So. Today I went to Plato's Closet in an effort to actually recoup some of the money I invested in the lovely clothing items I've purchased but really don't need anymore.

Now I feel old.

Every person working was possibly still in high school, decked out in the stereotypical sort of outfit, chatting with the friends that had apparently come to visit. After several minutes of standing there with my box, trying to look impatient, one of them came over and explained the buying policy to me.

That would be, if you're unfamiliar with it, only brand name stuff (Gap, Limited, Banana Republic, American Eagle, Aeropostale, blah, blah, blah...), only in good condition, and only "what's in style for teens now."

The first part I knew, and the second, and my clothes were in line with those rules. What I neglected to consider was that I've not been a "teen" now for almost 6 years. And when I did consider it, I felt OLD.

They ended up taking a few items, informing me that "the rest is just a little too old or worn out for what we can buy."

Fair enough. Except then I looked at which items they'd taken. They included:
1. A halter top I purchased my sophomore year at U of R (4 years ago) from New York & Co,
2. A t-shirt I got from a Gap outlet several years ago,
and (this is my favorite) 3. A button-down from American Eagle that I bought--no joke--while I was still in high school. I wore it all the time, and when it didn't fit right anymore, I wore it as a cover-up on the beach for several family vacations. It was the oldest, most worn out item in the entire (rather large) box. And they took it.

So either the girls who work at Plato's Closet are morons, or fashion is repeating itself. And that, again, makes me feel old.

Oh, and if you're interested, I have some really nice stuff from Banana Republic for sale.

http://erin-reads.blogspot.com/

I'm giving it a go. If nothing else, there are links to some interesting literary blogs!

My bookshelves are overflowing. The sad part is, I haven't read probably 85% of the books on them, which is silly, because there's probably a lot of crap that I got in a clearance section or at a library bag sale. Meanwhile, other books have begun accumulating in a stack on the floor. I've already built another bookcase since I've lived here; I'm out of wall space. It's time to purge.

I've decided I'll go through my cases in order, giving each book about 50 pages to catch my interest. If I like it, I'll keep going; if not, the book gets donated to make space for others. I'm doing one fiction and one non-fiction at the same time, so that I have a little variety. So far:

Kept
Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Watership Down
Asimov's Foundation Trilogy
The Handmaid's Tale
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Mists of Avalon
The Reluctant Tuscan
Piano Lessons

Not Kept
The Anti Death League
Priestess of Avalon (I got about half way through this one and just wasn't interested anymore)
Old School
Storyville USA
Any Small Thing Can Save You
Do the Windows Open?

Currently, I'm reading Nickel and Dimed (definitely getting kept) and Witchlight (not sure). Unfortunately, I'm keeping more than I'm getting rid of. Oh well...

Finally, an update! If anyone actually reads this journal after my long silence, I'll warn you this will be long. Here it goes.

So I blame all of this on my job in the bookstore. If it wasn't for the books I first found there, I'd still be eating granola bars and out-of-season produce. Not that those are bad.

The first one I read was called Plenty, and I guess I lied, I didn't find this one through the Book House. It came as I was exploring the Honest Weight Food Co-op's website, reveling in the fantasticness that is HWFC and finding out how people in the area thought about food. I came across a page for people participating in the 100-mile diet and then to the page for the 100-Mile Diet itself, the premise of which (as you may have guessed) is to eat only what can be produced (not purchased, but actually completely produced) within 100 miles of your dwelling place. A bit strict for my taste, but the concept was something I'd never considered before.

The points of the 100-Mile Diet are many. One is that eating locally supports the local economy. It also cuts down drastically on the amount of fuel needed to ship food across the country. It links the eater with the eaten, and she learns what "in season" means and what unique things are grown or produced in the immediate area.

The authors of Plenty started the 100-Mile Diet, basing their diet on a 100-mile radius around Vancouver for a year. The book is their story of that year. It turned me on to the idea of local eating and of knowing where your food came from, and I looked for more books. As I found them, I added them to my request list at the library. (I love the bookstore, but I don't make enough to buy every book I want to read...)

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, his most recent food-based treatise, was the first to arrive at the library. In it, Pollan distinguishes between food and "food-like substances," the latter of which include all the processed stuff readily available in supermarkets and convenience stores all over the country (and beyond). It's the true food he feels needs defending in the face of an onslaught of "food-like substances," a position he defends quite well with facts (probably thanks to his other career as a journalist). He even goes so far as to give loose guidelines for determining the food status of a potential edible, including whether or not you can pronounce all the ingredients, whether or not it makes health claims (if so, run), and whether or not your grandmother would recognize the item as something edible (Go-gurt, anyone?). It got me to start paying attention to what I was eating.

One interesting trend Pollan points out is the nutritional guidance we get. A few years ago, fat was the bad guy; now it's carbs. Science does some research, discovers "fats are bad" or "carbs are more damaging than fats," announces its findings, and the country goes crazy. Companies can reengineer processed foods to have more of the good nutrient and less of the bad, slap a new label emphasizing the food's compliance with new standards on the package, and away we go. The poor potato sitting over in produce can't ditch its carbs to fit into the Atkins diet, and so it gets pushed aside when really, these true food items are better for us than any of the foods that come in boxes and bags. Right about now is when I started really looking at ingredient lists and backing away from some of the foods I used to toss into my basket without a second thought.

The next book to arrive at the library was along different lines: Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. After moving from her long-time home in the Southwest to a farm in Virginia (or thereabouts), Kingsolver, her husband, and her two daughters, like the 100-Mile Diet people, decided to spend a year eating locally. In contrast to the Vancouverites, however, Kingsolver and her family grew much of their food and got the rest from their neighbors via trades and farmers' markets. Of the three books I'd read so far, this one was by far the most fun to read. Full of scary facts, sure, but more about the experience of growing, cooking, sharing, and preserving one's own food and the awareness that comes with it. I'd never really considered seasonality before, never thought about what it meant. When your food comes out of the ground in your back yard, you can only eat it when it's ripe or preserve it in a different form for later. It was about this time that I began plotting ways to grow my own produce.

The final book, and the longest in coming, was Michael Pollan's earlier book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. In it, Pollan traces the history of four meals: fast food/industrial, industrial organic, small farm/local organic, and foraged. He follows each meal as closely as possible (the industrial corporations, of course, denied access to some parts) from a plant or animal in the field or pen to the piece of food (or "food") on his plate. I learned so much about the differences between each food path.

Especially interesting was the difference between industrial organic, like Earthbound Farms or Wild Oats, and a more local organic food chain. True, neither puts chemicals on their plants, but from an oil standpoint, the industrial organic uses just as much as the traditional industrial--harvesting, chilling, cleaning, packaging, and transporting its goods in the same way.

Pollan's conclusion is that the extremes aren't sustainable. We can't all forage every meal we eat, but at the same time, we can't continue eating whatever the industrial food chain hands us.

I finished the last of these four books right around the time when gardens were being planted and people were signing up for CSA shares (Community Sponsored Agriculture...more on that in a moment). We found out that Unmesh's apartment complex offers space in a community garden patch, and we signed up. I explored CSAs online, and we joined one of those as well.

CSAs are small farms with shareholders. They ask for a share payment up front; it can be anywhere from $300 (for a half share of produce, like ours) to $600 or more (for a full share, often with meat or eggs or bread in addition to the produce). This way, the season's harvest is essentially paid for, and the farmers can focus on growing food. All the CSAs I've seen follow organic farming practices, though some haven't shelled out the hefty fee to become officially certified. In exchange for the share payment, members receive a weekly box of produce, whatever's ripe at the farm that week.

Our CSA is Otter Hook Farms. We just picked up our third box. It's definitely been a lesson in seasonality so far: we've had only varied greens for the past three weeks. But then it's early summer, and that's what's ready to eat at this point. We're looking forward to what comes next.

As for our garden, we planted it almost three weeks ago, and already we have the beginnings of our first cherry tomatoes ripening on the vine. We ended up planting peppers (sweet and habanero), tomatoes (regular and cherry), Japanese eggplant, basil, cilantro, and flowers for cutting. We can't wait to start the harvest.

We're also finding plenty of pick-your-own fruit opportunities in the area. In mid-June, we picked about 8 quarts of strawberries, most of which became the 17 jars of jam now sitting in Unmesh's freezer. Blueberries come next, then raspberries, then apples in the fall. I can't wait to pick them all.

Finally, I'm working on eating fewer processed foods. I try to make bread instead of buying it. Tonight we just made a big batch of granola to eat instead of cereal. The yogurt from the co-op is locally made, just milk and cultures, and I sweeten it with homemade jam. Free range eggs from a local farm, produce from our CSA. The pasture raised meats at the co-op are pricey, but oh so much tastier than the ones in the supermarket. I got a book on making cheese, though I've not had the time or money to actually try.

I find it's a lot of fun, and I feel better about what I eat. When your hand picks every berry that's in the jam you spread on your homemade toast in the morning, it's cool. And the best part, perhaps, is that my stomach is much happier without me having to cut out all the foods I was avoiding before.

So that's what's been going on with me lately. It's become such a big part of life here that I thought I should update. More on other topics later!

As some know and some do not, Unmesh and I recently took a road trip from Troy, NY to San Diego, CA to help some friends move. We finally got the pictures and stats together into a website, and you can access it here, if interested:

http://www.ukurup.com/trips/CCT08/index.html

A post! With real information! About my life! Whoa!

It's Joy's fault...she suggested I update more often. And since once is more often than never, here's my "more often".

So here's what's going on right now. At the beginning of May, my cats left Boston for Cincinnati, where they will be spending the summer. A week later, all my stuff went into a PODS container to be stored for three months. All this moving around business is because I'm subletting a place in Boston for the summer. I just finished moving in about two hours ago, and I'll be here until mid-August. It's furnished (hence the storing of furniture), and what I kept with me is about a car load. Good times.

I'm done with my job at the end of July. Bio 3, which I'll be starting in a few weeks (after I finish Bio 2) at Northeastern is done mid-August. When those two things are through, my committments in Boston shall be no more.

I'm not sure where I'm going next. It depends on several factors, some more important than others. Wherever it is, I shall be rejoined by my cats and furniture, and I'll be taking prerequisite courses for a physical therapy degree at any university that will allow me to do so.

In the meantime, I'm in Boston. The apartment I'm subletting is very cute, and it's nice and cool because of its semi-basement status. In a few days, the other girl who is living here for the summer (double sublet!) arrives. She seems very nice...from Colorado, doing an internship at NPR for the summer. Go NPR.

Other than all that, not much is new. There might be other things worth saying, but they're apparently not important enough for me to think of them right now! And so this brief update shall have to suffice.

There you go, Joy. All for you :-)

Question. Really.

We are taught at a young age that the following exchange follows proper English grammar:

Person 1: "How are you?"
Person 2: "I'm well. You?"

Alright. So what is the word Well, exactly? According to the English teachers at school, it is the adverb form of Good. Lovely, I accept.

So why, then, is it not "I'm good."? Good is an adjective. As such, it should be spending its time describing nouns. Such as...oh I don't know..."I"?

Meanwhile, Good's less-widely-used-but-apparently-more-formal counterpart, Well, should be off describing verbs.

We don't say "I'm happily" or "I'm excitedly". We say "I'm happy" or "I'm excited". So why on Earth is it "I'm well"?

Get a LiveJournal account and then you can read it!

Hello out there, all you known and anonymous journal stalkers. Just a quick note to let you all know I'm switching over to friends-only posts all the time. No particular reason; just cuz. What does this mean for those of you who are not already on my "friends" list? If you'd like to continue reading and you don't have a LiveJournal name already, get one (free and easy). Then tell me. Or, if you already have one, just tell me. Either way, I'll add you to my list. You'll just have to be signed in to read about my fantastically exciting life.

Thus concludes my last public LJ entry, at least for a while...

I'd just like to express my extreme excitement for the start of football. I even found a bar that has a zillion TVs that they will change to any channel you want. Yesssss.

In other news, I went to the bookstore to buy a journal today. Last time I bought one of those I was in junior high and called it a "diary." May I just say, it is impossible to find a perfect journal these days. I think I looked at every one they had on the shelves before settling for one that comes close. All I want are mid-sized pages, spiral bound or that at least lay open nicely. Lines that go all the way across the page, that aren't ridiculously narrow but that don't look like kindergarten writing practice paper, and that aren't so dark they overwhelm the page or too light that you can't even see them. No tear-out pages. And for heaven's sake, no flowers or quotes breaking up the pages. A nice cover is preferable, but hard to find if you're trying to fill all the rest of the requirements. Oh, and something less than $15 is nice. Oy.

The weather here has been glorious: 80-ish during the day, 60-ish at night. Jamie and I finally got the living room put together the rest of the way, and it's so nice and airy and pleasant. More cleaning and organizing this weekend, as my sister comes for a visit on Sunday.

Generally things are good. And for the small and silly things that are not, I now have an adequate (not perfect!) journal! We'll see how long this lasts...

Alright, that's it. I'm moving to Italy, at least for a while. Who's coming with me? No seriously. Let's go.

My final research paper for class is due tomorrow night. I have notecards, and an outline, but no paper, and no presentation. And I am not at all in the mood to focus.

It doesn't help that there were two back-to-back episodes of Gilmore Girls on, starting right when I sat down to eat dinner and take a break from working. Recent episodes. The ones that don't leave you with a happy, or at least semi-happy, ending. It was a Gilmore Girls kind of night.

And now it's 10:00, and I have no paper and no desire to write one. But I do enjoy whining.

What do you do with a head of Romaine lettuce, some salami, and some cheese if you don't have bread? I wrapped the salami and cheese up in the lettuce leaves. Whoa. I think I've found my new favorite snack!

Alright. New story.

( Check it out. )

See what happens when I'm bored? Homemade key lime pie :-)



And mmmm, is it good...and easy! I think I've found a new summer staple...

I should go do something exciting. The problem is that it all involves spending money.

I should go sit outside. But it's at least 90 degrees, and...ew.

I should work on my research paper for class. On a Friday, though?

Hmm. Maybe I'll just go sit and watch TV (since I can now!!) and read one of the many books I've been meaning to start.

Someone come visit so I have something exciting to do :-P

So...as of today...we officially have INTERNET of our very own!! I can sit in more than two positions in more than one location in the apartment without it cutting out! I can use it in my rooooooom!!!

That's awesome. And do you know what makes it even better? Our network is called CrankyPants. Unless you are Jamie or Maureen, you're probably like, "What?" And to that I would reply, "Um...yeah, just don't ask." Trust that it is awesome.

Yeah internet :-D

Is it weird to sit around on a Monday afternoon in your pajamas and eat peanut butter from the jar with a spoon? Perhaps.

What if it's because you were planning to go be productive, but then the plumber finally turned up to finish your kitchen and you'd rather be here to see it finished?

And also, you feel strange taking a shower while Brazilians work on your kitchen?

Maybe I'll go make curtains. Is that any less weird?

Mm, peanut butter.