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vovatI got a haircut at Hello Gorgeous on Monday. It cost $20, which is more than I usually pay for a haircut, and I don't think it was really any better. Generally, I like my haircuts all right as long as they don't make me look like a prepubescent boy, which often seemed to be the case when I'd get them at local barber shops.
After getting the haircut, I went with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bethje and Dorothea to Longwood Gardens. A lot of their usual plant displays aren't available in the winter, and we came too early in the day to see the Christmas lights. We did see the stuff in the conservatory, but we spent most of our time there wandering around in the meadow. We ended up leaving the beaten path and taking too much time to find a way back.
On Tuesday, my dad and his wife Barbara came by to visit, and Beth and I went out with them to the Olive Garden. (There's been kind of a garden theme to the places we've gone so far this week, hasn't there? {g}) I got the five-cheese ziti, which I thought I'd had before, but I didn't really remember what it was like. For a dish that advertises the presence of five cheeses right in its name, it wasn't really that cheese-intensive. Honestly, while I always like the Olive Garden, none of the entrées that I really like are currently on the menu. They no longer have the shrimp and crab ravioli, or that one dish with the sausage that I can't remember the name of. I remember the seafood alfredo being decent, but nowhere near as good as other seafood dishes they've had in the past. I did, at Beth's urging, order a Limoncello, which was good, and not at all boozey-tasting (I'm not a big fan of alcoholic beverages where you can taste the alcohol). It mostly just tasted like lemon ice.
One thing I'd been wondering about recently that doesn't have anything to do with the rest of this post but fits in pretty well with the title is how ethnic stereotypes become widespread. I get the impression that they usually start with people in a particular place making fun of their neighbors. In my junior high school German class, my teacher told us a joke about Ostfrisia, which is apparently the brunt of a lot of German jokes. As I remember it, the joke was that Ostfrisians take three things to bed with them: a match, a candle, and a rock. They throw the rock at the lightbulb, and then light the candle to see if they hit it. Gee, those Ostfrisians sure are stupid, huh? :P But I don't think these jokes have really spread outside of Germany, while jokes about stupid Poles are pretty common in many parts of the world (or of the United States, anyway). I have to wonder about that. I don't know. I get the impression that the reason New Jersey is the butt of so many jokes is that New York (where I'm sure most of those jokes were invented) is such a cultural center. But who started the Polish jokes, and why did they gain more success than other ethnic jokes? The other group that gets a lot of "gee, isn't that entire group of people stupid?" jokes, at least in this country, is blonde women, and I'm not really sure where those came from either. I remember discussing this issue before, and coming to the conclusion that it might be a combination of the idea that blondes are more attractive with one that women can't be both good-looking AND intelligent. And I'm sure Hugh Hefner's Girls Next Door aren't helping matters.
After getting the haircut, I went with
bethje and Dorothea to Longwood Gardens. A lot of their usual plant displays aren't available in the winter, and we came too early in the day to see the Christmas lights. We did see the stuff in the conservatory, but we spent most of our time there wandering around in the meadow. We ended up leaving the beaten path and taking too much time to find a way back.On Tuesday, my dad and his wife Barbara came by to visit, and Beth and I went out with them to the Olive Garden. (There's been kind of a garden theme to the places we've gone so far this week, hasn't there? {g}) I got the five-cheese ziti, which I thought I'd had before, but I didn't really remember what it was like. For a dish that advertises the presence of five cheeses right in its name, it wasn't really that cheese-intensive. Honestly, while I always like the Olive Garden, none of the entrées that I really like are currently on the menu. They no longer have the shrimp and crab ravioli, or that one dish with the sausage that I can't remember the name of. I remember the seafood alfredo being decent, but nowhere near as good as other seafood dishes they've had in the past. I did, at Beth's urging, order a Limoncello, which was good, and not at all boozey-tasting (I'm not a big fan of alcoholic beverages where you can taste the alcohol). It mostly just tasted like lemon ice.
One thing I'd been wondering about recently that doesn't have anything to do with the rest of this post but fits in pretty well with the title is how ethnic stereotypes become widespread. I get the impression that they usually start with people in a particular place making fun of their neighbors. In my junior high school German class, my teacher told us a joke about Ostfrisia, which is apparently the brunt of a lot of German jokes. As I remember it, the joke was that Ostfrisians take three things to bed with them: a match, a candle, and a rock. They throw the rock at the lightbulb, and then light the candle to see if they hit it. Gee, those Ostfrisians sure are stupid, huh? :P But I don't think these jokes have really spread outside of Germany, while jokes about stupid Poles are pretty common in many parts of the world (or of the United States, anyway). I have to wonder about that. I don't know. I get the impression that the reason New Jersey is the butt of so many jokes is that New York (where I'm sure most of those jokes were invented) is such a cultural center. But who started the Polish jokes, and why did they gain more success than other ethnic jokes? The other group that gets a lot of "gee, isn't that entire group of people stupid?" jokes, at least in this country, is blonde women, and I'm not really sure where those came from either. I remember discussing this issue before, and coming to the conclusion that it might be a combination of the idea that blondes are more attractive with one that women can't be both good-looking AND intelligent. And I'm sure Hugh Hefner's Girls Next Door aren't helping matters.
