Seattle isn't weird...you're the one who's weird

Let me relate the narrative I've gotten from Seattle since I've lived here:

• Our cops are busy punching people for jaywalking, when they're not being gunned down for no known reason.
• There's a 6'5" 19 year old going around living in peoples' homes, stealing their boats, and learning to fly their planes off of the internet (and then stealing and crashing the planes). He has a fan club.
• People have started raising chickens. For eggs. On their apartment balconies. Better yet, there are companies that are now prepared to design you a fabulous custom chicken coop or take you on a tour to see those owned by your neighbors.
• The locavore movement has gone completely off its rocker and it's now unacceptable to serve food that wasn't raised/grown in your restaurant.
• There is a Saw-like slaughterhouse-on-wheels roaming the streets.

Obviously, lack of sunlight and nightlife options has driven the people of the Pacific Northwest insane. You would never see this kind of weirdness in New York because people there have better things to do than make their own sauerkraut.

I'm going to start throwing parties. We'll call it a social service. Ooh, maybe I can even get a grant for it for the city for propping up the local moonshine industry.

Detroit: my next vacation spot

Italy is lovely, but I've become entranced lately with the possibilities latent in Detroit.

On the one hand, there's the social crisis that needs to be solved, the post-apocalyptic landscape, the crumbling infrastructure and obsolete industry. On the other, there's a burgeoning community of innovators and activists. And again, that social problem that still needs to be solved. Just check out Time magazines's Assignment Detroit. It's incredible.

I'm currently looking for volunteer projects in the Detroit area for a 2-3 week stint. I can assemble at least 1 team of 4 MBA grads, and possibly some engineers. If you know of any opportunities, please let me know!

This is so Washington

NYT article on the newest trend in laundry: hang-drying your clothes! How chic.

Of course, the trend's #1 photo op (besides an archive pic of an NYC tenement) is a Washington resident hanging up clothes in their yard. It's actually pretty cool. Check it out.

It's about time I headed back to Italy, no?

I haven't been in over 2 years and I have NEVER been to Sardinia. Italia, mi manchi!!

Plus, believe it or not...even though I just started work...I wouldn't mind a vacation somewhere with a well-respected culinary tradition. The food in Italy is really like nowhere else. It's the kind of food that builds you up and gets you ready for winter. I always put on a few pounds while there, and right now, I wouldn't mind it. A little macaroni con sarde? Some orecchiette fra diavolo...good southern food.

Sigh...maybe in the early summer next year.

Why I'm Investing in Banking

I've always followed financial news avidly. For one thing, finance is the only area of news in which exciting things happen every minute, every second, every day: fortunes won and lost! Scandal! Intrigue! Private jets!

Anyway, since now is the first time in my life that I'm not miserably poor, I've been playing the stock market. My first purchase: banking stocks. In case you've been living in a cave: Bankers are eating it right now. They didn't get paid last year. Everyone hates them--even their girlfriends--and the share-frat in the Hamptons was out of reach this year, so they had to stay in rainy Manhattan with Les Miserables.

Which is why now is the time to buy buy buy their stocks. Look at Citigroup right now. I mean...just look at it:



Wow, that's ugly. Citi has lost NINETY PERCENT of its value this year!

Why? Yeah, its fundamentals suck, and there's a flight to quality in stock buyers, bla bla bla, but what people don't seem realize is that Citi and its ilk ARE now high-quality. After Lehman's fall nearly brought on a financial apocalypse, do you think that the US government is going to allow another bank to fail? HECK no.

And that means that banks are now implicitly backed by the full faith and credit of the US government.

With this logic, a little while ago, I kicked some cash into C and some others, and in a very (very) short time frame, I've made almost 4%. Not an incredible gain, but kicking the crap out of my 401(k) at this point. A friend of mine invested earlier and got a 3X return!

So go ahead, throw your money in with ours...and drive up the stock price a little more.

Curioser and curioser

I was talking with a friend last night about the ups and downs of getting an MBA. It's pushing the reset button on your career, which can be refreshing, but you're also pushing the reset button on your life.

Without going through too much detail, all of our lives have changed pretty drastically in the past two years. We had plenty of marriages in my class. Plenty of babies, too, and some divorces, unfortunately. We moved to Boston from all over the world, travelled together in little packs, and now are redistributing ourselves again.

But I wonder: for people like we are, people who love to travel, love to learn, who are, refined to our quintessence, curious...is there really rest for us?

Leaving school feels like a change from the temporary to the permanent, but I have the feeling there will be a few more pushes of that reset button in one way or another before we finally all shake out. Until then, let's coat the globe, a spice ground fine, an exotic species even in our homes, and enjoy that life for what it is.

See you at next year's reunion, Sloanies.

Making food from the backyard

Since it's spring and my roommate and I have lapsed into a Depression-era poverty level (I am a grad student and she is a social worker and we are both up to our eyeballs in student loans), I decided to try cooking with ingredients from the immense, lush garden we have in our backyard.

Now, okay, up until recently, I forgot that this place HAD a backyard, and I think my neighbors did too, but now that everything's coming up roses (literally), we happen to have realized.

We have rhubarb, which I picked for a pie this weekend (pictured above), and carrots, tomatoes, raspberries, the aforementioned roses, a peach tree, a grape arbor(!), a blueberry bush, and a variety of flowers growing. We also have weeds. LOTS of weeds!!

Luckily, these are dandelions, which are edible. And because our garden is urban, I don't have to fight with the rabbits and deer that would normally claim my dinner. So it's polenta with tofu, dandelion greens, and morel mushrooms tonight! MMMMM yum

Today's frighteningly accurate Facebook Quiz result

Since I have totally run out of even moderately-interesting things to say, and because I love taking those dumb FB quizzes, I've decided to start a regular feature where I get a quiz result and comment on it.

Today's edition: "What Classic Disney Movie Best Describes Your Life?"

Because why shouldn't my life be completely circumscribed by populist children's movies?

Your life is best described by the movie Dumbo. Many people try to bring you down by making fun of things that are unique about you. You don't let them get you down though. You use your unique qualities to soar high above them and to make a difference in the world.

Sure, that seems accurate in the way that tarot card readings are accurate. It's vague enough, and has a positive-in-the-end message. And because Dumbo the elephant made such a difference in his movie world! Curing sick children, dissolving the then-significant circus caste system in which faceless roustabouts labored in the rain for pay they made to throw away, and proving to the world that big ears don't make you a loser if you can use them to fly and rain a storm of peanut bullets on your mother's tormentors.

Eat it, witches!!

I don't think any further comment is necessary.