A question people ask me a lot is, “How are your vegetables going?” Actually, it’s not so much “people” as “one of my coworkers” and not so much “a lot” as “once on Friday at lunch.” Nevertheless, I mentioned previously that I signed up with an organic farm to have vegetables delivered to my door, and have received two such deliveries.

I’ll say first that I do a lot of cooking, and I’m pretty comfortable cooking just about anything. In fact I prefer to just open the fridge and make something out of whatever I find in there; it’s simply too painful for me to think in advance of what I might want to cook later in the week to plan out a menu. Thus, the idea of having a big bag full of whatever’s in season delivered to my door seemed like a perfect fit.

In practice, the grab bag o’ veggies has proved to be more challenging that I thought. In some cases, I can’t even identify what some of the vegetables are. Tonight, we had pan-roasted kohlrabi with dinner. I didn’t know it was kohlrabi until after I’d cooked it, but it turned out all right–diced, browned in a little olive oil, and seasoned with salt and parsley.

The first week included some kale, which I figured out how to cook, and both weeks have had some mixed salad greens, or as I call them, ‘insalata alla Lawn-Boy’. The vegetables are packaged with all the greens attached, and I imagine most of the farm’s customers eat these as well. I’m not quite so adventurous, but who knows what the future holds. By the way, can any identify the leafy green stuff to the right? I have a bag of them and I don’t know what to do with them.

I am way behind on posting. There has been a lot of stuff going on that I have been meaning to post about, and I’m not really sure if I should post a big long post on a bunch of random things, or a bunch of little posts on more more specific things. I’ll just start.

Injuries

I have a number of injuries which are no longer going away; they’re accumulating. Since I turned 30, the injuries just start accumulating, and it’s really starting to get annoying. So far:

• My right shoulder, which I injured playing football (throwing). It was really bad for a couple years, but has improved with rehab.

• My left shoulder, which I injured playing roller hockey (was tripped and landed on it). It was never as bad as the right is even now, but still bites me every now and then.

• My left knee, which I injured playing volleyball and an MRI showed a cyst in it. It’s not bad as long as I try not to land on it too often when digging.

• My right elbow, which I injured three weeks ago playing volleyball (digging a hard-hit ball). It’s still pretty bad, but mostly because I cannot seem to prevent myself from trying one-arm digs… it’s just a conditioned response that I can’t seem to control.

• Both thumbs, which I hyperextend on a regular basis in volleyball. This is just the result of poor blocking technique.

Looking at this list, it sure seems like I play a lot more sports than I really do–I just get injured during ALL of them.

Gadgets

I am absoluted loving my Nokia 6620. It’s everything a gadgety phone should be. It has a camera with video recording, voice recording, instant messaging, bluetooth, e-mail, SyncML, and a bunch of other fancy words. Oh, it also makes phone calls, but I hardly ever use it for that. I need to do a little more tinkering with the blog so that I can post photos and entries directly from the phone, but soon there will be mobile photos, audio, and video going on.

Squeaky baby needs oil

Tara has started squealing and squeaking. She generally does this with her hand in her mouth, and the sounds that used to be cute coos and gurgles are now high-pitched squeals. I’m hoping she’ll get over it. Really soon.

In other news, she’s still a really big baby. For her four-month checkup, she weighed in at over 17 lbs., which puts her above the 97th percentile for weight. She’s also 24 inches, only about the 60th percentile. She’s a big girl.

Sleep

Anna has been having really awful sleep problems lately, getting up 2-3 times each night and generally requiring a lot of maintenance. This has been the norm more often then the exception throughout her life, and we’re in the process of the usual painful fix of ignoring her at night; generally it takes a couple days to work. This is somewhat complicated because of

Guests

May was the month of traveling, and June is turning out to be the month of people coming to visit. Currently, Jen’s Aunt M. is in town for the week, and Grandma D. will be here at the end of the month, perhaps followed immediately by Grandma M., Great-Grandma J., and Great-Aunt M. This will be the start of my two-month leave, so at least I’ll have some time to recover afterward.

I haven’t had a soft drink yet this year. For me this is a big accomplishment, as I used to drink 2-3 cans of Diet Pepsi per day. My motivation was that I recognized that soda is just a big can o’ chemicals that wasn’t doing me any good. Now I drink water pretty much everywhere I go. Beer? All-natural goodness.

Just recently, I finally saw the movie “Super Size Me,” which I thought was very well done. I didn’t think it was particularly surprising or enlightening, but it’s kind of a confirmation of stuff I already knew, and inspired me to try to remove even more unnatural food from my diet. After being low-carb for several years, I really don’t have any problem avoiding snack food if it’s not within reach; that is to say, I can walk right by it in the grocery store. It’s much harder to avoid when my wife is eating it right in front of me. I’m not that strong. But I will try.

“Super Size Me,” and later, the viral-marketing movie Store Wars led me to seek out and sign up with a local organic farm that delivers organic fruits and vegetables on a weekly subscription basis. We’ll see how it goes when it starts up in a couple weeks. In general, I will cook and eat healthful vegetables if they’re in the house, and this veggies-by-mail subscription will ensure that we have them on a regular basis.

So from now on, I’m going to try to eat my vegetables, eliminate processed snack foods, and continue my 4-5 hrs of volleyball each week, and add in some cycling when I have a chance. The exercise picture will have to change once I take my “sabbatical” in July and August, but that’s another post.