• Brown 3
• Orange 7
• Blue 7
• Yellow 8
• Red 13
• Green 19
• Total 57

A conscious effort to eat more fruit has turned into a strategy for eating more baked goods. Our well-intentioned banana purchase sits around for days until they start to wilt and the time comes to mash them up with some butter and molasses, hooray!

• 2-3 large mashed bananas (or 3-5 small)
• 1.5 cups flour
• .3 cups butter, melted
• 1 egg
• 1 cup sugar
• .5 cup molasses
• .5 tablespoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• .5 teaspoon nutmeg
• pinch salt

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Grease a oven-safe glass loaf pan with butter.
3. Sift together flour, soda and salt into a large mixing bowl.
4. Mix together remaining ingredients in a medium sized bowl.
5. Fold wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients, stirring until lumps are gone.
6. Spread mixture into greased loaf pan.
7. Bake at 350° F on a high rack for 40-50 minutes, or until a toothpick stuck into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Driving up to Boston we pulled over at a rest stop that didn’t have any facilities which was OK, we only had to stretch our legs. In front of our parked car were bunches of low growing raspberry bushes and I couldn’t resist going and eating a few of the ripe berries. Stepping into the bushes, I must’ve tramped through some fresh animal or human urine, because that night at dinner I caught the unmistakable smell of it wafting up from my left shoe.

Normally, I’d be the type to soak, wash and dry a shoe that had fallen on such a misfortune as this, but they had already been demoted from training shoe to casual walking shoe status for losing the spring and support of their younger days. Facing a 3 hour drive with a stinky pee shoe while I had a brand new pair waiting to be broken in I made the decision to wear the new pair and toss the old.

Downtube bikes are much sturdier than most folding bikes from Dahon, and better looking, now at a comparable price! Downtube is a small independent American company with an exceptional product line.

The 8H is their internal hub, maintenance free, 8 speed, 20″ wheel bike. This bike has no external shifter (aka rear derailleur), no gears (aka cogs). Never worry about improper shifting or cleaning your drivetrain. It is all enclosed in a completely sealed Sturmey-Archer 8 speed hub.

I bought this bike last year when I moved in to my tiny apartment, but now I have a room to store a full sized road bike which I need for triathlon training. I would keep it if I had more storage space and I was a little bit shorter (I’m 6′2″). It is great condition, it’s only logged about 200 miles total. There are a few superficial scratches in the paint job, but it still performs as a new bike.

Here are the specs for the 2008 model, roughly the same as last year’s.

The location of this bike is Greenpoint, Brooklyn in New York. Greenpoint is a neighborhood right next to Williamsburg.

Sitting through a company-wide meeting I wrote down a few of the finer nuggets from our esteemed leader. I have provided the subtexts for you:

expanding our global footprint

“we’re moving all the good tech jobs overseas”

creating ourselves as just a global provider

“we’ll fleece our overseas workers just as bad as we’re fleecing you”

i’ve visited most of our centers on a number of times

“traveling on the companies dime sure is sweet”

we all share challenges

“i had to answer my own phone this week”

by all measures, that being said

“uhhhh” [stalling for time]

we lost a lot of dollars on an absolute dollar basis

“no matter how you look at it we’re losing money”

we must manage relationships in a profitable way on a go-forward basis

“we should get our heads out of our asses soon”

the 79 cent bagel i bought was so worth the 20 minutes of entertainment. a couple of the geese would take pieces right from my fingers, but usually doing so would cause them to get bitten on the ass by a hungry flockmate. i imagined it was punishment for being such a greedy brownnose. there were two smaller female ducks milling about with the geese who were faster and smarter when it came to watching where crumbs fell and snapping them up. smarter i thought until i saw one of them snap up a goose turd and chew it for a while until it spit the turd out.