Almost two weeks ago, we got our final Pinckney’s Produce CSA box of the fall season. It has taken me this long to get a post up about it because without another box’s arrival to give us a deadline, we had the opportunity to eat the last shipment of veggies at our leisure, which, though I did freeze a little bit of it, proved my theory that each box was at least two weeks’ food for us. Here’s what we got:
- 5 sweet potatoes
- 2 heads broccoli
- 2 bell peppers
- 1 bunch collards
- 3 bunches spinach
- 1 bunch kale
- 1 head cabbage
- 1 eggplant
- lots of green beans
- lots of tomatoes
The first night I made a variation on one of our favorite dishes, Rachael Ray’s Italian Tuna Casserole (I have the cook book this recipe is from, but someone recreated it here). Tuna casserole is one of my comfort foods, and I’m a big fan of this recipe. Jon suggested adding in one of the heads of broccoli, and so this recipe used up one of those as well as two of the bunches of spinach. This recipe fed us for a couple of days, plus at least one lunch for me.
The kale was used up another night in this pasta with sausage and kale, which was almost as good as the bacon and collard linguine we’ve loved this season. read more…
This is sort of how I imagine the computer that does the match. Image via Flickr user Lori and the Bell Jar.
At some point in toddlerhood, it eventually hits all of us, the “I can do it by myself!” And from that point on, to be human is to want to be in charge of ourselves. You’re not the boss of me! I choose my choice! I’m in charge!
Lately, though, I find myself feeling like a toddler, trying to DO IT BY MYSELF, and this thing called life keeps reminding me that I’m not always the boss of me, I don’t always get to choose my choice. Boy oh boy does the medical education system that owns our lives right now make that clear. You see, in three weeks, Jon will get an email that will suddenly reveal what we’ll be doing with our lives for the next three years. And it’s more than driving me nuts. read more…
The weekly CSA post, the last one of the season, will be a few days later than usual. I realized I could take my time using up the veggies, as there was no new box coming to give me a deadline. Also, my freezer really can’t hold much more food. So, we’re trying to eat most of the veggies, and I’ll have a post about the last box and about the CSA experience as a whole when we finish. I guess this gives me some time to really “digest” the whole experience before sharing my final thoughts of the season.
Here’s some Friday fun for everyone. I found this hilarious video via my friend, Political Party Girl:
The instructor has clearly been borrowing Jessie Spano’s uppers.
True story, though, y’all. In college, where I was required to take one P.E. class per year, I took “Aerobic Dance,” because I heard it was hilarious. And oh my sweet spandex, it was. We didn’t really have an instructor so much as a lady who worked a VCR, and we’d basically sweat it to the oldies on the stage of the auditorium while she sat in the audience and watched us. Most of the videos we did were from the same era as this video. My favorite featured an instructor who seemed like one of Jem’s lost Holograms, and wore ridiculous thong leotards covered in stars over neon tights. If I had college to do over again, I’d make my friends buy crazy spandex outfits with me to wear to Aerobic Dance class. I’m sure American Apparel woulda done us up right.
Some day you should ask me to see some of the moves I learned. My friends in the class and I used bust out some of the moves at parties after a few drinks.
Image via Flickr user Jeff Karpala.
In the past 11 days, I have received 3 campus safety alerts about women being assaulted on the streets of the campus where I work. This news article from the local paper mentions two of them. Women, walking down the street, attacked from behind.
Now, maybe I’m a little jumpier than some people because I have been a victim before, but it was with this news in my mind that I had to walk alone, in the dark, after my class last night. Jon had taken the car to work yesterday morning, because it was pouring rain. The hospital is three quarters of a mile from my office, and I walk there at least once a week after work to volunteer, so we figured it would be no big deal for me to get the car after class last night. I hadn’t anticipated how much darker it is at 7 pm than 5.
Things running through my mind as I walked that .7 mi: walk fast, look around you, make sure your cell phone is in an outer pocket in case you need it, bag closed so as not to tempt robbers, don’t stop, stay out of the shadows, maybe you should hold your keys in case you need to use them as a weapon, why oh why don’t you have some pepper spray.
I was so relieved to reach the hospital and the brightly lit garage. Thankfully Jon had parked very close to the elevator. I got into the car, heart still pounding, and locked the doors. I am supposed to get free parking because I’m a hospital volunteer, but my badge is expired. The volunteer office told me not to worry about it, because no one ever really looks at our badges anyway. Unfortunately, the parking attendant was on some sort of a power trip, and was concerned I might be a med student, using an out of date badge in order to park for free. She decided to charge me $20, and she didn’t care that I showed her my work ID, to prove I was not a med student. I started crying. She told me to stop, sarcastically asked if I needed a hug. I tearfully tried to come up with an explanation, told her it had been a long day. I felt stupid for crying over $20, it’s not like it was a speeding ticket.
Later I realized why I got so upset over the $20 parking fee. Because I thought I had reached the safe zone, only to be treated badly, and this triggered all my anxiety and anger and fear to just come rolling out in tears. It took me a while after I got home to calm down.
And what, according to that news article, am I supposed to be doing with the news of these attacks? “We’re telling everyone to be aware of their surroundings and to be vigilant.”
It’s enough to make me want to cry all over again.
Not only does this comment suggest that somehow, those two women who were attacked were victimized because they were somehow not “vigilant,” it completely ignores the reality of being female in public. When am I not effing vigilant? Society has done a great job of teaching me that just by being a woman, I’m at risk, there are places I can’t go, times I shouldn’t be out, things I shouldn’t wear, zones where I am not safe, reasons for me to be constantly looking over my shoulder. I’m vigilant all the time, and it gets to be exhausting. I can’t afford not to be vigilant, but even when I am, and something happens to me, you can bet your sweet bippy that someone’s going to say I should have been vigilant.
Public safety says they’ve expanded their patrols and offer on campus escorts, but the escort wouldn’t do me much good when I’m walking to somewhere off campus. My boss, who teaches the night I have class and the night I volunteer, told me that from now on if I need to get to the hospital, he will drive me. I really appreciate the offer, and will probably take him up on it, but at the same time, I’m so frustrated to need a man with me in order to be safe.
So I’m going to buy some pepper spray. And I’m going to ask campus safety if, in light of these attacks, they could maybe offer a self defense course. And if they can’t, I’ll probably take one elsewhere. And yeah, I’ll be vigilant, just like always. Damn lot of good that will do me though.
Another delicious week with our Pinckney’s Produce CSA!
Another great haul this week! Here’s the breakdown:
- 5 sweet potatoes
- 1 large head cabbage
- 1 bunch kale
- 1 bunch collards
- 4 small heads broccoli
- 2 heads cauliflower
- lots of various tomatoes
This was our next to last CSA box! I’m already getting sad about the season ending, and will do more of a retrospective on the experience next week. I’ll also post a picture of the stock of food we’ve now accumulated in our freezer– at least one friend seems to be unable to believe everything I’ve said is in there fits! read more…
In the wake of what everyone agrees was a horrible tragedy at Fort Hood, there has been sort of a battle of interpretation going on between those who were quick to label it an act of terrorism because the perpetrator is a Muslim and those who urged caution, seeing it as a horrific act of workplace violence which may or may not have a religious or terroristic motivation. The juxtaposition of the treatment of the Fort Hood story, in which the perpetrator had an Arabic name, and the Orlando office shooting, in which the perpetrator did not stand out ethnically or religiously, was striking. We are more than OK assuming the Orlando shooter was just a guy who snapped in hard times, but we were less willing to believe that a Muslim American could “snap” without any additional religious or political motivation. In particular, I would recommend this piece by Eboo Patel, a Muslim American active in interfaith causes. I agree with Patel’s idea that murder is not a value in any major religion. Murderers are not Muslims or Christians, they are murderers.
However, now that more information is coming to light, the “terrorism” debate is heating up. It is being reported that Hasan had tried to contact Al Qaeda and the CIA may have known about this months ago, which raises some serious questions about whether or not they reported this info to the military, and what actions could have been taken to prevent this tragedy. Though I have seen at least one blogger at The New Republic call the reporter who broke the Al Qaeda story’s credibility into question, so I’m not quite ready to accept this as total fact yet. There was much speculation and misinformation when the story initially broke, and the speculation and misinformation continues in the aftermath. There is, however, some indication that Hasan was affiliated with more radical views of Islam.
Still, even if Hasan were a religious extremist, is the Fort Hood Massacre terrorism? read more…
hen I was in junior high, a miraculous invention changed my life. No, I’m not talking about instant messaging, though that came out around that time and also changed my life, in large part by making me a super fast typist, though I’d rather forget that my junior high band nerd self chose “ilovemysax” as my first unfortunate screen name. No, I’m talking about SPARKLY GEL PENS! I’m pretty sure Japan, land of all things adorable, which also gave us the required Tamagotchis (which were later banned from school), invented sparkly gel pens, and they found their way into my little junior high world sometime after that. Pretty soon they were practically required for junior high coolness, and we took our notes in class using neon colors, sometimes alternating every bullet point with a different color. Never mind that the fluorescent oranges and pinks were rather hard to read, we were SO COOL with our sparkly pens. (If you doubt that a pen is enough to be cool in junior high, you haven’t been in junior high.) I vividly remember sitting around a four-seater table with my 3 best friends in social studies class, our shared collection of gel pens stacked in a pile in the middle of the table for our shared use and note-beautification.
ut it wasn’t just class notes we beautified with our snazzy gel-inked, translucent roller-ball pens. There’s another crucial aspect of junior high life for which gel pens were crucial. And that is the art of the note to your friends. I became sort of a master at the highly embellished note, crafted somewhat surreptitiously during class, detailing OH SO MUCH serious junior high drama, referring to crushes with super secret code names, with my friends’ names at the top in highly embellished fonts I free-handed using print-outs I made of entire alphabets with Microsoft Word fonts from my home computer. I even invented some of my own fonts. And of course, I folded all the notes into intricate origami shapes for delivery, either slipped into lockers or passed hand to hand in the hallways. Pretty soon every friend who was on a sports team or competitive squad of some sort got a good-luck note, complete with doodles and illustrations, their names usually in my SUPER COOL self-designed zebra-printed all-caps font, on competition days. My notes actually became coveted items, and people would get their feelings hurt if game day came and I didn’t give them a good luck note.
hough we eventually moved on to high school, and gel pens and note-writing sort of dropped by the wayside, perhaps because we had actual schoolwork to be focusing on with our AP courseloads. Still those early note writing days led to a love of self-taught semi-calligraphy, and if you’re ever lucky enough to receive a birthday card from me, odds are your name will be written on the front with some sort of fancy font, most likely using a silver or gold gel pen, which are still popular pen choices, even if their novelty no longer makes them a school-supply must have. I think they’re now most popular with scrapbookers, which, you should see the stuff I did for my wedding album.
ou may be wondering what is up with this ode to fonts and gel pens, or perhaps what the deal is with the fancy drop caps I’m using in every paragraph of this post. And here is where I have to confess that the drop caps are the entire point. I stumbled across typographer Jessica Hiche’s Daily Drop Cap blog and was instantly transported back to my junior high font-inventing, note-embellishing days. If only someone had told my junior high self that growing up to be a font-designer was a possibility, my life may have taken a different course! Who knew that all that in-class time wasting could turn out to be a marketable skill?
heck out Hiche’s Daily Drop Caps for yourself, if you’re a font-nerd like me. I’m just going to be drooling over her typography work, and maybe breaking out those gel pens for some fun times. Anyone need a note?
It’s been a while since I did one of these, folks, but in the spirit of OMGYAYIT’SFRIDAYSQUEEEEE I decided to do another post of all the goodness on the internet you should be checking out. Sharing is caring.
- Senator Al Franken’s streak of awesome (sticking it to rapist contractors, going after insurance companies) continues with two of my favorite things: SOLDIERS AND PUPPIES (ok, service dogs).
- In other awesome news, Jon Stewart’s spoof of Glenn Beck is a must watch.
- Ever wonder what it would be like if you suddenly had a real life musical moment, where everyone sings and dances? Found out via Gizmodo about the latest stunt from the Improv Everywhere people I saw an episode of This American Life about:
- Apparently some curmudgeon without a soul over at Vanity Fair doesn’t like CUTE. I say: he clearly just needs some cuteoverload to warm his cold black heart. Or perhaps FUpenguin is more up his alley, like this image, entitled “beavers think they are so f***ing clever”:
- Want more cute? BABY TURTLES FROM SEA WORLD.
- My friend Political Party Girl and I were chatting and somehow got on the subject of Mr. Rogers. She linked me to this YouTube video of Mr. Rogers testifying before Congress in support of PBS funding, and I swear, my response to Mr. Rogers is almost Pavlovian. I hear his voice and suddenly I’d like to sit down and be still, while munching on some graham crackers, and just hang out with him. On days when the news is mostly terrible, I need the “what do you do with the mad that you feel” song that he sings at the end more than ever.
- I could probably devote an entire post to the tragic massacre at Fort Hood. Here are a few good pieces to check out: Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly gives the straight facts; Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent posts a statement from an Arab-American Military organization and reminds us not to jump to Islamophobic conclusions; Glenn Greenwald at Salon shows us just how misinformed we’d be if we had relied on live TV reporting of the massacre, which he describes as “an orgy of rumor-mongering, speculation and falsehoods that play a very significant role in shaping public perceptions and enabling all sorts of ill-intentioned exploitation.”
- Justice served: one of the Yearning For Zion polygamists has been convicted of sexual assault and faces up to 20 years in prison.
- Anne Lamotte is wonderful. Her letter to the president about health care reform could have been written by me, as I agree with every word.
- Speaking of health reform, would the House bill put children’s health care at risk?
Image via Air America via degreedate.com.
David Brooks is sort of the Andy Rooney of the New York Times, always baffled by modern ways of life and love, and wishing we could return to the good old days, maybe even in Lake Woebegone, where the men don’t have iPhones, the women don’t have Facebook, and all of the relationships are hookup-free until marriage. Brooks’ latest column is about how cell phones and texting have killed romance.
Brooks’ column is littered with proof of how he just. doesn’t. get. it. (He notes that the daters he quotes make up nicknames for their partners, not catching that “Stage Five Clinger” is a “Wedding Crashers” reference. He also seems to think Bruce Springsteen is an appropriate cultural reference.) I sort of imagine that Brooks does his phoning on a Jitterbug. He seems to almost want to return to the days of arranged marriages:
Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era — courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.
Now we have a dating free market, and free market conservative though he is, Brooks DOES NOT WANT!!! Why? Because “texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination.” read more…
