And I will still like Chipotle

Last night I watched Food, Inc.
In the past two weeks I listened to Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. About a month or so before that I watched Fast Food Nation. So, one would wonder if I haven't become a vegetarian or something. Nope, if G-d didn't want us to eat animals he wouldn't have made them so damned tasty.
The only problem I have in my thinking of food is in my reading of Leviticus. I like my sheep still baahing, but there is something about not eating blood. I'm ignoring that since I also eat bacon. Of course Leviticus has a bunch of other rules that I'm just going to tip-toe over.
Anyway, back to the food disturbing books and films.... I plan to watch King Corn a little later. Seeing the factory farm set up did bug me, but really got my goat was the stripping of people's first amendment rights with laws forbidding 'disparagement' of the cattle industry or chicken farming by individuals. And Monsanto's harassment of farmers forcing them to buy their seed and suing those who reuse their own seed just seemed like some form of evil I can't put into words. Makes me want to avoid all American soy products.
But what of my own eating? I cook a lot of my own food. I tend not to eat a lot of beef. I'm more of a chicken & lamb person. For certain cuts I will seek out Virginia lamb. Otherwise, I'm actually comfortable with Aussie or NZ imported lamb. Besides bacon, I don't eat a lot of pork. I eat a lot of chicken and that's where I need to change. I have been buying more non-medicated-non-hormonal chicken. I a going to try to move that to more local chicken. My eggs are from Maryland, bought at the locally owned bodega. My milk (when I don't buy a carton at work) is also local and organic. My rice is from Asia or California. I've been buying Gulf shrimp, forgoing asian farmed shrimp.
But the problem is when I eat out. Most of y'all know my tastes can be high end. I don't worry about their sources. But when I go down market, like Chipotle, I'll stick with my veggie burrito to stay safe.

Don't kill them

My sister got some Meyer Lemon trees today, that I ordered from a nursery in Florida. The note I sent with the trees were "Don't Kill Them." Hopefully the Meyers will sit somewhere in the front yard, where there is sun. Hopefully. And in 2 years, I pray they have lemons. And send them to me.
Why?
Meyer lemons seem to be horribly expensive. I paid $6 per pound for them at Dean & Deluca. I spent a good two days searching for them all over the city before finding them in Georgetown. I like the Meyers. Not like the regular lemons. Unfortunately, internet options seem to involve $20-$40 in shipping. Money, I rather give to my sister. Oh, if the tree is fruitful, somebody could be paying a month's rent with citrus.

Personal Goal #3 met

I hit this goal before, but fell off the wagon when I bought the Florida house. The goal was to have 4 months of living expenses. I had it then used it to buy the house and then took out a signature loan to pay for the repairs on it. Well I paid off that loan in less than a year, 8 months. In the past oh, 4 months my emergency fund has been yo-yoing up and down.
The pop-in renter helped throw some money in the coffers, but when he does leave I'm not going to seek a replacement. I need a break and I want the house to myself for a few months. Then I guess if someone doesn't hint to the future, I'll take on another short term roommate. Maybe. I make enough to not need a roommate to make ends meet. However, I do like the extra coupla thou a year 6 months of house sharing brings.
So now my current goal is to save up for the basement and rear of the house. I have a two year goal for that. The goal is to not take out a HELOC or a 2nd mortgage. But the back wall is the expensive part. The rear has a lot of structural issues... so does the basement.
I'm not seeing how I can save the desired amount even though I saved what I saved and paid off $7K in 8 months. But on another level I know I can do it, provided the dentist doesn't find any more of my damned teeth he wants to cap. F-ing caps at $900 a pop. Don't even get started with the gold vs not-gold cap price diffs.

Not something to be covered in a homily

Today and I gather tomorrow, the Catholic faithful in the diocese of Washington will go home with a three page letter from the Archbishop regarding the current scandal. I got such a letter. As I said its three pages, so I'm not going to repeat it. And the letter is pretty dense so, I'm not even going to try to summarize it. But I will say it is about child abuse and what the Church has done about it in the last ten years and some limitations.
Last week there seemed to be some odd expectation that the Pope was going to mention something about the sex scandal in the Easter Mass. Easter is all about Jesus. If half the world fell off the planet and Easter was the next Sunday, it might get a one sentence mention. Nor was such a thing mentioned at my own church for Easter vigil. Besides the homilies are very short, supposed to focus on the readings and the rest are pretty prescribed prayers. The RC mass is not like some other protestant church services where the pastor can go on and on and on about whatever topical subject happens to be his fancy. I couldn't tell you what today's homily was about because my mind wandered and by the time it wandered back the priest was done.
My own stance on this is not of any consequence. Right now my big negative of being Catholic is that the Help's church doesn't think I'm even Christian, which has caused some real problems for us. Also the RC Church doesn't have a monopoly on sexual misconduct, just a spotlight. When we all were Baptists my mother went to our pastor for help and guidance in dealing with her difficult marriage and he hit on her. We left that church for the one she attends to this day. The one where for a time the pastor was living in sin, after leaving his wife to shack up with another woman. Unlike the RC Church the congregation is supposed to boot the pastor, not some hierarchy, but sometimes, too many times they don't. But the Baptists are okay. The pastor that made overtures to my mom is retired and the adulterous pastor is supposed to be reconciling with his wife.

Gender equality and Christian t-shirts

I was bopping around on the web and wandered on to this website that had some pretty cool Christian themed tee-shirts with some awesome ska8er type graphics with words like "Forgiven" or "Risen" or some reference to Christ's sacrifice interwoven in the graphics, which covered the whole shirt or were off center. But that was just for guys. Their women's shirts were more bleech... girly on the topics of grace, purity, Chasity, and how great Christ is. Oh come on! Now it totally could have been because the market and the Invisible Hand directed the sellers and creators to make pink sweet n' innocent girly-girl shirts, which sucks if you aren't part of that market.

My Easter

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Originally uploaded by In Shaw

My Easter I followd my own personal tradition of staying home. Of course, I did join the Help's landlords' family for their traditional gathering after church.
I did two Easter Vigils. My own church clocked in at 1 hour 44 minutes, St. Pauls' less than 3 hours.
The Lord is Risen!

The Easter Plan

I plan to attend 2 Easter vigils and continue my tradition of avoiding going to church on Easter and Christmas. Why? It's MY tradition. Yes, it didn't start with the best of intentions but I've been doing it so long it has gotten a life of its own. Easter Sunday I will be enjoying Our Lady of the Holy Comforter or St. Mattress. I may try out 1st Futon A.M.E.
Saturday, if last year is anything like the previous year, the vigil will be early and short. Father is very aware of the crime in the neighborhood and said if he had Easter Vigil at the regular time, nobody would show up. I felt badly for the folks whose car window was smashed (smash & grab?) on service..... Also last year, service came with a beggar hitting people up for money, twice. Yeah, this is happening in the daylight.
After that's over I intend to wander over to the Church of the Gay Lawyer for their most EXCELLENT Easter Vigil. I'll probably write them a check too and wind up on their friggin mailing list. I'll need to arrive as early as I can, so hopefully I can time it right. If the Catholic vigil goes longer or the metro system traps me then I'll head back home because the CotGL fills up quickly. One time I had to stand the entire time because I arrived too late.

My important books

Sadly most are cookbooks

1. Curries without worries- For my faves of chicken curry, lamb curries, califlower & pea curry, and other good curries. The book needs to be copied for preservation.

2. How to Cook Everything- M. Bittman. For when I need a general idea of how to cook it.

3. Bistro Cooking. I had this book in grad school (History- UMASS). Never used it. After grad school (Library Science- UMCP) I discovered the lamb & garlic. Love the lamb & garlic.

4. Invention of Tradition. Eric Hobsbaum? As much as I love tradition.....

5. Bible- Please note this list is not in order of importance. No one version.

6. Book of Common Prayer.

7. Four Loves. CS Lewis. I like to review how I'm loving people (or not). I actually like reading this book, and refer back to it often.

8. Old House Journal (the book not the mag)- Renovation book, I got an old house. You figure.

9. Modern Archives Reader. Just for one article/chapter about not grandfathering in old records b/c the damned things managed to sit on the shelf untouched before you got there. Curses be to the earlier staff who took in all sorts of crap just to fill up their shelves. Now we have no space.

10. Frugual Gourmet Cooks with Wine- From here comes the chicken marsala and my standby pasta salad. This book s literally falling apart. I need to find another copy.

Dadetown

I'm posting this a reminder. I am hoping to one day see this indie film again but I can't find any hide nor hair of this 1995 mockumentary that I saw once with my ex-bf Jochen at a DC Indie Film Fest. Everyso often I look for this film but forget the name. Dadetown, dadetown, Dadetown! Takes place in upstate New York, about a dying factory town and the new yuppie business that relocates there.

Oppressed Methodists

Who knew.
Well I guess studying early modern British history I was supposed to know, but didn't care. I'm listening to an audiobook that I have the darnest trouble wrestling my mind away from, which I need to do when work or home requires all my mental skills and I have to get off auto-pilot. This audiobook is of Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas. Apparently Wilberforce's parents were very fearful of Methodist, which seems to have been too enthusiastic zeal for Jesus Christ and an annoying tendency to bring him into the world (seriously I have no idea what Methodists are about), tendencies. Through the biography of Wilberforce Methodism and Methodist tendencies tend to be this boogeyman that others worried about. It seems Methodists weren't too keen on theater.
The author seems to pit milquetoast Anglicanism against enthused Methodism, which this is my first of hearing of this. Now I know of limp Anglicanism, gad nothing new there and I am vaguely aware of Methodists in history. I have heard of the Wesley brothers, and I did take Religion in America in my undergrad days. However, I just figured them to be like any other Protestant group like Quakers or Baptists to have had the initial hardships then blended into the Christian landscape. Well maybe, depending on one's social class and ambitions. If you really wanted to get anywhere you must be CofE Anglican. And as far as I can tell and I am almost done with the book, Wilberforce, that servant of G-d, never left the Church of England, he just was a really enthusiastic happy moral faithful evangelistic Anglican.

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Lord Revive Us

I'm pretty down for reasons I don't like revealing. Since lunch I've had one song on continuous replay from 'In Sweetest Union Join', "Return Again," a scared harp/ shape note song.
The recording has these few lines:

Savior! visit thy plantation;
Grant us, Lord, a gracious rain!
All will come to desolation,
Unless thou return again:

Lord, revive us, Lord, revive us:
All our help must come from thee!

Keep no longer at a distance,
Shine upon us from on high!
Lest, for want of thine assistance,
Ev’ry plant should droop and die:

The rest, not included goes:

Surely once thy garden flourished:

Ev’ry part looked gay and green;
Then thy word our spirit nourished,
Happy seasons we have seen:

Lord, revive us, etc.

But a drought has since succeeded,
And a sad decline we see;
Lord, thy help is greatly needed,
Help can only come from thee:

Lord, revive us, etc.


Where are those we counted leaders,
Filled with zeal, and love, and truth?
Old professors, tall as cedars,
Bright examples of our youth!

Lord, revive us, etc.


Some in whom we once delighted,
We shall meet no more below:
Some, alas! we fear are blighted,
Scarce a single leaf they show:

Lord, revive us, etc.

Younger plants, the sight how pleasant!
Covered thick with blossoms stood;
But they cause us grief at present,
Frost has nipped them in the bud:

Lord, revive us, etc.

Dearest Savior, hasten hither,
Thou cans’t make them bloom again;
O, permit them not to wither,
Let not all our hopes be vain:

Lord, revive us, etc.


Let our mutual love be fervent,
Make us prevalent in prayer;
Let each one, esteemed thy servant,
Shun the world’s bewitching snares:

Lord, revive us, etc.

Break the tempter’s fatal pwoer,
Turn the stony heart to flesh;
And begin from this good hour
To revive thy work afresh:

Lord, revive us, Lord, revive us;
All our help must come from thee.

-John Newton

Entrepreneurial Fantasy

I want to open up a small cafe called "The Reading Room" where people eat quietly. Where single diners can come and be okay. I will serve good hot breads and soups and salads. There will be tea and simple coffees (black, cafe au lait, esspresso). The walls would be lined with reference books (language dictionaries, writing manuals, classic works of literature and non-fiction that getquoted often), and there will be several wi-fi signals so people can eat & quitely surf. Once a week or month there would be a speaker invited to come and talk about some issue on the upper floor.

Another thing- race

Okay I made fun of the Help for clapping like a white guy, and I guess that's the one racial thing mentioned in the last post. But there was another observation about the Grace PCA church I want to mention, it was comfortably diverse.
Though the church was predominately white (and under drinking age) it was not all white. I've been in all white churches or mostly white churches where I am the only visible minority or I can count people of color on one hand. Grace was roughly 10% non-white, with a fair number of interracial couples. Two of the children who were baptized that night were bi-racial, half Asian and half white.
Wallace (the Help's church) is fairly racially diverse too... and age diverse. A bit more so, with blacks, South Asians, East Asians, and Latinos dotting the chairs throughout the sanctuary. Racially, I'm at ease there. Liturgically, not so much.
Speaking of, I guess I can now say that I find Presbyterian sermons too damned long. About 2/3rd of the way through I'm thinking, 'wrap it up.' I appreciate the tradition in Anglican, Lutheran, and Catholic churches to keep the homily under 20 minutes.

I feel so OLD

Yesterday the Help and I went to check out a PCA church closer to the house Grace Church over in Chinatown. Now Grace doesn't have it's own building and thus is housed in the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church and has services at 5pm.

We arrived about 15-10 minutes before service to do that very American thing of "getting a good seat." I was venturing towards the left side when the Help suggested the balcony. So we went up and I noticed it was an old building with old building/ little money for 'historic maintenance problems. As the church was filling up we noticed something. The kids filling the pews looked about college aged. It was like we were attending some college lecture. I swear the average age of the congregation was about 25, only because there were a handful of senior citizens. If the old people stayed home, I'd say the average age was about 22. As part of that evening's service there was a baptism of one of the elder's kids. The elder couldn't be more than 35. The pastor was 45. At least there was someone older than us who wasn't retired.
Besides feeling like the cougar and the old guy in the club the church was quite nice.

Oh there was one odd thing. The greeting, or in some traditions, the peace. Now I'm accustomed to the shaking of hands and saying , "G-d's peace," and moving on to the next person. For about 2-3 minutes this church turns into a college meet and greet. I had shaken hands and turned to the people on the other side of me, when I noticed they were quite involved in introducing themselves and giving the "who am I " spiel. So I turned back to the set of people I had introduced myself to and they were carrying on a conversation about who they were and what brought them to DC, blah, blah, blah. I turned to the Help and remarked that, "this is different."

The music was good. Jazzy. There were a few traditional hymns and a few 20th/21st Century ones, with one "Jesus is my girlfriend" P&W song. The closing hymn "I'll fly away" was great and we clapped. It has been so long since I've clapped along in church, it was great. However, the Help started clapping. Unfortunately the Help claps like a white guy. I had to grab his hands and stop him. Later he confessed that he clasps like a white guy because he is a white guy. He also confessed that he wanted the balcony seat to see any balding heads.

iTunes U

Unfortunately work is slow and plodding and very uninspiring. It's just that I have a few things sitting on my desk that I've put off and ignored and there is no ignoring them. They must be done until something more interesting comes down the pike.
Anyway while that's going, I have almighty MP3 player and a few new sources of interesting lectures that almost make me miss college. Almost.
So far I am loving Seattle Pacific University. They have a bunch of old chapel lectures and speakers, as well class lectures. I've enjoyed the chapel speakers covering sex and cities (not those two subject together) from a Christian (with evangelistic notes) perspective. I've shared some the SPU and other lectures (from Reformed Theological Seminary) with the Help and sparked some discussion with him on related topics. The RTS lecture was on C.S. Lewis and the lecturer mentioned how in his old age he is comfortable with visiting the thoughts of Roman Catholic writers, but is secure in his Reformed outlook. The SPU lectures on sexuality, helped strengthen our resolve and appreciation for dialing way back the physical aspects of our relationship.
Unfortunately since the EcoTalk and Cato podcasts have had some dull (it happens) episodes I've had to get my libertarian economic ya yas somewhere else. The Mises Institute does have a lecture series that I've finished an enjoyed by Ralph Raico on the history of liberty. Now if only the Acton Institute would put a lecture series together of some of their stuff I'd be happy.
Goodness I'm spoiled.
Anyway, I keep looking for a class out there somewhere that covers Western historiography. I need a refresher. I've struggled with Open Univerity's German. I'll actually need to print out the related material, because mein Duetsch has gone to pot, and just listening isn't going to cut it.

Pink

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Originally uploaded by In Shaw

I have been informed my Mom, who is my manager that the front bedroom that is Rosa's has been painted pink.

Now, I own the blasted thing and I'm the last to know. I guess I could search in the lease to see if there is any language about painting the walls. Even then, what can I do? Not like I'm going to kick her out for paint. Besides there is no return to the projects, the powers that be are supposed to tear it down sometime in the future.

I'm enjoying the fact that the girls are enjoying a backyard and are playing in it and making neighborhood friends. That's almost worth the money, I've put into it. I do love hearing about how everyone is enjoying the space and what landscaping work Tito is doing. I do look forward to seeing them and the house next month. I want to see the yard. I want to see if anyone has fixed that hole. I want to see if my sister and her husband have let the kitchen go to pot. I want to see the front yard. I want to see the girls' room, even if one of them is the color of Pepto.

Valentine's day recap

For those who actually want to know.
I had told Jon that I was keeping my expectations low, as the Help admitted he didn't have a romantic bone in his body. Also the day before and day of I kept bugging, without response, the Help about what I should wear, because if we were going somewhere nice I wanted to dress the part. Day of, I find he hadn't reserved a table anywhere and just figured we'd go somewhere. *sigh. Because of the snow and the angry parking fights, I encouraged him to metro it over to my place.
He arrived a little late, 20 minutes past his ETA, which made me worried. When he did arrive he had in a plastic bag a pink teddy bear and a valentine's heart box. I eyed that with suspicion/ contempt. I am not a pink stuffed animal kind of girl. I was never a stuffed animal kind of girl. The box was a Russell Stover chocolate box, an inferior candy that I will eat if it's free and in the office and I don't feel like going out of the building for something better, like a Reeses Cup. And the box was falling apart.
I opened the box, no chocolate. Instead, the paper cups were filled with shallots and bubble gum. The kind of cheap .99 gum I love. I am addicted to bubble gum, especially the kind that gets hard quick and is nothing but sugar. The bear was just a container for brown rice. Yay. He knows me! He loves me!
Since my roommate was in and about and I really didn't have anything prepared we hopped on the metro to go back out to Maryland. We went to Tiffin, an Indian restaurant out in Langley Park that I used to go to when I worked and lived in Maryland. It wasn't full and we later stopped by the nearby former House of Spices (now some Halal market) to grab some black cardamon.
A good Valentines' Day.

Google made me cry

The ad is here, and like radio you develop the characters in your head, and the few sounds, the French gal's "hello" (or "halo?") and the cry of a baby just triggered something.

The South

I'm from the South.
And please don't tell me that Florida isn't the South. Maybe South Florida, isn't but the rest of Florida is.
Anyway, a pleasant catch-up with an old friend was almost ruined by poo-pooing the South. The old friend had re-located down south and was talking about how different it was. But what began to irritate me in that narrative was the insinuation that the South had some monopoly on racism. It doesn't, it just was manifested differently and it is more blatent and in your face. Northern racism is more subtle, harder to pin down and is slimer than an eel in that it allows the Northern racist to claim innocence. Martin Luther King had the darnest problem with Chicago, and Detroit, L.A., and Boston (think bussing in the 70s) aren't necessarily racial utopias where equality flows. And just because the area where one grew up didn't have any black, or Native American, or brown Latinos around to bother discriminating against, does not make one better than the Southerner who is being judged.
I also felt the need to speak out against the other form of white superiority, where the brown, native or whatever person is given the signal that he or she or his or her people are too incompetent to do anything and must be saved, rescued, placed in permanent dependence by the White man. Energy by the hero white is spent to focus on the goodness of the white and the pitiful plight of the brown, rather than truely enpowering the brown enough to help his/her ownself. Pity rather than commpassion.