Sep. 14: In which Jen rants a little

It’s Day #14 of our September Blog Challenge and today the topic is:

What has happened lately in the media that makes you want to rant?

Goodness, there are just so many things.

I guess marriage equality is a biggie for me personally—for several reasons, but mostly because I don’t like that some people are treated unfairly for no logical reason. Actually, a lot of the people who are doing the unfair treating think they have a very logical reason: because the Bible says so. Here’s the thing:

Having been raised in a church that claims it takes the Bible very literally—rest on the Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week, as specified in Genesis; avoid unclean foods specified in Leviticus 11; when people die they are dead, not in Heaven or Hell; ornamental jewelry draws attention to a person rather than God; one’s body is a temple, which has been interpreted as anti-alcohol, anti-drugs, anti-caffeine, etc.—I find this trail mix analogy to be perfect. In fact, I remember sitting in church around the age of nine, bored out of my mind during the sermon, and looking up the scriptures listed with each of the 28 fundamental Adventist beliefs. (What else could I do to make the time pass? I’d already circled all the words in the bulletin that had been said, and I giggled through the hymnal as I put “in the bathroom” after each title. Excuse me, but “He Lives” and “Who is He in Yonder Stall?” still give me the chuckles.) In my impromptu solo Bible study, I was surprised to find that there were some “rules” the church followed explicitly, but others they completely overlooked. Even at that age, I saw the inconsistencies between what the Bible told us to do and what we actually did. See, trail mix! Here are just a few examples.

In Leviticus chapter 12, it says that women are unclean for a week after they give birth to a boy and two weeks if it’s a girl—I guess girls are dirtier? Oh, and boys must be circumcised at eight days old. There would be far fewer arguments on cafemom.com if people just did what the Lord commanded.

Leviticus, chapter 19 has things to say about haircuts and tattoos.

27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.
28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.

In chapter 20 there’s a whole bunch of stuff about being put to death for cursing your parents (no one would ever make it past 17 years of age, for sure). And in chapter 21 we find out that God doesn’t like people with handicaps???

16 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
17 Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God.
18 For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous,
19 Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded,
20 Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken;
21 No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.

 

Hoo, boy.

I especially love this one: in 1 Timothy, the very book in which Paul condemns homosexuals (kinda; 1:10), he also says “bodily exercise profiteth little” (4:8) and “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities” (5:23). Sounds to me like Paul was a fat, drunk homophobe… so it totally makes sense that we follow every word he wrote.

If you’re using the Bible as the reason you don’t believe in marriage equality, then I call shenanigans. You gotta come up with something better.

As I said, it’s the discrimination part of being against marriage equality that bothers me most.

It’s weird, but I don’t think of my marriage as being interracial—Victor’s as white as white can be on the inside—but indeed, it is. There was a time when marrying outside of one’s own race was illegal too.

I look at these images and am awfully glad I wasn’t old enough to have an opinion at that time. I’m also glad I hadn’t met Victor and fallen in love but was forbidden to marry him. That would absolutely break my heart, for other people to tell me that I can’t marry the person I love. I would wonder why it’s even any of their business… how a white girl marrying an Asian boy could make anyone else’s marriage less special… how they can stand behind the Bible as the basis for these discriminatory beliefs, a book which also forbids divorce and adultery, a book that tells us to love one another.

Whether you question the Bible’s origins and interpretations or not, it’s hard to deny that Jesus Christ once walked the earth and that he was a pretty decent guy. In fact, Christians are named so because his followers are supposed to be Christ-like. Here’s what Jesus said about love:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. John 13:34

And that, my friends, is my rant for the day. I promise that tomorrow will be way less soapbox-y.

---

If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

Sep. 1: Moving

Sherilee and I have created a blog challenge! We’ve both been slacking on posting regularly to our blogs, so our goal is to post every day this month. We’ll write fun/interesting lists, tell some tales, share recipes, and more. Can we do it? I think we can! We’re starting with this topic:

Did you move many times as a child? How did that impact you, and does it still influence how you see the world today?

Jack asked me the other day how many places I’d lived, and then got bored before I was out of high school. The kids get a look on their faces when Victor or I start waxing nostalgic, like I’VE MADE A HUGE MISTAKE, and if we notice (which isn’t always, much to the kids’ dismay) we leave out most the details and stop talking.

So… I’m not gonna go through the list of every place I’ve ever lived, and I’m gonna define “child” in the above question as the years before I started college. That will shorten the post considerably.

1. I don’t remember living in the house in which I was born, but I visited it later because we knew the people who bought it.
2. The first house I remember was on Miracle Lane, in Medford, and we lived there until I was six-ish. I’m still in touch with some of the people we knew in that neighborhood. We lived in an apartment in Medford for a bit, too, before we moved to Portland.
3. When I was seven years old, we left our extended family in Southern Oregon and moved to Portland. We bought a new house in the Bethany area of Beaverton and I went to the public school for three years. My parents divorced during that time and Dad moved out. We stayed in the house another three-ish years—and I transferred to an SDA school—until Mom got remarried and we moved to the Walla Walla area.
4. We lived in a house in College Place for a year and a half; I went to two schools during that time. I got fed up with my step-dad’s complete jackassitude and, after ninth grade, moved back to Portland to try living with my dad.
5. We lived in a high-rise apartment building in downtown Portland. I thought it was pretty cool, being one of the few kids who lived in the building. I attended the same SDA school I had been at before.
6. After a year I moved on to the SDA high school in SE Portland. Dad decided we should live closer to the school, and we were there for two years until I graduated and left for college. Dad was really happy to see me go. Not like my friend Stephanie’s dad when she left for college, but close.

As far as impacting how I view the world today, I feel like it wasn’t moving that made such a difference as it was changing schools. I didn’t like being the new kid, not knowing anyone and feeling lonely and lost. Adjusting to each new school’s rules was less than fun. Going from a public school to a conservative SDA school was a culture shock in many ways, but then I went to a different SDA school that required girls to wear dresses every day—that was like going back in time a few decades. Sheesh.

Something else that was difficult about going to new SDA schools is that I was always lumped in with the other “divorce kids.” There was such a stigma back then (in Adventist circles). Some teachers would “tsk tsk” when they saw us; others would avoid us. A few were downright mean. (Isn’t that strange? It’s hard to believe life was like that and that we tolerated it.) But there were also the kind, accepting, nurturing grown-ups who knew that “divorce kids” couldn’t help being “divorce kids.” They made school a nice place to grow and learn.

My kids have lived in one house their entire lives, and have only switched schools when they’ve grown out of them. Staying in one place was never intentional, exactly, but since we haven’t been interested much in moving anywhere else, it’s how things have worked out for us. I’m glad Katie and Jack have that stability, even if they don’t yet realize its benefits.

One last itty-bitty comment:

I’m still in touch with friends from all of the different times (and locations) in my life, partly thanks to Facebook, but mostly just because I met some really great people over the years. While I admit that I wish life had gone a little differently at times, I’m grateful for the goodness that has come of these experiences, and the people who have stuck by me and stayed in my life. I know not everyone feels blessed by such a thing, but I definitely do.

If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September!

Oct. 26: A totally legitimate post

On nights like these, I miss Sabbath. There’s not much I regret about leaving my SDA upbringing, but having an excuse to take a day off and relax was pretty handy. All of the naps, none of the guilt!

Last night was the school’s multicultural fair that Shannon and I created pretty much from scratch. We should have just stolen an idea from the Internet, but instead we re-invented the wheel. Not the brightest idea, we repeatedly realized, but OH EM GEE, it turned out to be such a fun event! About a million people showed up—approximately 999,994 more than we expected—and families really seemed to have a great time. It’s so nice to start something new and then hear good chatter about it.

But it all wore me plum out. I’m absolutely exhausted and OH! What I wouldn’t give to spend a few days in bed, ignoring emails and texts and phone calls. But nooo, tomorrow I have to go to Jack’s football game at 1pm. After that I have to go to a pumpkin patch to buy 100 mini pumpkins for Family Night at 6:30pm. And at some point, I have to figure out a costume I can wear to Family Night that won’t get melted by the popcorn machine.

Since I have nothing interesting to say, here are funny things I’ve been collecting:

Enjoy your weekend, friends! If you have time, please nap the hell out of an afternoon for me.

Nov. 2: I wish I could quit you, cottage cheese loaf

Being raised Seventh-day Adventist had a great impact on the person I am now. When I say “great,” I do not mean “really cool,” but “huge.” For my family, every part of our lives had something to do with the church—Kathy and I went to SDA schools, Mom worked for the northwest headquarters, all our friends were fellow church members, Fridays were spent preparing for Sabbath, and Sabbath itself was typically Sabbath School + church + potluck + afternoon with friends + sundown worship. This is how many of our friends and fellow church members were too. The complete and total immersion in the church does absolutely nothing good for helping one live and relate to others in the real world, but some SDAs simply don’t care.

Adventists have what they call a “health message.” Part of the church doctrine is that they do not eat the unclean animals mentioned in Leviticus. Some church members take that further and are vegetarian or vegan. They say it’s for health reasons, but for a lot of them I suspect it’s just another way they can look down their noses at the worldly carnivores. Instead of eating meat, vegetarian SDAs eat a lot of Worthington-Loma Linda branded items that try to look like meat—most of them are soy-based and taste nothing like meat, but some omnivores pretend to enjoy this substitute. To call these people self-righteous is unfair; instead, I shall call them highly disillusioned and probably (hopefully) tastebud-less.

• Big Franks—“These canned vegan franks from Loma Linda resemble Polish sausage and have a spicy taste. Ideal for broiling and barbecuing!” Yes, they are ideal for barbecuing, if you don’t mind scraping most of them off the grill. They stick like you would not believe. Oh, and they might look like Polish sausage, but I assure you they taste nothing like it.
• Linketts, Veja-Links, Super-Links, Leanies—supposedly like hot dogs. They look right, but that’s where the similarities end. However, since real hot dogs are mostly pork lips and assholes, I can’t imagine these are any less healthy.
• Little Links, Saucettes, Prosage—breakfast sausage.
• Redi-Burger, Vege-Burger—dog food.
• Chili—dog food with beans.
• Tender Bits—yes, that is actually the name printed on the can. Are these the soy version of Rocky Mountain Oysters? There are also Tender Rounds.
• Skallops—these are supposed to be a substitute for sea scallops. They got the size about right, but not the color or texture or taste. Lots of people who weren’t raised on Skallops call them erasers. That’s the best description of their texture I’ve ever heard. I actually like Skallops, if they’re deep-fried and there’s plenty of tartar sauce for dipping. Or maybe it’s just the tartar sauce I like.
• Choplets—I don’t know what these are supposed to be. They’re patty-like, and come in a can.
• Fri-Chik—chicken substitute. The texture is NOTHING like chicken, and neither is the taste. I can tolerate Fri-Chik only when it’s cut very small, but I prefer not to eat it at all. I have friends who eat it straight out of the can. I know, I also cannot believe that people I love would do that.
• Prime Stakes—love the spelling on these. They’re supposed to be like Salisbury steaks, I think. There are also Stakelets and Swiss Stake. Sound delicious, don’t they? Mmmmm…
• FriPats—No idea what these are supposed to be.
• Dinner Roast—I think this is kind of like a pot roast or turkey roast. It’s frozen and comes in its own pan. Sooo convenient, it’s almost hard to resist! Ha.
• Stripples—fake bacon. These are almost identical to Morningstar Farms Breakfast Strips. They look nothing like bacon, and taste nothing like bacon. Still, I like them very much. Warning: you’ll burp them up for hours after eating.

Sadly, some Worthington-Loma Linda meat substitutes have been discontinued over the years. I think it’s because people died from the horror of what a bad idea they were.

• Bolono—if I remember right, this came in a roll that could be sliced like lunch meat.
• Wham—Ed laughed for about an hour the time I described this fake ham to him. It’s totally, completely real. Or was.
• Tuno—I remember this fake tuna fish, but did it come in a roll or can or what?
• Turkee Slices—how is this different from the other fake lunch meats?
• Nuteena—this is a weird “luncheon loaf” that I think is supposed to be mixed like tuna or chicken salad. It tastes like vomit. My sister loved it, and so did some other sane people. I don’t get that AT ALL. Kath, Worthington now makes Nut Loaf, which is the closest thing to Nuteena that’s still available. I know that makes you super-happy.

Besides fake meats, there are lots of recipes that allowed us to eat vegetarian but pretend we were eating something good. And some of them actually do taste good. SOME. For instance, walnut patties can be quite delicious. My favorite, though, always was and still is cottage cheese loaf. It has a consistency of meat loaf, maybe a little less firm. To some, the taste is similar to Thanksgiving stuffing. Here’s my mother-in-law’s recipe.

---

Darlene’s Cottage Cheese Roast

• ½ cube margarine or butter (melted)
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 cups low-fat cottage cheese
• 6 cups Special K cereal
• 2 pkgs. G Washington broth, Golden
• ½ cup milk
• 4 eggs

Mix all ingredients together. Bake in a 8x8 or 9x9 baking dish at 350° for 45-60 minutes or until it’s golden on the top and knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Darlene’s note: I usually place eggs, milk, G Washington broth, walnuts and coarsely cut up onions in an electric blender and blend until walnuts and onions are small enough pieces. Pour the egg mixture into a bowl and add melted butter, cottage cheese and Special K in that order. Bake in a 8x8 baking dish at 350° for 45-50 minutes or until it’s golden on top and knife inserted in the middles comes out clean.

Jen’s note: In place of the G Washington Broth, you can use Lipton onion broth, or McKay’s chicken seasoning, or pretty much anything like that.

---

Now, the part about the SDA health message that’s such a joke is that the original idea was to eat healthfully—Garden of Eden-like—but you go into the cafeteria of just about any Adventist institution and you’ll find a LOT of food is deep-fried or covered in cheese and/or sour cream and/or gravy or full of sugar and/or oil. This goes along with other church “doctrine” inconsistencies, like:

• ADORNMENT IN THE FORM OF JEWELRY IS BAD, but pins are fine, and come to think of it, we don’t mind if your watch cost thousands of dollars because it’s functional. Decorative scarves and belts? Those are okay too.
• DIVORCE IS BAD. Unless you really want one.
• ADULTERY IS WRONG, unless you pay tithe and go on mission trips for the church, in which case we’ll look the other way.
• DANCING IS IMMORAL, unless it’s line dancing or contra dancing or something else people like doing.
• PLAYING CARDS AND COMPETITIVE SPORTS IS WRONG, but Rook and Uno and Spoons are fine.

Yup.

Speaking of jokes, my mom was married to one for 23 very long years (not my dad). He was, like, fourth generation Adventist, or something like that, and his head was (is) waaaay deep up his ass. “Out of touch with reality” is putting it mildly, but what made it worse is that he was perfectly fine with that. When he and my mom first got married, she made cottage cheese loaf and he said it didn’t taste good. Oh, he liked cottage cheese loaf, he just didn’t like hers. So he said he would call his ex-wife and get her recipe, which he promised was really good. Like he was doing Mom a favor. Is it any wonder Mom doesn’t like cottage cheese loaf? She might think it tastes just fine, but from that day on, she resented cottage cheese loaf, and still resents me a little for eating it.

Sorry, Mom. I love you, but giving up cottage cheese loaf would be like giving up my fine SDA upbringing, and that would be like wearing jewelry even though I know it’s evil, or some other convenient excuse that makes no sense at all.

Apr. 19: You know you’re… when…

I kinda like these lists. Most of them are embarrassingly entertaining and we see way more of ourselves in them than we want to admit. I found the first two at The Shadowlands, along with links to a bunch of other nationalities’ lists. Check them out if you’re interested.

This first one is from Zompist. There’s no mention of the date it was written, but a few indications that it’s several years old.

If you’re American...

• You believe deep down in the First Amendment, guaranteed by the government and perhaps by God.
• You’re familiar with David Letterman, Mary Tyler Moore, Saturday Night Live, Bewitched, The Flintstones, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Donald Duck, the Fonz, Archie Bunker, Star Trek, The Honeymooners, The Addams Family, The Three Stooges, and Beetle Bailey.
• You know how baseball, basketball, and American football are played. If you’re male, you can argue intricate points about their rules. On the other hand (and unless you’re under about 20), you don’t care that much for soccer.
• You count yourself fortunate if you get three weeks of vacation a year.

If you died tonight...

• You’re fairly likely to believe in God; if not, you’ve certainly been approached by people asking whether you know that you’re going to Heaven.
• You think of McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC etc. as cheap food.
• You probably own a telephone and a TV. Your place is heated in the winter and has its own bathroom. You do your laundry in a machine. You don’t kill your own food. You don’t have a dirt floor. You eat at a table, sitting on chairs.
• You don’t consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, or guinea pigs to be food.
• A bathroom may not have a bathtub in it, but it certainly has a toilet.
• It seems natural to you that the telephone system, railroads, auto manufacturers, airlines, and power companies are privately run; indeed, you can hardly picture things working differently.
• You expect, as a matter of course, that the phones will work. Getting a new phone is routine.
• The train system, by contrast, isn’t very good. Trains don’t go any faster than cars; you’re better off taking a plane.
• You find a two-party system natural. You expect the politicians of both parties to be responsive to business, strong on defense, and concerned with the middle class. You find parliamentary systems (such as Italy’s) inefficient and comic.
• You don’t expect to hear socialism seriously defended. Communism, fuhgeddaboudit.
• Between “black” and “white” there are no other races. Someone with one black and one white parent looks black to you.
• You think most problems could be solved if only people would put aside their prejudices and work together.
• You take a strong court system for granted, even if you don’t use it. You know that if you went into business and had problems with a customer, partner, or supplier, you could take them to court.
• You’d respect someone who speaks French, German, or Japanese--but you very likely don’t yourself speak them well enough to communicate with a monolingual foreigner. You’re a bit more ambivalent about Spanish; you think the schools should teach kids English.
• It’s not all that necessary to learn foreign languages anyway. You can travel the continent using nothing but English--and get by pretty well in the rest of the world, too.
• You think a tax level of 30% is scandalously high.
• School is free through high school (at least, it’s an option, even if you went to private school); college isn’t, unless you get a scholarship.
• College is (normally, and excluding graduate study) four years long.

Everybody knows that…

• Mustard comes in jars. Shaving cream comes in cans. Milk comes in plastic jugs or cardboard boxes, and occasionally in bottles.
• The date comes second: 11/22/63. (And you know what happened on that date.)
• The decimal point is a dot. Certainly not a comma.
• A billion is a thousand times a million.
• World War II was a just war, and (granted all the suffering of course) ended all right. It was a time when the country came together and did what was right. And instead of insisting on vengeance, the US very generously rebuilt Europe instead, with the Marshall Plan.
• You expect marriages to be made for love, not arranged by third parties. Getting married by a judge is an option, but not a requirement; most marriages happen in church. You have a best man and a maid or matron of honor at the wedding--a friend or a sibling. And, naturally, a man gets only one wife at a time.
• If a man has sex with another man, he’s a homosexual.
• Once you’re introduced to someone (well, besides the President and other lofty figures), you can call them by their first name.
• If you’re a woman, you don’t go to the beach topless.
• A hotel room has a private bath.
• You’d rather a film be subtitled than dubbed (if you go to foreign films at all).
• You seriously expect to be able to transact business, or deal with the government, without paying bribes.
• If a politician has been cheating on his wife, you would question his ability to govern.
• Just about any store will take your credit card.
• A company can fire just about anybody it wants, unless it discriminates by doing so.
• You like your bacon crisp (unless it’s Canadian bacon, of course).
• Labor Day is in the fall.

Contributions to world civilization…

• You’ve probably seen Star Wars, ET, Home Alone, Casablanca, and Snow White. If you’re under forty, add Blazing Saddles, Terminator, Jaws, and 2001; otherwise, add Gone with the Wind, A Night at the Opera, Psycho, and Citizen Kane.
• You know the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Michael Jackson, Simon & Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt. If not, you know Frank Sinatra, Al Jolson, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett, and Kate Smith.
• You count on excellent medical treatment. You know you’re not going to die of cholera or other Third World diseases. You expect very strong measures to be taken to save very ill babies or people in their eighties. You think dying at 65 would be a tragedy.
• You went over US history, and some European, in school, Not much Russian, Chinese, or Latin American. You couldn’t name ten US interventions in Latin America.
• You expect the military to fight wars, not get involved in politics. You may not be able to name the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• Your country has never been conquered by a foreign nation.
• You’re used to a wide variety of choices for almost anything you buy.
• You still measure things in feet, pounds, and gallons.
• You are not a farmer.
• Comics basically come in two varieties: newspaper comics and magazines; the latter pretty much all feature superheroes.
• The people who appear on the most popular talk shows are mostly entertainers, politicians, or rather strange individuals. Certainly not, say, authors.
• You drive on the right side of the road. You stop at red lights even if nobody’s around. If you’re a pedestrian and cars are stopped at a red light, you will fearlessly cross the street in front of them.
• You think of Canada as a pleasant, peaceful, but rather dull country, which has suddenly developed an inexplicable problem in Québec. You probably couldn’t explain why the Canadians didn’t join the other British colonies in rebelling against King George.
• You consider the Volkswagen Beetle to be a small car.
• The police are armed, but not with submachine guns.
• If a woman is plumper than the average, it doesn’t improve her looks.
• The biggest meal of the day is in the evening.
• The nationality people most often make jokes about is the French.
• There’s parts of the city you definitely want to avoid at night.

Outside the Beltway…

• You feel that your kind of people aren’t being listened to enough in Washington.
• You wouldn’t expect both inflation and unemployment to be very high (say, over 15%) at the same time.
• You don’t care very much what family someone comes from.
• The normal thing, when a couple dies, is for their estate to be divided equally between their children.
• You think of opera and ballet as rather elite entertainments. It’s likely you don’t see that many plays, either.
• Christmas is in the winter. Unless you’re Jewish, you spend it with your family, give presents, and put up a tree.
• You may think the church is too powerful, or the state is; but you are used to not having a state church and don’t think that it would be a good idea.
• You’d be hard pressed to name the capitols or the leaders of all the nations of Europe.
• You aren’t familiar with Mafalda, Lucky Luke, Corto Maltese, Milo Manara, Guido Crepax, Gotlib, or Moebius.
• You’ve left a message at the beep.
• Taxis are generally operated by foreigners, who are often deplorably ignorant about the city.
• You are distrustful of welfare and unemployment payments--you think people should earn a living and not take handouts. But you would not be in favor of eliminating Social Security and Medicare.
• If you want to be a doctor, you need to get a bachelor’s first.
• There sure are a lot of lawyers.

Space and time…

• If you have an appointment, you’ll mutter an excuse if you’re five minutes late, and apologize profusely if it’s ten minutes. An hour late is almost inexcusable.
• If you’re talking to someone, you get uncomfortable if they approach closer than about two feet.
• About the only things you expect to bargain for are houses, cars, and antiques. Haggling is largely a matter of finding the hidden point that’s the buyer’s minimum.
• Once you’re past college, you very rarely simply show up at someone’s place. People have to invite each other over--especially if a meal is involved.
• When you negotiate, you are polite, of course, but it’s only good business to “play hardball.” Some foreigners pay excessive attention to status, or don’t say what they mean, and that’s exasperating.
• If you have a business appointment or interview with someone, you expect to have that person to yourself, and the business shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.

This next list came from Culture Clash.

You Know You’re a Canadian When...

• You stand in “line-ups” at the movie, not lines.
• You’re not offended by the term “Homo Milk.”
• You understand the sentence, “Could you please pass me a serviette, I just spilled my poutine.”
• You eat chocolate bars instead of candy bars.
• You drink pop, not soda.
• You know what it means to be on pogey.
• You know that a mickey and 2-4’s mean “Party at the camp, eh!”
• You can drink legally while still a teen.
• You talk about the weather with strangers and friends alike.
• You don’t know or care about the fuss with Cuba, it’s just a cheap place to travel with good cigars and no Americans.
• When there is a social problem, you turn to your government to fix it instead of telling them to stay out of it.
• You’re not sure if the leader of your nation has EVER had sex and you really don’t want to know if he has!
• You get milk in bags as well as cartons and plastic jugs.
• Pike is a type of fish, not some part of a highway.
• You drive on a highway, not a freeway.
• You know what a Robertson screwdriver is.
• You have Canadian Tire money in your kitchen drawers.
• You know that Thrills are something to chew and “taste like soap.”
• You know that Mounties “don’t always look like that.”
• You dismiss all beers under 6% as “for children and the elderly.”
• You know that the Friendly Giant isn’t a vegetable product line.
• You know that Casey and Finnegan are not a Celtic musical group.
• You participated in “ParticipACTION.”
• You have an Inuit carving by your bedside with the rationale, “What’s good enough protection for the Prime Minister is good enough for me.”
• You wonder why there isn’t a 5 dollar coin yet.
• Unlike any international assassin/terrorist/spy in the world, you don’t possess a Canadian passport.
• You use a red pen on your non-Canadian textbooks and fill in the missing u’s from labor, honor, and color.
• You know the French equivalents of “free,” “prize,” and “no sugar added,” thanks to your extensive education in bilingual cereal packaging.
• You are excited whenever an American television show mentions Canada.
• You make a mental note to talk about it at work the next day.
• You can do all the hand actions to Sharon, Lois and Bram’s “Skin-a-ma-rinky-dinky-doo” opus.
• You can eat more than one maple sugar candy without feeling nauseous.
• You were mad when “The Beachcombers” were taken off the air.
• You know what a toque is.
• You have some memento of Doug and Bob.
• You know Toronto is not a province.
• You never miss “Coaches Corner.”
• Back bacon and Kraft Dinner are two of your favorites food groups.

My Canadian friends will have to tell me how much of that is really typical of their citizens. They are also invited to explain to stupid Americans like myself the definitions of “pogey,” “Thrills,” and “Canadian Tire money.” Thank you.

This next list has been all over the ‘net. I think I’ve even posted it here before. I think it applies to Portlanders more than Oregonians in general, but whatev.

You know you’re an Oregonian if...

• You know more than 10 ways to order coffee.
• You consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it’s not a real mountain.
• You know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Issaquah, Oregon, Yakima and Willamette.
• You are not fazed by “Today’s forecast: showers followed by rain,” and “Tomorrow’s forecast: rain followed by showers.”
• You know the state flower (Mildew).
• You feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash.
• You use the statement “sun break” and know what it means.
• You know more people who own boats than air conditioners.
• You feel overdressed wearing a suit to a nice restaurant.
• You stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the “Walk” signal.
• You can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, and Veneto’s.
• You consider swimming an indoor sport.
• In winter, you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark while only working eight-hour days.
• You never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho.
• You know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon.
• You have no concept of humidity without precipitation.
• You know that Boring is a place and not just a state of mind.
• You can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food.
• You can point to at least two volcanoes, even if you cannot see through the cloud cover.
• You notice “the mountain is out” when it’s a pretty day and you can actually see it.
• You put on your shorts when the temperature gets above 50°, but still wear your hiking boots and parka.
• You switch to your sandals when it gets about 60°, but keep the socks on.
• You have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain.
• You think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists.
• You buy new sunglasses every year because you can’t find the old ones after such a long time.
• You measure distance in hours.
• You often switch from heat to air conditioning in the same day.
• You design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit under a raincoat.
• You know all the important seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Raining (Spring), Road Construction (Summer), Deer and Elk season (Fall).

This last one is for those of us who were raised in no way prepared to live among the “normals” of society.

You Know You Were raised SDA If:

• You pronounce “Adventist” as “AD-ventist,” not “ad-VEN-tist.”
• Your Little Friend wasn’t a person.
• Your bedtime stories were about real people instead of fairy tales.
• You had an Uncle Arthur, Uncle Dan, and Aunt Sue and were amazed to find out that all your friends in Sabbath School did too.
• You think of kids instead of cars when you hear the term “Pathfinder.”
• You can remember what the letters “MV” and “JMV” stand for.
• You have a board somewhere in your attic with a bunch of knots glued to it.
• You wondered if the earth would last long enough to have a girlfriend/boyfriend.
• Parenthood held many nasty surprises because you really believed Uncle Arthur when he said, “and he never disobeyed again.”
• You know “HMS” as a name, not a ship.
• You know how to play poker with Bible Authors cards and Wheat Thins.
• You know how to play Rook but not Bridge or Hearts.
• You have looked for angels outside of a movie theater.
• On Saturdays you catch yourself telling your children, “You can wade, but don’t swim.”
• The word “Philistine” has a meaning in current terminology.
• Your tie falls in your soup because you don’t wear a tie tack.
• The Review is not a full military dress inspection.
• You agreed to sing so you wouldn’t have to solicit.
• Saturday Night Live had meaning before the TV program.
• You read labels on cans years before nutritional labeling was available.
• You saved labels off of cans years before recycling became fashionable.
• You have asked for a Veggie-Whopper at Burger King.
• You take more time at the Taco Bell counter than the last six customers.
• You take a helping of Nuteena because you like it, not out of courtesy.
• You can tell the difference between Linkettes and Vegelinks with your eyes closed.
• You know 101 ways to prepare FriChik.
• You have more than twelve uses for soybeans.
• You can stack 3,000 calories on a plate at a church potluck.
• Your guilt trip ended the day Nabisco started using vegetable shortening in Oreos.

You May Have Gone To An SDA Boarding School If:

• You know all the basic square dance steps but only know how to execute them to march music.
• Your high school principal was an expert on female hemlines.
• You rolled down your skirt on the way to the principal’s office.
• Your Friday night date was to vespers.
• You went to banquets instead of dances or proms.
• You were called out of class to clean your room.
• You can grill cheese sandwiches on the bottom of an iron.
• You learned how to study in the dark after lights out.
• You’ve seen The Sound of Music with a hand in front of the projector during the kissing scenes.
• You have been to movies during which the lights came on periodically for a hand check.
• You knew who was engaged by asking the time.
• You couldn’t dance at school parties, but passing an orange under the neck was a non-sensual activity.
• The only time you could hold hands was while roller-skating in the gym.
• The other side of campus was no-man/woman’s land.
• You know what MCC stands for.
• You took cinnamon rolls back to the dorm on Friday afternoon.
• You have referred to high school as academy.

Source: the ‘net, of course