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Alphabet Soup

I've been married for 2.5 months now, and I'm still tackling the name change issue. I've known for a very long time that I want to keep my birth name as a part of my married name. I love the history behind the name Sembera and its rarity in the US. I love that one can google my name and know that everything written about Megan Sembera is about me. (Good thing there are no skeletons in my closet.) I like that a hyphenated last name will provide me with some professional continuity. Finally, I love the symbolism of a hyphenated last name - not a changeover of families but a merging of the two.

But the internet is scaring me. Apparently many people who hyphenate regret it down the line. Some computers don't recognize the hyphen as a character, banks and credit card companies have a hard time getting it right, women lament the problem of characters and fitting a lengthy last name into required field. Ahh!

My other option is to make Sembera my middle name and lose Alison, my current middle name. This makes me a bit sad though as my parents went through much deliberation to name me Megan Alison, and I even went by Alison for a short time in grade school when Megan became too common. Alas, my heart wants to be Megan Alison Sembera-Peters. I'm giving myself a deadline of 24 more hours....stay tuned for the oh-so-exciting final decision :)

Kids - Gotta Love Em

My wedding photographer's ten year-old son created this adorable blog. It

1) Cracks me up
2) Amazes me that ten year olds are growing up blogging!

Cute Captioned Cats

Hot Rod

Really??

This TWO THOUSAND NINE Dockers ad really pushes my buttons. Some ad man's been fantasizing about the Mad Men days too much.


Here's a redo and commentary that feels a little more accurate.

Calling the Container Home

Chris and I are in the market for a home, and look what I found today! I don't know how I'm just hearing about these, but WOW - shipping container homes :)

My grandparents had a container on their property in New Orleans. Grandpa was a farmer, and he used it to store tools, tractors, crops, etc. All of us grandkids used to play in there, but we never thought about sleeping in there. But if it would have looked like this...

...I don't think we ever would have left!

If you've ever been to a major port, you know how many shipping containers exist in this world. What a great secondhand use. And they are earthquake, hurricane and fire resistant. Some of these homes are designed and delivered (all-in-one of course) for only $17,000! And of course they are extemely portable.

Here are a few really neat homes.






...And this one is a DORM in Amsterdam

See more shipping container homes here and here.

You Are What You Eat by Mark Menjivar

This photo essay of Texans' fridge contents is fascinating. My favorite one is from a cook in West Texas:


Thought I would add our fridge to the collection:

No snakes...rather boring.

Change the World with Every Bite

I finally watched Food, Inc. and highly recommend it. The documentary continues the conversation started by The Jungle in 1901 and continued by Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma in recent years. It presents good background of the issues surrounding our food: foodborne illness, corporate bullying, employee safety and protection (or lack thereof), corn subsidies and the resulting pervasiveness in our food, animal welfare, early onset diabetes and obesity, poverty's affect on diet and health, genetic engineering, oligopoly and government lobbying, death of the small farmer, the blurring of industry and regulation, cloning...


Food, Inc. did a great job of reminding me that my dollars are my power. I've made many informed choices about what I choose to eat and not eat, but there's still room to improve for sure. Choose education over ignorance, friends. In the words of the filmmakers, "change the world with every bite!"

Pimp My Ride, Hyde Park Edition

P.S. Look who's driving...

For the Rest of Us

*Also notice the Erring of Grievences board below. Love my neighbors.

The Greenest of the Green

National Geographic recently published its list of the 25 Greenest Cities in the US. I'm proud to call Number Two home! Here's a glimpse of what the Top 25 municipalities are doing.

1. Eugene, OR (score 9.0375, pop. 137,893)
- Sustainable business incubator
- Renewable energy supplying 85% of city's power
- Extensive wetlands program

2. Austin, TX (score 8.5325, pop. 656,562)
- Green Builder program
- Smart growth initiative
- Committed to solar power

3. Portland, OR (score 8.24, pop. 529,121)
- Green building
- Excellent public transport
- Smart growth

4. St. Paul, MN (score 7.805, pop. 287,151)
- Green space makes up a quarter of urban area
- Significant greenhouse gas reductions
- Affordable housing

5. Santa Rosa, CA (score 7.785, pop. 147,595)
- Green building program
- Clean air and water
- Bicycle paths and lanes

6. Oakland, CA (score 7.3675, pop. 399,484)
- Building local food production
- Green building ordinance
- Public transport

7. Berkeley, CA (score 7.285, pop. 102,743)
- Green building requirements for municipal construction
- Well used public transport system
- Community gardens

8. Honolulu, HI (score 7.055, pop. 371,657)
- Clean air and water
- Biomass power generation
- Green building standards

9. Huntsville, AL (score 7.035, pop. 158,216)
- Green space makes up one-third of urban area
- High public transport use
- Excellent public education program

10. Denver, CO (score 7.0325, pop. 554,636)
- Greenprint Denver, sustainability initiative
- Large hybrid municipal fleet and nation's largest light rail system
- Clean water and access to wilderness

11. Boston, MA (score 6.99, pop. 589,141)
- Green building
- Excellent public transport
- Smoking ban

12. Lexington, KY (score 6.785, pop. 260,512)
- Comprehensive growth management plan
- Clean air
- Smoking ban

13. Springfield, IL (score 6.7225, pop. 111,454)
- Clean air and good water
- Green design
- Green spaces

14. Irvine, CA (score 6.72, pop. 143,072)
- Comprehensive green building program
- Smoking ban
- Pedestrian oriented

15. Cambridge, MA (score 6.72, pop. 101,355)
- High rate of public transport use
- Green design
- High percentage of green space

16. Anchorage, AK (score 6.705, pop. 260,283)
- Excellent air and water quality
- Smoking ban
- High public health

17. Syracuse, NY (score 6.66, pop. 147,306)
- Good air
- Smoking ban
- Commitment to reduce greenhouse gases

18. San Francisco, CA (score 6.6, pop. 776,733)
- Municipal composting
- Green design
- High percentage of renewable energy use
- Very high public transport use

19. Minneapolis, MN (score 6.58, pop. 382,618)
- City-specific minimum wage
- Smoking ban
- High percentage of renewable biomass energy

20. Milwaukee, WI (score 6.5125, pop. 596,974)
- Green housing development
- Green space

21. Rochester, NY (score 6.43, pop. 219,773)
- High percentage of renewable energy
- Clean air
- Smoking ban

22. Albuquerque, NM (score 6.3475, pop. 484,607)
- Clean water
- Smoking Ban
- Wind power

23. Ann Arbor, MI (score 6.2875, pop. 114,024)
- High percentage of public transport and bicycle commuters
- High yard waste recover
- Green space

24. Seattle, WA (score 6.115, pop. 563,374)
- Large number of green buildings
- Very high percentage of hydroelectric power use
- Clean air and smoking ban

25. Kansas City, MO (score 6.055, pop. 441,545)
- Clean water
- City specific minimum wage
- U.S. Mayors Climate Protection signatory

Zen

Teardrop Envy

After a half-cross country trek to Florida and back for Thanksgiving, I overdosed on my fill of mega-RV sightings.



I can try to be understanding. Maybe if you spend half of the year in a Rio Grande Valley RV Park like this one and never leave your spot and need a certain "standard of living", I'll let you slide by. But judging by the huge spike in sightings I see during holidays, I think people are actually using these things to get around. Maybe it's just me, but what a nightmare! It would be so limiting.

I've never traveled in an RV, but I think it could be a lot of fun...under appropriate circumstances. For example, if I was traveling with small children in a very cold area, camping might be a little tough. Or if I was an elderly woman traveling alone I might want more than a spot on the ground.

In fact, I met an elderly widow about five years ago at Big Bend. She was a very sweet octogenarian traveling alone across North America. Her husband had died years before, and she stayed at home, deeply depressed for several years. They had plans to see the country together, and he died before they could set out. Once she moved past her grief, she bought herself a little teardrop and set out solo.

Her teardrop was the first I'd seen in person, and I instantly fell in love. Teardrops are tiny campers for one to two people, complete with queen size beds, heaters, and kitchens. As you can see, you don't need a huge vehicle to tow a teardrop.





After I've won the lottery or sold some photos to National Geographic, I may just purchase a teardrop for my little family. Certainly can't hurt to dream :)

Kudos for the City of Austin

Heard some good press about my employer, the City of Austin, today. The League of American Bicyclists has given the City a 2009 "Bike Friendly Business" award based on its efforts to encourage and support bicycle commuting. What's significant about this honor is that we were the only city given the award (yep, we actually beat Portland at something!). In fact, the only other government entity to earn the award was DC-based National Parks Service. Most award recipients were environmentally focused or active-minded businesses.

Austin's own Bicycle Sport Shop earned the highest level award (no surprises there).

I still long for the day when I can transfer downtown and take advantage of the bike perks and PE/health program as a whole. Pilates, spin, swimming, and marathon training classes, farm to work goodies delivered to your office, discounted Austin Java downstairs, and Lady Bird Lake across the street. I could hang. :)

Simple Pleasures

I get the impression that that some children today have difficulty entertaining themselves. Today I watched my cousin's children have a blast with none other than a mop bucket on wheels.






A boogie board also became a great Florida-style sled.



Of course the boys had some modern-day diversions as well...



...followed by nap time with Daddy.

Daaaaaaaaaang!

Wow, this photo took my breath away. This is what the Obamas wore when hosting their first official dinner yesterday.


Source: http://jezebel.com/5412384/champagne-wishes

My Kind of Dog Races

I'm thankful for moments like this.

*Dance Parters For Life*

One of my favorite things about being married =]

Eleven Days

...till I'm the Mrs.

It's That Time of Year

Love my neighbor's scarecrow.

300 Reasons to Love Being 30

I turned thirty a few weeks ago and recieved the most perfect present from my fiance and both of our families. They all came together and bought me a Nikon D90 SLR. I'm so stoked beyond belief. I haven't had a chance to learn how to use it at all with the wedding being 2 weeks away, but I can't wait! Let's just say that this blog (or a suped up blog 2.0) may become more photo-centric turn in the near future. And I couldn't be happier about that.

On her first outing, Nikky D gave me over 300 reasons to love being 30, and I'm sure there are at least two billion more to come.

Chris also had some fun with Nikky D on her first outing, Pedernales State Park

hehe

Thank you, President Obama

Today is a great day for our nation's students, yet political divisions are distracting. President Obama is addressing American students at 11:00am today to tell them directly how important their education is, not only for their own futures but also for the future of our country. Only two Presidents (Reagan and Bush 1) have ever addressed students directly in this way. From what I've read, Bush's student speech proposal was also met with significant opposition from parents whose views differed from his own politically.

My last year in the classroom (before beginning graduate school) was 2007, when Obama and Clinton were beginning their runs for presidency. My class that year was made of 100% minority children, about 85 to 90% of whose families relied on government assistance for food and other necessities. Almost every child was from a broken home, and at least 3 of my 26 students that year had fathers who were currently in prison. In the past two years, one of the fathers of one of those students murdered the child's mother, and one of my female students is now pregnant. So many of the students were victims of abuse and had unbelievably low self-worth.

I realize that these facts may seem extreme for people who haven't worked in the education system or with government or nonprofit services that benefit those at need in our country. But my classroom was not an anomaly. Every other classroom at my school had similar issues and continues to. Austin is not an aberration either. These challenges are plaguing our country's children, and it is definitely impacting our overall level of education and our country's workforce. Our dropout rate remains around 30% (thirty percent!), and our children continue to lag behind children in other developed nations, especially in math and science. Teenage pregnancy is a problem now more than ever, and the percentages of young minority males in our correctional system greatly outweighs the similar percentage for white males. These are deep, complex problems in our society.

I applaud President Obama for speaking directly to students today. He has spoken to teachers, to parents, and now he is working on motivating the students. He's asking them to take responsibility for their education, their future. And I think it's unfortunate that many children will miss out on his speech today because their parent(s) disagree with the President's stance on health care, the economy, or the Middle East. I would have felt the same way if I was a teacher during Bush 1's speech. Our young people are capable of listening and having discussions within their classes following the speech, just as we adults watch televised debates and later discuss. In fact, I hosted classroom debates in 2007 with my fifth graders regarding presidential candidate agendas. These children were not only extremely motivated and excited about the presidential candidates, but also eager to discuss what they liked and disliked about their platforms. And the icing on the cake was to hear one student explain to the others in an "I Told You So" moment that yes, Black people and women were in fact allowed to be president in our country.

President Obama is a role model to millions of children. He was a role model well before he became president. And he is doing the right thing by drawing on his own experiences as a child to create a commonality with many of our kids today and give them hope for their own futures. If little Barack Hussein Obama can do it, so can they. And believe me, they are listening.

Read Obama's speech to students here (pdf file).

Emily's Crazy Last Hurrah in Austin

I meant to link to this a while ago, but better late than never! My adored friend Emily moved to DC a few weeks ago [ weep weep :( sigh ], but before she left she had to fit in a great story to remember our lovely town by. Here tis! Her story even made it on to the CapMetro blog. Go girl, you and your bike rule. We miss you both.

Emily's Going Away Fiesta

$ign of the Times

While we are not the only such culture, Americans are widely known for our need for instant gratification. The other American stereotype (that often goes hand-in-hand) is our ultraconsumption and widespread occurrence of living beyond our means. Of course we're seeing this played out with our current financial crisis.

I read today that Annie Leibovitz, the iconic photographer, is $24,000,000 in debt. I'm a fairly big fan of her work and I really was shocked to learn how a person so successful in her professional affairs can still live a false reality when it comes to finances. Here's the link to the excellent New York Magazine article about Annie's predicament:

http://nymag.com/fashion/09/fall/58346/

I stand firm in my belief that financial education classes should be compulsory components of public high school and college education.

Willie by Annie Leibovitz

Trust and Deceit

After undergrad, I got a job at the headquarters of a national department store. My first position was filling in for an employee away on medical leave due to cancer. I grew to know this particular employee very well as she would come in some days between chemo treatments and we would work side by side. She was a sweet woman who seemed to be getting the short end of the stick when it came to life. Her husband had died, leaving her with five children. Shortly after she became sick with cancer. She was a low wage employee and had a hard time making ends meet.

Luckily, everyone at the company looked out for her. They would take turns making dinners for her to take home to her children. They frequently collected cash donations to help her cover the cost of her husband's funeral, her medical bills, and her children's needs. After some time, she met a new man and got married, and employees raised plenty of money to help pay for her small wedding. One of the dress designers even made her a one of a kind wedding dress.

Although I am generally not happy working in the private sector and this job definitely wasn't fulfilling for me, I really appreciated the generosity and sense of family that employees felt for each other. Even though the massive office housed almost 2,000 employees, we all still felt an important part of our own teams.

Which is why discovering the truth of this employee's story was so devastating for us.

No dead husband.
No new husband.
No cancer.
No children.

The first crack in her story came out when another employee received a strange call from the woman during a day she was supposed to be at work. Another call, then another, but no truth - just strange hangups. Finally, she admitted that she was in jail and begged the other employee not to tell anyone. She had been mistaken for someone else and needed money to get out.

The county we worked in kept all inmate records online, and this employee was smart enough to do some searching. It turned out our lady had been a first class con artist and had a rap sheet as long as Mike Tyson's. She had been in trouble for forging checks, grand theft auto, identity theft, and plenty of other major crimes. And somehow, while working at our company, she again had tricked the insurance company into thinking she had cancer and was collecting insurance money while also being paid normally while out on "medical leave."

Finding out this woman had betrayed all of our collective trust was absolutely overwhelming. Not only because everyone had given this woman significant amounts of money, but because we trusted and loved her. We felt sympathy for her hard knocks and those of her children. And we had special places in our hearts for her; we considered her one of those people we wanted to protect in life.

Although these unfortunate events took place in 2001, I've been going over and over them in my mind the past few days. On Monday morning, one of my coworkers was placed on "indefinite administrative leave" and went home immediately. We have no further information, but all I can think about is how genuinely sweet she is and how it will be so devastating to hear of her being capable any kind of deceit or wrongdoing in her professional role. The news should come tomorrow, and I find myself unable to fall asleep tonight. I so hope I am overreacting. I need her to be an honest person! Let's hope there is some explanation and I'm worried about nothing.

Rant

I work in the Lakeway area (for those of you not from Austin, it's a small affluent town on the lake) and am very accustomed to seeing parking lots full of SUVs with one passenger each, usually each being a young mom in workout attire and plenty of makeup. But this lady's Sequoia just struck a nerve with me.

I understand that some people want to drill our country away, but I don't understand the emphasis on "paying less" for gasoline because of it. If one wants to pay less for gasoline, there are so many other options that would be more effective. The most obvious one to me: buy a different car. One that is smaller and runs more efficiently. You'll save money on the actual car and the cost to make it run. And you'll save money immediately rather than twenty years down the line when we've built more plants to refine more oil. Just saying.

PS. Because of this young lady's Sequoia and the many others out there, our grandkids might not know what a sequoia is. Or a tundra or bronco for that matter.


I apologize for my rant. Sorry. :)

Popsicle, Anyone?

It's been really hot in Austin lately. I think today we reached 105 degrees and it's not expected to change anytime soon.

Did you know that Austin's per capita water usage is higher than that of both Dallas and Houston? I know - completely shameful (although it's quite possible that Lance Armstrong alone pushed us over the edge last year).

As your friendly Austin Water Utility employee, just sending a quick reminder to think about your water usage so we can get through the summer without maxing out our water and energy. Here's a list of 100 ways to conserve water. Many of them are not only easy, but also have many benefits beyond the actual water savings. Cheers!

Snapshots of France and England

Chris and I returned from France and England this afternoon with thousands of photos and videos to remember our fun two weeks. I made a pact with myself on the plane that I would not TOUCH my photos until I hand in my final term paper of graduate school, which is due next Monday (and is currently non-existent). I've already let myself down by playing with my photos today, but this is it -- now it's really down to business!

Here are some of the non tourist-standing-in-front-of-a-monument shots. Trust me, there are plenty of those to go around too. Enjoy! More to come in a few weeks.

Girl posing for the cover of Vogue magazine, Kensington Palace, London

Swing dancers, Kensington Palace, London

Breakdancing rollerbladers, Hyde Park, London

Local sweets, Salisbury, England

Lovers in Paris

Le Tour Eiffel, Paris

Hitching a ride, Paris

Composer in City Hall, Manchester

Boys in a limo, London

Lady Hare and cathedral, Bath

Main Street, Salisbury

The London Eye

Watching sunset from The Eye, London

A grand entrance, Paris

Momma and babies, Hyde Park, London