store. Some are addons to Chrome similar to the ones that work with the Chrome Browser, some are web apps like Tweetdeck, and others are basically bookmarks to webpages, while handy are not the same as an app. There is everything from browser games that pop down from the toolbar, to photo editing, basically anything you'd expect in an app store.

The idea, as laid out in the intro page, is that if your current laptop were hit with a steam roller, you'd lose everything. If a google machine gets hit with a steam roller, no biggie, just log into another google machine and it's like the steam roller was one bad dream, all your setting exist in the cloud and nothing is lost.

I quickly tricked out with some basic necessities. Web Of Trust to vet the links as I surf and protect my machine, bookmarks to my usual places, an add on for blogger, one for sharing across my social networks, and Tweetdeck. Now I've been using the desktop app for a long time now and the web based one took a lot of tweaking and fiddling to approximate the settings and features I'd been enjoying thus far. I wish it had just "poof" imported my settings, but such is life.

I will be posting more about my experiences in a series to keep the length down to just below War and Peace and "too long didn't read," I know ya'll appreciate it!

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Tea for two, and two for tea . . . alone!

I know there are plenty of opportunities for a Jewish person to have a culture clash with secular or non-Jewish people. Fodder could come from a variety of lingo (oy vey!), food (gefilte fish), cultural (matchmakers!), geographical (you're from ___ you must know Sara Cohen!), physical (the shnoz), emotional (if you called more often you'd understand).

This week I had one I'd never experienced before. The Baffled Barista. See, the poor guy was just making me some tea (Grande non-fat please!) when there was a hub-bub from the break room. We'd been joking about something funny that had happened in line while I was ordering, so in an atmosphere of joviality he shared that a coworker was celebrating the news that she was expecting.

<<>>

What was he expecting me to say? I have no idea :) Something between indifference to polite smiling. Instead he got the Jewish mother treatment. Poor barista didn't know what hit him.

"Wow! Congratulations!" I beamed. I had known enough not to say mazal tov, my usual reaction to hearing news like this.

He looked shocked. "It's not mine, it's a coworkers."

"We all celebrate news like that. It's part of the Starbucks family celebration, right?" I fumbled.

He gave me his most strategic "you're a crazy lady but I'm in food service so I'm used to dealing with loonies" smile. Oy vey indeed.

See, every celebration in the Jewish people is something we share. If my mom's hair stylist's third cousin's half sister's dog had puppies, I'd say "Mazal tov!" and my excitement would only increase as the proximity of the celebration approached me personally. So my best friend's future engagement would require an ear shattering squeal, lots of jumping, and at least 3 more laugh lines to every person who informed me of the news, from the future-bride herself to any one of the 252 facebook friends we have in common.

We share simchas (celebrations) because we all have a piece of it. We've prayed for the blessing for ourselves and those we know, and at the end of the prayer is usually "and all of the people of Israel." So any time someone has something good, we've prayed for it at one time or another. We've put in the effort, the shared excitement is the reward. At a wedding, bris, engagement, we wish Mazal tov to everyone attending, not just the immediate participants. It's the sense of community we all feel for each other.

I feel bad for putting the poor guy on the spot when he was just trying to slog through his caffeinated shift. Maybe it was mostly because he was male, and a female would have reacted differently safe in the knowledge that I couldn't be mistaking paternity.

I also feel a little bad that there is such detachment from one another that the congratulations can't spill over. In hindsight I remembered the appropriate response "She must be so happy." The singular over the plural.


I know there are plenty of opportunities for a Jewish person to have a culture clash with secular or non-Jewish people. Fodder could come from a variety of lingo (oy vey!), food (gefilte fish), cultural (matchmakers!), geographical (you're from ___ you must know Sara Cohen!), physical (the shnoz), emotional (if you called more often you'd understand).


This week I had one I'd never experienced before. The Baffled Barista. See, the poor guy was just making me some tea (Grande non-fat please!) when there was a hub-bub from the break room. We'd been joking about something funny that had happened in line while I was ordering, so in an atmosphere of joviality he shared that a coworker was celebrating the news that she was expecting.

<<>>

What was he expecting me to say? I have no idea :) Something between indifference to polite smiling. Instead he got the Jewish mother treatment. Poor barista didn't know what hit him.

"Wow! Congratulations!" I beamed. I had known enough not to say mazal tov, my usual reaction to hearing news like this.

He looked shocked. "It's not mine, it's a coworkers."

"We all celebrate news like that. It's part of the Starbucks family celebration, right?" I fumbled.

He gave me his most strategic "you're a crazy lady but I'm in food service so I'm used to dealing with loonies" smile. Oy vey indeed.

See, every celebration in the Jewish people is something we share. If my mom's hair stylist's third cousin's half sister's dog had puppies, I'd say "Mazal tov!" and my excitement would only increase as the proximity of the celebration approached me personally. So my best friend's future engagement would require an ear shattering squeal, lots of jumping, and at least 3 more laugh lines to every person who informed me of the news, from the future-bride herself to any one of the 252 facebook friends we have in common.

We share simchas (celebrations) because we all have a piece of it. We've prayed for the blessing for ourselves and those we know, and at the end of the prayer is usually "and all of the people of Israel." So any time someone has something good, we've prayed for it at one time or another. We've put in the effort, the shared excitement is the reward. At a wedding, bris, engagement, we wish Mazal tov to everyone attending, not just the immediate participants. It's the sense of community we all feel for each other.

I feel bad for putting the poor guy on the spot when he was just trying to slog through his caffeinated shift. Maybe it was mostly because he was male, and a female would have reacted differently safe in the knowledge that I couldn't be mistaking paternity.

I also feel a little bad that there is such detachment from one another that the congratulations can't spill over. In hindsight I remembered the appropriate response "She must be so happy." The singular over the plural.