Sweet Corn & Sour Smells

Over the weekend, we went to a volunteer fire department fundraiser - an all-you-can-eat corn roast. They had pulled pork BBQ sandwiches, which were good, but Oh. My. Gosh. The corn. The corn was amazing. Fresh-picked that morning, we were told. As much as we wanted. More than we could eat. Speed-shucked, quick-cooked, and steamed to stay hot, with or without butter. (I took mine without. Totally unneccesary). I went back for thirds or something on the corn. I don't remember how many ears of corn I had, just that it was sooooooooo good. I have to get MORE CORN. I think it was the freshness that really did it.

Then, of course, we got rain. Fortunately, it was only about 1/2 hour or so, so hopefully the fundraiser didn't get rained out completely. But afterward...euchh. Outdoors now smells like slightly moldy vegetation. Down the street, where there are still really big puddles, it smells VERY sour, and mildewy. Bleachh. Hopefully things will dry out soon.

But oooohhhhh, that sweet corn. Fresh sweet corn. Yum. I gotta get me some more of that stuff.

PURSES! GO LOOK! COOL PURSES!

Hey, everybody, go check out the new cool purses at die Steppdecken des quilter!
They're all handmade by her, and she's having a contest to give one away! Go check 'em out, they're VERY much worth the look-see!

The Dot And The Line: A Romance In Lower Mathematics

More Random Stupid Food Items

The Indiana State Fair has prohibited Trans Fats at the fair this year. It's being promoted as a big deal and a "great move" because it's so much more healthy to have no trans fats in your food.

How on earth do people make decisions like these? I'm convinced this is not so much "let's make decisions toward healthier food" so much as it is "let's jump on the latest bandwagon." That's the only explanation I can think of that allows the Fair organizers to think that items such as DEEP FRIED TWINKIES, DEEP FRIED MARS BARS, DEEP FRIED REESES' CUPS, and fried Pepsi, for crying out loud, is even remotely "healthier".

Y'know, I don't think the myocardial infarction is being held off much by the lack of trans fats in THAT little combo. I really don't. And the stupid thing is, people are just gullible enough (on the whole) to think that this stuff truly is somehow "better" for them - so they'll go back for seconds and thirds.

Gimme a break. If your entire meal consists of Deep-Fried Breaded Stuff That Was Generally Junk Food To Begin With, taking out the trans fats ain't gonna make it healthy.

PLEASE, stop trying to jump on bandwagons, and make decisions that are truly better for you. Be informed! LEARN about your surroundings and the things that affect you! Then make your decisions based on INFORMATION, rather than bandwagons and sound bites.

Now that is truly good for you.

Mmmmmm.

Fresh veggies. Yum. I love fresh veggies. The stuff from the "fresh veggie" rack at the store is usually pretty good, but for the best taste ya gotta get 'em fresh from the garden.

So we were out on Saturday, wandering around the DeKalb County Courthouse in Auburn, taking pictures (which I stupidly accidentally deleted from my camera, so now we have to go back and do the pictures again) when we noticed the Farmers' Market. Hey, sez I, I'd like to go see what they have. Kevin, bless him, agreed that we could spare a few minutes to go "look". I'm sure he knew full well that it'd go from just "looking" to "um...hon, do you have any money with you?", because sure enough, when I said, "oooohhhh, look, FRESH BEANS!" he hauled out his change and said, "how much do you need?" He's so sweet.

About five dollars later, I was happily contemplating my new purchases: fresh green beans, 13 ears of fresh sweet corn, 2 tomatoes and 3 cucumbers. All of which Kev also very nicely carried back to the car for me. We had corn on the cob and chicken-n-tomato sandwiches 2 nights in a row - and shared both nights with friends. :) That was good. And I still have 4 corns left, that I took with me for the week, plus fresh beans. Guess what I'm sharing with my landlady this week?

This is NEAT.

Holdover from the GeoBash - we took some friends to "Hell's Point" in Pokagon State Park. One of them got a great pic of the stairs at Hell's Point. It looks like a tree tunnel. Very cool.

Hooray!

Well. 2 things to say "hooray!" about today.

1) It appears that the heat wave has broken, and we can turn the a/c off. Sure, it'll still be summer-warm, but at least it won't be "ohmygoshIcan'tMOVE" hot.

2) Apparently the Speedway gas stations' "Speedy Rewards Card" gets you 5 cents off per gallon immediately upon use. Yay! I saved 5 cents per gallon by using their card, and I didn't have to shop somewhere different! It's always nice saving money by doing stuff I do anyway. :D

What's in YOUR water?

Are people really this stupid? I ran across this article, wherein the authors make a big deal out of the fact that Aquafina, bottled by PepsiCo., is originally - GASP! - tap water. Apparently using a municipal water source for your water before running it through seven filters, including a reverse-osmosis filtering process, is bad.

I mean, really. The article treats it as though that's a bad thing. Where the heck did they think the water came from, Magical Water Pixies? The article also says that people just down the road from the bottling plant can get water out of their tap for far less than a bottle of Aquafina. Well, duh. Of course they can. But if they drink it straight from the tap, it's not filtered, is it? The whole "filtered" concept gets left behind in the article - it's the source that's the issue, apparently. My personal favorite is this quote:

"most people don't know that Pepsi's Aquafina, Coke's Dasani, come from our public water systems." Here's an idea: READ THE LABEL. Every single bottle of Aquafina & Dasani I've ever bought tells where it was bottled, and the source of the water. This isn't new. "Bottled in Cincinnati, OH" tells me that it was...bottled in Cinci. Probably using the Cincinnati, Ohio, water supply as the original source of the water.

It boggles my mind that people supposedly can't make this intellectual leap. Are they not reading the label at all? Did they think the water was generated on-site, with 2 giant containers of Hydrogen, a giant container of Oxygen, and some Chemist sitting there cackling maniacally? Or is this just another step toward "I don't want to think. I want the government and Large Corporate Entities to do it for me."?

Are people really buying bottled water thinking that it's some Exotic and Exciting Water From Another Place? Thinking that somehow tap water from halfway around the world tastes better than their own tap water?

If that's the case...people, you get what you deserve. I, for one, am going to go enjoy my bottled water, knowing full well it doesn't come from Magical Hydration Pixies, and not really caring that it was bottled just down the road. I like the taste. Not because it's someone else's tap water, but because it's purified and filtered. See, I can taste the chemicals in the water, and I don't like them. That's why I buy certain bottled waters. And I don't much care where the water came from, as long as it's IS purified, and not just Someone Else's Tap Water.

Read. Learn. KNOW what you're doing, how you're spending your money, and what you support! DON'T rely on everyone else to tell you what to do and how to think! If you do, you're just lazy. "You reap what you sow" isn't just a weird phrase.

Why is the grass greener?

We've all heard the phrase, "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." But why is it greener? Why do things look so good from outside? I think I've figured it out, at least from my perspective.

Things look better elsewhere because we don't have the full story. All we're seeing of any given person's situation at any given time is a "snapshot" of what it's like to be them right here, right now. Not "the work that led up to this point", not the effort put into it, not the "putting in their time", not the day-to-day drudge. We don't see any of that. All we see is the big shiny sparkly thing they have that we'd like to have, or the (perceived) lack of icky drudgy thing that we DO have.

This goes for everything, really. Other people have more vacation time than I do, for example. While I may envy their vacation time, what I don't see is that they put in time for 15 years to "earn" that amount of vacation time, or the reduced paycheck because it's unpaid, or whatever other modifications they have.

Some people think my work schedule is pretty darn good - my employer allows me to work 4 ten-hour days so I can spend an extra day with my family every week. Every Friday off? Wow, that looks great, right? Well, this too can be yours if you're willing to show up at work at 6am and work till 4 every day. And don't forget - short weeks must be made up for somehow, so sometimes there's some 12-hour days. Still sounds like the same great package? I sure do think so, but you might decide it's not as Shiny as you thought, hey?

I remember a sermon by our pastor that brought this up, only he was talking about "crosses we bear". We may look at someone else's "cross" (whatever their burden may be) and think, "Wow, I sure do wish I had that problem instead of mine. That is no problem for me! I could deal with that super easy!" Well, of course - and that precise reason is why THAT (whatever it is) isn't your burden to deal with! We don't know how difficult it is for someone else to deal with a burden, or present a Happy Face, or have that "Green Grass" - all we see is the superficial, snapshot-in-time instance of RIGHT NOW. What we see is not what really is. What we see is a small portion of what is, and we might be astonished to see what the Real Picture is. Every interaction, every bit of information, all of those things are like one little dot of paint on a canvas. Enough dots, all ganging up, can create a picture.
We have to remember that all we're seeing is a single dot. One single point in time. One single snippet of information in an otherwise busy, full life. Things are seldom as they seem. Hopefully we can remember this and realize that other peoples' burdens are not nearly as invisible, nor as easy-to-bear, as we may think.