go_team

Via somechicksings:

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture in your LJ, NOT under a cut tag, of something pleasant, such as an adorable kitten, or a fluffy white cloud, or a bottle of booze. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.
3. Include these instructions, and share the love.

I'm finally back to working on the Nepal trip pictures.

I heard John McCain is a Scientologist. Is it true? (Pass it on.)

This morning I woke up from a long, complicated, Wizard of Oz-style "and you were there, and you were there, and you were there" kind of dream where I caught up with a lot of people, some of whom I hadn't thought of in a long time, and we talked, and some of us performed, or showed off art, or writing, or kids (who mostly showed off themselves), or other projects that have been not consuming us so much as transforming us and our recent and not so recent lives (and vice versa), to the point where maybe we haven't been in touch as much as we might like. Anyway. All of the people in this dream were very dear to me, so I wrote a mushy Open Letter about it, but I wanted to tell everyone the most important part of the letter, which goes like this:

Friends, it was good to see you. No matter how long it's been since we last saw each other, or spoke, or wrote, or exchanged stupid email or whatever little time sucks the Web just distracted us with, I've missed you. I hope this letter finds you well --- at least as well as you were in my dream last night, if not better (and we were all pretty great). I think you are both the best thing that has ever happened to me, and that our friendship is the best thing I do, and every time I edit this sentence it gets a little longer and clumsier when what I really mean is just: You're the best. Thank you.

There ya go. Everything else can wait.

Love,
-Tracy

I think I sent my last batch of postcards from Nepal one month ago today, and I know I sent one to our home address here in Eugene, but it hasn't arrived yet, which has me a little worried. So here's my request to everyone who asked for a postcard (that links back to the original comments-filtered address collecting post, which was how I started my "to mail" list): could you please reply to this post and let me know if you got mail from my sojourn on the other side of the world? Again, comments will be screened.

Thanks so much!

Dear Internet,

I am once again in possession of a working cell phone. My number has not changed. If you don't know it and want to, email me. If you don't know my email address, who are you why the heck do you want my cell number?

That is all.

Love,
-Tracy

Dear Internet Friends,

Peter and I have successfully returned from our awesome vacation and tandem bike tour around the IJsselmeer. Home is every kind of awesome. Now I do not know if I will ever catch up on reading Teh EllJay, let alone freaking Google Reader (it seemed like such a good idea at the time, but oy). But I still love you all and am now much easier to contact, even if I put my cellphone through the wash in Holland and might be sort of hard to reach in that regard until I get a replacement. So email me if you want to get my attention, in particular if anything really important happened in the last three weeks that OMG Tracy Must Know About.

Muchas smoochas,

-me

I'm reading The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer and Jim Mason, and it might be my favorite piece of "when in doubt, don't eat the animal product" propaganda to date (besides cookbooks, anyway). But I just got to the chapter on eating out, and I'm a little worried, because of this passage:

That ranted, I am hoping very much that Singer and Mason will conclude that if you really want to eat out ethically, you should either patronize only restaurants that proudly advertise the origin of their ingredients, or forget it and eat only what you cook at home from ingredients whose sources you know and love (and good luck with that; this book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and of course Marion Nestle's fantastic What To Eat are good places to start). I'm keeping my fingers crossed, because the book has been very smart and in touch with reality so far, and I'm more than halfway through. And now I will return to my reading.

Update, 11:18 PM --- Nope, but then again the chapter turned out to be a more general thing about the food industry and three businesses in particular. I thought they went a little too easy on Whole Foods, too, but oh well. Maybe they'll give the "either choose your restaurant with care or stay home" advice in the conclusion of the book.

Some people I know swear that summer is their most carnivorous season — they just can’t resist dead animal flesh cooked on the grill. Not me. I get closest to veganism or even (gods and goddesses forbid) a raw foods diet during the hottest days of the year, when everything growing is so ripe and fresh it’s hard to think of eating anything else.

Read more...

kuddliphish asked if there was an LJ RSS feed for TracyFood yet, and there isn't, in part because I need a paid account to set that up and also because if I automate the "hey, check out TracyFood" messages I'll never update LJ again, which would be lame it turns out there's one at tracyfood and I don't know who's responsible (it sure wasn't me!) but I'm very happy it exists. Also, I'm thinking maybe I'll make weekly TracyFood summaries on LJ instead of entries every time I put a post up there, for purposes of laziness and not wanting to feel like I'm spamming. Any thoughts, dear readers?

... and I am So! Tired!