Off to California today! Indy's coming with me, because I thought it would be fun for him (airplanes, warm-weather playgrounds, beaucoup sushi, etc) and much less fun for Goldie, who is generally the easiest baby ever but who is possibly slightly less easy when jet-lagged; I don't know, but I decided that a heavily-itineraried trip would not be the best time to experiment. (She's staying home with an on-spring-break Kendrick, who will be the recipient of ten thousand photos of kitchens and living rooms from all across the South Bay area over the next five days.)

First up: a couple of days in San Francisco with Morgan, and then it's off to San Jose (which is sort of the nexus of all the areas we're looking at) to spend a few days looking at houses. I think. The "I think" is because every house that I have found over the past week on various home-search engines that I don't hate turns out to be sold already. Oh my god, there was this one house I came across - it was SUCH A DREAM (we're talking soaring windows, unbelievable kitchen, amazing school system, skylit family room, views views views and a CHICKEN COOP, which is obviously the best thing I can possibly imagine) that I called my broker in a panic and said "put an offer on it! Sight unseen! I don't care!" Her reply? "…It sold for tens of thousands of dollars over the asking price. In about 24 hours."

Greeeat.

The "hot market" that we're experiencing at present, it appears, is quite wonderful when you are the one selling your house and perhaps slightly less wonderful when you are the one looking for somewhere to live.

This photo has nothing to do with anything other than that it's baby-related, and the easiest DIY in the world (just a dreamcatcher, basically, except turned on its side), and I totally wish I had made one for our daughter's crib (not making one at this particular point in time; I have the feeling that delicate webs dripping with feathers might not travel especially well, and we have some serious traveling happening this summer).

Anyway, babies.

Spring!

 Currently test-running David Kind's new personalized eyeglasses styling service - you choose three pairs, a personal stylist chooses three more that he or she thinks will suit you, and then all six are delivered to your door in a pretty little mirrored box so you can choose your favorite (and then you ship 'em all back and they fill your prescription in the frame of your choice).

 This Spanish actress photoshopped her entire existence, thereby proving definitively that everything you see on the Internet is a lie. (via Styleite)

Yesterday I got a call from a friend - let's call her "A" - that made me angrier than I've been in a long time.

A is dating a new guy, and this new guy might be the guy; as in, the guy she wants to be with forever. (Let's call him "TG.") And yesterday she called me crying, because she found out that on the night before her first date with TG a mutual "friend" of theirs - a man whom she'd dated years and years ago - took it upon himself to tell TG not only about their past, but about all her past. In exhaustive, disgusting, disrespectful detail, with the express purpose of making her sound like she'd done nothing for the past decade except jump from man to man. He told stories about her that made her sound careless; not like the "kind of woman" TG should date. And so I suppose he had another purpose, as well: to use this "information" to shame her, and to make TG see her - a potential long-term partner - as something less than what she is.

To make her sound worthless.

Let's talk about the world "slut" for a second.