becky haycox

Month: January 2008

  • frown has been turned upside down, comments-wise

    Oh, lord, I didn’t know that it was impossible to comment on my blog after I restricted it. Sorry about that. Just trying to knob-twiddle so that I can decrease the amount of spammy ridiculousness on my site.

    You are now able to comment away without restriction. But not you, you idiot spambots.

    Speak up! I really love comments, so let me know sooner if you can’t get in. I can’t bear the thought of your little noses pressed up against the glass of my closed candy shop.

    Thanks for alerting me, C-girl.

  • recipe for hot citrus tea punch elixir

    Turq and the ElixirI received a request a while ago for this recipe. As the weather has been beastly off and on, hither and yon, this is a nice thing to have brewing on your stove whilst the drip and the wet happens outside. The drips seems to be happening internally for a lot of people this winter, as well — the stuff could be a nice alternative to a Hot Toddy. Let’s face it, hot sugared alcohol is like an organic Nyquil. Hey! good name.

    I give you:

    Becky’s Organic Nyquil

    Ingredients:

    • 4 tea bags: Bengal Spice, Orange & Spice, Lemon Ginger, Clove Blend, or anything spicy and delicious to you, in any combination. I recommend non-caffeinated.
    • 1 quart apple juice, fresh or concentrated
    • 1 quart orange juice, fresh or concentrated
    • 2 or 3 cups lemonade
    • 3 or 4 cinnamon sticks
    • Nutmeg
    • 2 cups any other juice (berry? limeade? mango? guava? pomegranate?)
    • Sugar
    • Oranges
    • Apples
    • Rum or brandy [optional, of course]

    Stick a couple cups of water in a big ol’ pot, put the tea bags in, and fire her up — you are now brewing a superconcentrated flavor elixir. Remove the bags. Add about 2/3rds of the apple and orange juices and a cup of lemonade. Put in the cinnamon sticks and whisk in some nutmeg. Warm it up and have a taste. How is it so far? Too citrusy? Put some more apple juice in. Too tea-y? Put some more apple juice in, and maybe a little sugar. Kind of blah? Put more spice and/or some other juices in, see what develops. A berry punch makes a nice taste in there. If it all seems too watery, add a shot of straight juice concentrate.

    One you get the right balance, cover and let simmer as long as you like. It all gets better as time goes. Slice some oranges and dice some apples, put them in there. However, the oranges and apples do cook and disintegrate eventually, causing some sediment and bits in the punch. Some people like that, some don’t. You might want to peel the oranges so that imbibers don’t have to spit out rinds, discreetly, into their napkins. Or maybe you want to go the distance and do some straining before serving.

    Ladle out the punch, have your guests put a shot of booze into their cups if they want, and raise your glasses to the SUPER CITRUS TEA PUNCH! aka ORGANIC NYQUIL!

    As the punch keeps getting drunk up, just keep adding and heating juice, yes, now you’re on a roll! What a host!

    [photo: i believe it’s time for more. i may have created this entire post just to put this picture up! cute t!]

  • requiem for a small pile of insignificant objects

    One December night in the 1980s, I was visiting my mom during my Christmas break from college. I remember that we were watching Dynasty. Mom, had usual, had gone the Christmas distance. Votive candles twinkled on the glass shelves that were decorated with heirlooms — figurines and teacups that had been in the family for years. Irreplaceable stuff. I think you know where this is going.

    A shocking wall of noise. The heat of the candles had shattered the glass of the top shelf. A vertical domino effect was achieved as one shelf crashed into the next, into the next. There were no surviving heirlooms.

    My mom’s face was remarkable as she stared at the smoking wreckage. I could see all the emotions struggling for dominance — regret, horror, panic, sadness. But she immediately shook herself, and with a half-laugh, said, “Oh! Well. You can only feel so bad. They’re only things. Just things.” And she meant it.

    So, my car was broken into last night. Goodbye to my iPod (and half the FM transmitter), credit cards, keys (but not my house key), license. Goodbye to my gym bag and that pair of warm boots and the sweater I hardly ever wore. Goodbye to my robot bag, the suede purse with the annoyingly-short straps, and that phone charger (but strangely, not my phone). And bye bye driver’s side window.

    Oh, things. The aftermath is a pain in the ass, but you are only things. Hardly a blip on my emotional radar. So, enjoy yourselves in your new lives! I release you!

    Update! On Friday, February 22, I got a call from a nearby gym, informing me that someone found my AAA,  Meryn’s, and Smart N’ Final cards sitting outside on the ground. Puzzling, since my car was broken into at a different gym 3 weeks prior.

    Another update! Not so puzzling. I talked to Officer P and he said there’s a “transient  camp” near the gym where my cards were found.  Officer P is going to look around the camp today (maybe undercover?? or wearing a wire??) Maybe he’ll find my robot bag!

  • new blog layout part two

    As I have mentioned, as a participant in NaBloPoMo, I won a blog makeover from Jessica at Kerflop. We’re done, this is it! I have gotten a couple inquiries as to how the process went, who did what, etc. So here you go. Part two of two.

    The banner

    banner

    I created the banner (as well as designed the overall blog look, which Jessica made happen with her skilled fingers.) I wanted the banner to look like one of the pages of the visual journal I have been keeping for the past few years. All of the images are scans of ephemera in my collection, and collaged using Photoshop. Some of the elements:

    1. A wayang kulit (Indonesian shadow puppet) of Srikandi, a character from the Mahabharata. Some of the many adjectives used to describe her: beautiful, strong-willed, couragous, competitive, loyal. I love Indonesia. I went a couple times in my younger days and have never ever forgotten it.
    2. Roadrunner from a piece of old stationery from the land of my youth, Arizona. Roadrunner: AZ state bird.
    3. The faces are from a larger piece of Chinese fortune paper. I love those expressions.
    4. Image from a medical journal depicting the bones of the hand. Lots of hand imagery here.
    5. From some kind of a flash card that I found in the street. The card had this line drawing and the number 44. This is a significant number for me this year. Ahem.
    6. From a vintage book of hand shadows. The hands are forming a bull. I am a Taurus.
    7. An unhappy electrical appliance from a particularly well-illustrated user’s manual (for what? I don’t remember). I like anthropomorphism.
    8. The internet. The world. Whatever. I like that the rays from the globe seem to be distressing the appliance.
    9. Me, age three. Watching. Brooding. Not a lot has changed.

    There are other images of hands and observing faces — significant aspects to my life! There are also a couple details of photos that my mother took, and some other secret objects.

  • new blog layout part one

    what i wanted this blog to look like

    As I have mentioned, from my participation in NaBloPoMo I won a blog makeover from Jessica at Kerflop. We’re done, this is it! I have gotten a couple inquiries as to how the process went, who did what, etc. So here you go. Part one of two.

    On my side, before I started bothering Jessica too much, I did my homework. I checked out Kerflop and was happy to see that she shared the same priorities of making a site clean, clear, validated and accessible. I made a list of priorities of what I wanted. I polled my readers to see what they wanted in a blog.

    On Jessica’s side, she checked in with what she would/could provide, the parameters of the prize, and provided a list of handy questions to ask myself about what I wanted. Since I had a clear idea of the visuals, I relied on her to provide rock-solid coding, CSS and plugins.

    With that in mind, I opened Photoshop and, basically, scanned in and drew what I wanted my banner and blog to look like. I flattened it, made it a JPEG (which you can see here full size or at the top of this post), and sent it over to Jessica for review. Per her request, I sent her the Photoshop file (in layers) to pull whatever raw images she needed.

    Jessica added these plugins (otherwise, the blog is hardcoded by her):

    • fArc – shows the archive sorted by month and year with permalink to comments and posts. I dug the way Kerflop’s archives looked, so she made it happen.
    • Subscribe to Comments – allows commenters to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments.

    It was a novel, unsettling, and fun role to play — that of the client. I got to be super low-tech and say things like “skootch the text box over” or “give that an airier feeling”. Reviewing our emails now, I think I was probably an annoying but not a “problem” client. I am amazed at her efficiency and highly recommend her!

    Update 2009: I would be remiss in mentioning three plugins that I have subsequently added and really rely on:

    Tomorrow: what’s all that stuff in the banner?

  • why do you flip and give me a skip each time

    I am trying to break up this Mexican standoff in my brain. On one side, my desire to trumpet my new blog design holds me to the rock; on the other, my need to acknowledge a significant (and very sad) anniversary holds me to the hard place.

    So, for now, output apropos of nothing and of everything.

    I took a CPR class today. I was surprised by the changes made in the two-plus decades since I last received training. Not the least of which was the fact that I now know how to operate an AED (automated external defibrillator). As in: electrode pads, beep beep, “clear!”, shock. As you might have noticed, AED units are in the airports, gyms, schools — they’re the Speak N’ Spell-looking things. Pretty soon, they’ll be everywhere, right next to the fire extinguisher, and we will all remember to call it an AED (and not the heart-shock-paddle-thingy).

    Anyway. Until today, I have struggled with a gigantic “what if”. My mother died of cardiac arrest five years ago. She was at home. She did not receive CPR until after the paramedics arrived, far far too late. I was haunted (not literally! thanks, mom) by thoughts of “if only I knew CPR and happened to be there and knew exactly what to do and the paramedics got there supersoon and and and…”

    But the reality, confirmed by grief counselors and medical professionals, is that CPR can’t do a huge amount on its own. CPR can’t restart a stopped heart — it’s a method to buy a tiny bit of time until defibrillation can occur. Because of the circumstances, my mom didn’t have a chance. And that is what it is.

    Readier availability of AEDs greatly increases the chances of undeading the dead (you know what I mean). Someday, we’ll all be carrying them around on our keychains and reanimating folks all over the damn place.

    For some reason, this all makes me feel better about the mom scenario. I’m really glad I’m starting the new year with this new skill. And I hope that I never have to use it.

    Oh, by the way, if you die near me, I’ll know what to do. However, my work did not pay for the first aid training, so please — if you are alive but injured, find some other good samaritan to help you.

    photo: kiss me, originally uploaded by hambox

    American Heart Association website

  • please! don’t look at me!

    A warning to my loyal fan base: things on this blog might be down or funky for a day or two, as Jessica, awesome Jessica from Kerflop, installs my new blog! New blog! All fancy like! This is the prize I won from Nablopomo, and I couldn’t be more pleased.

    See you on the other side!

  • eight eight eight eight let’s sing the song of eight

    I spent some time writing letters today — actual, pen-to-paper, send-with-a-stamp letters. A rare occasion, but fun. Rock Scissor Paper had a mega sale of their papery delights and I bought some, which prompted me to follow up with one of my modest new year resolutions. This resolution’s gist is to keep in better contact with key people in my life, some of whom don’t use computers (the horror.) Hence, I put pen in claw and scratch away.

    The only real point to this post is that, as I am quite fond of the number eight (the eight of clubs has been my favorite playing card since childhood), it is superfun to write 2008. I write it so that I don’t have to lift pen from paper.

    I might also note here that my handwriting is pretty scribbly. I can only imagine that the recipients of my letters kind of skim the contents in a good natured but somewhat uncomprehending way. Bless her, at least she tried, they murmur. But that’s one hell of a 2008!

    Photo:  1/1/2008, uploaded by Matt Callahan. Thanks for letting me use it!

  • look good feels good!

    look good feels good! originally uploaded by hambox

    Behold the unfortunate debut album of the long-forgotten Rundle’s Mission. Look Good Feels Good! is a concept disco album gone horribly awry.

    This might be the funnest meme in memedom. I would have spent time to tweak the typography more but that would make me a graphic designer obsessive type (pun totally intended). Have fun and show me what you got!

    Update: The flickr pool is a-hoppin’. Jump in! Who wants to bet BoingBoing will cover this within the next 5 hours?

    Update II: Flickrpool doesn’t seem to be working right now. Search for tags “cdcovermeme” instead

    1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
      The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
    2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
      The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
    3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
      The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
    4. Tag it: CD Cover Meme and cdcovermeme

    (taken from RobotSkirts. Thanks doll!)

  • vacation all i ever wanted

    I am back in Boston, can you tell? originally uploaded by hambox

    I am facing my last 24 hours here on the east coast. I am leaving one day early, as my family is returning to work tomorrow and it is time for me to Get the Hell Out of Here. Already my brother-in-law has sequestered himself with his mysterious Reports that he must create before starting his new term as a first- and second- grade teacher. And my sister is trying to bulk up her immune system as she prepares to face a roomful of babies starting tomorrow. Smart babies at Harvard!

    OMG I’m having so much fun. I have so much to tell you. But at this moment I am very much enjoying having minimal access to the internet, to television, to photo opps — to those perpetual electronic media/content streams that enter and exit my overtaxed brain.

    Instead, the ebb and flow has been of good food, drink, and conversation, lots of reading and listening and walking and observing. I have discovered that life is Real — even when it is not recorded by blog nor photo. Did you know that?