I found this while surfing around today:
The Grub Report: How to Eat Like a Local

It’s an interesting thought. Eat locally. Eat REALLY locally. At first I was like, “Hey, that’s not so bad.” I think Tim and I eat a larger amount of “local” food, by which I mean at least locally-prepared, than most people, because we buy from the Farmer’s Market and from a local coop that makes an effort to get local stuff, and because our favorite restaurants just happen to be local places. And our breakfasts are from a local bagel company.

But then as I read more, I realized that it was a lot harder than I realized. Because if you want to get down to it, probably a lot of the “local” stuff we buy isn’t actually local down to the source of the raw ingredients, which is apparently the point of this challenge. We buy it from local people, but I don’t think that they’re necessarily making a big effort to keep things local.

And some of that is just because they can’t. There is no ready source of local flour. We don’t grow wheat here. The seafood in the restaurants here is all trucked in; there aren’t any oceans anywhere near here. I also don’t think there’s a big freshwater fish industry locally, although I know there are supposed to be some nice bass and catfish hanging out somewhere in the area. Olives, citrus fruit… How many things do we all use that won’t even grow in this climate?

And that’s the reason I don’t think I could live up to this challenge. I couldn’t go all local, not just for a month. If I really felt like it, I might be able to modify my eating habits on a more permanent basis and start eating only things that will actually grow in this area… But it’s not worth it for a month. Frankly, I’m not up for it anyway. I likes me some bread, you know? We buy local when we can, but when it comes to the things that just aren’t available…

I do think it’s an interesting exercise in eating consciously, though. Being aware of where your food comes from, whether that’s your own backyard or halfway around the world. I’m feeling inspired; I might try it. Not for a long time, I think… Maybe just for a day or two. It would be an interesting exercise, if nothing else.

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“Self.”

“Yeah. Still here.”

“What if you make your own chicken stock? Isn’t that what you put those chicken bones in the freezer for?  Wouldn’t that be pretty low in sodium, since you’re not adding any salt?”

“Well, because I hadn’t thought of it, duh. And I see you’ve found some interesting-looking recipes. Do you know, self, I think this might just work.”

“Self?”

“Yeah, I’m still still here.  I’m…  not going anywhere, you know.”

“Why haven’t we tried Thai food before?”

“That’s a good question, self.”

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Well, I thought I was being a really bad girl yesterday because I was just feeling so tired and run-down by the time I got home that I just didn’t care, so I had beer and pizza for dinner and then a bite of fudge for dessert, and then sorbet later. As it turns out, I was only 50 calories over (which I probably burned walking around the building and between buildings at work), and the various things like carbs and fat and whatever mostly balanced out pretty well. I was pleasantly surprised.

I have discovered a yummy, if inherently flawed, lunch. Thai Kitchen makes these wonderful instant noodle dishes… Not ramen, though. They’re some kind of rice noodle soup. As easy as ramen, not quite as cheap (though at $1/packet and $1.80/bowl, that’s still a fairly cheap lunch), but with better taste. Some in packets, some in bowls. I kind of filled in with a couple of them this week because I just couldn’t think of what to have for lunches and they were handy and easy. Yesterday was a nicely spicy-sour Lemongrass Chili packet, today is a Roasted Garlic bowl. The major problem with them, of course, is the sodium. I really, really wish they weren’t so bad (the garlic bowl contains 1400mg, nearly 60% of my recommended daily intake) because otherwise they make such great lunches.

Maybe I can indulge myself once a week or something. *sigh* That Lemongrass Chili stuff was really good.

“Self?”

“Yo.”

“What if you make your OWN lemongrass-chili soup?  I bet you could find some sort of recipe–if nothing else, a similar one that you could cannabilize.”

“True, true.  Would it be lower sodium, though?  I mean, there’s still broth.”

“Hell if I know. But it’s worth a try.”

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Vacation was somewhat exempt from the diet. It maybe shouldn’t have been as much as it was. I’m pretty sure I ate (and drank) too much of all the wrong things…  I was going to total it all up, but it got too depressing.  Let’s just say, a lot of deep-fried stuff, a lot of high fat stuff, a surprising amount of alcohol, and way too many snacks for my own good.  I haven’t weighed myself yet.  I’m almost afraid of it.  I’ll try to remember to tonight, though.  I should do it just to know how far I’ve got to go back.

I’ve been doing pretty well, so far, but of course today’s only the second day back.  Yesterday I came out at 100 calories over (the coffee martini at bedtime got me).  Today…  Depends on if and how I snack tonight.  So far I’m pretty far under.  We’ll see.

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To Whom It May Concern:

My husband and I and two friends stayed at the Comfort Inn in Statesville, North Carolina (location NC439) on the night of June 24, 2006. I will be filling out the survey you sent in regards to the overall quality of our stay, and of course we reported minor problems to the hotel management. However, during our stay we became aware of a serious safety concern which I thought should be brought to the attention of the Choice Hotels chain management.

When we arrived, we were tired and wanted to relax, so of course we went to the pool/hot tub area. The water in the hot tub felt extremely warm. We happened to have a digital thermometer with us, so we measured the water temperature. The water temperature was 111 degrees Fahrenheit. We reported this to the front desk attendant. She told us that policy was to keep the hot tub water at 108 degrees, and did turn down the heat. Later, when our digital thermometer was still registering 106 degrees, she returned, measured the temperature by dropping a standard pool thermometer in for a few seconds, and assured us that the water was now 104.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) advises, in document #5112, that the temperature of a hot tub should never exceed 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and that temperatures of 110 degrees have been known to lead to death. This recommendation has been in place for at least nineteen years, as the CPSC indicates that it helped develop requirements for temperature controls ensuring that water temperature in hot tubs stays safe in 1987. A copy of CPSC document #5112 is enclosed for your convenience.

I hope that you will inform the Statesville, North Carolina Comfort Inn of these facts and require them to start maintaining their hot tub at a safe temperature. As a guest at your hotel, I find this extremely dangerous situation to be completely unacceptable, and I feel obligated to take such steps as are available to me to correct it. In addition to writing this letter, I will therefore be reporting the situation to the CPSC myself.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Sara Johnson

———-

Blog Notes: The above letter is pretty much self-explanatory. I’m sending it to Choice Hotels’ corporate headquarters by postal mail. In case of curiosity: we had two digital thermometers with us, actually, both for the same purpose. Two of us are tea drinkers, and green tea does best in 185-degree water, so we had thermometers along to make sure we got our tea water to the right temperature.

The relevant document from the CSPC can be viewed by clicking here. When I went to report my complaint, I did realize that the CSPC might not actually specialize in this sort of thing, where the problem is in the operation of a public facility rather than the manufacture of a unit, but maybe this will do some good. If anyone else knows who else I should be reporting this to, I’d be interested to know. Most of the stuff we didn’t like (towels too small, ice machine not working, not enough variety of breakfast foods, etc.) was just annoying, but this… this is an actual serious safety concern, so I feel like a bigger deal needs to be made than just bitching in a courtesy survey or something.

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Well, I’ve been gone for a week–ten days really–on vacation. Tim and I and Mike and Sara B. went out to North Carolina and rented a beach house on the Outer Banks. Mostly it was excellent. (Or maybe I should say it was flippin’ sweet.) We saw the usual sights, hung out at the house and on the beach, ate a lot of good food (we highly reccomend Uncle Pauly’s and the Down Under in Rodanthe, and of course the Weeping Radish in Manteo), and generally enjoyed ourselves. It was Mike and Sara’s first time in the area, and they really seemed to have a great time too. I actually came back with a little bit more color–not too much, but for once all of it tan and none of it burn. (Through SPF 70 sunscreen. Seriously, y’all, 30 and below might as well be hand lotion for all the good it does me.)

My brain’s too full of things to do to make a better report right now. I’ll say more later. I also kept a handwritten log while I was out there, which I’ll probably make available for anyone who cares to read it. It’s 16.75 pages front and back, though, so I won’t post ALL of it here in the blog. I’ll just put it up somewhere and post a link and some excerpts.

Another post to come soon with the one really serious complaint of the trip… There were minor annoyances here and there, but this one was bad enough I felt the need to write a formal letter about it to the management of Choice Hotels (which owns the Comfort Inn we stayed overnight at on the way out and on the way back). I’ll post the letter in a few; it should be self-explanatory.

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Tim is catching up on my blog archives.  He pointed out something to me that I hadn’t really thought much about.  I keep making all these attempts to start writing again, and I keep failing.  Why?

His theory is that I’m not failing.  To quote:  “You write all the time.  You write your life.”  His point is that I do write–I write here all the time.  Just because it’s not fiction or poetry or even anything formal most of the time doesn’t mean it’s not writing.

I hadn’t thought of it like that.

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10 Rules of Writing

Most of these I’ve seen before in similar lists. Most of them I have to agree with. Some of them I have a knee-jerk “but–” reaction to. I’m kind of wondering if there’s any reason for that reaction other than a somewhat childish desire to defend my own writing.

For example: I’ve always kind of figured the Alex book has to have a prologue to set the stage. (Or I did assume that, when I felt like I might actually finish it at some point.) Now, looking at this list, I’m thinking… why? Because, you know, this guy’s kind of right. It’s backstory. It can be dropped in any old where it’ll fit, just the same as the other significant backstory I’ve cut out. And, you know, with a few exceptions I don’t tend to pay all that much attention to prologues myself; why should I expect that my readers do any differently?

And then there’s rule #4, no adverbs modifying the word “said” as used to carry dialog. My first reaction was to protest that they fill in tone of voice, something that plain text cannot convey. But… In a novel you have room to set the stage so that a certain tone is conveyed, and room to describe nonverbal cues that will imply the same things tone of voice might. You also have control over every single thing said in the conversation; you can have another character’s reaction speak to the tone of voice. The more I think about it, the more I think this could be one reason why I’m so dissatisfied with the way my dialog comes out on paper; I do too much of trying to describe tone of voice with adverbs, and not enough filling in the scene around it so that I don’t need the adverbs. It sounds good in my head because my mind fills in the necessary shadings, but I haven’t translated those well to paper.

I think that, should I decide to try to write again (gasp), I should maybe try an exercise wherein I force myself to adhere to these rules. (Or at least as many of them as could be applied to an exercise shorter than a novel.) Perhaps even just go back and rework some existing stuff to adhere to them. I hesitate to invest too much time in doing so to either of my major projects, since as written they both have major changes to be made. (Krissitni may, in fact, be completely trashed other than the dream sequence at the beginning; it kept going off in directions I couldn’t effectively pursue.) However, even if all I do is rework everything and then throw it out anyway, at least I’ve gotten the practice in and gotten a better feel for how stuff comes out when those rules are followed.

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I’ve been really bad at impulse control lately. I feel hungry? I snack. I want something to help me get to sleep? I have that warm milk or that martini. I’ve been doing more “walk around the 5-acre building” sort of stuff during the work day than I had been for a while, but not enough to offset my indulgence. I stepped onto the scale last night and discovered I had gained back five pounds.

Five pounds isn’t the end of the world, by any means. But it’s representative of a trend that I don’t want to continue. So I’m going to have to buckle down again. I keep saying that and then not doing it… This time I mean it? This was so easy for a while. When did it get so hard again?

I’m going to make a deal with myself. A week from tomorrow, we leave for vacation. If I can exercise my self-control this week, I can treat myself on vacation. If I go overboard this week, though, I have to watch what I eat. Not count calories, not on vacation, but not have a lot of treats either. Try to choose the healthy options even if what I want is a big honking plate of German sausage and spatzle, and drink water rather than beer or soda, and so forth. No sweets. That sort of thing.

Of course, the success of that as a “punishment” depends upon my ability to control my impulses on vacation. The plan may be somewhat flawed. I have to start somewhere, though.

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…All of them magic, and all of them true.

Windflowers
I couldn’t wait to touch them
To smell them
I held them closely

I’m in fifth grade. I don’t know what windflowers are or why they would entrance a person to the extent that Seals and Crofts describe. All I know is that this–this is beautiful music. In a strange way, I fall under the spell of the “windflowers”; my young attempts at art and writing include them to an almost startling degree. I cover pages and pages of notebook with crude attempts at drawing endless variations on the flower motif. I make up a story which essentially does nothing but flesh out the song. Poorly. I envision windflowers as some sort of wonderfully tragic family curse, binding father and son to care for them above anything else and tend the blooms before their own needs. Half a decade later, I finally find a picture of actual windflowers in a gardening catalogue. The reality is somewhat less dramatic than I’d imagined, almost disappointing.

I was there to hear your borning cry
I’ll be there when you are old…

I’m in junior high. I’m fascinated with making music–which takes the form of playing the piano, since that’s what is available to me. The problem is, I can’t play it very well. In the first place, although I read trebel clef fairly fluently, I’m hopeless with bass clef. In the second place, my brain doesn’t want to work in the way that allows both hands to operate independently on the keys anyway. I can certainly pick out a melody, though, and I do so with various pieces of sheet music sitting around our house. Sometimes I even sneak bits of music home from church when they print something in the bulletin. I try chords sometimes, but they tend to have odd pauses before them as I try to position my hands correctly, and some of them are played a little too forcefully as I shove the keys down triumphantly after correcting a mistake. I never do get the hang of it, but at least I have a good time failing.

But God don’t make lonely girls
Sure didn’t want ‘em in His world
God don’t make lonely girls

It’s high school, the Age of Angst. The Wallflowers have just released a new album, and entranced by Jakob Dylan’s eyes and the first single from the disc, I’ve bought it. I like it well enough to stick it in quite often when I’m reading or playing Tetris. But one song always trips me up. I like the song well enough, but I’m caught in the grasp of that delusion that plagues teens everywhere: that no one really understands me, that I am all alone. When I’m particularly deep in angst-fest, I tend to spit back nasty comments at the poor defenseless CD player. “Oh yeah? Then what am I, Jakob? What the hell am I?” For maximum dramatic effect, of course, this line must always be delivered with a British accent. I do this with deadly seriousness, and later look back on it and laugh helplessly at myself.

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
Cause sooner or later it’s over
I just don’t want to miss you tonight

I’m in an empty house, alone with Tim, caught up in the thrill and the rush of a new relationship. The worst thing we have to worry about right now is our classes in college; both of us are working part-time in relatively low-stress jobs and still living with our parents. It’s two in the morning, and I just really don’t want to go home. I want to stay there forever with Tim, just us with nothing to do but be together. I play up the exhaustion in my voice and call Mom and Dad to let them know I won’t be home that night. I say I fell asleep and just woke up and am too tired to drive. It’s not entirely a lie, but not the whole truth either. Somewhere in the background, the Goo Goo Dolls are playing on late-night MTV. After I get off the phone I sit there and sing along softly, thinking to myself, Life is very good.

She leaned over…gave me butterfly kisses with her mama there,
Sticking little white flowers all up in her hair
“Walk my down the aisle, Daddy-it’s just about time.”
“Does my wedding gown look pretty, Daddy? Daddy, don’t cry!”

I’m in Fountain Square Ballroom in downtown Bloomington. I’m wearing the most expensive thing I’ve ever worn in my entire life, a white gown with a tank-style bodice that’s almost too tight and a skirt made of more tulle than I ever hope to see again. There is a brand-new ring on the third finger of my left hand. I normally hate being the center of attention, but tonight I feel like a princess. “Butterfly Kisses” is perhaps not an original choice of songs, but I don’t care about originality; it’s just too perfect. Maybe the details are off, but the right feeling is there. Dad takes my hand and we dance, and for some reason I just keep thinking of the last time I can remember dancing with him at a wedding. I was much younger, I didn’t care for dancing too much, and at the end of a song I broke away and ran off–quite rudely, I now realize. Tonight, my pespective on the whole thing is very different. Dad is so caught up in the moment that he doesn’t at first catch the significance of the song. I don’t mind; hearing it makes me cry (happily!) years later anyway.

I could go on and on. So many songs, evoking so many memories. I think this post is probably getting beyond “too long” now, though, so I’ll save some for another day.

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