You might have noticed the community farms/gardens set up on both sides of Monticello Ave. and 6th St SE. If not, you should definitely swing by. This is a perfect example of using arable land within the community for food production, precisely what the UVa students presented on at the Food Systems Planning Course Community Presentation.

Lots of green veggies growing as well as a huge strawberry patch. You can see the community tending to the farm/garden on the weekends and they sure do work hard, but look at how pretty their plot looks. Are there any other uses of land for food in town besides this example and UVa Dining?
[pic from spicy bear on flickr]

We finally discovered the positive side of the heavy rain-fall we have received in the past couple of weeks.  This past Saturday’s farmers market was pretty special.  Flowers were in full bloom.  Here are some noteworthy stops:
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I was invited to attend this year’s UVa Food Systems’s Planning Course community presentation held at the Central Brand Library on East Market Street.  The students did a wonderful job this year and provided even more insight into our local agricultural community.  This is my second year in a row and I was very excited to see what new thing are happening in the local food scene. Last year’s presentation focused on the “Challenges and Opportunities for our Community’s Local and Global Food Sources“. This year focuses on assessment and measurement. Specifically, what are the indicators or benchmarks for assessing a community’s food system. Is it doing well or poorly, and to what degree? This effort was compared to taking your body temperature to check for overall health.

The course focused on the following four issues:

1.  Amount of farmland required to support a community. IE: If Charlottesville wanted to be complete self sufficient, how much farmland and what kinds would it take?

2.  Factors that determine a community’s sustainable farm labor force. Farmers are ready to ramp up but there are no workers available for them to grow with.

3.  Low income access to fresh food

4.  The strength of the emergency food system network.  Amidst a changing economy, can the local food banks keep up with rising demand and decreasing donations? »Read More

Its amazing how attached we are to our phones these days. 10 years ago they were the gateway to arranging a dinner at the diner with your friends, or calling your girlfriend late at night on her cell so her parents wouldn’t know you two were on the phone. Today, its pretty much the center of our lives. Between WiFi, 3G, iPhone, Blackberry, we are more connected than ever.

And Wednesday evening I was all of a sudden disconnected. Somewhere between the house and dinner at Continental Divide, my precious Blackberry disappeared. I drove around town re-tracing my steps, went to a new house we moved into and then the old apartment, and still nothing. I called the phone twice only to hear many rings and then voicemail. I checked my SprintPCS account and saw that no new outgoing calls were made (found out right then that you can see your call log activity in almost real-time, very cool). I changed the passwords on all my accounts tied to the phone early on in the evening in fear of someone messing around and sending stupid emails to clients.

I woke up this morning with a weight in my stomach, that dam Blackberry that I curse all the time is now gone. That means I will have to move back to an old phone in the meantime. I decided to alleviate my concern and start the day fresh having yummy granola at C’Ville Coffee. 30 minutes into my breakfast I get a text from Kyle that someone found my phone and to call them back. I call the number and was bombarded with a dozen very personal questions….who I am, how to spell my name, pretty much everything in short of my social. I thought it was at a store and someone wanted to leave it clearly identified. At the end of the call I was told to pick the phone up at the police station on the downtown mall. Yes, that’s right. Someone found my phone in the Amtrak parking lot across from Continental Divide, and TURNED IT IN. The lady at the police station said people turn in stuff of value all the time, they even turn in money! Jeez, is this reality?

The last time I lost my phone I was still at Babson College studying in the MBA building in between classes. I put my new phone down and 5 min later, gone….in a school full of educated adults. And here we are 6 years later in Charlottesville, in a disconnected community and someone had the kindness and decency to not keep the phone or sell it on eBay, but turn it into the police of all places. And to top that off, the police made an effort to find my outgoing calls and reach out to Kyle to see if he knew whose phone it was.

In short I am amazed we have such amazing people in town. I am kind of looking forward to “paying it forward”. Has anyone else seen these random acts of kindness?

[photo from blackberry.com]

It was a glorious day for both vendors and shoppers this past Saturday.  After a week of disgusting, extremely Seattle-like weather, Mother Nature changed her mind and gave us a beautiful and warm (not intolerably hot though) Saturday.  The sun was shining and the market was packed, and by packed, I mean sardine can packed.  I think the city market has finally outgrown itself.  That parking lot area is way too small for the town.  Between current parents and their huge strollers to people walking side by side with their dogs, plus the general popularity of the market itself, it is not a comfortable experience.  What about shutting down more side streets?  South Street?  West Main?

Claustrophobic gripes aside, the Charlottesville farmers market kicks ass.  I saw a lot of old faces (vendors I met last year).  And a lot of new ones which definitely make this year’s market one to be reckoned with.  A run down of the new “must-see vendors” and a photo slideshow after the break: »Read More

In a commercial building space area tucked behind the Shell gas station on Preston Avenue you find the home of Charlottesville Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.  A modern martial art in the sense that it was started in the 20th century by world famous Helio Gracie (the father of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu), this has nothing to do with anything you have seen on the Karate Kid (I, II, III, and yes, even IV).  It emphasizes submission style movements where one “wins” by their opponent tapping out due to extreme pain or almost being knocked out.  While this sounds extremely violent, Jiu Jitsu is one of the slowest and most thought-intensive martial outs around.  In this game, size doesn’t matter, it is all about skill and patience.

Classes Will Leave You Dead Tired
Taught by head instructor and purple belt Gordon Emery.  Class participants range from undergrad and grad UVa students to local professionals, men AND women.  An extremely respectful atmosphere provides a difficult and both mentally/physically challenging experience.  Class is arranged in the following manner:

• warm-up:  what seems like a simple task turns into something much more tiring.  A combination of running, skipping, gymnastic/wrestling like tumbling, and active technique infused sprints (doing a bear walk across the length of the mats while a partner applies all his weight on your back working on a technique that throws his body from your left to your right side) aims to promote blood flow in the muscles you will use for the rest of the class and loosens up joints and tendons that you will badly rely on during the sparring session.

»Read More

In September I had he exquisite pleasure of spending an entire morning at the Boar’s Head Spa. I thought I would do a men’s review of a spa in cville and be very macho about it…you know, a sports massage followed by a mens manicure and a sports facial. Something along those lines. What I went for instead was the completely opposite experience, one where I would not be looking at the clock every minute as much as the inside of my eye lids while on cloud nine.

I found out men are like lost puppies in a spa. The most difficult part of my day was trying to relax, an oxymoron at any spa. The biggest reason for this was not the environment itself, but the lack of explicit instructions and subsequent details of what I would be doing.Being the only man at a spa is a little uncomfortable, even more so when you are only man wearing a cotton towel with nothing underneath. Waiting in the lovely quiet room, I didn’t know what to do…Did I misunderstand where I was supposed to be? Did someone already come for me, but missed me because I was in the men’s locker room at that precise moment? All these questions raced through my head.

Want to read the full post?Head over here to CvilleStyle for more.

Local entrepreneurs Toan and Betsy Nguyen, owners of C’Ville Coffee have finally taken their famous Honey Bunches to the next level…the internet.  In the works for many months now, their new online store, C-VilleCookies.com,  allows anyone anywhere in the country to feed their Honey Bunch craving.

Toan can tell you many stories where people that received them as gifts (Chicago, California, you name it) call as soon as their supply runs out for a refill.  Enough of these emergency calls have come in over the years to convince them to expand.  This is an ambitious goal for one of our darlings, and I hope they can pull it off.  With new flavors like butterscotch, white chocolate and macadamia nut and triple berry, I think they can do it!

If you are new to cville, stop by the City/Farmer’s Market saturday morning or swing by C’ville Coffee to get your fix.  They are worth the trip.

[pics from c-villecookies.com]

Yes, these pics are SO freaking exciting, we just had to post them.  And for all of you haters who think no one cares about this stuff…you are so wrong! (shooting devil horns in your general direction).  The mystery gift turned out to be a pair of shoes/sandals a million sizes too small for our dear Shenanigans.  One day she will meet her Prince Charming and put on the perfect fitting glass/cloth slipper.

The other night I heard that the UVa football team has in house masseuses/chiropractors that work on the team as part of their training.  This isn’t that rare I think.  Most schools, especially with great sports programs have mini physical therapy centers solely dedicated to their athletes.

ANYWAYS, so the NY Times reports that neck manipulations have a high-correlation to people getting strokes.  Yes, very scary indeed.  It seems a

technique called cervical spinal manipulation, involving a forceful twisting of the neck, could damage two major arteries that lead through the neck to the back of the brain. Strokes in people under age 45 are relatively rare, but these cervical arterial dissections are a leading cause of them.

In light of this weekend’s upcoming game…we might want to stay away from our athletes’ necks!  Has anyone experienced really bad side-effects after a session with the chiropractor?

[pic]