Make-Up Session

At the Park Slope Food Coop, where I'm considering membership, one has to be a owner-worker-shopper-member, which means you have to work at the store in order to be included in this socialist revolution. It's only 3 hours every 4 weeks, but apparently, it's not always the easiest thing to work in. If you miss a shift or have to reschedule, your shift leader is authorized (but not required) to give you 2 make-ups to, well, make up for the one you missed.

Does the two make-up rule apply here?

This is becoming a pattern

The problem with patterns for me is that I'm a non-habit forming individual. I don't wake up at the same time everyday. I don't buy all the same stuff every time I go to the grocery (although, in my old age and some training from an ex-boyfriend, this has a lot more pattern to it than it used to). I don't habitually place my keys in the same location. I take different routes to work.

Being non-habit-forming has its advantages. A lack of propensity toward addiction and the sense that things are always new and changing being the ones that stand out. However, it can also lead to disaster: messy room, burned dinner, lost keys, the list goes on.

So, that's my excuse. Getting myself into a pattern of writing is not easy and requires training.

I already failed!

I can't believe I didn't post yesterday. I was even thinking about it on my way home. My bed was just so comfortable.

Considering I don't think anyone read the promissory note preceding this one, it's probably OK, but still disappointing.

Let's see what happens today, since this obviously doesn't count.

Jealous Again

In November, my friend Laura took on the challenge of writing a post per day for 30 days. She thinks that the things she wrote were boring or dull at times, but I thought the whole thing was great. I loved having something to read from her each day. I started this blog because I was jealous of all the interesting things she had to say about life and the culture she was experiencing in Japan. Well, now she is in Indiana, so I have no excuse.

I can't say I'll be as engaging, but arbitrarily starting today (which is technically December 5th), I will start the same endeavor. So until January 4th, I'll find 10 or more minutes each day to give an update to life and/or thoughts.

Book Update: On my way to Thanksgiving in Indiana, I bought Malcolm Gladwell's other book, The Tipping Point, which I basically finished by the time I returned, and now I'm on to J.D. Salinger... Nine Short Stories. And with the way the trains are getting stuck these days, I'll be done in a day or two. Thank goodness I remembered that I really enjoy reading.

Save a Horse -- Ride a Cowboy

Life is good, isn't it?

Somehow, after all the music I've heard this weekend, that's the song that sticks with me. I'm currently reading Blink and after I ripped through the first two thirds in about 3 days, I was afraid that it would be toast by my first layover on the way to New Mexico, but I was mistaken. Instead, I was found in my seat, mouth open, and fast asleep.

This weekend was a whirlwind of activity since I was work/playing at an industry conference. Yeah, I pulled several 12+ hour days, but they almost invariably involved a water slide, and last I checked you're not allowed to complain about that. So I didn't.

Back to life. Back to reality for me.

Productivity

Because I'm obsessed with the title of this post, I've decided my next book (to read) should be something pedagogical. So I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma to learn more about food in the U.S. (or as the author refers to it: America). I've been interested for a long time in where it comes from, what is better for me, what is better for the environment, organic or local -- does it matter?, and other related things so this should be a good start.

However, it's not quite as motivating for reading as good fiction, so I've decided that I get to read something fun next.

My New Best Friend

I'm not sure what was wrong with me for so long, but I just discovered that books are my new best friend. Or maybe a long lost old friend. Either way it feels new and I love it.

Currently reading: The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

Privacy in NYC

Don't worry, it's actually an oxymoron.

I've been pondering the idea of privacy in this city lately as I find myself in an odd position -- or at least it's odd if you live anywhere else. I currently live in a one bedroom apartment with another young woman who is about my age. My room is separated from the living room by 4 enormous red canvas curtains that start about 1 foot from the ceiling -- so I am acutely aware of the problem. But from the conversations I hear other people having, I'm not the only one with issues.

Cell phone conversations and things overheard in restaurants range from what you ate last night, to how bad your feet smell, to who you had sex with last week, to how you're feeling about your relationship with your inner child. It's sort of amazing.

Additionally, there seems to be a lot of exposure of private parts.

There was one week probably in late spring when I saw no less than three penises in broad daylight on the sidewalk. Well the penises themselves weren't on the sidewalk. Rather, I was walking along the street minding my own business when what to my wondering eyes did appear but male genitalia shown without fear.

It has also come to my attention that functions that are normally private events (like urination and defecation, as my previous paragraph alluded to) are more frequently done in public here. Nose picking is huge -- maybe because the polluted air causes more build up in the nasal cavity. Just the other day, I saw a man go two knuckles deep to remove what must have been an atomic wedgie. A couple of nights ago, I saw someone who was at least dressed as a woman, wearing naught but a lacy thong and a ridiculously transparent tube of red fabric.

And to my chagrin, and potentially to the chagrin of many others, it seems that young men in this city have a habit of needing to have their hands down their pants. Now I can understand if it's cold out and you're standing on a Frisbee field and that's the warmest place on your body. However, this is New York City in the summer. It's already hot. You don't need to keep your extremities from getting frost bite. In fact, down your pants is probably the swampiest, least comfortable place to be.

I don't know if it's a lack of privacy that causes them to do this or a general numbness to the fact that when you're standing on a subway platform you actually are not surrounded by your own personal, private bubble, but when a young man stands for over 10 minutes waiting for a train with his hand down his pants, you have to think he's doing something more than separating his sweaty balls from his leg.

Delicious Meat Free Meat

Amid a long day of studying for what quite possibly is the world's most boring exam (Series 6), I made plans to meet up with an old friend from the Boston days. He is vegan, which I can't help but to give him a hard time about, and likes to do vegan things. So we went to Moo Shoes, which is a vegan shoe store so that he could buy some crunchy shoes for his new job. Then we went to Red Bamboo, a store specializing in turning things that are decidedly not meat (soy) into things that taste like meat. It was surprisingly delicious. It really tastes and has the consistency of chicken. Crazy Asians! (My only complaint is that they didn't have a single spicy dish in a 4-page menu)

I have a few questions from my experience:

1. Wasn't McDonald's the master of the meatless patty? What was so bad about that?
   
2. Are plastic/rubber shoes any more sustainable than leather ones?
1. Cow herding generally means colossally bad land management practices (water, rainforest, to name a few)
2. The methane that bovine produce is pretty toxic to the environment
3. Some find it inhumane to kill animals
4. If they're being killed for food, isn't it better to at least use all parts? Do we do that?
5. (Yes I understand that if you don't kill for food, then you don't have that problem, but damn cows taste good)
6. The rubber industry is riddled with problems ranging from child labor to deforestation to toxic dumping and other environmental degradation
   
7. Plastic is made out of oil. Need I say more?

Those are the things I can think of to at least start. Anyone have evidence one way or the other? It's definitely partially up to your personal preference on the meat eating issue. I used to be a vegetarian -- for 5 years. And then I went to college, decided I needed to try new things, and gained 20 pounds. Maybe that vegetarian thing was a good idea after all.

Something Else

Madame or Monsieur Anonymous is ready for me to post something else. I've been debating lately whether this is still the right thing to do. It has come to the point where this blog comes up in google searches when you put in all or part of my name and while I was kind of keen on that idea at first, it poses a privacy issue. I (used to) tend to write much more personally here, but I can't be quite so candid any more. Also, I can't write about work at all because I work in a highly regulated industry that would frown on that kind of activity. And since I haven't been any more creative than that, I haven't posted anything decent in a long time.

I have posted some stuff to flickr lately. Well, more lately than this.

Anyway, Anonymous, point taken. I'll try to be more creative.