Moved!

I have moved my blog off of the WordPress site and onto my own site. It’s now at http://www.peachylife.net/blog

Desk archaeological dig

I cleaned out my desk at home for the first time in a very long time. Many things in my desk were simply transferred into it from a box when I moved into this apartment four years ago. And those things have been probably been blindly transferred from one location to another as I’ve moved around over the last ten years since college. Here are some of the things I found:

• Hundreds of return address labels, you know those free ones you always get in the mail?
• Piles of half-used notepads.
• Remnants of the special stationery I used to write home from summer camp. 20 years ago.
• Colored pencils, crayons, and pens that I haven’t used since college.
• Hundreds of stickers leftover from craft projects from long long ago.
• A melted piece of taffy. Yeah, that was fun to clean up.
• Old name badge from when I volunteered at the Humane Society.
• Name badges from old jobs.
• Nearly a dozen old ball point pens that don’t work anymore.
• Calendar pages from my day planner back to 2006.
• All the manuals and CDs that came with the Dell computer I bought in 2000

Clearly I need to clean my desk more often.

Loving my CSA

A little over a year ago, I started subscribing to a CSA box. Every Thursday, Hood River Organic delivers a box of fruits and veggies to my front door. It’s waiting for me when I get home from work. I was inspired to do this after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, which chronicles the author’s adventures in raising/growing her own food. I am far too busy during summer to grow my own vegetables, and I often miss the weekend farmer’s markets because I’m camping or backpacking. Not only that, the farmer’s markets around here end in the autumn and don’t start up again until at least April or May. (In other words, they are closed during the only season when I have time to shop at them!)

Because I wanted a year-round CSA box, that really limited my choices. The vast majority of them only do spring, summer, and fall. When I found Hood River Organic, which not only has a year-round CSA but also delivers to your house, I immediately signed up. You may think it is very “ungreen” of me to sign up for a CSA that’s delivered to me, rather than one that I go pick up at a specified location. Most CSAs require you to come to their farmer’s market booth or a place like New Seasons to pick up your share of produce each week. But that, of course, is always on a specific day and time. That structure really didn’t work with my schedule. I work full-time in a public library, which means I work until 6:00 every weeknight, except one weeknight when I work until 8:00. Because I coordinate programs and events for the library, for which I have to be present, that one late shift each week can vary week to week. Not only that, I work every other Saturday. Working full-time with a fluctuating but inflexible schedule meant that picking up a CSA box on a set day and time simply wasn’t going to work for me.

I have loved getting my weekly CSA box from Hood River Organic. But I was curious what the price comparison would be if I were to buy the exact same items in the grocery store. So I did a little comparison this week. Below is the list of items I received in my box last Thursday:

• 1 zucchini
• 1 leek
• 7 apples (2.75 pounds)
• 5 pears (2.5 pounds)
• 2 green peppers (1/2 pound)
• 3 squash (1/2 pound)
• 2 tomatoes (1 pound)
• 1 sack of carrots (1 pound)
• 1 plum
• 3 beets
• 2 different sacks of mushrooms
• 1 loaf of bread

This morning I went to the grocery store and priced out what all this would have cost if I bought these items there. The grocery store didn’t have port or cantrell mushrooms, so that one was difficult to price. Since mushrooms can be pricey, I’d estimate that the mushrooms I received would retail for a little less than $10. Which means that if I bought everything on that list at the grocery store, it would come out to a little less than $30. Hood River Organic charges $39 per box, so I’m paying approximately $10 more than I would if I just bought this stuff at the store.

Nevertheless, I don’t plan to cancel my CSA subscription. I know that I’m supporting a Pacific Northwest farm and that my produce is organic and local. I’m also eating what’s in season, which is a good thing. (It’s unnatural to eat strawberries in January, I’m sorry.) The food is usually more flavorful too. The plums I bought at the grocery store this morning were pretty bland compared to the big juicy sweet plum I got in my box last week. I’ve also been able to try some stuff that I had never heard of before, stuff that I would never have given a second glace to if I had come across it in the grocery store or farmer’s market. Thanks to my CSA box, I discovered garlic scapes this spring, which made an excellent pesto. I rediscovered plums, which I hadn’t had since I was a child. I learned about mizuna, which went well in salads and in pastas. Thanks to the vast variety of greens I got in the spring, I taught myself how to make homemade salad rolls, which were excellent. And when peppers exploded onto the scene last fall, I learned how to roast them (and what a tasty result that was!).

Every week is a culinary adventure with a CSA subscription. Since I never know what I’m going to get, my dinner menus are improvisational. I often use rice, couscous, or pasta as a base, then add veggies as appropriate. Being a lifetime fruit lover, the fruit is a welcome addition to breakfast or a great mid-day snack at work. I love my weekly CSA delivery and I look forward to discovering new foods and menus in the future!

Google brainwashing

An unkempt woman with stringy hair and a dirty shirt gave me a five-minute lecture at the library yesterday because we have a shortcut to Google on the desktop of each public computer (we also have shortcuts to Craigslist, YouTube, and Facebook, because they are four of the most popular sites our patrons visit). I didn’t really follow her rambling lecture except to determine that she hated monopolies and was mad at us for “forcing” our patrons to use Google. When I tried to tell her that the vast majority of our patrons wanted to use Google and we were just making it easier/faster for them to get there, she interrupted me and said it had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with a lack of choice. She wanted us to replace the Google link with a link that said “Search Engines” which would take people to a directory of every search engine in existence. Look lady, people just want to search the web. They don’t want an interim step of deciding which search engine they’re going to use to accomplish that step. Most people don’t care what search engine they use. They just use Google because it’s fast and easy. As I mentioned about five different times, you are welcome to not use Google.

Dream on

Even before news leaked on Thursday that Freedom would be the new Oprah book, the book had 125 holds in our library system. Now on Saturday, a day after the official announcement, it has 266 holds. So no, dear library patron, we do not have any copies available today, nor will we for many months to come.

Adventures in bosom stains

I have developed a special talent of late. I have a liquid foundation makeup that I put on every morning. Somehow it is splashing onto my shirt, although I have yet to determine just how that is happening, and believe me I have been watching diligently. It’s like dobs of makeup are being transported from the bottle to my shirt through magic Star Trek transporter technology.

This happened again this morning, ten minutes before I had to leave for work. And of course the dob of makeup landed on my boob. I had another clean shirt I could have put on. But I detest doing laundry, and was reluctant to give the shirt up as dirty since I had only worn it for one hour. So I dabbed at it a bit, took it off and hunted for my Tide pen. The cap from the pen was lost and it had run dry. Shit. So I whipped out the OxiClean and rubbed it in with the dry Tide pen. Running topless around my apartment doing last minute get-ready-for-work preparations, I dashed back to the bedroom for my shirt a minute before I had to leave. The OxiClean had, of course, left a big soapy damp spot where the makeup had been. Oh well, it’ll dry, I thought. I put it on and went to work.

In the bathroom at work, I saw that the drying OxiClean was leaving an outline of the area where I had sprayed. Crap. I rubbed at it with a damp paper towel to try and get the soap out, but of course all I accomplished with this was transferring lots of white paper towel fibers onto my red shirt. And now the wet spot was back. Right on my boob. I had to be on the reference desk in ten minutes, so I threw on my denim jacket and pulled it close over my chest and crossed my fingers.

Two hours later when I got off the desk – having taken the jacket off long ago when I got too hot – I checked out the shirt in the bathroom mirror. The OxiClean had completely dried and left a nice amoeba-shaped mark on my shirt. It looked like I was a breast-feeding mom whose boobs had been leaking earlier. Fantastic. I get to go around the library for the rest of the day with this soap mark on my boob. Lucky me.

Blackberry misadventures

My sister and I headed out to the Gorge for some blackberry picking this evening. But many miles before our exit, traffic came to a standstill. Deborah looked up traffic on her Blackberry and saw that construction some four miles ahead had created major backups. After sitting in it for 20 minutes, we decided we would ditch at the next exit and head back.

Easier said than done, though. Signs before the exit warned that the left lane was closed ahead, so everyone was merging to the right lane. But our exit was a left exit into the Multnomah Falls parking lot between the eastbound and westbound lanes so I wanted to stay in the left lane. I didn’t want to be seen as one of those assholes who tries to zoom ahead in the soon-to-be-closed lane and then darts into the open lane of traffic, even though that’s not what I was doing. Besides, a red car ahead of us was hovering over both lanes and I said to Deborah, “I bet that red car would dart in front of me if I tried to go past it to the exit.” Sure enough, once the exit was in sight and I made a break for it, the red car pulled all the way over into my lane and blocked me, even though I had my left turn signal on. When I had to slow down for this, the guy in the silver car next to me gave me the finger and when I rolled down my window, he snarled at me to wait my turn in traffic like everyone else. “I’m exiting!” I screamed back at him. The red car blocked us all the way to the exit and as I zoomed past it on my way down the exit ramp, Deborah and I both gave him the finger. I don’t appreciate people who cut in line, but take a look at my turn signal, asshole. I’m leaving the freeway, this mess, and your ugly ass in the dust.

So now it was close to sunset, getting dark, and we had no berries. We stopped in at the big dog park across the Sandy River from Troutdale, remembering there were lots of blackberry bushes there. We parked next to a guy who was just getting his dogs in the truck after a walk. He was very chatty and introduced us to the six dogs in his car, who were all very friendly and eager to meet these dog-loving strangers. When we parted ways, the guy asked if we wanted the rest of his joint. Ah, so THAT’S why he was so chatty. He told us we looked like the joint-smoking types. (Deborah, who has long dreads, says she gets this all the time.) We declined the joint and headed off to find some berries.

After 30 minutes of picking, we each had about a pint. The pickings were slim since many berries had yet to ripen. I guess we were about a week too early. So we drove home in the dark with our little piles of berries and vowed to try again soon. Hopefully next time we won’t encounter traffic, moronic drivers, and stoned dog owners.

Books + summer = not happening

It’s that time of year again, when everyone and their dog is publishing lists of the best books for summer. Magazines, newspapers, NPR, Oprah….they all create these lists of books that they recommend for all that lazy summer downtime you have.

This concept is completely and utterly foreign to me. If all these list-makers are to be believed, Americans are all lounging around on beaches, next to pools, or in their gardens, using all this free time to plow through mountains of books. The problem is that I know exactly nobody who has more free time in the summer than other times of year. For me, summer is the time of year when I read the least. I’m out camping, hiking, traveling, or doing anything that will get me outside. The days are long, sunny, and warm and the last thing I want to do is sit around with my nose in a book. Maybe it’s because of where I live. Summer is short in the Pacific Northwest. At best, we have three months of good weather. The way I see it, we have nine months of bad weather in which to catch up on our reading.

Oprah’s list this year has a section called “For Your Beach Bag.” First of all, what constitutes a good beach read? That seems so subjective. Also, the Oregon Coast is incredibly scenic, but it’s usually on the chilly side and frequently windy. It’s the kind of place you enjoy with your eyes and your feet, walking along the beach. It’s not the kind of place where you sit around in the sun (if there is any sun) reading a book. I guess the target audience for that kind of list is the southern third of the country.

Sometimes the “best of summer” books include classics. Say what? Who wants to waste their summer reading time with books that they had to read in their college English 101 class? I was an English major and I can tell you right now that I wouldn’t re-read any of those books unless I ran out of good stuff to read. Which will never ever happen. If I spent the rest of my life just reading the books on my list of “books I want to read”, I would never read them all.

No one ever puts out lists of good winter reads when November hits. Why is that? Okay, so maybe people are too busy with the holidays for reading. But what about the rest of winter? The good weather is long gone, the days are short and the nights are long. You’re stuck inside most of the time. It is the perfect time to curl up in bed for hours with a good book.

So I’m off to take a hike now. I’ll get back to that mountain of books when the rain returns.

Toy boat

I went to the park yesterday afternoon to soak up the warm sunshine, since my apartment is a dark depressing cave in which I had been recuperating for nearly a week and in which I loathe being when the sun is out. On this busy Mother’s Day, the park was a great place for people-watching. One woman walked by pushing a stroller that contained not a child but her oversize purse. I saw no child in sight that might belong to her. A huge burly guy was walking a little lap dog on one of those retractable leashes. As if the disparity between huge man and little dog was not funny enough, the man accidentally dropped the plastic leash holder and the little dog took off at a trot down the trail, the plastic handle – which was half the size of the dog itself – bouncing along in the gravel behind him.

The most amusing group of people, however, were the father and son who brought their two-foot-long remote-controlled motorboat. I wondered why they chose the duck pond as their playground instead of the casting pond at the other end of the park where these sorts of toy boats are normally put afloat, but it soon became obvious why they chose the location they did. As soon as they set the boat in the water, the boy – who looked about 12 – sent the boat after the various ducks and geese dotting the pond. The plastic yellow toy buzzed in wild patterns around the pond, scattering fowl wherever it went. I felt bad for the birds. They were just trying to enjoy a nice afternoon out on the water until this boat came along. I found myself wishing that the boat would run aground, and, to my surprise, it did just that. It headed straight for shore, hit the low asphalt wall around the pond, and sailed out of the water to land in the mud, its little motor still whining away like a pesky mosquito.

The father and son sauntered down the path from where they’d been standing further down the shoreline, and I watched them retrieve the boat and start tinkering with it. After awhile they set it back in the water and tried again. The boat made a wide arc out in the pond, then headed back for land and jumped ashore 20 feet away from where it had done so before. More tinkering and out-of-the-water testing ensued. I was amazed how loud the boat’s motor was when it was out of the water.

The boat was sent back out in the water and everything seemed hunky-dory. Re-absorbed in my book, I suddenly realized that I couldn’t hear the whining boat anymore and I looked up. The boat had run aground about ten feet from shore and was sitting high and dry on a barely submerged piece of asphalt from the crumbling wall. The father, I could see, was peeling off his socks, clearly getting ready to wade out and rescue the boat. This pond, you should know, is home to hundreds of ducks and geese and although the water is continually moving through because it is fed by a creek, the shallow water near shore is no doubt a mucky mess of mud and bird shit. But the man seemed to have no problem heading out into that to rescue the boat. Soon enough, the boat was back to terrorizing the resident creatures.

Less than five minutes later the boat ran aground in the exact same spot, which seemed to me an impressive feat of precision. By now I was beginning to wonder if, in addition to chasing birds, the purpose of playing with the boat was to beach it again and again. Not being a person who has any interest in such things, maybe I was ignorant to the joys of running your toy boat aground. Maybe it’s more fun than watching it scoot around the water. In any case, the father and son left shortly thereafter and peace returned to the duck pond.

Tax day

In past years, Tax Day at the library has always been a little hectic. For one thing, we used to have tax forms and instructions on a table right by the reference desk. Also in past years, more people used paper forms and instructions. This year, however, we put the forms in the lobby. Without a body sitting at a desk nearby just waiting to be asked a question, people didn’t ask us nearly as many tax questions this year (not that we can answer them anyway since we are not accountants!). Also, more people are filing online, so they weren’t coming to the library to get forms. So today was fairly mellow. Indeed, this whole tax season has been pretty mellow.

One guy today really took the cake, though. He displayed his envelope, which evidently contained his completed tax return, and asked where the drop box was. I asked him what he was talking about and he said he was looking for the drop box for tax returns, and that we’d always had them before. I said “Are you thinking of the ballot box? That’s for ballots. For elections. You have to go to the post office to mail your taxes.” He left for the post office, but he didn’t look entirely convinced.

Conversely, during elections, I’ve had people call in to confirm that as long as their ballot was postmarked by election day, it would be accepted. Uh, no. The elections office has to have it in their hands on election day or it doesn’t count.