Procrastination

You are probably reading these because you avoiding doing something productive or unpleaseant.

You are procrastinating.

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

Haven't Met You Yet

This is a late Valentines Day post.

To be honest I don't really have a problem with the holiday. I think it is actually a cute and fun way to celebrate the universal force that is love. I think a lot of singles stress over it because it reminds them that they don't have that life long valentine. They feel powerless to change that fact and resent that Valentines Day calls attention to it.

I think the song "Haven't Met You Yet" by Michael Buble is a good antidote for the "Poor-me-I-am-unloved-and-don't-have-a-valentines-sweetheart" blues.

Particularly I like this verse:

I Might Have To Wait /I'll Never Give Up
I Guess It's Half Timing /And The Other Half's Luck
Wherever You Are /Whenever It's Right
You Come Out Of Nowhere And Into My Life
And I Know That We Can Be So Amazing

And Baby Your Love Is Gonna Change Me

And Now I Can See Every Possibility

It really strikes a chord with me. Because I have a deep down in my soul faith that someday I will meet a guy and get married. It will all work out. I just have to be patient. Plus the beat to this song is so fun!

Watch the music video (can't get it to embed)

Dolls in Trees

You have to ask your self: WHY? Why would you ever do this?
"The Creepiest Place on the Planet"

Give it a Ponder....

Great advice... we should all give it a ponder!

Waste and the Living

Last Sunday while getting on the freeway I spotted a clean looking young man with a cardboard sign "Going Home Atlanta, GA". I couldn't help but imagine what led him to that point in his life. Did he have some tragic past? Was he incapable of holding down a job or getting a car? Did he chose this life or was he trapped by it?

These thoughts were revisited by the article "Is it possible to live a life without money?" in The Guardian (UK based periodical). The author describes how she decided to become, for lack of a better word, a hobo. She squats in empty houses, eats food from garbage, and "skips" clothes, furniture, bicycles and anything she needs. She found that she didn't need money to survive.

"In my first two months as a squatter and a scavenger I spent 54p – less than a penny a day. Ten pence had gone on a sheet of photocopying and the other 44p had bought me a KitKat at my lowest ebb in the first week. It was extraordinary how quickly it had become routine to get through a day without cash." (although later she does find ways to make money off of others waste).

She survives on the fringe not because money is useless but because people are wasteful. We throw out perfectly good furniture, food, and clothes. We throw these things out because we have lost the talent or initiative to reuse. With the hard economic times many people are rediscovering repurposing. Such things as the youtube videos "Depression Cooking", where Clara teaches you how to cook like its the 1930s, are gaining in popularity. Just check out this article from the NYT on canning.

Overall the whole article is very interesting, if a bit preachy at times. I especially disliked how "free and easy" she seemed to find her life of leeching. Granted she is only using that which others choose not to use but I still feel like it is a bit of a cheat. This feeling was only re-enforced by the articles post script:

"Extracted from Free: Adventures on the Margins of a Wasteful Society by Katharine Hibbert, published by Ebury Press on 14 January at £11.99."

Because it feels a bit hypocritical for someone to extol the virtues of living without money, in a bid to make money.

Best Bread

In my bid to learn new skills I have taken on baking. I am limited on my time and resources-not to mention kitchen supplies. Thus I try to find things that are easy and foolproof (trying to build confidence). I can honestly say I have found the best bread recipe. The Grant Loaf is super simple and came out fantastic the first time. It only takes an hour to go from ingredients to full loaf. (Sorry the picture is so bad it is from my phone)

Here is the recipe:

5 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp. salt

1 packet or 2 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast

1 tablespoon honey

2 ½ cups tepid water

Put the flour and salt in a large bowl and mix well with your hand. Mix in yeast.

Use your hand to make a hollow in the center of the flour. Add the honey and water to the hollow.

Mix the flour into the liquid with your hand, then mix well for one minute, moving the dough from the sides of the bowl into the center. Mix one more minute until the dough feels very slippery and elastic and comes cleanly away from the sides of the bowl.

Lift the dough into a large loaf pan and smooth the surface with a plastic spatula. Cover loosely with a clean, damp dish towel. Leave in a warm spot for 30 to 40 minutes or until the dough rises to within ½ inch of the top of the pan.

While dough rises, heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Bake loaf for 35 to 40 minutes.

To test doneness, remove the pan from the oven and remove the loaf from the pan. Tap the loaf underneath. A hollow sound indicates the loaf is done.

Transfer to a wire rack until cold

Best eaten within four days or freeze for up to one month.

Enjoy!

More on China

To go along with the previous post with George Friedman discussing China I offer this article: "China: the world's next economic crash". It is an opinion piece from The Christian Science Monitor. Some favored points:

"Yet however fast the economy is growing, China’s policies are unsustainable. First, the central government will be hard pressed to find the money to continue the spending spree. Budget deficits are going up fast, a constraint on additional expenditures. More important, Beijing’s regulators are concerned that the state banks, the primary source of stimulus funds, are overextending themselves and accumulating bad loans. "

and

"Finally, stimulus spending, as time goes on, becomes less effective in creating growth. The country already has one empty new city – Ordos in Inner Mongolia – and thousands of vacant facilities, especially shopping malls. New factories are underutilized."