So I was talking to a friend about causation and quantum physics (as you do), and got onto the topic of knowledge and the nature of reality and whether we can ever know the nature of reality and that of course we can't so what do we do instead. I reviewed my path through modern epistemology, up through Kant and the limits of pure reason, and finishing with my PhD supervisor, who belongs to a tradition in the philosophy of science that holds that scientific knowledge is all theory-laden, including the observations one takes as evidence for the truth of one's theories. That means you can never get objective evidence, from outside your theory, that would prove your theory is true.
My friend was saying that this perspective (or something similar that happens to him when he tries to imagine a world without causation) makes him angsty. But for me it's always filled me with exhilaration.
If one adopts this view of the theory-ladenness of perception and experience, and is post-Kantian about the limits of pure reason and all that, but then concludes that then there's no point thinking anything ever again if it's all going to be wrong, I could see how that could lead to angst, but there's another (exhilarating) alternative. Sure, everything is just a theory and you can't ever know for sure you have the right one, but that doesn't mean there aren't better and worse theories. One can make meaningful judgements based on theories' internal coherence, among other things. Or, one could take the pragmatist stance and judge a theory based on how it works for you when you try it on for a while.
And it only occurred to me just this morning while I was talking to my friend that one reason I'm perfectly comfortable with this is because I was an English major as well as being a Philosophy major. I learned the skills of analysing and evaluating literary works. Even though these works are fiction, some of them are better than others, I'd go so far as to say "more true". It only just occurred to me today that literary criticism is exactly the same as theoretic evaluation in the post-Quine-Kuhn ungrounded philosophy of science embraced and taught to me by my PhD supervisor.
And then this afternoon driving to the bank and then Subway in Neenah, past the white boxy restaurant with the bit neon sign that just says "Eat" on top (I must stop there for lunch instead one day), I was thinking about what this all means for human experience. Since you can't even have any perceptions at all without a theoretical framework, one that has to be created and maintained by you even as you're perceiving, then mere existence as a human being is one prolonged profoundly creative narrative act!
This thought made my red car look a little brighter and the summer trees look a little greener.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
There's a thunderstorm here, like, every day
Monday night, driving south from the Target, headed home. Look over the bucolic vistas, fields of hay, barns and silos, and sigh. There's baby blue sky to the south, with clouds lightly empinkened by the approaching sunset. Smile.
Glance up and look in the rear-view mirror. Behind you the sky is an angry black bruise, all the way to the ground. And it's headed this way.
Glance up and look in the rear-view mirror. Behind you the sky is an angry black bruise, all the way to the ground. And it's headed this way.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Architecture and Philosophy
When I was in college I wrote a paper for a history class I was in called "Modernism", which I think I called "Frank Lloyd Wright vs. the Bauhaus". I don't remember how I got the paper to turn out, because I remember struggling with the arguments, but I do remember that I really wanted the Bauhaus to win.
From what I understood from doing the research for the paper, Bauhaus architecture was all about being true to the essence of the materials. The nature of steel and glass, new architectural materials at the time, was that they suited a rectangular box with windows flush to the outside. So, to be true to them, and to design according to their purest essence, this is the kind of building you should build. And they have the advantage of staying up, being sturdy, withstanding earthquakes, maximizing interior space, etc etc.
What I remember about Frank Lloyd Wright was that in his desire to integrate buildings into their surrounding landscape, he bent the materials to his will so inefficiently that the buildings were basically not very structurally sound. At the start of a chapter of a big coffee table book about his house Fallingwater, there was a copy of an engineer's report that went on with item after item of dubious features that would have to be rethought, resized, structurally reinforced, bodged up or worked around. I think Floyd persisted with his vision and got the house built with the design and dimensions that he wanted, but I believe today noone is allowed to walk on the grand, cantilevered concrete patio because it's already got cracks and is at risk of breaking off and falling into the river. I might be wrong about this, I will look it up. But that's what I remember.
So, now, 25 years on, what do I think? The style that Frank Lloyd Wright pioneered is very prominent in this part of the country, and it has captured my imagination. He lived and worked in Chicago so you see lots of it there, and here there are many houses in the Bungalow style, many commercial interiors with Mission style furniture and light fixtures, they even decorated that way in a brand new bar and pizza place I went to for work that's just part of a strip mall at the side of a major road. I've bought Mission style furniture for my living room and bedroom. And just today I wondered if by doing that I have been betraying myself, and abandoning the intellectual purity of the Modernist (aka Bauhaus) style that I allied myself to back in college.
Maybe not really - when I went on Wikipedia and looked up Mission Style, Arts and Crafts, and Gustav Stickley, I found this statement of the basic principle of Mission Style:
"a severely plain and rectilinear style which was visually enriched only by expressed structural features"*
And I thought, well, duh! That's why I like it! It expresses only the structural essence of the object (the chair, the doorway), the bit that juts out is actually a joist that holds it all together, there is no unnecessary decoration, there is no hiding of the workings of the structure. So that's perfectly consistent with the other stuff I like, and in fact the stuff that any philosopher would like.
So, how does all this fit with what I do for a living? I am a Relationship Manager, and I work in Marketing, which is the discipline dedicated to finding out what consumers want and delivering it to them. I was just musing on that today, and had this thought:
So, architecture, you have a little ways still to go. Give me design that accords with the materials, the environment, and the human form. And I'll be working on a philosophy that does the same, in return.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stickley
From what I understood from doing the research for the paper, Bauhaus architecture was all about being true to the essence of the materials. The nature of steel and glass, new architectural materials at the time, was that they suited a rectangular box with windows flush to the outside. So, to be true to them, and to design according to their purest essence, this is the kind of building you should build. And they have the advantage of staying up, being sturdy, withstanding earthquakes, maximizing interior space, etc etc.
What I remember about Frank Lloyd Wright was that in his desire to integrate buildings into their surrounding landscape, he bent the materials to his will so inefficiently that the buildings were basically not very structurally sound. At the start of a chapter of a big coffee table book about his house Fallingwater, there was a copy of an engineer's report that went on with item after item of dubious features that would have to be rethought, resized, structurally reinforced, bodged up or worked around. I think Floyd persisted with his vision and got the house built with the design and dimensions that he wanted, but I believe today noone is allowed to walk on the grand, cantilevered concrete patio because it's already got cracks and is at risk of breaking off and falling into the river. I might be wrong about this, I will look it up. But that's what I remember.
So, now, 25 years on, what do I think? The style that Frank Lloyd Wright pioneered is very prominent in this part of the country, and it has captured my imagination. He lived and worked in Chicago so you see lots of it there, and here there are many houses in the Bungalow style, many commercial interiors with Mission style furniture and light fixtures, they even decorated that way in a brand new bar and pizza place I went to for work that's just part of a strip mall at the side of a major road. I've bought Mission style furniture for my living room and bedroom. And just today I wondered if by doing that I have been betraying myself, and abandoning the intellectual purity of the Modernist (aka Bauhaus) style that I allied myself to back in college.
Maybe not really - when I went on Wikipedia and looked up Mission Style, Arts and Crafts, and Gustav Stickley, I found this statement of the basic principle of Mission Style:
"a severely plain and rectilinear style which was visually enriched only by expressed structural features"*
And I thought, well, duh! That's why I like it! It expresses only the structural essence of the object (the chair, the doorway), the bit that juts out is actually a joist that holds it all together, there is no unnecessary decoration, there is no hiding of the workings of the structure. So that's perfectly consistent with the other stuff I like, and in fact the stuff that any philosopher would like.
So, how does all this fit with what I do for a living? I am a Relationship Manager, and I work in Marketing, which is the discipline dedicated to finding out what consumers want and delivering it to them. I was just musing on that today, and had this thought:
- Bauhaus accords with the essential features of the materials.
- Frank Lloyd Wright style harmonizes with the features of the environment
- But both of them are really uncomfortable!
So, architecture, you have a little ways still to go. Give me design that accords with the materials, the environment, and the human form. And I'll be working on a philosophy that does the same, in return.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stickley
Saturday, July 19, 2008
night rain
You know what else I love? Rainstorms at night. Right now it's 11:20 pm (and yes, dark, we're that much past the solstice now, although I'm exaggerating, it was never light later than 9pm even on the longest day), and it's raining heavily and making just the most wonderful sound on the windows and out on the lake.
The storm rolled in very gradually, first just a grey fluff of clouds at the horizon, then darker over a number of hours, and then just as I was thinking of stopping reading I Can Has Cheezburger and going to bed, rolling thunder. The other night there were fireworks for some reason or other, over toward town, I saw them in the distance when I went outside to see what the noise was, but that just sounded like a car door being closed over and over. These thunder claps rolled the earth. Nature is always so much more impressive than humankind - I remember that from certain 4th of July displays that had lightening in high clouds in the distance. Cop that, God says. Call that a chrysanthemum?
I don't remember this kind of storm at night much, in either Sydney or Brisbane. I do remember the freaky thing in Brisbane of it getting much hotter overnight if cloud cover rolled in, because it reflected the heat from the ground. Freaky. Here I'm sure there is still so little heat in the ground, it having been buried under a jillion feet of snow for five months, that the effect doesn't happen.
But this rain, this full-on, proper thunderstorm rolling through town in the middle of the night on its way across the Midwest, like a freight train, this I love.
The storm rolled in very gradually, first just a grey fluff of clouds at the horizon, then darker over a number of hours, and then just as I was thinking of stopping reading I Can Has Cheezburger and going to bed, rolling thunder. The other night there were fireworks for some reason or other, over toward town, I saw them in the distance when I went outside to see what the noise was, but that just sounded like a car door being closed over and over. These thunder claps rolled the earth. Nature is always so much more impressive than humankind - I remember that from certain 4th of July displays that had lightening in high clouds in the distance. Cop that, God says. Call that a chrysanthemum?
I don't remember this kind of storm at night much, in either Sydney or Brisbane. I do remember the freaky thing in Brisbane of it getting much hotter overnight if cloud cover rolled in, because it reflected the heat from the ground. Freaky. Here I'm sure there is still so little heat in the ground, it having been buried under a jillion feet of snow for five months, that the effect doesn't happen.
But this rain, this full-on, proper thunderstorm rolling through town in the middle of the night on its way across the Midwest, like a freight train, this I love.
Ellen, you really shouldn't drink and blog
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
a cry out for all that's ever been and been lost
for lost love
lost kitchens
lost history
everything that ever was and was loved and was gone
lost hope, lost imagination
closing down of possibilities
change, loss, grief, change
We feel as though we can't go on.
We go on.
but some days the memories overtake us, the loss wells up like a black void and overtakes us,
we see a tea towel with a chicken on it at the grocery store and realize we are not our grandmother, our great-aunt, our mother, our mother's friends,
we are ourselves, flawed, disappointing, incomplete
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It will be fine tomorrow. Tomorrow we will get up and go on, and do what needs doing and pretend it's normal and we don't feel feelings and we are dependable and it's all fine and perfectly normal.
But yesterday, all the yesterdays, in history, all the nows we imagined, all the I's we meant to be,
they are gone, all gone, all gone.
The title of this little rant is "It sucks to be 45."
a cry out for all that's ever been and been lost
for lost love
lost kitchens
lost history
everything that ever was and was loved and was gone
lost hope, lost imagination
closing down of possibilities
change, loss, grief, change
We feel as though we can't go on.
We go on.
but some days the memories overtake us, the loss wells up like a black void and overtakes us,
we see a tea towel with a chicken on it at the grocery store and realize we are not our grandmother, our great-aunt, our mother, our mother's friends,
we are ourselves, flawed, disappointing, incomplete
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It will be fine tomorrow. Tomorrow we will get up and go on, and do what needs doing and pretend it's normal and we don't feel feelings and we are dependable and it's all fine and perfectly normal.
But yesterday, all the yesterdays, in history, all the nows we imagined, all the I's we meant to be,
they are gone, all gone, all gone.
The title of this little rant is "It sucks to be 45."
thought for today
Q: Did I make a mistake moving here from Sydney?
A: Let's just assume that you didn't, and work from there.
A: Let's just assume that you didn't, and work from there.
little poem composed at 1:30 in the morning after a deepening obsession with Peter Hayes of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
I am a chalk outline of my own body
and I'm trying to fit the moonlit night inside.
(Not sure exactly what this has to do with their music but it's the way the videos are making me feel - see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hso2CC1ozPs
esp the way he looks at 0:43 - omg)
and I'm trying to fit the moonlit night inside.
(Not sure exactly what this has to do with their music but it's the way the videos are making me feel - see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hso2CC1ozPs
esp the way he looks at 0:43 - omg)
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Energy flows out
Why is it so exhausting writing emails all day? I remember wondering this at my former job. I recall the incredible energy it took to control all those client requests, brief the team, answer questions by IM, prioritize, write emails with materials to review, pass along feedback, answer the phone in the midst of it all, and just keep it all together.
This job is the same. Even though I am the client, I have to take requests, explain things, argue for and barrack for things, prioritize constantly, interrupt phone calls to answer emails coming in, interrupt emails to answer phone calls, smile at people who come to my door, smile at people in the hall and on the elevators. Today I spent all day preparing a big presentation, getting the PowerPoint all done and memorizing the transitions, and then the meeting was postponed anyway because the seniormost person had a conflict. Tonight I am supposed to be checking four emails to make sure they made all the corrections I sent through yesterday, and then also making a list of topics to talk to my IT guy about tomorrow. And I am just shattered, and am not sure how I am going to manage it.
I remember a friend asking this question about term papers. She was taking a course and had to write a four-page essay. It was taking days, and she was stressing out about it. I remember her saying, "I can write a four-page letter in no time, why is this so much harder?" I think it's the same kind of thing, why spending all day writing emails and PowerPoints is hard. It's all communication flowing out. You have to set your message and then think of how to communicate to the other person, and craft it and check it and make sure it will be clear and persuasive, and make sure you've got your priorities right and timing and everything, and it's all energy out, so it's tiring and draining. That is my theory.
What you need to balance it is pure entertainment - energy in. Just passive receipt of stimulation, images, experiences.
Which is why, I think, seniorish managers like myself come home from a long day and just veg out in front of the television. This is my theory.
This job is the same. Even though I am the client, I have to take requests, explain things, argue for and barrack for things, prioritize constantly, interrupt phone calls to answer emails coming in, interrupt emails to answer phone calls, smile at people who come to my door, smile at people in the hall and on the elevators. Today I spent all day preparing a big presentation, getting the PowerPoint all done and memorizing the transitions, and then the meeting was postponed anyway because the seniormost person had a conflict. Tonight I am supposed to be checking four emails to make sure they made all the corrections I sent through yesterday, and then also making a list of topics to talk to my IT guy about tomorrow. And I am just shattered, and am not sure how I am going to manage it.
I remember a friend asking this question about term papers. She was taking a course and had to write a four-page essay. It was taking days, and she was stressing out about it. I remember her saying, "I can write a four-page letter in no time, why is this so much harder?" I think it's the same kind of thing, why spending all day writing emails and PowerPoints is hard. It's all communication flowing out. You have to set your message and then think of how to communicate to the other person, and craft it and check it and make sure it will be clear and persuasive, and make sure you've got your priorities right and timing and everything, and it's all energy out, so it's tiring and draining. That is my theory.
What you need to balance it is pure entertainment - energy in. Just passive receipt of stimulation, images, experiences.
Which is why, I think, seniorish managers like myself come home from a long day and just veg out in front of the television. This is my theory.
Haiku Inside the Mall on a Still, Humid Summer Evening in Grand Chute, Wisconsin
I miss the Food Court
at Bondi Junction Westfield,
the hummus the most.
at Bondi Junction Westfield,
the hummus the most.
"So, like, what is that a picture of?"
Tonight I was at the Mall and passed a shop called Forever 21. In the window were two manikins with t-shirts on that depicted a whole bunch of cassette tapes with hand-printed labels.
Like someone who was forever 21 would even know what they were.
Like someone who was forever 21 would even know what they were.
whinging (but you can't hear it properly)
Due to a combination of factors:
I spent all today having people walk away from me when I still had another question for them, and all day yesterday in meetings being quiet even though I disagreed with everything everyone said.
This is really bloody irritating.
Whinge whinge whinge.
- asthma medicine
- fighting the cold that's going around at work
- summertime allergies (prob the pretty wildflowers that are all a-bloom)
- stressiness
I spent all today having people walk away from me when I still had another question for them, and all day yesterday in meetings being quiet even though I disagreed with everything everyone said.
This is really bloody irritating.
Whinge whinge whinge.
Monday, July 14, 2008
What do you...?
Anti-anxiety exercise, undertaken not to assuage anxiety but because I'm bored and can't think of anything good to write:
What do you hear?
Tires on the interstate over in the distance, which sound like wind or ocean waves. Clacking of typing on my wireless Microsoft keyboard. A tweeting bird who should be in bed. The fountain in the lake outside. Listening closer, I think the bird might actually be crickets.
What do you taste?
Stouffer's French Bread Pizza, sausage and pepperoni version. I'm supposed to be following the Food Plan that my trainer made for me - lots of protein power and raw lion meat, that kind of thing - but I can't be bothered looking at it or going to the grocery store. Food is not my focus at the moment. I'm after strength and endurance, I told him. The food thing will come.
What do you see?
Lovely Blogger input interface, which always makes me happy. This lovely font they chose for my posts. Behind that, my new wallpaper which is a shot of rain streaking across my windshield last Monday morning when I had to pull over in Mequon, outside of Milwaukee, when trying to drive back home because it was too stormy to continue. And I didn't know it but I was already on the wrong highway. I love the picture - it looks like a regular picture Photoshopped but it's not. So I guess that made the storm and the detour and being 4 hours late to work worth it.
What do you smell?
Nothing. I'm nursing the beginnings of a cold, even stayed in and worked from home today, and I don't think I've breathed through my nose for a week, apart from if someone held something up to me and said, "Here, smell this."
What do you feel?
Oily, from not taking a shower today. Creaky in the neck, shoulders, knees, and of course my dicky fingers on my left hand which I'm going to see my doctor about on Friday. But also a smooth chocolately feeling left over from the shake I had earlier. Sore, tired, but also bored and transitioning to punchy. Which is better than depressed. Or anxious! So maybe this exercise works.
What do you hear?
Tires on the interstate over in the distance, which sound like wind or ocean waves. Clacking of typing on my wireless Microsoft keyboard. A tweeting bird who should be in bed. The fountain in the lake outside. Listening closer, I think the bird might actually be crickets.
What do you taste?
Stouffer's French Bread Pizza, sausage and pepperoni version. I'm supposed to be following the Food Plan that my trainer made for me - lots of protein power and raw lion meat, that kind of thing - but I can't be bothered looking at it or going to the grocery store. Food is not my focus at the moment. I'm after strength and endurance, I told him. The food thing will come.
What do you see?
Lovely Blogger input interface, which always makes me happy. This lovely font they chose for my posts. Behind that, my new wallpaper which is a shot of rain streaking across my windshield last Monday morning when I had to pull over in Mequon, outside of Milwaukee, when trying to drive back home because it was too stormy to continue. And I didn't know it but I was already on the wrong highway. I love the picture - it looks like a regular picture Photoshopped but it's not. So I guess that made the storm and the detour and being 4 hours late to work worth it.
What do you smell?
Nothing. I'm nursing the beginnings of a cold, even stayed in and worked from home today, and I don't think I've breathed through my nose for a week, apart from if someone held something up to me and said, "Here, smell this."
What do you feel?
Oily, from not taking a shower today. Creaky in the neck, shoulders, knees, and of course my dicky fingers on my left hand which I'm going to see my doctor about on Friday. But also a smooth chocolately feeling left over from the shake I had earlier. Sore, tired, but also bored and transitioning to punchy. Which is better than depressed. Or anxious! So maybe this exercise works.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Summer colours
Remember that in wintertime my whole world was blank white? And remember the Spring Green colour when the snow finally melted?
Now it's July and the colours have changed. The trees aren't that bright emerald green any more, they're more of a dark, spinachy colour. And when I drove down to Milwaukee on July 3, watching the patches of wheat (I've worked out that it's probably wheat) against those dark trees, the whole world was green and yellow.
I did that same drive with my sister today, only a week later, but the colours are all different again. The wheat fields have turned a brown or rusty red colour. The trees are even darker, in the heat. And beside the highway, all the way down, was an abundance of wildflowers. Big patches of purple clover or varge (my cousin thinks it's varge but I can't pick it at 65 mph yet), yellow stalks of something, white saucers of Queen Anne's lace actually growing wild in the median. It's a festival of delicate colour, set off by tall prairie grass that was rippling in waves in the wind.
What do you suppose Fall is going to be like? I can hardly wrap my mind around it!
Now it's July and the colours have changed. The trees aren't that bright emerald green any more, they're more of a dark, spinachy colour. And when I drove down to Milwaukee on July 3, watching the patches of wheat (I've worked out that it's probably wheat) against those dark trees, the whole world was green and yellow.
I did that same drive with my sister today, only a week later, but the colours are all different again. The wheat fields have turned a brown or rusty red colour. The trees are even darker, in the heat. And beside the highway, all the way down, was an abundance of wildflowers. Big patches of purple clover or varge (my cousin thinks it's varge but I can't pick it at 65 mph yet), yellow stalks of something, white saucers of Queen Anne's lace actually growing wild in the median. It's a festival of delicate colour, set off by tall prairie grass that was rippling in waves in the wind.
What do you suppose Fall is going to be like? I can hardly wrap my mind around it!
On Time
You can't change the past, and the future is not yet actual.
These seem like obvious facts, but philosophers often ignore them or, worse, argue that they are not true. But if you believe these facts about time it makes sense of quite a bit about our existence. If you remember that you can't change the past you never spend time feeling guilty, or going over and over something you did and worry how you could have done it differently, or engage in arguments about who did what and when. And if you remember that the future is not actual you will not believe people who confidently tell you there's only one way to invest your money and that there's something wrong with you if you don't do it. There's no fact of the matter about market activity even tomorrow, much less down the track when you're hoping to retire. You can make better and worse guesses, but no one knows for sure.
There are some downsides as well, though. If you live in the thin wedge of the present moment, all the focus is on what you don't have, on what you want in the future. Your life is driven by desire and motivation (the things that push you forward into the next moment), rather than memory, appreciation and gratitude.
Desire and motivation are good, but I've been trying to remember to look back and appreciate my past as well. I don't have a coffee table, but I had a nice coffee table in the past. I don't go to Philorum any more, but it was the center of my life for a wonderful year or so. I don't have a partner now, but I did. No one appreciates my body now as a partner would, but once someone did, and I should remember that and be thankful and that should be enough.
These seem like obvious facts, but philosophers often ignore them or, worse, argue that they are not true. But if you believe these facts about time it makes sense of quite a bit about our existence. If you remember that you can't change the past you never spend time feeling guilty, or going over and over something you did and worry how you could have done it differently, or engage in arguments about who did what and when. And if you remember that the future is not actual you will not believe people who confidently tell you there's only one way to invest your money and that there's something wrong with you if you don't do it. There's no fact of the matter about market activity even tomorrow, much less down the track when you're hoping to retire. You can make better and worse guesses, but no one knows for sure.
There are some downsides as well, though. If you live in the thin wedge of the present moment, all the focus is on what you don't have, on what you want in the future. Your life is driven by desire and motivation (the things that push you forward into the next moment), rather than memory, appreciation and gratitude.
Desire and motivation are good, but I've been trying to remember to look back and appreciate my past as well. I don't have a coffee table, but I had a nice coffee table in the past. I don't go to Philorum any more, but it was the center of my life for a wonderful year or so. I don't have a partner now, but I did. No one appreciates my body now as a partner would, but once someone did, and I should remember that and be thankful and that should be enough.
The green chile of Northeast Wisconsin
I had lunch with a supplier last week and we went to a very nice place in Neenah that's known for its soup and salads. I had the "three chicken salads", which was Waldorf, curry and something else on a bed of lettuce with all sorts of fresh veggies and a light dressing. And craisins.
Craisins are dried cranberries which are usually a little bit sweetened with something. Cranberries grow in Wisconsin so they feature in lots of dishes. I've noticed when travelling that when a place has a signature food, they don't just serve it as a feature on its own, they work it into every recipe they serve, whether its seems to belong there or not. My Mom first noticed this in New Mexico. They stopped with some friends and ordered a hamburger, but it came with super-hot green chile and the friends couldn't eat it. Green chile is a signature dish in New Mexico, so they serve it on everything - not just the Mexican-Southwestern food where it belongs but on hamburgers, beside the scrambled eggs in the morning, in a little cup beside your lunch sandwich.
In Tasmania it was salmon. On every restaurant menu instead of a choice between a Caesar Salad and a Chicken Caesar Salad, you had a choice between a Caesar Salad and a Caesar Salad with Salmon. Every sandwich included smoked salmon on it, and it, not chiles, appeared beside the scrambled eggs at breakfast.
Here it's craisins. I returned to the same restaurant later in the week for a lunch with my sister and cousin, who were both in town at the same time, and for variety I ordered the Tuna Melt Panini. Guess what was in the tuna salad? Craisins.
Craisins are dried cranberries which are usually a little bit sweetened with something. Cranberries grow in Wisconsin so they feature in lots of dishes. I've noticed when travelling that when a place has a signature food, they don't just serve it as a feature on its own, they work it into every recipe they serve, whether its seems to belong there or not. My Mom first noticed this in New Mexico. They stopped with some friends and ordered a hamburger, but it came with super-hot green chile and the friends couldn't eat it. Green chile is a signature dish in New Mexico, so they serve it on everything - not just the Mexican-Southwestern food where it belongs but on hamburgers, beside the scrambled eggs in the morning, in a little cup beside your lunch sandwich.
In Tasmania it was salmon. On every restaurant menu instead of a choice between a Caesar Salad and a Chicken Caesar Salad, you had a choice between a Caesar Salad and a Caesar Salad with Salmon. Every sandwich included smoked salmon on it, and it, not chiles, appeared beside the scrambled eggs at breakfast.
Here it's craisins. I returned to the same restaurant later in the week for a lunch with my sister and cousin, who were both in town at the same time, and for variety I ordered the Tuna Melt Panini. Guess what was in the tuna salad? Craisins.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Things you never thought you'd do
Okay, I know that every time I join a new gym and get a new trainer I rhapsodize about it, and it's probably getting repetitive, but I, once again, have a new gym and a new trainer and I love them! My former trainer at the gym at work left and moved back to Illinois, so I signed up with a commercial gym and have been going for three weeks now. And once again I learned that if you say "strength and endurance" as your goal, rather than "typical suburban pansy-assed worrying about my weight", you get to do REALLY FUN THINGS when you train. Like lift really heavy things, until you can't lift any more, can't even get your arms up, and then have your trainer praise you because you're doing really well and surprise him with your ability. The feeling of lifting heavy things is quite wonderful and a bit addictive - is it the blood flowing into one part of the body (no, no, bicep or quad, is what I mean) that does it, or just the general sense of accomplishment, or how good it feels when you stop? Don't know. Don't care! I'm loving training, I love having someone push me to work hard and ask me what I've been doing since we last met, it works for me, and I'm getting a bit stronger and fitter in the process to boot.
And, extra bonus, with this trainer comes a diet plan. I got it all printed out but actually haven't consulted it in any detail, I've just been watching what I eat a bit better. Kind of got the hang that meals should include protein, complex carbohydrates, vegetables and fruits. He's been having me write down everything I eat, which I'm used to from that one diet plan I was on in very early 2004, which worked quiet well for me. He reviewed about two weeks worth of meals (right at the end of a paycheck with no groceries in the house, so I was a bit concerned about how it would look), and he did say it wasn't too bad at all (no entire packs of Oreos or that kind of bad habit to deal with), but one thing I need to work on is to get some more protein, especially at breakfast. And he asked if it was a taste thing or a convenience thing, and it is certainly a convenience thing, I have exactly the same thing for breakfast every day and even that is a struggle, I certainly couldn't manage cooking an egg for myself every day, not that and also get to work sometime before midday.
So he suggested I might want to try adding in a protein supplement. They sell them at the shop right out front, did I maybe want to try one of those?
So I did. I gave it a day to think about, but this evening when I was in training, I decided to take the plunge. I am now the proud owner of one of those gargantuan, ridiculous, over the top jars of "Muscle Milk", the chocolate flavor, which has loud graphics and yellow highlighted text and outrageous claims all over the label. It's in my house right now, sitting on my kitchen counter, owned by me, and I'm just finishing off the first Pro-Evo lipid-filled catabolic-enhancing (or whatever - have to do a bit of research to see what all those jargony words mean) protein shake.
When the girl at the gym store rang up my purchase, I thanked her and then said, "This is something I never thought I'd do, ever in my life." She smiled wanly. But, seriously. I have a giant, over the top, ugly jar of chocolate flavored protein powder, in my house.
Who would have thought I'd move to Wisconsin and become Arnold Schwarzenegger?
And, extra bonus, with this trainer comes a diet plan. I got it all printed out but actually haven't consulted it in any detail, I've just been watching what I eat a bit better. Kind of got the hang that meals should include protein, complex carbohydrates, vegetables and fruits. He's been having me write down everything I eat, which I'm used to from that one diet plan I was on in very early 2004, which worked quiet well for me. He reviewed about two weeks worth of meals (right at the end of a paycheck with no groceries in the house, so I was a bit concerned about how it would look), and he did say it wasn't too bad at all (no entire packs of Oreos or that kind of bad habit to deal with), but one thing I need to work on is to get some more protein, especially at breakfast. And he asked if it was a taste thing or a convenience thing, and it is certainly a convenience thing, I have exactly the same thing for breakfast every day and even that is a struggle, I certainly couldn't manage cooking an egg for myself every day, not that and also get to work sometime before midday.
So he suggested I might want to try adding in a protein supplement. They sell them at the shop right out front, did I maybe want to try one of those?
So I did. I gave it a day to think about, but this evening when I was in training, I decided to take the plunge. I am now the proud owner of one of those gargantuan, ridiculous, over the top jars of "Muscle Milk", the chocolate flavor, which has loud graphics and yellow highlighted text and outrageous claims all over the label. It's in my house right now, sitting on my kitchen counter, owned by me, and I'm just finishing off the first Pro-Evo lipid-filled catabolic-enhancing (or whatever - have to do a bit of research to see what all those jargony words mean) protein shake.
When the girl at the gym store rang up my purchase, I thanked her and then said, "This is something I never thought I'd do, ever in my life." She smiled wanly. But, seriously. I have a giant, over the top, ugly jar of chocolate flavored protein powder, in my house.
Who would have thought I'd move to Wisconsin and become Arnold Schwarzenegger?
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