Food & Health: March 2004 Archives

I've had the kind of week where things keep going wrong.

First I messed up a bunch of negatives last week, so I went and bought a plastic film reel (more idiot-proof than metal). So what did I do as soon as I started developing a roll of film yesterday? I dropped the agitator down the drain. And there was no strainer, so it went down and disappeared immediately. The lab people will have to call a plumber, I suppose. Though with no strainer on the drains, I'm guessing all kinds of stuff rolls down there on a regular basis, so this can't be entirely unanticipated.

Fortunately, the roll of film turned out OK. Small blessings, I guess.

Yesterday evening I noticed that the lavender, which I'd intended to plant along the front walk as soon as the painting was done, had dried up and died in the heat we've been having. I suppose this means the end times are upon us and the last thing I need to worry about is landscaping, but I do wish I'd paid attention to watering schedules.

Today, after my first letterpress class (I'm taking an 8-week class at the college, because it's offered and more time on the press is a good thing), I ran into the darkroom to run off some prints quickly. Things went mostly well, except that one of my prints got stuck in the dryer and a bunch of them ended up wrinkled. (They flattened out OK in my notebook, but still.)

I thought I would work on the front yard some, since the weather is nice and it's supposed to get nasty next week. So I went under the house to get our little garden wagon out, and sank into a mucky hole up to my ankle.

Fortunately, the gardening went well, and now the little magnolia (which is in bud!) has a circle of mulch around it (with weed barrier underneath to keep out the Bermuda grass), and a number of those dandelion-like things have been pulled up, so the front yard looks like a bunch of teeny gophers have been having at it. Tomorrow I might go buy more lavender and plant it along the walk.

I also spent some time reworking my photoblog, in ways that are completely invisible to anybody but me, but which make it easier to put together posts. And I'm planning some other major revamps of other bloggish items, like my book list and some elements of the main page here at One Truth for All. With any luck, I won't totally and irretrievably mess this site up in the process.

I appear to have epoxied my fingernail to my finger. Working time of half an hour, my ass.

I found out that the father of a childhood friend of mine died last week. He'd been sick for some time, in the hospital, but that doesn't make it any easier. It was weird to hear about it from my mom, who read the death notice in the paper. Of course, this friend wouldn't have contacted me when it happened; we keep in touch now, but I would hardly say we're close friends. It made me think more about the tenuous nature of friendships that spring up in school.

Most of my friends from those times have drifted away. Our only real connection was that of the people we had to see every day, we were the least objectionable to each other. That's not a horrible thing. I had some good friendships in school. It's just that once we weren't being held together by the enforced social structures of school, there wasn't much for the friendship to fall back on.

My more lasting friendships have come from more personal connections, like people I met because they have interests in common with me. With those friends, I have a reason to call and find out how things are going. We have something to talk about or do when we see each other. We have other friends in common who we can gossip about, too, and developments in our common area of interest. We seek each other out because we want to.

I'm also really horrible as a correspondant, so I tend to stay friends with people who don't take offsense when I fall off the planet for a while, who will still call me and see what I'm up to, even if I haven't talked to them in a while. This was not always the case with me, but it's certainly been that way for a while, now. I don't really have the energy to have a lot of high-intensity friendships, anyway. Even though I'm not taking a full courseload this semester.

Unfortunately, this is the third friend in the last ten months to lose a parent. I'm not sure what it is about this year, but I can't say I like it. It's certainly not as interesting as The Year Everybody Got Married, or The Year Everybody Had A Baby. It reminds me too much of The Year Everybody Died From Terminal Illness. So if the surviving parents of my friends would not mind, I'm calling a moratorium on deaths for a while. Thanks.

First: This is my 100th post on this blog. I am a sucker for web statistics of all sorts, and that simple fact makes me happy. It also makes me happy that most people who come to this site are looking for pictures of three buildings: Stretto House, Schroeder House, and Drager House, probably because they are also having to render them for drafting classes just as I did.

Second: Somehow, in the last 24 hours, I have managed to mess up my right knee. This is good and bad. My right knee is my "good" knee, in the sense that it has required the least mechanical intervention over the years. So in theory this messing up might go away on its own and I won't have to worry, because the right knee is strong and will recover. On the other hand, maybe I've just ruined my one good knee, and I will spend the rest of my life on crutches. OK, that was an over-reaction, but the knee does hurt, and I've already been given the knee death sentence by more than one orthopaedic surgeon.

If anybody still needs convincing that Natural Family Planning just isn't reliable, this article detailing how women may ovulate more than once a month should clear things up.

So would everybody please give up on NFP and wear a condom if the pill offends too much?

Update: Apparently, this result was not actually reached by the study, but was inferred by reporters. Not that that makes NFP any more legitimate.

I've come up with a great new diet revolution:

The I'm So Hungry I Could Eat an Entire Cow Diet

-or-

The Exercise, You Idiot! Diet

The deal is this: You can eat whatever you want, as long as you hunt and kill it yourself. You've got to do your own butchery, too, so don't get all lazy on me. This means that if you want a slice of bread, you better plant some wheat, pronto.

For you city-dwellers or black thumbs, there's an alternative. You can eat whatever you want, as long as you've done a full hour of aerobic exercise at max heartrate within the last three hours. If you skip the exercise, you can eat salad greens, no dressing.

You're pretty much guaranteed to lose weight. Or die.