I've never belonged to a CSA before, but I was inspired after reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  Around the time I finished the book, my work sponsored a shipment from two different CSAs and I pressured my husband and one of his work friends into splitting a share.  We had the choice between Big River and another Minnesota CSA, but we settled on Big River because they are committed to training immigrant workers how to farm sustainably. And also because the variety of veggies looked better.

Since late June, we've been getting fresh produce, including green peppers, zucchini, squash, green beans, peas, dill (which made me smell like pickles for two days), lettuces, and my new favorite veggie ever, beets. Without a doubt, the produce I've gotten from them is fresher, more colorful, and much more tasty than the produce we normally get from the grocery store. Beets, for instance, are an amazing purple-y wine color and the tomatoes from today's salsa were a vibrant juicy red.  I should have taken a picture of the chopped but not pureed salsa, but my hands were covered in seeds.  Between Big River Farms and our local farmer's market, we've been eating very well this summer. 

I just had to brag.  It was totally worth moving our entire condo's furnishings into the dining room and kitchen for two days.  Aren't they pretty?

Our living room, early Saturday morning.

Same living room, different angle, later that day.

Our dining room, where all of our furniture and junk has to go.

One of our cats, Weetzie, coping with the changes.

In addition to the self-loathing and the half-hearted blogging, I am also vegging out on the House reruns. Sadly, I'm wishing that House was my doctor right now. I'm not even that sick.  I must be suffering from feverish, masochistic delusions. Bring on the Halls and the NyQuil.

So, I've been living iPod-less for four days. It feels like giving up caffeine or crack.  I used my iPod for two basic functions:  music while I exercise (to take my mind off of exercising) and music for my 25 minute bus commutes to and from work. 

I only exercised on Monday (due to some writing deadlines I've been pushing), but I actually had to think on my half an hour walk.  Not hum along to Ani or Tori, but think about what I was seeing and feeling.  It was nice to notice the landscape in my neighborhood, the two squirrels trying to "do it" in the road, the sky growing pink above the Basilica. 

My bus commute has been more challenging.  I obviously travel the same route every day.  In the morning, I share the bus with many of the same passengers.  It's kind of boring.  I realize that my iPod allows me to withdraw from the world.  Pretty much everyone is wearing one, so we can all retreat into our little self-pods and ignore each other.  At times this is valuable, such as when the crazy guy is ranting three seats away.  But last night I listened to a son describe to his father the picture he drew in day care that day. I got to see their physical resemblance and watch as the dad draped his arm over his son. Would I have missed that in my musical solitude?  Probably.

So, now I'm stuck.  Do I buy another vial of musical heroin or do I live with the silence? As soon as I realized my iPod had died, I was scoping the websites for the best deals.  I think I'm arguing for an iPod-less life, since I really don't know if I should spend the money on a new one.  And I like being able to think and hear my thoughts.  (Even though that scares me and I don't really care for the banality of most of my thoughts.) 

I'm interested to hear from other writers who choose to pod or not pod.  Why do you pod?  Do you limit your podding?  Why don't you pod? What's the trade-off?

Most importantly, do you think I should get an 80G iPod, because I can find it really cheaply, even though I only have a 60G hard drive on my laptop or should I just get the 30G and live with less?

One of the things that makes it so enjoyable (other than the writing is really fun) is that my father turned me on to Pandora.  Now, please excuse the plugging of an ad-supported website*.  But I don't think that I could survive the hours in front of my computer without it. 

With Pandora, you can create free internet radio stations that you (or anyone you share it with) can listen and enjoy.  You just plug in an artist or a song title that you like and then Pandora searches for music that fits the same musical "type."  It's part of a musical genome project, which traces the commonalities between music.  It's brilliant! 

I have six stations right now -- acoustic female singers like Ani Difranco, acoustic male singers like Greg Brown and Simon and Garfunkel, feminist punk music like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, classics like Frank Sinatra, goth and industrial like The Cure, and soul/rap like Jurassic 5 and Lauryn Hill.  If I get sick of one station, I transfer to another.  And I think (but don't quote me on this) but you can make as many stations as you want.  I've discovered a lot of new artists that I now like and I've powered through my freelancing with a song in my head.  Actually, lots of songs in my head.  If you like music and have a good internet connection, I would highly recommend it. 

* I have not been given any restitution for my recommendation. I just really really like the site. A lot.

On Saturday, I received my "pretty" print from Today is Pretty.  It is, to overuse the word, very very pretty.

I hightailed it to Target today and picked up a cute little floating photo frame and hung it this morning.  The wall is in my entry way, just as you come in the door.  It matches the red kitchen, to its right, which unfortunatley, has no more wall space. 

In other random news, I'm about a little over half done with my freelancing gig. It's totally time consuming, as we can see from the little blogging, but so much fun.  My day work has been slower than all get out, so it has been so nice to have a diversion at home to keep my Capricornian-brain whirring.  I'll be glad when I'm done before I go on vacation, but I'm loving it now.  I'm such a geek.   

Rather than writing poetry on the bus, I'm obsessively completing crossword puzzles.  (I bought a book of 500 at the campus bookstore on my Monday.)  I can see black and white little boxes in my sleep.  I keep itching to do another, as soon as I finish one.  I think they could be habit forming.

Of course, I'm also spending more time outside, taking walks and playing catch or frisbee with my husband.  When I'm inside, I'm watching TV or watching more TV.  So You Think You Can Dance  has a two hour premiere tonight, which is practically a holiday in our house. 

And my reading habits have changed.  In the past three weeks, I've read two different mysteries.  The first, admittedly, was an assignment for writing a review for the Uptown Neighborhood News. But it whetted my appetite for more mysteries!  Unfortunately (or fortunately for my review) the first was way better than the second. 

I would highly recommend State of the Onion (325 pages) by Julie Hyzy, especially if you like female protaganists in your mysteries.  The second, Simple Genius (420 pages) by David Baldacci is kind of cruddy. That's the technical literary term. The story is good, but the prose and dialogue is so wooden that I felt dirty for reading it. 

Despite these mixed results, I still want to read more mysteries.  So, if you have any recommendations for mystery authors that can write well, let me know!  I think I need to make peace with my tendencies towards frivolity, at least for the summer. 

Total For 2008: 3801 pages
Genres: Memoir (3), Essay (1), Graphic Novel (1), Non-Fiction (3), Poetry (4), Comic Book Anthology (1), Novel (2)

However, I have been doing other things (yes, there are other things) including...

• Seeing a Twin's Game with my hubby, as well as Mr. Horrorpants and his wife. The Twins are actually on a winning streak, although that phrase will probably jinx it.
• Enjoying the beautiful weather - it's finally above 50 degrees.
• Recovering from the massive report I had to coordinate at work.  I am so glad it's done, never to be coordinated again.  I hope.
• Reading my next book to review for Uptown Neighborhood News, State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy
• Watching Season One of The Riches-- I have a huge crush on Eddie Izzard now.
• Finishing Asphalt Sky.  I swear to God it's coming out soon. 

So life is good.  Just not very bloggable right now.  And that's okay. 

Since we are a Lutheran school, we have voluntary chapel as a service for our adult learners, should they choose to take advantage of it.  I'm not Lutheran at all, but I attend chapel on the days I work, so that I'm supporting a service for our students. (Most of the time there's only three or four of us present, including the person who is leading.)  Today, the service leader handed out Buddhist quotes to us and asked us to, using that darn R word again, reflect between each reading.  He tried to match our quotes to our personalities.  Here was mine:

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed. -- Buddha

Now, I've met this very nice gentleman once. But man, has he got me pegged.  I can be a little rigid at times. (Okay a lot rigid. A lot of the time.)  I think part of it's personality, part of it's upbringing, part of it's just habit.  Whatever the motivation, I can be very shielded with people I don't know, and sometimes with people I do know. 

My rigidity is something that I work on in my writing, for sure..  I always think that I am being so vulnerable and unguarded in my writing, and I'm really just shielding what I really feel with language. I often confuse thinking through an emotional issue and feeling through it.  I'm so much more comfortable with my intellect's capacity to connect than my heart. 

I guess that this is something that I have come to know about myself and accept as one of my opportunities for growth.  I just didn't realize that it was so apparent to the outside world.  So today, I want to just reflect (there's that R word again) on this quote and wonder at the ways I can open myself to the world. 

-- "To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy

Today, a professor at work sent me this Marge Piercy poem in the campus mail, because we had discussed it in passing two weeks ago.  He couldn't recall the name or the author, just the ending image of the vases and bodies being of use.   It helped to inform my work all day today, since I hung it above my computer monitor.  I love working at a college.