Been a long time since I rapped at ya

Hey there. Long time no blog. It's harder to do when you don't have your own internet connection and and you do have an actual life. Seriously. And it isn't like my inner life is so compelling that I have to share any of it. Actually it's pretty boring. I'll tell you, I spent a lot of mental energy on a really ridiculous thing about a month ago — frozen rasperries.

Y'all who are readers of this blog know that I have a thing for Frosted Mini-Wheats, and that the ONLY way to properly eat them is with berries and the ONLY berry that 1) stands up to the defrosting process without becoming a bad mushy and 2) perfectly complements the sweetness of the FMW crust with utterly sublime tartness is the raspberry. Frozen, to me, tastes better than fresh. Probably because I have gotten used to it. And the best frozen berry brand is the Safeway organics raspberry, which is a lot more expensive than the Grocery Outlet (a.k.a. Desperation Outlet) berries or the Top Food berries (which are local and I'd prefer to buy, but the lazy teens and riff raff employed in the PNW do NOT get rid of the bad berries, they put them in the sack. The Chilean people who pick the Safeway Organic berries — and I hate the idea of eating Chilean produce that's been petrochemicaled in 6,000 miles — are decent people who, in the tons of raspberries I have eaten from them, have maybe overlooked two bad berries. Now that is a track record. Chile, you should be proud of your berry pickers. Someday I will travel to your berry farms and kiss all your berry pickers.)

Where was I?

Oh, so the Safeway berries are more expensive, and they don't go on special all that often, so when they did in December I loaded up. They were $5 a bag and I bought $70 worth in a week. I saved about $6, which is a little more than one other bag. I think this is the Wayne White in me. I tell myself this whenever I make a somewhat silly purchase that has some logic to it. Anyway, I did this because I wanted to stock up for the next time it wasn't on special. Silly me, the week after that special ended another special kicked in that will last till the end of March. Anyway, this is the sort of goofy stuff I think about and obsess about when I'm not doing other things like:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wageslavery/1801963011/

Clam digging! (Sorry, but if you're using someone else's Flickr account you can't just cut and paste the img src. And I'm not going to go through the rigamarole of downloading and uploading the photo)

To clam dig, my landlocked and citified friends, you really need a few things: A clam gun (a PVC tube with handles and a little airhole on top) and a stick. It is NICE to have waders, and it is REALLY NICE to have neoprene chest waders (like Ray's dad Ray lent to me). They are warm, and you can only clam in the winter. Also you need a mesh bag or cut up milk gallon jug or Costco-size bucket that once had laundry detergent in it (the mesh bag is the easiest, I would assume, but the old-timers often are out there in jeans and boots up to their hips in surf (cold, cold, cold surf) with their milk jug of clams and they're using an old-timey shovel (like a garden shovel but the shovel bit got bent 80 degrees or so) to dig. I'm kind of a yuppie clammer, if there is such a thing, considering how "Harbor" the activity is.

What you do is you go out an hour or two before low tide (usually right before sunset, when the moon and sun are kind of opposite) on a clam weekend on an approved beach (in the photo, it's Long Beach, but since November Ray and I usually go to Twin Harbors, which is only about 15-20 mi from Aberdeen). You take your sick (it helps if it has a square end) and you pop the end into the sand and if there is a clam nearby it will "show," which means it will go, "oh, crap! Something wants to eat me!" and start digging (these razor clams can go a foot a minute). When it digs it throws up a little bubble or dimple on the surface that is quite distinct. Sometimes you'll pound one spot and you'll see one show, and like some sort of sign has gone out to the clam community, another clam will start to dig, and then you'll have two clams to catch (why it's good to work in tandem with a partner).

Anyhow, if the clams had just stayed mum you wouldn't have known they were there at all. But they moved, so you put your PVC tube over the dimple, with a little bit more pipe over towards the seaside (clams favor digging seaward) and you shove that pipe down as far as it will go, and you twist and twist and get it at least 2/3 of the way down and you hope like crazy those sounds you hear are starfish in the way and you're not crunching the clams and making them hard to clean. Then you put your finger over the airhole and through the magic of suction and using your legs, remove the pipe from the ground, dump it out (or filter it through your fingers if a wave is coming in) and voila, chances are there's a clam there. Repeat as many times as it takes to get 15 clams (a limit, and if it seems small, you are used to those fried clam strips. Razor clams are really big.)

Then there is the joy of cleaning the clams. Ray's dad Ray was all too happy to do this for us in November, but since, I have had to cowgirl up and massacre the clams. I was a wuss to start, but that first clam didn't help none. He crapped sand as I picked him up, and boy did he wiggle. As it turned out, this was the last clam I'd ever touch that had the poop-fear reflex, so he probably didn't have any idea what was going on. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen a clam brain anywhere, and I've gutted a lot of clams, so I dunno. They filter feed, he was filtering.

So Ray and I share the burden now. He cuts the clams out of their shells (harder to do when you've crunched the shells) and I take the writhing bodies and start cutting them up. First you snip off the "neck," which is the part with the dark, barnacle-y thing on it. Then you cut up the middle of the "seam," which is obvious when you see it, and through both valves of the neck (bivalves, natch). Then you cut out the guts and detach the "digger," which is also where the anus is. Then you cut through the digger/anus area to lay it flat. There is copious rinsing at every stage, by the way. And once you get to the clam butt you scrape all the dark poop out of it.

Here's something wacky -- the butt? It's the BEST part! The digger is so much more tender than the neck it is insane. I love to eat clam tuchus! So, just because it's butt, doesn't mean it will taste like butt. But make sure you scrape it pretty good all the same.

By the time Ray and I finish cleaning the clams it's usually at least 7 p.m. or so. So often we don't bother to "prep" them for cooking. As per Kathy Quigg's suggestion, we take the clams and dredge them through flour, then egg, then cracker crumbs (Ritz is good for baking, saltines for frying) and lay them out on sheets to freeze. Once they are frozen stiff they can be bagged and fried straight out of the bag. And fried is really the only way to eat them besides chowder or baked, which calls for the same preparation but in a 500 degree oven for a few minutes (cuts down on the grease).

So clamming takes up a lot of my off-hours mental energy.

I must seem like kind of a dipstick if these are things that preoccupy me, but I do, in fact, worry about the state of the world, how long it is till spring, if I can do the whole Sunday NYT crossword puzzle and when I'll get my window fixed from the big winter storm. Also, back when granddad died there was a fair bit of mental energy in the whole grief thing. So I'm not this food-crazed person.

Also taking up the occasional amount of mental energy: "Heroes" hate. I don't watch it, but I hear there's a character who has the ability to copy any action she sees. That was totally a power I dreamed up when I was a kid and have been holding it in reserve for a character when I became a famous YA writer. Now I look like the big copycat. But here's the thing — I thought about it in relation to ice skating, and I think the chick on the TV is watching action movies. Not like I didn't think of that, but the character I had in mind was really devious in a way. Also about to be used and abused by some shadow government.

So, maybe I'll try keeping you all updated more often than once a year? It's not a NY resolution or anything, so don't hold your breath.

The mAss Media

These are not the Donkey Basketball pictures you've been clamoring for, but since we were busy hazing new photo Louie Traub, we had to rely on the picture-taking-stylings of Doug Barker, managing editor and big-time laugher.



And then there's this:



Isn't that just precious of lil ole Anne?



We lost, even after I went all Bobby Knight. I blame the guy in charge of the scoreboard. He's an employee of the company we were playing against (I won't even dignify them with a name.) Sadly, the forces of evil cheated their way to victory. I tried, but I just didn't feel right about dragging people off their donkeys (although I could have).



That's Anne (our soccer-mom-in training, she brought the juice and Gushers), Louie (with the tongue out, this was his first newsroom bonding experience) and Jordan (our would-be Tookie Williams).

Been a long time

I've been fuming every morning for the past month about the early Daylight Savings Time — worried that I'm not going to be able to pull off getting out of bed on time for work and resentful to Congress for not personally considering my feelings.

And then I worked the weekend so I get to really ease into it. And it so far doesn't seem so bad.

Somewhere there's a metaphor for life in there. Or possibly just my life.

New Years Resolutions

Got any?

Here are mine:

• Stop saying "biznatch" so much. It's not so uncool it's cool — it's just uncool. And there is no added irony because of my intense whiteness. Yet so much fun to say. To wit: Biznatches be all up in my biznatch. (See, it is sort of like business. But it's biznatch)

• Use the Sonicare brush 3x/day. Stop using the leopard print manual brush. It is dead and useless. But it's leopard print! Okay, I'll save it for travel. And always brush before bed.

• Get the AP style for "O.K." changed. What the devil is "O.K." supposed to stand for? It's not, it's a word on its own. Also, continue fighting the AP overlords on the style for "Internet" and "Web site." So dorky. We don't write, "There are a lot of programs on Television" or "Circulation is down for all Newspapers except one."

• Become a crime-fighting ninja. (Hey, I'm trying to fight the Associated Press style manual — this is far more achievable, considering you can get throwing stars and nunchucks in tobacco shops.)

more important information

Read "The Echo Maker" by Richard Powers.

John Hodgeman (Hodgman?) is overrated. But I'm glad he's making a living and all. Pretend pretention has a place in this world.

"Consider the Lobster" is a much better essay than it has any right to be. But some of the other essays in DFW's book are a hodgepodge of footnotes. I wish he'd find a way to work his digressions INTO his essays, because in spite of the fact that he's a damn good writer, I think he could be better if he'd get over the footnote thing. Also, in his portrait of a talkshow radio host, he could very well have let the guy hang himself with his own rope, the footnotes were a little too pushing of a "take" that all readers (i.e. me) were picking up on really early.

I managed to do laundry today AND dishes AND garbage. I am letting the itty bitty spider build its web between my TV and cable box. For now. It's almost Christmas, after all. And I'm working The Eve. How saintly am I?

300 posts so far, plus big ups for vermouth

What the heck is vermouth anyway? Even when you put it in a martini there are people who get upset that they aren't drinking straight gin/vodka. Well, last night I had some vermouth as an apertif (I was curious how horrible it was, considering all the bad PR it gets, so I poured out a little, which led to a little more, which led to, oh, why not have an itty bitty glass — hey, that glass was a little bigger than I thought) and although it was sweet vermouth (whoops, got the wrong one at the liquor store) it was kind of herbally and I'm pretty easy to please in the alcohol department, and I have to say, don't playa hate on the vermouth.

There has to be a reason d'etre for sweet vermouth, though. I am not much of an apertif person.

I'm on the naughty list

Well, friends, it is Christmas of 2006 and once again I find myself on the naughty list. In hindsight, thinking back over the year gone by, I can understand why kindly old Mr. Kringle would choose to put me on his blacklist *again* but I thought I might as well explain why to people who only have seen me for brief spurts, where my image maintenance overdrive can compensate for my naturally malicious nature.

In retrospect, here are the things I shouldn’t have done this year, limited to what items I can remember.

• It was wrong of me to throw that annoying rich girl in the pool, stolen the insecure guy’s teddy bear, made out with that sleazy bike messenger and to have stolen the frat boy’s wallet. It was also wrong of me to cheat on the immunity challenges. But then, the greater wrong was going on that reality show in the first place.

• Knocked over that liquor store. Even though I never got caught. How was I to know that Santa doesn’t need charging papers or any other official evidence to prove my naughtiness? Apparently he just knows.

• Gotten in that fight with the window washer. Let’s be frank, he was a total ass. He totally deserved that shove I gave him and, really, the 15-story drop he would have had if he weren’t wearing that OSHA-mandated harness. Goody-effing-two shoes. You know he’s on the nice list.

• Peed on the mechanical bull. I was too drunk to be scared, and apparently too drunk to be continent, too.

• Broken up K-Fed and Britney. Yes, yes, you all thought I was doing you a favor until you saw where Brit started hanging out with Paris Hilton and not wearing panties. Those two walking venereal diseases deserved each other, and my machinations (producing and encouraging the K-Fed single “Popozao”) were apparently undertaken in a fit of misapprehension. And I inflicted “Popozao” on everyone in the U.S. for about a minute, which felt like an eternity, and for which I truly deserve punishment.

• My program encouraging trade protections for the national drug business. All I wanted to do was encourage the use of meth and pot manufactured by American farmers and chemists, who are suffering with all the cheap stuff flooding in from Mexico taking away their market share. Trying to get organic certification for American icky-icky was pretty silly, considering you smoke it anyway, and that's bad for you.

• Beating the "Yummo!" out of Racheal Ray. Frankly, I hope she got on the naughty list for cutting me with her sudoku knife. That finger reattached just fine, thank you.

• Encouraging those endangered humpback whales to beach. Who knew that you could use whalesong to get on the naughty list?

• Imported a couple of foreign ladies for unpaid brothel work. But they had free room and board and, hey, they are in America, best country in the mothertrucking world!!!

• Dismembering that hitchhiker. It’s not like I killed him and I figured this would go down as an anatomy lesson. But noooooo. Not in Santa’s book.

• Keeping that library book that the librarian didn't check out.

Look, Santa, things go back to zero come January, right?

You ever wonder ...

What ambient Christmas music would sound like? Or what protools layering and digital rejiggering might do to seasonal music?

Wonder no more.

So gross. This year I was actually wondering if techno+carols could = stuff that does not annoy at the mall/airport/grocery store. I guess I was wrong. Besides, it must be hard to create a new way of envisioning a holiday "mood" that does not have those specific referants to the season — the sleighbells, I suppose, is what I mean there.

We are all condemned to hear that "Wonderful Christmastime" song for the rest of our lives. Or "Greensleeves." Or whatever holiday novelty song you are doomed to hear in your own personal hell. Along with that "I'm a bitch!" "empowerment" song. How did a song with the title "Bitch" end up being appropriate for soft rock stations? I ask as I'm listening to it in a very cozy, homey cafe.

Speaking of bitches, I finished MoDo's "Are Men Necessary?" and was kind of surprised to have her ending the asking with a big thing about Hillary Clinton. I'm not exactly sure what that was all about, but with all the things that actually have a chance of disappearing in the world and all the things that really don't have anything to contribute to the world at large, here is a list of nouns that "Are _____ necessary?" might apply to better.

Frogs (they're disappearing at a rapid clip. Maybe we better not justify their existence before they go)
Holiday songs
Individually wrapped cheese slices
365 of Racheal Ray's recipes in one place
undeveloped beachfront properties
cafes sans free wifi access (no! they aren't!!!)
Thomas Kinkade paintings
Thomas Kinkade "illuminators"
Thomas Kinkade-inspired "novels."
payday loan centers
unwaxed floss.

Amazing books!

Read "A Disorder Peculiar to the Country." Ken Kalfus. Very good. Disturbing.

Watch "Thank You for Smoking" and "Why We Fight" and think how much more interesting "Thank You For Smoking" would have been if it were set in the world of "Why We Fight," which posits that the military industrial complex seeks its own justification for existence through baloney wars.

I had some other ideas but I totally forgot what they are.

Also, I'm looking for a recipe for an appetizer that travels pretty well. I've been bringing the bacon bean bundles (sooooo much better than they sound) to the McMillans' Turkey Celebration for the past few years and they've been popular, but this year I've got an hour or two driving ahead of me and I need a backup.

More from Mexico

That's the girls in the golf cart. Carol was a bang-up driver.

I didn't mean it like that.



Sibling bonding at work, over fresh cocos frios.



This is an ancient Maya tradition or something. I got parallax from having to use the viewfinder (it was sunny out) and it came out with this odd look. But I kind of like it.



Mom and Cindy rockin' the shops.



Here we are, learning about the soccer-basketball-human-sacrifice game that swept the Maya nation back in the day. Better than BASEketball, I bet.

Back from Mexico

So Cancun is a really big, thrashed, overdeveloped city with all sorts of overdeveloped areas around it. Very cheesy. And the Isla is getting pretty darned developed and we were in the developedest hotel there. But it was really really nice and I didn't even care that I was the biggest gringa around.

The Carribean sea is so beautiful, I can't blame people for wanting to visit. And the fish are neat. I went snorkeling with Ed and Doug at El Garrafon — the cheap place, not the $50 a day place — and the fish were pretty spectacular. They're kind of used to people bringing little jugs of fish food out and using them to attract them, so they will swim up to you. And then Ed threw fish food at me and the fish were all over me. Ew. So. Gross. Big ole floppy yellow and black stripy fish with their fish mouths going glop glop glop at me and their unblinking eyes.

Here are a sample of the photos I took:



Doug is so relaxed. He got pretty badly burned, though. People, use your SPF 50s on the first day!



Ha ha. It was so funny that first day. The boat was called "Turista!" Like the illness! We were so naive.



Rob is so darn cool. He and Carol Jean made it all happen.



You can't climb the Mayan ruins anymore. Some people think this is a real loss. They are jerks who don't mind fat American asses trotting up and down the limestone, wearing it out and scratching their names into the walls because they can and they'd like to think they're as significant as some extinct culture. That is a symptom of the American Cultural Virus that, coincidentally, could be found on the bus back from Chichen Itza. It was showing a Wesley Snipes vehicle, "Unstoppable."

I made everyone get up at 5 a.m. to get to CI, by the way. I am a damn martinet when I'm put in charge. And the bus didn't leave from Cancun until 9. It's like that episode of the Dog Whisperer when the Great Dane who is naturally a follower is put in charge by his stupid owners. I'm naturally a follower. I can't help it.



Pasty person at Tulum! Watch out!

One of the things that surprised and gratified me on this trip were all the incredibly fit, young, attractive people who had all tanned to a deep brown and had their hair sunstreaked so they were the same color all over. They were Japanese, Brazilian, European (North and South), Israeli, and possibly Visigoth. And then there I was. Pasty and not terribly petite. I felt like the Wilmoth clan was the mid-way marker between these demi-gods of attractiveness and the fat old American people in loud clothes. Unfortunately, as the poem says, "things fall apart, the center cannot hold." Someday I will be a fat old American woman with her shorts all bunched up in her blazingly white, fat thighs. Wearing white Keds with scrunched down pink socks.

No, I feel a duty to try to maintain the center for as long as possible.

More photos next month, when I get my bandwidth back!

Is Cancun cheesy? Is it fun?

That is a question I will be exploring over the next week. So come back and do find out if Cancun is cheesy, fun, etc. and if the addition of my family there contributes to either quality.

On a side not, it's gray, dark and frigid here. It's the perfect time to get the heck out of Dodge. Well, I'm sure January might be better, actually, as it's sort of one of the really low points on the winter dark and wet spiral.

More book review stuff

Read "Night Watch" by Sarah Waters. There is a reason it was the favorite for the Booker Prize. And as to Meegan's concern that it would be too pat, too easily wrapped up? No, it isn't. The novel goes backwards in time, so you see the whole cast of miserable people finish miserable and start fairly miserable, too. Waters' power of description is incredible. There's a part where an ambulance driver in WWII-era London is driving through a bombed-out street and Waters compares the drift of debris to bubbles settling in stout, and there are other wonderful little pieces like that in her book.

I'm picking up the Booker winner, "The Inheritance of Loss" by Anita Desai's kid, today at the library, so I guess I'll get to see why it won now.

Also flipped through Simon Winchester's "Karakatoa" and thought it was a little too formulaic for my tastes. Plus I already get plate techtonics and don't think it's too mindblowing and in need of popular science description for the target audience of the book (i.e. wannabe nerds like me).

Another book I read, and this will be one you can't necessarily get a hold of, is "On the Harbor," a local history book by my publisher and this guy I used to know. And I have to say, the first time I heard "local history book" I figured it would be one of those squat, aspen-green covered things with a whole bunch of text squished together and narratives that were all intertwined with dreadful boring dates, because local history doesn't always have the best enthusiasts. But no. It's a really lovely book with photos, sidebars, graphics and all the other good stuff about newspapers. And honestly, I should have known better when I was thinking it because both John C. Hughes and Ryan Teague Beckwith have impeccable journalism taste and Ryan in particular was always interested in coming up with new ways to present information. And my God, Grays Harbor has a lurid, fascinating history, and the journalism instincts to find the "telling detail," and to present information bravely, trusting the reader, really make the stories accessible.

So the one story I read about three or four times last night was "Who Killed Laura Law?" It's a murder mystery from 1939 that has never been solved and probably never will be. It was a flash point between "Red" (serious instigator types) and "White" (more conservative) Communist factions in town and between the Commies and the local business tycoons. And it's probably because there was so much tension and suspicion and bad actors that the murder of this young mother wasn't solved.

So, the two books I haven't been able to put down lately are "Night Watch" and "On the Harbor." Make of that what you will.

Book Review part Duh

Okay, "Carry Me Down" wasn't that great. Plus everytime I picked it up I thought of that song that goes, "Tie me kangaroo down, boys, tie me kangaroo down." And that was possibly more than you wanted or needed to know about the workings of my mind.

Next up: "Night Watch" by Sarah Waters, who previously introduced the lesbian Victorian circus novel to the stage with "Tipping the Velvet," which was a BBC production featuring the chick from "MI-5." I read the book and that was enough Victoriana for me. I expect "Night Watch," which appears to be nothing like the AWESOME-O Russian movie "Night Watch," to be about the same as "TtV" but WWII-ish. Which is to say, kind of awesome in crazy detail but not Russian "Night Watch" awesome, where people's heads blow up and there is an ensuing showdown between the forces of good and evil to be continued in "Day Watch."

So here's one of the beautiful views I am occasionally exposed to.



That's the beach at Westport. It won't look like this for long. Development will not be stopped. Money seeks its own level and development capitalizes on any authentic energy until it sucks it up, converting it to money. Perhaps it's an authentic neighborhood, or nature or something historic that gives an area its energy. That energy is so quickly converted to cash it'd make your head spin.

Dad went to the David Letterman show in NYC while he was at his pitchfest '06, No Print outlet Left Behind campaign and was really impressed with Xhibit (though he remembered his name as "Ingredient?") who appeared to be a humble rapper, giving props to his fans. My dad is so weird, people. A 60-y-o white man who loves to listen to rap and, last I checked, Imus. Basically anything shocking. Which explains why he thought the song had a positive message and not an ego-aggrandizing one, I guess.

Book Review time!

I finished a book! Two books! I'm feeling pretty good about that, so here's my personal, non-binding opinion of two Booker Prize nominees.

"Mothers Milk" Edward St. Aubyn. The names don't get Britisher than St. Aubyn (pron. "Sin Awbin"), and this book is pretty darn British, too. So although it contains a slimy psychiatrist elite academic sees-himself-as-a-third-person emotionally distanced father, it has its upside. Namely, the precocious older son of his who narrates the first quarter of the book. The beginning is a grim but hilarious piece of reminisence on birth, and it would be really too much to ask the rest of the book to be as good. And it can't be, but it's really darn good, even though it's a bit misogynistic with bad mother characters. This book still rocks, though.

"The Secret River." Kate Grenville. In the secret garden, the little lonely girl found a run down former monument to beauty and, uh, stuff (it's been a while). In the secret river, a transported Englishman finds a pack of aboriginals he can't understand, a bunch of jerks who are exploiting each other and has a wife who can't stop talking about going back to England, where their life was painted as even bleaker than in Australia. The book would have been better if people hadn't been quoted like this but rather in the usual way. I'm not sure what contemporary writers think they're doing with their free use of italics and punctuation.

I'm starting "Carry Me Down" (author? can't remember) and it's so far about a boy who knows when people are lying. Well, if "Blink" wasn't enough, here's the fictional version. And that's good enough for me. Because Malcom Gladwell may be full of himself (and he is!) but I still like just about everything he writes.

In other news, these guides are pretty good when it comes to helping me know something about going to the Cancun area: Moon handbooks, Rough Guide and Hidden Yucatan.

In incredibly shallow news: did anyone else notice how the Others have a really stringent planning code for their creepy suburb? There must be all sorts of homeowner association covenants governing the color and size of homes they can build. And boy are they hateful to outsiders. It's like Maumelle, Arkansas all over again. Because I definitely got the feeling some of the people in Maumelle would have loved to put a bunch of people that they considered outsiders into former dolphin holding tanks.

Organic FMW

So I got around to tasting the Organic Frosted Miniwheats that Kellogg's is pumping and I thought I'd give a report.

The first thing I noticed is that the box is significantly slimmer than the regular box. It holds 15 oz as compared to FMW's 19 and 24.3 oz boxes and costs more than, I'm pretty sure, either box. I bought it on sale — two for $6 — and that is typical of the sale price of both the other sizes on and off during the year. So it is a bit of a rip-off.

Of course, organic consumers purchase these products for their virtuousness (perhaps the slim box is a tip-off to the marketing — thinness is a virtue in our gluttonous society, but it also is a great way to try and make money by putting less product in packaging) so there is a bit of an expectation that in buying something rare(ish) and virtuous you have to pay a premium. True, there are fewer organic wheat fields than conventional wheat fields, and it's easier to grow organic wheat once a year (winter, less weeds competing for resources) than twice. And organic yields aren't quite up to conventional — which means pumped full of petro-chemical fertilizers. But organic yields are, in many cases, 90 percent of conventional, so there's not exactly a shortage, shall we say.

I also read that organic fields use blood bone-type fertilizer, so if you don't like the idea of dead animals touching your organic, possibly veg mouth, well, you have a choice to make. Because when you think about it, there are dead dinosaurs in those conventional fields. On the other hand, there is no gelatin in the sugar coating; it's straight organic cane sugar. It's not corn syrup like you get in the regular FMW.

So organic sugar isn't too tough to grow. Sugar isn't one of those crops that is destroying the ecosystem (yet! Brazil, if sugar protections are eliminated in this country, might become a major ethanol producer, using cane sugar instead of corn like here in the U.S. There is significantly more energy in cane gasoline than corn gas, so it would be the most desirable product on the market. And it is likely that the world's (read the First World's) hunger for energy would encourage growers to destroy the tropical dry forest (read: not the rain forest, cane doesn't need a lot of water to grow so it's low-impact on irrigation, at least) to plant cane fields (this was a Friedman column I actually bothered to read the other week), but I don't think more organic FMW would be nearly as damaging as cane gas) but it's not corn, which takes up an inappropriate amount of resources to grow.

But it is taste where the organic FMW failed. They are like those Post knockoffs. Little, tough, dense, insusceptible to milk. Thier color, a darker brown, is unappetizing unless, I guess, you're a German health nut. The sugar melts off right away, don't expect there to be any FMW worthy of waiting to eat till the end of your breakfast (or dinner) with the last bit of strawberry because that nice crust of sugar coating still remains. I wonder if this aggressively healthy taste and texture is part of the plan, or if the nice people at Kelloggs really tried to make it so these were as identical as possible to their cousins (which I noticed after I finished the organic box looked awfully yellow, like a donut or something).

I'm probably going to continue to buy regular FMW since I feel they taste better and are more appropriate to my budget, which has an outsized FMW expenditure level anyway. Also, I don't like the food-elite bull that the slim, green-topped boxes create. I am not to be marketed to in such an obvious way. If I didn't already know that the packaging cost more than the cereal inside (for the regular stuff and probably, I'm assuming, the organic stuff) and that UDSA organic isn't necessarily the highest standard of all for organics (plus it is the distance the wheat is shipped that also makes up part of the healthy earth equation — how many petrocalories did it take to get it from the farm to the bowl? Was it more than the regular stuff? This is something I feel I ought to know) I might be persuaded. But I'm not.

Yet.

YMCA

I finally gave in and joined. And I took a Jazzercise class for the first time. It's not easy. There are lots of dancy steps and things. But I'm just going to have to get over not going to the Morgan Family Y and having Tuff E Nuff and kickboxing. The thing about Jazzercise is it isn't what you think it is; it's got the same logo — which right now looks bad because it's too-recent-retro to be cool, just give it five more years and it will look very retro-forward — but it's not the leotard and legwarmer outfit you remember. It's hip-hoppy and salsa-y and, to In-Grid's "You Promised Me" it has some weird jazz hands action that makes you look like a goofy Paris mime (I think that may be the intent) for a few 8-counts.

I can't believe I did jazz hands.

On the upside, I met a 60-year-old lady who has been doing Jazzercise for eons, and she has an unlined face, a spring in her step and a great, healthy glow. And is thin and seems pain-free. There must be something to jazz hands.

It's not just Christmas

I saw a woman putting up Halloween decorations today. Halloween, people. A minor holiday (though in my mind it is the best of all the holidays because it involves candy, dressing up and scaring people and none of the family "must have most perfect Thanksgiving/Christmas ever" drama) to be sure, so why start decorating more than a month in advance?

Perhaps I should alert the media (snicker).

I also think I'm going to have to get a microwave at Satan-Mart (there are none at Sears) unless I hie myself to Olympia. Which maybe I should do because really, I want one of those teensy cute ones in a bright color (red? So it matches my kitchen rug and the picture I hung? Or yellow?) instead of a big ole white boring one. I can't remember the writer who compared shopping at the Wals-Mark, as some Arkies do call it, to soviet-style shopping, but yeah, that about sums it up. Not that I'm a big shopper or anything, I just have had some good shopping experiences but they've never been at a Wals-Mark.

Speaking of paying for stuff in an un-fun way, I read the fine print of the Comcast stuff. They are going to charge me a rental fee for the controller that talks to my (unnecessary and actually in-the-way-of-recording-one-show-while-watching-another-unless-I-get-a-TiVo-or-TiFaux) cable box. Don't say I should go without — I need my cylons and doctors in lust and plucky teenage detectives and Dog the Bounty Hunter.

Speaking of whom, he has the best-written website. You should go there: http://www.dogthebountyhunter.com (I forgot the html code. OMG, I am BRAINFARTING in the LIBRARY!) and mute your computer. Seriously, these folks embrace their own PR in a way that makes them the most meta of the po white you-know-what. And I say that with total love in my heart. I mean it. I cannot get enough of the A&E show, I will watch it even when the Kill Bill movies are on (like last night) or any other time. I love it. I love Beth and her amazing shirt torpedoes and Pamela Anderson Lee hairdos. I love Lelands little Hawaiian accent. I love Tim, the quiet shaman who wrings information out of all the street sources even though he barely says a word (made all the more amazing by the fact that he, like Dog, is not Hawaiian-born; breaking into island culture, where they have a word, "haole," for outsiders, is no mean feat). And I love the Dog, who is spiritual but so pragmatic, so matter-of-fact. They all remind me of my nightclubbing days in Arkansas and the bouncers I knew. It is amazing how that old dead Russian writer's saying that the cops and the criminals are two sides of the same coin can be reinterpreted through Da Kine Bail Bonds. Dog is the coin. Dude! He IS the COIN!

I urge you all to consider donating to his legal defense fund at P.O. Box 130781, The Woodlands, TX, 77393-0781 (here's why he needs a defense fund) (I think this is how to hyperlink)

Anyway, there's a Dog special on A&E where the Chapmans speak. I look forward to totally agreeing with everything Beth says.

Joke's on me

So the day I moved into my funky fresh apartment was a scorcher. Like 90 degrees in an area that almost never sees that much heat. Sweaty and gross, I was deeply looking forward to a shower.

Imagine my surprise when the hot water never got hot. On a labor day weekend.

Now, water being what it is, cold water is just too cold to bathe in unless you're Finnish. So I sulked and decided to pat myself off with a washcloth. By chance, I was in the kitchen with the cloth in my left hand, causing me to turn on the hot tap with my right — it's cold, right? No, it was hot.

I have a Romantic Language-ish tap. The hot is labeled "C" and the cold, "H." In Spanish I suppose you could extend that to caldo y hielo (hot and ice) but it's not as appropriate as caldo y frio, and in French isn't it chaud and froi (fwah? Why can't all foreign languages be as easy as Spanish to spell?)? So, ha ha. Funny. A great relief to learn that before sleeping in my clean-sheeted bed.

I also learned that although there is cable of every permutation (HD, digital, regular, enhanced) in my building there is no internet. I am dying, people. I may have to break down and get the dreaded DSL. The library doesn't let me blog past 8:30 p.m. and I just discovered they play "rockabye and goodnight" come 8:15 p.m., which is about as PNW as anything I've ever come across.

Found a great place to rollerblade in Westport. Why isn't there an English word for "malecón?" Boardwalk doesn't cut it — a malecon need not be made of boards and goes alongside the sea, not into it. If you think of the English term that fits, let me know.

I will drop pics of the insanely beautiful drive to Westport I took; it's the kind of drive that makes you feel like God has blessed you with his own hand to see the cows and the sea all in the same viewspace. I'm sure they have these moments and particular ken of vistae in urban America or even Kansas, but I feel like I live in the best place in the whole world in the PNW.

Man, that lullaby stuff is distracting. Oh, it's "Simple Gifts." What kind of message is that sending? Tis a gift to have free library access? Yes, indeedy.

I have more randomness — including a disparaging discourse on the way BBC actors (especially the older ones) kiss. Ew! Just watch their faces go totally slack as they lean in toward each other. It's enough to make you want to "get sick," as the Limeys would say, all over yourself. Or just feel sorry for the whole of BBC-watching Britannia, with such a model of passion-free "snogging," as they might say. All Brits who read this be aware that you have some very hot snoggers among you who I'd name if "Simple Gifts" weren't playing and the librarian wasn't lurking around me, but BBC needs to hold an older actor not disgusting kiss workshop.

Maybe I'm too American, demanding titillation. Well, I gots the cable now, so there I go.

Moving day(s)

It came and went on what had to be the hottest two days ever in the harbor. It hit over 90 Friday before Labor Day and got about there on Saturday, which was when future-movers Carrie, John and Michael decided to put in a little sweat investment (moving studio furnishings to studio apartment) for a large sweat dividend later on (all will eventually be moving into houses of their own within the next few months).

John is a champion big truck backer-upper. He credits his mirrors for helping him get in a space with mere inches on either side.

Carrie and I moved the small stuff while Michael and John moved the big stuff, cashing in our estrogen cards. The thing is, the big stuff (two bookcases and the futon) was too big for the elevator while the small stuff wasn't.

They wouldn't even let me pay for dinner. Which was the extremely reasonable price of $33 including, I think, three beers.

Right now my apartment looks a little like a U-haul barfed in it. I got it tidy enough for Hugh and Jan to come over while I attempted to fix Hugh's computer. Let me say that it was far, far beyond my ability to fix. But I got him to learn how to do regular maintenance and never to respond to a prompt that he doesn't know exactly what it means. And I got a burger at Billy's out of it.

My arms and shoulders are tired of lifting things. More than the furniture, it's the stuff. The seemingly endless parade of marching with boxes of books or armloads of hanging clothes or bags of food that need to be moved. Then there is the stuff I needed to get to be complete — a garbage can, a dish scrubber (oh, man am I going to miss that dishwasher at Mike's. I mean it) a toilet brush, hooks for the closet and bathroom door. I really never want to move again at this point.

I guess I should get cable and internet service started. Funny, but there's a part of me that has grown accustomed to relying on the library and netflix and other people for entertainment. Of course, if I want to find out which sexy doctor (one of brains, the other with animals both big and small) Meredith Grey picks, I'll have to spring for it fairly soon. Man I watch some embarrassing television.