birthday meme

i'm having a productive day so far. i'm doing laundry and working on my dissertation. i decided to take a short break for this (ganked from maeveh) because it seemed kinda cool...

Your Birthdate: February 9

You are a born idealist, with more pet causes than you can count. You prefer be around others, both when working and while relaxing. Generous and giving, you believe you can change the world one person at a time. You're open minded and tolerant. People feel like they can tell you anything. Your strength: Your go-with-the-flow flexibility Your weakness: Your flair for the over dramatic Your power color: Pine green Your power symbol: Circle Your power month: September

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

hmmm. ok.

added later: i fooled around with the generator on that site, and it comes up with the same blurb for any birthday that falls on the 9th of any month. i discovered this because i started plugging in birthdays for my family members.* when my mother's birthday (november 9) returned the idential profile to mine, i got suspicious and started testing it because, while my mother and i share some similarities, we aren't that much alike.

*interestingly, all of my family members' birthdays fall on or within a day of a date ending in 9. my sister jan pointed this out to me when i was a little kid. here is the pattern, from the beginning of the year to the end:

february 9 (me); april 10 (my sister anne); april 19 (my brother pat); june 28 (my sister jan); august 29 (my sister barb); september 19 (my father); and november 9 (my mother). of course we weren't actually born in this order (i'm the youngest, M&D the oldest, but otherwise my siblings' birthdays actually do occur in descending age order over the course of a year). i've always thought this was weird...the annual pattern rises and falls: 9-10-19-28-29-19-9.

another oddity: jan and my cousin jim are the only two left-handed people in my extended family. they both have the same birthday (june 28); and their initials are JMC (jan) and JCM (jim).

grass farming

here's an interesting website for and about meat, eggs, and dairy from grass fed animals. i've been really curious about this topic since finishing michael pollan's new book, the omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals, and i've been wondering what kinds of farms, buying clubs, etc. are available in this area. this website seems like a good clearinghouse for information (they even sell books--including pollan's).

pollan's book has challenged my thinking about meat and other animal-derived food. ( much more behind cut )

in other news...

i went to see the ABBA movie with my friend L last night, at the northwest film forum. it was surreal and funny. oddly, they didn't play "take a chance on me" (despite what the blurb says), but that's the song i had stuck in my head on the way out.

i would highly recommend going to see it, but sadly, yesterday was the last day. however, there are many other interesting films coming to the NWFF, and i found out last night that they do half-priced mondays! you can bet i'll be taking advantage of that this summer...

thinking about the movie goes at least partway toward mitigating my earlier pessimism about factory farming.

on balance i'm having a difficult week, though. it helps that i have this neverending dissertation work to dive into.