Christina's Blog

Pavement show!

2010-09-03T23:34:00.000-07:00

When I was 16, my hero, my big brother Alex, bought me four CDs for Christmas. One of them was Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, by Pavement. It made a lifelong fan of me. Tonight, I got to see Pavement for the first time ever, 16 years after getting my first record. Here are some highlights from the show:

1. Meeting up with eight other friends, all of whom know and like Pavement. Growing up in Montgomery, I never thought I would have more than one friend who liked or had ever heard of Pavement (yo, CG).
2. I think I've finally decided I have a sensitivity to marijuana smoke. It would explain my vehement hatred of it. My stomach cramps all up and I get nauseous.
3. This girl, standing in the area where everyone else was sitting.

Why, lady? Why not go stand in the standing area? She stood by my friends who I wanted to sit by, totally blocking Stephen Malkmus from my view so I had to move to the standing area. Not that I mind standing at a concert. It was just one of those moments where you question another human being's value. To her I say, "Girl, you are a douchebag and a half."
4. Stephen Malkmus' wit. Sharp as ever.
5. Absolutely beautiful weather, for once in Portland.

My list makes it sound like it wasn't a great night, but it was close to perfect; even magical. I had a blast, and I'm happy the band decided to grant me a reunion tour. I never got to see them when they were together because I lived in Alabama, so this was the fulfillment of one of my biggest wishes in life.

P.S. Tall people standing in front of me at concerts: You suck. Always have, always will.

About 12 days old

2010-02-03T12:31:00.000-08:00

No longer pregnant!

2010-01-23T20:14:00.001-08:00

39.5 weeks

2010-01-10T22:05:00.001-08:00

34 weeks pregnant

2009-11-30T21:07:00.001-08:00

Here's me looking like a total goofball.

My veins suck

2009-10-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

Today at the obstetrician, I had a glucose tolerance test to screen for gestational diabetes. I don't know what my results are yet, but I do know that my veins hate me. I had to have blood drawn within one hour after drinking the sugary drink they gave me, but the phlebotomist couldn't get any blood out of me. Finally, she took it out of the back of my hand. Now my hand hurts and I'm afraid to take off the bandage because she thought my vein was collapsing and I don't want to see a gory bruise on my hand. I thought I was going to faint after the second time I got stuck with the needle. I felt all the blood drain out of my head and thought I was about to start seeing spots. I asked for a glass of water and that helped a lot.

Then I went back to work and realized that part of the reason I felt so shaky was because of the sheer quantity of sugar I had to drink for the glucose test. I was cracked out like Cornholio for a few hours at work, which I knew would be followed by a crash.

Also, I took Max to the vet in the morning for his vaccinations because I am going to have to board him a few times in November. It turns out he's an old dog now. One of his back legs is significantly smaller than the other, which indicates nerve damage or a spine problem the vet said. Also it is likely because he failed a reflex test the vet did with his back toes.

Now I'm drinking tea next to Nathan on the couch, while he watches a sporting event. I think I'm going to slowly drift off to sleep.

What you do at a crosswalk in Portland

2009-09-21T17:59:00.001-07:00

In Portland, there's a rule of the road that says if there is a pedestrian at a crosswalk, whether the crosswalk is painted or just implied by the pedestrian standing trying to cross a street, the cars must stop. I'm sure it's the same way in lots of places, but it's a hard and fast rule here. The problem is, only 1/10 of the people in the area know about it. This isn't surprising. Drivers everywhere in this world are a selfish bunch who don't pay attention to even a quarter of the things they should notice while driving. But the funny thing is that if you're standing at a crosswalk, and a line of cars is headed your way, the first few cars are guaranteed to not stop. They never seem to know they have to. No, the only car that stops, and this happens really regularly, is the very last car in a chain. Imagine how frustrating it is to be the pedestrian sitting waiting and realizing that no one is going to stop. And then seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, the last car in a chain of idiotic brutes. Then, that car stops. Why? Why does the last car stop, when by all rights, he or she could just pass me faster than it takes for me to be sure that car is going to stop? By the time I've waited for every car in the chain, I'm focused on the rear of the last car, waiting for it to finally pass me so I can go, not on how fast that car is or isn't going. So this is what I have to say:

"Dear first car, Stop for me. Sincerely, Christina"
"Dear last car, Thanks for the thought, but please just keep going. Sincerely, Christina."

Facebook is eating my blog

2009-08-31T20:33:00.001-07:00

More often than not, I find myself too tired to write a real blog post, or too boring to fill a blog post. Facebook makes it easy to write a quick one-off update, but it's no substitute for a real post on my trusty old blog. I think I'll still be updating this thing when I'm 80.

Well, I'm now 21 weeks pregnant and staring down the last few days of having a belly button, from the looks of it. I'm really excited and happy about all the support I've gotten from the people in my life. It's very touching. The outpouring of support from friends, family, and neighbors has been overwhelming.

I didn't announce it here, so for anyone who doesn't know yet, I'm having a boy and his working title is Demetri Benjamin, after my sister and Nathan's brother. Every now and again, I feel little Mr. Demetri kicking and it's awesome. I think the other day, he had hiccups, based on a description I read on a pregnancy website.

Overall, I'm feeling very healthy and happy. I know the third trimester is going to be daunting and we have so much work to do that it's also overwhelming, but Nathan and I are working together to get our lives in order. Here's the most recent picture I've taken of my belly, three weeks ago at a friend's wedding at Kruger Farms up at Jantzen Beach.

Here's how pregnant I am

2009-07-03T11:12:00.000-07:00

12 weeks. Not much showing yet.

From Belly at 12 weeks

MorphThing

2009-07-03T10:58:00.001-07:00

There's a silly website that will morph two pictures. Most people use it to morph Smeagol onto Mothra, or Angelina Jolie onto Mothra, or the Olsen Twins onto Godzilla, or what have you. But some people morph their baby pictures to pretend that they have an idea what their kid will come out looking like. Here's my first attempt:

This plus this

From MorphThing

Equals this

From MorphThing

The brood

2009-07-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

The ladies like to hang out in the greenhouse if one of us forgets to shut the door.

From The ladies

General Tso is the prettiest girl.

From The ladies

I dyed some eggs the traditional red for Orthodox Easter. They looked pretty, but inside, it was a fiasco. Turns out, homegrown eggs take MUCH longer to boil because of their thicker shells and more substantial nutritional content. These pretty eggs were mostly liquid inside. Oops.

From The ladies

I no longer have any fear of letting my whole barnyard socialize. Everyone gets along famously.

From The ladies

Even Marla.

From The ladies

My trip to Alabama

2009-07-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

Nathan finally found the camera's USB cable so I was able to upload our vacation photos, plus every other picture we've taken over the last four or five months. So this is going to be a monster picture post!

We flew in to New Orleans and drove from there to the Southern tip of Alabama.

From Trip to Alabama

The world takes a long time to recover from a hurricane.

From Trip to Alabama

We were hoping for hot weather because it had been so cold in Portland, but we were happy to get to remember what thunderstorms look like.

From Trip to Alabama

We stopped at a casino in Gulfport for an all-you-can-eat crab legs buffet. It was the first time I had crab legs since leaving the east coast.

From Trip to Alabama

There is no describing to people from Portland why I don't eat the shrimp up here. But a picture of Gulf Coast shrimp might partially explain it. Too bad taste can't translate over the internet yet.

From Trip to Alabama

The next day, Nathan's grandma and Great Aunt Marlene set to work preparing a feast for kings. I told them I missed the Gulf Coast's seafood, but I never expected them to hand me my wildest dreams on a platter.

From Trip to Alabama

The beginnings of gumbo.

From Trip to Alabama

The long growing season in the South makes tomatoes like this possible at a time of year when in Portland I hadn't even put my tomato starts in the ground yet:

From Trip to Alabama

Aunt Marlene is famous for her etouffe. The gumbo is in the rear stock pot.

From Trip to Alabama

Pie!

From Trip to Alabama

Baked beans and green bean casserole.

From Trip to Alabama

Crab stuffing.

From Trip to Alabama

Fried oysters.

From Trip to Alabama

Cocktail shrimp.

From Trip to Alabama

During the days, we'd explore the family's property. They've begun a goat raising operation, so we played with some goats.

From Trip to Alabama

We saw a wild turkey.

From Trip to Alabama

Nathan's grandparents are building a cabin by a fishing lake they also built.

From Trip to Alabama

We saw a giant snake.

From Trip to Alabama

And another giant snake.

From Trip to Alabama

And a turtle.

From Trip to Alabama

And the cattle. Note the Katrina-damaged silo in the distance.

From Trip to Alabama

We found a chanterelle imposter. We weren't able to identify it, but we know it's not a chanterelle, and it's probably not a jack-o-lantern.

From Trip to Alabama

On our way back out, we spent a few hours in New Orleans taking in the sights.

From Trip to Alabama

And eating beignets!!!

From Trip to Alabama

On the flight back in to Portland, I got some awesome pics of Mount Hood.

From Trip to Alabama

You can see the whole album by clicking on the link under any of those photos!

So much news I'm bursting

2009-06-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

There are a few reasons I've been putting off posting on the old blog. The first is that I have really big news. The second is that I have tons of pictures to share, but keep hitting snags that prevent me from uploading them. I still can't upload my pics right now (missing cable), but I can share all the news that I've been bottling up for several months. I figure the best thing to do is go with bullets in order of most important to least:

I'm pregnant!That's right, you heard me correctly. I'm pregnant. As of Tuesday, I'm ten weeks into about a 40 week journey. I'm eating, puking, getting fat, and loving every minute of it.

Nathan got kicked out of the Taxpayers. Rob said it was because he was afraid that when we had kids, it would ruin his dreams of being a professional band. I can't tell you in words the scope heartbreak this has caused me. I still think about it every day. Of course, his reason was probably about 80% a lie, no one fires an excellent and dependable bassist like Nathan, who everyone likes so much, for such a BS reason. But Rob did. I know now just how much he hates family, but I also know that there was a lot more to his decision than the prospect of a kid (I wasn't even pregnant when he did this). The truth is, he never really liked us and now I'm forced to face that truth.

Nathan and I took a trip to Alabama over Memorial Day and it was awesome. I took tons of pictures, which I can't upload. So you will just have to trust me when I say that I ate a ton of awesome food and generally had a blast. It was the perfect vacation. I was happy to go and happy to be back. I remembered what I love about Alabama and I remembered why I don't live there. I have a rekindled love of Portland now.

Well, I guess that's the most important things I've been going through, jotted down in the most simplistic fashion to avoid excess emotion. I wouldn't want to be called an emotional preggo before I've actually started crying over nothing. I'm glad I finally got this stuff down and published, because I've tried to start several times and quit. Hopefully I can make a massive pictures post soon and not let so much time go by without posting big important news again.

Running

2009-05-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

I've taken up running as my main exercise. I never thought I would do this, because running has always been the most painful thing ever to me, and I've never had the stamina to run for long. Even running to the end of my block winded me. But one day, I typed in a random search in Google asking something like, "why can't I run" or "why do my lungs hurt when I run" and I immediately hit upon this program. I tried it out, and I didn't die from it. It was really empowering the way I was eased into it and taught how to know I'm running at the right pace. The other day, thanks to Cool Running, I ran for 20 minutes straight, which was 12 minutes longer than my previous record. It feels really good to know that I can run now, even if it's at a really slow pace.

A day in the suburbs, A day in the garden

2009-05-03T21:42:00.000-07:00

This weekend will be told in a story involving two parts: Saturday (Part the first) and Sunday (Part the second).

Saturday morning, Nathan and I woke up and took a trip out to the suburbs. Our mission was to take ham radio licensing tests. He was upgrading to the second level, and I was getting my first license. I'm happy to say I passed with flying colors. I got 32 out of 35 correct. Then we had burgers and saw a movie. Not content with just that, we went shopping to get me some running clothes (I've taken up running as a hobby!) and went to Uwajimaya. It was a big day of shopping like suburbanites, minus a trip to Costco.

Sunday was much more interesting. I spent my day in the garden. I weeded, planted grass seed where the chicken coop used to be, and planted zucchini, cucumber and tomatoes. I already have collards, turnip greens, onions, carrots and peas going. But the really interesting thing I did was a garden science experiment. I'm trying to make biochar, using this method. I'm not doing this for any carbon sequestration possibilities, which I find dubious, or to make any biofuel, which I find ridiculous. I don't think I can save the environment doing this. But I'm doing it as an attempt to make the best approximation we can make to Terra Preta. The science experiment possibilities this affords me are going to be awesome, if I can just get it to work. My first attempt at making biochar was a failure because I didn't have enough time and fuel to charcoal-ize what I had put in my terracotta pot. So with my next attempt, I'm going to use things that will burn much more easily, like dried grass clippings and weeds.

The next step is what really interests me. I will have a carbon-rich substance that by itself will make a good soil additive, but I feel like that's only the beginning step. What I want to do next is augment that with something nitrogen rich. What's nitrogen-rich, you ask? Why, chicken poop is! Oh look, I happen to have a bunch of that. But why stop there? I think once I mix that together, it will take a while to compost, of course, but red worms could help speed that process. That combination could possibly make the best soil I've ever seen in my life. I don't personally have any type of soil testing kit to test my finished product, so I think what I'll do is put my Terra Preta in a pot and set up another control pot. I'll plant the same type of plant in both pots (I have some pepper plant starts that might be perfect for this), and measure the quantity and quality of the vegetables I get off each plant. There may be more to setting up a truly scientific experiment than this (mostly getting a bigger sample size), but for my backyard science purposes, this should be fun and easy enough to learn something without undue burden. If I have any luck making the biochar, I will keep you guys updated on how this goes.

Biochar is exciting to me because my house and yard have lots of organic waste that I can't compost through normal means. Namely, dog and chicken poop. I also have a cat. You can't compost their poop in case they have any diseases; you don't want that getting into your food. But if you burn it down into charcoal, you'd kill any bacteria that could be in there, and ease your psyche about it because it won't really be poop anymore. I also prune my trees, and the branches take years to compost through normal methods. With pyrolysis, this matter could be broken down in hours and turned into excellent quality dirt.

You might have read in the wikipedia article that no one knows how the native peoples in South America made Terra Preta. They didn't leave us a recipe. But scientists have found evidence that they used all types of organic matter, including bones to make this soil. To me, the possibilities for biochar in the garden are really exciting.

A Blind Melon Video Once Lied To Me

2009-04-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

I should do a whole series about the questionable taste in music I have had during my life. We all have those songs and bands we regret having liked. But this post isn't about that. Not really. It's about the way I've learned important life lessons through my addiction to music; lessons I wouldn't have learned without having music in my life. The lesson I'm going to talk about today, I didn't learn from a Blind Melon song. Rather, I learned it through the years that followed the Blind Melon video that we all saw, and the slow realization that the hope this video gave me was a false one. But this post isn't even really about the lie, but what the lie taught me. With that introductory paragraph out of the way, let's get into it! I present to you Exhibit A, which I would embed herein, but the record company has disabled embedding, because they are F*@#sticks. Watch it for a trip down memory lane, or if you grew up under a rock and never saw this one.

A young Christina sort of liked this song, although Shannon Hoon's hair and entire visage disturbed me. I liked the song, but the video blew me away. The message probably resonated with a lot of misfit kids, because we all know that a large portion of teenagers experience strong feelings of alienation. I was one of those kids, but those feelings didn't start at puberty for me, nor did they end there. Maybe this is just me being my overly sensitive, silly self, but I remember first feeling incredibly different from everyone when I started kindergarten, and those feelings have followed me throughout my life. I'm 30 now, and probably should have moved past feeling that way, although I haven't quizzed other 30 year olds on whether they ever outgrew their feelings of alienation.

I have two theories for why I always felt this way. First, maybe it is a personal weakness of mine to always focus on what I don't have instead of on what I do have. This of course extends to commonalities with other people. I can have so many things in common with a person, but the differences to me, no matter how small, look like mountains. Second, maybe I AM different. I mean, I'm physically and mentally sound so I shouldn't feel so different from everyone else in this world, but I do. The details that define who I am, I've never found in another person. Find me another Greek person, who has strong protestant faith, loves Orthodoxy, hates sports, loves punk rock, loves indie rock, hates hippie culture, is pretty much straight edge, and loves animals too. Find me another person my age with these same traits who was raised by a mother and father like mine, who grew up in the Great Depression in lands far away from each other. I've never met that person. If I did, you can be sure that I would find political and ideological differences that would again look like mountains to me. I know deep down that this is true for everyone, but of course to me, my own identity seems so much more removed from everyone else's.

So, the Blind Melon video lied. I felt so heart-warmed as a teenager to think that maybe someday, I would climb a hill and find a bunch of people dressed in bee suits just like mine. But mine seems to be kind of unique, and that's cool. I like being different. My parents are pretty special. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty special. What's weird, though, is that the Blind Melon video didn't lie to everyone. I see kids move to Portland pretty regularly from places where they felt alone, like I did in the South. They move here from Ohio and Indiana, and upstate New York. Some move here from Philadelphia and Washington D.C., where you wouldn't think they'd feel alienated, but they did. They show up here, and they are lucky enough to immerse themselves in a community of people who from my perspective are incredibly similar in ideology and belief structure, upbringing, social class, and even in the brands of cigarettes and beer they enjoy. Even in the types of drugs that they like to do, the games they play, and the personal care products that they use or don't use. They all seem so incredibly alike in every important way. In Portland, and probably in lots of cities, people group together just like they did in high school, only in Portland it's the people who didn't seem to fit in to any group in high school. These aren't so much the people who played on the football team, or the cheerleading squad. These are the kids who sat alone at the lunch table, all grown up and having found their bees in Portland. So I know that this really does happen.

But the point of this post, like I said about a mile ago, isn't that I didn't find my bees. I don't need to move to every city in North America to know that I won't find them. They don't exist, and that's partially because I'm overly critical, and partially because I came from a situation that isn't too common. The point of this post is that I'm glad I didn't find my bees. Here's why. Think again about the people who moved to Portland and found their bees. Now, these people are free to surround themselves entirely with people just like them. Their hearts are gladdened by the commonality, and the fun times abound. I can't even begin to know what that feels like, but I do know what happens next: Bigotry. See, when you surround yourself by people who are just like you, you tend to get a feeling of smugness about your life's choices, your beliefs, your looks, and everything else about you. I know this to be true, because of having lived for so long in a red state, and then moving to such a very blue state. People in both places have zero ability to look at things from a different perspective than the one that surrounds them, and they tend to get really high and mighty about how their way is right and there is no other way to view an issue. But that's just being sheltered talking. When you move back and forth from one area to the next and one group to the next, you tend to get your beliefs and ideas knocked down a lot. Now, I'm not going to try to say I'm all that humble. Anyone who's ever read this blog knows that I can be a real you-know-what when I feel strongly about something. I act like I'm so right and that there's no other way to view it. But for most things in life, I've learned to take the stance of shoulder-shrugging. Those are the things I don't blog about. Things I was so sure of as a teenager, now I'm not so sure about. And the people who have convinced me to not be so sure? I don't quite believe them either. I think for myself, and I lean this way and that, and I find a middle ground.

And this is the blessing that I never thought I'd have back when I dreamed of finding my bees. The blessing of having so many friends of so many backgrounds that I can gain insight that I never thought existed before. Also, I think I've learned more than a lot of people about how to be REALLY accepting of everyone. Sure, I still find weaknesses in my ability to hold open arms, but I am so much more open to different types of people than I ever dreamed of achieving, and I owe that to the fact that I was never able to find my bees. Getting knocked down by differences, learning how to look past the insults by people who were socially sheltered like me growing up but remained so as adults has taught me how to love those people more than I ever thought I could. I have friends now from every social class and so many belief structures. And I've repeatedly had to feel the sting of being rejected by people who have their bees. Some of those people moved to a place like Portland to escape bigotry. They fled their Middle America homes to come to a place where they were free to be what they wanted, and found a whole stereotype they could fit into. I don't know what that feels like, but I do know, now, that when you find your stereotype, it can cause you to discard the people who were part of your life before, whose differences from yourself made you uncomfortable. And you become exactly that which you said you weren't when you left the place that rejected you. People sometimes come to Portland it seems with the express purpose of becoming bigots and looking down their noses at anyone who is different, all the while holding the hypocrisy of not realizing that they are doing exactly what was done to them, calling themselves open-minded and their homes "safe places." The lesson I've learned is that you're not open minded until you can confront the beliefs you hate in another person, welcome that person into your home with open arms, and love them because of their beliefs. And your home isn't a "safe place" until people whose beliefs are opposed to yours can be free to not be insulted in your home.

It's easy to love people for being similar to you, but it's hard to love people who disagree with you. And that's a task that I don't ever want to have the luxury of giving up. I hope I have to continue meeting people who force me to face the reasons I hold my beliefs, simultaneously making me love them for their wonderful personality traits. I hope I never find my bees, and that the difficulty of getting along with people who are different from myself, loving them for exactly who they are, and rejecting bigotry that I didn't even know I held, is a curse that I am always blessed with. You learn true loyalty that way, and loyalty has always been important to me.

Major confession, long time coming

2009-04-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

Ok. When I was around 16, 17, 18, I don't remember exactly, I got into grunge. That's no secret. I loved it and I probably always will. But it was my introduction to all things that I would later think were cool. I was a little late to get into grunge, which makes sense because kids in Alabama are generally forced to be late to everything...or they were before everyone did nothing if it wasn't use the internets. The point is, that getting into grunge was such an upheaval from all sounds that had previously been in my universe, that I couldn't stand to hear anything different. And, I decided that everything else that was out at the time was crap. Based on what little I had heard of "everything else going on," this was an unfair assessment. I'm getting to a point here. What else I did know was going on, at that time and for the next few years, was ska, in the vein of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and swing. What a stark contrast those bosstones made to my beloved Kurt Cobain. I decided it sucked, Kurt would have hated it, and I would have no part of it. I officially HATED ska.

But something unknown was lurking inside me.

See, as a very young kid, I had been blessed with what were probably the world's coolest older siblings. They listened to tons of music at home, and I loved most of it, Madonna excluded. I'm still getting to a point here. The point is, that while I didn't remember it between the years of 1996 and 2000, two of the bands I loved the most as a young kid were ska bands. They just were a hell of a lot better than the Bosstones.

I still hate the Bosstones (maybe I wouldn't if I could lose the mental block). I think I still hate all the bands of that wave of ska. But the truth is, I LOVE ska. I always have. When I was three, my favorite band was the Police, and my favorite song was Message in a Bottle, one of their most ska-influenced songs. When I was eight, my favorite band was the English Beat. I would sneak into my brother's room when he wasn't home and listen to Mirror in the Bathroom on vinyl over and over again. Today, I've come to terms with it. I love ska. I love it when people who can move limbs in coordination skank. I love Operation Ivy. I love Rancid. And more. I bet, if I went back and actually gave those second or third wave ska bands a chance, I'd love them too.

It may not seem like a major confession, but to me, it is. I went so many years partially defining myself by the fact that I hated ska, that it was hard to realize I had been wrong all along. I just had my grunge ears on at the time that ska was revived, and it didn't work out for me. I had a lot of fun listening to Nirvana and Mudhoney during those years, but I reckon I missed out on a lot too. But the great thing about life is that the music is still there, pressed onto records and CDs that I will always be able to go back and hear. When I'm 80, I might decide I really love Less Than Jake. I might skank dance in the nursing home with my walker. And that'll be just fine.

It's fitting to cap this by saying that today is the 15th anniversary of the day Kurt Cobain's body was found. I don't normally keep track of that, but this morning I woke up with Kurt Cobain in my head, for the first time having thought of him in a long time. It was coincidental and strange, and lovely too in a way.

Reason 187 Why Veganism Sucks

2009-03-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm jumping back off the wagon on suppressing my opinions on veganism. Let me first state: I don't hate vegans. At all. Not even in the least. Some of my most beloved friends are vegans, and that's just fine. Live and let live. But on my blog, I can say it how it is. My second prefacing statement is that I am not a permaculture hippie. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's when hippies gain a little bit of knowledge and then think they know everything, including how to make $100,000 a year on their city plot growing vegetables, worms, and ethanol. So to set the record straight, I have never been into science, but have recently gained a hobby which has shown me the error of my ways. Gardening and science go hand in hand, and I'm starting to love science because of my garden.

Yesterday, I ran across a gardening concept that is part of permaculture. I know I just said I'm not a permaculture hippie. That's still true. But permaculture is just the application of advanced scientific understanding of biology and ecosystems that can be incredibly helpful. And like many incredibly helpful things, hippies have taken hold of it, twisted it in their own way, and tarnished its reputation, as they are wont to do with just about everything. How does this play into veganism? Aren't vegans hippies? Yes, vegans are hippies, but in my experience, they're the ones who don't like science, or who haven't yet grown into having an interest in science. Maybe by the time they're 30 and a half, they'll learn something and discard veganism as a lifestyle. After all, my favorite xtina-ism is that the best thing about veganism is that everyone quits.

What I learned about ecosystems in second grade was forcefully brought to my attention last night, after having tried several times to battle its way to the forefront of my consciousness since living among Portland's thousands of vegans. I was watching a very long video about a type of permaculture study called a "food forest." About an hour into the 1:35 hour presentation, the farmer in this video drops the bombshell: animals are necessary in an ecosystem. Specifically, the absence of animals in any garden will result in an abundance of pests. So, if you have aphids, it is because you lack ladybugs, not because you lack pesticide. If you have slugs, you lack ducks. If you have fruitflies, you lack chickens. This concept was the most fascinating part of the book The Omnivore's Dilemma to me. The cows aren't just there for meat and milk: they are there to fix the soil. The chickens follow the cows to scatter what the cows left behind and remove the bugs from the equation. This is soil building, and this is what is missing from America's Midwest farming practices. This results in petroleum-based fertilizer laden topsoil being washed into the Gulf of Mexico every year.

So maybe a vegan understands that animals are part of an ecosystem, but they would have me just let the chickens roam free on the land, un-managed and unprotected. Of course, my chickens would be eaten by raccoons, opossums, coyotes, skunks, and tons of other predators, ruining my efforts and defaulting on the contract that humanity wrote with animals when we domesticated them: that we would protect them from predation. Well, recognizing this, the vegans might say that I should protect the chickens who are helping build the soil. But for pete's sake, don't eat those eggs! That's bad! This is where vegan logic leads. To the abandonment of prey animals in the woods and the refusal to eat the eggs which come out of every chicken, every day. I guess I could let the eggs hatch, if I had a rooster, but without my protection, those raccoons would still go gangbusters on the chickens and their eggs, decimating the population. And, imagining that there aren't any predators, chickens left unchecked will ruin any amount of land that you let them run on. My backyard is a testament to that. Chickens need us, and we need chickens. The eggs are a by product that I won't be guilted out of enjoying. I won't argue here for why we need to eat our chickens, because my conflict with vegetarianism is not as strong as my conflict with veganism.

Here's the video, in case you have an hour and a half to spare:

Crazy Old Jim Cramer

2009-03-14T16:41:00.000-07:00

I work during the day and I don't have cable TV, so I don't see a lot of Jim Cramer's show. To be honest, because I'm a working girl, I had never even heard of him until my company's blog posted a video of him frothing at the mouth. The blog was posted last September right around the financial crisis, but the video was from a year earlier. Now, I love Jon Steward, and I'm sure Cramer had this roast coming to him probably for a lot of reasons, but I wanted to clear the record. First, in case you've been living under a rock and didn't see the Jon Stewart interview, here it is:

Now here's the clip from before:

So did Jim Cramer make a bad and probably unethical call. I'd say so. Is he crazy? Sounds probable to me. Is he a rich dude who wants to go around calling the people who've lost their jobs in this financial crisis lazy bums? Yep. So to Jon Stewart I say, "it may be a comedy show, but show the whole story, please. P.S. I heart you!" But to Jim Cramer, I think the Dropkick Murphy's have said it best:

Same song, but with lyrics, in case you're like me and read better than you can hear lyrics:

That song has been in my head a lot during this economy. Seems to pretty much apply for something that happens every day in my life.

I love email advertising

2009-03-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

This ad was next to my reading pane in Yahoo Mail today:

From Pay-per-click

Meet Marla Singer

2009-03-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

Marla is really taking after her namesake. These videos are probably incredibly boring to anyone but me, but I get tickled pink every time I watch them, even though I have to hear my silly "baby talking the dog" voice.

Hiking and Gardening

2009-03-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

I have been taking a tone of pictures lately, if the last two posts don't show it. Here's a visual update of what I've been up to. First, last weekend I went hiking with friends in the Columbia Gorge up to some waterfalls:

From March 2009

Some of you may remember this post from a while back about how horrible women's clothing is. Nothing is standard. Here is an example of my perennial struggle with clothing. Aside from the fact that hiking pants are completely unflattering, this image shows my problem with sleeves. What I am wearing here is two long sleeved shirts, size medium. Notice how the white shirt's sleeves are approximately 8 inches longer than those of the black shirt. The black shirt's sleeves don't come down to my wrist, while the white shirt's sleeves cover up my fingers completely when it's not scrunched up. It just makes me wonder if size standardization is too much to ask for in the modern, industrialized world:

From March 2009

Tonight, I started my first seedlings for spring!

From Planting

The image below shows my super organized system for figuring out what the heck I planted in each pod. As you can see, half of this flat is empty because it turns out I didn't throw away most of my empty packets last year and so when I made my plan this year, I expected to have one heck of a lot more seeds than I have. The empty spots will probably be filled in by sweet peas, which I can never plant enough of.

From Planting

Baby pictures!

2009-02-26T22:09:00.000-08:00

My sister Zoe sent me a stockpile of childhood photos of myself and today, Nathan diligently scanned the first 50 of them for me. Now my infancy has been digitized. Next, toddler-hood. So, here's the first installment of a selection of favorite photos from 1978 - 1979:

From Childhood Pics

Check out my dad's sweet red leather jacket and comb-over!

From Childhood Pics

Kitsap County!

2009-02-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, Nathan and I went back to Kitsap County for Gabe's birthday and we took tons of pictures. Here's one of Wally posing in front of the diggit wall that Sue made for him:

From Gabe's birthday

Here's the birthday boy!

From Gabe's birthday

Blowing out the candles with a little help from mom and dad:

From Gabe's birthday

Bacon-wrapped sausage links: totally not vegan!

From Gabe's birthday

Aw, what a good dad!

From Gabe's birthday

Fun Times in the Pearl

2009-02-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

I don't know if many of you know this, but Portland is the home of the batshit crazy. I happen to work in one of the city's swankiest neighborhoods, the Pearl District, so while I'm at work, I get the bare minimum of crazy behavior from the city's crazy people. I get tons of crazy in every other neighborhood in the city, but not so much at work.

Today was one of the rare exceptions. Having skipped breakfast, I got hungry around 9:30 so a co-worker and I got up to visit ye old Whorebucks. On our way there, a crazy lady saw us and started yelling "Take your hands out of your pockets! Take your hands out of your pockets! What's the matter with you!? Get some GLOVES!" We changed our route to avoid her, and resolutely did not take our hands out of our pockets. The FedEx guy saw all this go down and smirked at us as we passed him. Miss Crazy followed us and when she passed him, she latched on to yell at him. "You don't need that truck! Take off those tattoos!" As we kept walking, we heard tons more gems out of her, including "Take that ladder off!" aimed at a passing work truck. We went into Starbucks, watched her scream some more, walked out, and could still hear her up the block. I heard later that she screamed as she passed another person, "Creepy, creepy, creepy!"

Ah, fun times with the crazies.

2009-02-13T19:17:00.001-08:00

Is it too early to start yearning for the sight of blossoming trees?

Not quite myself

2009-02-05T23:19:00.001-08:00

In the past few weeks, I've had some bad interactions with people, where I didn't start out to get into an argument but I wound up in one. I started feeling pretty downtrodden because of it, and was feeling sorry for myself because I feel like such a sore thumb in this world. There's no one like me, that's for sure. I've been sounding like a teenager, and I'm a grown woman! Well, these arguments have made me wary of even talking to people. I feel like it's ok for other people to have any opinion, no matter how they present it and no matter if it could be construed as offensive to anyone, but as soon as I believe in something strongly, people want to yell, scream, beat my ideas down, and generally get me to shut up.

So I was driving today and I found a CD at the bottom of the stack. It's a record I've loved since I lived in Virginia but I haven't listened to it in a while. I once quoted one of the lines from this record on this very blog, when people were arguing with me in the comment boxes, saying that I had no right to have an opinion. I said that while other people may want to silence my voice, "I'll never shut up and I'll never behave." The song may not have been written with my personal struggle in mind, but it helps me have confidence in my own beliefs, and in the notion that I have a right to have beliefs. This band, The Unseen, well, they may be quite different people from me (because everyone is) but their lyrics often give me a sense of empowerment. I need to listen to them more at times when other people want to silence my voice, or belittle me, or tell me that I'm alone in this world so I should keep my ideas locked up inside me with no outlet. So for my own edification, when I look back on this blog in the future when I feel downtrodden, here's a few Unseen lyrics, so I don't forget that I have rights too, no matter how different I am and how differently I was raised.

Resist, rebel, stand up for yourself
They will try to bring you down
One day those tables will be turned around
Stand defiant, don't be fooled

Stand up for yourself and what you believe
As long as you're true to yourself, there's nothing you can't achieve!
There comes a time when you may find yourself down and beaten
No hope, no future, total utter abandon
But you gotta take control, rise up outta nothing

Funnily enough, this whole phase I'm going through reminds me of a modern, pop-country song I used to hear all the time as a kid in Alabama. The singer said, "you've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything." That statement by a silly band has followed me and come to the front of my mind constantly since I was a young kid, meaning that this has been with me for more than half my life. I may hate pop country, but I love this statement. I do have my beliefs, and there's nothing wrong with that.

For now, I'll probably remain quiet. That's not like me, and I kind of hate myself for it. It's not very punk rock to let others shut your voice down. It's not punk to let the negative behaviors of a minority shut down your aspirations to be positive, strong, independent, and in control of your life. It's not punk to let other people's insistence on proliferating negative lifestyles stop you from spreading positive ideals. But I've lost confidence and I've lost the deep conviction that I have a right to my thoughts and a right to speak them.

Busy Saturday

2009-01-10T22:19:00.000-08:00

Last night it was Nathan's cousin Matt's birthday. I don't know if anyone who reads this regularly remembers that he moved here about a year ago and was one of the four roommates that I added to my house all of a sudden. Incidentally, I haven't blogged much about the various changes we've been through since then, but we only still have one of those roommates. Anyway, back to the party, it was a blast. I made Nathan buy a ton of beers and chicken wings, and it sort of morphed into two parties. The first part of the evening was attended by Matt's and my co-workers (did I mention I recommended him for a job at my company)? Shortly after they left, the new attendees all arrived, coming from one of the other segments of our social circle: the band members and associated friends. They brought life into a dwindling party, banging on drums, singing songs, wrassling, yelling, and whatnot. It was a blast. I think Matt had a great birthday party. We didn't go to bed until 2:30 a.m.

But the title of this post isn't "Busy Friday Night," it's "Busy Saturday." I just needed to preface the day, because my plan had been to wake up at the normal Saturday waking hour, around 9:00. But because I went to bed so late, my plans for the day got thrown off. After waking up at nearly 11:00, I spent the morning cleaning up the backyard since we have a small break from the rain. Cleaned out the chicken coop, poop scooped the dogs' side of the yard, and played with the chickens for a while. Then, I went with my friend Danielle to this place called The Bins.

A trip to The Bins is the kind of thing you don't move away from Portland without having done, and I had never been yet. I told Danielle months ago to take me on her next venture there and I wasn't going to miss this. "The Bins" is a Goodwill warehouse in the suburbs, where all donations initially go each week. The name is a reference to the way these goods are brought out: on giant flats full of unsorted donations. In the same bin, you might find some pots and pans, a Cabbage Patch doll, some VHS tapes, and various other assorted trash. The point of a visit here is that you get first dibs on thrift store items and it is cheaper than normal because, well, nothing has been sorted. It's dirty, it's stinky, and people are aggressive. It's a great place to go to see human nature in action. When a new bin comes out, all the customers swarm all over it, all the while staff members are yelling at them to back up or there will be no more bins. For clothing, you pay by the pound. I bought some baskets and some stuffed animals to give to friends as gifts. If they are really lucky, the toys will have come with bonus scabies, and we'll have a great story to tell in a few weeks. haha! One of the neatest items I found at the bins was a child's diary, about a fourth of the way filled with her life's story. The dates were from around 1998, and reading it was bittersweet. One has to wonder how a child's personal thoughts wind up becoming a donation at Goodwill? I bought the diary and gave it to my friend, who collects found writing.

After that, I came home, washed any staphylococcus of my hands, and took a refreshing nap on the futon with Marla and Max. Then I met Nathan and more friends for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant called Nicolas' - another Portland fixture. This restaurant always has a line out the door, but this shouldn't give you the impression that it's a swanky, exclusive kind of place. It's just a down-to-earth restaurant with amazing food. I ate so much that I hurt now. I kind of hate myself a little bit, but what is the point of gorging on Middle Eastern food if you can't have the joy of hating your life later? That's what I thought, no point at all. John and I had a contest to see who could stuff him/herself the most. In this sort of contest, there are no winners.

Every time I go there, I notice the similarity of Lebanese and Greek, not just in cuisine (which I already knew) but in language. The food Spanagh in Lebanese is Spanaki in Greek (spinach). The food Dolma has the same name in both languages. "Mezza" in Lebanese is a platter with several dips and small items like falafel. The Greek word for appetizer is mezze. It reminds me of a special on PBS I watched last week about India and the origins of civilization and language. Turns out that every language between India and Western Europe was probably Aryan in origin. Which kind of blows holes in the concept most Greek people have that we started everything. It's mighty interesting to me to see how language morphs from place to place and normally retains some vestiges of its former self. Written language is the same way, if you look at the history of each letter in the alphabet.

Well, that was my big Saturday, plus some incidental reflection. Hope you enjoyed this blog post on a small piece of my mundane, but fun, life.

Hate to be a bummer, but this needs posting

2009-01-06T17:49:00.000-08:00

Here's a summary of this article:

On January 1st in Oakland, Police shot a 22-year old father in the back as he lay face down on the floor of a BART station. He was unarmed.

A big day

2009-01-05T18:23:00.000-08:00

Today was a landmark day for the chickens. I got three eggs! And one of those eggs was gigantic. I mean, it is so big, it is too big for the egg carton to close! That is one of Kung Pao's eggs. General Tso's is the smallest, because she just started laying yesterday, and I didn't have a chance to give her a blog post calling her the lady of the day. In this shot, today's eggs are the three in the back row, with the freak of nature egg in the middle, General Tso's egg on the right, and Tandoori's on the left.

And again

2009-01-02T06:42:00.000-08:00

After a solid week of typical December in Portland weather (40 degrees and rainy with the occasional break-through of sunshine) I just woke up to two more inches of snow. Am I happy? Am I sad? I don't know. I think I like the snow, but my chickens sure hate it. And it turned their eggs yellow last time, instead of that dark orange, due to lack of access to grass. Still, I much prefer walking in snow than walking in mud in my backyard.

The Lady of the Day

2008-12-27T20:45:00.000-08:00

The lady of the day is Tandoori! She laid her first egg today, I'm nearly certain. She's been exhibiting the squatting behavior that Kung Pao showed before she started laying and today, I found an egg in a different nesting box than Kung Pao lays.

Although I only got one egg today, I'm pretty sure it is Tandoori's and not Kung Pao's, because of the different nesting box and because today's egg is visibly smaller than the eggs Kung Pao has been laying. Here's visual proof. In the first shot, today's egg is the one on the far right. In the second shot, it's the one in the middle. It may not seem like a big difference in photos, but the new egg is noticeably lighter than the others.

Regarding Portland and snow

2008-12-26T10:48:00.000-08:00

I have to say I'm kind of enjoying the snow over the normal rain. The chickens are the only thing that's putting a damper in my appreciation of snow over rain. Here are the things that I've realized are awesome about snow:

1. Snow reflects light, making it seem less gloomy in Portland
2. Snow is prettier than rain
3. Accumulated snow on the ground means that the dogs don't track mud into the house
4. Accumulated snow on the ground means the dogs' paws aren't damaging the grass any more. They have completely decimated my grass this year, turning my backyard into a mud pit, and now I know those roots may be dormant, but they're not getting dug up by dog paws.
5. I can ski on the streets with snow on them! If the snowy conditions stuck around all winter, I could train my younger dog to pull a sled without going to the mountain!

Big snow

2008-12-21T22:14:00.000-08:00

Well, we've got a ton of snow in Portland. I think we have about two feet of accumulation now. I went cross country skiing in the streets today. Nathan and I rode our skis to the park and then went all through it. I tried to take Marla with me, but i had to attach her to my belt, skijoring! But she took off before I was ready and I had to throw myself onto my neighbor's lawn to get her to stop. Luckily, my knee broke the layer of ice that was covering the snow. So now I have a giant shiner on my knee. I had taken her skijoring up in Forest Park yesterday and she did fine. That dog sure can pull fast! If I had been ready to go this morning, we would have cruised to the park...on second thought, if I hadn't gone and put her in her crate after the fall, I probably would have killed myself, so it's best that tragedy struck early and all I got was a giant bruise on my knee. It actually swelled up pretty far in the first few minutes after I fell. It was really comical. The reason Marla went crazy was that Nathan had taken off skiing down the street and she just flipped out being so far from him. I couldn't stop her once I was clipped into my skis. One of my poles went flying and I yelled at Marla to stop, but she wasn't having it. I knew the only way I could stop her was to throw myself down...I just wasn't expecting the snow to be so hard.

I'm enjoying the weather. I like how pretty everything is, and if I owned the skis I would take them out every day while I'm on vacation. I like how everything is shut down...it makes for a nice change, since it's temporary. The only thing that bothers me is knowing the chickens are out there. They're fine, I'm taking care of them, feeding them warm things and keeping the heat lamp on them. But they're not too happy. Kung Pao stopped laying eggs yesterday after about a week of not leaving her coop. My girls hate the snow.

My first eggs!

2008-11-30T17:31:00.000-08:00

From My First Eggs

Chickems!

2008-11-02T12:40:00.000-08:00

I have gotten many requests for new photos of the ladies, and I am finally getting my act together and complying, largely because Nathan has gone hiking while I stayed home. So I have time and this is more fun than laundry. Above, you see the lovely Mrs. General Tso. Below, CHICKEN BUTT!

More pictures here

Max's Halloween Costume

2008-10-06T22:20:00.000-07:00

Max is getting ready for Halloween by modeling his new pumpkin suit. Okay, actually, it is my roommate's costume and she put him in it against his will. See for yourselves:

From Pumpkin Max

But he's so cute! And angry. And cute!

Volcanoes and such

2008-09-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a vivid dream that Mt. Hood erupted. I watched plumes of black smoke rise out of the top of the mountain, followed by lava eruptions that reached the window I was looking through and lapped harmlessly against the glass. I think I must be a little concerned about the economy and the nation at large.

The cowboys on Wall Street got their spirits revived today by the hope of a second bailout proposal coming down from the heavens and saving their fortunes from loss. Of course, they would have us believe that without this bailout, Main Street's financial situation will be ruined and the middle class will be bankrupted, which is partially true. Without a bailout, the worst case scenario for me personally is that my company could go under, although I think that's extreme. The other half of the story is that even with the bailout, our financial situations will be ruined. They gambled with their futures and mine and are now trying to fearmonger and pressure me into paying for their parachutes while giving me nothing in return except for the job security I had before this all began.

I had a conversation with one of my coworkers today about how I could so strongly support the failure of Wall Street knowing that such a thing will affect me in the worst possible way. This is what I told her:

"I understand that if there’s no bailout the government is not going to act prudently and fix this problem in the myriad other, better, ways that it could be fixed. I also get that if there isn't a bailout, we will probably all end up losing our jobs. My opposition to this then is clearly cutting off my nose to spite my face (or someone else’s face...someone who really deserves it). But at the same time, I don’t have a lot of hope for the economy or the way that this will “fix” it. I think that if we don’t let it crash now (because it has been artificially inflated for a very long time and a crash is coming), it will just crash worse at a later time, probably when my kids will have to answer for it. I’d rather roll up my sleeves and suffer now so that I can create a better world for my kids instead of following in my parents’ generation’s footsteps. They soaked up all the resources, created national bad debt, harmed their neighbors in order to make a profit, and left a situation in which their kids will pay for their social security and never get any social security of their own. I know that may all be a complicated way of dealing with it, but I’d just rather face calamity head-on than postpone it."

She then asked me what my solution would be. To me, the obvious solution is to cut out the middleman on this bailout: the banks. Theoretically, the money will help banks begin to lend money again, easing the credit crunch, sending money to small and mid-sized businesses that need it. I think that if we as a nation happen to have $700 billion to inject into entrepreneurship, the government should just go ahead and do that without filtering it through privately owned banks. This sounds like a big scam to me. The government has money and businesses need it to keep the economy humming. Lend it then. No corporate CEO of a major, publicly held bank should take a cut off that transaction. Sounds like a disguised corporate parachute to me. The money lent to America's small businesses could be given at a higher priority to businesses with an emphasis on localizing food supplies, manufacturing something (anything!) domestically, and creating alternative methods of distributing these goods so that we are less reliant on goods shipped from overseas.

Another possible solution is to finally fix the healthcare system, giving us complete coverage in the same way that other industrialized nations have it. This would put hundreds of dollars per month back in the pocket of Americans, giving them extra liquidity, and relieving small businesses like the one I work for of the need to pay for my health insurance. I have long felt that America's health system is a major burden on free enterprise.

How about investing in public infrastructure? Like I said before, we could build 1,000 miles of light rail with the excess after fixing healthcare and still have enough money left over to donate bikes to poor families. This investment would employ construction workers who took a big fall when the housing boom faded. Unemployment would go down and Americans would have steady income and health coverage at a much lower overall cost to the nation than we currently pay. Sounds like a win-win-win to me. The only people who lose under this model are the wealthy risk-takers who cause these problems in the first place.

She said she didn't quite agree with me and I didn't push her to explain why not. I guess as opinionated as I am, I'm not always right and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The bailout will happen either way, but let it be known that I opposed this for my future kids' sake.

Take note

2008-09-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

In case there are any of you who don't know yet, I think it's time to talk about Atlanta. There has been what almost amounts to a media blackout on the fuel shortages the city is facing. I know why; we don't need another panic on top of the bailout mess, we don't want people rushing to the pump and decreasing supplies further, and we certainly don't want to talk about gas shortages in an election year. But people have to know anyway.

Is it really a media blackout? Well, a search of Yahoo's and Google's news pages shows nothing until maybe the tenth hit for a simple search for the term "Atlanta," when it should be the top story. CNN is a little bit better, but only because it has this iReport feature, which lets people post their local news and video rants. I watched one of these this morning, wherein a less-than-intelligent woman questioned why the nation wasn't paying attention, and why it was that Houston could get gas, but Atlanta couldn't.

So, for any of you that don't know what's going on, here's a brief list:

- The gulf coast refineries sustained a bit of damage, so supplies are low. Our nation's oil reserves are also very low.
- The southeast region gets its gas off these refineries.
- Houston clearly gets dibs because it's closer. I think last I read production was at half what it normally is.
- Atlanta has basically run out of gas, with most stations completely out and no one sure when the next tanker will arrive
- Cars are lined up down streets and around blocks.
- Gas station attendants have to help direct traffic into pumps
- Any station that gets gas from a delivery truck services as many people in line as it can before it runs out
- Fistfights are breaking out at gas stations
- There is now a policeman stationed at every station that is to get gas
- Drivers are following delivery trucks to stations in order to get into line

I wish I could say I was gleeful about having known this would happen for years, but I'm not. I have family and friends in Atlanta, and I care what happens to them. I don't want anyone to suffer whether I know them or not. I want my friends and family to move out of Atlanta immediately, but haven't had much luck over the past few years convincing them to do so. Last year it was water, this year gas. What's next year: water and gas? So far, my bet on Portland has proven right (or lucky, more like) and I hope it stays as sustainable as I think it is. Portland sure can't sustain the population of Atlanta in the event of a mass exodus, but Portland has to start getting ready for a flood of new people. Once Phoenix's and Las Vegas' water supply starts running out, those people are going to want to move to rainier climes.

Oy. I'm a little sick of my silly doomsday theories coming true. There's nothing I'd like more than to be wrong and have everyone point and laugh. I could stand being humiliated for believing in cockamamie chicken-little theories, but I can't stand seeing my friends and family suffering, stuck in a city that is dying of overpopulation.

Oh, also, I read a story last week about New York City running out of new bikes to sell.

Vegan Engagement Party

2008-09-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Today I held an engagement party for some vegan friends of mine. While I am not a vegan or a vegan sympathizer, I do have enough respect for other people's morals to attempt something like this. My only rule for hosting this event was that there be no substitute products used. I refuse to use Earth Balance, soy milk as a replacement for real milk or cream (you'll notice I did use coconut milk, more on this further down), fake cheese, textured vegetable protein, or anything else designed to replace animal products as direct copies. I did this because I believe that if an ethical diet pattern is healthy, you will not need substitute products. Had I truly stuck to my feelings about veganism, I would have refused to use anything that could not be grown in Oregon but since I have not come close to implementing localism in my own diet, I wasn't going to force the issue here.

Here is what I served tonight:

Black bean veggie patties
I used the recipe for veggie burgers but didn't make actual burgers out of them (no buns, tomatoes, etc. just a veggie patty)

Hummus
I will say that while the recipe claimed this would be restaurant style, it was not. Not even close to the hummus I can get at a few local Lebanese restaurants.

Chickpea Vegetable Curry

Hasselback Potatoes
On this one I left out any butter or cheese it called for. It would have been much better with some dairy products but it was fine without.

You'll notice two things: first, most of these dishes are world foods that have always been vegan. This meal was (if I do say so myself) delicious and satisfying and it accomplished this without substitutes created by chemists in labs. I would even say that the only reason it was satisfying was because it was made without the help of modern food technology. Had there been any TVP or soymilk, I would have felt cheated out meat and milk. Second, most of these dishes, with the exception of the obvious non-traditional food of veggie burgers, are side dishes. This is because it's easy to have a vegan side dish. That is where I will leave that train of thought. I think it speaks for itself.

As to the coconut milk, to me this does not count as a substitution because coconut milk-based curry dishes are traditional foods from places that mostly do not use real cow dairy and the dishes are not meant to taste as though it were made with milk or cream. The only objection that I have to using coconut milk and curry is that these foods are not local, which means that if one were to try to live a vegan life without the help of oil-based infrastructure, it might prove impossible. Or at least impossible without going to the hospital for nutritional deficiency-related matters frequently. It's all well and good to be a vegan when the world is rich and fat and you can get anything you want and need from the furthest reaches of the globe, supplemented with the furthest reaches of a food chemist's imagination. Not being a franken-eater, I try to stick to traditional eating philosophies. And enjoy my oil infrastructure while I still have it. One additional note about this meal is that there was no added soy anywhere. I have begun trying to wean myself off soy products, no matter how much I like many of them, because I have realized just how much of my diet is made of chemical soy derivatives. Not being comfortable with that much of my diet being made of one thing (corn is another example) I have made serious efforts to cut down not only on processed foods but also on things I love, like tofu and soy milk, simply to bring some much-needed diversity into my diet.

I have to say that this was the best, most satisfying vegan meal I have ever had, and it was fun to take on the challenge. I learned that making good curry is not nearly as intimidating as I had thought. It was so easy and idiot-proof. I loved coming out of my normal habits and learning new things. I definitely wouldn't be a vegan for any reason, but I can rest easier knowing that if the zombies showed up and took away all the animals, my suffering would be slightly less than I had previously imagined. But only by a little.

Financial bailout

2008-09-26T09:17:00.001-07:00

For days now, I have been more angry than I’ve ever been about this financial bailout. It strikes me as being caused by the housing crisis, which was caused by unethical lenders taking advantage of the poor. They made unsafe bets, pushed poor people in front of the foreclosure bus, and lost their own shirts because of it. And now the poor that got taken advantage of (because let’s face it, compared to them we’re all poor) are going to pay for it with this bailout, getting twice screwed by the rich.

What can I do about this? Not much. This bailout is going to go through whether I want it or not. But I sent a text to most everyone I know, saying to mobilize your friends in New York for the protests they had there. I posted a bulletin on MySpace with much the same message, telling people that if I lived in New York City I would do everything I could to take my chance to spit on some bankers’ faces. What else can I do about this? I’m not sure, but I think I’ll start with a letter or angry phone call to my congressman. I think you should do the same. Be vehement! Make your voices on this heard and take the chance to scare some congressional representatives. The nation is overwhelmingly against this and we can mobilize or at least make our opposition heard.

I’ve heard people from opposing sides say that if the other side wins, foreign investors will just buy up our nation’s financial institutions and America will be sold. What’s new? We already knew that the Saudis own 11% of the nation – or maybe only some of us knew that. Who else owns what? To me this argument is a ruse.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the need to post lyrics to punk songs, but what I listened to on my commute in this morning sums it up: Stand up and fight because tomorrow belongs to us. These financial criminals are taking advantage of us. Whether or not you think it’s hopeless, there’s no excuse for not fighting this.

Here’s the letter I sent to Oregon’s senators and congressional representatives. Feel free to copy, distribute, whatever, as long as you’re making noise about this.

Dear senators and congressional representatives,
I’m writing this in vehement opposition of the financial bailout. As I’m sure you know by now, the nation is strongly against this, across all demographic groups. The masses from all political sides, all races, all income brackets (except the wealthy), and all ethnicities have spoken to say that they should not be held responsible for the misjudgment of wealthy financial leaders. Now $700 billion is going to be spent on “fixing” the financial sector, under the ruse that it will help Americans obtain loans, but instead it will simply bail out bad leaders on the unwise decisions they made.

$700 billion is a lot of money (and we know it is not all that is going to be spent). The Oregonian recently put that number into perspective, by quantifying how many large projects could be done with that money. One example was how many Sears towers could be constructed for that price tag (it was around 1,000, I believe). That got me to thinking what else we could do. If we were constructing Sears towers with that money, Americans would be employed in every aspect of construction and that money would be brought into the active, tangible economy, instead of where it is going now: into derivatives of derivatives; theoretical money with no tangible aspect. But if we built these structures, it wouldn’t do the nation much good, since no entrepreneurs would be able to get start-up loans. We would wind up with a lot of empty high-rises. So I asked myself, what else could we do with $700 billion?

1. The OECD average per capita expenditure on health insurance is $2100. If we implemented a similar model, we could insure every American with $58 billion to spare.
2. Light rail costs on average $35 million per mile. We could construct 1,000 miles with $23 billion to spare.
3. The average cost of a bicycle is $385. With $23 billion, we could give 62.3 million Americans an alternative method of transportation with the balance. This would funnel money into the bicycle manufacturing industry, much of which is still based in the United States.
4. This taps the fund. But what about the social security system, that we purportedly cannot afford to fix. Wouldn’t $700 billion go a long way toward this? Let me ask, how much can thrifty seniors consume in comparison to luxury jet-flying, five-star restaurant dining, mansion-residing CEOs?

Healthcare is not a luxury, it is a right. The nation has demanded healthcare for years and it is an outright shame and tragedy that wealthy congressmen, for whom the government supplies quality healthcare, would vote against this for the poor and middle class. I reject this bailout of the irresponsible, those that gambled their financial futures, in defense of the poor who never gambled and were instead taken advantage of. If we have the money to bail these people out, I will not stand to hear that we don’t have the money for schools, hospitals, homes and mental hospitals for the homeless, and basic social services that are routinely denied for the common people.

2008-09-21T17:46:00.000-07:00

Dear clothing industry,
I know we haven’t talked in a while. Ok, I know we haven’t talked ever. But the time has come for us to make amends. By now you may have given up on me, taking my indifference to your offerings to mean what it does: that I hate you. But I realize now that this isn’t serving me. It used to work somewhat. You looked down on me, I looked down on you, and we both got by just fine. But now, your complete disinterest in my needs is beginning to affect me. This has been a long time coming. At first, I didn’t realize that your pants didn’t fit me, but as time went on, it became clearer. I used to be willing to wear pants that only fit somewhat, but now I cannot get pants that even pretend to fit. This has to stop. Fashion industry, we need to talk. This doesn’t end with pants, so I will air out my grievances in every category here.

1. Not everyone wants to look like a hippie. Of the people who are left, not all of them want to look like hoochies. Of the remaining people, not all of them want to look like moms, teenagers, ravers, yuppies, or businesswomen. What’s left? Admittedly, no one in particular. No one but me. Please, invent another person. I have. I don’t like peasant skirts. I don’t like frilly, ruffley things. I don’t like jeans that accentuate my all-too-round bottom. I just need clothes.
2. People need basic pieces. Not half-pieces. So, when you want to sell me ¾ sleeves, shirts whose top button is in the center of my boobs, or pants that come down to my mid-calf, you are doing me a disservice. Sure, I can see there is a demand for those things, but please try keeping a few basic items in stock for people who need them. Sell some shirts that have full-length sleeves. Please! I really shouldn’t have to beg for something so simple.
3. Women sometimes have curves. I know it’s not in fashion. I also recognize that I’m a little too curvy at the moment. But I shouldn’t have to try on 15 pairs of jeans and not find one pair that fits. It seems as though in designing pants, you have assumed that we are all either rail thin or obese. I say this because in trying on four different sizes of pants in multiple cuts, I did not find one pair of pants that fit. I found size 10s that were a little too tight, size 8s in the same cut at the same store that were too loose, size 9s at a different store that were too tight, size 11s at that same store that were too long and too tight, but NO pants that fit. I found pants that fit in the front and stuck way out in the back, I found pants that were too baggy all the way around, I found pants that I couldn’t pull up over my thighs, I found pants that squeezed my middle-fat most impolitely, but none that could be worn in polite company. I did find jeans that fit just fine until I sat down, and then they gaped out in the back so far that others in my vicinity would be forced to see parts of me that they should not ever have to see. I also found plenty of mom-jeans. You know, the kind that fit around the waist and then give you ample thigh room that even I can’t fill at this point. Also, your pants don’t have big enough pockets. Now don’t tell me, I know: women aren’t supposed to put things in their pockets. It’s un-ladylike. But I have to. Consider item four:
4. Your purses suck. So much so that I can’t find one that I like even a little bit. So I just don’t use them at all.
5. Let’s get to shoes. I’m sure you think that because you have probably 5 million different types available that there has to be something that will work for me. But your lack of consideration for human physiology has led to two major problems for me: plantar fasciitis and emerging bunions. That’s right, the shoes you made available to me my whole life were so bad for me that they ruined my feet and I am now under orders from my doctor to wear no shoes except for hiking boots or the type of orthopedic shoes that are so unflattering that even I won’t wear them. Now, pair this with the fact that you won’t sell pants that fit me, and I’m looking at a future of wearing sundresses paired with hiking boots. Thanks. Now I can be an extra unique individual.

I have a wish list, fashion industry. Here it is:

1. I want a pair of pin-stripe pants. These pants should fit me in every dimension. The stripes shouldn’t be too ostentatious or too subtle. Walk a middle line.
2. I want button-down shirts that I can wear to work. I want them in all colors and with sleeves that go down to my wrist. I’m not muscular, so I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the sleeves fit my biceps and give me room to hug somebody or stretch my arms out. I want the shirt to not be cut for a man: take the fact that I have boobs into consideration please.
3. I want five pairs of jeans. I want them to be dark in color and striking. I want people to notice them, but not for how horrible they fit. I want them to not show my butt-crack when I sit down or bend over. I don’t need your help pre-ripping them because I will wear them till they are rags anyway. I want them to make me look a little taller than I am. I want them to make my legs look skinny but I don’t want them to squeeze my legs when I sit all day at work. I want them to accentuate my posterior but not make it unavoidable in the train-wreck category. I want my jeans to say, “I’m not a mom!” And ideally, I’d like my jeans to lie and shout, “I’m cool! I’m fun! I’m interesting and you want to be my friend.”
4. I want shoes that meet my orthopedist’s rules and match a dress. The rules are:
a. Stiff, supportive heel
b. Wide toe-box that does not push my big toe inward
c. Soles that do not move when you attempt to twist them in the middle
d. Supportive arch
5. I want a sling purse that’s not too big or not too small. It should come down to my waist and stand out. It should have a flap that closes and that I can open quickly. I need room for a wallet, phone, and keys at a minimum. Maybe if there were room to shove my lunch in there too for a spare sweater, it would be perfect. In terms of look, I’m willing to buy two purses, but wouldn’t it be nice if I had a purse that I could wear to work, church, and out on the town? Hmm?
6. I want lots of cheap, high quality, long-sleeved undershirts that will keep me warm.
7. I want leggings that are thick and come up to my knees or mid-thigh for winter, because I get really cold in Portland.

The overall message is that I want to stand out in a good way. I want my clothes to be fun but please don’t call me funky. I want to wear the same clothes to work and into the pit at a concert that same night. And above all, I want everything to fit.

I am 30

2008-08-17T11:08:00.000-07:00

Today is my 30th birthday! We're having a party and grilling outside. It's going to be super hot just like it has been for a few days now. I have to say I can't believe how silly Portlanders are...as soon as the weather gets warm and their toes thaw out, they begin to bellyache like they're in such misery that they're dying. It's so stupid. I, for one, love it. Yes, it's not easy to do work, and if you're not careful you might dehydrate, but come on people. Put on some shorts, get a glass of ice water, and sit in the shade or by a river for a few days. Lounge. Enjoy life. Have some fun in the few days of the year that the weather doesn't hate you and your outdoor endeavors.

Here are some pictures of the progress on the urban homestead:

In the warm weather, the girls feel like digging themselves a cool spot in the dirt, under some plants:

Nathan built a beautiful and functional coop for the ladies:

The side has two doors so I can access the run and the coop easily:

Nesting boxes, perch and heating lamp:

Racoon-proofing attempt:

Corn!!

Baby romas:

Pumpkin turning orange:

Nathan's hops are doing really well. If he gets time, he'll harvest them today:

Jalapenos!

My new commute

2008-08-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

Since the weather in Portland now passes for "nice," and since Nathan made some critical adjustments to my bike, I have been commuting to work by bicycle. Not every day, but more and more. This is probably the third week. So, in honor of the fact that I've managed to do this more than once, and that I get less scared each time, I decided to show the Google Maps route of my ride to and from work.

From home to work:

Distance to work:

From work to home:

Distance home:

Combined, my commute (depending on how accurate I've been with the distance measurement tool) is 17.65 miles per day! I am very proud of myself. The ride to work is downhill and takes about 40 minutes. The ride back is uphill and I haven't taken an accurate measurement of the time. It's probably about 20 to 30 minutes longer. Hopefully I will be able to keep this up, at least three days per week, until the middle of October, at which time the rain will start. I expect to be able to start again when the weather starts getting "nice" next July.

Numerous updates lumped into one...with pics!

2008-08-05T08:10:00.000-07:00

Today I have jury duty. This means that I am sitting here in a room with a million other people doing nothing for probably hours. Luckily, I brought my laptop and enough work to last about 10 days. So, I'm using this morning to give the updates I've been organizing. In order, and supported by pictures, here's what I've been up to since my last post:

I got new glasses, a new haircut, new chickens (as you knew), and a goofy grin (optional):

I then got on a plane to visit California. My cousin and her daughter (in Greece, she's my niece but in America she's my cousin) were visiting from Greece and I got to see them. I also got to see my brother and his new daughter. My four siblings and I were united for the first time in about 6 years. Here are my sisters and my cousin:

Zoe and my nephews

Niece and Nephews:

Came back home and watched a Taxpayers show at which much debauchery ensued:

On the home front, the garden is doing well. It's kind of become a beast of its own, beyond my control. I have more than 100 Walla Walla onions planted:

Beans:

Corn and beans:

Nathan's hops:

Pumpkins:

And a lot more. Tomatoes, more beans, zucchini, winter squash, basil, oregano, parsley, peas, yams, peppers and potatoes.

The livestock front is also going well. Nobody has killed anyone else and the chickens - ahem - the ladies, are growing like weeds. The General (General Tso, aka Eunice von Cluckington) is the boldest. She will come up to me first to see if I am offering anything good to eat, and she figures out where her food is coming from fastest. Yesterday, she decimated an ant nest. That's a good hen, General. Good hen. Other favorite pursuits of the General's are dusting herself in the dirt.

Tandoori right now is the sweetest bird and easiest to handle. They all love perching, but she seems to love it the most.

Highly jealous dog behind bars, well away from the ladies:

Kung Pao is the largest bird. She is second to the General in her love of perching, and when the camera is taking photos, she has to come up to investigate:

I tried to buy some perches and ladders at Petco, but I came unprepared with crate dimensions, so I guessed wrong. In the interim, I've created a perch out of a bungee cable pulled tight. The girls sat here for about five minutes when I installed it, even though it was wobbly.

Also, when Nathan's brother Ben was here, those manly men crafted this fine piece:

It is a worm composter. I know more pictures need to be taken, but I let Nathan take the photo last night and he only took one. And now I'm at the courthouse. Inside this box are three compartments which the worms will travel between, depending on how we fill the compartments. Basically, they will turn our scraps into dirt, which will fix that horrible clay situation in the backyard. Also, I will feed some of the worms to my chickens.

Also, I've attended a wedding and a bridal shower, and I have baked two cakes for those occasions. My failures at cake baking have inspired an urge to start baking cakes until I become an expert. It's fun unless you're under a time deadline, at which time it becomes not fun and very stressful. But I think with practice, I can learn to bake a pretty and tasty cake.

2008-07-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

Kung Pao

2008-07-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

Tandoori

General Tso, a.k.a. Eunice Von Cluckington, a.k.a. Encarnacion.

The Hoh Rainforest

2008-07-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

Not yet

2008-07-14T21:55:00.001-07:00

In case any of you were waiting with bated breath, I don't have the chickens yet. They will be ready on Thursday. This is sad because I don't have any chickens now now now, but happy because the ones I get will be one week younger when I get them. Also sad is that there is a distinct possibility I will not get one of the super productively laying Rhode Island Reds. Instead, I will probably get two of the Barred Rocks. Still, more eggs than I will know what to do with.

Short vacation

2008-07-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

I took a long weekend starting last Thursday and went up to the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula with a big group of people. It was fun, but on the whole, I'd rate it at about a 5 in terms of its value as a vacation. Sure, I rested and took enough time off to where I'm excited to see my co-workers again, but the National Park system is just too unfriendly to dogs to make it worth a visit. I know most of you aren't dog owners so you can't visualize the challenge it is to do anything with dogs, but I'll sum it up for you:

1. It is cruel to go camping without one's dog. A dog is a loyal companion who spends most of his life in a house and deserves to tag along on any romping outdoors that the family does. It's only fair.
2. Romping means romping. Dogs like to get the occasional chance to stretch their limbs and go buck-wild, which they will never be able to do on a six foot leash.
3. Dogs must be kept on a six foot leash at all times within all campgrounds in the National Parks.
4. Dogs are not allowed on hiking trails in the National Parks. Or on most beaches. Or at hot springs. Or anywhere else that the ranger might catch you.
5. I have two dogs. Therefore, they come with me if I go camping.

I had to skip all the fun hiking trips that the group did and I got turned around by a park ranger on the beach when I hadn't realized I was beyond the dog-friendly invisible line. The rest of the party went on. Nathan and I had to go back to camp.

I have decided that I hate the National Park system and that it's time for a personal boycott. I don't like being treated like a second-class citizen because I have dogs(gasp!). These strict rules basically are the Park system's way of saying "no dogs allowed." The rules are ostensibly there to protect me, but I sometimes get sick of all the regulations and protections on society sometimes. People need to realize that, sure, sometimes dogs get in fights. Sometimes cougars attack. Things in life can be dangerous, especially when doing fun things outdoors. I think people need to get used to that idea and either go camping knowing that there are animals in this world, some of which are dogs, or not camp. The woods belong to the dogs too.

Other people like to excuse barring dogs from the park by saying that owners won't pick up after them. I have to say that I pick up my dog's poop almost all the time. Why almost and not always? Let me ask you...what are the hiker's recommendations for if a person has to poop? Should he scoop it up in a bag and carry it back home? You'll only find the craziest nutbag doing that. A common sense rule is to use a camping shovel to bury it. This is because it just so happens that...get ready now...animals poop in the woods. All of them, all over the place. Only a few of them bury it. Then people say, "but your dogs' poop carries diseases that people could catch!" Oh really? My annually vaccinated dogs are more of a threat to your health than the never vaccinated wild animals that live in the park? I don't think so. And anyone who catches a disease by rooting around in animal poop in the park probably deserved it.

So after all that ranting, I have to say that I still had fun. The Hoh Rainforest is beautiful - the part of it that I got to see anyway. And I had something to look forward to in coming back: I get my chickens tomorrow if all goes well. Oh, and I got to take a shower!

I'm here and alive

2008-07-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like my attempt to start blogging more often failed. Two months since last post? Holy heck. I've never gone that long without posting. So, what I've been up to is...being very busy. My garden is coming along nicely, the Taxpayers play occasionally, and I'm taking a much more active role in cooking every night and in learning drums. I guess the easiest way to update you guys on the events of the last few months is to do it pictorially. So, since early May, I attended a punk rock homecoming event for the Taxpayers' return from tour:

Given the dogs mohawks:

And cooked some Greek food:

I'm taking a long weekend this week to go camping up in the Hoh Rainforest. The original plan was to go to the Redwoods, but since they're on fire, we changed our destination. Hopefully, I'll get tons of great pictures of the Olympic Peninsula on our vacation.

Another development is that I've decided to get chickens. Lots of people in Portland keep chickens in their backyards and I can't wait to have eggs as fresh as the ones I remember eating in Greece. There's nothing better. I want to get one each of these three breeds:

Cat Attack

2008-05-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

Girlkat 1 Xtina 0

This morning, Girlkat attacked me. I'm sure it was totally my fault, but I couldn't have predicted the onslaught that occurred. Let me start at the beginning:

In the backyard, I have raised garden beds that I have been planting recently. This morning I looked out my window and saw Marla digging in the bed I just planted. Naturally, I threw open the window and screamed "Marla!" This scenario happens occasionally. It apparently does not happen when Girlkat is right behind me. She launched a full attack on the part of my body that was facing her: My ass. She ripped a hole in my pants and a smaller hole in my butt. I whipped around to see the mystery attacker, to face a cat, with fur puffed out, staring me down. She then attacked my front, twice, ripping holes in my pants and legs. You guys should have seen me attempting to convince the cat that I posed no danger. Looking back, it must have been pretty comical. She had me trapped in the kitchen for a while, but I talked her down with treats. I was late for the bus, so instead of getting to change my ripped pants before heading to work, I am now sitting at my desk, on my bleeding bum, with holes in my pants.

Remember, Girlkat does not have front claws. I am bleeding in three places, from her teeth and back claws.

Fell off the Wagon

2008-04-17T21:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, so much for updating every day. But there's a good reason I haven't been updating: I've been really busy. No really, once the boys left on tour, I started partying like a single girl! Ok, not just like a single girl. But I've been going out a lot. I went to see the Unseen right before the boys left. Then two days later I went to see Anti-Flag. The next day I saw the Bouncing Souls and last night I saw Daniel Johnston. So I've been doing a lot of partying and I guess it's partly been to make up for not getting to see the Taxpayers for a few weeks in a row. Since Nathan left, I've barely been home and the dogs have been sorely neglected. I'm going to try to spend lots of time with them this weekend...somehow. I've got tons of stuff to do this weekend, including trying to go to Olympia to see the Jacksons, the new baby, and Dylan on his birthday.

I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Recently on PostSecret

2008-04-05T20:09:00.001-07:00

This confession evoked emotion in me:

-----Email Message-----
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 6:16 PM
Subject: re: 'vegan' and 'proud'

I told my parent i became a vegan because i couldn't bare animals' suffering either. But actually it was just to hide my eating disorder from them.

Picture Day!

2008-04-04T21:32:00.000-07:00

I finally found the missing cable to my camera, so now I can show off what we've been doing for the past two months.

Parties at my house:

Parties at other people's houses:

Dressing up Max:

Visited my nephews, who are turning into the world's sweetest, cutest, wildest jungle monkeys:

And enjoying my animals. Marla weighs 55 pounds now (5 more than Max) and is sort of learning to get along with Girlkat:

Literacy

2008-04-02T20:36:00.000-07:00

Recently I've taken up the habit of reading, as if I were a literate person or something. I was at the airport headed to California a month ago so I stopped by Powell's and picked up what I thought would be a quick, interesting, and easy read: The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. It turned out to not be quick or particularly easy - in fact, it was pretty dense - but it was incredibly interesting. A coworker had recommended it to me about six months ago or more and I recognized the title in the bestseller's shelf. It took me much longer than that weekend to read the book, but it engrossed me the whole time.

For those of you who don't know, the book is about the different systems we have for obtaining food in America. It is mostly an expose of the sorts of things we know about but don't like to think about too much, such as what factory farmed animals go through as well as how far from humane the conditions that Certified Organic animals are raised in. Most of it contrasts the industrial agriculture that owns the great plains, with a farmer in Virginia who uses a method he calls "Beyond Organic." I learned a lot, even though none of the general concepts were new to me, the details were. I have to say that after having read the book, I feel closer to Nathan's dream of having our own farm, something I really didn't want before. I'm pretty conflicted in that, because I need people around me. I wouldn't want to live like I did in smaller towns I've lived in, where I felt so alone because there weren't enough people to choose from, and so I couldn't find commonalities.

Anyway, I'm reading the second book he wrote: In Defense of Food. My co-worker recommended his works to me because after I started getting really touchy about vegetarianism and veganism, and losing the amount of patience I once had, I began ranting to co-workers (who would sit still long enough and not show hostility) about my dietary politics, and the reasons I defend my choices. She calmly listened, agreed where she could, and recommended that I read these books because of the added information they could give to what I already thought. "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Well, that kind of says it all to me. Even though the book didn't delve into vegetarianism as much as I would have liked it to, and it didn't arrive at the conclusions I thought were so obvious, it was probably mostly out of diplomacy on the author's part. And I can understand that. Not everyone is the foaming-at-the-mouth fascist that I am. That's ok, tolerance is a virtue and I wish I could have held on to mine longer. I say I once had tolerance, but growing up the way I did, vegetarianism was always framed as something highly negative and I can't help but hold onto that as an adult. No disrespect intended to vegetarians I know.

In fact, I came to a conclusion the other day. People with political ideals, whether they pertain to religion, governmental politics, or dietary politics, tend to group together and talk about their ideas only in the safest of environments, where everyone agrees with them. I call it "yanking each other's dicks" (sorry for the crassness - but that's what's going on). So my new policy, if vegetarians and vegans will accept it, is that I really want to have open-minded conversations about the why of our dietary practices with them. When I mean open-minded, I mean it. I want to stop being so judgmental at the outset (which I have really tried in actual conversations to no avail) and really try to discuss the morality or immorality of my beliefs. And have the other party just as willing to de-construct their own beliefs. That's my goal, now I just have to find some willing vegetarians or vegans. Easier said than done.

No Immunity

2008-04-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

I failed in my goal of not taking a sick day till May. I took a half day on Monday and missed all of Tuesday. Half of my office dropped like flies on Monday, so I guess there must have been a hidden harbinger of disease here on Friday.

Nathan and I went hiking up by Eagle Creek on Sunday and it was beautiful. We hiked for 10.4 miles behind little runoff waterfalls up into the snow. By the time we hiked back down, the snow in some places was gone and was replaced by tiny little meadow flowers.

Then we got Burgerville and canceled out all the good work we had just done.

New floors

2008-03-28T07:39:00.000-07:00

The big thing that's been going on for the last week is that Nathan installed new floors in the house. The nasty carpet has been replaced with laminate and it looks great. Now I've just got to find a good solution for the dogs tracking muddy footprints all over it. I would normally be pissed that my new floors require more cleaning, but then I just tell myself that these footprints were all just soaking into that nasty carpet and now I have a much cleaner, healthier house to live in.

Last night, Marla christened the floor with pee. She was so excited about how she slides across the floor that she tried to romp around and get Max to play with her. Since Max has taken the firm stance that he does not play with her, he started to get annoyed and then started chasing her and growling. After about two minutes of growling, he finally scared the pee out of her. Luckily, on wood floors, pee is just a matter of a paper towel, not a whole carpet-cleaning event.

Been gone a long time!

2008-03-25T07:43:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to have to resort to posting to my blog in the mornings before work, because this is the only time I ever have anymore where I can sit in front of a computer and get my thoughts down! I'm sorry for the big delay in between posts, and doubly sorry that this one is going to be so boring. A LOT has been going on in our lives out here lately, but none of it really interesting for blogging. The dogs take up a lot of time and they're doing well. Marla gets incrementally better every day, but she's an adolescent, so that's not saying much. The same old yardstick still applies: she's way better than Max was at her age.

Work has been so busy lately that I can't see straight. I just put my head down, work, and wake up from my zone-in at five. I would keep working at home because I'm so far behind, but there's so much to do there too. I'm babysitting the neighbor's kid three times a week and simultaneously trying to get more exercise and take full control of my family's diet, so that I entrust none of it to people that weren't raised by a Greek mother with a healthy dose of common dietary sense.

Speaking of dietary sense, I've been struggling with it big time. Really ever since we moved to Portland. I used to have so much tolerance of other people's dietary politics. I was even proud to have friends that were "conscious" enough to become vegetarians, even though I disagreed with it myself. (I maintain that there's no such thing as a Greek vegan.) That's all gone now. My tolerance is out the window.
Ever since moving here, I constantly feel so judged by the vegan police that I can't take this crap anymore. I won't burden you guys here with every reason I think that "alternative" diets are crap. I just wish that people considering experimenting with their health for the sake of what they perceive to be morals would open their minds and talk to people that have made the decision to stick with eating meat. We don't all scream and we didn't all make the choice because we just didn't think about it hard enough, or because we were so evil, or so calloused, or because we were idiots. Immediately discounting whatever input an omnivore may have as being ill-thought not only disserves just the vegetarian/vegan, but it disserves everyone else in society that they will subsequently attempt to judge, guilt, or throw things at.

More later, I'm going to make a strong attempt to update this more often. There's only one block of time I have available, and I'm going to use it.

A month's worth

2008-02-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

So much has been going on that I've not been posting lately! As I mentioned in my last post, I now have four roommates and it's been awesome! They cook, they clean, they're fun, and they brought an original Nintendo into the house, so we're having Dr. Mario battles.

The dogs are doing well. Marla got spayed last week and she's up and at 'em at full energy now. She's still the best dog in her class, but we ran up on her most difficult area in the last training class: coming when called. She failed in the class, but has been better about it at home this week. She's a pro at "stay" and "leave it," at least for her age.

Work has been very busy. I'm losing two minions and gaining two more, so it's the biggest one-time shift in my team since I started leading a team. It's exciting, but it will also be challenging because my team is currently behind. And I'm sick. Did I mention I'm sick? I should start keeping an Excel spreadsheet of how often I'm sick. And I'm thinking of making daily fruit smoothies. My sister makes smoothies every day and hasn't been sick since fall, and that's with three little boys snotting all over her house. I know smoothies are super high in sugar, but they're the only way I can get fruit into my system, and I figure I need fruit more than I need to be skinny.

We went up to Washington to see Steph's new place last week and it was a blast. The dogs loved being able to run around on the acreage, and I loved the freedom to let them out. And the house is beautiful.

Someone made a video of the Taxpayers playing "Everybody does a Little" from a bunch of footage compiled over the past few months. I take it everyone has had a chance to notice it at the top of the page here. Other than that, not much is going on. Just surviving here.

Big Weekend

2008-01-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

We did so much this weekend! On Friday night, Nathan picked up some rental skis and boots from REI. Then, I took Marla to her first dog training session ever. I'm happy to report that she's the largest and best behaved dog in her class. Just as I expected. The other two dogs in her class are...a puggle and a goldendoodle. For those of you who are new to this, those are both "designer mutts," or mutts that were bred on purpose and sold for a high price, contributing to the pet overpopulation problem. This fad has gotten out of hand.

Saturday morning, we took the dogs cross-country skiing. I was surprised to find that it is a blast and I am somewhat good at it! I didn't get cold because Nathan made sure I was properly outfitted. The dogs behaved themselves very well offleash and the whole family is now sore.

Saturday evening after the ski trip, we went over to singer Rob's house so the Taxpayers could practice for the first time in a month. We met our friend Joe there, and he told us that his backup housing solution had fallen through. So today, Nathan and I talked it over and offered Joe and his fiancee Megan the lease of one of our three spare bedrooms. They accepted, and will begin moving into our house tomorrow. At the same time, Nathan's cousin from Alabama is moving in with us until he can get himself situated in Portland with job and new place to stay. He's bringing a friend. As of Monday, we will have four new adults living in this house, for a total of six people, two dogs and one cat. Believe it or not, I'm excited. We suddenly feel cramped, but we'll also be less lonely. Not that we were particularly lonely before....heck, I'm looking for the bright side here! Just kidding, I am excited, and this was all my idea anyway.

I'm very sore from skiing and I'm tired. So here are pictures of dogs:

Are you ready for this?

2007-12-20T20:27:00.001-08:00

Today, while I was at work, Nathan took Marla in for her first visit at our family vet. He informed Nathan that Marla is not as I had suspected a German Shepherd/Husky/Rottweiler. Instead, she is likely a...
German Shepherd/Malamute/St. Bernard

You heard me right. St. Bernard. I can't believe it. But I'm looking on the bright side of 100 lbs. St. Bernards are gentle giants with even temperaments. German Shepherds are smart enough to cancel out the St. Bernards' and Malamutes' dumb, and Malamutes are sweet. Marla is good, gentle, attentive, sweet, and at least somewhat smart. So I can forgive her for growing to be massive.

Marla Mauser

2007-12-15T20:14:00.000-08:00

Today we adopted a new puppy and overall, I couldn't be more pleased with her. She is the most docile, obedient, focused, and attentive dog I have ever met. We named her Marla Mauser for two reasons. A) I figure she will be viewed by Max as the bane of his existence. Therefore, I thought of the line in Fight Club where the main character said "If I had a tumor, I'd name it Marla." Second, she seems to be mainly German Shepherd, so I let Nathan pick out a German name. He picked Mauser. I think she's got the coolest name of any dog. And I think she's close to perfect for our family. She's going to excel at training classes, but she's going to be a very large dog. She may be part Rottweiler. Her other major drawback right now is that she's got worms, and of course, she's not yet housebroken (which is how I found out she had worms). Without further ado, pictures!

Nothing yet

2007-12-09T22:48:00.001-08:00

Nothing to report yet on the dog front. Except I really like this dog. She is the front-runner and really the only acceptable dog I've seen:

The shelter says she is a Rottweiler, German Shepherd, and Chow or Sharpei mix. I think the people at the shelter are less than intelligent. This dog is primarily Rottweiler, with what is likely to be a very small breed dog making the pup much smaller than a Rottie would be at this age. I'd say she is about 3 pounds at six weeks old. A rottweiler would weigh 10 or 11 pounds by now. Her ears are short, which I think suggests terrier, but it's just a guess. I think the shelter guessed at chow or sharpei because of her long tail that curves over her back. What they don't know is that this is exactly what an undocked Rottweiler tail looks like.

We'll see....I don't have to decide on her till next week, and maybe not even then if she's still available.

Christmas comes early for me!

2007-12-03T21:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Nathan dropped a major bombshell on me by telling me that for Christmas, he's going to allow another dog into our home! I can't even believe my ears on this, but I've been scouring petfinder all day for a puppy. I've been wanting a small adult dog for a long time now, but Nathan makes some fantastic arguments in favor of another Max-sized dog started from a puppy, so that's the way we're going. I just had to get the news out. If anyone in this area knows of any puppies, here's what I'm looking for:

- Adult size between 40 and 70 lbs
- Female only!
- Between 8 and 14 weeks old
- Very short to medium-short length hair; no double coats
- Mixed breed
- NO BULLY BREEDS OF ANY KIND (no Boxers, Pit Bulls, any type of "Staff" anything, no bulldogs of any kind)
- Good with kids, dogs and cats

Thanksgiving!

2007-11-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

This Thanksgiving involved a trip to see my sister in Sacramento and her kids, the jungle monkeys. The boys are doing well and they're super energetic. It's exciting watching them all grow up. Nathan and I spent one and a half days in Sacramento and two days driving. It was a pretty uneventful trip until the way home when I realized that my nephews had graciously shared their kid germs with me and I had a stomach flu. I even ralphed on the way home at a gas station. It was horrible and now I have a lingering stuffy nose from the ordeal. So today I'm home from work.

Children are little harbingers of disease and I have a weak immune system because I don't eat fruit. My sister has recently purchased a Vitamix blender and has been drinking fruit smoothies all fall and has not been sick once. My question is, how can I get the benefits of fruit into my body without having to go the smoothie route (or the eating fruit route)? The fruits I can eat are blueberries, watermelon, and apples. In juice form I can also drink lemonade and all manner of cranberry blends. The problem there is that juice is super high in calories and I don't want to be subsisting off juice alone. Who's got ideas as to how to better integrate fruit into my diet?

Max is Better!

2007-11-19T21:16:00.000-08:00

Yep, that's right. My boy-dog's eye seems to be fixed up. All last week, he was really out of sorts and he even had a few really horrible accidents in the house. Turns out that on top of the eye complaint he had bacteria and fungi living in his colon, giving him a nasty case of colitis. Ha! Colitis: sucks for the dog, sucks for me. Anyway, a second round of antibiotics and he seems pretty regular now.

Also, I started a blog for Max. It's not about his daily life, it's about the money I've wasted on toys for him. I figure if I post up a review about a toy that was crappy, it might save someone else from wasting their money.

So much activity!

2007-11-12T20:56:00.000-08:00

We did so much this weekend. I put an itemized list of it all on Chance's forum, but I think I'll go into more detail here.

Friday night began with happy hour with my coworkers. Nathan picked me up and took me to a house party the band was playing. It was full of what some people call "gypsy punks" and I call "hippies," because they're pretty much the opposite of what I call punk. In fact, they act, look, smell, and sing a lot like hippies do. Anyway, the Taxpayers' show was great and a few of my co-workers even came out to witness the madness. The hippies stayed upstairs for it. At the show, our friends Rob and Zach's new band the Atomic Butter Babes played for the first time in public, but it ended in tragedy when a beer that had been set on top of the amp toppled over into it. Our host stalked off unconsolable over his loss. Hopefully, Nathan will be able to fix it. He's not sure it's possible though.

Saturday, we went on a day hike in the woods in Washington, not far from here. We were hunting for Chanterelle mushrooms since a friend of ours is a hobby mycologist. I found two of them, which made me proud because those things cost $15 a pound in the grocery store. They're special. We also met a crazy mountain man and I got lost in the woods and Max slid down a mountainside when we were hiking off-trail. He seemed ok and in the end, I was found. (those events are not listed chronologically...I would never leave the trail if lost).

Saturday night the Taxpayers played another show, but a few things made it less than ideal. Mainly, the girl who opened the night was horrible. Sunday morning, we played soccer in the park, and then I spent the day cooking and cleaning because the boys were planning to come over to record a new record. As I was getting ready to start dinner in earnest, I noticed Max's eye looked bad, so I ended up taking him to the emergency vet. I got drops and a likely diagnosis, but it could actually be something serious if the drops don't clear it up. I hope my dog is ok and that he doesn't go blind or have nerve damage.

That's pretty much it for me. It was a packed weekend full of lots of fun and a few disappointments. Time for this girl to get to bed.

Anti-Milk

2007-10-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

If there's anything I hate, it's the anti-dairy movement.

Ever heard someone say that little kids get tummy aches all the time because of all the dairy they drink? I heard that argument for the first time last night. Guess what never happened to me once as a child? That's right, I never, ever got a stomach ache. And believe you me, in a Greek household, I ate a LOT of cow's dairy and goats dairy, and dairy with every meal, and dairy all over the place. I never had a stomach ailment of any kind (barring getting an upset stomach with a fever) until I was well into my 20s.

Anti-milk

Decisions, decisions

2007-10-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

Well. This Friday night I have a very difficult decision to make. At first it seems simple. My entertainment choices are:

A) Go see the Taxpayers at a house party
B) Go see the Street Dogs and Tiger Army

*Now factor in that I will have seen the Taxpayers just the night before.
*Now factor in that I haven't seen the Street Dogs since about March, whereas I saw Tiger Army in August.
*Now remember that since Nathan has a show, I will have to go to the other show by myself if I so choose. Of course, I will probably run into friends there.
*Now factor in that Jorge and Senia will be in town and are most likely to want to see the Taxpayers. They of course hold a trump card in that if they don't want to see the Taxpayers, I will certainly hang out with them at a non-concert entertainment option of their choice.

What, oh what, is a girl to do?

$15 a plate

2007-10-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

I don't know what the heck is wrong with the world, but tonight I discovered that soul food costs $15 a plate. That's right. For a dish that involves collard greens. Nathan and I stopped at a place that a coworker recommended, but decided against going in because I didn't want to pay $15 for fried chicken and mashed potatoes. So we went to place number two, which did not have the prices posted and found the same high prices when we were seated. True, we got lots of food and it was relatively good, but not worth the cost. When I go to get food that involves mashed potatoes or mac and cheese, I expect to pay no more than $8 per plate.

Next time, I'm going to Popeye's.

This weekend...

2007-10-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

was boring, fun, and sorta lonely (but not really) all at the same time. Nathan was "on tour" (!) in Washington, and I didn't go because I wasn't invited and then I made plans before I was invited. So I said "screw those boys, I'm playing with my friends at home without them." And that's what I did. I went to happy hour with my co-workers on Friday and watched them get rip-roaring drunk, I lazed around and cleaned some yesterday before hanging out with a co-worker for the evening, and I spent today cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry with a former co-worker. It was pretty relaxing and pretty fun, but not Taxpayers' concert level fun. I'm kind of pissed I didn't get more done. And now I'm ready for another week. The weekend is not long enough. Sometimes I hear people talk about going home for a week as though it's no big deal to be able to do that. In honor of taking vacations, here are a few pictures of my sister's last trip to Greece. I think she was there for about a month (which is really the minimum amount of time someone should plan to spend while visiting family abroad).

My mom and aunt (I haven't seen my aunt in 10 years)

View of Zakynthos from my aunt's beach house:

Not sure which island these two are. Probably Rhodes.

GOATS!

My mom, sister, and cousin. I expect each of you to tell me that my sister (the one standing) is the most beautiful person you've ever seen. Because she is, and I love her to pieces.

Husband quote of the day

2007-10-07T20:34:00.000-07:00

Wife: What is up with that face paint?

Husband: That's Devin Hester. Don't diss on Devin Hester's face paint. He could wear Hello Kitty face paint and he'd still be the man.

Ground Kontrol

2007-09-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

Ground Kontrol is a super sweet arcade for grown-ups in downtown Portland. The boys played there last night and the Indigo Boys took the opportunity to have their breakup show (Colin's moving to Austin). Anyway, it was a blast, as this photo should show:

Sick

2007-09-23T15:43:00.000-07:00

I think I get sick seasonally. This time, it ruined one of the last sunny weekends of the year for me. Symptoms: My head feels like it's going to explode. That's it. Every move makes it throb horribly. Saturday morning, I actually blew my nose a little bit, but since then the old sinuses have stopped helping the situation and I've just been sleeping. I slept almost the whole weekend away and it's really not hard to fall asleep when I'm in this much pain. The doctor gave me a note for work, an antibiotic and Tylenol 3 with codeine. I actually took one of the Tylenols, even though I had planned to not take any. This is reason number 1 why I might end up capitalizing on my note out of work. Something tells me that opiates and market analysis may not mix. Ugh. I can't believe I lost this weekend. I even missed the taxpayers last night at Brainstains.

My version of Labor Day

2007-09-03T22:05:00.000-07:00

I was sitting down to post when the neighbor came to the door. Nathan stole the computer chair and got his version of this weekend down before I could post. So I'll try to avoid repeating him. Check out his blog, he had the same weekend I did.

My weekend started a few hours early. I got done with my week's work by 2 pm on Friday and I headed to the little nail salon by my office to get my eyebrows waxed. The Asian ladies capitalized on my early weekend by convincing me to get my second pedicure ever. The last one I had was with Missy way back when we lived in Silverdale. I headed home after that, only to ruin my brand new toenail paint by putting on my shoes too soon.

When the bus got into my neighborhood, I noticed that some racists had added more graffiti to a bit of it they put up earlier last week that I had in mind to remove. I got a bucket and scrub brush together and headed to the bridge to do some graffiti abatement. Nathan was driving home and saw me and stepped in to do the scrubbing for me. I believe in immigration rights, and if the racists want to tag up my neighborhood, they're going to have to contend with me, my husband's scrubbing arm and my level of stubbornness.

We headed out to a show the taxpayers were supposed to play, which became a fiasco, as Nathan reported. In fact, the rest of the weekend was relayed pretty well on his blog. The one thing he didn't mention is that after the pain of car shopping, I ran to the nearest ticket sales outlet to get tickets for the Horrorpops/Briggs show. Turns out, it was sold out by then. It was a perfect end to a crappy Saturday. But at least I got to see the taxpayers play twice this weekend. We're coming up on a dry spell because Rob's heading back to Ohio to see his family and friends. Part of me is afraid he'll get stuck there, but then I remember that Ohio has to suck, and Portland's a pretty cool place. He'll probably come back.

I get a new minion tomorrow at work; this time it's a preemptive minion hired to help my team avoid the trauma we experienced over the summer with a huge workload. This will be my fourth minion and I expect that if things stay relatively slow over the next few weeks, I will do almost no writing. Instead, I'm going to take a much-needed chance to really analyze my team's work and try to find ways to improve what we do and how fast we can do it. I think it should be noted that every month over the past year or so has been our strongest month in sales ever. It's good to be at a strong company.

A few more weeks worth

2007-08-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

Check Nathan's blog for a full update - my version of events won't be that different. We've had two sets of visitors in the past two weeks and it's been a blast. And September's looking just as jam-packed with fun weekends and concerts.

Do you ever leave songs on CDs unlistened-to? Sometimes I'll buy a new CD of a band I really like, but I'll be so caught up listening to something different that my brain can't take it in, so I give up on sections of records. Finding good songs on those records later is like a great gift. That happened this week when we borrowed Rob's car (Nathan's singer). He had a copy of a Bright Eyes record that I bought way back in Washington and gave up on because I couldn't deal with anything but ultra-fast punk at that time. Well, now I've heard the second half of it and I'm really enjoying a couple of songs: Make War and Bowl of Oranges.

Tomorrow, my band has a second practice. I haven't talked about this because there's nothing really to talk about. A couple of girls that I met through Rob are just as incompetent at their instruments as I am at drums, so we're playing together. I don't really know anything about them except that one is the DJ that put the Taxpayers on the college radio station here. All I'm really expecting to get out of this is drum practice in a non-judgmental environment, but I think these girls have very high hopes. We'll see how it turns out.

Weeks worth of updating

2007-08-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of fun and stress over the past few weeks, which has prevented me from doing a lot of things; namely, blogging and doing my workout.

First things first, the bad stuff. I always like hearing the worst because it makes the best seem so much better. Simply put, I have too much work to do at work and it's making life very stressful and sort of miserable. I'm behind by days and I can't make myself do too much work over the weekends. But, help is on the way; I'm to get a new minion this week (hopefully).

Also, I just found out my mom had to go to the hospital in Greece, but I hear she'll be ok. Breathing complaints.

On to the fun!

Last weekend, I went camping with the Taxpayers and friends. I wasn't supposed to be the only girl, but Trisina fell ill right before the trip, so the only females present were me and Sasha (Rob's dog), who doesn't really count (except to Max). I still had fun though, even though I had really been looking forward to getting to know Trisina. We hiked about eight miles up Zigzag Mountain to Burnt Lake, which is a beautiful, warm lake full of crayfish at the top of a mountain. Rob fished, Nathan and I swam, John caught a crayfish which Chris took pictures of. We ate smores and drank tea and ate lentils. A camping neighbor brought us her leftover rice. We hiked back down the next day, for a total of about 15 to 16 miles with 25 pounds on my back (27 for Nathan). I can't find a calorie calculator that will tell me how many calories I burned doing that. Should I just add 25 pounds to my own weight? How does one calculate for the ascent and descent? To ford the river on the way back, I took my pants off - which made it the first time I've ever done that in public but not the last time that I did so that day.

After we got home from camping, we dropped the boys off, dropped Max off, and headed back over to the Sea Shanty (Rob's house) for a party involving touring bands. Lesbian touring bands, in specific. The lineup was the Taxpayers, Hey There Cowboy, Fixed Gears are for Jerks and Lesbians, and the Pussy Pirates. All the bands were awesome, and I took tons of pictures. The Pussy Pirates were the highlight of the evening. They called a pants-off party, and I obliged because it was about 100 degrees in Rob's garage. Still hot, I also removed my shirt. I've never been so nude in public without having a bathing suit on. But apparently, when you get old and matronly, you just don't care about modesty anymore. Pics from the show are here. Pics from a party the Taxpayers played the other night are here. I think my photographic style is improving. I'm taking fewer, but better pictures. Not to mention the other night I caught my personal photographic holy grail - a band member doing one of the traditional punk show jumps.

Other than that, it's been work work work. Also, I have house guests from North Carolina that have provided me some mental diversion from the pain of work. Don't worry Kira, the spare room is reserved for you and Barry later this week.

Busy

2007-08-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes your life is so hectic that it feels like you don't even have time to eat or sleep? That's me now. A real post will follow eventually, I just can't even keep my eyeballs open right now.

Finished

2007-07-26T20:48:00.001-07:00

I just finished the final Harry Potter book.

Plus one beard, minus two

2007-07-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

I really love this photo that the boys had me take last week. Since this was taken, one boy has grown a beard and two boys have shaved theirs.

Strep Throat

2007-07-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

That's right, I'm sick. I don't think I'm ever going to feel good again, because I simply don't have the time to rest the way I should. I'm behind at work, and of course it's the middle of the summer so every weekend and spare moment is planned to the hilt. I think I could probably lie in bed for two weeks straight and just barely get over this, but I won't get that chance. I even tried to go to Nathan's band's big show last night, but I ended up only dropping of some stuff, snapping a few photos, and turning right back around because I felt too bad. I was a walking zombie, kind of like I am right now.

Well, off to work!

The Satyricon

2007-07-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, the Taxpayers played at the Satyricon. It's a small but important (in my opinion) venue in town. Pics are at my photolog. They're also playing there this Wednesday, with Whole Wheat Bread. You might remember I posted about them earlier this spring. I saw them open for the Bouncing Souls and was delighted by their sound. This marks a special occasion: my husband's band playing with a band I already knew about.

Concert photography is really working out for me. While I don't know anything about photography, and getting good shots is difficult, bands really appreciate my trying. It just makes my day when a band I shot photos of compliments my work or puts my photos on their website. I don't think I'll ever make one red cent off my photos, but I do think that one day I'll have them to look back on and remember a good time in my life, or show my kids just how cool (read: dorky) their mom is.

And yes, I realize that my last ten posts or so have been about the Taxpayers. Not a lot else is going on in my life. We had a period of upheaval at work, and now we're in a period of extreme business. Today, Nathan and I took the Max hiking in the woods up by Mount Hood. I've been dreaming of buying a lot and building a small home off the grid for vacation use ever since. Not anything close to what Steph's friend is doing - in fact, I'd like it to eventually be bigger than my city house - but still built cheaply and sustainably. I can't afford to do that though. Not yet.

PC-PDX Punk BBQ Blowout!

2007-07-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

That was part of the long title of this weekend's event. The Taxpayers rocked the house, even more than the bigger bands that were there. Pictures posted at my photolog in numerous folders since I took about a thousand (or 300, and posted far fewer).
The Taxpayers are playing a real venue again this Thursday, only it's a much better venue than before in my opinion. This time it's at the Satyricon.

And another round

2007-07-03T22:48:00.000-07:00

Monday night at the Sea Shanty (Rob's house).

In other news, today is Nathan's and my sixth wedding anniversary. Nathan picked me up from work early, and set up a picnic for us at the International Rose Test Garden. The anniversary elf brought us a new camera flash, so I took lots of pictures of roses at the garden. We also went to see Ratatouille. I have to say, he's the best husband ever. I'll stop being mushy now.

The Speakeasy

2007-07-01T22:55:00.000-07:00

The Taxpayers played last night at the Speakeasy. Flint and Steph came down so that was a lot of fun. It was so great to have them there supporting the Taxpayers. I posted more pictures here.
The boys played with the band Prick and the Burn, who are starting their summer tour now. I missed most of that set because the bar was so smoky my eyes started burning so my girls and I went outside to get fresh air. I really hope Oregon outlaws smoking in bars soon. It's just so grotesque to force people who want to have a night out to inhale other people's toxins. I'm off my soapbox now.

Queeruption

2007-06-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Last night Nathan's band played some sort of benefit at a house party. It was never really explained what we were benefiting, but I'm sure other people knew all about it. I was just along for the ride and I had a great time. I took about a million photos and I published 73 of them here. This batch of photos is only organized by date. I think that's how I'm going to publish photos from now on unless anyone has any real objections. There's another show tonight and I'll be taking photos there as well. The bands you're looking at in the album are: Eats Skull, David Evan, The Taxpayers and Junkface.

***Edit: Nathan says the reason for the show was explained a million times, but I was wearing earplugs the whole time. So apparently, Queeruption is a DIY queer get-together that is being held this year in Vancouver.

Photolog: My commute is better than your commute

2007-06-22T23:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I get to complaining about the minor (or major) annoyances in life, it's good to remember how great I have it. I work a job that I'm good at, with people I like, I get paid well, and I don't have to use a car to get to work. My commute on summer mornings is lovely. Sure, there's some dirty industrial areas in the mix, but I like that part of it too. So the following incredibly long post is a photolog in chronological order of my morning commute. Remember this next time you're stuck in traffic in Virginia, Atlanta, or wherever the heck else you work; especially if your commute involves more than 7.5 miles mine does. Enjoy.

This is the view from the bus stop.

Mt. Hood as seen from the bridge.

About to pass under the Fremont Bridge.

I get off the bus and walk past Union Station.

I pass through a lovely courtyard and climb a stairway to a bridge that passes over the train tracks. At the top of the bridge, I see the city:

Walk up the tree-lined streets past the rich folks' condos.

Catch a view of my building:

Walk up the stairs:

Arrive at my desk.

Life can always be better. I think I'll choose to think about what makes my life great.

Updates of Old Posts

2007-06-06T06:47:00.001-07:00

I realize that I made some forward-looking statements in a couple of old posts and I just wanted to give a quick update before I go to work this morning.

Simplefit.org is working out great for me. I'm not noticing any appreciable change in my body's dimensions, but I am noticing a change in strength. I can do much more of the first level's workout than I could at the start and that's nothing to sneeze at. I can do four chin ups in a row now, which is nowhere close to being 10 pull ups but I've got to start somewhere. My arms actually are bigger, but this workout doesn't seem to be doing as much for my lower half as it should. It's great for upper body and core at level 1 but I'll have to get to level 2 or 3 I think if I'm to shrink the expanse that is now my butt.

The walnut tree! It's probably three times as big as it was when I took that picture, although I've been too lazy to take another photo and I never measured it the first time. I'm actually kind of worried about it because the roots are out of the bottom of the largest pot I have, and I know if I repot it, the plant will just seek another way out the bottom because it's trying to build the impressive deep root structure that large trees have. So I don't know what to do for it except plant it outside, and I definitely don't have a place to do that. Also, last weekend I was weeding the roses out front and I pulled a familiar looking plant up to find a small walnut at the root, so I quickly replanted it and am hoping it survives. I think I found the tree that these seedlings came from, and I learned that it's slated for termination this fall because it's too close to a structure. So I hope number two survives and that I find a home for them both soon.

More Music

2007-05-28T22:16:00.001-07:00

Three day weekends motivate me to post on my blog!

I have two pieces of music to talk about tonight before bed. First point - and most important - Nathan's band is on college radio tonight. If anyone is up late, let's listen. Go here at 11:00 pm if you want to hear it live. The archived show will be available here, but I don't know when. It seems like the dj is pretty good about keeping it up to date.

Couple of side notes on Nathan's band: A) I really dig them, which is unbecoming on a wife. B) The lead singer has a side project which strikes my funny bone. It's exactly what I like in the vein of snarky punk parody humor. Find it here (it's less good without video). The best song is the Shania Twain medley. Classic.

The less important piece of music is Tim Armstrong's new record. I have to say that there are a few tracks on here that I just love. Specifically, "Wake up" and "Hold on." A few others are really good too. This record finds Tim playing up the reggae influence that I love about his catalog. All the songs are free somewhere, and can be listened to at rancid's myspace page. Maybe other places as well. Every song has a video, and my favorite is the one for "wake up."

Business Ideas

2007-05-27T19:15:00.001-07:00

I constantly have ideas for businesses. I don't ever start one because my ideas range from the crazy, to the stupid, to the downright unprofitable. Not to mention the ones that I don't have the skills to accomplish. But deep in my heart of hearts, I know that there is money to be made off all kinds of crap, and that you never know what idea that seemed stupid at first might become major.

But I mainly don't start a business because I actually like my job and starting a business takes time and money and lots of things that I can't spare while working my job. It just doesn't fit into my life. That doesn't mean my ideas aren't good. Last week while doing research for a plan, I discovered that two of my ideas that I gave up on have been done. To me, this says that people like my ideas. So what do I do with my misc. business ideas that I will never start? Two things: 1) bug Nathan with all kinds of pipe dreams that I never plan to try until he breaks down and beats me like a wife, and 2) begin posting my ideas here.

Here's the one I like today:
Everyone is used to seeing hotdog stands in parks in the summer time. But what if you started a S'mores cart? The beauty of this idea lies in many attributes: its relatively low start-up cost, the fact that kids will demand s'mores and their moms like them too, the novelty of it, the simplicity of it...I could go on and on. You basically just need a box on wheels, ingredients, and a business license. You set up shop by the park, and you begin cooking s'mores. Using a creme brulee torch, you melt chocolate, and then heat up the marshmallow a little bit. Charge $3 per s'more. your markup on that is about $2.20 each. You can even have a little cooler filled with milk cartons. I think kids would go ape. The setup is cheap as well. You just need to build a box out of wood, put it on wheels, and paint it some bright, fun colors to attract the kids. Put the word "s'mores" in big letters on the front, and voila! I bet you could make like $200 - $400 per day doing this during the summer time. That's gross income of course. The main thing is that the ingredients on that will be expensive. You'd probably spend $100 on ingredients every day, unless you made the graham crackers yourself. But that just adds a lot of hassle to the business.

Portland has a drug problem

2007-05-22T21:38:00.001-07:00

If I could, for just one day, rid my life of the scourge that has been brought on by mind-altering substances, it would be the best day of my life.

I can't describe the profound effect that other people's drug use has had on my life. And I've had incredibly little exposure compared to most people I know. No one has ever seemed to be able to wrap their minds around the harsh reality of how drugs affect their users and the people in those users' lives. Not like I can.

This disease is insidious. The only thing that I can think of that comes close to the pervasive tendencies of drug use is AIDS.

I think Ian McKaye is my new hero:

I'm a person just like you
But I've got better things to do
Than sit around and fuck my head
Hang out with the living dead

I'm off to buy some sharpies.

There is a light that never goes out

2007-05-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

This week, at my office, it feels as though a light has gone out and I can't turn it back on. So I thought I'd be emo and paste song lyrics about it.

There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out
There is a light and it never goes out

And the world’s got me dizzy again
You think after 22 years I’d be used to the spin
And it only feels worse when I stay in one place
So I’m always pacing around or walking away
I keep drinking the ink from my pen
And I’m balancing history books up on my head
But it all boils down to one quotable phrase
If you love something, give it away

In conclusion (even though I didn't just quote him) it's funny how - just like the few great friends you make in a lifetime - Elliott Smith is always there for you even if he's not around.

Too much to do

2007-05-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

Who else feels that as a general rule, you're spinning your wheels? There is so much work for my family to do, that there is no way for us to do it all. I'm spending more and more of my time working, more of my time watching other people's kids, and less time doing anything fun or productive as a side project than ever. My house is a mess, I don't have time to get a haircut, and my poor husband is sinking in the mire of schoolwork, a garage that needs cleaning, and a mound of yardwork that may never be fully accomplished. On top of all that, my boss has offered to me the opportunity to go to school, and I don't have time to even look for a course, much less take one. It makes me wonder how people ever decide that it's a good time in their life to have kids. If we had kids, one of us would have to quit our livelihood, which may free up more time for housework, but I can only imagine that if there were just one more person's worth of laundry to do in this house, I might end up in the funny farm. Not to mention having an additional screaming human being in this house on top of the two that are already in here. How does anyone ever have time for a hobby?

In the course of my day, I run across all kinds of statistics that are used to prove all kinds of things. Some people say that the younger generation suffers because we're lazy and we waste all our time playing video games. Some say that we suffer because the cost of life has skyrocketed since the baby boomers had to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and that since they had everything cheaper, they have no right to criticize a younger generation that is in insurmountable debt (not my household, thank God.) Some people say that we're all selfish and that's why we're having fewer kids. On the one hand, people say that if a woman makes less than $40,000 per year at her job she should stay home to have kids because the family won't break even. Then I ran across a career counselor that argued that women are horrible human beings for intending to stay home to raise kids: that that sort of job is best left to minimum wage workers and that men are overburdened trying to provide their wives a lifestyle that will allow them to stay home and raise kids (that the man didn't even want). The point is, there are a lot of conflicting points of view here, but I'm of the opinion that Nathan and I are two smart, hard-working, interesting people that have hobbies and interests and have our lives together. We've made good decisions, we don't waste our lives on drugs or video games, yet we still can't get ahead in life to the point where I'd be able to start my own business, which has been my dream since I was 16. And the more I live, the less I think I'll ever be able to be my own boss, or go back to Greece to see my family, or afford to have a kid (or ever spend time with that kid).

I guess I'm feeling pretty disgruntled. I scratched off this post in five minutes. Now I'm heading to work.

Police Brutality for You and Me

2007-05-02T20:07:00.000-07:00

See Jorge's blog or this news article for the story on what happened yesterday in Los Angeles. I think this story is underreported in the national media and we need to spread it to everyone we know. I have a few avenues of doing that, and one of them is here. Please use any method you have of pressuring the media to make this the giant headline story that it is. We can't in good conscience let events like these go unreported and unnoticed in the nation.

This guy's a genius.

2007-04-30T21:54:00.000-07:00

I think it's time for me to begin collecting legos. If not to make fantastic art, then to prepare for the time when I have a kid who's old enough to play with the toys I never got enough of as a kid. The problem is that legos are expensive. Who's got ideas for cheaply starting a collection?

That computer is fully functional, by the way.

Reflections and Motivation

2007-04-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, last weekend Nathan and I headed to Los Angeles with Flint in order to support Jorge and Senia during their time of loss. It felt really good to be able to do that. I had recently entered a lull at work due to a project manager being on vacation, so the timing could not have been more fortuitous, despite the tragic event. I noticed many things that were blessings during this time, and I hope that after sufficient time has passed, Jorge's family can look back on this time and see the good things I saw. First, it was very lucky that Jorge's father did not suffer. It was a blessing that so many of Jorge's family members live in close geographic proximity - something that my family and Nathan's family lack. These are just a few of the good things I noticed.

Traveling always seems to motivate me to change things in my own life. I guess it's just the change in scenery and the mental break from duties that awakens me to my life's flaws. When I got back from Los Angeles, I began searching for a non-fad fitness program that I could implement into my life. I found this. It's exactly in line with what I might want in a diet/fitness regime. I have managed to stay on schedule for the first two days of the workout program, which is double my historic staying power. I don't know if I'll find the motivation to stay with this long-term; stick-to-it-iveness is something I've always lacked. But I'm going to try. It requires no investment aside from time (and a pull up bar). I'm not doing the diet since I really try to avoid fads, and I haven't had time to research it. In the meantime, I'll just try to continue my regular plan, which is to cut down my portions, avoid dietary chemicals (trans fats and HFCS) and up my fiber intake.

In other news! A few weeks ago, I was helping a woman who answered a craigslist ad to shovel my river rocks into her truck. She found a sprouted walnut seed and handed it to me. I'm the sort of sucker who can't let living things die, so I planted it. This is what it looks like today:

I'm positively thrilled with its growth to this point. My intentions are to grow it up and then decide what to do with it. My google research on walnut trees has informed me that it will take seven years for this thing to give me walnuts, and it won't be really fruitful for thirty years. I'll keep it in my greenhouse for as long as the greenhouse can hold it, and then find an outdoor home for it. Walnuts can self-pollinate, but they do better if they have a pollination buddy. I figure that if this walnut found its way into my yard, there's another walnut tree in the area. It's my opinion that I don't have room for this tree in my own yard. That assessment may not stand. I'd love to have a tree in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. Also, if this hazelnut tree in my backyard does not start producing hazelnuts, it can be chopped down to make room for a tree that will produce. That means that my hazelnut tree has about seven years - give or take - to start making babies. After that, it's cut off from the Hersey family. However, if I can't put this tree on my own land, and none of my neighbors offers it asylum in exchange for giving me the nuts, anyone who wants it can speak up. You've got seven years too.

Easter Sunday

2007-04-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

Today I went to Easter morning service. It was my first time at Portland's Greek Orthodox church. It was ok. The sunday morning service is never great because it's right after the real service at midnight and the lent-ending party that follows. No one wants to come to church the next morning so it's not packed at all.

Later on I made another grilled cheese panini. This time it was sharp cheddar and feta, which is a fantastic combination, except that I used a little too much feta so it was pretty salty. Then, Nathan indulged the demands of my culture by making up some lamb for dinner. As always, he made the difference between a mediocre meal that I might have made with the same ingredients and a fantastic Nathan creation. All in all, it's been a great Easter.

Christos Anesti

2007-04-07T22:20:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter to everyone! I have been a bad Orthodox for the last ten years or so and I certainly miss the Greek church more around easter time. We're not going to the midnight service tonight, but maybe next year we'll get it together and go. Now that Nathan's such a sharp-dressed man, I want to take him places that require formal attire. That means that I have to do something about my own piteous image, but that's another problem for another day. Tonight, I'm just going to sing the Greek Easter song in my head (post title), go to sleep, and try to wake up in time for proper Easter church tomorrow. Much less fun than the real deal tonight, but oh well.

Grilled Cheese, Part 3

2007-04-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

I have before me a grilled cheddar and smoked gouda sandwich on whole grain white bread. The combination of cheddar and gouda is very yummy, but one slice of each cheese is not enough. Additionally, this bread seems like it adds a little bit of unwanted sweetness to the recipe. Overall, this sandwich gets a score of 3 out of 5, but could be improved to 5/5 with better bread and more cheese. Finding good bread is going to become a quest, I can already tell. Also, I've come to the realization that I am in desperate need of one of those neat cheese slicers.