Food for thought, since it's certainly not going to be very tasty

I'm going to be a judge of the homebrew competition at the Alaska State Fair this weekend, and while looking through the website came across the winners, for 2006 and all-time, of the largest vegetable contest.

A few interesting things show up, like how many records were set last year. Examples: 67&1/8" long gourd, 84 pound collard green, 96.95 pound kohlrabi, and the one you most often hear about: the 1019 pound pumpkin.

Then there are the records for the ages, like 4.5 pound rhubarb (1983), 39.5 pound broccoli (1994), 45.25 pound red cabbage (1994), 71.75 pound chard (1995), and 25.3 pound mushroom (1993).

See what you too could do with 18 to 23 hours a day of sun, two 1,500 watt heaters, a Visqueen tent, a forklift, and up to 120 gallons of water a day? Get busy!

One reason we're excited about the new house

(And hope it closes as planned, with any more turmoil or headaches.) I was just writing this in an e-mail to a friend:

So definitely think about coming up when you have time: we're really excited to have people visit. In a sense, we've never really had enough space to properly have guests stay with us, at least who didn't mind sleeping on the couch in the living room.

It got me to thinking about the places J and I have lived, and how we really haven't had space for people to stay, at least when everyone didn't wan tto be in every else's back pockets:

Denver: one bed, one bath
San Diego, OB: studio, one bath
San Diego, University Heights: one bed, one bath
Salt Lake City, downtown: three bed, two bath (but only for four months)
Salt Lake City: two bed, one bath

It'll be awfully nice to be in a decently sized place, three bed, two and a half bath, especially with a view like this:

Don't ask me why in the fuck I'm reading this stuff:

at 1:30am in Anchorage. And don't ask about the last several hours I just spent reviewing individual assessor and property records for the Mat-Su Borough. (And TGS, say what we will about Mat-Su, but damn they've got a nice website for reviewing other people's property records: about the nicest I've ever used.)

Then, after hours of reasonably productive web surfing, I fall into the all too common practice of fucking around for an hour or two on the web, and before I know it, it's 1:30am, and for a series of links and click-throughs that I could relate to you, Gentle Reader, but won't, I end up reading a blog about being a consultant. At least it made me laugh out loud, especially this part:

The Art of the Shnap
Shnaps are a great way to escape the pain of a local [consulting] project for 30 minutes to an hour. To take a shnap, you tell the client, “I gotta go drop a deuce, be back in an hour.” You head into the John, slip down your drawers, drop some kids off at the pool, turn off the alarm on your cellphone, put your head in your lap (don’t forget to flush before this step so you’re not huffing your own shit fumes), and sleep.

(In the original version of this post, I actually included a link to the blog that this was in, but decided to remove it. As I read further down in the blog, there was some offensive, racist shit that I didn't like.)

Okay, now I'm really going to go brush my teeth with the electric toothbrush that, after about six years of faithful service and hundreds of falls, has finally developed a large crack. But hey, it's still working!

Price comparisons of vegan groceries in Anchorage

You know how you sometimes see those signs up at supermarkets claiming that in a direct product to product price comparison, their store came out x.x% lower than Competitors Y and Z?

While just about shitting myself over the preposterous prices at Carr's (which is essentially Safeway, same company) the other day, I decided to do just that. Except of course I did it with a distinctly hippie-ish natural foods vegan twist. For fuckssake, I'm sure not interested in comparing the price of Ragu's Ground Up Animal with Fresh Unknown Industrial Byproducts and A Half pound of Added Sugar Sauce.

I made a list of things that I regularly buy, and found myself with a shockingly logical route coming back from the dentist this morning. I then had the brain flash that should do beer price comparisons, too, but I'll report on those in another blog post.

THE ROUTE

• Carrs (Safeway) on West Dimond and Jewel Lake (hereinafter "Carrs")
  
• Fred Meyer on West Dimond just west of Minnesota ((hereinafter "Fred")
  
• Fred Meyer liquor store
  
• Gold Rush Liquors on Old Seward at East Dimond
  
• Brown Jug Warehouse store, 4140 Old Seward
  
• New Sagaya Midtown Market, Old Seward at 36th (hereinafter "Sagaya")
  
• VERY briefly spun around the astonishingly expensive Natural Pantry across the street from New Sagaya
  
• Carrs in the Sears Mall on Northern Lights, since I (mistakenly) assumed that the Carr's selection on West Dimond completely sucked due to their renovations
  
• Oaken Keg liquor store, a Carr's operation, in the Sears Mall
  
• the Commissary/PX/BX at Elmendorf AFB (hereinafter "base")
  

Now, if you're a stranger or lurker, you don't know why I have access to the Commissary at Elmendorf, and you'll have to e-mail me to find out. Suffice it to say that I'm EXTREMELY glad that I do have this access, because otherwise we might have to take out a home equity loan every time we wanted to buy Boca Burgers.

* The products and NON-SALE* prices are listed from from lowest to highest.
* I deliberately used the regular everyday price, ignoring temporary sales.
* Where a store isn't shown for a particular product, they either didn't sell it, or I just couldn't find it.

TOFU, cheapest available: Base $1.07; Sagaya $1.49; Carrs $2.19; Fred $2.39
Soy milk, 8th Continent

SOY MILK, 8th Continent (my favorite): Base $2.19; Fred Meyer $3.79; Sagaya $4.69

SOY MILK, Silk: Base $2.89; Fred Meyer $4.39; Carrs $4.69 (Silk Lite, no regular visible)

SMART BALANCE ORGANIC (vegan margarine): Base $2.59; Fred Meyer $3.29

SMART BALANCE [regular, non-vegan]: Base $1.79; Fred Meyer $2.45; Carrs 2.79

ONIONS, ORGANIC RED per pound: Base $1.11 (Earthbound Farms 3# bag); Sagaya $1.66 (IDENTICAL Earthbound Farms 3# bag)

ONIONS, conventional RED per pound: Base $1.15; Sagaya $1.49; Fred Meyer $1.99
(yes, I honestly couldn't find red onions anywhere at Carrs)

ONIONS, YELLOW per pound: Base $0.59; Fred Meyer $1.29; Sagaya $1.29; Carrs $1.39

LETTUCE, RED per head: Base $1.09; Fred Meyer $1.79; Sagaya $1.99; Carrs $1.99

LETTUCE, GREEN per head: Base $1.09; Fred Meyer $1.79; Sagaya $1.99; Carrs $1.99

SPINACH, per bunch: Base $1.29; Fred Meyer $1.79; Sagaya $1.99; Carrs $1.99

BROCCOLI, ORGANIC per pound: Base $1.58; Fred Meyer $2.29; Carrs $2.29; Sagaya $3.99

LIGHTLIFE vegan sausage tube: Base $2.34; Fred Meyer $3.99

COFFEE, ORGANIC per pound: Base: $4.38 ($2.74/10 oz.); Carrs $9.69; Fred Meyer $10.79

And my personal favorite for the most preposterous, indefensible markup in Anchorage:

BOCA VEGAN BURGERS: Base $2.00; Fred Meyer $4.19; Sagaya $5.49; Carrs $5.49

Note that despite vastly lower purchasing power/economy of scale, New Sagaya is almost always lower than Carrs / Safeway. Crazy.

The moral of the story? Always shop at the Base, then go to Fred Meyer as a more local backup, Sagaya is occasionally okay for certain items, and avoid Carrs / Safeway like avian influenza.

Of beers and vomit

So J is in Georgia, and while going to an excellent beer bar at my suggestion and urging, she happened on to an unknown brewpub. Their web site suggested decent beer and good vegetarian food options, so I urged her to go. Among other mixed reviews in a first e-mail, here is the entirety of the second e-mail she sent me:

when the ipa warms up it tastes like vomit

The identity of the brewpub will be withheld until I can do my own visit, but given that IPA is J's favorite style, the prospects look pretty dim.

It's been a long time since I laughed out loud at something on the web

Actually, probably since E (and by extension, S) got me to read Best of Craigslist. But, see, I have a relatively short attention span, and like pretty constant entertainment and/or stimuli of some kind. So with rare exceptions, like the Alaska Airlines board on Flytertalk and the homebrewing forum on BeerAdvocate, I rarely read many pages for long.

Anyway, back on topic, laughing out loud at things on the web.

Several things in this Instructable, and the pages linked from it, made me laugh out loud. Repeatedly.

Dinner!

Here's tonight's dinner, a green leaf lettuce salad with sauteed organic red onions and tofu, and toasted bread infused with garlic. The bread wasn't fresh per se, but was hot to the touch when I picked up it yesterday.

Cost breakdown:
$0.37: green leaf lettuce (1/3 of a $1.09 head, Alaska grown)
$1.07: tofu (one package)
$0.42: red onions (1/2 of one, $3.39 for 3 lbs/four onions, Earthbound Farms organic)
$0.20: Annie's Goddess dressing: (~ 1/30 of a $5.99, 1 liter bottle)
$0.25: bread (1/8 of a loaf, 2 for $4.00)

GRAND TOTAL: $2.30

Now, tell me where you can get vegan food like this at a restaurant at this cost?

TGS, watchoogot?

Cost comparisons of Anchorage groceries likely to follow.

Today's technology rant...

is more of a resigned sigh than a rant, I guess. My formerly reliable and trustworthy Dell 700m laptop has of late become a shitty little piece of shit laptop. First, the 71WH, 4800 mAH, Type C6017 extended life battery is dying. It basically only holds a little over an hour charge when fully charged with the DVD/CDROM drive running. For the last couple of years, it would regularly give me three plus hours with DVDs, a lifesaver on long flights. Researching it some, I've come to find out that almost everyone hates these batteries, which are close kin to the infamous firestarter Dell batteries which have resulted in at least three recalls in the last several years.

In addition, ont he ferry ride up here, the DVD/CDROM drive has started to malfunction, and doesn't like to correctly play DVDs for much more than an hour or two.

Mere coincidence that this all starts to go down after my 2 year extended warranty period ended in April? Truth be told, though, the extended warranty wasn't worth a shit anyway. When I had problems within a year, I spent endless and worthless hours on the phone with "technical support" who ran be through a series of stupid checklists, and ultimately I resolved the problem through some advice I found online.

Moral of the story? That Dell laptops suck, and I won't buy one again? Not really. I actually think it's a sad statement about built-in obsolescence, which manufacturers shamelessly apply to pretty much all consumer products these days. I still have a Mac Powerbook 5300c from 1996! that works fine, and offers better battery life than my Dell 700m from 2005. Okay, then, is the moral of the story that Macs are better than Dells for this purpose? Nope, not that, either: I know plenty of people with newer Max laptops that have jad just as shitty of lifespans.

No, I think the moral of the story is that computer (and consumer electronics) manufacturers have figured out that we, the purchasing public, have an endless capacity for ignorant spending and replacing and consumerism. In short: we're fools, and they know it. Pretty irritating, isn't it?

On a related note of irritation: sometime recently, Costco changed the only decent refund policy in the industry, and now only offers 60 or 90 days on electronics. I forget which, but it's not important, since it's a damn sight less than the lifetime satisfaction guarantee that they used to offer on everything they sold. That eliminates what was usually the primary reason, beyond decent (but usually not extraordinary) prices, to purchase from Costco. I used to almost always buy from them even when it wasn't precisely what I wanted. Now? Depends on where the price is right. And no, Costco, the "technical support" you offer as part of your Concierge services isn't a good substitute.

With apologies to John McPhee,

we've come in to the country. We arrived in Whittier, Alaska on the ferry on July 26th, and have been on the go since. On that first day, we:

• drove to Anchorage
  
• had breakfast at Snow City (details below)
  
• got both of our driver licenses
  
• got an expensive smog test for the car
  
• registered the car
  
• got library cards
  
• got J on the request list at the library for Harry Potter
  
• went to Elmendorf and got a base sticker for the car
  
• and got our health care switched over and PCM teams assigned
  
• and checked out the commissary
  
• 'checked in' to the B&B we're staying at for the month
  

It was a busy day.

We've now been in town a week, and J has been busy with meet and greets for her new job. In the meantime, we've gone to the home inspection for the house we're under contract for, and submitted a list of request repairs to the sellers. If all goes well, we close on the 27th.

I've been to the commissary twice, due to the VERY cheap prices, especially on the small but nice selection of organic produce, and excellent prices on fake-meat products.

Today we went out for a medical appointment for J, and checked out the "for sale" lot, and the (free to us!) recreation/fitness center. A free swimming pool! Yay!

Also over the weekend, we bought a Jeep Liberty. Ugh. It's an SUV, but getting in and out of our driveway in the winter will actually require legitimate 4WD. We are both sickened by the crappy gas mileage (18/23) but it's truly a winter vehicle only, and the bad mileage will help keep us honest honest on that.

I just called and got a dentist, and have an appointment for Monday morning. First thing Monday morning, like 6:45am, I drop off J at the airport to fly to Nome for the week, then go straight to the Jeep dealership to have the optional undercoating installed (sprayed on?) I then have a dentist appointment at 10am. Busy day ahead there, too.

And in the next hour, I need to go drop off some DVDs at the library, and then pick up the tickets we bought a month ago for tonight's sold-out Indigo Girls show at the Bear Tooth First Tap.