use real butter

I always get so riled up after listening to the news. We listen to ATC, OTM, Market Place… I heard about the new $2.5 million food pyramid a few days ago and looked it up. I was reminded of it again today on the radio. Here is what the old food pyramid looked like:

I thought these were fairly straightforward guidelines for decent nutrition. I grew up with the Food Pyramid. I ate a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables as a kid. I also ate a ton of cooked vegetables. That’s because 1) my parents are great cooks and 2) the Chinese know how to prepare vegetables without turning them into a puke green mush (sorry Middle America - you guys are so lame). Looking at the new food pyramid, it would seem that the USDA wants to confound and befuddle:



Why is this little androgyne running up the stairs like Rocky? What the hell are these colors? Is this promoting gay and lesbian rights (if so - something the USDA is doing right for once)? You have to goto a web site to actually get one of twelve pyramids that are right for you (and for the solution key to the mystery colors). If you don’t have a computer, you can go eat all the crap you want. Apparently, beans are double dipped as well. Go figure. A lot of industries (meat, dairy, sugar and fat) protested being limited on the pyramid, so the USDA made it so damn cryptic, that citizens of the United States have no flipping clue what to eat anymore. I went and looked up the top 100 grossing food companies in the world and selected the ones best known in the US. I made a little food pyramid of my own that I forsee being released in a decade or two. And I did all of this in less than an hour and for well under $2.5 million. Behold:

Yo Geology Goddess!

It’s a recycled pic, but you get my meaning. Happy Belated, hon! I didn’t know as you didn’t tell me. I had to see Little Richard with a mullet to get my info - ha ha ha!Big hugs.

We’re watching the movie Sideways right now. The kids are asleep and I missed the first 30 minutes screwing around in the office. The food looks amazing, the wine looks incredible, the characters are hilarious and I have no idea what is going on.

We got our inspection report last night - the house passed! So now we schedule the structural engineer and there are a few things about the inspection that need to be resolved. I spoke to one structural engineer on Friday and learned a lot about local issues for building, codes, issues with new construction, etc. It was great because of my background in engineering and geology, we had an awesome conversation. Yay for my random choices in education! Who would have thought that they would ever be so useful?

Today we did more kids’ stuff including t-ball with Ben, making cookies with Ben, and getting Emily to do the “hand grab”. The “hand grab” is a Chinese tradition for one-year olds where you set out a bunch of objects and let the baby crawl to them and grab from the lot. It’s really just for fun, but it’s supposed to indicate something about what the child likes or will do in life. When Ben turned one, he picked the calculator. Emily chose from peanuts (I don’t know what it is supposed to mean), a book, candy, a palm pilot, pencil, toy, thermometer, and a card.



The card had a big check in it. So Emily is gonna be Miss Money Bags. She is so cute. It is very obvious that Emily and Ben have different styles to life. I love them both for their own ways. Ben and Emily both look so much like Kris when she was young. Mom thinks Emily acts the way I did when I was little. Kids add a lot more entropy to your life, however. I think it is difficult in part because you go into a situation that was created by someone else and you are merely passing through as a visitor. Tomorrow is home again, back to my state of flux, but the state of flux I chose and the state of flux I know.