My So Called Life

Farmers’ Market Goes Corporate

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I’ve discussed before about the farmers’ market a block or so from our place.  We go there nearly every week and 99% of the time we purchase something from the Bleeding Heart Bakerybooth.  It is a little expensive, but everything is very delicious and very unique.  We get something new every time, anything from scones to rhubarb tarts to spinach and goat cheese croissants.  I’ve never been disappointed.

The last time we went there the booth wasn’t in the normal location.  Instead a booth from the Medici, a local restaurant and bakery, was in its place.  Eventually we found the booth further down and bought something there.  This week the booth wasn’t there at all.

Now I don’t know which company is actually bigger, they might be roughly the same size.  But in terms of Hyde Park restaurants, the Medici is definitely one of the heavy weights.  I like Medici a lot and in fact I have purchased bread from their farmers’ market booth.  So this isn’t against them directly.  But, especially considering that the Medici booth is in the exact (prime) location that the Bleeding Heart booth used to occupy strikes me as a corperate muscle job.  It would really be a shame if that was the case because 1) there is room for both booths since one sells mostly bread and the other sells mostly sweets and 2) the Bleeding Heart booth had so much more original things, instead of the boring old standards at Medici.

So maybe the booth will be back next week, but if not, my opinion of Medici will really go down.

Work Stats

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I stumbled across some stats about work the other day and since I’m always wondering stuff like how many people work there, I thought it was interesting:

Campus: 1,500 acres and 99 buildings
Workforce: 8,650 employees (including students)
Budget (2007): $412M Department Of Energy + $119M non-DOE + $20 M Dept. of Homeland Security

Almost jumped out of my skin

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I was working on the couch, minding my own business.  Evie was taking a nap and Nala was napping in the window.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a bird flies into the window *TWACK* and somehow manages to grab onto the screen.  It’s flapping its wings like crazy *flip flip flip flip flip flip flip* and Nala says, “In all the windows in all the condos, you had to fly into mine” and starts meowing and leaping at the bird and batting at the window.  Finally the bird got loose and flew away.  This entire scene unfolded in about 2 seconds but let me tell you, in the silence that preceded it, I about leapt of my shorts.

Now I don’t think Nala can ever leave that window again, just in case.

My Civic Duty

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I received a summons to be a standby juror.  I’ve never been a juror before and I would kind of be excited about it, but it falls right in the middle of an upcoming vacation.  Now, I don’t want to get out of jury duty.  I know everybody wants to get out of jury duty, something so true it has become a cliche.  But I think everybody should do their part, I just wish my part didn’t have to fall during my vacation.  I am supposed to call a number the day before after 4:30 p.m. to find out if I am to show up at court at 9:30 a.m. the following day.  Obviously that wouldn’t leave much time and we would have to cut our vacation short just in case.  The crappy thing is that most people I’ve talked to that have bee standby jurors do not get called, so it would probably be for nothing.

So I called to see if I could just move my standby jury status to another week.  Not to get out of it, mind you, but to postpone it until it was more convenient.  I was prepared for them to tell me no.  I was not prepared for what actually happened.  I called the phone number and gave them my juror number all official like and explained the situation and the conversation went like this:

Me: “So I was wondering if I could postpone it, perhaps for a week.”
Official Jury Coordinator Guy: “You’re going on vacation?”
Me: “Yes”
Official Jury Coordinator Guy: “Just disregard the notice.”
Me: “Just disregard it?”
Official Jury Coordinator Guy: “Disregard it.”
Me: “Like, ignore it? I can do that?”
Official Jury Coordinator Guy: “Disregard it.”

Soooo, I guess I don’t have to worry about it?  He certainly didn’t seem to be concerned about it.  Perhaps he made a note on the computer (I did hear him typing at one point) and I will just be sent another notice, I don’t know.  Or I’ll go to jail.

As long as I’m talking about government stuff, let me say something about universal health care.  It has come up several times lately that France is a magical wonderland where doctor’in is free and everybody lives to 1000.  Sure, there are a lot of good things about the social programs in France and it is not hard to paint it in a good light.  The liberals here make the conservatives in France look like flithy communists.  But I’m here to tell you that all of the French guys I work with hate it with a passion.  The tax burden is so great in France that they couldn’t wait to get to the U.S.  I heard on NPR today that last year the health care in France was $9 billion dollars over budget.  That’s $9 billion on top of whatever considerable budget they had planned for it.  I did a quick seach and saw on pubmed that in 2000 their budget was $37 billion.  I’m sure that has gone up quite a bit in the last 8 years.

So I’m not saying our health care system isn’t broke and I’m not saying universal health care isn’t the way to go, but I am saying that we would have to come up with at least $50 billion a year to start with to cover it.  Factor in how much it is going to increase every year as health care naturally gets more expensive and add that to the war and Social Security and tell me how we are going to pay for that?  More taxes and a lot of them and then we end up where France ended up.  The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

2 – 11, 3 – 4, 4 – 232

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I haven’t had a chance to update lately.  Of course a lot has happened, we celebrated another month with Evie, our anniversary, and of course, the birth of our nation.

For our part, we went camping for a 4 day weekend.  The camping went about as well as could be expected.  We were a little nervous since we have 2 more camping trips coming up this summer.  It rained once when we first got there and our tent leaked, but there was some time before we went to bed and it dried a little bit.  The rest of the time, the weather was great.  The bugs weren’t too bad and the campsite was decent.  We mostly avoided the sun, although I did have two funny red knees from where I sat in the sun talking for too long and got burned between where my shorts ended and my legs bent down at the knee.  Evie slept surprisingly well, including sleeping right through an impromptu fireworks display right outside our tent that kept Sara and I awake. 

In general, Evie loved camping.  She enjoyed being outside, she enjoyed the swimming and she enjoyed all of the people, but most of all she enjoyed the walking.  She is not walking on her own yet, but she moves quite well when she has something to hold on to.  When we were camping there was an endless loop of lawn chairs, picnic tables, outstretched hands, etc. for her to walk and walk and walk around, from sun up to sun down.  She probably improved her walking skills more in 3 days than in the previous 2 weeks.

The only bad thing that happened was that Evie got sick.  She had an elevated temperature (the doctor insists it wasn’t high enough to call it a fever) and she would periodically throw up.  But when she wasn’t doing that, she was in a pretty good mood so it was hard to know what to do about it exactly.  Actually, the one who got the worst of it was Anna who took a stream of vomit full in the mouth!  Yes, you read that right.

After we got home, the first night was pretty rough as Evie tried to re-adjust to things around here.  That was just the warm up though for the next day.  Sara caught whatever Evie had and got as sick as I’ve ever seen anybody.  She literally could not keep down a sip of water.  In addition Evie was still throwing up, so it was somewhat disastrous around here.  So far I have not gotten sick.  My stomach felt a little uneasy here and there, but I’m hoping it was just paranoia from being around sick people.  We seem to be through the worst of it (assuming I don’t get sick) so perhaps they will not have to paint a big skull and crossbones on the front of our house and quarantine us as a plague house.

Although, it wasn’t all doom and gloom, there were a few silver linings.  For example, Sara lost 7 pounds in about 10 hours!  She doesn’t recommend it as a weight loss program.