Ruminations on Wall-E, garbage, and culture

I recently had to write a paper for a sustainable design class that I'm taking. The assignment was to watch Wall-E and write a paper using the prompt "Is this the direction of our planet is taking? Is it a world problem or individual? Or… does the development of machines threaten humanity itself?" I'd like to share my paper with you:

The movie Wall-E portrays an eerie picture of where humanity is headed. It depicts a future in which the earth is so covered in garbage and toxic waste that it is no longer able to support life of any kind, and humans have fled to live in starships in the hope that specially designed robots who have been left on the planet can clean it up in 5 years so that humans can return to a newly habitable planet. Unfortunately, the earth is so badly contaminated, that it becomes impossible to return for the foreseeable future, and humankind ends up adrift in space in a big-box-store existence that emphasizes constant consumption and little personal responsibility, the traits that presumably led to the mess in the first place.

Unfortunately, the movie is not just a crazy fairy tale, but a representation of a real possibility, aside from the fact that we don't currently have the technology to evacuate the entire population onto space-going cruise ships. One of the big points of the movie is the amount of garbage that must be dealt with once the planet has been emptied of life, and that reflects the current state of affairs quite well. When we throw something away, where does it go? Where is “away”? And where are the resources coming from to replace all of the items that are disposed of? What happens when those resources are depleted? How are toxic wastes managed?

This problem is a world problem. When one person or company puts toxic waste in a waterway, that waterway becomes contaminated for all downstream users. When a rich country depletes more than its share of resources, poor countries have to go without, meaning the inhabitants of those countries are often lacking the basic necessities of life, such as food and clean water. They often turn to unsustainable practices just to earn enough to survive, polluting the air, water, and land around them so it will be unusable for future generations.

The development of machines does not threaten humanity directly. Despite the fact that in the movie, humans are shown as being dependent on machines for every possible action they might take in a day, from brushing their teeth to moving around to eating and drinking, that type of society is far too energy-intensive to happen any time soon. At the moment, almost any American can choose that lifestyle anyway – we can get into our cars, parked just steps away from our couches and beds, and drive to work, stopping by the drive-through on the way to pick up breakfast and coffee. We can park right outside the door to where we work and spend the rest of the day sitting at a desk, with a break for lunch – either a trip through the drive-through or maybe having something delivered. We can then drive home, take a few steps to the couch, and spend the evening watching TV, getting up only when dinner is delivered. Most people choose not to follow that lifestyle, so replacing cars and couches with machines wouldn't make a huge difference, as the majority of people would still not choose that lifestyle.

More importantly, we need to concentrate on the more urgent matter at hand – the depletion of resources and the contamination of the resources that are left. Americans continue with consumption, contamination, and disposal of resources without giving it a second thought. Something must be done to change these patterns if the planet earth is to continue being capable of sustaining life. To quote Umbra Fisk of Slate magazine, “disposable” is a dirty word.

Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since my last update. Crazy. A lot of things are going on right now in my life, including moving! I'm finally moving to a new apartment. I'm quite happy about that, although packing isn't going so well so far. But at least I'll have a yard and a washer and dryer, which I'm so looking forward to.

There hasn't been a lot going on in the garden. We're having a ridiculous fall heat wave, with temperatures up over 100, so I haven't been too inclined to get out there and work. I planted some squash seeds a few weeks ago, and some of them are doing well, some are not doing quite as well. One of the tomatoes, the pineapple tomato, has grown immensely, and I'm expecting quite a few tomatoes from it in the next month or two.

Quick update

A few updates about life, garden, exercise, and food:

Life is good right now! My house is very slowly getting cleaned and organized. I've decided to tackle this issue slowly, in the hopes that cleaning and organizing will become a habit. I guess I'll see how that goes.

The garden is doing well. I've spent several hours there over the last few days, and the ground is cleared of weeds, some of the plants are thriving, and I planted some more squash seeds. I'm hoping they'll do ok.

I've been running and doing the 30-Day Shred. So far, so good. My muscles are tired and achy, but I feel good. I'll have to get to the gym one of these days to weigh myself, though.

I've stopped eating dinner, sort of. I've been eating and energy bar and a few nuts for dinner for the moment. That won't last long, though, mostly because I'm out of energy bars. On the other hand, I've been eating a fairly large breakfast, so I thnk it balances out. I'll update more on how that's working for me. And now it's time for bed!

Garden bonanza

I've got huge plans for food from the garden this week! Tonight, I'm making braised cabbage with a red cabbage that I found in my garden. I had pretty much given up hope on the cabbage, and tonight I went to pull out some older plants, and there it was! I'm also in the process of roasting a pepper from the garden to make frittata for breakfast tomorrow morning, along with tomatillo sauce, frozen from last year. It will be a bit of an experiment. As a side dish for tonight, I'll be making a simple tomato and avocado salad, with heirlooms from the garden. Despite my heirlooms barely producing, I'm determined to enjoy them as much as possible.

In other garden news, the corn has just about petered out. The cucumber is still barely hanging in there, and I'm hoping the removal of some of the corn plants will convince it to grow a bit more. I also have a honey dew melon! I was despairing about not having had any melons from the garden, and lo and behold, there it was! The basil is going crazy and I've barely had time to do anything about it. The tomatillo plant is looking promising, but hasn't produced a lot yet - about enough to make a small batch of sauce. Today, I planted squash in six more places. I'm hoping at least one of the plants will pull through. I bought a packet of multi-colored pattypan squash seeds, and I would love to have white, yellow, and green to make zucchini pickles with.

Sobering news

I just found out that one of my classmates from graduate school has ALS. This is a person that I've thought of occasionally over the last few years, and I recently sent him a friend request on Facebook, not knowing that he was sick. Needless to say, I'm a little upset by the news. He is a person who has been energetic, creative, and surprising the entire time I've known him, and while I can't claim to be good friends with him, I've always thought very highly of him.

I would say that it's a lesson to me to try to be happier and to enjoy life and cherish each experience that I have, but I don't want to reduce him to an object lesson. He's a real person, and I fervently hope that everything will turn out ok.

Thoughts prior to embarking on a new year

My birthday is quickly approaching, and I've decided that I'm going to treat this as sort of a new year's celebration, considering that it's a new year for me. The last year was absolutely awful, and I'm determined that the next year will be better.

I'm preparing for the new year with a few gifts to myself and a few resolutions to get me through to the calendar new year.

First and foremost, I gave myself a haircut and a trip to the dentist. That might seem rather mundane, but it sure feels good to be doing mundane things again. It's been a very long time since I had a haircut, and a much, much longer time since a trip to the dentist.

Some of my new year resolutions include cleaning out and organizing my house, and then keeping it that way, along with saving money, losing weight, and getting in shape. Which have been pretty typical goals for me for a while now. I'm hoping that I'll get my act together to actually accomplish them.

Where did my memory go?

In my quest to shape up my finances, I've been doing a little virtual rearranging. I have labeled my emergency savings account as a true emergency savings account, although I have unfortunately had to dip into a bit lately. But I went to REI yesterday and emerged without buying anything that wasn't on my list, so that was a good start at controlling spending. I also opened an extra checking account for things that aren't regular expenses, such as vacations, car repair, car insurance, etc. I calculated how much I spend on unexpected expenses each year, then divided it by 12 and set up an automatic transfer to put that much money in that account each month. Hopefully this will help me, although until I pay off my credit card (which should happen in another month or two), it's going to be tight.

I now have two dilemmas. I had another savings account, my old, traditional savings account, and I can't for the life of me remember why I kept it open. Maybe I was thinking that I would use it for regular savings, but I'm not planning to have any regular savings until I pay off my student loans.

Which brings me to my next dilemma - my student loans. I HATE being in debt. I've figured that if I take any extra money I have each month, and put it towards my loans, I can cut the repayment period to 16 or 17 years. If I stop contributing to my 401(k) and put all of that towards my loans, I could have them paid off in 9.5 years. But is it worth the peace of mind of having my loans paid off earlier?

It might be time for a gratefulness post...

5 things I'm grateful for

1. Not being homeless, jobless, or health insurance-less. While I'm pretty much living paycheck to paycheck at the moment (and I wish someone had warned me BEFORE I went to school about how little I would make when I finished), I have some emergency money, I have a place to live, I have a good job, and for the moment I have health insurance that prevents me from being homeless.

2. My gym. I love my gym. There are awesome people there, and a lot of them go out of their way to be friendly. When I go to my gym, I feel like i'm surrounded by a community of people who care.

3. My garden. Although it's not producing as well as I would like, there is now a 3-year waiting list to get a plot, so I'm quite happy that I got one when I did.

4. My car. It runs. Enough said.

5. All of the fabulous adventures I'm plotting. I wish I had enough time and money for all of them, but for right now, I'll stick with what I can manage.

Priorities

Bear with me, this story has a point...

I went to a wedding this weekend at one of my favorite places in the region, Lake Tahoe. The location was beautiful, the drive there was beautiful, and the wedding was a lot of fun. This morning, we had a barbecue on the Truckee river. It was supposed to start at noon, and I got there a half hour early. Supposedly a lot of people were heading over early, but when I arrived, no one was there. I walked around a bit, because it was a beautiful spot, but I found myself getting cranky because I had tons of things that I really needed to get done today, and here I was having to wait for everyone, and what in the world was I supposed to do before all the slackers showed up?

And then, I had a small epiphany. One of the things I always envision myself doing, when I try to imagine how I would like my life to be, is to sit outside in a beautiful spot, preferably in the mountains, and read. And here I was, in a beautiful place, in the mountains, with my book! Obviously, I read for a while until people showed up, but it definitely made me think about priorities, and how I need to try to remember what's really important. Getting home and doing the laundry or mopping he floor really shouldn't always be at the top of my list.

A Budgeting Dilemma

I recently borrowed a book on getting out of debt from the library, and I'm trying to incorporate some of the philosophies into my own life. I have to admit, my debt burden has been weighing on me heavily lately. Things have happened in my life in the last year that would have been much easier to handle if I wasn't so debt-ridden, and it's time for me to take control of the situation and try to start living my life instead of just attempting to survive from one week to the next. However, that does present a few dilemmas for me.

For one thing, the program about which I'm reading suggests donating 10% of your monthly income to charity. I can understand and appreciate this, and I intend to donate some money, but 10% of my monthly income is a lot for me, when over 50% of my income is already going for rent and student loan payments, not to mention my EXTRA student loan payments, food, and utilities, which also take a large chunk of my income. So for the moment, I'm going to donate 2.5% of my income as small monthly payments to four of my favorite groups: Partners in Health, The Central Asia Institute, NPR, and Heifer International. If it does one thing for me, at least it will remind me that no matter how bad things may seem, a lot of people in the world have it a lot worse.

The next issue is where to cut costs. The book suggests all kinds of things that don't really help me - don't go for coffee every day, try keeping a one-car household, cancel your cable TV, etc. For the most part, I don't have a lot of these expenses that are often considered necessities of modern life. One of my splurges has been food - I believe strongly in buying organic, local, and sustainable, and that's not cheap. I'm working on figuring out how to balance saving money and not compromising my belief system, all while eating healthfully. Suggestions would be welcome.

As far as my garden goes, things haven't been great. The heirloom tomatoes look terrible, the pattypan squash is almost dead, and I'm not sure what is up with the cucumbers. At least the corn, green beans, and peppers are doing well.

And that's all for now. I'm off to work a bit in the garden before it gets insanely hot, then coming home for more chores... Hopefully it will be a productive day!

On dieting

Lately I have been trying very hard to lose weight, and instead, I'm losing the battle of the bulge. I've gained a few pounds instead of losing them, and my clothes are getting tighter. I've been exercising a decent amount, mostly training for a bicycle race that's coming up, but I'm also eating with abandon. I'm not sure how to go about breaking the cycle, but I have a few ideas...

For one thing, I eat too much dairy. Dairy makes my stomach upset, and has a lot of calories for how filling it is. I've been eating toasted whole wheat bread with butter for breakfast, and the butter has a whopping 1oo calories per tablespoon. I think that from now on, I will have some hummus on my bread instead, which clocks in at a mere 26 calories per tablespoon, and is more filling to boot. I'm going to make some fresh hummus tonight and give it a whirl tomorrow. Another thing that I've been doing is using balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegar as flavoring. They're both quite low calorie, only 10 calories per tablespoon, and add a lot of flavor.

I also need to try to eat more veggies and more fiber. For this week, I'll be having some leftover pasta salad (unfortunately with cheese), some asparagus and mushrooms in oyster sauce with brown rice (and I know the asparagus is out of season, and I feel completely guilty about it), some grilled veggies one night (with a tomato and cucumber salad), and perhaps towards the end of the week, some black bean soup, risotto, or pasta primavera, depending on what my garden provides me with.

Speaking of my garden, things are progressing well. The corn is huge and is producing ears. The pole beans are going crazy, and also producing. The tomatoes aren't doing quite as well, for some reason, although the peppers are doing great, and the tomatillo is growing like a weed. The plants that i'm having the most trouble with, though, are the squash. For some reason, squash doesn't like to grow in my garden, and i have no idea why. I'm going to have to do some research and figure it out.

Until then, happy eating!

My first summer harvest

I just returned from my garden, victorious! I harvested a purple bell pepper, a yellow banana pepper, a dark green heirloom zucchini (zucchino?), a handful of green beans, two beautiful beets, and four carrots, three of which are perfectly usable, and one which needs a little help, plus one little onion. My plan is to roast the beets, one carrot, and a Japanese sweet potato for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, and use the rest of the veggies to make a ratatouille to serve over rice for the next few days.

I'm beginning to wish that I had planted more beans, as I really enjoy eating and canning them. I also discovered that there are varieties of purple beans, so next year I may try starting some from seed. It would be very cool to can green and purple dilly beans.

So far, my zucchini haven't been productive at all. I'm hoping that will change, but one of the things I'm learning is that zucchini really don't like the heat that much. They collapse pretty quickly unless they get watered often. I'm determined not to make the same mistake I did last year and let the zucchini plants collapse.

Exciting garden news

I have corn growing on my cornstalks! It's such an exciting thing for me. Ironically, it's the smallest cornstalks that are producing right now, but i have at least three ears of corn coming up. My tomatoes are starting to produce, I have several peppers maturing, some of my beets are absolutely humungous, the green beans are doing great, and I have a small heirloom zucchini. the eggplants, tomatillo, and cucumber are all flowering, as are the melons. It's an exciting time for my garden.

Food plans for the next week (or two)

I've picked enough green beans to make a nice green bean and potato salad, so I bought potatoes at the farmer's market and I'm making enough to last at least two lunches and two dinners. I'm also making some focaccia to go along with it (yum!). Some fresh onion from the garden will round it out. I also picked up some small purple potatoes, so at some point I will eat those with mayonnaise or cottage cheese. I also just found a recipe for a lovely Italian summer soup, with beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and carrots, so that will probably be on the menu for later this week or next week.

At the moment, I'm also making en enormous amount of bread, most of it destined for the freezer. I've discovered the joys of freezing bread. It thaws beautifully, so one night of baking will last me several weeks.

If I run out of options for the next two weeks, I'll make some Eastern European whole pea soup, pasta with tomato sauce (flavored with onions and carrots from the garden!), or tasty bites, one of my favorite last-minute dinners.

Bonsais and mulch

Which have nothing to do with each other.

After a lecture (of sorts) from my garden neighbor, I decided to mulch my garden. Not having any mulching materials readily available, I headed over to my friend Sam's house to pilfer some from the streets. We grabbed some giant leaf bags and started shoveling grass clippings in. At one point, her neighbor came home as we were gathering grass clippings from in front of his house. He looked at us like we were crazy, then started laughing. I doubt he thinks we're crazy, just a bit eccentric. I got two giant leaf bags of clippings, which covered about 2/3 of my garden, which isn't bad. I'm curious to see how much it helps keep the weeds down and the water in. But so far, my garden is doing great!

One of my experiments this year is corn. I bought quite a few corn plants, some organic and some regular. I honestly can't remember which is which, but one group is doing far better than the other group. this is also the first time I've planted herbs other than basil, and they're doing better than expected at the moment. The beets are doing great! I picked a few the other day and roasted them, and they were delish. I'll have to plant more the next time around. I love beets. I pulled all of my shallots and I'm getting ready to hang them in my closet, the only cool, dark, dry place that I house. I also have a few volunteers, which I think are melons left over from last year. I don't actually remember what type of melon they are, but I know I didn't get the same kind this year, so I'm very hopeful they'll turn out to be good.

On a somewhat related side note, I've decided to take up bonsai, although probably not too seriously. Just a bit seriously. We'll see what happens. For now, I have two starters and no tools, so I can't do much other than just keep them alive (which is going well so far).

So if any of you want ideas for birthday gifts for me, bonsai tools and a tomato machine would be awesome!

So much to do in a 3-day weekend

I have undertaken quite a few projects during this 3-day weekend, and one of them in particular is eating up my time faster than I can believe. On my list:

Installing my new portable bike pump on my racing bike and moving my old pump to my commuter bike - Done!
Cleaning out my closet - mostly done
Setting up itunes so i can listen to podcasts at work - done
Setting up my portable hard dive - done
Transfering files from my old computer - taking FOREVER!

My sister Stacey was kind enough to help me clean out and organize my closet, and I took six bags of things to the Salvation Army to donate. That felt great! I also had quite a few bags of garbage and a lot of recycling, but there's still so much more to do. I know I'll have a few more bags for donation, but at the moment, I'm fresh out of bags to put stuff in.

My next project is to transfer everything off of my old computer so that I can give the monitor to my mom and dismantle the old CPU. So far, this hasn't worked as I planned, mostly because the process of transferring files is really quite slow. And it seems that every roommate I've ever had saved stuff on my computer, and I'm now laboriously going through all of it to determine what's good and what's not.

At the moment, Max (aka The Cutest Cat in the World) has resumed his love affair with my laptop and keeps trying to delete this post. Probably time to post it and get back to transferring files. Sigh

Another attempt at gratefulness

I'm going to try to come up with 5 things I'm grateful for, which isn't so easy for me these days. Here goes...

1. My bike! I love it. It gets me where I need to go, and I realize that I might have been grateful for it before, but I am still very, very happy to have my baby. Especially since my on-the-fly patch from the bicycle scavenger hunt seems to be holding. This is the latest place my bicycle has taken me:

2. Really nice spring days. We haven't had too many of them around here in the last few years, so it's awesome when they happen.

3. My job. Even though I complain about it a lot, I have wonderful people to work with, and plenty to do, and they pay me for it. In this economy, that's pretty good.

4. My cats. They're still soooooo cute. Even the annoying things they do are cute! How is that possible??

5. My garden. It's finally starting to look good. My winter garden just didn't get enough sun to ever look like it was doing well, but my summer garden is a different story. Check out the pics:
In this picture, you can see beets, green beans, tomatillo, lots of peppers, shallots, onion, and watermelon.


In this picture, I have herbs (oregano, sage, and thyme), green beans, pole beans, cucumber, eggplant, corn, carrots, and cabbage. And in the second bed over, i have basil, leeks, honey dew melon, zucchini, and pattypan squash. And dillweed. As it turns out, there's a reason why they call it a weed. They should call mint "mintweed".

Bonus item to be grateful for: Star Trek.

In which I succeed for one day at doing everything right

Yesterday was off to a fantabulous start. I got up early to go water the garden and made it to work on time. I ate a healthy, low-calorie breakfast and lunch, but by midafternoon, I was ready to crash. I knew I would be staying late at work (I ended up working for 10 hours, plus I had Toastmasters at lunch, so it was an 11-hour day), and I was having a hard time concentrating. So I decided to just buy a soda. It probably would have been fine, but when I went to talk to my structural engineer, I spotted a piece of a cupcake on his desk, and since I absolutely can't resist chocolate cake, I ended up eating half of a ridiculously large chocolate cupcake as well. Then I went running in the evening, and only put in about 1.5 miles, which I had to walk almost half of. Pathetic!

Today was much better. I made it to the garden and to work on time again, then ate my small, healthy breakfast. I was in meetings for the entire morning, which kept me from snacking, then I had soup and whole wheat bread for lunch. After working late again, I found the energy to go for a 16.5-mile bike ride. I was hoping to ride farther, but at around mile 8.5, another cyclist passed me and said it was really windy on the ride back into town, so I decided to turn around right away rather than risk being tired and/or running out of daylight on the ride back (I ride a slightly longer trail out, so the ride back seems a bit nicer). After a sensible dinner, I feel great! So perhaps it's time for a (separate) gratefulness post...

On Star Trek, exercise, and heat

I was lucky enough to see the new Star Trek movie at the IMAX theater near here this weekend. It's a new IMAX theater, and I'd never been to it before, but I have to say the screen seemed awfully small. I assumed it's because I was sitting a bit farther back than I was used to for an IMAX, but as it turns out, IMAX has started making movies that are MUCH smaller than the traditional IMAX format, yet promoting them in the same way. I can assure you, despite the fact that it was an awesome movie, I felt a bit ripped off. But still, it's a great movie. It's not exactly pure Star Trek (and I'm a proud Trekkie), and there were a few too many gratuitous fight and chase scenes, but definitely worth seeing at least once, if not more.

I'm finally getting back into the hang of exercise, and I'm finding that it makes me a much happier person. Despite the fact that it's been over 100 degrees recently, I managed to get outside this evening and go for a short run. A VERY short and pathetic run. I only made it 1.5 miles, and I barely ran more than half of it, but to be fair, I haven't exercised much lately, and my legs are incredibly sore from gardening on Saturday. I'd still like to get in shape and lose weight by midsummer.

In order to accomplish my lofty goals, I've finally set up an exercise plan consisting of running 3 days a week, spinning once a week, swimming once a week, and hopefully a bike ride on the weekend. Also, it would be good to fit some climbing and yoga in there, but I'm not going to push too hard just yet, especially on the yoga (since I am incredibly unflexible). I'll keep you posted, and tomorrow I should know approximately how many pounds I really need to try to lose, but I'm guessing it will be 10 to 15. I'd like to lose a pound a week, and drop 10 pounds by the end of July, but that might be asking a bit much. I'll just take it week by week and see how it goes...

The garden is almost finished!

Yesterday I planted around 25 corn plants, 12 pole beans, and 5 more bell peppers, and I removed 5 peppers that are apparently hot. Although who really knows? I also planted a new yellow pear tomato and some begonias in the planter outside my house. This brings the tally of plants in my garden to:

12 red bell peppers
6 yellow bell peppers
4 yellow banana peppers
1 great aconcagua pepper
1 serrano chile pepper
1 italian white wax pepper
3 blue jay peppers
3 orange bell peppers
1 lemon cucumber
1 pickling cucumber
3 eggplants
corn and pole beans
lots of bush beans
oregano
sage
some other herb that i can't think of right now
20 roma tomatoes
6 slicing heirloom tomatoes
1 yellow pear tomato
1 tomatillo
1 heirloom zucchini
1 yellow pattypan squash
1 honey dew melon
1 sugar baby watermelon
2 green and 1 purple basil

That might be too much for one plot, especially since I still want to squeeze in 6 more yellow peppers and a light green squash. I'm determined to use my garden to the maximum extent possible this year, after practically wasting all of the space last year.

Even more extreme gardening

I finally had a chance to spend some time in the garden today, and I planted quite a bit! I put in six more red bell peppers, six italian white wax peppers, the rest of the romas (20 in all), a tomatillo, two green basils and one purple, a yellow pear tomoto, four more heirlooms (white tomesol, striped german, brandywine, and cherokee purple), two cucumbers (a lemon and a slicing), and three eggplants (nadia, listada de gianda, and oriental express).

I still have a wee bit of space, so I want to plant one more tomato (maybe a black or a yellow), a hot pepper (for my good friend GeVil to use), and a melon or two, but I'll still have half a bed left over. i'm trying to decide if I should use it for potatoes or perhaps something else. Any ideas?

Extreme gardening

It's getting to be that time to start getting all of my plants in the ground, and today is going to be a big day for it. I wanted to take a moment and record what I've planted so far and what I'll be planting today.

So far I've only planted my first heirloom tomato, a green zebra. It's one of my absolute favorites, as it produces wonderful sweet tomatoes that are the perfect size for one person to use in salads and sauces, and it produces a lot. I also planted a yellow pattypan squash, which will be great for roasting, grilling, baking, and plenty of other uses.

Today I'll be planting 20 Roma tomatoes, 6 European Red Bell peppers (with 6 more that accidentally went home with Stacey), 6 Golden Bell peppers, 4 Sweet Banana peppers, 12 green beans (actually more like 36, since each once has three individual plants), 1 Blue Jay bell pepper (a bit of an experiment), 1 Giant Aconcagua pepper (another experiment), and an heirloom Cocozelle bush zucchini. I still have to plant 5 more tomatoes (4 heirlooms - one red, one orange, one yellow, and one purple - and a yellow plum), a tomatillo, some basil, 2-3 cucumbers and 2-3 eggplants, although I haven't decided which kind to plant this year. I'm thinking about trying to plant some herbs in the brick planters outside my apartment, but I'm not sure what the gardeners would think.

I'm also somewhat accidentally stumbling into bonsai. I inherited a rather cool planter with a dead bonsai in it from my mother, and I finally got a new bonsai at the nursery. I wish I had done some research BEFORE I bought the bonsai, because I think I bought a deciduous plant, and I would definitely have preferred an evergreen. At least it only cost $3, so if I make a giant mistake, it won't be a horribly expensive one.

OK, I'm off to the garden to get these babies in the ground. Wish me luck!

The spring transition garden

My garden is finally starting to do pretty well, probably because the sun is finally getting up above the trees and shedding some light on the poor vegetables. I need to start putting in my summer garden soon, but I can't bring myself to pull anything out yet. Here are a few pictures from yesterday:

All of my lettuce is looking fabulous, but I intend to put tomatoes there. I still have the stakes from last year, although I need to get a few more for this year...

The carrots are also fabulous as you can see:





I picked a huge bag of lettuce and three carrots and I'll make salad with beans, baby corn, carrots, and shallots for the rest of the week. Yum!

Ideas for food in May

In May I plan to live entirely off of my garden and my pantry with a few exceptions - I'll buy a little bit of fresh produce and eggs, some butter, and some flour. So I need to have a pretty good plan about what I'll make. Considering how much food I have, it shouldn't be too difficult, so here goes:

Eastern European pea soup (whole pea soup)
Split pea soup
All kinds of pasta with both pesto and tomato sauces (and capers)
Zucchini soup
Frozen meals
Tortellini
Canned soup
Tamales
Couscous
Asparagus! Oh, how I love asparagus...

Wow, that's a lot of options!

A few favorite recipes

So I've been promising recipes, and I've been extremely lazy about it, so here goes:

Butter bean, asparagus, and shallot salad

Some canned butter beans
Fresh asparagus, 1 bunch
Shallots (1 or 2 cloves)
salt
olive oil
balsamic vinegar

Wash the asparagus and trim the ends if you so desire. Steam for about 10 minutes, depending on how thick the spears are. Cut into 1-inch long pieces and chill. Open the can of beans and rinse well. Peel and slice the shallots into very thin slices. Mix the asparagus, butter beans, and shallots together in a bowl. Add salt, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar to taste, and voila! Salad without lettuce, yum!

Black bean quesadillas

These are delicious and low-calorie to boot

For one serving:
2 small corn tortillas (I prefer blue corn)
2 ounces monterey jack cheese
1/4 cup canned black beans
a small amount of butter for cooking (or oil, if you so desire)
Some tomatillo sauce

Melt some butter in a pan, and place one tortilla in the pan, on medium heat. Crumble or slice half the cheese and add to the tortilla. Add half the black beans. When the cheese starts to get gooey, fold the tortilla in half. Flip frequently to avoid burning, until the cheese is entirely melted. Cook the second tortilla in the same way. Add some tomatillo sauce. (To make tomatillo sauce, de-paper the tomatillos and wash thoroughly. Boil for 10 minutes, then drain. Mix by hand or in a blender or food processor. And that's it!)

The emerging spring garden

So I’m in my second month of saving money by shopping only once a month. I’ve also decided to eat out less. Much, much less. I’ve broken down once and gone out to eat, spending $10.50 for lunch at a great Japanese restaurant. But I only spent about $50 on groceries so far, and I’m not expecting to spend much more, except on a few veggies from the market. I’ll be planting my garden at the end of this month and beginning of the next, so I’m planning to only spend about $20 on food next month. I think I can do it, considering how full my pantry is right now. I have to do better at saying no to going out, especially when I have so much food at home.

In my garden I’m planning to plant 5 heirloom tomatoes, 18 sauce tomatoes, 1 tomatillo, 2-3 squash, 2-3 eggplant, 1 or 2 cucumbers, bunches of green beans, and 24 peppers. I doubt I’ll do melon this year, as my melons were not very successful last year. Right now I have beets, carrots, onions, shallots, leeks, cabbage and lettuce growing, all of which I’m really excited about, but especially the beets and shallots. Yum! I think I also have some volunteer garlic, but I won’t really know until it’s time to harvest. I had a few cloves of garlic that started sprouting in my fridge, so I planted them in the little planter outside my living room window. Stacey warned me that they probably won’t form bulbs (I don’t know why), so I’ll just use them as green garlic, an ingredient that I almost never use, but that I’d like to use.

At the moment, my garden is doing fantastically. My beets and carrots are growing quickly, the onions and shallots look great, and I have tons of lettuce. It's really fantastic! The two things that didn't do well are spinach and cabbage, and I'm not sure why.

Everyday life?

Wow, my everyday life seems to boil down to diet, exercise, and cats. How boring! I have plenty of other stuff going on in my life, and I feel like I should make a distinct effort to mention it...

First, I'm studying Italian. It has been extremely slow going, which is frustrating. I would love to be able to actually spend some time in Italy studying, or just living and learning. Unfortunately, here in America we believe strongly in debt, and my student loans prevent me from doing anything really cool for the next 2o years or so. That being said, I'm currently taking a conversational Italian class at the nearby Italian Cultural Society.

Second, I rock climb. I've probably mentioned this before, and while it does (kind of) fit into the category of exercise, it's also tons of fun. And yesterday I got my butt kicked by a 5.10C/D, which is kind of embarassing.

Third, I love to cook! I've been making black bean quesadillas with blue corn tortillas and homemade (and homegrown) tomatillo sauce this week, and they have been fabulous! I'm planning quiche for Easter dinner (which I've also mentioned) and I'm hoping to experiment a bit more in the coming months as I grow more vegetables (my beets look great! And my shallots!)

That leads me into my fourth topic, which is gardening. I love my garden. I wish I had more time to spend there, which makes me think I need to reassess my priorities a bit. I'm planning to plant all sorts of thing in the next few months, and I can't wait to get started. This storm we're having is definitely putting a damper on those plans, though.

OK, that's pretty good for now. Litter boxes are calling me!

More April Food

More reminders for my feeble brain:

Week of April 6th: Artichokes and homemade mayo for lunch, black bean quesadillas for dinner
Week of April 13th: Potatoes and cottage cheese, leftover quiche
Week of April 20th: Black bean soup, salads?
Week of April 27th: Pot pie? bean and veggie soup?

As you can see, the end of the month is a bit hazy. The next co-op sale should be the 1st of May, and I'm hoping to buy as little as possible that day, as my pantry is getting quite full, despite my attempts to only shop once a month. I don't know if I can handle that many beans towards the end of the month, so I might have to go for some roasted asparagus at some point. Or I can steal some leek recipes from mia sorella. Yum! I love leeks!

A Great Weekend

This weekend has turned out (so far) to be far better than I originally anticipated. Yesterday, I joined a few friends for a hike in Plumas National Forest. It was an 8-mile hike, somewhat strenuous, but perfect for me. I had been looking forward to getting outside, but also dreading all the work that I was leaving behind at home. But getting out into nature did wonders for my spirit, and it was a gorgeous day as well.

Last night, I went out with a good friend who was in town, and we saw a cover band playing live music. The music was upbeat, the perfect thing to keep me awake after a day of vigorous exercise. I really need to go out and listen to live music more often.

Today, I set up my garden watering system, but I didn't really have time to weed very much, since it was getting quite hot. That will have to wait for another day, perhaps tuesday (although it may rain on tuesday, so maybe thursday instead...

No no poo

So I have recently tried going without shampoo (also known as "no poo") in an effort to have healthier hair. It's been a few weeks, and so far things aren't going very well. For one thing, my hair has been EXTREMELY oily and kind of gross-looking. So I've been wearing it up a lot, which isn't too much of a problem for me. The other big problem is that my skin condition is getting worse, which is definitely not a goal. I have sebhorrhea, a rather unpleasant condition that is exacerbated by stress, which I definitely have a lot of these days. As it turns out, sebhorrhea is also caused by excess oils.

The idea behind going no poo is that after you stop artificially stripping your hair of its natural oils and the rehydrating with conditioner, your hair will eventually return to it's natural (and supposedly more attractive and healthy) state. This would be all well and good if my skin condition wasn't caused by excess oil, and so I'm afraid I may have to go back to shampooing in order to save myself from looking like an adolescent with acne. Sigh.

In other news, I finally found some motivation to get stuff done today, mostly because I took a half hour nap after I got home. I'm beginning to think that I'm one of those people that does well on a weird schedule. I enjoy getting up in the morning (not as early as I do for work, but 7 or 8 is fine with me) and getting stuff done in the early quiet. I seem to need a nap in the afternoon, and then I'm pretty awake in the evening and often get more and more awake until I reach a wall, at which point I crash. The crash often happens very quickly. I'm not sure how to use this information to keep myself happier and well-rested...

OK, off to sort some papers before bed.

The cat conundrum

So I have two wee little kitties, Max and Akaya. Akaya is going to be 12 soon, and as a member of the senior cat population, she has some health issues that I would really love to have solved. Mainly, this involves IBD (inflammatory bowel disease), or so the vet believes. It's impossible to know for sure without extremely invasive testing, which just seems unnecessarily cruel and, well, unnecessary. So I've chosen to treat the issue as if it is IBD. This has involved trial diets of specialty foods as well as medication, neither of which have been very fun.

This lack of fun is mainly because I have TWO cats and they're both whiny about food. Also, pilling a cat is never fun (saying "pilling a cat" is kind of fun, but not enough to make up for the actual deed). Because of the difficulty inherent in pilling a cat, I have finally put my mortar and pestle to use in crushing the pill, which is then mixed with some wet cat food (which I've pureed with some water to make it nice and soupy, just the way she likes it). Of course, one can't have wet food without the other getting whiny and shoving in, so Max has to have his own cat food (chunky with gravy, just the way he likes it). And when Akaya is done slurping up her wet food, she helps Max by licking the gravy off of the chicken chunks in his food. Ahhh, symbiosis. This will work well as long as Akaya doesn't spontaneously decide that she no longer likes the type of wet food that I am providing, which has already happened twice. Persnickity cat.

But now that Akaya is on a special-food-only diet, I'm having to separate their dry food as well. Akaya can't eat any of Max's food, and I don't want Max to eat Akaya's food since it's insanely expensive and he's got a big appetite (he's a growing cat after all, but mainly it's his spare tire that's doing the growing. And his fur - more on that in a bit). And naturally, Akaya would prefer to eat Max's food and Max would prefer to eat Akaya's food. I'm experimenting with feeding them in separate rooms and only leaving the food out as long as they eat their own food. They haven't eaten as much as they usually do, which is slightly worriesome as Akaya's weight recently dropped quite dramatically, and I'm hoping she'll put some back on. But hopefully they'll learn to eat the food that's given them.

As far as cat hair goes, hairball season is upon us. The cats are shedding all over the house. I think Max sheds his coat completely every night and regrows a new one before morning. I'm guessing he spends the majority of the night scampering around the house and depositing the spent cat hair on any available surface, because it multiplies faster than I can keep up with it. I'm definitely going to have to get better about combing him, because the layer of fur in the house and the hairballs on the floor are starting to get annoying. Perhaps instead of "Locks of Love" we can sponsor an organization for those poor little hairless cats and call it "Coats of Compassion" or something like that. Hey, it's an idea.

April Menu

It just occurred to me that if I ever want to find my list of April food, perhaps sometime in the middle of April, it might be quite difficult, so I'm just going to add a list here for my own reference (and to help with the creation of my shopping list for this Friday). I'll need at least 8 different meals:

Potatoes with cottage cheese
Bean and vegetable soup
Black bean and cheese quesadillas with tomatillo sauce
Bean and vegetable pot pie
Polenta with topping
Roasted asparagus? Or asparagus and bean salad?
Salad!
Asparagus and Leek Quiche for Easter dinner (I will almost certainly have leftovers to last a few days)

A good Monday

Finally, I've had a great day. It's amazing how I feel like I can accomplish anything after some good exercise. Today, I did a 1-hour spin class and then climbed for about 45 minutes. While my climbing skills have been somewhat lacking lately, I did finish a 5.10C that I'd been worried about because of a rather tricky part. While I didn't do it perfectly today, I figured out what I did wrong so I can do a better job the next time. My plans for the rest of the week include a short run tomorrow (20-30 minutes), a flag football game, runnning stairs (twice to the top of the local parking garage), and some weights for the arms on Wednesday, another short run on Thursday, and some bouldering on Friday. Sounds like a good plan for this week...

Food has been an interesting topic for me lately. My local co-op has been having "recession fridays", with 10% off of everything the first friday of every month. I have now decided to only shop once a month, and supplement with occasional trips to the farmer's market, which in Sacramento is a thing of beauty. This has been great for me in two ways - it's forcing me to plan my meals well in advance, which helps my time management and means I waste less food, and it also means I'm spending less every month on my grocery bill. However, I'm going to have to get a bit more serious about really planning meals. And this is going to have to be my long-term memory for food planning and recipe storage. So I'll get started with April!

The plan is to make two different dishes every week, with each dish providing four meals (I'm single, and I tend to make foods I love and don't get sick of). The remaining meals during the week will consist of either a frozen co-op meal (Amy's Indian!), a tamale from Primavera Tamales, or the occassional meal out (Daphne's!). On weekends, I'll scrounge the pantry or share meals with friends. March has turned out fabulously - I spent $80 on the first recession Friday and another $10-$15 at farmer's markets. I will finish out this week with homemade whole wheat bread and salads picked fresh from the garden, with lettuce, carrots, and radishes grown in my community garden plot, and canned beans, which I'm trying to incorporate for more protein.

April is the next one to plan. I'll definitely have some polenta with some kind of topping, perhaps some more salads, bean and vegetable soup (recipe to follow soon), bean and vegetable pot pie (recipe also to follow soon), and black bean and cheese quesadillas with tomatillo sauce (made fresh with tomatillos from my garden last fall and frozen for just such an occassion!). I also have some frozen zucchini soup that will need to be used up soon. I've become a huge fan of freezing vegetables. I rescued some vegetables from a friend's fridge while he was on vacation, chopped them up, and froze them in zip-loc bags (which I rescued from people at work who were going to throw them away). So those will go nicely in my soup. I'll also be making an asparagus and leek (and maybe mushroom?) quiche for Easter dinner. Yum! I'll have to remember to get some cheese for that at the co-op this Friday.

I'll get some recipes up soon. In the meantime, happy eating!

Healthy whole wheat bread

In my attempts to eat more healthfully, I've wanted to make homemade whole wheat bread, but most recipes require eggs, milk, butter, and honey, which all have a bit more fat than I would like, and require me to keep ingredients on hand that I would not normally have, such as milk. However, my wonderful baking sister provided me with a fabulous recipe that I need to preserve here for posterity (or else I will have to ask her AGAIN for the recipe, and she will throw a cookbook at me). Here goes:

2 cups warm water
1 tbsp yeast
1/3 cup honey
1 tbsp salt
4 tbsp oil
3 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups white bread flour

Proof the yeast, mix it all together, let rise 1.5 hours (1 hour if your house is really warm, or you leave it next to a cozy fire or sunny window). Scrape out of the bowl, divide into two, flatten each piece, then fold into thirds like a business letter. Press gently into a baking pan lined with cooking oil or parchment paper. I tried one of each tonight, and they both worked just fine. Let rise another 45 minutes or so. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes, turning halfway. Voila! Fabulous, healthy whole wheat bread!

I just spent the day cleaning out my mom's house to prepare it to sell. While my sister and I worked hard all day, and some parts of the house look pretty good, we barely made a dent in the sheer amount of stuff that still needs to find a new home. It's definitely inspiring me to clean out my own house, as soon as I have more energy.

One of the things I have been meaning to do for a while is to write a list of what I'm grateful for. My sister has started doing this recently, and as I sit here nursing an early spring cold, I'm thinking that would be a good idea. So here goes.

1. Rain. After living in Oregon for several years, I love the rain, especially the sound of the rain as it falls on the trees. I also like to drink water, and rain can be especially helpful in that regard.

2. My wee kitty. He loves to sit on my lap, and he shows so much appreciation just for my presence. It doesn't take much to make him happy. If only I could get him to stop shedding so much... And my other kitty as well, whose favorite activity is to sleep on my bed. Or my sweater. Or whatever else I leave lying around that smells like me.

3. Never having to take another exam again. After passing the last exam to fulfill my career goals, I will only be taking exams if I want to, and right now I can't even think of anything I want to do that requires an exam. Hooray!

4. Living in such a diverse place. I love having lots of non-chain shops and restaurants to choose from, and I love being able to walk or bike to most of them quite easily. I also have a natural foods co-op and my community garden plot (and historic Sutter's Fort, which I have never visited) within easy walking/biking distance of my home. If I ever leave Sacramento, I'll definitely miss that.

5. The means to go to those shops and restaurants every once in a while for a little splurge. While I'm definitely not as well off as the rest of my friends, I have a steady job that pays me enough to go out and splurge once in a while, which is great when I'm so tired that even the thought of cooking is exhausting.

Well, I'm not sure that helped me as much as it helps my sister, but perhaps I'll get in the swing of it soon. But I'm glad to be back and posting!

English muffin recipe

I make this recipe with my stand mixer. You can also mix the ingredients by hand, or with a bread machine on the dough setting.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups milk
2 cups white bread flour
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 tsp sugar
1.5 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter, softened
1.5 tsp active dry yeast

Warm the milk gently and dissolve the yeast in it. Add the butter. Mix in some flour and allow it to sit for a few minutes, then add the salt, sugar, and the rest of the flour. When you have a good dough (it will take some practice to learn when that happens), cover the bowl and allow it to rise in a warm place for one to two hours, until it has doubled in size.

After it has finished rising, roll it out on a floured surface. Using a cutter (or a cup or bowl) cut out your muffins. Shape the trimmings into more muffins. Dust with cornmeal, semolina, rice flour, or wheat flour, cover, and allow to rise 20 minutes.

Lightly oil a griddle or frying pan. Cook the muffins very slowly, 7 minutes on each side, until they are lightly browned and are almost doubled in size. Viola! Fresh English muffins...

On food and packaging

So I’ve been doing some thinking on how to reduce waste, especially packaging waste, and also how to eat more healthfully. I want to stop eating margarine and eat butter instead. I’m considering buying the giant stick of butter from the co-op that’s just wrapped in one piece of paper. I think it’s a pound of butter. But I’d need an easy way to 1) bring some to work to keep in the fridge, and 2) use it at home without hacking off a piece of the huge block every time. I’m thinking I can reuse the glass jars that certain things come in, such as bread yeast or the new boullion that comes as a paste. I can refill the jar from the big block that I keep at home. I would probably buy the individually wrapped sticks of unsalted butter for cooking and baking, because they’re much easier to measure than the huge blocks.

I also hate how much packaging my English muffins come in. Every week, I have the little cardboard box and plastic bag to deal with. English muffins are relatively easy to make, but they don’t keep long, so I think I will make several weeks worth at one time and then freeze the majority of them in individual bags. I can then put them in packs of 5 and each Sunday place a pack of 5 in the fridge to use for the week. I may try it out this weekend and see what happens.

I’m also having a hard time with my diet. I tend to either eat too much or nowhere near enough. It’s been very difficult for me to find that happy middle ground, and I would sure like to. I would love to know exactly how much to eat, to know when to stop eating because I really am full (and not feel guilty if my plate isn’t clean). I would like to look at a normal portion and not think “that’s all I get to eat?”. I find that when I put what I think is an appropriate amount of food on a plate, it generally turns out to be too much, but because I was raised to eat everything on my plate, I eat it all anyway.

So those are some goals to work on: less food, less packaging, and definitely less soda.

Speaking of breakfast and book clubs and “In Defense of Food”, I’ve decided to switch from margarine to butter. For most of my life I didn’t even think it was necessary to differentiate between butter and margarine. After doing some reading about manufactured foods and health and whatnot, I’ve come to the conclusion that even if margarine is non-hydrogenated, and filled with good stuff like flax oil, it probably isn’t the best idea for me, and almost certainly bad for the environment. Therefore, I’m planning to make more informed choices – I’ll buy local butter from the co-op, or make my own as necessary.

On that note, I’ve also decided to start making my own mayonnaise and keeping it in a jar in the fridge. Mayonnaise is incredibly easy to make, and when I make it myself I can decide exactly what goes into it and what consistency to make it. Homemade mayonnaise also uses far less packaging and tastes far better, although I feel obliged to point out that it may not last as long as store-bought (no preservatives) and there's always the risk of salmonella when eating uncooked eggs.

I’ve also decided not to make as much bread. I can’t eat too much at once, and it’s pretty energy intensive to only make one loaf at a time. I also have no space to freeze bread, which is a great way to store extra. So I’ll only be making bread when I have a reason to make several loaves at once, or if I’ll be baking something else at the same time. Otherwise, I will buy bread from the village bakery in Davis.

Monday morning procrastination

I don't really feel like figuring out what to wear to work today just yet. Usually, I'm lucky if I look somewhat presentable and I match, but sometime even that is a huge chore. Sometimes I wish someone would nominate me for "What Not To Wear" but I don't think I look quite that bad.

Last night was my book club meeting, and we had such a fabulous potluck while we discussed "In Defense of Food". Before I read that book, I thought I had decent eating habits. Now I know better. While I still think I make better choices than the vast majority of Americans, I still have a long way to go.

Attempting to lose some weight does make things more difficult, though. For lunch this week, I will be eating roasted brussels sprouts with garlic, with a break on Wednesday for some Chipotle (not my choice, but it's my friend's favorite, so I told her I'd give it another chance). Dinners will consist of boiled purple potatoes with cottage cheese. For breakfast I'll have my usual multi-grain english muffin with flax seed, along with some honey dew melon, and I have apples for an afternoon snack. I haven't made it to the gym in a while, so I'll likely go tonight, and see how I'm progressing in my weight loss plan.

On a random side note, I'm feeling like my hair is getting out of control. After I cut it short, I stopped blow-drying it, and it often dried decently, with a nice amount of curl, but now it's getting longer and that technique isn't working so well, so I've been blow-drying it to keep it under control. Unfortunately, that makes the horrible layers that my last hairdresser added rather pronounced, so I may have to go for my yearly haircut a bit early (and to someone else). And I was really hoping to grow it out and donate it again. Sigh.

Weekend update

Since my sister has linked to me from her blog, I guess I should probably start updating a bit more regularly.

My life has decided to become busy again (although I probably had something to do with that). Why are there never enough hours in the day? This weekend, I did my taxes (hellooooo refund!), went to a hockey game in Stockton, went to the farmer's market in Davis, and spent some time working. I need to spend even more time working, so I should make this a quick post. I also recently signed up for an interior design course at the local community college, and I'm considering pursuing an AA there. I'll be making an appointment to talk to a counselor soon about how many classes I would have to take and how long this whole process might take. I also signed up to take the LEED exam (again) in March, and I organized a study group at work to ensure that I'll actually pass this time.

I also bought plane tickets to go on a lovely little vacation to Italy, starting in Rome, and ending in Vinadio. I didn't even realize it, but I'll be in Italy for Carnival and Mardi Gras, so hopefully that will be fun. Either way, I should see some cool stuff, visit i miei amici italiani, and go skiing and snowboarding in the Alps. All in all, not a bad trip if I do say so myself.

I had a very long list of things to do today, most of which involved cleaning and/or organizing my house. So far, I've accomplished almost nothing, although I am happy to have taxes out of the way. My training for the marathon is going slow, but steadier than expected - I ran approximately 2 miles on Friday evening and felt pretty good afterwards. I may run a bit later this afternoon as well if I can get my act together and get to work. Which I think I'll do right now.

The last two days have been a mixed bag for accomplishing what I want to accomplish. I didn't make it to the gym yesterday, but I did manage to get my house pretty well cleaned up, which is always nice, and I cooked up enough food to last me the week. So far this evening, I've run 2.5 miles, and I'm getting ready to do laundry and finish some organizing around the house. I might even have time to watch a movie, which would be great.

Of course, the biggest event of my day was the inauguration! My coworker set it up so that we could watch a streaming broadcast in our large conference room, and by the beginning of Obama's speech, everyone was in there watching and clapping. I haven't felt this proud to be an American in such a long time. I finally feel like there's hope for our future.

On difficult cats with picky eating habits

My older cat is almost 12 years old and lately has been suffering from what I refer to as "digestive troubles" as evidenced by the little presents she leaves scattered around my apartment. After several expensive vet visits and several even more expensive (and inconclusive) tests, the doctor admitted he didn't know what was wrong, but it was most likely IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) or lymphoma, a type of cancer common in older cats. Not having the money for chemotherapy, or even for the test to determine if it is cancer for sure, I'm opting to treat her as if she has IBD, which means medication twice daily for the time being.

For those of you who have cats, you know that there are two types - the ever-so-common cat who is EXTREMELY picky, and turns her nose up at just about everything, and sometimes will eat something for a day or two but then decides it's just not good enough, and the extremely rare cat who will eat anything and everything. Akaya, my sick kitty, is the first type, and Max, my other kitty, the second type. So I'm not only having difficulty finding something to mix with Akaya's medicine that she will eat, I'm having a hard time keeping Max from eating everything I try give Akaya. I'd separate them, but my apartment is relatively small and doesn't really have useful doors. I think I've finally hit on a solution - Kaya gets high-priced, quality fish catfood, pureed to a mush (the better to hide the meds), while Max gets whatever I can find to keep him occupied while Kaya eats. I'm not sure I'll ever get another cat after all of this.

Tipping the scales

On the topic of healthy living and weight control, I’d like to start out by saying that I’m not really fat. I’m in the normal weight range for my height and I have a healthy BMI, although I’m closer to obese in both of those categories than I would like. While my friends like to tell me that I’m skinny (even though most of them are even skinnier), when I can barely squeeze into my “fat jeans” and when I have a nice roll of stomach fat appear whenever I sit down, I know it’s time to do something about the condition I’m in. I’m not a huge person, but it’s possible to by skinny and fat at the same time, and I’m heading in that direction very rapidly. My goal now is to lose up to 10 pounds in the next four weeks while getting in better shape on my 10K training program that I am currently (and shamelessly) ignoring.

So this week I intend to eat bulgur-lentil soup for lunch every day and Brussels sprouts with a bit of homemade mayo for dinner. My breakfast consists of a multi-grain english muffin with flax, topped with a bit of non-hyrogenated margarine (although I'll be switching to butter soon - more about that in a later post), plus some calcium chews, a few small pieces of fruit throughout the day, and a cup of low-sodium V8 and some peanut butter for an afternoon snack.

For exercise, I’ll rock-climb tonight, run tomorrow, and hopefully fit some exercise in on Wednesday and Thursday, which may not happen because of classes. On Friday I’ll go rock-climbing and/or running depending on what I get done the rest of the week. That’s my plan for now. Next week, it will be bean soup for lunch and purple potatoes with cottage cheese for dinner. Yum!

Stuff, stuff everywhere, and not a drop to...

So one of the constants in my life recently is an overabundance of not-quite-useful objects that I just can't bring myself to get rid of for whatever reason. I remember the day when I moved to Hawaii without even one piece of furniture to my name, and everything fit into two suitcases, or when I moved to Oregon and everything fit into two sedans. These days, I'm lucky if I can squeeze everything into a medium-sized moving truck. My one-bedroom apartment is bursting at the seams. Where did all this stuff come from? And why can't I get rid of it?

I have to admit that I'm a bit of a gear junkie, a book-lover, and a pack-rat, and those don't always go well together in terms of making space. I also have only one closet in my entire apartment, which means my clothes and shoes are stored together with my christmas tree, climbing gear, camping and backpacking gear, snowboarding and snowshoeing gear, craft supplies, sewing supplies, tools, extra bathroom and desk supplies, biking gear, old mementos, musical instruments, random sports equipment, ice skates (!), and other assorted accoutrements of daily living.

It can be noted at this point that I often have more than one of any given thing - two tents, two internal frame backpacks, three pairs of snowboarding boots, myriad backpacks, and far too many shoes to actually wear. If I was actually setting out to acquire all of this stuff, I would never buy so much of it, but alas, it has somehow made its way into my home, and pack-rat that I am, it's difficult to dislodge it. I mean, what if someday I wanted to go ice skating? I would kick myself for getting rid of those ice skates that I haven't used in 8 years.

So where am I going with all of this? I'm trying to create incentive to actually sort through and get rid of stuff, in as earth-friendly a way as possible. It's silly to throw away perfectly good, useful items, but it's also silly to keep them around to clutter up my house when someone else could be getting some use out of them. But I really need to get some motivation and some tips in how to actually sort and organize so much random stuff. Sigh. And I need to convince the people in my life to stop buying me random things, especially if they happen to be purple.

Controlled Chaos

I'm starting this blog because my life thus far has been a menangerie of barely controlled chaos. I'm hoping that by writing about daily activities, thoughts, and ideas, I can not only keep track of what the heck I'm doing (since a personal assistant doesn't seem to be forthcoming), but I can also try to keep the chaos to a bare minimum. I haven't decided what issues I'm going to write about, but I'm choosing from among the following: being single, being an architect, attempting to get into shape and/or lose weight, outdoor activities, adventures, gardening, organizing my space and time, decluttering, and living a simple and more natural life. Perhaps I'll write about all of them. I guess I'll see as time goes on. At the moment, I have to admit that writing a blog about how I waste time seems a bit contrary, but it's an experiment of sorts...