Veggies Week #2

The weekly greens are here!

A lovely (and enormous!) butterhead lettuce:


Two heads of red leaf lettuce:


Fresh spinach!


More strawberries! I wish you could see them, they're soooooo pretty!


And a whole lot of thyme and oregeno:

When the Going Gets Tough...

I'm in the office right now, working my 11th 12-hour day in the past two weeks. We've been living the typical investment banker groundhog day: wake up, begin coffee feed, pound data like there's no tomorrow, finance, finance, finance, dinner, sleep...and again!

There's a noticable increase in swearing and shouting as our nerves gradually frazzle. And then there's the football being thrown over the cubicles, the case of beer under my desk, our CFO walking around in bermuda shorts muttering to himself, and everyone answering their phones "what now?!" but I think it's the hallmark of a great team, that we're coping with the moments of panic and stress, instead of taking it out on each other.

Nothing like a common monetary goal to bring people together!

Wolfram Alpha

Finally, a replacement for my Excel-as-a-calculator habit: http://www.wolframalpha.com

It does all sorts of fun math!

There's quite some potential here. It's definitely an alpha product, with kinks and large gaps. But it's nice getting straight answers instead of links. I'm especially impressed by the music and demography portions. With a single click, I can hear a C minor scale while reading the notation, or find out how many people in the US have "Kim" as a last name (194,067 per the 2000 US Census).

Veggies Week #1

The farm officially opened for harvest this week! Since the season just started, the haul wasn't huge:

Two giant heads of lettuce:


From left to right, fresh chives, oregano, and thyme:

Chives are going into mashed potatoes, thyme into burgers, and oregano to be dried, possibly for use in making our own tomato sauce - definitely something we want to try this year.

From left to right, catnip and horehound:

The catnip is for, well, cats. I've never used horehound before, but it's supposed to make a medicinal tea (good for coughs and chest congestion), so we'll dry it and save for that.

And strawberries!

Insomnia

darkness grips the air
 jasmine blooms nearby
   the wistful smell of summers past
I take a deep breath
      and try to sleep.

Google Doodles

Vote now for the best Google doodle!

A Tale of Corporate America

Since the firm no longer provides cups (or coffee, or utensils, or even a cafeteria anymore), I've been using a mug at work. It's one of those ubiquitous dark blue mugs, this one emblazoned with the Wharton logo. School affiliation has never been a big deal with my team. We still follow small business mentality: who cares about your education, as long as you get shit done right.

Now that we're in a megafirm, we share space with some typical Wall Street holier-than-thou types. Many look down on us: we don't dress business formal, we hang colorful pictures around our workspace, we're boisterous and opinionated and non-traditional.

A few days ago, I brought my mug into the bathroom to wash. I purposefully turned the Wharton logo away, because it's not my style to advertise. I did my bathroom business, and as I came out, I noticed a woman from one of the more arrogant groups leaving the sink where I had placed my mug. The mug was turned with the logo facing out. As I began washing my hands and the mug, I noticed her eyebrows lift and I was subjected to an appraising scan.

First of all, who the hell touches another person's mug in the bathroom sink?

Second, that's right, bitch. I'm not wearing an expensive suit, I have legos and Star Wars toys in my office, I rock a PB&J lunch, and my background just caught you with your pants down.

I've noticed since that day, when I see that woman in the hall, instead of looking down her nose at me, she quickly glances away :)

Tulips!

A decent number of my tulips survived this year! I don't know if it was the wet weather or my copious application of hot pepper flakes (which did nothing to deter a terrible feasting at our doorstep last year) but somehow this lovely riot of color made it through the season.



Bonus shot of our house. Check out how tall the tulips are!


Hello, sun!

Aftermath

Wow, it's already been two weekends since our bitchlor* party and I haven't had a chance to post until now! As soon as we got back, things got all crazy at work, so I've been pulling the long hours.

New Orleans is awesome! Great bars, great people, great music, and holy shit great food. The only thing I couldn't deal with is the southern heat, but luckily it wasn't too bad when we were there.

Highlights:
- Cheap, heavily alcoholic, well mixed drinks. $23 a round, anyone?!
- Raw oysters the size of my palm, the best damn ones I've ever had
- Getting a lap dance to Massive Attack's Angel!
- Watching Ellis Marsalis play live
- Frenchmen Street taco truck. Pork and pineapple, yum
- Tiger crawl through the limo!
- Zapp's chips: strangely tasty, even the Cajun dill
- Quick goth fix: Above ground cemetery crypts
- Beautiful galleries and boutiques, window shopping heaven!
- Abita beer, ubiquitous all over the city and hits the spot
- Pounds of boiled crawfish! I finally satisfied my 10 year itch for these delectable critters
- Heart shaped sinks in the condo bathroom, yay kitsch!
- Street party in the middle of nowhere...is this a residential zone?
- Club music, soul style!
- Music still thumping at 6 AM; I swear this is the real city that never sleeps
- Seeing artists working on Mardi Gras floats in the warehouse
- Did I mention the food? It's incredible!

Definitely a place I want to revisit!

* combined bachelor/bachlorette