Last weekend, Jesse and I went to Las Vegas. We stayed at the Monte Carlo and had a great time! Too many things to say so I'll just make some points.
1. Flying to Vegas is much easier than driving to Vegas.
2. It's really funny that in the morning there are only senior citizens roaming around in restaurants and the casinos. Everyone else is still sleeping.
3. People can walk around Vegas almost naked and it's ok.
4. Jesse and I took a Gondola ride inside the Venetian, which is something I've always wanted to do.
5. I love pigging out in Vegas. We went to the Bellagio buffet and had so much food. I loved their Lemon Merengue Pie, it was delicious. Jesse liked there little cheesecake.
6. On Sunday, I ran 5.9 miles in 57 minutes and 32 seconds from the outskirts of Vegas to almost downtown. I started running the in darkness of the morning around 5:15 a.m. and ran as the sun rose over some far off mountains. It was really pretty.
7. I usually run with an MP3 player but I couldn't during with it on this run so I was trying to sing in my mind or I had randomn thoughts to keep myself busy. I had been up since 4 am on Saturday morning so I was running on adrenalin and Mountain Dew.
8. Jesse got to ride in the follow van with the Chief of the IRS.
9. We saw Joakim Noah, from the Chicago Bulls surrounded by seven hot girls at the Palms. He was really, really tall.
10. Vegas is its own little world. I like it and so does my hubby.
Will post some pictures soon.
Melissa
Friday, April 25, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The Omnivore's Dilemma
WARNING: LONG AND SEMI-POLITICAL POST AHEAD!!
I'm about halfway through a book called the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen. I was going to post my general thoughts on it when I was done, but it turns out that the book is far too interesting to leave it at that. The book is about food, what we eat, why we eat it and some of the potential consequences. I'm going to try to distill what I've learned so far into short, easy to understand thoughts.
Some time in the first world war a German scientist (Haber) trying to build bombs without the need from nitrates from Chile developed a way to artificially fix nitrogen, and make explosives artificially. Fixing nitrogen is something that has to happen for the nitrogen to be useful to plants growing in the soil. Usually animal feces or some kinds of plants do this in nature, which is why crops get cycled in tradiational agriculture. Anyway, this was a process by which a farmer could continuously grow the same thing on the same land.
Some time either just pre or just post cold war there was a depression and subsequent rise in the price of corn. As the effects of this rippled through the economy the government stepped in and began to stabilize, and then subsidize corn prices. The results of this led to the production of corn and nothing but corn (and some soybeans) by most farms in America's breadbasket, because you were guarenteed money by corn. The variety of corn produced by these Iowa cornfields isn't edible, it's just really starchy and provides the most calorie per square foot of any other grain or grass, that's why the grow it as opposed to other things.
So there's a big corn surplus that the food industry needed to find something to do with, so they started breaking it down and making high fructose corn syrup, glucose, ethanol, xanthan gum, corn starch, and animal feed.
This is where it gets a little wierd and nasty in my estimation. A steer's lifespan is 1200 lbs, slaughter weight. The natural diet of cattle is grass, they're rumen's, which means they can break down and digest the sugars in grass, corn is actually poisonous to them. Corn, as mentioned above in unparalleled in it's calorie density, so cows are brought up to weight with a diet of mostly corn and antibiotics as well as feed additives (inculding other cow bits). The idea being to get the cow fat enough to slaughter before it get's too sick.
What's the point and who cares you may ask fairly enough, if it's got protein, carbohydrates and fat, the macronutrients, then you're set. The thing is: you are what you eat, and you are what you eat eats too. Our meat eats corn, our soda is 100% corn, most preservatives we use in food come from corn. This leaves our diets remarkably lacking in most everything but corn, there's little to no 'biodiversity' in our diets.
Organic farming helps a little bit in this, since organic meats eat organic food (food not fetilized by Haber-ized nitrates, or with pesticides used on them). Pesticides and other ways we 'help' plants make them weak and low on all the vitamins and minerals that make plants good for us. Anyway, when an organically raised steer eats his food, he's getting a better deal in terms of nutrients than standarly raised steer. There's a lot more to say on this, but I don't want to go on too long.
The next bit is something that Al Gore spoke to a little while ago and was roundly ridiculed for, which is that eating meat contributes more to global warming than driving. Even if you don't believe in man-made global warming a reasonable person would certainly cede that America needs to get off foreign oil, or at least help the sky to be less brown. The reason I bring this up is 20% or the fuel used in the US is used to get food from one place to another, that's a lot. Certainly it takes a lot of fuel to get corn from silos in Iowa to feed-lots in Kansas, and meat from Kansas to most of the midwest, or California, where some of it ends up.
I don't want to fault people for what they eat, if the food is available and it tastes good to them and that's what they want to eat then that's their right. I'm certainly not going to start a new People's Park and stick it to the man, but the half of this book I've read so far has put a number of stones in my shoes in regards to how I eat. I curious now about buying local foods, and buying organic foods, not to mention trying some grass-fed beef. Anyway, buy the book and read the book, it's facinating.
I'm about halfway through a book called the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen. I was going to post my general thoughts on it when I was done, but it turns out that the book is far too interesting to leave it at that. The book is about food, what we eat, why we eat it and some of the potential consequences. I'm going to try to distill what I've learned so far into short, easy to understand thoughts.
Some time in the first world war a German scientist (Haber) trying to build bombs without the need from nitrates from Chile developed a way to artificially fix nitrogen, and make explosives artificially. Fixing nitrogen is something that has to happen for the nitrogen to be useful to plants growing in the soil. Usually animal feces or some kinds of plants do this in nature, which is why crops get cycled in tradiational agriculture. Anyway, this was a process by which a farmer could continuously grow the same thing on the same land.
Some time either just pre or just post cold war there was a depression and subsequent rise in the price of corn. As the effects of this rippled through the economy the government stepped in and began to stabilize, and then subsidize corn prices. The results of this led to the production of corn and nothing but corn (and some soybeans) by most farms in America's breadbasket, because you were guarenteed money by corn. The variety of corn produced by these Iowa cornfields isn't edible, it's just really starchy and provides the most calorie per square foot of any other grain or grass, that's why the grow it as opposed to other things.
So there's a big corn surplus that the food industry needed to find something to do with, so they started breaking it down and making high fructose corn syrup, glucose, ethanol, xanthan gum, corn starch, and animal feed.
This is where it gets a little wierd and nasty in my estimation. A steer's lifespan is 1200 lbs, slaughter weight. The natural diet of cattle is grass, they're rumen's, which means they can break down and digest the sugars in grass, corn is actually poisonous to them. Corn, as mentioned above in unparalleled in it's calorie density, so cows are brought up to weight with a diet of mostly corn and antibiotics as well as feed additives (inculding other cow bits). The idea being to get the cow fat enough to slaughter before it get's too sick.
What's the point and who cares you may ask fairly enough, if it's got protein, carbohydrates and fat, the macronutrients, then you're set. The thing is: you are what you eat, and you are what you eat eats too. Our meat eats corn, our soda is 100% corn, most preservatives we use in food come from corn. This leaves our diets remarkably lacking in most everything but corn, there's little to no 'biodiversity' in our diets.
Organic farming helps a little bit in this, since organic meats eat organic food (food not fetilized by Haber-ized nitrates, or with pesticides used on them). Pesticides and other ways we 'help' plants make them weak and low on all the vitamins and minerals that make plants good for us. Anyway, when an organically raised steer eats his food, he's getting a better deal in terms of nutrients than standarly raised steer. There's a lot more to say on this, but I don't want to go on too long.
The next bit is something that Al Gore spoke to a little while ago and was roundly ridiculed for, which is that eating meat contributes more to global warming than driving. Even if you don't believe in man-made global warming a reasonable person would certainly cede that America needs to get off foreign oil, or at least help the sky to be less brown. The reason I bring this up is 20% or the fuel used in the US is used to get food from one place to another, that's a lot. Certainly it takes a lot of fuel to get corn from silos in Iowa to feed-lots in Kansas, and meat from Kansas to most of the midwest, or California, where some of it ends up.
I don't want to fault people for what they eat, if the food is available and it tastes good to them and that's what they want to eat then that's their right. I'm certainly not going to start a new People's Park and stick it to the man, but the half of this book I've read so far has put a number of stones in my shoes in regards to how I eat. I curious now about buying local foods, and buying organic foods, not to mention trying some grass-fed beef. Anyway, buy the book and read the book, it's facinating.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Two Years!
Jesse and I celebrated our two year anniversary last week. I think we liked being married to each other. Nothing too exciting going on in our lives, just the daily surprises of our crazy dog Rocky. One thing I guess we both have learned about each other is that we are really violent when we are sleeping. Apparently Jesse can't stop elbowing me in my chest/back and head butting me in the night, and I can't stop punching him in the back and biting his shoulder. Violent dreamers...
Melissa
Monday, April 07, 2008
exercising
I almost met pukie today, second time in the last year, I don't know if that means I'm working too hard, or not hard enough.
In other news, if you're not doing pullups you should definitely start.
In other news, if you're not doing pullups you should definitely start.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Project 86
Project 86 is going to grace us with their presence again (or at least grace Sacramento), so we're driving up April 12th to Orangevale, Ca to see them. Let me know if you're interested.
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