This Week in Thoughtful Consumerism, Vol. 1

Welcome to the first volume of This Week in Thoughtful Consumerism!  I’m hoping to make this a weekly (or close-to-weekly) feature on the blog.  I’ll gather a handful of links to pieces about consumerism that made me think.  And sometimes, like today, I’ll also tell a story or two about my recent adventures in thoughtful consumerism.

The links will be a mix of old and newer stuff.  Just because something is a little older doesn’t make it less valuable or insightful!  Oldies are goodies, I say.

Onto the links!

Newer stuff:

* At Already Pretty, Sally started a discussion about how social media influence our shopping and dressing habits.  I found the comments fascinating!

* What do you think about Lululemon’s clothing quality?  And why does Chip Wilson look like he just ate a lemon in every photo?

Older stuff:

* I’m not sure if I’m heading into “austerity measures!” territory, but this post of Chrissy’s is a classic in my book. 

* There’s been a flurry of closet inventory posts around the style blogworld.  I don’t know about you, but I’m fascinated by people’s shopping and closet habits.  Here’s one from AJ and another one from Kimmie.  Style bloggers on the whole are not minimalists, but I do admire their courage to confront (and document!) their consumerism head-on.

And now, two stories from me!

* First, nothing beats hand-me-downs from your stylish sister.  I love these wedges she gave me!

Cute and comfortable!  I used to dislike the look of wedges, but now I’m quite fond of them.  When we were looking through the items that Theresa was going to purge, she cautioned me, “Now, don’t take anything that you’re not going to wear.”  I think she’d be pleased to know that I’ve worn these wedges at least half a dozen times in the last few weeks.

* And a story about not-so-thoughtful consumerism.  As you may know, Paul and I are vegetarians, and this applies to eating out as well as cooking at home.  After his dance competition in Houston, we went to the cutest café called Ruggles Green.  We were trying to sneak our dinner order into the kitchen before they closed at 10 PM, so we rushed through our plan without a close reading of the menu.  They serve an appetizer called hempanadas, and we figured that with a name like that, they must be vegetarian!  WRONG.  The hempanadas are made with a beefy filling.  (I would like to point out, though, that beef is the final ingredient listed for the filling.  In hindsight, I’m not terribly surprised that we missed it.)  Anyway, so the hempanadas arrived and Paul discovered they were made with beef, and I was terribly embarrassed.  I don’t usually make that kind of rookie mistake when it comes to eating out, but there I was.  There we were.  And you know what?  We ate them.  Because the mistake was on us, and I had to own that fact.  Paul kept offering to eat them so I wouldn’t have to, but we ended up splitting them.  Saving grace: the two sauces that came with them were awesome.  We used them as dipping sauces for the nut burger Paul ordered, and the combination was delicious.

I told that story to some friends, and one of them asked, “Well, were they worth it?  Were they delicious?”  I think what she was really trying to ask is whether beef tastes great to me, since it’s a forbidden delicacy.  And the truth is that beef is not a very exciting meat to me.  I loved the sauces that came with our hempanadas, but I was too embarrassed by our mistake to enjoy the hempanadas themselves.  Truly, I prefer beans or tofu or vegetables to beef.

Have you read any good stories lately that fall into the thoughtful consumerism category?  Feel free to share them in the links!

PS  I have not forgotten about that chocolate cake recipe I owe you.  This weekend, I promise, I will share.  So busy all the time…

Snark Fail

Have you ever written a blog post only to have it fall flat on its face?

Yeah, I think that’s what happened with my last post.

I’m a lot snarkier in real life than I am in writer form.  Being funny, in my experience, is not an easy task to pull off in written form.  Or maybe I’m just a tough customer, because a lot of things that other people say are “so funny” don’t make me laugh out loud.  Paul would probably tell you that I think I’m funnier than I really am; he often accuses me of making “Mom jokes.”  Guilty as charged!

Anyway, so back to the subject of that last post: spending all my free time with Paul.  The truth is that I am feeling a mix of emotions about our time together, but the prevailing feeling is one of happiness.  I feel a bit guilty about our time together, as I have so many other things that I probably should be doing, including job applications, blogging, and catching up around my apartment.  My should list is long, but being with him feels so good and so right that I kinda push those shoulds to the side so that we can be together.

To be fair, we have been out of town a lot: at least two weekends a month for the last three months, including this one.  I can be a lot more productive and spend time with Paul if our travel schedule slows down, which it might (perhaps?) in December or January.  It’s really the travel that is sucking up all my time.  The irony is that we are both self-professed homebodies!  We love cooking together and staying in to watch our shows.  I love slowing down with him.

Paul and I are coming up on nine months together this week.  I get kinda teary-eyed when I think about it.  Meeting him was the single best thing that happened to me this year, and I can’t really imagine my life without him now.  Have you ever heard someone say, “When you know, you know?”  Meaning that when the time and the relationship are right, you don’t need to spend your time hemming and hawing over whether you’ve found a life companion.  You just know.  That is how I feel about Paul, and as much as I am a skeptic about everything, I don’t feel skeptical about us.  I just feel right.

I may be snarky about my unfinished to-do list, but my gratitude for love runs deep.  Outwardly pragmatic but secretly romantic, I am a very lucky lady.

Gone Boyfriending

I have officially turned into that person I never wanted to be: the girl who spends all her free time with her boyfriend.

I’m not exactly the stereotype of dependent, clingy, no-life girlfriend.  It’s just that most of my weekends have been spent elsewhere with Paul, and all this travel and boyfriending is cutting into my blogging time!  To top it off, when I think about what I want to write, it’s all about my adventures…with my boyfriend.

Oh boy.

But I have good news.  The first is that yesterday I went to a wedding shower by myself, and it was great.  I ate cake, drank sangria, caught up with old friends, and chatted with new people.  I rode my bike there and enjoyed the time alone on two wheels.  The second is that I have no travel on the calendar until Thanksgiving, when we (yes, “we” again!) go to Houston for a kick-ass, completely non-traditional Tex-Mex feast that my friend Courtney is making.

And there’s more good news: I’m about halfway done with my post about Paul’s birthday cake, and there will even be a recipe.  A recipe!  From me!  The retired food blogger!

Until then, happy November, friends!

PS  Cheers to Paul’s best friend Tim, who coined the word “girlfriending” to describe how he has been spending his time.  It’s adorable.

Feels Like Running

Hey, hey!  I’m alive!

My apologies for my unannounced break from this space.  I thought I’d stop by to say hello and point you toward my other blog, where I just wrote about running my first marathon and what an adventure that was.  It was an amazing day; I’m still glowing about it.  And if you want to read about the ups and downs of training for a marathon in summertime Texas, I’ll be updating this training archive page soon.

In other news, we just celebrated Paul’s 30th birthday with friends and sushi and games and this chocolate cake, which I will tell you about ASAP, I promise.  He said it was one of the best birthdays he’s had in a while, which made me happy.  (He makes me happy.)  And in other other news, I’m back on the job market earlier than expected, which I will also tell you about soon.  Man, this year—it’s giving me whiplash.  I’m hoping to slow down a bit in November, to savor things for a while.  Things like the Cranberry-Pecan Cinnamon Rolls in the newest issue of EatingWell.  Things like my 32nd birthday, which is less than a month away.  Things like the light in late autumn Texas, which is so heartbreakingly beautiful that time just stops when I go for a walk in the late afternoon.

There’s so much to tell you, dear reader.  We’ll start with cake.

Until then, have a great week!

Postcard from Last Thursday Night

Love is attending two out-of-town weddings in two weeks for your beloved.  Paul and I just finished our October wedding circuit, which I hope to tell you about soon because it was fun.  Hectic, yes, but a lot of fun.

Before we left for the second wedding, we had a wonderful, relaxing date night.  Paul built a fire, I chopped vegetables, and we cooked a dinner wrapped in foil over hot coals.  While our rustic dinner sizzled outside, we ate pan-seared cheese and drank wine.  I got a little tipsy, and the stresses of the week receded away.  We watched our standard date night show (30 Rock), and when dinner was finally ready, we dug into it with our sporks and ate every last bite.

(Yup, those are sporks up there in that photo.  Paul is a spork evangelist, and he converted me.)

Life has been busier than ever but so, so good.  I hope you are well too, dear reader.

How Things Are Going

{The view from a weekend trip to Pedernales Falls State Park}

I wanted to title this post “Why I Decided to do a Second Postdoc,” but I felt like that would imply too much intentionality.  It was never my plan to do a second postdoc.  For a long time, I was dead set against it.  For the record, as a grad student, I didn’t think I would do a first postdoc.  Oh, but what humble plans we make!

To be really honest, I tend to have a “work is work” attitude toward my own scientific pursuits.  This thread has run through the years as I’ve moved from graduate school to my first postdoc to my second postdoc.  Part of this attitude is that I come from a blue-collar background: I grew up in a lower middle-class family in a modest town.  My parents are very smart and college-educated, but they are not romantic about their work.  Work is work.  The other piece of the puzzle here is that for most grad students and postdocs, the bulk of the “work” they do as scientists is labor, plain and simple.  Animal work, molecular biology, behavioral assays, biochemistry—all of these entail an enormous amount of labor that somebody’s got to do if the science is going to get done.  Graduate and postdoc work is usually couched in terms of “training,” but at some point, you’ve handled enough fruit flies and done enough PCR that it’s not training any more.  You’re a damn expert, and running another PCR reaction is just work.

But I love—LOVE!—learning and becoming proficient at new skills.  I really do.  Pursuing science isn’t really non-stop learning so much as it is a lot of WORK and some learning.  My new job involves both.  The learning part is the fun part, and it is the part of this job that I enjoy the most.

My new job is not a perfect long-term position for me—I can’t say with any certainty that it’s getting me closer to my mountain*.  I took this job so that I wouldn’t have to move and because I fell in love. I have no regrets about choosing either of those things.  I love my life in Texas. Uprooting myself in search of a job didn’t feel like the right move this year; perhaps I have grown cynical about the idea of a job making me happy. My home and my relationships make me happy.  I have lower expectations for my job, which I’ll talk about in this post.

In the spirit of keeping myself organized here, I’m making a list of my thoughts on the new job.  Starting with the good stuff…

* I love the newness of what I’m doing now.  Truly, I’ve been drinking from the firehose, trying to learn, absorb, and reflect on all the new stuff being thrown at me.  It’s been a lot of fun.

* My work keeps me busy, and I generally feel good about what I have accomplished at the end of the day.  I have enough little projects that I have some success every day.

* My expectations of this position are flexible.  Initially, I thought I’d say that my expectations are lower, but that’s not quite right.  Instead, I see my work in terms of making contributions wherever I can.  I’m doing a mix of animal work, molecular biology, and manuscript-related work.  The variety of my tasks keeps me excited and engaged.

* My boss challenges me to get things done, but I don’t think she’s ever shamed me for not getting something done.  There is, I think, a fine line between dangling the carrot to motivate people and making them feel bad if they fail to meet a deadline or make a result.  My boss has high expectations of her people, for sure, and she expects me to get a lot done.  It can be stressful—sometimes I am stressed—but I’m adjusting to her, and she’s adjusting to me. 

* I will likely have this nice job for about a year, and then…?  The plus side: a job I like for a year.  I’m not sure what happens after that, and I don’t want to speculate too much here.  But I see my position as the chance to learn a lot of cool new stuff, and for the most part, I’m feeling optimistic about the future.  This much I know: I want to write a book, and I want to teach.  What else I’m doing is to be determined.

As for some of the downsides to this job…

* I have to follow a dress code.  My boss’s stance on clothing: 1) no showing cleavage and 2) cover your thighs.  So that means no showing toe, back, or front cleavage.  I generally don’t have too much of a problem dressing for work, but I miss wearing sandals.  Now I can only wear them during my off hours, which gives me sartorial separation between work and the rest of my life.  I’ll admit that it’s kinda nice to have a tangible reminder of the difference between work time and play time.

* Frequency of meetings.  I am attending upwards of four meetings a week, if not more.  This is hard on my introvert self.

* Less time to write.  If you read either of my blogs, you’ve probably noticed that things have been quieter than usual.  The truth is that I just don’t have much time to write these days.  It breaks my heart!  I love writing and miss it so much.  I also have a huge backlog of things I’d like to share here, and I live in hope that I’ll find the time I want and need for writing.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with my work life these days.  This current phase may have an expiration date, so I’m enjoying the experience while it lasts.

* You must watch this speech from Neil Gaiman—I loved it.  My friends and I now talk about our mountains as a metaphor for goals and dreams.

You Must Watch This Film

Tap, tap, tap.  Is this blog on?

I don’t usually go more than a week without posting, but life is moving fast these days.  Marathon in 17 days, two weddings in the next two weeks, and oh yeah, my day job.  Overwhelmed is my current status.

But rather than say nothing, I thought I’d pop in and say hello.  (Hi!)  I have a film recommendation, which, if you haven’t seen it, will give you chills.  I thought it was incredible.  It filled me with hope and rage at the same time.  Paul and I watched it together.  I think he had seen it before, and topically, it’s something we talk about a lot.  So without further ado, please click on over to watch…

The Lightbulb Conspiracy: Planned Obsolescence

(Scroll down a bit.  The “backup link” version worked for me here in the United States.)

Happy almost-weekend, friends.