Talk Radio

I began listening to talk radio recently when I got sick of listening to radio hosts talking on music stations in the morning--go figure. When you spend about 2 hours in the car each day, it's nice to have something to distract you from your misery. I'm glad that I swallowed my pride and switched to AM. I now feel like I am somewhat in the loop of what is going on in the world, and it has even inspired me to read the Wall Street Journal--which previously just decomposed on my driveway. These are the things I've learned so far from the programs I tune in to:

-Radio programs are actually interesting. I have even learned tips on saving money and staying out of debt!

-There are a lot of idiots out there who call in and make fools of themselves.

-Radio hosts are often rude and sarcastic to callers, and I like that.

-Radio hosts take themselves very seriously, and maybe they should.

-Radio hosts like to get people riled up

-You can learn about female reproductive problems while driving in your car!

Take this radio host, for example. I have no idea who he is, but look how happy he is! He gets to sit at his desk and talk and get paid for it. That sounds like any womans dream job to me. I bet this photo was taken just after he talked to a caller that agreed with his opnion, or someone who said something really stupid. This guy loves his job



I feel confident enough in myself that I can admit that listening to Chris Baker on my way home from work is one of my favorite times of the day. He is somewhat ridiculous, but he sure makes me laugh. If you live in Houston, and you're tired of hearing Lady Gaga more than you should, you can listen to Chris Baker on 950AM from 3-5 on weekdays--and during commercials, why not switch over to Sean Hannity on 740AM for some ultra full-on debates.

It doesn't matter to me whether or not I agree with what they are saying, it matters that I am making use of my brain. I decide what's right, they just give me ideas to springboard off of. It's kind of fun. Geeky? Probably so.


So the latest issue that I have been thinking about is the whole "click it or ticket" campaign. The Houston police chief said their goal with this program is to hand out 20,000 tickets a year ($$$). Well, why isn't it to get more people to wear their seatbelt Mr. Police Chief? To promote safe driving? Those are my questions. And why do people have to be told to wear a seatbelt anyway? If they are not smart enough to realize how stupid it is not to buckle up, then by all means don't wear one. I think the idea is the same as what they state in the Darwin Awards: refining the gene pool by weeding out the idiots. That's just what I think though. I mean, how can seatbelts be mandatory but motorcycle helmets not be? I wear my seatbelt, do you?

I <3 Shipleys

I'm probably the only bride, about to be married in two months, who still eats donuts. I should be avoiding these foods, that have been proven to be fattening and horrible for you. I should have the motivation to cut these things out of my diet because I will be wearing a wedding dress soon in front of my family and friends. But I can't resist the donuts. They appear by magic every Friday morning in the kitchen at work. I tell myself each time that I will not eat one next week. That next week I will begin my bridal-starvation-diet. But I know better than that.

Sangria

As a relatively new fan of sangria, I am excited to share what little I know about it, and to urge people to discover, or rediscover, the magic.

My love for red wine dates back only a few years, to the college days when I lived with my cousin Laura, my friend Laura, and a girl named Crystal. My friend Laura was a very inspirational and beautiful girl, and she taught me the ways of wine--she was basically my wine guru and our roach infested apartment her ashram. There was rarely an evening in that apartment when wine did not grace us with its glorious presence. If I may steal the words of my friend Ashley, we probably could have saved the planet by recycling all the wine bottles we went through. Needless to say, I like wine, and I have grown to thoroughly enjoy it in it's natural form.

Enter: Sangria. According to legend (history actually), Sangria originated in Spain and Portugal, although it is also commonly served at Mexican restaurants. It is basically a wine punch with endless variations. The word Sangria means bloody, and it's not hard to imagine why. Sangria is typically served as a casual, refreshing drink in the summer--it is simply the perfect to sip on a patio.

The beauty of Sangria lies in it's endless potential to become whatever the creator imagines. The alcohol content is up to you! Typically, a bottle of red wine is used; you may decide whether to use merlot, a cab sav, shiraz and so on. You also can choose how much brandy to add--some people use gin! The truly exciting part, in my opinion, is the fruit. When it comes to adding fruit to your sangria, the options are basically as endless as there are types of fruit. The most common, however, are oranges, lemons and limes. My friend Emily made some wonderful Sangria in Taiwan with peaches and apples as well--but you can really use anything, and it would be hard to ruin it. So go ahead, toss in some mango chunks, some kiwis, a nectarine! Pineapple? Sure! Go bananas--literally!

Here is a basic sangria recipe, but like I said before, experiment away!

- 1 bottle of red wine (or more)

- 1/3 cup of sugar (optional)

- 1/3 cup of brandy (or more)

- 1 lemon, sliced crosswise

- 1 orance, sliced crosswise

- 1 medium pear, diced

- 2 medium peached, peeled, pitted and sliced

- 2 cups of sliced strawberries

- 1 can of ginger ale

You can use lemon-lime soda instead of ginger ale if you prefer, you may vary the amounts of the ingredients above, you may add flavored vodka, you may even use white instead of red wine if you wish. Sangria is tastier if made in advance so that the fruit can soak up the flavors. Knock yourself out! I recommend tripling or quadrupling the recipe and substituting sangria for water. 8 glasses a day baby.

Sangria is typically served in a pitcher with a wooden spoon to be used for scooping out the wonderful infused fruit pieces. This is a sangria pitcher I picked up in Barcelona--I am so looking forward to using it!

Hump Day

I am always so surprised when Wednesday rolls around--that it's already the middle of the week. That's when I know I'm going to make it to Friday night. Such a feeling of accomplishment:)

I have been in a creative slump lately. I have some ideas for things I want to try/make, but I just don't have the energy when I have the time and vise versa. I am looking forward to spending a Saturday at my sewing machine, stay tuned.

Speaking of soon, my wedding is just around the corner--how the heck did that happen? We have just over two months until the big day! I'm so excited, but I know it also means that I will be moving away from lots of people who I love, so that will be very sad. But of course I'm mostly excited--thrilled actually. I have my fingers crossed that none of my guests will be harmed in "dangerous" Mexico by the drug cartels, swine flu, hurricanes, or any other natural disaster that could possibly occur. I'm just kidding, I'm not worried at all. Hello, I can't wait to spend a week on the beach eating and drinking all I want 24 hours a day, going to the spa, and oh yeah, GETTING MARRIED. Woah. Two months... woah.

Speaking of getting married, I am getting my biometrics taken and sending my visa to Los Angeles tomorrow--so wish me luck/pray for me please. It's finally happening and I am so so so so happy to get that thing out of my life. Hopefully I will have great news about my approval really soon.

Speaking of going places, let me please indulge myself by posting a photo of some of my newest acquisitions from my trip to Spain. I had already met my quota of items-I-had-to-buy-because-I-was-in-a-foreign-country but then I saw these. They are handmade, of course, from clay and have the nicest glaze. The white chimney is an architectural pattern of the different civilizations that settled Menorca--distinctly Mediterranean if you ask me. Had to own them, even though it meant making another trip to the atm.

And while I'm at it, why not brag photographically on the sweet little pillow I picked up at Pottery Barn with a gift certificate we were given at our wedding shower. I'm into coral/orange lately, and why shouldn't I be--it's wonderful. I am really excited to put all of these things in our little country cottage (if said visa is approved, if said wedding is not destroyed by a hurricane, if....). Which, by the way, we are closing on the house June first! And by we, I mean Sam is signing and so it's all his responsibility:) Only joking. Once it's official I will post pictures, I haven't wanted to jinx anything, I feel like I'm already sort of hanging by a thread.

And lastly, Twilight. I am in the middle of the third book. Wow. By the way, is the whole series called Twilight, or only the first book? I guess I could google that. Cheerio friends, I do hope that I have something original and exciting to share with you soon! Enjoy the week...

It's Friday!

I just returned from my trip to visit my kid sister in Spain this week. I will write more about that and post pictures soon--but not all 596 of them. It was such a nice trip to such a wonderful place, and I can't believe I never did a study abroad program when I was in school! Silly silly me.

I mentioned earlier that I was going to be reading the first of the Twilight books soon. And it finally happened during this trip, as I lay beside the twinkling turqouise waters of the Mediterranean. Yeah, it's pretty silly. "It's an easy read," noted my sister. And what more could you want for beach reading? I will still finish them, although I am struggling at the beginning of the second one. They do not come close to comparing to my beloved Harry Potter. And I didn't expect them to. But it is so nice to dive into a world that is not real, because I reckon life itself is real enough.

Happy weekend! I'm off to celebrate the most deserved college graduation of all time--CONGRATULATIONS LEAH! I've got my party boots packed...

something more serious than swine flu

As this whole swine flu "crisis" spirals out of control I can't help but feel sort of hopeless with mankind. In the past 6 days we have seen countries all over the world closing their borders to Mexico, cancelling flights, closing schools and businesses, and dedicating hours upon hours of riveting media coverage to the sitation. It's really incredible the extent that people have acted--and how quickly. Which is why I feel like we are all a little deluded.

I am a little ashamed that people have reacted to strongly to a virus that hasn't actually affected that many people in the grand scheme of things, especially as the there are many much more serious situations that are largely ignored. The one that weighs the heaviest on me is the war in Darfur. Since it began, there have been as many as 675,000 deaths--murders I should say as it is actually a genocide, and more than 5.5 million people have been displaced.

I will be honest, I did not know the extent of this terrible situation until I read the book What is the What, which is the story of Valentino Achak Deng who was a refugee of the Sudanese civil war in the 80's and 90's. Although his story mainly takes place before the current war in Darfur, it gives a heartwrenching account of how and why the whole conflict began in the first place. All of the proceeds from the book help to fund the The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation and to aid the Sudanese in both American and Sudan. Their website has so much information about the war, and also about how people can volunteer. Another very good organization is World Vision, which focuses on sponsoring children.

I also recently read this comment on a blog post:

I taped a map of North Africa over my bed and studiedDarfur. The war appeared in the media in 2004 but it had begun in the 1890s when the English drew borders that boxed the Arab north and African south inside the same nation now known as Sudan. The English developed the north but left the south a desert. After Sudan gained its independence in 1956, the Arabs saw themselves a degree better than the Africans, and since then both have fought over the identity of the nation. In between the rounds of war, old rituals continued. Each season, Arab herders drove cattle tothe southern region of Darfur, where Fur, Masaaleit and Zaghawa tribes welcomed them. The cattle fertilized soil and helped carry supplies. In 2003, adrought in the North dried wells, turning earth to sand and forcing Arab herders south. They wanted more than grazing for cattle; they wanted new land. Rifles were handed out to African tribesmen. Anger crystallized into rebel groups, among them the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and EqualityMovement. After the rebels raided a military outpost,the Arab dominated government, flush with oil money, bought weapons for the Arab herders creating a militia we now know as the Janjaweed. They galloped into villages; shooting men down, ripping women apart, stuffing bodies into wells or ravines. Refugees fled to the neighboring nations of Chad and the Central African Republic. In the years that followed, 2.5million people were driven from their homes and up to 255,000 were killed.

I hope that more and more people become aware of this situation and talk about it. Something needs to be done soon.

I guess the whole point of this post is to communicate my frustration with how the media selectively covers stories, and blows them out of proportion or leaves them out altogether. We rely on them to let us know what's going on in the world, and they rely on us to get in a tizzy and panic when they say we should. There are a lot more important and serious things going on right now than the swine flu--at least for the flu there are vaccinations and anti-virals. But what vaccine can we give the people of Darfur to save them from the misery they endure every single day?

This Weekend

Why oh why does the weekend go by so fast? I really shouldn't complain, because I just had three weeks off from my "job" and I leave again for Spain this Saturday. So I wont complain, I'll just point out the Saturday and Sunday go by much more quickly than all the others.

I have been working on lots of little piddly projects around the house. I have an ungodly amount of art and craft supplies that I most likely wont get to take with me when I move, so I'm trying to use up as much as I can. Just started to think that I might organize an auction in my sitting room and try and get rid of some of my stuff--clothes, shoes, furniture, paint brushes etc. Not sure if I'm ready to part with it all yet, but I'll keep you posted. Anyway, I made some new items that I listed in my Etsy shop if you're interested.

Among the projects I have worked on this weekend was this:

The big-bad-visa-application. That's a two inch binder there. I am so ready to get this thing out of my life! And I'm in luck, because I will be applying and sending it off the day after I get back from Spain, so if you would please pray, cross your fingers and knock on wood for me it would be much appreciated. I'm still yo-yoing between optimism and despair about the whole thing. And then I think to myself, I am busting my a$$ to live in a country where I have to learn to drive a stick shift on the other side of the road. A country where you have to apply for a license to have a tv in your house. A country where there is no Mexican food. A country that has rules against having electrical outlets in your bathroom. Ah, but they speak English, and the have fish n chips, and PUBS, and charming elderly people who drink milky tea, and quaint villages and cities to explore, and Easy Jet!!!!!, and most importantly Sam. I'm so excited, but it still doesn't seem real at all.

Now, onto a completely different topic, I have in my possession the first book of the Twilight series. If reading these is anything like reading Harry Potter was for me, then I probably will not be doing much posting in the near future--or really anything else. I adamantly refused to read Harry Potter, they seemed so dumb, but oh my goodness, I loved them. Perhaps partly because I read them when I was living in Taiwan and needed a nice fairy-tale land to escape to in order to maintain my sanity, but also because they are so enchanting. They are so easy and sweet--I bet that they haven't been described as sweet before, but they were to me. So I have been hearing about these Twilight books for a while now, and instead of saying I would never read them, I said I would read them when the fickle finger of fate deemed it appropriate. The time has come.

The entire time I have been writing this post there has been an ice cream truck sitting out in the street in the same spot with it's annoying little jingly tunes going on and on. It just struck me that I would prefer politicians to stop making laws prohibiting people from doing things such as wearing baseball caps into banks, and smoking in cars, but make some laws that would really benefit me like banning ice cream truck music. I endure it every day, and there's no escaping it--it's so irritating!

Something really weird happened here, the entire thing just turned into a link to the picture I posted. I can't figure out how to make it go away so I'll just leave it. Good grief.

from the garden

who to believe

I just had an interesting conversation with my friend Leslie about the FDA and food regulations, and what's safe to eat and what's not. It lead to a broader conversation about how to weed through all the information out there to find out the truth about things. Thanks to the internet you can find out almost anything immediately. For instance, when my soon to be in-laws were in town, we were trying to figure out the weather in both farenheit and celcius. Gail went for the dictionary and and found the equation I went straight to Google and printed out a 3 page chart of conversions.

There's just so much information, and I find it frustrating. How do you find out what's actually true--which organization or website do you believe, and why do you believe it over myriad others stating opposing facts? I received an email the other day about the dangers of drinking water from plastic bottles that have been left in the heat. Almost as soon as I sent it my inbox was flooded with responses including links to websites that both disputed and supported this information, as well as emails from friends saying thanks for sharing. So basically, this did nothing for me, I still don't know if it's safe or not, and how can I?

I personally believe most of the things we ingest, whether proven safe or harmful, probably each contribute in some miniscule way to health problems. Sometimes I don't rinse an apple before eating it--the horror! Is this going to cause cancer, probably not. But it could be a contributing factor along with using skin cream that is not all-natural, and heating my leftover maccaroni in a plastic container, and sitting near a smoker in a bar, and eating a hamburger that is not organic and talking on my cell phone, and drinking a coke and so on and so forth. And these are things I simply cannot worry about when I have to do things like pay bills and apply for a resident visa in another country and drive an hour to work everyday. Of course we should not be careless, and should avoid harmful things when we can--which is why it's important to know what even is harmful.

This particular issue, the watter bottle issue, is not that big of a deal to me, but others are. Political issues, for example, are more important to me. I do not want to know only the liberal's or conservative's point of view, I want to know the truth, and I fear that I rarely am exposed to the truth through the media. Does the US really supply 90% of guns to Mexico, or does it supply 90% percent of the traced guns which is only about 60% of the total. Hmmm. Who actually knows the answer? Who is the ultimate decider? And why do we trust these people so much anyway, they could tell us anything.

My personal conclusion is that you have to take it all into account, ponder it all and then forget about it. If anyone knows of any 100% reliable websites that are confirmed by other 100% reliable websites with information pertaining to anything beneficial to me please let me know.

Recycling.

I am wondering why people still don't recycle. Oh wait, I already know the answer to that. Because it's so inconvenient. In most neighborhoods STILL there are no recycling programs, no truck comes by to pick it up. Well why not I ask you? And who do I need to talk to about this?

At my house we recycle cans, glass, plastic and paper. But we have to do it ourselves. Which means that once every bin is overflowing and we can't park cars in the garage anymore, it's time to take the recycling in. This requires stopping by three different places, in three different parts of town to get everything where it needs to go. This is annoying. But it's well worth the effort in my opinion. And it doesn't actually take that much time, especially if we work it in when we are going by those places anyway.

The interesting thing is that by recycling there is so much less trash, so the number of garbage cans out by our curb is fewer than before. It seems like if everyone recycled, people would be putting out less trash and fewer garbage trucks would need to go around. So the conclusion I come to is that maybe some of those garbage trucks would be able to pick up some recycling every other week. Of course it wouldn't be as easy as that, but come on! It can't be that hard either.

And while I'm at it, why don't fast food restaurants (for a start) recycle either? Wouldn't it just take like three different trash cans? One for paper, one for plastic and one for gross food leftovers? In Taiwan, every business and residence was required to recycle. When we went to McDonalds we separated our trash. It took all of 10 seconds. And our apartment building had one entire room devoted to collecting and separating recycling. Why in Taiwan but not here? In California, some companies get tax incentives for having their employees work from home so they use less gas and so the roads are less congested. Why not in Houston--the traffic is horrific? In England, even the most remote hamlets have recycling trucks come by every other week. Why not in Tomball?

I don't want to sound overly enthusiastic about this, but I do urge each person to live a more responsible life.