Half Changed World

knock wood

I don't want to jinx us, and I certainly don't want to make light of the H1N1 flu, which has knocked several people of my acquaintance on their backsides, but so far this fall my family has been far less sick than in the average year.  And it's not just me -- Fairfax county schools are reporting a 3.6 percent absenteeism rate, down from an average of 4.03 percent.  My theory is that everyone is being so good about washing hands, and not coming to work/school when they're sick, that they're passing around a lot fewer colds than usual.

[For the record, we did get both boys vaccinated last weekend.  The Fairfax health department mass clinic was amazingly efficient.   Vaccines have not yet been available for non-priority populations in this area, so neither T. nor I have been vaccinated.]

decision trees and swine flu

I have a masters in public policy degree, and people sometimes ask me what exactly do you learn in a public policy program.  The answer is a little bit of lots of things -- some economics, some statistics, some political science, how to write a 2 page memo, a fair amount on whatever topic you specialize in.  But probably the core skill they try to teach is about decision making with imperfect information.  And when I was in grad school, the main example they used to illustrate this issue is the 1976 swine flu vaccination decision.

The short version of it is that in February 1976 two soldiers at Fort Dix died from a swine flu, with a significant number of soldiers infected, and no exposure to pigs involved.  This was known to be related to the flu that had caused the 1918 pandemic, most people didn't have immunity to it, there was a theory of cyclical pandemics that suggested that we were overdue for one, and this strain had proven itself to have the ability to kill otherwise healthy young men.  The government asked the vaccine manufacturers to produce a vaccine, and in the fall, they swung into action with a full-fledged immunization drive.
As it turns out, swine flu did not reemerge in the fall, and the vaccination campaign was suspended (after about 40 million people had been vaccinated) when some of the vaccinated individuals came down with Guillain-Barré syndrome.

With hindsight, it's clear that the vaccination drive was unnecessary.   But with the information available, was it the wrong thing to do?   The people who made the decision still think it was the right call, writing: "When lives are at stake, it is better to err on the side of overreaction than underreaction. Because of the unpredictability of influenza, responsible public health leaders must be willing to take risks on behalf of the public."  My public policy classmates were less convinced, generally concluding that it made sense to produce the vaccine, but that they should have held off on immunizing people until there was some evidence that the swine flu had returned in the fall.  We felt the president had been pushed by politics to overreact to a low-probability but high risk event, fearing the headlines if tens of thousands died and the government had done nothing. 

Which brings us to today, and the headlines that half of Americans could be infected by the swine flu this year.  So, I'm glad that they're making vaccines.  But I'm not sure whether I want to line up -- or line my kids up -- to be immunized.  If you've got some time to spend thinking about what the vaccine strategy should be, the CDC is holding two web-based public forums to collect input and is looking for participants.

For us, a complicating factor is that D has a history of mild asthma.  And viral infections are his primary trigger.  He's been doing so well that we've had him off of the inhaled steroid, but I emailed his pediatrician to ask if she thought we should start him again with the start of the school year.  She responded that the risks of the inhaled steroid were very low, while the flu was an unknown, so she'd advise going ahead with the steroid.  So we're going to do that, and otherwise we're waiting and seeing.

What are you doing?  Will you get vaccinated if offered it?  Do you think your local school system is overreacting, underreacting, or getting it right?  Do you have a plan for what you'll do if schools are closed?

bye bye bank

This morning, we were woken at 8.15 am by the phone ringing.  It was an automated message from T's credit card company, reminding him that he had a payment due, and offering him the opportunity to make the payment by phone.  Since they charge for the phone payments, he declined, but he did turn the computer on right away to make a payment before it was overdue.

He clicked onto our bank's site, only to discovered that it had been closed yesterday by the Office of Thrift Supervision, just like in the This American Life episode about what happens when the FDIC takes over a bank.  He was still able to make the electronic payment, but it definitely made us pay attention.  Last fall, when lots of banks were failing, I did wonder about the security of this bank -- which was essentially entirely online, with just one actual branch -- but after double checking that it was covered by the FDIC, I chose not to worry about it.  I'm sort of surprised that it failed now -- isn't the banking crisis supposed to be over?

Our account is now part of Stearns Bank, whose website indicates that they've taken over no less than four failed banks.  I'll wait and see what terms they offer us -- what I most liked about ebank was that I could use any ATM, and they would reimburse us for the fees charged by the bank. Otherwise, I'm not sure what bank I'll move to.  Probably Schwab, since we already have a brokerage account with them.

here's the plan

I appreciated the kind responses to Thursday's post.  Here's the plan:

• I'm paid up for TypePad through nearly the end of the year.  So there's no need to do anything immediately.
• I'm going to give myself permission to blog when I feel like it and not to blog when I don't, and not to feel guilty about it.  We'll see if it works.
• Before my TypePad account expires, my plan is to move the blog over to WordPress.  While the import function ino WordPress.com is quite impressive, there's not a way to preserve the current URL structure.  (In other words, all of the hyperlinks would be broken, even if I had www.halfchangedworld.com pointed toward the new blog.)  However, it appears that I can do this if I run WordPress off my own site.  (Or to be fair, it appears that it can theoretically be done, and I have confident that T will be able to do it in practice.  On my own, probably not.) Since T is already paying for web hosting that can accomodate multiple domains, we should be able to do this at no or minimal extra cost.
• Once I'm on WordPress, I'll have the option of adding extra authors (Typepad only allows this at its most expensive tier).  Extra authors might help preserve this commenting/reading community even when I'm posting less.

the beginning of the end (perhaps)

I think it's a sign of a blog that is seriously ill, if not on life support, when most of your posts are apologies for not blogging more often.  I'm thinking about pulling the plug.

• Next month, I'll have been blogging for five years.  According to Typepad, this is my 1,013th post.  It's not that I have nothing left to say, but I'm not spilling over with ideas the way I used to.
• When I started this blog, I was at a job where I was frustrated with the policies, was not allowed to speak my mind, and had a fair amount of time to kill.  That's not the case these days.  I've done three presentations already this month, and have four more scheduled.  I'm loving it, but I'm exhausted by the time I get home.
• My kids are getting older, and are staying up later, especially in the summer.  The window of time between when they go to bed and when I collapse myself is shrinking.  And I'm somewhat less willing to post about them as they get older.
• It's not just me.  Laura at 11d had a post recently about how the blogosphere has changed, and I think she's on the mark.  I used to love the big kerfluffles (remember the Perfect Madness posts?) where we'd all read and post and link and then post some more to respond to the points that someone else had made.  It had the wonderful heady feeling of being in college and staying up until two in the morning because you were discussing the meaning of life and solving all the problems of the world.  I haven't had that feeling in a while.

So why keep it?  Because I'll miss you, my readers and commenters. The level of civility and thoughtfulness that has always characterized the discussions here is really quite remarkable, and not that common.  And (to be honest) because I still mumble about wanting to write a book someday, and having a built in "platform" might help me sell it.  On the other hand, I might be more likely to stop mumbling and start writing without the blog.

Even if I stopped posting, I do think I'd like to keep my archives alive somewhere.  Not sure I'm willing to pay Typepad for that.  Is there a simple way to migrate from Typepad onto one of the free services?

in the mail

Between online banking and email, I rarely send old fashioned mail any more.  But today I found myself with a stack of envelopes (and one package) to send.  They included:

• our property tax payment (which I might be able to make online, but for a twice a year payment, I haven't bothered to spend the time required to figure it out)
• several checks for deposit (the flip side of going to an entirely online bank is that I need to mail in deposits, not including my paycheck, which is direct deposited; however, the bank gives us prepaid envelopes)
• a RSVP card for a wedding
• two condolence cards (both to former colleagues who lost a parent recently)
• one Netflix envelope
• two DVDs that Amazon sent to me by mistake along with some books that I did order (I asked them what they wanted me to do, and they sent me a prepaid label and asked me to mail them back).

What do you still mail?

back from vacation

Hey, I'm back from vacation, so semi-regular posting may resume soon.  (I still have a business trip coming up, and a generally hectic schedule at work, so I'm not promising regular.  I know I still owe you all another health care reform post.)

We had a nice trip, which included visits to both sets of grandparents, my high school reunion, and visits to some friends.  The weather was absolutely awful for a while in the middle which led us to a sudden trip to Toys R Us for more board games, but then was nice on either end.  Did you know Monopoly now comes with an extra die that speeds things up?  It still is a long game, but doesn't take forever the way it used to.

Vacation for me means reading.  I read Blood Lure, by Nevada Barr, the Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, by Maggie O'Farrell, and Netherland by Joseph O'Neill.  Blood Lure was mindless fun.  Esme Lennox was a choice of my sister-in-law's book club, which she passed on to me. It's the intertwining stories of a girl growing up in colonial India and Scotland and her great-niece today.  I liked it, although it left me somewhat unsatisfied, with the contemporary story being much weaker than the historical one.  Netherland was a disappointment, given the great reviews it's received.  It reminded me a bit of Ian McEwan's Saturday, which I found similarly frustrating -- lovely writing, but I didn't give a darn about any of the characters.

I'm fine

I feel silly and dramatic even saying this, but since I got some worried notes on Facebook, I figured I should check in.  (And for those of you not in the US -- there was a major accident on the DC metro this evening -- the local news is reporting 9 dead.)   I'm not a red line rider, so it didn't even mess up my commute. 

I'm crazy busy at work getting ready for my vacation, and then I'll be on vacation, so don't worry about me if I don't post for a week or so.

Kids restaurant week

You've probably heard of the "Restaurant Week" promos that happen once a year in a lot of cities -- a bunch of restaurants all agree to offer a limited fixed price menu at the same bargain price for one week a year.  It's a nice way to get to try restaurants that are usually out of your price range, and gets the restaurants more customers during a generally slow time of year and lots of publicity and goodwill.

Well, this year Cookie magazine helped organize "Kids Restaurant Week" in three cities, including DC.  Adults pay $29, kids pay their age, special early seatings.  We generally have given up on going out with the boys to any restaurant fancier than Applebees, because it's just not worth the money to buy food that they won't eat, and it takes too much of our energy to keep them sitting nicely.  (Although we've discovered that a pair of bubble teas will buy us a good 45 minutes sitting at the local dim sum joint.)  But we decided to give Wasabi a try, since N likes the takeout sushi from Trader Joe's, and I hoped the food on a conveyor belt would distract D even if there was nothing he was willing to eat.  And it's right near my office.

We got there a little late, due to some parking issues.  (We discovered that our minivan no longer fits in the parking structures downtown since we installed a bike rack.  And most metered spots are off limits between 4 and 6.30.)  But they were very welcoming when we got there.

It turned out to be far more of a success than I had anticipated.  They had a kids meal planned out, with chicken karage, avocado rolls, sweet potato tempura and strawberries with ginger.  Somewhat to my surprise, D adored the chicken.  And adults could just eat of the conveyor belt or the menu.  The boys were thrilled by how the staff turned the standard wooden disposible chopsticks into kids chopsticks with the clever use of a rubberband and the rolled up paper wrapper.

At the end of the meal, the manager (or owner?) stopped by and was very welcoming.  He asked where we lived, and when we said Virginia, he told us they were opening a new branch in Tyson's in the fall.  He said that would be a more kid-friendly set-up, with more room, and the chefs working on display in the middle. 

I wouldn't have imagined taking the boys to Wasabi without the incentive of kids restaurant week, but at the end, they asked if they could go back.  And we probably will.

Camping

We had a really nice weekend camping.  We went with several other families, so there were a total of five kids, with ours the youngest at five and eight, and the oldest being twelve.  We went out to Wolf Gap, which is right on the border between Virginia and West Virginia.

I was impressed at how well the boys did hiking, since last year they were pretty whiny on a much shorter hike.  There was one section where you really needed to climb up some rocks, and both boys made it with only a few helping hands.  (They needed a bit more assistance on the downhill there.)  D whined a fair bit on the way up, but then raced down ahead of us trying to keep up on the way down.  N was a trooper for most of the time, but was clearly wiped by the end.

Other than the hike, the boys mostly spent the time obsessively poking the fire.  There were enough adults there that we were able to take turns supervising them, and no one got set on fire.  The kids all thought we should have a fire going at all times, so we told them they were responsible for collecting enough firewood to make that happen, and the older kids even each took a turn with the saw.  The adults were able to actually have some conversations, as well as reading, and staring into the fire.  We all ate far too many roasted marshmallows.

This was car camping [e.g. we could drive right to the campsite, but we slept in tents, not the car] so we were able to bring a ridiculous amount of supplies.  We had folding chairs and tables, a two burner stove, big tents, beer and soda, barbecued chicken, watermelon, coffee w/ cream, you name it.  This is the sort of camping that I did with my family when I was growing up, but as an adult I somewhere along the way decided that I only wanted to do backcountry camping, where you only have what you're willing to carry.  That's obviously not going to happen with the boys until they're old enough to carry their own gear, but this weekend made me realize that it's some sort of stupid snobbery to think that car camping isn't worth doing.

The two burner stove that my friends brought is pretty much identical to the one my parents bought at Sears 40 years ago, and a quick online search shows that Coleman still makes pretty much the identical model.  I remembered that when I was little we were able to buy the fuel for the stove at gas stations, which makes me think that car camping must have been far more popular then than it is now.* We hypothesized that it's been driven out by the combination of:

• Camping as a cheap way to travel has been driven out by cheap motels and low-fare air travel.
• Those who do travel and camp mostly use RVs.  (When did RVs get popular?)
• Now that air conditioning is so ubiquitous, not to mention television and the internet, not so many people are interested in sitting in the woods and getting eaten by mosquitoes.  (My boys did complain about our not letting them bring their DSs.)
• Those who do still camp are more likely to be the hard core folks who want to backpack and not car camp.

*I'm not entirely sure that's true -- it looks like white gas was used for things other than just camping stoves and lanterns.

What do you think -- has car camping declined?  Will it make a comeback in the recession?  Do you do it?  What's the one piece of gear that you couldn't live without?

Ok, I found some statistics from the outdoor industry foundation.  I think this is the trade group of the people who sell gear.  It's a little hard to read, but I think they're saying that 49 million Americans went car camping at least once in 2004, down 18 percent from 1998, and 13 million Americans went backpacking at least once in 2004, down 23 percent from 1998.  If anyone can find longer-term trends, I'd love to see them.

quinoa

I've been making a lot of the NY Times Recipes for Health lately.  They're healthy (although not always low-calorie), usually reasonably easy to make and almost always tasty.  This week I made the Royal Quinoa Salad with Tofu and Sesame Ginger Vinaigrette.  I thought it needed more broccoli than the recipe called for, but otherwise it was pretty good.

Tofu isn't kosher for Passover by traditional Ashkenazi standards, because it's made from beans, which are "kitniyot" -- not really leaven, but sort of guilty by association.  (Either because you can make bread-like foods out of them, or because they were grown in adjacent fields, not clear.)  A couple of years ago, I decided that worrying about kitniyot wasn't particularly meaningful to me -- I won't eat cornbread, but I'm not going to worry about corn syrup, or tofu.

Quinoa's a different issue.  Although it sure looks like a grain, biologically, it's a member of a different family.  More to the point, it's a new world plant, and was totally unknown to the rabbis who wrote the laws about Passover.  So it's kosher for Passover, even for those observe the prohibition on kitniyot.

Passover ended tonight, so we had the traditional pizza for dinner.

Harry Potter

I've been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to N as his bedtime story for the past several weeks, with D usually coming in to listen as well.  (I read it to him when he was about N's age.)  We finished it over the weekend, and tonight N asked if I'd start another chapter book.

I said, sure, how about Harry Potter?  This was a devious move on my part, because I tried reading it to D last year, and during the letter delivery sequence, he decided it was too scary and refused to go any further.  But N is much less freaked out by "scary" books and movies (remember, he's the one who came to see Coraline, even though he's almost 3 years younger than D), and he said ok, mostly because he could see that it was a big fat book that would get him my attention for a long time.

So I read the first half chapter to both boys, and then D asked if I'd read the rest of the chapter as his bedtime story.  Gee, I guess you can twist my arm.  So we finished the first chapter, and then D asked if he could keep going on his own.  I said yes, overruling N's pout, and D made it to Diagon Alley before I made him turn out the light.

I'm feeling pleased as punch, both because I think he'll enjoy it, and also because D has been resistant to reading chapter books on his own, in spite of the fact that he's quite capable of doing so.  He reads lots of manga, and has read some of the kids' novelizations set in the star wars universe, but that's about it.  And while I'm willing to concede that Harry Potter isn't great literature, it's a heck of a lot better than those star wars novels. 

Fundamentally, I think I've been feeling a bit left out of D's interests.  I'm not fascinated by Pokemon, and I can't fake it.  I'm not a big fan of manga.  I'm really bad at Lego Star Wars.  So I'm excited to have him interested in something that I like too.

Haagen-Dasz: Five

Yes, I really am posting about ice cream the day after I wrote about my diet.  It's part of a blog tour, and when they asked me if I wanted free ice cream, I couldn't resist.

The ice cream in question is Haagen-Dazs Five and, as featured in the front page of the Washington Post yesterday (don't they have a recession to report on?), the gimmick is that there are only five ingredients in each flavor and they're all something recognizable -- milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and whatever the flavor is.  In other words, it more or less passes Michael Pollan's food rules.

They say that these have less fat than the standard Haagen Dasz flavors, but this is still a premium ice cream, coming in at 220-240 calories for a 1/2 cup serving (and my guess is that most people probably treat the 14 ounce packages as a 2 serving package, if they don't eat the whole thing).  That said, it's very good ice cream. Ginger was probably my favorite flavor of the ones we tried, D liked the passionfruit best, and N liked them all.

So, what am I doing eating ice cream if I'm on a diet?  Well, they're rich enough that a little goes a long way.  I served myself a big bowl of fruit and put a dollop of ice cream on top.  The passionfruit ice cream was amazing with the mango chunks from Trader Joe's, and the ginger, mint and brown sugar all went well with strawberries.  As Pollan says, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

TBR: The Instinct Diet

This January, I got back from vacation and hopped on the scale, and was horrified to see a number that I had previously only seen when pregnant -- yes, I really did weigh more than I did immediately postpartum.  It shouldn't have surprised me -- all my pants were too tight.  Somewhere along the way, I had added an extra 10 pounds to the usual "I could really stand to lose 10 pounds."  So I started looking around for a diet plan that I could follow.  I'm pretty skeptical of diets, but I also know that all of these "lifestyle" approaches that claim that you can lose weight effortlessly by making simple substitutions don't work for me, because I already drink skim milk, don't drink soda, rarely have chips, etc.

Over at US Food Policy, Parke spoke highly of The Instinct Diet: Use Your Five Food Instincts to Lose Weight and Keep It Off, by Susan Roberts, so I decided to give it a try.  Eight weeks later, I've lost the "extra" 10 pounds, and am finding it painless enough that I'm going to keep going and try to get rid of the "could stand to lose" weight.

Roberts goes through a whole explanation of the different "instincts" that make us overeat, but fundamentally, the diet is about eating a nutritionally balanced diet, restricting calories, and using a bunch of "tricks" so that you don't feel deprived and hungry along the way.  So, you eat lots of soup and salad, because they're high volume.  You put the most fattening flavorful things on the outside (chocolate on strawberries, dressing on salad) so you maximize the taste punch.  You eat mostly whole grain or high fiber carbs so they digest slowly and make you feel full.  You eat a wide variety of veggies, but rotate through a limited set of main dishes, and have a choice of a starch with dinner or dessert, but not both.

The book includes both recipes and suggestions for how to follow the diet using mostly packaged foods.  In general, the recipes are quite good -- the thai peanut dressing for salad is amazing, and all the soups have been good enough that I'd make them even when I wasn't trying to watch my weight.  However, the "pizza" base was all but inedible -- possibly because I couldn't find the white wheat bran she recommended anywhere, either online or looking at health stores.  But the no-cook alternative is to use a low-carb pita bread, which worked out ok for me.  I thought the "I-diet bread" was awful the first time I had it, but it's grown on me over time.  (And one of Roberts' instincts is indeed familiarity.)

So, I don't think the diet is perfect, but it's working for me.  And the Amazon reviews are overwhelmingly positive.  This may be the best diet book you've never heard of.

Sorry, this post is attracting too much spam.  I'm going to close it to comments.

a night at the movies

I'm trying to think what movies I have seen in a theater in the last 12 months.  It's possible I'm missing one, but I think the complete list is:

• Wall-E
• Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull
• Waltz with Bashir
• Coraline
• Monsters v. Aliens

The key point here is that four of these are primarily kids movies, and the most recent two are both 3-D.  (As it happens, the adult movie was also animated, but that's another story.)  I've just about given up on going to the movies as a way to spend an evening out.  The theater experience just isn't enough better than watching it at home on Netflix to justify the cost of a movie ticket.  (Let alone the cost of a babysitter.)  On the not-terribly-frequent occasions when T. and I go out in the evening, we'd rather spend the time talking or doing something rather than sitting next to each other in a theater.

The 3-D movies are, I think, the theaters' current best hope at answering the question of what they can offer in terms of an experience that a Blu-Ray player and a widescreen TV doesn't.  The new technology really is impressive.  If I'm going to see a movie that's available in the 3-D, it's worth the couple of extra bucks for the experience.  But, at some point pretty soon, the novelty of it is going to wear off, and the question will be whether the movies stand on their own.  Coraline passed that test for me.  Monsters vs Aliens, not so much, although the boys loved it.

The other thing that theaters offer is the experience of seeing a movie early, when your friends are still talking about it.  Almost none of my friends see first run movies either, so that's not a real factor for me.  (Interestingly, I got a pitch today from a service that rents recent hardcover books, in a Netflix-like manner.  Their argument for why you should pay $20 a month for something that you can get for free from your public library is that you'll get the popular books faster.  Again, there's certainly no short of older books that I haven't read, but I can see the appeal in the right circumstances.)

The sales data suggests that movie attendance is up in spite of the bad economy, or maybe because of it.  Including popcorn, it cost the four of us $60 to go to the movies, which certainly isn't something that fits in my budget terribly often.  But if you're giving up your family vacation, going to the movies can seem like a cheap way to splurge.

stages

I noticed this week that I seem to have arrived at a new parenting stage, one where the emotional work of parenting is often harder than the physical.  My boys can dress themselves (most of the time), use the bathroom without assistance (most of the time), get themselves a glass of water.  D can entertain himself for hours between reading and playing with his DS.  N isn't quite so self-maintaining, but on a weekend morning, the boys generally can play together for a good hour before the arguing gets loud enough that we can't pretend not to notice any more.

But the emotional work is challenging.  N gave me huge hugs and kisses before I went away on a 36 hour trip for work, but then ignored me on my return.  D says "sorry" for hurting his brother without thinking or meaning it, but bursts into tears when we press him.  Both of them are constantly complaining about headaches or stomachaches, but it doesn't seem to stop them from running around like lunatics.

Checking in

I'm fine, just very busy at work.  I went to Connecticut and back for a hearing on Tuesday, and had an audioconference this afternoon.  It's a sign of the state of my life that a 14 hour round trip train trip felt like a nice break. 

I took advantage of the trip to make some progress in the huge pile of unread papers that has been accumulating on my desk.  It made me realize that I've just been radically underestimating how long it's going to take me to read things, and that even if I was 100% efficient at work and didn't ever check personal messages, I still wouldn't have time to get to everything that strikes me as interesting.

Prosper as a microcosm of the banking crisis

I've written here a few times before about Prosper, the social lending site.  Last year at tax time I noted that you could see the recession starting to show up in the statement, with two loans sold as delinquent, and more and more loans running behind in payment.  Well, this year I've got a bunch more delinquent loans. 

What's annoying though is that Prosper is reporting them as "charge-offs" meaning that they don't think they'll ever be repaid, but they're still trying to collect them.  This makes it questionable to claim them as losses on my taxes, even though the one loan where they subsequently made some collections was reported as income.*  By contrast, if they sold the loans for less than face value, it could have been a standard capital loss.  My understanding is that they tried to sell them, but couldn't find anyone who would buy them.  Sound familiar?

What makes this a less than complete miniature version of the banking crisis is that Prosper didn't sell tranches on its loans -- when you bought a share of a loan, it was just a straight fractional share, with everyone getting a corresponding share of the monthly payments. 

When Prosper suddenly stopped taking new money in the fall, they claimed it was because they were entering a SEC quiet period.  My understanding is that this wasn't exactly voluntary -- the SEC said that they weren't just a middleman, but were creating securities without any oversight.  Frankly, I'd be shocked if they ever reopen for business.

*I've googled, and it's clear that some people are planning on claiming the charge-offs as losses.  But the IRS looks very closely at losses that aren't matched with a 1099-B, and the $30 I would save on my taxes is not worth the increased risk of being audited.  Even if I wasn't a DC policy wonk.

PTA report

My blogging time tonight got consumed by putting together the PTA newsletter. 

I'm not sure whether anyone reads the newsletter, as most of the content is repeated by single-topic flyers included in the take-home folders.  But it's a chance to provide a bit more advance notice of events and to thank the volunteers who make everything happen.

I picked this job to volunteer for because it's easy to do on my own schedule.  But I don't feel like it's allowed me to get to know as many people as I'd like, since I get all the info for it by email.  Volunteering at the election day bakesale was much better for that.

The hot topic right now is the school schedules.  For years, a group of parents have been campaigning to rejigger the schedule so that the high school students don't have to get up so early.  There's a bunch of research that says that teens really are biologically wired to stay up late.  But, the same buses do multiple routes a day, so if the high schools start later, most of the elementary schools will start earlier.

I don't really personally mind if the school starts at 7.50 (as would happen under the proposed plan).  The school is right on my way to work, so I'd probably drop the boys off in the morning on my way out, rather than having them waiting for the bus at the crack of dawn.  Before we moved, D's school started at 8 am. 

But the principal is really concerned about it.  The worries that she expressed are:

• older kids not being home in the afternoon to watch younger kids
• teachers who live a long way out not being able to make it in on time and so transferring to other schools
• overall, need to provide coverage for a longer day (since it will start earlier but aftercare will have to run just as late).

I don't really know how this will play out.

In somewhat-related political news, Arne Duncan says he's going to send his daughter to public school, but in Arlington, not DC.

still buzzing

OK, I know you're all probably getting sick of my obsessing over the inauguration, but indulge me for one more post.  I'll get back to being my usual jaded wonky self soon enough, I promise.

I loved these pictures of Obama's first day on the job.  It still hardly seems real that he's actually the president.  So it's amazing to see him in the Oval Office, getting down to business.

At work, everyone was trading their inauguration stories.  It sounded like the people who just wandered down to the Mall and found spots near the Washington Monument generally had a better experience than many of the people who had tickets, who spent a lot of time on lines to get through security (and some of whom didn't make it in at all).

I really enjoyed reading about the experiences of these kids from Chicago who were selected for a trip to DC at Share My Inauguration.*  They clearly appreciated the historic moment, but also had a definite kids' perspective on the whole experience.

As I said yesterday, I had a better time at the inauguration for not being responsible for keeping D safe and happy.  I think he probably showed good judgment in turning down my invitation to come with me.  But I'm also a little sad that I don't think he appreciates quite how momentous a day it was.  He's learned about segregation and Martin Luther King, Jr. in school, but it's a pretty abstract concept to him.  And there's something lovely about that innocence too.  But I wonder if 8 years from now, he's going to be pissed that I didn't schlepp him down to the Mall so he could claim bragging rights.

One of the things that was interesting about the inauguration is that everyone there was consciously aware that it was a Historical Moment.  I wonder if the people who attended the March on Washington knew right away that it would be Important.  I'm pretty sure that most of the people who attended Woodstock (the other comparison I heard a lot) didn't know that it was an Event until after the fact.

* Full disclosure: I was asked to plug this site as part of MomCentral blog tour, but I'm happy to do so.  They seem to be great kids, and I'm glad that they got the opportunity to be here.

A day to remember

It really was a day to remember.

I'm assuming that anyone reading this has already read news coverage, so I'm only going to post about my personal experience:

The transportation logistics were convoluted, but not terrible given the huge number of people they were transporting.  The 16S bus we had been promised didn't exist, but that didn't really matter.  Bypassing L'Enfant Plaza and getting dumped at Judiciary Square instead probably cost us an hour of walking around, but gained us the experience of getting to walk through the 3rd street tunnel.  On the way home, we didn't even try to get on the metro near the Mall, but walked across the 14th street bridge to the Pentagon.  We passed a woman who suggested that it would be grand to have no cars and pedestrians walking down the middle of Independence Ave all the time.

The lines for the ticketed areas were a total mess.  The silver line literally looped back onto itself at one point.  We lucked into being right nearby when they opened up a new gate, but I'm not at all surprised that some ticket holders never got in.  There was no one managing the lines or providing information that I could find.

The Mall was a madhouse (we were jam packed so tightly that I literally couldn't move my arms for most of the time, and I could only see small pieces of the Jumbotron, let alone the actual events) but it was still a glorious day.  Everyone was just so happy and excited and buzzing.  I've never been in that tightly packed a crowd other than for short periods on the subway, but it was ok.

I really wasn't that cold, except on the way home.  I guess we were packed in so tightly we kept each other warm, like penguins.

That said, I'm glad that D turned down my offer to come.  He would have been tired and uncomfortable and unable to see, and I would have had him on my shoulders for hours, and we both would have been cranky.  It was a day for going with the flow, and I'm particularly bad at going with the flow when I feel responsible for other people's happiness.

The crowd was more integrated than any event I've attended that I can think of.  The woman in front of me (white) was 6 months pregnant and part of a group that was 4 adults and 16 children. She's a lot braver than I am.  The woman next to her (black) said she was only there because her 91 year old mother wanted to be there.

I'm not generally a fan of Rick Warren, but it was moving to hear so many people around me saying the Lord's Prayer under their breath around me.  

The crowd was a lot more rowdy than you could tell from the TV broadcasts -- there was lots of cheering for Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter as well as Bill Clinton and all of the Obamas, and there were pretty loud boos for Bush, Lieberman, and Clarence Thomas.  (Some for McCain, but not as many as for the other three.)   And there was lots of singing of hey nah, good bye.  Chants of Yes We Can and Obama while the dignitaries were arriving.

I don't think the people around us knew that Aretha was going to sing, so there were whooops when she was announced. 

I couldn't really hear most of the speeches -- the audio wasn't very loud, and there was also an echo effect from the multiple jumbotrons -- so I watched the whole thing over again once we finally made it home.

Here's a photo I took during Obama's speech -- by holding my camera over my head and snapping in the general direction of the screen.  The view from my eye level was much worse.

Forgot to mention: Everyone in my section was amused by a squirrel who was clearly freaked out that there were so many people under ITS TREE.  At one point it got up the nerve to jump from one tree to another, and there was an audible cheer in our area. 

Inauguration

It still takes my breath away to think that in just over a week, this man is going to be sworn is as President of the United States.  I'm sure he'll piss me off sometimes, but I really can't think of anyone else I'd rather have as President right now, even if there are people whose list of policies look closer to mine.

I think I've decided against taking the boys downtown, although it kills me a little to be so close and not to be there.  But we wouldn't be able to see a thing, and it's going to be cold, and they just don't have that much patience.  I took them to see him at the town meeting in Alexandria during the primaries, so they can tell their kids someday that they saw him.  (I'm told that my great-great grandmother Betsy Segal saw Mr. Lincoln when he came to New York to give his speech at Cooper Union and she was a little girl.)  One of my friends is having a kid-friendly party, so I think we'll go there, and watch on TV and wave flags, and read stories from Our White House.

I'm not going to any of the inaugural balls, but there are a couple of parties that I'm considering.  My boss is having a get together on the evening of the 20th, if I can figure out how to get to her house in Maryland from Virginia.

What are you doing?

pie and vacation

After two years of making really complicated cakes for the office dessert contest (a golden cage and then a 7 layer cake), this year I decided to do something easy.  I made the eggnog variation of the New York Times' Brandy Alexander Pie.  And no, I still didn't win, but I didn't feel like I should have.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and a Joyous Solstice.  I probably won't be posting again until after the New Year.  Stay warm, have fun, don't spend too much, take lots of photos, and I'll be back next year.

checking in

I got a kind email asking if I was ok, since I hadn't posted in a while.  Thanks for asking - I'm fine.  I had a business trip from Monday to Thursday, and then have been catching up with sleep, household chores, and hanging out with my family.  D had a sinus infection, which is responding well to antibiotics, and I've got a low-level cold.

Some odds and ends from the week:

• The meeting I attended was a conference of people working on economic policy from a social justice angle, mostly at the state level.  I came away even more depressed than I had been.
• The meeting was in Las Vegas, where I had never been.  I spent about $5 on slot machines, but otherwise avoided the gambling.  Someone told me that the hotels were at about 10 percent of their usual occupancy rates.  It ticked me off that the hotel we were at (Bally's) charged for both internet access and the gym.  My room had a view of the "Eiffel Tower."
• At home, we started getting Netflix on Tivo.  Very nice.  Watched The King of Kong thanks to Flea's review.
• Went to the local "Plan for Change" meeting this afternoon.  There was much confusion/disagreement about whether we were supposed to be picking national level issues to work on, or something local (and within our control).  Needed to leave before the end in order to pick up the boys from their playdate, but can't say I was overwhelmed by what I saw.

DTWOF, SATC, WTF

The New York Times gave a heck of a review to The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For. I love Bechdel's reaction. Dang is right.

I'm watching the movie of Sex and the City while I write this.  It's truly awful, and I say this as someone who was a fan of the series.  (I'm still watching it because I've got a pile of laundry to sort.)

I wonder who else falls into the intersection of people who read DTWOF and watch SATC.  While the characters are at close to polar opposites of the cultural spectrum (crunchy politically obsessed anti-materialist lesbians in Minnesota vs. fashion obsessed consumerist heterosexuals in search of true love in New York), the stories actually have a lot in common.  Both are soap operas, and both portray worlds where friendships between women endure over time in spite of relationships, jobs, kids, and everything else that life throws at you.  And, in spite of name of the show, most of the time SATC passes the Mo Movie Test -- women talk to each other about things other than men (usually shoes, but I still think that counts).

this week

So far this week:

• I've had a severely upset stomach;
• I managed to fall walking out of the house and sprain my ankle;
• I managed to turn on the parking lights on my car without noticing, and so the battery was dead when I went to go to work this morning.

I'm really looking forward to having another 20 or 30 percent of my brain back after next Tuesday.

only connect

Anyone going to the DC BlogHer event next weekend?  I'm interested in meeting people, but am not sure that I want to spend the $100 they're charging for the actually conference.  Cecily is organizing a dinner for the night before so I may just go to that.

Phantom Scribbler posted today, asking where the cool kids are hanging out these days.  I told her I didn't know, but I agreed that I'm finding less sense of community in the blogosphere these days.  I'm still writing, and still reading, but commenting less, and getting involved in fewer long conversations.  I'm still on a bunch of listservs too, but I'm wondering how much this is a matter of habit, rather than something that's still important to me.

Phantom did convince me to sign up for Facebook, which I had been resisting.  I guess I'm an old fogie or something.* I know, I've been hearing for years about how popular it is, but I was still shocked when it told me that there were 588 people in my gmail address book who had Facebook accounts.  I only attempted to friend about 50 of them, but that's still a lot.  Obviously, not everyone who has a facebook account actually uses it, but 28 people use it enough to respond to my request to friend them within 9 hours.

* This summer, I decided that a good description of my precise state of being almost but not quite up-to-date is that I watched Dr Horrible, but I heard about it first on NPR.  Similarly, I've been blogging for four years, but this is the first social networking site I've joined.

5769

We had a truly delightful Rosh Hashanah.  For the first time, my parents came down to spend it with us, so I was able to both share it with my family, and with my home congregation. 

On Monday, I went to D's classroom and read them the story of Engineer Ari and the Rosh Hashanah Ride (which we discovered from the PJ library) and shared apples and honey with the class.   It was a nice chance to meet his classmates and the teacher. Unlike his old school, I don't think D's the only Jewish kid in the whole school, but he's certainly the only one in his class. 

At services, the rabbi said that today is the birthday of the world, and N asked me how old the world was.  I told him we'd talk about it later, and at dinner we talked about how it was the year 5769 in the Jewish calendar, but that science indicates that the world is a lot older.  Somehow wound up promising the boys that we'd take them to Dinosaur National Monument someday.

It was a gorgeous day, so after services we went down to the beach and did tashlich, naming the bad things that we wanted to get rid of.  For the boys, it was mostly things like hitting and not listening.  I started with things like yelling and not listening, but when T offered up "cynicism" I had to ask for the bag of crumbs back.

Tashlich, 5769

matters outside my area of expertise

Two weeks ago, I had the chance to testify before a Congressional subcommittee.  It was quite exciting, even though the room was more than half empty, and only four of the members of Congress were present.  The whole thing was a little surreal, though, because the witness invited by the Republicans used all his time to argue that the biggest challenge facing American families is high energy costs, and so that we should expand domestic production of oil (in ANWR and offshore).  The ranking member therefore asked each of testifying whether we'd support expanding domestic production.

While those of you read this regularly can probably guess what I personally think of that, my organization certainly doesn't have a position on the matter.  So when it was my turn, I responded that I would decline to offer a position on an subject outside my area of expertise.  Representative Davis then commented that I had disqualified myself from ever running for Congress, as having opinions on topics that you know nothing about is an absolute prerequisite for members of Congress.

This week has certainly proved the truth of that observation.  I haven't been blogging about the bailout because I don't know what the right thing to do is, and I wish I had any confidence that anyone else really does.  I'm afraid that they're all making it up as they go along, and we're going to be left holding the bag at the end.

While I recognize the symbolic appeal of limiting executive pay, I think I'd actually rather see the banks commit to opening no fee bank accounts -- tied to debt cards, but programmed not to allow overdrafts -- for everyone in the country.

This made me laugh.  (No video, safe for work).

Another September 11

What I'm most struck by this year is how long it's been.  The little baby who I came home to hug, who I pushed around the neighborhood under that impossible blue sky, who forced me to turn off the television and focus on my life... he's now in second grade, and asking me hard questions.

The hearing I was at on the hill was delayed because of the remembrance ceremony, and while we were waiting, people started telling their "where I was" stories.  I do think there's something very powerful about this shared experience, but I'm also glad that my children won't have these stories to tell.

I do want to make it over to the Pentagon memorial at some point.  But not on a day when it's full of politicians and cameras.

Last year.

Other's posts today:

• Sue at inner dorothy
• uccellina at a bird's nest.
• jackie at esperanza
• landismom at bumblebee sweet potato
• rj at procrastinet

iPod update

I'm enjoying the new "genius" playlist on iTunes.  Like the random shuffle, it gets me to listen to things that I forgot I had in my collection, but it doesn't have the hugely jarring transitions between totally different types of music (or the random spanish language lesson or hypnosis mp3 mixed in).

I haven't been reading much with ereader, but I think that's because my test case (Nixonland) is just too dense to read in 100 word increments.  I read all of Little Brother on it, and had no problem with the format.

I stink at Trism, but it's quite addicting.  I haven't actually been playing any of the other games that I downloaded.

Somewhere along the way it ate the videos I had on it.  Not quite sure why, but don't care enough to spend the time required to figure it out.

Irony

I spent about half of the weekend working -- on a paper about work-life pressures on American workers.

First day of school

It was a pretty uneventful first day of school around here.  Both boys are continuing at the same schools (preschool in N's case) that they attended last year, so there was relatively little drama.  And the school bus even showed up on time.

It was an odd feeling for me to be standing around at the "parents' coffee" at N's preschool, looking at the teary-eyed parents of the younger children, and realizing that this is our last year of preschool. 

Some of my previous posts on the topic:

• 2004
• 2005
• 2006 and follow-up
• Much to my surprise, I seem not to have posted on the first day of school last year.  But I did write about the first PTA meeting of the year.

Back in town

Back from vacation.  Had a good time, but could use a vacation from my vacation.  For a week, I was on my own with the kids.  The program I was at had children's activities during the day, and evening babysitting, but that still left me with maybe 6 hours a day with the boys. 

The main issue is that there were a lot of kids who were a few years older than D, whose parents gave them a lot more freedom than I was willing to give D, so he was testing the limits every few minutes.  And whenever I let him do something, N wanted to do it as well, so if D wasn't arguing with me, N was.  And neither of them quite got the concept that I'd want to have a conversation with other adults over meals.

D also desperately wanted to play with the older kids, especially when they broke out pokemon cards and a portable game machine, but mostly they saw him as a "little kid" and weren't interested.  It did help a little when I borrowed Munchkin Fu from someone who was attending, and he was able to demonstrate his ability to play complicated games.

It made me realize that D has a lot more experience playing with younger kids than with older ones.  I had D when I was 29, so few of my friends have older children, and mothers groups tend to attract parents of younger children more than school-age kids.

First Tomato Soup

The tomatoes I planted this year did even worse than last year.  A few of the plants just got drowned in the torrential rains shortly after I transplanted them, and the one plant that got big and healthy hasn't produced much in the way of fruit.  I don't really get enough sun here for tomatoes, but I can't help myself. 

Today, we finally had a ripe tomato, and I let N pick it.  He came in with it and asked "Can we make First Tomato soup?"  This was, of course, a reference to one of the Voyage to the Bunny Planet books* by Rosemary Wells** where in the day that should have been, Claire gets to pick the first ripe tomato and her mother makes her First Tomato soup. 

I couldn't resist a request like that, but I also didn't want to waste one of my few homegrown tomatoes on something that could just as well be made out of store-bought tomatoes.  And I strongly suspected that neither of the boys would actually eat whatever I made.  So after a few minutes of googling, I made the simplest soup possible -- tomato, olive oil, and salt, pureed together without cooking.   D refused to taste it and N had just a few bites, but T and I enjoyed it.

*In each of these books, a young bunny has a terrible day, and then the Bunny Queen takes them to the Bunny Planet, where they get to experience the day that should have been.  Each of the days gives the child what they were really missing -- quiet and solitude, parental attention, warmth and affection.  The link is to a book that contains all three stories, but if you can find the out-of-print box set in a used bookstore or yard sale for less than the unreal prices being asked by Amazon sellers, I'd vote for that.  The books are larger than the classic Sendak Nutshell Library but only about half the size of a standard paperback and there's something about the small books fitting into their own little case that is absolutely irresistible for preschoolers.

**Yes, Rosemary Wells, better known as the creator of Max and Ruby.

All you can eat

Last weekend, I took the boys to the big Air and Space Museum annex, out by Dulles.  Like all the Smithsonian museums, admission is free, but they charge $12 for parking.  After some agonizing, I signed up for an annual parking permit.  I'm something of a sucker for unlimited admission passes -- we also got season passes for Six Flags.  I'm not sure they always make economic sense, but I'm a more relaxed and happier parent when I know that we can leave as soon as the boys start to fade, without having to endure the "death march of fun" in order to wring out the most value from our admission.  Economic logic says that once you've paid the admission it's a sunk cost, and thus the price of admission shouldn't affect how long you choose to stay, but I don't know anyone who actually behaves that way.  (I'm also pretty sure that we're still not mentally accounting for the price of gas when when we decide to go to the museum because it's "free.")

The Six Flags passes are an interesting case, because they cost barely more than a single admission.  As far as I can tell, they're a loss leader to get you to buy food and rent lockers at the park.

what we're up to

• We've been swimming a lot.  D's now comfortable going under water (with goggles on) and N can paddle around with a swim noodle.

• Zot! is finally out.

• We've been having a great time playing Boom Blox.  I really like the cooperative play mode, which is a good level of difficulty for D and me -- hard enough that we have to work at it, but easy enough that we can in fact solve the puzzles.  We're clearly not the only ones who like it -- it was sold out at all the stores near us, so we ordered it online.

• I loved this librarian's letter to someone who asked that a book be pulled.

• The nice folks who make Avatar asked if I wanted a review copy of the next disk.  Boy did I, especially since we managed to miss an episode on the tivo.  The boys are just thrilled.

camping

Back from the camping trip with my college friend. We had a great time, even though it rained on and off almost the whole time, I got stung by wasps, and I fell several times, earning this enormous bruise:

For scale, that's my thigh, so the bruise is probably 5 inches across.  And I can't blame it on particularly tricky terrain -- there was just a big rock in the path that I totally didn't see.

Given the rain, we decided that climbing Old Rag would probably be a stupid idea, so we explored some of the other trails in the area, and had a great time playing around in this swimming hole:

I suspect that the rhododendrons would have been unreal a month or two earlier, but at this point, the most interesting wildlife was the various and colorful fungi:

For anyone considering a trip to Shenandoah National Park, I highly recommend the trip planning database on the NPS website.  You enter the experience level of your group and how many nights you want to camp, and it spits back a list of suggested trips.

 

Thrifty food plan wrap-up

In the final week, we wound up doing three grocery trips, to Costco, Trader Joe's, and Giant, for a total of $173.75 for the week, and $460.78 for the month.  Some of the high spending this week is because we stocked up on stuff that will last until the next month, but we also bought more packaged goods -- a big thing of nutrigrain bars for D to take as snacks at camp, string cheese, ice cream -- and D even convinced T to buy "orange chicken" at Costco.  So, it's easy to see that it would be easy to blow past the $501 thrifty food plan budget if you weren't really watching.  The bars are a lot cheaper at Costco than at the regular grocery store, but they're still far more expensive than baking.

As it happens, this week we're going to get our first delivery from South Mountain Creamery.  Since I read The Way We Eat, I've been wanting to move away from industrially produced meat and dairy, and this looks like a way to do so without adding yet another set of shopping trips to our lives.  It's not cheap, but it's a better price than the comparable foods from Whole Paycheck.  I'm interested in seeing whether we can taste the difference.

unpacking the old selves

I've spent much of the last couple of hours digging into our storage closet and the boxes stuffed in the garage trying to locate all my camping gear.  My closest friend from college is visiting over the 4th of July weekend, and we're going to go backpacking for a couple of days.  I'm hoping that she'll be able to help me figure out my big frame backpack, which I've never used.

I bought that pack sometime in the fall of 1999, around the time I ran my last marathon.  T and I were going to hike the Grand Canyon in the early summer, and I had even written away for the backcountry permits.  But by the time spring came around, I was pregnant with D. and doing a strenuous hike in 100 degree weather didn't sound like such a bright idea.

BitchPhD blogged last week about visiting with an old friend, looking for reassurance that they're still the same people, even if they spend their days saying "eye-rolling mommy things."  K is single, she doesn't have kids, and she has her summers off from work, so she gets to spend lots of time hiking and biking.  Our lives are pretty different.  And she lives on the west coast, so we don't see much of each other.  I'm a little worried that we'll find out that we've drifted too far apart to bridge the gap.

Conservation and savings

We've been in this house for a bit more than a year now, so now we're able to do same month year-to-year comparisons of our energy use.  We've been steadily working on making the house more energy efficient, so I've been curious to see what the impacts are.  We've replaced the windows, one of the toilets, clothes washer, dryer, boiler, fridge, dishwasher, and stove.  Basically, the only things left to do are the hot water heater and the air conditioner...

So, the envelope please...

• Electricity -- Dominion Virginia Power has a handy-dandy button on its site that generates various comparisons for you once you've logged in.  It shows how much you paid in a given month compared to the previous month and the same month the year before, and divides the change out among different temperatures, different number of days in the billing cycle, change in prices, and "customer-controlled use."  So, we paid $71.20 in May 2008, down from $95.02 a year previously.  And the rates went up in that period, so they claim that customer-controlled use saved us $27.28.  So, a decent percentage savings, but not that impressive in absolute dollar amounts.  Even with the forthcoming 18% rate hike, it's going to take us a long time before the improvements pay for themselves.  (Obviously, the energy savings were not the primary reasons we made these changes, so we're not upset by this.)

• Gas -- Washington Gas doesn't offer this kind of comparison, so I have to sort of eyeball things.  We used 13.2 therms last month, versus 63 therms a year ago.  That's because it took us a while last year to figure out how much energy our old boiler was using keeping water hot even when it wasn't sending any into the baseboard heaters.  Once we figured out that we needed to shut the boiler off in the summer, it dropped down to 32 therms. (The remainder is for the clothes dryer and water heater, both of which are gas-powered.  Our new stove is also gas powered, but you'd have to work really hard to spend more than a few dollars that way...)  The more impressive comparison is February to March, when our use dropped from 258 therms to 151 when we installed the new boiler.  That improvement clearly is cost-effective, since our February bill was close to $400.*

• Water -- We get billed quarterly for water, and haven't paid more than $100 per quarter.  While the washer and dishwasher use less water than the old ones, I don't expect it to make a noticeable difference on our bills.  We put in a low-flow showerhead but I'm guessing that it impacts the gas bill more than the water bill.

Dominion is making a big deal out of their new conservation plan, but I'm pretty skeptical.  Based on my results, my guess is that just showing people how much their energy use costs won't significantly affect usage unless they also adopt variable rate pricing, where electricity costs a lot more during peak usage times. (Dominion does not appear to be doing that, since their demo says you'd be entering the rates from your bill.)  I think this is mostly an attempt to convince politicians to give them approval for the transmission lines and coal-burning plant they want to build.

* When I see stories like this one about people with $400 monthly electric bills, I have to assume that they have electric heat, and very poor insulation.  I'm not sure I could run up a $400 electric bill in this house even if I ran the air conditioning with the windows open.

Cross-posted to my home blog.  Also, note the new "Environment" category -- I'll go back when I get a chance and add the tag to some of my older posts. 

Thrifty food plan -- week 3

This week we did only one shopping trip, spending $58.56, to bring us to a total for the month so far of $286.95.  Then we went out of town for three days, taking the bus to New York.  I don't know how to account for that in this experiment.  On the one hand, my brother and parents fed us several meals, which helped out the budget.  On the other hand, we spent about $60 on restaurant meals... 

So why are we finding it relatively easy to stay within the Thrifty Food Plan, when by all accounts, people on Food Stamps are struggling badly to cope with rising food prices?  My guess is that there are several things going on:

• First, most people on Food Stamps are working, and thus receive less than the maximum monthly benefit.  In theory, Food Stamps aren't supposed to pay for all their food -- they're supposed to use some of their cash income for food as well.  But low-income families have many other demands on their income (if I remember correctly, about half are spending 50 percent or more of their income just on housing).  Food is the easiest part of the budget to squeeze, particularly if you're willing to invest the time in going to food pantries.
• Second, we have a car, and so can travel to low-cost supermarkets and warehouse stores.  And we can have enough cash to buy large quantities when they're on sale.
• Third, we're eating very little meat, and relatively little processed food.  We often make a big batch of pancakes or waffles on the weekend, and reheat them for breakfast all week, which is a lot cheaper than breakfast cereal.

summer time

My current dilemma: if we let the kids stay up late because they don't have to go to school in the morning, the window of time between when they go to bed and when I fall into bed becomes increasingly narrow.  When am I supposed to blog?

Just before bed, D showed us the digital slideshow of the first grade year. Overall, I'd say he had a good year.  I don't think he was challenged, but he didn't seem to be bored either.  He made friends, improved his self-control, decided that he likes science, and improved his writing.

The school said that you can submit letters about your child's "learning style" to help them make class placements for next year.  We're not sufficiently hooked into the parents network to know who the second grade teachers are, and if there are code words that we should be using to try to avoid certain ones.  (And yes, I sometimes think that I'd be more hooked in if I were the at-home parent, but I'm not sure that's really true.)  So, I guess we'll have to actually write about his learning style. The main thing I'd like him to learn is persistence through difficulty, and I sure don't know how one goes about teaching that.  So far, video games seem to be our best bet.

Back on the grid

We lost power in yesterday's storms and didn't get it back until this afternoon.  We've got a big branch down in the back yard, but since it didn't hit the house, we're grateful. 

This did show me that we're not as prepared for "disaster" as I'd like -- while we had lots of candles and flashlights, we didn't have batteries for our big lamp, and this morning, we couldn't find our battery operated radios to find out whether the schools would be opening on time.  (Wound up sitting in the car to listen to the radio there.)  We have lots of supplies, but I'm not quite sure where they are...

still here

Didn't want anyone to worry -- I'm still alive.  Just decided that I needed to prioritize things like getting a reasonable amount of sleep for a while...

Plastic bags

One of the sections of The World Without Us that caught my attention is the description of the gigantic collection of plastic trash in the middle of the Pacific ocean.  It was running around in the back of my head last week when I read the NY Times article about how Ireland has essentially stopped using disposable shopping bags, driven in large part by a 33 cent per bag tax.  Meanwhile, D has been learning about recycling at school, and I've been trying to use that as a starting point for a broader lesson about the environment (and turning off lights when you leave the room, please).

So we've decided to see if we can break the plastic bag habit.  We'll keep track of how many we take in each month, and see how low we can get the number.

I understand that giving up plastic grocery bags isn't going to save the world.  And there are plenty of things that involve plastics that I have no intention of giving up.  But it strikes me that using disposable plastic bags in no way improves my quality of life.  It's just a habit.  And one that we can choose to break.

We've got some canvas bags already, and I went ahead and ordered some folding ones that I can keep in my purse so I always have one with me.  We'll see how it goes.

Updated:

So far, so good.  We've had some slip-ups, but have been using them more often than not (and often forgoing the plastic bag even when we didn't bring the grocery bags).

Jo(e) has a great post up about reusable bags.  She argues that the problem is that they're so convenient that they get used for everything BUT groceries.  But if you buy enough of them, they become ubiquitous, and you stop having to worry about what you did with them.

Are you an early adopter?

The new Apple laptops sure are gorgeous.  I can't justify a new laptop right now, but they're sweet enough that I may finally make the jump over to the Mac world with my next computer. Of all the computers I've owned, I've never had a Mac, although my first computer was an Apple IIc.

In general, I don't think of myself as an early adopter. I can (and do) ooh and ah over the iPhone, but my actual cell phone is about 4 years old, and running on pre-paid minutes from t-mobile -- $100 buys you 1000 minutes, which lasts me for about a year.

But we did get a Wii the first day it went on sale. And we were early adopters of TiVo -- although we got it because a friend had bought it, and was then moving to Ireland, so he sold the machine to us.

I think the distinction for me is whether a new gadget does something fundamentally new and different, or if it's an improvement over something I already have.  If it's the later, and what I have is working, I find it hard to justify forking over the money for the latest and greatest...

That said, our big family holiday gift this year was that we upgraded our tivo to HD.  TiVo successfully hooked us by allowing people to transfer their lifetime plans to a new machine -- but only for a limited period.  I feel manipulated, or something. 

So, are you an earlier adopter?  Or do you never pay attention to the hot new thing?  For everything, or only some things?  And if you're selective, how do you decide?

Globalization

T and I were astonished last summer to notice a "made in China" label on a bottle of bubble solution.  This is a statement about how mindbogglingly cheap international shipping is, given that even in the US, it can't cost more than pennies to make a plastic bottle, put a label on it, and fill it with water and soap.

Given that, how on earth is an American manufacturer supposed to compete?  I want to talk about the couch that we just bought, because it offers one answer to that question.

The couch is made by Carolina Chair.  This is a small, family-run company.  (Seriously, when I asked Cathy in customer service what something would cost, she said "let me ask my brother and get back to you.") They're surviving in the era of globalization by:

• making a high quality product
• cutting out the middleman -- they only sell direct to customers
• cutting out inventory -- every piece is custom made, and they don't start making it until you place your order.
• providing incredible customer service -- truly friendly and helpful -- they even emailed us a photo of our couch in their manufacturing plant. 

I found them via googling for a love seat/chaise combo because the ones we were looking at from Pottery Barn were really just a bit too big to fit in our living room.  When I emailed them, they were quite happy to make one just the right size for us, in the fabric of our choice.  (Ours is the 3rd one down on this page.  Yes, it's very red.)  It made me a little nervous to order something like a couch online, but this Wall Street Journal article reassured me.  So we went ahead, feeling good about supporting an American company.

And we're really happy with the couch.

Happy 2008

Happy New Year!  I was offline for a while because we took the boys to Florida to see their grandparents and aunt.  Only had dial-up access, so I didn't even keep up with the comments, let alone try to post. 

The drive was hard, but the boys were very well behaved, and overall it was a good trip.  The weather was perfect, we didn't try to do too much, and D was even adventurous enough to go boogie boarding.  (Remember, this was the kid who once refused to even walk on sand.)  We spent one fun but exhausting day at the house of the Mouse, but also spent 3 hours playing around at Sugar Sand Park (highly recommended if you're in the area) and hunting for the letterbox in the nearby nature trail.

The grandparents were somewhat more restrained than in previous years on the gift-giving front, but the boys' rooms still look like a toy bomb exploded all over the place.  I had a blinding flash of the obvious insight this afternoon that while their rooms have a good bit of storage space, most of it is too high for them to reach.  So I think we need some more low bins.  And we'll encourage them to have a yard sale in the spring to clear out some of the stuff that they don't play with any more.

that solar model

Alison Bechdel has a new DTWOF strip up about the solstice and I may never be able to complain about a dark midwinter again without thinking of it.