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July 31, 2008
Book
I left my fiction at work and it is a tragedy! I started "Year of Wonders" today. I've wanted to read it since I happened upon a Geraldine Brooks reading at Powells in 2001, the year it came out.
I was vaguely interested in Brooks because of her marriage to Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic, Pulitzer-prize winning former Wall Street Journal reporter, and one-time resident of Waterford, Virginia.
I learned, when she spoke at Powells, that Brooks is also a former Wall Street Journal reporter and she is Australian-American. Then she started describing the book: historical fiction about an isolated English community that, when devastated by the plague in 1666, chooses voluntary quarantine to limit the spread of the disease. Then she started reading, and I knew I had to get the book.
Seven years later, Brooks has her own Pulitzer - this one for fiction - to complement her husband's. I saw the winning book, "March," on display at a bookstore yesterday and I decided to finally track down "Year of Wonders."
I started it on my lunch break today, and I'm glad that I finally found this book. It is beautiful. I want to devour it. I want to know what happens next. I want to enjoy it. I left it at work.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2008
Ben says:
I ordered a new gold-plated alto saxophone from this guy in New York I've done business with before named Phil Barone. He imports saxophones from Taiwan and puts his logo on them. The horns have been well received but they are inexpensive.
Well-made saxophones that have good reputations and get used by more musicians have historically been manufactured in places like the U.S., France, and Germany. Recently, these horns have become outrageously expensive due to the number of hobbyists like me out there who might have some more money than starving musicians, and might also be more willing to use the internet to acquire them. On this one board I read, there are more than a few people with like six horns or more just because they want them. Often, these are the expensive ones.
Historically, Chinese and Taiwanese made saxophones have been shoddy and cheap. They are still cheap, but Taiwan at least has figured out how to make good ones. There was an NPR article recently about the people who make saxophones in Taiwan.
Anyway, I'm getting an alto to provide an alternate voice to my tenor saxophone, and possibly even use both on a gig. The most recent combo I've entered into is with another tenor player (we rehearse tonight for the first time), so I thought it might be good to play something else. We also both can play clarinet. Long story short, this pushed me over the edge... I've been wanting another voice of saxophone for quite some time.
Here's some links to pictures of the model I'm getting (it's shiny!):
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:07 PM | Comments (3)
July 29, 2008
Slowly I learn
Homework, question 26: Project the current (system) date in a format of your choice (not the default format).
My first attempt:
SELECT
CAST(MONTH(GETDATE()) AS VARCHAR(2))+'/'+
CAST(DAY(GETDATE()) AS VARCHAR(2))+'/'+
CAST(YEAR(GETDATE()) AS VARCHAR(4))
AS Date,
CAST(DATEPART(HOUR,GETDATE()) AS VARCHAR(2))+':'+
CAST(DATEPART(MINUTE,GETDATE()) AS VARCHAR(2))+':'+
CAST(DATEPART(SECOND,GETDATE()) AS VARCHAR(2))
AS 'Proof that this student is up too late' ;
Initial results:
Date Proof that this student is up too late
---------- --------------------------------------
7/29/2008 23:0:20
Final answer:
SELECT
CONVERT(CHAR, GETDATE(), 100) as "Proof that this student is up too late";
Final results:
Proof that this student is up too late
--------------------------------------
Jul 29 2008 11:55PM
Good night!
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:57 PM | Comments (1)
July 28, 2008
House musing
We bought our home for $195,000 with a 10 percent down payment in May 2007, a townhouse in a row of 12 identical units. A few weeks later a unit on the other end of the row sold for $239,900; its owner had passed away and his son sold the house. Six months later another neighbor retired and sold her place for $224,200. This morning my next door neighbor, who recently became disabled and can no longer live with all these stairs, signed hers away for $224,000. I feel pretty good about my situation. I feel like Ben and I should formally initiate the "you'd better remove my PMI" proceedings with our lender.
PMI, or private mortgage insurance, is required by mortgage companies when a home owner puts down less than 20 percent of the cost of the house. Mortgage brokers repeatedly and vehemently told us that we were foolish to sign a single 6 percent 30 year fixed rate loan and pay PMI, when we could have one 6 percent/30 year loan for 80 percent of the house's value, and get a 30 year 8.5 percent ARM for another 10 percent. We'd be throwing money away on PMI, they'd say, seemingly oblivious to the amount of money we'd throw away on interest over the course of 30 years.
We're about to show them a thing or two.
I just hope the fact that the crazy pack rat neighbor sold his totally trashed place for $130,000 in February doesn't mess every thing up. The guy who bought that place spent months gutting it and rebuilding the interior from the ground up, the damage was so bad. Do appraisers take that kind of thing into account?
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:37 PM | Comments (3)
July 27, 2008
One fun thing I did today
I got up in the morning and took a shower and put on a fun party outfit and got myself all groomed up this morning before I sat down to spend hours updating my computer so I could do my homework, then doing my homework, then engaging in other productive but dull life activities. Every time I walked by a mirror I saw my flouncy skirt and it made me smile.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:37 PM | Comments (2)
Hibernating
I'm still here. I've been hibernating this weekend. Ben and I had many, many invitations to do lots of fun and fulfilling things, but for the most part we stayed in and worked somewhat hard to meet our many overwhelming obligations.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2008
Husband update
Ben has joined a third jazz band. He is now in the Woodshed Jazz Orchestra, a smallish combo and a saxophone duet. He practices regularly at least six days a week. He taxes private and group lessons from a guy who with his own entry on Wikipedia. Now Ben's thinking of getting a second saxophone, maybe doing some composing.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:10 PM | Comments (3)
July 23, 2008
Life's like a movie, make your own ending
If you just can't get enough of my text-based tales of minestrone and databases, just wait until you get a load of the movie!
Minestrone and databases from Courtney Sherwood on Vimeo.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)
Brain dead
Relational databases ate my brain this evening. Now I'm preparing to eat minestrone. If I were going to create a database about my soup, it would require only three tables: RECIPES, INGREDIENTS, RECIPE_INGREDIENT_INDEX. It would not be as tasty as fresh homemade stock simmered for hours with vegetables from the farmers market, home-grown beans from someone I know, sea shell pasta and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. This is a very large pot of soup. I'm looking forward to devouring it over the next few days.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:27 PM | Comments (2)
July 22, 2008
Hard work, cats, camels and now it's time for bed
Today news broke all over the place, and I was there to write it up. Both my stories were picked to run A1 in tomorrow's paper, and I still managed to make most of my appointments, update the blog, and plan for the week ahead before I clocked out at 5 p.m. Then I ran four miles, came home, and cooked up a light dinner. I've spent this evening diagramming databases for my class. It's breaking my brain a bit. It's 16 hours since I woke up, I haven't stopped rushing since I got out of bed, and I'm beat.
I have a story to tell about a cat in the shower. Oh, and I've learned a few things about myself over the past week or so, you might like to hear about that. Then there's the picture of a guy I know on a camel. It's late, I'm tired, and I think I'm going to go the easy route.
Here's Matt on a camel. Matt's a hard-working colleague who spent the last three weeks blogging from Egypt. I'm a bit jealous, it sounds like he had a good time.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2008
Courtney Courtney Courtney starts with C.
Tonight I ate so much cookie dough that I became nauseous. This might sound like a bad thing, but in fact it's an improvement on recent history. Usually I ignore the queasy feeling and keep right on eating until I become physically ill. This time I decided to bake some of the dough, rather than eat all 48 unborn cookies. At least 24 chocolate chip cookies will avoid my gullet for long enough to become fully baked. They should be done in about 8 minutes. Good thing. Me want cookie.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:55 PM | Comments (1)
July 20, 2008
Running out of things to say
I've run out of things to say. This blog had a good run, I guess, but now I'm struck silent by the mundanity of my life.
I sleep! I wake up! I eat! I watch TV! I work! I play with cats! That's about it. Sometimes I log on and write about sleeping or waking up, eating butter or cheese, watching something stupid on TV, working hard, or rubbing a cat's belly. But it gets old after a while.
I'm happy, and happiness is boring.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:58 PM | Comments (7)
July 16, 2008
Academia
Here's hoping one bad week doesn't derail my performance in this database class I'm taking. I've been so sick all week that I've climbed into bed shortly after dinner every evening. I didn't start the homework that's due this evening until today. I could push through and get it done on time, but I'm crashing. So yeah, I'm going to bed. The professor takes homework up to two days late. I'll finish it tomorrow. I definitely feel guilty, but I also feel congested and tired. I really want an A in this class. I hope one late assignment out of eight doesn't destroy my odds.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2008
Still sick
My neural matter has been transformed to a mass of snot. I think it was originally a large snot cube. Shoved into the tight curves of my skull, it's now under a great deal of pressure. The snot is trying to escape, and as it goes my snotty brain cells vanish forever.
This is a bad situation to be in when you have a lot of brain work to do. I'm trying to learn about banking, because writing about financial institutions became part of my job this week. Banks are complicated. Try learning about complicated, highly technical, highly regulated, numbers-laden subjects with a pressurized brain of snot that's oozing out your nose while you type. It's hard.
Tomorrow may be even harder. It was in the 90s when I drove home today in a car that has no air conditioning. There was some kind of a traffic jam. I burned away an eighth of a tank of gasoline in eight miles. My left arm baked brown in the sun. The heat melted what was left of my snotty brain. Most of it leaked away before I got home. And tomorrow I have to turn in another complicated, numbers-laden story.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:37 PM | Comments (4)
July 14, 2008
Sick
Going to bed. Good night.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:40 PM | Comments (1)
July 13, 2008
Adventure
When people ask me why I moved to Portland, my stock answer is "Adventure!"
More than adventure, though, I think it was loyalty that led me to quit my job and squander my savings on a cross-country road trip with a physical destination but no other goal in mind. I promised Laura I would do it. I couldn't go back on that promise.
It was stupid, unbelievably so, in many, many ways. We had run-ins with bad weather, flat tires, police as we crossed the country. When we got here we were couch surfers in a sea of drama. It took me a year in an awful job to break my way back into newspapers, and another two years to really get on the right track.
Yet somehow that stupid sense of loyalty, made stronger, yes, by a desire for adventure, seems to have led me to exactly where I need to be. I love this city, my job, Ben, these silly cats, my crazy busy life, and I wouldn't have any of it if I hadn't kept a promise I never should have made.
I don't know what to make of that. I think I'll just settle for feeling lucky.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:53 PM | Comments (4)
July 12, 2008
Books!
I've posted a few brief book reviews to my Goodreads account recently.
The Alieniest
A historical fiction mystery thriller set in Manhattan at the end of the 19th Century. Police, reporters and even women pull together to apply new techniques in forensics and psychology to a gruesome murder. Soon they uncover a pattern of serial killings in a population nobody wants to admit exists ... (read more)
The Road
How can a bleak struggle for survival, the daily search for food and shelter in a post-apocalyptic world of death, cruelty and ash be the most beautiful work I've read in years? (read more)
Gather, Darkness!
If I were in a deeper mood when I read this, I might have read a very 1950s-specific political message in "Gather, Darkness!" I mean, an elite tier of oppressive atheist dictators lead an oppressed populace ... hmmm, wonder who they could represent? But the morality and the political overtones of this book are a bit too simple to deserve much deep thought. (read more)
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:11 PM | Comments (1)
July 10, 2008
I've got it good
Cats, husband, job, not necessarily in that order. Home, family, friends, popcorn, miso soup, books, bad television, cool breezes in the evening. Pizza. Mountains and volcanoes. I can't complain too much.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2008
Tough day
The past few days have been excruciating at work. I am still employed, but the relief of keeping my job is bitter given the deep and awful losses of the past week. Here's a bit more on that. Note the bit about business reporters. They're the folks I work most closely with. Worked most closely with.
Today I came home, cried a little bit, cooked myself a light dinner, and spent the next four hours finishing this week's homework for the database class I'm taking. Finally, the work is done and in, ahead of the due date even.
Ben's running a fever, sick, barely able to sleep and miserable when he's awake. Somehow he's keeping his congested head together enough to help me cope. I don't know how I'd do it without him.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:04 PM | Comments (1)
July 08, 2008
My week in pizza
Day 1 - July 2
For lunch a piece of terrible mall pizza. (No photo available.)
For dinner, Stark Naked cheese.
Day 2 - July 3
For dinner, Stark Naked pineapple and spicy peppers. Too spicy, almost!
Day 3 - July 4
For lunch, leftover Stark Naked cheese.
Day 4 - July 5
For dinner, Hopworks Urban Brewery cheese - happy hour special!
Day 5 - July 6
For dinner, Pizza Schmizza Veggie Baby, which has a rich alfredo sauce in place of marinara.
Day 6 - July 7
For lunch, leftover Pizza Schmizza Veggie Baby, purchased with a two-for-one coupon the day before. Two consecutive days of alfredo sauce nearly killed me.
Day 7 - July 8
For lunch, a frozen Lean Cuisine veggie pizza. Tasted kind of like cardboard, but had fewer calories than all the other pizzas and was $1 off.
Thus ends Pizza Week, seven consecutive days eating pizza just to prove that I could do it. I learned new things about myself this week, but that will have to wait for a future telling.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:53 PM | Comments (4)
July 07, 2008
Pies
Today was day six of Pizza Week. I am still enjoying every slice I eat, however eating pizza every day is proving to be more logistically difficult than I projected. If you have breakfast, lunch and dinner plans that don't involve pizza several days a week, and you have vowed to eat pizza every day, you may find yourself eating way too much food, is what I'm saying.
Now I'm working on a different kind of pie. Blackberry rhubarb. It's in the oven.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2008
Sunday afternoon
I have four unscheduled hours this afternoon, a rarity in my busy life. Should I kick back with the Internet? Do laundry? Clean? Do homework? Prepare for next week's homeowners' association board meeting? Go for a run? Every decision to do one thing becomes a decision not to do something else. Everything is important.
I think I will read a book.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2008
Cuts at work
Now that my paper's top editor has written about it, I finally feel comfortable sharing something that's been on my mind for the past couple of weeks. My newspaper, like nearly every other daily newspaper in an urban or suburban area in the United States, is struggling, and more people are going to lose their jobs.
We cut 30 jobs in February, 19 through layoffs and 11 through attrition. Three of these people were in the newsroom, the rest were spread across the company. The bosses told us in late June that we will have to cut more, but they haven't yet been specific. My uninformed guess is that 8 to 10 people in our 50-some person newsroom will go, and another 20 or so jobs across the paper will also be cut. This is pure speculation.
Nationwide, newspapers have cut more than 6,000 jobs since Jan. 1, 2008. Layoffs are accelerating as the year progresses, with more than 900 jobs cut in the last week of June alone.
A newsroom mentor and other talented hard-working people went on unemployment following the last round of my paper's layoffs. Talented reporters from other papers, people I know through my participation in the Society for Professional Journalists, have been laid off or demoted. Half the names that made me want to get into this business in the first place took buyouts at the Washington Post in May. Thinking about it all makes me choke up.
Here's a map showing many of the cuts, though I know of layoffs that aren't included.
So how am I coping? I'm in mourning for my industry, I'm scared about the long-term prospects for my career. I'm also oddly calm about my immediate future.
At first I was so scared I could barely do my job. Then I went camping in Yosemite with Ben and his family. I talked about it too much there, made dark jokes, speculated about a thousand possible new careers. We came back home, and nightmares ruined my sleep for several days.
I'm not equipped for prolonged emotional turmoil, however.
I love my job, and if I lose it I'll be heartbroken. In the meantime, I'm going to keep loving it. I'm going to keep striving every day to transform myself into the best reporter that I can become. I'm taking a class on databases, because I think that it will help me with that goal. I'm working hard. I can't fix all that's broken about newspapers, but maybe I can make my small contribution to the industry a little bit more vital.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:24 AM | Comments (2)
July 04, 2008
Three days of pizza
This is day three of Pizza Week, my seven-day pizza eating challenge. So far I'm doing fine and not feeling gross or anything. To recap, I've challenged myself to eat pizza every day for a week as a test of my belief that I can do just that.
On day one, I had gross mall pizza for lunch and really great Stark Naked cheese pizza for dinner. Yesterday, day two, I had a lunch of left-over Stark Naked cheese. Today I had more Stark Naked for lunch, but this time I needed a break from cheese so I got a weird pineapple and jalapeno slice and then picked off all the jalapenos because it was too hot for me.
Tomorrow I think I need a break from my three day Stark Naked streak. Maybe I'll have a slice of Pizza Schmizza. If Ben's not sick of being my Pizza Week sidekick, I may even try to convince him to head to BJ's for dinner for some deep dish Chicago style pies.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2008
I hurt so bad
In my neck, my upper back, my lower back, my shoulders, my right wrist and at least one of my ankles. And I don't know why.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:56 PM | Comments (0)
July 02, 2008
Pizza
Last night I was up past midnight, which is to say I was up way past my bedtime, when I developed a craving for pizza. I knew I couldn't have any, as there was none in the house and it was time for bed.
So I typed a crazed and sleep deprived scream and posted it to an online community associated with my college:
I WANT PIZZA! ALL DAY EVERY DAY! I CAN'T REMEMBER A DAY IN MY RECENT LIFE (PAST 10 YEARS) WHEN I DIDN'T CRAVE PIZZA DURING ANY GIVEN 24-HOUR PERIOD. YET SOMEHOW I EAT IT LESS THAN ONCE A WEEK. IS THIS A GOOD THING, A TESTAMENT TO MY SELF CONTROL AND HEALTHY EATING HABITS? IS THIS A BAD THING, THAT SUCH A PRIMAL URGE GOES UNFULFILLED? IS THIS A LIE, CONSIDERING THE NUMBER OF BREAD-SPAGHETTI SAUCE-MOZZARELLA OR (MEXICAN VERSION) BREAD-SALSA-CHEDDAR COMBOS I EAT EVERY WEEK? HOW STRICT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF PIZZA?
(Ben also likes pizza, as has been chronicled, but his love of the food is perhaps more moderate than mine.
)
By this morning, many people had responded to my crazed appreciation for pizza, most of them expressing their own feelings of deep appreciation for it. One person said she had taken this love of pizza too far: "(My husband)and I also blithely assumed that we could 'eat pizza every day.' So we made a bet with one another, which we called Pizza Week. We had to eat pizza every single day for a week, and twice on Sunday. We barely made it, and didn't have pizza at all for probably 2 months after that experience."
Rather than accept the lesson of another's painful experience, I have chosen to take that anecdote as a challenge. This woman and her husband could not survive Pizza Week. That leaves to me the task of proving that it can be done.
As soon as I realized my mission, my stomach began to grumble. It was nearly lunch time, so I headed to the mom-and-pop slice shop at a decaying mall near my office and ordered a slice of cheese.
It was bad. Not completely bad - this was moderately palatable pizza - but there wasn't much flavor or texture and it was a disappointing slice.
That's when I knew I'd have to have more pizza for dinner. A fresh slice of quality pie to blot out the memory of the afternoon's disappointments.
After work, I headed to Stark Naked Pizza and ordered three slices. One for me, one for Ben, one for lunch tomorrow.
I'm not saying I could - or would want to - eat pizza for every meal of every day. But a slice a day for a week seems doable, enjoyable even, at least today, Wednesday, day one of the challenge.
Pizza Week will be over in six days. Until then, one question remains: Will I conquer the pizza, or will it conquer me?
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2008
My first encounter with databases.
My first encounter with databases came in about 1990, when my parents bought an exciting computer, a new-to-us operating system called Windows and a huge hard drive – 30 megs! My dad wanted all the bells and whistles, so he bought a text-based database program along with a lot of other software. We had about 200 VHS tapes of various shows and movies my parents had recorded off of TV.
My dad gave a number, 1 to 200, to each tape, then spent many hours over several weeks popping them into the VCR and fast forwarding at high speed to see what the tape contained. He created a database that contained the tape number, what TV shows or movies were on that tape, and under which category it fell (category examples included “miniseries,” “kids TV,” “kids movie” “romance movie,” etc.). It was an extremely useful tool for several years, because we could get on the computer and quickly find out where a particular movie was stored, or we could just search by category when we didn’t know what we wanted to watch, and pick and choose that way.
Eventually we got a new computer, and the software didn’t work on it. For years, we continued to refer to decaying reams of paper that contained the printed index of our movie library. Then gradually the VHS tapes lost their magnetism, the world moved on to DVDs, and the first database I encountered became obsolete.
(Cut and paste from the "introduce yourself" section of my database class' first assignment, which I stayed up late tonight to complete.)
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:33 PM | Comments (1)