Quote of the Day - 2/14/2012

The important thing is to do something, even if it’s as simple as making a pile of pile of pebbles. For it is always the doing that leads to the becoming, and before you know it you’re on the next stage of life. - Joan Anderson in A Walk on the Beach (2004)

~~~~~

Just thinking about something is not enough even if the change you are making is mostly a mental one. While there is a concept of continuous learning - in reality, we learn in spurts. Getting to a next stage of life generally prompts a learning spurt; sometimes we experience a spurt when we discover something new and pursue it with intensity. I find it more descriptive to think about life as a series of transitions. These transitions can vary in length and importance; they can overlap. The idea is to recognize our situation (the ‘as is’) and what we want (the ‘to be’) so that we can take the actions to make it happen.

Finding a way to ‘do something’ is an accelerant to transition. Realizing this should influence how you plan ….making sure that you focus on tangible actions. In reality there are almost always multiple transitions going on concurrently at various stages of maturity; think about your plan as something that will continue as your life moves forward; some transitions will complete but others will start…it’s the nature of life.

Here are my rules of thumb for developing a personal transition (life?) plan:

• Plan a ‘something’ for every day that moves you toward a goal. It is easiest to have it be something that is part of a daily rhythm rather than a totally unique action. My current example: this blog.
• Identify a larger project that will take several months and add the time phased actions it will take to make it happen. My current example: get the interior of the house painted.
• Write it down. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I like to use a task list that includes dates and categories unless a project gets complicated enough that I need to identify relationships between the tasks (then I use something like Microsoft Project). My current example: task list in Microsoft Outlook with categories of blog, house, etc.
• Check off actions as you complete them. My current example: I look at the list every morning and, most days, mark everything complete by the evening.
• Every week/month assess how well you are moving toward your goal and make adjustments to your plan. My current example: I pretty much know how I am doing every day but I find adjustments or additions to the plan are made either weekly or monthly, depending on how quick the series of actions are.

A great periodic self-assessment is to ask yourself what you are doing differently from the way you were 3-6 months ago. The focus should be on how you have translated something you learned into how you live. It’s looking at the results of your plan from a different perspective and may help you answer the really important question - Did you move yourself toward your ‘to be’ objective?

Teams of Two

On the eve of Valentine’s Day - consider teams of two. They are the smallest team of all and yet are often the primary drivers in just about every aspect of our lives. Why might this be true? 

• It is easier for two people to communicate well than for a larger number of people.
• It may be biologically driven…to create and care for children.
• We each need a partner to fill in our weaknesses…and we need to fill theirs.
• The logistics of sustaining a team of two are easier than for a larger team.
• Our culture supports and encourages teams of two.

Maybe it doesn’t matter ‘why’ when it is so easy to observe teams of two every day. Some of them have existed for a very long time, morphing to continue their effectiveness and compatibility over the course of their relationship. It is unusual for larger teams to grow old together…but no so for teams of two.

What are the most important teams of two in your life?

Remember that not all of them are Valentine’s material; it turns out that teams of two are very effective in the business world too. Walt and Roy Disney are an example that is often cited.

Favorite Smells of Winter

What are your favorite smells of winter?

Mine are indoor smells that I associate with home…cozy and warm even when the outdoors if very cold.

Vanilla. It’s often combined with other scents, perhaps because it is a ‘comfort’ smell. There are artificial forms now but I always try to buy the natural form. It pleases me to know that it comes from an orchid that requires special care to produce the seed pods that contain the scent. It took quite a long time to figure out how to grow the plants in tropical places where they were not native! The scent can waft from cooking or tea or a candle or hand lotion. 

Baking bread. I am not a bread baker but I enjoy the smell when I am drying bread crumbs (bread going stale processed in the food processor then dried in a 200 degree F oven for a couple or hours). It makes the whole house smell like baking bread. Somehow that smell is the one I associate most with warmth. 

Cinnamon - cloves - nutmeg (i.e. the pumpkin pie spices). The smell of these spices are such a favorite that I make pumpkin custard (who needs the crust!) almost once a month and the candles I buy are most likely to be this scent.

So - are these smells among your favorites…or do you have completely different favorite smells of winter?

Quote of the Day - 2/12/2012

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. - Albert Einstein

~~~~~

The glorious complexity of natural systems…balanced…resilient to change (up to a point)…sustained. There are so many perspectives from which to ‘look deep’ and, in doing so, understand even more than the area of focus. Why does that happen?

For me, it happens in several ways.

• Nature is a system of elements so closely linked that a change in one has a ripple effect in another. For example - once I start looking closely at my garden, I notice not only the plants but the insects and frogs and (argh!!) the deer. There are so many threads to follow and explore….to understand.
• Looking deep into nature also encourages me to think more deeply in other areas as well. Being outdoors - having a ‘green hour’ - is stimulating and calming at the same time. It is like a clearing of cobwebs. Understanding grows when we give ourselves time to think!

The Architecture of Home - Part II

Yesterday I began this post about visualizing your ideal home.  The previous post is here.

Room configuration that supports lifestyle 

Main living area: Kitchen-den open floor plan or country kitchen…separate formal dining room…island work area or stove top or sink…window over the sink? My ideal is an open kitchen-breakfast area-den as one large continuous room. An island in the kitchen provides plenty of work area and I’d prefer to have enough room for some bar stools to turn it into an eating area too. I don’t need a formal dining room at all; if the house has one, I’ll use it for something besides a dining room.

Bedrooms: Master bedroom with bathroom…or do all the bedrooms need it. My ideal would be to have all bedrooms have their own bathroom. My second choice would be for two bedrooms that shared a bathroom between them.

Stairs or no stairs - I prefer houses without stairs…primarily because I am thinking about not wanting to deal with stairs 20 years from now. I’ve never liked to carry groceries or laundry up or down stairs.

Garage - How many cars? Easy to get groceries carried from car to kitchen? My ideal is probably 2…with garage door opener; I don’t want more than a step up or down (preferably no step) to get into the house from the garage.

Laundry room/space - Space to hang clothes as they come from the washer or dryer? How easily can the dirty clothes get to the laundry room?

Electrical outlets - Are they conveniently located and are there enough of them?

Connectivity - Is internet connectivity/internal network easy to achieve?

Storage - Unfinished area of basement for storage or is it somewhere else in the house?

Light 

Windows 

• Number, Size, and Type - My ideal home includes lots of windows. I particularly like transom windows over French doors. In the late 1800s, small conservatories were popular. Now, garden rooms are more common. Either one or both would be part of my ideal home. I also like skylights.
• Direction (will the sun shine directly in?) - My ideal house has at least some windows where the sun shines in - for me and the cats to enjoy on a cold sunny day.
• Double paned? - This is a resounding 'yes' for my ideal house since just about every place has very hot or very cold weather for part of the year.
• Clear or colored or etched glass - My ideal house would have mostly clear glass windows but I like bevelled and etched front doors - perhaps stained glass for the transom windows.
• Easily opened and types of screens - A house needs to be aired out on breezy spring and fall days...and other days that the temperature and air outside is pleasant.

Overhead lights or outlet on switch - My ideal house would have lights on ceiling fans in almost every room.

Task lighting (particularly in kitchen) - If the overhead cabinents shade the countertop in the kitchen, there needs to be lighting under them. 

Bathroom - The round clear bulbs mounted on a bar above a mirror are my favorites for bathroom lighting.

Features for the home of the future 

Water - There are a few houses that have gray water systems now but as water becomes scarcer, there will be even more. In the interim, catching water from wasing veggies to water plants is a start (supported by your effort rather than the architecture of your home). There may also be a trend to add filtration/purification of drinking water into homes; this is something that can be added after the home as built as well.

Power generation - It is becoming increasingly possible to generate power from just about all external surfaces of the home. As energy costs increase and the production costs of the materials comes down, they will gain rapidly in popularity. They are included in my vision of my ideal home 10 years from now.

Appliances  

• Appliances should take 0 power when not in use. I don't need clocks on my microwave, oven, and coffee maker! The only appliance that should be using power all the time in the kitchen is the refrigerator.
• Heating and cooling systems should make use of underground temperature gradients whenever possible to reduce the power required for that purpose.

 Materials 

• Locally produced
• Non-toxic (both in the way they are produced, the outgassing when they are first installed, and recyclable)
• Appropriate durability - Maybe the durability of granite countertops is out of step with the other materials used for the house.

 Flexible 

• Rooms that can change functionality are a plus. Changing a dining room to a 'cave' or a bedroom should be anticipated and even supported by the architecture.
• Different kinds of walls or even screens should be used to subdivide larger areas - making it easy to reconfigure as the needs of the household change over time.

 Back to the beginning - 

If you could have any house to make your home, what would it be like? 

It's a wonderful vision. Right? Now - what tweak can you make to where you are right now to implement a piece of your ideal home architecture.

The Architecture of Home - Part I

If you could have any house to make your home, what would it be like?

This is a very good question to answer just prior to beginning a search for a new home. It also turns out to be productive for anyone trying to hone the way space is utilized in their current home since many of the things that may be not quite right can be remediated without moving to a new house.

This is not so much an exercise in preparation for ‘building your own’ as it is about making choices that utilize or adjust the architecture to make wherever you dwell into your home. It should be unique to you not someone else’s ideal. To clearly visualize your ideal - become familiar with your needs and preferences (and those of the people that share your home).

The list below (and continued in tomorrow’s post) is intended to help you develop a deeper understanding of your

Ideal Home Architecture.

Enough space - Think about what you really need from many perspectives

‘Caves’ for each person in the household - A ‘cave’ is the place for each person to have as their individual space to do things on their own; it could be a place with computer and comfy chair or simply surface area for projects. The key is to acknowledge the space each person needs for just themselves. My 'cave' looks most like an office - with a pleasant view from the window and good lighting.

Shared areas - every home needs spaces where people do things together. Maybe it is a large kitchen/breakfast area or a den or an outdoor patio.

Kitchen 

• Counter top space - For kitchen equipment and/or multiple cooks. Cooking and eating together is an important part of the interactions in my home so the kitchen has to accommodate multiple people cooking in it at the same time.
• Counter top material - Granite is popular now…but is the durability of granite may be over the top for what you really need. There are some beautiful counters made from recycled color glass that I’ve been looking at.
• Cabinets (or other storage) - For at least the frequently used kitchen items. The challenge for me to is to get everything I use frequently onto the shelves I can reach without needing a step stool (if what I need is out of reach I tend to avoid using it).
• Cabinet material - Color/type of wood. Light is important to me so like light colored wood cabinets the best. I like the kitchen to be one of the brightest rooms in the house.
• If there were extra storage in the kitchen - what would you use it for? The area where the phone is in our current kitchen is never used for food. It holds mail and projects and purses. I’m spoiled enough by the extra space that now it is part of my ‘ideal.’
• Pantry - storage for non-refrigerated food. Do you buy such food in bulk? I prefer a long pantry that is not very deep so that I can easily see and retrieve things on the shelves. The bulk items (like paper towels and cat food) go on the top shelf or under the bottom shelf.
• What layout fits the way you cook? I like a big U with an island counter in the center. I do most of my mixing on that island. My salad preparation is done next to the sink although I put most of my parings in the compost rather than garbage disposal. The refrigerator, oven, and dishwasher can all open all the way with some room to spare although there is barely enough to walk by; at first, I thought my ideal would be to have a bit more space to walk but I’ve gotten used to them now.
• Space for Appliances - what appliances do you need: microwave, oven/range, refrigerator, dishwasher, etc. We have a large side by side and were pleased that the house was built with a water connection for the ice maker. The microwave is built-in over the oven/range; the configuration is ideal but the reliability of the unit has been abysmal. We are getting ready to replace it again.

 Bedrooms 

• Number and size- Keep in mind not only the people that normally live in the home but if you need to handle guests. I like a guest room that has another purpose (such as for special projects) or is small enough that it does not take a sizable chunk out of the space that used every day.
• Double as 'caves'? - This can be quite easy if the bedroom is for one person…more complex if it is a shared room.
• Closet space - Do you like walk in…sliding doors…builtins…shoe racks…other closet features? Will all clothes be kept in the closet or will out of season clothes be moved elsewhere? There are a lot of solutions for closet limitations. A quick and easy one I’ve done several times it to raise the bar a few inches then create a double decked section with Hanging Rod from the top bar. 

Bathrooms 

• Number and size - How many people have to get ready concurrently? Is there one on each floor of the house? We have full baths in the basement and bedroom floors but only a half bath on the ground floor. My ideal would have a full bath on each floor to add flexibility to the ground floor rooms.
• Shower/tub - both, together, separate. I definitely prefer a shower rather than a shower tub.
• Towel and toiletry storage. I find that I don’t care as much about a full linen closet as I do about storage in the bathroom itself. My idea would be to have adequate enclosed space in each bathroom for everything that would be needed there.

Minimize these types of spaces: Every home has some of these---if they are significant enough, think of ways to improve the spaces for your family. I’ve listed some ideas below.

• Hallways - Make it into a picture gallery or add hooks for car keys and purses or build in narrow shelves for paperbacks/pictures/display items. Improve lighting if it is too dark.
• Small rooms with lots of doorways - Close off one or more of the doors and put furniture in front of it or consider repurposing the room to have a table and chairs in the center with minimal furniture against the walls.
• Awkwardly shaped corner cabinet spaces - Get a rotating spice rack to put in the space, store special occasion dishes or platters only used once or twice a year in the space.
• Garage without shelving - Add free standing metal shelving or cabinets along part of the back wall and on the sides if the garage is wide enough or add higher wall attached shelving along the whole length of the back wall.

Tomorrow I'll continue this post with sections on room configuration, lighting, and features that have potential for the future.

Being Green – Reuse

The ultimate of being green is to reuse rather than trash. Here are some activities that have worked for me and I’d love to hear about ones that have worked for you:

• Re-purpose. Think of a new use from an item that you would have previously trashed or recycled. Some examples:
  • I have some plastic trays that were used by a caterer that would not go through the dishwasher well…but worked great under pots on the deck to catch the water run off.
  • The candles that come in a glass container with a lid made wonderful canisters. I use mine to hold tea bags and packets of sweetener. To clean out the wax, set them in a shallow pan of boiling water until all the bits of wax melt and can be poured out. Wipe clean with a paper towel. Soak in water to get the labels off then put through the dishwasher.

• Thrift stores. There is no consistency in thrift stores – but it is often worthwhile to at least check out the ones near you. Yes – the selection is totally unpredictable and there will be times you will not find anything you can use. But when you do….it is usually a terrific bargain and the reuse is just an added positive.
• Donate. When you clean out closets or otherwise identify things you no longer need…decide if some of them can be easily donated to a charity. Some charities will even pick up from your porch!
• Freecycle. Post items that you want to give away …or pick up something someone else is giving away. To find a group near you – check out http://www.freecycle.org/ and let the reuse begin! I have gotten rid of a partial package of roofing shingles, an old ice cream freezer, and a box of art project supplies!
• Bring your own Bag - Use canvas or reinforced paper/plastic bags from conferences or received as gifts for charitable donations when you go shopping rather than using the stores plastic bags.

Quote of the Day - 2/7/2012

By 1935 and 1936 the American camera manufacturers and the photographic supply shops found their business booming.  Candid cameras were everywhere. - Frederick Lewis Allen in SINCE YESTERDAY - THE 1930s IN AMERICA

~~~~~

When do the candid images start in your family…ones that were not taken in a studio? There may be a few from the 30s in my family but they ramped up considerably in the 40s. When my mother was a young teenager, she enjoyed using her Brownie camera; one of her more memorable pictures was of the head and shoulders of her young twin sisters looking out from the bathroom window (obviously more interested in being outside than taking a bath).

Cameras have certainly improved since the 1930s. There have been incremental improvements in the technology - black/white to color to faster film to better lenses to easier flash lighting to miniaturization to digital rather than chemical images. Many people now have a camera with them all the time (since it is in their cell phone).

The cultural change the candid images of the 1930s initiated is still with us and now the ease with which images can be shared with a very broad audience (i.e. the world via the internet) is causing another cultural change. Our lives can very easily become a lot more public than ever before.

Do we understand the world better with the increase in images? We expect more visuals now in just about every aspect of our life. It is easier for us to absorb but there is no guarantee that we understand what we are seeing. A picture is only worth a 1000 words if we understand the context and content of the picture!

February Sunrise

I’ve been watching all week for a great sunrise…and it happened yesterday. The clouds were just right to reflect the colors. The pictures below were taken from the front of my house in Howard County Maryland. This is about as easy as it gets for a sunrise photography project: simply walking out the front door at about 7 in the morning, taking pictures from two vantage points with a hand held camera. The first series was taken over a 3 minute period; the second over 4 minutes. Catching a great sunrise does not take a lot of time; being in the right place for those few short minutes is the challenge. Next time I’ll add a bit more location/setting control (i.e. use a tripod and just take one vantage point).

Trees still in silhouette

The red - pink - orange light

Reflected on the clouds

Begins a new day

The color sequence always the same

Red - pink - orange until

It all washes into yellow light

That bleaches away

To the dazzling brightness

Of a sunny day.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 4, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Magnetotactic Bacteria found in Death Valley National Park - evidently these bacteria are unique because they can biomineralize both greigite and magnetite; they may prove enabling to mass produce these minerals

Severe Python Damage to Florida's Native Everglades Animals Documented in New Study - Near complete disappearance of raccoons, rabbits, opossums in the southern part of the Everglades where the pythons have been the longest (11 years)

Learning-Based Tourism an Opportunity for Industry Expansion - lifelong learning and personal enrichment travel increasing among affluent and educated people

Are Diet Soft Drinks Bad for You? - A study finds that the answer is ‘yes’ if you drink one or more a day.

The National Mall gets more efficient LED lighting - Note the paragraph at the end of the article about the phase-out of incandescent bulbs

Snowy owl Invasion - Video from the Cornell Ornithology Laboratory

iRobot ventures into Telemedicine - The company that makes the Roomba robo-vacuum is entering the hospital robotic arena

Innovation without Age Limits - More complex innovation takes more training…and that often takes time.

Yellowstone in winter (video) - a short video just over 4 minutes…full of vignettes of animals…snow…mists

Evolution of the Businessman (infographic) - Does the very bottom (Today’s Businessman) jive with your observations?

Quote of the Day - 2/1/2012

There is something astonishingly satisfying about holding in your hands a physical object that didn’t exist until you made it. - Diana Athill in Yesterday Morning: A Very English Childhood

~~~~~

I agree with Diana Athill. Making a physical object can be very satisfying. In our everyday lives there are lots of opportunities for us to gain this kind of satisfaction. It can be rather ordinary -

• A batch of muffins,
• A contorted paperclip to hang the calendar from the arm of the desk lamp, or
• An arrangement of baskets and silk flowers on top of book cases

Or quite elaborate and time consuming -

• A cape made from old drapery material,
• A tile made to be a stepping stone in the garden, or
• Blocks of wood painted with milk paint to be given as a gift to a young child.

What have you made today?

Quote of the Day - 1/31/2012

Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us – Plotinus, 205-270 CE

~~~~~

Data

Information

Knowledge

Wisdom

No matter where we are along the continuum - action is required to translate our understanding into reality. Simply knowing is not enough. Today - think about how you can more fully leverage what you know to hone what you are doing.

Note: This is a widely used quote. I ran across it in a book by Philip Armour (The Laws of Software Process: A New Model for the Production and Management of Software) which proposed that software development should be viewed and managed as a knowledge acquisition activity. The author provides a thought provoking perspective on the history and future of the way we capture then transfer knowledge.

Quote of the Day - 1/29/2012

Scientific work requires intelligence, creativity, education and determination.  As a result, the history of science is always the history of a select group of individuals. - Margaret Alic in Hypatia's Heritage (Beacon Paperback)

~~~~~

Which of the requirements for scientific work (intelligence, creativity, education and determination) is the most challenging for the US population today? Determination would by my top pick and the others lag behind it by quite a lot. There are plenty of intelligent people…lots of good ideas…education is available but linked to determination just as closely as scientific work is. Our high schools and colleges have plenty of capacity in science and engineering yet we hear frequently that there are not enough US students - even though scholarship programs that support science and technology studies are available to top students. So - it comes back to determination and perseverance.

And that is going against the grain of popular culture which has tended toward the sound bite, the quick gratification, instant feedback. After a while it becomes harder to focus on one thing for very long. Determination is needed for scientific work because it can’t be accomplished without deeper thinking…and that takes longer blocks of time. It takes a commitment that evidently few are willing to make.

The ‘select group of individuals’ that make scientific history is becoming more and more self-selected based on determination rather than anything else. Statistically, it is still possible to see gender bias in some fields of science but there has been tremendous progress over the past 50 years that has accelerated in the last 20. The instances of women doing scientific work but not receiving appropriate credit are gone.  

The future health of the economy, both in the world and the US, is highly dependent on the innovations that come from the scientists and engineers among us. There needs to be a cultural inflection point toward viewing determination….thinking and acting for a longer term objective…as a positive attribute for more of our population. It would improve our capacity for scientific work and a lot of other endeavors as well.

Quote of the Day - 1/28/2012

Art is a method of laying claim to the physical world. - Joan Aiken in Morningquest

~~~~~

Maybe this is why I enjoy photography so much. It has become a favorite method for me to ‘claim the physical world.’ I know that with camera in hand, my attention is more focused on details of light and intensity (or not) of color. And then when I look at it later on a large screen, there is often more in the image than I realized.

Fortunately for me, digital cameras are a technology that has advanced rapidly; it no longer takes a lot of fiddling with technology to capture the images I want. Being in the right place and composition are the challenge. The camera I’ve enjoyed for the past year of so is a Canon PowerShot SD4500IS 10 MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD, Brown . All the problems I’ve had with it have been self-inflicted (leaving the SD card in the laptop or the battery in the charger). It’s small enough that I carry it in a padded area of my purse or a pocket of my travel vest; it’s always near at hand to capture an image I want to keep in more than my memory. The only extra purchase I’ve made is a second battery for a long day/lots of images captured.

What is your favorite ‘method of laying claim to the physical world?’

A Surprise in Every Day

The old proverb for physical health

'an apple a day keeps the doctor away'

has a parallel saying for creative/mental health which goes

'a surprise a day makes for an interesting life.'

What I mean by that is that if your life has a few things that are unexpected you will never be bored for long.  Make an effort to notice anything that is different than you expect. It will 

• Increase your focus on the present
• Prompt associations which lead to
  • Creative bursts - sometimes extreme
  • Memories of similar situations
  • Linkages that are new to you
• Open another path into the future 

Here are a few of my recent 'surprises' - 

• I discovered that the panel below the sink in my bathroom actually opens up and there is a bin there for toothpaste and other sundries. I’ve lived in the house for over 15 years and had never used it! I promptly put some things that had been on the counter into the new found space.
• Chia seeds. I remembered the chia pets from years ago but was surprised when I read a about the seeds being edible and highly nutritious. I’m now trying a tablespoon a day for a month. The second surprise was how good they taste even just rehydrated in water. Will they work as a substitute for poppy seeds in muffins? Hmm…an experiment for another day.
• At the grocery store I noticed that there were only 2 types of people shopping at mid-morning on a Friday: the group about my age that was leisurely shopping and parents with children that had come in for a single purpose. There were several surprises in that observation:
  • Why weren’t the children in school? (I found out later that it was a day off between quarters for some schools)
  • Are there more people like me (happily and newly free of the M-F work week) than I realized?
• As I drove through the light rain this morning, I thought about how much like dusk is looked with the thick clouds and the trees in silhouette. The surprise as I scanned the scene was a hawk in the top of a tall tree. I’m happy that hawks are around in the area where I live; I enjoy having the rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks too; it’s good to have the balance. 

Have your enjoyed your moments of serendipity today?

Personal Rhythms - Weekly

This blog item is the second in a series about the rhythms we choose for our lives. Today the topic is weekly rhythms.

~~~~~

There are activities that are generally done on a weekly basis…almost always associated with a particular day of the week. They serve as infrastructure to other activities so must be done sometime during the week although they can be moved to other days if necessary occasionally. The three that are nearly constant for me are:  

• House cleaning on Wednesdays
• Groceries shopping on Fridays
• Laundry on Saturdays 

If I make a batch of muffins, it is generally on Sunday. Visits to museums, galleries, or gardens are most often on Sunday afternoon.

For young children, it is worthwhile considering a weekly cycle to provide a bit of structure for activities that would become boring or overwhelming if they happened every day. The idea is to have a theme for the day that can be repeated in subsequent weeks. For example: 

• Family activity on Sundays
• Seasonal craft on Mondays
• Baking/cooking on Tuesday
• Painting/drawing on Wednesday
• Farm or other extended outdoor activity on Thursday
• Grocery shopping on Friday
• Music on Saturdays 

Think about the weekly rhythms most important to enable your life to move along the way you want. Are they firmly in place or ad hoc? Could they be honed to better meet your needs?

~~~~~

Last week, the post was about daily rhythms. I’ll post an item about annual rhythms next week and there will be a final post for rhythms that don’t quite fit into daily/weekly/monthly/annual cycles or the rhythm is set by a metric other than time.

Recipe of the Week: Orange Zest

I enjoy eating oranges more than orange juice so I almost always have a few in the refrigerator. After noticing how expensive orange peel was in the spice section of the grocery (and thinking of reducing food waste) - I decided to always collect the zest off the orange before I ate the inside. After trying several different techniques, this is the one that works best for me.

• Wash the orange with soap and water and let it dry before starting.
• With a sharp knife peel off the outermost layer of the peel (the orange part). I always play a game with myself on how long a ribbon a peel I can get.
• Place in a small food processor and process it until the bits are the size you want. Sometimes I leave it with variable sized pieces. Other times I continue until it is all relatively small bits.
• Let the peeling air dry on a plate, breaking up occasionally if the bits are clumped.

Oftentimes the orange will be thin skinned enough that what is left of the 'skin' after the zest is removed can be eaten along with the pulp so only the thickened ends of the skin is left as trash.

So far I have not had to worry about storage of the orange zest because I use it for cooking pretty quickly. As long as it is thoroughly dry, it could be stored in a the cabinent with other spices. Here are my favorite ways to use orange peel:

1. Bake with an apple
2. Add to your favorite salad 
3. Use as a seasoning for stir fried or baked chicken
4. Mix into pancake or muffin batter
5. Stir into cool cucumber/yogurt soup 

What's in your trash?

My household is down to one, not full, trash bag per week. We’ve done the easy recycling of plastics, cans, glass, and paper; it’s easy because our community has wheeled recycle bins, unlimited amounts, and trucks that come once a week - as often as the trash pickup. Over the years the items handled by our community recycling program has enlarged from newspaper/cardboard to all paper, from limited plastics to many more plastics (and more plastics are labeled clearly now so we know they are recyclable; much of the grocery packaging that used to be styrofoam is now recyclable plastic) and we no longer have to separate by type at all…it all goes into the rolling bin.  We still have to take the plastic shopping bags back to the store for recycling but we are getting fewer of them now that most of our purchases are carried home in reusable bags. So - what is still going in the trash? Here’s an inventory for this week:

• Milk carton, other food cartons
• Plastic wrap
• Used tissues/paper towels/cotton balls
• Broken strand of Christmas lights
• Styrofoam
• Used up ink pen
• Dried up marker
• Orange and banana peel, plate scrapings, vegetable trimmings (peelings, bad places, inedible parts)
• Old sock
• Small bags (shopping and food wrapping)
• Chunks of cat litter

Our household has a goal to reduce our food waste this year both because we want to maximize the nutrition we get from the food we buy; reducing our trash is a side-effect. Our primary strategies are:

• Pay more attention to our handling of left overs
  • not lose them in the refrigerator
  • freeze them for later if we are tired of the entrée already
• Make orange zest from every orange eaten so the peeling is reduced somewhat (and there is a flavorful addition available for other cooking)
• Instead of throwing away bread that has gotten a little stale, make bread crumbs (toasting or drying in the oven in a 200 degree F oven makes them crispy) to use instead of crackers with soups or croutons in salads.
• Collect tea and coffee grounds for immediate use as a soil addition or get a mushroom starter kit to grow your own crop of mushrooms.

There is a part of the trash that is potentially compostable but I’m not quite ready to do it…so it stays a part of the trash. I have started putting food scraps into the trash rather than down the garbage disposal these days (less water pollution) so the potentially compostable part of the trash has increased slightly.

It’s harder to image how the rest goes somewhere else than the trash. For bigger electronics like computers or cell phones, there are places to take them for recycling (Best Buy, for example). For things like a broken strand of Christmas lights, it takes too much effort to figure out what to do with them other than put them in the trash.

That’s a quick ‘state of the trash’ at the beginning of 2012 in my household. What’s in your trash?

Personal Rhythms - Daily

This blog item is the first in a series about the rhythms we choose for our lives. Today the topic is daily rhythms. In upcoming weeks I’ll post items about weekly, monthly, and annual rhythms. There will be a final post for rhythms that don’t quite fit into a daily/weekly/monthly/annual cycles or the rhythm is set by a metric other than time.

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For most people, consistent and healthy daily rhythms for sleeping and eating optimize how we feel about everything else. 

• Being asleep for about the same length of time each day and starting/stopping the sleep period at about the same time is a key to feeling rested and alert during the waking hours. Generally 7 to 8 hours of sleep is required. Try this experiment for a week:
  
  • Set a timer for a bit longer than you think you need to sleep.
  • Go to bed at the same time each evening.If you wake up before your timer goes off and after you have been in bed for at least 7 hours (you can make this shorter if you think you need less) - get up. Many people will feel warm at this time because their metabolic rate has already increased to the ‘awake’ state.
  • Otherwise - get up when the timer goes off…no snoozing.
  • Make some notes about how rested - or not - your feel during the day and make adjustments to the timer if you need to. 
  • At the end of the week, make some decisions about the optimal sleep duration for you and set your alarm clock accordingly or continue the timer technique. Many people are surprised to find that they almost always get up before the timer goes off. The benefit to waking up on your own is never being jolted awake by an alarm.
• Three meals a day work for most people but not for everyone. If you have times during the day that you feel sleepy, start keeping a record of what and when you eat; make adjustments. I am an extremely early morning person and I find a small meal (2 squares of dark chocolate and vitamins/mineral supplements) first thing in the morning followed by another small meal (a piece of fruit or small muffin) is better for me than combining everything into one breakfast. I eat lunch and dinner at about the same time each day and frequently try to have the largest meal of the day be at lunch. 

 There are hygiene related daily rhythms that are good habits. There are some examples below. Think aboutyour daily habits. If changes need to be made commit to making the change for at least 3 weeks before re-evaluating since habits take time to establish (or break). In either situation - it takes conscious effort to make the change. 

• Brushing teeth
• Showering
• Clean socks

 And there are metrics that you make check daily to provide the feedback loop for your health related goals - things like:

•  Weight
• Blood pressure
• How many steps you took 

Again - evaluate the metrics you are checking. Remember that metrics can warp your actions to make sure that warp is in a direction you intend.

Annie Dillard is right: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

Rhythms that build your appreciation of the day for yourself and for others are the most important rhythms of all - intentionally look for those pleasant surprises - the serendipity - that makes life interesting. All the rest of the rhythms discussed above are the administration behind the scenes so that we are primed to live the day.

Quote of the Day - 1/16/2012

"Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus." - Emerson as quoted by Louisa May Alcott in Moods.

  

Moods are an overlay to our perception of the world. The more we hold moods in check by melding everything into a homogeneous demeanor we can sustain for long periods of time, the more consistent everything becomes. This is often the ‘professional’ behavior that training and workplace metrics encourage. It comes at a cost. We are purposely looking through the same lens…that paints the world the same hue…and only shows what lies in its own focus. It can make life easier for us because we know exactly what to expect of ourselves; it can also help our relationships for the same reason.

It can also be boring and stressful.

Acknowledging a different mood, even slightly, can change the experience of an everyday situation and provide new avenues to address problems. For example, usually Andrea is in a good mood in the morning when she gets to work but one morning she arrives having spilled coffee while driving in and now she is upset, feeling that nothing has started right with the day…she is grumpy. She opens her email and there is, yet another, request for help finding a chart set from a recent review. Usually she replies to these requests with a link to the location. It takes less than 5 minutes to find the location and respond. In her grumpy mood - she realizes this same person has been asking this question pretty frequently and she starts a note with a link to the library and plans to tell the person to ‘find it themselves.’ Fortunately she realizes it will come across as abrupt and rude before she hits ‘send.’ The outcome, in the end, was positive because she wrote up a very simple procedure to find the chart sets and now sends it out when requests come in - just below the specific link to the one requested; the number of requests have gone down because the frequent requesters now understand how to easily find the chart sets themselves.

Keeping moods internal - not showing them outwardly - can be stressful. It is probably healthier than not acknowledging the mood at all since the ‘focus’ for your mood is still visible (i.e. you have not narrowed your perception by only experiencing/acknowledging one mood). Because you restrict yourself from jumping up and down with joy or clomping down the hall with tight fists in frustration, there need to be alternative escapes for the emotion of the mood. Think about what works for you. Physical activity works well for me because it serves to break the thread of activity my mood had created:

• Take 5 deep breaths. Air in through your nose…out through your mouth.
• Walk rapidly to your car…and then back.
• Roll your head clockwise 10 times, counterclockwise 10 times.

Remember - The more intense the mood, the more intense the new perception might be so seek to use the positive aspects of that perception while curbing the actions that could damage relationships.

And - enjoy your life’s “train of moods like a string of beads.”