Post-nasal drip notes and also Fucking Thanksgiving

I blew it this morning. I blew my top at son #3 Henry for missing the bus to school. Henry is mostly a self-starter, but he takes too long to get moving in the mornings, despite a fair amount of coaching. I had a very busy morning with work - see super bowl of produce below - wall-to-wall calls, starting early, product shortages, grumpy people in stores hustling their fool asses to help serve the ever-grateful customers on the USA. I yelled at my kid and now I feel awful for it. I gave him a ride to school, was back in my chair in 15 minutes, was not a big deal but I blew my top and got angry. Drinking some herbal tea is my calm-down method now. ALSO, I have the post nasal drip. Everyone has had a cold, now it's my turn. Taking care of myself, drinking tea and staying in for a few days. Fucking Thanksgiving.

Super Bowl of Produce.

Every year around this time, people in the produce world talk about the super bowl of produce, the time when food shopping peaks out in the US. Farmers in Washington, Oregon, California and Mexico have all been busting ass, growing tons and tons of EVERYTHING, getting ready ahead of the food-shopping mega-Holiday. we who work in wholesale see the crazy fluctuating pricing for commodities like cauliflower and leaf lettuce. pricing for these items is double what it was two weeks ago. broccoli is $60 but next week it will go down swiftly. cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions don't change as much since those crops store well. Produce is alive, in the process of dying. By handling it with care, storing it at the proper temperature and shipping it back out quickly, doing this we can slow that dying process so it can stay alive and pretty long enough to catch the eye of the consumer and be itself consumed. Success! I personally enjoy the frantic pace and sense of urgency that comes from trying to serve these poor bedraggled,hard working produce departments around Washington Oregon Idaho and montana. Enjoy produce responsibly, people and grow your own if you can. Peas!

My little corner of the world

hey it's another Friday. boy did I work hard this week. Thanksgiving time is the super Bowl of produce, as they say in The biz, and I can attest every year, it's the same - big orders product shortages pork quality not enough celery not enough green beans not enough this we ran out of herbs etc etc. it's okay. I feel like my job is just to communicate the reality of produce inventory to my mini retail customers. I think of it is helping people get the produce they need and it makes me feel good. I suppose I am the rare person who doesn't say they hate their job. I love my job. it's not a bad place to be in and I've worked many years to get here but I love wholesaling produce to retail customers. it's a lot of interesting hard working people to talk to. some of them are bland that some of them are quite interesting and creative all types musicians, artists, frustrated cartoon voice over artists. all of them working their ass off to stock that goddamn produce for those m************ yuppies so they can have a f****** organic Thanksgiving. hallelujah praise the Lord they raise our glass and cheer. I make sure to think positive thoughts about Seattle Seahawks even though I have no idea what the hell is going on in sports. tonight I am editing the three camera video from trouble Cuts practice last night. sometimes I do these things just to exercise and get better at doing it. every time I realize my mistakes. this time I used a couple different cameras one of them kind of sucked. I feel bad that Kylie and his base don't have very good lighting or resolution. okay good night bye. - Ed.

Installing updates 11/15 /22

today, for the first time, I'm doing my blog via voice control on my phone. I've never had luck logging in to blogger from my phone before, probably because I have too many Google accounts and linking them is brain work that I'm usually not prepared to do. this last week has been good. I was very happy to go see OS Mutantes on Sunday night. it always charges my spiritual batteries to see an incredible band live. I always knew the name of the band but now I know that Sergio Diaz is the main member, unchanged since 1966. at first became aware of Os mutantes after reading a book called Tropical Truth by the Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso some years ago when I still lived in Eugene. Tropical truth was Caetano's personal story but it also told the history of mpb, music popular of brazil, and the tropicalista movement that occurred after a dictatorship was installed in Brazil in the mid late 60s. if you're interested, there is probably a YouTube video with a good history of all the musicians and bands involved. my favorites of course were Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Os Mutantes. regarding the concert I saw the other night, Sergio Diaz is an incredible guitar player, his electric psychedelic shredding is right up there with artists like Carlos Santana or any of that psychedelic s*** from the '60s. he was old and fat and sat in a chair but his smile and manner we're very engaging. he spoke with the audience many times. although not all the songs or other style I prefer, the ones I recognized were incredible and the band was supple and beautiful with talented players in all positions. that's all I'm going to say in this long-winded blog today. until next time, ed. Below: Sergio Diaz and singer Esmeria Bulgari and Os Mutantes perform at the Alladdin Theater, POrtland, Oregon 13 Nov 2022

What does November even mean? 11/9/2022

Hey I went to Seattle last week for work. It was nice to hit the road in a rental hybrid Mitsubishi car-thing and go to visit various produce departments of Tacoma, Bonney Lake, Issaquah, Sammamish and Seattle. Yay, produce! Almost everyone I talked to was exhausted and complained of being short on labor. Ouch! I also saw loads and loads of people, customers, people in cars, people in homeless camps, people in hospitals. I did get a chance to see my brother Mike and it sounds like he is doing better and will likely recover from his head injury. It wsa hard to see my brother trying to connect sentences and forgetting words, but after a few hours he was talking and wording a lot better. Seattle itself is beautiful to me, with all it's crazy little neighborhoods and nooks and crannies, a mystery or tragedy around every bend. I didn't make much time for quality food like I normally do but I found a couple different tacos that I was glad to munch on. This week, I've been back to work with a vengeance and not had much time for art, music or chickens or gardens. I made time today since it was a quiter workday where i could take my 15 minute breaks and spend some time in the yard in the cold sun. Beautiful life - how long can this go? A pretty cool monument to flying saucers:

A classic and valid complaint:

Me and Mike in the hospital - he's feeling a lot better. Also a breakfast I ate.