Talking to Myself Again

Catching Up. Again.

mood: calm
music: silence

In my previous post (way back on January 27), I noted that I had fallen behind in my blogging and had some catching up to do. That was after a whopping 10 days of not posting. Well, it's now nearly a whole month later!

Some people have big gaps in their blog posts because their life had become too busy for them to post. That sometimes happens to me, but that's not my excuse this time. (Well, not my entire excuse.)

Instead, I had a few Very Important Topics to write about. Given that they were Very Important Topics, they would require Careful Thought and Finely Crafted Writing -- which I didn't have time the time or energy to do.

Where I went wrong, however, was in failing to write about the numerous trivial topics that I could have written about until I had time to write about the Very Important Topics.

That mistake will be corrected now. Prepare for a flurry (okay, a blizzard) of Pointless Trivia!

As a reminder of where I left off, on Jan 15 Dawn and I attended a showing of King Corn, which gave me even more reasons to think about eating local and changing my food buying habits. So what have we been up to since?

Fun Time Station

On Saturday, Jan 19, we skipped the monthly gathering of the Springfield Area Freethinkers and instead took Lando to something called "Fun Time Station" in the Orr Building at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. It's an annual event for kids, sponsored by the local PBS station, which basically involves a variety of games and activities that kids can do. Eric and Patty met us there, so Lando got to play with Sarah and Rose.

They had a small ball pit, tumbling mats, playdough, a sandbox, ring toss, beanbag toss, etc; a real police car and a real fire engine; and demonstrations by dancers, skaters, and musicians. In short, it's a way for kids to run around and burn off some energy, even though it's bloody cold outside!

Oh, they also had a couple of people dressed up like Clifford the Big Red Dog and Elmo, both of which we made sure to avoid, based on Lando's past reactions to seeing such giant surreal apparitions!

A Wedding Anniversary

Sunday, Jan. 20 was my Dad & Pat's wedding anniversary. I entirely forgot about it until just now. Oops!

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Monday, Jan. 21 was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a state holiday, which means for me it was a day off. Hurray!

My Big Fat Greek Colonoscopy

No, I'm not going to go all gross on you here. Well, not too gross.

For the last few years, every few months I'd have some blood in the stool. Of course, as soon as you see blood in your stool, alarm bells go off! But then the next day there would be nothing. And nothing the day after that. Huh. Okay, it was just one of those things. And then after 4 or 5 months... blood in the stool! And then nothing. And the cycle would repeat itself.

Eventually I decided to stop wondering about it and told my doctor about it. She agreed that it was probably nothing, but recommended that I get a colonoscopy, just to be safe, so she made an for me appointment with Dr. Howard Chodash, a gastroenterologist.

Coincidentally, this was not my first encounter with Dr. Chodash. A few years ago, when I was attending the GIS in Illinois conference in Chicago, while eating lunch I swallowed a piece of steak that was just a little too large. It became lodged in my esophagus, just above the entrance to the stomach. It took a trip to the hospital to get it removed.

When I returned to Springfield, I had a followup visit with Dr. Chodash, who sent a camera down my throat to take a look around and verify that nothing was damaged. He also gave me a prescription for Prevacid, since the cause of my problem was stomach acid irritating the lining of the esophagus. Ever since I've been heartburn-free!

Anyway, back to the colonoscopy.

During the preliminary visit, he explained to me that the colonoscopy itself wasn't a big deal. It was a short, painless procedure, and I'd be back to work the next day. However, the preparation involved the day before the colonoscopy would be the unpleasant part.

Basically, I could have pretty much nothing to eat or drink the day before (with a few exceptions, like clear liquids and Jello).

In addition, at noon I was to take a stool softener, then that evening I was to drink 2 liters of Halflytely. It tastes... not good. When I drank the first glass, I thought, "well, it's not as bad tasting as I expected". Then I drank the next glass. And the next glass. And the next glass. And the next glass. And the next glass. And the next glass. And with each glassful, it tasted worse and worse, and my stomach became more and more full. And, of course, in between all of those glasses, I was sitting on the toilet.

It was not the most fun I've ever had.

On this day when I couldn't eat anything and was spending all of my time sitting on the toilet, some books that I had ordered from Amazon arrived, including (ironically) Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of DietingThe Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. (These are two of the Very Important Topics that I'll write about later. I hope.) I also received It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff. I guess a book about getting rid of stuff you don't need is appropriate for reading on the toilet.

I weighed 256.2 pounds on the morning of Jan. 22; I weighed 252.4 pounds on the morning of Jan. 23, a loss of 3.4 pounds. I don't think Halflytely Bowel Prep was the "new science of weight loss" that Rethinking Thin had in mind.

Jan. 23 was the day of my colonoscopy, and as he had said, the procedure was short and painless. Actually, because another patient was running late, they started mine an hour earlier than planned, so I spent even less time waiting around than I had expected. I was awake throughout the procedure, but sedated, such that my memory is a bit fuzzy. I remember watching on the monitor, which was sort of interesting, but I wasn't very alert and paid far less attention I would have if I weren't sedated. The end result was that they found one polyp, which they removed and sent off to be analyzed, but other than that nothing.

By the morning of Jan. 25, I weighed 257.6. So much for that weight loss plan!

Rethinking the Diet

One of my New Year's resolutions was to lose weight. I had started off well, losing 4 pounds in the first 2 weeks.

One of the books I received on Jan. 22 was Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata, which explained that losing significant amounts of weight and keeping it off is just about biologically impossible. This is one of the Very Important Topics that I want to write about later. Remind me.

In any case, that sort of took some of the wind out of my sails and my diet has stalled. I can't blame it all on that book, because part of it was just getting busy and not counting calories, but it definitely removed a lot of my motivation. I haven't decided yet whether I'm convinced that it's hopeless; I'll have to research the topic some more.

Reducing the Stuff

Another book that I received on Jan. 22 was It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff by Peter Walsh. I decided to buy it after reading my brother's review. (Buying a book about having less stuff? Oh the irony!)

It was quite good, very motivating, and we've begun taking some significant steps in that direction. I don't know that this quite rises to the level of a Very Important Topic; perhaps I would call it a Rather Important Topic. In any case, I do plan to write about it more later.

Amazon's Return Policy

Of the 3 books I received on Jan. 22, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan definitely had the biggest impact on me. This is the biggest of the Very Important Topics that I want to write about later. (You've been warned.)

Unfortunately, when I received it, I noticed that this last 20 or so pages were miscut. They were smaller than normal and were still joined together. I could have just sliced them open and ignored the fact that they were small, but since I had 2 other books that I could read while I waited for this one to be replaced, I decided to return it.

I checked the packing slip for their return policy and saw that there was a web address to handle that. At that web page, I selected the book that I wanted to return and entered a description of the reason for the return. Amazon then displayed for me a postage paid return label to print and told me that a new copy of the book would be shipped to me. I would then have 30 days to return the old copy.

Nice! If I finished the other 2 books quickly, I would still be able to read The Omnivore's Dilemma while waiting for the replacement to arrive! (As it so happens, I did just that.) And as an added bonus, the box that they were shipping the replacement copy in would be exactly the right size to ship back the defective copy!

Making a return doesn't get much easier than that!

A Foot of Snow!

On Jan. 31, the snow began falling. When we awoke on Feb. 1, we had 11 inches of snow on the ground! The next day we got another 2 inches added to the total. The day after that we had rain and temperatures in the mid-50s (?!), so the snow didn't last too long, but there was a lot of it for awhile!

Home Expo

For whatever reason, every year Springfield hosts two competing home improvement shows at virtually the same time (sometimes on the same weekend). This year, for a change, one of the home shows decided to move up to early February, while the other will be held in early Mach.

On Feb. 3 we attended the Home Expo in the Orr Building at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. As usual in recent years, our primary goal in attending is to get Lando out of the house and give him a chance to run around and burn up some energy. (It never seems to work, however.)

One highlight this year was watching one of the exhibitors help Lando play bowling on a Nintendo Wii. Before Lando became obsessed with drums and then knights, he was a big fan of bowling. He has 4 sets of bowling pins, ranging from 1 inch tall tabletop pins to 2 feet tall driveway pins. We've also got a little bowling game on our Nintendo GameCube (Monkey Ball), and Lando loves watching us play. We plan on buying a Wii "one of these days", but not yet.

Schwan's is Going Bye-Bye... But Not Yet

After reading Plenty, I resolved to start getting more of my food from local sources. After watching King Corn, I resolved to eliminate corn-fed beef from my diet. After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I resolved to eliminate all industrial animal products from my diet.

But then on Feb. 5, the Schwan's delivery guy showed up, as he does every Tuesday. We still bought some stuff, but it was much less than we've bought in the past.

These things take time!

Funshop

On Feb. 6 we had our first Funshop session of the Winter semester. This will be the last time Lando will be in the 2 to 3 1/2 year olds class.

Dinner at the Davises'

On Friday, Feb. 8, we went to Eric & Patty's house for dinner. Patty had given up meat for Lent, which meant she was cooking vegetarian anyway, so they decided to invite us over to help with the eating. Lando, Sarah, and Rose spent the majority of the time down in the basement playing, carefully watched over by the wireless closed-circuit camera that Eric had installed.

I mentioned my new interest in avoiding industrial agriculture and buying more locally grown whole foods. That triggered some disturbing flashbacks for Patty. Apparently her childhood involved large amounts of boiled oats, corn meal mash, and lard. Somehow, when I think of fresh whole foods, none of those 3 items features prominently. Her mother was Amish, so perhaps that had something to do with it. I don't know.

In any case, if my weekly CSA box consists primarily of oats and lard, I'll skip it next year. I don't think that's very likely, however.

Amazon Prime

Also on Feb. 8, I ordered yet more stuff from Amazon: 2 books & 4 DVDs -- In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto; How to get your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much; Who Killed the Electric Car?; Super Size Me; Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price; and The Corporation. (As you might imagine, there was some Very Important Topics in there.)

And I finally broke down and signed up for Amazon Prime, which means free 2-day shipping on many items and free standard shipping on everything. It costs $79 per year, but given how often we're ordering from Amazon, I think it's worth it.

Lando's Links

On Feb. 9, I created a "start page" for Lando. In the last couple of months, Lando has become quite skilled at using the mouse, having mastered the tricky task of clicking and dragging. We had begun taking him to various web sites with Flash-based games, which he would then quietly play for 20 or 30 minutes. Given Lando's high-energy activity level, this was amazing! The only problem was, if he was playing at one site (say, The Backyardigans) and wanted to go to another (say, Peep and the Big Wide World), he couldn't do so on his own.

So, being the web geek that I am, I put together a simple HTML file with images that linked to the various web sites. Now he can just go to his home page and click on, say, Clifford the Big Red Dog to get to that page.

Yes, we don't want him to turn into a computer zombie, but it is handy to once in awhile turn him loose on the Internet for a bit so that we can enjoy a nice, quiet living room. :-)

Darwin Day Dinner

On Feb. 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born. Here in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln is a very big deal and everyone is gearing up for next year's 200th anniversary celebration.

On the exact same day, Feb. 12, 1809, Charles Darwin was born. Not surprisingly, the anniversary of his birth doesn't get nearly as much attention. However, some of us celebrate Feb. 12 as Darwin Day. I'm the chairman of the local skeptics group, REALL, and each year we have a dinner to celebrate not only Darwin Day, but also the anniversary of the formation of the group.

This year we got together a couple of days early, on Feb. 10 at the Pasta House. We had a nice turnout, with 30 people showing up, including 5 kids (Lando, Sarah, Rose, Andrew, and Matthew). I read a couple of excerpts from On the Origin of Species, passed out a quiz to check on people's Darwin knowledge, and we each had a slice of birthday cake.

In past years, we'd had a dinosaur-themed cake that said "Happy Birthday Charles". This year the dinosaur-themed cake wasn't available, so we went with the primordial sea cake, more commonly known as Finding Nemo without the Nemo and Dory figures.

Feb 11: 2 books & 4 DVDs arrive; order book, DVD, CD for Dawn

Lincoln's Birthday

As I mentioned, Feb. 12, was Lincoln's birthday. Another state holiday, another day off for me!

Funshop Valentine's Day Party

Wednesday, Feb. 13 was Funshop's Valentine's Day party. Okay, "party" is a bit of a stretch of the term. it was just the normal Funshop gathering, but the kids each had a paper bag with their name on it. Everyone brought a stack of Valentine's Day cards and dropped one into each bag. I'm pretty sure we didn't even look at the cards when we got home. But hey, he's 3!

Valentine's Day

Feb. 14 was Valentine's Day, the officially sanctioned day for being romantic. I, as always, was pretty much unprepared. I gave Dawn a book, CD, and DVD from her Amazon wish list. That was it. No flowers, no box of chocolates. She gave me pants. What can I say? We're an Old Married Couple.

Okay, I admit it. I sucked at the romance thing this year. I'm going to blame it on the 3 year old this time and try harder next year!

Freethinkers Meetup

Feb. 16 was the 3rd Saturday of the month, and for a change I made it to the Freethinkers Meetup at Buffet King. None of the food was local, I'm sure, and no doubt it was all industrial, but I ate least avoided the beef and pork, limiting myself to fish and some chicken.

I don't remember exactly how the topic came up, but at some point I started talking about The Omnivore's Dilemma. Yes, I've become that guy, the one who's constantly talking about whatever food kick he's currently on! I'll try not to be that guy for very long; I promise!

In any case, it's sort of a difficult topic for me to talk about, because it's complex and I find that I can seldom get more than a single sentence out before I'm interrupted. Given that I was raised not to interrupt others when they're speaking, I then find myself waiting for a chance to continue my thought. And after I get out a second sentence, I'm interrupted again! Part of it is my speaking style. I tend to want to lay out the evidence and then state the conclusion. This takes multiple sentences.

Okay, I admit it -- I can run on quite a bit. But if you got this far in this post, you already knew that, didn't you?

Presidents' Day

Feb. 18 was yet another state holiday! That's the good news. The bad news is that we don't get another one until Memorial Day (May 26 this year). For some reason, we have 8 state holidays during the 4 cold months of November through February, then only 4 state holidays during the 8 warm months of March through October. I think that needs adjusting!

Schwan's Delivery Shrinks Further

Feb. 19 was another Schwan's delivery. We cut this one back even further, getting just a couple of cheese pizzas and some ice cream.

Funshop without Dawn; Lunar Eclipse

Feb. 20 was Funshop night, and because Dawn needed a break, I had suggested to her that she take the night off and leave Lando to me. She agreed, so it was just Lando and Daddy!

Later that night we watched the total lunar eclipse. It was bloody cold, but we took Lando outside 2 or 3 times and showed him the moon. I think his basic reaction was, "Wow! The moon! I want to go in now."

Deer Herd

On the night of Feb. 26 (2 days ago), a bit before midnight, I looked out the back window and saw an entire herd of deer! Okay, it was just 4, but in a tiny backyard in the middle of a subdivision, that qualifies as a herd. This look like a doe and 3 "teenagers". Several months ago I had seen a doe and 2 fawns.

I don't know what it is about our backyard that attracts deer, particularly given that we are, as I said, in the middle of a subdivision. They were just passing through and didn't stay around for more than a minute or two, so I didn't get a chance to take a picture. I'm curious what sort of shots I'd get if I set up a motion-triggered camera back there.

Funshop

Yesterday, Feb. 27, another Wednesday, another Funshop. This time the theme was teeth and brushing them. So.... Okay, I really don't have anything to say about that. There were toothbrushes, a giant mouth with teeth in them, and some books about teeth. I really just can't get very excited about the topic.

Dawn's Sick

After Funshop we went to Bellacino's for dinner. To avoid industrial pork, I had to give up my favorite (the BLT grinder) and instead compromised with the industrial chicken (the chicken grinder, which sounds rather disturbing now that I write it).

That evening, however, Dawn was feeling very dizzy, with a sore throat and a sore back. Was it the food? Or maybe the flu? Whatever it was, I sent her to bed.

When I woke her up this morning at 7:00, she was still feeling dizzy, so I stayed home from work to take care of her and Lando. We went to urgent care and found that she had "benign positional vertigo" brought on by a head cold. Basically this means that the small calcium particles in her inner ear are moving around whenever she moves her head, making her feel dizzy and nauseous. They gave her a prescription and said that the symptoms could last for 3-5 days. Also, she's not to drive until a week after the symptoms disappear.

I'm Caught Up! More or Less.

Okay, I'm pretty much caught up. Other than the Very Important Topics, I'd also like to write about Springfield's planned winter farmer's market, rearranging our living room furniture, pizza toppings, and copying stuff from Tivo to DVD, but those topics will just have to wait for another day.

"King Corn" and Community-Supported Agriculture

mood: inspired
music: silence

I've fallen behind here and have some catching up to do, but I'll try not to do it all in one post. (It's better to avoid writing something so long that people fall asleep before they reach the end.)

A week ago last Tuesday (i.e. January 15), Dawn and I dropped off Lando with Rosie & GM, then went to the Liberty Brew & View showing of King Corn. By the end of the evening, I was giving up corn-fed beef, Dawn was giving up soda (well, cutting back at least), and we'd bought $500 of fresh produce.

Liberty Brew & View is a monthly gathering, organized by Will Reynolds, to watch a politically-themed movie (usually a documentary) while enjoying some dinner and/or drinks. It's held in the back room of a bar which used to be a one-screen movie theater. After the movie, there's generally someone to speak for a few minutes about the topic. Previous gatherings have drawn about 20-30 people. This one drew over 100!

King Corn was very good. It's a documentary made by a couple of recent college grads who, after hearing that theirs is the first generation of Americans that might have a shorter lifespan than their parents, decide to keep a detailed food diary of what they eat while on a road trip. They eventually have their hair chemically analyzed to learn what it says about their eating habits. When we eat, whatever our body digests eventually is used to make hair, so chemically analyzing a hair sample can reveal what it is we've been eating. In their case, they learned that most of the carbon in their hair came from corn.

Corn?

It turns out that corn is in a stunningly large variety of foods. For example, if you buy a burger, fries, and a soda, the burger is probably made from cattle that were fed corn, the fries were probably fried in corn oil, the soda is primarily high fructose corn syrup, and even the ketchup might well contain high fructose corn syrup. For that matter, even the juice that you buy for your toddler might contain high fructose corn syrup.

After learning this, these 2 college grads decided that they were going to move to Iowa for a year, raise 1 acre of corn, then follow it to see where it goes.

As I said, it was a very good movie. It was quite funny, as well as thought-provoking, and I learned plenty.

One thing we learned is that beef cattle tend to be sent to feedlots, where they are fed corn for about 3 months before they are slaughtered. Feeding them corn fattens them up more quickly (and in a much smaller area) than letting them eat grass. However, cattle evolved to eat grass, not corn. They'll eat the corn, but it does very bad things to their stomachs and digestive tract. If they aren't slaughtered quickly, they'll die within a few months anyway. In addition, to ensure that they stay "healthy", they are given large quantities of antibiotics. This kills most of the bacteria, of course, but the ones that it leaves behind are the ones that are resistant. These bacteria then are able to reproduce more easily, since they aren't competing with the other bacteria. The result is an increase in the population of drug-resistant bacteria.

After learning how the cattle are treated, Dawn told me that I wasn't allowed to eat corn-fed beef anymore. I was slightly annoyed by her remark, not because I disagreed with it, but because I had already been thinking along those lines earlier, partly as a result of reading Plenty. I'd much rather get credit for announcing the decision on my own rather than merely agreeing to a decision made by someone else! But that's just nitpicking on my part.

The end result is the same: No more corn-fed beef. So that either means finding grass-fed beef or becoming a vegetarian.

Actually, I'd already been toying with the idea of becoming a vegetarian again. I had been a vegetarian for about 8 months several years ago, partly just to see whether I could do it. I didn't go 100%, however. I described myself as a "private vegetarian, social omnivore". In other words, if I were out with friends, I didn't want them to have to make special arrangements to handle my eating requirements. If sausage pizza were ordered, I'd eat it. If there was a hotdog roast, I'd roast a hotdog. I've since learned that the term "flexitarian" describes what I was.

So I might well take the plunge and become a flexitarian again. We'll see.

One of the most interesting themes of the movie was the role of government subsidies in the production of corn. Industrial agribusiness operations are given millions of dollars, while small farmers growing fresh veggies get nothing. The sound bite for that was, "We subsidize Happy Meals, not healthy meals." When the guys start the process of raising their one acre of corn, they sign up for a federal government subsidy -- $28 for growing 1 acre of corn. Near the end of the movie, they total up all of their costs (renting the land, seed, fertilizer, herbicides), then subtract that from their proceeds from selling the 180 bushels of corn they grew, and find that they lost $19. In other words, they didn't actually make a profit from growing corn; they just made a profit from the government subsidies.

Anyway, here's the trailer:

(One of the guys you see in the trailer is Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which I had coincidentally just ordered before seeing King Corn. Small world, huh?)

After the showing of the film, there was a panel discussion featuring 2 local farmers, as well as 2 representatives of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance. They discussed industrial agribusiness, organic farming, and buying locally-grown food -- topics that have very much been on my mind since reading Plenty.

One of the panelists mentioned that Hill Street Farms had 3 slots left in their community-supported agriculture program. I was quite excited, because that was one of the things I had specifically wanted to ask the panelists: Are there any CSAs in the Springfield area? When the panelists were done, I quickly went to talk to Andy Heck of Hill Street Farms, asked him for the details of the CSA, and told him that I would discuss it with my wife and then call him the next day. (Okay, so technically I didn't buy $500 of fresh produce that very night.)

So, what is "community-supported agriculture"? The short version is that you pay a farmer or group of farmers in advance for food that they will provide later. In the case of the Hill Street Farms CSA, it's $500 paid in January for fresh produce made available every Saturday for 24 weeks (from about mid-May until late-October). By agreeing in advance to buy the food, the farmer is able to grow a wider variety of foods, because he has a guaranteed sale.

For us, one advantage of participating in the CSA is it's a way to kickstart our "buy more local food, eat more fresh food" plan. Because we've already paid for the food in advance, that's a strong incentive to actually pick up the food and eat it. We have a Farmer's Market (and that's where the weekly pickups are), but to be honest there are some Saturdays where we've felt more like staying home rather than making the trip. And, when we have gone, we've tended to buy the same very small variety of fruits and vegetables each time (sweet corn, tomatoes, strawberries, peaches, maybe some broccoli). This will encourage us to eat more fresh produce, as well as a wider variety.

Of course, it will also require us to do significantly more cooking than we have in the past! I did a Google search on "beginning vegetarian cooking" and the top hit was Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. The reviews on Amazon were all good, except for a few that complained that it was too basic. Well, that sounded perfect for me! But before I had a chance to order the book, Dawn handed me one of her cookbooks -- Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison! Well, that saved me a bit of money!

Of course, before we can really start cooking, we'll need to find the countertops in the kitchen, but that's another story.

(Hey! Wake up! You've reached the end!)

The 100-Mile Diet

mood: ambitious
music: silence

I suppose you could say that I'm going through a midlife crisis. That term isn't entirely accurate, since it evokes images of guys buying red sports cars or something. Besides, "crisis" is far too dramatic a word. Perhaps a better phrase might be "midlife adjustment" or "reassessment" or something. Whatever.

Three books have played important roles as catalysts in my thinking.

• Jared Diamond's book Collapse got me thinking a bit more seriously about protecting the environment. I've long contributed to various environmental causes and have done my bit, such as recycling and replacing light bulbs with compact fluorescents. However, his book highlighted for me the importance of "sustainability" and of thinking more long-term. (Perhaps becoming a father also had a role in that.)
• Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone (and, to a lesser extent, the followup book Better Together, written with Lewis Feldstein) got me thinking about the importance of personal relationships and of building strong communities, as well as the need to address local issues rather than just "big picture" national and international issues.
• Lastly, Plenty by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon provided what I think is a small part of the solutions to the problems raised in Collapse and Bowling Alone.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

In Collapse, Jared Diamond examines several civilizations which rose, peaked, and then collapsed. He explores the causes of those collapse, with obvious parallels to today. The typical scenario is a civilization growing, reaching the peak of its power, then running out of some essential resource and collapsing, often quite suddenly.

Generally, a lack of "sustainability" is the key problem.

Suppose there are 10 million fish in a sea, and each year that number grows by 10% (i.e. 1 million fish). If you harvest 1 million fish each year (i.e. 10%), you'll never run out of fish. That's sustainability.

However, if you harvest 1.1 million fish each year, you'll eventually run out of fish, even though the population isn't noticeably smaller from year to year. It's an unsustainable rate. The population will slowly shrink, and eventually you'll have kids listening to their grandparents talk about how "there used to be so many more fish than there are today".

What really got me thinking about our situation is the explanation that, if the Third World were to achieve the living standards of the First World, the environmental impact would be the same as if the population of the world had increased by a factor of 12. In other words, imagine all of the resources required, the pollution produced, and the environmental damage caused by a population of 72 billion people. Obviously that's not something that would be feasible.

We are unlikely to convince the rest of the world to just accept their place in life, so the best alternative is to make the First World lifestyle sustainable.

Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community

In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam documents the sharp decline in recent decades of a wide range of community participation. The decline includes involvement in formal activities, such as attendance at club meetings, volunteering, and voting, as well as informal activities, such as having friends over for dinner, or playing cards.

The term used for the value of social networks of friends and acquaintances is "social capital". Just like "physical capital" (stuff) and "human capital" (knowledge and skills), social capital is valuable.

Communities with high social capital have higher education levels, fewer teen pregnancies, less crime, more wealth, are healthier, live longer, and are happier with life. Conversely, communities with low social capital have more kids dropping out of school and skipping class, more teen pregnancies, more crime, more poverty, more health problems, shorter lifespans, and are less happy.

As a massive oversimplification, think of a high social capital community as being like a small town, where everyone knows their neighbors and helps them out, while a low social capital community is like a big city, where people might live somewhere for 20 years and not know anyone else on their block.

There are several causes of the steep decline in social capital in recent decades.

• One cause is the two-income household. Once upon a time, women stayed at home all day, which meant they had time to meet the neighbors, join clubs, get involved in their child's school, prepare meals to entertain friends, etc. Not anymore.
• Another cause is that we now tend to live in one community, work in a different community, and shop in yet another community. Before sprawl, we tended to live, work, and shop all in the same community, so we had much more of an interest in what happened there.
• A big cause is electronic entertainment -- TV, video games, and the Internet. We spend many hours these days interacting with one of those 3 screens. Add them up, then imagine what you could do with those hours.
• Lastly, and perhaps most surprisingly, is the passing from the scene of the so-called Greatest Generation. (Yes, it's an annoying term, but you know who I mean.) World War II had the effect of energizing lots of people to be involved in their communities. After the war, many people felt inspired to seek out some other Great Purpose to be a part of. As a result, large numbers of people joined clubs, volunteered, etc. In the decades since, there hasn't been a similar catalyst to propel large numbers of people to become involved.

There's much, much more to this book than I can summarize here. It's a book that I want to give to everyone I meet and say, "Read this! It will change your life!" (Maybe I'll go door to door like the Mormons or something, or start leaving copies in hotel rooms.)

Anyway, I feel pretty sure that the decline in social capital is a very big reason for the dissatisfaction that many people feel with "the world today".

After reading Bowling Alone, I was motivated to become more active in the local community. Previously, I had always focused more on national and international issues (in part because those are the ones you see on TV and read about in news magazines).

One bit that caught my interest was his description of "checkbook membership" -- in other words, "joining" some organization where your entire degree of involvement consists of writing a membership check every year. That definitely described my membership in numerous organizations. Activism has become professionalized. We no longer tell our politicians what we want; we pay professional activists to do that for us.

My interest in the environment led me to decide to join the local Sierra Club and to start attending meetings, rather than just sending money to the national organization as I had in the past.

Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally

Lastly, I read Plenty and found another way to combine my renewed interest in protecting the environment with my new interest in social capital.

The short version is this: Eat more locally grown food.

How does that help the environment? Well, the ingredients in the average American meal have traveled anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 miles or more, on average, by the time they get to your plate. We're buying hybrid cars, recycling, and replacing light bulbs with compact fluorescents, but then we're eating apples shipped from New Zealand!

I remember seeing an article on the Internet several months ago that pointed out that, if you walk 3 miles to the grocery store, the energy used to produce the food needed to replace the calories you burned in walking to the store is greater than the energy that would be used to drive your SUV to the store instead.

This was immediately misinterpreted by the Digg crowd as a defense of SUVs rather than as a way to highlight how much energy is used to grow, process, package, and ship our food.

In addition to obvious (and probably defensible) things like importing citrus from South America in the winter, there are truly weird examples of waste. For instance, the peak season for importing strawberries to California is the same time period as the peak season for harvesting strawberries in California. Rather than selling berries grown right next door, stores are selling berries that were grown thousands of miles away!

Even more bizarre, many foods are harvested locally, shipped hundreds or thousands of miles away for processing, then shipped back for final sale to the public. For example, crabs caught off the west coast are shipped 4,000 miles to China, where the meat is removed from the shells, then the crab meat is shipped 4,000 miles back to the west coast, for a total journey of 8,000 miles for a locally caught food.

The authors of Plenty decided to go an entire year eating only food that was grown within 100 miles of their home. They called it the 100-mile diet and they found that, contrary to expectations, they ate a much wider variety of foods than they had before. Out of the 30,000 species of edible plants, just 20 species supply 90% of the world's food. It's a very good book, and I highly recommend it to everyone. (This is another book that I'll be leaving in hotel rooms all over the country.)

I can't find the quote now to confirm my memory, but I seem to recall reading that a regional food system could be 17 times as efficient as the global food system we have now (but don't quote me on that).

So that's how eating local is better for the environment, but how is it good for social capital? Well, if you buy locally grown food, you're more likely to talk directly to the farmer who grew the crop, raised the chickens, or tended the bees. Even if you buy at a specialty grocery store that sells locally grown food, chances are it's a small, non-chain store, where you're more likely to establish a relationship with the employees of the store.

I'm not ready to commit to the 100-mile diet yet, but I am interested in trying to eat more locally grown food. The dead of winter is not the best time to start, because what you tend to eat during the winter are things that you harvested and canned earlier in the year. Plus, since we're renting this house, planting a garden this spring is pretty much out of the question. However, we can buy locally grown food at the farmer's market when it opens in May, as well as buying directly from local farmers once spring arrives. And we can look into growing some things in containers (tomatoes, herbs, etc).

The biggest challenge for me will be learning how to actually cook, as opposed to "cooking" aka "reheating precooked prepared foods". Before I can really do that, we'll need to work on clearing out the kitchen and getting it a bit more organized, so that cooking doesn't involve more time searching for utensils and counter space than it does actually preparing the food!

Clutter and Weight Loss

mood: contemplative
music: rain

Recently I came across an article about the link between clutter in our homes and weight loss. The idea was, if your house is a mess, it's harder for you to exercise and lose weight. You're not likely to play basketball if you can't find the ball, for example. "Interesting point," I thought to myself.

The next day my brother posted his review of It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, by Peter Walsh. It sounded quite interesting, so when I went to Amazon to read more about the book, I found that the same author has written a new book, due out in February, called Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?: An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More. Yes, it's about how clutter makes it harder for us to lose weight!

Synchronicity at work?

There's just one problem:

• If I could lose weight, I would have more energy.
• If I had more energy, I could declutter the house.
• If the house were less cluttered, we could cook more.
• If we cooked more, we would eat healthier.
• If I ate healthier, I would lose weight.

Second verse, same as the first!

Well, losing weight is part of my resolutions for the new year (what a surprise!), so perhaps I can jump into this circle in mid-dance and get up to speed. We'll see.

New Year's Resolutions

mood: ambitious
music: fireworks

New Year's has never been that much of a big deal for me. Perhaps it's because, growing up in southern Illinois, we generally didn't have someplace to go like Times Square to celebrate. I do remember sometimes feeling a bit embarrassed that I didn't have someone to kiss at the stroke of midnight, but that's about it.

One thing that I did do from time to time was make some New Year's resolutions. These tended not to really stick, of course, but I did make the attempt. One problem is the weather. Who feels motivated and energized when the days are short and the temperature is cold? That's one thing I like about the SCA -- their year starts on May 1, when the days are long, the temperatures are pleasant, and the world is bursting with life! That's a time of year to feel energized!

It's been many years since I've made any resolutions, but I feel the urge to give it another try. Two of the best ways to keep resolutions are to (1) write them down, and (2) tell people about them. Thus, this post!

So here they are:

Wally's Resolutions for 2008!

1. Make better use of my time.

This pretty much boils down to 2 things: (1) Stop procrastinating; (2) Waste less time on TV, video games, and the Internet.

Stop procrastinating.

When I was growing up, my parents had a rule: Do your homework before you go play. Simple, huh? Basically, homework is finite, play is infinite. In other words, there isn't a point where you would be finished with your playing. You could play forever! It's easy to get so wrapped up in your playing that you forget to do your homework, or simply don't leave enough time to get it done. And even if you do leave enough time to get your homework done, all the time that you're playing, there will be a little voice in your head worrying about your homework and making you feel guilty about playing. Do your homework first and that little voice goes away!

Now just replace "homework" with "chores" or "errands" or "housework" or whatever.

Waste less time on TV, the Internet, and video games.

I used to watch quite a bit of TV. You can recognize people who watch lots of TV: At parties, that's pretty much all they talk about. They ask whether you saw some show, then tell you what happened. (I plead guilty to having done the same thing in the past!) If you watch quite a bit of TV, you might not notice it, but if you don't, it's quite obvious. I guess in a strange way it's a bit like secondhand smoke: If you're a smoker, you don't notice others smoking, but if you're not, even a single cigarette is quite noticeable.

In recent years, however, I've whittled down my TV watching quite a bit, to the point where now I pretty much only watch The Daily Show and Mythbusters, as well as the occasional episode of Nova. However, to pretend that I don't watch any other TV would be to ignore the fact that I watch a lot of Lando's TV shows: Peep and the Big Wide World; The Backyardigans; Oobi; The Upside Down Show; etc. When you add that in, I still watch quite a lot of TV. Not to mention the fact that it means that Lando watches quite a lot of TV.

I don't know if I'm ready to give up TV entirely, but I do think that I need to cut back significantly. And I think I need to ensure that Lando watches less TV.

Many people have reduced the time that they spend watching TV, but only because they now spend that time on the Internet or playing video games. I admit that to a large degree I fall into that category.

I generally don't spend all that much time playing video games any more, but I do spend quite a bit of time browsing the Internet. Way too much time, really. I read news sites, blogs, more news sites, more blogs.... I admit that I think I'm very well-informed on the issues of the day, but do I really need to be that informed? To the extent that I know quite a lot but do very little? I don't think so.

Suppose that I spend an average of 2 hours per day on TV, the Internet, and video games. That's 14 hours per week, or nearly 2 full workdays. If your boss said that you could have an extra 2 days off each week, imagine how much you could accomplish! You could get all of your chores and errands done and still have plenty of time to write the great American novel! Or whatever.

That sounds like a lot of time. But guess what? The average American watches twice that amount. That's 4 hours per day, 28 hours per week, or nearly 4 full workdays. If your boss said that you could have an extra 4 days off each week....

Wow. And now you know why we never seem to have enough time to get stuff done: We're spending 28 hours a week watching TV.

That's also a large part of the reason why fewer and fewer people participate in their community, attend meetings, volunteer, etc. -- we're glued to the TV.

Of course, given that there's a writers' strike at the moment, cutting down on my TV viewing might be a bit easier! I might try going cold turkey for a month and see how that goes. (One thing I've noticed: If you watch one TV show, you see ads for other TV shows, which makes you more likely to watch two TV shows, where you'll see ads for still more TV shows, etc. I don't watch any network TV shows, so I don't see any ads for network TV shows, which makes it less likely that I'll decide to watch one. A nice little Catch-22.)

2. Take better care of my health.

My dad has had 2 heart attacks. His dad died of a heart attack. My mom's mom had multiple strokes. Heart problems are definitely in my genes. Because we had Lando late in life, there's a significant chance that I could be dead before he's 20 years old. I'd really rather that didn't happen. My mother died just shy of my 36th birthday and even at that age I felt I was way too young to lose a parent.

I can't do anything about my family history, but I can reduce my other risk factors by taking better care of my health. To do this, I need to: (1) Lose weight; (2) Exercise; (3) Eat better.

Lose weight.

If I remember right, when I was in high school playing basketball and running cross country and track, I weighed about 175. (I'm 6 feet and 1 inch tall.) When I went to college, I stopped exercising and ate more junk food. When I moved to my first apartment in Springfield, I can still clearly remember weighing myself one day and being shocked to see that I weighed 190 pounds!

Now, 20+ years later, I'm in the neighborhood of 260 pounds. If I lose weight at the rate of 1.5 pounds per week, or 78 pounds in 52 weeks, that would put me at 182 pounds by the end of the year. Technically, I'm supposed to weigh less than that, but I'd be very happy with 182.

Exercise.

As important as it is to be the right weight, it is apparently even more important to be fit. If you are overweight, but exercise regularly, you're better off than someone who is the proper weight but is a couch potato. (Hey! Less TV and Internet! See how that ties together? It's almost like I planned it that way!)

Once upon a time, I ran cross country. I would get up early each morning and run 3 miles or more before school. These days, if I run across the street, I'm out of breath by the time I get to the other side!

We joke about how keeping up with Lando forces us to get some exercise, and in some ways that's slightly true, but the reality is that we mainly sit in a chair or on the floor and play with him from there. In addition, when he gets older, if he's going to want to get involved in sports, it would be nice to be in good enough shape that I could help out at least a little!

Eat better.

In addition to taking in fewer calories than I'm burning (i.e. losing weight), I really need to eat healthier foods. I don't eat nearly enough fresh foods, enough fruits and vegetables, etc. And I eat way too much processed food and snacks. Yes, it's very convenient. But if it were less convenient, I suspect I would eat less of it, wouldn't I? After all, if you had to make your own French fries, how often do you think you would really do so?

This ties in directly to the book that I mentioned the other day, Plenty by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. The 100-mile diet involves attempting to eat food grown or raised within a 100-mile radius of where you are. The reasons for this are that it is better for the environment (rather than buying corn that traveled 2,000 miles to get to your door, buy corn that traveled 20 miles); it is generally better for your health, since you'll be more likely to eat fresh fruits, vegetables, and grains rather than, say, a microwave dinner or potato chips; and it is fun, because it increases your connections to people in the local community, you'll become more aware of the changing of the seasons and the direct effect that has one what foods are available, you'll increase the variety of foods you eat.

One quick statistic about that last point: Out of the 7,000 plant species that humans have used throughout history, today 90% of the world's food comes from just 20 species of plants! We've got supermarkets that might carry 45,000 different items, but we tend to keep eating the same things over and over and over....

3. Take better care of my finances.

We need to: (1) Pay down our debts; and (2) Create a budget and stick to it.

Pay down our debts.

We've got debts. We don't like having debts. We want to have smaller debts. How could we make that happen? Hmm....

Create a budget and stick to it.

There's one thing President Bush (aka the Worst President Ever) and I have in common: Neither of us can keep a balanced budget. However, Bush at least has a budget. We don't. When both of us were working, we didn't really pay much attention to what we were spending. When Dawn left the workforce shortly before Lando was born, we continued to spend money as pretty much the same rate as we always had. As a result, our income is exceeded by an outgo.

In short, we're running a deficit.

Everything I've ever read about personal finance says, "Create a budget and stick to it." So, we're going to create a budget and stick to it. Or at least that's the plan!

So those are my resolutions for 2008. How about you? What's your plan for correcting all of your imperfections by this time next year?

Christmas Recap

mood: thankful
music: silence

Christmas went well. Santa found the house on time and nobody was sick, so I consider that a success.

In previous years, Dawn and I had opened our presents on Christmas eve, in part because that's what our parents tended to do. However, with Lando now being old enough to know what Christmas is about (in a purely secular sense, which is about all that a 3-year-old would understand anyway -- PRESENTS!), we decided to open our presents on Christmas morning. (I think that my parents used to open presents on Christmas morning, until Ross and I were older, and then we began opening presents on Christmas eve, right after we returned from the Christmas eve church service.)

Lando got lots of good stuff. LOTS of good stuff.

As I think I mentioned earlier, we got him a drumset. He really likes the drumset, and unlike the bagpipes we gave him, he has no problem getting it to make noise! It's got a bass drum, a tom, a snare, and a cymbal. He even has a little rhythm that he can keep (at least part of the time).

However, his favorite toy by far was the marble race. This is a series of tubes, ramps, loops, etc. You place the marbles at the top, the roll down to the bottom, then you do it again. And again. And again. If you're 45 years old, after about 15 minutes of this, you're bored. If you're 3 years old, you apparently never get bored with it.

He also got a very cool castle, which I believe makes his 4th. However, you apparently can never have too many castles or too many knights, because he's spent plenty of time playing with it as well!

He got plenty of other gifts as well, but I'm having trouble remember which things were for Christmas and which were for his birthday, so I won't bother trying to list them all.

Dawn and I got a few things as well.

Dawn's largest present (physically) was the bodhran that Santa got her. If you're not familiar with what a bodhran is, it's a Celtic frame drum that looks like a very large tambourine that you play with a stick called a tipper.

Here's an example. Turn up the sound and watch all 3 minutes of this video:

Nice, huh? The kid is 10 years old!

The only problem is Dawn has trouble practicing, because whenever she tries, it draws Lando's attention, and he either demands that she stop (we don't know why) or joins in with his own drums, which as you can imagine is a bit of a distraction! I think I'm going to have to start taking Lando to the mall or something so that Dawn can have the house to herself for a bit.

Of course, one other obstacle to her practicing is that the tutorial DVD that I ordered for her got backordered, so it won't be here for awhile! :-(

My presents consisted primarily of several books, plus the CD "Letting Go of God" by Julia Sweeney (formerly with Saturday Night Live).

I've listened to the CD 3 times, as it is quite funny, very poignant, and insightful. It's a one woman show she does about her journey from Catholicism through mysticism to (eventually) atheism. Ironically, her spiritual journey was precipitated by a visit by a couple of Mormon missionaries, followed by her decision to join her church's Bible study group. I suspect that even a good-natured Christian would enjoy it, even though they disagreed with her conclusions. (The humorless, fire-and-brimstone variety of Christian would definitely not enjoy it.)

I also quickly devoured one of the books, "Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally", by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. This is one of those books that I have the urge to buy a dozen of and give them to all my friends. I plan on talking about it more later. At length. Be prepared.

Two Weekends, Two Birthdays, Two Firsts, Two Sickies

mood: tired
music: silence

It's been awhile since I've had time to do a real update here. Posting the results of a pointless online quiz and embedding a nifty video from Youtube don't really count. What you've really been wondering is, "Wally, what's going on in your life?" Well, since you asked....

Work Sucks

I've been working on this stupid project forever. Well, okay, since June 2006. Still. I just want it to be done with! I think I'm doing some good work, but I've got a deadline looming and I'm worried about showstopper bugs and I'm worried about the system running too slow and I'm worried about it taking forever to jump through all of the hoops needed to actually get the thing into production and.... Well, you get the picture. Anyway, as a result of all of this, I don't know when my next vacation will be. Everyone and their brother will be gone for the holidays, but I expect I'll be plunking away on the keyboard, trying to get everything ready. *sigh* Let's just call it the Frankenstein Project. It was never meant to be and it will not die! (Maybe it's just misunderstood? Nah.)

Happy Birthday, Rose!

Two weekends ago we went to a birthday party for Rose, who is now 2 years old. What's that? You want pictures? Okay!

Here's one of the birthday girl:

Here's Lando and Sarah (Rose's sister) watching the unwrapping of the presents:

And here's Rose blowing out the candles on the cake (with a little bit of help from her mom):

So that was Rose's birthday. It went better than mine! Yes, that's right. (Next topic, please!)

Happy Belated Birthday to Me!

Yes, November 9 was my birthday, so this weekend was my birthday weekend. Plus, I had Monday off (Veterans' Day -- thanks, guys!), so I had a 3-day weekend. However....

Well, let's see. The good part was that Dawn got me Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!) Funny stuff! I've never actually watched The Colbert Report, however. I watch The Daily Show -- one of Lando's earliest phrases was "Daily Show Jon Stewart" -- so I see the little promo bit that they do at the end of that. However, I just don't have time to watch much TV these days, so no Stephen Colbert for me.

Even if I did have time to watch it, I would have to do so when Dawn wasn't in the room because Stephen Colbert makes her squirm. :-) That makes it particularly nice that she bought me his book. In return, I promised her that I wouldn't read her passages from the book every 5 minutes.

The bad part was that both Lando and Dawn were (and are) sick, so my 3-day weekend was spent tending to the needs of a sick 2-year-old while my sick wife rested. Unfortunately, when Lando is sick, rather than being listless like a normal person (e.g. me), he usually becomes even more energetic than normal.

If the whole household gets sick, we're in trouble.

Two Firsts for Lando

Last night, Lando did two things that he hadn't done before, one worrying, the other heartwarming.

The worrying one: He opened the refrigerator by himself. Doh! He had to grip the handle with both hands and yank hard, but he got it opened. Now we'll have to pay attention to what things we put within his reach in there.

The heartwarming one: As I was rocking him to sleep last night, he asked me, "What did you do today?" Nice! Normally that's what I ask him, to give him a chance to tell me anything that he might be thinking about (in part in the hope that, by telling me, he can stop thinking about it and fall the heck asleep already). It was a nice surprise for him to turn the question around and ask me. So I told him that I woke up, took a shower, got dressed, got in the car, drove to work (which he's been to a few times), worked on the computer, ate lunch, worked on the computer some more, then drove to the grocery store to buy him some milk and juice and bananas, then came home.

He then wanted to know why I couldn't work on the computer at home. I'd like to know the same thing!

The Family that Vomits Together ... is Sick

This morning before I left for work I asked Dawn whether she was feeling well enough to handle Lando on her own. She said she felt better than yesterday, but I had a feeling that she might feel worse after she got out of bed, so I told her to call me later and let me know how she felt. About 10:30 or so I decided to call her instead, and she reported that she was feeling better than yesterday and that there was no need for me to come home.

About 2:00 she called me to report that Lando had thrown up, that she had thrown up while trying to clean up the mess, that she felt much worse than this morning, and could I please come home. So I did.

The good news is that Lando apparently threw up just as a result of coughing alot, rather than as the result of an upset stomach, and Dawn threw up because she is easily grossed out. In other words, nobody seems to have anything like a stomach flu. Hooray! And then shortly after I got Lando to go down for his nap the cat threw up. *sigh*

So that's what's been going on these days. I think it's time for me to go to Pasta House and get us some comfort food.

Sam I Am?

mood: cheerful
music: baby monitor

So I took the Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You? survey and came up with this:

Samwise Gamgee

A brave and loyal associate full of optimism, you remain true to your friends and their efforts, to whatever end.

But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Samwise is a character in the Middle-Earth universe. You can read more about him at TheOneRing.net.

It's fun to take these tests, but I'm not sure why, because I generally either disagree with the result or can't see how the result fits from the answers I gave. I always want to try taking the test again, adjusting one or two answers slightly to see whether I get a different result. I don't, of course, because I'm not that obsessive about it.

...

Well, okay, so just this once I took the quiz again.

This time, on those questions where I wavered slightly in my answer, I took the other choice and came up with this:

Kosh

A reclusive seer shrouded in riddles, you reveal very little and only what is deemed congruent with your plans.

Understanding is a three edged sword. Your side, their side, and the truth.

Kosh is a character in the Babylon 5 universe. You can read a few tidbits about his race at The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5.

If you are familiar with both The Lord of the Rings and Babylon 5, you know that Samwise Gamgee and Kosh are nothing alike! However, I can safely say that I am much more like Samwise Gamgee than I am like Kosh (thank goodness!), so I guess on those answers where I wavered, I wavered to the more accurate answer.

Writer's Block, Computer Books

Have you ever been patiently waiting for someone to stop talking so that you can say something -- and then find that you can't remember what it is you wanted to say? That describes my experience pretty much every time I sit down to do this.

Yesterday I received more of the stuff I had requested during our annual end-of-fiscal-year spending spree, much to my amazement and joy. My boss had a bunch of education money that she had been desperately trying to spend, but there really weren't any classes available during the few weeks left in the year that would do me any good. I eventually wrote up a list of probably 20-30 books that would be useful, on the chance that perhaps she could spend some of her education money on books. I didn't think it was likely that I would get more than a few, so I prioritized them and gave her the list. I've been totally shocked to discover that she apparently ordered all of them!

Anyway, on Monday several of them arrived, so I quickly snatched up Information Architecture and began reading. Yeah, okay, so it doesn't exactly sound like a page-turner, but I'm hoping it will help me figure out how to better organize the agency's web site. Currently it is (in my opinion) a disjointed, confusing jumble. It has improved over the last two years, but it still is only slightly less confusing than... uh, something that's really confusing. Anyway, I'll let you know how it turns out!

I just read in an e-mail message from my brother's girlfriend that they found a scorpion in their house. Texas! What a country!

My Life by the Numbers

Today: 230 pounds. What a surprise. I might as well just drop this bit and only post it when something changes! Walked 2 miles in 28:20. My time sucked, but this morning it was very warm, extremely humid, and very foggy! It was not unlike walking through a giant vat of chicken soup, only with more sodium and slightly fewer noodles.

Back from Chicago, Learning Irish

I got home yesterday at about 11:30 PM, after a long day. Class got out on Friday at about noon, which was fine, except that my train wasn't scheduled to leave Chicago until 6:30 PM, so that meant I had more than six hours to wait. I went to the train station, ate, read the Chicago Tribune very thoroughly, then read a few more chapters of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Then, to top things off, the train was about an hour late leaving! Ack! At least I got an awful lot of reading done, but I think eleven hours is over-doing it a bit.

Something very important happened in the last week! No, I'm not talking about the dismissal of the Paula Jones lawsuit -- I'm talking about me starting to learn how to speak Irish! Fun! I had been thinking about trying to learn to speak it for quite some time, but books about learning Irish aren't exactly common around here. Spanish, French, German, Italian -- yes. But not Irish. Anyway, while I was walking back to my hotel one evening, I found a place called "The Savvy Traveller."  It was a very interesting shop, and among the things they had there were some books and tapes for learning Irish. I figured this was a chance not to be missed, so I picked up Irish on Your Own!, by Éamonn Ó Dónaill and Deirbhile Ní Churraighín. It includes a book and five cassettes.

Of course, I didn't have a tape player with me, but that was okay -- until I looked at the first lesson and quickly came to the conclusion that Irish was not a language in which you could figure out how words are supposed to be pronounced just by looking at them! Here's a quick example -- "mháthair" looks like it should be pronounced "mather", but instead is pronounced something like "waher". Can someone please tell me how they get a "w" sound out of that?! It turns out Irish doesn't even have a "w" in its alphabet. I either needed a tape player or would have to find something else to keep me from going stir-crazy in the hotel.

So I stopped by a Radio Shack, took a look at their selection of Walkman-style tape players, and picked one pretty much at random. After a few minutes in the back room, the salesman told me they were all out of that model. Fine. I picked another one. They had that one, so I bought it. It wasn't until I got back to my hotel room and began listening to the first lesson that I realized this player had a fatal flaw -- no "rewind" button! If I'm listening to music, rewinding isn't that big of a deal. However, when trying to figure out what the heck someone is saying in Irish, rewinding is a big plus! For that matter, a counter would be nice so that I could know how far I needed to rewind to get to the start of the lesson. Oh well. I put up with it while in Chicago, but tomorrow I plan on getting something a bit more practical.

Anyway, after three lessons, I can now mispronounce "how are you", "I am fine", "what is your name", "where do you live", "it is hot", and a similar selection of dorky-sounding phrases. But in Irish they sound really cool!

On Thursday I tracked down the location of the Borders bookstore and went there. Big place -- three floors! I wanted to locate an Irish grammar book and dictionary, to supplement the conversational lessons. I couldn't find either, so instead I bought two more lesson books. One is Teach Yourself Irish, by Diarmuid Ó Sé and Joseph Sheils, which includes two tapes. It also seems to have more information about grammar. The other one is Learning Irish, by Mícheál Ó Siadhail, which also emphasizes grammar.

Lastly, just because it was there, I picked up An Invitation to Old English & Anglo-Saxon England, by Bruce Mitchell. I don't seriously plan on learning Old English, but how often do you see a book on the subject? Maybe I'll just casually leave it out on the coffee table to impress people. When they ask me to say something in Old English, I'll say something like "It is seven o'clock" in Irish and they'll never know the difference.

Slán go fóill! (Goodbye for now!)