Happy New Year!
Well, after a CRAZY and PARTYLICIOUS New Year's Eve, I am finally finally feeling coherent enough to blog.
Psych.
Our NYE was totally boring yet totally perfect. Healthy dinner, some netflix, and then we passed out at 9:30 p.m. I am still feeling sleep-deprived after lots of late nights and early mornings on the east coast (basically midnight-8 a.m., nothing drastic but Cour10ay totally needs her 9+ hours in order to be remotely nice/charming), so this was the best possible evening for me!
On to other peoples' more interesting lives...
I recently learned that, in the Reno hospital system, health-care workers are not allowed to call overweight people obese, overweight, fat, etc. The term is now officially "bariatric" (like geriatric but with a b). And, the hospitals have special 4XL-sized toilets (the size of a small hot tub), wheelchairs, beds, doorways, the list goes on. I guess this is important in Reno, where 55% of the population is "bariatric". If you don't believe me, just hang out for 10 minutes in the Trader Joe's/Big Lots parking lot.
I also recently learned one reason why the McMansion Explosion is so huge in Anne Arundel County, Maryland (and probably more than a few other counties). Thirty years ago, there were hardly any developments in the whole county. Basically everything that wasn't a town was farmland. Then farmers began to sell to developers... My mom's friend Ricky Davis had a farm where he raised cattle and crops, and hosted Future Farmers of America events. The farm was in his family for over 200 years. Recently, Ricky's neighbor farmer died and none of his family wanted to keep up the farm, so it was sold to a developer who put up 15 or so monstrosities with crappy landscaping (read: no trees, so everyone from the road could see how ginormous the houses were). The people who moved in started going over to Ricky's, complaining that the cows smelled, the farm machinery was unsightly, the FFA events were disturbing them, etc., and he needed to stop doing all that. Ricky fought back for a while but eventually he saw that things were only getting worse, so he too sold out to a developer and moved to Iowa (to farm in peace, I assume.)
It all makes me cry. It feels so unsustainable to me - continually bulldozing over land to make it into strip malls or housing developments where everyone gets a 4 car garage with a couple of acres of land. In Reno, which p.s. is in a DESERT, this land is usually landscaped with all kinds of east-coast plants that require lots of water, which by the way doesn't really grow on trees in the desert, so to speak. In Maryland, it's just making everything ugly, and contributing to the death of the Chesapeake Bay, which is another rant of mine that I will save for another blog.
At the moment I am quite happy to be in Incline, where homeowners have to jump through twelve hoops to do anything to their houses lest they adversely affect the environment (or their neighbors' lake view).
Whoa.... where did the "happy" of my post-title go?!
Psych.
Our NYE was totally boring yet totally perfect. Healthy dinner, some netflix, and then we passed out at 9:30 p.m. I am still feeling sleep-deprived after lots of late nights and early mornings on the east coast (basically midnight-8 a.m., nothing drastic but Cour10ay totally needs her 9+ hours in order to be remotely nice/charming), so this was the best possible evening for me!
On to other peoples' more interesting lives...
I recently learned that, in the Reno hospital system, health-care workers are not allowed to call overweight people obese, overweight, fat, etc. The term is now officially "bariatric" (like geriatric but with a b). And, the hospitals have special 4XL-sized toilets (the size of a small hot tub), wheelchairs, beds, doorways, the list goes on. I guess this is important in Reno, where 55% of the population is "bariatric". If you don't believe me, just hang out for 10 minutes in the Trader Joe's/Big Lots parking lot.
I also recently learned one reason why the McMansion Explosion is so huge in Anne Arundel County, Maryland (and probably more than a few other counties). Thirty years ago, there were hardly any developments in the whole county. Basically everything that wasn't a town was farmland. Then farmers began to sell to developers... My mom's friend Ricky Davis had a farm where he raised cattle and crops, and hosted Future Farmers of America events. The farm was in his family for over 200 years. Recently, Ricky's neighbor farmer died and none of his family wanted to keep up the farm, so it was sold to a developer who put up 15 or so monstrosities with crappy landscaping (read: no trees, so everyone from the road could see how ginormous the houses were). The people who moved in started going over to Ricky's, complaining that the cows smelled, the farm machinery was unsightly, the FFA events were disturbing them, etc., and he needed to stop doing all that. Ricky fought back for a while but eventually he saw that things were only getting worse, so he too sold out to a developer and moved to Iowa (to farm in peace, I assume.)
It all makes me cry. It feels so unsustainable to me - continually bulldozing over land to make it into strip malls or housing developments where everyone gets a 4 car garage with a couple of acres of land. In Reno, which p.s. is in a DESERT, this land is usually landscaped with all kinds of east-coast plants that require lots of water, which by the way doesn't really grow on trees in the desert, so to speak. In Maryland, it's just making everything ugly, and contributing to the death of the Chesapeake Bay, which is another rant of mine that I will save for another blog.
At the moment I am quite happy to be in Incline, where homeowners have to jump through twelve hoops to do anything to their houses lest they adversely affect the environment (or their neighbors' lake view).
Whoa.... where did the "happy" of my post-title go?!
Labels: enjoy the blog, environment, in my opinion, IV
posted by Courtenay at 1/01/2008
2 Comments:
I agree with your farmland-come-ugly developments rant. My cousin up in Indiana tells me that the many of the corn & soybean fields have been replaced with houses, which is kind of sad considering that my Dad grew up on a farm up there. I don't even know how many generations that land goes back, but things happen when people die and people move away. Don't even ask what's happening around where I live. I justifying our home choice by it being about 30 years old and still surrounded by trees.
I agree--it's sad to see the ugly houses go up. I know housing is necessary--but does it have to be so awful--and so big for 2-3 people? SHEESH!
I was under the mistaken impression that all people in Reno must be athletes like you and Greg! Guess I'm wrong eh? Wicked funny about Bariatric. Have you seen the "No OUtlet" signs. Someone out there thought "Dead End" was too negative! HA! Come ON!
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