My little buckeroos and buckerettes: Updates will be sparse until Saturday or so as the Moms is in town and we’re going to GO CRAZY NEW YORK STYLE. Which is to say, scout some galleries and such. It’s a wild time, I’m telling you. In the meantime, comfort yourselves that shirts are shipping (finally) this week and you’ll have them in your moist clutches before you know it.

You people are obsessed with this sandwich, I swear - understandably so. I’m getting a lot of mail suggesting additions (grilled mushrooms are an excellent idea although I’d probably forego the lime in that case) and substitutions (raw green beans instead of the snap peas is something I’ll definitely have to try). Seriously, knock yourselves out - if it fits on the bread and doesn’t taste like ass, go for it.

Rabbit’s post today strikes close to home; I, too, am incapable of leaving my house without being overequipped for at least the next week or so. I got this new bag for Christmas, and it’s a really excellent bag except that it’s finally big enough to hold everything I want to carry, which is to say it’s about three times as much room as is necessary for everything I need to carry. I’ve tried switching to smaller bags. Believe me, I have. When I clomp up my stairs to my apartment after my last lecture of the day and my back is hurting from that infernal bag and my feet are sore for the same reason, I swear up and down to clean it the fuck out and bring only the absolute minimimun I need to not die. But it never happens. I end up with notebooks and textbooks, sure, but then also a couple of novels and hey toss in the latest Granta and you never know whether you’ll want Penguin mints or gum or those horrible Listerine breath things so you might as well bring all three, and a can of Jolt in case you get drowsy before class and don’t forget fifty pens in case forty nine get lost or run out of ink and MY GOD WHERE’S MY EXTRA TOOTHBRUSH. Friends grabbing my bag for me from coat check counters always marvel at its impossible, pendulous weight. "What the hell is in this thing? Do you even have any classes today? Why don’t you just carry your wallet and keys?" As if. They’ll be sorry one day when they’re caught with the sniffles and don’t have a wide variety of tissue and napkin options available for mid-movie nose wiping, or when that cute chick on the downtown 6 asks for a piece of gum BUT THEY ONLY HAVE MINTS. Suckers.

SupaSupa writes: Emma - Tell me more about this intricately contstructed salad-sandwich of yours so that I too may enjoy the delights of such summer dining!

People: let’s do this thing. You take your bread - I’m fond of really fresh Italian or French bread but it doesn’t really matter. You get yourself some honey mustard. Just a scraping, don’t go overboard. Then some Swiss - you vegans can skip this part or use some of that really alarming soycheese I guess although I’ve never found any of it to be less than absolutely vile. Slice up a serious quantity of cucumber and layer half of it over the cheese, don’t be shy. After the Swiss, there are sprouts - oh, such sprouts there are. Once in a while if you’re feeling really crazy, this is where you’d sprinkle in a handful of raw snap peas, the kind that are unbelievably crisp and that you shelled just a few minutes ago for this express purpose. Then pile on greens by the fistful - we’re talking baby spinach, romaine, what have you; I’m fond of the mixed salad greens I get at the hippy Greenmarket but it doesn’t matter. At this point, take a deep breath - this is the sheer genius of it. Take a slice of lime and squeeze it over the greens. Go ahead, don’t be scared. Then another layer of cucumber to squash everything down, and perhaps more Swiss if you’re nervous about all the vegetables.

You’re in the home stretch now - you could add some pickles or peppers or tomato or whatever, or just call it a day. That right there is the Giant Veggie Sandwichâ„¢. Now you know (and knowing is half the battle).

When it’s not playing with lighters (metaphorically speaking), my forum produces the occasional gem. Thanks to Eric for this one.

One little lime is enough to make me take back every dirty thing I’ve ever said about Corona. My god, it even smells fantastic.

Minor flurry of apartment cleaning today as it turns out my mum’s going to be staying with me later this week while we check out some galleries for my dad in Soho. I’m looking forward to it; none of my family has been to New York since last fall.

I hit that Greenmarket in Union Square earlier and got home a few hours ago with bags and bags of veggies. Seriously can’t get enough of this stuff; all I eat now are these intricately constructed sandwiches with french bread and greens and cucumber. Summer has officially arrived, the only thing I need to do now is stock my fridge with watermelon and my freezer with those popsicles that come as little tubes of liquid until you freeze them. You know the ones.

It looks like Penny Arcade and Pure Drivel (brought to you by Scotty and the filthiest Monkey you ever did see) share a common, unfortunate fan. A quick summary: a fanboy posted to the forum looking to show off his strip and a frightening cartoon he did of me, only for everyone who actually looked at his strip to realize he’s ripping off some of my best friends.

This is a classic PA strip, and here’s one from the fanboy’s archive (on my server as he’s removed the strips in question).

Here’s a strip by Monkey, and here’s the copied version.

My favorite part? This kid’s been spamming me for weeks, looking for traffic to his site. I’m really curious how he thought I would just somehow not notice word-for-word dialogue being copied from Monkey and PA. Either way, though, I guess he finally got some traffic.

<gabriel> so are you having a good weekend? lots of fun I assume.
<emma> i have been sick all weekend actually
<gabriel> you are like bob sick
<emma> i am
<gabriel> Robert M. Sick
<emma> that’s me!
<gabriel> captain sick of the USS disease
<emma> how did you know
<gabriel> queen sicka of sickonia
<emma> totally
<gabriel> daughter of fredrick sick and heir to the sick fortune
<emma> you have me pegged completely
<gabriel> well I hope you get to feeling better soon
<gabriel> you know what always helps me get over a cold?
<emma> tell me
<gabriel> lesbian sex
<gabriel> it’s true
<emma> really
<gabriel> oh yeah!
<gabriel> better than chicken fucking soup
<gabriel> it’s a fact
<emma> i believe you

The best epiphanies are the kind that come in the shower or over a bowl of cereal, so soon after you wake up that maybe it came to you while you were sleeping or something and you just now remembered. And then you dry off or rinse the bowl out (as the case may be) and sit down to start over on two or three weeks of work, and you get more done in the next eight hours than in days and days previously. You don’t really mind having thrown out so much, starting more or less from scratch, because you finally get to a point where it’s done or at least you can leave it for a while (whatever it may be) and you don’t have that fucking irritating little poke at the back of your head reminding you that you’re not happy with it. Because you are, finally. Happy with it.

The trouble of course being that when it’s polished and ready to go a day or two later, you’ve forgotten about all the work that never saw the light of day, all the starting over and revising and throwing out. “I made that in eight hours,” you tell people. (They are appropriately amazed.) And when you start on the next thing a day or a week or a month later, it seems incomprehensible that you’d actually have to wait for another epiphany, but you do.

That’s the best.

(Consolation regarding the rather spectacular loss suffered by the Yankees this afternoon)

At least they won last night with an impressive (and surprising) tenth inning.

At least the novelty of being a one-time Red Sox fan and now getting to watch Mo Vaughn and Roger Clemens both playing for two different New York teams has yet to wear off.

At least I dozed through a couple of today’s more painful moments, thanks to the lingering remnants of the most recent tonsil escapades. It was a little disconcerting waking up each time and realizing the Mets had another run or three, but perhaps less excruciating than actually watching it happen.

At least it was undeniably hilarious when Estes missed Clemens with that pitch. It didn’t just not hit him but actually went behind him completely, nowhere near the plate (or the batter, for that matter). Seriously, isn’t he at least as big as the strike zone?

At least after a couple of mid-game screwdrivers I’d more or less lost track of which team, exactly, I wanted to win. It’s much easier to maintain a consistent level of generalized, surly enthusiasm when sobriety is somewhat less than total.

At least they lost spectacularly.

At least the Mets are a New York team, too (and at least there’s another game tomorrow).

Perusing nyc vans makes me very, very happy. (via Morning News)

The “arch-rival” thread over in the forum led me off into a tangent of thinking about my favorite sites done by talented chicks. Here’s a sampling: Meg Hourihan is fantastically smart and her writing makes me quiver. While it may no longer be updated, Heather Hamilton’s Dooce.com was a particular favorite and I was sad to see it go. I’m jealous of Loobylu’s illustrations and madcrazy sewing skills. Mena Trott is not only one of the people behind Movable Type but also writes dollarshort, one of my daily reads. The delicious Heather Champ brings us the Mirror Project and Harrumph, among many other projects. I was furious when Hoopla got hijacked, but at least Leslie Harpold hasn’t disappeared. And I could never forget Mighty Girl or Min Jung Kim, or Dumbrella’s own pocketpig. Finally, I’ve been reading Angela Martini’s Spacegirl for years now, and Heather Havrilesky’s Rabbit Blog is not to be missed. I could go on (and on, and on) and perhaps I will - my own links could use a little updating. I’m not trying to prove a point here (except perhaps about the ratio of women named Heather). It’s not like it’s news that there are women who do scrumptious work on the web - but it does seem a little strange to me when people still send me mail proclaiming me some sort of rarity.

Today I’m thinking more work on that freelance thing (almost done), more sleeping (still sick) and maybe watching the next Mets/Yankees game later (Yankees won last night).

As some of you have already noticed, I’ve joined the ranks of drew and sam brown and jeff (not to mention heaps of other people who are cooler than me). After three years or whatever it is, caoine finally has its very own forum over on Dumbrella. Another couple minor changes - I’ve moved the six picks from the cam archives to the about page, and what used to be photos is now just miscellany (because that’s the direction it’s been moving in anyway).

Watching Mets vs Yankees (I’m cheering for New York).