I've been thinking a bit lately about how much my carbon footprint has increased in just this past year. Before then, my carbon footprint after having moved to san Diego could have been something to be envied: I took the bus pretty much everywhere local, I walked a lot, and didn't drive much to go anywhere. I lived a somewhat satisfying, if locally-focused, life.
During this past year, however, I've been doing my share of contributing to global climate change, and it's not something that I am particularly proud of. I've made two international round trips (a total of six flights, including an international trip outside the U.S.) since last summer, and have flown to San Francisco a couple of times, as well. The flights were all holiday-related. Last summer, Peter and I took two flights each way to Roatan (from San Diego to Dallas and then onward to Roatan) where we spent a week scuba diving and exploring each other.
I accompanied Peter in the late winter to Barcelona, where he attended a conference. After the conference, we flew from Barcelona to London, then from London to Newcastle upon Tyne. We hired a car from Newcastle which we took up the coast to Alnwick. We then headed to the Lake District, staying in Keswick. Finally, we headed eastward through a few small towns, returning to Joan McGuinness's home. Loved the roundabouts and how quickly and efficiently they enabled traffic to move. Makes me wonder why we don't utilize them more here, but then I think about the driving habits of Americans in general, and realize that we live, unfortunately, in a society that needs rules that take away any personal judgment. Being outside the United States makes me wonder why this country is so so so far behind others in adopting modern technologies into life. The carbon footprint of the United States is indeed quite large and heavy and deep.
I'd flown from San Diego to San Francisco for the Game Developers' Conference, and for a random late early summer weekend.
It's surprising to me how my behavior has changed now that I am in love. Some things that I would not have considered before I'm doing now with nary a thought, which is a good sign for love and a bad sign for the environment, I guess.
This summer, we'll be flying to Kosrae, an island in Micronesia, essentially in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. It'll be a diving holiday, with stops at other islands both going and returning. I'm learning that I need to accept the price of flying (both to myself personally and to the earth). While I do not profess to be a paragon of environmentalism, I also don't want to be part of the problem, either. I've always had mixed feelings about people like Al Gore, who travels quite extensively to tell people to, well, conserve resources and limit their carbon emissions.
There are sites online where one can have one's carbon footprint calculated according to travel and other carbon-inducing activities. I've been to one in particular for class:
http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/carboncalculator.
I found that this application takes many aspects of modern living into consideration. It can be a bit depressing, though, to learn just how many metric tons (each at a thousand kilograms) one is responsible for. It never feels like much while we're doing it, but every trip to the market where one hops in one's car, every restaurant dining experience, and, especially, flight, adds to the carbon loading our species puts on this limited earth. The Earth is sending us a message that we shan't ignore, because if we continue to do so, we are signing our own (and our children's children's) death warrant.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
Nitrox Certification!
I took the Enriched Diver PADI course at Sport Chalet. The course orientation was last week, when we filled out forms and decided when to meet this week (we'd met tonight, Tuesday, one week after the orientation). In class tonight, we went over the Knowledge Reviews at the end of the course book before taking the exam. I was surprised that the exam did not contain any calculations, as I had been worried about remembering formulae for calculating things like Partial Pressures of breathing gas components and allowable bottom times. Nitrox is made up of Nitrogen and Oxygen, in varying proportions, depending on the application. If one wants to dive for a long time at a fairly shallow depth, then one can boost the oxygen level and reduce the nitrogen so that there is less risk of nitrogen narcosis, though this introduces the possibility of oxygen toxicity, which can be easily fatal as it causes convulsions that cause the diver to spit out their regulator and drown. What I hadn't known until this class was that although there are some possible symptoms prior to having a convulsive seizure, it's actually more likely that no symptoms will appear prior to the convulsions. Hmmm, that's food for thought...
The other thing I hadn't known is that the three-minute safety stop when coming up from a dive deeper than 40 feet is a precaution, not a requirement. I had asked whether we would still make a safety stop when bringing a convulsing or unconscious diver to the surface. She answered that although safety stops are preferable, if we're trying to keep another diver from drowning, we can just go right up to the surface to expose their face to air that they can potentially breathe. I suppose it's better to have the bends on the surface than be dead on the bottom, eh?
After taking the multiple choice exam, we completed some practical exercises with our dive computers and a couple of cylinders containing enriched air mixes. One tank contained Nitrox with 31 per cent oxygen, and the other contained 27 per cent oxygen. We practiced filling out the forms that we'll be presented with whenever we get enriched air fills, and practiced programming our computers to calculate the new set of criteria when diving with Nitrox of varying gas proportions.
At the end of the evening, Kathy, the instructor, gave us a photocopied list of local (Southern Californian) dive shops that supply Nitrox. Sport Chalet is not one of them. We went behind the desk in the SCUBA section of the store to see the up-to-date inspection certificate that dive shops are required to have in order to provide air fills of any type. Where Peter and I typically go to get our air fills, they do have Nitrox. Whenever I go to get a fill, the fellow who is there most of the time asks me, "Air or Nitrox?" and I always answer, "Just air." Depending on what we decide to dive with this weekend, I might have the opportunity to ask for a Nitrox fill, and present my (temporary) certification card with Kathy's signature. My permanent card will come in the mail in several days or a couple weeks.
Yay!
Yay!
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Feeling Better; Plus Another Dive at La Jolla Shores
I should take back what I'd said about my satisfaction with eBay and PayPal. So far, though I'm scheduled to receive a credit, my account has yet to be updated. I know it's supposed to take a few days from when the product was returned, but I returned it at least a week ago, and my account still does not show the credit. I will phone their customer service tomorrow (since it'll be a regular business day) and hopefully get a live person on the phone who can either correct it or at least tell me why it's taken so long. Maybe this process will take longer. I guess I've got time, since I'd bought the computer with the 6-month leave for payment...
Yesterday, Peter and I took another dive at the Shores. I changed my outfit so that I was only wearing the Fourth Element fleece-lined drysuit liner bottoms without the LL Bean Expedition Weight base layer beneath. The dive was uneventful, but executed fairly well. Peter still held one of my fins, though, while I donned the first one between sets. After waiting through the next set, I managed my second fin, and started kicking out through another couple sets of waves until I got into the more rolling portion of the waves away from the breakers.
We descended into about 20 feet of water among lots of little sand dollars (Peter calls them "sand dimes"), seeing a few small sea stars, and commenced swimming west into the "Crap Patch." We swam slowly and easily through the warm water (the water temp stayed around 60 degrees F). When we were on our way to Vallecitos Point, we came across a small group of divers who apparently were also headed for the point, and as they swam away from us, they kicked up A LOT of sand, clouding the water so that it was hard to see after they'd left. We ended up swimming to shallower water, noodling around, then finished the dive by swimming underwater until we got to a depth of about 12 feet, when I looked up, saw a few divers on the surface, and decided to swim the rest of the way on the surface. I kicked backwards, keeping my eye on Peter's form as he swam along the bottom until it was shallow enough to stand up.
After a first mislead, we drove over to Ski Beach on Mission Bay (on Vacation Island), where the Dive Animals were having a picnic. Peter introduced me to a couple of other members, and I introduced myself to a woman, whose name is Martina, I think, who is a native Southern Californian, but lived on the East Coast for a number of years with her husband, who recently retired. Turns out they'll be on next weekend's boat dive as well, so I'll at least have been introduced to a few people who will be on the boat. I think there are a total of about 28 people who will be on the boat, which, from what Peter told me, is well-appointed and staffed, with a nice swim step on the back with two fin ladders descending into the water.
Martina had won the raffle prize of a cabin seat for one on the October trip to the Cortez Banks, but since she and her husband are going to the Seychelles then, she won't be able to use it. She sold it to Peter for just a little less than the purchase price would have been and he bought another cabin ticket from Gayle so that we'd have the cabin for the two of us. Gayle commented that though the October boat is nearly full, there are still 4 open slots on this weekend's trip. So even though she'd planned to already have fewer divers than can be accommodated by the boat (I think it's the Horizon), we might have even fewer, which means plenty of space for everyone, which is good news for people diving dry, as dry divers take up more space (with gear, etc.) than wet divers.
I was able to download the license for MacDive onto my computer, so I should be able to start using all its functionalities now. I'll learn more after next weekend, when I'll download those dives, which will take me over the trial version limit of five saved dives. For $25, MacDive appears to be a good program which works well with the dive computer data. I like being able to see my dive profile on the screen.
I showed the profile from that dive to Kat. She commented that it looked like we went really deep. I looked, and then realized, somewhat surprisedly, that we'd gone to 84 feet, which is deeper than I'd thought. So the last two things that I want to work on (concentratedly, during the dive, as opposed to technique in getting past the surf and donning my fins) is breathing slower. Peter said it'll come when I become more comfortable and am able to relax while diving.
Relax, yes.
Yesterday, Peter and I took another dive at the Shores. I changed my outfit so that I was only wearing the Fourth Element fleece-lined drysuit liner bottoms without the LL Bean Expedition Weight base layer beneath. The dive was uneventful, but executed fairly well. Peter still held one of my fins, though, while I donned the first one between sets. After waiting through the next set, I managed my second fin, and started kicking out through another couple sets of waves until I got into the more rolling portion of the waves away from the breakers.
We descended into about 20 feet of water among lots of little sand dollars (Peter calls them "sand dimes"), seeing a few small sea stars, and commenced swimming west into the "Crap Patch." We swam slowly and easily through the warm water (the water temp stayed around 60 degrees F). When we were on our way to Vallecitos Point, we came across a small group of divers who apparently were also headed for the point, and as they swam away from us, they kicked up A LOT of sand, clouding the water so that it was hard to see after they'd left. We ended up swimming to shallower water, noodling around, then finished the dive by swimming underwater until we got to a depth of about 12 feet, when I looked up, saw a few divers on the surface, and decided to swim the rest of the way on the surface. I kicked backwards, keeping my eye on Peter's form as he swam along the bottom until it was shallow enough to stand up.
After a first mislead, we drove over to Ski Beach on Mission Bay (on Vacation Island), where the Dive Animals were having a picnic. Peter introduced me to a couple of other members, and I introduced myself to a woman, whose name is Martina, I think, who is a native Southern Californian, but lived on the East Coast for a number of years with her husband, who recently retired. Turns out they'll be on next weekend's boat dive as well, so I'll at least have been introduced to a few people who will be on the boat. I think there are a total of about 28 people who will be on the boat, which, from what Peter told me, is well-appointed and staffed, with a nice swim step on the back with two fin ladders descending into the water.
Martina had won the raffle prize of a cabin seat for one on the October trip to the Cortez Banks, but since she and her husband are going to the Seychelles then, she won't be able to use it. She sold it to Peter for just a little less than the purchase price would have been and he bought another cabin ticket from Gayle so that we'd have the cabin for the two of us. Gayle commented that though the October boat is nearly full, there are still 4 open slots on this weekend's trip. So even though she'd planned to already have fewer divers than can be accommodated by the boat (I think it's the Horizon), we might have even fewer, which means plenty of space for everyone, which is good news for people diving dry, as dry divers take up more space (with gear, etc.) than wet divers.
I was able to download the license for MacDive onto my computer, so I should be able to start using all its functionalities now. I'll learn more after next weekend, when I'll download those dives, which will take me over the trial version limit of five saved dives. For $25, MacDive appears to be a good program which works well with the dive computer data. I like being able to see my dive profile on the screen.
I showed the profile from that dive to Kat. She commented that it looked like we went really deep. I looked, and then realized, somewhat surprisedly, that we'd gone to 84 feet, which is deeper than I'd thought. So the last two things that I want to work on (concentratedly, during the dive, as opposed to technique in getting past the surf and donning my fins) is breathing slower. Peter said it'll come when I become more comfortable and am able to relax while diving.
Relax, yes.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Follow-up on my eBay and PayPal experience
Well, following my description of what happened with the first dive computer I'd "won" on eBay, I received a response from the seller, who chose to sign anonymously. Well, I have a problem with people who won't own up to their own words, so I will just say for now that his first name is Kevin. If he chooses to harass me any further, I will announce his contact information here so that anyone else who feels compelled can give him a taste of his own medicine.
In other, related news, I am thrilled to have a functioning dive computer! It was even sent with the user's manual, which is great. Unfortunately, the battery that was included was the wrong size, so Peter ran out to CVS to procure a replacement, which took all of about fifteen minutes total. We went on a very nice, calm dive to the canyon, and, by using Peter's download cable, I was able to see my dive profile, which looked pretty uneventful, except I did pop up to the surface at the end of the dive, when we'd gotten to about 12-15 feet of water depth. We'd been swimming toward the beach for a while at that point, so I did not worry about DCI. I just waited at the surface until Peter came up, and we swam together back into the shallows, where we easily took off our fins and stood up.
This will be a short entry, as I've things to do tonight, but I wanted to write something after receiving a notification that someone had commented on one of my posts.
On another note, I will not be attending Pastries and Desserts this week, as there is an all-day symposium on Energy & Climate Change, which I plan to attend. I was told by one of my fellow 350.org members that I can ask a question regarding using thorium as fuel for nuclear reactors. I'm looking forward to that.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
The Mundane Essentials of Living Skinny
When I use the phrase "living skinny," don't think that I'm referring to a lowfat diet. In fact, oftentimes, living skinny in those terms often implies eating more (financially) expensive ingredients and eating at more expensive restaurants. What I mean when I use this phrase is in contrast to "living fat," with which I'm referring to living generously, or living large, I think is how some people put it. In plain English, it means to live cheaply, or frugally, in my case, which I try to do to the extent possible and practicable.
Much of the mundanity of my life is spent living a pretty skinny life, as I do not have unlimited funds with which to finance my desires, much less my needs. I take advantage of the many free and public events that cross my path, and absorb as much as I can in any learning environment.
Take the Pastries and Desserts class I am currently enrolled in. There is no fee for the class, and just a nominal materials fee for ingredients. I've thought to bring my own cooking utensils to use, but since I no longer have any inkling of what we're preparing each week, that's a rather difficult thing to do, for sure. In this class, I'm learning about ingredients and new methods, and am being exposed to recipes that I have not encountered before, such as this week's Rum Baba. Bananas Foster, which was our second recipe this week, I've approximated before, though without the rum.
I'm adding the recipes to my (paper) library as I get them, collecting the handouts each week. Eventually, I will add the ones I like (or ones that I missed but want to try) to my electronic library by scanning the sheets and saving them as pdf's on my computer in the Recipes folder to which I've been adding for the past several months. I have some subfolders for some of the more common recipes I like to use when I know I'm in the mood for making a certain type of item, but need a specific recipe. Among these subfolders are: Cookies, Bars, Biscuits and Muffins; Cakes; Pies, Cobblers, and Crisps; Soups; and Pasta, Rice, and Beans. Other recipes are kept in the general Recipes Folder, itself a subfolder in my Documents folder on the hard drive.
Thinking about ingredients that I want to use, I had prepared a jar of preserved lemons in either December or January, following a (free, of course) presentation at the public library's central branch downtown. The presentation was sponsored by the Culinary Historians of San Diego and the recipe was given to attendees after the main presentation, which was about an author's travels around the Mediterranean, and the people and foods she encountered there.
The preserved lemons are beckoning me from the kitchen counter, where they sit next to the coffee grinder and coffeemaker. Another recipe I came across when searching for recipes using preserved lemons was that for preserved butter, another Moroccan invention (or so I'm led to believe). It looks a little harder to make, but I have the pound of butter required for the recipe (actually, it requires 500 grams, but a pound is close enough). I'm just not sure how one kneads butter without causing it to melt with the heat of one's hands. Maybe one uses really, really cold water for kneading the salt into the butter to keep the butter cool and relatively solid.
Making my own preserved lemons is an example of another activity that I like to engage in: producing ingredients to be used in other recipes. Even when I was in school in Virginia, in the late 1980's to the late 1990's, I made herbed vinegar with which I dressed salads, as well as used as substitute when vinegar was called for, to add extra flavor to whatever I was making.
Speaking of herbed vinegars, I ought to dry some of the herbs from Peter's herb garden and set them into jars of vinegar to flavor them. Currently, we have some vinegars, two of which that are made from citrus fruits and one that is made from honey. These are not flavored vinegars, but rather vinegars that are made by fermenting their namesakes themselves. The honey vinegar is quite nice, with extra virgin olive oil, on salads made with leaf lettuce, tomato, celery, sliced mushrooms, bell peppers, and quartered and sliced cuke. Of course, a little bit of crumbled/cubed feta (Bulgarian, Danish, or Greek) wouldn't hurt, either!
I followed a recipe for "paleo" coconut bread, which used half a dozen eggs, half a cup of melted butter, half a teaspoon of sea salt, and three-quarters of a cup of coconut flour. After it came out, I decided that when I make this again, I will add things to improve the texture: almond milk, to add moisture, and baking powder, to provide some leavening. I'll write about the result in a future post. For now, I'll just eat the evidence...
Much of the mundanity of my life is spent living a pretty skinny life, as I do not have unlimited funds with which to finance my desires, much less my needs. I take advantage of the many free and public events that cross my path, and absorb as much as I can in any learning environment.
Take the Pastries and Desserts class I am currently enrolled in. There is no fee for the class, and just a nominal materials fee for ingredients. I've thought to bring my own cooking utensils to use, but since I no longer have any inkling of what we're preparing each week, that's a rather difficult thing to do, for sure. In this class, I'm learning about ingredients and new methods, and am being exposed to recipes that I have not encountered before, such as this week's Rum Baba. Bananas Foster, which was our second recipe this week, I've approximated before, though without the rum.
I'm adding the recipes to my (paper) library as I get them, collecting the handouts each week. Eventually, I will add the ones I like (or ones that I missed but want to try) to my electronic library by scanning the sheets and saving them as pdf's on my computer in the Recipes folder to which I've been adding for the past several months. I have some subfolders for some of the more common recipes I like to use when I know I'm in the mood for making a certain type of item, but need a specific recipe. Among these subfolders are: Cookies, Bars, Biscuits and Muffins; Cakes; Pies, Cobblers, and Crisps; Soups; and Pasta, Rice, and Beans. Other recipes are kept in the general Recipes Folder, itself a subfolder in my Documents folder on the hard drive.
Thinking about ingredients that I want to use, I had prepared a jar of preserved lemons in either December or January, following a (free, of course) presentation at the public library's central branch downtown. The presentation was sponsored by the Culinary Historians of San Diego and the recipe was given to attendees after the main presentation, which was about an author's travels around the Mediterranean, and the people and foods she encountered there.
The preserved lemons are beckoning me from the kitchen counter, where they sit next to the coffee grinder and coffeemaker. Another recipe I came across when searching for recipes using preserved lemons was that for preserved butter, another Moroccan invention (or so I'm led to believe). It looks a little harder to make, but I have the pound of butter required for the recipe (actually, it requires 500 grams, but a pound is close enough). I'm just not sure how one kneads butter without causing it to melt with the heat of one's hands. Maybe one uses really, really cold water for kneading the salt into the butter to keep the butter cool and relatively solid.
Making my own preserved lemons is an example of another activity that I like to engage in: producing ingredients to be used in other recipes. Even when I was in school in Virginia, in the late 1980's to the late 1990's, I made herbed vinegar with which I dressed salads, as well as used as substitute when vinegar was called for, to add extra flavor to whatever I was making.
Speaking of herbed vinegars, I ought to dry some of the herbs from Peter's herb garden and set them into jars of vinegar to flavor them. Currently, we have some vinegars, two of which that are made from citrus fruits and one that is made from honey. These are not flavored vinegars, but rather vinegars that are made by fermenting their namesakes themselves. The honey vinegar is quite nice, with extra virgin olive oil, on salads made with leaf lettuce, tomato, celery, sliced mushrooms, bell peppers, and quartered and sliced cuke. Of course, a little bit of crumbled/cubed feta (Bulgarian, Danish, or Greek) wouldn't hurt, either!
I followed a recipe for "paleo" coconut bread, which used half a dozen eggs, half a cup of melted butter, half a teaspoon of sea salt, and three-quarters of a cup of coconut flour. After it came out, I decided that when I make this again, I will add things to improve the texture: almond milk, to add moisture, and baking powder, to provide some leavening. I'll write about the result in a future post. For now, I'll just eat the evidence...
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Don't Forget the Crackers, Gromit!
Yesterday, Peter took out a wedge of brie he'd bought from Sprouts. When I arrived, it was "ripening" on the kitchen counter. We had some with our green salad for lunch. When I went to pick up Kat from school, Peter had some more, leaving a small piece for me to finish, which I did in the evening. I also took out the remaining cubic inch of feta that I'd had left from the pound or so that I'd purchased from North Park Produce last week (or something like that). I have, in the fridge, a wedge of brie that I'd brought from home yesterday (I'd bought it at Trader Joe's in a moment of weakness). It's still in the fridge, and it's likely that I'll probably cut into it either this evening or tomorrow.
Since it is Wednesday, it's a class day for Pastries and Desserts. I have no idea what we'll be doing, so I'll just bring some lightweight containers to bring home whatever it is we end up making. The class does not end until 3, so Kat will wait for me to pick her up after school. She will go to Homework Lab, which goes until I don't know how late, but she'll be waiting for me at 3:30 at the front of the school (on a side street; the school backs onto the main road). Driving there, I think I'll check the progress of the fumigation of our complex. Today, when we were on our way to the freeway from the school, I saw blue and red and yellow-striped tents on about half of the buildings on both the bottom and middle levels, so I assume the "gassing" didn't start until pretty late in the day on the first day (yesterday). The gas is turned on for 24-72 hours, depending on the level of infestation. I don't know how bad the infestation is, but from what I've seen, it looked bad enough, from my perspective, so that the tenting is a good thing to get rid of the termites. In reality, it looks like it might not be that bad, after all, since we're only exiled until tomorrow afternoon.
The preparations for the tenting were a good excuse for me to clean out the refrigerator. I (finally!) put into the trash the half- to mostly-empty containers of various goods that were still residing in the fridge. I used a Skoy cloth (a very thin, very light sheet of cellulose sponge) to wipe every shelf as I went, finally getting down to the vegetable drawers. There was one I could not take out because the door of the fridge blocks its path (the door doesn't open completely in the fridge's current location, and it'd be a really big hassle to move the fridge to the middle of the kitchen just to take the drawer out, so I wiped it out as best as I could with the Skoy). I removed the other drawer and washed it in the sink, leaving it to drain on the dishwasher rack, which was exposed to the air because I left the dishwasher open, specifically, for that purpose.
I opened all the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms (mostly just slightly) to allow for free gas flow in and around them.
Now I'm thinking about cheese, of all things. Perhaps this is merely a recurring theme in my life:
When I was in college (half the marathon distance west of Boston, MA), I was known as "Cheese Woman" because I always had a pack or two of (sliced) cheese in the small fridge that I shared with my roommate. The cheese was purchased from the campus inconvenience store, and was often just swiss (provolone, if I got lucky). I often snacked on cheese while studying or reading.
Perhaps it's a minor miracle that I never suffered from "Freshman Fifteen" (the expression used for the common weight gain among college students when they leave home and are in charge of their own food choices for the first time since leaving home). Now that I'm raising my own child, I'm introducing her to my favorite more common cheeses (the different blues, brie, feta, camembert, romano, parmesan, gruyere). I'm also hoping to impart to Kat the importance of physical activity for one's overall health, though I admit, I allow her to spend hours on end with her iPad...
That's the main reason why I'm thinking about buying a bicycle for myself. Kat has a bike, which she uses to tool around Mira Mesa. I'd like to get a bike and a rack for my car so that we could take our bikes to parks (and the concrete paths along the shoreline) not located within easy riding distance, and bike for fun. Peter has a bike, so the three of us could go out, perhaps to Penasquitos Canyon or Pacific Beach, to take an occasional ride. I saw a really, really attractive Specialized bike in a bike shop in University City for about $500. It comes in different colors, too, and the color I like most is the deep purple. They have one, assembled, in the shop, waiting to be taken out.
First, I think I'll take Kat's bike out and ride it a bit to get myself accustomed to the feel of being on a bike again. It's been years and years since I've ridden very much (since architecture school), so I'm a bit anxious about spending so much money (and $500 is a lot of money to me) on a bike that might not see enough use to justify its cost. Worse comes to worst, though, I can always give the Specialized bike to Kat when she leaves for college. That'll be four years from now. These bikes will have to last, which I have no doubt they will, given the San Diego climate in which they currently reside...
I've been contemplating the purchase of the bike for a pretty long time now (over a year at this point). Other, more immediate things keep popping up, like my oral health problems and my dive computer dying (whose replacement I wrote about in a recent post), so the bike had gone to the back burner.
The other, more immediate purchase that I want to make (before August) is a dive vest that I could wear for the warm water diving in Kosrae. I think I'll still bring my (7mm) shorty for the just-in-case, though I doubt I will need it. I definitely will be limiting the space required in my luggage for clothing, as I plan to pack two or three sarongs, and wear shorts and a T-shirt for the flights to and from, as well as the Sunday we'll be there, as it looks like we'll spend that day hiking and exploring the island itself. When we were on Roatan, I wore my sarongs every day after the first, washing them during the warm evenings; they dried overnight and were ready to wear again in the morning.
I'll talk to Peter about the vests, as it looks like we'll need to buy them online, for the local dive shops don't seem to carry vests without hoods (which, given the water temperatures in San Diego, makes perfect sense).
I'd like to buy the bike before the summer really gets going, because I don't want it to get too hot to ride. But I do want to test out my riding skills first by taking Kat's bike out for a gentle ride around our neighborhood streets. I'll put that on my calendar after the fumigation.
No rant today, just some thoughts and quandaries. I suppose I could rant about being relatively unwell-off financially, but in reality, I have access to all the things that are necessary, and some things that are, in my mind, luxuries (including the consumption of generous quantities of cheese!).
Since it is Wednesday, it's a class day for Pastries and Desserts. I have no idea what we'll be doing, so I'll just bring some lightweight containers to bring home whatever it is we end up making. The class does not end until 3, so Kat will wait for me to pick her up after school. She will go to Homework Lab, which goes until I don't know how late, but she'll be waiting for me at 3:30 at the front of the school (on a side street; the school backs onto the main road). Driving there, I think I'll check the progress of the fumigation of our complex. Today, when we were on our way to the freeway from the school, I saw blue and red and yellow-striped tents on about half of the buildings on both the bottom and middle levels, so I assume the "gassing" didn't start until pretty late in the day on the first day (yesterday). The gas is turned on for 24-72 hours, depending on the level of infestation. I don't know how bad the infestation is, but from what I've seen, it looked bad enough, from my perspective, so that the tenting is a good thing to get rid of the termites. In reality, it looks like it might not be that bad, after all, since we're only exiled until tomorrow afternoon.
The preparations for the tenting were a good excuse for me to clean out the refrigerator. I (finally!) put into the trash the half- to mostly-empty containers of various goods that were still residing in the fridge. I used a Skoy cloth (a very thin, very light sheet of cellulose sponge) to wipe every shelf as I went, finally getting down to the vegetable drawers. There was one I could not take out because the door of the fridge blocks its path (the door doesn't open completely in the fridge's current location, and it'd be a really big hassle to move the fridge to the middle of the kitchen just to take the drawer out, so I wiped it out as best as I could with the Skoy). I removed the other drawer and washed it in the sink, leaving it to drain on the dishwasher rack, which was exposed to the air because I left the dishwasher open, specifically, for that purpose.
I opened all the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms (mostly just slightly) to allow for free gas flow in and around them.
Now I'm thinking about cheese, of all things. Perhaps this is merely a recurring theme in my life:
When I was in college (half the marathon distance west of Boston, MA), I was known as "Cheese Woman" because I always had a pack or two of (sliced) cheese in the small fridge that I shared with my roommate. The cheese was purchased from the campus inconvenience store, and was often just swiss (provolone, if I got lucky). I often snacked on cheese while studying or reading.
Perhaps it's a minor miracle that I never suffered from "Freshman Fifteen" (the expression used for the common weight gain among college students when they leave home and are in charge of their own food choices for the first time since leaving home). Now that I'm raising my own child, I'm introducing her to my favorite more common cheeses (the different blues, brie, feta, camembert, romano, parmesan, gruyere). I'm also hoping to impart to Kat the importance of physical activity for one's overall health, though I admit, I allow her to spend hours on end with her iPad...
That's the main reason why I'm thinking about buying a bicycle for myself. Kat has a bike, which she uses to tool around Mira Mesa. I'd like to get a bike and a rack for my car so that we could take our bikes to parks (and the concrete paths along the shoreline) not located within easy riding distance, and bike for fun. Peter has a bike, so the three of us could go out, perhaps to Penasquitos Canyon or Pacific Beach, to take an occasional ride. I saw a really, really attractive Specialized bike in a bike shop in University City for about $500. It comes in different colors, too, and the color I like most is the deep purple. They have one, assembled, in the shop, waiting to be taken out.
First, I think I'll take Kat's bike out and ride it a bit to get myself accustomed to the feel of being on a bike again. It's been years and years since I've ridden very much (since architecture school), so I'm a bit anxious about spending so much money (and $500 is a lot of money to me) on a bike that might not see enough use to justify its cost. Worse comes to worst, though, I can always give the Specialized bike to Kat when she leaves for college. That'll be four years from now. These bikes will have to last, which I have no doubt they will, given the San Diego climate in which they currently reside...
I've been contemplating the purchase of the bike for a pretty long time now (over a year at this point). Other, more immediate things keep popping up, like my oral health problems and my dive computer dying (whose replacement I wrote about in a recent post), so the bike had gone to the back burner.
The other, more immediate purchase that I want to make (before August) is a dive vest that I could wear for the warm water diving in Kosrae. I think I'll still bring my (7mm) shorty for the just-in-case, though I doubt I will need it. I definitely will be limiting the space required in my luggage for clothing, as I plan to pack two or three sarongs, and wear shorts and a T-shirt for the flights to and from, as well as the Sunday we'll be there, as it looks like we'll spend that day hiking and exploring the island itself. When we were on Roatan, I wore my sarongs every day after the first, washing them during the warm evenings; they dried overnight and were ready to wear again in the morning.
I'll talk to Peter about the vests, as it looks like we'll need to buy them online, for the local dive shops don't seem to carry vests without hoods (which, given the water temperatures in San Diego, makes perfect sense).
I'd like to buy the bike before the summer really gets going, because I don't want it to get too hot to ride. But I do want to test out my riding skills first by taking Kat's bike out for a gentle ride around our neighborhood streets. I'll put that on my calendar after the fumigation.
No rant today, just some thoughts and quandaries. I suppose I could rant about being relatively unwell-off financially, but in reality, I have access to all the things that are necessary, and some things that are, in my mind, luxuries (including the consumption of generous quantities of cheese!).
Monday, May 5, 2014
eBay, PayPal, and Buyers' Protection
I'll start with a simple, yet delicious recipe for green globe squash, which I received in my recent CSA share:
1 globe green summer squash (resembles a globular zucchini)
small handful fresh basil (about four or six large leaves)
3-4 large cloves fresh garlic
1/2 t salt
2 T unsalted butter
Cut off stem end of squash. cut lengthwise (as much as it has a length - you know wheat I mean) into quarters, then cut off the bloom end scar from each quarter. slice into chunks between 1/8" and 1/4" thick.
Julienne the basil leaves. Chop the garlic coarsely.
Heat small nonstick nonreactive pan.
Add butter to hot pan and tilt to spread.
Add garlic, and cook, on medium heat, until fragrant. Add basil leaves, and allow to cook about a half minute longer. Add squash in a single layer, if you can, and allow to cook for about thirty seconds to one minute, until the squash looks shiny. Turn over the squash, basil leaves, and garlic so that the basil and garlic are on top, and the second broad side of the squash slices faces downward. Sprinkle salt over everything, then allow to cook just about thirty seconds longer for the squash to brown on its second side (this really doesn't take very long at all). Serve immediately.
This squash can be artfully eaten with chopsticks, as Kat and I did last night, with steamed and buttered green beans.
Is it obvious that we're trying to empty the kitchen and have limited access to ingredients? I need to remember to bring the remainder of the butter that I just opened to Peter's to use while we're staying there. My cream cheese and chunks of eating cheese are already there.
Tonight, I will take Kat to Oki Ton Japanese restaurant off Fenton Parkway (near the IKEA) here in San Diego. It's a little bit of a drive, but I've got a voucher to use and I might as well use it for this. Peter was coming with us, but it turns out he has a meeting with the PowPAC people to hand off their website administration, as he's administered it for a number of years now and I guess he's ready to let that part of his involvement go.
It won't be the first time Kat and I will be having dinner out together by ourselves, but since we don't eat out often, I'd like it to be a fun evening before we have to vacate our flat in the morning.
Almost two weeks ago, I'd received, in the mail, a new dive computer that I'd won on eBay. I dove with it this past Sunday at the Shores, and realized that the depth gauge was not working, as it kept registering me on the surface even though I was down at 17 feet (I was doing some hovering exercises at different depths). So I'm sending it back. Took it to the post office this morning in the box in which I'd originally received my medication this month from an online pharmacy.
I've already ordered another (used) dive computer from another vendor. Same brand and model. Still doesn't come with a download cable, but I can use the one that Peter has. I'm already planning to test the new-to-me Suunto Vyper this weekend, as it's supposed to arrive in the post on Friday. It's just as well for me to wait 'til the weekend, even though traffic & parking will be more challenging in La Jolla then, rather than take the new computer on a night dive before then.
So I appealed my refund with PayPal, whom I'd contacted almost immediately after buying the nonfunctioning computer. This afternoon, I already received a positive response. The refund should be credited to my account, bringing down my balance to just the second computer I'd bought (also on eBay). At least for this second computer, shipping was free...
So even though it might take a few days for all the payments/crediting to settle, I'm satisfied that I was able to get a refund. So in my case, the Buyers' Protection was triggered and worked. The only disappointment is the wait time on hold when one phones in, but that's pretty standard these days, isn't it?
1 globe green summer squash (resembles a globular zucchini)
small handful fresh basil (about four or six large leaves)
3-4 large cloves fresh garlic
1/2 t salt
2 T unsalted butter
Cut off stem end of squash. cut lengthwise (as much as it has a length - you know wheat I mean) into quarters, then cut off the bloom end scar from each quarter. slice into chunks between 1/8" and 1/4" thick.
Julienne the basil leaves. Chop the garlic coarsely.
Heat small nonstick nonreactive pan.
Add butter to hot pan and tilt to spread.
Add garlic, and cook, on medium heat, until fragrant. Add basil leaves, and allow to cook about a half minute longer. Add squash in a single layer, if you can, and allow to cook for about thirty seconds to one minute, until the squash looks shiny. Turn over the squash, basil leaves, and garlic so that the basil and garlic are on top, and the second broad side of the squash slices faces downward. Sprinkle salt over everything, then allow to cook just about thirty seconds longer for the squash to brown on its second side (this really doesn't take very long at all). Serve immediately.
This squash can be artfully eaten with chopsticks, as Kat and I did last night, with steamed and buttered green beans.
Is it obvious that we're trying to empty the kitchen and have limited access to ingredients? I need to remember to bring the remainder of the butter that I just opened to Peter's to use while we're staying there. My cream cheese and chunks of eating cheese are already there.
Tonight, I will take Kat to Oki Ton Japanese restaurant off Fenton Parkway (near the IKEA) here in San Diego. It's a little bit of a drive, but I've got a voucher to use and I might as well use it for this. Peter was coming with us, but it turns out he has a meeting with the PowPAC people to hand off their website administration, as he's administered it for a number of years now and I guess he's ready to let that part of his involvement go.
It won't be the first time Kat and I will be having dinner out together by ourselves, but since we don't eat out often, I'd like it to be a fun evening before we have to vacate our flat in the morning.
Almost two weeks ago, I'd received, in the mail, a new dive computer that I'd won on eBay. I dove with it this past Sunday at the Shores, and realized that the depth gauge was not working, as it kept registering me on the surface even though I was down at 17 feet (I was doing some hovering exercises at different depths). So I'm sending it back. Took it to the post office this morning in the box in which I'd originally received my medication this month from an online pharmacy.
I've already ordered another (used) dive computer from another vendor. Same brand and model. Still doesn't come with a download cable, but I can use the one that Peter has. I'm already planning to test the new-to-me Suunto Vyper this weekend, as it's supposed to arrive in the post on Friday. It's just as well for me to wait 'til the weekend, even though traffic & parking will be more challenging in La Jolla then, rather than take the new computer on a night dive before then.
So I appealed my refund with PayPal, whom I'd contacted almost immediately after buying the nonfunctioning computer. This afternoon, I already received a positive response. The refund should be credited to my account, bringing down my balance to just the second computer I'd bought (also on eBay). At least for this second computer, shipping was free...
So even though it might take a few days for all the payments/crediting to settle, I'm satisfied that I was able to get a refund. So in my case, the Buyers' Protection was triggered and worked. The only disappointment is the wait time on hold when one phones in, but that's pretty standard these days, isn't it?
Sunday, May 4, 2014
An Attempt To Cook Everything And More Thoughts on Love
It is Sunday. Our fumigation is scheduled for Tuesday morning. Today, I will pack up the pantry's dried goods and some refrigerated foods and take them to Peter's, where I will stay during the fumigation process, which will take place through Thursday midday, I believe. The original schedule had the fumigation taking place starting Thursday morning, with a Saturday afternoon return, so we ought to be able to move back in on Thursday afternoon, right?
This morning, I baked a batch of banana-oat cookies. Unfortunately, I used eight times as much accoutrements as called for in the recipe (about 2 c. of butterscotch chips instead of 1/4 c. walnuts) - oops. Well, they're just very chippy cookies, I guess. Just a little cookie batter holding together the butterscotch chips, essentially. Next time, I'll remember the proper proportions for the bananas, oats, and additional ingredient (the nuts in the original recipe). The original recipe reads:
Preheat oven to 350 deg. F.
Mash bananas thoroughly. Add oats and mix thoroughly. stir in chopped walnuts.
Drop onto greased or lined baking sheets and bake 15 minutes. Cool on baking sheets, then keep in air-tight container for storage.
I don't even remember where that original recipe came from; it was something Kat had found online somewhere and decided to try, making a batch some months ago when we had a lot of ripe bananas and not much else. She'd substituted chocolate chips for the walnuts, and the results were good. The version I made this morning is:
Preheat oven to 350 deg. F. Make sure bananas are mashed. Blend in vanilla extract. Add flour and oat bran, and mix thoroughly. Stir in protein granules and butterscotch chips. Drop by tablespoonfuls on silicone mat on baking sheet, spacing cookies closely as they don't spread too much (though they can "fall" and the butterscotch chips melt and run into each other).
Bake 15 minutes. Cool on cookie sheets about 20 minutes. Remove to an airtight container.
These came out very sweet. The butterscotch chips could easily be reduced by half, but since I'd have to find something else to do with the chips before Tuesday morning, I figured I'd just use the whole package instead of having a partial bag opened to pack.
I talked to some folks at last night's game night at Ralph's about the melting chocolate for forming candies, and Mark suggested that I add confectioners' wax to help firm up the candies. I'll look for it at the grocery store, then, next time I go looking for baker's chocolate for a future recipe. Right now, the already-formed hazelnut clusters are in the fridge, layered in wax paper in a Ziploc bag (I used a pretty big Ziploc to keep the layers of wax paper, with the chocolates on them, intact so that the chocolates don't touch).
If I'd thought about it, I would have included some of the cake flour that's been sitting in the pantry for a long time now. I'd originally bought it for - as you can guess, I'm sure - cakes, but since the recipe did not use the entire box, I had the leftover flour. I suppose if I wanted, I could add to it the remainder of my package of Bob's Red Mill vital wheat gluten, and try to use it like regular flour, though then it might come out pretty gluten-heavy, as I think the normal ratio of gluten to flour is much lower than what it would be if I combined the (approximately) 3/4 c. of gluten with the (I think) 2 c. of cake flour. I might ask Jake, the teacher for Pastries and Desserts, about it this week (if I remember when I see him in class on Wednesday).
My computer is playing tracks from my sound collection as I'm writing. Some of the tracks are Mandarin Chinese lessons from when I took Beginning Mandarin through San Diego Continuing Education with Lloyd about thee years ago now...
Wow. I've been in San Diego for five and a half years now; so much has happened in that time, including Kat's growth spurt, the development of my friendships through Meetup.com, the re-establishment of my friendship with Liz, and this (I hope final) instance of falling in love...
Of course, one likes to think of "this time" as being the "final time" for falling in love, especially when it happens infrequently (as it has for me). Both Peter and I realize that the future is uncertain, and therefore we remind each other irregularly (but also constantly) that we love each other. It feels wonderful to hear and to say. It's comfortable and exciting at the same.
Right now I'm listening to the end of "Bicycle Race" by Queen. Seems to be a string of Queen songs right now, but I think that might be because the entire album was saved as a single track file and therefore will play the entire thing without pause. Which is fine with me; I like Jazz.
I've packed up the dive computer and it's ready to ship. I'll bring it to the post office tomorrow and mail it registered and get a receipt with tacking number so that I can submit that for my eBay refund. I'm disappointed that the computer doesn't work, but what pisses me off is that the seller did it without thinking about it (or responding to my emails when I told him it was not functional).
Grumble, grumble...
This morning, I baked a batch of banana-oat cookies. Unfortunately, I used eight times as much accoutrements as called for in the recipe (about 2 c. of butterscotch chips instead of 1/4 c. walnuts) - oops. Well, they're just very chippy cookies, I guess. Just a little cookie batter holding together the butterscotch chips, essentially. Next time, I'll remember the proper proportions for the bananas, oats, and additional ingredient (the nuts in the original recipe). The original recipe reads:
- 2 ripe bananas
- 1 c. oats
- 1/4 c. walnuts
Preheat oven to 350 deg. F.
Mash bananas thoroughly. Add oats and mix thoroughly. stir in chopped walnuts.
Drop onto greased or lined baking sheets and bake 15 minutes. Cool on baking sheets, then keep in air-tight container for storage.
I don't even remember where that original recipe came from; it was something Kat had found online somewhere and decided to try, making a batch some months ago when we had a lot of ripe bananas and not much else. She'd substituted chocolate chips for the walnuts, and the results were good. The version I made this morning is:
- 4 ripe bananas, mashed roughly
- 1 c. oat bran
- 1/2 c. flour
- 1/2 c. soy protein granules (I used a brand called Nutrela)
- 2 t. vanilla extract
- 1 pkg. butterscotch chips (really much more than needed; about half the bag would suffice, I'm sure)
Preheat oven to 350 deg. F. Make sure bananas are mashed. Blend in vanilla extract. Add flour and oat bran, and mix thoroughly. Stir in protein granules and butterscotch chips. Drop by tablespoonfuls on silicone mat on baking sheet, spacing cookies closely as they don't spread too much (though they can "fall" and the butterscotch chips melt and run into each other).
Bake 15 minutes. Cool on cookie sheets about 20 minutes. Remove to an airtight container.
These came out very sweet. The butterscotch chips could easily be reduced by half, but since I'd have to find something else to do with the chips before Tuesday morning, I figured I'd just use the whole package instead of having a partial bag opened to pack.
I talked to some folks at last night's game night at Ralph's about the melting chocolate for forming candies, and Mark suggested that I add confectioners' wax to help firm up the candies. I'll look for it at the grocery store, then, next time I go looking for baker's chocolate for a future recipe. Right now, the already-formed hazelnut clusters are in the fridge, layered in wax paper in a Ziploc bag (I used a pretty big Ziploc to keep the layers of wax paper, with the chocolates on them, intact so that the chocolates don't touch).
If I'd thought about it, I would have included some of the cake flour that's been sitting in the pantry for a long time now. I'd originally bought it for - as you can guess, I'm sure - cakes, but since the recipe did not use the entire box, I had the leftover flour. I suppose if I wanted, I could add to it the remainder of my package of Bob's Red Mill vital wheat gluten, and try to use it like regular flour, though then it might come out pretty gluten-heavy, as I think the normal ratio of gluten to flour is much lower than what it would be if I combined the (approximately) 3/4 c. of gluten with the (I think) 2 c. of cake flour. I might ask Jake, the teacher for Pastries and Desserts, about it this week (if I remember when I see him in class on Wednesday).
My computer is playing tracks from my sound collection as I'm writing. Some of the tracks are Mandarin Chinese lessons from when I took Beginning Mandarin through San Diego Continuing Education with Lloyd about thee years ago now...
Wow. I've been in San Diego for five and a half years now; so much has happened in that time, including Kat's growth spurt, the development of my friendships through Meetup.com, the re-establishment of my friendship with Liz, and this (I hope final) instance of falling in love...
Of course, one likes to think of "this time" as being the "final time" for falling in love, especially when it happens infrequently (as it has for me). Both Peter and I realize that the future is uncertain, and therefore we remind each other irregularly (but also constantly) that we love each other. It feels wonderful to hear and to say. It's comfortable and exciting at the same.
Right now I'm listening to the end of "Bicycle Race" by Queen. Seems to be a string of Queen songs right now, but I think that might be because the entire album was saved as a single track file and therefore will play the entire thing without pause. Which is fine with me; I like Jazz.
I've packed up the dive computer and it's ready to ship. I'll bring it to the post office tomorrow and mail it registered and get a receipt with tacking number so that I can submit that for my eBay refund. I'm disappointed that the computer doesn't work, but what pisses me off is that the seller did it without thinking about it (or responding to my emails when I told him it was not functional).
Grumble, grumble...
Friday, May 2, 2014
Mortgage Refi's, Privacy, and Chocolates
I recently applied to refinance my mortgage, on which I've been paying a whopping 8.25 per cent interest up to now. When I first got my first mortgage, it was when I was not working, as I was still spending my days with the infant Kat in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. That loan was a no-income-verification loan, and so carries a higher interest rate than the typical at the time, which I think was closer to 6.25 per cent.
The loan application process has been taking some doing. For some reason, the lender wants to know not only my marital status, but they want a copy of the divorce decree! I asked the woman on the phone, Well, I owned the property before I was married, had it through the marriage, and kept it after the divorce. Why is my marital status an issue? to which she could offer no explanation. I suppose most people just fill out the paperwork to get it over with. I contacted the County Clerk of Lycoming County, PA, where the divorce would have been registered. It's going to coast fifty cents per page to copy any official legal paperwork, which this happens to be. So I mailed off the fifty cent check with the letter and a self-addressed envelope in this morning's mail. I'll wait to talk to the mortgage company, as I won't submit the divorce decree until after they ask for it again, which they might or might not, depending on how the woman I talked to relays my reaction to the underwriters. Why are mortgage underwriters so damn f*cking nosy, anyway? What difference does it make whether someone is married to one's partner or not?
Now I understand why Peter has been putting off finalizing his divorce (he's been separated from his wife for a few years now). It's such a pain in the f*cking ass, whereas it's easy enough to get married...
Financial information makes sense. My finances were never mixed with John's (or Chris's, when we were married), and I've never missed a mortgage payment, which must count for something. When I talked to a friend about this, she agreed that the requirements for obtaining a mortgage seem quite onerous, and she said that the regular mortgage payments do count for something. My regular payoff of my credit cards count for something, as well. We talked to another student in Pastries & Desserts on Wednesday about obtaining credit. She has no credit record, because she recently relocated to San Diego from Korea, where she was working before she married and moved here. Someone recommended to her that she get a credit card from her bank, then just make lots of charges, as long as she pays them off as well. From that conversation, I gathered that one charges everything, then pays it off at the end of the month, showing responsibility with rotating credit. Long-term debts, like mortgages and car loans, are harder, I suppose, to get because they're a much larger commitment. I understand that they want a copy of the most recent lease with the current tenant, who just renewed their lease, which makes me happy, because it's a real estate listing fee that I can avoid for another year.
On another, completely unrelated note, I just formed some homemade chocolates using 7 ounces of baker's chocolate (100% cacao), an ounce and a half of sugar, and hazelnuts that I roasted earlier this morning. They're cooling on the stovetop and in the fridge. I'm hoping to try one and take some to Peter's this afternoon, as we'll be making final preparations to dive tomorrow morning. I'm only mildly nervous that the rest of the chocolates will disappear when Kat comes home from school, as she has a minimum day today and therefore will be coming home just around lunchtime, meaning she'll be hungry. Though, realistically, I probably ought to worry about their melting before I get to Peter's as it's already a quite warm day. I'll prepare a green salad for lunch, with butter lettuce and blanched green beans (from the CSA box) and chilled hard-boiled eggs which I'll slice with my new KitchenAid brand egg slicer. I'd tried to slice eggs with a knife when my first egg slicer broke, but there's too much drag from the blade, so I totally understand the wire. like cheese, right?
Well, today's rant came, at least, with something good that has happened, and that is my first chocolate-making experience. I'll probably be more likely to make something more akin to fudge again, as I really, really did enjoy the orange fudge I'd made around New Year's (the recipe is in an earlier post). I'm still trying to use up ingredients from my pantry, as the fumigation is on Tuesday and I will want to empty out my food as much as possible before then.
The loan application process has been taking some doing. For some reason, the lender wants to know not only my marital status, but they want a copy of the divorce decree! I asked the woman on the phone, Well, I owned the property before I was married, had it through the marriage, and kept it after the divorce. Why is my marital status an issue? to which she could offer no explanation. I suppose most people just fill out the paperwork to get it over with. I contacted the County Clerk of Lycoming County, PA, where the divorce would have been registered. It's going to coast fifty cents per page to copy any official legal paperwork, which this happens to be. So I mailed off the fifty cent check with the letter and a self-addressed envelope in this morning's mail. I'll wait to talk to the mortgage company, as I won't submit the divorce decree until after they ask for it again, which they might or might not, depending on how the woman I talked to relays my reaction to the underwriters. Why are mortgage underwriters so damn f*cking nosy, anyway? What difference does it make whether someone is married to one's partner or not?
Now I understand why Peter has been putting off finalizing his divorce (he's been separated from his wife for a few years now). It's such a pain in the f*cking ass, whereas it's easy enough to get married...
Financial information makes sense. My finances were never mixed with John's (or Chris's, when we were married), and I've never missed a mortgage payment, which must count for something. When I talked to a friend about this, she agreed that the requirements for obtaining a mortgage seem quite onerous, and she said that the regular mortgage payments do count for something. My regular payoff of my credit cards count for something, as well. We talked to another student in Pastries & Desserts on Wednesday about obtaining credit. She has no credit record, because she recently relocated to San Diego from Korea, where she was working before she married and moved here. Someone recommended to her that she get a credit card from her bank, then just make lots of charges, as long as she pays them off as well. From that conversation, I gathered that one charges everything, then pays it off at the end of the month, showing responsibility with rotating credit. Long-term debts, like mortgages and car loans, are harder, I suppose, to get because they're a much larger commitment. I understand that they want a copy of the most recent lease with the current tenant, who just renewed their lease, which makes me happy, because it's a real estate listing fee that I can avoid for another year.
On another, completely unrelated note, I just formed some homemade chocolates using 7 ounces of baker's chocolate (100% cacao), an ounce and a half of sugar, and hazelnuts that I roasted earlier this morning. They're cooling on the stovetop and in the fridge. I'm hoping to try one and take some to Peter's this afternoon, as we'll be making final preparations to dive tomorrow morning. I'm only mildly nervous that the rest of the chocolates will disappear when Kat comes home from school, as she has a minimum day today and therefore will be coming home just around lunchtime, meaning she'll be hungry. Though, realistically, I probably ought to worry about their melting before I get to Peter's as it's already a quite warm day. I'll prepare a green salad for lunch, with butter lettuce and blanched green beans (from the CSA box) and chilled hard-boiled eggs which I'll slice with my new KitchenAid brand egg slicer. I'd tried to slice eggs with a knife when my first egg slicer broke, but there's too much drag from the blade, so I totally understand the wire. like cheese, right?
Well, today's rant came, at least, with something good that has happened, and that is my first chocolate-making experience. I'll probably be more likely to make something more akin to fudge again, as I really, really did enjoy the orange fudge I'd made around New Year's (the recipe is in an earlier post). I'm still trying to use up ingredients from my pantry, as the fumigation is on Tuesday and I will want to empty out my food as much as possible before then.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
There's Just Something About Fresh Produce
I recently joined a CSA. I had been member of another CSA, but that one was based in the Bay Area (ie, San Francisco), so the produce was more than a little wilted by the time it got down to San Diego. The subscription farm that I just joined is totally local and, from what I've been told by a good friend, produces very good veggies.
Being a member of a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture), or subscription farm, means that by enabling a farm to pay its bills and workers, one gets the bounty of that which is produced - namely, fresh produce - for either the same monetary cost or even less than the supermarket (especially organic supermarkets like Whole Foods), because this process is direct. It cuts out the middle-man, the supermarket/distributer who, naturally, takes a cut (often a substantial one at that) from what the consumer pays before paying the farmer. By cutting out this middle-man, the farmer gets to keep more of what the consumer pays, and the consumer ends up paying less than retail for their food.
Naturally, there will be leaner times and more abundant times, when one's CSA box (or "share," as they are referred) contents can vary. That is the price of buying into a subscription farm: by sharing the expenses, the consumer gets a portion of that which is produced, for better, when times are abundant, or worse, when there are events that cause or precipitate crop failure. It's shared risk among the farmer and their customers. If there is more than one farm in a co-op arrangement, the other member farms may try to produce extra to make up for the farm that has had the bad luck, but I don't know that for sure. For each of the subscription farms I've known, and I'm only just joining my second, it is a single farm. I believe the CSA I've just joined is veggie-only, so, like I'd said in an earlier post, Kat and I will still need to go to Sprout's or North Park Produce to get most of our fresh (and dried) fruit.
I expect to make forays to places like Trader Joe's (although I am trying to limit my spending there for reasons which I'll go into later) or the Grocery Outlet for things like cooking oils, vinegars (since Kat and I have realized that it would take more space to properly ferment and store vinegar than we have in our small two-bedroom flat), dairy products (I have not the right mentality or constitution to go vegan at this point), and almond, rice, or the occasional coconut milk. I'd also end up buying herbs and spices, though if we find a good garden spot (ie, if Peter relocates to a place where we can grow an herb garden comparable to the one he currently has), we could conceivably grow much of the herbs we'd use. Then we'd just need to buy spices.
On the dairy note, I've tried to produce yogurt at home by using a "starter" of store-bought yogurt and store-bought milk that I've heated up to 115-120 degrees Fahrenheit. I was trying to wake up the yeast without killing it with too high a temperature, but the two times I've tried it, the yogurt came out very watery. It turned out that, counterintuitively, using more starter yogurt actually makes the yogurt form less well... That's an experiment that I'll need to try again another day this summer, as paying almost $10 per week for the eight pounds of yogurt we consume becomes expensive after a while. I'm glad that Kat likes yogurt. She tends to sweeten it with honey and/or jam (her current favorite is fig jam, which I buy at North Park Produce). Still, I'm glad she's found a good source of calcium, as she, like I, no longer drinks bovine milk due to lactose intolerance. In other words, she has started to suffer from the inability to produce lactase with which to digest lactose, producing rather pronounced gastric disturbances.
That leads me to another, almost-related point. Kat's dad, who lives on the East Coast, doesn't (or at least he didn't, when I knew him) believe there's such a thing as lactose intolerance. He also doesn't believe in earthshine, by which one can see, with the naked eye, that portion of the moon which is not directly lit by the sun (at night). It's a fortunate thing that Kat was conceived before I knew him well enough to know about these beliefs, or she would not be around at all. I don't think I would have willingly bred with a man whose mind, while claiming to espouse the reality of the scientific method, denies such things...
Back to the point with which I started today's discussion: fresh produce. It helps that the produce we will be consuming will be organically produced, meaning that no artificial growth stimulants are used and that no insecticides are applied. I understand that organic farms do not produce the volume of food that is required to feed the human population as it stands today. This, in turn, leads me to another point: the world's human population is quickly approaching the carrying capacity of the planet, if it's not already there. At some point, the human population will reach a point at which there will necessarily be a population crash. The estimates of the carrying capacity of our fair blue dot in this great universe keep going up, but there is a limit. Bullocks, say some, technology will allow the human population to increase infinitely. But what kind of quality of life would it be for that population? Not a very pretty one, if the current state of income distribution is any indication.
While I'm in favor of organic gardening and farming, I realize that there is a need, on another scale, to have adequate farms to feed the world's ever-increasing human population. For me, the locality of my produce is more important than the fact that it's organic, because I understand that organic produce contains no more nutrients than that which is conventionally-produced using pesticides and GMOs. That less fuel is used to bring the produce to me is the deciding factor. I like food with small ecological footprints.
That brings me to another rant: the human population. The growth of the human population is uneven in that the places that produce the most wealth and are best suited to support larger populations have steadily decreasing populations (with the notable exception of the United States, though much of our population growth is from immigration) while poorer, less technologically-advanced populations are indeed burgeoning, meaning to grow or increase rapidly. Hell in a handbasket, anyone?
But back to my produce. Today, I'm happily unpacking butter lettuce, cone-top cabbage, radishes, eight-ball summer squash, beets, kale, broccoli, fresh basil, and a pint of lovely, sweet, red strawberries. I was able to fill the drawers in my fridge and then some.
I'm only sorry that in today's Pastries and Desserts class, we made doughnuts, which Liz and I were happily devouring as they cooked. Ugh. Now I'm paying the price. Tomorrow, I will try to run, then, if my hip feels better. Then I'll get into my regular core routine, then perhaps add in some arms, shoulders, chest, and back for a whole-body workout. For now, I'm going to take a shower and lay myself down to rest after just waaay too many carbs in those doughnuts...
Being a member of a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture), or subscription farm, means that by enabling a farm to pay its bills and workers, one gets the bounty of that which is produced - namely, fresh produce - for either the same monetary cost or even less than the supermarket (especially organic supermarkets like Whole Foods), because this process is direct. It cuts out the middle-man, the supermarket/distributer who, naturally, takes a cut (often a substantial one at that) from what the consumer pays before paying the farmer. By cutting out this middle-man, the farmer gets to keep more of what the consumer pays, and the consumer ends up paying less than retail for their food.
Naturally, there will be leaner times and more abundant times, when one's CSA box (or "share," as they are referred) contents can vary. That is the price of buying into a subscription farm: by sharing the expenses, the consumer gets a portion of that which is produced, for better, when times are abundant, or worse, when there are events that cause or precipitate crop failure. It's shared risk among the farmer and their customers. If there is more than one farm in a co-op arrangement, the other member farms may try to produce extra to make up for the farm that has had the bad luck, but I don't know that for sure. For each of the subscription farms I've known, and I'm only just joining my second, it is a single farm. I believe the CSA I've just joined is veggie-only, so, like I'd said in an earlier post, Kat and I will still need to go to Sprout's or North Park Produce to get most of our fresh (and dried) fruit.
I expect to make forays to places like Trader Joe's (although I am trying to limit my spending there for reasons which I'll go into later) or the Grocery Outlet for things like cooking oils, vinegars (since Kat and I have realized that it would take more space to properly ferment and store vinegar than we have in our small two-bedroom flat), dairy products (I have not the right mentality or constitution to go vegan at this point), and almond, rice, or the occasional coconut milk. I'd also end up buying herbs and spices, though if we find a good garden spot (ie, if Peter relocates to a place where we can grow an herb garden comparable to the one he currently has), we could conceivably grow much of the herbs we'd use. Then we'd just need to buy spices.
On the dairy note, I've tried to produce yogurt at home by using a "starter" of store-bought yogurt and store-bought milk that I've heated up to 115-120 degrees Fahrenheit. I was trying to wake up the yeast without killing it with too high a temperature, but the two times I've tried it, the yogurt came out very watery. It turned out that, counterintuitively, using more starter yogurt actually makes the yogurt form less well... That's an experiment that I'll need to try again another day this summer, as paying almost $10 per week for the eight pounds of yogurt we consume becomes expensive after a while. I'm glad that Kat likes yogurt. She tends to sweeten it with honey and/or jam (her current favorite is fig jam, which I buy at North Park Produce). Still, I'm glad she's found a good source of calcium, as she, like I, no longer drinks bovine milk due to lactose intolerance. In other words, she has started to suffer from the inability to produce lactase with which to digest lactose, producing rather pronounced gastric disturbances.
That leads me to another, almost-related point. Kat's dad, who lives on the East Coast, doesn't (or at least he didn't, when I knew him) believe there's such a thing as lactose intolerance. He also doesn't believe in earthshine, by which one can see, with the naked eye, that portion of the moon which is not directly lit by the sun (at night). It's a fortunate thing that Kat was conceived before I knew him well enough to know about these beliefs, or she would not be around at all. I don't think I would have willingly bred with a man whose mind, while claiming to espouse the reality of the scientific method, denies such things...
Back to the point with which I started today's discussion: fresh produce. It helps that the produce we will be consuming will be organically produced, meaning that no artificial growth stimulants are used and that no insecticides are applied. I understand that organic farms do not produce the volume of food that is required to feed the human population as it stands today. This, in turn, leads me to another point: the world's human population is quickly approaching the carrying capacity of the planet, if it's not already there. At some point, the human population will reach a point at which there will necessarily be a population crash. The estimates of the carrying capacity of our fair blue dot in this great universe keep going up, but there is a limit. Bullocks, say some, technology will allow the human population to increase infinitely. But what kind of quality of life would it be for that population? Not a very pretty one, if the current state of income distribution is any indication.
While I'm in favor of organic gardening and farming, I realize that there is a need, on another scale, to have adequate farms to feed the world's ever-increasing human population. For me, the locality of my produce is more important than the fact that it's organic, because I understand that organic produce contains no more nutrients than that which is conventionally-produced using pesticides and GMOs. That less fuel is used to bring the produce to me is the deciding factor. I like food with small ecological footprints.
That brings me to another rant: the human population. The growth of the human population is uneven in that the places that produce the most wealth and are best suited to support larger populations have steadily decreasing populations (with the notable exception of the United States, though much of our population growth is from immigration) while poorer, less technologically-advanced populations are indeed burgeoning, meaning to grow or increase rapidly. Hell in a handbasket, anyone?
But back to my produce. Today, I'm happily unpacking butter lettuce, cone-top cabbage, radishes, eight-ball summer squash, beets, kale, broccoli, fresh basil, and a pint of lovely, sweet, red strawberries. I was able to fill the drawers in my fridge and then some.
I'm only sorry that in today's Pastries and Desserts class, we made doughnuts, which Liz and I were happily devouring as they cooked. Ugh. Now I'm paying the price. Tomorrow, I will try to run, then, if my hip feels better. Then I'll get into my regular core routine, then perhaps add in some arms, shoulders, chest, and back for a whole-body workout. For now, I'm going to take a shower and lay myself down to rest after just waaay too many carbs in those doughnuts...
Monday, April 28, 2014
Say, That Reminds Me...
Okay, okay, I will freely admit that my memory is atrocious. The fact is, I depend on others to help me remember lots of details (like passwords for websites and bank ATM PINs). The trouble is, there are just so many passwords that I'd come up with a system, but the system fails once I have to change a password, because they're not inherently sequential (ie, PassWord01, PassWord02, etc.). For most websites, I just use the name of the website/company, adding a number if a number is required, and capitalizing the name if an uppercase letter is required. There is one four-digit number sequence which I've designated my "ATM PIN," which I intend to use for every ATM card until it gets hacked or stolen. Then I'll be up the creek as far as making up a new one.
I opened three new accounts at Kat's credit union (two savings and one checking) because I intend to move my finances from BoA over the next weeks. The only catch is that my safe deposit box just renewed, so it'd be almost another whole year before I can close that without loss. In the process of opening the new checking account at the credit union, the woman who was setting up the account had me enter a PIN for my ATM card. She said that the credit card comes with a four-digit number as well, but that it's usually better and easier to just have the computer randomize one for me because making up another one might end up being confusing. I concurred, and so am awaiting my new credit card, which will actually not be another VISA (I currently hold a VISA and a Discover). I don't plan to make cash withdrawals with my credit cards, anyway, so it's unlikely that I'll need to remember my credit card's four-digit code for using at ATMs. In this way, I've been making things much easier on myself by avoiding things that require memorization.
Soon I'll take the SCUBA Enriched Air Course, in which I'll need to memorize some formulae for figuring partial pressures based on depth and percentage of gases in the mix. The concept of partial pressures makes sense, if I think about it enough. A common Nitrox mix is composed of 32% oxygen, 67% nitrogen, and one per cent of something like carbon dioxide. There are "tri-mixes," to which helium is added in so that the percentage of nitrogen is lowered, thus cutting the risk of nitrogen narcosis while avoiding oxygen toxicity. But that's all for me ahead, next month, right before my trial (and it will be a trial, I'm sure).
Thinking about the trial, I'm glad that it's amidst enjoyable events, because then it'll be a blip instead of the dreaded, drawn-out debacle from which the court system seems to take pleasure. This is because it (the court system) wants to schedule things along its own pace, not necessarily in accordance with the accused's right to a speedy trial. It's taken long enough. I'm glad it'll be over in a few weeks.
Right. The fumigation will take place one week from tomorrow, so Kat and I'll be packing up foodstuffs, double bagging everything in big plastic bags in order to keep them "safe" from the fumigation gas. I looked up the chemical online, and it looks like it attacks the nervous system, but the description leaves out details, like how an animal actually dies after inhaling the killer gas. It just makes me sad that we haven't found Buddy, Kat's ball python, for weeks now (he'd disappeared shortly after I'd gone with Peter to San Francisco in mid-March). Given that snakes can hide themselves very well, it's sad and somewhat ironic, I suppose, that by hiding, Buddy's writing his own death warrant...
Tomorrow, I will pick up my first box from my new CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture), or subscription farm. I read their description of themselves, and I like the fact that they're very local, located right here in San Diego. The only thing I hadn't noticed while reading their literature is that I think they grow only veggies, not fruit, so we'll still need to procure fruit from supermarkets, which isn't too bad, I suppose, since I like the fresh and dried fruit from Sprouts, anyway.
It's getting late. I'll close up for tonight, and maybe write something more substantial tomorrow.
I opened three new accounts at Kat's credit union (two savings and one checking) because I intend to move my finances from BoA over the next weeks. The only catch is that my safe deposit box just renewed, so it'd be almost another whole year before I can close that without loss. In the process of opening the new checking account at the credit union, the woman who was setting up the account had me enter a PIN for my ATM card. She said that the credit card comes with a four-digit number as well, but that it's usually better and easier to just have the computer randomize one for me because making up another one might end up being confusing. I concurred, and so am awaiting my new credit card, which will actually not be another VISA (I currently hold a VISA and a Discover). I don't plan to make cash withdrawals with my credit cards, anyway, so it's unlikely that I'll need to remember my credit card's four-digit code for using at ATMs. In this way, I've been making things much easier on myself by avoiding things that require memorization.
Soon I'll take the SCUBA Enriched Air Course, in which I'll need to memorize some formulae for figuring partial pressures based on depth and percentage of gases in the mix. The concept of partial pressures makes sense, if I think about it enough. A common Nitrox mix is composed of 32% oxygen, 67% nitrogen, and one per cent of something like carbon dioxide. There are "tri-mixes," to which helium is added in so that the percentage of nitrogen is lowered, thus cutting the risk of nitrogen narcosis while avoiding oxygen toxicity. But that's all for me ahead, next month, right before my trial (and it will be a trial, I'm sure).
Thinking about the trial, I'm glad that it's amidst enjoyable events, because then it'll be a blip instead of the dreaded, drawn-out debacle from which the court system seems to take pleasure. This is because it (the court system) wants to schedule things along its own pace, not necessarily in accordance with the accused's right to a speedy trial. It's taken long enough. I'm glad it'll be over in a few weeks.
Right. The fumigation will take place one week from tomorrow, so Kat and I'll be packing up foodstuffs, double bagging everything in big plastic bags in order to keep them "safe" from the fumigation gas. I looked up the chemical online, and it looks like it attacks the nervous system, but the description leaves out details, like how an animal actually dies after inhaling the killer gas. It just makes me sad that we haven't found Buddy, Kat's ball python, for weeks now (he'd disappeared shortly after I'd gone with Peter to San Francisco in mid-March). Given that snakes can hide themselves very well, it's sad and somewhat ironic, I suppose, that by hiding, Buddy's writing his own death warrant...
Tomorrow, I will pick up my first box from my new CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture), or subscription farm. I read their description of themselves, and I like the fact that they're very local, located right here in San Diego. The only thing I hadn't noticed while reading their literature is that I think they grow only veggies, not fruit, so we'll still need to procure fruit from supermarkets, which isn't too bad, I suppose, since I like the fresh and dried fruit from Sprouts, anyway.
It's getting late. I'll close up for tonight, and maybe write something more substantial tomorrow.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Proposed Pipeline Under and Through the United States from Canada to Gulf Coast Refineries for Export to Foreign Destinations
I was watching a video of the anti-Keystone XL Pipeline protest posted by SanDiego350.org:
http://www.eyepaintart.blogspot.com/2014/04/stop-kxl-no-pipeline.html.
I'm going to rant a bit today about the "demand" for petroleum products, in spite of their obsolescence...
I understand that there are and will continue to be internal combustion engines as part of our lives. However, what I cannot fathom is why people will continue to buy this technology, since it is already reaching the end of its useful lifespan.
I understand: because I live in the United States, which has not seen a war on its own land since the turn of the twentieth century (Okay, WWII saw some Japanese attacks on US territories). That being the case, this country has never needed to re-lay its rails (as Germany and Japan have), or rebuild much of its infrastructure, as much of Europe has. That is why this country is so far behind the curve on adopting new technologies: what we've already had was always good enough, and we were never forced to replace them.
The time has come (actually, the time had been ripe for a long, long time, and is nearing the rotting stage) for the United States to go through the reconstruction of all major infrastructure, including bridges, tunnels, canals, subways, sewer systems, etc. This would create immediate jobs for the construction industry, which has been aching for work since the economic downturn of the prior presidential administration, and provide a baseline for future work, as everything will be documented (or at least it ought to be) for future repairs (and for those of you who want to argue that some systems should be good enough to never require repair, I'll tell you that you are full of it, because all artificially created systems break down over time. All of them. It's not a matter of if, but when.
We could finally install a high speed rail system (aka "bullet trains"), that could compete with airlines for inter-city travelers. Giving people a viable alternative to flying would be a good thing. I know that I'd prefer to sit on a train, book in hand, watching the landscape race by rather than go through airport security any day of the week. I'd rather complete some work while a train shuttles me along, rather than be too uncomfortable, cramped into a seat on a flying can, to get anything done.
It's not that I have anything against airplanes: they have their purpose. However, for anything but the longest distances (or where bodies of water prevent railroad crossings), I believe that electric trains should be implemented and utilized. The electricity should be produced using renewables like sunlight, ocean waves, and wind (or, more likely, a combination of some or all of them), so that again, we're not investing in that anachronistic technology called fossil fuels. And that's more jobs for the construction industry. Granted, all of these projects would produce term, or temporary, jobs, but it's something. The construction industry needs to retool itself into projects involving renovation, updating, and very little new construction. As an architect, I understand the shock, but I believe this is the right way to go.
So, back to the Pipeline(s). There is really no need for it (them). People need to learn to become more efficient, to use the newer existing technologies to make the most of what energy can be produced using renewable methods (like those stated above). The cheapest energy we save is that which we never use, as I've heard said many, many times.
But too many people not only refuse to learn, they actively campaign against it. "The Masses" seem to enjoy the status quo. Even if they don't necessarily enjoy it, it's familiar, and that makes it less scary. The devil you know being less scary, right? But the status quo, the devil we do know, is going to end our species (or at least the society we've built) that much sooner. I just hate to think about how much we'll be destroying this planet before we're finally winked out of existence. The Earth, or Gaia, as some like to call it, can be happy, then, if it feels anything at all, to finally be free of the infestation that is the human species and the fever (climate change) it induced.
http://www.eyepaintart.blogspot.com/2014/04/stop-kxl-no-pipeline.html.
I'm going to rant a bit today about the "demand" for petroleum products, in spite of their obsolescence...
I understand that there are and will continue to be internal combustion engines as part of our lives. However, what I cannot fathom is why people will continue to buy this technology, since it is already reaching the end of its useful lifespan.
I understand: because I live in the United States, which has not seen a war on its own land since the turn of the twentieth century (Okay, WWII saw some Japanese attacks on US territories). That being the case, this country has never needed to re-lay its rails (as Germany and Japan have), or rebuild much of its infrastructure, as much of Europe has. That is why this country is so far behind the curve on adopting new technologies: what we've already had was always good enough, and we were never forced to replace them.
The time has come (actually, the time had been ripe for a long, long time, and is nearing the rotting stage) for the United States to go through the reconstruction of all major infrastructure, including bridges, tunnels, canals, subways, sewer systems, etc. This would create immediate jobs for the construction industry, which has been aching for work since the economic downturn of the prior presidential administration, and provide a baseline for future work, as everything will be documented (or at least it ought to be) for future repairs (and for those of you who want to argue that some systems should be good enough to never require repair, I'll tell you that you are full of it, because all artificially created systems break down over time. All of them. It's not a matter of if, but when.
We could finally install a high speed rail system (aka "bullet trains"), that could compete with airlines for inter-city travelers. Giving people a viable alternative to flying would be a good thing. I know that I'd prefer to sit on a train, book in hand, watching the landscape race by rather than go through airport security any day of the week. I'd rather complete some work while a train shuttles me along, rather than be too uncomfortable, cramped into a seat on a flying can, to get anything done.
It's not that I have anything against airplanes: they have their purpose. However, for anything but the longest distances (or where bodies of water prevent railroad crossings), I believe that electric trains should be implemented and utilized. The electricity should be produced using renewables like sunlight, ocean waves, and wind (or, more likely, a combination of some or all of them), so that again, we're not investing in that anachronistic technology called fossil fuels. And that's more jobs for the construction industry. Granted, all of these projects would produce term, or temporary, jobs, but it's something. The construction industry needs to retool itself into projects involving renovation, updating, and very little new construction. As an architect, I understand the shock, but I believe this is the right way to go.
So, back to the Pipeline(s). There is really no need for it (them). People need to learn to become more efficient, to use the newer existing technologies to make the most of what energy can be produced using renewable methods (like those stated above). The cheapest energy we save is that which we never use, as I've heard said many, many times.
But too many people not only refuse to learn, they actively campaign against it. "The Masses" seem to enjoy the status quo. Even if they don't necessarily enjoy it, it's familiar, and that makes it less scary. The devil you know being less scary, right? But the status quo, the devil we do know, is going to end our species (or at least the society we've built) that much sooner. I just hate to think about how much we'll be destroying this planet before we're finally winked out of existence. The Earth, or Gaia, as some like to call it, can be happy, then, if it feels anything at all, to finally be free of the infestation that is the human species and the fever (climate change) it induced.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
How the San Diego Police Department Uses Time as an Intimidation Tactic
It's happened to me twice. I'm glad that the red light cams that littered the City of San Diego have finally been determined to provide inadmissible "evidence" in court. The judgment came too late for me, but I feel better knowing that the City of San Diego will no longer be funding its police activities through commissioning ticket quotas from its traffic officers (though this is, in greatest likelihood, still practiced, because police departments in all U.S. cities are notoriously corrupt and therefore forever in want of cash).
I think the worst part of the red light cam scam is that the photos are sent to the driver weeks before the actual summons arrives in the mail, giving the driver time to stew in their misery. These police departments are practicing psychological torture. Rather than make the accusation right away by sending a ticket with the photos, the photos are sent first, so as to intimidate the driver into believing that they've got no recourse. Well, I'm glad that the red light cams are gone. They were never a method of increasing safety on the streets, no matter how much the police departments might claim. They are (were) a means of pure revenue production for the police departments that use(d) them. While I value the peacekeeping function of a functional police department, more often than not, I'm witness to the high-handedness and self-righteousness police officers often express in both actions and words.
The most recent time I was pulled over by a cop for a supposed traffic violation, Peter was with me, and he remembered the entire encounter, word for word. Afterwards, he asked me if I remembered how the cop reacted when I responded to his query, and I said I wasn't looking at the guy. Peter leaned back and told me the cop appeared flabbergasted that I should have made a judgment call while driving, rather than just blindly obeying the word of the law...
I obey the word of the law when it makes logical sense. When it makes no rational, reasonable sense, I ignore the word and go for the spirit of the law, which, in my mind, is public safety (and shouldn't that always be the focus of police departments?).
So if public safety is the goal of all police departments, and I believe it ought to be, why are so many resources put into collecting traffic fines? Traffic fines help to pay for the operation of the police department, and therefore has become a necessary evil. In all seriousness, who really gives a flying f*ck how fast someone's driving on a major thoroughfare as long as they're managing the car well enough to avoid a wreck? In my book: no harm, no foul. No accident, no blame. If there's an accident, then there is typically some assignment of blame (it might come out equally among participants, or might come out to lay at the feet of one driver). Outside of adjudicating court cases where one party is suing another for their part in causing a traffic accident, why does the law even care?
It really shouldn't, is my conclusion. It seems to have become the role of police departments around the country (this country, at least) to be society's busybodies, minding everybody's business, regardless of the righteousness of that inquisitiveness. It reminds me of miscegenation laws and "marriage inequality" laws. Who cares what gender(s) of person(s) one enjoys, sexually or otherwise?
I remember spending time in college (and I did attend college) figuring out my sexuality, and came to the conclusion that the kind of persons I found attractive were those who were wholly themselves and comfortable occupying their own skin. Sure, I had physical preferences, just as most, if not all, people do. But in terms of the person inside that body, I was kind of an equal opportunity lover of sorts, though I realized over time that I really did have preferences for certain personality types, and that those preferences were acceptable, both to myself and to the society in which I lived.
Nowadays, I spend less time thinking about why I find someone attractive, and just revel in the joy of being in love, which happens all too infrequently to the likes of me...
I've been in love three times in my life.
The first young man I'd fallen for was, the words of my friend, Deb Pastner, "an Adonis." What she'd actually said was, "I walked into the bathroom, and there, brushing his teeth, was an Adonis. I figured he must belong to you." (We had a coed bathroom on our floor of the dorm.)
The second time I fell in love was with my (second) husband. If I gave you a physical description of these first two men, you'd think I had a thing for tall blonds, which, perhaps, I do, to a certain extent...
The third man, with whom I'm very much in love, is, unlike the first two, actually my senior by about a dozen or so years. Like the first two, though, he has a great head of hair through which I so do enjoy running my fingers! And, like the first two, he is a creator; an artful engineer, if you will. A musician, as well as a great intellectual, and a thoughtful, affectionate person to boot!
Alas, I digress a bit too far even for my taste. Good night. I will find some other topic about which to rant, I'm sure, soon enough.
I think the worst part of the red light cam scam is that the photos are sent to the driver weeks before the actual summons arrives in the mail, giving the driver time to stew in their misery. These police departments are practicing psychological torture. Rather than make the accusation right away by sending a ticket with the photos, the photos are sent first, so as to intimidate the driver into believing that they've got no recourse. Well, I'm glad that the red light cams are gone. They were never a method of increasing safety on the streets, no matter how much the police departments might claim. They are (were) a means of pure revenue production for the police departments that use(d) them. While I value the peacekeeping function of a functional police department, more often than not, I'm witness to the high-handedness and self-righteousness police officers often express in both actions and words.
The most recent time I was pulled over by a cop for a supposed traffic violation, Peter was with me, and he remembered the entire encounter, word for word. Afterwards, he asked me if I remembered how the cop reacted when I responded to his query, and I said I wasn't looking at the guy. Peter leaned back and told me the cop appeared flabbergasted that I should have made a judgment call while driving, rather than just blindly obeying the word of the law...
I obey the word of the law when it makes logical sense. When it makes no rational, reasonable sense, I ignore the word and go for the spirit of the law, which, in my mind, is public safety (and shouldn't that always be the focus of police departments?).
So if public safety is the goal of all police departments, and I believe it ought to be, why are so many resources put into collecting traffic fines? Traffic fines help to pay for the operation of the police department, and therefore has become a necessary evil. In all seriousness, who really gives a flying f*ck how fast someone's driving on a major thoroughfare as long as they're managing the car well enough to avoid a wreck? In my book: no harm, no foul. No accident, no blame. If there's an accident, then there is typically some assignment of blame (it might come out equally among participants, or might come out to lay at the feet of one driver). Outside of adjudicating court cases where one party is suing another for their part in causing a traffic accident, why does the law even care?
It really shouldn't, is my conclusion. It seems to have become the role of police departments around the country (this country, at least) to be society's busybodies, minding everybody's business, regardless of the righteousness of that inquisitiveness. It reminds me of miscegenation laws and "marriage inequality" laws. Who cares what gender(s) of person(s) one enjoys, sexually or otherwise?
I remember spending time in college (and I did attend college) figuring out my sexuality, and came to the conclusion that the kind of persons I found attractive were those who were wholly themselves and comfortable occupying their own skin. Sure, I had physical preferences, just as most, if not all, people do. But in terms of the person inside that body, I was kind of an equal opportunity lover of sorts, though I realized over time that I really did have preferences for certain personality types, and that those preferences were acceptable, both to myself and to the society in which I lived.
Nowadays, I spend less time thinking about why I find someone attractive, and just revel in the joy of being in love, which happens all too infrequently to the likes of me...
I've been in love three times in my life.
The first young man I'd fallen for was, the words of my friend, Deb Pastner, "an Adonis." What she'd actually said was, "I walked into the bathroom, and there, brushing his teeth, was an Adonis. I figured he must belong to you." (We had a coed bathroom on our floor of the dorm.)
The second time I fell in love was with my (second) husband. If I gave you a physical description of these first two men, you'd think I had a thing for tall blonds, which, perhaps, I do, to a certain extent...
The third man, with whom I'm very much in love, is, unlike the first two, actually my senior by about a dozen or so years. Like the first two, though, he has a great head of hair through which I so do enjoy running my fingers! And, like the first two, he is a creator; an artful engineer, if you will. A musician, as well as a great intellectual, and a thoughtful, affectionate person to boot!
Alas, I digress a bit too far even for my taste. Good night. I will find some other topic about which to rant, I'm sure, soon enough.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Learning the Limits to "Freedom of Speech"
Today, I received an email message from TripAdvisor, where I often posted reviews of places, local and distant, as a reference for other travelers and visitors to San Diego. I am (or at least I was, when I'd received this missive from them) one of their "Top Contributors." This was the first time I'd ever been requested to rewrite a review. Here is the original review in its entirety:
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"We went to SeaWorld because my friend had free passes from another friend. We went there early, and walked around quite a bit, making a spiral to cover all the exhibits. We did not see any performing animals, though, even though that seems to be what a lot of people go to SeaWorld for. We visited the porpoises in their holding tank, touched some rays in the touch pool, ate lunch at one of the eateries, and rode the roller coaster a couple of times because I'd not been on a roller coaster in years.
"It was not an unpleasant visit; I hope that the basic premise of the organization changes its focus to the well-being of the animals, rather than "sacrificing" the few to "help" the overall population, as it seems to be. SeaWorld calls a lot of attention to its conservation efforts around San Diego, as I'm sure SeaWorlds in other locations do, but as long as they're holding intelligent, sentient captives in pools, I'd recommend against patronizing them."
I'm sure that the lawyers at TripAdvisor took one look at this and thought, "This is a lawsuit waiting to happen (if we publish this review)..." so they sent me a request for a rewrite. I am not going to rewrite it, because anything else I'd write could only be (even more) scathing, not only of SeaWorld, but of TripAdvisor itself for not having the balls to publish anything that can be construed as "controversial," perhaps esp. after SeaWorld already caught flak over the movie "Blackfish." I hadn't seen "Blackfish" until after our visit to SeaWorld, so was not aware of any mistreatment prior to our visit. Call me naive; I pretty much was, though I'd always had a sinking feeling about SeaWorld in general, and never had the desire to see one of their performing animal shows. "Blackfish" called perfect attention to it for me.
I was going to write about something else today, but that has flown out of my mind now that I'm on this topic. Censorship is practiced everywhere, I've learned. Too many ambulance-chasing lawyers and suit-happy, overly-sensitive to criticism organizations out there... A lot of self-censorship, I believe. Even in a forum as this, my own blog, someone might tell me to be careful, because SeaWorld might come after me for defamation. Well, SeaWorld can try, but they're trying to get blood from a stone if they sue my ass, because I don't have sufficient assets to make it worth their while. And it's bad publicity for them to go after some random blogger for insulting their collective ego.
I would be surprised if Blogger were to delete this post. We'll see how many eyes see it before that happens...
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Thursday, April 17, 2014
Why MTS in the City of San Diego Sucks
17 April 2014 5:32p
We all know the chicken-and-egg argument: unless public transit improves its service, nobody will ride it except the desperate; yet, the system won't be improved unless ridership increases enough to pay for it. This all points to an obvious solution that would send republicans (the Repugnant Party, I prefer to call it) around the bend, I'm sure:
All transit systems must be subsidized until ridership increases sufficiently for it to become self-sustaining. People like to say that they don't want to ride the bus because it's inconvenient, and perhaps they don't want to conform to a schedule. Well, you know what, folks? What pathetic system we do have is going down the f*cking tubes because nobody will ride! Well, get a clue, folks, because before long, private cars will be so exorbitant to run due to the price of fuel that we'll all need to use transit. Be the first, goddamn it! Get to the front of this curve!
AND I MEAN IT. No, the naysayers contend, We, as "'mer'cans," like to be individuals and nonconformist to the point where nobody even wants to share transportation with anyone else (much to our collective detriment). And Americans love love love their automobiles!
I did not notice any loss of individuality among the Spanish, Catalan, German, Belgian, New Yorkers, or Bostonians who all use their public transit systems as they are intended to be used. Oh, but the naysayers complain, New York already has a great transit system, as do most European countries.
Well, the United States of America is behaving more like the Disparate Spoiled-Rotten Children of America by poo-pooing public transit. Doesn't anyone remember that one of the steps in growing into adulthood is learning how to share? Or has that lesson stopped being taught because we're all such (selfish, egotistical) "individuals" now?
Granted, there are times when I use private transportation. Mostly, this is due to the lack of public options, which I would much prefer to use, if given the choice. But in Sunny San Diego, the choices are pathetically limited, with the possible exception of neighborhoods in which ridership is either high already, or there is easy money to be made from people who are willing to pay for and ride transit. Nobody considers that people ride transit because they realize that it's actually more convenient to avoid parking a 1-2 ton machine at one's destination, only to have to park it again when one gets home.
On a recent trip to Barcelona, I enjoyed learning the basics of the city's transit system (buses and subways) to make getting around easier and faster than walking everywhere. No car to worry about, I was free to explore the city to my heart's content.
When I first moved to San Diego in 2008, I rode transit exclusively because I was not driving yet after an automobile accident (I'll write about this another time, probably). I remember specifically taking the bus from my neighborhood to Kearny Mesa Transit Center, on Claremont Mesa Boulevard, and looking for attractive destinations of buses that were passing through. I saw a bus whose destination was "Pacific Beach," and I decided, Hey, that sounds like a cool destination to check out; it's a beach, how bad can it be? I'd remembered taking the subway from New York City to the beach, so this might be something as spectacularly similar! Turns out I ended up taking the 27 bus to Pacific Beach almost every day for almost a year, to walk on the "boardwalk" (is it a California thing to call something a "boardwalk" when it's really asphalt?) and look out onto the ocean in contemplation.
I've since been to Point Loma (past the airport on the 992 bus), Ocean Beach (on the 923), and Old Town (on the trolley's Green Line). I've even been out to Santee at the end of the Green Line with two children with me in the evening, when it was dark by the time we got home. Dangerous? Nah, not to me, or to my then-ten-year-old daughter, who has since become a confident transit utilizer herself.
I've heard the other complaint about transit: "It takes too long." Well, yes, it does take longer, but as long as one is willing to live at a slower pace, which I think we all ought to do anyway, transit is just fine. People have become so impatient these days that to wait five minutes for a late bus that will take an extra twenty minutes to get there feels like too much of a sacrifice to make to get anywhere. Well, those same shortsighted naysayers reply, why live life at a slower pace? Life will pass you by if you don't hurry...
Activities, my interests, and people keep my life interesting (if you haven't noticed), so I don't feel like life is passing me by at all. In fact, I believe I'm able to enjoy my life to a greater extent than folks who spend their lives rushing from one thing to another until they rush themselves into an early grave. Me, I'd rather live my life, and not have it determined by something as ephemeral as impatience. Patience is, after all, a virtue, whether one believes in a god (which I don't, obviously) or not. And the frustration of being stuck in traffic? Well, at times when I am stuck in traffic, I figure that's the price of living in a city that doesn't know how to organize itself. Unless I'm running out for groceries (because they'll melt or thaw excessively, though I've had fish packed in ice before leaving PB once to get back to Mira Mesa via two buses), I compute the time spent into an object's acquisition cost, just as I figure into the cost of groceries the cost of the gas I'm burning when I drive (and I do drive when I go to the grocery store, although I'm making such trips less frequently now that I belong to a CSA and receive fresh produce delivered to my door - I'll write about this another time, as well).
Life is what we make of it. I'm using my time on this earth as I see fit, spending time with my daughter, my lover, my immediate and extended family, my friends, and playmates. If I get to my destinations by bus or train, that's all the better, in my book. The time it takes, well, that's time spent reading or watching the scenery.
We all know the chicken-and-egg argument: unless public transit improves its service, nobody will ride it except the desperate; yet, the system won't be improved unless ridership increases enough to pay for it. This all points to an obvious solution that would send republicans (the Repugnant Party, I prefer to call it) around the bend, I'm sure:
All transit systems must be subsidized until ridership increases sufficiently for it to become self-sustaining. People like to say that they don't want to ride the bus because it's inconvenient, and perhaps they don't want to conform to a schedule. Well, you know what, folks? What pathetic system we do have is going down the f*cking tubes because nobody will ride! Well, get a clue, folks, because before long, private cars will be so exorbitant to run due to the price of fuel that we'll all need to use transit. Be the first, goddamn it! Get to the front of this curve!
AND I MEAN IT. No, the naysayers contend, We, as "'mer'cans," like to be individuals and nonconformist to the point where nobody even wants to share transportation with anyone else (much to our collective detriment). And Americans love love love their automobiles!
I did not notice any loss of individuality among the Spanish, Catalan, German, Belgian, New Yorkers, or Bostonians who all use their public transit systems as they are intended to be used. Oh, but the naysayers complain, New York already has a great transit system, as do most European countries.
Well, the United States of America is behaving more like the Disparate Spoiled-Rotten Children of America by poo-pooing public transit. Doesn't anyone remember that one of the steps in growing into adulthood is learning how to share? Or has that lesson stopped being taught because we're all such (selfish, egotistical) "individuals" now?
Granted, there are times when I use private transportation. Mostly, this is due to the lack of public options, which I would much prefer to use, if given the choice. But in Sunny San Diego, the choices are pathetically limited, with the possible exception of neighborhoods in which ridership is either high already, or there is easy money to be made from people who are willing to pay for and ride transit. Nobody considers that people ride transit because they realize that it's actually more convenient to avoid parking a 1-2 ton machine at one's destination, only to have to park it again when one gets home.
On a recent trip to Barcelona, I enjoyed learning the basics of the city's transit system (buses and subways) to make getting around easier and faster than walking everywhere. No car to worry about, I was free to explore the city to my heart's content.
When I first moved to San Diego in 2008, I rode transit exclusively because I was not driving yet after an automobile accident (I'll write about this another time, probably). I remember specifically taking the bus from my neighborhood to Kearny Mesa Transit Center, on Claremont Mesa Boulevard, and looking for attractive destinations of buses that were passing through. I saw a bus whose destination was "Pacific Beach," and I decided, Hey, that sounds like a cool destination to check out; it's a beach, how bad can it be? I'd remembered taking the subway from New York City to the beach, so this might be something as spectacularly similar! Turns out I ended up taking the 27 bus to Pacific Beach almost every day for almost a year, to walk on the "boardwalk" (is it a California thing to call something a "boardwalk" when it's really asphalt?) and look out onto the ocean in contemplation.
I've since been to Point Loma (past the airport on the 992 bus), Ocean Beach (on the 923), and Old Town (on the trolley's Green Line). I've even been out to Santee at the end of the Green Line with two children with me in the evening, when it was dark by the time we got home. Dangerous? Nah, not to me, or to my then-ten-year-old daughter, who has since become a confident transit utilizer herself.
I've heard the other complaint about transit: "It takes too long." Well, yes, it does take longer, but as long as one is willing to live at a slower pace, which I think we all ought to do anyway, transit is just fine. People have become so impatient these days that to wait five minutes for a late bus that will take an extra twenty minutes to get there feels like too much of a sacrifice to make to get anywhere. Well, those same shortsighted naysayers reply, why live life at a slower pace? Life will pass you by if you don't hurry...
Activities, my interests, and people keep my life interesting (if you haven't noticed), so I don't feel like life is passing me by at all. In fact, I believe I'm able to enjoy my life to a greater extent than folks who spend their lives rushing from one thing to another until they rush themselves into an early grave. Me, I'd rather live my life, and not have it determined by something as ephemeral as impatience. Patience is, after all, a virtue, whether one believes in a god (which I don't, obviously) or not. And the frustration of being stuck in traffic? Well, at times when I am stuck in traffic, I figure that's the price of living in a city that doesn't know how to organize itself. Unless I'm running out for groceries (because they'll melt or thaw excessively, though I've had fish packed in ice before leaving PB once to get back to Mira Mesa via two buses), I compute the time spent into an object's acquisition cost, just as I figure into the cost of groceries the cost of the gas I'm burning when I drive (and I do drive when I go to the grocery store, although I'm making such trips less frequently now that I belong to a CSA and receive fresh produce delivered to my door - I'll write about this another time, as well).
Life is what we make of it. I'm using my time on this earth as I see fit, spending time with my daughter, my lover, my immediate and extended family, my friends, and playmates. If I get to my destinations by bus or train, that's all the better, in my book. The time it takes, well, that's time spent reading or watching the scenery.
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