Kurrs' Digital Tapestry of Words

I was originally going to title this "Moments of Happiness" but that would imply that they don't happen very often. Much like the LJ community, I've noticed that this is often the place where I merely bitch and moan about how hard my life is.

As an aside, this has been made decidedly worse by the fact that I just had the worst month health-wise I've had in 10 years. The real problem was that it really affecting my thinking and judgement parts of my brain. Last week was the first week in which I was able to learn for more than an hour straight. Before that, I was just stare into space, unable to concentrate, go home, collapse. Why didn't I see a doctor? Because I could barely think. I tried to think my way through it, but all I could come up with was "no fever, no pain, no vomitting, no bleeding fecal matter, c'on, where's my symptoms?". And then, when thinks actually got bad in the case of migraines and what-not, I couldn't even move. Then, I'd feel "better" and think it was over. Arg, cycles of broken. Grr.

Well, it's over now, and even then I was having quite a bit of happiness in my life, even if I wasn't able to express it (or much else for that matter) during the time period.

Sushi

Recently, I had sushi. This makes me so incredibly happy. The hardest thing to cut, out of all of the ethical decisions I've been making in my life to reduce the amount of negative impact I cause, has been the loss of raw fish. I'm not a huge cooked fish person, but the loss of the beloved uncooked creatures of the sea. The pain, the pain. I could give up meat, dairy, new clothes, lots of stuff, if I needed to, and not be too perturbed. I'm not a consumeristic individual and don't mind not receiving things that I think are unreasonable to expect for as cheap as they come in our society.

But, raw fish is soooooo goooooood. And recently, Tim discovered that Ki-Rin, the sushi place near him in New West, serves red (also known as skipjack) tuna. Now skipjack is one of the few breeds of tuna that is managed well with little bycatch and habitat effects. Like catfish, dungenesse crab, and a small handful of other sea creatures, there is no real reason (IMHO) to feel guilty about eating the little critters. And is was god. That was a typo, but a funny one, I'll leave it.

Change

I recently witnessed something that made me really happy. First, some backstory. My parents live in the area that's centered between the university and alma, along 10th. The community is built around that little strip. Now, the area is newly wed and nearly dead, for the most part at least, and therefore sees little change. When the Starbucks moved in across from the Safeway, at every break you'd see a whole slew of safeway workers in their little aprons drinking away at the 'bucks. One horrible company supporting another in a terrible little symbiosis.

Recently, a computer cafe opened up down the street from Starbucks, also across the street from Safeway. A neat little place called think! that's snazzy and not a franchise. They started to sell coffee that's organic and fair trade. Last week, I was going by on the bus, and you know what I saw?

A whole slew of Safeway workers in their little aprons drinking away at think! and not one sitting outside the Starfucks. And it made me happy.