yes we can...

the enemy of the enemy is my friend...

interview me...

so i was reading my friend nate's blog the other day, and he had this little blog game posted. the rules of which were these:

1. Leave a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

in an instance of curiosity killing the cat, i thusly commented. and here we are.

my responses to nate's five questions are written as if to him directly.

1. How do you feel about the Spurs getting taken down by the Lakers in only five games?
first of all, you suck.

second of all, i am actually relieved that if we were going to lose, it only lasted five games. if it had dragged out to seven, i would literally have exploded. i have all manner of thoughts and opinions on this series, but this website nails it so well, i'm just going to refer to them.

2. How many Brian McLaren books have you read, and which is your favorite?
um, haven't i already disclosed this information to you before? and if so, this is a totally unfair question. because it forces me to confess the fact that i have read only 2 1/2 of brian's books - ANKOC, more ready than you realize, and 1/3 of secret message. if it counts for anything, i own them all (which it doesn't, because i got them all for free). as far as my favorite, i have a feeling that once i read secret message and generous orthodoxy, those will be my favorites. but the most revolutionary to me was ANKOC, because of where i was in my life at the time - a couple years out of Baptist college and rethinking everything.

3. Missouri or Texas? Why?
i've said it before, and i'll say it again. i'm a horrible texan. i have zero state pride in comparison with other texans - for example, i would never to this to my house at christmas. plus the college team i cheer for is in kansas!

it's difficult to compare the two states because my experience in each has been so different. i've lived in four cities in texas, and only one in missouri. i've lived in texas for 28 of my (almost) 32 years, so i've had a lot more time to nit-pick. and because my recent dallas experience was what it was, texas and i have a bit of making up to do.

Texas (an evaluation of the whole giant lot of it)
PRO: no state income tax (!), two of my three nieces, and (of course) the san antonio spurs. austin has to count for something, as do the big six, central market, and the profusion of truly spectacular tex-mex. lady bird's wildflowers. my fabulous hair stylist, omar. in-state tuition.

CON: it is so damn hot here (and humid, depending on where you are) for so much of the year. summer i can handle. nine months of it is just too much. also, all of our metropolitan areas are all concrete and cars (mostly giant pickups and suburbans).

Missouri (kansas city specific)
PRO: fall and spring. and winter. my yoga studio. the city market. room 39. the fact that it doesn't take me longer than 15 minutes to get anywhere. it's closer to wisconsin, where my other niece lives. the good people i know in KC are all concentrated into one place, whereas in texas they're all sprawled out. loose park. the plaza library.

CON: state and city income tax. and property tax on my car. none of the lights in downtown kansas city are timed correctly. TIF. midwesterners (as a generalization) are too nice - now don't get me wrong, i love friendly people. but i'd rather you be honest with me than tiptoe around an issue, trying not to hurt my feelings. anything out-south.

so mostly it's a draw, but i like the weather better in missouri. adv - MO (sorry, i've been watching a lot of tennis lately).

4. Do you like Pat Green?
not particularly.

5. What do you think about Edward Norton playing the Incredible Hulk?
i was a scaredy-kid, and the incredible hulk freaked the hell out of me. i mean, i still watched it, but the process where he burst through his shirt and got all mean - yikes. so, i have no intention of seeing the incredible hulk - movie version. but ed norton, he's beautiful. and an environmentalist. and while it seems to be a weird fit (don't you think the rock or dwayne johnson or whatever he's going by these days would be a more natural choice?), anytime i have opportunity to see more of ol' ed on the big screen, i'm in.

an update...

just about this time last week, i described to you my truly hellish moving day. but i neglected to give you any details of WHY i moved, and where i'm going from here.

well, here's the skinny:

dallas and i, we're just not that in to each other. it's okay, we both knew it, and so it was time for us to quit trying to make it work and just move on. but there is this one teeny little thing that keeps me hanging on. oh yeah, that damn thesis.

and, to be fair to dallas, school was fantastic. i have an a-number one new advisor, whom i adore, and who wants to get me the hell out of school ASAP. this right here, friends, is the textbook definition of a good advisor. and believe me, i know the difference. experienced it first-hand.

so in another instance of win-win-win, here's my plan: i'm spending the summer back in kansas city, working with the jellybean conspiracy on their annual fall fundraiser, and doing a bit of temp work. AND WORKING ON MY THESIS. my goal is to be done writing by the end of august. though as it is now june and i haven't actually engaged in much writing, my deadline may have to be extended a bit. but as i live and breathe, by the time i leave for my mountain vacay at the end of september, i will be done.

i have no idea what i'll be doing in october. or november. or december. hopefully, i'll be starting back to school in january, working on a second masters (non-thesis!) in health education.

so, that's the plan. we'll see how it actually shakes out. but i'm hopeful, and eager to see what the summer holds.

but mostly, i'm just eager to finish this damn thesis...

to my friends at TNT...

it's MANU (mah-nue) not MANO (mah-noe) ginobili. please adjust accordingly.

thankyouverymuch.

go spurs!

there and back again...

i'm sitting here watching the celtics get absolutely mugged by the pistons (the pistons have cut a twenty-four point lead down to nine), with my feet on the coffee table. i am pooped.

why, you ask? well...

• yesterday i drove from dallas to wellington (apx 4.5 hours). here i collected my MVP parents.
• we then got up at 5:45 AM and drove back to dallas (another 4.5 hours)
• where we picked up a moving truck.
• we then loaded said moving truck with the contents of my SECOND floor apartment. it was shockingly hot and humid and we almost died (only a slight exaggeration). (apx 2.5 hours)
  
• we grabbed a quick sandwich from subway (30 mins)
  
• and proceeded to make the return trip to wellington (apx 5.5 hours - frequent stops were required on this trip as my dad and i both were partially comatose)

needless to say, no one was interested in unloading tonight (my stuff's going back into storage). my dad said the only thing he was lifting tonight was a frosty shiner bock. which leaves me here, watching basketball, with my very tired feet up. homeless once again.

i already miss my kitchen.

oh, and the pistons lost by fourteen.

and boy are my arms tired...

first of all, i want to say that i think this is total crap:

American Airlines to Charge for Checked Baggage
Starting June 15 most American passengers must pay $15 for checking a single bag. That comes on top of the airline's decision two weeks ago to charge $25 for a second bag.

but obviously it's indicative of something bigger, as noted by richard heinberg

Saying Goodbye to Air Travel
The airline industry has no future. The same is true for airfreight. No air carrier has a viable plan to make a profit with oil at current prices—much less in years to come as the petroleum available to world markets dwindles rapidly.

hornets gone fishing...

pinched from spursreport.com

this is not the one from TNT (i can't find that one online ANYWHERE), but it'll have to do. go spurs!

dunder mifflin, this is pam...

i'm playing receptionist this week at my temp job du jour. the phones have been ringing off the hook this morning, but this particular conversation sticks out...

      Me:   Good Morning, (insert company name here)

      Lady on the Line:  Yes, Michael Scott please.

      Me:   places Lady on the Line on hold as quickly as possible to avoid cracking up in her ear.

i don't know what i would have done had she been looking for dwight schrute.

well played, charles barkley...

even though i yelled at him the other day, i like charles barkley. a lot. seriously, he cracks me up. because of him, kenny smith, and ernie johnson, inside the nba one of my favorite tv shows (that, and the office).

so i was glad to see this interview with e.j. tonight during the spurs/hornets pregame show.

"I like to go into Vegas, it's a fun place, but you know what, I've got to stop gambling. That's the bottom line," Barkley said during TNT's pregame show before Game 7 between San Antonio and New Orleans. "I am not going to gamble anymore. For right now, the next year or two, I'm not going to gamble."

"Just because I can afford to lose money doesn't mean I should do it," he said.

link: barkley vows to stop gambling.

no longer one and done...

i have a basketball crush on jay bilas.

NBA considers draft plan revisions
With 13 freshmen making themselves available for the NBA Draft, the one-and- done rule is coming under fire. One college basketball expert thinks a baseball-like draft is more practical.

i once heard dick vitale say much the same thing: high school seniors should be eligible for the NBA draft. but should you choose to play college ball, you should have to stay three years.

no doubt my love affair with college basketball colors my thinking on this matter, but for the most part, i think i'd vote for three years. take this year's kansas team, for example. i am completely at peace with brandon rush and even mario chalmers testing the waters of the NBA (rush is in, chalmers is still eligible to return to kansas for his senior campaign). but darrell arthur. i wish he would stay one more year. i felt the same way about julian wright last year. and no doubt, i'll feel the same way about another player next year.

perhaps it's the selfishness of being a fan. and i'm okay with that. this is why those who are invested in the game in a different way than i are charged with making these decisions.

but that jay bilas is one smart cookie. i hope someone listens.

folding money...

my school has a new rule that once you enroll in thesis hours, you have to enroll every semester (including summers) until you finish your culminating experience (that's what they're calling it these days). as such, yesterday i enrolled for my requisite three credit hours.

my bill (which includes student health insurance) - $890. asking me to pay this is like scavenging for water in the desert - there ain't none...

so when i hear that charles barkley is FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS in the hole to casinos in vegas, i want to BEAT HIM SENSELESS with my tuition bill.

end of rant...

the basketball version of nachos...

as has been well established here, i am a huge san antonio spurs fan. for those of you who are less informed of the goings on of the NBA playoffs, a quick update: in one of the most bizarre series of basketball i have ever witnessed, the spurs and the new orleans hornets are tied at three games apiece in the western conference semifinals. the home teams have won each game in this series by an average of 18(!) points. the spurs are hoping to change that as the series moves back to new orleans for game seven on monday, winner take all.

as per standard operating procedure round these parts, when my teams are in the headlines, i engage in freakish amounts of article reading on the internets. in my research yesterday, the link trail brought me to the blog of jason friedman, who covers the rockets for the houston press. his blog post, trapped in the closet no more, led me to the most bizarre and thoroughly entertaining piece of comment-ary i have ever read in my whole life.

(ignore the part about shane battier.) (oh, and if you're sensitive to language, beware)

First and foremost, let me say Shane Battier is a total homo.

Second, the Spurs rock the shit. Always have, always will. If God gave birth to another son, but instead of a son it was a basketball team, it would be the Spurs.

One time I had some cancer on my leg and my dad took a dirty wash cloth with Sean Elliot's picture on it and rubbed it on the cancer, and the cancer went away; but only after the dirty wash cloth hit a tip-toed three point over Rasheed Wallace en route to the Spurs first ever title.

You know how delicious and fantastic nachos are? The Spurs are like the basketball version of nachos, except they win a shit load of championships.

Manu Ginobili once fought a tornado.

Tony Parker is smokin' hot and can fly.

Tim Duncan carries around a flask on his hip that's filled with lightning bolts.

Coach Popovich sleeps standing up. With his eyes open. Watching game film.

My cousin got hit by car and died for a brief moment. When the EMT brought him back to life he said Jesus was wearing a David Robinson jersey.

Fabricio Oberto's last name translates literally to "of the cockstrong, greasy-hairred kind." Plus, he has a Pirate-Of-The-Carribean-style gold tooth which is incredible and of itself.

Bruce Bowen doesn't have any kids because he won't even let his wife score.

Not liking the Spurs is the equivalent to campaigning for slavery to make a return.

And when you're a Spurs fan, -a true Spurs fan- each night before you go to sleep, a unicorn flys down from heaven and gives you a tender kiss on the forehead. No shit.

that's billion with a B...

as most of you know, i grew up in a farming community. my folks still live there, i own land there, and it has profoundly influenced the person i have come to be.

so it is with great interest that i have been following the 2007 iteration of the farm bill. in case you're unfamiliar, the farm bill is a ginormous piece of legislation that dictates policy on a million different things including WIC and food stamps, subsidies, conservation programs, and (at least in the bill that congress is about to send to the president), tax breaks for the depreciation of racehorses.

this whole thing keeps getting more and more interesting. it looks like the farm bill will be placed in front of the president in the next couple of weeks, at which point he will promptly issue a veto.

the washington post has done some really great reporting on this. most recently:

* Negotiators Agree on Farm Bill, but Bush Vows to Veto It
* Plow It Under: A farm bill larded with giveaways deserves President Bush's veto.

in addition, here's a good summary of the latest goings on from grist.

and by chasing the link trail, i found these two websites. they're really good.

* blog for rural america

* mulch

by my own admission, i realize these points of view only represent one side of the issue. and obviously there are many sides, or this thing wouldn't have been locked in legistlation for as long as it has.

i went over to bread for the world's website to see if they had offered any kind of response. i would say they give it a half thumbs up. they are pleased with the increases in nutrition assistance programs (2/3 of the farm bill's $300 billion (that's with a B) is allocated to nutrition programs - including WIC and food stamps). but they, too, see it as a major missed opportunity for congress to make substantial change to current farm bill business as usual.

so, we'll see where this goes from here. if nothing else, it promises to further illuminate the tenuous relationship that congress shares with the administration.

how i spent my weekend...

terrifying images from the grocery store...

Anthropomorphism - the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to nonhuman beings, inanimate objects, or natural or supernatural phenomena. this "humanification," in my opinion, is often carried out with varying degrees of success. for example...

success: snoopy! on a typewriter!














not so much: a hot dog with frankfurter colored legs and bun colored arms, caressing a similarly limbed bottle of mustard. yikes.

one down...

my favorite piece of analysis on the suns/spurs series, courtesy of buck harvey at the san antonio express news...

Shaq has always said he makes them when he has to. Memphis’ John Calipari coincidentally said the same this month in San Antonio, and that didn’t work out, either, in the Final Four.

heh.

darkness and light...

i just spent a lovely extended weekend in kansas city. dallas has been a bit of a cruel mistress this spring, and it was great to spend some time back in the old hood. i ran around from dawn til dusk for four days straight, hitting up some of my favorite places with some of my favorite people. i even ran in to my old landlord, dan, who misses me terribly. it was, on many levels, so good.

however, upon my return, i was greeted with this news. mom said the town is covered up in texas rangers and that the old widow ladies are absolutely terrified.

a sleepy little town in the texas panhandle. where getting stuck in traffic means you got trapped behind a tractor on 15th street. where people wave from their cars, and wear red for the skyrockets. isolated, but not immune.

lord, have mercy.

tasty business...

since i live by myself and don't mind leftovers, i usually only cook a couple times per week. each time i cook, however, i make enough of whatever i'm making to feed me for a couple of days. this alleviates the two-fold problem of 1) menu planning and 2) coming home hungry in the evening to an empty refrigerator.

i made a big batch of this asian-style spicy coleslaw (mine wasn't near that pretty) on sunday, and just polished it off for lunch today. it combines my recent obsession with coleslaw (weird, i know) with one of my favorite things in the whole world, peanut butter. plus it's a little spicy. win-win-win.

the salad is huge - i halved it. and if you're not planning on eating it all at one sitting, dress it as you go. otherwise, you'll get watery, soggy coleslaw. and who wants that?

again we say, taste-ola.

crowd goes wild...

so, you don't have to know me very well to know that i LOVE basketball. with a big bright red heart, love it.

when i was growing up, my whole family would spend our evenings watching michael jordan and the bulls play basketball on WGN. now, i know a lot of people who could give a flip about basketball, and the family tv turned to WGN (does that station even exist anymore?) would have sent them to their bedroom with a magazine. but not us scott gals. even at an early age we were lovers of the game, and those seasons we watched the bulls just fanned the flame. this interest has not faded over time, although some of us (ahem...) are a bit nuttier about it than others.

no longer a bulls fan, i've been cheering for the san antonio spurs since college. and a moderate interest in the kansas jayhawks became a full out obsession after living in kansas city for four years.

san antonio has seen some great basketball in the past couple of weeks. to wit:

1. kansas won the championship!
they nearly killed us all in the process, but holy crap, they did it!

as a side note, that steal and shot that sherron made to set up mario chalmers' game winning three? i've heard more than one comparison to miracle at the hands of sean elliott, from the 1999 western conference championships. same court. same corner. same result. swish.

i love the alamodome.

2. tim duncan made a three pointer to send saturday's spurs/suns game into double overtime.
it's already been documented here once, but it deserves a second mention.

the basketball gods are good to me - now that my favorite sporting event of the year is over (with a perfect ending!), at least we have the NBA playoffs to tide us over for the next couple months (which is a bit long, even for me).

so, in summation:
1. rock chalk!
2. go spurs!

p.s. i'm watching game two of the spurs/suns series as we speak, and just want to mention how much i love manu ginobli.

that's what's for dinner?

seriously, this ad campaign grosses me out. people in haiti are rioting over a cup of rice, and we're selling meat in the form of mountains.

all the way around, it's disgusting.

green thumb...

two articles from the new york times that have me scheming a way to have a garden this summer...

out of the yard and onto the fork

Kitchen gardens are as old as the first hunter-gatherers who decided to settle down and watch the seeds grow. Walled medieval gardens protected carefully tended herbs, greens and fruit trees from marauders, both human and animal. The American colonists planted gardens as soon as they could, sowing seeds brought from Europe.

Call them survivor gardens.

Now, they are being discovered by a new generation of people who worry about just what is in that bag of spinach and how much fuel was consumed to grow it and to fly it a thousand miles.

why bother?

But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

swish!

timmy sends the game to double overtime. from the THREE.

go spurs!

laci is...

currently eating a piece of this bread, lightly toasted, with a bit of peanut butter. it is, in the words of my friend jill, taste-ola. (i have no idea how you would spell that!).

it's a quick bread - no yeast required - so whip up a batch for yourself this evening, and have a slice for dessert. or maybe for breakfast in the morning. i guarantee, it's a great way to start the day.

sometimes goodness comes in the smallest of packages.

fill in the blank...

when i was in college and found myself in a particularly boring lecture (i'm looking at you, vertebrate biology), i had this little game that i would play to pass the e-v-e-r-l-a-s-t-i-n-g time.

it went like this: i would attempt to list, from memory, all of the states of the united states. and if the lecture were especially long, i would also endeavor to include their capitals. and this would all be written with my left hand.

(you never know when you might need it).

so, you can see why i stayed up until 1:30 this morning playing the games on this website. it's listmaking heaven!!

it's amazing what your brain does to you when faced with a page full of blanks and a timer. for example, it forgets the number 'eleven' in spanish. or the book of lamentations. or mansfield park as a jane austen novel. or aluminum.

also, i'd like to know what it says about me that i came closer to naming all of the major league baseball teams (missed three, including the mets - see above statement about brain freeze) than i did the presidents of the US. i got all of the 20th century ones back as far as woodrow wilson, but still, the period from thomas jefferson to wilson was sparsely populated, with the notable exception of (whew!) abraham lincoln. james van buren, please accept my apologies.

so, if you have some time to kill, and like dorky listmaking games, you are set.

and these dorky listmaking games? they're why you want me on your team in trivial pursuit, or in the cash cab.

homemade...

this article appeared in yesterday's new york times.

leaving behind the trucker hat
young urbanites, learning that dirt can also be soil, are using their Carhartts as originally intended.

for a while now, i've been frustrated. i'm frustrated that other people get to decide what goes into my meat, onto my vegetables, into my water, etc., etc. it's been years since my life was connected to the land in a meaningful way. this coming from a girl who learned how to drive on that red tractor over there!

so i had a lot of resonance for the farmers who were profiled in that NYT article. i am different from them in that i don't want to make my living at farming. but i am *thisclose* to moving to the country, getting myself a cow and some chickens, and planting a big ole garden.

since i'm only a generation and a half removed from the farm and grew up in a farming community, i have no romantic notions of what it means to grow your own food. it is dirty, stinky, long work. i'd have to learn how to do ALOT of stuff.

and yet, it seems totally doable. there are lots of questions that i don't have the answer to, and there's still stuff to do here before i'm ready to raise my barn.

but one of these days, i'm going to make my own butter. with my kitchenaid, of course.

in case you're looking for a little something a little fancier than a pine box...

how about a fully customizable major league baseball urn? or if you'd rather spend eternity in one piece, they have caskets too! this way, the MLB can "share" a portion of your life AND death. because they care about their fans.

if you're not a baseball lover (like myself), fear not. according to this morning's sportscenter, licensing deals with other major sports leagues are on the way. and universities too.

i wonder if they'll make customizable resting places? for example, i have a friend who is a st. louis cardinals, san antonio spurs, and florida state seminoles fan. how in the world would he choose just one in which to spend the remainder of his days?

oh, the possibilites.

order yours at eternal image.

oh, and if sports aren't your thing, you can choose from a collection that includes star trek, precious moments, the american kennel club, and the cat fanciers' assocation.

if you're going to go, you might as well go out in style...

i still call them samoas...

well, it's springtime here in dallas. one of the many things this means is that you can't go anywhere without being accosted by cookie selling girl scouts.

as wholesome as the idea of girl scout cookies may be, a quick read through the ingredient list will probably net at least one or two items not commonly found on your grocer's shelves. i'll pass, thanks.

but all is not lost! right here is where my obsession with food blogs comes in handy. heidi over at 101 cookbooks has developed her very own homemade thin mint recipe. i've made them several times, and while, yes, they do require a bit more work than plunking down $3.50 for a brightly colored box, they are soooooo tasty.

or if tagalongs are more your style, then baking bites will help you satisfy your chocolate/peanut butter needs.

and samoas? here you go. i made these about a month ago and they are messy and gooey and chocolatey and totally scrumptious.

the other good thing about this? no need to hoard boxes and boxes of these things in the freezer so that when september rolls around, you can satisfy your craving. (like the stash in your freezer lasts until fall...) nope, my friends. get you some butter and good chocolate, and you are on your way.

you gotta admit, though, those girl scouts are darn near irresistible.

an open letter to gillian welch...

dear gillian,

please come out with a new album. 2003 was a long time ago.

sincerely,
laci