I've been to a few people's homes around the Westside in the past six months, and I saw many many apartments before renting one upon moving to Santa Monica last summer, and can now comment on a particular type of apartment occupied by young professionals without trust funds.
The building is two stories tall, long and skinny, with similar buildings on either side. There may be four, six, eight, or ten apartments, all one or two bedrooms. The building is divided into entryways, each entryway accessing two apartments per floor. Entryways never have doors, let alone secured doors and buzzers. Construction is stucco on chicken wire on wood frames or concrete. The pathway along the side of the building to access the rear entryways is usually poured concrete, sometimes asphalt, and is lined with some sort of skinny greenery, a wall, and then the next building, which is nearly identical to the present one.
The apartments usually have wood floors or fake wood floors of some sort of laminate made up to look like wood, floating over plywood or concrete. The front door enters into a combined living room-dining room, with a galley kitchen hidden behind a wall. The continuation of the kitchen area suggests a dining area, though this is usually too small for a table and chairs for more than two people. Sometimes there is a balcony.
Tucked to the side is a bathroom and bedroom, or two bedrooms, usually separated by the bathroom. The whole unit is roughly a square, split down the middle into the living-dining-kitchen half and the bedroom-closets-bathroom half. Sometimes one of the bedrooms has a private bath within.
The walls are decorated with framed not-art, personal photos and prints and objects collected from international travel not intended as art, like mexican sugar skulls or a kite from Shanghai. Dust collects in the corners. Everyone has at least one bookshelf in the living room. There is a couch, sometimes two, a chair, a small dining room table, sometimes a big TV sometimes no TV never a small TV, a desk and computer corner, and a slight awkwardness when entering for the lack of transition space between the public outside to the private inside. Open the door, or have it unlocked and opened for you, and you are directly into the cosy interior, and can collapse directly onto the couch from where you stand, if you feel comfortable enough with your hosts to do so.
Yesterday's run destination: main branch library
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: donuts and coffee
lunch: tuna wrap at (not recommended) Naturally, in Pacific Palisades
dinner: tofu yakisoba
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
After the Fall's Forever Medicine Kit (tm)
For the survivalist who has everything, a new gift: the gift of life. You can make your own bow and arrows to hunt feed yourself and yours. You've installed a passive solar heating system and invested heavily in insulation to keep your cabin warm through those cold Colorado winters. You even set in a supply of seeds for all the crops you'll need and a few you don't quite know how to cook. Because after the fall, it's going to be a long, lonely time and there's no one going to be there to lend a hand.
You have the top of the line survival medicine kit, you've read through all the manuals, you're ready to set a bone or perform CPR. But your medicine chest, deep and rich though it might be today, one day is going to run out. And a little cut starts to look pretty serious when the last tube of antibiotics just ran out. Which is why you need After the Fall's new Forever Medicine Kit (tm).
Kit includes:
Penicillium fungi spores
Bacilus subtilis, granulated colonies
Willow seedlings (Don't be alarmed that it looks like a stick! This is a 100% guaranteed viable seedling in a dormant state)
And much more! A total of 21 different spores, seeds, and seedlings.
128 page instruction booklet gives detailed directions on how to produce and purify lifesaving drugs using the same raw materials currently employed by the industrial pharmaceutical industry. Make your own aspirin, penicillin, and bacitracin, just to name a few. Booklet printed on TYVEK for maximum durability.
With the Forever Medicine Kit and proper management of your biological medicinal stock, you will be able to produce key drugs, proven by 100+ years of scientific medical research to be effective on a wide range of ailments, injuries, and diseases, within the comforts of your own homestead. This Kit provides the seed material and the straight-forward instructions you need to make the drugs you'll need.
NOTE: these drugs are to be used only in EMERGENCY SURVIVAL situations. After the Fall takes no responsibility for the proper preparation and ultimate effects of any of the drugs produced by these seed materials and instructions. Proper preparation assumes the availability of commonly found materials and equipment, like sterile bottles, wood or charcoal, bread, rice, or similar feedstock, and healthy soils. Not all seeds and trees will grow in all climates.
Yesterday menu:
breakfast: donut
lunch: cheese and crackers
dinner: black bean soup ala Atticus, greens salad with lemon honey miso dressing, crusty bread and olive oil with zahtar
You have the top of the line survival medicine kit, you've read through all the manuals, you're ready to set a bone or perform CPR. But your medicine chest, deep and rich though it might be today, one day is going to run out. And a little cut starts to look pretty serious when the last tube of antibiotics just ran out. Which is why you need After the Fall's new Forever Medicine Kit (tm).
Kit includes:
Penicillium fungi spores
Bacilus subtilis, granulated colonies
Willow seedlings (Don't be alarmed that it looks like a stick! This is a 100% guaranteed viable seedling in a dormant state)
And much more! A total of 21 different spores, seeds, and seedlings.
128 page instruction booklet gives detailed directions on how to produce and purify lifesaving drugs using the same raw materials currently employed by the industrial pharmaceutical industry. Make your own aspirin, penicillin, and bacitracin, just to name a few. Booklet printed on TYVEK for maximum durability.
With the Forever Medicine Kit and proper management of your biological medicinal stock, you will be able to produce key drugs, proven by 100+ years of scientific medical research to be effective on a wide range of ailments, injuries, and diseases, within the comforts of your own homestead. This Kit provides the seed material and the straight-forward instructions you need to make the drugs you'll need.
NOTE: these drugs are to be used only in EMERGENCY SURVIVAL situations. After the Fall takes no responsibility for the proper preparation and ultimate effects of any of the drugs produced by these seed materials and instructions. Proper preparation assumes the availability of commonly found materials and equipment, like sterile bottles, wood or charcoal, bread, rice, or similar feedstock, and healthy soils. Not all seeds and trees will grow in all climates.
Yesterday menu:
breakfast: donut
lunch: cheese and crackers
dinner: black bean soup ala Atticus, greens salad with lemon honey miso dressing, crusty bread and olive oil with zahtar
Friday, February 18, 2011
Clean up time is fun time
Clean up, clean up
Everybody clean up
Clean up, clean up
Clean up now
More mornings than not Becca has left for work before I have showered, which when it first happened was a cause of great alarm. What will I do with the highly mobile and curious baby while trapped by soap and water? Can she safely be entertained in the bathroom? Or maybe she's still asleep and I'll leave the door open to listen for her waking up and just be quick about it.
Turned out to be a non-issue, as uberbaby ended up cheerfully playing with her bath toys on the bathroom floor and found it hilarious to flap the shower curtain back and forth. These days, it is just part of the morning pattern. She gets to bring in a toy or book, she points out where I should put my clothes and the spot on the counter for my glasses, we play peek-a-boo with the shower curtain, she lines up her bath toys on the edge of the tub, and it all works out.
Yesterday her toy was Travel Boggle, recently reassembled after a few dice wandered under living room furniture. She stacked the dice. Put them on the board, and took them out. Threw them. At least, so I presume from what I heard, I didn't look, I trust her to play peacefully and safely at this point. When I was almost done with my shower, I shouted out that it was time to clean up, and a minute later as I emerged 13 blocks were back in place and she was grabbing, with great hilarity and satisfaction, for the remaining three.
Yesterday's run destination: around the block
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: french toast
lunch: pasta and chili
dinner: mapo tofu and snap peas
Everybody clean up
Clean up, clean up
Clean up now
More mornings than not Becca has left for work before I have showered, which when it first happened was a cause of great alarm. What will I do with the highly mobile and curious baby while trapped by soap and water? Can she safely be entertained in the bathroom? Or maybe she's still asleep and I'll leave the door open to listen for her waking up and just be quick about it.
Turned out to be a non-issue, as uberbaby ended up cheerfully playing with her bath toys on the bathroom floor and found it hilarious to flap the shower curtain back and forth. These days, it is just part of the morning pattern. She gets to bring in a toy or book, she points out where I should put my clothes and the spot on the counter for my glasses, we play peek-a-boo with the shower curtain, she lines up her bath toys on the edge of the tub, and it all works out.
Yesterday her toy was Travel Boggle, recently reassembled after a few dice wandered under living room furniture. She stacked the dice. Put them on the board, and took them out. Threw them. At least, so I presume from what I heard, I didn't look, I trust her to play peacefully and safely at this point. When I was almost done with my shower, I shouted out that it was time to clean up, and a minute later as I emerged 13 blocks were back in place and she was grabbing, with great hilarity and satisfaction, for the remaining three.
Yesterday's run destination: around the block
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: french toast
lunch: pasta and chili
dinner: mapo tofu and snap peas
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Cheesy potato
As a young teenager I would come home and collect the mail from its box at the top of the driveway. I got to open the junk mail. One day, there was a promotional mailer from a spice company, McCormick, or the like, with a short stack of recipe cards, diecut for entry in a rolodex, shiny and colorful. One was for a quick side dish: microwaved cheesy potatoes. Cut a raw potato in thick slices, but not all the way through, using a wooden spoon handle on either side of the potato as baffles to keep the knife from going all the way through. Microwave. Add small slices of cheese between each slice and sprinkle with more cheese and oregano. Microwave, briefly.
Somehow this dish, quick and simple, filling to the point pinch hitting for a complete meal, became a standard of my personal cuisine. I make it a few times a month, often for a weekend lunch. These days, I don't pre-slice the potatoes, which I think leads to a better texture, and sometimes just open up and flatten out the potatoes without slicing at all. These are minor details. Mostly, melted cheese is yummy.
Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: maple miniwheats
lunch: leftover chili, again
dinner: pasta and red sauce with chorizo, greens salad
Somehow this dish, quick and simple, filling to the point pinch hitting for a complete meal, became a standard of my personal cuisine. I make it a few times a month, often for a weekend lunch. These days, I don't pre-slice the potatoes, which I think leads to a better texture, and sometimes just open up and flatten out the potatoes without slicing at all. These are minor details. Mostly, melted cheese is yummy.
Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: maple miniwheats
lunch: leftover chili, again
dinner: pasta and red sauce with chorizo, greens salad
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Health care is more than medical insurance, right?
Once upon a time, four years ago or so, I went to a heartfelt but less than rigorous lay-led church service on insurance. Andrew Fischer spoke on how the function of insurance, to sustain people and families after a crisis-level loss of property, health, or life, used to be provided by churches, as the most substantial local institution of care, and how providing this care to members in turn strengthened churches and communities. Then around 200 years ago, private, regional, market economy insurance started to be provided for the tragedies of domestic life, evolving out of the insurance developed around a growing mercantile system of trade. Andrew focused on what was lost in that transition, trusting that the story of what was gained, in spreading risk, clear contractual relationships, portability, etc. had been adequately told in the popular business press.
By moving the function of insurance out of the local community, he said, the personal relationship of care among neighbors was weakened. By relying on businesses instead of parishioners to help us after the loss of a job, the death of a spouse, or the destruction of a home by fire, flood, or crime, we marginalized the church, pushed it out of the necessary core of a family's existence. By ending the practice of helping our neighbors in their times of need with our own time, energy, and money, we created a vacuum of care that left many people spiritually hollow, without outlet to help others through personal connection, atomized among neighbors who rarely become friends.
It was interesting, not exactly convincing, thought provoking, and nostalgic. The idea of tracking and measuring the losses involved in shifting key societal needs from the world of social capital to the world of financial capital matches other trends in my idea environment, that about the price of pollution and climate change, of hidden costs in the rich world's industrial food system, of separating health care from medical care.
With the spiraling costs of health insurance regularly in the news, I wonder about how to capture the benefits of community-centered care without losing the fantastic gains of industrial scientific medicine.
I occasionally avoid medical care, not that I or my immediate family have needed substantial medical interventions in the past few years (barring my partner's pregnancy and the birth of our child, which required in the end only minimal medical intervention), not because it is expensive to me but because I understand it to be expensive to the medical system. The science fiction reading part of my mind thinks about how to create for myself a minimal medical cost life. Certainly regular exercise is involved. Probably identifying the riskiest behaviors in my daily patterns, like driving. A low calorie diet, but one that brings me joy. Finding happiness and low stress habits among my friends and family. Hoping to luck out genetically to avoid having big, expensive diseases, like cancer, alzheimer's, or diabetes. Accepting home hospice care by loving friends and family, even at the cost of potential years of life.
I think of a health care system, one that includes medical insurance and access to the fruits of excellent medical care but goes beyond it to support me in leading a healthy life. I want integrated care that encourages and enforces lifestyle choices that help me be healthier, happier, and less dependent on medical intervention, that cares about me in good times and bad, and that I can care for in return. A church community, at least the mythically friendly and supportive one that Andrew sketched, sounds like a good candidate to host such a system. Caring for the whole person, knowing the people around me and letting them know me and my life, a community that relates to my spiritual, intellectual, familial, social, and personal dimensions and recognizes that they are wrapped up in one another. I believe such a holistic care system, though it has very definite flaws, could be enormously more efficient in health per dollar of medical care than the crisis mitigation business model we seem to have now.
Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: eggs and toast
lunch: leftover chili with lime and cilantro
dinner: shrimp fried rice
By moving the function of insurance out of the local community, he said, the personal relationship of care among neighbors was weakened. By relying on businesses instead of parishioners to help us after the loss of a job, the death of a spouse, or the destruction of a home by fire, flood, or crime, we marginalized the church, pushed it out of the necessary core of a family's existence. By ending the practice of helping our neighbors in their times of need with our own time, energy, and money, we created a vacuum of care that left many people spiritually hollow, without outlet to help others through personal connection, atomized among neighbors who rarely become friends.
It was interesting, not exactly convincing, thought provoking, and nostalgic. The idea of tracking and measuring the losses involved in shifting key societal needs from the world of social capital to the world of financial capital matches other trends in my idea environment, that about the price of pollution and climate change, of hidden costs in the rich world's industrial food system, of separating health care from medical care.
With the spiraling costs of health insurance regularly in the news, I wonder about how to capture the benefits of community-centered care without losing the fantastic gains of industrial scientific medicine.
I occasionally avoid medical care, not that I or my immediate family have needed substantial medical interventions in the past few years (barring my partner's pregnancy and the birth of our child, which required in the end only minimal medical intervention), not because it is expensive to me but because I understand it to be expensive to the medical system. The science fiction reading part of my mind thinks about how to create for myself a minimal medical cost life. Certainly regular exercise is involved. Probably identifying the riskiest behaviors in my daily patterns, like driving. A low calorie diet, but one that brings me joy. Finding happiness and low stress habits among my friends and family. Hoping to luck out genetically to avoid having big, expensive diseases, like cancer, alzheimer's, or diabetes. Accepting home hospice care by loving friends and family, even at the cost of potential years of life.
I think of a health care system, one that includes medical insurance and access to the fruits of excellent medical care but goes beyond it to support me in leading a healthy life. I want integrated care that encourages and enforces lifestyle choices that help me be healthier, happier, and less dependent on medical intervention, that cares about me in good times and bad, and that I can care for in return. A church community, at least the mythically friendly and supportive one that Andrew sketched, sounds like a good candidate to host such a system. Caring for the whole person, knowing the people around me and letting them know me and my life, a community that relates to my spiritual, intellectual, familial, social, and personal dimensions and recognizes that they are wrapped up in one another. I believe such a holistic care system, though it has very definite flaws, could be enormously more efficient in health per dollar of medical care than the crisis mitigation business model we seem to have now.
Yesterday's run destination: Montana Ave.
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: eggs and toast
lunch: leftover chili with lime and cilantro
dinner: shrimp fried rice
Friday, February 4, 2011
Parenting Tips from Hell
I just read Room, by Emma Donoghue, in a flurry and a rush. It is beautiful and painful and very much in the company of the works Donoghue cites as inspiration, stories of parents in impossible situations, like The Road (McCarthy) and Life is Beautiful (Benigni). Thinking on those works, here are some parenting tips if you find yourself in hell with a small child, perhaps the hell of a concentration camp, or wandering a post-apocalyptic landscape, or imprisoned in a basement or shed for years on end:
structure your day
every object is precious, keep track of them
everything has multiple uses
hell is fun! for kids who don't know better
teach them everything you know, all the time
even one book is a great source of words, games
it's ok to cry sometimes, just don't let it overwhelm you
eat the best diet you can, multivitamins are your friends
other people may seem to want to help, but you can only trust the two of you
the world outside your bubble is both more terrible and more friendly than you imagine it
even the most hellish parts can be made into a game
after your child has outgrown the fiction that they aren't in hell that you construct for them, he'll pretend to believe it because he sees it helps you cope
fresh fruit can be the most colorful wonderful thing in the world
the best games don't need anything but two people talking to each other
everything you do to prepare them for the day you'll be gone is never enough
Today's menu:
breakfast: cinnamon toast and rooibos
lunch: can of chick peas
dinner: ribeye and red wine reduction, broiled asparagus, onion tart, spouted lentil salad
structure your day
every object is precious, keep track of them
everything has multiple uses
hell is fun! for kids who don't know better
teach them everything you know, all the time
even one book is a great source of words, games
it's ok to cry sometimes, just don't let it overwhelm you
eat the best diet you can, multivitamins are your friends
other people may seem to want to help, but you can only trust the two of you
the world outside your bubble is both more terrible and more friendly than you imagine it
even the most hellish parts can be made into a game
after your child has outgrown the fiction that they aren't in hell that you construct for them, he'll pretend to believe it because he sees it helps you cope
fresh fruit can be the most colorful wonderful thing in the world
the best games don't need anything but two people talking to each other
everything you do to prepare them for the day you'll be gone is never enough
Today's menu:
breakfast: cinnamon toast and rooibos
lunch: can of chick peas
dinner: ribeye and red wine reduction, broiled asparagus, onion tart, spouted lentil salad
Thursday, February 3, 2011
At the Moth
Across 5th Street from the main Post Office sits one of the semi-anonymous clubs of Santa Monica, Zanzibar. It is more up front about its presence than most, with a large sign on the corner and a small marquee listing upcoming acts. Not like that place on Santa Monica Blvd that doesn't have a name, but some nights has a bouncer and a line outside. But without that sign, Zanzibar looks like just another of Santa Monica's many warehouse/light industrial one story boxes.
Last night, there was a line down the front of the club and around the corner. I parked in front of the library two blocks away and joined the line, by myself in a line mostly of pairs of people. Behind me were two white girls talking about a wedding one of them was going to, her bridesmaid dress and its expensive alterations, the oddity of the bridal shower a few months ago. In an excellent gesture towards friendliness on what for around here was an exceedingly cool evening that made me wish I had grabbed a jacket over my sweater, the management had stationed a volunteer to hang out at the end of the line handing out slips of paper for anyone who wanted to to write a one sentence story of the craziest "after hours" adventure they had been in.
The line moved in fits and starts as groups passed the doorman, paid their entrance, and were released in to find a place to stand. I ordered a beer and found a spot near the bar, the night's festivities just getting started on stage. The room is full, perhaps near its fire department mandated maximum of 212 persons, seats around, standing behind, a crowd at and around the bar. It's buzzing but not loud, friendly but focused on stage.
The MC, perhaps an aspiring comedian? in any case quite comfortable with the mic and the crowd, vulgar and funny, as she described the night's rules. Put your name in the hat if you want to tell a story. Three teams of judges, volunteers from the audience who signed up earlier. Five minutes, then you get a signal on the ocarina (the ocarina of time?) to wrap it up. Six minutes, a louder signal. Seven minutes, they play it in your ear and your score goes down down down. Five storytellers, intermission to grab a beer, five more, pick a winner to go to the GrandSlam next month, go home. It is a Wednesday night, after all.
And stories. True stories, stories of adventures after hours, at pool parties and in strange apartments, hitchhiking through Tennessee and a man with tattoos not remembering how to breath fire. Five maybe regular people, all but one professionally smooth on stage, practiced, putting in jokes and little details and turns of phrase, not quite to the point of poignancy and rarely capturing a mood and fully setting and fleshing out the scene from their recollections of wild days gone past, but fun, enthusiastic, captivating.
It is nearly nine when I leave, walk back to my car through the still open library to pick up a book and stop by the reception for the Swiss Consulate-sponsored coffee table book of photos of glaciers for a chocolate or two, collect myself, drive home the twenty blocks through familiar streets.
Yesterday's run destination: Washington Ave.
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cinnamon toast crunch and coffee
lunch: chicken and potatoes
dinner: bean quesadillas
Last night, there was a line down the front of the club and around the corner. I parked in front of the library two blocks away and joined the line, by myself in a line mostly of pairs of people. Behind me were two white girls talking about a wedding one of them was going to, her bridesmaid dress and its expensive alterations, the oddity of the bridal shower a few months ago. In an excellent gesture towards friendliness on what for around here was an exceedingly cool evening that made me wish I had grabbed a jacket over my sweater, the management had stationed a volunteer to hang out at the end of the line handing out slips of paper for anyone who wanted to to write a one sentence story of the craziest "after hours" adventure they had been in.
The line moved in fits and starts as groups passed the doorman, paid their entrance, and were released in to find a place to stand. I ordered a beer and found a spot near the bar, the night's festivities just getting started on stage. The room is full, perhaps near its fire department mandated maximum of 212 persons, seats around, standing behind, a crowd at and around the bar. It's buzzing but not loud, friendly but focused on stage.
The MC, perhaps an aspiring comedian? in any case quite comfortable with the mic and the crowd, vulgar and funny, as she described the night's rules. Put your name in the hat if you want to tell a story. Three teams of judges, volunteers from the audience who signed up earlier. Five minutes, then you get a signal on the ocarina (the ocarina of time?) to wrap it up. Six minutes, a louder signal. Seven minutes, they play it in your ear and your score goes down down down. Five storytellers, intermission to grab a beer, five more, pick a winner to go to the GrandSlam next month, go home. It is a Wednesday night, after all.
And stories. True stories, stories of adventures after hours, at pool parties and in strange apartments, hitchhiking through Tennessee and a man with tattoos not remembering how to breath fire. Five maybe regular people, all but one professionally smooth on stage, practiced, putting in jokes and little details and turns of phrase, not quite to the point of poignancy and rarely capturing a mood and fully setting and fleshing out the scene from their recollections of wild days gone past, but fun, enthusiastic, captivating.
It is nearly nine when I leave, walk back to my car through the still open library to pick up a book and stop by the reception for the Swiss Consulate-sponsored coffee table book of photos of glaciers for a chocolate or two, collect myself, drive home the twenty blocks through familiar streets.
Yesterday's run destination: Washington Ave.
Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: cinnamon toast crunch and coffee
lunch: chicken and potatoes
dinner: bean quesadillas
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