Andrew D. Anderson » Blog » Life

Well, now, where to start? Last time I wrote I was in the midst of mountains and forests in beautiful Northern Idaho. The weather was blissful, the scenery was soothing, my uncle was tolerable… I almost felt like I was having a good enough time to justify the ~2k mile trip out there.

Two weeks of the good life passed and my other uncle called. Two days later my two uncles and I were in Chicago. Me, back in Chicago. I haven’t been gone long enough to feel nostalgic about my return… or to mentally prepare myself for another bout with the nearly-intolerable weather here.

There’s really no telling how long I’ll stick around the midwest, but I’ll try to keep updating. At least mobile internet works well here.

With Chicago behind me and Idaho all around me – life is certainly different. (So is the site design, eh, what do you think?) Northern Idaho is beautiful, with low humidity, plenty of sunshine, and near-perfect temperatures. Well, at least for the past four days… I’ll try not to get so far ahead of myself…

Last Tuesday, moving my things went well – the thunder storms abated a bit and that was certainly a welcomed change.  The entire farm was unkempt and somehow a poor bird (actually two birds, but one was deceased) had wandered into the house. When I noticed it, I didn’t even take it to be real. It was eerily still and staring out the window. I grabbed it, brought it outside, and gave it some water. It was so weak it hardly tried to get away from me. That was basically the only noteworthy part of my move. Well, ok, the oats were really nice too, but I think they flooded the day after I left the farm.

Two days later, Thursday, the flight I was taking out of Chicago was originally scheduled to depart at 1930, but ended up being delayed over three hours. I was fretting that the unfortunate delay might be a sign of things to come. Really, things since then have been pretty good. I didn’t get the promised tour around Seattle, but it is still scheduled for the weeks to come. Instead, I was treated to a midnight Jack-In-The-Box hamburger and a half-day long drive from Washington to Idaho the next noon. The drive was peaceful – there are so many trees and mountains in Washington that one cannot help but feel calm.

Somewhere between Seattle, WA and Coeur D’Alene, ID – after the Washington mountains – the beautiful scenery abruptly becomes a desert. It’s strange just how sharp of a transition it is; luckily it just as quickly reverts to greenery.

So, for the next week (or possibly more), I’ll be around northern Idaho. If I see anything noteworthy I’ll make a point to blog. Maybe I’ll even take a few pictures worth sharing.

I’ve been a graduate for five days now, and I already have great things in the works for this website of mine. I’m redesigning the whole place from the ground up! That’s all I can say for the moment, but keep an eye peeled for breathtaking updates shortly.

I’m not sure that it is very reassuring as an indication of career prospects, but that depends greatly on perspective. What I am sure of is that it raises some very important questions. Read:

http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0910/arts_sciences/philosopher.shtml

it’s worth the time, in my opinion.

Specifically, I think that the Subject hits a few ideas right on the head. Most importantly, to me:

“Too often,” he declares, “the defenders of free markets forget that what we really want is free men.”

and, following close behind:

Rejecting the false dichotomy between thinking and doing …

I’ve got another six months of institutionalized education, and then it’s off to the “real world”. That fact has me thinking about what I want to do, where I want to go, what kind of a person I should struggle to be. (I’m convinced that in a capitalistic system “being” is a struggle.) A mode of thinking that’s always been useful for me before is to look at what isn’t or shouldn’t be – and those thoughts leave me rejecting the corporate rat race. Sure, the money is nice – but the time stolen is irreplaceable. The exploitation is insulting and the alienation nauseating. I’m with Marx on at least one idea, alienation is not good: I want to have a connection with what I make. And I do want to make things. Those things don’t necessarily have to be tangible, but they ought to be perceptible.

There’s something about being a cog that just upsets my very being. The quote on “free men” speaks to me loudly and clearly. It’s hard for me to believe that the idea could ever be received with dismissal. Which leaves me wondering if it ever is, or if the more pressing demands of life (hunger, shelter, etc.) simply push the more philosophical and principal-based ‘necessities’ clear out of the picture.

To what extent must rigorous thought, freedom, and “success” be opposed? Clearly, there are some of us out there who simply reject the existence of the opposition as an insurmountable obstacle, but why is that so rare? (Why does the story usually go like: pick two.)

Food for thought… (foreshadowing my future, albeit in an externally-inaccessible way.)

…or, alternatively, Why I Don’t Buy Cheap Bread.

For whatever reason, you’re on a mission to be frugal. You can’t NOT buy food, so you head on over to your local discount grocer. You proceed to buy grits, powdered milk, cheap hotdogs and then you reach for the cheap bread…

Ah, but should you? Well, you inspect the little tag with the price and then you probably notice two things 1) the squishy white enriched bread is cheaper and 2) the price per ounce is closer than you might have thought – possibly even in favor of the more expensive loaf.

So, what do you do? What metric do you use? loaves or ounces? The cheaper loaf, or the loaf that costs less per ounce? It plagued me for a good ten minutes a few years ago, and then I decided to go with the cheaper loaf. My initial reasoning was actually based on the slice metric, ie. cost per slice. Those long, squishy, cheap loaves of bread have more slices than their more expensive counterparts. This trumped, in my mind, even the price per ounce benefit of a few competing loaves.

So I mozied on home – particularly pleased with myself for making the frugally-intelligent choice of price per slice. Then I made a sandwich while reviewing the receipt. I was a genius! …

And I was still hungry – so I made another sandwich. By then end of sandwich number two I felt terrible. No, I didn’t over-eat. I realized I had mad a mistake, my metric choice was flawed.

You see, the better bread generally has more fiber and is heavier per slice. You eat one sandwich made with the more expensive bread and you’re satisfied. It takes two with the cheap stuff. That means you’re actually eating double the slices per meal, not to mention the cost of the extra sandwich fillings. That cheap white bread costs your more money than you realize.

Lesson learned – the proper metric is price per sandwich-meal. I’ve been eating more expensive (per loaf) bread ever since – and that’s why.

(This doesn’t necessarily hold if you’re a chronic snacker, or making sandwiches for someone that normally wastes half of them regardless, ie small children.)