Survival Skills

If you're stranded with just a can of soda and some chocolate, you can start a fire for survival. Good to know.

UNDERpopulation?

I found this article via Ryan's website, and thought it was interesting enough to share. Basically talking about how families are having less children than they used to, so now there aren't enough young people to support the older generations. It's a bigger problem in Japan and Europe, according to the article, but it's becoming an issue here, too.

It's interesting because it's not something I've ever thought about, and certainly not something I've really witnessed. Granted, anyone who knows me is aware that Chris and I are not anywhere close to thinking about having children, and don't know if we ever will be. But in my experience, we're an anomoly in the world. I mean, I actually have friends that chide me for not wanting kids. In the 7 months I worked at the TV station in Savannah, 4 people there had a new baby. Most of our married friends in Gainesville have had at least one. In fact, I can only name THREE married couples in Gainesville I know that are NOT with child, and two of them have been married less than a year. My point in this is that I certainly haven't seen much evidence of people not wanting children, with the exception of myself.

I can list plenty of reasons why I lean more towards the Japanese standard. The article says that we're all too selfish and concerned about ourselves, and that's probably true. When it comes down to it, I see children as messing up what I want for my life, and not allowing me to do what I want. But another part of that is that I've seen plenty of parents who are just as selfish, but they had children in spite of their selfishness, and wound up either treating their children as burdens to their own lives, or just not knowing how to parent, and so raising spoiled horrible children with no manners. I know that I don't want to do that, and so I figure my best option is not to have children if I'm going to screw them up. I guess my point here is that I don't think my generation is any more spoiled than our parents' generation... there's just more of us who have decided not to screw up someone else's life because of our selfishness.

Just to make myself clear, my parents raised me great and I don't think they were selfish at all, and I definitely wouldn't say they are the reason I don't want children. Just had to throw in that disclaimer before everyone starts thinking my parents left me home alone every weekend to live their own lives or something. They didn't. (But they did stop taking me out to eat when I was too big to order from the kid's menu... but that means they stopped taking my brother, too, so that poor kid missed out on 2 extra years of restaurants. Yeah. Life sure was rough.)

Heathers

Last night Chris and I watched Heathers for the first time ever. Now, before I hear all the "What? You've never seen HEATHERS?" comments, I do want to point out that I was, uhh, nine years old when it came out. And it's not exactly appropriate for children. So it's not all that surprising that it's missed my radar all these years. But the main reason we watched it, I think, is because it's constantly being referenced in pop culture, so we figured we had to watch it to get all the references. Sort of like how everyone has to watch A Clockwork Orange, or Sofie's Choice... speaking of which, I hear a reference to Sofie's Choice at least once a week (usually in the form of "This isn't exactly Sofie's Choice"), and I've never seen that either, so that's next on my Official Pop Culture Reference Movie List (otherwise known as the OPCRML). Yeah. I'm off my tangent now.

In summary, Heathers was a really messed up movie. It was more disturbing than I expected it to be, but I think I'm disturbed by odd things. But it was great to laugh at silly 80s fashion in the movie, like the massive shoulder pads... knowing all the while that shoulder pads will probably come back into fashion. And that, my friends, may be the most disturbing thing yet.

My Tomato Plant

I don't really know why I'm all about posting pictures all of a sudden, but I am. About a month ago I bought this tiny tomato plant (about 8 inches high) and I read up on what I should do to grow it indoors... so I planted him in a big pot with a lot of peat and percolite in with the soil, and set it by my south-facing window to try and give him the most sun possible while still indoors. And now he's HUGE! I keep thinking it will stop getting taller, but he just keeps going... about a foot a week, it seems... before long I'm gonna hafta get him a bigger pot.

He's flowering, but no tomatos yet. In comparison, I also bought a bell pepper plant at the same time (that's him next to the huge tomato plant) and he's only about tripled in size since I got him. I'm not sure what to expect from them as far as actually producing fruit, but they're fun to watch anyways.

My Morning Trek...

Usually when people ask how we like living in Savannah, I say it's a better town to visit then it is to live in. And it's true: when you're visiting, you're not concerned about the high crime rate, the cost of living or the ridiculously low pay scale. But I must say I've really been enjoying my 1.3 mile bike to work lately... and I thought I'd share some of what I see every morning.

Forsyth Park

Forsyth Park

Forsyth Park

Forsyth Park

Store on Bull Street

Okay, that's all I have to say today.

shameless begging

Chris's birthday is less than a month away... May 9th, to be exact... so I've picked this time to do a little shameless begging, if you want to do something for him that won't take you much time but will make Chris very happy... click this link and sign up for a trial of one of their items. We've been trying for almost a year to get people to sign up for this... if 5 people sign up Chris gets a free ipod, but we've only gotten 3 people to do it, so far. It's really not hard... just click through a few things then sign up for something (like a trial of the Blockbuster mail-in DVD service or something). Even better, if YOU want a free ipod, get 5 more people to sign up for you, and you get one, too! The only downside is that you'll get a lot of spam mail through this, but if you have a yahoo e-mail address (or hotmail, or whatever) all that spam will go straight to your spam e-mail box, and you'll never hafta see it. If you don't have a yahoo email account, sign up for one of those first.

The important thing is that you have to click through the above link for it to be counted towards Chris's ipod.

Trust me, he will love you forever if you do it.

Mmmm.... Shellfish...

My parents came to visit this weekend, and we had a great time. We walked all over downtown (great walking weather!), and ate some yummy food at some yummy places... actually, we pretty much filled the whole time they were here with either walking or eating. Oh, and I showed them where I work and stuff, but that was part of walking around downtown. They brought their yorkshire terrier with them for the trip (her name is Corkey), and since Savannah is such a dog-friendly city, we were able to take her with us on a few of our excursions. Sunday morning she went down to Gallery Espresso with us for breakfast (they let the dogs inside, believe it or not), and then walked around downtown, then we took her with us to Tybee Island, where we went to The Crab Shack for lunch. It's all outdoors, and Corkey was able to sit under the table the whole time. She was so happy to get to go everywhere with us.

Anyways, The Crab Shack was a lot of fun. They have a big shellfish platter that is supposed to feed 2, but was enough for all 4 of us... crab legs, shrimp, clams, crawfish, sausage, corn, and potatoes... yum! It was awesome. It's all outdoors, and they play Jimmy Buffet, and there's a hole in the middle of the table with a trashcan underneath to throw your shells and stuff... really a very clever setup. We had a great time.

So my belly is happy... and I'm sure I've burned off all the calories walking around downtown. Lots of fun.

My final though, I decided to grab a Google Map (maps.google.com) of the downtown area, and all the highlighted parts are where we walked at least once this weekend. Like I said, lots of walking.

The Office

So considering the name of this website, I'm not sure if I'm "allowed" to write about this, but I'm going to anyways. If you've ever worked in an office, you need to see the new tv show "The Office." It has quickly climbed to the top of my "Good TV" list, and it's probably the only sitcom on that list. Really, this show cracks me up. I think I've seen each episode (there have been 4 aired) twice. The best part is when you feel like you're watching past coworkers on the screen... I'm constantly identifying with it, and it makes me laugh. I will throw in the disclaimer that it doesn't remind me of where I work NOW, so much as where I've worked in the past, where we had sales people and fake-motivational speeches all the time. I had a manager who would promise contests with rewards and then "forget" about them immediately, after we'd done our part. Ya know, it's so much funnier when it's happening on TV than when it's happening to you. So yes. The Office. Good stuff.

Love your neighbors?

First of all, I'm sick. Again. With something completely different from when I was sick a couple months ago. In fact, I don't remember feeling like this since I was a little girl. I'm pretty miserable, but that's not the point of this post.

The point is that I am having some real issues with our new upstairs neighbors. We had a woman in the apartment above us until December, and she was great (and quiet). She had a good sized dog, but even he was pretty quiet. Never heard much of anything from them. NOT SO WITH THE NEW NEIGHBORS! Perhaps we were a little spoiled having no one up there for 4 months, but these guys are LOUD. I think they could be in the running for the loudest neighbors EVER. They stomp their way everywhere, bang their way through the day, and one of them has spent the last 90 minutes playing a saxaphone... HE HAS NOT STOPPED and I'm about to lose my mind. If I wasn't housebound (and couch-bound) by this flu-or-whatever-it-is I would have left to get away from it. Not only that, there's been some repetitive tapping on the floor (MY CEILING) as well. Needless to say, they've made our decision of whether or not to move at the end of May VERY EASY. We were wondering if we needed to... we do. We really do.

Google Maps

Well, I must jump on the bandwagon and mention how much fun I've had playing with Google Maps and its Satellite feature. And to save you the trouble of trying to find cool places yourself, this website links you to all the cool landmarks. You can also see my neighborhood pretty well. Weird.

PHP Productivity

I've been teaching myself PHP recently, and man is it fun! I know, that sounds weird, but really, I'm having a blast learning it and getting my websites to do all kinds of cool new things. Today I managed to solve 3 of the PHP tasks floating in my head (one with much help from Paul), and I'm just really excited about it. I know, I'm kind of a nerd, but I don't care. I'm being productive, and I'm loving it!

Name the States

So I'm sick... I've been sick for a week or so... which means I'm recouping on the couch... and have the TV on just for noise. Which brings me to the purpose of this post.

There's this TV show called Street Smarts, where the host asks random people on the street random questions and the contestants have to guess whether or not the people knew the answers or not. This particular episode is solely asking people on the streets how many states are in the USA. This is one of those things I just thought everyone KNEW. You learn it when you're tiny and you just always KNOW it. There are 50 states. 50 stars on the flag to represent all 50 states. 13 stripes on the flag to represent the 13 original colonies. The last two states were Alaska and Hawaii, making 50 states. But SO MANY of these people think there are 51 or 52 states. One woman guessed 42 states. Weird. And I always thought I was a loser because I can't list all 50 states. I never memorized the Animaniacs song that listed them all. But at least I knew there are 50 states.

Gee whiz fact: Texas is NOT the largest state. Alaska is twice as big as Texas. True story.

Magnolias in Savannah

There's a lone pink magnolia tree in Forsyth Park that I saw the other day on my bike home from work. I just had to get a couple pictures, so I walked over there this morning before running some errands with Perrin. I didn't even know what they were, but some guy on a bike stopped and informed me. He actually gave me it's entire multi-word scientific name, a bunch of random facts about it, and then told me to be on the lookout when the Gingko bush blooms in a month or so. Then he took off on his bike. Very random.

the more things change...

You know, I always hear people say that people don't change. But I'm constantly amazed when I think back to 18-year-old Kendra and realize what a different person 25-year-old Kendra is. And not just the obvious "At 18 I was living my life for me, not for the Lord, and now my priorities are different" and not even the obvious "I wasn't married when I was 18" kind of different.

As a progressive young woman, I hated the idea of cooking and have always simply said "I can't cook," which could be loosly translated to "I don't want to cook, I have no desire to put the energy into cooking, and so I don't want to be required to cook." I've also thought it was silly when people wanted a garden because that's dirty outdoor work. I hated houseplants, thought fish tanks were dumb, and generally didn't want to be associated with anything domestic.

The change started slow, with one easy house plant and a goldfish that I didn't particularly care for, but felt obligated to keep alive. Slowly I developed an affinity (and now an obsession) with goldfish, and my plant collection slowly grew as well. Somehow all of this grew and mutated into a strong desire to have a backyard so that I can have an herb garden (and maybe some tomatos) and a koi pond. Take that, 18-year-old Kendra!

Most recently (and this all happened soon after my 25th birthday) I've developed this desire to cook daily meals. This really makes no sense, as my mom can tell you about the many times as a teenager that I ruined spaghetti (and really, how DO you ruin spaghetti?) when it was my day to cook dinner. My husband can tell you about all the times I refused to touch raw chicken or even look at it (and the many times I begged him to cook for us). But suddenly I'm the Crock Pot queen. I will insert ramblings into any conversation about the day's Crock Pot dinner, and the amazingly affordable price of bulk herbs at the health food store. I've even cut up raw chicken breasts into tiny pieces, and browned beef. Yesterday I had a couple girlfriends over for homemade taboulli. I love having real food at home, and I don't mind waking up early to prepare it in the Crock Pot so it's ready when I get home. (18-year-old Kendra is rolling her eyes and denying that I have the same birth certificate that she does).

But the icing on the cake, the thing I never even thought of refusing to do because the idea never popped into my mind that it was a possibility, is my new hobby. I knit. I am currently knitting a scarf. It's my first scarf, and so it will most likely be rather malformed, but I'm knitting it myself, and I'm oh-so-excited about it. I bring it with me to my friends' house to knit while we hang out. I am about to leave the computer so that I can watch some TV and knit. And I can't wait.

Do I blame all of these new, domestic traits on my turning 25? Do I blame them on getting married? Hormones? I really have no idea, and I'm not too concerned about it.

You can be sure that if my mom ever reads this the first thing she will say is "You know, Kendra, you've also always said that you don't want children. Just wait, that will be the next thing to change.

Don't hold your breath, Mom.

New Site, New Blog

Those of you who used to follow my News section of [i dream in blue] will notice that my old posts from that site are not included in this new blog. It's basically a coding issue. Blogger has changed since I first started that one, and my coding style has evolved as well, and my old stuff just wouldn't tranfer over very well. So this is a fresh start with a fresh outlook and probably more interesting content (since it's not part of a business website).