Stay Cool.

The Roots song "Stay Cool," off of The Tipping Point album has my new favorite lyric:

Tryin to play it cooler than a polar bear colony

Maybe it's not going down in the books as the best ever, but it makes me smile when I hear it. Rest of the lyrics found here.



Big props to my friend Jim (who authors this blog) for introducing me to The Roots and a host of other new stuff.

Polar bear pic taken from this blog, just because it's a good pic. What a cool polar bear.

San Francisco to ban plastic bags!

I was working in this tiny town in Germany for a few weeks in 2003. I remember being really shocked by a few things, first that nothing was open on Sunday and shops closed up by 2pm on Saturday AND that I wasn't given a plastic bag for my purchases.

Flash forward to 2007 in San Francisco... where the petroleum-based bag is on the way out.

Note that this does not mean the end of the plastic bag entirely - it just means that "plastic" may be made from corn, or some other non-oil based substance. Because the substitutes will initially be more expensive than the standard plastic bags, I imagine that stores will charge a fee for customers that do not bring their own bag.

Forget your bags at home all the time? Try keeping a few bags in your car so you've got them handy when you go shopping.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/27/environment.baggs.reut/index.html

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to become the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags from large supermarkets to help promote recycling.

Under the legislation, beginning in six months large supermarkets and drugstores will not be allowed to offer plastic bags made from petroleum products.

"Many [foreign] cities and nations have already implemented very similar legislation," said Ross Mirkarimi, the city legislator who championed the new law. "It's astounding that San Francisco would be the first U.S. city to follow suit." (Watch why it's no longer politically correct to 'think plastics' )

"I am hopeful that other U.S. cities will also adopt similar legislation," he said. "Why wait for the federal government to enact legislation that gets to the core of this problem when local governments can just step up to the plate?"

The city's Department of the Environment said San Francisco uses 181 million plastic grocery bags annually. Plans dating back a decade to encourage recycling of the bags have largely failed, with shoppers returning just one percent of bags, said department spokesman Mark Westland.

Mirkarimi said the ban would save 450,000 gallons of oil a year and remove the need to send 1,400 tons of debris now sent annually to landfills. The new rules would, however, allow recyclable plastic bags, which are not widely used today.

A spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who must approve or veto the legislation, called it sensible. "Chances are good that he is going to sign it," said Nathan Ballard.

Picture of sea turtle eating a plastic bag :( taken from an Australian newspaper http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/28/1088392600187.html.

Peeps on Ponies!

G$, this one's for you. From www.cuteoverload.com/. Yay!

foggy, cloudy sunday

Birthday was awesome. Lots of friends came out to play and it was fun to introduce my different groups to each other. My new year got off to a wondeful start. Thank you everyone for coming out and celebrating my birthday!

After being distracted by college basketball (OMG! Hoyas take it in OT!) and a dirty kitchen (now clean!), I'm settling in to do some work. Lots to do this week and I really need to focus to get it all done.

And some environmental news...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/23/AR2007032301753.html
Paris Embraces Plan to Become City of Bikes

I love the idea of getting more people to travel by bicycle.

More bikes = more drivers used to being around bikes = safer. More bikes = less cars = reduction in greenhouse gas emissions = better for the planet. More bikes = healthier people.

I'm not entirely surprised that the fastest way around Paris is by bicycle. I wonder if the same is true in cities like SF... getting up those hills is NOT very fast by bike!

Interesting example of a public/private partnership! Go business & sustainability!

Some excerpts from the Washington Post article:

By John Ward AndersonWashington Post Foreign Service Saturday, March 24, 2007; A10

PARIS, March 23 -- Paris is for lovers -- lovers of food and art and wine, lovers of the romantic sort and, starting this summer, lovers of bicycles.

On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city's image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.

By the end of the year, organizers and city officials say, there should be 20,600 bikes at 1,450 stations -- or about one station every 250 yards across the entire city. Based on experience elsewhere -- particularly in Lyon, France's third-largest city, which launched a similar system two years ago -- regular users of the bikes will ride them almost for free.

...
The Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delano?, has the same aim, said his aide, Jean-Luc Dumesnil: "We think it could change Paris's image -- make it quieter, less polluted, with a nicer atmosphere, a better way of life."

But there is a practical side, too, Dumesnil said. A recent study analyzed different trips in the city "with a car, bike, taxi and walking, and the bikes were always the fastest."

U.S. To Give Every Iraqi $3,544.91, Let Free-Market Capitalism Do The Rest

The Onion.

Rules.

Check out this article: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30234?utm_source=slate_rss_1

"I'm very excited," Ahmed Allawi said. "A free, unregulated market will swiftly and efficiently lead to the establishment of an array of fairly priced goods and services. Any day now, there should be something available to spend this money on. As for today, the open-air market down the street is still on fire."

Oh yeah, this gets filed under knowledge. Because it involves economics. Allawi's quote basically sums up what free-market economists think will happen if the market is set to rule all.

fido, part II

the fido saga continued. warning! whining ahead!

fido's visit to the mechanic yesterday was $320 - a lot better than i expected.
fido passed smog.
fido is still broken though. now the ignition doesn't fully shut off the electrical system. turning the car off is an hour long process of jiggling the key around until something, somewhere catches. so i now have an effing short in the system. wonderful. fido is now off and will not be turning back on again until i am on my way back to the mechanic. i'm so annoyed and sad and angry about this whole thing.

and my laptop.
lenovo failed to give DHL my apartment number, so they brought it back. and didn't call me!
i had to drive to portrero hill (south america, as far as i'm concerned. other side of the city.) to deal with it. at least my car works... until it's time to stop.

on the bright side, i did go for a run this evening. what a wonderful way to burn off some anger.

i want a summer internship. if i don't find something, i'm going back to illinois to stay with my mom for the summer. i'm actually really excited at the possibility of being there for a while - near my family and lots of old friends. could be just what i need. and my mom sounds kind of happy about it too - of course, she's making plans for all of the stuff we'll get done around the house, but she was also saying that we could go to the beach and the dunes...

Poor Fido :(

Fido, my 10 year old, red VW Golf, is in the shop.

This sucks for so many reasons, including
1. My mechanic is in Mountain View.
2. This will cost money.
3. Fido is not worth that much money.
4. Fido and I are nearing our six year anniversary (coincides with my birthday) and I was hoping to be together at least seven years... through my expected MBA graduation date - May 2008.
5. I don't even drive that often, but I'd like to have a reliable car.
6. Smog check is due on the 22nd. It failed. Check engine light & a misfiring fourth cylinder. Can't Fido just use the other three and call it a day?
7. I really wanted to go for a run this afternoon. It cleared up and was a beautiful day near the ocean. Instead, I'm in Mountain View. AND I had to drive past my old house.
8. DHL is supposed to drop off a box for my laptop and I wanted to get it shipped back to IBM/Lenovo today.

This doesn't suck because:
1. I'm at Red Rock Cafe in Mountain View. One of my most favorite places to study.
2. Tom, my auto mechanic, is really good and really fast.
3. It got me out of the house.
4. Red Rock Cafe is working with Project Rwanda, an organization that is "Furthering the economic development of Rwanda through initatives based on the bicycle as a tool and symbol of hope." I may have to buy a bag of beans to support this one.
5. This is a reminder that I really shouldn't drive that much. Effing cars. (Not you Fido, I <3 you, please don't be really broken)

Fido's saga to be continued...

Birthday Plans

Beginnings.

We celebrate New Years as the beginning - the official start to this big span of time - the YEAR. We make plans, resolutions and have dreams.

The end of a relationship changed all of that for me.

I need a new start. A new set of plans, resolutions and dreams. I've been working on improvements, especially in the past few weeks. But, I like things to seem official.

So... this Friday, March 23rd, my birthday, is also going to be my NEW YEAR. A year full of potential and excitement. A year for me to do what I want to do and learn all about who I am and who I want to be.

I don't expect that March 24th will be some huge, massively accomplished day... after all, I'm going out drinking and dancing the night before... but I'd like to make efforts to feel new and renewed and positive and aware of the possibilities. And maybe get a phone number when I'm out on Friday night so that one of those possibilities - a DATE - can happen soon :)

droppin some knowledge

Some things I have recently learned that I want to share:

1. You're only supposed to use one space between sentences. We all learned TWO spaces because typewriters used the same spacing for all letters, so the two spaces were necessary for seperation. One space is okay for computers because the letters now have their own spacing (some fonts excepted from this rule). -props to a pug-fan

2. Airfare to San Diego is really cheap right now. -Orbitz

3. I like Bloc Party -thanks to Small Child

4. Even adults have MySpace pages. Apparently it's a good way to find a date?!? I'm surely not going to have a blog and a MySpace, so this may be moving over, if I ever decide that I need in on that trend. -MEv

5. Biking in an area is a good way to get to know it. Knowing how to bike the route between my place andthe GG Bridge was really helpful in driving home on Saturday night.

6. ThinkPad's are not THE ULTIMATE in laptops. Everyone said that they are so reliable. My keyboard just died. Thank goodness for warranties. It goes back on Tuesday. For now, my roommate (thank you!) had an extra keyboard & my old work gave me my old laptop to do contract work.

7. 8 oz of sugar snap peas = not good for the stomach.

8. Good chocolate frosting can be made from sour cream and chocolate. -pug fan/baker extraordinaire

9. Low tide sometimes brings smelly jellyfishes to shore at Ocean Beach. -BF & BP

10. I *will* know by the week of April 16 if I am a finalist and get an interview for a supersweet summer CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) internship.

I was in school this weekend and I swear I learned a lot. But that doesn't seem to be making it to this list. I think my brain's on school overload. I'll come back and drop some mad MBA or sustainability-related knowledge another time.

Sadness. Illinois and Wisconsin are out of the tournament. If only Illinois hadn't stopped playing the last five minutes of their game... totally missed Wisconsin though. I had Wisconsin going to the Elite Eight, so that's gonna hurt my bracket in the Backyard Goats league.

Baby goats = so cute.
Picture taken from :http://www.mccullagh.org/image/10d-14/baby-goat.htmlh.org/image/10d-14/baby-goat.html

mmm. stringless sugar snap peas.

safeway sells 8 oz bags of pre-washed stringless sugar snap peas. i buy them when they're on sale because it's a good snack. kind of sweet with a satisfying crunch. and they're vegetables. woo-hoo!

i'm studying for my econ midterm and decided i needed a snack (really, i should have just made lunch).

i just ate the entire 8 oz (227g) bag of sugar snap peas. doh!

but ... ~ 100 calories total.

vegetables = awesome.

A recap.

I'm a student. I'm getting my MBA at the Presidio School of Management. It's a relatively new school in San Francisco and the program focuses on Sustainable Management. Awesome, very needed stuff in business today. More on that another time.

Anyway, our class schedule is set up such that we're only in class four days a month - Thursday through Sunday. Full eight hour days and then usually socializing afterwards. I've been hanging out with school friends a lot (ok, Monday and Tuesday) this week and it's been great! On Monday a group came over to study. We definitely goofed off and enjoyed the weather, but we got our work done too!

Yesterday I went mountain biking at China Camp.

Picture of China Camp taken from www.dirtworld.com/ - It looked a lot like this yesterday!

I am so fortunate to have new friends that waited for me and were positive about the whole mountain biking experience. Even though I was the last one to meet up at all of the different intersections, no one said anything about waiting - everyone was really positive. Thanks guys!

You see, I'm a really timid mountain biker. I don't have a lot of confidence that I can handle some of the terrain. And I need to practice. And I'm just generally kind of conservative when it comes to the possibility for injury. I don't like rocks or big gouges in the dirt (I call them ravines). There were some rough parts at China Camp, but it was overall an okay place for a relative newbie. There were some patches that were single (1.5?) track but rock-free. What an awesome feeling - "flying" through the woods.

I fell once, but that was just on a tight corner. My knee came down on some rocks, so I'll be feeling that for a while. It's scraped up a little & bruised. (I did eat a hamburger last night so the iron would help my injury. And I iced it yesterday. And am putting arnica gel on it and taking arnica.)

Hopefully I'll go for a walk along Ocean Beach this evening. Went with a friend on Monday after studying and it was amazing. There were so many sand dollars - at first we only found broken ones, but as we got further along the beach we found more whole ones than we could carry! I'd like to pack some up and send them to my mom, who loves the ocean. The sunset was beautiful. The contrast of the blue sky, pink clouds... the sunset reflecting on the shallow water... the green and tan ocean grass compared to the sky.

Yes, I am lucky to live near Ocean Beach.
I took this picture with my camera phone of the Golden Gate Bridge on my way back to SF from Marin.

Sunday night. How did it get to be so late?

It was a beautiful weekend in San Francisco. I was happy to be outside as much as possible - managed to get in two runs AND two bike rides (if you count bike riding as a means of transportation). One run and one ride were even social events. Good times with friends.

Definitely did not do much homework, which sucks, but I feel like having fun with friends is worth some pain during the week. If nothing else I can say that it's good for my mental and emotional health, both of which need some love right now.

March Madness starts Thursday. I haven't been watching as much in years past, but I'm looking forward to some good games. Illinois is a 12 seed. Not great, but I'm happy they made it into the tournament at all. My sister went to Wisconsin, so I'll be an honorary Badger fan.

You can find a printable bracket here - http://www.ncaasports.com/basketball/mens/brackets/printable/2007

I'm thinking of sending this link out to more folks, but I'm a little nervous - not really for any good reasons. I'm also not sure how much I want to give away as far as my own identitiy for strangers who might stumble onto my little blog.

eff you, muni.

my love affair with muni is over, at least for now.

www.511.org failed me. i got on bus #1 which should have lead to bus #2 which should have gotten me to the restaurant by 8pm.

instead, i waited for bus #2 for over 45 minutes and got to the restaurant by 9pm. i wasn't too happy to be so late AND i was effing starving!!! i wasn't going to drink at all, but ordered a mojito the second i sat down. muni, you drove me to drink!

dearest muni, why have you forsaken me so? i kept on thinking... if only i had my bike, if only i had my bike.

do i dare try muni again?

thank goodness i got a ride home!

Global Warming? Let's just engineer ourselves out of this one...

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RSGVJPD
PLAN B FOR GLOBAL WARMING?
Mar 8th 2007

Environment: "Geo-engineering" is the direct use of technology tocounteract climate change. The idea is highly controversial

IF MAN is inadvertently capable of heating the entire planet, surely itis not beyond his wit to cool it down as well? Although most climatescientists do not like to talk about it, cutting greenhouse-gasemissions is not, strictly speaking, the only way to solve the problemof climate change. Just as technology caused the problem, it might alsobe able to help reverse it. The use of planetary-scale engineering tocounteract climate change is known as "geo-engineering".

...

The article then goes on to describe a couple of these cooling/shading methods - here are a few -

• Placing a giant "shade" at a point in space where it will maintain it's position between the Earth and the sun
• Sprinkle reflective particles in the ocean so that the water does not absorb all of the sun's rays
• Form a low-lying marine cloud by spraying droplets of ocean water into the air
• Place huge reflectors (mirrors?) in the desert to reflect light back away from the Earth

Why not work on solving the problem? Let's cut way back on CO2 emissions and develop alternate technologies. See where we can get in 20 years and *then* look into these far-out methods.

Fruit bowl

Ripe pear saves area woman from chocolate.

That whole "keep a bowl of fruit in the kitchen" idea - you walk in the kitchen, wanting a snack. Instead of going for the chocolate, you're supposed to have the apple, or in my case, pear. It worked!

Well, it worked one time.

This afternoon I caved and enjoyed the dark chocolate chips. And I'm currently snacking on popcorn instead of a banana or grapefruit.

OMG! I want to see The Namesake, based on the book by Jhumpa Lahiri. It looks like the main character is the kid who played Kumar in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Anyway, The Namesake is a really good book. I don't remember much about it though, other than really enjoying it.

Car-less days count: 1. Just today. I was in a car quite a bit yesterday as I was helping a dear friend go to the doctor. We'll see what happens this weekend.

Finishing up day 3 w/o being in a car

No car time since Sunday. But tonight I took a bus. Two of em, actually. All by myself! Across the city!

Excellent website: www.511.org/ If only I could somehow text my location and destination. The website's great when you're leaving your house & heading somewhere, but what about going back? Is there some sort of google text type of service for MUNI?

Hawaii? Nope, San Francisco...

the camera in my razr phone does not do this justice. however... some pics from my walk to go study at nibs, a coffee shop/bakery on balboa.

Hi G$.

And it begins...

I'm not sure what I want to do with this space. I do know that I enjoy reading what my friends write in their blogs, so hopefully this will similarly amuse some of my peeps. You know, when I have something interesting to say.

A few comments on foods:
1. Trader Joe's Red Curry and Yellow Curry sauces = awesome
2. Canned pumpkin. Simple, nutritious, delicious. Scoop some into a bowl, add some pumpkin pie seasoning or cinnamon. Maybe add dark chocolate chips. Microwave for a few. It's good.
3. Grapefruit. Why did I hate thee? Now I am very happy that the Ruby Red variety is in season.

It is Tuesday. I have not driven my car for two days. I really, really dislike driving in San Francisco. I really, really like walking and riding my bike in San Francisco.