Embrace Your Inner Hamster

Toyota has recently unveiled its 2010 Prius, and it's got a lot of nifty new features like a solar roof which powers a fan to help keep the interior of your car cool by circulating air from the outside. I know it's the dead of winter and some of you may be thinking how glorious it would be to step into a 125º car right now; but you know as well as I do that when it's 100º outside, the last thing you want to do is get into your 125º car. I imagine this is even worse if you have small children. I haven't met a kid yet who likes being hot, sweaty, tired AND strapped into a car seat. There is also a button on the key fob that will activate the A/C from 30 feet away. How cool is that? Now, I'm not sure if this solar fan thing works no matter what or if there is a way to disable this feature in the winter, but I would imagine that the Toyota folks have thought of that.

So, I'm loving the new features on the Prius. It has also been redesigned to be slightly sportier looking, nothing big, it still looks like a Prius, but a Prius that's trying to look less like a hamster. This is where I am conflicted. You may recall that one of the things that I like about the Prius is that it's cute, but, well, it's no Mustang.  It appears the Toyota people read my blog and tried to address this issue (What? You don't know that they didn't.), but here's the thing:  If you're going to make a car that looks like a hamster, then embrace that and make it as hamster-y cute as you can. The Prius still looks like a hamster, but now it looks like a hamster that is trying to look sporty, maybe more like a jack rabbit. If you're going to make a sporty car, then make it sporty, but don't make a sporty hamster.

(Picture found on Yuval Y's flickr photostream)

What do you guys think?  You can open the links below in separate windows and compare them side-by-side.  
Here is the 2009 Prius, embracing its inner hamster.
Here is the 2010 Prius, trying to make you forget that it looks like a hamster. 

Also, just because I like to bring it up, here is the Tesla Roadster, looking nothing like a hamster but also costing $109,000 AND, as I have just discovered, listed in the #2 spot on Time's Best Inventions of 2008 list .  

Young @ Heart

My husband and I watched this movie this weekend, and we loved it!  I figured after my last downer post, I would give you something uplifting.  Some of these people probably lived through the Depression and/or the Dust Bowl, and look how well they turned out!

I'm not gonna lie to you, there's some heart break in this movie, but ultimately it is fun and uplifting.  I would encourage you to check out the Young at Heart Chorus at their web site and support them in any way you can.  They are a non-profit, and what a great organization!  

2008 Reading Roundup?

Not exactly.

Everyone else has done their end-of-year roundups, and I've enjoyed visiting everyone's blogs and seeing what everyone enjoyed reading and, of course, adding to my TBR list, which is now up to 417 items!  Thanks, guys!  ;)

Instead of a "best of" list though, I wanted to highlight a couple of books that I have thought about more and more as the year has gone on and on and that I would highly recommend reading given the current economic situation.  One is The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan.  The other is The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan, which I reviewed  here and here.  As well as being interesting reads, I think these two books do a great job of illustrating how we screw things up when we try to manipulate them too much and how well things can work if we would just let them do what they are supposed to do.  

At first glance, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl may seem like completely separate, sadly coincidental events, but their relation to one another is strong.  For years, YEARS I tell you, Native Americans took advantage of the animals and the plants that were naturally occurring in North America.  Americans of the non-Native variety, encouraged mightily by their government, decided that the best way to move forward and prosper would be to kill off all those pesky buffalo, dig up all that stupid grass that they eat and grow wheat and cows instead.  Great idea.  Hey, I know, after we've done that, let's go to the desert, pull out those pesky cacti, kill off all the rabbits and instead we'll raise fish and bananas!  Huh.  The bananas and the fish are all dried up, and the coyotes are eyeballing our children.  Why isn't this working??

To give the people credit, these were the true pioneers of our nation.  These were the people who were brave enough to leave their homes behind and venture out to places like Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and other wide open places where they could stake out hundreds, even thousands, of acres for themselves and try to make a life for themselves and their families.  These people had a lot of faith and determination and, for that, I admire them.

At first, things looked good.  People were making lots of money selling wheat, farmers were riding around in their Prada saddles, wearing their Gucci cowboy boots; driving their BMW tractors, you know, the ones with the gold rims and the diamond-tipped plows; women were decorating their houses in the latest Martha-Stewart-approved styles; and the kids all had their own iPhones. (It's been a while since I read the book, but that was the general feel of things if I remember correctly.)  Then the Depression hit.  And then.  THEN the Dust Bowl hit.  Y'all.  I had NO IDEA.  I can't believe I had never heard more about this other than, "and then the Dust Bowl hit and farmers had a really hard time."  (No, I haven't read The Grapes of Wrath, why do you ask?)  Clouds like giant, rolling thunderheads of dirt would sweep over entire states.  People in New York were getting hit with dust from Kansas.  Cars were buried.  Seriously.  I had no idea.  People looked up and saw this coming at them:    

I don't know about you, but that would scare the crap out of me.  I found this picture of a "black blizzard" over Prowers, CO, around 1937 at this web site.  Please go check out their other pictures.  

So, anyway, farmers are sitting high on the hog, growing tons of wheat, so they decide, this is great!  I'm going to plow up another 1,000 acres next year and plant some more!  Well, eventually everyone's thinking the same thing and the market is flooded with wheat.  Oh, also, Wall Street fails.  Prices start to drop, so the next year, the farmers have to plow up 2,000 acres because now they're only getting $.03/ton instead of $.27/ton (my prices could be off, but come on, everything cost like $.03 in 1931.  Inflation's a bitch.)  Eventually, millions of acres have been plowed and planted, then the drought hits, crops die, the top soil dries up and blows away, now there is no good land and no water.  What's a farmer to do?  Try to plant more next year.  Except next year's even worse.  Eventually, millions of acres of land have been plowed under in an attempt to get even a few acres of crops to market.  The worse the storms, the worse the crops; the worse the crops, the more land has to be plowed, the more land that is plowed, the worse the dust storms.  America is in the throes of the Great Depression, nobody has any money to spend on groceries, and nobody can grow anything to feed themselves.  This is a bad situation.  This timeline from the 1930s seems eerily familiar-read a little bit about the events leading up to the Depression and see if they don't strike a little too close to home right now.  (Thanks to PBS for the timeline-they have a lot of other information that you can link to on their site regarding the Depression and the Dust Bowl).

Cut to The Omnivore's Dilemma, present day (roughly).  Pollan examines some of the agricultural standards that are in practice today and contrasts and compares them.  Of course, when it comes to feeding the masses, corn-fed beef on a giant feedlot seems like the best solution, but what happens if all of your corn crops are wiped out?  What happens if a particularly deadly virus sweeps through your cattle who are already relying on all kinds of supplements and antibiotics to keep them alive?  What if this year's batch of vaccinations is contaminated?  What happens if there's a fire at the plant that manufactures all of your synthetic fertilizers?  Enter the small organic farmer who raises chickens, rabbits, pigs, and cows who are allowed to roam free and graze on climate-appropriate grasses that their systems are naturally adept at digesting.  These grasses are rotated with other crops and replenished by the animals' manure as they wander amongst the fields-no synthetic fertilizers are needed.  On a one-to-one basis, there's no way the small farm can feed as many people as the big industrial farm, but the potential for loss is also less.  If all your corn is wiped out one year, hopefully you will still have wheat, beans, and onions to sell.  If all your chickens take ill, hopefully the cows will remain unaffected and another small farmer nearby will be able to give you a couple of his chickens.  If, heaven forbid, your farm should go out of business, hundreds of other people will not be out of their jobs.  

Between these two books, there are lessons to be learned, I'm sure of it.   

I know this sounds like a bunch of doom and gloom, but the intent of this post isn't to scare anybody or convince anyone that the sky is falling.  I think this is a good chance to take a good look at the past and try to prepare for what might be coming.  I think things are going to get worse before they get better.  I don't think we are anywhere near the end of this financial debacle that we seem to have gotten ourselves into, but I think this is a good opportunity for everyone to start thinking about the little things.  

There has been a lot of talk about reviving the vegetable garden a la the Victory Gardens of the 1940s-is it ok to have a vegetable garden in your yard?  (Thanks to Garden Rant for that link!)  Will the neighbors think you're a hillbilly?  Is it worth it financially?  Nutritionally?  Socially??  Can it make a difference on a national level if we are all growing our own tomatoes instead of having them shipped all over the country? Is Obama going to have a vegetable garden at the White House and will it be organic?  Will it be just big enough to feed his family or will it supply food banks and local schools?  In what direction will that one seemingly small decision lead our country?  Maybe no where, maybe to great places.  Who knows?  

If you have reviewed either of these books, or if you have any other thoughts about this post, please leave me a  comment!      

What I'm Reading Now-The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Some Additional Thoughts on My Kindle

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel Well, it seems it has taken me about 5 months to read this book, but not because I didn't like it and not because it's so long. I blame it on my Kindle (and my library). I love my Kindle (and my library!), but I've found that I tend to ignore my Kindle items and read whatever I have from the library because the library hates me and my notions of an acceptable amount of time to have a book checked out and regularly charges me for my nonsense. Amazon.com and I have a simple agreement. I pay them about $10 up front, and they let me keep a book on my Kindle as long as I want, and they never bother me about it again. All in all, it ends up being about the same either way since my library won't charge more than $7.50 for an item but they cast guilt and shame my way and threaten to send me to collections from time to time.

Also, if any of you have been paying rapt attention to my sidebar, you will notice that I have removed my "What's on my kindle" widget. I realized that I have a ton of things that are on my Kindle that I either A) read a year or more ago and have no intention of reviewing here, B) only have samples of, or C) am never going to get around to reading (see paragraph above). Since you have to have a minimum of 6 items in order to have a fancy carousel widget, I ended up using those old titles or sample titles, and that just seems like cheating. Also, since the titles I am reading are always on the back burner, the widget doesn't change much. So, whatever I have in my current reading pile, whether it is an actual, physical book or a Kindle download, it will now show up in my "What I'm reading now OR What I will soon be paying late fees on at the library" widget. And if any of this mattered to anyone in the least, you, whoever you are, need to promise yourself some time off from reading blogs for a while!

So, Edgar Sawtelle: First of all, you're not going to get much actual plot summary from me, so I suggest you click on the link above and check out the summaries at Amazon.com if you're not familiar with the general synopsis. I started reading this book in August, got a little over half-way through and then left off for a few months, so I didn't read the whole thing all together. I don't know if this matters, but I'm just disclosing. I know I had to spend some time going back and rereading things that I had totally forgotten about, so the story as a whole probably suffered a little bit because of this.

This brings me to a critique that I have of the Kindle (a critique that was not covered here). While it has a pretty good search feature and allows for fairly easy maneuvering throughout the downloaded material, I like to physically be able to go back and look for something in a book because I usually have a good idea of where to look. For example, I know whether to look on the top left-hand side of the book or about half-way down the right-hand side, but I probably don't have any idea, specifically, what chapter it was in or what page it was on. That might just be a weird thing about me, but there you go. You can't physically search a Kindle. You have one screen, and you have to sort through various search results to find what you're looking for. Now, if you know ahead of time that you will want to go back and reference something, you can bookmark it, but this doesn't help when you're three chapters down the road going, "What the heck happened in that one scene in the barn with the puppies?" In this instance, a search for either "barn" or "puppies" will turn up A LOT of results. You can also specify a location that you want to jump to, but unless you know that the quote you are looking for is at location 4378, this isn't very helpful either.

Anyway, back to the story-I really liked it. It seems like this was one of those books that people either really loved or couldn't stand.* I didn't REALLY LOVE IT! but I did like it a lot. I thought that Edgar's ability to train his dogs so precisely was fascinating. He is mute and a kid and is able to work wonders with the dogs. I am a grown-up, not mute, and, well, I have not been able to work wonders with my dogs. Let's just leave it at that.

That is not your chair. Get down!

*Sigh* That is not your chair either, but thank you for getting out of the other chair.

This book has been compared to Hamlet, and I can see where the comparisons come in; there are definitely some similar themes and plot lines running through this story. I've also heard that it's supposed to be all literary and cerebral. I don't know about that. Maybe it was and I just missed it, or maybe it's because if you can recognize the similarities to Hamlet that makes you all brainy or something. Whatever. I read it because I thought it would be an interesting story, and I liked it.

I loved the writing in this book. It was simple and clear and, I thought, to-the-point. There are others who will probably argue that at 576 pages there was nothing to-the-point about this book but I found it to be a quick and easy read, even though it took me 5 months to read it! I do think the Kindle might have had something to do with this. As you may recall from my previous review, there are no page numbers on the Kindle; instead there are "locations" and a progress bar. Even though I had seen The Story of Edgar Sawtelle on the shelves in bookstores, I had forgotten how large it was. I was truly shocked when I read a recent review that mentioned its 576-page length. When you are not hefting around an actual book, there are no page numbers, and you're enjoying the story, it's easy to think that a book is smaller than it is. Seriously, I remember thinking, Wow, this is a pretty short book-it's going really fast. Was it the book? Was it the Kindle? I don't know. Something to think about though if you're thinking of tackling a big book.

Some other reviews of Edgar Sawtelle:

Loved It! (Or at least liked it)

Jill (Softdrink)-Fizzy Thoughts

Janet-Fond of Snape

Michael at Books on the Nightstand mentions this a couple times, but I can't seem to find a full review anywhere. That's a shame since I think it was his glowing early review that got me interested in the first place.

Ali('s husband)-Worducopia

Sandra-Fresh Ink Books

Raych at books i done read

Hated It! (Or maybe just not so much with the liking)

Chartroose-Bloody Hell, It's a Book Barrage!

*Ha! I thought I had a bunch of other reviews to link to, but it turns out I was just thinking about all the comments that people have made on other blogs about how much they think they'll like or dislike the book based on other reviews and the fact that Oprah recommended it. So, if you have a review that you'd like me to link to, let me know, and I'll add it.

**3/31/09-Yay! Thanks to this week's Weekly Geeks project, I have been able to add additional reviews to the 4 I originally had.

Dear Bank of America

Dear Bank of America,

I tried protecting your anonymity here, when I mentioned the two times you accidentally charged us $150 for Overdraft Protection that we didn't need, but I no longer care.  We have a checking account and a credit card with you.  We have overdraft protection set up so that if our checking account is ever overdrawn, it will pull from the credit card to cover the overage.  You decided to randomly charge $150 to our credit card (twice!) in the name of "Overdraft Protection" even though our checking account was never even anywhere close to being overdrawn.  The second time you charged us a late fee on the $150 that you inappropriately charged to our account-fair enough.  We probably should have contacted you sooner about this mysterious $150 charge.  After about 8 hours on the phone with your various minions, you agreed that an error had been made and that this situation would be corrected.  This resulted in a $4.19 credit to our account, for which you sent us two (2) checks, each in the amount of $4.19.  We deposited the first check and decided that the second check must have been an error and never tried to deposit it.  Silly us!  It must have been the first check that was the error because, guess what!  It has been returned unpaid due to a stop payment order.  So, now not only do we not get the $4.19 that you owe us, but we now owe our (non-BofA) bank a $5.00 returned-item fee.  Thank you.  No, really.  This is AWESOME.  

Sincerely,

Considering moving all of our accounts to another bank

Seriously, am I out of line for expecting more from a financial institution that just received millions of dollars in bailout money?  I know the bailout money doesn't really have anything to do with me and my little situation one way or the other, but come on!  Can't they do a little better job with all that money than this??

The first check was issued on December 1, the second on December 4.  It is now January 6, and at no time during the past month have we received any correspondence from BofA saying, hey, our bad, we sent you two checks.  Please don't cash one of them; if you have already cashed it and it has somehow resulted in fines or penalties we would be happy to take care of those for you.  We value you as a customer and apologize for the inconvenience.  

Oh yeah, also, we got a nice little notice from the credit bureau folks indicating that our credit report had changed.  You want to guess why?  I will give the BofA folks credit for at least jumping on that little fire and putting it out.  They sent a letter to the credit reporting agency immediately stating that we have a zero balance on our account and that it is not, in fact, past due.  So.  At least there's that.  

Wish my husband luck as he spends another 4 hours on the phone trying to straighten out this matter about the checks.  Is it worth it, or should we just suck up the $9.19?  Honestly, it's not worth the time it's going to take to fix it, but it's the principal of the thing, dammit.        

What I'm Reading Now-Rebecca

Rebeccaby Daphne Du Maurier-This is a book that I kept seeing referenced, especially around Halloween, and I thought I would give it a shot. I'm glad I did! I thought that it was going to be a scary ghost story, but I was wrong. It wasn't scary and there wasn't a ghost, but it was still a good story about a woman who is haunted by the reputation and her own assumptions about her husband's late wife, the infamous Rebecca.

Our narrator is the new Mrs. de Winter, and we never learn her actual name, which seems appropriate as she never seems to know exactly who she is either; all she does seem to know is that she is the new Mrs. de Winter, and she is definitely NOT Rebecca. She is reminded of her lack of Rebecca-ness all the time, visitors to Manderley, her new home and Mr. de Winter's famed estate, remark upon it; the family brings it up; the servants make it obvious; and she berates herself constantly about her inability to live up to Rebecca. Rebecca was the most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen, Rebecca was witty, Rebecca used to throw the most wonderful parties. Mrs. de Winter always used to put the flowers on that table, Madam; Mrs. de Winter's habit was to take care of all her correspondence after breakfast, Madam; would you like me to show you where she kept the stationery? Then there's Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper who seems to take particular joy in pointing out how not-Rebecca the new Mrs. de Winter is. She is her own brand of evil, but I also found her oddly sympathetic.

As the new Mrs. de Winter struggled to find her own identity I was simultaneously fed up with her and extremely sympathetic to her. As a young new bride to a recently-widowed older man who is clearly above her station in life, she is trying to fit into a world that is completely alien to her-she's never been the head of anything, let alone an estate! Everyone clearly loved Rebecca, her new husband is still clearly distraught over her loss, the staff are all very accommodating to her every request, but clearly they despise her for her sad attempts at filling Rebecca's shoes. Even the dogs know what the routine is supposed to be and, clearly, she does not. She's not as pretty, she gets tongue-tied in front of guests, she doesn't enjoy hunting. How can she compete? What was she thinking marrying this man? Why is Mrs. Danvers so evil?? At several points throughout the book, I just wished she'd man-up and say, "Look here, I'm sorry for your loss, I know you all still miss Rebecca, but, dammit, I'm not her and I never will be," and at the same time, how could she?

Ah! But then there is a twist! Things are revealed! Other things come to light! Were there suspicious circumstances surrounding Rebecca's death at sea? Was she the woman that everyone thought she was? Who IS that icky fellow that the new Mrs. de Winter finds lurking about Manderley with Mrs. Danvers? Is Mr. de Winter a visitor from another planet? And Manderley, beautiful, beloved Manderley, what will become of it? Does it involve Elvis? (Not all of these questions will be answered in the book, but you will have to read it to find out which ones!)

I think, for the average reader, It's always a crap shoot going back to read the "classics." What was considered witty at the time of writing may be missed entirely today, what was horrifying back then is lame now, the prose can be difficult, the language awkward, etc. I am happy to report that I did not find any of these to be issues with Rebecca unless there was a lot of funny stuff that I missed, but then I wouldn't really know it anyway. The themes of love, loss, feelings of inadequacy, fear, loneliness are all things that are still relevant today, and I thought the story moved along quite well.

Have you read Rebecca? What did you think of it? Has anyone read anything else by Daphne Du Maurier? What did you think?

Check out Nymeth's review at Things Mean a Lot I think her review was the one that finally convinced me that I needed to read this book, and she's got lots of links to other reviews too!

**updated 3/30/09-Maree at Just Add Books loved Rebecca!

So did Lightheaded at everyday reads

Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Fireworks are big on New Year's Eve in Hawaii, probably bigger than they are on the 4th of July. Here was the scene from where we were last night. I like that my camera has a "fireworks" setting on it, even if I still need a tripod to get a clear shot! I kind of like the squiggly effect that I had on this shot though.

Because there are so many fireworks, the island looks like this from about 9:00PM-1:00AM on NYE. (Just smoky, not squiggly-the squiggly was me again.)



Usually we have some nice trade winds blowing at about 10-15 mph, which helps clear out the smoke, but every once in a while the trade winds die, or you find yourself in a pocket that just doesn't have any wind, and then it just looks like this all night long!

Whatever your New Year's celebration looked like, I hope you had fun!  Anybody do anything unusual to celebrate this year?