blog
I made a few new spice labels to match my set from 2 years ago.
I also polished my black shoes - man, I forgot how much work polishing is!
My parents were up to deliver me stuff, meaning I had to reorganize all my art stuff, kitchen stuff, books, etc! I acquired a bookshelf, which makes our living room look exponentially nicer (not exactly a feat considering the cardboard box table).
Also, we were leaving my aunt and uncle's house and spotted a garage sale - they had a great new dresser we picked up. The mirror is from a different garage sale over the summer - it was $5 so I couldn't resist, although I had nowhere to put it. It's non-functional atop the dresser, but at least it looks pretty ;D
The idea of CSAs (community supported agriculture) has intrigued me since I heard about in college, but they always seemed to come in 4-person or 2-person shares, which I didn't need. But now I have someone to share with, I finally got to try one!
After MUCH hemming and hawing, I decided on Boistfort Valley Farm, which has a delivery site in Kirkland only a fifteen minute round trip away. Why I picked them:
Our final delivery was last week, and now I'm trying to decide whether to buy a winter share.
Overall I loved having the CSA! I pretty much stopped grocery shopping, only going for pasta, dairy, and baking supplies, yet we were always inundated with food! We always got way more than we could eat, and I felt bad letting stuff go bad in the fridge when I didn't get around to cooking it. Each week was different so I didn’t wind up making the same things all the time. It was fun to try stuff I hadn’t tried before - garlic scapes (thumbs WAY up!), celery root (thumbs down), random asian greens (shrug), etc. An added bonus was the farm included recipes each week, which all sounded delicious - and all the ones that I made were! I couldn't get enough of the peas or the scapes, and the carrots were the best I've ever had. It was amazing to make whole meals - stews, pasta sauce, salad, etc - all from the freshest ingredients.
There were some drawbacks too though:
All in all, though, awesome. I think I'll do it again next summer. I'm not sure I need that many root veggies though to warrant the winter share...
After MUCH hemming and hawing, I decided on Boistfort Valley Farm, which has a delivery site in Kirkland only a fifteen minute round trip away. Why I picked them:
- they're 'Salmon Safe',
- they offered a two-person share,
- it cost ~22 bucks a week for the whole summer all the way through October, and
- the variety of food they offered sounded delectable and delicious.
Our final delivery was last week, and now I'm trying to decide whether to buy a winter share.
Overall I loved having the CSA! I pretty much stopped grocery shopping, only going for pasta, dairy, and baking supplies, yet we were always inundated with food! We always got way more than we could eat, and I felt bad letting stuff go bad in the fridge when I didn't get around to cooking it. Each week was different so I didn’t wind up making the same things all the time. It was fun to try stuff I hadn’t tried before - garlic scapes (thumbs WAY up!), celery root (thumbs down), random asian greens (shrug), etc. An added bonus was the farm included recipes each week, which all sounded delicious - and all the ones that I made were! I couldn't get enough of the peas or the scapes, and the carrots were the best I've ever had. It was amazing to make whole meals - stews, pasta sauce, salad, etc - all from the freshest ingredients.
There were some drawbacks too though:
- no choice in what we got, so we got some stuff I know I don't like (chard, celery, fennel bulbs) - although I did re-try some things (Note: even peanut sauce does not make chard edible)
- no choice in what we got, so I couldn't get more of the stuff I loved
- no choice, so we doubled up with our own garden. This turned out to only be an issue with tomatoes due to our slacking garden skillzorz, nothing a little pico de gallo won't fix ;D
- we didn't know what we'd get each week, making planning a challenge
- made it so I didn't need to go to farmer's markets ever :'(
- got too many of some stuff (zukes, cucumbers (uh, how much tzatziki can I eat?), radishes, green beans by the end)
- flowers were included - CJ would have rather'd more food, though we already had too much! (The lily's exacerbated his allergies)
- I wanted more fruit, cuz the fruit we did get was SO GOOD! I've never really liked nectarines, but I made a stupendous cobbler and wanted more!
All in all, though, awesome. I think I'll do it again next summer. I'm not sure I need that many root veggies though to warrant the winter share...
Labels: environment, opinion, random
Yesterday I showed CJ some stuff in Excel, which made me want to do some - I used to be the Queen of Excel! So I put together a simple little timeline of my interests over the past 13 years. It's silly, approximated, and incomplete (e.g. I omitted my one-summer long obsession with Batman and with vampires [before Twilight, please, give me some credit], etc.), but I had fun!
I ranked interest level in a topic from 0 to 10, with zero indicating I had a baseline interest about what the average person would have, and ten indicating near obsession. No value for a year indicated I didn't know / have an opinion about it.
Interests are organized in the legend left to right based on my first interest level, so 'mythology' is my oldest, highest-level interest starting in 1996, and 'steampunk' is my most recently begun interest.
I ranked interest level in a topic from 0 to 10, with zero indicating I had a baseline interest about what the average person would have, and ten indicating near obsession. No value for a year indicated I didn't know / have an opinion about it.
Interests are organized in the legend left to right based on my first interest level, so 'mythology' is my oldest, highest-level interest starting in 1996, and 'steampunk' is my most recently begun interest.
Labels: random
Mom got me a new earring rack, huzzah! Apparently I have a lot of earrings, I've already filled it pretty much completely up! But I still think it's time to make new... Of these, I made 35 pairs, bought 18, and was given 42.
I just finished up another fun, time-consuming graphic design class - this time for the web! We designed new portfolio sites (at last, tracydurnell.com will have different content than my blog! well, as soon as I finish coding...) and redesigned a random Hawaiian coffee-seller's website. Here's my homepage design for em:
In July I took CJ white-water rafting in eastern WA. I couldn't sleep the night before because I was so worried from the last time I went rafting (raft tipped, threw us all out in a big rapid with the river super flippin high - water so cold it knocked the air out of you - fend for yourself swim for the other raft look for parents later! - lost one of my tevas) but it turned out to be totally tame because I booked so late in the year. Random photography companies take pictures as you go down the rapids - I'm Rivers Inc Boat 1 7-12 if the link doesn't work.
How I know I should be a scientist: I <3 data! Here's a sweet chart comparing how different people spend their days, allowing you to compare what percent of Americans are working vs. sleeping, eating, watching TV, etc at any given moment of the day. And the site Daytum lets you keep track of random personal data like "miles walked" or "movies watched" or "drinks drank" or whatever the hell you want to keep track of. I can't decide what I want to track, so I haven't started yet!
Zomg.
I just finished up another fun, time-consuming graphic design class - this time for the web! We designed new portfolio sites (at last, tracydurnell.com will have different content than my blog! well, as soon as I finish coding...) and redesigned a random Hawaiian coffee-seller's website. Here's my homepage design for em:
In July I took CJ white-water rafting in eastern WA. I couldn't sleep the night before because I was so worried from the last time I went rafting (raft tipped, threw us all out in a big rapid with the river super flippin high - water so cold it knocked the air out of you - fend for yourself swim for the other raft look for parents later! - lost one of my tevas) but it turned out to be totally tame because I booked so late in the year. Random photography companies take pictures as you go down the rapids - I'm Rivers Inc Boat 1 7-12 if the link doesn't work.
How I know I should be a scientist: I <3 data! Here's a sweet chart comparing how different people spend their days, allowing you to compare what percent of Americans are working vs. sleeping, eating, watching TV, etc at any given moment of the day. And the site Daytum lets you keep track of random personal data like "miles walked" or "movies watched" or "drinks drank" or whatever the hell you want to keep track of. I can't decide what I want to track, so I haven't started yet!
Zomg.
Labels: adventure, design, random
The Last Supper in Detail
The Last Supper is totally thrashed--you can zoom in so it's like you're standing only inches from the canvas, and it's surprising how much paint is missing or flaking off the closer you zoom.
In more exciting news, my family got a new DUAL-FLUSH toilet this weekend! (Like the kind we had in New Zealand.) Hopefully it will help us save lots of water.
The Last Supper is totally thrashed--you can zoom in so it's like you're standing only inches from the canvas, and it's surprising how much paint is missing or flaking off the closer you zoom.
In more exciting news, my family got a new DUAL-FLUSH toilet this weekend! (Like the kind we had in New Zealand.) Hopefully it will help us save lots of water.
Labels: inspiration, random
If you've got a blog, you might consider participating in "Blog Action Day," October 15th, which aims to raise awareness of environmental issues and solutions. So, even though I have lately been very unreliable about posting, I will definitely (my top misspelled word) post on October 15th. Speaking of blogging, anyone want to help me set up an RSS feed? Apparently it's harder than I thought.
Now to the main topic, namely, that I am irrationally concerned that after the apocalypse, I will be a drain on society. I'm not sure why, but at some point I decided that one good metric of societal worth is what I'd be able to contribute to a post-apocalyptic community. The idea came up again recently when I read about world colonization in Time Enough for Love, and one incidental character complained that although he was no good at farming, when the world developed well enough to need secondary education, he'd be the best creative writing professor ever. If you want to read an entertaining 'apocalypse' story, try World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars, which is apparently being turned into a movie.
Society would first need agricultural, medicinal, and construction knowledge--nope. I have some rudimentary woodworking skills. I might be able to point out environmental hazards at potential sites, e.g. this is a flood plain, let's move 50 feet up the hill instead. But that sort of knowledge is really straightforward if you're actually considering it, so that's not much of a contribution. I want to learn about wild edibles, which would be useful, but that'll take a while.
Once people are fed and housed, society will need to develop infrastructure for transportation to enable the development of trade so that people can specialize but still supply their basic needs. All I have on that account is an "intro to planning" class, which doesn't give me that much expertise, and people can figure out where roads and meeting places should be. Most of the planning class was saying that people had it right until they started building for automobiles rather than people, and since we won't have cars, that won't be a problem.
After the apocalypse, will we try to rebuild the world to its current state, or will we have learned from today's problems and rebuild with some consideration for the Earth and its other inhabitants? Will we be so stressed with trying to survive that we'll forget to plan and consider our long-term goals and foundations? How would you plan and manage Utopia?
Eventually society will try to redevelop technologies. I don't know anything about electronics, gears, motors, can't build anything. I know only how to utilize technologies. I know some basic chemistry and lab techniques, but wouldn't know what to combine to make what, or how to synthesize materials. I can sauter but not weld.
Yikes. Looks like it'd be cheaper to shoot me--surely people will salvage guns. I'm not the only one who would only be able to contribute my body (if not manual labor, I could be a child-bearing vessel...). What does it say about society that so many humans would be unable to survive without it?
What knowledge and skills will earn your keep after the apocalypse?
Now to the main topic, namely, that I am irrationally concerned that after the apocalypse, I will be a drain on society. I'm not sure why, but at some point I decided that one good metric of societal worth is what I'd be able to contribute to a post-apocalyptic community. The idea came up again recently when I read about world colonization in Time Enough for Love, and one incidental character complained that although he was no good at farming, when the world developed well enough to need secondary education, he'd be the best creative writing professor ever. If you want to read an entertaining 'apocalypse' story, try World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars, which is apparently being turned into a movie.
Society would first need agricultural, medicinal, and construction knowledge--nope. I have some rudimentary woodworking skills. I might be able to point out environmental hazards at potential sites, e.g. this is a flood plain, let's move 50 feet up the hill instead. But that sort of knowledge is really straightforward if you're actually considering it, so that's not much of a contribution. I want to learn about wild edibles, which would be useful, but that'll take a while.
Once people are fed and housed, society will need to develop infrastructure for transportation to enable the development of trade so that people can specialize but still supply their basic needs. All I have on that account is an "intro to planning" class, which doesn't give me that much expertise, and people can figure out where roads and meeting places should be. Most of the planning class was saying that people had it right until they started building for automobiles rather than people, and since we won't have cars, that won't be a problem.
After the apocalypse, will we try to rebuild the world to its current state, or will we have learned from today's problems and rebuild with some consideration for the Earth and its other inhabitants? Will we be so stressed with trying to survive that we'll forget to plan and consider our long-term goals and foundations? How would you plan and manage Utopia?
Eventually society will try to redevelop technologies. I don't know anything about electronics, gears, motors, can't build anything. I know only how to utilize technologies. I know some basic chemistry and lab techniques, but wouldn't know what to combine to make what, or how to synthesize materials. I can sauter but not weld.
Yikes. Looks like it'd be cheaper to shoot me--surely people will salvage guns. I'm not the only one who would only be able to contribute my body (if not manual labor, I could be a child-bearing vessel...). What does it say about society that so many humans would be unable to survive without it?
What knowledge and skills will earn your keep after the apocalypse?
Labels: random
5 Nasty Critters Benefiting from Global Warming
Sweet atheist billboard in WI
Skeleton loveseat - can't remember where I got it from, too many tabs open as usual!
Sweet atheist billboard in WI
Skeleton loveseat - can't remember where I got it from, too many tabs open as usual!
Labels: atheism, inspiration, random
Along with my elementary and high school attic memories, we have also been purging boxes of kid's books and toys, including three boxes of china animals Robin and I cherished. We sorted them into categories: marginally cute, broken, and ugly as fuck. Obviously those gnomes, glass fruits, and thimbles are precious objects to be saved for the children Robin and I have sworn not to have!
Labels: random
Last night two pints of ice cream rang up to $6.66. The cashier yelped and cried, "I don't like that number!" quickly subtracting a penny from our order. Sweet, superstition saved us a cent.
Today I drank a coffee at 1:30 and I can still feel the caffeine prickling.
Today I drank a coffee at 1:30 and I can still feel the caffeine prickling.
Check out this photo album of the Creation Museum just built in Kentucky. Apparently if something is logical to humans but countermands "God's word" then humans should create new "logic" that fits into the young-earth creationist theory. Creationists deny macroevolution, yet this picture shows the development of new species (read: evolution) after the genetic bottleneck caused by the great flood. All I can say is that these people are quite creative in their attempts to reconcile reality with religion.
