The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

• Geeky Traveller - A Travel Blog for Nerds | The Geek Shall Inhabit the Earth
  (tags: blogs geek travel advice)

• Denim Therapy
  When I start buying expensive jeans, I’ll know where to have them repaired.
  (tags: denim jeans repair clothing)

Hey! Bloggers! If you’re going to switch to using Feedburner feeds in place of those auto-generated by your blogging software, and if you’re going to turn off your redirects to the new feed, can you PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND GOOD put an announcement on your blog BEFORE the change? So that those of us who are subscribed to your old feed URL know what happened? And don’t have to wait until we realize we haven’t seen any posts from you in a while before we go looking for your feed all over again? ‘Cause if you wait until after the change is complete to tell us, we’re not going to see the announcement.

Yeah, that’s right, I’m looking at you, Recruiting.com and Jarvis.

Tom knows Ben Domenech better than I do, but I know Ben to be smart, funny, a fine poker player, and generous with his tickets to Crosby, Stills, & Nash. 

So with all this Washington Post/”Red America” shitstorm going on, I’d just like to say one thing:

How many of my friend Ben’s detractors would think it were fair and reasonable if they were judged for their own lapses in judgment during their college years?*  Because I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t want their bosses- past, present and future- to form their opinions of the people they are now based on the people they were then.  People who live in glass houses, y’all.

*The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net does not condone plagiarism any more than she condones underage binge drinking, drunk driving, promiscuity, illegal drug use, stealing your best friend’s girl, hazing, puking in your roommate’s closet, or any of the other stupid shit you did in college.

• PHP for Beginners - By a Beginner
  (tags: php geek tutorial programming reference)
• Geek to Live: Mastering Wget - Lifehacker
  (tags: wget unix tools geek howto)
• Buttered Noodles with Eggs
  mmm, comfort food
  (tags: recipe cooking noodles eggs)

• Reason: Absolution in Your Cup: The real meaning of Fair Trade coffee by Kerry Howley
  Why Fair Trade Coffee is a lie
  (tags: coffee fair_trade starbucks economics)
• Is Whole Foods Wholesome? - The dark secrets of the organic-food movement. By Field Maloney
  Why organic produce is also kind of a lie
  (tags: food organic wholefoods)

Interesting article in the Post today about how recipe writers are having to dumb-down their instructions for people who never learned to cook.

The cookbook writers act like the sky is falling, but really, it’s to be expected. Almost throughout human history, food preparation was the work of the woman of the house, so there’s 50% of the population who never learned much about cooking to begin with. The time women spend on their economic contribution to the household has moved out of the house in the last 50 years, meaning they have less time to be near to their kitchens. The market has responded by making meals a matter of pulling a box or bag out of the freezer and heating up the contents, so for the last generation or two, we’ve had the unique situation of it being possible for children to grow up having never helped their parents prepare a meal. Cooking is no longer a matter of necessity, it’s now a hobby. The people who know how to cook now are people who have chosen to learn it because they enjoy it.

On the other hand, with every kind of diet-related disease on the rise, this isn’t the ideal state of affairs. Convenience food is full of trans fats, sodium, sugars, and all sorts of preservatives and color additives that, while technically edible, don’t contribute much nutritionally and interfere with the flavors of the ingredients. Ew. It’s crap, and this is what people are feeding themselves instead of learning to make their own food.

So we cook more, to make sure we eat better. I don’t remember the last time I bought frozen, prepared food other than french fries. Since deciding to do all our cooking together, Tom and I have found that we go out for dinner a lot less. Partly it’s that cooking time is couple time for us, and partly it’s that what we cook is often better than what we can get if we go out.

So get a friend to start cooking with you. Watch Food Network. Take a class. Read the recipes on the sides of the food packages. Your body will thank you for it.

As requested, and in honor of both my 1 pound loss and the iPod nano Tom gave me as an anniversary present, here’s my current workout playlist for your aerobic enjoyment.

1. Back to the Earth - Rusted Root (starts out nice and slow, suitable for warmup stretches, and then picks up to a good pace for treadmill or elliptical exercise)
2. A Little Respect - Erasure (these first two were used as warmup music in my high school dance classes, so they put me in an exercising mood)
3. Jump Around - House of Pain
4. Tell Me When - Human League
5. Somebody Told Me (Thriftshop’s Killer Remix) - The Killers
6. Nth Degree - Morningwood
7. Who’s to Blame - Ozomatli feat. Chali 2na
8. Joote de Do Paise Le Lo - Lata Mangeshkar, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam (Bollywood song, I’m told it’s about hiding the couple’s shoes before their wedding. It’s a tidge slower than the previous songs, because this is about the point where I’m hitting the cool down on the elliptical.)
9. Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
10. Let Me Entertain You - Robbie Williams
    

I don’t know if it’s just the gym or if it’s that the gym is making me more conscious about what I eat, but for anyone who’s interested…

I’ve lost a pound since last week.

Four years ago, Tom and I went on our first date.  And this is the last year when March 16 is our big anniversary.  Tom wished me a happy anniversary this morning, and said, “Best decision I ever made.”

Mine too.   But really, I think it was more a series of small decisions that all add up to a much bigger one.  And that’s the way it should be.