Food

Apparently I do the same thing with cherry tomatoes as I do with sugar snap peas and chocolate chips.

This sunday is the garlic festival. I do NOT do the same thing with garlic. I have a strange relationship with garlic, rather love-hate. Also, it is apparently going to be like a hundred degrees there, which will not do wonders for the smell, I'm sure. Perhaps the stench will revive me when I faint. I may even be persuaded to try garlic ice cream afterwards.

FYI: People who do not like bacon annoy me. I mean, it's BACON. What's not to like? If you're morally opposed to it because you're a vegetarian, that's fine, as long as you still acknowledge that it's the greatest smell in the world, and that if you were going to break your vegetarianism for anything, it would totally be bacon.

SP 4 Eva

Smashing Pumpkins was soooo fun! Who needs James Iha? Not me! You just need Billy Corgan. The rest of the band just needs to learn the notes.
Halfway through, the rest of the band left anyways, and Billy played by himself with an acoustic guitar. Then they came back for a glorious finale.
They played most of my favorite songs, and a lot of new stuff. It was perfect. The Fillmore is an awesome place to see him--it's very small.
Okay, yes, fine. I cried during "Bullet with Butterfly Wings." Just a little. I didn't even notice until the song was over. Have you ever had a song change your life? I was fourteen, and I thought, WHERE did he get that voice, and HOW exactly does he know what my rage feels like?

Billy Corgan

I'm going to the Smashing Pumpkins concert tonight, too-ooonight!
I must be getting old because I'm annoyed that it won't start until 9pm (which means SP won't finish until well after midnight). I have get up for work at 6am people!
Also, I have brought earplugs with me. Joe tells me that this really is pretty acceptable and not that uncool. It is, in fact, MORE uncool to stand there with your fingers in your ears, scowling at the band because they suddenly got louder.
Should be a fairly tame concert, considering. SF is a chill place, and the Fillmore is not a venue that inspires one to mosh or anything like that. Plus, I can't imagine that anyone there will be any younger than, oh, me.

Fake Sugar

There is a new, but controversial and arguable, study out that shows:

"People who drank one or more diet sodas each day developed the same risks for heart disease as those who downed sugary regular soda...
It could be, they suggest, that even no-calorie sweet drinks increase the craving for more sweets, and that people who indulge in sodas probably have less healthy diets overall."

My money is on the "increased craving for sweets" thing. I try to avoid fake sweeteners like aspartame when I can. I think it keeps us all addicted to sugar. I don't drink any kind of soda, but it drives me nuts that I can't find a low-calorie yogurt that isn't full of fake sweetener. I really don't need it to taste THAT sweet.
To read the full article about the study, click HERE.
There is probably fake sugar in more things than I think, like the "light" Swenson's ice cream I like so much. I'd better watch out for that. I'd really just rather eat the real thing, but less of it.
That's why I only eat dark chocolate :) Why muck it up with milk and sugar?

Twitchy Issues

Does it make anyone else INTENSELY uncomfortable when people walk next to you on the street?
Like when you're walking down the street and a stranger comes out of Starbucks just as you're walking by and go the same direction as you.
Then you wait at a stoplight together.
Then you walk down the next block side by side. You try to slow down to let them get ahead of you, but that doesn't really seem to work because maybe they're doing the same thing at the exact same time. And you can't go any slower because man, you're already late for work.
So you try to walk faster, but you have short legs and can only go so fast and as soon as you get a little bit ahead of them you reach the next stoplight which has just turned red so you're even again. And that was your last burst of speed because it's 8:03 am and you haven't had any coffee yet.
So you try to walk as close to the buildings as possible, wishing they would move farther towards the curb, but they can't because this is Oakland and there are homeless people and free newspaper stands everywhere and in this manner you will walk down an entire stretch of deserted street with just one other person, casting suspicious looks their way.
I hate my commute.

Food Stuff

FYI: The Boy has started posting to his food blog, Fork and Pen, fairly regularly again. Check there for more of our adventures!

Laptop

I bought a new laptop this weekend! My old one died two weeks ago. I mean, straight-up died. I plug it in, push power on, and nothing happens.
Luckily I had plenty of warning as my hard drive had been making pathetic clicking noises for a few months now. I had everything backed up already, except possibly a few days of writing. Which probably weren't very good anyways, since I'd been cranking through it for my Novel in 90 wordcounts.
By the way, Novel in 90, not really for me. It was good in the beginning, and then I just felt like I was forcing myself to write stuff I wasn't ready for. It was turning out crummy. This is the same reason I had no fun doing NaNoWriMo. Writing fast is a waste of time, in my opinion. I'd rather write well. Of course, I haven't been doing much of that lately either.
I've never been well served by tracking my words. I used to do BIC (butt in chair) count instead. If I could just sit in front of my computer or notebook for an hour a day, I would do much better. Maybe I should start my own BIC club.
Anyways, the computer. It's a Dell, is about 10 times faster than my old IBM thinkpad, and is only 4.3 pounds! Woot. It should be here next week. My very first new computer.
Also, I've officially broken the 40 pound weight barrier (for myself. Not my computer). I'd been edging closer and closer, ever so slowly, and I finally did it! I finally started tracking points again, is what happened. I've now lost 40.2 pounds. In celebration, I bought myself a pretty purple shirt from Anthropologie.

Local Love

I saw a news clip this morning that said that each human creates more carbon emissions by what they eat than they do by driving.

For example, if you buy a fresh pineapple, realize that that pineapple had to be FLOWN from somewhere tropical to get to you, then probably trucked in to your local grocery. The same is true of all imports.

So what do you do? Eat local, as much as possible.

Yes, it's easy for me to say. I live in California. I could eat nothing but farmer's market produce year round. But even in colder climates you can do your best. Don't buy corn from the grocery store, as there's a good chance it was trucked in from Iowa, or somewhere random. Go find those kids selling it out of the back of a truck. The same goes for tomatoes and other produce. See if there is a local farmer's market anywhere. Of course, driving an hour out of your way to get produce kind of defeats the purpose, but if you plan properly, you can combine trips. This has the added bonus of supporting small farms, which are a dying breed.

Remember, small changes help. Make a raspberry or rhubarb dessert in the summer, instead of something with lemons. Even if you buy them at the store, there's a better chance they are local.

Also, I've always wondered about milk in Wisconsin. Does the milk we buy at the grocery store come from Wisconsin cows? If so, is it also PROCESSED in Wisconsin? That part is important. See if you can check the label and find out. You might be suprised. Same goes with cheese. There is NO REASON to buy Vermont cheese or Vermont maple syrup in Wisconsin.

What else is local to your area?

Back to Square One

ARGH!! After not hearing back from this glorious job I desparately wanted for two weeks, I finally called them today. The person answers and says he's glad to hear from me. He's sorry He hasn't been in touch but that's what HR advised him to do. And no, they haven't filled the position yet.

Then he goes on about how difficult it has been to find someone who can do everything because there are so many different parts to this job and blah blah blah. And how you really can't know how a person will do until you work with them.

Yes. This is how employment works. Everyone does it.

Then she says they think they might try a few people out on a freelance basis. Apparently someone is coming in one day next week.

WHAT?!?! You do not get a 30 day free trial!!!! Hire someone who is intelligent and ambitious and then tell everyone else NO!

Not that they asked me, but even if they had, I couldn't come in one day a week so they could "try" me. For crying out loud! Some of us have full time jobs already.
Anyways, they didn't ask me, though he didn't seem willing to give me a definite no. But I'm going to take it that way. If they call me in the next few weeks, fine. If not, I'll call them eventually to get the "what could I have done better?" riff.
The thing is, not only did I want that job, but I really really wanted to be done with looking. And I really really really didn't want to do this commute anymore.

I shall console myself with Harry Potter (in IMAX 3-D!!) on Friday and the Chocolate Festival on Saturday.

Look, I'm on the Simpsons!

And so is Joe!







I think I did a better job with Joe's. It's hard to objectively make yourself into a cartoon character. Or maybe Joe just naturally looks more like a Simpsons character...