let's posit a few facts i've been told, or heard in various places in the blogosphere, or seen on twitter, or been told by, er, let's just say, "people who have been talking to analysts".

1. 70% of the email market in the corporate world (i actually don't know what market segment they were talking about) has gone to exchange.

2. many customers who have been with Notes for a long time, let's say really any release before 8, but mostly like 4, 5 or 6, have switched or are switching to exchange for email.

3. Lotus is winning many new customers (customers who never saw the pre-8 clients).

so the result is, Lotus is winning new business, while the old business where impressions of the clunky client, the "two lane highway" / workplace years, and the years of non existent marketing (thank god that is behind us) have stuck, like flies in poisoned molasses.

i get this picture in my head of two rivers side by side, running in opposite directions, and masses of salmon swimming like hell in each respective direction.

so my question is, does this bear out to what other people are seeing in the marketplace?

and yeah, this hits home for me for reasons i'm not going to talk about outside of what i just did, because i don't usually blog about work, and this is as close as i ever want to get. mainly i'm just trying to gage what is going on out there.

also up for discussion:

i've also seen: independent developers who have had a lot of trouble finding work, and business partners who do things other than development like making products, who are doing very well with Notes.

so to finish the tale i started in the last two blog posts, they finally restored my new macbook to "new" condition. which means that they wiped the drive and reinstalled the OS and i was back to square one.

the fellow who called did so from the center of Happy Apple Nirvana. i could feel him smiling from deep within the center of Brahman's navel (or is that Atman, i can never keep them straight) as he told me with complete and joyous calm that the computer was ready to be picked up.

i went into the store to pick it up and while i was there i grabbed a fire wire cord and a game for my daughter. everyone i spoke to was sooo happy and listened so well and was genuinely interested in everything i had to say. all my questions were answered quickly and efficiently and with great energy and near manic attention to detail. i'd stepped back into Happy Apple Land, after my sojourn in the bowels of, oh, i don't know, Apple Purgatory?

i remember going to see my sister when she was in college. she was majoring in theatre in a small college near (or in?) st. augustine. st. augustine is a touristy place. there is an old spanish fort there, and lots of historic places to see. if you are into the hyperreal, ripley's has a museum there. there are horse drawn carriages that trot down cobbled streets. there are great beaches, and an old cathedral, and so on. we went there a lot when i was a kid. we always had a blast there.

the st. augustine i knew from childhood is the one i have just described. but my sister lived in an apartment that was just behind that st augustine. it was a poor neighborhood. there were gangs there. the place where she and three other students and various others lived was pretty much a hell hole. the kitchen was unusable. literally. i had one of two lifetime run-ins with the paranormal on the metal fire escape stairs that led up to her front door. little claws running along my back. spooky as hell. the week after i visited, the whole neighborhood was effectively shut down due to a gang war, and armed gang members had to escort my sister and her friends from block to block whenever they wanted to walk anywhere. like say to the store or whatever.

so there is st. augustine. and then there is the st. augustine behind st. augustine.

now i've learned, there is Happy Apple Land, where everyone is a "genius" and they wear cool blue and orange t shirts, and they are all very happy to answer all of your questions, as long as everyone is staying inside the preconfigured Apple Swim Lanes.

but. go outside the swim lanes and suddenly you are being escorted through dangerous territory by rival gang members. this metaphor is actually quite a bit more apt than you might think.

this is a tale of two macs. or, two macbooks, to be a little more precise.

first off, for those interested, when i got my machine back, i had to move the data over from my old machine. except i couldn't do it the cool way. cuz i had vilefault enabled on the old machine. and i couldn't turn it off as there was not enough room on the hard drive for a complete copy of the Home folder. so it goes.

i didn't want to repeat the merry go round from before. so i just went with a brand new account and transferred the data over, directory by directory, file by file, the old fashioned way. and that was fine cuz it forced me to actually look at the data and think about what was there. i trimmed some of the fat. no biggie. and the firewire cable worked great.

i bought a macbook last january for my wife who was starting a master's program in humanities. her program is online and she needed a reliable machine. she needed a new machine, anyway, actually, as her old macbook just doesn't work anymore. at all. we can't even turn it on. it was the last of the motorolla macbooks and it's toast. so as it was in its final throes we went down and got her a new machine, an aluminum model, which apparently they don't make at the moment, in the macbook line.

so. around the time my machine came back, her machine started throwing kernel panics. oh and the iSight camera had stopped working a while back. but the kernel panics, well, when that happens the machine freezes, and whatever she was working on just goes away. poof.

so she put her data on a thumb drive. transferred it to my machine. and i took hers in for service.

so i walk into the Apple Store and say, hey, i need to drop this machine off for service. i know what's wrong with it, basically, and can someone take a look. and the person i am talking to starts telling me i need to make a genius appointment. i say, no look i just want to drop the machine off. and he gets offended, cuz i cut him off mid sentence.

he doesn't know about my very recent history with his store. he doesn't know that for me, just walking in there is now stressful. especially if there's a repair involved. all he knows is some asshole who needs to grow up and learn how to be polite just cut him off mid sentence and now his day has become stressful.

see at some point there is this big feedback loop that keeps getting worse. but i realize, right there, he didn't deserve that. so i try to smile and be a sane human being for the rest of the conversation. and i do that. so i pull out my Pro Care card. and he makes an appointment. and says that you know, someone will get back to me in a week or so. and then i say, well is that true? i mean, i'm a member of Pro Care (which always sounds like a dental plan to me), thought you guys were supposed to do this a little quicker in that case (or something along those lines). and now he has to remake the appointment. and he gets snarky with me several times. in fact at one point he stops himself and says, was that snarky? i'm sorry.

we were both kinda riding the edge, trying to be basically human to each other. but i did maintain my cool through the rest of the conversation. but see, what happened was, i walked into the store without an appointment. and this effectively puts me outside the swim lanes. and so, apparently, this causes dissonance in the mind of any Apple Store employee i talk to. they just can't handle it.

oh and btw what i learned was that, when doing a "quick drop", tell them you are a procare member, NOT a guest. cuz that way they will click the Member button on the web application screen instead of the Guest button. and then things will, theoretically, go faster.

so after putting in my data multiple times (like, i don't know, four or five times including associating my apple id with my procare id, which somehow was never done before) we finally get the order put into the system, and away goes my wife's macbook into the bowels of the store.

it has been, i think, eighteen days from that day. and to my knowledge nothing meaninful has happened yet.

which is why i have not written anything about this from before, because i figured it would save me some time to just write it all up at once.

but i've apparently gone inside the badlands. i'm in the Apple Store behind the Apple store. i'm at the part where various Apple employees try to walk me from street corner to street corner. but no one is really handing off anything. nothing is really happening. like i'm unstuck in time, or, i dont' know. pick your own vonnegut/kafka metaphor.

of course this is all ridiculous. it's not like anyone is losing any limbs, or anyone is dying. it's not like my parents innocently named me Harry Potter. the Apple Store didn't give me cancer. i must say though i'm glad my cholesterol is coming down because they might have given me a mild infarction or two somewhere along the way.

so the long boring stupid story is that, some days later they call and say that the machine needs hardware replacement parts. (see i totally knew that. i'd done my homework.) and they would have to ship it off somewhere, send it to a "depot" of some kind, as they didn't have the parts in stock. and did they want me to make a back up of the data?

so i go by the store, since this is all on my voice mail, and also whenever i call them back the phone rings and rings and no one picks it up. and i tell them, no, i don't need a backup. just please send it off so i can get it back and return it to my wife and get my macbook back from her and then i can install Notes 8.5 and i can go on with my life, get back to work on my novel, and basically return to normal. or what passes for normal for me, anyway.

ok so i didn't really tell them all of that. but that's what i'm thinking.

so they are all like, ok cool, we'll do that then.

and then a week later someone leaves me another voice mail. with the same message. they are going to ship it off, but, do i want them to back up the data first? just in case something goes wrong or they have to replace the hard drive.

i thought it was the same voice mail from before. i seriously didn't think it was a new one. and btw the last conversation we had with them, which was last night, they admitted it was the logic board. which has nothing to do with the hard drive. but let's forget about that for now. and get back to the 99 dollars they apparently really, really, reeeeally want to charge me to back up the data that they know i do not need backed up.

so i go by the store. in person. i talk to a guy in a cool orange t-shirt. i get his card. and i say, you know, it's funny. i had the same exact conversation with a guy, right here in this spot, a week ago. the same one! we are talking about exactly the same thing. we are talking about the fact that i don't want my data backed up. i just want you to send the machine off for repairs. that's all. no data backup needed, just send the machine off. now. thanks.

i was very nice. very polite. i smiled as often as i could. i just want to point that out. because after a while i get to thinking, this is just bad karma. i've done something wrong and i deserve what i'm getting. i was mean to an Apple employee who wasn't listening to me and wanted to unjustly charge me money for something that was not my fault. who just wanted me to line up and get into the Apple Certified Swim Lanes, where as much as possible Apple gets to push the hard work of fixing their broken shite onto their customers, and where possible, they get to charge us for things we don't need and should not have to pay for.

but i digress.

so this time i get a business card. the card is somewhere else and i don't remember his name and that is probably good because otherwise i'd likely blog it right now. but i have a business card and until last night it was squirreled away in my wallet.

so then today or yesterday or maybe wednesday (today at the very latest) i should, from the time of my last redundant conversation, be picking up the machine, with its new logic board. except i'm not.

do you know why not?

because yesterday morning, i got a voice mail asking if they wanted me to have them back up the data. because they needed to ship the computer off to a depot, where they can replace the hardware that needs replaced, because they are not able to fix the problem themselves. and this time he kindly leaves the price tag for me on the voice mail, in a cheerful, blustery voice. the cost is 99 dollars, and can i get back to them and let them know.

see how they did that?

lol!!

i mean that is just awesome. its like they've been up night after night reading Kafka, and figuring out how they can make the Apple Store more Kafkaesque. i mean it's only an Apple Store. how much harm can they really do to the world? they could get as Kafkaesque as they want and really, probably, no one would be harmed, per se. they aren't going to give me H1N1 just because they ship my laptop off to, er, Antarctica? by mistake or something. it's all ok cuz they all wear these really great t-shirts and stuff.

ok. so. this is the part where i make a declaration!

i'm never buying anything from Apple ever again. the Apple stock price can climb all the way to the moon, large swaths of which Apple will undoubtedly one day own, but i don't care. i might just give up computers altogether. eventually. at some point in the distant future. or, whatever.

i'm likely not going to blog about this again. so this is the end.

so the good news is, someone from the Apple store called to tell me that he was working on the computer already. it was around dinner time, about 7:15pm or so. that is definitely faster than i expected. they haven't called to tell me that it is done and ready to be picked up. so... why call me to tell me that you have started working on it?

it turns out the bad news is that what he was calling to tell me was that i forgot to initial a checkbox allowing them to charge me one hundred dollars for diagnosing whatever was wrong with my machine.

omfg...

they are trying, really hard, to lose a customer.

let me put this another way.

they called me. during dinner time. to scold me. as though i were an idiot child.

i had to tell the poor guy who i unloaded on not to take it personally. cuz as i told him, "you are the fourth or fifth person i've spoken to about this issue and i'm really pissed off". just so he would understand that the undercurrent of anger on my side of the equation wasn't anything against him in particular. and then i directed him to the place on the form in question where a manager had initialed saying there would be no charge.

hello? anyone? fucking? in there?

his response? he said he was directed by a manager to call me up and inform me that unless i came in and initialed that check box, that they would not be working on my machine.

this is the part where i get surly.

un. fucking. believable. the sheer arrogance is completely astounding.

dear apple store managers, everywhere in the world, and especially in Tampa, Florida.

you do not get to call me up and harass me. ever. you don't get to have your "administrators" (or whatever you call them - geniuses? hahahahaha) call me up and tell me that from now on i will be required to initial that check box. let me fill you in, all you Apple store managers who are undoubtedly completely and blissfully unaware of this blog entry, that relationships with customers are just like all relationships. there is give and take. it is ALWAYS A NEGOTIATION. you don't get to set arbitrary rules, no matter how great your hardware is.

have you got that part? get smarter already. christ on fucking crackers.

i'm pretty sure that by the end of the conversation he'd said he was going to work on the machine. although i'm not 100% certain. i suppose i'll find out eventually.

how much worse can this get? i've been patronized by the good people at the Apple store for the last time. i can tell you that for sure. i'm really not sure at this moment what i'm going to do when i walk into their store to pick up the machine. i may walk out with my money back instead. not sure how i can even use the machine with any semblance of joy after this.

maybe i'm getting old. but it seems as though we keep lowering the bar, and lowering it further and further, and when we've got it lowered that far, we lower it some more. i want to teach people how to start thinking. i want to show them there is a better way to live. maybe that's arrogance on my part? i don't know. but i don't think it is.

last night my daughter read me "a couple of stories". she's doing so great with that. i am continually astounded at how many words she knows, and even words she isn't sure of, she often figures out very quickly. she is truly mastering reading. i'm incredibly proud. can you tell? so in between stories i said to her, hey if you get to read me stories, i get to read you a poem. so i did, and wouldn't you know it, i turned to a Rilke poem that kind of put things in perspective. here is an excerpt from The Man Watching:

What we choose to fight with is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!

... When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.

my "triumph" over the situation with the computer definitely makes me small. i'm not sure there is even a triumph there. it's such a stupid thing. i ought to be out wrestling with angels instead:

If we would only let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

...whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

anyway. maybe that's the universe or god or whatever you want to call it (myself? or just plain old Rilke) telling me, i've got better things to worry about than this.

on monday i bought a new macbook pro. the "little" one with the smaller hard drive and 2 gig of ram.

really nice machine. i was sooooo excited when i saw the keyboard back lighting. omg i love that sh1t. it's the little things. i love the aluminum body, just everything. it's wonderful and i can't wait to try Notes 8.5.1 on it.

got it home, ported my data from my old macbook over. on my old macbook (which still works as long as it is plugged in - needs a new battery i guess - for the second time) the data is encrypted with FileVault.

all the data got ported over. i didn't have a fire wire cable around so i used the network cable and it worked fine. or so i thought.

once the data was on the new machine, i tried logging into my account. of course this would be the same account i had on the old machine. i've typed the password about a zillion times, no way i've forgotten it.

so i type it in and it comes back with an error. something about FileVault (don't remember now the wording).

so i google the error and after searching some i finally find what looks like the right set of instructions.

the first thing i have to do is figure out how to enable root level access on the machine. then there were five or six more tasks after that, all looking at least that herculean.

ack.

so, hey i just bought the machine two days ago right? i also bought AppleCare to go with it (don't leave the store without it man, trust me on that one), and i am a ProCare member (don't get me started on ProCare - those f$kers won't even look at your machine without paying for it - a hundred bucks a year!!), and i've bought, let's see now, including this new machine, four Apple laptops, one iMac, and two iPods over the years.

they ought to roll out the red carpet for a customer like me, right?

not so much.

first off, the first tech who looks at the machine says, oh, we'll just change your password and you'll be all set. he wasn't looking at the error. he wasn't actually reading it.

see how i did that? cuz ya know, when there are errors on the screen, i like to, you know, actually read them. i'm curious like that.

then i explain to the tech guy (i'm using the term lightly at this point) how i already looked up the error and told him how the first instruction was to enable root level access on the machine. he looks at me with slight terror, his eyes getting sort of big and wide, pupils dilating (no i'm not making this up or embellishing) and says, ooohhh, it's a File Vault error. we'll have to check it in and have them look at it.

so we do that. and he says someone will call me.

now having tried to call the Apple store one time and having been completely befuddled and denied by their automated telephone system, i realized that this was a "don't call us we'll call you" kind of scenario. but i'm a patient guy. even when it comes to the long awaited MacBook Pro (insert gilded choirs of angels singing hallelujah here - i've really wanted one of these machines for a LONG time), i can be patient with them while someone monkeys around with the significant task of getting FileVault to give up its encrypted ghost. i mean, i figure that is going to take someone with both brains and time some significant effort to come to grips with. right?

so it's been two days and i haven't heard anything. no calls from either confident or frantic tech people. nothing. i'm starting to get nervous. so i go into the store on my lunch break and give them the repair number and they disappear. for a while. i start to realize right then - ah, no one has even looked at it yet.

another tech fellow comes out. he is introduced to me as their "administrator". um, yeah, not sure what that means in the context of an Apple store. but i'm not impressed. by the title anyway. i'm more than willing to be impressed by his technical skills. but he simply says, we are going to have to wipe the drive and charge you 85 dollars.

now wiping the drive doesn't bother me. i can just disable FileVault on the old machine and push the data back over again. no biggie, right? but the 85 dollar charge? THAT i have a problem with.

it isn't MY fault that "Snow Leopard" can't handle the encrypted data. it isn't my fault that their software can't, in this instance, talk to their own software. but the fellow is insistent.

so i start to get surly. he brings out another geek. oh my she looks very smart and very geeky. just the sort of person who can listen to the problem's description and make an intelligent assessment of the situation. right? right?

not so much. she listens to me talk to the fellow. i explain again what happened. by now it is painfully clear than no one on their "technical staff" has even thought to GOOGLE the error message that they clearly do not understand. they don't get it. talking to them is like, well, talking to a deer that has it's eyes caught in the headlights. no one is home. all the fellow can do is to repeat his assertion that because it is a "software problem" (apparently these are magical words that mean "we automatically get to charge money") and they are going to levy their 85 dollar fine. no. matter. what. cuz ya know, i'm so stupid, pushing their bright shiny buttons on their perfect, beautiful screens, and so this means i obviously deserve to pay them for the privilege when the machine locks up tighter than a.. well something that is locked up really tight. uh, davie jones locker? or something?

anyhoo.

now. now............ he's got me steaming mad. this is the kind of mad i just don't really GET any more. i've grown up a lot. honest. but i'm losing it at this point. i say to him, WE ARE DONE HERE. YOU ARE GOING TO TAKE THIS COMPUTER BACK AND YOU ARE GOING TO GIVE ME A FULL REFUND.

and i put the computer down on one of the many large wooden desks that now populate the new fangled store. and we stand there and he and the geeky girl who is supposed to be All That sort of stare at the computer, and stare at me, and finally he picks it up and says, "OK" with a hint of triumph in his voice, as though he's won some sort of argument he was really hoping he WOULD in fact win. or... something. by this time i'm not at all convinced i can accurately predict what he might be thinking, since i'm not entirely sure he IS thinking. i mean i thought i could at least assume if not predict rational customer service. am i crazy?

and so he goes over to the register where they are now going to give me my money back. theoretically.

now at this point i am ready to disavow All Things Apple. For Fucking Forever. all over an 85 dollar charge. but the charge is so unwarranted and unbelievably stupid, and the service has been so painfully slow and so painfully unintelligent. and i expect more from Apple. i'm sorry, shame on me apparently, but i just do expect more from them. because their machines rock. and because they look so nice. and because they cost a lot of money. (that last one is kinda important methinks.)

now i know better.

so i suppose in order to do a refund, he's got to go and get the manager. and she comes out. and she's very nice and she wants very much to help me and figure out my problem. so NOW after all of THAT, i finally have someone who, holy crap, is actually listening to me. i guess threatening to return the merchandise will do that?

she doesn't understand the problem i don't think, she even looks at me with some suspicion, and says that they haven't seen that problem before, and that they have transferred data from some machines that had FileVault installed, but... well, i guess she decides to take my word for it. maybe it's my earnest insistence that i've been wronged. maybe it's that, over and over again, i am able to explain the problem logically. maybe it's that i'm pissed off. really bad, by now. maybe it's that i suggest to her that she can GOOGLE THE ERROR AND SEE THE RESOLUTION ON THEIR OWN F@#$@#$@ING WEB SITE???

who knows what part of my tale (the one i've burned up my entire lunch hour telling to various suspicious, uncaring, and unthinking people, people who think that whenever they smile at me, i'm supposed to just jangle up 85 bucks out of my pocket like a broken one armed bandit), finally gets through to her.

her solution? they'll wipe the data for me without charge. i tell her i've got a ProCare card. cuz i know this is the part where no one looks at my new MBP for days or weeks. she says, oh that's good it would have been 3 to 5 business days before they could have turned it around without ProCare. but since i do in fact have it, they can get it done in 1 to 2 business days instead.

i think to myself, yeah, it's been sitting in the back room without anyone even looking at it for two days. already. right? right? but i'm emotionally spent, i've already totally lost it once, let it go, let it go.

i told this story to a friend of mine at work. he said, thanks for telling me that. i'm never buying Apple.

i love Apple computers. i've watched my daughter do amazing things with her iMac that i know she would not have been able to do with a PC. but god almighty frankenchrist people. Apple really needs to train their people on THINKING PROACTIVELY and on giving good customer service and on LISTENING CAREFULLY and on RESEARCHING THINGS THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

the manager, who was a sweet girl in her way, expected me to thank her. she gave me this look, saying something along the lines of how she had helped me, and it was obvious, albeit unspoken, that she expected me to thank her. i was so worn out at that moment that i did just that. i said "thank you" and walked out.

but what she didn't realize is that she did the absolute MINIMUM to keep me coming back. and i do mean the minimum. she basically came out and did some triage, mostly treating me with respect but here and there lapsing into suspicion or some kind of wariness. and then had the, god what do you call it, temerity? to expect to be thanked for what she did. as though LISTENING INTELLIGENTLY is a SERVICE that goes beyond the call of duty.

but that isn't enough. not by a long shot, when you have already been treated the way i was, after spending close to 1,600 dollars on the machine in question.

i'm disappointed and a bit shocked.

and i'm waiting, i guess for two days, to hear back from them. i fully expect to have to go visit them before they call me, but maybe they'll surprise me. we'll see.

one green smoothie!

here is the recipe for the smoothie:

one cup strawberries
half cup blueberries
two bananas
seven leaves of romaine lettuce.
1 cup of water.

blend...

and that's it! simple to make, tastes great, and very cleansing. i added the blueberries for the antioxidant boost, you can also make it without them and it tastes great that way too. romaine lettuce has a high chlorophyll content which is very cleansing/detoxifying.

i'm sort of slowly heading toward going "raw" as a vegan. this is the next step on the journey for me - one i've known i was going to take but haven't had the time yet or the inclination to follow. but i'm getting there, it feels like it is time to start moving that direction. so i started reading this book:

12 Steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food

i don't know why but i had a good feeling about this book. it hasn't disappointed. i love the way it is written, and i love the stories mrs. boutenko tells about her own family's history. basically the short story is, they all had really awful health problems. they did the raw vegan thing and everyone started feeling better, rather dramatically. she had a diabetic son for instance who was cured, her asthmatic daughter? also cured. she and her husband had all sorts of problems - all cured by eating raw, vegan foods.

but then they ran into problems after being raw vegans for nine years. it seemed their diet wasn't quite cutting it. so they added in greens, lots of greens, and things got better again.

so i'm experimenting with the green smoothies. i figure its a great way to start inching my way toward going raw. moving away from cooked foods is i think a bigger deal than i imagined it would be. it turns out there are opiates created by cooking food. grilled meat for instance has highly addictive toxic substances that are also found in cigarettes. 100 grams worth of grilled meat equals 800 cigarettes worth of these toxic addictive chemicals.

but this addictive property of cooked food isn't just limited to meat. it doesn't matter what kind of food it is, when you cook it, addictive chemicals that often have opiate effects, are created. here are a few other things i've learned about cooking food:

- many fats cooked at temperatures over 300 degrees turn into trans fats. different fats have different temperatures at which they go toxic.

- vegetables and fruits naturally contain enzymes that help digestion. at temperatures over 118 degrees, the enzymes disappear. (there is a restaurant in orlando called Cafe 118 for this very reason). when the enzymes disappear, the body has to make up for it by manufacturing enzymes to digest the food. this is hard on the pancreas and is stressful. i read recently that the enzymes created by the pancreas go around killing cancer cells. by diverting them to digestive activities, our ability to fight cancer is limited.

- many other vitamins and nutrients disappear in even light cooking. for instance falcarinol, a cancer fighting nutrient found in carrots, is halved when carrots are blanched.

- the pH of foods changes when foods are cooked. they become more acidic. the more acidic a food is, the harder it is on the body. one way the body adjusts by pulling calcium out of the bones to change the pH back to where it needs to be. ever notice Tums and Rolaids are made mostly of calcium? there's a good reason for that. raw foods are much more alkaline. the blood stream has a certain pH it has to maintain - it's basic survival. so the body will do everything it can to adjust to whatever dietary choices we make.

so... for all of these reasons - the pH of foods, toxic chemicals created by cooking, nutrient density, and the resulting health and wellness of eating raw - i want to move in this direction.

honestly it feels like moving toward a completely raw diet is going to be harder than going vegan was. but i am already experiencing benefits from eating the green smoothies. so... i'm going to continue experimenting in that direction.

if you want to read more, some of it is in the book i linked to above, and some of it is in the Thrive book i blogged about before.