I wonder about this new rage to take care of the earth.

The motives behind it all are what’s got me down. It’s upsetting to me that everybody had to be scared out of their minds with impending doom (Al Gore, I’m talking to you!) before they decided that having a dependency on oil, pesticides and cheap products that were made in sweatshops from far away countries might not such a good idea.I’m not very afraid of the climate changing, and I know it will, but our planet is old and it’s dealt with a lot. I also know that the people who do nothing to change our current bad habits also feel this way. They have a point and it’s hard to argue with. 

So I want to explain my argument for living a more sustainable life. 

The rise of the industrial and technological revolutions were one giant attempt to live more efficiently, with more productivity. Those things are great. Living efficiently is something to admire. Waste not, want not right? But I think all these years we’ve been a bit mislead with what efficiency really is. 

Forcing a cow, who naturally gets its nutrients from grass -a plant that created nutrients from sunlight (how much more efficient can you get?) to feed on corn (a very unnatural food for a cow) that must be transported from miles away and use up more gasoline (corn which farmers actually lose money on and only continue to grow more of because of government subsidies). This unnatural feed causes the cows to become weakened and ill, forcing ranchers to use loads of antibiotics and growth hormones to get the cows to live long enough to make it to slaughter (which by the way, isn’t very long anymore) or well enough to produce unnatural amounts of milk. 

Feeding cows corn is slowly acidifying their naturally alkaline stomach fluids which is helping e.coli that lives there to become more acid resistant. SO… when you eat beef, along with the acid resistant e.coli, your stomach acids no longer can protect you from infection. See what happens when you mess with Mother Nature? She screws you over.

Ultimately, this system seems highly inefficient to me and against the whole point of the industrial and technological revolutions. These were just a few tiny examples in our huge wasteful industrial food system.

So if you don’t like the idea of hippies and world peace or you don’t care to hug a tree, I hope I’ve at least appealed to your common senses and convinced you that operating in a more natural (non-industrial system) is a much more efficient and reasonable way to live your life.

Happy Earth Day.  

It’s grey outside again. The past week was full of sun and before that I had told myself that I wasn’t yet ready for spring to come. I was having too much fun wearing stockings and scarves and pretty coats. But now…well now that I’ve got to hang out with Joe during this past long weekend, our time was spent lounging in the warm sun reading books and going on walks. I forgot how fun that can be. But the rain is back, I don’t know for how long, but I won’t be too upset to see it go. I don’t mind that it’s here either. I guess I like any sort of weather as long as it isn’t unbearably hot.

Here are a few things that I’ve been enjoying:

-chocolate chip oatmeal cookies- this song- this book- turkish coffee-my own coffee roaster- this other song- an old friend’s 9 month travel adventures 

Today Joe and I celebrate four years together. Four. long. years….hah! I kid! Really I feel cheated that I only get to tell everyone that we’ve been together for four years. It feels like we’ve been hanging out together for much longer. Despite my general whinyness, he’s put up with me like a champ. He’s always trying to make life easier for me when I really don’t deserve it. For example, I called him today in the middle of a nervous breakdown because I couldn’t for the life of me understand how to work my new film camera and couldn’t complete my photography class assignment. Today was my last day to complete the roll of film and what little light left was quickly fading away. It had been raining all week, making completing my assignment extra annoying. I don’t know why, but the combination of not being able to see if my pictures turned out and knowing that those snotty photography majors in my class will get to witness whether they turned out at the same time as me is just highly frustrating. If you knew me, you’d know when I get frustrated, I like to give up and avoid the trouble altogether. Well, Joe took off of work early and rushed home to explain to this frantic loon what the relationship of the F-stop and shutter speed were (can you believe that I really wasn’t that sure?) and supervised me while I took dorky pictures of whatever I could find that was nearest a window, like that lamp in the picture above. How can he put up with me? And how lucky am I to have him? Super duper lucky.    I love you, Monkey.

Just wanted to pop in and say that all is well in our camp. We had a good New Year’s Eve with Erin. We played Rock Band on Joe’s new PS3 and had a great round of Trivial Pursuit (I came in last place as usual, but I did my best yet!). I’m sure the neighbors were glad to hear clanking drums and singing that was closer to a cat in heat than any song the game was having us sing. I really should not have been singing in the first place, but I also have a cold, so not only was I off key, I was nasally!

We are still battling ants, but they haven’t been near as bad as the Christmas tree episode. Despite the ant problem this winter, living in this home the past year has been great. We hope 2008 will be even better. I believe this is the first place that really feels like home since I’ve moved away from my family. I have a nice kitchen with enough cups, mugs and plates to go around. I have extra blankets to curl up on the couch with and enough yarn to last me until well into 2009. Oh yeah, and I still get to live with my favorite person- Joe!

I hope you all have a fantastic year (maybe even complete a few of those New Year’s Resolutions, but you know, no pressure!).

I want to wish everyone celebrating a Merry Christmas. My plans for this holiday aren’t quite going as I’d hoped. I’m really wishing to wake up tomorrow morning and open presents under a pretty Christmas tree, but we had to take down the ornaments and haul our tree out to the trash bin today after discovering the ants that we had been battling for control over the house this past month (and thought we’d won) had moved from our bathroom and office to our Christmas tree. They made themselves right at home in our tree stand (plenty of drinking water there you see). I think the ants may have won. We’ve tried everything. We don’t leave a speck of food out (strangely they haven’t touched our kitchen), we’ve tried Terro traps and vacuuming them up and squashing them and finally a ‘non poison’ spray. Nothing deters these guys! I can handle a few ants here and there, but they seem to really want to build a nest in here. It’s bizarre.

So tomorrow we’ll have a Christmas with no tree. I know, not the end of the world by any means, but I really liked our tree! I’m glad I snapped some pictures a fews days back so I have something to show you.

Anyways, a few thousand ants can’t ruin my Christmas! I still get to spend it with Joe and the presents! I still get the presents! Hah!

Merry Christmas!

It has been almost one year since I unwrapped my Gocco machine for Christmas and last night was my first time putting it to use. I’d constantly think of possible designs to print, but nothing ever seemed good enough and really, I never had a good enough reason to use it. Not until now.

Joe has completed his Masters project on cryptographic hash functions and we are due for a graduation party on the 21st of this month. Usually we wouldn’t bother with invitations, most of our get-togethers are just close friends and relatives. We just call them up and say ‘hey, come over! we have food!’ and that usually does the trick. Now though, a bit classier type of people (by classier I mean, Joe knows them on a professional basis only.) will be on the invite list, so we needed something more official.

I began my search for invitations on Etsy and found some cool silkscreened IBM punch cards. They weren’t really meant to be invitations, but I showed Joe and he suggested we just make our own. I thought ‘ooh! a chance to use my Gocco!’. So 15 minutes later, we had ordered a stack of old IBM punch cards from eBay. Last night Joe finally made me pull out the Gocco and get to work, but I had no idea what I was doing. The Gocco instruction manual wasn’t the greatest help. Thanks to Joe for figuring absolutely everything out, we managed to come up with some pretty cool invitations.

We used a pretty tree design from the classic computer science manual- Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming and an old school typewriter font for the design. We only had three colors to choose from for the Gocco machine, so we stuck with black, which ended up being fine. I like it’s simplicity.

The party is drawing nearer and I’m hoping to get the living room painted, tree up and decorated (along with the rest of the house) before then. On top of that, my grandmother calls today telling me the family is driving up to visit this weekend. Not that I’m not psyched about that, but there goes some precious painting time! Maybe I can enlist my family to be my paint crew?

The camellias in the front yard are looking pretty right now. I guess that’s one nice thing about renting a home. Normally I would never buy or plant a camellia. I know the flowers are pretty, but the rest of the year, the plant is just blah. Nothing I’d ever pay attention to, but I’ll certainly enjoy the benefits while they hang around. Might as well, since they are here to stay.

In other news, I’ve been having multiple mail and comment moderation issues, so if you have emailed me in the last couple of weeks and I haven’t replied, please email me again. The problem has been fixed, but I’m afraid I might have missed a couple emails. And if you have commented and it isn’t posted yet, email me and let me know.

I’ve been doing some serious cleaning today. I spent this morning scrubbing the oven and polishing the counters. Sometimes I don’t know what the point is of this. It gets dirty the very next day. At least it feels good and clean for five minutes or so I guess? It makes me feel a tad bit better, but not really. Anyone know of a good eco-friendly cleaner that gets off grease? No matter how much I scrub the stove, I still see a sheen of grease. It bothers me to no end, but I’ve gone so long now without using products containing bleach or petroleum that I don’t want to cave now! Vinegar, baking soda, and castille soap have not managed to work on grease.

I know this isn’t the most exciting post I’ve ever produced (are any of them really?), but I’ve been having bad luck with picture taking these last few months. Maybe I’m just not as focused…I don’t know. I’ve made a few good eats these last couple weeks, but haven’t been able to produce an adequate picture to show you so I’ve been quiet around here. Although, I found a new cooking blog that has made me want to really get to work in the kitchen again, so hopefully I’ll have something to show for all the work I know I’ll put in. Doesn’t whole wheat cranberry-rosemary bread sound good? Or what about chicken, olive and lemon soup? I think I’m going to make the soup tonight, along with pumpkin spice cupcakes for dessert. I roasted my sugar pumpkin last night so I’ll be all prepared today. Let’s see if I’ll manage that and math homework (test tomorrow! yay!).

Hope you all are well.

Halloween is already here and I’ve not prepared at all. I still have no candy to pass out, not even a carved pumpkin in sight! What’s new?

Oh yes, did I tell you that I am back from Montreal? No, I didn’t? Well, I am.

Well, did I tell you about the most wonderful fado concert that I attended and sat third row center? Nuh uh, you say?

Or that I’m so very very close to completing that hooded baby blanket? No?! I’m really behind.

I’m sorry. I really did have two whole posts written out and lost them both. Really, I swear. No, really!

Joe has been away this week in Anaheim for a work conference and I have the whole house to myself! You better believe the wild parties I’ve been throwin’. Well, there will be cookie baking with Erin tomorrow and the passing out of candy…oh and old scary movie watching! That counts as a wild party right? Oh yeah, get the word out: “Taryn will be passing out full size candy bars tomorrow night”. Last year we got a grand total of two trick-or-treaters, so this year we are trying to bribe more ghoulies into coming to say hello. Parents will hate us, I’m sure, but anything to win the kid’s hearts and minds right?

I’ll be back with more on Montreal and the fado concert soon…I think.

I just booked our room for the trip to Montreal. I had my first encounter with a french speaking person over the phone and boy, was it ever nerve racking! Not because the man wasn’t polite and all that. He was very friendly, but I almost froze up and didn’t say anything when they answered the phone with a ‘bonjour-hello’. I had read that it is polite to always start off in french no matter if you don’t know the language or not. It’s the polite thing to do, but I just couldn’t make myself say bonjour! I’m much more nervous about going off to Montreal now. I know I’ll only have to start off in French for a few words before they realize ‘hey, she has a really horrible accent, I think she’s an American…let’s continue in english for her sake’, but oh, the idea of speaking a language which I have absolutely no schooling in is downright scary. How terribly can I mess up their language without offending them? Will I mispronounce a word so incorrectly that I end up asking the waiter for a monkey instead of the menu?

I suppose all we can do is try our darndest to not mess up the pronunciation and be extremely polite and avoid being ‘those loud and obnoxious Americans’. Actually, Joe and I are really quiet people, so we’ve been tagged as Canadians during our travels without even trying to hide the fact that we are from the U.S., but I doubt we can actually fool French Canadians so much.

That reminds me of waiting in customs to enter England. We saw a group of college age guys covered head to toe in Canadian colors with the Canadian flag patches everywhere. It looked ridiculous. They acted and talked like they were from the U.S. to me. Sure enough, I see one of them pull out a U.S. passport. They weren’t fooling anyone!

For now I’m off to practice a very important phrase…

Je ne parle pas français…..

jhuh ne parl pah frahn-say…

juh nay parl pah fraun-say…

ugh!

&

So glad fall has come, and especially happy that the cool breezy weeks are still peppered with days in the low 80’s. I wish we always had a nice mix of light rain, cool breezes and warm sun. I know this lovely weather won’t last long, so quickly do the best seasons leave us!

I’ve been assigned my garden plot last week and spent a perfect day breaking up the compacted clay and refreshing the soil with horse manure. I haven’t had a chance to plant anything yet. It’s getting so late so I need to do that this weekend, luckily the weather is going to be perfect for that.

Mostly though I’ve been knitting away. The blanket is still not complete. I’m at the half way mark. I’m definitely not progressing as quickly as I was hoping. A whole blanket of seed stitch gets ridiculously boring, so I decided to start a couple of quicker projects to work on when I need a break from the blanket. I’ve almost got my first Saartje’s Booty complete! I just need to knit the button straps and seam them up. I’ve hit a speed bump though and have a problem with casting on for the straps. I just can’t figure it out and apparently I’m not the only one with this problem, but the explanations in the help forums aren’t helping me! I hate being so close to complete and not being able to finish!

I’ve also been thinking up quick knitted christmas gifts to start now…a silk lace scarf, a pair of fetching wrist warmers, a scarflette are all possibilities. Can’t wait. I just love sitting with a warm blanket, a warm drink and something to knit.

In other news, Joe and I are going on vacation AGAIN! I know, that’s a lot of plane rides for us this year! This time I’m taking Joe to Montreal for his birthday (this month). Anybody have any suggestions for good food, things to see and do, that would be great. Just drop me an email or comment here. I’m assuming a hockey game is in order (Joe’s favorite hockey team during his youth was Montreal) and of course the botanical gardens, but what else? We are just staying for the weekend.

Oh yeah, to the local knitters:
I heard about a free alpaca farm tour on Sunday. I’ll probably be going so if anyone wants to come along, drop me a line.

Hopefully I’ll post soon with a completed pair of baby booties and a baby blanket! Have a good day all!