Boredom Besets On Me Like A Pack of Wild Hounds On A Bloody Fox.

I feel like I'm back to post high school graduation, pre-college days when I'd sleep till noon and stay up all night.

And I got sick. A horrible summer cold.

This should help.

Laid Off

It's happened. I've been laid off.

Growing my own food

I've been doing alot of reading lately since I've got about 8 hours of time a day to bill to overhead. Which brings me to a proverbial saying by Paul Tillich that said, "Boredom is rage spread thin."

Boredom is rage spread thin. Is a person who's so unchallenged in life harboring a thin coat of rage beneath his persona? Do I harbor rage inside of me? I do feel very unchallenged in what I do. Once a colleague bluntly said one day aftering talk work, "your not challanged, you need to move on." Another time while in college a lady instructor said, in front of the entire class, "Your in the wrong profession chris." At times I think I'm missing out on what's out there. Somebodies doing my job and having a blast doing it. Sooner or later it's gonna be too late to make my saucy move. Anxiety wells up like a boiling kettle set atop a burner and I can't immediately fix it so in retrospect I guess it is rage. Rage born from boredom.

Here's what I'm reading. I got caught up reading The Modern History Project which had myriads of links and references one of which landed me on Amana. Amana is communal colony in Iowa dated from 1855 to now 2009. Amana is also the brand of appliances known for their quality and for the appliance maker right here in the U.S. The Amana colonies are also known for their integrity to the colonial way of life. Not quite the Amish but still purveyors of the less is better lifestyle.

Over time I've also come across several websites of people with the talent to create art. The three links below are sites of people who've-apart from the food network telling us what is art and good-have tried their own ways to capture an audience. Oh the food network. In my opinion it was once a good thing but got ahead of itself and just saturated the once non-existing market with more stuff, stuff & more stuff. Anyone remember Great Chefs on PBS? The concept of cooking on TV started around Julie Child cooking in a studio kitchen then Great Chefs air's a cooking show in the chefs' kitchen away from the studio. Brilliant! I remember watching Great Chefs every day after school sometimes drifting asleep to the drum of convection ovens and classy jazz music. The chefs didn't have to talk non-stop about the history of their grandmothers secret recipes or need image gimmicks like blonde spiked hair, in fact they barely spoke at all.

Today there are many many people who have taken this idea and turned it into something of their own. I can site a few but not all. Here are a few:

(Photo from New York Times: Kelly Doe)

Mark Bittman-Not even a chef he says. He's an avid home cook who made his career from cooking in his tiny Manhattan kitchen. Where's the Wolf Stove? Not even a GE stainless steel microwave oven? More with less.

(Photo from Kimberly Belle)

Kimberly Belle-Food Maven of New York City. Started a boutique catering co. The Dinner Belle. Brilliant idea. An even more brilliant idea is the blog chronicling the lives of Belle and her friends running the business

(Photo from Smitten Kitchen)

Smitten Kitchen-A food blog from a wife/husband duo cooked up from another tiny New York kitchen. Great photography & recipes for the rest of us without a Culinary equivalent of a Ph.D.

(Photo from Honest Fare)

Honest Fare-Food blog on food prep. From Orlando Florida. Recipes are printable resembling recipe cards. Brilliant idea. Great photography.

My big idea. A grocery store. Grow Grocery. A stable of organic foods unlike whole foods or trader joes because Grow won't be prohibitively expensive. I'll have the gardens and other growers supply feeding the stalls with the season's harvest. It will be kept small. It will be great.

This is a very rough draft I drafted in about an hour so the quality is poor. But it's a beginning. The beginning of something good.

The Gold Standard

To each his vine in due time. On a Sunday before the lore of Monday.

In the background Mr Romweber sits in his regality while the Ms. Sloan has made her way into a prominent place among us all.

Get in the Van Go

On our way to Seattle Coffee Cafe for chill time. This being Houston we could have driven to Seattle to get there. We flew over the hills through the woods and past the city. Once there we had a very relaxing time. It was good to see a cafe serve a good iced coffee and even better to see the owner pluck her herbs from her herb garden by the patio for the kitchen.

This is Papo the great. Here he's telling us of how he's planning to visit Buñol for La Tomatina.

This is Los chilling us down despite the wretched heat of mid summer.

Cookies & Cake

**Addendum 07/17/09**

This is a photo of Silvia with me on a peculiar bike one fine day.

The joy is upon me like a melodious tune. Like a fat boy in the pantry of his grandmothers kitchen eating cookies and cake. Like a frat boy chugging his sixth beer in six seconds then smashing the can on his face screaming to high heaven. Like a person whose just hit the submit button on his very last car payment he'll make in the next ten years.

The last simile applies to me. I just payed my last bill for the sleek silver civic I call Silvia. It all started when I lived in Kenner, La. working for my first legit, non-illegal, non-working nights job after finishing college. I needed a car because the city metro system gave me ulcers and had me living on the streets just to be there when the bus finally showed up. That is when I didn't ride my bike to get from point A to point Z.

I landed a job for a small fab shop with an attached engineering house in industrial Harvey Louisiana off the Harvey Canal across the river from New Orleans. Best job ever. Best boss ever. Best place to work ever. Best commute to work ever.

After bumming the truck from Dav my brother one year too many I saved enough to buy a car of my own. The joy of having cash I thought, but in the reality of July 12, 2009 wasn't really that much . So I start shopping around and in shooting the breeze one afternoon with my best boss Bob I say, "hey Bob, I got some money to buy a car. I saw this full sized Bronco parked down the street for a couple-ah-gee's whatdyathink?" He's says I'm crasie and need to look at somthing smaller, like a civic-brand new. Well, my outlook and game face transforms immediately after he gives me such sagely advice. I then reasoned, I have a good job, money, no other huge commitments. Why not? Fast forward a few weeks past lot's of low-ball, cheezy sales-man bargaining and on my own, I roll out of the Honda parking lot with my brand new jewel of a car with 268 miles on the odometer. The rest is history waiting to be served in the creole kitchen sort of speak.

Now, or then, I could make the arduous commute across the Huey P. Long Bridge in a much smaller, faster little car. I could look up through the sun roof and gaze at the centuries old rusted I-beams and boltwork swaying above the Mississippi River while sitting in standstill traffic. It was all a grand experience I miss dearly.

Today the sleek silver civic Silvia is still just as pretty as she was when we made our maiden voyage down Jefferson Highway that fine day. We've been places and turned many faces me and Silvia. After today she is all mines and not subject to seizure as I'd thought the first six months after signing my name away. All mines. Tonight, she'll be treated to the expensive gas: $2.78 Shell V-Power Gas.

I Ride & I Slide On Asphalt

We all have bikes. The wonderfully cool, young, hip people in our circle of friends have bikes that we can now ride en masse like a San Francisco Cat Alley Race except we're in Houston. We plan to take the ruckus to the streets of H-Town somewhere near Ben Taub Hospital just in case anyone in our posse gets assaulted or run-over. In my case I may have to just catch a ride with the paramedics and hang out the passenger window to get the feel of riding bikes because I can't go 100 ft. without doing a rolling face plant on the pavement. Seriously.

For the past 10 years or so during my time in the saddle I've been somewhat attached to the bicycle. But now, after some modifications I'm as attached to the bike as Ben Hur is to the galley of his sinking ship. So if this ship is asinkin, so am I, not Ben Hur. Being clipped into the pedals is a new experience I have to get used to. Several times I forgot this fact while riding. Here's a scene typical of our ride the other day. I'm riding along like a pro all suave-like when Lily and her lady friend decide to suddenly stop just off the track to drink water. I think, "okay, I can take five, after all even the best of the best needs to rest."

I start to slow down, I come to a complete stop, lean over to put my foot down....not working....I'm still leaning but nothing's holding me up....wha!??....MY FOOT IS STILL CLIPPED IN! I then topple right over and crash onto the ground scraping the skin off my lower right leg while my face does a sort of scoop action drag through the dirt and finally settles a few inches from impact. It takes a few seconds to register the pain, then the fact that I just fell flat from a complete stop, then the humiliation of falling in front of girls so I lay there seeking sympathy.

This happens twice that day.

I hear the lady friend say the second time, "I think your husband just fell again." She then asks me inquisitively after I get up and brush off, "Why do you keep falling? Aren't you supposed to be some sort pro at this?"

But I am! I say. I'm just not used to being clipped in!

Actually I'm not a pro in the least bit. I couldn't keep up on a training day peloton if I tried, which I did try sometime ago that's a story waiting in the queue.

The ride goes on and we all finally make it to our start and quietly pack and plan to return this weekend.

In other news: this post has been in draft for three days now so alot has happened since Monday morning. I've sworn to myself that if I survive summer of 2009 and manage to hold on to my job I will stand up at the next town hall meeting and ask for a moment of recognition be given to all the talented young people/friends we've/I've lost while working here. Every week another dear friends' desk is left empty because of being laid off, or technically speaking-reduction in workforce. It's getting to be very depressing. Everything is getting to be very depressing. I had to stop reading The Stand because the reality of it all was just too much for me to handle right now. I actually couldn't sleep some nights after having spent a few hours reading through chapters of surreal horror, the scenes permeated through my mind and saturated my dreams with friends and family around me disappearing leaving me alone in a deserted city.

I have to stop writing blogs mid paragraph about happenings all around the world that effect me to the point of building an opinion and attempting to voice it out loud because if I start writing about crimes & injustice, when and where does it stop? Do I really want this haven in Pezrealian to be a reflection of all that's wrong in this world? I don't and I won't let it. But I do see the irony of posting this weekend's party highlights and yet across the earth in China a family loses a breadwinning son amist riots and ethnic hatred so I think, "why bother?" Why try? How can I live a life in denial of what's coming? Is it coming? Don't know. For now though it's just one day at a time.