Greek yogurt with honey.
Author: Dunrie
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Yoga trance dance
In late summer, my friend Victoria and I followed an ad in the Ann Arbor Observer for “yoga trance dance”. It brought us to an unfamiliar yoga studio on a Saturday night. No one was there, but the door was open, so we let ourselves in. Excited and unsure, we and another stranger waited in vain. Turns out the Observer had the wrong date, and the event had been the previous evening.
Well, after many months of either being out of town, otherwise committed, or forgetful, I finally went last night. The event has switched to Saturday evenings and changed host studios to A2YogaWorks, but it was good to finally act on my long-dormant intention, only maybe 5 months later!
I have to say that I was apprehensive. I just may be the most self-conscious person on the planet, so the image of myself free-form dancing with a roomful of strangers was somewhat uncomfortable. Worse, my partner-in-crime Victoria wasn’t available. So I was on my own.
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Calendar
Everybody is cheap about different, weird things. I’m cheap about calendars. I balk at purchasing a calendar in December when one can be had half-price or better in January. I am the calendar-buyer in the house. Each year I pick up a few in January, one for the house, one for my husband’s work, one for my work…
A couple of charities sent me tolerable calendars this year – the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, the Nature Conservancy – so the only calendar we needed was the one for my husband’s office. Well, I have been fooling around a lot with taking aerial photos while my husband enjoys his pilot’s license. And I have been posting some aerial and some candid photos onto Flickr.
Flickr has all sorts of relationships with vendors who will happily slap your photos onto business cards, mugs, t-shirts, calendars, and whathaveyou. So I decided not to cheap out this year; I’d custom-make a flight calendar for my husband for Christmas.
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Wanderlust hangover
We went to my former employer’s holiday party last night. Even though it has been two years since I worked there, my husband and I still go to catch up with the people and enjoy the celebrations.
My old boss’ wife is a trained opera singer, and each year she brings in live music. She sings Christmas carols with the pianist and bassist in that rich voice of hers that finds you wherever you are at the party and invites you to join her. The food is spectacular, the drink plentiful, and the company whip-smart and funny.
From pretty much everyone, I got the inevitable question, “so where are you working now?” and bemused surprise that I’m actually on my second place since I left, 1/year. I learned they’re again advertising my old job, and some of the wives asked me if I was thinking about returning. I hadn’t known, and I’m not, but, it was great to catch up and feel the warmth and affection of the very familiar group. Maybe it was the Christmas carols, those bittersweet songs of longing and hope for holiday perfection, or, maybe it was all the champagne they poured me, but I got nostalgic.
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Ethical food | Good food? | Economist.com
Ever since we lived in England in 1996-7, we have maintained a subscription to the Economist magazine. We appreciate its international coverage and clever sense of humor. Its photo editors/photo caption writers get me laughing quite often–I still chuckle over the “Greetings, earthlings” cover of Kim Jong Il.
Anyway, I typically disagree with their political and environmental perspectives, but somehow feel more informed and not quite so knee-jerk liberal by somewhat tolerantly reading them. This week’s opinion piece on organic, local, and fair trade foods got me thinking. Ethical food | Good food? | Economist.com and Food politics | Voting with your trolley | Economist.com
They generally bashed organic farms for being more land-intensive than factory farms (demanding more habitat destruction), bashed people trying to save energy by eating locally with a finding that a great part of the petroleum/energy used in the food process is in local consumer transit, not shipping. The editorial argued that New Zealand lamb, even when counting transportation to Britain, requires less energy than British lamb (something about the agricultural practices, or maybe climate). In support of this contention, I did hear an NPR commentary about an Ann Arborite who was trying to “eat local” for Thanksgiving (no foods from more than 100 mile radius of his home), and in fact he did end up doing a lot more driving than usual (including driving to Windsor to purchase salt mined under Windsor/Detroit).
The opinion piece basically said, if buying this way makes you feel good, great, but don’t confuse “voting with dollars” with actual voting and political activism. Shoot, now I actually have to go stand with the crazies on the corner and not just hide out at the fancy grocery stores.
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Good examples
We just got back from Indianapolis where we visited with my in-laws and my grandparents-in-law. Both of my husband’s grandmothers have had some form of Alzheimer’s Disease. With his late grandmother Olympia, it progressed from repeating the same stories over and over, to forgetting which language she was speaking, to a wordless confusion. His grandmother Jane has exhibited a similar disorientation and repetition of stories. She’s not always sure who we are, but she still follows along as we chatter and makes her famous sarcastic comments.
As Grandma Jane gets in her funny barbs about how cheap her husband is and how long winded and boring we are, we laugh. At brunch, as her husband helped her finish her meal, she commented he only helped her because he didn’t want to pay for an additional plate of food for himself. Dave’s grandfather looked at her and laughed, and then he looked at me and said “I think she’s cute.” He’s losing her and caring for her all at the same time, and it is heartbreaking, and they’re still laughing.
My mother-in-law asked Dave’s grandfather “when I’m in this state, do you think your son will take as good care of me as you take of Jane? As good care of me as my dad of my mom?”
Of course he will, he’s had such terrific examples.