We've been eating a lot more vegetables over the past few months. I used to think that a meal had to have meat for it to be a meal, but as we've become better at cooking, it's become easier to make good recipes with mostly vegetables.

The vegetable box we receive also gives us plenty of things to cook that don't have to be accompanied by meat, and I'm trying new fruits and vegetables with each box we receive.

I've made a conscious decision to try to minimize the amount of meat I eat and there are some benefits of that. For example, I may live longer by eating less meat.

A minor benefit of eating less meat is that cooking less raw meat means that there are fewer times when animal blood gets on our counter top and fewer bacteria in the kitchen.

The animal food industry has a huge impact on the environment due to all the resources it takes to feed animals so we can eat them, and also treats many animals inhumanely.

We have a couple pretty good cookbooks that we use that have many meat-free recipes. Stir-fry with vegetables and sometimes tofu is a favorite of ours. We've also found some recipes online for chili, veggie sandwich, and mushroom and potato soup.

Eating some meals without meat does take some effort to find new recipes that don't include meat, but for me it has been worthwhile and for many other people who have reasons for eating less meat.

We'd mentioned before that Seattle has 45% more dogs than children, and another study confirms that Seattle has relatively few children. In fact, of all US cities, Seattle has the second lowest rate of children living in the city limits, behind San Francisco:

Less than 20 percent of all Seattle households included children younger than 18, compared with 34 percent nationally and 33 in Washington state.

While the low rate of children here is striking, it's not especially surprising, considering the high cost of living, especially for home ownership, which prices many families out of the city and into the suburbs. And, with Seattle's city limits being smaller than sprawling cities elsewhere in the country, suburban expansion long ago filled Seattle to its edges, pushing families looking for new developments into suburbs outside of Seattle. Seattle also attracts singles and young married couples like us without children who create demand for small condos and apartments.

We've always liked looking at Christmas lights, so we went to Candy Cane Lane earlier this week. Candy Cane Lane is a short street in the Ravenna neighborhood, north of the U-District, where all the home owners put up lights and displays for everyone to enjoy during the Christmas season. It's one of the best light displays in the area with every house on the street participating. We decided to park a few streets over and walk through it as opposed to driving through like we have in past years.

I have been looking forward to our next trip, as we will be returning to Texas to spend time with family. This will be one of our longer trips back to Texas - we'll be there for 9 days - but it also feels like it's been a very long time since we've been there. Last year, we weren't able to be with family during the holidays, so I'm very excited to be able to see my parents and other relatives and friends, including our baby niece.

We traveled during the holidays our first year here, which was quite an hectic experience thanks to the snow storm that moved in before we left.

While this winter is expected to be wet and cold, right now the forecast doesn't show any snow that would impact our flight out.

I'm looking forward to satisfying my currently insatiable cravings for barbecue and Tex-Mex. Lesley and I will also be spending an evening in Dallas by ourselves and going to a hockey game with her parents.

While we'll have spent more than half of our vacation time this year to go back to Texas rather than traveling somewhere new and exciting, it's good to spend holidays with family.

So, I had another birthday recently. Seems like it comes around more and more often. I do like to take advantage of my birthday when it happens, and I was glad to be able to do all these things that I wouldn't normally do.

Lesley took good care of me for my birthday. She bought me several doughnuts from Top Pot, including my favorite: old-fashioned glazed. I love classic country music, so she got me a Patsy Cline greatest hits. She also took me out to dinner at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant that we'd never been to before. I pass by this place sometimes on my way home and have always been intrigued, but have never stopped in. I thought the place had good ambiance and despite being in an out of the way location, it got pretty busy when we were there. We shared a vegetable platter, which was a lot of food for pretty cheap. I'm not sure when we'll go back, as neither of us are huge fans of Ethiopian food, but it was nice to try this place out and go somewhere different for my birthday.

We also went out to brunch at a cafe that had opened recently just a couple blocks from our apartment and watched a film noir (The Third Man) on our Netflix queue. We also went out to a piano bar nearby and listened to a variety of songs, including work from 70s progressive artists like Kansas and the Moody Blues, ragtime tunes, and classical pieces by Beethoven.

It was fun going to several places we hadn't been to before. And it's cool that new places are opening nearby, as we didn't have to go any farther than half a mile from where we live for me to have a good birthday.

Troy and I went to my work Christmas party last night. It was held at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in downtown Seattle instead of the Hotel Andra where it was the past two years. We just barely made the bus near our apartment and arrived shortly after it started at 6 for cocktails and appetizers. They had several kinds of cheese, including Gouda, goat cheese, and aged Parmesan. They also had nuts and dried cranberries to munch on.

After about an hour we all sat down at our assigned tables and had salad, dinner, and dessert. I really liked the salad, which had thin pear slices, cheese, walnuts, and bibb lettuce with a nice vinaigrette dressing. I had a steak with mashed potatoes and green beans while Troy had a cheese ravioli pasta dish with asparagus. My steak was cooked just right, but it didn't have a very good flavor. For dessert we had a chocolate Swiss roll with cream filling and raspberries. We also had some red and white wine throughout the night.

The Fairmont is a really nice hotel and the ceilings were really high compared to the low ceilings at the Hotel Andra, which made it easier to hear people talk. We also had a live group of carolers, which is always a nice touch.

This party was a little different from the last two, not just because it was in a different hotel, but because my former boss is retiring at the end of this year. A few people said a few words and gave short speeches. She really likes Elvis, so we had an Elvis impersonator put on a show. It was a big surprise for her and pretty unexpected. He sang to several ladies, but thankfully I managed to avoid him. It probably helped that we were at a table in the very back corner of the room, although I didn't like feeling so far away from everyone else.

Overall, it was an interesting night. I liked the nice hotel, but didn't care much for the steak or where our table was located. I got tired of standing on my feet, which hurt my heel. We also had to wait in the bus terminal for quite a while to get home, which was slightly inconvenient. I'll take free food and drinks though any day.

A couple of weeks ago we went to a housewarming party for some friends of ours that moved to Kirkland. We were driving around and exploring the area a little bit when we came across a gigantic bonfire, probably 10 feet wide! It was on a beach close to Lake Washington. We decided to stop and check it out. There were lots of other people standing around it, keeping warm. It was cold outside, but the fire was pretty hot, even standing about 10 feet from it! Unfortunately we didn't have our cameras with us, so Troy just took a picture with his cell phone camera, which doesn't really do it justice. I'd never seen anything like it, pretty cool.

Seattle City Light sends out a newsletter bimonthly with news and tips for saving energy and recycling electronics among other things. This issue detailed where our electricity comes from:

• Hydro - 91.2%


• Nuclear - 4.4%


• Wind - 2.3%


• Coal - 1.4%


• Other - 0.7%

I haven't bought a new game system since I bought my PS2 from my sister 4 years ago. I've been playing my old games quite a bit recently and have run out of ones I want to play for the 100th time. I mentioned I was interested in getting a Wii and one of my coworkers told me she would sell hers to me at a discount. She included the following items with her offer:

• Wii system


• 4 Wii remotes


• 2 nunchucks


• 2 controllers


• 2 wheels


• Wii bat/tennis racket/golf club

Games:

• Mario Kart


• Mario Party 8


• Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games


• Wii Play


• Wii Sports

She was willing to take $250 for all of those items, so I quickly accepted! I think it was a pretty sweet deal considering all of that stuff brand new would cost a lot more than that. Now I also want to buy other games, including Zelda, Donkey Kong Returns, New Super Mario Bros, and Mario Galaxy 1 & 2. Early Merry Christmas to me! :)

We moved to Seattle largely for the walkable urban environment that is missing from our hometown of Fort Worth. So, I have been following with interest the study in Fort Worth to determine the feasibility of adding a streetcar line there.

We have a streetcar running in our neighborhood, which was controversial when it was installed. However, in the few years since it's been installed, ridership has grown significantly as has the neighborhood. Developers have responded to the streetcar investment Seattle made in this long-neglected area and the neighborhood surrounding the streetcar is the fastest growing part of the city. Like Portland's streetcar did, Seattle's streetcar has been a catalyst for the development of a good urban neighborhood.

Fort Worth has also neglected areas near its downtown and a streetcar there would have sparked private development toward creating a significant urban center city area - the studies so far had predicted millions of dollars in growth. However, Fort Worth's city council decided to stop the studies and abandon the streetcar project. Stopping the streetcar study points to a lack of vision on behalf of Fort Worth's leaders and established interests.

There has been some resistance in Seattle to the investments in Seattle's urban areas and public transportation, but Seattle has been successful at creating urban areas that people want to live in. Fort Worth hasn't and apparently doesn't care to. Consequently, the town of Fort Worth will see more people like myself who prefer walkable urban areas over drivable suburban areas leaving for cities like Seattle.

I had my MRI Monday morning and that went ok. I didn't know they were going to inject dye into my right arm at the elbow, so that wasn't very fun. I had my normal reaction of feeling nauseous and close to fainting. The MRI was really loud, so I had to wear ear plugs and I also had music to listen with headphones. They did short 2-3 minute tests and the machine would make all kinds of noise. I was glad when the whole thing was over, it took about an hour.

Yesterday we met with the doctor and went over the MRI results, which were negative. He didn't find any tumor, cyst, or bursitis. He said it is just chronic plantar fasciitis, so he told me to keep doing what I've been doing - stretching, wearing my night splint, icing my heel, and wearing shoes all the time. He also gave me some silicone 3/4 shoe inserts that should give me more padding than my harder orthotics. I got another coritsone shot too. Hopefully these new inserts help. He said plantar fasciitis normally goes away for most people after about a year, no matter what measures have been taken to cure it. Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but I guess it's better than unnecessary surgery and having to use crutches.

Our apartment had their annual holiday party this past week and we decided to go. There were some finger foods and drinks, however we showed up late, so some of the food was cold or already eaten. There was also a raffle for several prizes that were donated by local businesses. There were quite a lot of other people there, but Lesley and me were each lucky enough to win a prize.

I won a free pizza from Tutta Bella and Lesley won two free tickets to the Cinerama.

We had our free pizza with a calzone this weekend and we had been wanting to go to the Cinerama since it was remodeled, so we're looking forward to seeing a movie there sometime soon.

We've mentioned Top Pot a few times before, but it definitely deserves its own post. We woke up pretty early this morning for some reason, so I suggested we walk to Top Pot to get some doughnuts before the Conference USA championship game between SMU and UCF. I usually get them for free at work all the time, since it's only a few blocks from my office and people bring in a couple dozen almost every week it seems like. I used to only eat the apple fritter, but lately I've been trying different ones like the cinnamon sugar covered blueberry cake doughnut.

We got four doughnuts this morning. Troy got a regular and a chocolate old fashioned glazed and I got a peppermint snowdrift and a chocolate bar. I was barely able to finish the chocolate bar. Top Pot definitely has the best doughnuts I've ever had. Troy likes them more than Krispy Kreme now. I wonder if we'll ever try them all...

I had my follow up appointment with my podiatrist the day before Thanksgiving. My foot had not improved at all since my second coritsone shot (now 5 weeks ago). In fact it got considerably worse, probably the worst it's ever felt. He said it seemed that my plantar fasciitis had gone away, but that another mass had gotten bigger in a different spot on my heel. He thought it might be neuroma or bursitis. The podiatrist recommended either an MRI or surgery because he wasn't sure what was wrong. He made an MRI sound like it wouldn't really give us much information about what it is, so I was leaning toward just doing the surgery.

After talking to several people, I decided to get a second opinion, this time from an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in foot and ankle problems. He was highly recommended to me too. He said I should definitely get an MRI because it actually does give you a lot of information about your muscles and fatty tissues in the heel. It would pinpoint exactly where my pain is and what is there so that if surgery is necessary, they know exactly where to cut.

So, I decided to go with this new doctor who seems to have a lot more experience with this type of surgery. My MRI is scheduled for next Monday at 8:00am and my follow up appointment to talk about the results is Tuesday at 3:45pm.

I can't wait to hear what the doctor says about the results and what we can do from here. This problem has gone on way too long and I'm ready to get back to my normal life of walking and hiking.