Quibbling Dot Net

• Glassy Eyes | Deals on Online Eyeglasses. Good eyeglasses. Cheap.
  The how-to of making sure you have enough information about your prescription and frame size to be able to order online.
  (tags: glasses online shopping)
• How to get an unbelievable, thrilling deal on new glasses. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine
  I need new glasses.
  (tags: glasses online shopping)

We’re having a great time in Seattle- seeing lots of sights, hanging out with friends and family, etc. This is some video I took of some guys who regularly get booked to sing outside the original Starbucks shop (you can tell it’s the original because the mermaid is naked). They were fantastic! View the full set of photos (including new ones as I add them).

• The Eternal Value of Privacy
  "A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty."
  (tags: privacy security theater rights)

Tom and I are off to Seattle for a week for some much-needed R&R. I’m hoping to have time to set aside time to write and refresh my creativity. But in preparation, I’ve been super productive. I managed to clear my task list at work today and get as much as possible set up to run automatically in my absence.

Last night was dedicated to some household preparation chores. To preserve the excess produce we’ve been getting in our CSA share, I made a pot of tomato sauce to freeze. It’s really sweet, I think because it was made mostly with cherry tomatoes- LOTS of cherry tomatoes. I also sliced up the three or four pounds of peaches we had stashed in the fridge to slow down the ripening- we now have four quart-sized bags of peach slices in the freezer. I also froze a bag of edamame- we had picked a big ol’ sack of it at the farm last weekend, and Tom doesn’t like it. So I boiled it up, and had some for dinner Monday night, and then some for lunch yesterday and today, and still had edamame left over.  I like this stocked-freezer thing.

So we won’t come home to a bunch of spoiled produce. And every dish in the house is clean, and most of the laundry is done. 

And now, it is time to rest.

• Shill Game - washingtonpost.com
  I'm not sure why I'm so charmed by this article on Billy Mays, but I am
  (tags: billymays marketing sales pitch)

• Crusading ex-Pa. lawmaker takes in sex offenders - washingtonpost.com
  (tags: christianity compassion crime law)

Backstage at Coldplay

Originally uploaded by boboroshi

This is, oddly enough, the post I was trying to write when I decided I needed to upgrade Wordpress (and managed to wipe out my archives). Flickr wasn’t getting along with the older version I was running, so I ended up writing this post at least four times, and losing it every time.

These are my friends John and Leanne. We’ve known John for a few years, and had only been starting to get to know Leanne as her relationship with John deepened.

Less than 24 hours after this picture was taken, Leanne passed away in her sleep, due to a chest brain aneurysm that took her without warning. She was 27 years old.

The last two weeks have been a blur- we’ve been confronting the uncomfortable betrayal of our assumptions that we’re all going to live to ripe old ages. We’ve been focusing on supporting John, whose loss is far deeper than ours and who wakes up to a fresh hell every morning without her. We’ve been challenging a universe in which someone so radiant and joyful can be taken so suddenly while nasty, small people continue to walk the earth.

Leanne’s friends gathered yesterday afternoon to comfort one another and celebrate her life. It was exactly the kind of party Leanne would have liked to attend- people from all the different areas of her life, together, getting to know one another over a few drinks and her favorite music.

Related: I am well on my way to being the grandma who won’t stop fussing in the kitchen during times of family stress. Being pathologically unable to stop making jokes, I am not so good at words. But I can cook.

Manga Avatar

Originally uploaded by tiffany bridge

Look look look! I made this! It sort of, oh, moderately looks like me. I think it’s that the nose is wrong. And there wasn’t a face shape option that adequately captures the Italian Grandmother chin I have (proudly inherited from my own Italian Grandmothers).

I suppose next time I could go straight up anime and make one with big ol’ eyes and teeny little features. That would be hilarious.

• Task Times, The Planning Fallacy, and a Magical 20% | 43 Folders
  (tags: work management planning projectmanagement)

Ben enjoys some wine with dinner.

Originally uploaded by tiffany bridge

My brother is in town this week for some training stuff. Since his company offers what is, in my not so humble opinion, a barbarically inadequate amount of vacation time, he tries to schedule his annual training sessions in areas where he has family, and I try to squeeze in some family time while he’s in town. Since it’s Restaurant Week, it seemed like an excellent opportunity to try Dino, which I’ve been wanting to check out for a while. (Short version: We loved it. Detailed dinner review at We Love DC.)

As the younger brother, Ben gleefully enjoyed taunting me about my height from the moment he grew even a scant few millimeters taller than me. He’s got about 6 inches on me now, and still enjoys teasing me, as the little-big sister. And that’s fine. He can tease me all he wants about my height…

…at least I’ve still got all my hair.