The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

• Nationals Book It After Foul Ball Accidentally Smashes Capitol Rotunda | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
  Ryan Zimmerman, you are in BIG TROUBLE, MISTER!
  (tags: nationals baseball washington onion funny humor)

• mental_floss Blog » Five Lessons in Grammar
  I’m terrible with “that” and “which” and collective nouns make me tear my hair out.
  (tags: language reference tips writing grammar)

• don’t eat alone: cheese plate communion
  Milton, on ritual as “meaningful repetition”
  (tags: ritual relationships religion Christianity)

• how to work from home - Real Simple
  tips on working from home, particularly when your spouse also works from home. Not that I’m planning to do that myself anytime soon, but it’s good food for thought.
  (tags: freelancing jobs office work workplace telecommuting)
• Newsletter: Month Fifty and Fifty-one | dooce ®
  “We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices m
  (tags: blogging women mommyblogs feminism)

Tiff & Teddy

Originally uploaded by tiffany bridge

Tom and I went to the ballgame yesterday, to see the Washington Nationals eke out a win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-8.

We also went to see Iron Man on Friday night. People. See this movie. Now. It’s fantastic.

I think the movie is probably helped by the fact that so few people know anything about the Iron Man mythology. So I had no opinion on whether or not Robert Downey, Jr. was too old to play Tony Stark, or what the suit should look like, or whatever. And Downey really is great in this movie- he’s an excellent actor who really brings a lot of charm and life to what could have been a tiresome and yet nonsensical stereotype: Brilliant engineer who is also a billionaire playboy?

An aspect that appeals to my geeky nature is that while Bruce Wayne has to get other people to design his gear for him, Stark is able to design his suit pretty much in isolation, assisted first by a fellow prisoner where he’s being held by terrorists, and then only by a robot and his snarky British house AI. Finally, the geek gets to be the superhero. And then you get to see the iterations of the suit, the abortive flight tests, the unexpected altitude issues, etc. that you never get to see in any other superhero movie. Spiderman goes straight from sweatpants to the iconic spandex, the Batmobile is always pretty much the Batmobile, etc.

And of course, needless to say, my geeky friends and I were all looking at the house and the workshop and saying, “If I were filthy rich, of COURSE that’s what would be in my house. Of COURSE I would have a snarky British house AI.” So I think it really resonated with all of us.

New fridge collage!

Originally uploaded by tiffany bridge

One of the things I’ve been personally working on lately is a War on Crap I Keep For No Good Reason. I’m kind of a packrat, and I have a particular tendency to hold on to things for sentimental reasons. I still have every wedding card we were given, for example, and tons of movie ticket stubs and random little gifts given to me by people i don’t even talk to any more.

I started reading Unclutterer after meeting its editor at a party, and while not every post is relevant to me personally, one of the themes that I found particularly useful is the idea of “honoring” your sentimental possessions without letting them become clutter.

The Fridge collage is helpful on a number of levels. Often, when I get home from work, one or the other of us is in the kitchen working on dinner. The other one will often position themselves close by for the end-of-workday chat. (Couples, you know the chat I’m talking about, the “I haven’t seen you all day” chat.) So despite the tiny kitchen, we actually spend a lot of family time there. So having a place to store mementos of our loved ones in the kitchen actually makes a lot of sense (it might be clutter for other people, but it works for us).

It also provides me a system for clearing out old mementos without feeling guilty about it. When the Wasyliks send us a new photo Christmas card, the old one can be disposed of without guilt, because it has been enjoyed for a year, and now we have one to replace it with.

Finally, it provides an outlet for the acquisition of souvenirs. (My silver charm bracelet has the same function- a place to store mementos so they do not become clutter.) When we go someplace and want to bring home a souvenir, fridge magnets are a popular choice, because our fridge is already a place where we display objects associated with memories. If you are a person who wants to bring us back something from your vacation, believe me when I tell you that postcards and magnets are fantastic ideas and not at all lame.

Another great suggestion I heard along this line, and one I try to put into practice myself, is to purchase everyday objects you’ll use anyway that are unique in some fashion to the place you’re visiting. So every time you use, I don’t know, your can opener, you can think of your trip.

So that’s what I’m working on. Getting rid of crap I thought I would use but didn’t, stuff I think I need to save because of a person but don’t, trying to keep stuff I KNOW I don’t need from getting into my house to begin with…

Now, I just need to find someone with a Kindle who will let me borrow it for a week to see if it’s any good. It’s not that I object to having shelves full of books, it’s that I’d like to be able to bring reading material into the house without causing more clutter, like I do with music.

• Scientists Prove That Younger Siblings Get Less Discipline | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com
  I always suspected it (and so did every other elder sibling I knew) but now… SCIENTIFIC PROOF that your kid sister/brother gets away with more.
  (tags: science siblings parents discipline)

• Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody
  Cognitive Surplus is a concept I’m going to be rolling around in my head for a while.
  (tags: brain consumption creativity culture entertainment evolution socialmedia socialsoftware society sociology tech technology television thought wikipedia writing)
• Food That Travels Well - New York Times
  Food miles vs. “life cycle” analysis… why eating local actually isn’t always better for the environment.
  (tags: economics farming Food locavore agriculture environment)