Pithy Title Here

It's a night of firsts here, folks. It's the first night I feel like I have "living" space and not a repository for IKEA boxes. It's the first night I have been on the interwebs here bc my wifi card has been on the rag or something that prevented it from working as normal. Incidentally, if you need some IKEA furniture built, I am your guy. Though I'm pretty sure that after the next - and last - piece there is to assemble, I never want to see a wooden dowel again for at least a good 30-day period. But I digress... The movers arrive at 9 a.m. or so tomorrow. The next two days I am spending the bulk of time getting the place in some kind of basic shape, moving items into our storage unit and getting it ready for the arrival of the fabulous wife and dog (and Spragg !) on Saturday. That said, I have been working full time this week and a few things that are immediately notable: I have a 10-minute commute. Walking. You have no idea how fantastic this is unless ...

I just changed the settings on my computer and Blackberry so that everything is on Pacific Time. From here on out, I'm three hours behind the east coast I have long called home. In five hours, I hop on a plane and land 3,000 miles away... at home. Kinda cool, no? Sarah, Ashley and friend Jen are en route, as well, via car. I strongly suggest you follow their travails on Sarah's blog over the next few days. There will be much to report on a new city, but before that, I think it's only proper to send off Charlotte, a place I have enjoyed greatly. I've made great friends, had good times and learned a bit about what makes the South the South. So... a few things I will miss about Charlotte and some I won't (and people don't count on here. I am talking about material things...) I will miss: The trees. Charlotte is still a city of trees. Crepe Myrtles, Magnolias, Mimosas... even some palms here and there. The coniferous Northwest beckons, but there is something ab...

You know the saying "you are what you eat?" I have a whole new view on it since I read Michael Pollin's The Omnivore's Dilemma last fall. Now, don't get me wrong, I still grab myself a Bojangle's Supremes combo every couple months. But the book demands you look not only at what you eat, but also at your place and role in creating the food you consume. What the book basically gets at is that, if we are what we eat, what we are is corn. Piles of corn. High fructose corn syrup. Corn oil. The chicken you eat at most restaurants? Fed on corn. Beef, too, which is actually really bad for cows. Pollin gets into the reasons for all this. And I couldn't do it any justice by typing all the reasons here... you should just read the book. What's interesting is that Pollin isn't some holier-than-thou warrior for vegetarianism. In fact, he's pretty clear on the idea that simply looking at a human shows we're supposed to eat some meat. Our teeth hand...