I'm home for Thanksgiving Day, once again, and it's good to have mom and dad back this year (last year, they were off on their mission). Family dinners always seem so much more organized when my mom is spearheading them.
I brought a surprise home this year. No, not a girl, unfortunately, but I brought the next best thing: a beard! That's right, starting November 4, I started growing a beard for the first time in my life.
I got some amusing reactions. One of my nephews stared at me with his mouth agape. My mom and dad just looked at me and laughed. My older brother said, "I think your face is moldy."
I, for one, am actually not wild about the beard and will most likely shave it off, maybe even tomorrow. Maybe I'll give it another shot further down the road but as of right now I think I prefer being clean-shaven. |
On a day when nothing seems to go right, I like to listen to a song or two to pick myself up. Today, that song was Jessica by the Allman Brothers Band. It seemed to do the trick, at least temporarily.
Unfortunately, things got worse later on in the day, and I admit I was a bit of a grouch around the house this evening, even with guests over.
Maybe I should pick a different song next time.
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Many people I know, both friends and co-workers, participate in the phenomenon known as Fantasy Football. Well, fantasy sports in general, but especially football. I have only attempted a fantasy sport once myself: baseball. I got sick of it after about a month - granted, perhaps it was due to the nature of baseball being played almost every day rather than weekly like football, but I got tired nonetheless.
A recent Penny Arcade cast fantasy football in a different light. You create a party of characters based on optimal stats. Every week, your party does battle, and depending on the outcome of their encounters, you either end your battle gloriously, or wallow in defeat. Yes, that's right: fantasy football is a role playing game. "They might as well call it Final Fantasy Football," as Gabe puts it.
The popularity of the game puts football in an interesting light: are we more concerned with the flow of the game itself, or the outcome? I tend to think it's the latter: you often hear people obsess more about statistics than the game itself (although I suppose that's okay in baseball, in which the game basically IS statistics). I think this is why I have become a fan of soccer. It's harder to quantify with numbers, to describe how a game went you have to talk more about the play itself rather than the numbers afterward, and of course, ties are considered acceptable. Yeah, I think that's a good thing.
Of course, the real reason might be the fact that there are far fewer commercials and breaks in play.
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November 8, 9 and 10 of 1989 were a few days of an emotional roller coaster ride for me. It all started on the 8th, with the death of Grandma Edith, my paternal grandmother. This being the first time I had lost a close family member, it hit me pretty hard.
The next day was different. I don't remember exactly where I was or what I was doing when I got the news, but I got the news nonetheless. East Germany was lifting travel restrictions for its citizens. In minutes, Berliners from east and west headed for the checkpoints and the Ku'Damm, and the border guards could not keep the East Berliners out. A mass of people flooded into the West, literally into the waiting arms of the West Berliners. Pandemonium ensued (but the good kind of pandemonium).
We did not go out on the night of the 9th, as we were still in mourning for grandma. My dad left for her funeral on the 10th. That night, my mom decided to take me and my siblings Kurt and Carolyn out.
We left our house in southern Zehlendorf and took the S-Bahn through Steglitz up to the city center. The train was packed, standing room only. We stayed on for the segment of the S-Bahn that went through the east, as it passed through the eerie abandoned Potsdamer Platz station. We got off in the West, and I'm not sure how which direction we walked, but we ended up just outside the Brandenburg Gate.
The festive atmosphere from the night before had died down. Now there were guards lining the top of the wall, and news vans from networks all over the world parked everywhere. Mom wanted us to see this to show how important an event this was not just to Germany, but to the entire world.
After that, we had to walk through Tiergarten to find a train station, which we eventually did. Mom was a bit worried about walking all the way through Tiergarten, but I wasn't particularly worried - I was having fun! We eventually caught the U-Bahn, I'm not sure which station it was, but I want to say it was Gleisdreick. After a few transfers, we found ourselves home. We didn't go to the Ku'Damm, probably because Mom didn't want to take three kids to a crowded shopping district.
A few days later, we found ourselves with hammers and chisels at the Steinstucken exclave of Berlin, chipping away at the wall and bringing home as many pieces as we could. We still have a box of pieces of the wall in our garage at home.
They were three incredible days. While I don't exactly remember the details of what happened (I was nine, give me a break!), I don't forget how it felt.
I look forward to writing about the twentieth anniversary of reunification day next year!
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Sometime in 1989, my parents started talking about a potential move. I don't know when the discussion started, but they eventually told the children that we might be moving back to Germany. We had already lived in Germany for five years - while I was born in Kansas, we moved to Germany shortly afterward and I spent my earliest years there. I was happy with our home in Washington, but being a military family I wasn't too surprised about having to move.
I knew we were going to Berlin, and I started to learn a few things about the city. Its role in World War II, the blockade, the Cold War, and of course, the wall. When we arrived in Berlin sometime in July, we went to see the wall in the American sector, near an apartment complex in Duppel where many Americans lived. The western side of the wall was covered in graffiti - some of it simple vandalism, some of it art - and there was a wooden observation tower for us to scale and look over to the eastern portion of the wall.
The image of looking over the wall was unforgettable even to my nine-year-old mind. The death strip was a stark, lonely strip of land, littered with tank barriers, ditches, and cordoned off by multiple fences, most of which had barbed wire over the top. On the other side of the wall, you could just see the small town of Kleinmachnow. There was a single guard tower in the middle of the death strip, and we could see two guards keeping watch. I waved at them, and one of the guards waved back.
In the first few months of living in Berlin, the realities of the divided city hit me. We went to Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, and saw some of the memorials set up for those who died trying to escape into West Berlin. I saw the monument to the Berlin Airlift at Tempelhof Airport (and later, saw its corresponding monument in Frankfurt). And of course, we walked along the wall at Potsdamer Platz.
I was perhaps too young to truly understand all the context of the Cold War, and why the wall was there. But I was old enough to realize what an injustice it was, and what it stood for. I figured it would remain standing for the three years we were planning on living in Berlin, and that it would stay up for most of my life.
Twenty years ago today, that all changed. |
| » Crustaceans |
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Lately, my roommate Christian has had an obsession with crawdads. Some of the local lakes (Lake Union and Lake Washington) are supposedly teeming with them, and he had the idea of creating a trap to catch them. So, he bought some wire fencing and got to work, eventually creating three traps.
It's hard to describe how these traps look, but they're quite unusual. They are cylindrical, with a cone pointing inward on either end, and a suspended wire cube in the middle. When looking at the completed trap, I almost expected Carl Sagan to show up and begin using these traps to model the theory of a cylindrical universe (I would have been very surprised if he had shown up).
Last night, Christian and Stephanie laid the traps in Lake Union and waited a little over an hour. We returned to check on them and alas, no crawdads. Just a few bottom feeding fish and nothing else. Obviously some of the parameters of the crawdad hunt are going to need to change (perhaps leaving them in the water longer will do the trick, or using different bait).
Of course, crawdads are never going to help me fulfill my dream of having lobster rage fists, but they're a step in the right direction.
Nov. 8th, 2009 @ 10:05 am
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| » As I walk down the highway, all I do is sing this song |
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Karaoke, as we all know, is awesome. Wednesday night, I had the opportunity to do some karaoke with a few friends, and a good time was had by all.
The funny thing about karaoke is how my favorite songs or favorite musicians may not always make great karaoke songs. For example, I love Pink Floyd, but most Pink Floyd songs aren't much fun for karaoke (given the fact that some of them are over twenty freakin' minutes long). On the flipside, some songs that I would rarely or never listen to on my own volition make surprisingly fun karaoke numbers.
The first time I ever sang karaoke was when I was 18, at a school activity. The song was "Pinball Wizard," which was appropriate given that I sang it with some friends who happened to be appearing in the all-city musical Tommy (I was the hawker, incidentally).
When my family and I went on a cruise back in December 2005, karaoke was a regular activity as well, and last year my brother created his own karaoke system, which turns out to be awesome. It is now a regular activity when I visit family once a month or so.
The key to enjoying karaoke (besides being drunk, of course, and as a teetotaler I am never in that situation) is to first pick a song that's fun to sing, and then just get up there and put everything you've got into it. Don't worry about looking ridiculous because EVERYBODY looks ridiculous doing it. The question is what kind of ridiculous you're going to be: awesome ridiculous, or embarrassing ridiculous? I prefer the former.
For the record, I sang two of my favorite karaoke songs (Sabotage and Born to Run), and one that I'd never done before (Out on the Tiles, which I didn't do a great job on - Zeppelin was not meant be sung an octave lower). When I'm with the family, Queen is usually a popular selection - my brother and I have a killer duet of Under Pressure, and the whole family joins in for Bohemian Rhapsody.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to practice for my rousing rendition of "Baby Got Back."
Nov. 6th, 2009 @ 05:49 pm
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| » Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes! |
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After having worked in the building at 5th and Jackson in the International District for two years, my corporate superiors finally saw it fit to move me to a different location.
Four blocks away, in fact.
My new office is in Seattle's Pioneer Square district, a building I've worked in the past back in 2006. The building is nice, and it has a certain older charm to it than the relatively young 5th and Jackson had.
I have mixed feelings about the move. I like being closer to the teams with whom we coordinate, and a change of scenery can be nice. On the other hand, 5th and Jackson is the place where I got my first "real" job in February 2006, and I have a lot of fond memories for the place. I also like its ideal location in the heart of the International District, just two blocks away from Uwajimaya and many good restaurants.
Not only that, but the dreaded team split finally took place, and there are now only three developers and one database guy on my team. We have a new boss, who I met earlier this week. And most impactingly (I am allowed to invent new words), I find myself with newfound responsibilities on the smaller team. I won't describe too much how that's been, but suffice it to say, I am being asked a lot more questions now, and I frequently don't have the answer.
I must admit I am a little intimidated about all the new demands that are placed on me, but I will do everything I can to rise to the challenge and fill the void left behind by the team split.
Either that, or I'll start a bakery and sell cookies for a living instead.
Nov. 6th, 2009 @ 01:43 pm
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| » In Memoriam |
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Many years ago, when I was in high school, I joined a writing group known as Operation CWAL. I was a bored teenager looking for a creative outlet, and Operation CWAL combined two of my favorite things: video games and off-the-wall humor. While my story writing has slowed down substantially since then, I still look back on the early days of CWAL with fondness.
One of the members of CWAL was Mark "Maggott" Argyle, who wrote hilarious stories about an evil alien overlord (the eponymous Maggott) who was supremely powerful, but too lazy to actually cause any serious destruction. He later began a pre-podcast radio show hosted by that character (voiced by himself, of course). I used to download each new episode as soon as it came out and listen to it several times, cackling madly the entire time. I was even a guest on the show once, playing the role of my own character, Arcturus (a paintball-obsessed front lines fighter).
It was to my great dismay that I learned that Maggott was found dead today in an apparent suicide. I was shocked, and then saddened.
It is difficult to describe the role Operation CWAL has had in my life. I didn't write very many stories that were particularly good, and many of the stories that made me laugh back when I was seventeen might not make me laugh now. I didn't know anybody in the group in person - they were spread all over the continent (and in some cases, across the world). I didn't meet any of them in person until I was twenty-one.
And yet, the CWALers were like brothers to me. The humor may have been juvenile sometimes, and we frequently ripped off from other published works, but the storyverse we created was OURS! We were proud of what we made, and while writing will only ever be a hobby of mine, I feel being a part of CWAL gave me a better appreciation for the written word, and for the craft of comedy.
Maggott was one of the creative driving forces behind the group. He was one of the first to join. He wrote some of the earliest gut-bustingly funny stories. Through his music and radio show, he branched out into a new medium for the group.
Operation CWAL doesn't write stories anymore. We're grown up now, and the CWALers have stopped writing stories and are moving on with their lives, going to school, and getting married. What was once a group of bored teenagers are now scientists, engineers, doctors and lawyers. We have become husbands, wives, and parents to children. But the world we created all those years ago has kept us together.
When we lost Maggott, it was like losing a family member. I had no idea that things were so bad for him that he felt the need to take his own life. I wish I could have done something to sway him from his decision.
But whenever someone is taken from this world, I feel it best to remember them for the life they lived. With that in mind, I'm going to dig up some of his stories, listen to a few episodes of the Maggott Show, and laugh myself silly.
Rest in peace, Maggott. You won't be forgotten.
Oct. 5th, 2009 @ 10:30 pm
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| » Party! Pizza party! |
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Some weeks ago, my roommate Christian decided to do something awesome: He would build a wood-fired brick oven at his parents' house in Kenmore, so that we could use it to make pizza, and other delicious things. After about a month of toiling away, his project was complete. All that remained was to bring delicious ingredients and turn them into pizza, and bring a sufficient number of friends to eat them all.
Last week, we did just that.
The pizza was delicious. I was appointed toppings manager, and fulfilled my duty with aplomb. I think we ended up making over thirty pizzas, and there was no trace of leftovers. Afterward, we decided to use the oven's residual heat to make s'mores (you're killing me, Smalls!), and they were the best s'mores we ever had. Theresa also decided to make a loaf of rosemary bread, and it came out perfectly.
We also gathered around the television to watch the Argentina vs. Brazil world cup qualifying match. It was a good match, but unfortunately, Argentina lost.
The party was a huge success. I want one of these ovens for myself someday!
Sep. 12th, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
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| » Welcoming home the Sounders |
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Last week, the Sounders won their first ever trophy, the U.S. Open Cup. The Open Cup is a tournament that has been around since the early 20th century, and is one of the oldest running sports competitions in the country. I was pretty thrilled that the Sounders won a trophy in their very first season, and since I wasn't working the next day, decided to go to the airport to welcome the Sounders back.
At 2:30 in the morning.
I wasn't the only Sounder fan there, about 150 other people gathered to welcome the team home. In spite of how late (or early) it was, everybody was excited, and we stood around chatting and singing victory songs while we waited for the plane to arrive. They didn't get there until about 3:45, but walked right to us, let us touch the trophy, and gave us high fives. Kasey Keller gave a short speech to thank us for welcoming them home. At that point, I really wanted to get to bed, so I left.
Here are the pictures from the evening. While they may appear to be blurry, let me assure you that that's how the world looked to me at that hour.
Sep. 10th, 2009 @ 09:59 pm
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| » Crazy Train |
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I am a bit of a transit nerd. The day Seattle's new light rail opened, I made sure to ride the entire distance of it, both ways. I think it's an awesome addition to the city and am glad we have it.
Today, I had some spare time during my lunch break and rode to the Beacon Hill station to check it out and look around the neighborhood it services. The station itself is probably my favorite along the entire line: it's the one that most resembles a Berlin U-Bahn station (although compared to the U-Bahn, it's almost eerily quiet). It's also a very interesting station with some cool sculptures hanging from the ceilings.
What made me smile is on the ride back to the office, I spotted two kids who looked to be about ten years old or so, raptly peering down the tunnel to watch for when the train would come. I used to do the exact same thing when I was that age, living in Berlin.
I'm excited for more light rail service to open in Seattle, I just wish it wouldn't take so long!
Aug. 11th, 2009 @ 03:30 pm
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| » Ten Years Ago |
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Today marks the ten year anniversary of my arrival in Argentina. I remember that day well. It seemed like the longest plane ride of my life (probably because it was, in fact, the longest plane ride of my life). Here's a few memories I have of the voyage:
- Saying goodbye to my parents, two siblings, and my grandmother at the Salt Lake City airport. Missionaries heading out into the field can no longer have family members come to the airport, unfortunately.
- In Chicago, I found a pay phone and called up my other two siblings to bid them a final farewell, and sent a letter to my best friend, who had recently arrived to his own mission in Georgia.
- A man passing by in the airport saw us and said, "Good luck, Elders." Ten seconds later, my companion told me "Wipe that smile off your face!"
- The plane was underbooked, so most of us had several seats we could stretch out across and sleep on. They played "Never Been Kissed" as the in-flight movie, twice. Being a good missionary, I tried to avoid watching it.
- One of our group left his sleeping bag on the plane in Buenos Aires, but was able to retrieve it.
- We were escorted to the temple grounds after that. We didn't go into the temple, but we did eat at the adjacent cafeteria. It was my first encounter with the Argentine meal I would probably eat more than any other: Milanesa. It's kind of like a schnitzel made with beef.
- Our escort then drove us through the heart of Buenos Aires to get to the national airport and our flight to Neuquen. It is hard to describe how I felt looking at the city, but I can say for sure that I felt like a lost little boy when I looked out there.
- The Buenos Aires airport does not have a ban on smoking.
- We arrived in Neuquen late at night, and we were all dead tired.
It was a grueling, bewildering, busy day. My mission was full of vivid experiences, but the drive through Buenos Aires is what really made me realize I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
And every time I think back to the me of ten years ago, I think "Man, I really had no idea what I was in for!"
Aug. 10th, 2009 @ 01:02 pm
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| » STP |
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I’d been looking forward to doing STP for a year now, and the day finally arrived. I actually woke up on my own at 2:30 AM, but I snoozed in bed until my alarm went off at 3. I ate a small breakfast, did some quick preparations, and was ready to go before 4. Christian and I met up with Ken at his place, along with another guy, Clay, who would be riding with us. We rode to the starting line (all downhill, so not a problem) and met up with Catherine and Lacey. I was very excited about starting, but five minutes before we were supposed to begin, disaster struck: Christian attempted to tighten the bolt holding his seat in place, and broke it. He quickly searched for a repair hut and thankfully, he fixed the problem with a mere two minutes to go. My team decided to wear ugly sweaters to keep warm for the first two hours (keeping in mind we were leaving at 4:45 AM). A lot of people asked us about the sweaters, especially me (I guess my sweater was the ugliest because I got asked the most, “What’s with the sweaters?”). The starting signal was given and we took off, and let me tell you, the beginning few miles where everybody is riding together is just exhilarating. I loved hearing the whirring of hundreds of bikes around me for the first few miles. I am also glad I got a chance to ride down the winding portion of Lake Washington Boulevard with no cars on it. Once the crowd thinned out and we grouped together the ride went pretty well for the first fifty miles. We got to the food stop in Kent and got some food, and ditched the sweaters (a lady took them and said she’d give them to a thrift store). It was after the first food stop that we had our first flat tire, the rear tire on Catherine’s bike. We changed out the innertube, but 15 miles later the same tire got a flat. We changed it again and continued, but this tire continued to give us problems. We eventually solved the problem, but more on that later. While we were between Kent and Spanaway, a guy named Joe joined us in our paceline, and Clay took off to find a group his own speed. We let Joe ride with us, but he broke a couple of cardinal rules: don’t join a paceline without asking, and when you take the lead, don’t just take off without allowing everybody to group up behind you. He went on his own after the next flat tire. When we got to Tenino, mom and dad met us there and gave us chocolate. There was a guy with a repair hut who fixed Catherine’s wheel, which never gave us another problem. I said goodbye to mom and dad and we took off, now well over two hours behind schedule. Another setback happened later: Christian had been not feeling well for the past several days, and after the halfway point it caught up to him. We took two fairly long breaks before he decided to call it. We left him in Vader for Hope to pick up (and I mean an actual person named Hope, not the concept of hope). The rest of Washington was uneventful. We crossed the harrowing Lewis and Clark bridge, over which Lacey lost a bottle when hitting an expansion joint. She looked back to see if she could get it, but I just yelled “It’s gone, let it go!” like I was in a war movie. We went about 25 miles through Oregon through a few towns. A little kid in one town saw us ride by and yelled “Go bikers!” Cute. Unfortunately, Lacey’s knees were not doing well, and we had to stop in St. Helens. It was here that we decided to not finish. I was disappointed – we were less than 25 miles away, and I was feeling good enough to finish (but butt and back were sore, but I still had enough energy to finish). However, ending the ride there was probably the right decision. We were so far behind schedule that it was getting dark, and we didn’t have lights. It would be almost 10:00 when we would have arrived. So, I called Mom and Dad and they picked me up. The team picked me up from their house the next day. They all enjoyed meeting Mom and Dad, and also the chocolate they gave us. Even though we didn’t finish, I’m glad I did STP. We got a chance to see some beautiful parts of the state, and we can be proud of how much we did (180 miles is nothing to shrug about). I will do it again next year and this time, I will finish.
Jul. 21st, 2009 @ 08:27 am
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| » STP |
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Tomorrow I will be doing the Seattle to Portland bicycle classic. 205 miles, all in one day. I'm excited, but nervous.
I will report on how it went when I'm done. I've made lots of preparations for this and think I'm ready. I even shaved my legs to make myself more aerodynamic!
Here's hoping there are no incidents.
Jul. 10th, 2009 @ 09:06 pm
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| » July |
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The month of July is usually quite relaxed for me, a month in which I get to enjoy the best of Seattle's summer weather and leisurely enjoy what free time I have.
This year, that will not be the case.
The month starts off well enough, with my parents returning from their 18 month mission in Germany and spending the weekend with them in Olympia. Then on Sunday, I return to Seattle and have a barbecue with some friends from around here and one of my best friends from my own missionary days, who will be visiting.
Then the tough part begins.
I have to move out of my house due to the owner deciding to sell the place on a whim (lucky I didn't do the couple of projects I was thinking of doing around the house). I have until the end of July to do it, and I hope to find a place by the middle of the month. The last half of the month I can spend making the transition to wherever I go. I've looked at a few places but will not make a decision until I talk with my roommates to find out what their plans are (one of them is on vacation in peru at the moment). I would say there is a 90% chance that I will stay on this side of Lake Washington.
Then, on July 11 I have STP, which I have been training for. I'm excited but nervous. It's going to be a long day, that's for sure (205 miles of cycling in one day!).
At the end of the month, I will start commuting to Bellevue, where my new office is located. I'm not wild about the idea of crossing the lake to get to work, but it's better than Redmond (and certainly better than not having work).
I'm excited about what's going to be happening this month but recognize that there's going to be a lot of challenges. Am I up to the task? I suppose we'll find out August 1.
Jun. 30th, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
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| » AdBlade |
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There's a new display ad service I've been seeing over the past month called AdBlade. I don't like it.
My reason for not liking it? Well, AdBlade is similar to Google's AdSense in that it displays a number of text advertisements in a single placement. However, it differs in that these are not context ads - they do not depend on what text shows up in the page you're viewing. They also pair images with these ads. I don't mind AdSense, it doesn't get in my way or distract me when I'm trying to browse. AdBlade with its images, however, is distracting.
My real problem, though, is with the ads themselves. They do not (yet) advertise what I would consider reputable businesses. They're all teeth whiteners, lip plumpers, colon cleansers, and "get thin by following one simple rule" scams.
Now, open up your favorite email account and take a look at your junk mail folder sometime. Notice what you see in all those subject lines. That's right - advertisements for the same products! That's why I don't like AdBlade: The advertisements you see are hard to ignore, and the products they advertise are sketchy at best. I certainly wouldn't want to pay money for any of them.
Now, you're probably saying "Mark, why don't you just block all the ads so you never have to see them again?" Well, since I work in the realm of online advertising, that's kind of self-defeating. I like to be more aware of what kind of advertising there is out there, who my competitors are, and what new technologies are being developed (plus I consider it mildly unethical to block the ads that are being used to pay for much of the internet's existence).
At any rate, I'm not worried about AdBlade stealing business from us. I'll start paying attention to them when they start drawing reputable advertisers.
As an aside, I'm going to read it as "lip plumbers" from now on because it amuses me.
Jun. 10th, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
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| » Plants vs. Zombies |
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A phenomenon has swept across my team, spreading faster than an outbreak of the solanum virus. Yes, it's Plants vs. Zombies, a tower defense style game from PopCap, noted developer of other casual games such as Bejeweled and Peggle. The concept of the game is simple. There are zombies that are trying to get into a house so that they can eat the brains of the people living in said house. But to get there they have to cross the yard, and the last line of defense is...the yard's plants. Basically, you place the plants in the yard to defend against the zombies. It's a quirky little game, but it's a lot of fun. So, a former member of our team now works for PopCap (their office is located in Belltown) and managed to get our team addicted to the game. At any given point during the workday, somebody is playing it. I play it at home, but it's funny to see (and hear) people playing it at the office. Especially when I hear somebody trash talking the zombies from across the room.
Jun. 1st, 2009 @ 04:41 pm
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| » High Fructose Corn Syrup |
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Several months ago, I decided to drastically reduce the amount of high fructose corn syrup in my diet. This has gone well so far, and while I was already in pretty good shape at the time, I think taking initiative now will help me stay in shape well into the future.
I've had several people ask me what makes HFCS worse than foods with regular sugar in them. That's a good question. I'll be honest, if you replaced the amount of HFCS you eat with equal amounts of sugar, it would still be just as unhealthy. True, there are studies that suggest that HFCS is more easily converted into fat than cane sugar, but there hasn't yet been enough conclusive evidence to convince me that the difference is more than negligible.
The real problem with HFCS is that it's everywhere. Sugar cane is mainly produced outside the USA, while corn is grown right here. Thanks to farmer subsidies, it is cheaper to sweeten foods with HFCS than it is with sugar. This had the effect of making junk food cheaper to produce, and thereby cheaper to purchase.
If you eliminiate HFCS from your diet, you cannot consume many (perhaps most) junk foods available at grocery and convenience stores. So in essence, you're not watching out for your health by replacing one sweetener with another, you're doing it by eliminating the sweetener from your diet entirely.
I wasn't sure how easy it would be for me to do this at first. Prior to starting, I had a tendency to drink one or two 12 ounce cans of soda per day. Since I work at Microsoft, a refrigerator full of free soda is a short walk away from my desk. But since starting I almost never go to the fridge anymore - I've replaced soda with just plain water. I still drink soda, of course, but now when I drink it, it's much less frequent. And since I only drink soda that's made with cane sugar now, I drink the good stuff (Thomas Kemper, Jones, Hansen's, and so forth).
So I'm convinced the real value of not eating or drinking anything with HFCS in it isn't that replacing it with sugar will be better for you, but that you can replace it with either nothing, or healthier foods. It's pretty hard to eliminate HFCS completely from my diet (because, like I said, it's EVERYWHERE), but I'm making good progress toward my goal.
May. 28th, 2009 @ 01:24 pm
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| » Cleaning |
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While I don't particularly enjoy cleaning, there's something satisfying about having a sparkling, pristine bathroom after working on it for a couple hours.
I just need to clean it more often so that in the future the job doesn't take as long.
May. 27th, 2009 @ 10:54 pm
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