Recently in cool stuff Category

1. New Year's Day ride up the cemetary on a jalopy
2. Knob Creek, honey, black tea and OJ hot toddies
3. Dwell Magazine redesign
4. Mediocre Asian take-out and Anchor Merry Christmas & Happy New Year Special Seasonal Ale
5. Applying for jobs
6. Boys in spandex
7. Classics by Ratatat
8. Modern medicine
9. Commuting BOTH WAYS without getting rained on
10. Technical performance garments for inclement weather
11. Top 10 lists!

1. Wool hat with ear flaps
2. B & B
3. Cat
4. Lobster claw gloves
5. Yoga
6. Big old kettle o' soup
7. Weatherized, modern apartment
8. Going to my friends' house who shamelessly crank the heat. U know who u r!!
9. Good boots
10. Brushed polyester anything

I've been inspired and entertained lately by photo blogs and my friends' flickr accounts. So I am trying to remember to take pictures, upload them to flickr and put them on my blog.

This is my cat.

My company, Imbibe Magazine, took part in Portland's Bike Commute Challenge during the month of September. When I started I was the token quirky bike commuter, but I'm happy to report that I've roped my coworker Siobhan into sharing that role with me - and we make up half the office staff, so not so quirky now! She had been considering bike commuting but was discouraged because she had to lug a bunch of crap to and from the office, post office, etc.. I brought her a pair of panniers I had that I wasn't using, and that was apparently the missing link because now she is commuting by bike, 30 minutes each way from North Portland, at least once or twice a week.

I am totally impressed, not just by Siobhan, but by the demonstration that often the factors that influence our decisions are actually quite small. I started running (and hence began my irreversible plummet into excercise geekdom) when a friend who worked at Adidas gave me some free shoes. Once I finally bought a couch, I started reading and studying more. You know how it is - waffling about buying something, not knowing if you can justify the extra expense, putting it off. Well, I just want to say, if you've been on the fence about shelling out for that new rain jacket, or gym membership, or dance classes, or chef's knife, or upgrading from your Schwinn Varsity, or whatever, you should probably just go buy it, because it might make a disproportionately big difference in your day-to-day life.

Yesterday was the end of summer term. Today is the best day ever. I went on a long bike ride, then spent the rest of the day staring into space and doing laundry. Now I am eating the best brocolli and rice in the entire world. It has soy sauce, sriracha, and miso mayo on it. The white jasmine rice turned out nice and sticky. Mmm, broccoli and rice.

Sorry, this is probably not too exciting to you, but sometimes it doesn't take much to make me happy.

I've been running again instead of biking because I don't have any time. Dude, running is hard, especially when you go from hardly doing it at all to doing it all the time. But it's refreshing doing something different. I finally broke down and bought the Queer as Folk soundtrack to listen to when I run. OMG, it is totally blowing my mind!

Working out makes food taste better and sleep feel better. I had some Trader Joe's tuna curry with quinoa and week-old brocolli and it was like the best meal of my entire life. Then I snuggled into my cheap-ass Target sheets and felt like a princess or a baby. Oh sleep, I've missed you.

It's finally summer in Portland. I've been bicycling, working at Imbibe, eating lots of delicious fresh produce, and taking a class on semiotics in French advertising for summer school. I went on a camping trip with my friends to San Juan Island and went kayaking.

The weather in Portland has been amazing, and I've been on my bike as much as possible. Riding in the hills with friends is the best thing ever. I've been on some great rides lately with the Veloshop ladies and AP, who I love riding with but whose schedule usually doesn't permit us to join up. Today we had an exceptionally great ride in Portland's west hills. We ascended Saltzman, a curvy gravel road that winds through the trees of Forest Park, then rode Skyline to 53rd, a cool, totally fun, not too white knuckly descent, and continued down fast, swoopy Cornell.

Usually in the last mile or so of a ride the only thought in my head is grilled protein, plus me and Slizzy watched The Last Picture Show last night and they are always eating cheeseburgers in that movie, so when I got home I molted out of my spandex and went directly to New Seasons for a cheesburger, and it was seriously the best cheeseburger of my entire life. It was grilled and crusty on the edges, and the bun was fresh and toasty, and the cheese was sharp and melty, and I had salty tomatoes on the side, and the whole thing together was not of this world. I spent the entire time I was eating it in awe and adoration of my cheeseburger. I am so happy to be alive, so that I can go on beautiful bike rides and then eat delicious cheeseburgers. Sometimes I don't really need anything else in life than that.

I just got back from an awesome trip to Chicagoland. Basically I just spent the whole time eating. The best part was going with my family to Max & Benny's in Northbrook, a Jewish deli-restaurant-bakery. This is the kind of place that has both thin and thick challah french toast on the menu, because Jews are picky. We had blintzes, bagels, whitefish salad, latkes, corned beef and fluffy rolls and egg creams. Heaven. I brought back hamantaschen and rugelach for my friends.

The other really exciting thing was the architecture. Pretty much the entire suburban periphery of Chicago was built between like 1955 and 1965, so everything, from the modest family homes to the deli to the post office, is done in super hot, Prairie-influenced, space age, modernist style. I want to move to Illinois so I can live in a brick and glass ranch, eat matzoh ball soup at Max & Benny's and hang out with my family. I would get a single-speed, since the entire state is completely flat, and a car, since everything is so spread out. I would acquire a nasal accent.

We also went to Hop Leaf in Andersonville. If you like beer and live in Chicago, you should go there. You can read my blog post about it on the Imbibe blog here. Please leave a comment over there. I'll be your best friend. I'll buy you a blintz at Max & Benny's.

So, part of why I haven't been blogging much lately is that I've been busy as all get out with my new job at Imbibe, a national drinks magazine (coffee, booze, wine, etc.). In many ways, it is sort of a fantasy realized: I get paid to blog and drink booze at work, and I get to eat for free at fancy restaurants that I'm not even writing about. You can check out some of what I've been up to (and learn about assorted upcoming events) on the Imbibe blog. Also, freelancers in the house: Most of the feature stories are farmed out, so check out the articles on the website to get an idea of what kind of stuff the magazine runs, and pitch us some stuff. Also, we run a q-and-a column called Distilled that answers obscure queries about random drink-related stuff, so ask us questions! You can email your questions from the Imbibe blog. So, yeah. Bottoms up!

Even magazines like Shape and Domino are featuring sustainable products and encouraging readers to eat organic foods (which is surprising and totally cool), so I might as well throw my own bit of token trendy activism into the mix.

Living in a progressive community, it's easy to assume that you're doing a pretty good job, buying organic cereal and bike commuting and all. Still, looking at my own life, I realize that in the last few years I've gone from crazy rabid radical youth out to rescue the world, to being completely centered on making my own individual life run well, which involves using my money to get through college instead of on organic groceries, and using my time to further my career and physical health instead of volunteering. And I think that's good, because it's important to be able to live your life in a way that satisfies your individual needs and not be a martyr to The Cause, but it's also good to step back every now and then and examine how your life fits in with everything else. Some of my friends are starting to have kids. It makes you think about stuff.

I found a few small extra things I could do that don't cost that much money or brain power. I signed up for one of the sustainable energy options you can get through PGE. When I realized how much energy it takes to run the water heater (my old apartment included hot water in the rent, and now my PGE bill is more than double what it was), I stopped taking quite so many long showers and baths.

I'm also considering trying out some energy-saving flourescent type lightbulbs. Supposedly they are getting better and don't make your house feel like an office anymore. I read about it in Domino. I'll report back.

It isn't feasible for me to do all my shopping at farmers markets and natural foods stores because one, it's expensive, and two, it's annoying, but buying local produce is one of the best things you can do, so my goal is to go to the farmers market once a week and buy one or two things from a local farmer. The food thing is incredibly complex, though. I still feel OK about buying a lot of pesticide-frosted apples from Fred Meyer, because at least they're coming from Washington close by, whereas most of the organic produce at New Seasons these days is flown in from Chile. And it also probably takes a lot less energy to produce a local apple than a processed soy and flax seed organic vegan energy bar from Vermont. I mean I still eat stuff like that too, but I'm just saying, there are ways to be sustainable that circumvent the whole green marketing circus and radical guilt hippie militia.

So, yeah. I'm finding a way to make it work for myself, without it feeling like I'm giving up hella stuff. I'm not going to tell you what to do, because that's annoying. But I just wanted to mention that we have a lot of options now.