i feel bloggy

this past weekend carla and i went to the beaverton farmer's market.
we bought some fresh asparagus, radishes and lettuce.

and on a whim, we bought a whole bunch of plants. vegetable plants.

broccoli, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers and peppers.

so after dropping those off at home, we ran to home depot and bought a bunch of soil and turned these plastic bins we used to move into a container garden on our porch.

we already had some peas and spinach and herbs and carrots growing that carla had planted earlier, but now we are up to a full-fledged garden.

i'm excited about it because i haven't had a garden since i was living in minnesota.

every summer on memorial day weekend, we would plant the garden with tons of vegetables.

there was always a time during the summer when we would have these huge massive salads for lunch on weekends that were made from just stuff in our garden (except for the cheese and baconbits!). or cabbage and ham soup at the end of the season when the cabbage ripened.

it makes this apartment feel like home just a bit more.

sipping vinho verde

as a sip my second glass of the effervescent portuguese white, i will now espouse my thoughts on alcohol:

1. i love it.

2. i love almost all forms of it.

3. i like learning about it.

my adventures in oregon have been showing me that oregonians like there booze.
between the wineries and the craft brews and the bars on every corner in downtown portland, alcohol flows freely here.

i also work in a store that sells wine and beer. so i feel that, in order to be most effective as a knowledgeable tj's crewmember, i should know about wine and beer.

and experience is the only true teacher.

this is what i have learned about beer:
hefeweizen is my favorite kind of beer.
sam adam's summer ale maybe the best seasonal brew i know of.
i like fruit added beers. which may make me a fruit, but i'll accept that.

what i have learned about wine:
i don't like reds with most foods. i like them on their own or with sweet things.
i like white wine with food.
i like going to wineries and drinking the samples.

i have yet to tour as many breweries and vineyards as i would like to, but it is still early in my time here, so my plan is to...

oops, i need another glass...

spider-man 3

i've been waiting for this movie to come out for a couple months. since i saw 300 (which i absolutely loved) this is the movie i have most wanted to see.

the action and fight scenes and special effects and the look of venom were all awesome.

the dialogue was a bit hokey and forced.

i liked the acting and the range of emotion was good, especially by the dude that plays harry. i like him.

but it feels like they crammed way too much into the movie. they could have kept out the gwen stacy story line or kick mary jane to the curb for the whole movie. the sandman sentimentalism was a bit too much. (is sentimentalism even a word? my spell check says it is, but i don't know about that...)

it was worth seeing, but i'll probably be ok with that being the only time i ever see it.

3/5 stars

new era

with blair, clinton and chirac all out of office now, all my favorite world leaders are out of power now.

which is too bad, because it seems like the world is shifting towards more conservative, isolationist and authoritarian regimes.

mainly that's too bad because i feel that's the opposite of where we need to be going in world politics.

the justifications we (the us, nato, the u.n., the e.u.) used to get rid of slobodan milosevic, liberate east timor, intervene in sierra leone, and now the belated call to dafur are righteous and morally correct.

those that live in free, prosperous democracies have a mandate to spread those ideals of liberty and justice to everyone.

for two reasons: one, security. if a small nation has a vested interest in democracy and world-wide free trade, you are less likely to see hostile military action or extremism take hold in government. two, it is the right thing to do.

putting aside everything that went wrong in iraq, if we would have used this reasoning to oust saddam and we used this as a first principle for planning our military action, i think fewer people would have been opposed to this from the start. i know i would have.

america is still the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. maybe even ever.
and that is fantastic.

but we need to let the world know that even if it's for our own selfish reasons, we will step in and force the tyrants out.
monroe doctrine, ww1, ww2, marshall plan, serbia, america has a track record of doing good in this world.

we cannot let a setback like iraq keep our country from losing the faith in our ability to be that beacon of light of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

happy birthday dad!

the dad-o is 46-o today-o!

happy birthday!

hope whatever you two empty-nesters are doing is fun and exciting with no children at home to get in the way of getting wicked drunk on your birthday, dad!

organization and time management

i am pretty good at keeping organized and managing my time when i am at work.
i get things done right away, i keep my inbox clean and i'll write myself to-do lists when i have more than i can keep straight in my head.

but at home, i'm lucky if i can remember to shower on my days off.

and it's not that i don't want to be organized and efficient. i'm just a procrastinator. i spend a lot of time calculating how long a task will take me and then i start it at the last possible second.

but, invariably, it ends up taking longer than i estimated or i get distracted by the tv or internet or a kitty that needs a good head scratching.

or i say i will take care of it on my days off. which leads to me sleeping in, taking care of the "honey-do" list posted to my bathroom mirror and me reading/watching the internet/tv/newspaper.

what i need to do is import the time management tools and techniques i use at trader joe's into my personal life.

i need to step up and keep my life in order. i want it to be that when i wake up in the morning that i look at the house and say, "damn, i have nothing to do. let's go watch a movie or sleep another 5 hours." instead of saying, "ok, if i sleep two more hours and watch this movie while i do laundry and dishes, then spend 15 minutes cleaning the bathroom then 5 minutes in the shower, maybe i can squeeze in enough time to get gas before i have to be at work."

which, of course, leads me to not doing half that stuff and praying that i don't run out of gas until after work.

so why don't i just make myself to-do lists and calendars and all that jazz of highly efficient people?

because it feels like work. i love my job, but i can only do so much work in a week. and 98% is used by the job that gives me money. so i don't have the motivation or will (ok, i do, i just don't use them) for chores and the like.

but i will.

tomorrow.

retail

i have probably mentioned this before, but people say some of the strangest things when you are working in retail.

take this for example:

on sunday, probably 3 or 4 different people asked me where a product was located. so i told them and walked them over to the right aisle and shelf.

"oh, you've moved this. it used to be over there."
"it's been here as long as i've worked here, and i've been here since january"
"no, it was over there the last time i came in"

now, either the last time they came in was last november or they are thinking of a different trader joe's or they're idiots.

yes, we do move stuff around and it may switch shelves or move over a section, but for the most part, we don't move entire aisles around.

these people think we do this stuff on a whim, but do you know how much work it is to empty a whole aisle and move it to another part of the store?

a shit ton. that's how much.

it's ok to admit you don't remember where something is or that you are thinking of another store or you haven't been in for awhile.

but i do not appreciate when it is my fault and our problem for you not being able to open your eyes and think for yourself.

don't get me wrong, i love my job. and i love customers. i wouldn't have a career without them. but for the love of God, think, people!

lou dobbs yesternight

on lou dobbs yesterday, they were talking about how some people are pissed that the mlk jr memorial in washington, d.c. is going to be built using chinese granite.

whatever dude he had on, said that this was a bunch of crap and we should be using american granite.
lou dobbs said the chinese should take their granite and build a memorial to mlk jr over there, and we'll use american granite for our american monument.
then they interviewed the "common man on the street" and we got 2 types of reactions:

1. that's terrible. mlk jr was an american. it should use american granite and american labor. no no no no no no chinese. bad international. good uberpatriots only use american products.

2. why do people care? wasn't mlk jr all about bringing people together and having us all treated as equal? should the whole world want to help on this monument?

exactly. the whole world should help on this monument. mlk jr's dream and vision was a world where everyone was looked upon as equal. where everyone had their shot at achieving their goals and dreams.

we should get the chinese to do the granite. we should get the italians for the landscaping. germans for any metal work to do. kenyans to string the lights. canadians for the sidewalks. indians to run the hot dog across the street.

this is the problem i have with a lot of people here in america. isolationism and xenophobia.

globalization is a good thing!

the recent stock market surge is partly due to american companies making more money overseas. part of the lack of inflation is that we can produce consumer goods cheaper overseas.
yes, we lose manufacturing jobs here, but who cares?
let's train our workforce and children to be smart and service oriented.

healthcare, engineering, service industries, sales, biotech, computer science. that's where the american know-how and how-to is going to be in the future. let other nations build polluting factories that are physically demanding and exhausting.

americans shouldn't have to physically toil for their money. we're too rich of a nation! we'll pay other people to do it for us! this is america, people. it's time we were ok with being totally kickass and we can continue to be that if we let other countries do the jobs that we don't care for. let america get richer! let the world get richer!

but keep america number one. that's all i ask.

title

i know someone that died in iraq.

i'd only met ryan a couple times. he's the fiance of one of carla's best friends from college.

he died in an explosion on wednesday.

this is the first time that i have directly known someone that has died in war.

watching reports of iraq on the tv or reading it in the papers, it doesn't quite hit home.

we're so sheltered from the violence and atrocities that happen over there on a daily basis.

the daily show and the like uses humor to present it to us. the 24 hours news channels don't even devote that much time to covering it anymore.

politicians bicker over how to fund/end/win it.

i was opposed to the iraq war from the beginning. i knew that we wouldn't get out of there for years and years. but my voice doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of things.

but now, i'm even angrier than before. people's lives that i know have been destroyed. how do i even comfort them? how do i help carla comfort her friend?

God, it sounds sad to me that it takes this horror hitting close to home for me to become enraged again about my government, my nation fighting in a war that i never wanted.

but it did.

i had keeping carla happy to worry about. i had my job transferring me across the country to worry about. i had my crohn's to worry about. i had my life to worry about.

but now, i'm just happy that the ones i love and care about are here in america. here where they can worry about congress raising the minimum wage or how much trans fats they are eating.

i'm sad more than anything when i think about ryan's family and friends. what do they do? how long are they going to grieve? months? years? forever?

i'm just sad.