the travesty

Alright Costco, I don't know why you're selling caskets in the first place, but "The Mother Casket"?

For shame. I do understand that there is the word Mother embroidered on the casket, and the name seems obvious, but let's think about this a little more.

Furthermore, the interior description says "Nude crepe."

Right after it says this:

THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC OR OTHER EVIDENCE THAT ANY CASKET WITH A SEALING DEVICE WILL PRESERVE HUMAN REMAINS

(In all caps because Costco wants to ensure they are not held liable for decomposition of loved ones' bodies.)

Maybe this blog post is in poor taste, but so is the name of this casket model, admittedly. It gets good ratings, though, which is saying something for Costco's online storefront, where reviews are hard to come by.

Also, when I'm dead, please don't spend a lot of money on my funeral and casket. That will be of no use to anyone.

another one of those posts

I used to write in my journal a lot. I don't much anymore, and ever since I stopped writing consistently, I have mourned the fact that I don't. (Yet I haven't done anything about it.) I think it was important for me in many ways. Among them, it gave me a chance to work through my feelings and often, to bring a new perspective and understanding to those feelings and ideas. It gave me a chance to respond. To think about all of these stimuli that bombard me constantly.

The lessening of my journal writing seemed to correlate with the beginnings of a committed relationship (which resulted eventually in marriage; if you hadn't guessed, I'm talking about Husband). I wondered if the relationship between lack of journal writing and presence of commitment was meaningful beyond the correlation. I think in a way it is. This makes me feel a little better about not journal-writing these days. I have found a replacement, in a sense—a safe place to express myself.

It's sort of a trade-off though. Communication with a human being is dynamic and communication with a piece of paper (no audience intended) is not. I gain some love but I lose some understanding and perceived self-actualization in the process.

I haven't been reading Saussure (was I supposed to read him as a student of English language/linguistics during my undergrad career?), but Husband has, and from this secondhand reading, I interpret language as a means to thought. In fact, I've got a blog titled that (By the way, this blog is where I post poetry I write, which is another thing that I haven't done for quite some time—related?).

Meaning.

I find my thoughts in the expression of them.

I think Saussure might support this.

I cannot think of anything I love more than doing it (communication) well, or helping someone else do it well, or reading someone's words who has done it really well. It's why I love writing, editing, reading. When that understanding (that understanding: the understanding that goes, oddly, completely beyond language) is achieved between two minds, two souls—that is an incredibly beautiful moment. And nothing is more eminently frustrating than miscommunication, language failure, and disconnectedness.

I wish I could talk better with people and narrow the gap between souls more often through conversation. I am not very good at conversation. But when I feel like language is transcended and understanding is achieved between another person and me . . . well, the word that comes to mind is love, and that can be felt in so many ways.

Funny that this love is both found in and destroyed by language. One of my favorite songs by Modest Mouse is "Blame It on the Tetons," and there is a line in there that goes like this:

Language is the liquid

That we’re all dissolved in

Great for solving problems

After it creates the problem

I feel like language is a perfect analogy for life that way. So amazing and so imperfect and so inescapable.

in no particular order

My coworker Margaret and I traded computers at work today for a little while. When I received my computer back, my desktop background was set to a slideshow of these lovelies:

(The file name for the above artistic masterpiece was "future.jpg.")

(Sorry for you single guys out there. Margaret is already hitched.)

how I feel

I feel like this today. (The picture is accurate: I did wear my hair curly today. And it is shedding all over my black sweater.)

another post about grocery shopping

This weekend I was really looking forward to going to Costco and Winco and doing a price comparison on some items I commonly buy (and especially those I sometimes get in bulk from Costco). It was the most exciting weekend activity EVER. (Nerdy, I know.)

Since I know you're all as interested as me, I shall tell you the results. I was somewhat surprised by my findings, perhaps naively so. I really love Winco's bulk foods section and love that you can get however much you want or need of whatever it is you want or need. And I have noted that the prices of the bulk items per pound are cheaper than other places I've seen items sold by weight. I'm less impressed when I compare other areas of the store, though; however, the sales are often pretty good. Most of the items I compared were items you could find in the Winco bulk foods section.

Costco's worthiness was demonstrated in the comparison. (The comparisons are not all fair, I should say. Costco has better quality goods, generally speaking, but I tried to match the products as closely as possible.) Here are the results:

Costco	item	Winco
1.08/lb	whole wheat spaghetti	.98/lb
1.06/lb	penne	.76/lb
1.96/lb	egg noodles	1.10/lb
2.22/lb (organic)	peanut butter	1.48/lb (non-organic, self-churned)
3.57/lb	almond butter	3.96/lb
1.66/gallon	milk	1.88/gallon
6.29/lb	pure maple syrup	8.85/lb
1.76/lb	semi-sweet chocolate chips	2.21/lb
2.33/lb	dried cranberries	3.67/lb
2.21/lb (name-brand)	honey nut cheerios	1.79/lb
.75/lb (organic)	apple sauce	.54/lb
1.16/lb	short-grain brown rice	.74/lb
.28/lb (for 25 lb bag)	long-grain white rice	.45/lb
2.50/lb	quinoa	3.52/lb
2.00/lb	honey	2.24/lb
.69/lb (10 lbs)	oats	.51/lb
4.22/gallon	soy milk	5.12/gallon
4.60/lb	walnuts	3.30/lb
5.28/lb	pecans	8.50/lb
3.33/lb	almonds	3.78/lb
.24/lb (for 25 lb bag)	all purpose flour	.27/lb
.61/lb	sugar	.46/lb
.81/lb	brown sugar	.97/lb
18.62/gallon	olive oil	28.62/gallon
5.96/gallon	vegetable oil	6.27/gallon
6.32/gallon	canola oil	7.18/gallon
.62/lb	tomato sauce	.80/lb
1.32/lb	tomato paste	1.68/lb
1.06/lb	diced tomatoes	1.02/lb

Some of the results were interesting. For example, although pecans and almonds are cheaper at Costco, walnuts are not. Pecans are significantly cheaper at Costco. Granulated sugar is quite a bit cheaper at Winco, and flour is comparable (I probably will still buy from Winco to avoid dealing with the 25 lb bag, though). I did not realize that canola oil is more expensive than vegetable oil. Brown rice is cheaper at Winco. Peanut butter is too, but almond butter is cheaper at Costco. I compared S&W canned garbanzo beans and black beans as well, and it turned out they were the same at both Costco and Winco: .68/can.

I hope you appreciated the results of my experiment. I guess shopping at Costco does save money after all. Which makes me feel a little better about paying to shop there? Hmm, I didn't factor that into the prices . . .

vacated houses

(Disclaimer: I'm posting this on my personal blog in order to disassociate Tim from it. He takes no responsibility for the events narrated herein.)

First a little background:

Our current apartment is a basement apartment. When we moved in, the house above was being rented. We didn't get to know our upstairs neighbors a whole lot, partially because they were not letting the apartment. (That is to say: our landlord lives somewhere else.)

Recently, something strange happened, and the events still are shrouded in a cloud of mystery. There seemed to be intimations of an upcoming relocation in the house upstairs. This lasted a few days. (Glimpses of our neighbors with luggage, coming in and out of the house frequently, weekly yard sales, etc.) Then there were no people up there anymore, just things.

Around this same time, someone came by our apartment asking for the landlord's contact information. She said she was a friend of the family who had been renting the house and that there was a "family emergency" (one which demanded a sudden move, apparently), and she said that she needed to let the landlord know that they had moved out.

Being curious, we walked through the house. You would, too, wouldn't you? (Our tour was facilitated by a door in the basement that is broken and won't latch, let alone lock.) The house was a complete mess. I felt like we were walking through a house that had been vacated due to some sort of apocalyptic event that no one told us was happening. (Should we pick up and run, too? Were we in danger?) You know, take what you can carry and then leave the rest, and also maybe trash the rest of it, too, just for fun? There was spray paint in some areas of the house. Half-eaten cream pie was rotting in the kitchen, the garbage overflowing. It looked like the floors hadn't been cleaned in years. Ripped-out pages of a questionable magazine was lying about in one of the bedrooms. In another bedroom, marker writing appeared all over the walls.

The scariest thing, though, was this, which you see just as you open the broken door to enter the house:


What kind of sadistic decorations are these? SO CREEPY. (Or am I the creepy one? I'll let you be the judge.)

But there is a bright side to all of this. The landlord came with his family and extended family, prepared with a trailer and hundreds of large black garbage sacks, to remove most of the remaining junk. But not before I could score a decent vacuum off of our dear neighbors! This is actually the second time we scored off them, because a few weeks before, we'd bought a kitchen table set for $50 from them at a yard sale—no matter that we can't actually fit it in our apartment. (I think they'd want us to enjoy their vacuum. They seemed like nice people.)

Also, now that it's a lot less creepy to go in this vacant house, I've been doing laundry for free there. (Beats going to a laundromat. And no, the landlord doesn't know, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind, because he seems like a nice person. And yes, I'm a terrible person. But Tim isn't.)

The end.

NOTE: To the landlord or former renters of the house, if you happen to stumble on this obscure blog, I will relinquish the vacuum upon request.

Awkward Babies

Awkward Stoddard was awkward with babies.

Awk-Rowan is also awkward with babies.

I have met three newbies (you know, newborns?) that I've spent a little time with lately (not a whole lot of time, really, but it's a lot for me, because I'm hardly ever around babies, and hardly ever holding them, but I held all of these babies). What I have learned from this experience is that I am a tiny bit terrified that I will have no idea what to do with a baby if I ever get one.

Food Processor: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . . (a.k.a. Post for Kristen)

So I think I have already raved about how much I love my food processor. It’s so versatile and it has really broadened my cooking horizons. My first experiences making pie crust, freezer jam, hummus, and homemade peanut butter were facilitated by this little machine. I have used it to cut up all of the lovely CSA squash and veggies I get. I can use it for many of my slicing, grating, shredding, grinding, and mixing needs, and I there is more that I probably haven't tapped, too. It's great to chop onions, slice tomatoes and squash, shred potatoes, grate cheese, etc.

So if you have a food processor, please make the following:

• Hummus (When I make hummus, I just throw together the following into the bowl of the food processor: a can of drained garbanzos, with a little bit of the liquid from the can, about a tablespoon of garlic, a tablespoon of tahini, a teaspoon or so of olive oil, some freshly squeezed lemon juice, maybe some seasonings, then process away!)
  
  
• Peanut butter: I used this recipe from Alton Brown, except I didn’t add any honey—I didn’t need it)
  
  
• Salsa or pico de gallo
  
  
• Guacamole
  
  
• Tofu balls (I haven’t cooked a lot with tofu, but I tried this recipe with slight alterations—I browned the outsides in a pan on the stove, and then baked them in the oven.)
  
  
• Falafel (I have tried this recipe with moderate success. How do I keep falafel from not falling apart when I fry it, anyone know?)
  
  
• Freezer jam (I used the processor to puree the strawberries for the jam. You can pulse them to chop if you want it more chunky, though.)
  
  
• Pie crust (I love Ina’s perfect pie crust recipe here. I have used it a lot to make chicken pot pie, though not apple pie.)
  
  
• Bread dough and pizza dough (I love this recipe for regular pizza crust and this one for whole wheat pizza. I'm not sure why, but I have had varying results with bread [Then again, what's new there? My results with bread always vary even if you don't factor in the food processor.] So not all of my bread dough has worked exceptionally well in the food processor, but it seems like it is usually pretty good, especially when I''m not making a lot of dough at once. I found this multigrain bread dough recipe at America’s Test Kitchen. You can see it here [you can also find it for free on America’s Test Kitchen website, but you have to register]. I have made 5 loaves of it already in the past week and a half and have been subsisting mainly on bread slathered with freezer jam and nothing else. Yummy. Didn't work so well in the food processor, though, unfortunately.)
  
  
• Cookie dough (Just add the chocolate chips after the dough is already mixed if you’re making chocolate chip cookies so that they retain their shape.)
  
  
• Honey butter, or any kind of specialty butter
  
  
• Soup (Have you tried Ina’s chicken chili? Sarah introduced it to me, and it's just delicious. I use the food processor as she recommends in the recipe.)
  
  
• Ground meat (I made this chicken thing in the food processor a while ago: ground chicken, tomato sauce, some spices, and pan-cooked. We put it in burritos.)
  
  
• Bread crumbs or graham cracker crumbs (Have you ever used ground oatmeal as a substitute for bread crumbs, or flour for that matter? We tried it in falafel when we made it with our gluten-free friend, and it worked surprisingly well!)
  
  
• Waffle batter, crepe batter, cake batter (I used it for banana bread, which is more of a cake batter, and I really liked pureeing the bananas to make them smooth before adding the rest of the ingredients when I made this recipe. Also, Tim and I landed on a waffle recipe very similar to this one that we use almost weekly [waffles on a Saturday morn, anyone?].)
  
  
• Chop nuts
  
  
• Zucchini (this one is for you, Kristen): I like chopping or grating zucchini with the food processor. I really like this one pasta with zucchini and chickpeas/garbanzo beans, similar to the one here (I also saw it on Real Simple originally as well); you can adapt it however you want, but it is a really quick, easy meal. You could also grate zucchini and make zucchini bread/muffins.

The end . . . or just the beginning.

Basil couldn't take the fireworks.

I regret to inform you that my basil plant was overturned from its home on the windowsill on the Fourth of July. Though best efforts were made to put everything back into the little container, it did not survive the trauma.

Sad, sad day.

A/C update

Thank you, sympathetic friends, for your kindness.

The landlord sent someone to fix the air conditioning yesterday afternoon shortly after I got home from work. Coincidentally, I knew the guy: he used to be in our ward and was the elders quorum president before he and his family moved away. He checked to make sure everything was working satisfactorily inside, and said that it was, then told me he'd have to get on the roof to fix it. But he couldn't do it right then because his truck with his ladder was in Wallsburg (at least I think that is what he said, but I'd never heard of the place, so I can't be sure). He didn't explain why it was there, but I bet it was a really good story.

Thus we were off to Payson again for yet another night in the twin bed.

So apparently I can't manage any alarm clocks other than the one I'm used to using: I tried setting one on my phone, but it didn't ever go off, so I didn't wake up in time to get to my carpool, so I took the bus, which was awesome, most especially because it took two hours.

I hope this post elicits even more sympathy.

P.S. Why is it still 70 degrees in the middle of the night in Provo?