For the first month or so, my biggest problem was the gassiness that comes with eating vegetarian. Beans are a great source of protein and I was eating a lot, and I guess my body just wasn’t used to it. So I hit the simethicone hard, and things have pretty much worked themselves out now. I do still take simethicone after I eat a meal that mainly consists of beans, just to do everyone around me a favor.

After about six weeks, I realized I had gained about five or six pounds. Whether it’s my scale or my body, my weight always fluctuated by a pound or two, usually coming in at 124 or 125 pounds. Now I’m a constant 130. Which I suppose isn’t really that bad, seeing as how I’m 5′8″. But there are a few shirts I can’t wear anymore, and I’ve had to relegate a few pairs of pants to the “weekend” pile, if you know what I mean.

At first I was pretty upset about the weight gain, but in all honestly I feel really good. I don’t feel fat, and if I have to go out and buy a few new pairs of pants, oh well. There are bigger things in my life I could spend my time worrying about, and five pounds really just don’t seem worth it. Even at 125 I felt like I needed to tone a bit, and I still do, so I’ll probably end up using the gym membership I have until February. Maybe. I’ve had it for a few weeks and haven’t gone, though, so we’ll see.

As far as the difficulty in not eating meat, there really isn’t any unless I’m super starving. And even then it’s not that I miss meat, it’s just that I feel like I’m on the verge of a low-blood sugar crash and it would be so much easier to stop at McDonald’s and grab a cheeseburger instead of going home and fixing spinach or a veggie burger.

Some people have suggested that instead of keeping with the vegetarianism, I instead seek out locally grown beef, chicken and pork so that I don’t have to worry about the way they’re treated or the hormones that are pumped into them. And while I think that is a great way for meat eaters to get their food, I just don’t think it would work for me. I know myself, and that would be a slippery slope. It would not be a stretch for me to be out at a restaurant and order a meat dish just because I was a meat eater again. Years ago I stopped eating beef after I read My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki (a great book, by the way—one of my favorites), but it didn’t take more than a few months before I fell off the wagon after numerous dinners with friends and family members where beef was served.

Ian and I just watched Food Inc. tonight, and I will say that if I wasn’t a vegetarian already I would have made the commitment tonight after seeing that film. I know there are a lot of problems with genetically engineered vegetables, and I understand, as Ian put it, that I’m not doing the world any favors by eating them.

But I do know that I am not encouraging the inhumane treatment of chickens, pigs and cows. I am not responsible for the way they are crushed to death, made to walk on broken legs or thrown into grinders while still alive and crying, scared and helpless.

And like I’ve told a few people who have told me that my not eating meat doesn’t matter: Just because I can’t fix the entire problem with our food industry doesn’t mean I shouldn’t stop eating meat. Not being able to do everything perfectly doesn’t mean I should ignore what feels right to me.

Back in 2004, Pabst executed a highly effective word-of-mouth campaign that made the long-declining brand an “ironic downscale chic” choice for bike messengers and other younger drinkers who viewed the beer as a statement of non-mainstream taste. —adage.com, as reported on freewilliamsburg.com

HAHAHA.

So all you kids drinking PBR because you think it makes you look cool and ironic and like you’re bucking mainstream? Yeah, you’re really just part of a corporate marketing campaign and you’re doing exactly what The Man intended for you to do.

Enjoy your shitty beer.

I visited your website to pay my electric bill today and noticed that you have instituted a “convenience fee” for online payments. I have been paying my bill online for a long time now and today is the first time I have seen this fee. I am curious as to why your business model now includes charging customers for something that is easier for both them and you, but also cuts down on waste? Have you had to hire additional employees to handle the online bill processing? Have you had to hire additional IT professionals or pay more in database or web hosting? I’m just wondering what the extra $5 is being used for.

The customer service rep I spoke to on the phone when I called to ask about this new fee made it painfully clear that Murfreesboro Electric Department has no intention of embracing any kind of technology (she was not aware of how email addresses worked, telling me I should send my email to “murfreesboroelectric.com, there was no ‘anyone @’ in this email address”), despite almost every other business in the country encouraging its customers to move to paperless billing and online bill payment not only to help cut down on paper waste but to make things simpler for everyone involved as well.

I realize that Murfreesboro Electric Department is a monopoly and I am going to have to either pay your convenience fee or suck it up and buy more checks and stamps, but I wanted to voice my displeasure as a customer in case you put any stock in your customers’ opinions. It’s sad that when Murfreesboro is making such great strides in moving toward being a more progressive town, its largest utility company is working to hinder its progress.

I look forward to your response, as I’ll be sharing it on my blog, Twitter and Facebook with other Murfreesboro residents.

Best,
Megan Morris

——

UPDATE: See below for the email I received back. You’ll notice it doesn’t answer my question as to what the $5 is going toward. Also, apparently I can use a check, but not a credit card, and that doesn’t require a convenience fee. (Who the F uses checks still??) I guess my answer is that the $5 charge is to cover the cost of processing credit card payments to their processor. Which is still bullshit. EVERY merchant that accepts credit or debit cards pays a processing fee. Would you pay an additional fee at the grocery store or a clothing store to be able to use your credit or debit card? Why is it OK for the electric department to charge one, then?

Is this not the most adorable thing you have ever seen?

Let me answer that for you: Yes, yes it is.

Our Halloween party was a resounding success, if I may say so myself. And despite discovering that ~25 people is way too many to get an actual game of trivia going, there were several people rocking out to Guitar Hero: Van Halen and a ton of laughing, conversing, eating and drinking.

Oh, the drinking.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that any party where 100+ beers aren’t enough, a smoking-ass elephant is only second in interest next to Ian’s chest hair, a taco hands out Halloween candy to your neighbors and one of the cats eats a glowstick (and makes the stairs glow purple with his barf) counts as legendary.

I can’t wait until next year.

(Check out the pictures here.)

All you can do is find a way to be happy in the moment and not take yourself too seriously. I’m working toward that.

It’s the little things that are the big things, and you do them right.

This was the first client site for which I was responsible for the web development (it was designed by my coworker Ben, and Summer, Rex and Megan were responsible for content and overall strategy), and I will not lie: It was overwhelmingly difficult at times. Going from kind of knowing CSS and not ever having built anything in Movable Type to Oh Hi Let Me Build This Site Quickly Now was a challenge, but looking back I see how much I learned from the entire experience.

Luckily I had a lot of support from Patrick (we hired him as a consultant to teach me how to write my own CSS and built in Movable Type–all in like a week) and several super-smart coders and Movable Type users on Twitter who were so responsive and willing to help.

According to the notification we’re not supposed to officially announce anything until the awards are actually given out, so I’m not going to tell you the site name or the awards. I tried to stay as cool and collected as I could at the office—oh who am I kidding, I blabbed to whoever would listen how all those times I said I was going to jump out the window because Movable Type wasn’t working and all those times Ben threatened to kill me because I wouldn’t stop asking for more images in different sizes and colors TOTALLY WORTH IT.

I’m so lucky that I work someplace that lets me do what I am interested in and trusts in me enough to understand that if I don’t know how to do something, I sure as hell will find out. And I’m so proud of the team that worked so hard to make this site so awesome. Even if it didn’t win anything we would still understand its value, but it’s always nice to have validation.

Now, I wonder how I can weasel my way into a trip to accept the awards?

Can’t we all get along? Stop this arguing. There’s too much sand in your collective vaginas. This world should just be one finger-bangin’ party, where angular haircuts, men in capri pants or “lands end sweaters” and girls in fresh “American Apparel hoodies” and “tote bags bigger than their midsections” can cohabitate with rock critics and rock stars. You know, ride the minivan people–two fingers up front, three in the back!

Amen, brother. A-fuckin’-men.