New post over at Jew and Julia… here’s an outtake:

What is the point of food if it isn’t satisfying?  I will admit that I’ve been struggling with my weight recently, and spending time feeling deprived.  Just recently, I decided that I am simply no longer going to waste calories eating food that I don’t enjoy.  Life is too short… but I’ve already said that.  I may wind up eating less, but I will wind up more satisfied.

Jew and Julia | SatisFAT-ion: how I learned to stop worrying and love the schmaltz.

Containing a capital letter or two | dooce®.

I am not a regular Dooce reader, but I think that this story about customer service, the power of the consumer and the internet, the serious situation that is sleep deprivation in new mothers, and channeling these forces for the good of humanity; needs to be read, and widely.

Maybe I’ll just go to sleep.

City Brights: Rich Lieberman : Hello ‘Michael Jackson news’–goodbye ‘Health-care debate.

I saw this link and just thought, hmm, what does ‘medical homicide‘ have to do with our health care system? I don’t know how the prescription drug abuse problem factors in to a national health care debate, but I think it should.

I think it’s a sign of how jacked the American relationship is with health care that Jackson died due to a prescription obtained from and administered by a physician, but no one sees it as related to health care at all.  (Okay, maybe in this case it should be called “health manipulation.”)

We have a system where the very rich can pay for custom medical requests, to the point where celebrities die every so often from misuse of “legally” obtained prescription drugs.  And on the opposite end of the earnings spectrum, people who can’t afford health care at all.  Health care vs. Money, a struggle that’s killing patients at every pay scale.

I truly believe that just because one has a medical license, is paid and follows technically correct procedure for administering drugs doesn’t mean it’s right, ethical or legal to do so.  Doctors have an ethical and legal responsibility to protect the lives of their patients, and I think this includes even when they are paid highly to fill patient orders.  If I ask for a drug just because I saw a cute ad on TV, I expect my doctor to advise me of potential risks and to refuse my request if it puts my life in danger.  Call me crazy.

No wait, call it the Hippocratic oath.

Michael Jackson died.  You may have heard.

Aside from initial nostalgia for the defining cultural presence of my childhood, the liking of whom decided one’s coolness in the first through third grades, this is not life-changing news.

What is significant is the self-awareness I discover upon reflection.  In the past few days I’ve become pretty emotional, because the way I see people reacting to the death of Michael Jackson isn’t something I like.  It’s bringing out some of the uglier instincts of humans, and I don’t like seeing this in people I like and people I love.  (Or myself, but I’ll get to that below.)

So when someone wonders aloud how we can make this enormous hoopla mourning a, yeah, brilliant musician and showman who was more importantly a child molester, I get upset.  I’m not upset because of the facts of the situation, necessarily, because neither I nor anyone I know was there to tell me what happened to any of the kids whose families sued MJ for alleged child abuse.

But I can say that I’m human, and would hate to know that when I die what will overshadow any positive legacy I leave is gossip and mudslinging about my mistakes, when gossip and mudslinging do not change the past.

It’s smart to take the Michael Jackson cases and say to oneself, how can I use this to improve my life?  Can I make sure my kids are safe and with trustworthy adults?  Absolutely.

Does it change anything to trash Michael Jackson as a child molester?  Does it make any kids anywhere safer to say that Michael Jackson’s musical legacy is a pittance compared to the charges leveled against him?  Absolutely not.

Incidentally, at the time that these thoughts were arising in my head, I had been reading The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs.  In it, he attempts to be a complete literalist in following the laws of the bible, both the Hebrew and Christian texts.  Having already been troubled by the gossip surrounding Michael Jackson’s passing (and jokes even I had made at his expense throughout adolescence which I regret) I was intensely interested in the day he spent reflecting on the many prohibitions against gossip which occur in the bible.  He specifically mentions Psalms 34:13, “Keep your tongue from evil,” Ephesians 4:29, and the Talmud, but there are others even within the bible itself.

He repeatedly struggles to keep from saying anything negative about others, and it made me aware of how much humor is made at the expense of others.  How much time we spend hashing out the faults of others for no purpose other than to entertain.  (I have enough faults of my own, why do I need to expound on the failings of other people?)

Of course, my own reaction to others’ gossip, especially on the topic of Michael Jackson, has been problematic.  I haven’t been shy about sharing my opinions of gossipers, and in this regard I’m just as bad as they are.

I’m reminded of the Denis Leary song, “I’m An Asshole.”  Gossiping about the unchangeable past is probably behaviour we all could all stand to excise from our daily habits.  In my quest for “fairness” or something, my outing the gossipers is just as bad.

If I don’t have something nice to say, next time I just won’t say anything.

And maybe I’ll go read some world news headlines, for a little practical grounding.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship of a blog to other kinds of media, especially Twitter.

This comes as part of two related trains of thought: what does Twitter really *do*, exactly?  And more importantly, what am I doing with my life?

You may wonder how everything I’ve written thus far are related.  Let’s discuss.

1) What does Twitter really *do*, exactly? I started down this particular path when news from Iran began unfolding primarily over Twitter channels.  Twitter is an online outlet that until recently I hadn’t been using much, and to be honest I haven’t determined my thoughts or feelings about it.  It’s quite handy for blurting things and pictures out onto the internet as they’re happening.  I’m able to absorb bite-size updates from a distinctly different circle of friends than the ones on Facebook or within blogging circles.  And I’ve recently started following entities (websites, news outlets) in addition to the individual Twitter feeds I’d been following for a longer time.

This is what led me to explore the interplay between Twitter and my blog.  To that end, I’ve created a new Twitter ID, @cheryl_katz, which will truthfully probably contain most of the content that had previously been blurted through @cinediva – now with more brand/identity and domain-matching consistency!  And maybe with fewer gory details of my personal life.

To these ends, I’m conducting some informal research to learn what there is already catalogued out there about the use of Twitter in internet marketing, especially but not limited to the blog world.  Here are some links I turned up, for the curious:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/5-ways-to-use-twitter-for-good.html
http://bethkanter.wikispaces.com/twitter_primer
http://blog.mskpetigo.com/2008/04/tweets-or-blogs-personal-perspective.html
http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2008/08/the-creation-of-twitter-best-practices-round-1/
http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/01/25/35-twitter-tips-from-35-twitter-users/

I have no comments to share on these, as yet, but they’ve been open in Firefox tabs for a few days and I’ve been noshing casually on them.

Which leads me to my second purpose:

2)  What am I doing with my life? You might suspect that a snappy Google search isn’t turning up handy results, and if you suspected that, you’d be right.  But this question relates to Twitter in the simple sense of being a marketing element on the internet.  Once upon a time, on- and off-line marketing for a fast-growing startup web-based software company were projects of my daily concern.  I got pregnant, hired and trained a replacement, took a maternity leave, and when I returned to work a year later had entirely different hats, not within my area of “expertise” so to speak, to wear for the sake of the company.

But one day, now, I’m going to want to re-enter the workforce somewhere within my vast and very flexible comfort zone.  In my confident moments, I’m aware that I can (and have done in the past) jump into any role and quickly acquire the necessary skills.  I’ve proven over five years and four job titles within our former company that I am easily adaptable and readily able to hit the ground running.  I am very good especially at establishing a department and hiring the right person to take it to the next level.

I bring this up mostly to illustrate that while I spend a lot of time considering what I “can” do given my skills and experience, the more pertinent question is what a) do I want to do and b) am I “in shape” to do?

a) is a far harder question.  b) is an answer entirely within my control.

So I’ve decided to spend some of my free time pursuing opportunities through volunteer efforts and pro bono work to exercise elements of my eclectic skill set as it interests me to do so.  I’ll be helping out with our synagogue website and published materials in various ways, working for a former colleague on projects of interest to him and professional benefit to myself, and I will focus my efforts to develop my blog both creatively and functionally.  I’m working out some muscles that to be honest are a little rusty and atrophied, but the knowledge is still in there, and I have a reassuring ability to learn stuff for doing things.  To bring it back around to the beginning – I’ll be starting with Twitter.

I found this quote through Metaquotes on LiveJournal:

Yes, go ahead and support Israel all you like, but don’t do it because enough Jews there will cast ‘Summon Jesus.’  (Link.)

Besides the RPG-lingo chuckle, and general agreement with the sentiment in this line – the original post has an interesting take on the appropriation of Jewish stuff for generally non-Jewish purposes.  I’ve had thoughts in similar patterns, but haven’t condensed them to expression point just yet.

Tiny Art Director.  This website just about killed me with laughing.  Also, I truly believe it is a flash forward into the snarky comments Sami will be able to make for me and Ben in the future.  (See “About the Tiny Art Director” in which she says, “I want Daddy to go away on a trip.”)

So…. maybe not so far in the future.  Today Sami told me, “You BAD mama!”

I was like, “Um, what?  Bad mama?”

She revised, “No, you BAT mama!  I’m Batman… GIRL hahahaha.”  (It was pretty maniacal.)

Also, at bedtime, she says, “I don’t want HIM in here.”  Him = Daddy.  We seriously can’t please her.

Clearly she needs a job.  Hopefully a good one like the Tiny Art Director.

I made these lemon bars this weekend and they were amazing.

I went to IKEA today, and I hope that someone will remind me next time that whenever I go I want to stab out my eyes with one of their stylishly designed carving forks.  I went in looking for kitchen shelves.  They were out of stock.  I also spied a new set of dishes, but decided to wait for Ben’s approval since he’s expressed that he’d like to be included in some domestic matters; and I observed a few options for kitchen island/cart ideas that might work for additional baking surface space that I have found myself desperately needing.

I left, however, having purchased nothing.  The process of navigating the store was so frustrating (normally I go with the flow of their floor plan, but today I had objectives, people, ‘kay?) on a day when  I just wanted to be in and out.  No such luck.

My schedule this week and weekend sort of necessitate that I move up my running schedule by a day, so I need to squeeze in 30 minutes of running that I otherwise would do tomorrow.  I’ll probably also move Thursday up to Wednesday and somehow squeeze in an extra run day this week.

In running news, I did a series of hill intervals on Thursday, rested Friday and Saturday, and when I did my Sunday run (3 miles, it’s a rest week) I was not just measurably but palpably faster.  On the order of a whole minute per mile.  It was much cooler than it had been on previous recent runs, and also a shorter run, so these are also factors, but it is nice to see some results – theories in action, I love it!

That’s about all the news that’s fit to print today, so far.

(Yup, Ethiopian food again.)

In the spirit of, you know, running with a theme for the entire week, I decided to work the berbere spice blend I threw together a few days ago and rock out with my bad self and $2.50 worth of round steaks which I pre-rubbed with the berbere spices.

I sauteed onions in a tablespoon of canola oil until they were just translucent, then added spices to coat. Sauteed another 30 seconds until well coated, stirring a lot. Removed 90% of the onions from the pan then added the beef strips and cooked them for a good 10-15 minutes, flipping every 5 min or so. I tossed in some more spice blend just for fun, and when I thought the scent was starting to wear off.

After the meat was cooked through, I removed all of the onions and beef from the pan and combined them with the onions I’d removed before. Then I was left with a crusty, spicy, cast iron skillet. Not one to let concentrated flavor go to waste, I threw in some club soda and stirred/scraped the bottom of the pan until most of the crusted-down spices came up. After a few minutes I had a dark brown, tasty sauce reduction which I poured off onto the beef and onions.

Not to be outdone, not even by myself, I made a vague facsimile of injera. I had no teff flour, so I used a mixture of white and whole wheat flours, and added club soda for additional bubbling action. (Recipe here.) I am not crazy about this recipe and will probably try another quick version before I get off my butt and just make some damn teff sourdough starter a few days ahead of when I know I’ll want injera.

So tonight I served up the lentils from Monday, the greens from Tuesday and my approximation which is almost dead-on authentic zilzil, along with pancakes that were super bubbly but not at all injera-like.

The lentils got better after each day in the fridge as leftovers. And this was probably one of the tastiest dinners I’ve had at home in a long time.

The Case Against Breast-Feeding – The Atlantic (April 2009).

I’m a little bit gobsmacked about this article.  It’s one thing to feel suckered into nursing children, especially if you expected miraculous results.  It’s entirely another to go on and declare nursing essentially a hoax, a clever ruse designed to keep women chained to their homes and their babies.

Perhaps what we really want is a world where nursing is an easier choice?  One where moms aren’t made uncomfortable for feeding their babies in public, where moms have time and space for pumping at work if necessary, and one where everyone is better educated about the place of breastfeeding in a family.

Then it could be a personal choice of how to feed one’s child, not a choice under duress from the healthcare conspiracy accusing people of being bad parents whether they choose breast or bottle.  Imagine that!