So, I’m buying a car. This  has turned out to be a hilariously awful process, just as eye-opening as that New England morning drive, only now I’m fully understanding all the things people say about used cars and used car salesmen.

I don’t really like driving, and I don’t really know that much about cars. I can drive a standard and I can check a car’s oil, and I am incredibly impressed with myself for being able to do those things.

I secretly enjoy it when computer salespeople dumb things down for me, because it’s almost always followed by that awkward look when they realize I know what I’m talking about.  But with cars, I actually don’t have the foggiest idea what we’re talking about. Oh, it need a transmisserator? Excuse me while I stare blankly. And Google.

Anyway, I’ve gotten better and better at knowing what to ask when I go to look at cars. Do you have the title in hand, and is it actually in your name or your cousin’s sister-in-law’s roommate’s name? Are you selling the car because it spectacularly failed inspection recently? Did you hit a deer immediately after posting the photos? If it’s a standard, do all of the gears work?

And, one that bitter experience has taught me to ask: DOES IT HAVE SEATS?

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

One Hubcap ‘Cause Three Got Stolen

When I was back in New Jersey a few weeks ago, I mentioned to my parents that I’d helped a little bit with the spinoff game for Shutter Island. (I didn’t add that my particular brand of helping had a lot to do with asking the producer about a thousand times to please please warn me if was going to be gross. Sorry about that!) They seemed pleased, perhaps because I’ve worn them down by telling them over and over that I’ve written about a game they haven’t heard about in a publication they haven’t heard about. Besides,  if you can’t tell your parents about minor successes and have them be impressed, really, what are parents for?

“Does that mean you’re in the credits with Martin Scorsese?” my dad asked.

“I’m not entirely sure who that is.” (Every day with me is like an adventure in pop culture.)

“The director of The Godfather!” my dad said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

“I saw that!” I said, “It was kind of gross.”

Edit: My old roommate Chris just pointed out that Scorsese is not actually the director of The Godfather, which just proves that nobody reads the credits anyway.

PS: If you would like to play the game, you can download the free trial or buy the game here.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Shutter Island

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

My Problem With Yoga

“Yes!”

“Meg, that’s great!”

“You didn’t have to sound quite so surprised, Mom.”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Green Thumb

“If I’d known,” Stick said. “I could have worn my Hugh Hefner smoking jacket,”

Although Stick and I found Awesome Street endlessly hilarious (“There’s no room for the car here! We’ll have to park over on Mediocre Street!”), some of the other guests told us that the town of Cary was less than thrilled with creativity cutting into their cutesy themed-named subdivisions, and the Awesome Street residents had to apply several times to get the name approved. We also learned that Awesome Street beat out runner-up names Floppy Drive and Hard Drive.

“Yeah, sometimes I’m working and I see people pull up and take photos of the street sign!” one guy told me.

“That was me.” I said.

I’m of the school of thought that social gatherings require me to put on lip gloss and bring a six pack (see also: ways in which I will never fully leave college), and I was totally impressed with this one’s Sno-Cone maker, margarita machine, and all kinds of toys. What really set it apart from our last our last Playboy-themed office party, though, was Mama Hoffmann’s twin circling and insisting that we all eat! More! Have another one! Do you want something else? Eat! You should eat more! Have another one!

It was a nice crowd, and we talked about the joys of Bosphorus, Unaabi Grill, and how Cary, for all its soulless sameness, really does have great food. I met a lot of –  can’t resist it any longer– awesome people. (If you were at the Awesome party, and I was not swift enough to trade contact info with you, I would love to get in touch!)

Later on, I met a girl who — and I could not make this up — was an element bridesmaid for her best friend’s pagan wedding. (She was Earth, but when I was in Allison’s wedding, I was Air) The former-element-bridesmaid and her now-husband decided to get married at the courthouse. I am not saying those two facts are connected, of course, just mentioning two things I learned last night.

“So, how do you know the Intelliscanner crew?” another girl asked me.

“I drove past one day and I got out to take a picture.” I said.

“Oh. Oh! I thought you were kidding about that.”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

The Awesome Party

Meg: Kids?

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Does Whatever A Spider Can

My aura of plant death is extra embarrassing because the women in my family who aren’t me all have green thumbs. I didn’t get the Mackay green thumb, I got the lesser-known Doom Thumb. I think it’s recessive. It’s not that I don’t like flowers, it’s just that I can’t keep up with all the required maintenance. All that remembering to water. And not letting them freeze to death.

Sometimes people ask when Stick and I plan to have children, and I remind them that I can’t be responsible for a geranium.

But now I have this pretty potted lavender, and I haven’t killed it yet. It smells nice, and it has pretty purple flowers, and if we have one thing that needs care and attention, why not have two? This is the sort of logic probably employed by crazy cat ladies.

So Stick and I picked up a couple other herbs, because I dare you to walk past the smells of mint and basil and not want them. We thought we’d take them out of their sad little supermarket pots and put them in bigger ones. Since we were getting so garden-y, we decided to give a couple of seed packets a try, too. We set up a little balcony garden, with pots of dirt where we hope to soon have plants.

Today we had the first yellow-green tips of our tiny sprouting scallions!

Or carrots. I’m not entirely sure which is which, we mixed up the pots. I’m not very good at gardening.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

And Whatever It Is Farmers Raise

This is almost as bad as when when I found out that Calais doesn’t rhyme with place.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Wrong for Twenty-Something Years

My recipe said that if you don’t have a steamer, you can boil artichokes, placed upright and arranged snugly in saucepan with a few inches of water. I think there was a typo, and what it meant was if you don’t have a steamer, don’t even think about boiling artichokes, placed upright and arranged snugly in saucepan with a few inches of water!

First my artichokes turned brown, which was a little odd, and then they spectacularly failed to get soft enough to eat. Then the water turned brown, and somehow began to smell of blanching citrus peels,  while the artichoke leaves were still hard. Also the leaves never opened up and out. I pulled a leaf off to taste, just in case I’d picked up that rare African Brown Artichoke, that looks bizarre and tastes good, but it had the consistency of bark. Bark with the smell of toxic vegetable matter. Sadly, the extremely rare oak-artichoke crossbreed is inedible.

Once it was clear that my artichokes were more science project than delicacy, I thought I’d cut one in half. I tried with a paring knife, an awesome culinary knife and finally a serrated bread knife, which shredded the artichoke, into a mass of unmarinated artichoke heart and tree bark. Some of the leaves managed to be both over- and under-cooked, which defies all logic.

I’d been thwarted by an artichoke.

I decided to be thrifty and not order a pizza, although it was definitely warranted. Stick is awesome, he didn’t complain about the thrown-together replacement dinner, and he even offered to clean up the kitchen. Possible because if I saw the artichoke debris, I would cry.

Stick thought it would be a good idea to put the artichoke bits in the garbage disposal.  Remember that part where none of my knives could cut through the leaves? Yeah, he didn’t remember. Again, the smell of toxic vegetable matter, only this time, it was rising up from the clogged sink.

Good thing we didn’t order in last night, because we’re definitely eating out tonight.

Update 3/31: Any chance I bought Hurley’s cherimoya instead of the artichoke-oak hybrid?

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

All Artichoked Up

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

March Madness