Whole, no bites

I haven’t looked at my xiebob dashboard in a while, but I just wandered over to see that one of the searches for finding my blog of late has been “how to eat a tranchla whole(no bites)”. Awesome.

Jessica, holding a tarantula

 

Snow!

We have gotten a ton of snow in the last week. It’s been hard to get around in but beautiful nonetheless. There was about a foot of snow when we woke up this morning. These pictures are from earlier, before another 4 inches or so of snow fell!

Yesterday, we went out skiing around the neighborhood, and it didn’t even feel like fake skiing. I was extremely careful not to fall, as I have been instructed not to by my midwives :). This made it kind of not as fun, but it was still awesome to be out there on skis in our own neighborhood.

 

Quick blog catch-up

Fun things we’ve been up to lately while I haven’t been posting.

• Colin’s Mum turned 60, and we had a birthday bash for her out at Glenn and Glenda’s beautiful house and garden.

• Sue, Michael and Verl came to visit us in Seattle, and they brought us a truckload of awesome baby stuff! It was very fun watching Verl and Flynn play together and to see how quickly they picked things up from each other. Flynn’s been asking people for “cheers” clinking cups ever since.
• We went to visit Sue, Michael, and Verl in Portland, with special guest stars David and Megan in attendance. Lots of great food and fun companionship.

All this fun stuff happened before my latest back incident. More fun stuff to come now that I’m back on my feet.

 

Home workstation

My back has been out again for the last week.

Last time this happened, I miserably did nothing but listen to NPR, which actually has really crappy daytime programming, and sleep.

But this time, Colin rigged me up a way that I can actually use my computer from a a full lying-down position – laptop on a bedstand, and keyboard duct taped to a pillow. Here I am, working from home.

I still can’t wait until I can move around freely again.

 

Health Care for All

I am really happy to see that the health care movement in the United States seems to be growing. It makes sense that the movement is growing, since our health care situation is getting worse and worse. Here are some stats from a recent Healthy Washington Coalition caucus I attended:

• Health care costs are skyrocketing
  • Over the last 5 years, health care costs for the typical Washington household have risen over 6x faster than family income.
  • This year, 1 in 4 Washingtonians under 65 will spend more than 10% of pre-tax family income on health care costs. 84% of these have health insurance.
• Poor coverage quality leaves many without security
  • A Consumer Reports study found that 24% of the U.S. population is “underinsured” – with insufficient coverage to pay for many health care expenses. [This rate is probably much higher now.]
• Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States
  • An estimated 19,000 Washington residents file for medical bankruptcy every year.
  • 3/4 of those bankrupted by medical debt had health insurance at the time they were sick or injured.
• Employer-based coverage is eroding
  • In Washington, since 1993, employer-based coverage declined from 71% to 66%.
• Almost 600,000 Washingtonians are uninsured
  • Nearly 1 in 3 non-elderly Washington adults goes uninsured at some point in a 2-year period.
  • Every year, 380 Washington residents die because of lack of proper medical care.
  • In 2005, premiums for Washington families with private, employer-sponsored coverage were $1,206 higher due to the unpaid cost of health care for the uninsured.
• Our health care system is inefficient and quality is uneven
  • In our system, administration takes 30 cents of every health care dollar.
  • In the U.S., adults receive only 55% of recommended care.

The situation is especially pitiful when you compare us to other developed countries. You can see some of these other systems on Wikipedia, in Michael Moore’s movie Sicko (although of course you have to take everything he does with a grain of salt), on a special NPR series, and much more.

Health care should be affordable, universal, and complete. It’s shameful that people should be going bankrupt or dying for lack of health care, and the situation is rapidly worsening. In my opinion, the best way to accomplish universal healthcare is to get the insurance companies completely out of the mix and have a single-payer plan where the sick and the healthy pool their money to pay for all of our eventual needs.

It’s an exciting time in Washington, because the legislature has commissioned research around a set of 5 proposals:

• The “Private Insurance Deregulation” Plan – allow insurance to offer plans with more limited coverage
• The “Massachusetts” Plan – people who can’t afford coverage can get help paying premiums
• The “Washington Health Partnership” Plan – everybody can choose between private and public coverage
• The “Single Payer” Plan – guaranteed coverage administered by the state, paid for by all citizens (this one makes the most sense to me, by far!)
• The “Guaranteed Health Benefits” Plan – catastrophic coverage guaranteed by the state

An actuarial analysis of these proposals is going to be presented in February 2009, under Washington SB 6333. I’ll be really curious to see how the numbers add up for each of these plan, and to see the real change that I hope will come as a result of the study.

 

Subconscious computer trust

Today at 11:18am, my Finder crashed when I was trying to samba-mount a remote drive.

I didn’t realize the Finder had crashed, and I thought that it was 11:18am for a full hour before my conscious brain finally kicked in to question the subconscious trust I had in the little clock in the upper right-hand corner of my computer. I look at the clock many times a day, because I have a lot of meetings at specific times. Around lunch, I look at it a lot to see if it is still too ridiculously early to eat lunch. So for about an hour today, my subconscious brain repeated over and over “I’m getting even hungrier. Is it too early to eat lunch? Yup. I should wait until at least 11:30.” before finally my conscious brain kicked in and said “Wait, still _exactly_ 11:18??”

My trusting brain and I – amused and abashed -  finally ate lunch at about 12:18.

 

First spring hike – Bullitt Access Trail

Colin and I went on a hike to celebrate the 3-day weekend. We’re really lucky to have so much great hiking near our house. We didn’t even have to get on a highway to get to the Bullitt Access Trail. It was a really pretty hike. We hiked partway up the trail, taking it slow and easy.

Photos

Birds

• American Robin – Turdus migratorius
• Common Raven – Corvus corax
• Dark-eyed Junco – Junco hyemalis
• Rufus-sided Towhee – Pipilo erythrophthalmus
• House Wren – Troglodytes aedon

Mushrooms

• Pholiota mutabilis
• Mycena amicta
• Mycena sp.
• Inocybe sp.
• Oyster Mushroom – Pleurotus ostreatus
• Fomitopsis pinicola
• Stereum sp.

Plants

• Western Red Cedar – Thuja plicata
• Western Hemlock – Tsuga heterophylla
• Douglas Fir – Pseudotsuga menziesii
• Big-leaf Maple – Acer macrophyllum
• Red Alder – Alnus rubrus
• Cottonwood – Populus balsamifera ssp. trichocarpa

• Hazelnut – Corylus cornuta var. californica
• Red Elderberry – Sambuca racemosa
• Red Huckleberry – Vaccinium parvifolium
• Salmonberry – Rubus spectabilis
• Thimbleberry – Rubus parviflorus
• Snow Berry – Symphoricarpos albus
• Ocean Spray – Holodiscus discolor
• Devil’s Club – Oplopanex horridus
• Holly

• Sword Fern – Polystichum munitum
• Bracken Fern – Pteridium aquilinum
• Licorice Fern - Glycorhiza polypodium
• Lady Fern – Athyrium filix-femina
• Deer Fern – Blechnum spicant

• Herb Robert – Geranium robertianum
• Broad-leaf Dock – Rumax obtusifolius
• Indian Plum – Oemleria cerasiformis
• Oregon Grape – Mahonia nervosa
• Cleavers – Galium aparine
• Bleeding Heart – Dicentra formosa
• Siberian Miner’s Lettuce – Claytonia siberica
• False Solomon’s Seal – Smilacina racemosa
• Buttercup – Ranunculus sp.
• Salal – Gaultheria shallon
• Stinging Nettles – Urtica dioica
• Vanillaleaf – Achlys triphylla

Arthropods

• House fly
• Gnat
• Fly spp.
• Centipede sp.
• Beetle spp.

Mollusks

• Banana slug – Ariolimax columbianus

 

Seder

The 6th annual Goodship seder went splendidly. Here’s a timelapse I took, capturing a picture every 5 minutes over a good portion of the evening.

 

A beautiful spring day in my neighborhood

Today it got into the high seventies in Seattle, just on a Saturday when everything was in bloom. I took a walk down to Kubota Garden. (Click the pictures to see more photos)

Then Sage and I hung out our back yard.

 

My gym is cool

Background story:

For years, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I barely ever get any exercise. I eat well and balanced, I don’t do anything really bad for my body, I take my vitamins, but I just don’t really exercise. I’ve just never been into sports, and my job involves sitting in a conference room for 3-7 hours a day and sitting in front of my computer at my desk for the other rest. I have a 25-40 minute drive to work, involving walks between my house and the car and between my car and work. I enjoy camping and hiking and cross-country skiing, but I just don’t get out there that often, because I also enjoy a calm weekend at home programming, cooking, and watching movies.

Last winter, I thought about joining a gym, but I had never done it before, and I was intimidated. I talked to a bunch of gyms near work, and I was going to do some of the introductory programs, but then I told some other people about what I was going to do, and they all said “Everybody joins a gym and then doesn’t go, and it’s expensive. Can’t you just walk or run to get exercise?” I felt silly, and I wasn’t sure it would go so well, so I didn’t join.

I kept stewing on the idea, and last summer I decided that I would start walking. Every day after work, before even going inside the house, I set a timer for 10 minutes and started walking. After the timer went off, I turned around and walked 10 minutes back. The 20 minutes was a time that I picked because it seemed long enough to get some aerobic advantage, but it seemed short enough that I would always have time to do it. It seemed that even if I got busy, I would always have time for a 20 minute walk, and it wouldn’t feel like some big imposition that I would be tempted to start skipping and eventually give up on.

Well, the walking went well. I actually really enjoyed it. I walked in a different direction from my house each day. If Colin was available, he came with me. It was really nice to be outside for a bit each day.

But then, one day, I noticed that I was walking in the dark! And then for a couple of times, I was walking in dark, cold drizzle. And then the excuses (“well, it’s too dark and rainy tonight” and “I just don’t feel like walking around in the dark tonight”) and the inevitable tapering off happened. So that was disappointing, and again I wasn’t exercising for a while.

One day, I was looking online at a site that talks about places to go and things to do in your neighborhood, and I encountered a gym called Rainier Health and Fitness a couple of miles from my house. I went to their website and read some reviews, and they sounded cool. I told Colin about it, and one day after work we just decided to go check it out.

The Gym:

The gym is really interesting and neat, probably largely because it was founded as a community service and not as a money-making venture. There was recently a nice article about the gym in a local newspaper http://www.colorsnw.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=117&z=41. Their website talks about their mission as well http://www.rainierhealth.com/aboutus/theproblem.htm. To summarize, the founders were concerned about the growing weight issues and lack of fitness in lower-income communities, like the one we live in, and among minorities. They thought about the kinds of barriers there are for people in our community to go to a gym, and did what they could to combat them. The rates are low, and there is an are lower rates available for those in need. The atmosphere at the gym is extremely down to earth and friendly. They have free child-care every night. They have 2 evenings with women-only time so that religious Muslim women (there are a lot in our neighborhood) feel comfortable working out. They have rules about language and respectful interactions, and it feels nothing like the meat-market I’ve heard about at other gyms.

The gym itself is in a triple-wide trailer, but the equipment is all quite nice and new. The staff are friendly and ready to help out. There are a ton of people at the gym who, like me and Colin, had never worked out at a gym before. There are people of all shapes, sizes, ages, colors and dress. There are always a few women working out with heads covered, long skirts over long pants, and long sleeves. They must get hot!

Anyway, I think it’s cool that these people had a vision, that they thought about the important aspects to implementing it, that they are working hard to accomplish their goals, and that it is working so well. The gym is full almost every time we go, and there seem to be new people joining every day! Congratulations to them.