This blog has moved to http://egrigg9000.com/meal

Since this blog is not about my specific career, I would be happy to talk to people about my role offline. I will continue to discuss the issues of work life balance, and what it means to have good design support that balance, in gory detail right here in "the other fourth meal." I may change the URL to something more spunky, though, and perhaps less broken. Just a thought.

In the meantime, my days will be filled with cleaning out the basement, working out and eating healthy, and buying stuff at the mall for no reason. I won't be spending my break in front of the computer like I am right now. Gotta go. Love to everyone.

Today I went to Whole Foods for the first time in ages. There is one thing in that store that is a financial bargain, and that's the spices. I had a list from my cookbook of which spices to acquire, and our spice drawer was a sad thing indeed. Crowded, most items expired, and never opened unless in dire desperation. Being burnt out from interviews as well as having to go in on a weekend (to handle the work not accomplished while interviewing), I decided to tackle this one drawer. I knew it meant going to Whole Foods.

From my list, I circled two items where there was no point looking for the items at any other store. Those two items were truffle oil, and hawaiian red sea salt. After making off with my little baggies of spices to disappoint the people behind me in line with, I headed to the correct aisle and found the last remaining bag of this salt. $4 for approximately 1/4 cup of salt.

This salt fits the formula of being a luxury. Regular salt is 79 cents per what, a 6 cup size or so. This red salt is easily a decimal point off from that standard. However, it has that undefineable quality. A few years ago the scientists discovered a new taste center, other than sweet salty bitter and the other thing. They called it "yummy" for the absence of anything else to call it. Apparently soy sauce and balsamic vinegar have this quality. Red sea salt has as well. It is not a sharp taste, when you eat it, but quite mellow and manages to stand up to the food as the lead singer and keep some complexity under wraps so it holds your attention. The ingredients on the bag mention "sea essence" or some such nonsense. It is perfect that they do this, for a product must have that indefinable quality in order to be a true luxury.

In one scene in Lord of the Rings, both Frodo and Sam almost lose their lives for a box of salt from the shire. They did not even know what it was as they struggled to save it, but later pronounced it worthy of risking their own lives for, even if the prospect of roast chicken was remote to the point of ridicule. This is the spiritual relationship we have with these luxuries, as if our very identities were tumbling down the rocks and requiring heroic acts to maintain their presence in our lives.

The way I see it, I am delighted to pay $4 for a substance that is thrilling rather than commonplace. A thrilling wine might be $600, a thrilling hotel room even more, a thrilling handbag in the thousands. It's all in the ratios, and salt at $4 is a peasant's luxury even when sold with panache and glamour. Some luxuries are a bargain, and I would love to have more examples in this price range.

Kit 4 is interesting, because in one way the rubber meets the road in disconnecting from your external solution, and it was my experience that I was able to do things I would not normally be able to do. This includes counting calories and exercising every day, without being completely obsessed over how I was adding sacrifice to an already sacrificial scenario. On the other hand, we are informed that we simply are not ready. The skills in kits 5 and 6 will be the foundation of the access to joy which, as I understand it, defeats the demons of reaching for the (whatever) and instead reaching for the effective thing. I'm parroting words here, and in all honesty I do not understand the difference between the effectiveness of reaching for the (whatever) so that I am pinned to the collection board with a pin like a specimen, and reaching for the effectiveness of something transformative and supporting. Again, to quote something from my "community connection," ... "I'm not yet at the point where I can have a bad day and say 'oh, that's ok, I'll just eat a pile of spinach and get on the treadmill.'"

Anyway, let's just hypothesize that I had a rough day, on a WEEKEND, which is completely unfair, and all the government's fault, and my chosen restaurant is under construction and the nearest one nearby was, you guessed it. Red Robin. I have a unique perspective of Red Robin, similar to what I have for Starbucks. As a Seattle originated business I remember the original. Back in the 1980s a friends mom took us out to the Portage Bay Red Robin which was the original. What I know now is it is one of the only places you can bring kids for lunch and order a drink without feeling like a deviant. Back then, me and my friend looked at the menu of non-alcoholic beverages and coo-ed over the "Chocolate Moo" etc. I remember everything about that place, the fireplace, the glass enclosed porch overlooking the bridge, the houseboats, the boats destined for the docks or the great beyond. I remember the 1970s graphic design on the car ads and the old fashioned posters they showed on the wall. All these things that likely, as the place was becoming cloned, a replicatory-ist type came in and chronicled obsessively for each new RR that would be created. I imagine this person reviewing posters and other objects d'art. "Definitely not RR," the person would say in a New York rich person lisp. "Ooohh, definitely RR." This would all happen in 1982 or so. In my imagination.

Once I was jogging past the Portage Bay RR and I tripped over the tiniest crack in the pavement and fell. I had a rock wedged in my hand and it was pretty gross. I might have been 20. It was 10:30 in the morning on a Sunday. I went to RR and walked in amidst the staff setting up. This one woman was very nice, and directed me to the restroom. This was the impossibly small restroom that I remember, with the picture of the cigarette girl on the wall. Somehow, the small RR bathroom was part of its charm that did not get cloned. A small bathroom says, we are independent, the fishermen eat here, it says any number of authentic type things that the large bathroom with the taps that turn on for themselves such as Cheesecake Factory does not say. I tore the rock out of my palm and it left an almost exact imprint of the Nike logo. Who knew.

So later, after growing up and all, I returned to RR in California and noticed what had evolved. Portage bay was not within our reach, but the one on the waterfront in Seattle by the daycare became a staple. If it were not for the Santa Fe chicken burger we would have signed off completely, but those anaheim peppers... on a burger... someone was really thinking over there in corporate world. However, a jarring introduction to becoming re-acquainted to my favorite neighborhood establishment was the birthday song. The RR birthday song goes like this. Some poor schlub mentions to the waiter that it's the birthday of the even poorer schlub they brought with them. The staff takes note and at some point they gather around for the act of humiliation. They all sing something along these lines, reluctantly, but with barely enough flair to avoid being fired:

"Happy happy birthday, blah blah blah blah blah (while clapping as if someone was russian breakdancing on the floor, on the beat, you know)

Happy happy birthday, blah blah blah blah blah

Happy happy birthday

(and then in a RITARDANDO which is completely beyond the scope of the asthetic aim of the piece, a slowing down of the tempo for dramatic effect)

... may all your dreams come truuuee

(then back uptempo)

Happy happy birthday, blah blah yabba dabba do. Hey!"

This was my complaint at the time. They re-wrote the birthday song. I had this complaint that felt very valid at the time. My position was, the birthday song goes, well, you know how the birthday song goes. Who is RR to rewrite the birthday song? Is it within their cultural bill of rights to do this? And who are we to just simply accept this new, faulty, russian dance type birthday song when we already had one that was perfectly good? OK, so it was a little downbeat, but still. We have a birthday song in this country. Already.

Then I had kids and of course after the drink I did not feel bad about ordering, we started singing the RR birthday song along with the staff, wherever we were. We do not know the words. We might have been a little loud. We had the clapping thing down, and nobody can ritardando like the Grigg family let me tell you. Of course we may have gotten a few looks. Those people can stuff it in a sack. Until...

This weekend, on the trip to RR I am not supposed to be obsessing about, the one after which I did not want to eat the rest of the day (even though I had only like 6 fries), on this trip I found out two things:

1) The Santa Fe burger is not available in all RRs. Unbeleiveable!

2) Recently, they changed the RR birthday song. Not a big change, but they took out the ritardando. So the staff-singing birthday experience just plows on over you, without a joking nod to aesthetics, As fast as humanly possible.

So now instead of complaining about RR taking the audacious leap of rewriting the birthday song for all of us, I complain that the new RR song is nowhere near as nice, as kitchy, as cigarette-girl-pull the rock out of your palm-nostalgic as the old one. Which proves that nostalgia is as easily romance-able as the high school cheerleader whose parents are away from home.

Bring back the ritardando! Bring back the artificial authenticity I experienced long enough ago to barely warrant as real. Bring back the works, while you're at it. And don't be shy with the anaheims.

It's been a terrific couple of weeks, including a tremendous trip to CA. I don't travel well, the security guards took my hair conditioner, but my spirit is completely revived. I am exercising every day, eating vegetables, working like a dog, it's all good. Even the bad parts.

Anyway, still fatblogging, but expect to see this number for a while.

Hope all is well with you!

The reason I am not a gamer is temporary. I was a gamer and will be a gamer again. However, where I am now in my life, if I play a game and am productive at solving a problem, I feel like I have DONE SOMETHING. This is terrible because then I do not feel like working or doing something else. It’s time to take a break. No sense that the game itself was supposed to be a break in and of itself. So it all kinda breaks down from there. What I really need in my life is (well, not REALLY need, but you get the idea) is an activity that feels completely unproductive. Something that feels like a break. Something that starts the guilt timer going and sends me back to some supposedly productive activity when it maxxes out and I feel bad enough for those delicious few minutes of pointlessness.

Enter 2nd life. Catherine gave a stunning demo of bizarre and pointless social interaction that was interesting and fascinating for what it did NOT have. There was no urgency or sense of panic. There was random social subtleties everywhere. There was the sense that time could go on and on. Sure, you could look at the game as a money making venture and consider that equivalent to points, but then again you can look at the real world that way too. It does not seem to be the point of 2nd life. And that is the challenge of the game. If you are type A, you will be very confused and not know where to hang your hat. Then again, you will feel as if you actually had a break.

Proposed: a first rule of entertainment. A new rule. People don’t want to do anything. People want pointless. I say, let’s give it to ‘em! (In small quantaties of course.)

For a good example of how little I know about reporting, consider this example from my life around 1998 or so. My roommate had a friend who was a reporter, she would come over on occasion and we knew each other pretty well. She found out where I worked at the time, and was very interested to know that I worked with a certain person Ms. A who was in politics. I had the odd sensation of being sortof interviewed but not really. This led to several layers on inconsistencies regarding policy: 1) Since I knew that this friend was a reporter, I clammed right up when being asked questions. These questions I would have answered freely to any other person, just because I like to talk. 2) When the friend told me I would be able to answer her questions “off the record,” I still clammed up. I was not the company spokesperson and not interested in giving background information for any story, period, due to the stress it would bring me in the workplace worrying about fallout from overstepping my bounds. So I acted a bit rude probably, and clammed up, not like I had anything interesting to say anyway. Which leads to the third and implicit policy inconsistency: 3) If you are talking to a reporter, and she doesn’t say “off the record,” does it assume you are on the record?

As bloggers, we look for material everywhere. One poetry slam I attended in San Francisco with my dh had a terrific performance by a poet who threw a story at us in the audience, regarding his breakup with his girlfriend (what else), where the girl comes to terms with her guy being a poet. Her parting line: “I’m not your girlfriend, I’m your MATERIAL!!!” Which correctly sums up the state most of us bloggers would be in if our material could yell at us.

My key question regarding being on the record. What is the default? What is polite? And most importantly, what is DONE (are people usually impolite and gather all material on the record unless explicitly asked not to?)

This winter was unusually harsh for illness around the pacific NW. In fact, some refer to the Moose Flu for those who went to Northern Voice healthy and returned to face a week of the crud. Myself, I escaped the crud only by having had it already. There I was, some week in January, in bed and watching TV. Like he has every sick day I’ve had when I was a little girl, Bob Barker came onscreen. It was very different watching him as an adult. The sets were old and 70’s looking. It brought back memories of that episode of Seinfeld where the set from the Merv Griffin show came into Kramer’s hands. You could see the dust even though the cameras. The contestants were way fatter than I remembered. And they were about my age. The font of their name tags was the same. They stood in those little podiums in the showcase showdown, straining in their stirrup pants to not suffer the indignity of bidding “over” yet numerically closer.

Bob was older, of course, and maintained a kind of dignity that his sets did not. He shook as he held the microphone, knowing the song of the lines so well, introducing the models with the clever themed presentations. Of course this was not nervousness but simply old age. This was one kind of gift to us he gave. Another gift was tacked on right at the end, where Bob took 2 seconds of airtime to remind us to “please control the pet population. Spay or neuter your pet.” These 2 seconds under the complete control of someone so respected just for the longevity of his work, not to mention the cultural signpost it provides. This is the reverse of blogging, heroic, one person, doing what he wants to broadcast to millions for the duration of our lives with that 2 seconds. In blogging, we make one statement that may or may not be read, and stands on its own as a reference. What Bob had was like a monarchy, powerful but ultimately not scalable. As a blogger, you have democracy or even anarchy, thriving on the association of person to person and meme to meme.

Given these two experiences, it seems to me that the reason the tipping point for climate change occurred, is it had both the monarchy and the democracy. It had Al Gore, at the top, and environmentalist hippie do gooder bloggers (and I mean this with the greatest respect) forming the long base of the pyramid. Perhaps working from both sides is the key to the tipping point?

It's 10pm, time for some sleep before the adventure continuing tomorrow.

Today I did several responsible things.

I threw away the halloween candy. Without telling the kids. It is March, after all. Responsibility grade of A+. However it was not really a problem for me, so it's more of a silent success.

I placed the coffeemaking appratusses into a cupboard. Because I haven't used them since December. (Sorry I'm a little wobbly when I crouch down). Responsibility grade of A- because the jury is still out on how much damage the stuff was doing to me in the first place. I'm doing OK though.

I have my food weighing and measuring stuff right next to something I do use, which is the liquor. Ha ha - those of you who might feel judgmental about this can stuff it in a sack. Here is the thing I learned about using an external solution. There is not a category of things that are good to use and bad to use. If a thing becomes a problem for you, then that's a problem. Moderation is sometimes about turning the knob down on your usual thing and turning the knob up on others. So, while having alcohol in the house, even for comfort, might be a problem for other people, for me alas it is not. At least not yet, and I am secure that my skills are strong enough to stay with myself and monitor all of these hobby-excesses. For now, picking one up is great, because it takes the pressure off of food.

This curvy countertop space is an area of the house which I insisted on creating just for coffee. I thought of it like a transitional space for guests, where maybe they don't want to be in the center of all the action area in the kitchen, but maybe they do want a cup. It has turned into the shrine of stuff for Beth, which is fine too. What this stuff says to me is, "You are a responsible person. You are putting things in your body that you want, in the quantities that you want, and those quantities and choices are resonable. You are perfectly permitted to lose it, just as long as you keep track and write it down, and don't have the coffee." Responsibility grade B-. For obvious reasons.

And now I go about cooking myself an entire batch of spinach, with one 300 calorie sausage and some onion. I'm eating it right now. The onions are sweet. Very yummy. Responsibiilty grade B+, depending on what else I eat today.

At the point where I am in my Solutions work, most of the way through kit 4, I have really shaken up my dependency on food, the artistry thereof, the creative aspect, the social magnetism, and the caloric mischief that it entails. Note I have not solved this problem, but I have created a place of internal emotional safety which gives me something to stand on when I reach for it. I know when I get thrown a curveball, such as today, I am prone to pouting and reaching for a sure thing. I also know I have a set of things I can reach for instead, and even have a track record of reaching for them on occasion.

Nothing gives me more curveballs than facing the evil demons of the taxes, what bill to be behind on next, and the list of calories I consume each day (note - I will be hungry at 2500 calories a day. obviously a flaw in my o.s. because according to the government and traineo, I should be like a tick about to explode with that much food.) So after grumbling, and nothing being like how I wanted it, I went for a walk. At the post office, I mailed bills which were getting shutoff notices. That was a practical thing that made things a little better. I also mailed the ballot for Seattle's new viaduct (no to both plans). At the espresso stand I bought a split-shot, when I have been off caffeine since December. Bad girl. But at least it was not a caloric choice. Then to the grocery store for a bottle of wine, some Tikka sauce, chocolate, and a small shrimp party platter. Just in case I decide to lose it calorically and at least don't want to regret the lapse asthetically. Then to the tanning booth, required due to the vitamin D. Viva la 9 minute vacation.

Feeling better, I waited for the bus, knowing that as an adult I was going to have to face these demons again. In fact, as an adult, it is my job to decide the size of the demons and whether to duck or jump. One unreasonable expectation I have about both the taxes and the finances is I expect to be perfect and therefore risk-free. In fact, I cannot be perfect, as even the most closely monitored checking account can bounce checks by mistake, and even the most carefully prepared tax return can get audited. Given that I cannot inject myself into a risk-free world, I can do what I can. The fact is, these troubles are not new things, I am just looking at them more closely. Like finding out I am really 5 foot 8 and not 5 foot 11 like I have imagined all my life, it hurts to find out information you don't want to know. BUT not knowing the information does not change the underlying truth of it.

The evil and dark things are lurking in the box, and each year I crack the lid open a little more, each year it seems I can stand to look at a little more of what's in there - without losing it completely. The pride in that is what feeds me today.

At some point I was handed the link to these folk's site. I can't quite remember if my dh works with one of them, or if they live in our neighborhood, or both. I think both. Anyway I loaded up the site again tonight and am in complete agony reading the torture. And like childbirth there is no running away. You are the one owning this house that is killing you, and you will be the one to write the check with the zeros and the more zeros and then live in your parent's house anyway. You will be the one suspending all expectation for immediate enjoyment of any dollar you might have. The kicker for me is: I don't know why we expect these old houses to have been built so damn well they don't need to be torn down in 100 years. You wouldn't expect a car to last 100 years? And people say: they don't make them like this anymore, and tap the walls like you would a very large football player. The fact is, they did not know how to make a modern house in 1910. They knew how to make a wooden castle like thing out of old growth. More of a fort, really. That's what they knew how to make. But plumbing? electrical? indoor bathroom? indoor KITCHEN? That was for the servants to worry about. The house we live in EXPECTS SERVANTS. Which explains a lot about my own attitude, especially if architecture affects us the way the chinese know it does.

The real kicker, the thing that makes me really mad is that I was personally tricked into thinking that pouring several life savings' into a single structure was in any way worth it, was somehow noble and traditional, would get me into seattle democrat heaven or something. it's just wrong and I would like a condo now please and my money and sanity back. Which is not going to happen.

sigh.

Of course I like my house just fine, and if I did not deserve the agony it gave us I also arguably did not deserve for it to triple in value over that period of time. But the fact is, once you go there, once you remodel one of these old neglected creatures you can never do it again. Not if you have been really burned. Serial remodelers house-flipper types simply don't get very burned.

Anyway, enjoy the read.

At any rate.

Q: How many Jack Bauers does it take to screw in a light bulb. (I'm still working on this one).

A: A possibiity: One to torture the bulb, another to file an investigation, and Chloe.

Q: What does Jack Bauer want on his spaghetti?

A: meetBALL, meetBALL, meetBALL, meetBALL.

Yes that one translates into text horribly. Let it be known that I do a great imitation of the little electronic heartbeat thing. The unfortunate thing is, I have been trying out Jott, and waiting for a good idea to run through the service. The first thing that comes to me is an audio sound effect pun. Sigh.

My fingers are tired from typing all day. Otherwise I would update you on Northern Voice, which was the most alive I've felt in months, and that's either sad or nice depending on how blog-centric you are.

Today I want to note about a thing in O magazine. Which I read, after I've read everything else in the world, which is often. Anyway, the first 1/2 of the mag is meta info. It's like having an about box on a piece of software that has more functionality than the software itself. At any rate, there was a "men of oprah" where those poor guys obviously were spending 99% of their energy not being weird about that. One even said something along the lines of "the people who work here are great - and not one of them knows how to upload a file to an FTP server!" Not sure how many layers to unpeel on that one. Let me try. (btw, ouchy fingers)

1) FTP IS HARD!!!! Really, if you don't do it all the time, it can be really hard. Then it can fail for no reason, the file can corrupt, there's the txt or binary to consider, mac or pc, it's out of control.

2) Computers should be easy, and the savvy person expects computers to be easy. It is actually savvy to be a luddite. Technology is there for the thing you are doing, not for its own sake. If you're shy about technology, you need to first respect it, and then show it the business end of a rolled up newspaper.

3) Why is there so much overlap between the personal improvement crowd and the technology crowd in real life, but so little overlap in the media? Which makes me think the man's comment is false... statistically how can this be so?