Do it yourself

One day I got motivated to do basic repairs myself. I remember that day well. I had just paid $22 for a terrible mechanic to put in a headlight for me. A couple days later another headlight went out. I went to Autozone that day and bought a new headlight for like $2 and installed it in like 30 minutes. Note: the first 28 minutes I was trying to replace the wrong bulb. As soon as I put it in the right hole it took like 2 minutes.

How to learn to be handy:

You tube. Seriously, type in anything into You tube and there are like 20 videos of some guy doing what you need to do.

So here is my list of things that you should not even consider paying someone to do.

Car

• Installing headlights - 2 minutes about $2 per bulb
• Break lights - a little harder, you have to get in the trunk and position yourself to be able to turn the lightbulb. Bring the bulb with you to Autozone.
• Reattaching a Rearview mirror - they sell a special glue for this. If yours ever falls off, gluing it back on takes under 5 minutes.

Home

• Light switches - I replaced all of ours with dimmers. Turn off the electricity (don't ever believe the labels on the panels). Get one of those testers at Home Depot that ensures that the power is actually off. Black=Power IN, White=Power OUT, Green=No power, ground. Note: Do this during the day so you can see what you're doing...because the power is off...
• Changing the locks - Seriously, 4 screws. You can do it. I guarantee it.
• Basic Plumbing - clogged drains etc. Gross and I'll spare you the details. Man up and just do it.
• Garbage disposal clogged? Hot water, baking soda and vinegar. Little red button under the disposal, push it to reset. When it's working, add ice cube and let them fly around in there to clean everything out. Note: any kind of skin does not belong in the disposal (avocado,potato, carrot, chicken, human).
• Dishwasher Installation - Look at a you tube video. Usually just pull the old one out, turn it on its side, disconnect it. To install, buy a Dishwasher Installation kit with flexible tubing (not copper). 2 hours, $20 for materials.
• Sanding, staining and polyurethane-ing - Sand with the grain, use glove to stain, polyurethane when it's the color you like.
• Moving - Invite 20 close friends, they'll have it done in an hour and will actually care for your stuff (depending on your friends)
• Shoveling the driveway - you choose to live in New England? Shovel your own driveway. Not like it's everyday all winter. Plus how much exercise do you actually get in the winter?
• Mow the lawn - enjoy the time outside with just you, your iPod and your lawn mower. This one is easy for me to say as my lawn is like 6'X10'.

Can you think of any others to share? A lot of this stuff might look hard at first but if you know it's easy, you might just try it!

How many ingredients?

I just started reading In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan. And it got me thinking. Good food is simple. Jaques Pepin is quoted saying that his favorite dish is, "A good piece of bread with some good butter." How simple is that? Most of the dishes that I like are also very simple. Steak on the grill, Lobster, Roast Chicken. All of these have max 5 ingredients. For example, the steak would be 1. Steak, 2. Pepper, 3. Salt. Even more complex dishes like say Coq au Vin, still have about 10 ingredients.

Before I go on, I think I need to define ingredients. Strange that ingredients needs to be defined, but now that food has turned into "food science" (says Pollan) we need to make sure that when I say "butter" you don't understand "I can't believe it's not butter". The former has max two ingredients (milk, salt), while the latter has liquid soybean oil, canola,hydrogenated soybean, partially hydrogenated soybean oils, water, cream, salt, soy lecithin, vegetable mono- and diglycerides, Potassium sorbate, calcium disodium, citric acid, Natural and artificial flavors, vitamin A, Beta carotene. Let's give "I can't believe" the benefit of the doubt and say that they have a "Natural/artificial flavors" tree in their front yard. This is 16 ingredients in something that calls itself an ingredient. Obviously the former can be called an ingredient, while the other, I say, needs to be called a conglomerate ingredient (Clomgredient?). When cooking, if you want to cook healthy, choose ingredients over Clomgredients.

I think everything you consume should have fewer ingredients than a Twinkie. Let's see how many ingredients a Twinkie has. Looks like around 28. Hmmm...that's too many. Let's try something more "healthy". Ugh. Everything I look up has over twenty ingredients. Ok, let's try to put the cap at 18. I bet you could make the most complicated dishes in the world with 18 ingredients.

What do I want for dinner tonight? Hmmm...Let's say, Dry Vodka martini with olives, Cassoulet, Ile Flotante. No appetizers, I'm not that hungry.

Martini: Vodka, Olives -2 ingredients

Cassoulet : ~11 ingredients (depending on if you consider duck confit/sausage a Clomgredient or not)

Ile Flottante: ~8 ingredients

Ok, so the whole meal has 21 ingredients, 7 fewer than a Twinkie has by itself. You tell me which is health food. When you're at the supermarket, take a look at the ingredients list, and try to choose stuff with fewer ingredients. You will notice that it tastes better, and will be healthier. This is not "health food" that I'm talking about.

You want to eat chips and salsa? Tostitos for example: corn, salt oil. Salsa: Tomatoes, jalapeno, onion,salt, vineagar.

Fried Chicken? Chicken, flour, salt,pepper, oil.

Fish&Chips: Cod, flour, salt, oil, potato.

The more food you eat from ingredients and less from Clomgredients, the less you will eventually have to worry about your health.

What have you eaten

Came across this online here. Was forwarded there by another great website (if you like Vietnamese food...and who doesn't).

Here’s what I want you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects - I had grasshopper in an empanada, does that count?
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear - had this in a margarita
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini - You know I accidentally ordered a dirty Gin martini instead of a dirty Vodka martini. Vodka is the way to go...dirty.
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. - At Bocuse when I was 12
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

The Tongue Diagnosis

So continuing with the Asian theme, we're going to take a quick look at alternative medicine. Actually, I like to call it "complementary" medicine because I believe you can get the best of both worlds by using standard medicine (Western) and "alternative" medicine (Eastern). In the realm of alternative medicine you get herbalists, acupuncturists, Massage therapists etc. I've always been interested in Complementary and Alternative medicine (sometimes referred to as CAM as opposed to TCM- Traditional Chinese Medicine). In college a friend of mine's father was a "professional" herbalist. Currently he's a "professional" painter. Over the years I've gotten some herbs from him: a salve for my frequent dislocated shoulder, ginseng pills to help me from overtiredness, and some tinctures to curb my overactive immune system. These have all kind of worked. I think that they did do something, but either I didn't take them long enough or my condition wasn't severe enough to see a quick remedy.

The lithmus test of the CAM practitioner is the Tongue Diagnosis. Supposedly the entire body is reflected in the tongue...like how the health of your bones can be seen in your teeth. Anyway, if you have a mirror of a good friend/wife/husband, try out this tongue diagnosis. I think the results are amazing, my diagnosis was perfect. It's interesting too, because you can't tell from the pictures which one is good/bad, healthy/sick because well...we don't spend that much time looking at our tongues, but maybe we should. So woohoo! Stick your tongue out more!

Fangsong : Release - Relax

So, no one commented on my last post about not working so much. But from conversations with people who read it it seems that 1. most people do agree that you need many hours of not doing work to do work, and 2. that no one wants to write that online (#3 of the link). Funny thing though, because your boss also needs 20 hours (or probably more) of doing nothing to get the 20 hours of production.

Everyone will agree that we think better with a clear mind. When stressed, we hardly get anything done, because the mind if full of utterly random thoughts. I usually think like this (when stressed): OK, I need to get this done, because I need to do this that and the other today, but I can't spend too much time on this, because I do have to do that, and I have a meeting at 11, which we know will screw up my whole day and I wont get anything done. Around 4 I'm beat and haven't gotten anything done.

Heike and I are taking Tai Chi. There are 5 basic principals of Tai Chi, but here we will concentrate on one: Fangsong. Fangsong literally means release, but release in the meaning of relax. Make a fist and hold it tight....tighter...tighter...now let it go, relax it..relax more. This is Fangsong. Laoshi (tai chi teacher) told us that he used to work in sales and would hold the phone so tightly and push it against his ear when on the phone. There is no need for this. It just adds unneeded stress to the day (Does your ear ever hurt after being on the phone? I bet it does). When you go through your day, I bet you will find areas where you need to Fangsong, let go. When you sit at your desk are you completely relaxed? Are you squinting? relax the face. Do you make fists with your hands? relax the hands. My favorite is to make "fists" with the feet. Relax....let go...

This, I think, is a quick hit for more production with less stress (#3 on New Years resolutions). Relax the mind so you can think (my job is all thinking), relax the body to conserve your energy (for when you get out of work).

Extra Credit: Name the Seinfeld episode that introduced us (kind of) to the idea of Fangsong.

How much do you really work?

I don't mean how many hours are you at work, but how many productive hours do you have a day? Over the last few weeks (we haven't been busy) so I started to think about this at work. I get to work around 9:30 and usually leave about 5:30, which sounds like an 8 hour day, but it is really only 3-4 hours of production. A day in the business world (for those of you in academia) goes like this.
9:30-10 - Read emails and drink coffee
10-11 - Errant meeting that goes over by 30 minutes
11:30-12 - Don't want to start doing anything because I'll be interrupted by lunch
12-1 Lunch
1-1:15 - Digest, read the paper and have another coffee (or other hot caffeinated beverage)
1:15-2:30 - Respond to emails and get some real work done
2:30-3:30 - Errant meeting.
3:30-5:15 - Do work
5:15 - 5:30 - Shut down computer

Say we count the meetings as productive work ... then we get a total of about 5 hours. If we ignore the meetings we get around 3 hours. Again, this is just a sample day. Most of my days, I have many more than 2 meetings, so you can imagine how the productivity decreases.

Now my question is, what if I wasn't required to be there 40 hours a week, and could only show up say 20 hours a week. Would I get as much done? or do I need the 20 hours of reading the paper at work to do the 20 hours of real work?

Resolution Review

Ok, so we're a couple of weeks into the new year. Let's see how I'm doing on my new year's resolutions. In order of how motivated I am to write about them. First of all I'd be interested to hear what you have resolved for the new year. It doesn't have to be anything spectacular, but it seems that every year we should try to focus of something. Anyway, back to me.

Facebook. So the first week, I checked it like once, second week like twice, but last week I think I was on almost every week. I have relaxed my "friend" criteria a little and have become "friends" with people from high school that I never particularly cared for (and still don't really). I let facebook go through my Gmail addressbook and find friends for me. Now I have 50ish friends. Woohoo.
Facebook itself is interesting. It's a great form of impersonal communication. Impersonal communication, according to HighDef, is any form of communication that allows you to separate yourself from actually physically or verbally interacting with someone. eg. Email, and text messaging. This impersonal communication somehow makes it easier to talk to people whom you have not talked to in a long time (or maybe don't particularily like). While I feel that something is lost in impersonal communication, I think a lot is gained. Any communication is better than no communication, right? I don't particularily like talking on the phone, so whenever possible, I make plans via Text messaging and email. Instead of telling my friends what I think about Facebook, I post it on my blog....you get the idea.