My So Called Life

The Pyramid of Conservation

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I saw this graphic, called the “Pyramid of Conservation“, which I found very interesting.

It is a cost effectiveness pyramid for “green” technologies. Basically, it kind of gives you a quick bang-for-your-buck visual, and kind of highlights what one should do, if one wants to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle.

The part that is interesting is that, when you think about how you could become more eco-friendly, your mind immediately jumps to the top of the list: installing solar panels, living off the grid, etc. But in fact, that’s basically the *last* step you should take. Not only is it not very cost effective (it’s very expensive, but doesn’t make you that much greener, contrary to popular belief), but also it is such a big, expensive task, that it might turn people off from doing any sort of eco-improvements at all, including very cost effective ones, such as changing your light bulbs or turning off unused appliances.

The middle of the pyramid is worth looking at too. If we all went through and “upgraded” or existing situation (more efficient electronics and appliances, better insulation, etc.), something almost anybody could probably do to some degree (especially with the help of targeted assistance) we would save more than we probably ever will with solar panels.

It is also very interesting that the bottom of the pyramid is “Understanding”. I think that makes perfect sense though, since it costs nothing, and could make a big difference. For example, we all just participated in some understanding, since we’re reading this and learning about all the steps we could take to be greener without going right to the big ticket items.

Link via Sara.

The best Easter egg hunt ever

/ Shane / Leave a comment

On Saturday we signed up for an Easter egg hunt over at the community garden. We thought Evie would have a good time. We had no idea.

So it turned out that only one other kid showed up for the Easter egg hunt, besides Evie. There were 50 eggs hidden around the neighborhood park. For those of you following around at home, that’s 25 eggs per kid. This is WAY more eggs than you usually get to grab at a thing like this. There were eggs everywhere, and Evie could hardly pick them up fast enough. And there was no competition for the eggs, no egg tug-of-wars, no big kids abusing little kids, more eggs than a 3 year old could imagine.

Another kid showed up about 30 minutes later, and I’m not sure if  he was there for the egg hunt or not, but we felt bad for him watching Evie gloating over her hoard of colored eggs like a dragon over treasure. When Evie wasn’t looking, we would take them out of her basket and re-hide them for this other little boy to find. However, this boy was not prepared for the egg-finding force that was Evie. We would practically hide the egg in his pocket and he would miss it, but not Evie. Her usual focus and determination apparently applies to egg hunts as well. She would re-find them as fast as we re-hid them. So she probably found at least 40 eggs when all was said and done.

After this we had to play Easter egg hunt for the rest of the day at our house. Alternately either hiding eggs from her, or finding eggs that she hid. The eggs contained such treasures as rubber bands or candy that you weren’t allowed to eat. After playing this game with her for a while I discovered A) she’s better at finding eggs than I am, and B) she has a pretty sophisticated idea about where to hide eggs.

An interesting side note, the other kid that showed up for the egg hunt is actually going to be in her class at her new school next year. So that was interesting, and I’m glad to see they got along well.

You can contrast this with the other Easter egg hunt of the weekend, which I think was a pretty typical egg hunt experience. In other words, it was pretty crummy. This egg hunt was after church on Sunday, so first off, Evie is forced to sit through the entire service looking at eggs hiding all around her, but not able to touch them. Naturally, she spent the entire time cataloging every coordinate of every egg in range of our position.

Here’s where the trouble really starts.

Afterwards, the directions were for kids to come to the front and get instructions before looking for eggs. Poor Evie, who’s the most perfect, mature child on the planet who also has terribly mean parents that make her follow the rules, had to go to the front to get the instructions as the rest of the children raped and pillaged all of the eggs in the rest of the church. Second off, people can’t stop trying to hand her eggs during church, which she knows is wrong but is quite a temptation to offer a 3 year old. And might I add that the fun of getting the eggs is finding them, not having them handed to you by and adult.

I know this is something on me, because it’s one of my personal pet peeves, but FOLLOW THE RULES! Who are you that are so important that YOUR precious little monster doesn’t need to follow the rules? Go ahead little Timmy, you’ve waited long enough, you can start a little early. Here little girl, it’s just one egg, what could it hurt. Yes, I understand that it’s just an egg hunt and who really cares, but it is a series of these little things over the course of the lifetime of your child that teaches her that rules don’t matter because she is special and above the rules for some reason.

So naturally, Evie follows the rules and is devastated to find out that all of  her carefully cataloged eggs are gone before she gets back (except for the one I was sitting on and another one I was defending through sheer intimidation). She ends up finding 3 eggs (so one other one that I wasn’t personally defending), even though they planned about a dozen per kid. And kids are walking by taunting her with their piles of 20+ eggs. Most of this stuff went over her head, and she was actually somewhat happy with the ones she found, but she was a little disappointed and it’s only going to get worse as she gets older and becomes more aware of what is going on.

You can see why I liked the first one much better.

As a side note, is there some kind of inflation of candy hidden in Easter eggs? Everywhere we went, the eggs had 2 or 3 pieces of candy in them, basically as much candy as could fit in the eggs. I only remember there being one piece of candy per egg! I had to sneakily go through Evie’s found eggs as quick as I could and remove a bunch of the candy, so she wouldn’t have candy overload (total she had something like 30 eggs with 2 or 3 pieces of candy per egg…I think that’s a little excessive for a kid her age).

Aw man, I just realized, the reason I only remember one piece of candy per egg was that MY parents probably dug through my eggs and removed extra pieces. Oh well, I guess I’m just part of the parenting circle of life.

How our wedding almost failed before it started

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Before you get married, a lot of churches require you to go through some sort of pre-marital counseling program. It depends on what religion you are and where your church is, but I think it is pretty common to meet with your priest or minister for a couple of sessions, ostensibly to prepare you for the difficulties of married life, but in reality probably to secretly observe you and make sure you seem like you A) know what you’re getting into, and B) it seems like the marriage has at least *some* chance of surviving.

So when Sara and I got married, it was pretty normal when the minister indicated she would prefer that we meet with her for a few sessions. However, Sara and I each lived in different states, the minister was in a 3rd state, and the wedding itself was taking place in yet a 4th state (it was very complicated). So getting together for multiple sessions was pretty much a no-go. However, we located a place locally that was offering a one-day-intensive marriage counselling class, and the minister agreed that we could go to that class instead.

Now I’ve never done it, but I assume that there is a different vibe if you’re with your minister, whom you trust and whom actually cares about you or has some stake in your well being, versus going to a random place to meet with people you’ve never met before. Also, I think we were the only couple in the class going through a “pre-wedding” session, everybody else was there for marriage counseling. As in, we-have-big-problems-and-in-some-cases-straight-up-hate-each-other counseling. Everybody sort of hated us because we were young and in love, and sort of represented everything they used to be, and no longer were. So right off the bat, we didn’t fit in, and it wasn’t the super best environment.

Now, for my part, I was just there to mark the checkbox that said “has performed pre-marriage counseling” and that’s about it. I figured we’d have to fill in some busy-work worksheets with some made up “everything is great” nonsense and get out of there. I’ve done a little therapy, so I know the score. Sara, however, is not the grizzled therapy veteran that I am, so the whole scenario just wasn’t the same for her. She couldn’t skip all the first steps.

For example, if you’re going to really feel comfortable opening up to someone, you need to have a certain level of trust with that person. If it’s your regular pastor, or regular therapist, then you’ve probably achieved that level of trust over time. Most people don’t want to just walk in and start yapping to some total stranger. I mean other people besides me, of course, since you can’t shut me up about my personal business (even on the Internet). And there are certain things you have to do, such as role playing, that make you feel silly. So if you aren’t very comfortable, and especially if you’ve never done something like that before, it is going to be very difficult.

So Sara was feeling uncomfortable and awkward to begin with, and then I started to feel awkward and uncomfortable on her behalf. As the day wore on, this feeling sort of grew and grew until the therapist in the one-on-one session started to pick up on the vibe. “Something is wrong here,” he said. “There’s something going on that you’re not telling me.” His attitude was that he thought he was being extremely clever for ferreting out some hidden secret. Best case he was judging us hardcore.

Of course this was about the worst thing in the world to say, because it made the whole situation worse.  Now I’m having anxiety that he thinks there’s some big issue in our relationship (which of course there wasn’t) and he’s going to “fail” us somehow and we’re going to have to cancel our wedding and our whole lives would be ruined. It got to be too much and Sara actually started crying, which 1) was very upsetting to me, and 2) solidified the guy’s idea that we had some horrible relationship problem that we weren’t telling him about, and he was really on to something.

In other words,  he probably wasn’t going to win any prizes for his amazing psychology (or detective) prowess.

Eventually the day came to a close and we managed to escape. He didn’t “fail” us (which, by the way, I think I would have had more respect for him if he would have…if he really believed that we had some colossal relationship issues, he sure didn’t try very hard to stop us from getting married. He didn’t even mention this whole thing again, after the one-on-one session. You would think that he would have at least tried to get us to come back for some additional counseling.) It was a very rough day, one that probably strained our relationship. So maybe in that sense it was a good test after all! One of those, “if you get through this, you’ll get through anything” type deals.

For me, it certainly calls into question the ability of anybody to really understand someone in a therapy session, since they are projecting their own baggage onto a situation and reading things in that aren’t there. Or maybe we just had a particularly bad, clueless therapist, who knows. I guess we can look back and laugh about it now.

I’ll always have the memory of that day, and more specifically the memory of the absolutely fantastic muffuletta I had for lunch.

Halbach Baconfest Part II – Taste Test

/ Shane / 1 Comment

For the big bacon taste test, we had 5 competitors:

  1. Nueske’s – Applewood smoked, pepper coated
  2. Dreymiller and Kray – Hickory smoked
  3. Prairie Grove Farms – Applewood smoked, uncured
  4. Trader Joe’s – Apple smoked, uncured
  5. Moore Family Farm – Smoked and cured

I should add that the Moore Family Farm is not available in stores. We are part of a buying group that buys meat and eggs from a farm downstate. We’ve been out to visit the farm a few times, so I’ve probably actually met the pigs that went into that bacon!

So here is the list of our rankings, with the grand prize winners at the end. The winner may surprise you!

Shane:

Brand Type Rating (1-10) Comments
Nueske’s Applewood smoked, pepper coated 6 Dark edges due to pepper, not as salty, less flavor than I expected, little bit of pepper after-burn
Dreymiller and Kray Hickory smoked 7 wider strips, good texture, a little fattier, nice to have non-applewood, very salty
Prairie Grove Farms Applewood smoked, uncured 8 salty, nice appearance, very good flavor
Trader Joe’s Apple smoked, uncured 8 straightest, flattest bacon, sort of factory looking, salty, good flavor, lean
Moore Family Farm Smoked and cured 4 fattier, sort of chewy, not very seasoned or salty, most authentically pork tasting, maybe good for soup

Nathan:

Brand Type Rating (1-10) Comments
Nueske’s Applewood smoked, pepper coated 7 The after taste is where all the flavor is, most smokey flavor
Dreymiller and Kray Hickory smoked 8 Hickory: tasted a little more flavorful because of the fat
Prairie Grove Farms Applewood smoked, uncured 8 Seasoned well can’t taste the smokiness or apple wood.
Trader Joe’s Apple smoked, uncured 7 Lean, flat, good flavor – hint of apple wood but not too strong
Moore Family Farm Smoked and cured 5 Thicker cut, more fat, so not as crisp, but not as flavorful

Sara:

Brand Type Rating (1-10) Comments
Nueske’s Applewood smoked, pepper coated 7 light and peppery, good to try, but wouldn’t choose on a regular basis
Dreymiller and Kray Hickory smoked 6 a little saltier, would be a good topping for pizza
Prairie Grove Farms Applewood smoked, uncured 8 very salty but flavor is great – also pretty flat (think BLTs)
Trader Joe’s Apple smoked, uncured 10 good pig flavor, nice flat slice
Moore Family Farm Smoked and cured 4 stringy and chewy, flaovr is “piggy” but texture unappealing

Results:

Brand Average Rating
Trader Joe’s 8 1/3
Prairie Grove Farms 8
Dreymiller and Kray 7
Nueske’s 6 2/3
Moore Family Farm 4 1/3

I was downright stunned that the Trader Joe’s one won. First off, it was the least exotic of the bunch. Second off, it was one of the cheapest (I can’t remember if it was cheaper than Moore Family Farm or not). Third off, it was probably the least impressive looking. After these results are in, I have discovered that this particular kind of bacon from Trader Joe’s has a big following. So really, this was a fantastic result, because this is the one kind of bacon that we might reasonably buy on a regular basis.

The other interesting thing was that the Prairie Grove brand came in second. This was the one that was the “healthiest”. Of course it’s still bacon, but it was hormone free, antibiotic free, etc. So even though you still have to feel bad about it, I guess you don’t have to feel AS bad about it.

We let Evie fill an evaluation out as well, but we didn’t count her ratings into the final results. However, you’ll notice something interesting! Evie picked the same two we did.

Brand Type Rating (1-10) Comments
Nueske’s Applewood smoked, pepper coated 1 Might want to have it again, but not sure
Dreymiller and Kray Hickory smoked 1 I don’t want to have it again
Prairie Grove Farms Applewood smoked, uncured 10 That one was good too
Trader Joe’s Apple smoked, uncured 10 I liked it
Moore Family Farm Smoked and cured 1 Maybe I might have it again

So, while we dismissed her comments, she was actually just as good at taste testing as we were! (To be fair, she would rate something a 1 and say I don’t want to have it again, while simultaneously trying to wheedle an extra piece away from one of us).