Wow, This Local Challenge Thing Might Be HARD

 Mmm yummy  7 Responses »
Aug 312007
 

Last night, I rushed to the grocery store right after dinner, for breakfasts, drinks, and snacks for our weekend retreat. I made two stops, the warehouse-grocery-meets-farmers-market, which I think I’ll be shorthanding to Produce Warehouse during this experiment, and a regular mainstream grocery store, the cheaper of my neighborhood chains.

Produce Warehouse:

  • Bananas, organic, from Mexico. Imported directly, which I guess means something to some shoppers, but I’m not sure what. There were big signs with a map and everything. Along with 50,000 30,000 pounds of bananas*.
  • Apples, gala, conventional, from Washington State
  • Musileli type cereal, organic, from Canada!
  • Purple Muscadine grapes, bought since they were the only fruit from Georgia that I could find. I hope Noah likes them.
  • Multigrain bread, organic, baked on-site. Yummy, and I have no idea where the ingredients came from. Jeez this could get hardcore very quickly!

Cheap Grocery:

  • Tropicana Fruit Squeeze water-juice bottles. These are my newest addiction. They’re fruit juice sweetened, low-calorie, and delicious. Lakeland Florida, which can’t really be justified as local, but at least is a state boardering mine.
  • Pretzels – I went with the brand from Pennsylvania instead of Texas. Not local, probably a wash as far as distance goes.
  • Yo Baby Yogurt – Organic. From New Hampshire. A staple of Noah’s diet. I’m thinking about the suggestion that I make yogurt myself, but I’m not committed to it yet.
  • Pepperidge Farm cookies – Fairfield, CT. Not local. I should have bought cookies at Produce Warehouse, but I forgot.
  • 4 Pack of Starbux Frappucinos – The label says “North America.” I’m going to guess non-local. I’m a coffee junkie and we have no idea what the 5:30 am coffee options are going to look like at the retreat locale.

* A random bonus prize will be awarded to the first person correctly identifying that reference in the comments below. No googling!

 Posted by Liza at 6:20 pm

Eating Locally

 Mmm yummy, Personal  2 Responses »
Aug 302007
 

I’ve decided to join the group of people taking the September Eat Local Challenge.

The idea is that the environmental impact of eating food that has been driven (or flown, or boated, or railed, or multimodally transported) hundreds or thousands of miles from where it originated to my plate is huge. And while it isn’t something most of us can control completely, it is something that we can do that makes a difference.

How it works is this: During the month of September, I’m committing to buying as much of my food as possible from local sources. They recommend defining local as within a 100 mile radius of where you live. I’m going to be flexible on that rule as I think the main source of regional dairy is about 25 miles further out than that.

One group, the Locavores, has this pledge:

If not LOCALLY PRODUCED, then Organic.
If not ORGANIC, then Family farm.
If not FAMILY FARM, then Local business.
If not a LOCAL BUSINESS, then Fair Trade.

It’s going to be a big change for us. That dairy doesn’t produce yogurt, and we’ve been eating a whole lotta fruit from far away places. I haven’t even tried to figure out meat yet.

But, I’m considering a half-share in a CSA, and in exploring the smaller farmers markets in my area. Our big farmers market may be a good place for bread, but a huge number of their products are from outside of the US, to say nothing of outside of northern Georgia.

Also, I’m declaring that food we already have doesn’t count. So the variously sourced frozen and packaged goods we have are still available for September consumption.

I’ll be blogging regular updates about this over the month, and I would love to hear what other people think or have tried along these lines.

 Posted by Liza at 6:09 pm

Tired Little Code Monkey

 Personal, Web/Tech  2 Responses »
Aug 292007
 

I can’t believe I’m still up, but I got on a tear about wanting to get the BlogHer ad network ads up, and then I figured out how to make the little segmenty things in the sidebar look pretty again, AND I figured out how to make my archives not take up 10 inches of space in the sidebar.

Seriously, check out the archive box over on the lower right. I don’t know why 2005 is in a different color, but hot damn! I looked at some cool archive links around the Internet, found one I liked, and actually modified the code so it would be mine. Of course, every month I’ll have to manually edit it, but still. Worth it!

And by the way? All the sidebar stuff in my other blog can’t be done with widgets! I had to get in to all the sidebar code and try not to break anything while rearranging. Which did happen. Fortunately, I’d saved a txt file of the original before I started messing around.

I am feeling like I know how to bend the Internet to my will.

All of you who are actual programmers are smiling behind your hands at how cute my little projects are. Thanks for the public straight face. If I ever build anything, I’ll be exactly the same way.

 Posted by Liza at 11:24 pm

Hey, That’s Nice

 Personal  4 Responses »
Aug 292007
 

How’s this for irony? Last week, I got a lovely email from my new BlogHer friend ktjrdn, awarding me a “Nice Matters” blog award!

Then I ignored it for almost a week.

I SWEAR it was nothing personal. I saw it, I got excited, and then it dropped right out of my brain with all the chaos and stress and sadness at work.

Anyway, she says I’m nice, and I hope that it’s true:

niceaward

The “rules” of the award say: “This award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world. Once you’ve been awarded please pass it on to 7 others who you feel are deserving of this award.”

In keeping with the BlogHer connections theme, I’m going to award my 7 to these lovely Ladyblogs — in no particular order.

Each of us knew a few of each other before the conference, and got into some great email conversations. During the last few weeks, they’ve also been huge sources of support on my wild roller-coaster ride.

Thank you all for being so nice.

  1. Lizzy
  2. Isabel (aka Lizabel)
  3. Lizarita
  4. Carrisa (aka Calizza )
  5. Molly (aka Moliza)
  6. Frema (aka Lizema, or Lizzee, if you prefer)
  7. Stacy (aka Lizacy)
 Posted by Liza at 8:15 pm

Still Workin’

 Personal  8 Responses »
Aug 282007
 

I had my meeting with HR a little while ago, and just wanted to update family & friends that I still have a job!!!

The mood here is still pretty sad — roughly 900 people were “position eliminated” and 4 smaller offices will be completely closed.

 Posted by Liza at 12:36 pm

Rough Day

 Personal  5 Responses »
Aug 282007
 

Back in July, my company\’s new CEO announced that there were going to be big changes coming. Those changes were going to include layoffs, and a narrowing of our focus.

Well, today is (rumored to be) the day. Most people think there will be around 500 people let go. I have no idea whether or not I\’ll be one of them.

Whether I am or not, everyone who is let go could use your hopes, prayers, and good thoughts.

 Posted by Liza at 4:03 am

18 Month Stats

 The Real Live Boy  No Responses »
Aug 232007
 

We had Noah’s 18 month checkup last week, and I keep forgetting to post his new stats:

Height – Uncertain as he squirmed and fought being measured, but listed as 33.25 inches, or 78th percentile. Considering he was 33 inches at 15 months, and he seems taller, I think we’ll try again when he’s feeling less squirmy. He was towering over the other 2-and-unders at the B&N train table a few weekends back.

Weight – 27 lbs, 11.75 oz, or 74th percentile. That’s up from 15 months, up 3.75 lbs and 30 percentile points in fact. And it seems more intuitively right.

Head – 19.5 inches, or 90th percentile. Fortunately, his cute belly keeps him from looking like a lollipop. I’m kidding — he’s tall enough that it doesn’t look strange at all.

 Posted by Liza at 9:18 pm
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