I just took an online quiz to find out what kind of accent I have. Lo and behold, it's the "Inland North." After living in MN, NC and NY I wasn't sure what I would come away with. But apparently one's native roots (ruts?!) are the most influential. Follow this link to take the quiz yourself. What did you get? What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
North Central
The West
The Northeast
Philadelphia
Boston
The South

Today I was reading a Berenstain Bears book to my kindergartners and, uncharacteristically, I had an intellectual thought: can dirt roads be sunny? Every Berenstain Bears book starts with subtle variations of a single phrase: "On a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country." But can dirt roads be sunny? I can see how the day could be sunny, or the sky could be sunny, but can objects absorbing sun themselves take on the adjective of sunny?

Are flowers sunny? (I suppose sunflowers could be described as sunny, though even that strikes me as a bit of a stretch. ) Are sunbathers sunny? Sunglasses? Leaves? Melting ice cream cones? Sweaty dogs? Freckles? Solar-powered battery chargers?

Things I love about my apartment:
-3 skylights (1 each in living room, kitchen, and bathroom)
-beautiful parquet floors
-we're the top level so we don't have to listen to others' footsteps or dogs with long scraping toenails (ask William about his place on the UES last year about that one)
-great landlords who are immediately responsive to any problem
-the only utility we pay is gas (and Internet)
-nice big windows with original shutters
-pretty nice furniture thanks to great Craigslist and stoop sale bargains
-the heat is plentiful
-tons of sunshine
-pretty view of a synagogue, a nice red brick apartment building, and Prospect Park in the distance
-1 block from Prospect Park
-large kitchen
-mini dishwasher!
-quite close to the 2/3/B/Q trains
-great neighborhood; we LOVE Park Slope
-just 1 block from the grocery store
-a buzzer for letting people up instead of hiking down the stairs to let them in (ahh, we love the buzzer... if it weren't for the buzzer we just might never invite friends over).


Things I don't love about my apartment:
-5th floor walk-up
-renting, not owning (I can barely fit all of the words on my check on that line where I have to write the amount out)
-living in New York = high taxes = federal + state+ city taxes (yes, city taxes!)
-when I say"quite close" to the 2/3/B/Q trains, that's a New Yorker talking. It's actually .31 miles to the 2/3 and .47 miles to the B/Q (according to online calculations, not a geeky odometer thank you very much). Combine that with 4 flights of stairs, crappy weather, and a heavy bag, and anyone outside of New York would call that "quite a workout," not "quite close."
-when I say "just 1 block from the grocery store," I'm not talking about a Lunds or Cub or Harris Teeter, with wide aisles, sparkling linoleum and more than one kind of tomato paste. I'm talking about jam packed, slightly grimey grocery shopping which involves desperate searches for anything edible that is remotely close to an item on your list (hmmm... ricotta cheese? No... I see cream cheese..great, it's barely expired and it comes in this tiny package for only $4, good enough!).
-our radiators hiss loudly
-taking a cab from Manhattan often involves flashing large wads of bills at the driver to convince him to drive to an outer burrough
-delivery people are too wise to fall for our trick of "buzzing them up." We have tried this, without success, dozens of times. We have never succeeded. If we want our Thai takeout, we gotta hike down for it damn it!
-when I say large kitchen, that's also relative. Our kitchen is really only half finished, if you think about it. On the right side are the sink, stove, microwave, mini-dishwasher, cabinets, and counters. On the far wall is the fridge. On the left side is... nothing. Well, a tiny radiator, but that's it. It's like they forgot to build on that side! We could seriously use the extra cabinet and counter space. We did buy a table with a couple of bar stools. But it's not exactly making up for the forgetfulness (or thriftiness, most likely) of the contractors.
-mini dishwasher, great as a find as it is, is still a mini dishwasher. Most pots, pans, cutting boards, etc. are clearly out of the question. Small utensils and mugs, though, are a perfect fit! ... as long as there aren't too many of them. Thankfully we're looking on the bright side, which is that the loud drone of the dishwasher that we run constantly at least blocks out the hiss of the radiators.

It's hard for me to believe how bad so many people's photos are. I'm going to have to stop looking at some people's snapshots from vacations, parties, etc. because all I see are bad light, bad expression, bad cropping. And I'm not even that critical of a person! I feel like I should create a class on "The 5 Tips You Need to Know Before You Press the Shutter." It could be a really short class-- 15 minutes maybe. I could even have a 5 minute version for the ADHD set (though for that set I'd have to add a 6th Tip: Move your finger completely away from the lens before you take the picture). I could even post them on here, but then I wouldn't have any paying participants at my class, would I?

I'm lucky that I've been around excellent photography my whole life. My dad is the prime example, of course, but I have many talented friends, too. So I suppose I have less to complain about than the average person since not that many people are showing me horrible shots. But a different way of looking at it is that being exposed (heh, heh) to good photography is what causes my difficulty in viewing lousy work.

I hesitated in using "amateur" to describe sub-par work, and then decided against it (in favor of other words--lousy in the latest instance) because there are a lot of amateurs that have great skills. And I can tell you why they do: they attended my class, "The 5 Tips You Need to Know Before You Press the Shutter." One of them needed the shortened (time wise) but lengthened (tip wise) version due to her attention difficulties. After her imposing thumb shadow became a non-issue, she made her debut as a decent amateur.

Top Five Movies I've Never Seen (causing reactions of profound horror and disbelief from my friends):

5. Lord of the Rings I and III (yes, II I did see)
4. Superman
3. Any 007 until the most recent
2. Braveheart
1. Any Star Wars