Gentlemen, start your engines

Well, today we met with the priest and decided on a date for the wedding. It'll be October 14th of this year.

Oh yeah. We're getting all this ready in six and a half months.

Speed wedding! Whee!

Denotative meanings

So I took this little quiz from Dykewife. Ever wonder what your name really means?

danulai -- [adjective]: Sexually stunning 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

But I learned that if you plug your name in twice, you won’t get the same results both times. My second try revealed:

danulai -- [noun]: A hard-core grave robber 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

I suppose grave robbing can be sexy.

Ouch!

Today I went grocery shopping and saw a fantastic deal on strawberries. They looked beautiful and smelled delicious, and even though you had to buy two containers to get the discount I indulged anyway.

This evening I made a batch of chocolate-dipped strawberries* which took all of the first container and some of the second container. I knew that if I froze and thawed the strawberries they'd be mealy and unsuitable for eating by themselves, so I decided to cut them up and use them for ice cream topping instead.

I was sawing away with one of my butter knives when I realized that I should be using a knife from the fancy knife set I got for Christmas. I inspected a few before choosing a serrated knife that looked to be the appropriate size. Holding the strawberry in one hand, I deftly sliced down.

Sliced down a little too much.

Right into my finger.

Now, the benefit of being a complete klutz is that you're accustomed to bandaging yourself up. I calmly rinsed the wound and grabbed my box of medications from the pantry. While hunting for the Band-Aids and Neosporin, I glanced at my finger.

Damn, I thought. I must have sliced deeper than I thought. Dark red blood was welling up and spilling over the side of my finger. Cursing, I ran to get a tissue to stop the blood flow until I could bandage it.

I bandaged it up and used a cutting board to slice the rest of the strawberries one-handed. I tossed them with a little sugar and put them in a plastic tub to freeze. I looked at my finger again. The blood had seeped through. I brushed the countertop with my finger as an experiment, and to my surprise I left a bloody trail.

So what do you do when Band-Aids don't work?

Wrap another Band-Aid around the finger. Can you tell I was raised by a nurse?

So, I learned three lessons tonight:

1. If I had stuck with my old knives (i.e., made do) I wouldn't have gotten cut

2. You should really use a cutting board instead of just holding stuff with your fingers

3. It's really hard to type with two Band-Aids wrapped around your left index finger

It's been such an educational night.





* Before you give me too much credit, know that I used this nifty little product that was basically a bunch of chocolate chips in a microwaveable tub. Melt, dip, refrigerate. That's all there was to it.

The Bus

Yesterday Mike and I had the most fun. We went to the museum and we took the bus both ways.

I grew up in a very rural area where public transportation was nothing more than a vague idea. With nowhere to go and nobody to go there, there was no need for busses or subways. I learned about the existence of public transportation from my social studies classes and from my mom who told me stories about riding the bus in her hometown and riding the subway when she lived in New York. Once I knew I would be moving to Milwaukee with Mike this summer I asked him to teach me how to ride the bus since I really had no idea.

Yesterday Mike remembered his promise (he's so good at remembering those things) and offered to take the bus to and from the museum. That morning I went to the grocery store and got $10 in quarters to provide adequate bus change. As we walked to the appropriate bus stop I was excited - I was no longer the country bumpkin gawking at the big city sights. I was going to ride the bus just like a real city person.

I learned several lessons about riding the bus. The first is

1. The bus has TVs

This was something that kind of enchanted me. I don't know why. I guess it just seemed so considerate. I've ridden on trains quite a bit and I've never been in a train with a TV. While I was watching TV Mike was trying to explain various rules of bus etiquette, but I couldn't hear him because

2. The bus is loud

It really is. Mike made an offhand comment while we were waiting for the bus that we would hear it coming, and he was right. It was loud and clattery and I could barely hear Mike next to me, let alone any announcements that might have been coming across the bus's PA system.

Even though you can't hear you can still look, and this taught me that

3. The bus is less glamorous than you would imagine

Okay, that's kind of a given for city dwellers, so let me explain. To me, busses are so quintessentially urban. Another thing that is quintessentially urban are hip, trendy people. Can you blame me for thinking that one would go with the other?

As it turns out, I was wrong. Hip, trendy people seem to avoid the bus. This kind of amazes me since

4. The bus is kind of expensive

It was $1.75 each way. Which I suppose is cheaper than a car, but is not really cheaper than the parking lot across from the museum ($2.00 on weekdays). You'd think that with those prices riding the bus would equate to conspicuous consumption, but not so much.

Then again, with my commute and weekend driving around I spend about $40.00 on gas per week. If I took the bus to work and for my weekend errands, it would come out to about $31.50. And I could take the bus home from work because

5. It is safe to ride the bus past 5 PM

I checked with Mike on this. He assured me that he had ridden on our bus line at 2 AM with no problems. I figured that with the gathering dusk might come murderers, but apparently not. Not on that bus route anyway.

So although walking remains my favorite mode of urban transportation it's nice to know how to ride the bus.

The next time we're out at my parents' house I'll teach Mike the differences between a fox and a coyote. It's really only a fair exchange.

Damn you, Republicans!

This excerpt was taken from the March 21st, 2006 issue of “Savage Love” by Dan Savage.

Straight Rights Update: Earlier this month, Republicans in South Dakota successfully banned abortion in that state. Last week, the GOP-controlled state house of representatives in Missouri voted to ban state-funded family-planning clinics from dispensing birth control. "If you hand out contraception to single women," one Republican state rep told the Kansas City Star, "we're saying promiscuity is okay." On the federal level, Republicans are blocking the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception and keeping a 100 percent effective HPV vaccine—a vaccine that will save the lives of thousands of women every year—from being made available.

The GOP's message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no life-saving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You're going to have those babies, ladies, and you're going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that's too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.

What's it going to take to get a straight-rights movement off the ground? The GOP in Kansas is seeking to criminalize hetero heavy petting, for God's sake! Wake up and smell the freaking Holy War, breeders! The religious right hates heterosexuality just as much as it hates homosexuality. Fight back!

They’re banning hetero heavy petting? But…but that’s my favorite kind!

Seriously though, the next Republican I find is getting a Danulai-administered kick in the nuts for this bullshit. I know that Dan Savage probably isn’t the best-respected man in the world, so I found a few other sources to back up his opinions.

And he’s right.

Look, I’m not crazy about the idea of kids having sex. I’d love it if abstinence education or removing contraceptives worked. They don’t. Republicans can feel all sanctimonious about their contraceptive bans and no-sex-ed policies and think they’ve done the right thing, but then it falls to us liberals working in public education and public health to deal with the aftermath…women – girls, a lot of times – getting pregnant, having babies, raising them in poverty, and renewing the cycle.

And as far as that HPV vaccine goes…I can’t even begin to express my anger about that. As someone who was once put at risk for contracting HPV through no fault of her own, and as someone who has lost family members due to cancer, I can’t describe how stupid, how foolish, how utterly, utterly cruel this is.

If we elect another Republican president in 2008, I’ll seriously consider moving to Canada.

I don't even know what a changeling is...

What type of Fae are you?

As seen on Brady Street...

bradystread
Originally uploaded by Lucky Haskins.

The great thing about Milwaukee is that even the delinquents know the importance of literacy.