Fisch Food

Into the Wild

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:24:26 -0500

My husband and I love Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam. His music just does something to us both. I don't know, it just resonates. One of his more recent solo projects was to write a soundtrack for the movie "Into the Wild". Andy bought the CD the day it came out, and we'd been listening to it since before the actual movie was released. This was back when we weren't going to movie theaters, so we didn't actually see the flick until we could rent it a month or two ago.

Good film.

It's about a guy named Christopher McCandless who, back in the early 90s, abandoned all his earthly possessions to live of his own accord. You get to witness his adventures as he tours the United States, then finally ending up in Alaska. If the movie does nothing else, it stirs emotion. You feel the thrills and the desperation to your very core.

My intent here initially was to share one of Ed's songs, but instead, I found a music video that made me relive the movie. So much the better. Enjoy.

Into the Wild

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The Big Read list

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:10:41 -0500

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Gray out those you are unfamiliar with.

6) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (technicality - this is one of the Chronicles of Narnia, yes??)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett My mother read this to me when I was 10. It's one of my favorite childhood memories.

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple, Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (My dad read this book when I was about 7 or 8. Every night after dinner, we would take a long walk and he would retell as much of the story to me as he had read the night before. Then he took me to the Broadway play.)

Wow! So, 16 isn't 6, but it seems like a small number compared to 100! This is kind of inspiring actually. Makes me want to read something with a little more teeth. :) My dad would clean this list UP, by the way.

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QotD: 5 Unique Things About Me

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:14:45 -0500

What are five things that make you unique?
Submitted by RA<3TA.

Ever been able to tell you're in "one of those moods"? Maybe it's just me (ooh - maybe that's thing number 1??). It's a deep thoughts day. I can tell, because this qotd made me think. Hard.

First I was going to name some simple things. Then I realized that it was extremely naive to think that I was really all that unique anyway. Surely some other person somewhere else in the world has the same traits/thoughts/pet peeves as me.

Then I was going to be a biological smartass and say something like "I can name 1 thing. DNA." Cute, right? Then I started thinking about how I could break that into five things. Well there are four amino acid building blocks that comprise all DNA (and I mean ALL DNA): Guanine, tyrosine, adenine, and cytosine.

Then I was knocked over by a simple idea. The one thing that sets me apart from everyone else (DNA) is elementally shared by everybody. It makes me unique and at the same time makes me no different from anyone else.

Egh, ask me tomorrow. This is the kind of day a person needs to go sit on a rock and think.

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My Fellow Passengers

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:54:02 -0500

I like people watching. I think I got it from my dad. Whenever we were out and about in the community (especially when we were in the car), he'd point out an interesting person and say, "What do you think their story is." Then we'd all take turns making one up. Dad's were always the best.

I'm flying to St. Louis this weekend for "THE" shower. Constrained by hotel checkout times, I had to arrive to my terminal interminably early. Usually I try to time it so that I'm walking up to the gate at the first boarding call. My seat in the terminal is also very very conducive to my studies. I had to sit on the floor, back against the windows, tarmac behind me, to get a seat by a plug for my laptop. I am facing everyone. It's like if you were the last person to walk onto a full elevator, then you never turned around and just kept staring at all the people staring back at you.

I first noticed the nervous guy. He's so nervous, he makes me nervous. In fact, I'm not entirely sure he's not schizophrenic. He's having very heated silent discussions with an unseen person. I do that too, in the privacy of my home, when I've had a recent confrontation. All the things I wish I would've said. Perhaps I should recommend to him that he blog. When he's not having heated discussions, he sits, arms folded staring detached out the window. I dunno how to describe it, but he's not looking out the window. It looks like he's looking at something closer. Perhaps his verbal sparring partner? I've thought about emailing his description to the husband a couple of times, just in case the plane gets hijacked.

There are the new parents. Fussing over the kid. Their anxiety is passing off to the baby, and now the she's wailing. Ahh flying.

There's a couple of girls seated right in front of me. Both in designer t-shirts. One skinny, and one not so skinny. They're both wearing the same-sized shirt. So the one shirt looks normal, and the other is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d accross her front. There are actually vertical fissures in the screen printing. She cannot be comfortable. Oh yeah, and she's wearing black Vans slides with rhinestone skull and crossbones on them. She's deeply entrenched in a black romance novel called Chocolate Flava.

Who else, who else? The guy with the terrible comb-over (Is there a good comb-over?) standing against the wall, with a foot propped up James Dean-style. So many tired-looking business travelers, waiting to go home. There's an interesting fella who looks strikingly like Christopher Lee. He's wearing a white t-shirt with a bright red neckerchief. Except it's not a bandanna or anything knotted. Looks like the neck part of a turtleneck. The look kind of looks French. Except he's put a heather gray Old Navy hoodie sweatshirt over the ensemble.

So, soon enough here, I'll be boarding my flight, and two and a half hours later, I'll be greeted by my brother and sister-in-law and a wriggling 2-year-old who has been so excited to see his Aunt Debbie. Then two hours after that, Andy will catch up to us from Dallas. Then the weekend begins...

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Life QotW: School's Out for Summer!

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:58:35 -0500

How did/do you spend your summer vacations?

Growing up, we always went somewhere colder. Wisconsin, Michigan, Wyoming, South Dakota. Stayed in cabins mostly. I'm pretty sure it was simply because going someplace where you can drive and rent a cabin is a very economical choice for a family of five.

Vacations were all about getting away from civilization. Staying in small towns. Or, rather, miles away from small towns. Communing with nature. Reading. I actually only remember one place having a TV. No cable though. And the only video left in the place was Dirty Dancing. It didn't matter. I had books. And cards. And board games if I could get one of the boys to play along. I have memories of sitting on rail fences and staring at the mountains in Wyoming, standing at the edge of a mesa in the Black Hills, dropping a canoe paddle in the lake in Wisconsin, and strolling Michigan beaches by myself at sunset. Horsefly bites and sardines on crackers and bonfires. Lots of s'mores. We did go to Disney World once, and that was fun too.

My husband's family was exactly the opposite. Myrtle Beach 14 years in a row. Warm, sunny, and populated. Every day was beach-laying and surf sports. Evenings were restaurants and endless mini golf and go-karts.

This year, I'm going to Hilton Head with his parents and his little brother. I'm really looking forward to seeing what these beach vacations are all about. It's going to be different for me, but I'll try anything once. :)

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QotD: Why I Blog

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:41:48 -0500

Why do you blog?
Submitted by littleduckling.

Used to be (on my personal website) that I just wanted to keep friends and family up to date on our daily meanderings after we moved all the way to Texas. Then I grew weary of editing myself to keep my image squeaky clean to grandparents and young relatives. So Mark introduced me to Vox.

Plus, I like validation as much as the next guy.

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The Cost of Driving

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:51:54 -0500

The hub and I have more car-related expenses than your average Joe. We first realized this when we started going to a new financial advisor. Our advisor, who we love and highly respect, asked us to please tally up our monthly expenses so that he could accurately siphon off what we weren't using and invest it accordingly. When we took our homework to his office, he looked over our worksheet and said, "I see a mistake on here. You spend $xxx on your cars every month? Does that include car payments?" Nope, it sure didn't. Now, our financial advisor handles the portfolios for millionaires as well as Simpletons like ourselves. I'm sure it wasn't so much the number on the page that shocked him but rather the proportion of that expense to our realized income.

Alright, so everyone feels like vomiting at the gas pump when they see how much that tank of gas just cost them. What makes us so different, you ask?

We both drive Jeeps. I have an '02 Liberty that is four months from being paid off (Woot!). I bought it as a replacement for the crumbling bucket I was driving when I was a grad student in Illinois. Four-wheel drive was a must for getting to and fro in the snowy wintertime. My husband drives an '05 Wrangler that we bought last year. We live in Texas, so really, it was nothing more than an emotional purchase. He loves Jeeps and has always wanted a Wrangler. Both cars get about 16 mpg.
My husband has an 80-mile (round trip) daily commute. We bought our house in the burbs, and whaddayaknow... one month later, he got an unbelievable job opportunity in downtown Dallas. Bad timing. It's not only the mileage - but every road around here is a toll road. So he pays at least $3.00 a day to drive to and from work, albeit there's really not a lot we can do about the tolls.

So those two factors mean quite a bit of dough for us every month. And I don't have to tell anyone that gas prices continue to creep up essentially unchecked. Consumer Reports stated a few years ago that the economics of a hybrid car just didn't work yet, that the cost savings on gas don't yet outreach the cost difference on a hybrid. Finally, after shelling out yet another $60 at the pump, I did the math. Last night. At 10PM. And wouldn't you know it, at Midnight I was wide awake - staring at a spreadsheet.

In my cost analysis - complete with graphs, of course, because when a scientist is explaining their data analysis, they need visual aids - I pretended that either Andy or I sold our current cars for a new one: either a Prius, a Camry, or a Camry Hybrid. I calculated a spread of cost savings across various gas prices: $3.00 - $5.00. There are two basic flexible costs for us per year in a car: the car payment and the cost of fuel. This is where you can win or lose based on the car. You can be saving a ton of money in gas, but if the car costs an arm and a leg (thus your car payment is significantly more than what you are already paying) gas cost per gallon would have to be really high in order for you to be making a net savings.

This is where I discovered that it wouldn't make any sense to sell my car. We have four months left to pay it off. So while in 2008 (if we sold my car today and bought a new one) I might see some savings with a more economical car, in 2009 and beyond gas would have to be REALLY high price to make up for the fact that I now had a new car payment instead of a $0 monthly payment. On the other hand, Andy's car payment is higher than mine and we have three years exactly left to pay it off. Replacing his car payment with another isn't really all that much different. So the fuel efficiency of the car has a more dramatic effect on yearly cost savings. So here's what I found.

CarAnalysis2008

Hard to see but the Prius is in Green, the Camry Hybrid is in Blue, and the regular old (not V6) Camry is in Purple. I'm represented by triangles, and the hub is diamonds.

So for the balance of the year, no matter the fuel cost, the hub would be in the black for cost savings across all fuel costs (well, from $3-5 at least) if he traded his Wrangler for a Prius or a Camry Hybrid. I would only be in the black if I traded my Liberty for a Prius and if and only if gas prices remained over $4.25 for the balance of the year. That's for 7 months. Let's look at a full year.

CarAnalysis2009

Now the landscape has changed. Compare the numbers (vertically) on the left. See the magnitude of difference between 2008 and 2009? Now we can see that, at any fuel cost, it doesn't make sense for me to trade in my car for a new one. For it to make sense for the hub to buy either of the Camrys, fuel would need to be over $3.80/gallon for the duration of that time (maybe not all that unlikely). But look at that Prius. Hard to argue with 44 miles/gallon apparently!

Finally, what about four years from now, when there are no car payments to take into account? This is just for sheer interest level. Kinda predictable (obviously changing from a low MPG car to a high MPG car will save money on gas), but I figured I'd add for heck's sake.

FuelCostAnalysis

I emailed this to my husband last night. Kind of cruel, knowing how much he loves that car; now he has to have this hanging over his head. Pretty difficult for a guy to get excited about cruising around in a Prius, I imagine. I'm not trying to make the case for selling his car, I'm really not - but we spend a frickin' lot on gas. As fuel costs continue to increase, I think it's wise to keep these slopes in mind.

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3 reasons I'm cranky this morning

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:52:00 -0500

I'm tired. Okay, I'm cheating. Lack of rest is never the reason I'm cranky, it's more like the catalyst. Fatigue is a bad mood enabler without which I would probably be taking all this in stride.
I got a bum travel schedule for next week. I finally got my husband to come with me on my sister-in-law's shower (yes, that shower) next weekend. We were to depart on a Friday and return on Sunday. I got scheduled in our plant on Friday. An hour north of Baltimore. No way in hell I'm going to be able to make what I need to at the plant and catch up with the hub in St. Louis on Friday night, although I'm going to try. Just had to break the news that he'll more than likely be overnighting with my brother and sister-in-law by himself. He's cranky (and tired) too. This conversation didn't go very well.
The owner of Hugo's dog kennel gave me a thorough run-down of why he is a terrible dog when I picked him up last night. Now, I decided long ago I wouldn't be a parent that defends their kids tooth and nail no matter what the teacher says, but I can't help it. Her grievances were as follows:

"Hugo doesn't listen." They can't get him to sit, down, or stay in daycare. Know what? He is a 1-year-old lab surrounded by about 30 other dogs. He doesn't speak English, and bless him - he's just a little on the slow side. The hub and I work with him constantly, but he's just not 100% reliable under distraction - even with us. So I wouldn't really expect Hugo to listen to strangers under heavy distraction either.
"Hugo guards the water bowl." I needed clarification on this. By "guarding" she didn't mean showing aggression to dogs trying to approach the water bowl. She meant that he lays down, puts his paws on either side of the bowl, and wallows in it. That's not guarding, lady, he's just trying to swim in a very small wading pool. She was upset that the other dogs 'don't get a chance to have a drink'. That, to her was completely unacceptable. "It's okay to swim in the wading pools outside, but in the indoor water bowls, he is only allowed to drink standing up." In fact, she demonstrated that she was able to "finally" get Hugo to stand up when he drank by yelling "HUGO! STAND UP!" So now I'm envisioning my dog being screamed at for trying to cool off and not understanding what he's doing wrong. And it makes me angry.
"He humps the other dogs a lot." I ask, "Do you correct him?" She responds, "Yes, do you?" I calmly explained that, when we go to the dog park, Hugo does not proposition the other dogs and I can't correct a behavior that I do not see. I learned awhile back that the whole humping thing is a way for dogs to impose rank on other dogs. Nothing sexual in nature. Hugo knows exactly where he stands with us. When we're around, he is very content just being one of the four-legged rabble.
This brings me to a grievance I have with them. They crate as punishment. So now, going in the crate is a very negative thing for Hugo. A problem - since Hugo is crated when we are away from the house.
"He pees and poops in his kennel." "Is this a problem at home?" she asked. Nope. Never eliminates in the house or in his crate. "Well, that is a problem here. We are an indoor facility, and we had to clean up after him 8 times this weekend." Quite frankly, he's probably afraid of these people and all their yelling. He's probably confused as to what is "good" and "bad" behavior because it is clearly not a consistent message with what he's getting at home so he just waits until he's by himself to go. Seems logical to me.
"He barrels at the door of his kennel when the attendants come to let him out for daycare. One of them lost a fingernail this weekend." She's clearly trying to elicit some sort of apologetic or remorseful behavior from me at this point, but I just feebly say, "Okay." I wanted to say "Then why don't you just keep the kennel door shut until he can compose himself before giving him what he wants? We make Hugo "Wait" at doors leading outside for us to walk ahead of him." but my tongue was tied.
"Have you cut back on his food? He's overweight." Okay now you're just looking for stuff to say.
"We're going to have to see some improvement in his behavior if we're going to continue to be able to board him here." Well, that's one thing I can help you with, lady. We'll go ahead and cancel our other four bookings we have with you this summer and take our business elsewhere. He came home to us dirty and smelling like urine. I am abhorred.

So yeah, I'll get over it. I'm on my third cup of coffee (although I've switched to decaf now) and I've had an apple hoping that a moderate amount of caffeine and some blood glucose (eh, fructose, whatever) will help shoo away this little storm cloud over my head.

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QotD: Rise & Shine!

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:01:39 -0500

What are your first thoughts upon waking?
Submitted by Cher Cabula.

Ugh, what is that noise? No way it's 6:00 already.

Come to think of it, I don't have the luxury of thinking a whole lot of interesting thoughts in the morning. I'm like a robot. Shut off alarm, bathroom, let the dog out, feed the dog, and pour the coffee. Then the less-than-mundane thoughts can start to flow.

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QotD: Life is Short

nobody@vox.com(Debbie) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:05:10 -0500

If you had to write your autobiography in 6 words, what would you write?
Submitted by mitzie.

Given a choice, I chose happiness.

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