I have been wracking my brain for well more than a week on the right way to solve my problem. The larger problem is the incredible speed of technology advances. The specific problem is my cd-writer is broken. If it wasn’t I would happily burn disks day and night. I have hundreds of pictures and pages of recent writing that I don’t want to loose. In particular, I was contemplating the blog and the best way to save my posts for later reading.

I was swinging towards buying an external cd burner. But this thought keeps occurring to me–how will I read the disks when cd technology is replaced by something else? Already I can’t watch my wedding video–no vcr at our house.

I have a thumb drive, but just looking at the funny little thing poking out of my computer makes me think “transitional technology! ” It doesn’t seem like the long term answer I am looking for. And when you think how quickly the thumb replaced the cd in computer data storage…I still remember the days of the tape backup. Even that wasn’t that long ago.

As obsessive a reader as I am, you would think it would take just a few minutes for me to come up with the right answer. But honestly, it took me weeks. I wracked mybrain everytime I sat down at the computer to discover the best way to preserve my writing and pictures so they could be easily read at any time, accessed conveniently at any time and any place.

I posed the dilemma to Daniel only after I had solved it. Needless to say, it was obvious to him and he laughed and laughed at me.

I could, um, yeah…I could print the things I wrote. On paper. Then I could read them anytime I wanted to, now or in the future.

Ten points to you if you thought of that answer while reading the post.

My kids are constantly hungry. Norah says to me, at least once a day, “You know why I am always so hungry mommy? It is because I am growing!” Of course! Why didn’t I think of that!

So, I need to feed her. And probably her sister too. And I am obsessed with turning them into cultured little multilingual euro-cool babies. So I can’t just toss them some raisins at snack time. Oh now. I need to feed them something cool.

And where do we turn to find cool food? Food worth mentioning on a blog? Create TV!

So, today’s snack, for the brave (and gullible, because really, who would feed this to a child?) Is tomato tuna mousse short stacks.

Frankly, the many recipes I see on TV that involve turning sea food into mousse make me ill. I just can’t handle that concept. Sea food is meant to be flaky and moist, preferably fresh off the grill. Sea food needs to be kept far, far from the blender.

And while tomatoes may be the favorite fruit turned vegetable known to man, I just can’t bear them fresh. They need to be cooked into a nice marinara or chopped up with lots of onion, garlic, peppers, cilantro and served with taco chips.

But, for the sake of the kids. To make them sophisticated. I should make the Tuna Mouse Short Stacks.
The Chef highly recommends using jarred tuna instead of canned. But I’m sure he wouldn’t complain if you went and caught your own fresh. Either way make sure the bits are small enough to fit in your food processor. Now it’s blending time. Blend that stuff up until it looks like tuna pudding. In fact, add a dash of olive oil while you blend, to add richness, flavor, and sheen. Because what is tuna mousse if it can’t be shiny?

I almost feel bad posting this recipe, because it is so simple. But if you are willing to catch your own tuna then you can grow your own tomatoes too.

First, get a plant catalogue. I’m sure tomatoes taste better mail order. Order seeds, starting medium, grow light, tomato cage and a gardener. Wait three months.

Now, get a big, fat, firm red tomato. You’ll like it best if you use a nice heirloom tomato, but that really needed to be addressed in the growing section of the directions, so you might as well just ignore it now.

Slice your tomato into even, finger thick, slices.

Bring your canister of shiny tuna mousse to the tomato slices. Spread the tuna mousse on the slices and restack.

Be sure at every step in the process that nothing looks natural. Remove any obvious chunks that would let people know it is tuna inside the tomato.

Restack that veggie-fruit as carefully as possible.

Create a tomato that looks like it was never cut but has some strange, unfortunate kind of mildew problem. Like a tomato fresh from a very rainy, unclean garden. The tuna flavor will be a delightful surprise.

I have blocked most of this episode from my mind. All I remember about it, besides the bad gagging it inspired, was that it was Ming. I like that Ming, but he has quite a seafood fetish. The recipe was actually from the guest chef who hosted the episode from the kitchen of his vineyard palace home. So there was a lot of drinking going on. And based on how much they both thought this was just a great thing to serve people you love, I think there was even more drinking going on off camera.

But for the kids, you know. It’s cultural TV food. I owe them this experience.

I haven’t been particularly academic since the kids were born. I’ve wanted to be. I think about learning things. I even bought a Spanish text to help me brush up. It is telling that the thing I read (apart from the Bible) that made me think the most recently, was the tag on my tea bag.

Long ago, in an attempt to annoy my then-boyfriend, now dear husband Daniel I claimed I was an ascientist. Get it? Like an athiest? I don’t believe in science. The truth behind the jibe is that I don’t believe that science is infallable, that the scientific method can prove everything it claims to prove or that the current powerful scientific community is trying to actually use the scientific method to push its religion.

Most science is faith based. You have to first accept that the scientific method is the best way to study something (which, in many cases it is) and then you have to accept that it can be applied to all things natural (which it cannot) and then you have to accept that whatever answers the scientific method produce are true. Which they are not. Science is constantly disproving old theories. So much so that I have a hard time trusting any new theories. And where a theory cannot be actually proved through that vaulted method scientific it is called a law. Evolution anyone?

It takes a great store of faith to buy a mindset that is internally inconsistent and constantly changing. It is also very perturbing that the powerful in the scientific community shut their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears, and completely deny any aspect of faith in their work.

And then there is this guy:

John von Neumann

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

“von Neumann” redirects here. For other uses, see von Neumann (disambiguation).

John von Neumann
John von Neumann in the 1940s
Born	December 28, 1903(1903-12-28) Budapest, Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy
Died	February 8, 1957 (aged 53) Washington, D.C., United States
Residence	United States
Nationality	Hungarian American
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	University of Berlin Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study Site Y, Los Alamos
Alma mater	University of Pázmány Péter ETH Zurich
Doctoral advisor	Leopold Fejer
Doctoral students	Donald B. Gillies Israel Halperin John P. Mayberry
Known for	Game theory Von Neumann algebras Von Neumann architecture Cellular automata
Notable awards	Enrico Fermi Award 1956
Religious stance	Converted Roman Catholic; previously agnostic; born to a non-practicing Jewish family

John von Neumann (Hungarian: margittai Neumann János Lajos) (December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian born American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields^[1] including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), and statistics, as well as many other mathematical fields. He is generally regarded as one of the foremost mathematicians of the 20th century.^[2] Most notably, von Neumann was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics, a member of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (as one of the few originally appointed — a group collectively referred to as the demigods^{[citation needed]}), and a key figure in the development of game theory^[3][1] and the concepts of cellular automata^[1] and the universal constructor. Along with Ede Teller and Stanisław Ulam, von Neumann worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen bomb.

The tag of my tea bag said this:

“In mathematics, you don’t understand things, you just get used to them. Johann von Neumann (1903-1957)”

Daniel likes to tell me about the crazy circular reasoning that geologists and anthropolgists use to date their finds. One says that the fossils have this age because they are found in a strata of dirt that is this old. The other says that the dirt is from this era because the artifacts presnent in the strata are from that era. This was the way his profs taught him in college.

Like mathematics, I think this is something you just have to get used to. Circular reasoning is internally illogical and unacceptably in any polite conversation.

The February edition of Town Hall magazine has a great article called Darwin’s Dominance: Evolution’s Glass Ceiling. This article is a short look at the challenges that scientist who wish to study the theory of intelligent design face. The main argument evolutionary biologist use to dismiss intelligent design is that there is an absence of solid research behind the theory. According to the professors and scientists interviewed for the article someone who pursues the study of intelligent design will be refused funding, blacklisted, and out of a job. The people who demand research to back the theory also make the research impossible. I am very excited about a new film called Expelled that was to be released this month. It is a full length documentary about this topic.

I wish I could put a billboard up in times square with von Nuemann’s quote. A man much smarter than any of my previous science or math teachers who admits, on my tea bag that this is the stuff of faith, as much as any other religion is.

Daniel gives scientists the benefit of the doubt on many issues. He believes that the method they use is infallable if used appropriately. He gives off a vibe that sciencey folks are smarter than the word nerds of the world. My original beef was with him assuming his professors were smarter than mine and the field of biology more academic than history. As annoying as that was, it lead to my little joke. Ascientism may not become the next big movement, but a heavy dose of skepticism applied to science would do it a world of good.

The toddler bed is second only to the mighty box full of blocks, at our house. The girls can build anything with the blocks. Then the blocks can also be the people that live in the new buildings. But the toddler bed–it can be anything and the girls get to be the people that live in it. Right now it is a house-bed-car and Norah is the mommy and Lucy is the daddy. It takes a lot of pillows and blankets and dollies to be a house-bed-car, but it appears to be functionary perfectly, because my girls are transported.

I could use a house-bed-car. There’s no rules against leaving the kids locked in the house-bed-car while they cuddle their blankets and play dolls while you run in really quickly to get the five dollar pizza for dinner.

And you could totally sleep while you were driving. How cool is that? You could eat your five dollar pizza and then you could sleep.

I have fuzzy memories of the days long ago when I *helped* my mom at the office where she was a dispatcher. We sent things that seemed remarkably like house-car-beds to places like Poulsbo and…well, I said they were fuzzy memories.

The thing about a house-car-bed is you don’t want to waste it going to get Pizza Pizza. It’s not a daily commuter. It is the magic ride to wherever you want to go, as long as it is really far away.

My destination would have to be the Library of Congress. Where every book in the whole wide world is waiting for me. At the Library of Congress I would never look at the shelf in despair knowing I had already read everything on it three times. Oh no. Going to bed to read with Daniel in our house-bed-car at the Library of Congress would be just the thing.

A house-car-bed seems like a leisurely way to travel, lots of stopping on the way. In today’s day dream I would follow the wagon train backwards stopping in all the places that my people passed through. Conveniently, my g-g-grandma was born in MacPherson, Kansas just a holla from my in-laws, so the kids could see their grandparents. And I could eat my fill of verinika and work in the garden a bit. A nice break from the driving, I think.

I would do all the geeky genealogy things–take photocopies from country records, take pictures of my kids on tumbledown grave markers. I would totally try to find out if Joseph Wham was really a bigamist.

Along the way I would be making a great master list. The List of all the books to read at the Library of Congress. I would pick books that entertained me, not for learning. Probably I would learn stuff too, but that wouldn’t be the point. It would be learning by accident.

I would solve a couple of mysteries, if I could. I would find out where the Jack Ory stories originated, for instance.

And then I would go back to my house-car-bed, have a $5 pizza and head home. I think, by the time all that was done, the rainy season would be over. Which of course, is the real point of the journey.

My  computer has been logged onto the internet for almost four hours now while uploading four pictures onto face book. And then, it “timed out” because facebook “took too long to respond.”

That about sums up my dial-up internet life.

At least I have my fiscal-responsibility-moral-superiority complex to keep me company.

I’ve been budgeting and thinking about diapers and scratching my head and wondering and planning.

I’m not usually motivated by bribing myself.  As I mentioned earlier, usually setting a reward means I am going to go out and get the thing now.  It is like permission.

But I’m willing to try again. I just rinsed and agitated my second nasty diaper of the morning. Poor kiddo has a rash to boot.  But I think that cloth diapers are better for rashy tushies and surely I have time to rinse a few diapers.  So I am going to try the reward system again.  I am making the diaper reward and the dishwasher reward permanent and public.  The permanent aspect is to help me remember my goal and the public aspect is to keep me honest–to keep me from slipping away to Wal mart today and buying the huggies or the dustbuster.

CARROTS 
One month of cloth diapering–dust buster

Paid off Freestar loan–dishwasher

The rewards are linked to the acheivements as follows.

Cloth diapering is more work, so I will make one of my other jobs easier as a reward for sticking with it.

A new dishwasher plus installation should cost me about two car payments.  I won’t get one until I can pay cash for it, with money that used to go to the car.

Usually Daniel changes Lucy’s first morning diaper. It is his great act of kindness and grace to me everyday.  She is the kind of little gal that usually only poops once a day, and that in the morning. So when Daniel tells me what a great big stinker her pants were on a given morning I sympathise and feel grateful, but go on with my day, as planned.  Some days she does poop twice. As a veteran parent of almost four years I can handle that. Especially as Lucy usually poops normal poop. The kind that rolls right off the diaper, into the toilet.

We stayed up too late last night and slept in too late this morning.  I offered the gift of grace and kindness this morning and took care of the big stinkers big stinky.  And had a great d’oh moment.

When Daniel tells me, morning after morning, more than seven days in a row, that Lucy has been having lots of nasty pants, I should listen. I should not make the switch to cloth in the middle of a nasty pants phase.

I go back and forth between cloth and disposables. A few months of the one and a few months of the other.  Our false spring gave me hope for sunny weather. Sunny weather made me think of bare toes and tushies and sprinklers and…potty training! It seemed like a prime opportunity to switch back to cloth.  Maybe Lucy would respond quickly to the toilet, and maybe she wouldn’t. But either way her tushy would be comfy and our garbage would be empty.  I didn’t think that maybe she was entering a toddler tummy stage, where her poops would run like a fast food milkshake.

And she might not be entering a phase. From my reading in 2006-2007 I learned that toddler tummy, or chronic toddler loose stool, was generally thought to be caused by a late maturing chemical–the chemical that mixes in your digestive process and creates a solid stool. Since Lucy has been making rabbit turds for ages I can’t imagine she is starting something that will last. But still. If I had listened to Daniel…

Well, if I had listened to Daniel I would have bought a fresh batch of Huggies. I would have increased her banana, rice, apple sauce, and dry toast intake.  I would have waited and watched. I would not have spent the early morning smelling a sewer and beating a diaper against the side of the toilet. Oh yes. This kind of poop only comes off with agitation.  And I was agitated.

Once you have one diaper soaking in the bucket, you really ought to just keep going. It’s one of those cycles of fill the bucket-wash the load that are hard to time just right for stopping.  A lone diaper in the bucket is likely to get forgotten.  And one day’s diapers really aren’t enough to wash. Two days, or even a day and a half seems more efficient (time and energy-wise.)

I suppose beating the poop off of the didy only took a couple of minutes. Rinsing nasty pants is one of the earthly experiences that foreshadows perdition. It is devilishly gross. I’ve done it before, though. And I guess I can do it again, since I’ve started.

I’ve been scrolling through old posts looking for the first mention of handwashing dishes. I didn’t see what I was looking for, but the my post about apron wearing seems to be about the same time. I think I gave up on my dishwasher in January.

The dishwasher has multiple problems. The bottom floods with water–very stinky, brown water. The dishes retain an invisible film of bitter tasting soap. It sounds to be like the thingy that keeps water from flooding back in is broken and something is amiss with the rinse cycle.

We gave up on the dishwasher and I was immediately happier. No sucking nasty water out of the bottom of the machine with the turkey baster. No more soap ingestion induced tummy troubles. And I have even been enjoying my daily date with Clark Howard (on the radio) while I position myself in front of the steamy, bubbly sink to do the wash. Handwashing the dishes never takes as long as it feels like it will.

I wondered how long it would take for the blush to wear off. If I have my dating correct, that would be three and a half months. We had no dish washer at our first apartment and we lived there for six months. I was sure I could make it at least a year this time before I went crazy.

The other day I noticed that I was less enamored with the process. I decided that maybe handwashing should be part punishement and part encouragement. A new dishwasher became my carrot. I hung it from the stick attatched to my head and said “When the car is paid off, you can have a new dishwasher.” Great Idea! I was thrilled with my own cleverness. I was hating dishwashing so surely now I would pile the money onto the car instead of other things. A penny at a time adds up when it is every penny, right?

And as I said it, the little red Traci on my left shoulder snickered in my ear. That Traci remembered how I wasn’t going to replace the station wagon until it reached 200,000 miles. It whispered I wouldn’t have a car payment to pay off if I was able to keep that kind of bargain with myself. The little while colored Traci on my right shoulder hung her head in shame.

This morning there was only on clean spoon. So Daniel washed one more and gave it to Norah for her breakfast. Watching him wash the spoon reminded me how much I have been washing the dishes lately. A lot. Yes, in many ways I feel like washing the dishes is my job and since I don’t go embalm for Daniel I shouldn’t be all the time expecting him to wash the dishes. That use to look something like me doing 85% of the dishes. These days I think I’ve been washing more like 98% of them. Maybe that is why I am so tired of it.

I wonder, should I mention to Daniel that putting in a little more effort at the sink could save him about $500? Or should I just go down to the appliance store today and buy a dishwasher?

The little red Traci to the left is whispering to me: You were going to hand wash all your dishes forever. Its so green. The only reason you decided to buy one when the car was paid off was to give yourself permission to do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now.

The little white Traci is taking a nap. I am very disappointed in her.

I actually can’t buy the dishwasher now. We have very carefully scraped together our deck money. I do want that deck after all. But the Zero percent credit card that I’ve never used, the one I got to buy plane tickets when I thought we couldn’t afford them last year…it is calling my name…

Traci….Traaaaa-ciiiii….dishwasher….energystar…..Traaaaaa-ccccciiiiiii…zeropercent…

A new family came to our church last year, around this time. A mommy, daddy and two little girls. Nicole, the mom jumped right into out ministry program and her husband followed along in good humor. We seemed to get on just fine, so I eagerly invested in the relationship. It seemed ideal and divinely gifted–a nice mom who I got on well with that had a 4 year old girl and a 3 year old girl who both got along with my kids. I was delighted.

We had a family barbeque over mother’s day. I went to her house for a playdate. And somewhere along the way we just didn’t click, I guess. I invited her over for playdates frequently though. You can have a coke with a friend while your kids play even if she’s not your best friend. And as their family was in an apartment, she always said how much she appreciated the kids getting to run around in our yard.

The first time she left the kids with me I thought it was just an unfortunate timing thing. But then, I realised it was how it would always be. If I wanted Emily and Ruthie to play with Norah I had to babysit them. Nicole would show up with a pepsi and an excuse “Hey Traci! Do you mind if I run to Wal Mart really fast, since I am so close? I’ll be right back. Here, have a coke!” And then she was gone. Everytime I invited her. If you are imagining that she came back a couple of hours later everytime, ready to take her kids home, you are right.

And that sounds like a complaint, I know. It was disappointing, yes. But like I said, I liked her kids, so it was never a burden. And slowly, over the year I got to know her better. I realized that she has a super A type personality, constant go, must work. A playdate to her was probably like a dentist appointment to the rest of us. A drudgery. Keeping her from getting something done. Well, anyway. All she had to do was ask, and I would watch her kids. The using a playdate thing for babysitting kind of hurt my feelings.

I’m an effusive gusher, in personal communication, so I made sure she knew she could call me anytime to watch her kids. And then she did. Which was fine, I promise.

One day she called to see if I could watch the back seat from her van. She and her husband were trying their best to figure out how to live in a small space, how to live on the money they made and how to get back home to their town in the North. To help with all of those things they were giving up the lease on their garage, selling stuff on craig’s list and taking a whole load of things back home to Mother’s house to store.

What could be wrong with that? We have a garage…and it’s not like they would just abandon the seat from a three year old minivan that they still carried a loan on.

That time, Nicole came calling for her seat. It was actually well more than two months later, but she did come for it.

Then, it was time for them to move back home. They hated it here, the rain, the chilliness year round, living in an apartment, having no family near. Getting back home to the sunny prairies of North Western Washington was a great blessing to them. They decided to move in two stages, one weekend to move essentials and kids up North, to Grandma’s house. The next, get the UHaul and take everything else.

Could we hold onto their minivan seat until the second weekend? Sure! Why not? It’s the seat to their car, it’s not like they wouldn’t come back for it.

I’ve got a spare minivan seat in my garage. The big back seat. I shouldn’t complain though. I’m not the one who had my car totalled on the way back to town.

Yup. Totalled. No one was hurt. They were half way home and the car was towed up North somewhere.

They rented a car, got their UHaul, and collected all of the furniture. They didn’t stop by to put the seat in their truck. Nope. It’s still here. We talked twice in the week following the accident. She said she would let me know what the insurance adjuster wanted to do about the seat. A month…two? later I emailed her. She called back, the last I have heard form her. She apologised for forgetting about me and the seat. She told me all about her brand new Mazda 300. She said I could do whatever I wanted with the seat. I haven’t heard from her since.

My parents want me to sell it. They see dollar value on everything unwanted. I put an ad on Craigslist, but no one answered. Daniel figures we can just take it to the dump. I guess we will. We can also take the bike trailer they gave us–”I’ll give you the hitch as son as I find it, okay?” she said.

Nicole said I could do whatever I want with the seat to her car. But I can’t really. I can’t throw that far.

I have a friend who is ready to move to “the next house.” Their starter house is really lovely and they’ve taken good care of it. They aren’t space greedy, really, but daddy and mommy need an office. For most families, I figger a corner for the pc and a box for paperwork is probably enough. But there are families like my friends, who need an office. He works from home frequently, when on call and they both do hours and hours of volunteer work that takes spreadsheets and emails and things. And since she just delivered her third son, they really have outgrown their 1000 square feet.

They are hard core followers of Dave Ramsey, so I trust most of their decisions on the move will be fundy-approved.

Except that my friend said something crazy the other day. Maybe she is still addled from pregnant/nursing horomones…

I was telling her there were tons of for sale signs in a neighborhood I know she’d like to move to. We were both excited about it (that neighborhood is about a mile from me, so I may have been even more excited than she was.) And then she said: “I hate to live that close to Mill Plain, but we can probably avoid driving it, if we are careful.”

Avoid driving on Mill Plain Boulevard? I was flabergasted, but didn’t let on. I can’t imagine not wanting to drive on Mill Plain. Even if I lived out in the country, when I got to town I would want to drive on Mill Plain.

Mill Plain Boulevard is the main artery that divides Vancouver into North and South. In it’s infancy, Vancouver was a tiny little town and so Mill plain is about three miles up a steep ridge to the North of the Columbia River.Vancouver has reached its gangly adolescence, the southern half of the town is still just the three-ish mile stretch between the river and the Boulevard. The Northern half reaches about 15 miles into the adjacent country side.At the farthest East Mill Plain is a alley through some feilds, a path into a new town, the only idea that the suburban desert of Vancouver exists is the shiny new Wal Mart that pops out of the land like a veruca.

Mill Plain travels through the eastern part of town, areas loving called Hearthwood, Cascade Park and the Desireable the Heights Neighborhood. Okay, only realtors call it the Desirable the Heights Neighborhood, but I live there, so I like it. It’s delightfully hopeful and ironic for such a 1960’s ranch house mushroom patch.

In the East, Mill Plain takes you past the hobbyists airport, the Fred Meyer where Daniel bought my replacement wedding ring, our church with its new minty green building almost finished. It takes you past the hospital with the new shiny towers and waterfall tucked into the courtyard. And then, look quick to your left, Our House! The green one! Just a block south in tDtHN. Mill Plain also takes you past the other cemetery.

But that’s just where it goes on this half of town. What it is is also wonderful. It is a shady boulevard divided regularly with wide planters. There are giant pines in the middle of Mill Plain that litter the road with pine cones. Pine cone litter! How Northwest! Huge glossy laurels and those shrubs that are kind of like laurels but with leaves that turn red and camelias and miniture firs seem to make up the rest of the dividers. Some of the roadsides are planted like the dividers. But other stretches are filled with tidy homes and charming businesses. My Lucy’s favorite is the spa and stove store with the frog sliding down water slide. It’s not a sign so much as a celebration; its a giant plyboard cut out like one would see at a real carny’s carnival.

I know that my friend dislikes Mill Plain for its traffic. (She’s from that other town where the new Wal Mart just sprung up.) But…for a four and five, even six lane road in spots, it is easygoing traffic. I’ve made my fair share of unprotected left turns on Mill Plain and have never had to wait for than half a minute. Not too bad, for such a big road. And the traffic itself never disappoints. I see at least three Prius’s every time I go out. And plenty of those Honda Elements that I think are so cute. On Monday I even saw my personal favorite, someone’s beloved Tin Lizzy shining like it was going to a party on the West Egg.

Mill Plain is a great drive for what it is, what drives on it, and where it goes. The East side of town is just the beginning of the good stuff. Not long after Mill Plain passes the other cemetery it goes steeply down, a hill that proves the name the Heights is appropriate. At the bottom of the hill we mostly leave the 1960’s and their ranch dreams behind and enter the world of front porch homes. Homes with character and charm. Also the International Air Acadamy, now offering a course in hospitality and catering. To the right, or north if you prefer, is the Blind Onion Pizza Shop. The second best pizza in town.

A great evergreen shrouded high school and its park, the library and public utilities all appear right before we get downtown. And then–Down Town.

There are a handful of legitimate business. A giant Hilton Hotel and convention center, a truly beautiful park, one charming antiques and collectibles shopping area. That gym I joined for a month is in that area. Down town is freckled with galleries that nurture local artists. The rest of it seems to be bail bond venders, trial lawyers and pawn shops. But on the weekend when the farmers market springs up out of the moist pavement none of the darker business of down town seem to exist. Booth after booth of wholesome food fresh flowers and artists distract even from the high rise buildings with their banking concerns and money granting foundations.

Down town peters out into more old houses, a little dilapidated, some, but all charming.And then Mill Plain finds itself where heavy industrial work and farming meet to discuss the future. It’s called Fruit Valley and it is where I brought both of my babies home. Our house is tucked into the neighborhood, safe and cozy with tiny homes of its kind, politely ignoring the plastic works plant, the heater makers, and that place where they wash the chemical protectant stuff off of the cars as they come land-side from their long barge ride.

Mill Plain ends here, physically, but in spirit it continues, the name is different at this place, but the road goes on, just a bit more, to the great slimy and toxic mess that is Vancouver Lake. If you walk to the lake from my old barrio, instead of driving Mill Plain, you will walk through the fruit farms and the hunting ground. They grow all kinds of berries and fruit in the farm land and shoot, I think, just birds in the hunting approved area.

But no matter which way you take to the lake you shouldn’t swim in it. It is a man made lake, with insufficient outlet to filter the fertilizers from the farm land. And the toxic red algae loves that fertilizer. So swimmers are cautioned to wash immediately after touching the water.

Driving down Mill Plain to the lake is the perfect way to see it. The park is lovely and the waters shiny, but you are safe from the toxicity. And if it is one of the Prius families driving they aren’t adding to the toxicity of the event either.

I don’t see why my friend would want to avoid all of that. I’ll go with Mill Plain anywhere it will take me.