I took our Prius in for its 12-month scheduled maintenance this morning. 4712 miles are on the odometer. Next Saturday will be The Green Machine's official first birthday.

I dropped the car off at the dealership at 9:00 this morning. I was told it will be ready around 3 this afternoon. I wasn't expecting it to be an all-day appointment, but then again, I didn't ask when I made the appointment. (I could go off on a tangent about patients at our clinic who get angry when they learn their PET scan will take four hours, but I won't. Maybe later.)

It's not a bad walk from the Toyota dealership to the nearest Capitol Hill bus, but I've decided to splurge and reserve a Flexcar and Phillip's assistance for the return trip this afternoon.

Paper or plastic? We choose "neither." I keep a canvas shopping bag in my briefcase or backpack. We keep a canvas shopping bag in the trunk of our car. We have several canvas shopping bags at home. When we walk into our neighborhood QFC, we pick up a hand basket - never a shopping cart. Sometimes, if we're buying just a couple of items, we forego the basket and carry our purchase to the checkout in our hands. Sometimes, we start out hand-carrying our items, find some things we hadn't planned on, and then use our canvas bag as a shopping basket. We then unload our bag at the checkout, so the cashier can scan our purchases and return them to the shopping bag. (It's a practice I saw all the time at the grocery store in the heart of Woerden, The Netherlands, by the way.) We do it all the time at our neighborhood QFC.

I stopped off at QFC on my way home from work today. I planned on hand-carrying a purchase of kiwi fruit and salad. Then I remembered that Phillip had asked for bread flour. My canvas bag became my grocery basket again. At the checkout, the cashier was one of the store managers. "I don't mean to hassle you." he said to me, "but I have to ask you to use one of our plastic baskets next time. What you just did could get you busted in a lot of stores for shoplifting. It's called 'concealment.'" I didn't argue with him, but it annoyed me. Phillip was even more annoyed when I told him the story. He was hassling me. It would be extremely difficult (I hope) to prove a shoplifting case before I'd even reached the checkout line. It was a bad ending to an otherwise alright day.

When I got home, I started thumbing through the latest issue of Wired magazine. (I hardly ever read it anymore.) In it, I saw an ad for the Phaeton, Volkswagen's new luxury sedan. This is a car that has an available 420 horsepower, 12 cylinder engine. Out of curiosity, I checked the web site, since the gas mileage wasn't listed in the magazine ad. It was tough information to find, but I learned that the Phaeton gets 12 MPG in the city, 19 MPG on the highway. (Of course, that means that in real life, it's worse than 12 MPG.) My day was getting worse. When did luxury become synonymous with wasteful? Why would a car need 420 horsepower?

I learned recently, on The History Channel, that the Ford Model A had a 20 horsepower engine. I thought that was pretty quaint, until my dad pointed out that people got around on eighteen fewer horses before automobiles arrived.

It seems like every time I look in a mirror, my peace sign earring (on loan from Phillip) is upside down. I don't know what that means.

The song stuck in my head this morning was "One Of Us" by Joan Osborne. As I walked across campus, I thought about the song's meaning. A few weeks ago, Phillip brought up that very question. We decided that it was a plea to treat your fellow humans with respect - since, after all, the stranger on the bus could be God. This morning, I came up with another (different?) meaning. Is it a suggestion that we think of God as a part of our daily lives, instead of a distant being in a heaven far away? I think the song may be asking if we would treat God differently if we could see God clearer. If God had a face / What would it look like / And would you want to see / If seeing meant that you would have to believe

Meanwhile, Frodo has arrived in Rivendell. It must have been ages since I last read the trilogy, because there is so much of the story that I had forgotten. (Truth be told, when we were on our way to see The Return of The King, it occurred to me that I couldn't remember exactly how the story ended.) Of course, parts of the book seem familiar because of the films, even though the two really are different beings. There are significant differences, of course, but so far I feel that Peter Jackson has made all the right choices in the translation he made.

Pet's email asked me why anyone would have a blog. Why keep a private journal that anyone can see, but which no one will ever find? I gave her the standard "it helps with writer's block" answer, but there are other reasons, I suppose. There is a desire to make a mark in the world, no matter how small. (Sort of a sophisticated graffiti?) There is my desire to learn about other cultures - I read other people's blogs - so why shouldn't I return the favor?

I was a part of the personal home page fad of the mid-90's. I actually thought my home page would make a difference, and I would receive a flood of emails from strangers around the world. I soon learned, of course, that it didn't work that way. My home page lasted longer than those of most of my friends, but toward the end, I was doing it mainly for myself. When I started this blog, I knew I was doing it for myself. No one will ever read it. I didn't bother putting an "email me" link on it. I'm not trying to make a difference, I'm not trying to impress anyone. If I do, fine - but that's not the point.

This is a dangerous line of thought, though. Does everything have a payoff? Is a hike wasted if it doesn't lead to a pot of gold? Is the pleasure in the producing, or in the product?

My 2004 tea/teasan log:

1. yerba maté, 1 January
2. genmaicha, 9 January
3. South African Rooibos (with honey crystals), 10 January
4. chamomile lemon herb, 15 January
5. Northwest blackberry, 17-19 January (at Karen & Beth's house)

Phillip bought me a bottle of Barq's root beer for the drive down to Olympia last Saturday afternoon. When I walked into Karen & Beth (and Ceilidh)'s kitchen holding a plastic bottle of mass-produced carbonated sugar, I felt a little like I was driving a gas-guzzling Hummer into a protected wetland. As much as I like to think of myself as environmentally aware, Beth & Karen's life, with their kitchen full of organic, locally grown, co-op food, makes my life feel extravagant. I don't think I threw anything away the whole weekend (even the Barq's bottle) - everything was either reused, composted, or sent to recycling. Their ecological footprints must be miniscule.

Dream Country was disappointing. I think Phillip shares my opinion. Compared to the previous two collections, each of the four stories in this one felt forced, and lacking in inspiration.