May 1, 2007 5:44pm

Had a wonderful weekend with Roger here. We went up to Buckhannon where I'm moving this summer to start my rotations. I signed the lease for my house. On the ride there and back, I educated him on some fine American music he was never exposed to. One just can't go a lifetime without hearing some Miles Davis and John Coltrane, really.

Monday night, Nathan came over to study OPP. This made for an interesting night when he saw all my new and improved organic, toxin-free stuff and the text book on Integrative Medicine that I bought.

He put his head in his hands and said, "You've gone liberal blue on me! You've gone liberal! I can't believe this."

Well, that's not true. But it was funny seeing him freak out. Especially since our friendship began in Anatomy lab when he looked over our dead body and asked, "Are you a flaming liberal?" I said no, I wasn't. From that point on, we've gotten along great.

I'm trying my best to not be annoying to others in my new green phase. I remember when everyone I knew was either on Weight Watchers or the Atkins Diet. Going out to dinner was a nightmare because they all wanted to tell me how many points my food was worth, or how many carbs I was eating. I really didn't care, and I found it annoying that someone felt the need to tell me that.

So, I'm keeping it to myself (except, of course, with Nathan, for whom it seems to be a point of irritation and, therefore, entertainment for me).

That aside, I wanted to mention a point that BBM brought up in a comment. She's right, all this crap is expensive. It sucks. I don't get it. Well, I mean, I kinda do. There's less of it and less of a demand for it so it's more expensive. The only way organic and hormone free food would become cheaper is if it became the only way to produce food. But right now, commercial farms rule the industry and they can manage to produce a massive amount of food, while smaller farms have to make less at a time.

And I don't know how a family manages to afford it. For me it's not too hard. It's just me here so the amount of food (and cleaning products, and paper products, etc) that I need to buy is rather limited. Since I pay more for the stuff, I am more conscious of what I am spending (a good thing) and I try to not let things spoil and waste (also a good thing). But I don't know how this would be managable for a family that is already counting every penny. An extra $2 for a half gallon of milk is a lot when you go through it in a day. It doesn't make that much difference when I buy a quart at a time and it takes me over a week to finish it.

It sucks, but unless there is some massive revolution in our eating and buying practices, I don't see it getting cheaper.

Just like it's really convenient for a movie star to buy a pimped out hybrid, when the average person is just hoping that the muffler on their 89 Toyota with 200,000 miles on it doesn't fall off.