Below are the most recent 8 friends' journal entries.

Friday, December 18th, 2009
angerona	3:41p	я дозрела. Научите меня делать фотографии как вот в этой записи, например: то есть я не про то, что там на них -- слингов у меня и самой хватает :). Я про то, как выглядят люди, свет, передачу цветов и т.д. Я понимаю, что это как "научите меня высшей математике и хорошему вкусу в комментариях к этой записи," но все же, хоть основы какие-то подскажите. Сколько процентов тут зависит от фотоаппарата (и если много, то какой порекомендуете из довольно простых -- то есть не так, чтоб зашкаливал ум от всевозможных опций; я ведь и опции не понимаю; но можно и не мыльницу), сколько -- от умения фотографа увидеть и словить момент, сколько -- от обработки и понимания азов про свет и остальное? И где почитать эти самые азы? Только действительно азы и чтоб понятно и можно было попробовать что-то из рекомендаций даже на мыльнице. Хочу снимать более красивые фотографии детей, чем у меня сейчас получаются, когда я просто щелкаю и стараюсь словить момент. Но даже если момент спойман, далеко не всегда фотография при этом хорошо выглядит. Вот например это уже обработанная фотография, и вроде хорошая, но мне кажется, могла бы быть гораздо лучше, если б задний план был менее четкий, а в переднем цвета были как-то более живые, что ли. У меня даже слов нет, чтоб правильно обьяснить, что я имею в виду, но разницу вижу, и я уверена, что профессионал ее увидит гораздо лучше. (28 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
angerona	8:18a	Overheard at Marshalls The line to the cashiers is next to a stand with various moderately fancy chocolates. Voices behind me: Man: ooh, truffles. [earnestly] Did you know that truffles actually grow in the ground? Older woman: yes, I did. Man: I guess I should've known, given that pigs search for them, but I never thought about it, until I heard it recently. Pretty disgusting, huh? Still, they taste so good. Woman: my dad can tell you all about it. He used to live on the farm where they found some truffles. Man: must've been quite a find! From the ground and so chocolatey... (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
angerona	12:52p	Question for droid- and other smartphone- owners: What's the easiest way of getting a chunk of text onto the phone for future reading? Say I'm reading something on the web or have a document on my computer and want to be able to read it on my phone later. What do you do in such cases? Send yourself a URL? But I'm finding book readers to be much better for reading text than browsers on my Droid. Copy the text into a document and email the document to yourself? In what format? I would love for it to be in ebook or some such format that a book reader would easily recognize, instead of Word. Would love to be able to include pictures, too. Anything else I haven't thought of? Ideally I'd love to have a collection of articles/books that I've put together for "when I have fifteen minutes free somewhere, I can read this" purpose. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 14th, 2009
angerona	9:50a	overheard in gymnastics waiting room mom, waiting for her daughter, is talking on the phone: "she has four jewish lesbian moms and she's going to catholic school. Of course the kid is going to have problems!" (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
angerona	8:49a	Financial questions A few simple personal finance questions. We think we know the answers to them, but just in case would like to hear what you think: If you have several 401(k) accounts, would you roll them into one? Why or why not? If you decided to combine all the 401(k) accounts into one for ease of management, would you keep them in 401(k) or put it all into a rollover IRA? If you decided to go with a rollover IRA, do you have any recommendations for the bank to manage it? We are thinking Vanguard or ETrade. Is there any risk in combining all those accounts into one, given that they are not FDIC insured? At the same time, they are just investment holdings, not cash -- at least at this time. And now a question of curiosity: if you had somewhere between 10 and 50 thousand dollars to invest, would you put them in a fairly low-interest mortgage or 529 accounts for kids or somewhere else? (36 Comments |Comment on this)
angerona	8:32a	Вчера полезла в список френдов в ЖЖ и с удивлением обнаружила, что какие-то люди, которые я была уверена у меня во фредах, совсем нет, и наоборот. Список большой, так что я просто проглядела мельком, и подозреваю, что многое упустила. Поэтому спрашиваю здесь: если вы меня читаете регулярно и комментируете иногда, и хотели бы видеть какие-то подзамочные записи, то напишите здесь. Если наоборот не хотите быть во френдах, тоже пишите :). (47 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 11th, 2009
angerona	2:11p	Internal pangs of something Как называется реакция, когда узнаешь какие-то хорошие новости про кого-то, а внутри саднит от того, что у тебя этого нет. Это не зависть, потому что за другого действительно рад и считаешь, что человек это заслужил. и про себя не думаешь "почему мне так невезет?", а "если б я старалась, и у меня бы это было, а я сама себе злобный буратино..." или даже "увы, у меня такой возможности не было, даже если б я захотела, но классно, что у кого-то она есть." То есть так думаешь, но все равно саднит где-то внутри, как будто наступили на любимую мозоль, даже если это про дела давно минувших дней, которые уже изменить никак нельзя, да и все вроде нормально обернулось. Я не знаю, понятно ли я обьясняю. Могу и примеры какие-то дать: читаю в ЖЖ о том, что кто-то вышел в декрет за пару месяцев до рождения первого ребенка, чтоб отдохнуть; киваю головой, что правильно, если есть такая возможность, то это отлично, а у самой что-то внутри переворачивается горькое вроде "а я вот работала до родов..." И сдалось оно мне это, правда? Ребенку пять лет уже! И такие же внутренние перевороты когда кто-то говорит легко "скидываю детей бабушкам на выходные" или "открываю свою фирму, сегодня первый день в новом офисе" или еще какие-то вещи, про которые и признаваться даже стыдно, что у меня на них внутри болезненно откликается, но ведь откликается. Как эти отклики называются? И, главное, как от них избавиться? (65 Comments |Comment on this)
angerona	12:42p	Chick Lit Rules in chick lit, when a working woman gets pregnant, she starts making plan for leaving work after she gives birth (and sometimes long before it). If she's single and the father is not in the picture, the book may make a nod towards reality and so the woman will make contingency plans for working part-time. Most of it from home. Why? Tell me, why? Why do the page after page she's contemplating the change in her life situation, the tight budget and future lack of vacations, but never a thought is spared to working full-time. The single answer looms: a working mother is a bad mother. And this girl may be a careless, absent-minded, obsessed with her loser of an ex-boyfriend, but gosh darn it she's not going to be a "BAD MOTHER"(tm). there are only two types of professions for women in chick lit: (1) something in marketing/journalism and (2) A LAWYER. Just like that, in all caps. A marketing-cum-journalist chick comes with the following accessories: an editor (female or male, somewhat strict, but generally fairly understanding when it's needed), an evil or annoying co-worker, and a sympathetic coworker with whom she can bitch about the evil-coworker and the editor-boss. The lawyer-chicks come in two flavors, depending on whether she is a leading character or a supporting cast member. A leading character is always over-busy over-worked and either hates her lawyerly job or will realize by the end of the book that she does (and more likely than not will quit it). A supporting character is also an over-busy and over-worked lawyer, but happens to love her job and stays in it till the end of the book. That's it. No other professions are allowed; I suppose because one can't easily identify with them or something. Or perhaps late twenty- and young thirty- somethings female these days really do work only two types of jobs, unless they are a complete anomaly and a freak. How would I know? It is acceptable and even expected for the heroine to be somewhat plump and to want to lose weight. But the cardinal rule of all chick lit is that she is not allowed to lose weight by through perseverance, exercise and changing her diet. Don't take me wrong, the characters may and do lose weight, it just happens through deus ex machina, and the means are as creative as their authors' fantasy. I've seen: spending hours on a stationary bike, completely unaware of it, in a postpartum depression-anger haze; walking the streets day in and day out and not eating properly, also because of sadness, depression and anger; walking dogs because she lost her job as a lawyer; spending lots of time on her feet because she became a housekeeper because of her troubles at her job as -- you guessed it -- a lawyer; not eating out of worry or anxiety; and the one to top them all: waking up without any memory of the past four years only to discover that during those same years she's lost a lot of weight, gained killer muscles and obtained some sleek plastic surgery. I'm sure there are plenty more other creative inventions as to how to lose weight. But I'll be completely shocked if you tell me of a book where the heroine lost weight through the mundane means of forcing herself to exercise and diet. For every "true love" subplot, there must be another romantic subplot that looks quite feasible from the beginning and some guy that seems fairly attractive, but is discovered to have some major character flaw at the end. You know what's most true to life in chick lit? Names. I love how the characters are named: the names are always appropriate to their age, background and heritage. That's something I can't nitpick on. In the latest book I read: "Certain Girls" by Jennifer Weiner, there's a teenage popular girl, named Amber Gross, and a comment that with such a name, you'd think she'd get at least some teasing, but it's as if she was immune. That was the part where I had to stop and nod vigorously. There was Erin Gross in my high school, and she too was very popular (well, at least among our nerdy crowd -- there she was considered to be extremely cool and pretty), despite the unfortunate name. (23 Comments |Comment on this)