Coming up…
Posted in adverlitas on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008If Santa doesn’t do it for you this year, celebrate Mulchfest instead!
Archive for the 'adverlitas' Category
Get someone’s goat, I’ll give you one of mine!
Posted in adverlitas, newyorkette style on Monday, Dec. 1, 2008
I’m offering an original drawing to anyone who gives a whole animal on heifer.org. Just forward me your confirmation email (delete any sensitive information, as I don’t need it), and send me your address! All drawings (except the flying bee) are india ink on 8.5×11 inch cotton, pH neutral archival quality paper.
Whatever whole animal you fund, I’ll send you a drawing of it (or another animal, if you prefer). First come, first serve. But these are not the last drawings. I plan on doing more. Click on the goat above for more pics of other beasties!
UPDATE: if you’re having qualms about spending a whole animal amount, we can work something out if you’re only buying shares of a few animals to give in some of your friends’ names.
Adverlita alert: the Chico Bag!
Posted in adverlitas, newyorkette style on Friday, Jan. 11, 2008
(I don’t know what color this is, but this is the color of one of mine! It comes in ten colors.)
You may have noticed the new “adverlita” in the sidebar! (You have to be on newyorkette.com to see the sidebar.) It’s for Chico Bag, which I have just discovered. Adverlitas, I hasten to remind you, are unsollicited “ads” for things I appreciate, such as Heifer International, Mulchfest, and Opera Mini. Things I like and use or ascribe to or practice.
I like the Chico Bag, and find myself using them (I store two in my regular handbag) all the time, mostly when I’m on my way home and decide to spontaneously drop in at my local supermarket. The thing I like about them is that I’m not tempted to sling them over my shoulder, which usually results in a very sore shoulder. These bags are very comfortable to hold in the hand, or slip over the arm in a very twee way as one gets one’s metro card out of one’s pocket. They don’t dig into your hand the way plastic bags do. I hate that feeling!
My stash of canvas bags, which rarely see the light of day—even the pretty Whole Foods one and the stylish Fairway one— are very jealous. Is it my fault they’re too bulky to carry around in case I might need them?
NB: the only thing you have to remember is to unpack them from their little attached carry-sack (which comes with a key chain attachment, that’s how small they are when packed), before you get to the cashier, so your bags are open and ready to receive your groceries as they come down the conveyor belt. I always forget and annoy my cashier with my nervous fumbling.
If nothing else, check out the funny plastic bag monster video on their site!
Happy Mulchfest!
Posted in adverlitas on Saturday, Jan. 5, 2008
(Click on the image for more information!)
Today and tomorrow, in all of New York’s boroughs! Bring your tree to any of the locations in the list, and feel good about recycling your Christmas tree! You might even be able to take home the mulch for your own use, if you choose one of the “chipping” sites (as opposed to the “drop-off only” sites.
Happy Mulchfest!
TNY weekend reader: The old and the new
Posted in TNY, TNY weekend reader, adverlitas on Wednesday, Apr. 25, 2007
I get my TNY by subscription as a reward for my contribution to WNYC, which I support in spite of my occasional objections to Leonard Lopate (his gospel hours, his embarrassing adoration of Patricia T. O’Conner), a heck of a lot of religious content, and Jonathan Schwartz’s strange insistance on sharing his love affair with the insane-sounding “Carousel Waltz”. My contribution is ten dollars a week, forever, or until my credit card dies. All I asked for in return: my reward and a mailbox free of WNYC requests for contributions.
Anyway, never mind my grumpy nature: the thing is, even though my contribution is ongoing, my reward apparently isn’t! They have not coordinated their gift-giving to synch with their gift-receiving. That means that I will spend the next month not getting my TNY in the mail. The E.T.A. of my next issue is apparently May 7th. Get it together WNYC!
Being too cheap and stubborn to go out and buy my own (alas, here we go with my grumpy nature again!), I have been reading The New Yorker on my cell phone instead. Thus, the illustration above in honor of my stalwart efforts to read TNY come hell or highwater, or not.
But it’s not just in my honor, because how am I able I do this? I found that Opera, a web browser recommended to me by my high-tech medievalist friend Maria in Berlin, does a “mini” version, aptly called “Opera Mini.” It’s free, just like the computer-based version. I downloaded it onto my cell phone, and found that the magazine was quite readable, even on my inch and a quarter by inch and six-eighths screen. I was even able to view my own cartoon this week on the site. Very satisfying.
Yesterday, I spent my lunch break reading Atul Gawande’s “The way we age now” on my cell phone in the “Go Sushi” downstairs from my next fitting client, and was quite pleased about it, however horrified I was by the prospect of my future and inevitable calcification.
Calcification may be in the future for us all, but so is reading magazines on our cell phones! Try it! Don’t be an old fart!
PS - in case anyone has tried to post a comment lately and not succeeded, it seems my anti-spamming measures have been nuking perfectly acceptable comments before I even see them… Sorry about that! 
Please keep trying, and let me know if you’re still not getting through.
Newyorkette reminder…
Posted in NYC, adverlitas on Friday, Jan. 5, 2007
I’m going Saturday morning with my little tree! Click on the image for the Parks Department info by borough.
ChristmasHoliday shopping? Give a goat, get my goat.
Posted in adverlitas on Monday, Dec. 11, 2006
Click on the goat for the full sized version. (image: carolita.org)
In case anyone’s curious, the little goat in my sidebar is a special “adverlita.” Every year, sometime during the countdown to Christmas I receive a catalogue from Heifer International, with a photograph of Walter Cronkite cuddling a duckling on the cover, proposing that I buy a cow or a goat or a flock of geese (or a share thereof) for a family or village somewhere less prosperous than where I live.
Part of my “adverlita” philosophy is to help friends, and another part is to simply promote things I think are good. I love goats. They always look like they’re laughing. I think goats are good. And I think Heifer International is a good thing, too. You can buy a share of a goat for only $10 in your own name or in the name of a friend or colleagues, or a whole goat for $120. Which is cheaper than your girlfriend or boyfriend’s present (if you’re a half-decent boy/girlfriend, that is).
Buy a goat, or share of a goat (I did!) : here.
For whole (or shares of) heifers, llamas, sheep, geese, ducks, water buffalos, wabbits, and even trees, etc.: see the full catalogue here.
** If you buy a whole goat in my name, I’ll give you the original drawing of my “get someone’s goat,” brush and india ink on acid-free paper, irregularly sized but frame-able. You just have to make sure I receive the confirmation email card they provide you with. If you buy any other animals, I’ll give you a drawing of that animal (more are coming, anyway, to keep the sidebar hopping—including the “trio of rabbits.”).
Heifer International: here.
NB: the change from “Christmas” to “Holiday” was effected in order to encompass whatever other holidays are happening at this time— I am possessed of equal measures of personal indifference and respect regarding all religions, and was only trying to be polite. (Hear that, pro X-mas warriors? Ever hear of being polite?)
