guys like dolls

Joey and I are now vegan. About 3 weeks ago we took the final step, following through on something that we had known was the right thing to do for quite a while.

Most people ask me exactly what being vegan means. Generally speaking, we try to avoid all usage of any and all animal products. More specifically, the first thing that people think of is food. We don’t eat meat, honey, milk, butter, eggs, gelatin, etc. Food is probably the most important aspect, because it serves as a cheap source of animal carcasses for everything else. But non-food animal products are also incredibly common. Clothing, shoes, and furniture are the biggest. They can contain wool, leather, cashmere, silk, fur (or fake fur), feathers/down, mohair. Bone china (which is actually made from bone), baseball gloves and various sports balls, sleeping bags, some chapsticks, and it goes on and on. It is fairly amazing when you actually think about it. Mostly, being vegan just means being more conscious of our choices and their impact on the world. Being conscious, and then opting for synthetics – which are by and large equivalent to their animal counterparts and have the added advantage of not hurting anyone.

The food part seems more difficult, but hasn’t actually been very hard. We’ve been vegetarian for almost two years and had stopped using most dairy products (cow milk, eggs, etc) a long time ago. Our only holdout had been cheese, mostly because I was addicted to it. After reading more about the reality of dairy farms though (hint: they are not happy cows), I was newly convinced that it had to be done. Since then, I actually don’t miss it at all. The cheese substitutes are very impressive – but you don’t even end up needing them. I think it is sort of like candy – the junk food kind – snickers, kit kat bars, twix, etc. I probably haven’t had any candy in 2 years or so, not that I’ve been particularly avoiding it, but just because I don’t really encounter it very often. If you see candy all of the time, you start to have cravings, and after eating some, you just want more. This seems to spiral in on itself until you think that candy is something you love, and couldn’t see yourself with out. However, the same is true in reverse. If you don’t encounter candy at all, you don’t really miss it. It just becomes like any boring food – you could eat it, but eh, you could live without it.

Cheese is exactly the same. The first couple of days after not eating it, you have heavy withdrawal. But if you just don’t buy it at the store, and reduce your other encounters with it, you really don’t notice that it is gone at all. (Now, of course, if someone comes and waves your favorite candy bar in your face, you are going to be tempted, but don’t do that!)

Anyway, food substitutes are pretty easy, and we almost always cook at home so that part hasn’t actually been too bad. I’ve also been working my way through Veganomicon, a vegan cookbook which is filled with delicious recipes. It has helped me learn how to cook from a new perspective; teaching me how to use beans, lentils, tofu, various oils and so forth. I’m actually blogging about all of the recipes in the book (which explains all of the food photos).

Going vegan isn’t just about food though. It’s about not exploiting animals in any part of your life. And once you start thinking about it, you realize that animal products are everywhere.

First comes the clothes. For the first time, I actually read all of the labels on my clothes, and realized that a very large percentage had some form of animal in them. Most shoes don’t disclose their materials, but looking online, most use leather. (Zappos has a vegan section though!)

And next comes everything else. This is a work in progress for us. Some of our more expensive things (hiking boots, sleeping bags) will take time to replace. Most importantly though, we no longer purchase anything new with animal products. Overall, it’s a really good thing I stumbled upon minimalism because it has made this process much easier.

So that’s veganism. If you want to know more about why we made this choice you can check out many sites on the issues.

I went outside early on Monday morning and realized that we have a large bee nest in our orange tree! I only saw the nest because the bees were extremely active – flying from our flowers to the hive over and over again.

We usually don’t get outside until the afternoon and they seem to get sleepier, so you can’t tell they are there unless you know where to look. This morning it was raining, and that also seems to keep the activity fairly low.

I find bees fascinating. And I love them because they pollinate my vegetables. They’ve been doing an excellent job with the fava beans and the newly planted tomatoes. Lola chases them. This is very destructive, but it’s funny to watch her spinning around in circles after a seemingly invisible foe.

Everybody is peacefully coexisting, so there is very little chance that we’ll remove the nest – which means we get to watch the bees all year long!

Two quick things:

1) I’ve been slowly working my way through Ken Burns’ history of the National Parks. It really drives home the point that we have an insatiable urge for the planet’s resources and that without extraordinary (and usually unpopular at the time) protection, more land and animals would go the way of the passenger pigeon. Also a cool tidbit: all of the National Monuments that you see on the map are the result of the Antiquities Act, which helped to (mostly) protect the Grand Canyon when Congress wouldn’t act. I wish that the film could be compressed down to an hour so that it would be more accessible/widely watched because it really puts things into perspective.

2) I’m on Google Books!

Around 4 or 5 weeks ago I ran into this blog mnmlist and discovered something amazing – I needed less stuff. And so began the process of removing things from my life – both physical objects and tasks that I thought I needed to do but really don’t.

If you were to explore our house now some of the changes might seems strange but others you wouldn’t notice at all. We no longer have a bed frame, that seems big, but it makes so much sense for us. We aren’t old, so we don’t need the bed to be higher up. We don’t have a mice or bug infested house, so we don’t need any space between the ground and us. And on the up side, I don’t have to clean all that dust that ended up under the bed and was so hard to reach with the vacuum anymore! Our bedroom feels so much bigger now, because the frame isn’t taking up all that space.

I’ve also gone through a ton of my clothes, and I no longer have a dresser. Everything I own is either hanging up or stashed in 3 bins (socks, underwear, other non hanging etc). So far this has been fantastic. The closet is much more open, I wear every single one of my clothes constantly, and it’s made line drying and veganism a lot easier (but I’ll save that for another post).

Other stuff is less noticeable. I got rid of the mac mini which was hooked up to the tv, making it harder – on purpose – for me to watch hulu. Bookshelves, rugs, pillows, extra extra blankets, unused kitchen gadgets, unused old hobby materials, and knickknacks have all gone. In general, I no longer lose anything in the house. There just isn’t anywhere for it to go. The closets are fairly empty and everything has a place (everything had a place before too I suppose, but now it has a place with lots of space around it!) I’ve gotten rid of so many useless items, clutter that just builds up over time until you don’t even remember why you have it.

I’ve also given away almost all of my books. It isn’t very likely that I’m going to re-read them, and it’s better for someone else to enjoy them than it is for me to hold onto them. I think that is in general my new philosophy. I wasn’t using my sewing machine, and in fact, I’m probably never going to use it. By giving it away to someone who will use it, it’s possible for there to be one less sewing machine in the world. And if I ever really need a sewing machine (and can’t use a tailor or sew it by hand for whatever reason) then it would be better for me to try and borrow one – or even watch craigslist or freecycle for a machine and then donate it back to the free pool when I’m done.

We’ve been doing this with moving boxes for years – buy them for $50 off craigslist, sell them for $50 when you are done. Why can’t we do it with more things? You wouldn’t hold onto those moving boxes the whole time you weren’t using them, so why would you hold onto that sewing machine. “Just in case” isn’t a good enough reason for me anymore. I’m trying to only keep that which I use regularly. And through this process I’ve come to just need less. The desire for things simply fades away. What you have right now is good enough.

It isn’t just the house that minimalizes though, it’s things on your todo list as well. I’ve allowed myself to cross off items that don’t really need to get done and were just causing me stress. By getting rid of so much stuff the house is also much easier to clean, and I already mentioned that I don’t lose anything anymore. (In fact, I have a text document which lists every single thing we own and what room it’s in – yeah, I’m a little ocd… but that isn’t necessary for minimalism to work!) I also don’t have a smart phone anymore. I don’t check my email constantly, I don’t feel a need to read the news all the time, and I don’t miss it one bit. It’s nice to be detached. To sit and do nothing. Especially with the dog, she’s great at keeping me company.

I’m by no means done. Every week I seem to find more things that I don’t need or something I no longer need to do. Or sometimes I find another way to do things which allows me to get rid of something else. This has freed up a lot of time for me to do better things – like starting a new blog, helping a friend with a website, and just kicking it.

Overall, life just seems easier, calmer, better.

For Christmas, Joey got me a pair of Vibram FiveFingers shoes. They are amazing. I know many people have said that, but it’s true. For me, it just makes running more fun, and more difficult – both of which I enjoy.

The difficult part starts with your calves. At first, running even around the block is tough. I was sore for a week after my first run, and I didn’t think my calves were that weak to start with! This is mostly because your heels don’t touch the ground as much when compared to running with regular shoes. It’s sort of like doing calf raises the entire time. I think of this as a bonus – in the same amount of time as my non-fivefingers runs I’m getting more of a workout. Brilliant.

My calves are fairly buff now so I’m able to run longer distances more often. This has brought on the next stage of blisters and calluses. For me, I guess my toes weren’t strong enough, so my blisters are all centered there. My big toes in particular are now much thicker than they used to be. It doesn’t help that these days I’m running mostly on concrete, which is pretty rough. (Note: The main reason I’m running on concrete is that the one downside of these shoes is their lack of insulation. It is still too cold outside to go on long trail hikes. It’s warming up quickly though!) I suppose if you were able to run on trails all the time, you might be able to avoid blisters, but I feel like I’m just preparing my feet for real barefoot running.

Most importantly though, monkey shoes (Joey’s name for them, rather fitting) make running fun again. I feel more agile, bouncy even. It’s fun to feel the grass or twigs or bumps on the ground. Fun to just have more sensation. And I’m really excited to use them for backpacking. I have sandles for crossing streams, but these will be much better – easier to balance with on the rocks and I can even continue walking in them until they are dry.

I love my shoes so much that I had Joey get them too. They are just that good.

Cassie and I were in Tahoe last weekend for my research group’s yearly retreat. Downhill sports aren’t an option because Cassie’s head is held on with super glue and duct tape, so we decided to try out snowshoeing. We surveyed the various options in the South Lake Tahoe area and decided on Spooner Lake. After renting the snowshoes and the trail pass it was $30/person for the day. We hiked for 3 hours and covered about 7 miles (GPS data here). We stayed on the snowshoeing trail most of the time except when finding a nice lunch spot and cutting between trails. The snow was all very nice and powdery, even on the trail, because the area looked like it was very lightly used. It was a fun snow alternative to hiking, although I couldn’t see doing it very often right now because we can hike year round. If we lived somewhere where it snowed though, I would definitely get some snowshoes. Even sweeter would be snowshoeing to work. Here are some photos from the hike:

I took a class on solar energy this quarter (EE237 – Solar Energy Conversion) that had a fairly nifty final project. They provided the cells (EverBright, purchased on eBay) and we were supposed to build a panel in groups that minimized the energy cost ($/Wh) by using the cells and any form of light concentration. We took the quick and dirty approach of cardboard and aluminum foil, but ended up making a pretty nice looking panel that performed decently. The cells are supposed to generate 1.75 Wp (peak power output) so 12 cells should have put out about 21W, while the panel put out about 30W. We had expected about 60W, but I think that cracks in the panels and reflector roughness were our downfall; also, we never got around to testing the cells without light concentration so who knows how good they actually were. I’ll hear in a few days how it compared with the panels made by the other groups in the class. We’ll probably lose to the group that used a huge lens capable of melting a penny (!), unless they managed to fry their panels with the light intensity. Either way, I wanted to share the pictures.

I just saw The Cove this weekend, and it was a very well done movie. The plot is thrilling, the animals are easy to like, and the antagonists are easy to gang up on.

However, the movie really saddens me. It’s so easy to attack someone else’s culture and habits, while avoiding your own issues. The movie derides the Japanese for saying that hunting dolphins is part of their culture – but you could easily turn that back on Americans and ask us why we torture cows, chickens, and pigs.

For every dolphin that that is killed in Japan, 365,000 chickens are slaughtered in the US every year (9,000,000,000 vs. 23,000). And I’m not saying that killing dolphins should be ignored, but you shouldn’t throw stones in a glass house. I wish the movie had been made about one of the three species we really torture here. I wish it had been closer to home.

People will get excited about this cause, support it, and change absolutely none of their personal habits. I was sitting next to someone who was appalled at the movie but will continue to eat fish, not even considering all other meat. He couldn’t see the connection. It is easy to get excited and go to Japan and be an activist – and much harder to simply reduce the quantity of meat you consume. There are celebrities involved! and beaches! There is a lot of glamour and no sacrifice required.

I’m glad dolphins are getting a champion, but who gets to draw the line between which animals are sacred and which aren’t?

I’ve picked up on minimalism lately and because of that I’ve been going through old papers and mementos and either scanning or trashing them. In the process I ran across that Google flyer as well as this sticker I made. The design was originally for the Daily Cal – another funny adventure.

The first time I went to the Daily Cal office was because of my first freshman roommate, Amelia. She liked to write and had started going to the office the first week of school. I was up for anything that first semester, so I decided to go with her after a while and see what it was like. (In high school I had been EIC and Design Editor for the yearbook, so a newspaper wasn’t that foreign)

It turns out that they actually paid you to do design work, fantastical, so I took my first college job. The Daily Cal was a little crazy… it takes a lot of time and is definitely a labor of love, especially for the writers. They would work on an article for 8 hours or something and maybe get paid $10 for it.

So I got immersed in the atmosphere and during my 3 years of school was a designer (layout text/pictures in software), then design editor (same but in charge of schedule/making sure layouts are consistent), then did some production (the night job, last design tweaks and fix and major issues once everyone else is asleep) and finally was the production manager (in charge of production).

The production job was the most fun, and the most painful. You were in charge of sending all of the final layouts to the printer and making sure there weren’t any software glitches. It might also involve redoing layouts if stories changed late at night and the designers had already gone home. My memory is sketchy, but I think I would typically work 3 nights a week from 6pm till around 12-2am depending on what kind of night it was.

The fun part was the thrill of not knowing what was going to happen. I also did a lot of homework because there was a ton of downtime. The pain was waiting on those nights when you wanted to go home early and always ended at 2am. I got paid by the hour, one of the few jobs like that on staff, and few people have the skills/interest needed, so it worked out nicely for me.

Anyway, the sticker came from my design days. The business manager of the Daily Cal (one of the few adults) wanted to do some recycling promos and asked me to mock some stuff up. (I made extra money on the side sometimes doing this). I’ve always thought most recycling stickers are extremely boring so I made a couple variations with a grunge theme. (I drew that campanile and a sather gate by hand.) I didn’t even use that text! It was more mild, “Recycle because it’s good for the planet” or some such boringness. It was still rejected, but Joey liked it. He came up with the slogan above, “Recycle or I’ll Burn Your House Down”, so I printed a few stickers just for him for Christmas. Such a simple ending, but it evokes a lot of memories.

Isn’t it fun to reminisce?

I never actually meant to work at Google. I was applying for grad school when I was handed this flyer on campus:

I was pretty cocky back then, so I took my resume and emailed it to requested address with a subject of “I think I have a big brain”. (Little did I know that ATS – the candidate tracking system – is automated and does not care what the email said.) 2 phone screens later I was invited on campus, and still didn’t care if I was offered a job because Mountain View was pretty far from Berkeley (ie Joey) and as most of you know, I don’t drive.

The campus interview was amusing. Joey dropped me off very early in the morning and I actually went to the wrong building. (B42 instead of B40 – this was also back when we had much tighter security and I was questioned to death about why I was even there) I was sitting next to these other interviewees who were really old (ie not inexperienced new grads) and I felt out of place and slightly frightened. No one there knew what to do with me.

Then, magic happened. I was picked up by some recruiter and taken over to the new grads place, and it was wonderful! There were donuts and swag! Everybody was just milling around and talking! Smiling and friendly! I felt so much better. We each had 3 interviews and then it was off to lunch and a tour! This was all still just for fun until someone mentioned shuttles. Apparently a shuttle had just started from east bay to campus and I was suddenly much more interested in working.

The process at Google tends to take forever, and I actually cared now that there was a shuttle, so I was waiting on pins and needles. And – funnily enough, my hands and legs started feeling like pins and needles too! And I had to go back for my second neck surgery on April 1.

The timing of everything gets fuzzy in my last semester of senior year, but Google sent me an offer, and I thought it was pretty amazing to actually be offered real money. I took a while to accept and in the meantime they sent me a basket of flavored popcorn, and another bucket of candy. When I did accept they sent me an ipod – I almost swooned. I had so little money then that when my macbook hard drive died I actually booted off that ipod for a while.

I had the surgery, moved with Joey to Oakland, and started taking the shuttle every day to work. Almost 5 years later, I’m still there and it’s all because of a funny flyer.