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June 25, 2007
swan swan hummingbird
Back when I started Son of Max, I was a brand new mother to one son. I worked at an oddly (for me) corporate job and thought it would be nice to have an outlet whereby I could yammer on about things and have a couple of my friends yuck it up over my sad little misadventures.
It's been three years and some stuff has changed. I've moved across country to return to my salty New England roots. With my husband and a couple of other folks, I co-founded a software company and now work from home full-time. I'm getting paid to blog, which was one of my semi-serious career goals. Also, we were joined by an unexpected though very sweet baby girl.
Now it seems I'm going to be writing a twice-monthly column about kids and nature for a new Providencian web site. I get to take pictures of things like thimble-sized horseshoe crabs to illustrate my posts. This makes me insanely happy because it is pretty much combining all of the things I'm into right now (besides plastic buckets of frozen, pre-mixed margaritas and Owen Wilson.)
All of this is to say that I am swan-songing Son of Max. I feel enough has changed from when I've started it that I'd like to start anew. If you know me, you'll get links to my new stuff whether you like it or not. If you don't know me, thanks for reading and let me know if you have any interest in either of my new gigs. I can't promise there will be any posts devoted to my crotch or stories about our pagan family's attempt to assign meaning to various holidays, but I will do my very best to keep it real on the EC.
Posted by Max at 09:36 PM
June 05, 2007
surplus junk in our hippy trunk
I am a big fan of Peapod, the grocery home delivery service. Sure, there are some limitations with product selection and their website is less than slick, but we've been ordering from them for over a year now and it's become a habit. One of the best features is the ability to "Shop Lists", which means you get a long list of all the stuff you've ever bought there and unimaginative culinary slackers like myself can go through and select the same frozen and/or pre-packed crap they always buy. Presto, the family somehow survives for yet another week.
So last night at around 11 p.m. AND ADMITTEDLY AFTER SOME TEQUILA, I blasted through our weekly order, gave it a quick review, hit the "submit" button and went to bed.
Now, I should back up and say that due to our growing concern about our carbon footprint and in an effort to buy local and just generally trying not to personally fuck up the world so much, I've sworn off grocery stores for several whole categories of items. Such as produce. And fish. Rhode Island has a surprising amount of farmland for such a teeny state and certainly a number of small, local fish markets, including a recently discovered CLAM SHACK that sells seafood so fresh it's booty-popping as it slides deliciously down your craw.
I perhaps should have noticed that the final dollar amount for last night's order, while about what it's been in the past, seemed high for an order that had no meat, seafood, or produce. However, we had just purchased HBO yesterday for the sole purpose of having a Sopranos marathon and to my husband and me, that means drinks. So I didn't.
Imagine my surprise when I unloaded said groceries to discover not one but ELEVEN boxes of false sausage. Coco spun around the kitchen gleefully. He loves those things! He will eat them every day! And then, after unpacking like, one box of craisins and a bottle of salad dressing, I discovered the other six bags contained boxes and boxes of granola bars. Peanut butter -- Coco can't even bring them to school!
That my friends is a little story about how when you are designing a web application, you should have some helpful text that pops up and says "Um, are you sure?" or some such thing when you enter "11" into the quantity field instead of "1", especially when everything else on your order is quantity of "1" and WTF Peapod people, who orders that much of one thing?! It could also be interpreted as a story about a person who spent $76.82 on fake sausage and granola.
At least, as my husband pointed out, if the world does end soon*, we've got some fricking granola bars to see us through a week or two. You can come over, provided you are not allergic to tree nuts.
* Thanks Mimi Smartypants for the link, from the bottom of my plasticine heart.
Posted by Max at 10:37 PM | Comments (2)