My Carbon Footprint

This morning, in a fit of conscientiousness, I calculated my carbon footprint.  I've calculated it before, using the calculator on the UC Berkeley, when I was in my first Environmental Studies class at UCSD.  My carbon footprint has gone up, somewhat significantly, because I've since flown a few times this year, to San Francisco, to Barcelona and London (a circle trip), and Roatan.  My footprint was, for the previous year, something far below the average for the industrialized world, but appears to have moved up into the average for industrial nations, though still far below the average for the United States.

The calculator I used this morning is located here:
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

The calculator at Berkeley is here:
http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/carboncalculator

I have not gone back to recalculate my former footprint (though I suppose I could dig and look for records in my class notes), but considering I had made only (should I really phrase it "only"?) a single transoceanic flight in each of the previous few years, I don't think it's all that terrible for my lifetime thus far (though I realize that many people in the United States do not have the means to travel extensively).

Well, it's time for me to go back to bed and finish sleeping.

Community Choice Energy

This morning, I attended a meeting with three San Diego groups:  SanDiego350, Sierra Club San Diego, Friends of San Diego Clean Energy, and the San Diego Chapter of the California Solar Energy Industries Association.  In attendance were about a hundred people.  The morning was opened by a short welcome from San Diego 350.org's Bob Braaton, who essentially "witnessed" to us his epiphany when he came face to face with a hummingbird in his back yard.


Todd Gloria told us how he took his temporary mayoral role (after Bob Filner's scandalous vacating of the position) to push forward an environmental agenda, including hiring Nicole Capretz and charging her with putting together a Climate Action Plan for the City of San Diego.  It was high time such an action was taken, and the audience demonstrated its approval.  There were four other speakers, I believe, though their names escape me at this moment.  The last speaker was a woman, Shawn Marshall, who is one of the founders of Marin Clean Energy.  She used to hold a government position, and in that position, she helped move Marin County forward in its adoption of clean, renewable energy providers.  It was heartening.
Before the start of the morning session, I ate several blueberries and a strawberry.  I also drank two cups of coffee, which kept me going, as the tea I'd been drinking with breakfast was red tea and therefore caffeine-free.  Between the fruit and yogurt that I'd eaten for breakfast and the coffee, I was pretty good all morning.  I still need to try a recipe for coffee with butter, though.  Yes, it sounds strange, but the person who published the recipe swears by it, as it keeps her energy level steady all morning and into the afternoon.  I'm not sure if I'd want to skip lunch, but if it allowed her to postpone lunch to get things done during her morning, all the more power to her, I say.
Of course, at the end of the morning, folks helped put things away.  Some people (including myself) were given packages of food to take home.  I was given about a half dozen assorted bagels:  whole wheat, plain, sesame, cranberry, and asiago cheese.  I brought the box home and put them on the kitchen counter for K to eat, as I'm still avoiding excessive carbohydrate consumption.
I walked to Park Boulevard and waited for a few minutes for the bus.  I then decided to walk to the nearest bus stop where the 20 bus goes, which was the one after City College on Eleventh Avenue.
On the ride home, I dozed several times, waking when we'd reached Fashion Valley, and again when we'd reached Kearny Mesa Transit Center.  I closed my eyes and rested them until we had reached the northeast corner of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar (near the Carroll Canyon Road exit from the 15).  I managed to keep my eyes open until I got off the bus and walked the rest of the way home.
I made myself a frittata with shiitakes, a handful of fresh basil, and Danish feta cheese.  No additional seasonings were needed, as the feta made the frittata plenty salty and the basil provided a nice counterbalance to it.  Since then, I've been trying to think of things to bake (though we're really full-up on cookies right now).  I was thinking banana bread, since we have a bunch and a half and they're all perfectly ripe now, and are starting to become too ripe to eat.  Perfect baking bananas.  Since we already have the banana cookies we'd made last Sunday, K doesn't want to make more cookies.  What else can one make with ripe bananas?
I just found (another) recipe for banana bread, but this one is "paleo," meaning no wheat, but rather coconut flour, almond flour, and almond butter (though I think we'll substitute peanut butter this time).







Any ideas out there for banana recipes besides bread and Foster?

Oatmeal Cookies with Golden Raisins and Cranberries

Ingredients:

1/2 c.    light brown sugar
.25 lb.  unsalted butter, softened (important that it's at room temperature)
1 t.       salt
2 t.       baking powder
1 t.       ground cinnamon
2 t.       vanilla extract
1          jumbo (or 2 large) egg
1.25 c. whole wheat flour
.25 c.   golden raisins, chopped roughly
.25 c.   cranberries, chopped roughly
1.5 c.   rolled oats (not the quick-cook variety

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat butter on high speed in a stand mixer until fluffy (I didn't think butter would ever look "fluffy," but it actually lightens in color and does gain volume!).  Add sugar and mix on medium-high speed, scraping the bowl a couple of times to make sure everything combines.  Add egg and vanilla extract, beating well after each addition.
Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.  Add in three sections to wet ingredients, scraping the bowl between.
Add raisins and cranberries, and mix well.  Stir in rolled oats.  Some of the oats may not completely incorporate, but the baked oats taste good as a crunchy snack, anyway.
Scoop by tablespoonfuls onto silicone-lined baking sheet.  The batter will be stiff enough to make pretty "tall" cookies.
Bake for about 14 minutes.
Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for one minute before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Makes about two and a half dozen cookies.

Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies with Browned Butter and Mascarpone

Experiment du jour:

1/2 lb. browned butter

about 1/2-3/4 c. brown sugar

8 oz. mascarpone cheese at room temperature

about 2 tsp almond extract

about 2 tsp vanilla extract

1 jumbo egg

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 1/4 c. whole wheat flour

3/4 c. walnuts, chopped finely

about 1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Beat butter, mascarpone, and sugar. Add egg while continuing to run the mixer. With mixer still running at low-to medium speed, add extracts and salt and mix until all the wet ingredients are cooled and well-incorporated. Add flour, 3/4 c. at a time, scraping after each addition, adding the baking powder with the last 3/4 cup addition.

Turn off mixer and remove bowl. Add nuts and chips, and stir thoroughly.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls on silicone-lined baking sheet, leaving about two inch spaces between.

Bake in preheated 375º F. oven for about 11-13 minutes, until cookies start to brown on top (they will sizzle as they bake).

Remove from oven and allow to cool on baking sheet for one minute before cooling completely on rack.

The USPS Needs a Good Kick in the Pants

No kidding, I can hear you say aloud, reading the title.  Well, as it turns out, PayPal will NOT refund my money through its Buyers' Protection Program because the USPS failed to update the status of my package that I'd mailed on 5 May (that's LAST month) after it'd accepted it for delivery.  I suppose most people don't bother checking on outgoing packages, and most of them arrive unmolested.  However, when a package has money riding on it, you bet I'm going to certify its mailing, and the PO had better NOT LOSE TRACK OF IT.  The customer rep on the phone at PayPal said that there was nothing he, personally, could do, as the information needed is from the PO, and the PO appears to be playing f*cking games:

Thank you for contacting the United States Postal Service.

You have reached the office of the Consumer Advocate.  Our normal business hours are: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday.  If you have contacted us during normal business hours, we will respond to your inquiry as quickly as possible.  However, if you have contacted us outside of normal business hours or on a Federal observed holiday, we will respond on the following business day.

As an alternative, you may contact our Customer Care Center at 1-800-ASK-USPS (800-275-8777).  The Customer Care Center hours of operation are: Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m.-8:30 p.m. EST and Saturdays, 8:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. EST

And this after I'd written back that I need some kind of resolution:

In order to better serve you, your recently submitted inquiry was forwarded to an office that is better suited to address your needs. It is being investigated and you can expect a reply within 2 to 4 business days

And this:

Thank you for contacting the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General Hotline. The OIG Hotline was established to provide stakeholders, US Postal Service employees, and the American public with a confidential means of reporting incidences of suspicious activity to the OIG concerning fraud, waste, abuse, and misconduct within the US Postal Service.  

While we can't guarantee we can recover lost money or items, your information can help alert Investigators to problem areas and possibly prevent others from being victimized. Your concern has been received and documented in our database. If additional information is necessary, someone will contact you.

-----Original Message-----

From: Nancy Yuen [mailto:nancyuen@yahoo.com] 

Sent: Monday, June 09, 2014 9:26 PM

To: Hotline Mailbox

Subject: delivery status update

I need delivery confirmation for the following package:

9514800024804125000115

I require confirmation of delivery because I am awaiting a refund for that returned package.  Since the USPS had accepted the package from me for delivery, I will hold USPS responsible for the refund should I not receive it from the vendor, who denies having received it.

So I'm phoning the Rancho Bernardo office this morning to see what kind of answer I can get out of these federally-paid weasels.

What was the phrase Melissa Ethridge used?

"...survival is easy but satisfaction is rough..."

Indeed, rough to obtain, even in the age of almost instantaneous information retrieval and the lightning-speed of the Internet.

So the best I can get is satisfaction at helping the PO better its ways so as to prevent other victims of its horrendous treatment of certified postal packages?  I'm waiting for the Rancho Bernardo office to open in a couple hours now (actually, less than that now)...

The Beginning of a Great Adventure

I love that song by Lou Reed.  In fact, I enjoy that entire album, named for the city in which I lived the summer it was introduced into my life, which was 1991.  That was the summer I interned at the Insurance Services Office, located in World Trade Center 5, after my second year of college.  I was dating the older brother of one of my housemates, and we were (almost?) the quintessential New Yorkers:  liberal, young, and happy.  Though we were both on budgets, we were good at finding great free events/activities to take up while I was there.  No, we were not living anything like the "Friends" depicted on television, but we were happy.  We were a nice Jewish boy from Wisconsin and a young Chinese-American woman (we insisted on calling ourselves women - or wimmin, or womyn - in those days at Wellesley) from Bergen County, New Jersey.

I received a letter recently from a friend I'd met while I lived in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.  Ann commented that my life, since having moved to San Diego, appears to have been quite full and interesting in fulfilling ways.  I looked back at my life while I lived in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, and realized that at that point, my life was quite circumscribed by my physical circumstances.  I was a stay-at-home mom to a young child (Kat aged from 6 to 8 then), and my life was centered on improving my mental and, to a lesser extent, physical abilities after having been pretty well-battered as the result of a rush-hour automobile collision involving my economy 4-door sedan and a tractor trailer.  I remember just being thankful (to nobody in particular, but nonetheless, relieved) that Kat was not in the car with me, for though her car seat was securely fastened to the center of the rear seat, she would nonetheless have suffered injuries from flying broken glass and psychological trauma, for she probably would not have lost consciousness, as I had.

While I recovered slowly, I started to play Bridge as a means of improving my short-term memory skills while enjoying social interaction.  Most (actually, all) of the other members of the Williamsport Bridge Club were retirees who had their Tuesday afternoons free.  Actually, just about all of my days were free, as I had no job -or even job prospects- at this point.  I helped set out the snacks and coffee each Tuesday afternoon, and enjoyed the weekly lessons before a few hours of play.  All the players were friendly, even if they gave intense competition during the game.  There would be breaks when we chatted about our families and lives.  I enjoyed those afternoons.  After I left the Keystone State for the sunny Southwest (first stopping in Albuquerque for the summer, then finally landing in San Diego), I kept in touch with Ann, one of my occasional partners in playing (her husband, Frank, does not play Bridge, or at least doesn't to the extent that Ann plays).  More often than not, the instructor, whose name escapes me now, was usually my partner, as I was one of the few people there who was not joined by their spouse or another regular partner.

When I moved to Albuquerque, and then, later, San Diego, I played Bridge as a means of joining an established community which was friendly and open to new players.  There appeared to be very little ego in the room, just fun being had by all who were learning or re-learning after a hiatus that may have lasted years.  Not that Bridge cannot be stressful, but playing it is enjoyable for me, though I have not played in many, many months now (essentially since taking up SCUBA diving, three years ago).

I was reminded of how much I enjoy games during our recent trip on the Horizon, over Memorial Day weekend, when we went to Santa Catalina Island and San Clemente.  I played a few games of Mexican Train (dominoes) with a couple of older women and enjoyed taking my turns, chatting, and playing, even if I didn't win.  The other players commented on my sportsmanship, and I replied that as often as I find myself losing, it helps to enjoy the play as much as I do.  Winning is a plus, no longer a focus.  The games seem to have become much more of a journey for me than a means to an end.

Anyway, all of this was brought to mind when I received a letter from Ann, informing me that she's been in physical therapy because she'd fallen a couple times due to strength imbalance in her legs.  I think Ann's in her early- to mid-80's now, just about 40 years older than I am.  I recently took some stock of my general health, and while I am, by may respects, healthy, I'm not near as fit as I'd like to be.
As a reminder to myself, I want to get back into running intervals again, especially now that my hip is feeling much better after the little bit of rest and physical therapy it did receive over the past three weeks.  I ran once last week, and I may go again this afternoon/evening, depending on how the schedule works out with my going to the gym and getting to the equipment I like before it becomes too crowded with the after-work crowd.  It also depends on when Kat gets home, of course.

The reason I wanted to write this entry in the first place was to introduce the fact that Kat and I will be taking Professional Bakeshop Skills together through San Diego Continuing Education, which will be very, very cool.  She actually attended the first class this week with Liz because I was still recovering from food poisoning that I acquired Sunday afternoon at the SCUBA show.  Next week, I will attend Monday afternoon/evening's class, and Kat will be on her field trip with her Girl Scout troop to NorCal.  The following week, we'll finally be able to attend a class together.  There'll be optional Friday classes as well, and I'm fairly sure we'll try to make it to a lot of those sessions, too.  I'm tres excited to take a class with her, especially in a topic that we both love and can bring into our home life, as well as something that can go beyond our home life, eventually, depending on how things go...

Last Day of Pastries and Desserts Class

Yesterday was the last meeting of Pastries & Desserts.  On Monday, the summer term begins and I will explore Advanced Bakeshop Skills, which is described as learning baking theory and practicing production techniques.  Could come in handy.  I'd asked Jake which class I ought to take to learn how to make puff pastry and ladyfingers, and he said, "Advanced Bakeshop Skills."  He also recommended taking it at the West City campus, because the kitchen there is superior to the one at the Educational Cultural Complex, where I'd taken Pastries & Desserts with him.

We made baklava (with prepared phyllo dough from a box, of course;  similarly, we'd used store-bought ladyfingers last week for tiramisu) for our final class meeting.  Fortunately, the two women I'd liked most from the class, Sonya and Sarah, were friends and actually asked me for my phone number.  I exchanged phone numbers with them.  They both live in Golden Hill, east of Downtown (San Diego).  When the baklava that I'd prepared with another young woman, whose name I've forgotten now, came out of the oven, it looked really nice and well-baked.

Yikes!  In a spate of clearing files from the camera's memory card, I deleted the photos I'd taken of our lovely baklava!  Oh, well;  I suppose that just means I'll have to make another one sometime...

Election Day, June 2014

Tuesday, I awoke at my usual time, about 4:30 am, and realized that I should not be going back to sleep, for I was due at the polling station at 5:45 in order to set up the touchscreen voting machine and to meet the other workers at my precinct.  The Precinct Inspector was a pleasant Vietnamese woman named Grace, the Assistant Precinct Inspector was a woman whose name escaped my mind the moment after she introduced herself to me, who was also a Vietnamese immigrant; there were two men, one who was about my age or a little older, who had a son in high school, and a retired man who very proudly informed me that he had a son who attended Columbia University for undergraduate and either medical school or law school.

This older man's name was Augusto (or something like that), and he exhibited all the pride that comes from a lack of self-knowledge, especially as one ages and loses mental capacities that once may have been quite superior (though being a doctor from South America would not have been a high recommendation to me for his practice).  It was sad and frustrating at the same.  He had taken it upon himself to assume the job of looking up voters' addresses and names in the street index, which was arranged alphabetically by street name, then in numerical order of the address.  Seemed quite simple enough to me, and I figured that it was not his eyesight that limited his ability to look up names and addresses quickly, but rather the molasses flow of his mind.

As the day waxed, few voters turned up with long draughts between.  We sat and most of us chatted with one another, about family, mostly.  I learned how Grace's family had slowly immigrated, each entering group gaining citizenship and, in turn, sponsoring additional family members to join them. I think I was in the same entering generation of immigrants as her niece, who is my age. Grace told me how, as immigrants, her generation, as parents, had focused their energy on teaching their children English, and not their native tongue, thus producing a generation (mine) that feels the loss of the intergenerational connection that language provides in families of immigrants.

When I asked if Augusto would allow Tim, who sat next to him, to take the job of looking up street addresses, his reaction was defensive and rather pitiful in its expression of pride. He said that if I wanted him to leave and go home, he could do that (I was sooo tempted!). He refused to take into consideration the fact that voters were waiting, thankfully patiently, for him to look up their addresses after having it reiterated for him a number of times not less than two. At the end of the evening, he was in a hurry to leave, and would not lend a hand in counting and totaling the ballots. I turned my attention to the touchscreen voting machine and limited it to the task of having the machine tabulate the number of votes cast (zero) and the respective number of votes each candidate received (zero, of course). Augusto left before the ballots were all counted. The last thing he did do was to go outside and pick up the yellow “Vote Here” signs from the street entrance to the building. After he left, Tim tried to make due with the required signatures on various documents, though without the fifth signature, I'm not sure id the ballots cast at our voting station were actually counted. I don't know enough about the electoral process in California to be able to tell whether voting was a waste of the time of all of those voters in our precinct because of one angry aged man whose pride meant more to him than any social benefit he may have provided by “serving” as a poll worker. In my not-so-humble opinion, he should not receive his stipend (although it's not much, under $100) because he essentially reneged on his duties.

As I left the parking lot of the church where the voting materials drop-off took place, Grace called to me and invited me to have lunch or dinner with her (and the Assistant Precinct Inspector) sometime. Indeed, that would be nice. Might even invite Tim, who was not unpleasant at all, either, to work with.

I told Peter when I saw him later that I hope never to become belligerent in old age. If my faculties begin to wane, I just hope to do it gracefully and not pin my ego on my intellectual prowess, which can only go down. He agreed that that would be a damn shame.