Heat Wave!!

Yesterday, Sean and I "beat the heat" by going swimming at Madison Park. The cool lake water was amazingly refreshing.

In honor of this enormous heat wave, my Spanish vocab word of the day is:

bochornoso - sticky; muggy

Also, Seattlest has a good blurb about the most sought-after item in all of Seattle right now:

How Hot is it in Seattle?

Coffee Debate

Sean and I got into a little debate this morning, and rather than try to find out the answer myself online, I thought I'd 'ask the audience'. So.... here's the question:

Do they serve coffee in jail?

Sean says no. He says jail is supposed to be unpleasant, and furthermore coffee is hot and could therefore be used as a weapon.

I say yes. Coffee is like air. I think most people in modern society don't even think of coffee as something that's optional. I hate to say it, but I would assume that even Joseph Fritzl gets a cup of coffee every day.

What do you guys think?

The DELE

Is it really sad to wish you had a reason to take a test?

Not Much Progress?

WOW, just have to post a link to this story comparing the African Research Survey of 1938 with the UN Millenium Project of 2005. Interesting.

We Already Tried This In 1938

4 of 92000

Nope, it's not a new Borg. The 4 are my friends and I, and the 92000 are the other people who rode the brand-spanking new light rail in Seattle this weekend.



Here's us on the light rail. (I think they're trying to push for the name "link" but I'm not feeling that so much.) It wasn't too crowded, thanks to numerous staff members who metered the number of people who could get on at the Westlake station.

And where did we go? .... drum roll ..... Columbia City!



We're not sure what Jungle Butter is but it sounds cool. I should apologize to the residents of Columbia City, because this isn't the most flattering picture of their town/neighborhood. They actually have a really adorable historic downtown, where we ate dinner. Of course the dang light rail was only running till 5pm today so we had to bus it back home, but it was a fun adventure!

Costa Rica - World's Happiest Country

What can I say here? I love Costa Rica and I can't wait to get back to the happiest place on earth! (Yeah that's right Disneyland, you are so 80's. Take that!)

Costa Rica Ranked As World's Happiest Country

But, I will take issue with one piece of the article, and you'll know why if you read my bit about turtle egg poaching....

Costa Ricans and the rest of the happiest countries base their fulfillment levels on more elemental questions: How green is my lifestyle? How much time do I spend with my family and friends? How often do I do the things I love?

Stealing turtle eggs from a National Park is not super green.... but hey no country is perfect!

More Software Complaints?

Ok guys,

You probably thought that now that I'm not working as an engineer anymore I am done complaining about software. Well, no such luck!

Today's complaint is about Outlook. Our IT guy came in and finally "fixed" a problem that I had, which was that I didn't have access to all of the contacts. Now I do have those which is great. However, coincidentally, the morning after he did this fix, I had 140 spam emails in my inbox. Sigh.

Spanish Vocab #2

Today I was listening to La Matinal, and there was a funny piece about a hotel survey which asked which tourists are the best/worst.

Turns out the French were the worst, being tacaño (cheap) with their propinas (tips), as well as arrogant and bad at foreign languages. The Japonese were the best, being pulcros (neat and tidy), corteses (polite) and nunca quejarse (never complain).

beca - grant; scholarship

escaso - limited; scant

juzgar - to try; judge

otorgar - to grant

plazo - period (of time)

pulcro - neat; tidy

sede - headquarters

telón - curtain

veintena - twenty; score

vial - road

One Semester of Spanish - Spanish Love Song

All I can say is: ROFL. Pls to watch. (<--- one semester of English).

Food Pictures

Just to follow up on the last post, here's a picture of some REALLY healthy food (chard and whole wheat berries):

So Much Produce, or, What's this red thing?

Back in January, I talked about the Peak Oil group and the still-forming Sail Transport Network.

The STN is group of people who use a sailboat to sail up the coast of Washington to get produce from farms, and bring it back to Seattle to sell in bags, similar to a CSA model, with the key differentiating factor being the fossil-free method of transportation.

Well, it is off and running now, and Sean and I picked up our first tote-bag of produce two Sundays ago. (No we didn't use fossil-free means to pick it up....oops.)

It was a straaaange experience going through the bag. First, we started digging in on the strawberries. They were the sweetest, yummiest strawberries ever!! Mmmm. But then, the stuff just got weirder and weirder. Turnips..... radishes..... ok I've heard of those before. Chard.... maybe? Whole wheat berries..... what?

Well, I had to prove Sean wrong of course ( he was convinced that this was at best a $25 donation to the environment and perhaps more like flushing $25 down the toilet) so I started looking up recipes for these strange new foods.

And - we ended up eating a lot of the stuff!! The parley and dill we didn't really eat.... I think we're going to get more dill this Sunday so I''ll try to give it away, perhaps.

My favorite was the radish recipe that came with our bag. (Sean didn't like it but that's ok I just ate the whole thing myself!)

I thought the recipe came fromhere but I can't find it so I'll paraphrase for anyone who's interested:

1. Slice up some radishes and cook in a pan with some chicken broth for 5 mins.
2. Add 3-4 tablespoons of honey and cook for 5 more mins.
3. Eat!