Are there really people who diligently concentrate on their job all day?
Is there really a Santa Claus, and does he really spend the off-season in Reno with a retired magician's assistant named "LaLa Lamour"?
I find it baffling as well, Heebie. During my office hours, I am usually looking at blogs or Facebook or whatever. When someone pops by, I casually click over to a Word document or my email or something serious-looking. In order to teach well, I do need mental down-time or I get way too exhausted.
When I used to work in business offices, I would try to read novels, but was told this didn't "look" like I was doing anything. I protested that the girl who had the job before me did wordsearch magazines, and they said, "Wordsearches look like work. Novels do not." Keeping a pencil moving is, I guess, what they wanted, so I started drawing during my spare time. Each day of the week on my desktop calendar got a tiny elaborate abstract work of art based on the theme of the number of that date, usually incorporating golden ratios and shit. There was a lot of downtime.
At my previous job I ended up with my back to my office door (shared office, no choice in the matter), so I bought one of those rear-view monitor mirrors. Problem was, I never checked it.
At my current job I'm quite exposed, but texty blogs are okay, I figure. I draw the line at watching videos at work; too much like TV.
Wordsearches look like work.
"Wordsearches look like your intellectual curiosity and acumen are at the feeble level we deem appropriate for this position. Don't scare people."
2: The collection of the Museum of American Visionary Art in Baltimore includes several works by dedicated office doodlers. Many of them are quite striking.
If I was focussed enough to only have work related windows open all day, I'd certainly flaunt it. More inexplicable to me are the cow-orkers who flaunt the fact that they aren't doing work. A few years back I worked with a professor who spent most of the day sitting at the secretary's desk in the main office playing Bejeweled on her computer. He not only wasn't working, he keeping someone else from working, and doing so for all to see.
While I was writing 5 I got two emails from students asking where their papers were.
My real problem isn't commenting on blogs, though, it is overmarking the papers. The last paper I sent back had 20 comments. That really slows you down.
5.2: That is amazing. I'm trying to imagine how one would go about addressing this problem, and can't imagine what one could say.
I once had a job placing 4rbitr0n radio ratings diaries through an auto-dialer, and was very pleased that the prohibition of reading at one's station lasted maybe a week. The autodialer didn't warn us when a call connected; usually we just heard "-lo?" after it had already been said once, so we started every spiel at a disadvantage as it was. Shifting attention from a magazine to a person is orders of magnitude easier than popping into third gear out of a daydream.
The room's productivity collapsed when we were required to sit and gaze into nothingness between calls, and I'm convinced the only reason the requirement lasted more than a couple of days was so the bosses could act like they were doing something nice for us by ending it.
More inexplicable to me are the cow-orkers who flaunt the fact that they aren't doing work.
It's just that the effort it would take to reposition my desk so that the monitor is facing away from the door is greater than the shame in revealing I am a ginormous slacker....
Could the attorneys and anyone else with billable hours comment on how this topic interacts with their billing practices? Does a client really expect that every minute of time one spends on their project is fully focused?
5: I shall now spend a few minutes meditating on the lovely image evoked by "cow-orkers". Thanks!
Just yesterday I changed the angle of my computer screen a bit so it's not quite so visible to any visitor. I work in a room of cubicles, though, so privacy is hard to come by.
2
In order to teach well, I do need mental down-time or I get way too exhausted.
Good excuse. My excuse is that there's a lot of "hurry up and wait" at my job. Right now there's a big project that's overdue but I just can't do anything else on it until I hear from the lawyer on the project team. She's said she'll have it for me today, but she's said that before. I don't want to get ahead of the game on something more long-term, or add polish to a project which I signed off on as "good enough," because if I get started on that and then get the information I'm waiting for, it'll actually take a nontrivial amount of time to shift gears.
5: I don't what it means to ork a cow, but it sounds disgusting.
My desktop computer faces more or less toward my office door, with some month-old Mathematica windows or whatever up, but my laptop faces away from the door and is mostly for blog-reading.
Could the attorneys and anyone else with billable hours comment on how this topic interacts with their billing practices? Does a client really expect that every minute of time one spends on their project is fully focused?
I assume clients do expect not to be billed for blog-commenting. So, sadly, the time I waste here during the day has to be made up somewhere. On the other hand, I don't start and stop the stopwatch every time my mind goes blank in the middle of drafting a memorandum or conducting research.
re: 12
Yeah, there's a fair bit of that in my job. I'm often twiddling my thumbs while waiting for other people to finish replying to my queries. I try to find projects that I can work on in down time but even allowing for that, there are hours in the day when I am waiting for files to come back from the archive, or data to get processed or whatever.
I'm pretty much convinced that everyone else I know is much harder-working than I am. But I have a high threshold for what I think is worthwhile. This will likely cause me problems down the line, I'm sure; "I could have written as many papers as Other Job Candidate, but I don't see the point in churning out mediocre work" probably doesn't go over so well with the hiring committees.
17: Ha! I think this about my time-to-degree. Oh sure, I could have gotten a PhD in four years too, if I were also writing about current pop literature, but I guess I decided to spend a few years, like, doing some fucking reading and thinking. DON'T JUDGE ME.
re: 18
Yeah, my timescale for my D.Phil has been slow. I don't know how much ice 'I had no money and had to spend huge amounts of time working to eat' cuts ...
10: I would certainly not bill for time spent reading blogs, or anything else on the internet (other than legal research).
That said, I would bet there's generally a discrepancy between "client expectations" and actual practices regarding the level of mental focus involved in each increment of billable time.
People, people, get a 3M privacy filter.
If anyone asks why you're using it, you say that you have to look at confidential personnel files on your screen, and Legal says that these cannot be visible to any unauthorized person without creating legal jeopardy. Alternatively, the non-disclosure agreement you have with a customer is so super tight that you have to restrict access to client documents. Or your eye doctor recommended it when you complained of headaches. Just turn the sound down when you watch youtube, to be safe.
In my office, my choices are to face the door or face the window. I could get monitor-privacy only by giving up my view--not worth it, in my estimation.
'I had no money and had to spend huge amounts of time working to eat'
Yeah, this is me too. I've been using it for years. "But I teach eight classes a year! I can't be expected to progress as fast as those rich kids!" One of my advisers got sick of it and finally gave me what for about all the PhD students who manage to raise kids, hold jobs, and write a dissertation all at once, and how dare I use work as an excuse?
She's right. At a certain point (for example, now) I have to stop using my class angst as a way to win pity. Pity doesn't get me a doctorate.
re: 23
It hasn't taken me a huge amount longer, to be honest. I submitted in a fairly normal time-frame --maybe 9 months more than some of my faster peers, but about the same as a lot of the rest of them -- but it took a while to resubmit the revisions because by that time I was working a full-time job.
I work in cubicle office (some of the nicest cubicles I've seen, but cubes nonetheless) no real cover possible.* I pretty much have the bastards trained by now**. My at-work distraction timeline over my career: novels, tetris, Jewelbox, Usenet, honestly worked my fucking ass off for 5 years, pinball (we had a game room for a while), blogs.
*I have thought about getting a privacy filter per pp in 21, but somehow that feels like it's shrinking the Overton Window.
**It's actually a lot more complicated than that and I have pushed it to the limit and beyond over the last 20+ years (in patented ENTP fashion). I'll probably blow it sometime, but I've smoked all my life and I ain't dead yet. Worst moment: shared my screen in a big online meeting (boss and boss's boss on it) and an Unfogged thread briefly flashed up***. Holy Fucking Career Death, Batman!
***Someone else was supposed to show it but had a problem, so I shared mine without taking adequate precautions and through some vagaries of the meeting software (or pilot error) it rapidly flipped through some other windows I had open than the one I intended.
10, 20: I have a hard time with this question, too. Certainly, if I take 15 or 30 minutes and read a long article, or go through my blogs in order with no work mixed in, that time doesn't get billed. But I always have my google reader up in its own tab, and it's not uncommon for me to see a new post pop up while I'm reviewing documents or editing e memo. If it takes me 15 seconds to read it and then I'm back, I don't stop and re-start the clock for that click-over. The line between 15 seconds and 15 minutes is hard to draw, though.
I also remember seeing somewhere recently that people are more efficient if their brains are stimulated (say, by intermittent internet browsing) than if they try to focus exclusively on one task for hours at a stretch. That fits with my own experience--I'm more likely to come back more quickly, with more mental energy, if I read a quick blog post than if I stare out the window for a minute.
Reason #232,089 why billing by the hour is stupid.
I also remember seeing somewhere recently that people are more efficient if their brains are stimulated (say, by intermittent internet browsing) than if they try to focus exclusively on one task for hours at a stretch.
Yeah, I too have noticed that the quality of my commenting improves if I take periodic breaks to do a little billable work.
18 but I guess I decided to spend a few years, like, doing some fucking reading and thinking. DON'T JUDGE ME.
I know the career path is very different between science and humanities, so this might not apply so much, but I really enjoyed having that "reading and thinking" time in grad school, and I sort of wish there had been less pressure to get through it quickly. In grad school I spent a lot of time reading about things not quite aligned with my research, and working on crazy, difficult, ambitious projects that eventually failed but that I learned a lot from. Now that I'm at the postdoc stage (i.e. must produce lots of research very quickly in order to get a longer-term job, a stage which maybe doesn't exist in your field?), I don't feel like I have any of that time to read and think about things that don't have immediate payoff. Everything has to be tailored to fit in the category of things that are simple enough that I know I'm capable of doing them on a short timescale, but still interesting enough that they aren't worthless. It's uncomfortably constraining.
I work more efficiently if I can stay focused on one task, but I can work longer if I am multitasking.
I didn't think that post-docs existed in the humanities, but I know somebody who got one at the University of Chicago. It's not a necessary step to assistant professorship though.
28: Yeah, I really do think I'm a much more effective thinker, writer, and speaker because of all the time I've spent playing with large, broad, far-ranging, interdisciplinary ideas. I like to tell my students that my orals exams were basically the result of spending four years preparing for a two-hour conversation. Sure, I could have done my orals right after coursework, but that wasn't really appropriate given how my work has since come to bring together all of those texts. I needed a lot of time to consider why it was important to me to use all of these texts.
OTOH, I probably should have just treated orals like a cumulative exam on my coursework like most people do, in that it wouldn't have been the most sickeningly stressful day of my life. But I was able to turn in my dissertation prospectus a few weeks after the exam, and felt I really had a hard-won blessing from my committee.
30: They do, and some of them are pretty swanky. We tend to avoid them just because, FFS, most of us are nearing or well over 30 and pretty goddamn sick of not being able to settle in one place. So if we can get a TT job, we do. Of course, even a lot of those end up being like postdocs, in that people stay for a year or two and publish just enough to go back on the market and find a better job somewhere else.
I'm not much of a homebody and generally wouldn't mind moving, but continually moving for the next ten years would make me feel awful. I'm old enough that I'd far rather stay in NYC where I have friends, an academic community, a lifestyle, etc.
Wordsearches look like work. Novels do not.
Anything you do on a computer looks like work, including reading novels.
Totally OT, but I have a really nervous-making day today that promises to be either an incredible, happy, validating thing on several fronts or a total wristslitter. I'm so nervous, in fact, that even if things go well for me, I still might throw up and/or cry. I hate getting my hopes up about things and wish good stuff would just happen spontaneously without my having to anticipate it.
34: Yikes! All because I never sent you the playlist?
Huh. I'm curious, but I'm guessing you don't want to be more specific, or you would have been. Good luck, regardless.
35: Hee. I got the playlist worked out. Many thanks for all the suggestions!
36: I'm up for an important award in my department and have some encouragement that I might get it. Also have to confront some interpersonal situations I've been avoiding dealing with, some potentially awful, some potentially quite good.
Grad school - yeah, those hyper-performers can make a person feel inadequate. Then you realize that the vast majority of people never have the privilege to feel inadequate because grad school is taking a bit long.
As far as billing, I am familiar with the union and blue-collar concepts of paid rest and eating periods, which are really needed when you're doing physical work. Aren't short "clear the cobwebs" breaks the equivalent for those of us doing mental work?
Good luck!
I never figured out how to separate work time and goofing around time cleanly -- I switch what I'm thinking about six times a minute, unless the task is simpleminded enough that I'm not really thinking at all. I'm so happy not to be billing by the hourly anymore -- when I tried to be rigidly honest, I ended up billing about an hour and a half a day, which didn't make sense with my output (fairly ordinary for the people I was working with, who were billing eight hour days at least), but any other way I was billing for a lot of minutes in which I was also goofing off. I felt guilty and dishonest for eight years.
"I could have written as many papers as Other Job Candidate, but I don't see the point in churning out mediocre work" probably doesn't go over so well with the hiring committees
I'm not not NOT saying that this is what's going on with you, but I believe I avoid work in part because, if I haven't tried hard, I can keep up the front that what I would've written (or: will write when I get my act together) would've been (or: will be) sooooooo awesome and much better than most of what gets put out in the journals. (Never mind that churning out mediocre work [as drafts] is a necessary first step in producing the awesome stuff.)
As I say, this could just be my issue.
And: good luck with people and prizes, AWB.
I never figured out how to separate work time and goofing around time cleanly -- I switch what I'm thinking about six times a minute, unless the task is simpleminded enough that I'm not really thinking at all. I'm so happy not to be billing by the hourly anymore -- when I tried to be rigidly honest, I ended up billing about an hour and a half a day, which didn't make sense with my output (fairly ordinary for the people I was working with, who were billing eight hour days at least), but any other way I was billing for a lot of minutes in which I was also goofing off. I felt guilty and dishonest for eight years.
I know the feeling. I took some relief from the fact that, early in my time working as a contractor, I attended a panel featuring K/ij J/ohns/on in which she started off by commenting that when she worked at microsoft she realized at some point that she only did about 2 hours of real work a day -- and that she was considered a hard worker by her peers.
Obviously this made an impression since I remember the exact talk 10 years later.
I've found for myself that 2-3 hours of real focused work is a pretty damn good day. Particularly since, when I say that, I'm not counting the 1-2 hours of solid prep work that 2-3 hours of work requires.
I'm uncomfortable with this. But I also know that I'm considered productive and hard-working by my peers. So I operate under the assumption that (almost) everyone does a significant amount of mental thumb-twiddling between bursts of real work.
It doesn't bother me much now that my work is judged on output. Billing by the six minute increment, though, was horrible for me.
Best of luck, Bear.
28: Pound out Least Publishable Units as fast as your time and integrity will allow or start planning a lateral move. I fucked this up due to a string of personal crises and came damn near to having to work for a right wing asshole Bush crony contractor just to pay rent. OTOH it smashed my TT ambitions, which is a good thing since I'd have been driven mad by the intersection of faculty politics and funding realities.
Free advice, worth what you paid.
I switch what I'm thinking about six times a minute
This actually takes a pretty serious amount of mental self control. I know I couldn't do it. There are too many times my mind gets fixated on a single thought (or strong emotion dressed up with a little thought) that I just can't get away from.
I am posting this while talking to someone in a two-person meeting. They're drawing on the whiteboard just this second.
Hope it goes well and better than well, AWB.
Also have to confront some interpersonal situations I've been avoiding dealing with/i>
I'm so proud. We can extend this encouraging streak next time.
While I was writing 5 I got two emails from students asking where their papers were.
My real problem isn't commenting on blogs, though, it is overmarking the papers. The last paper I sent back had 20 comments. That really slows you down.
This is insanity. Why are you doing this?
Could the attorneys and anyone else with billable hours comment on how this topic interacts with their billing practices? Does a client really expect that every minute of time one spends on their project is fully focused?
I estimate how much of the day was actually spent being productive on a given project, and bill that. I'm usually rounding down anyway (people don't seem to think architects deserve much money*), so it's not a big deal.
* I'd make a self-deprecating joke, but it's true across the board. I've heard that even starchitects (a term I dislike, but whatever) don't actually bill all the hours they put in on projects
It doesn't bother me much now that my work is judged on output. Billing by the six minute increment, though, was horrible for me.
I'm somewhere in-between. Technically I bill in half-hour increments. Practically I use 2-hour increments for most of my billing. As long as I'm working on a project over several days I assume the slow periods and productive periods balance out.
Again, nobody complains, and I am generally productive.
It still drives me crazy sometimes, particularly when I'm having a string of a couple unproductive weeks in a row, and I feel guilty about billing anyone.
Pity doesn't get me a doctorate.
Now you all know why I never went for a PhD.
This is insanity. Why are you doing this?
I can't explain it. It is a problem I've had my entire academic career, and it has only been getting worse, not better.
I do sometimes get compliments from students on the detail and usefulness of the feedback I give them. My current strategy has been to try to arrange the semester so I can actually continue to give detailed feedback without destroying my schedule. I have failed this term.
I'm also terrified because my online summer course goes live the day grades this semester are due.
56: I have a history professor friend who uses voice-recognition software to dictate comments; he ends up with a page or so for most papers, and says it helps a lot speed-wise.
I use macros in word, and that helps. Maybe I should try voice recognition software, too.
My workplace distractions are severely limited by the strict filter on the office internet system. The Department of the Interior does not look kindly on the use of unauthorized websites. Facebook and most blogs are right out, and while I think there are some blogs that do get through I'm not inclined to risk it because our IT guy is famously humorless.
It doesn't bother me much now that my work is judged on output. Billing by the six minute increment, though, was horrible for me.
A client once complained that it wanted my time broken down into more specific tasks -- "Reviewing Document A, Reviewing Document B, etc." instead of "Reviewing record containing documents A - M." Turned out this was a huge bonus for me and a bad call for them. If A, B, and C took me four minutes each, and 0.1 is the minimum billing increment, itemized got me 0.3 instead of 0.2. Nevertheless, it was about the most tedious thing ever.
46: I don't think you need to googleproof her name in the course of linking to her site.
I was particularly vexed by the billable-hours question with a programming project a while ago. I had been engaged to debug some code; locating and fixing the bugs in this (spectacularly bad) piece of software was the whole job. Sometimes, I'd be diagnosing a bug, and go haring off on completely the wrong track; when I eventually found the cause of the bug, it was really obvious why that wrong track was such a wrong track. That would be okay, except that feeling of obviousness made me think it was a stupid mistake to have made, and then I felt like a bastard for billing for time spent making stupid mistakes.
I wound up billing such hours at between 50% and 75%, depending on the subtlety of the bug, but I was never happy with that as a solution.
(hey, this is my mineshaft debut)
56: AB has arranged her course to have 2 assignments, which are effectively drafts and require a ton of comments, come at about the mid- and 2/3-point of the semester. I don't think she puts comments on finals at all. Maybe general stuff, but nothing specific.
I doubt this helps, but as she spends 2 weeks out of every semester utterly buried in writing comments, it seemed relevant.
Hi Iain. Glad you're here. You're going to be on my side, right?
62: Right. That sort of thing is a huge problem for lawyers -- 'spent a week drafting motion papers that we decided would be a bad idea to file' is very depressing billing.
And hi! We'd give you a fruit basket, but I've lost it.
AB has arranged her course to have 2 assignments, which are effectively drafts and require a ton of comments, come at about the mid- and 2/3-point of the semester. I don't think she puts comments on finals at all.
I have to admit. I generally didn't read comments on my final papers. By the time I got them back I was ready to be done with the class.
In many cases I might have been perfectly interested in continuing conversations about the content of the class, but I really wasn't interested in re-visiting the state of mind I was in when I wrote the final papers.
In other words, AB may have the right idea.
I wasn't particularly inclined to do everything at the last minute either. It's just that writing final papers always made me depressingly aware of how far I had fallen short of genuine fluency with the course material. Even if I had a decent handle on it, I always felt conscious of big glaring gaps in my understanding.
For final papers, I like the "turn in a SASE with the paper if you want it back with the comments" move. I've never had more than half of the students bother.
63: That's basically my strategy, but this semester the calendar got screwed up because campus was closed after an arson, my final papers are due one week from today, and I'm still giving out comments on the first draft.
'spent a week drafting motion papers that we decided would be a bad idea to file'
Still better than "spent a week drafting motion papers that were stricken because the other attorney in the office who was supposed to file them forgot." Pretty sure that week wound up getting cut.
Could the attorneys and anyone else with billable hours comment on how this topic interacts with their billing practices? Does a client really expect that every minute of time one spends on their project is fully focused?
I believe that there is a long thread on this topic in the archives.
72: We all agreed not to bill for comment threads, right?
73: unless they contain legally-related topics or questions. Then I bill them as legal research (and, if I answer any questions, analysis).
74
(and, if I answer any questions, analysis).
Who do you send the bill to, the other commenters?
['Asking this question does not constitute an acceptance of terms.']
69: Blume (or anyone else) what does SASE stand for? There are papers that I would have wanted a lot of feedback on, because I get lonely doing that sort of work if I'm not thinking about how actual people might respond to it, and so I like to know.
BG, self-addressed stamped envelope.
'spent a week drafting motion papers that we decided would be a bad idea to file' is very depressing billing.
Not as depressing as in the plaintiffs' contingency fee practice, where the hypothetical billing entry looks more like "spent three years litigating until we lost, so we won't get paid."
On the plus side, I don't have to worry so much about "billing" on my time sheets for time spent goofing off.
Does a client really expect that every minute of time one spends on their project is fully focused?
Personally, I suspect that the jackal-headed god Anubis will comment on this issue before remanding me to the custody of the Devourer of Souls. Possibly with specific reference to blogs.
(Or, just see 43.)
I like the "turn in a SASE with the paper if you want it back with the comments" move
I gave one of these to every single professor I ever had. I'm still bitter about the extremely high percentage (>60% for sure; I'd have to check) who never mailed back my papers.
They'd had me for a whole semester at that point. They knew I was a night student. They knew I valued feedback.
I'm in the office about 60 hours a week; I'm generally here when I'm stuck having to be half-alert for something that depends on another person (e.g. on hold) and is too important for me to get focused on an entire other work project in the meantime.
It's harder than you think to properly address an envelope to itself. Very few of them have permanent addresses.
64: Hi Megan. Probably: I find rhubarb pie to be comfortable reading, and on the public record to be edifying. Although, now I come to think of it, I don't know why I think the latter is you except that it's a megan in california who seems to care about the same sorts of things as you do. If you're not the same person, maybe you could be friends?
67: I think maybe you'd best hold onto the fruit basket. Australian customs tend to look askance at imports that have started to sprout.
83.2: If this one were to sprout, it would assuredly retract in due course.
What's a starchitect? I know that folks are building with green materials now...
I've managed to invent a component of my job that involves computers, so that helps. I really should just go mop the floor, or something.
I'm an attorney, and although I don't do hourly billing, I'm incredibly busy when I'm at the office, so I rarely have the chance to surf the net or make blog posts (I'm home from work today, or I wouldn't be posting right now). This suits me, as my work is diverse and generally interesting and I don't like idle time at work. Also, the more work I get done, the more money I make, and the sooner I can go home for the day, so I have a lot of incentive to remain on task. However, when I was in law school, surfing the internet during class was the only thing that kept me sane, so I suppose it depends on the situation.
Blume (or anyone else) what does SASE stand for?
You know what's even faster than asking the mineshaft?
85: Not a strawchitect. A star architect. Like Frank Gehry or Rem Koolhaas or whoever. A better term would probably be parachute architects - internationally famous people who are hired for their fame, spend a few days in a city, and then drop an iteration of their stylized buildings.
That's a bit unfair, of course, and not every famous architect practices this way, but that's the connotation of "starchitect," anyway.
91: Sending an email to your librarian, asking him/her to look it up for you in the Reference section.
90: I suppose a parachute architect is a step up from a seagull architect.
Oh! I was mostly joking. It never occurs to me that commenters here have any other context for me.
Yes, I write otpr. Glad it is edifying you.
Yes, elk in the sense of european moose.
I'm not sure why I'm trying to play it cool.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT I MET AN ELK.
Yeah. I was having fun reading it like starch-itech, like the forks. But then I guess you don't want biodegradable buildings. Except maybe in LA.
Holy crap, Megan has a policy blog?! I thought it was all rhubarb pie these days. That's awesome. Now I shall read it.
I should note for people who hadn't been reading there yet (because I screwed it up in her comments) that she's anonymous on OTPR; don't call her Megan. I figure the CA water community must be small enough that she'd be instantly busted by first name.
URL under my name. Thanks. It is pretty unapologetically arcane, though.
It cracks me up that my old blog that has been defunct a year still gets more hits per day than my new live policy blog. At least half the searches that arrive at my old blog are for pictures of spiders.
Just call her Awesome Water Bureaucrat, or AWB for short. That will keep things straight.
For all the good the loose anonymity does me. I'm not sure why I'm clinging to it. I have a very silly hope that it would be hard to go backwards from otpr to my actual name.
A Water Bureaucrat would be fine. We could start by calling me that here.
Any elk in the outskirts of town is likely one of the bad seed juvenile delinquents that raided people's lawns here last year and not afraid of people.
I couldn't help stand and admire it for two minutes (and frantically taking photos), which wasn't prudent, since there was a small chance it would have been pissed and kicked my face in if it noticed me.
After I stepped back, an eldergly mideastern gentleman came after me, and he probably walked right next to the elk without noticing it.
Something I translated from a Australian reality cop show recently:
voiceover
But while they may look like real life water rats, Adam insists police diving is not a glamorous job.
105: Just to confirm, given that it was up close and personal: the elk was neither wee nor sleekit, right?
104: But then we wouldn't know whether AWB-fun meant chucking sofas off roofs or hanging out with insufferable New Yorkers.
It would have to mean chucking insufferable New Yorkers off roofs.
But I liked the New Yorkers I met! And she hangs out with some New Yorkers that I would never think are insufferable! Can we give them parachutes? Or attach bungee cords to their sofas before tossing them over?
This would be like the witch-test to determine which New Yorkers are insufferable: if we toss you off a roof, do you float down as if by a parachute? INSUFFERABLE!
What do you call 25 New Yorkers falling off a roof?
Skeet.
Actually, our current cat fell off a third-story roof in the mean brownstones of Brooklyn as a young cat. She broke a hip, which bothers her a bit (she claws her way onto the bed or couch rather than jumping) but obviously lived. (I think it was LB asking the other day about maximum animal sizes that don't get killed from terminal velocity falls.)
If we gave them parachutes then they'd be starchitects.
Love the Moose/Elk/Älg. Also that color of green in early Spring is great.
We have a herd of elk. I see them pretty frequently.
106: That's a reference to the Australian non-reality cop show Water Rats in which the police race around in speedboats catching waterborne criminals
(I think it was LB asking the other day about maximum animal sizes that don't get killed from terminal velocity falls.)
That one comes up from time to time.
117: Ah, but they're entirely different from Weman's elk. I think. I looked this up the last time we got into a moose conversation and instantly got confused again, but I think Weman's elk are moose in the US, and your elk are some kind of deer in Europe.
And none of them are either wee or sleekit.
120: That sounds right. I can never remember if our elk are their moose or vice versa. It's hard to tell from the picture in 86, but I think that's what I would call a moose. I've never seen one of those.
120,121: Yes Alces alces are moose in North America and elk in Europe. The European subspecies tend to be smaller than their NA cousins.
And none of them are either wee or sleekit.
That whole exchange still cracks me up.
I always have at least one distraction window up at work. I have a cube with high walls and people have to walk around to its entrance to get where they can see my monitor or talk to me, so I have plenty of warning. My team, though, is conscious of the feast-or-famine nature of our work, so making use of downtime for non-work pursuits is not at all a problem.
The funny thing is, though, that I missed this thread during the day because I was way too busy at work to look at blogs and later had someone sitting in my cube with me while we worked on something together so I couldn't sneak peaks at another tab or a comment window.
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Tomorrow is our neighborhood's Community Day, which means yard sales around the neighborhood and a big bake sale to benefit our neighborhood watch program. Tonight I baked these frankly magnificent cookies to give to the sale tomorrow morning: oats, brown sugar, loads of butter, chocolate chips, butterscotch, cinnamon and pecans. They are so good that I woke up Rah, who hadn't slept in about 40 hours due to work, and made him try one while still warm. I can't decide whether this makes me wonderful or terrible as a boyfriend but I don't really care as long as I can bake cookies like this.
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I can't decide whether this makes me wonderful or terrible as a boyfriend.
You can be both. You could be kinda like Galadriel when she went all scary, except with cookies. Also you should send me some cookies. I have no cookies.
It was a wee and probably sleekit moose I met, not fullgrown, and entrancing but likely, as above, a juvenile delinquent.
It could still kill me if it wanted to, which is part of why meeting a moose is a memorable experience.
"Love the Moose/Elk/Älg. Also that color of green in early Spring is great."
Um, late spring. I live in the mild, populated part of Sweden.
It did come out really pretty with that evening sunlight. It was taken at 20:20.
I wish we used wapiti more commonly for our North American animal.
It could still kill me if it wanted to
Does it know where you live?
38 update: I did in fact get the prize I was up for. I also managed to avoid any sort of confrontation with the people I thought I would have to confront, which is, I guess, bad. I managed to introduce my best friend (and sometimes lover*) to my other best friend (and professed, but not actual, lover) and it was only mildly hostile.
* Can someone come up with a better term for this? Is there a non-degrading, non-romantic term for someone one has sex with? Or is it fundamentally either degrading or romantic to have sex on a semi-regular basis with someone you're not dating?
124: McManly, could you please post the recipe?
Own "lover." Congrats on the prize.
Congrats AWB.
Why do you need a term? Why attempt to place someone into a box defined by a single word?
Many relationships resist a simple definition.
Congrats, AWB! And the term "lover" grates on me too, more even that friend-with-benefits. But will probably nails it -- who needs formal terms?
131: Congrats!
As for the second one, my friend and I have been stumped for a good name as well. Maybe "undercover partner"?
I don't want to put anyone into a box, but it's nice to have a word that clearly communicates a relationship. If I call her my "partner," I'm sure her husband would disagree. He's her partner. "Lover" just sounds so 70's or something. "Girlfriend" implies either that we're dating or that we're 40-somethings who go to spinning class together.
She just called. Apparently we had sex last night before her husband picked her up? I DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING. Thanks, tequila.
I don't want to put anyone into a box
At least not until you get some tequila in you, apparently.
Yeah, I tried to convince her that she raped me, but apparently this was not the case.
Congrats, AWB! That's so great! I mean the award. I'm not evaluating forgotten sex with your best friend.
Congratulations, AWB! Is it the kind of award which oils your professional wheels or your budgetary ones? (Hoping both.)
144: Both! It's the most prestigious prize offered by my department, and pays $4K. I've never had an unexpected four grand before. Maybe I'll take a vacation! Or go back into therapy!
Do they report the money? I won a prize several years ago, excitedly spent all the money, and then SURPRISE! had to pay taxes on it.
Yay, prize! And it's a shame when the spot for a word you want to use it taken up by words with unpleasant connotations: I was riffling through my vocabulary for a substitute for 'lover' there, and didn't come up with anything better than 'fuckbuddy', which sounds really unfriendly. Possibly this is a moment for pretentiously borrowing foreign words? I don't have a candidate, but some language must have a good one.
I'm not sure. Sometimes our school's books can be very sloppy. I've called before about whether to include things on my taxes or not and they are not helpful. But I hear they're pretty careful with the money on these prizes; I'm guessing it gets reported.
German's no good. Liebhaber is terrible (though not as bad as Lover said with a German accent, which you sometimes hear). There's a great word for partner, Lebensgefährte, which means 'life companion', but that's no help here. Maybe French!
fuckbuddy
Shudder. That's a horrible word; I agree. I'd be happy to borrow something from another language if there was such a word. Anyone have any suggestions? I sort of like "petite amie."
I thought friends with benefit was the standard term, though maybe you don't use it in singular.
The Swedish term, fairly prevalent I think, is KK, ie knullkompis, ie fuck buddy.
154: Besides unwieldiness and the implication that other friendships don't have benefits, the other major problem of "Friends with Benefits" is how it actually gets used in the lexicon. Any pair of people I've known who described themselves as friends with benefits were not really friends. They were one another's booty call, and they could stand to stick around for breakfast the next day, but that was pretty much the extent of their relationship.
"Friends with Benefits" has been hijacked by those who aren't really friends, making it inappropriate for people who are actually good friends and just happen to enjoy getting into one another's what-nots.
154: I always thought this sounded sleazy. Part of the difficulty is that (a) the most important part of our relationship that should be communicated is that we are very close friends, but (b) it also seems somehow not accurate to fail to communicate that we have a sexual relationship, but (c) in doing so it sort of cheapens (a).
So my other best friend, with whom I have not had sex but with whom I'm mutually in love, knows that this woman and I hang out all the time, that I love her, that we have a very caring friendship. When I recently clarified for him that we also occasionally sleep together, it sort of confused him. After I introduced the two of them last night, he walked off rather quickly and she was all "Was he going to punch me?" It's like he doesn't know whether to be jealous, titillated, glad to meet her, or nervous about whether she'll like him. There's no good name for her role in my life that clarifies whether it leaves room for him too.
people who are actually good friends and just happen to enjoy getting into one another's what-nots.
This, I have to admit, I find a mystifying relationship; friendly acquaintance/booty call makes much more sense to me. If you're good friends, and the what-nots are appealing, what's the barrier to romance? (I suppose incompatible long-term life plans would preclude committment, but I'd think of even an agreed upon time- or intensity-limited relationship under those circumstances as a romantic one.)
And of course the mystification doesn't extend to Bear's situation, where the structure of the situation makes sense. I was thinking of 'Orientation compatible couple with no other more primary relationship' when I was being mystified.
Why do you have to clarify to the public that you have a sexual relationship?
Other than saying "yea, I hit that," it seems unnecessary and slightly too much information.
Not Bear, but I'd guess that she's not worried about 'the public', but about the sort of friends who you do keep abreast of what's going on in your life. Making it an announcement is making too much of it, but having a word for it when you're talking to friends is convenient.
This, I have to admit, I find a mystifying relationship; friendly acquaintance/booty call makes much more sense to me. If you're good friends, and the what-nots are appealing, what's the barrier to romance? (I suppose incompatible long-term life plans would preclude committment, but I'd think of even an agreed upon time- or intensity-limited relationship under those circumstances as a romantic one.)
This is what bothers me about using such simple terms to try to define a relationship. It seems oddly similar to saying using the term "best friend" or "maid of honor." They are really only good words for exclusion purposes.
"She is my best friend, NOT you!"
"I am sleeping with HER, not you."
160: She's not really clarifying it to the public. She's sharing info with her e-friends.
will, you're needed in the Crunch thread for your divorce expertise.
The French use "copine" for both "girlfriend" and "friend who is a girl."
158,9: Well, that's sort of the position I'm in with this guy. I can't date him. He can't date me. We're not psychologically compatible in that he's terrible in relationships, takes advantage of people, is violent and argumentative and needy and incredibly self-loathing and anxious. (He's in heavy-duty therapy about all this.) I would let him walk all over me if I was his girlfriend. I'd want to take care of him and make everything better for him, and that's not good for him or for me.
But we're in love with each other because love is stupid. It's something we talk about. We're also nearly pathologically attracted to each other. We talk about having a more physical relationship, which now seems to include smooching and general handsiness but not making out or nudity, but I think both of us fear that it would lead to us actually dating.
I'm not just being coy or whatever when I say I can't date him. We would fucking kill each other.
In my case, both of us are balancing work and school, and just don't really feel like the sort of obligation-feeling that comes with making things official. We both dated around a bit in the early part, and that's mostly ending because she and another friend of mine are about to move in with me (to study for the bar, until they get jobs that can support apartments).
The way it made the most sense to me is that "girlfriend" seems to occupy a place in my mind slightly above even best friends. We're not like that, we're really just very good friends, and I'm lucky enough to have a couple amazing friends whom I love just as much and would happily drop everything for. So she doesn't really have a completely unique place in my heart. Between that lack of "emotional exclusivity" and the agreed-upon lack of sexual exclusivity, it just seems a bit odd to call one another boyfriend or girlfriend.
167 to 158. (And geez, sisters apparently make everything take so much longer. They were supposed to leave for brunch like half an hour ago!)
AB still gives me shit over one time (one time!) that we, apparently, had sex that I didn't recall in the morning.
And, indeed, I think tequila played a role.
I hereby vow not to pay it forward, and never to remind AWB that she had amnesiac sex with her loverfriend.
The good news is that these people have names, for use in conversation with people who really know you, and a more general label (friend) for people who don't.
Congratulations on the prize, AWB.
167: Eh, it's the way your mind or my mind puts things in boxes. To me, that sounds like a boyfriend/girlfriend, significant other, whatever your word is for romantic relationship thing, with qualifications that are important, but not particularly fundamental -- in a similar situation, I wouldn't be looking for a term to distinguish what you're in from a romantic relationship. But given that that's what makes sense to you, I can see it.
166: Yeah, I can see that. But there the relationship is complex, but it boils down to 'very close friends who'd love to be involved with each other but mutually recognize that it really wouldn't work'; 'friends' works as well as any other word for it.
I often introduce him to people as "my buddy," as in "This is my buddy, [name]." He makes fun of me for it, but it seems a good way of communicating a childish sort of attachment and affection while also being clear that we're not dating.
Also, 166.1 describes a situation not unlike Bad Old GF & me (me in the AWB role, of course). She was not quite as bad as that description, but all of those traits were present.
Oh, and many congratulations, on both parts of the prize. I came up to my office to check on my finances and figure out how to pay for groceries*, and discovered that my tax refund/EITC had been deposited. Woo! Bills paid! Food bought! Back on a cash basis for a couple months!
* AB went to the intake interview for food stamps this week, and was extremely grumpified to learn that "day care" is an acceptable expense (ie, deducted from your income in calculating eligibility), but "preschool" is not. What's the distinction? "Preschool" means "enriching" activities occur. So, to be clear: if you dump your kid off at somebody's house where she'll be set in front of TV all day, that expense improves your eligibility for food stamps; if you apply your limited resources towards trying to put your kid in a position to learn things, you won't get as much help feeding her.
Yeah. I guess I love him to much to ever want to have to look back at him as my Bad Old BF. But as it is, it's sort of like having a boyfriend without the sex. We're constantly cockblocking each other because we're so obviously together. Last night I made a point of not talking to him while he was chatting with a pretty girl, and I think it hurt his feelings that I didn't. Neither of us has the right to be jealous, but we both are. Frankly, the whole situation sucks. OTOH, I don't think anyone has ever loved me more, and that feels really shockingly good.
too much. God, I think I'm still drunk. Yay!
175: It sounds like something that made sense ("daycare should be deducted to reward working families") in the abstract but not in practice. Stupid laws. Good luck with not killing the bureaucrats.
What about "my friend" and then, if it ever matters, explaining that you sometimes sleep together. Most people wouldn't really be concerned with what you do with your genitals, right, except out of titillation?
Of course, ATM you owe us more information, so "best friend (and sometimes lover*)" is appropriate.
179.1 is what I generally do, since most people don't need to know we have sex. But it is a bit of a shocking revelation--first, that I'm not straight, and second, that I have a sort-of girlfriend, and third, that she's married.
Congratulations, AWB. Cash prizes are the best prizes.
Having a word for it makes sense to me for that reason, as a way to put background information into the sort of conversation where it's appropriate without having to make everything a heavy announcement.
No, the right way to handle it is with a vaguely Northern European accent: "After we made love the other day, X and I were discussing... Why do look shocked? It is a natural function, making love. What do you do with your friends?"
Intimate friend? Still ambiguous, but not necessarily exclusive, and not as cloying or sarcastic as "special". ("Special" has become a "special" in general.)
"Mary is the friend who I go see old Woody Allen movies with, Sam is my kayaking buddy and Lou is the one that doesn't mind if I do amyl nitrate poppers when I come."
Congratulations on the booty, AWB, and good luck naming the booty.
The good news is that these people have names, for use in conversation with people who really know you, and a more general label (friend) for people who don't.
I'd say this is about 80% right. The 20% is social courtesy. Miss Manners says the point of etiquette is to put people at ease, and there have certainly been occasions where the multitude of possibilities contained within "friend" has created serious awkwardness and anger. I'd appreciate being put at ease in those situations, so that I don't inadvertently offend people.
As a colleague, friend, or boss, I'm going to ration the information I give out about you to other people based on your relationship with them. I don't particularly relish getting castigated for not knowing that your "friend" is actually someone who is allowed to know why you're out sick, that you're looking for a new job, or that you're pregnant.
Most of this is not hard to pick up from social cues, hence the 80% above. But people have an alarming tendency to think that the social cues common in their circle are known to all, and that can be pretty unpleasant.
On a semi-related note, I'm sure I told the story here before of being at a party when I was 22 or so, introduced to someone's 50-something partner and having a relaxed and engaged conversation before it became clear that he was only her business partner, and he thought my friendly conversation meant that he was being invited to trail me around for the rest of the evening and presume a romantic attachment. Yeccchhh.
Fellow union organizer to worker: "Meet my partner, Ali."
Worker: "Partner? What're you guys, cowboys?"
I'd say this is about 80% right. The 20% is social courtesy. Miss Manners says the point of etiquette is to put people at ease, and there have certainly been occasions where the multitude of possibilities contained within "friend" has created serious awkwardness and anger. I'd appreciate being put at ease in those situations, so that I don't inadvertently offend people.
Right -- in a social setting where the nature of relationships between people is going to be relevant to how they behave, it's at least sometimes polite to tip off anyone who doesn't know all the relationships as to what they are.
187.last sort of happened to me once last fall. I was introduced to a married couple, much older, and let my guard down a lot, chatted very openly with the husband. Within an hour, he had a hand on my knee. I didn't mind--he was really hott for a 50-something-year-old dude--but I kept waiting for his wife to jump in or do something about it. She'd just look over, glance at where his hands were, and smile.
Later, of course, the host tells me they have an open relationship. But it's amazing how thinking someone is not sexually available allows you to open up to them and be instantly vulnerable. I bet this guy gets a lot of tail that way.
But it is a bit of a shocking revelation--first, that I'm not straight, and second, that I have a sort-of girlfriend, and third, that she's married.
Clearly you need to move to the Bay Area. That wouldn't qualify as shocking here.
(Of course, then you'd have to deal with people calling you her secondary, and I don't know how you'd feel about that.)
Use the term "lover". The 70s were right. The plutocrats have worked overtime to destroy the idea of a society based on anything other than greed, and the 70s was the closest we ever came, so the propagandists work overtime to make it tacky. This means that in utopia we're all going to have shag carpet, but fuck it, it's worth it.
AWB:
Was it that Patron coffee tequila? That stuff is dangerously good.
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JRoth, I like your post about small towns.
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I have yet to open Unfogged--or any other blog without work-related content--at my new job. I'm pretty surprised that I have the willpower.
I lasted three or four months here. Then I started commenting just a little, and lost it completely.
I always think "WeHo" refers to West Hoboken.
It might very well in New York but doesn't in Google. Atypical is typical out here.
There's no good name for her role in my life that clarifies whether it leaves room for him too.
This, I think, is a problem with or without sex, depending on who wants how much room. The Drunk was like this in that whoever else was involved in my life in any way was a threat to her. So she said horrible things about me to other people, and horrible things about other people to me, because the most important thing was that she be at the center of everyone's life. Most people aren't quite so (overtly?) pathological, but I think there's always an element of this when we meet significant people in the lives of people we consider significant. What is my significance in the mix? Does the other significant person cut into the affection that might otherwise flow toward me? Is my friend being dismissive because I'm not significant to him or because that is how he is with even the people who matter most?
Yeah, I think with my friend and me, it worries him to meet other people I care about because then he learns that I love them too. And while I know for sure that he has many people in his life whom he cares about very deeply, he's insistent that "this" [you-me hand gesture] is something he only has with me. It's true that I don't have "this" [gesture] with anyone else, but it's also important to me that the people I love allow me to love other people (not, like, sexually, necessarily, but love with my heart). So my lack of jealousy drives him nuts because he thinks I don't love him enough. (And he just texted me to ask about the rest of my night.)
Dirty secret: Unfogged threads, pasted into a Word doc, look much like anything else one could legitimately be reviewing. Same for books from the Gutenberg project.
Commenting means a bit more sneakiness, but there are resizing the window games that can be played, as well.
I was surprised to find that I had to evaluate an infinite series--when analyzing budget tradeoffs! I did not expect that.
And while I know for sure that he has many people in his life whom he cares about very deeply, he's insistent that "this" [you-me hand gesture] is something he only has with me.
Yeah, I just closed the book on a friendship this week with a guy who explained that "this" was the type of emotional intimacy he could only share with one woman, his partner, and that the remainder of his friendships are limited to occasional "compartmentalized" interactions (i.e., they might talk about serious issues on occasion, but don't follow up or think about each other or those issues outside of the immediate conversation). I'm very much the opposite in that I generally love each of my friends quite deeply. A bit confusing* in that we most certainly used to have "this" and his partner was no less his partner nor no less serious at that time, so it's not entirely clear why "this" was okay then and not now.
* Right, okay, maybe not that confusing if I were to accept that the "this" that used to be "there" wasn't so much "this" as it was him contemplating what other option he thought might be out there and "this" couldn't exist once "that" was ruled out. But I refuse to accept it! Because "this" meant something, dammit!
It would suck way more if he turned out to be who I'd thought he was and the friendship didn't work out. But acknowledging different standards for friendship and acknowledging that they are utterly incompatible is actually kind of nice on one level. It helps that my standards don't limit me to caring deeply about only one person at a time.
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This article has an excellent, Mineshaft-appropriate title, though I can't bring myself to read it.
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207: They left out a crucial word, though.
Here's an old but still wonderful story about elk; rather, a dead elk, specifically dogs in elk.
~132: Here you go!
Set the oven to preheating to 375. Grease a cookie sheet using a little butter (or whatever you use if you don't use butter).
Throw two cups (four sticks) of butter and two cups of light brown sugar (tightly packed) into a stand mixer and mix very well. (I'm sure you don't need a stand mixer, but c'mon.) Then add two whisked eggs and a generous tablespoon of vanilla extract and set on medium speed so that it can start to cream.
While that's happening, mix together in a separate bowl: two cups all-purpose flour, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of baking soda, a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon and two cups of uncooked oats (old-fashioned or quick, it doesn't matter).
Set the mixer on low and start adding your dry to your wet a little at a time as per standard baking procedures. You're going to have to pause fairly often to scrape down the bowl. Once you've got all the dry ingredients in, set it back on medium and make sure it's well-mixed.
Now, throw in a couple of cups of chocolate chips, a couple of cups of butterscotch chips and two cups of pecans, either halves or pieces (I like the halves, but that's just me). Make sure everything is mixed in. Spoon out quarter-to-half-cup cookies onto the pan with a couple of inches between them. (They will wind up mushed together here and there; they make very large cookies.)
The instructions I originally had said to bake them for 12 to 15 minutes or until light brown but no longer. In my oven they have to be baked at least 15 minutes or they're too soft and fall apart when I try to deal with them later.
When done, take them out and let them cool for two minutes on the sheet, then transfer to a rack or a sheet of tin foil or whatever. They will be very fragile, so either be extremely patient or bear the terrible burden of cookies that are eaten in chunks. (I am never patient with things I bake.) They are mushy and chewy when fresh but overnight they solidify just enough to gain some structural integrity without becoming crunchy or brittle. They'll have an interesting consistency that varies from one bite to another.
I'm posting this from memory, since the cookbook is all the way inside and that's, like, ten feet away, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing I've forgotten.
Also, congratulations AWB on everything! I feel your naming pain. I have always hated the word "lover" because hearing it makes me visualize explicit sex between the two people who are using it at the moment and that's not actually something I want to do very often.
The term used in my social circle for a while was the "um-friend," in that they were, when introduced, "my... um, friend." I have struggled for seven years now regarding how to refer to Rah. I've settled on "partner" but sometimes I say "husband" but we can't actually get married so that's not really true but I hate the word "lover" but I hate "life partner" or "life companion" as sounding like terminology explained in a particularly awful Star Trek slash-fiction posted somewhere on a fan site.
Oh, and BG, that one recipe makes about thirty large cookies, so be warned if you're looking to bake something for you and the boyfriend to nosh on and don't want to have to lean to one side to see one another around the mound of cookies. I went for a full batch for bake sale reasons. I saved back only six for the both of us.
That's a lot of butter in that recipe, Robust. Wow.
My mother once had an oats, butter, chocolate, maybe karo syrup? recipe for a sort of two-layered chocolate/oat bar that was out of this world. The oats portion may have involved flour and salt, but that was about it. Even as it was fantastic, I felt there was something that disturbed me. I could never put my finger on it, of course, since these chocolate oat bars were in front of me.
How much butter is a stick?
Eight tablespoons, or a 1/2 cup.
Unfogged threads, pasted into a Word doc
But beware, keyboard shortcut friends: Ctrl+V is not your friend.
Four ounces, or a quarter pound.
Four ounces, or a quarter pound.
Show-off.
Using weight is showing off? I can't imagine measuring butter out by quantity, except maybe at the tablespoon level.
But beware, keyboard shortcut friends: Ctrl+V is not your friend.
Why? Because there is, or can be, a record of them on the machine? For your colleagues to see? Or .. why, Witt?
I am a lover of keyboard shortcuts. I Ctrl/A, Ctrl/C, Ctrl/V all over the place. These people who laboriously mouse over and highlight everything, and use the menus to cut and paste, or drag and drop, just seem silly to me.
What am I doing wrong, Witt?
And yes, that is a hell of a lot of butter in the recipe
</whisper>
Anyway, I've generally not read Unfogged at all, and have never commented, from work. Grad school excepted, but that's different. I stick to news blogs which have had the virtue, often, of being work-related anyway. But even those I barely read. I like to have a separation between work and everything else.
Basil, I was just being silly to Charley, implying that it was a bit over the top to provide two additional measure after I had already given two. Butter in the US is generally sold in plastic wrappers with tablespoon lines marked, and it usually also says 4 tbsp = 1/4 c. and 8 tbsp. = 1/2 c., so if someone who is unused to cooking buys it, you'll still be able to figure things out pretty easily.
Parsimon, I love keyboard shortcuts and use them nonstop. I was just mentioning that if you're doing a lot of Ctrl+A, copy, paste, with Unfogged threads, but working on other documents and e-mail at the same time, there's the danger of accidentally pasting an Unfogged thread into another document and saving/closing/sending it before you have time to notice. Not likely, but possible, if you use shortcuts a lot and often (ahem) have 15 or 20 windows open.
Oh, I thought you were referring to word's - and other editors' capable of html - tendency to default paste webpages formatted to look like webpages rather than like office documents. Which could be a problem if you're not usually working with webpages. Hence paste special.
223.2: I would never make that mistake! It's best to keep open windows/tabs to 4 or 6 anyway. If I ever read unfogged at work, I back out of it on occasion and erase the history from time to time, ahem.
Seriously, my work partner knows about unfogged and has even read it once or twice, but if and when I spend time at the shop reading it, that's between me and myself. I very rarely comment from work.
223: Ah! Now I understand. I was imagining having to squash butter into a measuring cup.
196: Then I started commenting just a little, and lost it completely.
It was fun (and somewhat reassuring) to watch that play out.
Also, that's an awful lot of vanilla. Using the vanilla extract I get over here, I'd expect to use about a teaspoon, maybe less, for those quantities if I wanted to taste anything else. For future reference does anybody know if it's generally sold in weaker solution in America? So I can adapt recipes?
Butter in the US is sold in one pound cartons, four sticks to the carton.
228: I don't know if there's a difference, but RMMP's recipe has about three to six times as much vanilla as I'd expect in a recipe for cookies.
naw, that sounds right; you can reliably double or tripe the amt of vanilla in a given recipe with good results.
I did mention that this recipe makes thirty (goddamn) cookies, didn't I? This is a very large recipe. It makes a lot of cookies. Feel free to subdivide it to your hearts' individual desires. It has a lot of everything. Just the dry ingredients - brown sugar, flour, oats, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and pecans - come out to twelve cups of ingredients. The output filled a plastic grocery bag, once individually packaged for sale.
there's the danger of accidentally pasting an Unfogged thread into another document and saving/closing/sending it before you have time to notice
I did this once with a change control document at Ma Bell. Pasted my comment right into it and closed it out and pasted "this request has been completed; please let us know if further changes are required" into the comment box. I caught it at the comment box end but not the change control end. Oops. Happily, the client never noticed.
Congratulations, Bear! (late, I know, but still...)
On the money thing: Guesstimate taxes and send in a check to the IRS as soon as the award check clears. That gets rid of temptation to cheat and avoids a financial crunch next April.
On the name thing: I was once introduced by the woman I was sleeping with as "bed-mate." Pretty much the lousiest option, that one. Our situation was odd because it was a genuine friendship+sex without the usual baggage that goes along with a serious relationship since I was the auxiliary boyfriend while the primary (fully aware of the situation) was out of town for a year. One of the most enjoyable relationships I've ever had, actually.
Robust, those cookies are seriously making me itch to bake, and I already have a rhubarb crisp on the counter. My expanding waist line will not thank you! (But I'm guessing my mouth will, as soon as I get around to it).
233: What happened when he came back?
236: I became "Close Friend She Used to Fuck" which is an odd role, and he returned to being "The Boyfriend." I get along well enough with him that we're still friends (albeit distant ones) 16 years later. We shared a hotel room at her wedding, actually.
I think that perhaps my ideal relationship would be one like that, with a clear end date. Too much of the stress in relationships comes from plans for the future, which typically involve one or both partners planning for a future with someone who is much like the other partner, but with a few key adjustments. It's those adjustments that create the real pebble in your shoe types of stresses that build up over time.
194: Thanks. I wish that I posted more often. But I was never a very regular blogger, and Unfogged sucks up most of my desire to share my thought bubbles (sorry about that), and since I never developed a regular audience, it didn't make sense to invest a lot of time there. The only blogging I do is Tour de France every July. Weirdly.
We shared a hotel room at her wedding, actually.
Took 3 tries on this til I understood that she married a third party.
237.2: Yes, yes, yes. Whenever I envision dating anyone I know, I tend to think, "Wouldn't it be great if I were moving overseas at the end of the summer?" Or, in some cases, I think, "I bet I could stand like one whole weekend with him and it would be really fun and then we could go back to being friends." This, it seems, is a sign that I do not actually want to date these people. OTOH, a short-term situation does not seem like a loss to me. It can be a good thing!
Hm Contrariwise, I'm a sucker for the partnership-style relationship. I suppose the worst thing is for a partnership favorer to try having a relationship with a temporary-style person. Yep.
I suppose the worst thing is for a partnership favorer to try having a relationship with a temporary-style person.
Indeed.
I don't think it's necessarily about what "type" of person you are, but what kind of relationship you could see yourself having with a particular person.