Last Friday, we had an oil spill in the oven. Sweety and I cleaned it out, but we saw how much crud was burned on to the oven and decided to run a cleaning cycle for the first time.

( Smoke! Stench! New ovens with features we won't use! )

I haven't posted a press release in a long time. I have no idea how I got on the list for this one. It takes up a lot of room, so I'm snipping it liberally. Yes, it's real: I'm sure they released in on April 2 on purpose. The full Web site is at http://spidermanonbroadway.marvel.com .

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SPIDER-MAN
TURN OFF THE DARK
ANNOUNCES OPEN CASTING CALLS
 
DIRECTED BY JULIE TAYMOR,
MUSIC & LYRICS BY BONO & THE EDGE
 
( Obnoxious! )

Sweety and I are now watching more shows per week than any time since the kids were born. It's almost a relief that one of them is ending. Here are my thoughts on the current seasons of...

( Heroes, Castle, Lost, Dollhouse, and BSG )

For a while now--probably since I first heard about the clams on Prozac problems--I've been trying to use health/beauty products that are better for the health and beauty of the the planet my children will someday inherit. (Scratch that. Those kids are hardly meek.) 

Some easy replacements have been excellent; some have even made me wonder if the original solutions were the problems. For instance, it seems that my lips grow less chapped when I use a beeswax lip balm than a petroleum-based one. Unscented scrubs, creams, and lotions often feel better on my skin, and they let me enjoy the scents that inevitably accompany other products.

But there have been a few things here and there that have been failures. One that springs to mind is the "botanical" facial toner that was mostly alcohol--to preserve the natural ingredients, no doubt--which stung my skin and made me smell like Everclear. That one's easy though; basic reading skills at the store would have saved me that one. Others are less obvious. Rather than let you buy or make these products yourself, I share my own experiences and idiocy with you. If you don't toss out a half-full tube or jar, the world is better off, right? Right.

( My bad purchase is your gain! )

This is already long, so I'll spare you my next product failure. If anyone finds this remotely amusing, I will humiliate myself further soon--not just for you, but for the good of the planet.

(Edited for clarity's sake.)

I think this is one of the best adaptations I've ever seen. Of course they couldn't do every single thing; they couldn't lavish time on the prison psychiatrist's home life and the reading of pirate comics. A few small characters dropped away or were condensed into one.  And this being Hollywood, the ending wasn't exactly the same.

But in many ways, the revisions were better. They accomplished an immense amount of backstory during the opening credits, and it didn't become boring. Many of the later changes were merely more concise than the book, but some were actually more clever. Few things became bigger than they were in the book, and I liked that. The only jarring thing to me was that some of the between-the-panels stuff came out, and it became much more explicit. If you absolutely can't handle the idea of hearing bones break, don't go see this movie.

Many lines--particularly Rorschach's--were verbatim from the book. Many of the characters designs were as well; the biggest departure is that of Silk Spectre II. Let's face it, the original skimpsuit was not all that attractive, and it definitely didn't look wearable. (How would it stay on? This in the book in which someone thinks hard about how to attach a mask properly.) They clearly took pains to make the actors look like the characters; at least two actors didn't have their natural hair color.

The performances were overall very impressive. I loved Nite Owl II and Dr. Manhattan. Rorschach's voice wasn't what I expected, but I came to like it and by the end thought Jackie Earle Haley was a hell of an actor. The Comedian was excellent; that's a tough role. Ozymandias was good, although I thought he looked a bit too skinny. It's kind of hard to find a cast of such little-known actors these days (the biggest stars were Billy Crudup and Matt Frewer, if that gives you any idea) and seeing casting this good makes you wonder why anyone bothers with big names. They were superb.

I really recommend it.

Sweety and I saw the Rorschach profile on Heroes (complete with a plug that calls Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, Silk Spectre II et al "The Watchmen," like it's a team name). Although we liked most of what we saw of Rorschach, I was disappointed to hear all the characters say "Ror-shack." I've always said "Ror-shock," and given the "raw shark" joke in the book, that seems correct to me.

I mentioned it to Sweety, who said, "Oh, me too. But doesn't it make you want to sing 'Ror-shack! Baby Ror-shack!' to the tune of 'Love Shack'?"

( And you know, it does. )

I almost went with a version that kept more of the original text and focused on his sexual repression, but this stuff scanned more easily. Someone better at filking could probably work in the dog, too. But hey, at least it's up in time for the advance screening now.

May Alan Moore, David Gibbons, and the B-52s forgive me.

Today, Sweety and I had lunch together and went to run an errand afterward. "Let's go to Elephant Pharm," I said. "We need diapers."

Elephant Pharm is a locally owned pharmacy chain. It's an extremely cool place; clean and friendly, with organic choices in everything from food to baby lotion to feminine hygiene and beyond. Conveniently, it's right next to Trader Joe's. This is great because Elephant Pharm has all the stuff Trader Joe's lacks. Often, I have to schedule a Trader Joe's trip in tandem with another grocery trip, because they never have diapers or zippered plastic bags or unscented hand lotion.

Make that was and had. When we got there, we found a store that looked like it hadn't opened yet. No lights on, everything still in place on the shelves. A man in sunglasses stopped us, as if blocking the door. "Elephant Pharm is closed," he told us. "Your prescriptions have been moved to Long's." He didn't move, just handed us a flyer and stood there talking. He seemed very East Coast to me somehow, and not in the ways I like. Sweety said later that he thought the man was trying to block us from reading the sign on the door.

Sure enough, the sign said that all Elephant Pharm store closed yesterday, "with a heavy heart" and probably forever. Knowing Long's was recently acquired by CVS, I asked the man what happened to the Long's employees who used to work Long's corporate headquarters in Northern California. "They were given generous severance packages," he said.

I found this entire exchange very troubling. Long's used to be a locally owned chain, before CVS bought them and rendered many locals jobless. Elephant Pharm was local, too. I'm all for global culture, but walking into a CVS just like the one in Sweety's New Jersey hometown holds little appeal.

Until recently I gave most of my business to a national chain pharmacy simply because it was more convenient. It seemed good to save the gas. But a few weeks ago, I decided that I couldn't afford to have more jobs leave our community. I also decided to stop ordering from Diapers.com, even though it would cost a few dimes more per pack to buy them at Elephant Pharm. I wanted to keep the last local pharmacy in business.

It seems my change was too little, too late.

I'm considering starting a site of my own. In fact, I started to fill out the contact info at a domain service. Then I backed out when it started asking for contact info. I don't have an office; I don't even have a P.O. box. If I register my home office, then will my home address be out there for anybody to find?

GoDaddy has some info about "private registration," but I'm not clear as to what's so private about it.

Can anybody clear this up for me or point me to some useful info?

Technology and animation journalist/editor Emru Townsend died last night. Although he was lucky enough to get a bone marrow transplant for his Monosomy 7--and his site HealEmru.com has doubtlessly helped many others to get the marrow they need--his transplant did not cure the disease.

I knew Emru only a little bit, completely through e-mail. From what I saw there--and from everything else I knew of him--he was intelligent, funny, and sweet. He leaves behind a wife and young son.

I wish I had gotten to know him better. I wish he were still alive.

1. Registering online at the National Marrow Donor Registry is pretty easy doesn't take very long. I did it last Thursday.

2. Thanks to a new technology called PBSC, sometimes the needed stem cells can be harvested through a procedure not unlike donating blood or platelets. No anesthesia needed. An old friend of mine is eligible for a bone marrow transplant using PBSC.

3. Getting into the database is the longest part of the screening process. My swab kit is already here, but it will take weeks to process it if I send it back the normal way. If I get it to my friend's family, though, they can expedite it through his marrow drive on Saturday.

I'm about to go swab my mouth and cross my fingers right now.

This summer, Sweety and I attended a truly marvelous wedding. It was in a tiny space by a pond in a gorgeous wooded hillside. Our considerate friends rented a B&B and hired nannies to watch all the guests' kids. And the ceremony was so moving that even the participants cried. We had to leave before the reception due to the kids' bedtime, but we swore we'd take our newly married friends, A and E, to a nice dinner to catch up and talk about the wedding.

A few weeks ago, A and E came to visit.  We spent a little time reacquainting them with the kids, who they hadn't seen in a while. We went out to a nice Italian restaurant. Wine, pasta, main dishes, dessert and coffee. We reminisced about the wedding, which really was one of the most touching and beautiful I've ever attended. We chatted about friends, former co-workers, and current events.

All the topics of conversation were interesting, but one of my favorite chats happened with A on the way to the restaurant. "How is it being married?" I asked.

"Not much different, really," he told me. "We've been together fifteen years."

I still get a little glow from being married, and I told him that. "But the best part is the way you suddenly become legitimate in society," I mused. "The neighbors ask you over. Everybody wants to help you celebrate."

A nodded. "It made a big difference with family, too." He told me that the marriage made their families more comfortable. Then he added, "No on 8!"

A and E are wonderful people. We've known them for years; Sweety used to work with A, and I always looked forward to seeing A at work get-togethers. When the twins were small, A and E bravely visited our chaotic household and brought lunch. They helped to feed and hold the babies. The babies clearly liked them.

A and E are a fantastic couple. They have the kind of deep love you want all your friends to have. Sweety and I were thrilled when their commitment ceremony became a wedding. And yes, they are both men.

Now the state of California is about to vote as to whether A and E, and others who happen to be in romantic and loving same-sex relationships, have the right to be married. I know that a lot of people are considering voting Yes on 8 to make gay marriage illegal, and I think these people don't have the whole story. Perhaps they just don't know a couple like A and E. 

If you came to this blog knowing me, you probably knew this would be my take on it. If you didn't, please think about it. The state of California is not going to require that marriage be taught in schools. It's not going to demand that your church perform gay marriages (heck, look at the hoops you have to jump through to get married in a church even now). And if you are married and straight, your marriage will not mean any less because gays can get married, too. After watching A and E get married, and hearing how it helped their families to accept them, it made marriage mean even more to me.

Please encourage all your California friends to vote No on 8. It will hurt no one, and it will help some people who are in love. It will help their families, too.

I was pleased with the last American presidential debate. It was an interesting, lively format, and we heard some details we hadn't heard before.

Health care is a big issue for our family. Although we're all healthy right now (knock wood), we've had some big scares, and we know the value of good insurance.

When I was pregnant, I worked full-time and got truly fabulous health insurance. This was excellent stuff, covering things I didn't use, such as acupuncture and fertility treatment. I was especially grateful for it when our spontaneous twins decided to continue their trend of spontaneity by arriving eight weeks early (nine weeks, according to some calculations). The total hospital bill for the kids' first five weeks ran $945,000. That's just the hospital bill; it doesn't include the doctors' fees and radiology and breast pump rental and so forth.

$945,000. And I was getting good nutrition and prenatal care. Sure, I had gestational diabetes--a common complication of twin pregnancy--but it went away shortly after I gave birth. The kids themselves didn't actually develop any major problems. The majority of the time they lay there racking up the bills, it was just because they were too small and undeveloped to swallow, to survive without an incubator, and do those other things that full-term babies are born knowing to do.

We continued our insurance through COBRA as long as we could, and then applied for private insurance. Since we weren't planning to have any more kids, we applied for one with no maternity coverage.

We were denied coverage.

I called our insurance agent and asked why, and the agent told me it was because of the gestational diabetes and the premature births. The fact that we planned to have no more pregnancies didn't matter. The fact that we planned to have no more births didn't matter. The fact that my husband, our twins, and I were all healthy didn't matter. We were denied coverage.

So when the candidates talked about their plans, I was interested.

( How the candidates' health care plans would work for my family )

Like most American grownups, I've been thinking a lot about the economy lately. And like most American grownups, I've been thinking about our personal finances and how they fit into the economy.

I'm wondering, what are the best ways to keep the economy afloat without wasting our own money? It's pretty obvious that the "consumerism as patriotism" thing didn't work. I've always been of the opinion that buying useless junk helps neither the economy nor our budget, but what about other things?

For instance, the other day I bought some organic cherry tomatoes. The American-grown ones cost 6 dollars a pint. There were Mexican-grown grape tomatoes next to them, which were the same as far as my recipe was concerned. The Mexican tomatoes didn't have a price tag, but I assumed they were about the same or a little bit cheaper.  I know that my $6 doesn't make a huge impact alone, but if a few other shoppers make the same decision, that helps the grocery store decide what to stock. What the grocery store stocks pretty much makes the decision for the people who don't care about these issues. So, in terms of the economy, money returned to the community, semi-local ecology, etc., was it more cost-effective to buy the American ones?

Of course, this is further complicated by my guess that the life of the average Mexican farm worker isn't so hot, either.

In last night's VP debate, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin both set their hypothetical John and Jane Smiths "around the kitchen table" having difficult talks about the woes of the middle class. Having just made a pasta frittatta for dinner, I had food on the brain, and that got me thinking of the debate in food terms. What if, instead of the mini-speeches we got, we were instead dropping by for dinner at their kitchen tables? Not a fancy Sunday dinner, mind you, but a weeknight "since you're in town, why don't you come have dinner with the family?" dinner.  So I tried to translate their words and messages into food.


( One night in Wasilla... )



( Then, in Delaware... )


( In real-world terms... )

Today I renewed our Natural History subscription for another two years. It's one of Sweety's favorite magazines, and it's associated wth a museum, so I'm all for it. Didn't hurt that you get such a good rate when you re-up early.

But I paused for a minute when I remembered the latest issue ran 48 pages. I've never counted their edit-to-ads ratio, but a thinner mag usually means less content. Subscriptions help, sure, and so does selling mailing lists (although we're no help in that regard), but ad revenue is still where most mags make their money. When ad pages drop, so do edit pages. I'm not saying NH will stop printing or anything; I don't know how their overall finances are, and I think they probably have some core readers who will never give up on the mag.

I've been told that the first thing people let go when their household budget gets constricted is magazine subscriptions. They're not all that expensive over the time you get them, but if you're up for renewal and see a fast way to not spend forty bucks, a lot will depend on how much forty bucks means to you at that moment. I guess I've always seen dropping subscriber numbers--and you can easily track these at a magazine's Web site, because they have to reassess their rate base quarterly--as a bad sign for not just the mag staffers, who lose jobs if this continues, but for the economy in general. Of course there are surer ways of showing how the economy's doing, but it's a segment I find a little sad when things aren't going well.

The case of Natural History is especially worrisome because it's such a good magazine, always very solid and interesting. Sweety loves the science articles, and even I often tear out their book reviews and add to my Amazon or library list. Discover went ridiculously fluffy a few years back, so there aren't a lot of science magaziness that I can both comprehend and stand any more. If NH gets thinner, it is a loss for both of us. And not just for us; it means there are fewer ways for average joes to learn about science, and it might mean the museum is suffering, too. That's a bad sign not just for the current economy, but for the future of our economy.

I'm there with my real name and a recent (cruddy photo) and everything. I was expecting to hate Facebook, but I'd accrued three formal invitations and a number of hints, so it seemed like enough of my friends were there for it to be worthwhile. So far, I've found one long-lost friend and reconnected with a number of former co-workers. Might turn out to be worth it after all.

Forgive the lame link, but this is where I found the story about major chain stores expected to close down many--possibly all--stores.

This is interesting to me because I was just in #1-Least-Likely-to-Succeed, aka Sears, the other day. Having suffered through a few seasons of really cruddy kids' clothes that couldn't stand up to washing, I decided to see if Lands' End could do better for at least a few key items. I buy a lot of Sweety's clothes there because they're classic-looking and they last forever. And the kids' clothes were very nice, but some of them were mismarked. Not wanting to wait another five years for one of the girls to wear a certain cardigan, I readied for returns.

But returning with the included label costs you $6.50. If I understood the woman on the phone correctly, it costs that even if the return is due to their mistake. Returning them at Sears, though, is free. So off to Sears we went.

The return went very smoothly. The items were still tagged; their bags had been opened, but that was it. Everything was pretty close to pristine. And do you know what sticker they put on them? "CLEARANCE--USED." If they're having to do that every time Lands' End screws up an order, then no wonder they're not doing well.

I enjoyed the season finale of Doctor Who. They really did pull out all the stops. I particularly liked seeing Elisabeth Sladen in her Doctor Who context again.

About two years ago, when I was pregnant, Sweety bought me a GameCube game called Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life. This is the girled-up second entry in the Harvest Moon line. Basically, it's a farming sim with a tiny bit of plot and a lot of relationships with the neighbors. Oh, and since this is the girl version, you also raise a kid and can buy clothes. Sweety thought I could play it while I was on bedrest, enjoying the progress of root vegetables as our own little harvest gestated.

As it turned out, I couldn't very well play console games lying on my left side with a continual nosebleed. So I just started playing it a few weeks ago. And although I'm enjoying it, it's teaching me some things about how I play games.

Wildfires are burning all over Northern California. We don't live especially near any of them, and yet the air is hazy and smelly. I tried to take the kids for a wagon ride yesterday, but turned back early because I felt like I was holding cigarettes to their lips. This morning, the smell hit me halfway down the stairs.

Edit: Just check out the fire map. Yikes.

What a scary part of climate change this is! It seems that a lot of people think that if they hide inside and turn up the air conditioners, global warming won't bother them. But the drought--which may be partly due to natural cycles, but is almost certainly worsened by the human-caused heat--is baking the area into kindling. I suspect that homes and lives will be lost. It's a poor swap for an SUV.