I’m sure all the vegan’s have seen this already, but if not here it is: veganlunchbox.com. Inspiring. Cute. Awesome! Makes you want to pack a lunch for me and Angelique.
i have joined the legions of people who can now, cheesily but truthfully, say that getting an ipod has changed my life. it’s so fun to rediscover your own music collection in this way. for some reason, it’s like a new era. right now i’m trying to make a playlist of fast jams. in my world, that means bloc party and the hives, which is pretty fast stuff, no? definitely! oh well.. hours of fun!
by the way, now i want this:
i went to vegforlife.com this morning and that led me to good old herbivore magazine’s website, awesome! and then I went to herbivore’s editors blog site which had a link to vegan.com a site run by author Eric Markus who does a very interesting podcast about animal rights, veg living, etc… I’m downloading it now, can’t wait to listen to it!!!
I came up with my 3 goals for the next 21 days. But before I list them, I have to admit that this whole “21 Day Challenge” thing is kinda funny to me… it really reminds me of “The Plan” from Six Feet Under! It’s all totally positive and meant to enhance our lives. So I guess that’s why it seems strange to me, because I’ve always been sort of a pessimist. However, I tried to set goals that are achievable so that I don’t feel like a failure. It will still be quite a challenge for me though!
1. Eat one vegan meal a day.
2. Do at least 20 minutes of yoga or walk for 20 minutes.
3. Do positive affirmations each day.
How does that sound? The toughest thing for my lazy ass will be the exercising… but with the warden Andrew Johnson by my side, it’s all good!
In the spirit of things, here’s a nice photo of cute cows! Who needs a reason for a cow picture anyway!
Angelique and I signed up for the ‘21 day challenge.’ Fred Patenaude set up the system and website and also does an informative raw foods email newsletter. The challenge is interesting because it focuses on three aspects of your life: nutrition, physical activity, and mind/body. You must do something every day and it must be something you add to your life, not take away (like quitting something). For example, exercise everyday for at least 15 minutes. It’s fun, because lots of people have already signed up (it’s free) and you can see what everyone is writing at their goals.
Interested? Click here.
To lay it all on the line:
Here’s my three goals for the 21 day challenge:
1. eat one raw meal per day
2. Do at least 20 minutes of core body exercises or 60 minutes of cardio everyday.
3. Meditate for 10 minutes every day
In other news: This weekend we are going to try to sell our CD collection. 14 years in the making, and it all ends tomorrow! It’s like giving up your baby or something. But I also feel like it’s very good because it’s giving up a major material possession of mine, and using music only as music and not some way to quantify my life. Stupid, but that’s the way I viewed in my younger years.
In MORE other news: We are going to Guatemala in March! 8 days! More info to come.
we are always ripping. that’s what it’s called, right? when you take your cds and make them into MP3’s? since the purchase of this external hard drive, we’ve been ripping everything we own. (andy owns 95% of the cds and i own the rest. ha!) we’re up to 8336 songs and 36 gigs. andy’s master plan is to sell our cd collection to a record store or something. i remember selling some cds to gallery of sound back in the day, when i needed money in college. it was a mistake; i felt like i was selling my soul! but this is different now. i think because we have everything backed up, and we’re keeping the cds that are hard to find or rare.
so every time we’re on the computer we have to fire up the itunes and rip. feels like a part time job. but it’s neat. i should get a part time job so i could afford to buy myself my own ipod, huh?!
Every six months or so I get fed-up with the lack of infrastructure for bicycle commuting in the Columbus area, this time I wrote a letter to a few people in the local government. Here’s the letter:
To Whom It May Concern:
I’m a bicycle commuter and not to sound over-dramatic… but on most days I feel like I’m taking my life in my hands while riding to work through Columbus and Franklin county and I feel the Public Service Department and Transportation Division are partly to blame by making roads that are unsafe to all users other then automobiles. Most days, that’s right MOST days I have incidents while riding to/from work that are seriously scary. It’s no wonder I rarely see other bicycle commuters on my 15 mile trip. The short way would only be 8 miles but it’s WAY to dangerous, so I cut around the west side and Hilliard and ride through the country, which is nice but takes twice as long. Columbus could be a perfect city for bicycle commuting, it has a decent climate, no hills in sight and a great bicycling community but the lack of a proper bicycle/pedestrian policy and planning that is ONLY based on automobiles makes it a horrible city for cyclists. Our city is failing its residents and setting ourselves up for failure as fossil fuels become obsolete. But that’s the big picture, the little picture is everyday I commute (2-3 days per week) people honk at me, yell at me and intimidate me while I’m riding to work. Today someone honked 2 feet behind me and continued to aggressively pass me while oncoming traffic was also passing, I was about 12 inches from a pissed off SUV driver going 45 mph! Scary. I wasn’t at fault, I wasn’t riding in the middle of the road, I was simply trying to go to work. Some roads are great with nice wide (2-3 feet) shoulders but they’re usually close to schools, if only all roads had these shoulders. How can we convince the Public Service Department and the Transportation Division that more roads need bike lanes and shoulders for pedestrians. Does someone have to be killed before a safe policy will be even considered?
Just as importantly, is there a way to educate both the bicycle riders of central Ohio and most importantly the motorist’s about traffic laws. I believe most of the problems I encounter on my daily commutes are from uneducated motorists that believe I don’t have a ‘right’ to ride on the road and I don’t ‘deserve’ the same space as cars, but with education I think most motorists will understand the rights of pedestrians, bicycles and automobiles.
Please, consider alternative forms of transportation while planning our streets. User’s besides automobiles are out there everyday just trying to get to work safely.
Thanks,
Andy Johnson
carlos felt it was necessary to hop on top of the toilet and nestle underneath the towel. therefore, i had to snap a picture. good thing the camera’s always handy.
this weekend we painted our bedroom. a while ago, we had done the walls in a chocolate brown. although i really liked it, we admittedly did a shoddy job of it. so now that we got a new bed, we felt it was time to re-do. so after two coats of primer, we painted the walls a nice light blue, kind of like this. the room looks clean and bright, which is good, but definitely more boring right now, which is bad. what i wanted to do was unabashedly copy from the december issue of domino and use this canvas on the main wall. it’d be c’est manifique!
although andy said the above marimekko is kinda boring, and he told me that he’d like to actually do a painting instead. is it boring? anyway i was surprised by that, since it’s been a long time since he’s done any painting. so that’s very exciting.