About

I have been trying to maintain three different blogs for a while now, and by trying I mean failing miserably. I haven't posted much on anything lately, and I think it looks worse that there are three different blogs with very sparse posting patterns, so I decided to pick one and go with it. I get a lot more traffic over at The Almost Vegan Project, but I think that project has run its course, so I am settling in here.

I am interested in many things, but I am trying not to be obsessive about any of them. I am a recovering perfectionist (about many things, but see this post about food), and I struggle with being judgemental about people who don't see things the same way that I do. At a high level though, here are the topics that really interest me:

• My family and friends
• Books of all kinds, but especially science fiction and mysteries
• Feminism
• Gardening (but only from the standpoint of having fresh produce in my yard and using it; I hire someone to do the installation and care of the garden!)
• Making healthy food for my friends and family, and myself
• Caring for the environment
• Taking the focus off of things and putting it on relationships, and doing things that matter to me
• Writing
• Poverty, and how to cure it or at least mitigate the effects
• Education
• Do it myself projects, whether it is crafts, household repair, hair cutting, cooking great meals--whatever I can do for myself rather than paying someone else (except for gardening--I can take on preserving the produce from a garden or taking care of the garden, but not both; there is only so much time available to me)
• Pop culture, and how it promotes stereotypes and dominant cultural values

If I didn't have to have a job, and I could do whatever I wanted to do, I would definitely go back to grad school. What to study, though, that would be the question. Probably social psychology or economics. I am very interested in the socially constructed nature of reality, but also how poverty can be combatted on a practical basis. My house and children won't let me be a poor grad student, though, so this is all theoretical.

I have two children, a 13 year old girl and an 8 year old boy. They are great kids, even if they do try to drive me crazy on a regular basis. I will say, never having been a boy, I did not realize how much food they eat! My goodness, seeing how much my son eats at only 8 1/2 fills me with fear when I picture my grocery bills when he is a teenager. My daughter is a typical 13 year old in that she seems to think my every word and action are calculated to make her miserable, but she is still very sweet, and she is smart enough that I think she will make it through puberty alive, with a minimum of damage.

I work as a project manager, working to make sure IT infrastructure projects get done on time. I like my job because it makes me think, I get to meet a lot of people (although mostly over the phone), and I am always learning things. I have to be super organized, though, which explains my love of lists. I have a whole system, with paper and pen for general organization (with multiple pen colors--one color for the list, one for checking things off, and at least one for making notes on things I have worked on, but still have more to do), calendar reminders for things I want to remember on a specific day, and Outlook post it notes to sit on my desktop (on one of my two monitors) for things that I need to remember within a given day. I can sit down and write detailed lists for any task, from packing for a trip to cleaning the house to weekend errands in less than 5 minutes. Follow-through can be a problem, but at least I know what I need to do.

This is getting ridiculously long, so I am leaving it for now. Any questions, let me know.