In the pipeline...

I got hired a year ago Saturday which is pretty exciting for me to think about. Work is generally great, but boy does it ever drain me. Wouldn't you know it, having a 9 to 5 job--or in my case more like 9:30 to 6, leaves less time in the day to write here? On a happier note, our office moved 6 weeks ago, cutting my commute by more than half. I've taken advantage of the extra hour I stole back from my daily subway time to focus on self-improvement projects. Lately that has meant going to the gym. (Oh, that's right, I used to exercise! Ha!)

I have several other personal goal-projects going on in my newly recovered free time, one of which is capturing and fleshing out my thoughts on the issues that interest me most, namely the interconnectedness of individual personal actions and the world around us, or what I mean when I call myself an urban ruralist. I look forward to exploring and sharing a bit of that here very soon.

The most pressing project, though, is crafting our Halloween costumes for Saturday! Last year we attended a Harry Potter themed party and pulled together some incredible dragon costumes in just a few days (dragons from the Tri-Wizard Tournament in Year 4 at Hogwarts: The Goblet of Fire, of course). With the excitement of Where the Wild Things Are all about us, Jeff and I got to thinking about the phrase "where the wild things are," which can be loosely interpreted as "wild things," "wild," "things," or my personal favorite: "where." Our "where" is the sea and I will soon be posting some gloriously unattractive progress photos.
I am so happy to have regained a bit of time for silly things like buying fabric, scoring cardboard and wondering where to put the eyes.

On Not Eating Fast Food

Sally Sampson, mother of a perpetually hungry 15-year old son, wrote a wonderful piece for the Washington Post called "Dude, It Adds Up" detailing her quest to see if she could make better versions of typical fast food staples for less than it costs to buy one at the drive-thru.

As you can see from her chart below, she succeeded. While I ultimately agree with Ms. Sampson that cooking--even cooking these less-than-healthy items--is nearly always a better bet than purchasing the same items at a restaurant, I think she has left out a number of relevant costs. She has some strange logic about associated costs in the paragraph below:

Restaurant fast food is rarely as convenient as you expect. There are hidden costs everywhere. True, when you cook at home you use electricity, soap, water and so on, but when you buy fast food, really all you get is imagined speed: You still have to get there, wait in line and wait for your food. And what you get is second-rate.

First, fast food does live up to its name in that the time involved to procure a hamburger from McDonald's is far shorter than the time it takes to pick up ingredients and prep them oneself. You have to decide far in advance that you would like to buy the ingredients to make a burger, get them, and then put them together properly. For those of us in cities where decent grocery stores are few and far between, it takes about 3 hours to make a hamburger. The opportunity cost of time spent procuring groceries and cooking is certainly a relevant factor.

Secondly, one of the major points that Ms. Sampson implies but does not state outright is that repeatedly eating fast food has hidden costs. Her opening sentence implies the connection between long-term fast food consumption and obesity, and she also mentions that her son feels sluggish or has a "McHangover" after eating poor-quality fast food. Yet, she chooses not to make the case here that surrendering control of the ingredients in our food to chain eateries has far-ranging consequences for our health. The immediate effect of bombarding our digestive systems with densely caloric, fatty, salty, often chemical-ridden foods is having all our blood cells cease non-essential functions like thought in order to break down this glut of food into useable energy. The long term effects are obesity and weight-related difficulties like plantar fasciitis, knee and back pain; diabetes; and plaque build-up in arteries leading to increased incidence of heart attacks.

Since I enjoy going to the grocery store, absolutely love cooking and have no desire to resemble this creature, the choice of how to source my savory indulgences is an easy one--I'm making them at home.