Interesting Reading

Here's an article from yesterday's New York Times. I found it interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health/policy/14panel.html?no_interstitial

Sigh.

I really need to find a job soon. For the income certainly but also because I'm about to drive myself (and Zack I'm sure) absolutely crazy being stuck in the house with nothing to do day after day. I'm not good at sitting still. I'm not good at enjoying time off and relaxing when I know that I could or should be working. And I'm really, really not good at just doing nothing. I've cleaned the cottage to within an inch of it's life (a necessity, given what I already told you about the floors and the moisture in the air). I've applied what for feels like every job in the city that I'm even remotely qualified for...and several that I'm not qualified for at all. I drew the line at "Bikini Housekeeper" and "Lingerie Model" per Zack's request, but otherwise, my resume has been sent to pretty much every business in the city. I've gotten a library card and already read several books. These things are all fun I suppose, but they're not exactly paying the bills. The good news is, I have a job prospect that is looking pretty promising. I had a second interview on Friday with the CFO and Assistant VP of Finance at the Tulane Medical Center and they seemed pretty interested. I know I am! Supposedly there were lots of qualified applicants and its very competitive but I'm hoping that my background in Accounting and the MBA will make me a front runner. We'll see. I'll keep you posted but in the meantime, anyone who wants to say a little prayer for me and keep their fingers crossed that this works out, well, I'd sure appreciate it.

This is the first time since we've been in New Orleans that I've been home alone all day. As part of his law school orientation activities Zack is participating in a week-long volunteer project which means he's gone all day and I have the house to myself. It's kinda fun to get to watch what I want to watch on TV but I had gotten pretty used to him being around all the time so now I miss him too. The whole point of this blog post is that I wanted to tell you a little about his volunteer project. I don't know many details yet, but he's working with an organization (no, I don't know the name, sorry) that is trying to figure out how to get information to the city's very poorest citizens. There's something like a 40% illiteracy rate here, which means that a large percentage of the population is not only not utilizing government aid and free assistance programs that are available, but they don't even realize such things exist. These people have no phone, no TV and certainly no computers or Internet. These limitations, along with being unable to read or write has really created a very despondent demographic in this city. He said he really learned a LOT about New Orleans yesterday just from being in meetings with this group, and he shared some of it with me. I won't go into too many details yet because I don't know much at this point, but I'm hoping that by the time he finishes up this project he will have learned and shared with me a whole lot about some of the inner workings of the local government, the demographics of the city, etc. From what he was told yesterday a lot of the allegations of corruption here are true and the amount of underhanded wheeling and dealing that goes on is just outrageous.

Like I said, I don't know enough yet to get too into it but I hope to share some of what he learns with you all at some point. Just wanted to give you a heads up to be on the lookout for the low-down on NOLA at some point!

Political Rant...kinda

Anyone up for a good political rant? Me too. Here goes...

There's another blog that I loosely follow, written by a girl I kinda sorta used to know way back in the day. And by way back I mean waaaaaaay back, like elementary school or so, when she came to our church for awhile. Anyway, I read this girl's blog from time to time, mostly out of a gross fascination at how completely different people can be from each other, and how ill-informed some people truly are. I'll stop short of saying I read the blog purely for comic relief because that's not the case but she continually writes things that simultaneously enrage me and yet make me feel sorry for her because of how blatantly wrong she is about a lot of stuff. She was homeschooled...that's all I'm sayin'.

Just recently she posted this blog about how "HORRIBLE" our current President is, what a "TERRIBLE" job his administration is doing and how "TERRIFIED" she is about the future of our country. She actually said that; she's terrified for her life. (The good news is, at least she's not melodramatic). You know what though? Whatever. I'm so sick of hearing uneducated, ill-informed, judgemental people criticize our President about things they have absolutely no understanding of that I don't even listen to it anymore. I could really care less. Her naivety and lowbrow tirades only serve to make her look silly and aren't worth even addressing. Besides all that, she's a Sarah Palin supporter which means that she lost 99% of her credibility with me before she even started writing.

What infuriates me though, is when people like this who are uninformed and ignorant of the topics at hand start trying to pass off their own twisted opinions as fact. That's just not cool. For example, trying to convince your readers that the Obama administration is pushing for socialization, or comparing America in the hands of President Obama to Communist China is just taking things a little too far. Certainly we're all entitled to our own opinions here but that doesn't give anyone the right to just make up falsehoods and spin them as truths. You know what I'd really love to do? I mean, I just think this would be awesome beyond belief. I'd like to round up everyone out there who thinks that we either are now, or are becoming a socialist nation, put them on a boat and send them to Communist China for awhile. Oooooh or better yet, North Korea; I hear its lots of fun over there! I'd let them chill over there for a few months, see what a true Communist or Socialist government is like then I'd dare a single one of them to have the guts to come back and even hint at the idea that the United States can be compared to places like that.

This girl is just one example, the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back" if you will, but I've heard the Socialism and/or Communism argument from enough people recently that I'm starting to get just a bit fed up with it. The problem is that Socialism has become like a hot button; its just a buzz word that people hear and then repeat (thinking it makes them sound super smart--like no one's going to put one over on them) without really even knowing what it means. Is the government telling us how many children we can have? No. Does the government own or otherwise control all of the utility companies? No. Do we give everything we earn to the Government to be redistributed between all citizens equally, thereby effectively creating a classless society? No. So can we all just agree here that the U.S. is in fact still a healthy and thriving democracy where even the most uninformed citizens have the freedom to spread political slander?

I'm sure this will come as a huge surprise to you all, but it rained here today. Stormed actually. Much like it's done every single day since we've been here. I've never been in a place where it rained as much as it does here and I think I may be starting to mildew just a little bit. Zack and I did get something pretty cool the other day though, in an effort to try to offset the effects of all the moisture in the air down here. He's actually the one who found them when he was at Lowe's the other day; I've never seen or heard of anything like this before, so I'm thinking it must be a regional product. Anyway, it's called DampRid and its this little bucket of white flakes, vaguely reminiscent of instant mashed potatoes, that you just sit out somewhere in your house and it pulls moisture out of the air. Similar to a dehumidifier I would imagine, only way cheaper and much less obtrusive. And it really works! We put one in each of the upstairs bedrooms and its crazy how much water they've already pulled out of the air. See?

The flakes just sort of melt down and dissolve into this mushy-white-pasty-looking stuff as they take on more water until eventually I guess they just disappear altogether and you know its time to replace them.

The water that's been pulled out of the air in just the past couple of days. I estimate that to be a couple of cups at least.

Oh, get this! Zack killed a cockroach in our living room last night! Eeeeeeeeewww!!! We were sitting there watching TV after dinner and out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something moving along the base of the TV stand. Zack said he didn't see anything and tried to pretend like I was just imagining the whole thing so that he didn't have to get up and go on a bug raid right in the middle of his show. I kept watching though and sure enough, a few minutes later a big old cockroach came crawling out from behind the TV and scurried across the floor! I don't really get too hot and bothered by bugs or spiders or lizards or anything like that, but seriously, is there a dirtier or disgusting bug in the whole world than a cockroach? I don't think so. I've seen them all over the place down here since we moved, but this is the first one I've seen in the house. Now I'm kinda paranoid that they're really all in the walls and under the floorboards and everything and we just don't realize it yet. Uuuuggghh!

On a completely unrelated though probably no more exciting note, Zack and I went to Baton Rouge this afternoon. Several people have told us that New Orleans is so unique its really not a good representation of what the rest of the state is like, so I was very curious to see what it would be like to get outside the city. I liked it! Of course, it was pouring down rain the whole time we were there so all we could do was drive around and sight see from inside the car but from what we saw, it looks like a nice city. Definitely much more moderna nd commercialized than NOLA. We drove through LSU's campus (and while it pains me to say this about another SEC school) it was actually very pretty. It will never compare to UK in my mind of course, but nice nonetheless. We also saw the state capitol which was a really weird looking building. It's actually very pretty too, but I've never seen another capitol building shaped like this at all; its really tall and skinny. Kentucky definitely wins out in that category too.

I left Zack downstairs doing the dishes so probably I should go check on him. I hope everyone feels sufficiently caught up on the nitty-gritty details of our life now. Happy Saturday!

Cookie Monster

I've got to write about this because its one of those things that when I heard it, I literally thought at first that it had to be some kind of joke. I really did. As I was driving home from the park yesterday there was a morning talk show on the radio discussing a segment of The View (as in, the tv show) that I think had aired maybe the day before. The topic of conversation was Cookie Monster (of Sesame Street fame), and how he is now being blamed for childhood obesity in America. Wait...what??? I seriously thought that the radio show was doing some kind of spoof of The View, maybe making fun of some of the ridiculous arguments those ladies get into because otherwise, how does saying that make any sense at all?

Apparently there was recently an episode of Sesame Street where the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture came on to teach Cookie Monster the benefits of healthy eating.

People do lots of things that I find irritating, or silly, or at the very least I just don't understand. This falls into all three of those categories. I think to blame a fictional character, a fuzzy blue puppet no less, with the obesity epidemic that our country is facing is more than just a little absurd. Let's think about this argument for a second, and all of the holes there are in it. Here, I'll just make a list; that'll be easier.

1. I looked it up; Sesame Street is aired in 77 countries around the world, but we here in America are the only ones who keep getting fatter.
2. What about all the kids who grew up watching Sesame Street and didn't get fat?
3. By that same token, what about all the obese people out there who never watched the show at all?
4. Sesame Street has been around since 1977. If we're going to pin the eating habits of Americans on cartoon tv shows, then I think we ought to consider a few others. Bugs Bunny (who incidentally was voted the greatest cartoon character of all time) has been around since 1940. Popeye first debuted in 1929. Garfield the Cat in 1978. the Flintstones in 1960.

My point with comment #4 is this; there have always been cartoon characters with a penchant for eating. If the argument being made against poor old Cookie Monster were true, then why didn't we have a generation of kids obsessed with eating spinach like Popeye, or carrots like Bugs? And if this is really such a problem, why don't Garfield and Fred Flintstone and Scooby Doo get to share some of the blame? Those characters are defined by their eating habits just as much, if not more than Cookie Monster. Why just Cookie Monster, and why now all of a sudden?

Here's what I think. I think obesity really is a problem but rather than people accepting the blame for their own poor diet choices, or those of their kids, they need to find a scape goat to blame. It's no different than blaming video games for school violence or rap music for underage drinking and drug use. The people making these arguments are people who have been to lazy, or too ignorant, or just too indifferent to see what was going on with their kids, and rather than admit that maybe they weren't quite as great a parent as they could have been, they're looking for an out. This irritates me to no end.

When kids are overweight (barring any medical problems) it's 100% the parents' fault. That's it. There's no two ways about it. Of course kids would rather eat cookies or a happy meal than vegetables! Come on! I'm 23 and I'd rather eat cookies than vegetables; cookies taste good! But I don't make that choice because growing up, my mom and dad made me eat vegetables and fruit and other healthy stuff and taught me that cookies are fine in moderation, but that can't be all I eat or else, before long, I won't be able to fit into any of my clothes anymore. Let's think about this; little kids can't drive themselves to the grocery store or through a fast-food drive-thru; they don't have jobs so they don't have money; they can't cook for themselves. Basically, until they're probably 10 or so, kids eat exactly what their parents give them to eat. End of story. The argument against Cookie Monster is that he makes kids think its ok to eat an entire box of cookies all at once. Well my question to any parent would be, why in the world would you even give your kid an entire box of cookies at one time in the first place?

The bottom line is this. We as a country are getting fatter, because we're lazy and we're ignorant about what we're putting in our mouths and we're making our kids that way too. Now leave poor old Cookie Monster alone. Sheesh.

My Hurricane Dilemma

Do you ever have one of those moments when you realize something for the very first time, something that is probably painfully obvious to everyone else around you and thus, should have been to you too? You feel so confident about something, you don't even pause long enough to think about second guessing yourself, and then out of the blue...WHAM! It hits you that you may in fact be a complete and total retard and all you can really do at that point is utter a very shocked, very defeated, "Oh."

This happened to me the other day. Zack and I were leaving the grocery store when I noticed a magazine rack by the door with stacks of Hurricane Evacuation Route brochures. They were free, so I quickly snatched one up and proceeded to thumb through it while Zack loaded the groceries into the car. As he drove us home, I read aloud to him the lists of emergency supplies that they recommend keeping on hand at all times. "I can tell you right now," I informed him rather earnestly, "you might as well go ahead and get ready; if I hear even a hint of a warning of a hurricane within five hundred miles of Louisiana, I'm gone. I'm packing up and getting out of here so fast you won't know what hit you." I meant it too. I'm no dummy. I can think of approximately six thousand things I'd rather do than wait out a hurricane down here, going days, maybe weeks without electricity (read: A/C) or fresh water.

"And what exactly are you going to do if you've got a job?" Zack asked.

Oh.

This is where the big DUH moment came in. I'd never even thought about that. In hindsight I guess that I just assumed most people down here felt the same way I do. I truly figured most jobs offer "Hurricane Days" or something like that as an additional benefit. You know, you've got your PTO, your sick days, and your inclement weather days. This makes soooo much sense to me in my head that I'd never even considered for a moment that it wasn't a reality.

So now I have quite a dilemma on my hands. What am I supposed to do if a hurricane really does come? You'd think after what these people went through with Katrina they'd be more gun-shy and ready to flee at the first sign of bad weather; I know I sure would. Heck, I am now and I wasn't even here four years ago. I can't decide if this makes me respect the locals down here more for their resilience and their refusal to let a natural disaster like that get the best of them, or if it makes me think they're complete lunatics because they didn't learn their lesson the first time around. All that aside though, I've given this a lot of thought and I've decided, job or not, I'm getting the heck out of dodge if another hurricane comes.

Family treasures

Zack and I got some incredible wedding gifts when we got married last month. I can't even begin to express how thankful we are for the generosity of so many friends and family. It kind of blows my mind to think about it to be perfectly honest because we certainly got way more than we deserved. I think one of my very favorite gifts though, is one that came just yesterday from my Aunt Becky (Mom's sister) to our new house here in New Orleans.

She sent me a collection of all of the old family recipes she has collected over the years. Some of them are ones that my Nanny gave her when she got married, some have been passed down through the years from as far back as my great grandmothers, and still others are ones that my mom has shared with her at some point. As I flipped through the stack of index cards, I saw recipes for some of my favorite foods in the whole world--things I've grown up eating for years, and probably taken for granted because Mom, or Nanny, or whoever was preparing them at the time, seemed to cook them up with such ease. There's a recipe from my great grandmother for her paper-thin sugar cookies that actually no one in the family can make quite like she does, there's a recipe for my Nanny's Italian creme cake that has become a Christmas staple in our family, and the light-as-a feather angel biscuits that my mom made for me and Leah all the time when we were growing up. How awesome is that?!?

Maybe its because I do have a teeny, tiny sentimental side (I know, I know--who would have thought, right?), or maybe it's just because I like to cook and bake so much, but I'm terribly excited to have all these little pieces of family history to keep and share in the years to come. I think there's as much emotion and memory tied to food as there is to anything else in life. How often do we associate milestone events with the food that we ate that day? At least in my family, certain foods just mean something and there's nothing else in the world that can serve as a proper substitute. Sunday mornings before church mean cinnamon rolls. Thanksgiving is turkey of course, but more importantly it means Nanny's homemade yeast rolls and stuffing. Christmas is country ham so salty you can't eat more than a tiny slice without swelling up like a balloon (Zack made the mistake of eating a bunch of ham right before bed the first Christmas he spent with my family and he woke up in the middle of the night with his tongue dried to the roof of his mouth). My dad always has a homemade pound cake on his birthday, and a football season just isn't a football season without my Grandad's fried chicken at at least one tailgate. There's as much of my family history and comforting childhood memories in this little box as there is in anything else I own. I have no doubt that its going to take years and years of practice on my part to obtain the level of expertise with these recipes that I'm so accustomed to from eating them over the years, and some I may never be able to master at all (Grandmother's sugar cookies most likely fall in this category). But I'm ok with that. If these things were that easy to make, they probably wouldn't be nearly as delicious as they are and luckily, Zack is a very willing taste-tester for me so I should be able to get lots and lots of practice.