Whose Cuisine...?

Friday, March 08, 2002

Another day of computer support hell, but with a minor victory: I convinced my boss to buy a new USB scanner to replace the ancient (eight years old!) SCSI scanner that has been giving the new common-use Mac fits. The screws must be really tight in the budget this year; it took me nearly a month to shake $300 out of him.

Christina and I spent a leisurely hour or so at Borders tonight. As she sipped her mocha, Christina flipped through a couple of the books on feng shui I nabbed from a shelf out of curiousity. I never even opened them, though, because she spent fifteen minutes describing the more ludicrous concepts of feng shui. (If you've never heard of feng shui, get a quick primer here.) Apparently one's domicile can be divided into portions, the physical locations of which are associated with certain aspects of life: career and prosperity in one corner, love and marriage in another, etc. Our "career" corner is located in our bathroom, which may explain why our professional lives are in the toilet. On the other hand, the career quadrant of one's life may be augmented by water -- fountains and the like. And what is a shower but a type of fountain?

Tonight's dinner: leftover chicken katsu (we'll discuss it sometime) and fried rice. Mmmmm... leftovers.

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Thursday, March 07, 2002

A few more quotes came in today for the book printing, these much more in line with the Morris quotes but still not as cheap. It seems 1000 copies is the magical number at which 200 page books start to fall into the $3 range. Don't get me started on why we take a book for which we pay $3 to print and price it at $15. I'll go into the economics of the book industry another night. I've read some things about Amazon's "Advantage" program that might be cause for concern, but for now I hope it's the isolated ranting of disgruntled self-published authors, venting their frustrations to the net at large.

Dropped off the carcass of our winged invader at the rental office this morning and had a talk with Norm, the complex handyman. Norm has been around the place longer than we have, and we pre-date the rest of the office staff. He promised to spray around the outside and place wasp traps (whatever those are) in the likely crevices of the kitchen cabinets. We'll see what happens.

Finally finished reading The House With a Clock In Its Walls to Christina tonight. Earlier got in a viewing of the season premiere episode of Six Feet Under. It's still as freaky and wonderful as ever. Hey, HBO: when does the first season come out on DVD?

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Wednesday, March 06, 2002

I hate bugs

Today, for the second time in a week, we came home to find a wasp buzzing lazily around the kitchen's flourescent light tubes. It was easily dispatched with a few household chemicals (man, that Tilex must be nasty stuff!), but the coincidence was unnerving. A quick web search of insect pictures revealed the nasties to be paper wasps, which like to nest in attics and rafters. We figure they're up in the space between the kitchen ceiling and the roof, and occasionally one will find its way down through a cupboard or other hole in the house's structure into the kitchen itself.

The idea that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of wasps living above my head (and in my beloved kitchen! cramped, but beloved) is not one that thrills me. Of all God's critters, stinging, flying insects are about my least favorite. Numerous nasty run-ins with them as a kid and my apparent allergy to the stings (I can remember various limbs swelling up like balloons) makes them just about the only thing I'm scared of in a panicky, throw-your-arms-up-in-the-air-and-run-screaming sort of way. When Scott and I watch b-movies, it's the millions-of-little-bugs movies that really get me. Giant tarantula? No problem – you can see it coming and get out of its way. The Swarm? Eeeeeeyaaaaah!

We're going to drop by the apartment manager's office in the morning. I cannot live in a place where I'm wondering whether or not the wasps have taken over when I come from work. Nuh-uh.

It's the money, stupid

The quotes from printers continue to come in, and they all say that Morris Publishing rules with the low bid. I was kind of disappointed with the bid that came in from a local printer, but life moves on. We're still weighing our options. Just about the only thing certain at this point is that this book will come out. Eventually.

And hey, Stomp Tokyo has a new voice mail and fax number! Call and leave a message or fax us something fun at 530-937-2827. The number, for those curious, is in Yreka, California. Gotta love these internet services.

In my book bag: Preacher: Salvation

Playing on iTunes: Ring - The Connells
In the VCR: Curse of the Screaming Dead

Yeah, we still use the VCR from time to time. Gotta dump those great movies off the Tivo somehow!

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Tuesday, March 05, 2002

Many thanks to all those who let their opinions be known on the great bean bag debate. I will definitely write an update when the actual transfer of beans occurs.

Today was spent doing the routine "my machine sure does lock up a lot" chores, punctuated by e-mails from the various printers I've gotten in touch with about getting the book published. I still haven't decided on four-color or spot color, but I have started to design the actual cover. It's a bit rough at the moment, but I think it's a good start. The back side is a whole new nightmare.

Scott has been pushing me to ditch the 10% gray screen that exists in the boxes that set our sidebars apart from the rest of the page. His reasoning is that then we'll be able to use the printer from whom we have received the cheapest quote so far. (For whatever reason, they strongly discourage the use of such screens. If you're lost and don't know what I'm talking about, check out some of the sample pages on the Reel Shame web site). I think this is a crappy reason to alter a design, especially since I think we can find someone to do the design we want at a price we can afford.

I looked to Chris Magyar for some support in this decision and he came back with the answer that screens are just so '80s I should probably take them out for design reasons, regardless of the economics. I was a bit taken aback by this; screens were a favorite tool back in the days of the Triton Tribune at Eckerd College, and I kind of enjoyed using them again in the book. Then Chris put it to me another way: he compared it to 1995 page design. Would I design a web page these days with a black background, blinking neon green text, and little animated "under construction" graphics?

Shudder. Perish the thought!

I'm still not entirely convinced that the screens need to go. The print world is not quite the rapidly changing place, design-wise, that the web is, but it did make me pause to think. And so I turn to my vast array of People With Opinions (PWOs),and I put it to you: screens or no screens?

If I ditch the screens, I'll probably have to do some slight redesign to thicken the border of the box, maybe alter the point size of the type ever so slightly to compensate. No, Lisa, don't have a heart attack – I won't move any indexed words from one page to another! But I'm willing to do it if the book will look more professional that way.

Let me know what you think, in comments or via e-mail.

And now, back to the cooking

I used some of my new "China #1 Ginger Powder" from the Spice House in a loaf of bread today, but forgot to add the honey. Whoops. The resulting bread was good, but without the sweetness of the honey to offset the ginger, it was a bit too gingery. Don't think I'll be doing that again.

I found a source of dutch-processed cocoa in town. There's a bulk grocer just down the street, not 20 blocks from here. They seem to be part bulk-food and spice-house, part herbal medicine shop, part aromatherapy consultants, part gift boutique. Oh, and you can get fresh-ground peanut butter if you want it, too. And Scharffen-Berger chocolate at just $2.50 per teeny-tiny bar.

Reasons to Hang Up Your Leather Jacket

Today I found tiny little holes in my jacket, in curious little sets of three. If I had to guess, I'd say they were Suzie-sized.

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I'm going to be a star!

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Monday, March 04, 2002

Another spot of chilly weather rolls in, and the cats have joined us in bed for the night.

I took some time to go exploring for the local restaurant supply store and found one in Largo, one of the towns to the north of here. They had lots of cheap, huge pots and pans, but nothing like the saucier I was looking for. I picked up some plastic squeeze bottles and a smallish ladle, but didn't spend any real money. At least I have a good source of half-sheet pans should I ever need to replace the ones I have or give some away as gifts. Trust me, once you use a sturdy aluminum half-sheet pan, any other cookie sheet looks downright anemic.

I'm currently spending a lot of time gathering quotes for the printing of our book; it seems that the world of book printing is rather wild and wooly, with some folks who will gladly charge you four or five times the amount that another printer would for the same job. The quality varies as well; some printers seem no better than good photocopies.

I paid the well-respected ParaPublishing group the ten bucks they wanted for a list of reputable printers and their thoughts on what any given job "should" cost, but of course their automated electronic file delivery system screwed up and the file never downloaded. Now I can look forward to calling them in the morning to complain.

I'm also not sure that I'm asking for the right things. I was thinking that our cover was a four-color job, but now I think maybe it's a two-color job. It's a black-and-white layout with a bit of red spot-color (a lot like the title graphic on the promo web site) – or, at least it will be, once I get it laid out. But it's all in my head, honest.

There's so much to do that I'm having trouble deciding what to do first. Updates to the site are suffering (poor Jeff Stanford's Queen of the Damned review has been on tap for nearly a week) and I need to stop my head from spinning and just start checking items off the to-do list.

Did I mention I have a day job? That's been a barrel of fun, too, with two of the users I support screaming at each other today over the page layout of a document. I joke about being a control freak, but some people really need chemical help.

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There were some questions about Christina's bean bag chair project. Specifically, why not just make a shell that covers the existing shell, instead of transferring the beans from one shell to another? I brought up the same question myself, and as always, she had an answer. Here it is, in her own words.

You all doubt me. Fine.

There are two reasons I decided not to just encase the existing shell, having to do with the amount of work required and the comfort and stability of the finished thing.

(1) Doing it that way, less of the work could be done by machine. I'd have to leave a big enough hole to put the entire bean bag through (almost 4 feet in diameter) and then sew up the rest by hand. I hate sewing by hand, and a seam 2-3 yards long through two or more layers of denim? I don't think so. This way, the sewing was all by machine - just an 18 inch gap left, and I stuck a zipper in there (which is then covered by another panel, secured by velcro).

(2) The existing plastic or whatever covering material sucks. When pressure is put on it, the seams tear. Having an additional piece of material between one's rear and the bean bag doesn't change that, it'll still tear. Only then, we wouldn't be able to get at the tear to patch it with duct tape, even, like we've been doing. Pellets would escape the inner shell, faster and faster as the rips extended, and then there'd be a layer of loose pellets between the two shells. Which would be a lot less comfortable to sit on, and sort of unstable, too.

I'll admit that the pellet transfer is likely to be a comedy of errors. But I'd still rather do it this way. Plus, it'll just look nicer.

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Sunday, March 03, 2002

In what I take as a sign that we won't be retiring the bean bag chair any time soon, Christina began the major task of constructing a new shell for all of those little beads of styrofoam. The green vinyl shell that houses them now is held together in a few places by duct tape, and I'm guessing that was a factor in her trip to JoAnn Fabrics today to buy the denim for the new shell.

It took her a good part of the day, but the shell is now finished and we'll wash it to soften the material before we try to get the beads out of the old shell and into the new. Stay tuned for news on that project, one that I'm sure will be comical. I sure hope Christina has a plan.

My project for the day was to construct a promotional site for the book. You can get a look at it here, at reelshame.com. I didn't realize how impressive we were until I read the glowing testimonials I wrote about us for this site. I mean, did you know that Scott and I invented plastic wood?

I half-expected to see my brother Benjamin today; he and some friends are driving down to the Keys for Spring Break. But they decided to take the Florida Turnpike, which is a ways north of Tampa, so we were deprived of their company. Ah well, plenty of other chances, I suppose.

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