Eight Random Facts

Anali at Grumpator tagged me for "eight random facts" about myself so here goes:

(1) I will eat a raw beet but I will not, unless under great duress, eat a pickled beet.

(2) There's a purple leafed plant growing in my garden and I have no idea what it is. My father-in-law promised that all the seeds he gave us are food. We'll see.

(3) I am 1/8th Cree and Chippewa Indian (my great aunts and uncles call this "mitchif" meaning mixed because everybody there is French/Indian mixed blood, but mitchif can refer to anyone who is mixed). The reservation that that my part of my family lives on is the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Indian reservation in North Dakota and is considered Chippewa, even though most of the people there are more Cree than Chippewa. Apparently at the time the reservation treaty was signed, the law required a full-blooded Indian to sign and the only full-blooded guy around was Chippewa. So there you go.

(4) I finished a Janet Evanovich novel a week or so ago but I didn't put it on my Library Thing account because I was too embarrassed to admit I was reading Janet Evanovich. But I do enjoy mindless reading every now and then, or more accurately all summer.

(5) I spent one summer in college working for a funeral home where my job was, among other things, to drive bodies to the crematorium (in a big box) and then pick them up the next day (in a little box).

(6) In high school, Moses asked me to the prom and I turned him down.

(7) I'm thinking about doing a triathlon in October, but I haven't worked up the courage to register yet, and also a week ago I scraped all the skin off my knees so I'm not feeling so athletic.

(8) I harvested a beautiful roma tomato from our garden tonight (see above right).

The Root of the Problem

So, what's a Kohlrabi? Good freakin' question. I got one last week in our Community Supported Agriculture ("CSA") share. Every day I opened the refrigerator and it stared at me, defiantly, as if to say, "I dare you to find a way to put me into dinner! I dare you! I dare you! Try to eat me!! You are a mere mortal and I am Mighty Kohlrabi!! Bow to my blobby, rooty superiority--you will not conquer!" Finally I got out a big knife, killed it, and put in a soup.
Which brings me to the thing about this whole eating locally and seasonally. The weekend before last, we were visiting some good friends and conversation turned to sustainable eating and whether or not it's practical to think that everyone in world could eat organically grown, local, seasonal produce. Specifically, could a climate like Arizona realistically support its population strictly on locally grown, organic produce and meat? Is there enough farm-able land? Enough water? I'd like to think if we were really willing it could be done, and clearly it was done in the past (although there were a lot fewer people), but the truth is I don't know if it is reasonable to expect everyone to hop on board the non-processed food train. Because, to be honest, I'm not always on board. I know that I'm supposed confront the weird veggies in my CSA share with a sense of open minded adventure. But then I have a week when I'm really tired, and my ouwies still hurt, and I don't feel like cooking and I've got some funky looking thing in my vegetable bin that's going to go bad if I don't deal with it, and I just want my simple broccoli and cauliflower and carrots from New Zealand or Albania or wherever, all cleaned and chopped, and ready for mindless consumption. If I, someone who feels pretty strongly that we need to change the way we interact with the world, especially in the way we grow and eat food, is struggling with this, how could we ever convince a large portion of population to voluntaryily give up convenience eating? Maybe the answer is that we never will, but eventually someday, everybody will be forced to eat this "new" way because gas and oil will just be too expensive to support the well traveled melon and its cousin the amazing traveling zucchini. There's a happy slogan for conscious food consumption: "Eat Local or Die." Maybe that's what it'll take for me to get it too.

Book Review: Prey by Michael Crichton

Something about summer makes me only want to read the novelized equivalent of People magazine. I'm not a wit interested in my book club book (Inheritance of Loss, in which I've stalled out at about 3/4 of the way through), so I've been scrounging the library for literary distractions. Which led me to the Michael Crichton shelf.
The main character is Prey is an out of work software developer in Silicon Valley who's playing stay at home dad while looking for new work. His wife, a child psychologist, is, for some reason not very well explained, employed as a vice president of a big company developing nano-technology. The wife works long hours and comes home acting weird, so when the main character (see what an impression they made on me, I can't even remember their names) gets offered a job at the big company he takes it. He arrives to find that researchers at the company have released a "swarm" of nano-particles into the environment that are programmed with predator/prey behaviors. The company has lost control of the swarm, main character must save the day, and fun and hilarity ensues. Okay, maybe not fun an hilarity, but a least page turning.
Probably needless to say, this work will not go down in annals of great literature, but it was fun to read and had a nice, satisfying plot line. None of this "character study" crap that I have no patience for in summer.
...........
Ouwie update: they still hurt. Also, the "hurt-free" antiseptic wash is not hurt--free, that claim is a complete marketing lie. It's about as hurt-free as as Twinkies are fat free. It is hurt-full, as in it hurts like hell to put on, as in I have practice the breathing I learned in child-birth class just to work up the courage to squirt some on. And I am so sorry, Garion, that I never believed when you screamed, "IT HURTS!!!" because now I know it totally does.

Wipeout

I am such an idiot. This morning, while happily riding my bike to work I got into a tussle with some railroad tracks and the railroad tracks won. The idiot part is because I soon as a started crossing over, I knew I was hitting the tracks at the wrong angle, and then smack! I was on the ground. And bleeding from five different places ordered here from top to bottom: chin, shoulder, both knees, and my ankle. I considered including a picture, but truth be told it's gross, and the internet really doesn't need anymore gross pictures. I also managed to bend up my bike a bit (but I think Moses can fix it). I of course called Moses to come rescue me--I am so glad he had a phone today because I was exactly half way between home in work, and I'm not sure which way I would have started limping if I had to get home on my own. Garion took one look at me started bawling, which was exactly what I wanted to do, but felt I should try to hold it together while in public. I asked him if I could have a Sponge-Bob band aid, but he said no, so I guess he wasn't feeling too bad for me : ). I decided to take the rest of today off to nurse my wounds and have treated myself with a liberal dose of antibiotic ointment and an iced mocha from Starbucks. I'm planning to hunker down for a Lord of the Rings marathon--I think watching other people getting seriously beat-up will help me forget how much my ouwies hurt.

Geeky Thoughts

Since January, I've been taking a lap swimming class twice a week through Tucson's Parks and Recreation. I love to swim and this class has been a great way for me to build some stamina and release some stress. As part of my new resolution to kick the car habit as much as possible, this morning I decided I'd ride my bike to my swimming class and then ride work. Which I did. Which means riding my bike at 5:oo in the morning because my swimming class is at the ungodly hour of 5:30. This also means riding my bike to work after an hour of swimming. Needless to say, by the time I got to work this morning, I was starving. If it had taken me any longer to open my containers of yogurt and granola, I probably would have resorted to eating the plants in my office. Also, I still had to ride to home--I think I'm going sleep really good tonight. And probably have sore legs tomorrow. I wish that my body could respond as instantly to my desire to bike everywhere as quickly as I've decided that this is something I should do; I can hardly wait until the day when I can bike, plus swim, plus ride home and not feel completely wiped.
On the other hand, now that I've done it once, I know it can be done and I'm feeling even more encouraged to bike whenever I can. Which leads to the shamefully geeky thought I had today as I was contemplating the wonderfulness of my bicycle: wouldn't it be great if you could choose as bicycle as your mount in World of Warcraft?! You could ride around smiting the forces of evil from your slick, two wheeled steed that didn't require the upkeep of horse but still moved you efficiently from point A to point B and didn't pollute the world with those mechanical chickens or whatever they are! AND!! you could have a bicycle helmet for your head, like a bike helmet +50 to armor, +100 to intellect (because you'd made the intelligent choice to ride a bike!), and +200 to stamina (because think of all that extra exercise you'd be getting!)!! It would be sooooooo kewl.

We Didn't Die!!

I'm pleased to report that Garion and I had two separate trail-a-bike adventures and we are still alive to tell about them. We made it to daycare on Friday and to swimming lesson sign-up on Saturday. I feel like should get an I-didn't-drive-my-car-for-two days gold star. Riding a bicycle with the trail-a-bike and Garion attached is sort of like riding a bike drunk (I suspect), or maybe like having an alien being in control of your bike, or maybe like riding on ice--lots of weird movement and very little control. But hey, we lived!
I've been jonesing for an Xtracycle attachment for my bicycle and a couple of days with the trail-a-bike has reinforced my coveting. The only problem is the Xtracycle is expensive, and I mean like a car payment expensive. If I save up all my allotted spending money, I can buy one in three months (with a contribution also from Moses's spending money, because he says it'd be worth it just so I'd quit yammering about the Xtracycle)--we'll see if I have that much discipline. In the mean time, I'm making Moses tow the trail-a-bike.