I grew up in a farming community in Central California in a small town called Hanford (google it, you’ll be indifferent that you did).  As I like to say… You can take the boy out of the country… but you can’t make him go back!

I have long since considered myself a city dweller (or as of present a suburban city dweller) and love the fast pace of the busy streets and high-rise building. I love the convenience of having things close by, the night life, the culture and the excitement cities have to offer.  And while I prefer the urine smelling subways of San Francisco over the cow dung smelling… um… every where… in my home town, I do miss the farm fresh produce that country living provides.

YOU PAY FOR POMEGRANATES!?!?!

I remember the first time I saw how much a pomegranate sold for in a grocery store in the bay area.  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  Don’t people know these things grow on trees!

There was a lone pomegranate tree in a field near my high school that produced like a bazzillion pomegranates. If that ran out, our neighbor a few doors down had like a hundred trees. Talking to him about what you can do with a pomegranate was like talking to Bubba from Forest Gump about what you can do with shrimp.  Let’s just say my parents are still well stocked with pomegranate jelly.

And that is just pomegranates… don’t get me started on peaches and apricots!

PLANTING THE SEED

It's blurry, but it's a garden

I’ve always had this idea that someday I will live in a nice house with a yard.  There are two problems with that statement and living on a single family income in the bay area… house and yard.  We have been confined to apartment dwelling for some years now and while we plan and are working towards bigger and better things, my desire for a lush garden with fresh produce has been nothing more that a pipe dream… until now!

I decided to wait no longer… I was going to plant a garden on the balcony and become one of the few… the proud… apartment dwelling… urban farmers!

So I now have a 4′X4′ raised planter box that is host to beans, squash, watermelon, pumpkin, peas, cucumbers, eggplant and tomatoes.  I have 3 buckets to hold 3 blueberry bushes, 1 orange tree (ok… we’ve actually had this for about a year and a half.  We actually thought we killed it because it lost all of its leaves and started looking all brown and dry.  Miraculously the tree came back to life and now hosts a wonderful bouquet of orange blossoms that draws in the humming birds.) and finally we have a few containers that house strawberries, radishes, garlic and onions (not all in the same container).  We’ll be getting a few more containers here really soon too!

OH HOW THEY WIGGLE AND SQUIRM

In addition to a garden, I’ve always been interested in “vermicomposting” or worm farming.  Originally I was just planning to have the worms live in a bucket… but through the beauty of social networking, I posted my interest in this project on facebook and someone said they had an actually worm compost bed just hanging out in their shed. So now I have a legit worm set up complete with wiggly worms that I bought at a nursery suggested by another one of my fantastic facebook friends!

I would like to say that I’m doing the worm bin for the kids… but really I know I’m more excited about it than they are, but they do like to show their friends when they come over.  Today my 6 year old had a friend over and was thrilled to show her the bin.  We came across a couple of worms mating (each worm has both male and female organs).

“Look dad, those worms tied themselves together!”

“Yes.  Yes they did!”

Here’s to grabbing a bit of that country life…

The other day I was having a conversation with a co-worker over lunch when she surprised me with the question, “What 3 things would you say contribute to your happiness?”

She then chuckled and commented on how she probably caught me off guard. Well, the joke was on her because I happen to think about my happiness a lot (I read a lot about what makes people happy too) so my answer was very quick.

Three Contributions to my happiness:

1. My attitude
   Attitude is everything when it comes to happiness. Really if you want to be happy, you can. All you need is to have a good attitude about life and the world around you.
2. I always keep learning
   I love to learn and challenge myself.  There is a great sense of accomplishment when something new is learned. That personal progression gives me a sense of fulfillment and capability.
3. Connecting with other people
   The people I connect with, and I mean on a much more personal level than just small talk acquaintances, are what really make me excited about getting up in the morning and going anywhere… work, activities, church… anywhere. With out those connections, it just seems like everything would be a chore.

She was surprise by the quick response. “Those are really good answers.  I thought you would say something like your family.”

My Family Does Not Make Me Happy

So I’m playing with words here and bolding for shock value for those who just skim this page.  My family definitely enhances my happiness! They are the first people that come to mind when I mentioned “connecting with other people” above. But the catch here is that they can not make me happy (sometimes they can just be down right frustrating… but I love them ).

I don’t think any of my family members want the responsibility of my happiness (especially my wife… she told me that already ).

What! These aren’t My Ideas?

Literally the next day after this conversation I was reading, The Dragonfly Effect by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith where they referenced a study done by (and I’m going to just give the reference as it appears at the back of the book)

Sheldon, K.M.,Elliot, A.J., Kim, Y., and Kasser, T. “What Is Satisfying About Satisfying Events? Testing 10 Candidate Psychological Needs.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001, 80(2), 325-339 (while I haven’t read this study yet, I have been known to whip out the library card and hit their online reference section).

In this study they found that there were 3 basic needs in terms of  the human’s sense of self-worth: “competence (feeling that we are effective and able), autonomy (feeling that we are able to dictate our own behavior), and relatedness (feeling that we are connected to others).”  (not sure how I should reference this since I’m quoting from The Dragonfly Effect… which was referencing the study.  I’m sure all you scholarly folks can give me the MLA guidelines that I’m too lazy to look up).

Wham!  There was my list of 3.

Competence, effective and able = Attitude

Autonomy,dictate our own behavior = Learning

Relatedness, Connected to others = Um… connecting to others

But is That All I Need?

Those three things keep me happy and moving ahead in life, but is there more that could contribute to happiness?  What would you say are the three things that contribute to your happiness?

So… I’m sitting here at LaGuardia air port, behind a chinese man who is humming, rather loudly and off key, some C-Pop (its what the kids call Chinese Pop Music… Yeah, I’m hip to the lingo) music he’s listening to on his iPhone.  As my feet continue to throb from 2 days of non stop walking around the city that doesn’t sleep (and I got very little of that myself), I am grateful to be sitting and actually looking forward to the several hours I will be sitting on my return.  This is my 2nd trip here in the last 30 days so I’ve had a few opportunities to learn a couple of things about NYC.

1. Directions are given in the time it takes to walk somewhere. Please note that you will need to do some math!
   “How do I get to time square?”"Ok… head that way on 29th street, about a 7 minute walk, till you hit Broadway.  Make a left and go up Broadway, another 5 minute walk, and then when you see the big Coke sign… you’re there.” 

   “So that’s about 13 minutes?”

   “10 if you’re a fast walker”

2. This is how we do it in New York!
   That’s what people say when they are about to, or have just done something rude.  This includes, flipping people off, yelling at passing cabs, swearing about nothing in particular… just to hear themselves swear.Ex:  You’re walking along with a “New Yorker” (because as I mentioned above… you walk everywhere) having a pleasant conversation and suddenly he’ll bust out with “Why don’t you f**king watch where you’re going you f**king moron!” at a passing bicyclist.  To which the biker will glance back, flip the bird and shout, “f**k you!” 

   “This is how we do it in New York.” and then the pleasant conversation continues with out missing a beat.

3. There is a constant game of chicken between pedestrians and automobiles
   It doesn’t matter what the crosswalk sign says, if you feel like going, go.  I’m sure there is some sort of point system involved because the people waiting to cross the street wait as far out in the road as possible. It also seems that the drivers make it a point to get as close to those people waiting with out actually hitting them.  I’m sure there is someone in NYC that is missing a few toes.In addition to this game  there is also the game where people try to gauge how fast the car is coming and if they can make it across the street fast enough with out changing their walking speed.  Trick is they also have to figure out if the car is they type who will speed up once they are in the middle of the road. 

   While these games are challenging to play (I did play a little bit but never quite reached the level of a true New Yorker), they are fun to watch other people play .

4. There are cool things to find everywhere! I went to the New York library, and look at this fabulous painting I found! (Captions added)

New York is an awesome city with so much to explore and discover.  There is just something inherently American about NYC!

For those of you who would like to take a crack at writing your own captions… click and download this image below.  Let me know what you come up with!

Ok… so my “first draft” at a logo was ill received.  My dad who, unknowingly to me, is quite up on the graphic trends of today, informed me that skulls are sooooo overdone. (I do agree, they are overdone… I was just testing it out ).

So I decided to go back to the drawing board. And for creative inspiration I went to buildabrand.com. A website that helps you create logos.  My “Key Words” that depict what I want my logo to represent were, Humorous, Optimistic, Eccentric, Funky, Loud, Flexible.  I click enter and then they showed me some suggestions…. 20 pages worth…  here is just a sample page…

For some reason… I’m confused?  These all look like whacked designs… guess no inspiration there.

Ok.  So right now this blog is pretty blah.  Not much posted, not much style.  Just words.

But it is a work in progress. You will start to see it change as I fiddle with it, play with it, and stuff, remove stuff and just have fun with it.  What this is is an experiment for my entertainment that I am sharing with you.

For starters, I’ve been playing around with my identity.  I’m not dressing in drag or anything (I know some of you are disappointed) but looking for something that represents me or at least who I feel I am.  So I’ve been toying with my “logo” or “Icon” and here is what I’ve come up with (going to stylize it a bit more… but this is the basic image).

For those of you know me… do you feel it “represents?”  For those of you who don’t know me that well, what do you think this says about me?

Ok… I just can’t wait until this blog is completely set up to start blogging… so you’ll see some odd things here and there.  The lay out will change, new things will be added, but hey… that will give you a reason to keep coming back!