31 July 2008

The Last Day

It's not the last day we're in the United States, but it's Mike's last day of French class and my last day of work. There's no turning back now! We have to move to Burundi because that's where our jobs are.

I'm going to miss my job. I've been doing it for so many years now it's a daily habit. And a good one. I like my job. And I'm leaving it under such unusual circumstances. I'm not fired or quitting because I'm unhappy. I'm not outgrowing it and moving on to a bigger and better position. I'm not leaving to have kids. When I moved across the country they let me telecommute, so even when I left the city I didn't leave the job.

I'm ending the job now because, I guess, this particular job is an inconvenience for me to keep doing in Burundi. We won't have reliable internet in our house which makes the job impossible to do. Work is an inconvenience. What a crazy notion.

I think I'm going to feel like I'm just on vacation from my job until I wake up in Burundi to my new life. It hasn't quite hit me yet that tomorrow's going to be any different from any other Friday.

29 July 2008

Fatigue and Good-byes

We're tired. Again last night we didn't sleep well, but that's just one small part of it.

We're tired of living transitionally. We're tired of waiting to move. We're tired of all our belongings being in storage. Living in D.C. has been fun but we're tired of taking advantage of the fun stuff. Our stomachs are tired of so much restaurant food.

We're tired of dealing with the airlines and the cats. Why is it so hard and why won't customer service actually serve customers?

We're tired of all the errands. We're tired of doctor and dentist and vet appointments. And they're not finished yet. We have something scheduled for nearly every day from now until we leave, either shopping or a visit to some sort of waiting room.

We haven't even started packing yet. That will be a different kind of tired next week.

I'm not tired of saying good-bye though. I still have a little glow leftover from our weekend in Rhode Island. A friend from high school was in D.C. visiting last weekend. Last night we had dinner with my aunt, my cousin, her husband, and their brand-new, two-weeks-old-tomorrow baby girl. The next time I see her she's going to look a lot different. Sometimes the actual travel is a chore and the time that visiting takes away from the moving preparations causes a tinge of anxiety, but actually making that connection with people has become important to me. I don't want to zoom out of town and say good-bye with a mass email. I want to say good-bye in person.

28 July 2008

24 Hours on Mefloquine

Mike and I took our first malaria pills yesterday morning after breakfast. Despite all the horror stories we've heard about the side effects, neither of us suffered too much. I had a headache most of the day but there were several factors that could have contributed to it. The most annoying thing for me was that I was exhausted but couldn't fall asleep last night. (OMG anxiety and insomnia!) Finally after one o'clock I dozed off and stayed asleep until about six this morning. This morning Mike said he had the vivid, psychedelic dreams last night and didn't sleep well. (It makes sense: He has some pretty weird dreams to begin with and I rarely remember having any dreams at all.)

We both agree that our side effects haven't impaired our abilities to function normally. After all they hype, I'm relieved it's not so bad. But we'll see what happens next Sunday. Will the side effects continue throughout the week or are they strongest on the day you take the pill? Does the medicine build up over time, causing the side effects to get worse? Is this my anxiety taking over?

24 July 2008

The Last September You'll Ever See

The newest, albeit lame, James Bond flick? No. It's what Mike and I were discussing on an early run this morning (which we grudgingly dragged ourselves out of bed for). The heat and humidity have lifted in D.C.--temporarily at least. When we stepped outside I remarked that it kind of felt like September rather than the oppressive August weather we've been having. Mike said "Enjoy it while you can," and it dawned on me that soon we'll be leaving behind seasons as we know them. Instead of spring, summer, winter, and fall, we'll have steady temperatures with dry, less dry, wet, and wetter seasons. (When do I need to plant my pumpkin seeds in order to have jack o'lanterns for Halloween?)

We're still running around shopping like crazy.

This weekend we start our malaria pills, an affair that will last until four weeks after we finally leave Burundi.

Next week we're squeezing in as many "one last visits" with local friends as possible.

We tackled my family last weekend and will tackle Mike's on our last weekend.

Our last week is all scheduled with the cats' vet appointments and our packout dates. (Yesterday I was insane with panic because none of those dates were set yet; today it's all taken care of.)

It's about this time in the moving process that I've learned to turn on autopilot and just read my calendar and do what it tells me without thinking too much. Could it be I'm finally getting used to this?

21 July 2008

Home Again, Home Again...

Jiggity-jig.

We're home from our long weekend in Rhode Island. And our even longer train ride home. The weekend was great--sun, sand, surf, happy kids running around, happy grown-ups chatting and eating good food. We picked a good weekend to go. So many of my family members were in town for summer vacation that we got to have one last visit with a lot of people.

The train ride home was not the perfect ending to a perfect weekend though. We got on near the beginning of the line, in Kingston, Rhode Island (the train starts in Boston and I think there are 2 or 3 stops before Kingston), and the train was already 10 minutes late.

And crowded. The only two seats we found together were a table in the club car. We were okay with that. For a while it was so novel to be sitting at a table. Mike spread out his French stuff and studied. We could eat and drink without fear of spilling in our laps.

But the train kept getting later and later. It stopped to rescue some passengers from a local train that had broken down just north of New Haven. It proceeded to make the rest of the local stops until New Haven. Then in New York and Philadelphia the trains were single-tracked, so we were just sitting there not moving. We were supposed to get in around 9:30 last night. We got home at midnight.

Today we're exhausted from our 9 hours of sitting. Mike's at class this morning and I'll be working this afternoon but as far as our Burundi preparations go, we're on vacation for one more day.

15 July 2008

Bye-Bye NaBloPoMo

Well, there goes my NaBloPoMo streak. Sunday I posted at What I Eat but yesterday I didn't post anywhere. In the morning I was busy with errands (including getting my last vaccinations and my malaria pills). In the afternoon I was busy with working. Last night I was busy with going out to eat then going through piles of old papers and mail then reading a bit before bed. I'd rather break the streak than post just for the sake of posting. Plus I'm probably not bringing my laptop to Rhode Island this weekend so wouldn't have been posting anyway.

12 July 2008

Just a Quick Note

I debated not doing a NaBloPoMo post today and ruining my streak because some days there are more important things than blog posting. And I'm most likely going to be derailed when I go to Rhode Island later this week anyway. My brain did plenty of work today without crafting a post, thank you very much.

But I have a few minutes to kill while waiting for George's King of Falafel and Cheese Steak to deliver some totally yummy hummus and grape leaves and other tasty treats for dinner. Mike zipped out to find an ATM. I'm about 7 sips into a new gluten-free beer, Green's Endeavour. What else can I do but check out the online world for a bit?

We had another busy day of consumables shopping. We tackled wine and beer, cat stuff, the Asian grocery store, and a few toiletries that we couldn't find at Costco. Plus two trips to the storage unit. We are spent. Toward the end of the outing, as I was wilted and getting close to a meltdown, I reminded myself that in four weeks I'll be a million miles from any suburban shopping center and that will be a great reward if I can just get through it now. I perked up a bit and just kept shopping.

11 July 2008

Bookworm -- Summer Reading Meme

So there's this list going around of 100 great books. It's supposedly from the National Endowment for the Arts as part of their Big Read project, encouraging people to read classic literature. It's perfect for people like me who like to show off how many books they've read. :)

(I should mention that I can't actually find this list at the NEA website. I've copied it from other blogs. Seems like a good list though.)

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (I'm going to ** the books I love. Underlining is a PITA on blogger.)
4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. **Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. **To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I own these and haven't gotten around to finishing them.)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read a good portion of his works, probably more than half.)
15. **Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (I just received this from PaperBackSwap.)
22. **The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. **The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (I'm surprised this is on the list. One of the worst books I've ever read.)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I also received this one recently from PaperBackSwap.)
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. **Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (I read Portrait of an Artist and tried this one, but I'll never finish it.)
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. **The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. **Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. **Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. **Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read almost half the list. I'm secure in my reading confidence to know that I don't have to read some of those that are considered classics or modern classics. Some of the more recently published books on the list, like Da Vinci Code, Memoirs of a Geisha, and The Kite Runner are books that didn't blow me away. I should just face the fact that I'm not a huge fan of popular fiction. I try, but it doesn't always work out for me.

(Um, that last paragraph is kind of a disaster. I'm still taking a low dose of codeine for my tooth.)

10 July 2008

Burundi Catches the Exercise Bug

I came across this article today from South Africa's Mail & Guardian Online: Athletic Escapism in Burundi. We've heard that there are walking and hiking clubs for touring the hills around the city. But it sounds amazing to see all these people meeting on the beach for socializing and aerobics.
This particular 2km stretch of beach regularly welcomes hundreds of young and old Burundians who've caught the exercise craze. But the rest of the city will also be buzzing with citizens walking in groups belonging to the 20 or so sport clubs, or with family and friends.

We've also heard of an equestrian club and we're looking forward to learning to ride horses. The hills around the city will be great training for Kilimanjaro. According to the article there's also karate lessons. The city seems to be a workout paradise.

I wonder why that is? Burundians are poor and civil-war weary. You'd think they'd be concerned with survival. But it seems that exercise and socializing has become part of that survival instinct. They are relieving stress and staying healthy. A Bujumbura aerobics instructor theorizes:
"People lacked things to do during the war as all work stopped. A lot of people started to exercise to pass time and when they started to meet regularly, that's when many clubs were formed. This was an activity to rid them of negative thoughts."

In other Burundian athlete news, Burundi sent its first athletes to the Olympics in 1996 and one of their runners won the gold medal in the men's 5,000-meter race (1). What an exciting Olympic debut! Burundi has sent a handful of runners and swimmers to the Summer Olympics ever since (2). They are slated to send some athletes this year but I haven't found any information on which events they'll be competing in. We'll be arriving in Burundi during the first weekend of the Olympics. It should be a lot of fun to watch them there.

(1) Burundi's First Olympics Ends with a Gold Medal
(2)
Burundi at the Olympics

09 July 2008

No More Brain Function -- A Meme

Vicky at Mummy Chronicles tagged me ages ago and I think I'm just tired enough to do this now.

The rules: Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

What was I doing ten years ago?
In the summer of 1998 I had just graduated college, started my first job, and moved into my first apartment. It was quite a tumultuous, transitional time, as it is for many early-twentysomethings.

What are five (non-work) things on my to-do list for today:
1. Try on some shoes I ordered from Zappos about two months ago so I can either put them away or send them back
2. Find a place to store the 6 boxes of Amazon.com groceries that are supposed to be delivered today
3. Recover from my wisdom tooth extraction
4. Return some personal emails
5. Watch Project Runway reruns while they're on Bravo this morning since I won't have Bravo in Burundi

Five Snacks I Enjoy:
1. Chocolate
2. Ice Cream
3. Cheese
4. Fruit
5. Nachos

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. Pay off my parents' mortgages and repay them for my student loans
2. Buy a big piece of land and build my and Mike's dream home
3. Travel
4. Give to or start my own charities... I'm not sure what kinds though. Maybe I'd start some sort of grant or scholarship fund. (Like George Costanza once said, "I could be a kick-ass philanthropist!")

Places I have lived:
1. Hope Valley, RI
2. Bridgeport, CT
3. San Diego, CA
4. Arlington, VA
5. Walnut Creek, CA
6. Falls Church, VA
7. Washington, D.C.

Jobs I have had:
1. Ice cream scooper at a Ben & Jerry's near the beach
2. Cleaned rooms at a crummy motel (not the same as Vicky's, but it's next-town-over equivalent)
3. Filed things for a professor as my college work-study job
4. Children's book editorial assistant
5. Children's book writer
6. Various other proofreading, editing, and publishing related jobs
7. Sales associate at a book store (awesome job, by the way, if you like books and working for slightly more than minimum wage)
7. Currently, editorial assistant for a medical journal

Now I'm supposed to tag other bloggers, but I'm not going to do that. Just about anyone I know who'd want to do this meme has already done it. But I will suggest a few awesome blogs, some I've been a long-time reader of, some I recently discovered:

The Mummy Chronicles
Becoming a Fiction Writer
Easier than Scrapbooking
Inder Loves Folk Art
Moxie Tonic
Travel Betty
A Catalog of Bitch

Check out these lovely ladies and enjoy!

Soft Foods

My tooth extraction went better than I expected it to yesterday. After six pokes in five different spots, the doctor finally got the anesthesia IV into me. "That's weird," is not something you want your doctor to say while he's poking you with needles, but that's what he said, several times. Despite my veins being large and close to the surface he just couldn't get the needle in properly. I agreed that that is weird, because no one ever has any trouble drawing blood from me. Eventually he got it though and I dozed off. When I woke up a little while later it was all done. It was apparently a very easy extraction and I was a good patient. I rested for a few minutes, dusted some bloody tooth pieces off my shirt (the nurse acted like that was normal, so I didn't worry), and then Mike appeared to take me home.

They gave me novocain on top of the anesthesia. Luckily the novocain gave Mike plenty of time to get my pain reliever prescription from CVS. The pain reliever is pretty mild, and the pain is milder than I expected. I'm seeping a normal amount of blood, no gushing. I'm not nauseous from any of the drugs. By the time the novocain wore off I was quite hungry. Since I was approved a soft foods diet rather than all liquid I dove into a bowl of hot cereal, then nibbled some cheese. Mike made me a fruit smoothie before I went to bed (and there's enough left over for breakfast this morning).

I certainly feel better than I thought I would. Not great, but not terrible. I slept through one of my pain pills last night and I take it as a good sign that I wasn't in enough pain to wake up for it. I told Mike I feel good enough to probably putter around the house today and return a few work emails. But I'm supposed to get three more vaccinations today and I'm going to put those off until tomorrow or Friday. I'm in no mood to walk around and talk to people and then get stuck with more needles.

08 July 2008

No Food for You

I'm getting my wisdom tooth out today instead of later in the month as originally planned. I can't have anything to eat or drink this morning except for some giant pills I need to take an hour before the procedure. I'm usually not that hungry first thing in the morning but of course I am today since I can't have anything.

I've been thinking that it's not fair that we have to choose doctors and procedures based on insurance coverage. Lately I've felt that my teeth are a business opportunity for someone and maybe my health isn't really the issue. I had consultations with two oral surgeons. The one that I liked, who talked to me for a while and whose office staff made me feel comfortable and right at home, is not covered by our insurance. The surgeon who is covered by our insurance... sitting in his waiting room is like being at a cattle auction or something. A bunch of us were herded in and left to sit there and when I was finally called in I was showed a five-minute video about the procedure and then the surgeon talked to me for about two minutes, cramming in a lot of information about everything that could go wrong and not giving a lot of assurance that it will probably be okay. When it comes down to insurance or no insurance, $100 or $1700, I really didn't have a choice.

I just keep telling myself it's a common procedure that happens all the time so the odds of wrong-doing are slim.

07 July 2008

We consume.

We started buying our consumables in earnest last week. This is our haul from Costco. We made it through toiletries and some kitchen and cleaning stuff before our cart was too heavy to push and it occurred to us we only have one car and can only carry so much stuff home. We have a list and for the most part we stuck to it. Also we have time to do a bit of comparison shopping and buy some of our preferred brands at other stores if Costco doesn't have them. It's all sort of a puzzle. We need X amount of stuff as cheaply and from as few stores as possible, but for some items we're willing to pay a tad more to get a specific brand.

Aside from the toiletries and cleaning products from Costco we also placed a gigantic order with Amazon.com Groceries. They have bulk discounts on, surprisingly, most of the gluten-free foods I eat on a regular basis. My favorite crackers, cookies, and pasta plus some of the Bob's Red Mill baking mixes are available for much cheaper than specifically gluten-free shopping sites. Who knew that something as mainstream as Amazon.com could be such a gluten-free paradise? If you shop smartly and choose only items from Amazon and not outside sellers, you'll get free shipping on all of it, too.

(And while we were at Amazon we couldn't resist adding a few DVDs to our order.)

We'll have a yard with enough room for a garden, so we ordered seeds for some of our favorite vegetables that we might not be able to buy fresh there. As adults, neither of us have lived in a place where we can have gardens (except for a small patch of tomatoes at one place) and we're looking forward to having one. Apparently the soil is very fertile and any plant that likes sun and water will do well.

We also bought gallons of facial products from The Body Shop and I placed an Arbonne order with Vicky for all the sunblock I'll need.

Next we have to focus on the cats. They, also, need two years' worth of their favorite food and litter. Man, that's going to be heavy.

We know that we have to ignore the current economy and think ahead. All this stuff we're buying is an investment. We'll be happy with our preferred brands and favorite foods and life will be a little bit easier. Life will be different enough, and hard at times, without worrying about running out to CVS for deodorant (and CVS, of course, doesn't exist in Bujumbura). If we were to run out to the European grocery store American brands of cereal could cost upwards of $15 a box, so it's in our best financial interest to bring some with us (local brands have little to no quality control). But with all the rational thought behind it, it's still very weird to be shopping for the future like this.

06 July 2008

I Achieve 24 Hours in Nature

We made it! As Mike told my dad, nature threw its shallowest streams and lightest rains at us and we prevailed. It was a hard hike with a heavy pack and using trekking poles for the first time. But all the equipment worked and we stayed warm and dry all night long.

The scenery was gorgeous. I wish I hadn't been so afraid of falling in the river so I could have enjoyed it a bit more. The trail is little-used and not blazed. You basically go upriver to the falls and downriver to the parking lot. The trail goes along the river, then abruptly ends, and you have to wander around in the river a bit, sometimes crossing it, to find the trail again. This happens several times.

Once I got my feet wet and got over not wanting to get them wet, the hike was a bit easier. After a while I figured out how to use the poles to my advantage, too. And while my pack wasn't so uncomfortable that it made me sore, it was heavy enough to change my center of balance and I was still struggling with that on the hike out this morning. Balance isn't my strong point anyway.

Mike has a new camp stove, and it was awesome. We fried potatoes and onions last night and heated up sausage and beans. It was such a good camping dinner. This morning we made hot cereal and Mike tried out a new doodad that turns his waterbottle into a coffeepot. It was great.

Now we are lounging at home, exhausted now that we've had the chance to stop and think about it. But I'm glad I did this night out in the woods. It was a good test of our gear and it made me even more eager to climb Kilimanjaro.

We forgot the battery for the camera, so there's no photographic evidence of our trip, unfortunately.

05 July 2008

Off we go

Just a quick cup of joe before we head out to St. Mary's Wilderness in George Washington National Forest. This is my first attempt at backpack camping. My pack's kind of heavy and I haven't even added all my snacks yet. But I have to do this in order to find out if I can do it for Kilimanjaro.

04 July 2008

Bad News for Chickens in Burundi

I was ready to take food waste and shortages off my mind and also not worry about Burundi today, but my Google blog searcher was not:
Burundi: Untreatable Disease Kills 1000 Chicken
"The disease has also been reported in other parts of the country but total numbers of dead chickens are not [yet] available," the director of the Animal Health Department in the Ministry of Agriculture and Stockbreeding, Pierre Bukuru, told IRIN.

"With the pandemic among the chickens, the population will face a significant lack of animal proteins and many people will suffer from the shortage, as chicken is widely raised and consumed in Burundi," he added.

Bukuru said the illness, which has similar symptoms to Newcastle Disease, was affecting the economic lives of people raising chickens or trading in meat and eggs.

"Egg production has dropped by 80 percent," he said.

He added that the meat of infected chickens did not pose a threat to human health as long as it was well-cooked.

Obviously this is not good news for Burundians. Their crops are already being destroyed by flooding rains and civil war flare-ups. It's a country that sustains itself on farming, with many families raising their own food and selling what's leftover. But if there's not even enough for themselves to eat, there's going to be very little income coming in from sales.

I asked a colleague who's been in Bujumbura for a few months now what the rising food prices are like. He said it's very hard for average Burundians but prices on staple items like sugar are still quite cheap for Americans. He said Americans there aren't worrying too much about it yet. The best we can do is to keep buying local meats and produce to keep those families in business. (We've heard the meat and fruit are spectacular and we can't wait to get over there and eat some for ourselves.)

(Image from The Poultry Site.)

03 July 2008

Wasted Food

This morning I discovered the Wasted Food blog. If you have anything lurking in your refrigerator, you will feel guilty after reading a bit of this blog. We try to eat the leftovers but it turns out there is no try, only do. Trying will not actually clean out the fridge and prevent food from being thrown out. Think about how much money you're spending on that food (and the gas it may have taken you to get to the store) every time you throw it away uneaten.

And then think about one reason some of those food prices are so high: The farms, processors, and wholesalers are throwing away food before it even gets to your store. If the banana is too straight or the cucumber is too curved, they don't make it to market. In the U.K., a fruit stand owner was forced to throw away thousands of kiwi fruit because the EU deemed it was too small to sell, by about 1 millimeter in diameter (full story at MailOnline).

I feel ill thinking about all the food and money we've wasted over the years. Apparently when we get to Burundi, if we have domestic help, they'll just take any food that we're getting ready to throw away. Americans can afford to waste food, but Burundians cannot. For most families, every scrap is prized.

Is there really a global food shortage or is the food just not distributed evenly around the world? Remember the rice scare a few weeks back, when it was big news that warehouse stores like Costco were limiting customers to five bags of rice? (Um, an inflated story to drive people to stores to buy stuff, anyone?) Well, aren't we lucky that there was enough in stock that five bags per customer were available? In parts of Asia and Africa riots broke out because families couldn't even buy one bag.

01 July 2008

I Can Eat Again

The swelling is down. My mumps appear to be nearly all cleared up. I think I'm back on solid foods, at least for this morning until I go to my next dentist appointment.

I know this is kind of a lame post for my first day of NaBloPoMo, but I'm very hungry right now and very busy today so wanted to get this taken care of early.