Jefflog

From this Seattle Times article:

In other action Monday, state lawmakers approved a measure declaring the Walla Walla sweet onion the official state vegetable. The measure was developed as part of a Kirkland junior high school teacher’s lessons on state government, and passed the House 95-1.

Rep. Mike Sells, D-Everett, cast the only dissenting vote. Sells said the ‘no’ vote was an early Valentine’s Day present to his wife, Gayle, who was in attendance and can’t stand the scent of onions.

Lawmakers were then invited to a free lunch of sausages flavored with the fragrant orb, prompting House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis, to declare: “It seems to me this bill is a lot about pork — pork sausages, that is, and I’m looking forward to lunch.”

Are onions really considered a vegetable? And after reading this story, can anyone take Washington State lawmakers seriously?

I’ve been a customer of E*Trade Bank for about six years, even before it was known as E*Trade Bank (it was named Telebank before E*Trade bought them out in 2000). I’ve always had great access to my account through the Internet, gotten higher-than-average interest rates for their checking and savings accounts, and used their free bill pay to easily pay most bills with a few clicks on the keyboard.

Another perk is ATM access. They have something like 15,000 ATMs throughout the country, usually in convenience stores, hotels, and the like. This is very useful when traveling, as it’s not hard to log into their website and find an ATM nearby. And, if you have to use another bank’s ATM, they won’t charge you a fee, although the other bank might charge you $1 or $2. With other banks, withdrawing from another bank will usually invoke an extra $1 to $2 charge.

The account has also been useful as I’ve moved from New Orleans to Seattle to Indianapolis. I would be hard pressed to find a bank that operates in all three areas, which would have meant opening and closing different accounts through the years. Going “virtual” means that I can keep the same account no matter where I live.

There is a downside to the virtuality: you can’t instant access to more cash than what the ATM will disperse, nor can you get change, free notary services, or anything else where access to a live human is useful. That’s why we maintain an account with a local bank as well. But, we probably use the E*Trade account for about 75% of our transactions.

• Traveling with a toddler is not recommended if it can be avoided. Some of the downsides:
  • Naptime means always eating takeout for lunch, and sometimes for dinner as well because everyone is so tired
  • The hotel room isn’t designed to be childproof, and your toddler doesn’t have the knowledge she’s gained at home about what is appropriate to touch and what isn’t.
  • Heading out to the convenience store twice a day for milk, since the hotel doesn’t have a refrigerator.
  • Both coming and going, the flight intersected Maggie’s normal sleep times. This made the travel unduly stressful, for both parents and her.
• February is a mixed-bag in terms of time to travel to Miami. It wasn’t crowded, but temperatures were mostly in the low 70s except for the last day. This week they’re seeing temps in the 60s so the trip could have been worse.
• Restaurants in Miami Beach were generally expensive and not terribly interesting. Part of this was due to our lack of choices — there are many fancy restaurants where taking a toddler or getting takeout was not an option. We were staying right next door to Emeril’s restaurant but couldn’t go.

  Seeing how many people were eating at a particular place wasn’t a good gauge for how good the food was; in fact, the two most-crowded places we went had the most mediocre food. Come to think of it, that can be true of several of the “chain” restaurants around here…

  Two good places we ate: Miss Yip Chinese Cafe, a local chain serving authentic Chinese food, and San Loco, a “cheap eats” Mexican place and highly recommended.

• The Super Bowl isn’t very popular among the Latino population; we thought that restaurants wouldn’t be very crowded on Super Bowl Sunday, but they were all doing great business, without a single TV in sight. My guess is that the World Cup might be more of a draw.

We returned from a four-day vacation to Miami Beach last night. I’ll write more about the trip when I have more time, but before I post pictures, I should share some news with my readers.

Hong and I are expecting a baby boy in June. This, in fact, was the impetus for the vacation, well knowing that trying to make such a trip with two small children would be insane. Indeed, it was crazy enough with just one child in tow. It’s nice to get back and “relax” at work.