There are still a few nice, honest people left in the world. Case in point: the guy who saved my ass this weekend. After church, I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few necessities. I had the kid in tow and we were both still dressed in our good church clothes so I was carrying a clutch purse instead of my normal, ginormous, running-around-doing-errands purse (this fact becomes important later – just trust me on this). I’m never a fan of grocery shopping even at the best of times and doing it in 3” heels, with a 4-year-old who is ready for his nap and yet still not too tired to notice and ask about every toy, piece of candy, box of cookies or sugary cereal that we come across is even more difficult. So, I was on a mission to get in, get the stuff we needed, and get outta there as fast as possible. I managed to accomplish this task fairly well except I had to give up on the lunch meat as there was a line 6-people-deep at the deli counter so that was a no-go. Still, got the milk, the diet coke and the peanut butter and everything else on my list and got out of the store without any tantrums occurring on either my part or on Ryan’s part. Navigated the demolition derby that is the parking lot without breaking my neck or having Ryan get run over by some crazed psycho in a Hummer who thinks the parking lot is the best place to try to break the land speed record. Got the kid and the groceries in the car, was a good citizen and put the grocery cart back in the cart return area and headed for home. No problems, right? I pull into the garage and start to unload things when I suddenly realized that I don’t see my purse. Anywhere. I start frantically looking for it at which point this small voice pipes up from the back seat: “Uh, Mom, are you looking for your purse?” “Yes, honey, do you see it back there?” “No, you left it in the cart at the grocery store.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Those of you that are women and carry purses are screaming along with me, I am sure. See, my normal purse is a shoulder bag, which stays on my shoulder and therefore is never at risk of being left behind somewhere. Not so with a clutch purse – it’s easy to set it down and forget about it. In fact, if you want to free up your hands to do anything, you almost have to set it down (although mine has a wrist strap so you can hang it from your wrist and note to self that I need to freakin’ use the strap next time!) I remember jumping back into the car and starting the engine and then everything is a blur until I pull back into the grocery store parking lot. Well, I do remember Ryan saying from the back seat that I should slow down or the “pleaseman” will give me a ticket and me muttering some response about an emergency (Ryan has since told at least two perfect strangers that it is okay to break the law if it is an emergency – way to go, me). As I squeal into the handicapped spot (emergency, remember?) which is the closest place I can park to the cart return, I can see my grocery cart sitting there by itself, but it’s obvious that there’s no black clutch purse in it. My heart is sinking, but I decide to go into the store and check to see if anyone has been honest enough (yeah, right) to maybe have turned in the purse. As I get up to the door of the store, I see a man standing off to the side with a cart and something black in it. Just as I’m about to try for a closer look, he looks at me and says “I think I have your purse – I recognize you from your driver’s license. Don’t worry, everything is still in it.” After he picked me up off the ground where I had fallen into a puddle of relief, I thanked him a bunch of times and headed back for the car because Ryan was still strapped into it and I didn’t want to leave him alone (or the car in the handicapped spot) any longer. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I should’ve given the guy something as a reward. That purse had all the cash I’d just taken out when I bought groceries, all my credit and ATM cards, my (brand new) driver’s license, my phone, and a new pair of Brighton sunglasses that I just bought in Vegas. Losing it could have so been a complete disaster.
So, thank you again, Good Samaritan, whoever you are!
In other news...
I am completely addicted to the Choco-Nut trail mix from Mother’s Market and it is ruining my diet. And yet, can’t stop eating it. So good.
Went to Vegas over Memorial Day Weekend and had a fabulous time. Bought the aforementioned Brighton sunglasses, saw two shows, shopped, hung out by the pool, ate at a couple of fabulous restaurants and just generally had a terrific time. Oh, here’s the pair of sunglasses I almost bought instead. I actually like them a little bit better, but they are very similar to a prescription pair that I already have so I decided to go for something with a little different look. The prescription glasses are at the eye doctor’s shop for repair so I needed something to wear in the meantime.
The shows I went to were “Le Reve” at the Wynn hotel and “Love” at the Mirage. The former was good, but very bizarre with no real story line. The latter is a Cirque-du-Soleil show set to Beatles’ music and it was excellent!
While in Vegas, I noticed a disturbing trend. I wasn’t going to mention it figuring that hey, it’s Vegas, you never know what you’ll see there (for example, there were so many women wearing hooker gear and having several inches of thong showing out the back of their pants that my retinas nearly burned out, but whatever), but since my return, I’ve noticed it occurring here as well. What is it, you ask? Women wearing shoes that are either way too big or way too small for their feet. Did I miss a memo? When did it become okay to have 3” of shoe base sticking out behind your heel or 3” of your toes hanging off the front edge of your shoe? Shoes – especially heels – are uncomfortable (and expensive) enough that I cannot fathom why anyone would buy and wear shoes that don’t fit. And I don’t mean that they’re just a tad bit tight and you know the leather will stretch out. I’m talking don’t fit by at least a couple of sizes. Why? I don’t get it. Oh, and besides the comfort and expense issue, it’s incredibly unattractive. Someone please explain this to me.
Oh, and speaking of shoes…the highlight of my trip was when I went into the Stuart Weitzman (ritzy, high-end, designer shoes) store in the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace and both of the sales clerks kept commenting on the shoes I was wearing and how cute they were. Now, I’ll admit, they are a really cute pair of metallic silver strappy sandals with some jeweled embellishment on the front (hey, it was Vegas – if you can’t wear your bling there, then you might as well not own any). But, it was all I could to make it out of the store without bursting into gales of laughter.
Why? Because those so cute sandals?
They’re from last summer.
And they’re from Payless.
They cost me about $9.00 during a BOGO sale.
Not only can I rock the cheap shoes…I can rock ‘em in Stuart Weitzman’s store.
Life is good.
KJ
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Biz & Books
First, a bit of business…
There’ve been a couple of recent inquiries about pricing on my jewelry so I just thought I’d put up a reminder that everything is available for sale at the Silver Parrot Designs website. I accept credit cards and will ship anywhere in the United States.
Okay, on to the books.
It took me forever to find a copy of “ Crystal Dragon,” the second book of Sharon Lee & Steve Miller’s Great Migration Duology. None of the local bookstores carried it and even Amazon was sold out of it for a while. I learned recently it’s because their publisher, Meisha Merlin, has gone out of business. That’s a real shame because they were doing a great job bringing new talent into the field and they were also set to publish the long (and I mean long – like 20 years) awaited new addition to Jacqueline Lichtenberg’s Sime/Gen series. I don’t think that book is EVER going to get published!
But anyway, back to Lee & Miller. I can’t say enough good things about the entire Liaden Universe series. Wonderful. Original. Action-packed. Romantic. Just plain good. The basic elements of the books speak for themselves, but I thought I’d point out that one of my personal favorite things about the way these authors write is their dialogue. There’s a certain cadence or rhythm to the way the characters (particularly the Liadens) speak that invokes a feeling of antiquity. There are always multiple unspoken levels of complexity for every word that IS spoken and the whole is infused with a very dry sense of wit. Altogether enjoyable!
I do think the Duology books are perhaps the weakest of the entire series, but this second book is definitely better than the first. The reader is given much more insight into the origin of the dramliza, the origin of Clan Korval, and the personalities and relationship of Cantra yos’Phelium and M. Jela. If you haven’t ventured into Liaden space yet, I probably would not start with the Duology (even though it is the “origin” story). It makes much more sense if one already has the background from the other books. I suppose with Meisha Merlin out of the picture, it will be a long time (if ever) before we get any more books in this series, but don’t despair, pilot! The adventuresome can find an on-line version of the latest Liaden story at the Korval website. The story is free, but if you are suitably impressed with the tale, you can make a donation to keep these wonderful authors afloat while they find a new publisher. I highly encourage everyone to do this as these two are the type of authors who should be supported. They’re turning out high quality, inventive, INTELLIGENT work as opposed another tired re-tread of Star Wars/vampire/werewolf novels.
Which is a wonderful segue into my review of Karen Chance’s two, um, well, vampire novels, “Touch the Dark” and “Claimed by Shadow.” Although, technically, they are really the story of Cassandra Palmer who is an oracle (and those of you who know your Greek mythology are now going “ooo…an oracle named Cassandra…how, er, daring). However, Cassandra has managed to deeply entangle herself into the affairs of vampires, weres and pretty much every other supernatural beastie around. Orphaned as a child when supernatural politic led to her parents’ death in a car bombing, Cassandra is raised at the vampire court of Antonio (sort of a combo of Tony Soprano and Dracula rolled into one neat package) who wants to control her in order to use her psychic gifts for his own material gains. Cassandra eventually escapes and teams up with the FBI for a little payback of the “even vampire gangsters have to pay their taxes” kind which eventually leads to her being in the witness protection program with a pack of vampires perennially trying to find her. One day, they do.
And that’s where our story begins. And, it’s actually a pretty good story, at that. Leaving aside some rookie author mistakes in the continuity department and the fact that Cassandra is not ALWAYS the brightest bulb in the room, these were an enjoyable read. The action is certainly non-stop. In fact, a few restful scenes here and there to allow the reader to recover would not go amiss in future installments. The vampires come in a variety of different flavors: creepy, evil, nice, sexy but dangerous and of course, just downright sexy. Which of course means that there are the de rigueur (apparently) sex scenes, but they are nowhere near as intense or as ubiquitous as those found in, oh, I don’t know, say, a Laurell K. Hamilton novel. I did find it a bit creepy that the one vampire Cassandra is most strongly attracted to is the guy who was kinda sorta her “guardian uncle” while she was growing up. But, given the essential immortality of vamps, I suppose it’s no creepier than say Harrison Ford and Callista Flockhart or Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Or Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.
Then, I read the two remaining books in Diana Pharaoh Francis’s “Path” series: “Path of Honor” and “Path of Blood.”
The best thing I can say about this trilogy is that it is mediocre. After a promising, but somewhat juvenile, start in the first book, Francis meanders through a second book during which (as far as I can tell) nothing much happens except a lot of whining. Yes, the plague is terrible and yes, Reisil can’t seem to get her powers functioning to cure it, and that’s bad. But what I didn’t see in this book was Reisil really taking any ACTIONS to address this. There’s a lot of “poor me, nobody likes me” and “woe is me I can’t save everyone” moments, but is she running around looking up obscure magic texts, or spending hours on her knees in the temple praying or roaming the countryside trying to scare up the wizards so she can ask them questions? Nope.
The whole story really falls apart in the last book where a whole new character from another world is suddenly introduced and then Reisil has to go to his world and then she comes back and blah, blah, blah. THEN, the author skips over the actual RESOLUTION of everything and just gives us a synopsis of it in a flashback that occurs two years later. GRRR! And that’s not even what I hated the most (although it was pretty bad). I hated, hated, HATED the way the author chose to resolve Reisil’s romance with Yohuac. I suppose I won’t reveal that here in case anyone is actually tempted to read these books, but man, was it frustrating! The sad thing is that these books contained some nuggets of really quality stuff – too bad they didn’t come to fruition.
Which leaves me with the last thing I read this month – Jim Butcher’s second “Alera” book: “Academ’s Fury.” This book has been out for a while. In fact, it’s been out long enough that it’s now in paperback (originally released in hardback) and I waited to pick it up because I had mixed feelings about the first book in the series. It was well-written in true Jim Butcher style, but it just didn’t have quite the same “oomph” for me as the Dresden books do. Perhaps that’s an unfair comparison because of course the true, high fantasy, Alera books won’t have the same snappy, pop culture references and humor as the Dresden books. I also felt like the teenage character of Tavi not having any furycrafting ability in a world where everyone else DOES was so very reminiscent of the plot of the original installment of Piers Anthony’s “Xanth” series. Of course, the two series could not possibly be more different in every other respect. I’m just saying I felt I’d seen this device before.
But, there it was in paperback and I was having a hard time finding anything else decent to read so I thought I’d give the series another chance. I knew it would at least be intelligent and tightly crafted if nothing else.
Wow. Am I glad I picked this book up. It completely blows the first book away! Non-stop action (in fact, this book could’ve used a couple of “respite” moments, too), non-stop plots, and danger, danger, danger Will Robinson. Thoroughly entertaining from cover to cover. In fact, I ran out as soon as I’d finished it to pick up the third book in the series (which is out only in hardcover thus far) only to have to throw a fit in the bookstore because they were out of stock! If I have one critique (other than the request for a breather from the action) it would be that while the use of overwhelming odds is a tried-and-true device, I found the odds against Tavi, Isana, Bernard and Amara in this book to be SO overwhelming as to be unbelievable that they accomplished what they did. This is exacerbated by the fact that they all survived a “battle of overwhelming odds” in the first book of the series already. Still, there are hints that perhaps Tavi is more than what he seems and that this may account for some of his “luck” despite his apparent lack of furycrafting ability. I’m headed to a different bookstore at lunch today in the hopes of picking up the next installment so I’ll have to let you know how it all turns out.
That’s it for now.
Take care all and have a Happy Memorial Day weekend!
KJ
P.S. Dratted Barnes & Nobel didn't have "Cursor's Fury" so off to amazon.com I go!
There’ve been a couple of recent inquiries about pricing on my jewelry so I just thought I’d put up a reminder that everything is available for sale at the Silver Parrot Designs website. I accept credit cards and will ship anywhere in the United States.
Okay, on to the books.
It took me forever to find a copy of “ Crystal Dragon,” the second book of Sharon Lee & Steve Miller’s Great Migration Duology. None of the local bookstores carried it and even Amazon was sold out of it for a while. I learned recently it’s because their publisher, Meisha Merlin, has gone out of business. That’s a real shame because they were doing a great job bringing new talent into the field and they were also set to publish the long (and I mean long – like 20 years) awaited new addition to Jacqueline Lichtenberg’s Sime/Gen series. I don’t think that book is EVER going to get published!
But anyway, back to Lee & Miller. I can’t say enough good things about the entire Liaden Universe series. Wonderful. Original. Action-packed. Romantic. Just plain good. The basic elements of the books speak for themselves, but I thought I’d point out that one of my personal favorite things about the way these authors write is their dialogue. There’s a certain cadence or rhythm to the way the characters (particularly the Liadens) speak that invokes a feeling of antiquity. There are always multiple unspoken levels of complexity for every word that IS spoken and the whole is infused with a very dry sense of wit. Altogether enjoyable!
I do think the Duology books are perhaps the weakest of the entire series, but this second book is definitely better than the first. The reader is given much more insight into the origin of the dramliza, the origin of Clan Korval, and the personalities and relationship of Cantra yos’Phelium and M. Jela. If you haven’t ventured into Liaden space yet, I probably would not start with the Duology (even though it is the “origin” story). It makes much more sense if one already has the background from the other books. I suppose with Meisha Merlin out of the picture, it will be a long time (if ever) before we get any more books in this series, but don’t despair, pilot! The adventuresome can find an on-line version of the latest Liaden story at the Korval website. The story is free, but if you are suitably impressed with the tale, you can make a donation to keep these wonderful authors afloat while they find a new publisher. I highly encourage everyone to do this as these two are the type of authors who should be supported. They’re turning out high quality, inventive, INTELLIGENT work as opposed another tired re-tread of Star Wars/vampire/werewolf novels.
Which is a wonderful segue into my review of Karen Chance’s two, um, well, vampire novels, “Touch the Dark” and “Claimed by Shadow.” Although, technically, they are really the story of Cassandra Palmer who is an oracle (and those of you who know your Greek mythology are now going “ooo…an oracle named Cassandra…how, er, daring). However, Cassandra has managed to deeply entangle herself into the affairs of vampires, weres and pretty much every other supernatural beastie around. Orphaned as a child when supernatural politic led to her parents’ death in a car bombing, Cassandra is raised at the vampire court of Antonio (sort of a combo of Tony Soprano and Dracula rolled into one neat package) who wants to control her in order to use her psychic gifts for his own material gains. Cassandra eventually escapes and teams up with the FBI for a little payback of the “even vampire gangsters have to pay their taxes” kind which eventually leads to her being in the witness protection program with a pack of vampires perennially trying to find her. One day, they do.
And that’s where our story begins. And, it’s actually a pretty good story, at that. Leaving aside some rookie author mistakes in the continuity department and the fact that Cassandra is not ALWAYS the brightest bulb in the room, these were an enjoyable read. The action is certainly non-stop. In fact, a few restful scenes here and there to allow the reader to recover would not go amiss in future installments. The vampires come in a variety of different flavors: creepy, evil, nice, sexy but dangerous and of course, just downright sexy. Which of course means that there are the de rigueur (apparently) sex scenes, but they are nowhere near as intense or as ubiquitous as those found in, oh, I don’t know, say, a Laurell K. Hamilton novel. I did find it a bit creepy that the one vampire Cassandra is most strongly attracted to is the guy who was kinda sorta her “guardian uncle” while she was growing up. But, given the essential immortality of vamps, I suppose it’s no creepier than say Harrison Ford and Callista Flockhart or Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Or Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.
Then, I read the two remaining books in Diana Pharaoh Francis’s “Path” series: “Path of Honor” and “Path of Blood.”
The best thing I can say about this trilogy is that it is mediocre. After a promising, but somewhat juvenile, start in the first book, Francis meanders through a second book during which (as far as I can tell) nothing much happens except a lot of whining. Yes, the plague is terrible and yes, Reisil can’t seem to get her powers functioning to cure it, and that’s bad. But what I didn’t see in this book was Reisil really taking any ACTIONS to address this. There’s a lot of “poor me, nobody likes me” and “woe is me I can’t save everyone” moments, but is she running around looking up obscure magic texts, or spending hours on her knees in the temple praying or roaming the countryside trying to scare up the wizards so she can ask them questions? Nope.
The whole story really falls apart in the last book where a whole new character from another world is suddenly introduced and then Reisil has to go to his world and then she comes back and blah, blah, blah. THEN, the author skips over the actual RESOLUTION of everything and just gives us a synopsis of it in a flashback that occurs two years later. GRRR! And that’s not even what I hated the most (although it was pretty bad). I hated, hated, HATED the way the author chose to resolve Reisil’s romance with Yohuac. I suppose I won’t reveal that here in case anyone is actually tempted to read these books, but man, was it frustrating! The sad thing is that these books contained some nuggets of really quality stuff – too bad they didn’t come to fruition.
Which leaves me with the last thing I read this month – Jim Butcher’s second “Alera” book: “Academ’s Fury.” This book has been out for a while. In fact, it’s been out long enough that it’s now in paperback (originally released in hardback) and I waited to pick it up because I had mixed feelings about the first book in the series. It was well-written in true Jim Butcher style, but it just didn’t have quite the same “oomph” for me as the Dresden books do. Perhaps that’s an unfair comparison because of course the true, high fantasy, Alera books won’t have the same snappy, pop culture references and humor as the Dresden books. I also felt like the teenage character of Tavi not having any furycrafting ability in a world where everyone else DOES was so very reminiscent of the plot of the original installment of Piers Anthony’s “Xanth” series. Of course, the two series could not possibly be more different in every other respect. I’m just saying I felt I’d seen this device before.
But, there it was in paperback and I was having a hard time finding anything else decent to read so I thought I’d give the series another chance. I knew it would at least be intelligent and tightly crafted if nothing else.
Wow. Am I glad I picked this book up. It completely blows the first book away! Non-stop action (in fact, this book could’ve used a couple of “respite” moments, too), non-stop plots, and danger, danger, danger Will Robinson. Thoroughly entertaining from cover to cover. In fact, I ran out as soon as I’d finished it to pick up the third book in the series (which is out only in hardcover thus far) only to have to throw a fit in the bookstore because they were out of stock! If I have one critique (other than the request for a breather from the action) it would be that while the use of overwhelming odds is a tried-and-true device, I found the odds against Tavi, Isana, Bernard and Amara in this book to be SO overwhelming as to be unbelievable that they accomplished what they did. This is exacerbated by the fact that they all survived a “battle of overwhelming odds” in the first book of the series already. Still, there are hints that perhaps Tavi is more than what he seems and that this may account for some of his “luck” despite his apparent lack of furycrafting ability. I’m headed to a different bookstore at lunch today in the hopes of picking up the next installment so I’ll have to let you know how it all turns out.
That’s it for now.
Take care all and have a Happy Memorial Day weekend!
KJ
P.S. Dratted Barnes & Nobel didn't have "Cursor's Fury" so off to amazon.com I go!
Thursday, May 17, 2007
You have got to be freakin' kidding me!!
Well, if I ever needed any (additional) proof that TV execs are idiots, this is it. And look at the absolute DREK! they are going to replace it with.
I am now officially boycotting all CW shows. Except for the remaining episodes of the last season of "Veronica Mars."
RIP, girlfriend.
KJ
I am now officially boycotting all CW shows. Except for the remaining episodes of the last season of "Veronica Mars."
RIP, girlfriend.
KJ
Monday, May 14, 2007
Saying "65% off retail"...
...to a bead addict is like saying "free crack" to a drug addict. Which is why it was so hard to restrain myself at the Rings & Things trunk show this weekend. Amazing prices and probably every type, color and cut of every stone you've ever heard of (and a few you haven't).
Pictures?
Mais, bien sur!
These amethysts were my big splurge for the day. But, thanks to the aforementioned 65% off, they were actually affordable. And sooooo cute!
Now, if I could just get some time to actually do some beading...sigh.
Hope everyone had a happy Mother's Day!
KJ
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Thou shalt not covet...
...but if thou do, thou shalt covet the GOOD stuff!
To wit:
Are these the cutest or what? Perfect for summer earrings!
I just love this new CZ shape, but wish they had more colors available.
I just love this new CZ shape, but wish they had more colors available.
And for these I just have one word: DROOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sadly, way out of my budget realm right now.
And yet more pictures of beads I covet but cannot afford:
Sadly, way out of my budget realm right now.
And yet more pictures of beads I covet but cannot afford:
There's no real point to this other than that I figured eveyone was getting tired of my diet ranting so it seemed like a good time for some eye candy. Except now I am depressed and must go in search of REAL candy.
Poorness sucks!
KJ
Pick, pick, pick
Okayyyy…so just when I think I’ve run out of topics to discuss under the Step 1 – No More Denial part of the plan, I run across this article. And yep, there it is, one of my big issues staring me in the face.
Hi. My name is KJ and I’m a picky eater.
Always have been. Always will be.
I would say this article describes me to a “T.” I was picky as a kid. I have an overly developed gag reflex. I once threw up at the dinner table at the mere mention that I’d have to eat squash. My sense of smell is so sensitive it’s been described as almost “psychic.” If my sense of smell were an animal, it’d be a shark – able to detect the tiniest scent traces in the vast distances of the open ocean.
Not very useful in modern day life although I’m sure it saved some of my ancestresses from accidentally eating a deadly mushroom or something because I’m assuming it is some sort of evolutionary ability (my mom has it, too).
Then there’s the whole texture issue. I love that the article talks about tomatoes because I can’t think of a better example of something that is SO icky in its raw form. I just can’t even go there. Yet, I have no problem whatsoever with tomato sauce (as long as it’s not “chunky” style) or ketchup and I love cream of tomato soup. I remember my mom telling me that no boy would ever want to date me after he saw me pick the tomato off my hamburger. She was wrong, by the way. I just have to find boys who also do not like tomatoes.
And yeah, I might be a bit OCD about a few things. And yeah, my parents were overly concerned with forcing me to eat stuff and making me sit at the table until I’d cleaned my plate.
I did find it interesting to note that in the study mentioned in the article, picky eaters rated certain flavors (sweet and bitter) as more intense than non-picky eaters. Since taste is largely influenced by sense of smell, I wonder if my sense of smell could be part of the problem. I definitely find a lot of fruits almost too sweet to tolerate and most vegetables taste too bitter.
I’m working on it, though. I don’t think I’ll ever really make friends with vegetables, but since I started cleaning up the rest of my diet, I’ve found a couple of ways to add fruit in that I can tolerate (and even enjoy in some cases). I make smoothies in the morning for breakfast quite frequently. It gets me around the whole “texture” issue and I cut the sweetness by adding vanilla-flavored soy powder and using non-fat milk instead of juice as the liquid. When I get to the eating section of the plan, I’ll post my recipe.
I’ve also learned to do a better job picking out apples and keeping them in the fridge so they are nice and crisp because I can’t stand it when they are mealy. Gross! Spreading peanut butter on them helps considerably and again, cuts any amount of over-sweetness. I’m very careful to measure out only 2 tbsp. of the peanut butter, though. It has a lot of calories and fat. That’s okay in small amounts but I could eat half a jar in one sitting if I’m not careful.
I don’t really have a final point to make. I just thought the article was interesting and if there are any other picky eaters out there, you are not alone!
KJ
Hi. My name is KJ and I’m a picky eater.
Always have been. Always will be.
I would say this article describes me to a “T.” I was picky as a kid. I have an overly developed gag reflex. I once threw up at the dinner table at the mere mention that I’d have to eat squash. My sense of smell is so sensitive it’s been described as almost “psychic.” If my sense of smell were an animal, it’d be a shark – able to detect the tiniest scent traces in the vast distances of the open ocean.
Not very useful in modern day life although I’m sure it saved some of my ancestresses from accidentally eating a deadly mushroom or something because I’m assuming it is some sort of evolutionary ability (my mom has it, too).
Then there’s the whole texture issue. I love that the article talks about tomatoes because I can’t think of a better example of something that is SO icky in its raw form. I just can’t even go there. Yet, I have no problem whatsoever with tomato sauce (as long as it’s not “chunky” style) or ketchup and I love cream of tomato soup. I remember my mom telling me that no boy would ever want to date me after he saw me pick the tomato off my hamburger. She was wrong, by the way. I just have to find boys who also do not like tomatoes.
And yeah, I might be a bit OCD about a few things. And yeah, my parents were overly concerned with forcing me to eat stuff and making me sit at the table until I’d cleaned my plate.
I did find it interesting to note that in the study mentioned in the article, picky eaters rated certain flavors (sweet and bitter) as more intense than non-picky eaters. Since taste is largely influenced by sense of smell, I wonder if my sense of smell could be part of the problem. I definitely find a lot of fruits almost too sweet to tolerate and most vegetables taste too bitter.
I’m working on it, though. I don’t think I’ll ever really make friends with vegetables, but since I started cleaning up the rest of my diet, I’ve found a couple of ways to add fruit in that I can tolerate (and even enjoy in some cases). I make smoothies in the morning for breakfast quite frequently. It gets me around the whole “texture” issue and I cut the sweetness by adding vanilla-flavored soy powder and using non-fat milk instead of juice as the liquid. When I get to the eating section of the plan, I’ll post my recipe.
I’ve also learned to do a better job picking out apples and keeping them in the fridge so they are nice and crisp because I can’t stand it when they are mealy. Gross! Spreading peanut butter on them helps considerably and again, cuts any amount of over-sweetness. I’m very careful to measure out only 2 tbsp. of the peanut butter, though. It has a lot of calories and fat. That’s okay in small amounts but I could eat half a jar in one sitting if I’m not careful.
I don’t really have a final point to make. I just thought the article was interesting and if there are any other picky eaters out there, you are not alone!
KJ
Monday, May 07, 2007
Former fat girls unite!
I thought this article had some interesting things to say - a lot of them parallel what I've been trying to communicate albeit in a more precise, articulate way.
What can I say, I'm all about the verbal ramblings, people.
KJ
What can I say, I'm all about the verbal ramblings, people.
KJ
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
E-mails. I get e-mails
Okay, so no one posts comments but boy do I get the e-mails. People, the song from yesterday was NOT me endorsing this type of destructive, revenge-seeking behavior. I like the song because it's a good way to VICARIOUSLY fulfill all those destructive urges that we all have when we've been hurt by someone we thought cared about us. I like the IDEA of occsionally IMAGINING that I am not bound by laws/religious beliefs/guilt, etc. and can therefore freely pursue the whole revenge thing.
But, in the end, I AM bound by all those things as well as an underlying logical voice that tells me behavior like this may possibly buy me a nanosecond of relief while I'm engaging in it, but it will never make the pain go away long-term. Therefore, it's not really of any actual use to me.
I hate logic. It's a pain in the butt. It does, however, keep me out of jail. Which is a good thing.
Oh, and the other reason I like the song is that Carrie Underwood just sings the ever-lovin' daylights out of it. Now that IS empowering!
KJ - who suddenly feels like belting out a few choruses of Aretha's "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" C'mon, who's with me?
But, in the end, I AM bound by all those things as well as an underlying logical voice that tells me behavior like this may possibly buy me a nanosecond of relief while I'm engaging in it, but it will never make the pain go away long-term. Therefore, it's not really of any actual use to me.
I hate logic. It's a pain in the butt. It does, however, keep me out of jail. Which is a good thing.
Oh, and the other reason I like the song is that Carrie Underwood just sings the ever-lovin' daylights out of it. Now that IS empowering!
KJ - who suddenly feels like belting out a few choruses of Aretha's "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" C'mon, who's with me?
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Sing it, sister!
So, as is my usual habit when the writer’s block kicks in and I don’t have anything especially brilliant or witty to write about, I turn to my current favorite song lyrics for inspiration. I’m really enjoying Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” and without further ado, here are the lyrics:
Right now he's probably slow dancing with a bleached-blond tramp,
and she's probably getting frisky.
Right now he's probably buying her some fruity little drink
cause she can't shoot whiskey.
Right now, he's probably up behind her with a pool-stick,
showing her how to shoot a combo and he don't know...
I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats.
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires.
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.
Right now, she's probably up singing
some white-trash version of Shania karaoke..
Right now, she's probably saying "I'm drunk"
and he's thinking that he's gonna lucky.
Right now, he's probably dabbing on 3 dollars worth of that bathroom cologne...
and he don't know...
I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive.
Carved my name into his leather seats...
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.
I might've saved a little trouble for the next girl,
cause the next time that he cheats...
Oh you know it won't be on me!
No.. not on me..
I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats...
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.
Ohh.. maybe next time he'll think.. before he cheats...
Ohh... before he cheats...ohhhh.
This may be a new ringtone choice for my phone ;-)
KJ
Right now he's probably slow dancing with a bleached-blond tramp,
and she's probably getting frisky.
Right now he's probably buying her some fruity little drink
cause she can't shoot whiskey.
Right now, he's probably up behind her with a pool-stick,
showing her how to shoot a combo and he don't know...
I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats.
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires.
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.
Right now, she's probably up singing
some white-trash version of Shania karaoke..
Right now, she's probably saying "I'm drunk"
and he's thinking that he's gonna lucky.
Right now, he's probably dabbing on 3 dollars worth of that bathroom cologne...
and he don't know...
I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive.
Carved my name into his leather seats...
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.
I might've saved a little trouble for the next girl,
cause the next time that he cheats...
Oh you know it won't be on me!
No.. not on me..
I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats...
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.
Ohh.. maybe next time he'll think.. before he cheats...
Ohh... before he cheats...ohhhh.
This may be a new ringtone choice for my phone ;-)
KJ
Thursday, April 26, 2007
I am perfect...
...except, apparently, not so much.
I just discovered some major errors in yesterday's book review post. Does this make me a miscreant? (Ha! I got my bonus points!)
I seem to have fixed them. For now anyway - it took multiple attempts. Some days blogger just seems to want to be contrary for the heck of it all. Anyway, if you like books, you might want to re-read the post as there were several that were missing.
KJ
I just discovered some major errors in yesterday's book review post. Does this make me a miscreant? (Ha! I got my bonus points!)
I seem to have fixed them. For now anyway - it took multiple attempts. Some days blogger just seems to want to be contrary for the heck of it all. Anyway, if you like books, you might want to re-read the post as there were several that were missing.
KJ
Fun with words
For no particular reason, I felt like looking some words up in the dictionary today. I had this urge to get my definition on (so to speak). And I was struck by what Mr. Webster has to say about one particular word.
And that word would be: DEADBEAT
Which the esteemed Mr. Webster defines in the following manner:
1. A person who deliberately avoids paying debts.
2. A loafer; sponger.
3. Being a parent who neglects parental responsibilities, esp. one who does not pay child support.
In fact, I was SO fascinated by this that I had to also Google what Mr. Roget has to say about synonyms for this word.
And that word would (again) be: DEADBEAT
Mr. Roget provides the following enlightening list of synonyms:
Freeloader
Delinquent
Criminal
Debtor
Defaulter
Loafer
Malefactor (ooh…good one)
Miscreant (another good one)
Punk (where’s Dirty Harry when you need him?)
Reprobate
Stiff
Welsher
Failure
Incompetent
Ne’er-do-well
No-good
Nobody
Underachiever
Washout
Turkey
Dud
Parasite
Leech
Fungus
Taker
I’m just sayin’ is all.
KJ
P.S. Bonus points to those who go out and use either “malefactor” or “miscreant” in a sentence today.
And that word would be: DEADBEAT
Which the esteemed Mr. Webster defines in the following manner:
1. A person who deliberately avoids paying debts.
2. A loafer; sponger.
3. Being a parent who neglects parental responsibilities, esp. one who does not pay child support.
In fact, I was SO fascinated by this that I had to also Google what Mr. Roget has to say about synonyms for this word.
And that word would (again) be: DEADBEAT
Mr. Roget provides the following enlightening list of synonyms:
Freeloader
Delinquent
Criminal
Debtor
Defaulter
Loafer
Malefactor (ooh…good one)
Miscreant (another good one)
Punk (where’s Dirty Harry when you need him?)
Reprobate
Stiff
Welsher
Failure
Incompetent
Ne’er-do-well
No-good
Nobody
Underachiever
Washout
Turkey
Dud
Parasite
Leech
Fungus
Taker
I’m just sayin’ is all.
KJ
P.S. Bonus points to those who go out and use either “malefactor” or “miscreant” in a sentence today.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The drought is over!
Okay, so it hasn't rained enough here in So Cal this year, but at least some decent books are finally around and I’m getting caught up on the reading list so here’s the latest book review.
I came back from vacation to find the the latest (and first hardback) installment of the Rachel Morgan series “For a Few Demons More” by Kim Harrison (who obviously has a Clint Eastwood fetish when it comes to book titles which reminds me it’s about time for me to have my annual spaghetti western film festival…must go update my Netflix queue.) Fortunately for the author, but unfortunately for the rest of us, this series has gotten popular enough that this installment came out in hardback. I always have mixed feelings about this because I’m glad to know my favorite authors are successful enough to warrant a hardback release, but it means my book budget goes up some more and hardbacks are such a pain to fit into my purse to carry around. Paperbacks fit in so much more nicely, especially on days when I’m not carrying the state-of-Texas-sized giganto-purse.
None of which, of course, has anything to do with the actual book so let’s get to the review. Same cast of characters is back. Rachel still has the same impulse-control and adrenaline-junkie issues as always. She’s still tiptoeing around a possible relationship with Ivy the vampire. I have to admit I’m getting tired of the whole “will she give in to her secret lesbian desires” sub-plot that’s been going on through the whole darned series. Ms. Harrison needs to make a decision on this. Either make her a lesbian or don’t, but quit sitting on the fence because I’m sure I’m not the only one who has gotten to the point of no longer caring. Also, isn’t Rachel supposed to be a witch? I don’t think she cast an actual spell in the entire book. While there’s nothing terribly wrong with this book, it doesn’t seem like the series moved forward here. Despite the **warning – spoiler** exits of a couple of characters, everything seems pretty much in the same place it was at the beginning of the book. A major thread is left undone (presumably to keep our interest going for the NEXT book) and I’m starting to find Ceri a far more interesting character than Rachel (who never seems to learn anything from her mistakes).
After so much sameness, I decided to try something new with Diana Pharoah Francis’s “Path of Fate.” I really liked her twist on the tradition human/magical-animal-bonding story. What if an animal came to bond with someone who wasn’t particularly thrilled to be “chosen?” It was a great starting premise, but I thought it was resolved too quickly. There should have been more fallout from the initial rejection of the animal and it should’ve lasted longer. I found this book to be a bit simplistic (and unrealistic in certain areas). Although it was shelved in the main sci-fi/fantasy section, I can’t help wondering if maybe it was supposed to be in the YA section instead. It had that sort of feel to it. Still, there was enough good raw material there that I picked up the second installment in the series to see if the author makes any progress.
Then, of course, there’s the latest Dresden book “White Night.” Holy crap! Can Jim Butcher GET any better? I cannot believe the way each book is just better, funnier, more tightly plotted and more exciting than the last. I stayed up until 1:30 AM last night because I couldn’t put the darned thing down. If you’re a fan of the series, run, don’t walk, to pick up this book. If you’re not a fan…what on earth is WRONG with you? You can also go HERE to join in the letter-writing campaign to request another season of “The Dresden Files” on the Sci-Fi channel. While I’ll admit that the first episode or two were a bit lukewarm, the series definitely improved and got better each week. I thought the last two episodes were terrific and it’s absolutely worth bringing the show back for more.
Lastly, I devoured Jane Lindskold’s “Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls” in practically one sitting. I’ve always been a big fan of her work – “Changer” and its sequel “Legends Walking” are two of my all-time favorites, but I’d never gotten around to picking up this book until recently. Lindskold was a protégé of the late, great, Roger Zelazny, and while her works are nothing like his, I still seem to detect a faint hint of a similar “tone” or style.
“Brother” chronicles the life of Sara, a young woman who has spent her entire life in mental institutions until one day she’s forced onto the street as a result of budget cuts. Unable to communicate in a normal fashion, Sara resorts to famous quotes from literature to get her point across. For anyone with a background in English or literature, this provides an extra layer of complexity. But Sara is more than just a kooky escapee from a nut farm – she possesses a special gift. It’s a gift that someone wants to find and make not-so-ethical use of. Also, this book IS available in paperback. Okay, so it’s a trade paperback, but still less expensive than a hardback version.
That’s where I left off and got some much needed sleep. I’m on almost continual mom-duty for the next 3 weeks so the pickings may be a bit slim around here. I know the jewelry pictures have been almost non-existent because I just haven’t had any time to make anything lately. I’ve got my fingers crossed about getting some stuff done on my lunch hour today.
And yes, I take jewelry projects to work on at lunch.
So what?
Perfectly normal.
Stop staring at me.
KJ
I came back from vacation to find the the latest (and first hardback) installment of the Rachel Morgan series “For a Few Demons More” by Kim Harrison (who obviously has a Clint Eastwood fetish when it comes to book titles which reminds me it’s about time for me to have my annual spaghetti western film festival…must go update my Netflix queue.) Fortunately for the author, but unfortunately for the rest of us, this series has gotten popular enough that this installment came out in hardback. I always have mixed feelings about this because I’m glad to know my favorite authors are successful enough to warrant a hardback release, but it means my book budget goes up some more and hardbacks are such a pain to fit into my purse to carry around. Paperbacks fit in so much more nicely, especially on days when I’m not carrying the state-of-Texas-sized giganto-purse.
None of which, of course, has anything to do with the actual book so let’s get to the review. Same cast of characters is back. Rachel still has the same impulse-control and adrenaline-junkie issues as always. She’s still tiptoeing around a possible relationship with Ivy the vampire. I have to admit I’m getting tired of the whole “will she give in to her secret lesbian desires” sub-plot that’s been going on through the whole darned series. Ms. Harrison needs to make a decision on this. Either make her a lesbian or don’t, but quit sitting on the fence because I’m sure I’m not the only one who has gotten to the point of no longer caring. Also, isn’t Rachel supposed to be a witch? I don’t think she cast an actual spell in the entire book. While there’s nothing terribly wrong with this book, it doesn’t seem like the series moved forward here. Despite the **warning – spoiler** exits of a couple of characters, everything seems pretty much in the same place it was at the beginning of the book. A major thread is left undone (presumably to keep our interest going for the NEXT book) and I’m starting to find Ceri a far more interesting character than Rachel (who never seems to learn anything from her mistakes).
After so much sameness, I decided to try something new with Diana Pharoah Francis’s “Path of Fate.” I really liked her twist on the tradition human/magical-animal-bonding story. What if an animal came to bond with someone who wasn’t particularly thrilled to be “chosen?” It was a great starting premise, but I thought it was resolved too quickly. There should have been more fallout from the initial rejection of the animal and it should’ve lasted longer. I found this book to be a bit simplistic (and unrealistic in certain areas). Although it was shelved in the main sci-fi/fantasy section, I can’t help wondering if maybe it was supposed to be in the YA section instead. It had that sort of feel to it. Still, there was enough good raw material there that I picked up the second installment in the series to see if the author makes any progress.
Then, of course, there’s the latest Dresden book “White Night.” Holy crap! Can Jim Butcher GET any better? I cannot believe the way each book is just better, funnier, more tightly plotted and more exciting than the last. I stayed up until 1:30 AM last night because I couldn’t put the darned thing down. If you’re a fan of the series, run, don’t walk, to pick up this book. If you’re not a fan…what on earth is WRONG with you? You can also go HERE to join in the letter-writing campaign to request another season of “The Dresden Files” on the Sci-Fi channel. While I’ll admit that the first episode or two were a bit lukewarm, the series definitely improved and got better each week. I thought the last two episodes were terrific and it’s absolutely worth bringing the show back for more.
Lastly, I devoured Jane Lindskold’s “Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls” in practically one sitting. I’ve always been a big fan of her work – “Changer” and its sequel “Legends Walking” are two of my all-time favorites, but I’d never gotten around to picking up this book until recently. Lindskold was a protégé of the late, great, Roger Zelazny, and while her works are nothing like his, I still seem to detect a faint hint of a similar “tone” or style.
“Brother” chronicles the life of Sara, a young woman who has spent her entire life in mental institutions until one day she’s forced onto the street as a result of budget cuts. Unable to communicate in a normal fashion, Sara resorts to famous quotes from literature to get her point across. For anyone with a background in English or literature, this provides an extra layer of complexity. But Sara is more than just a kooky escapee from a nut farm – she possesses a special gift. It’s a gift that someone wants to find and make not-so-ethical use of. Also, this book IS available in paperback. Okay, so it’s a trade paperback, but still less expensive than a hardback version.
That’s where I left off and got some much needed sleep. I’m on almost continual mom-duty for the next 3 weeks so the pickings may be a bit slim around here. I know the jewelry pictures have been almost non-existent because I just haven’t had any time to make anything lately. I’ve got my fingers crossed about getting some stuff done on my lunch hour today.
And yes, I take jewelry projects to work on at lunch.
So what?
Perfectly normal.
Stop staring at me.
KJ
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
A Day at The Beach
Okay, I was going to title this entry “The Big Swell”, but I just knew that those of you out there with dirty minds would make something…ahem…dirty out of that so “A Day at the Beach” it is.
Remember back when I made my Resolutions for 2007 and one of them was to get down to the beach more often? Well, I’ve been making good on that by going for walks after work and on weekends at some of my favorite beaches when the weather allows.
All this got me to thinking about how much I love the beach and how I’ve always lived near it because Dad was in the Navy until 1970. Except for being born in Idaho Falls, ID (hey, don’t ask me why the Navy has its nuclear submarine training program there – they just DO), every state I’ve lived in (CT, VA, SC, HI, CA) we’ve lived at or near the beach and all of my earliest memories involve the ocean somehow. I still remember putting horseshoe crabs back in the water in Virginia Beach after some teenage vandals had turned them all upside down on the sand so they’d die.
Surf and Turf, anyone?
Giant turban snail:
Another turban snail, but this one was still occupied so I put it back in the water in the hopes of rescuing it. It moved off under its own power so I have hopes that the rescue was successful. Go, snail, go!
Yes, this is how I spend my days, people. I rescue giant snails because that’s just the kind of girl I am.
Damn, but I love living in So Cal.
Remember back when I made my Resolutions for 2007 and one of them was to get down to the beach more often? Well, I’ve been making good on that by going for walks after work and on weekends at some of my favorite beaches when the weather allows.
All this got me to thinking about how much I love the beach and how I’ve always lived near it because Dad was in the Navy until 1970. Except for being born in Idaho Falls, ID (hey, don’t ask me why the Navy has its nuclear submarine training program there – they just DO), every state I’ve lived in (CT, VA, SC, HI, CA) we’ve lived at or near the beach and all of my earliest memories involve the ocean somehow. I still remember putting horseshoe crabs back in the water in Virginia Beach after some teenage vandals had turned them all upside down on the sand so they’d die.
Horshoe crab pics:
I remember watching the fishermen pull nets up onto the sand on that same beach and the day that a small shark bit one of the fishermen’s fingers off while we watched. I remember learning to body surf at Sandy Beach on Oahu and being the only girl surfer in the water at The Wedge on a red flag day when the waves were over 6’ high.
Back before Dad taught me to body surf, he was an original longboard surfer. He used to have a bright yellow board that we called “the big banana” (until it got stolen in Hawaii) and he was the one who turned me onto the classic surf movies such as “Endless Summer” and “Big Wednesday.” (By the way if you haven't seen this movie, can I just say...Jan Michael Vincent BEFORE he became a wacked out addict who nearly offed himself and ruined his face in a car crash).
Back before Dad taught me to body surf, he was an original longboard surfer. He used to have a bright yellow board that we called “the big banana” (until it got stolen in Hawaii) and he was the one who turned me onto the classic surf movies such as “Endless Summer” and “Big Wednesday.” (By the way if you haven't seen this movie, can I just say...Jan Michael Vincent BEFORE he became a wacked out addict who nearly offed himself and ruined his face in a car crash).
In fact, “Big Wednesday” gives a great idea of the kind of swell that recently hit our beaches. A week or so ago, we had an unusually big swell for several days resulting in 10-12 foot waves. Unfortunately, due to work and other responsibilities, I wasn’t able to make it down to see the surf on those days, but I did go down on Saturday to see the results and holy cow was there a lot of stuff tossed up on the beach. I don’t remember ever seeing this amount of debris get up onto the sand. At Main Beach in Laguna, the city had collected most of the debris into a number of large piles that were each at least waist high and about the length of a school bus:
I took a few shots of some of the things I found:
Surf and Turf, anyone?
Giant turban snail:
Another turban snail, but this one was still occupied so I put it back in the water in the hopes of rescuing it. It moved off under its own power so I have hopes that the rescue was successful. Go, snail, go!
Yes, this is how I spend my days, people. I rescue giant snails because that’s just the kind of girl I am.
Also found this beautiful clam shell:
I was going to take this one home, but when I turned it over, I found it was still...partially...occupied. Ick. Oh well, guess the gulls have to eat, too.
The weather turned crappy later in the day after I left, but it was glorious the morning I was down there and the surf was still pretty decent:
The weather turned crappy later in the day after I left, but it was glorious the morning I was down there and the surf was still pretty decent:
Damn, but I love living in So Cal.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Confronting the past
So, we’re all tearing off that blanket of denial, right? Everyone will go about this in her own way, but for me, part of the process involved picking up the psychological flashlight and taking a stroll through the attic, the basement and even shining the beam over those dark corners that no one likes to go into because, y’know, cobwebs, and scuttling things and just ICK! Well, it’s time to hang some lights, give the place a good sweeping and dusting, knock down the cob webs and put out traps for anything that dares to scuttle or otherwise creep me out because the place better be ship-shape the next time I decide to poke around.
How did I get here? It’s not like I woke up one day and decided “hey, I think I’ll be fat for the next 15 years.” I wasn’t always overweight. In my early years, I was actually on the small side for my age. I was also a competitive swimmer until high school when I switched to dancing. I was in terrific shape and had abs you could bounce a quarter off of (literally – someone tried it so I know for sure). I weighed 116 lbs. when I left for college. Then, my knee went out towards the end of my freshman year at UCLA and that was the end of dancing for me. It even made walking to and from campus something I tried to avoid whenever possible by bumming rides from friends with mopeds, etc. so I put on a few pounds that way, but I was still about 120-122 which is better than acceptable for someone 5’5” and with my curves.
I think the real problem began my sophomore year when I started to struggle with an ever-deepening depression (except I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time) and it really affected my sleeping habits, my energy level and my eating habits.
Ah yes, my eating habits. Never stellar to begin with – I pretty much loathed and avoided most fruits and all vegetables since I was a kid. My poor mom tried everything to change this. I remember many a night being the last one left sitting at the dinner table, in the dark, long after the rest of the family had gone upstairs and mom had finished cleaning the kitchen. Just sitting there. Me and my plate of vegetables that I refused to eat. Eventually, mom would cave in and come get me. I remember lunches where I poured my Campbell’s alphabet soup (which is essentially vegetable soup w/ letters in it) little by little into my brother’s bowl (sorry, Mark) whenever my mom wasn’t looking. I also dumped my raisins into his cup of milk (sorry again, Mark) to hide them. I fed vegetables to the dog under the table (in my defense, he didn’t like them, either, and would hork them back up later on the shag rug) or spit them into my napkin and then excuse myself to go to the bathroom where I’d dump my napkin out into the toilet and flush the vegetables good-bye.
So, when I got to college, it was like “finally, I am FREE from the tyranny of fruits and vegetables and shall never again be forced to eat them against my will!” Hey, don’t judge. Most college kids make stupid decisions when they get out on their own. Mine just didn’t happen to involve drugs or alcohol (except that one time in Santa Barbara at the I.S.V.T. that…okay SOME things you SHOULD remain in denial about). And, in my infinite “I’ve graduated from high school and am therefore all-knowing and mistress of the universe”-ness, what did I replace fruits and veggies with? Well, sugar and fat, of course. Oh, and mashed potatoes. Must not forget the mashed potatoes of which I could eat gallons especially if they are smothered in butter and gravy. I once survived an entire finals week on nothing but Diet Coke and mashed potatoes, but that’s another blog entry.
So, suffice to say, that between the depression, the sleeplessness, the bad eating and various other things, I got up to 130 lbs. by the end of sophomore year. Still, this was not a disaster by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I’m sure at that point that no one but me even noticed the change because a curvy figure can hide a lot more “fluff” than a stick-straight one.
Then came my junior year when I moved into the sorority house to live. HELLO, body image issues! Big time! But I’ve done enough “demons of the past” confronting for today so we’ll save that for another entry.
KJ
How did I get here? It’s not like I woke up one day and decided “hey, I think I’ll be fat for the next 15 years.” I wasn’t always overweight. In my early years, I was actually on the small side for my age. I was also a competitive swimmer until high school when I switched to dancing. I was in terrific shape and had abs you could bounce a quarter off of (literally – someone tried it so I know for sure). I weighed 116 lbs. when I left for college. Then, my knee went out towards the end of my freshman year at UCLA and that was the end of dancing for me. It even made walking to and from campus something I tried to avoid whenever possible by bumming rides from friends with mopeds, etc. so I put on a few pounds that way, but I was still about 120-122 which is better than acceptable for someone 5’5” and with my curves.
I think the real problem began my sophomore year when I started to struggle with an ever-deepening depression (except I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time) and it really affected my sleeping habits, my energy level and my eating habits.
Ah yes, my eating habits. Never stellar to begin with – I pretty much loathed and avoided most fruits and all vegetables since I was a kid. My poor mom tried everything to change this. I remember many a night being the last one left sitting at the dinner table, in the dark, long after the rest of the family had gone upstairs and mom had finished cleaning the kitchen. Just sitting there. Me and my plate of vegetables that I refused to eat. Eventually, mom would cave in and come get me. I remember lunches where I poured my Campbell’s alphabet soup (which is essentially vegetable soup w/ letters in it) little by little into my brother’s bowl (sorry, Mark) whenever my mom wasn’t looking. I also dumped my raisins into his cup of milk (sorry again, Mark) to hide them. I fed vegetables to the dog under the table (in my defense, he didn’t like them, either, and would hork them back up later on the shag rug) or spit them into my napkin and then excuse myself to go to the bathroom where I’d dump my napkin out into the toilet and flush the vegetables good-bye.
So, when I got to college, it was like “finally, I am FREE from the tyranny of fruits and vegetables and shall never again be forced to eat them against my will!” Hey, don’t judge. Most college kids make stupid decisions when they get out on their own. Mine just didn’t happen to involve drugs or alcohol (except that one time in Santa Barbara at the I.S.V.T. that…okay SOME things you SHOULD remain in denial about). And, in my infinite “I’ve graduated from high school and am therefore all-knowing and mistress of the universe”-ness, what did I replace fruits and veggies with? Well, sugar and fat, of course. Oh, and mashed potatoes. Must not forget the mashed potatoes of which I could eat gallons especially if they are smothered in butter and gravy. I once survived an entire finals week on nothing but Diet Coke and mashed potatoes, but that’s another blog entry.
So, suffice to say, that between the depression, the sleeplessness, the bad eating and various other things, I got up to 130 lbs. by the end of sophomore year. Still, this was not a disaster by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I’m sure at that point that no one but me even noticed the change because a curvy figure can hide a lot more “fluff” than a stick-straight one.
Then came my junior year when I moved into the sorority house to live. HELLO, body image issues! Big time! But I’ve done enough “demons of the past” confronting for today so we’ll save that for another entry.
KJ
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Latest Book Review
Finding time to read has been a bit tough lately…hence the long lag time between reviews. Never thought I would get to a place in my life where I didn’t devour at least 3-4 books a week, but looks like I’m there. Still, thanks to a week of vacation, I’ve gotten caught up a bit on the “to be read” pile so here are the reviews.
First up is Mark Del Franco’s “Unshapely Things.” It’s a bit “Harry Dresden Lite” (does EVERYONE have to be a private investigator?), but there are a couple of changes that make it interesting enough to stand on its own. Whereas Harry is very powerful, but has a hard time with his personal life, Del Franco’s main character USED to have it all. Power, wealth, fame, etc. Then he lost everything courtesy of a magical accident. Now he’s sort of like a has-been rock-star…can’t get into clubs that used to keep an entire room reserved for him and can’t perform more than a basic protection spell. Also different here is the status of the otherworldly creatures. They are, with a few exceptions, the down-and-out denizens of a magic-laden ghetto. When they become the targets of a serial killer, neither the magical authorities nor the mundane police seem to much care. Enter our hero who, despite his fallen status, still considers his non-human “kin” to be worth saving. While there are some definite “first novel” issues, this could shape up into a decent series as the writer becomes more practiced and if he is able to further differentiate his characters and world from the Dresden books
Side note: The Dresden Files TV series on SciFi is definitely improving. Each episode has been better than the last and I have a serious crush on Paul Blackthorne (the actor who plays Harry). Still not crazy about the guy playing Bob – he looks so damn mournful all the time – but he’s starting to bother me less. Anyway, it’s definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already. Wish I could say the same for Lifetime’s take on Tanya Huff’s “Vicky Nelson” series. I didn’t even know they’d made those books into a show until I accidentally stumbled across it while channel surfing one night a few weeks ago. Always a bad sign when there’s no pre-premiere publicity. The only good thing I can say about it is that the guy playing Henry Fitzroy is H-O-T. Too bad he can’t act his way out of a paper bag. He also seems like he’s trying to suppress (not always successfully) a major surfer-boy accent. Like, dude, I’m like a total vampire. Sweet. Yeah, just how I’d expect a son of Henry the VIIIth to talk. The guy playing Mike Celucci is WAY too good-looking to be a cop. The gal playing Vicki is decent, but somehow I think of Vicki as being more hard-nosed and pissed-off or something. Plus, I wonder how Ms. Huff feels about Lifetime scrubbing even the merest HINT of homosexuality (a MAJOR part of the book series) out of the TV show. Tony’s not even in it for heaven’s sake and Henry is suddenly all-hetero-all-the-time. Anyway, I suppose it’s worth checking out for the eye candy quotient, but there’s not much else there.
So, back to the books.
Y’all know how I feel about Linnea Sinclair so I was really excited to pick up her latest book, “Games of Command.” It’s good, but it’s definitely not my favorite of her works so far (that would be “Finders, Keepers”). I kept having the feeling that I’d been dropped into the second novel in a series and maybe that’s the case, but none of my searches have turned up an earlier book featuring these same characters. Maybe there were short stories or unpublished pieces? I dunno, but it sure seems like a lot happened off stage to lead up to this story and I was frustrated that I didn’t get to read THAT part. As always in a Sinclair book, the romance, characters and the pacing of the action are top notch. I could’ve done with a bit less furzel-talk (cuteness overload) and there was, for me, a rather jarring plot twist about halfway through the book that had me going “what the ___?” for a bit, but those are my de rigueur nitpicks and shouldn’t deter anyone from buying and enjoying the book. I’m looking forward to her next book which has the fun and interesting title of “The Down-Home Zombie Blues.”
Next comes “Nylon Angel”, the first in the Parrish Plessis series. Usually, I kind of enjoy a good cyberpunk novel, but while the world background in this book is interesting, about halfway through it I realized I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the character or whether she made it through or not. And the whole alien virus thing seems like a weird addition that got tacked on and doesn’t really belong. I bought the second novel in the series at the same time I bought the first book, but I doubt I’ll read it. I’m looking for the receipt to take it back.
Fortunately, Carrie Vaughn’s “Kitty Takes a Holiday”, the third installment in the Kitty the Werewolf series, was a good way to recover from the whole Parrish Plessis debacle. I usually find that series tend to get weaker as they go along, but this one keeps getting better. Despite the use of the incredibly tired “skinwalker” device (seriously, people, there ARE other mythologies in the world…go plunder one of those for your ideas and spare us the umpty-zillionth re-tread on this one), I really enjoyed this book. Vaughn takes a risk by having a main character undergo a major and permanent change which completely alters the dynamic between him and Kitty and between Kitty and another prominent character. It’s nice to see a storyline really moving forward and evolving. I look forward to seeing where Kitty goes next.
You guys know what happens when I venture out and try a new author, right? It’s almost never good. And this time, I just got sucked in by the incredible cover art for Alan Campbell’s “Scar Night.” Too bad the book doesn’t live up to the picture on the outside. Despite starting out with a fascinating premise of a city built entirely on chains and suspended over a seemingly bottomless abyss, Campbell fails to deliver with his characters. It’s a shame. I hate it when a great world goes to waste. I gave up and didn’t finish the book because I got tired of waiting to care about these people.
And that’s when the vacation ended. At least I had the new Kim Harrison book to look forward to when I got home. Still reading it so the review will have to wait until next time.
KJ
First up is Mark Del Franco’s “Unshapely Things.” It’s a bit “Harry Dresden Lite” (does EVERYONE have to be a private investigator?), but there are a couple of changes that make it interesting enough to stand on its own. Whereas Harry is very powerful, but has a hard time with his personal life, Del Franco’s main character USED to have it all. Power, wealth, fame, etc. Then he lost everything courtesy of a magical accident. Now he’s sort of like a has-been rock-star…can’t get into clubs that used to keep an entire room reserved for him and can’t perform more than a basic protection spell. Also different here is the status of the otherworldly creatures. They are, with a few exceptions, the down-and-out denizens of a magic-laden ghetto. When they become the targets of a serial killer, neither the magical authorities nor the mundane police seem to much care. Enter our hero who, despite his fallen status, still considers his non-human “kin” to be worth saving. While there are some definite “first novel” issues, this could shape up into a decent series as the writer becomes more practiced and if he is able to further differentiate his characters and world from the Dresden books
Side note: The Dresden Files TV series on SciFi is definitely improving. Each episode has been better than the last and I have a serious crush on Paul Blackthorne (the actor who plays Harry). Still not crazy about the guy playing Bob – he looks so damn mournful all the time – but he’s starting to bother me less. Anyway, it’s definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already. Wish I could say the same for Lifetime’s take on Tanya Huff’s “Vicky Nelson” series. I didn’t even know they’d made those books into a show until I accidentally stumbled across it while channel surfing one night a few weeks ago. Always a bad sign when there’s no pre-premiere publicity. The only good thing I can say about it is that the guy playing Henry Fitzroy is H-O-T. Too bad he can’t act his way out of a paper bag. He also seems like he’s trying to suppress (not always successfully) a major surfer-boy accent. Like, dude, I’m like a total vampire. Sweet. Yeah, just how I’d expect a son of Henry the VIIIth to talk. The guy playing Mike Celucci is WAY too good-looking to be a cop. The gal playing Vicki is decent, but somehow I think of Vicki as being more hard-nosed and pissed-off or something. Plus, I wonder how Ms. Huff feels about Lifetime scrubbing even the merest HINT of homosexuality (a MAJOR part of the book series) out of the TV show. Tony’s not even in it for heaven’s sake and Henry is suddenly all-hetero-all-the-time. Anyway, I suppose it’s worth checking out for the eye candy quotient, but there’s not much else there.
So, back to the books.
Y’all know how I feel about Linnea Sinclair so I was really excited to pick up her latest book, “Games of Command.” It’s good, but it’s definitely not my favorite of her works so far (that would be “Finders, Keepers”). I kept having the feeling that I’d been dropped into the second novel in a series and maybe that’s the case, but none of my searches have turned up an earlier book featuring these same characters. Maybe there were short stories or unpublished pieces? I dunno, but it sure seems like a lot happened off stage to lead up to this story and I was frustrated that I didn’t get to read THAT part. As always in a Sinclair book, the romance, characters and the pacing of the action are top notch. I could’ve done with a bit less furzel-talk (cuteness overload) and there was, for me, a rather jarring plot twist about halfway through the book that had me going “what the ___?” for a bit, but those are my de rigueur nitpicks and shouldn’t deter anyone from buying and enjoying the book. I’m looking forward to her next book which has the fun and interesting title of “The Down-Home Zombie Blues.”
Next comes “Nylon Angel”, the first in the Parrish Plessis series. Usually, I kind of enjoy a good cyberpunk novel, but while the world background in this book is interesting, about halfway through it I realized I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the character or whether she made it through or not. And the whole alien virus thing seems like a weird addition that got tacked on and doesn’t really belong. I bought the second novel in the series at the same time I bought the first book, but I doubt I’ll read it. I’m looking for the receipt to take it back.
Fortunately, Carrie Vaughn’s “Kitty Takes a Holiday”, the third installment in the Kitty the Werewolf series, was a good way to recover from the whole Parrish Plessis debacle. I usually find that series tend to get weaker as they go along, but this one keeps getting better. Despite the use of the incredibly tired “skinwalker” device (seriously, people, there ARE other mythologies in the world…go plunder one of those for your ideas and spare us the umpty-zillionth re-tread on this one), I really enjoyed this book. Vaughn takes a risk by having a main character undergo a major and permanent change which completely alters the dynamic between him and Kitty and between Kitty and another prominent character. It’s nice to see a storyline really moving forward and evolving. I look forward to seeing where Kitty goes next.
You guys know what happens when I venture out and try a new author, right? It’s almost never good. And this time, I just got sucked in by the incredible cover art for Alan Campbell’s “Scar Night.” Too bad the book doesn’t live up to the picture on the outside. Despite starting out with a fascinating premise of a city built entirely on chains and suspended over a seemingly bottomless abyss, Campbell fails to deliver with his characters. It’s a shame. I hate it when a great world goes to waste. I gave up and didn’t finish the book because I got tired of waiting to care about these people.
And that’s when the vacation ended. At least I had the new Kim Harrison book to look forward to when I got home. Still reading it so the review will have to wait until next time.
KJ
Thursday, April 12, 2007
10 Reasons Why Vacation Rocks...
10. No stupid alarm clock blaring an obnoxious DJ voice right into the middle of that great dream where Hugh Laurie and I are…well, never mind about that, but seriously, TOTAL buzz kill.
9. Abundant sunshine, a pool within walking distance and my new green bikini.
8. Tony, the so-cute poolside bar tender who makes a mean Pina Colada.
7. African fennecs (world’s smallest fox species) at the zoo:
9. Abundant sunshine, a pool within walking distance and my new green bikini.
8. Tony, the so-cute poolside bar tender who makes a mean Pina Colada.
7. African fennecs (world’s smallest fox species) at the zoo:
6. The kestrel that flew onto a tree branch mere inches from my head and hung out long enough for me to show him to the kidlet.
5. Naps.
4. White-chocolate-covered cheesecake lollipops w/ raspberry sauce. OH. MY. GOD. These were seriously the best dessert EVER.
3. Getting to re-order the cheesecake lollipops for dessert again another night in order to experience their awesomeness for a second time.
2. Finding and using the hotel gym for the first time in my life.
1. And the number 1 reason my vacation rocked? Finding THE shoe bargain of the century – 2 pairs of Kate Spade shoes on sale for $99!
5. Naps.
4. White-chocolate-covered cheesecake lollipops w/ raspberry sauce. OH. MY. GOD. These were seriously the best dessert EVER.
3. Getting to re-order the cheesecake lollipops for dessert again another night in order to experience their awesomeness for a second time.
2. Finding and using the hotel gym for the first time in my life.
1. And the number 1 reason my vacation rocked? Finding THE shoe bargain of the century – 2 pairs of Kate Spade shoes on sale for $99!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
A funny thing happened on the way to the cafeteria...
Well, actually, it happened IN the cafeteria. In the lunch line. In front of many, many witnesses. Public humiliation – these are the moments that make life worthwhile. Except not so much.
Let me set the scene.
I work in a 15 story building that is part of a sprawling complex of connected office buildings. On the first floor, buried in the center of the maze that is the entire complex, is a cafeteria. Except it’s not just any old cafeteria. It’s more like the biggest mall food court you could possibly imagine. There’s a grill station, an Italian station (including little pizza boxes for your own personal pizza), a Chinese station, a HUGE salad bar, a made-to-order sandwich station, a giant bar of breads and desserts, a huge soup selection, several frozen yogurt machines and various and sundry other little stands and shelves of fruit, chips, jello, cheeses, hard-boiled eggs and well, just about every food you could possibly imagine.
Then there’s my favorite – the toss-to-order salad station. They have a Chinese Chicken Salad with sesame dressing that is awesome. Normally, I go over there, pick up a CC Salad package, hand it to Francisco (the designated tosser of salad) and he tosses it all up for me with the dressing and other accoutrements. The only downside to this is (as I learned on a previous occasion) that if you go get your salad tossed, but then don’t get to eat it right away because you return to your desk to maybe find out that there was a meeting you completely forgot about which proceeded to suck up 2 hours of your time and when you finally escaped and went to eat your lovely salad, you found that it had become a wilted pile of mush with melted, no-longer-crisp wonton chips on top. And since, of course, the wonton chips are the best part of the salad, the whole thing was ruined.
So, lesson learned. Do not put the dressing on the salad unless you can eat it right away. Oh, and also, maybe remember to calendar your meetings in Outlook with reminders so you don’t space out and forget about them.
This brings me to the day in question during which I had a busy morning that ran into the lunch hour so when I finally got a break I realized I only had 15 minutes to run get my lunch before heading into a 12:30 meeting.
Which leads one to ask WHY do people schedule meetings at lunch time? Don’t they know I get cranky when my blood sugar is in the basement?
But I digress (as usual).
Having learned my lesson about the wilted salad, I formulated a cunning plan to avoid the soggy wonton chip issue. I would pick up the salad package and then ask Francisco to give me a couple of the little “to go” containers of dressing. I’d go to the meeting and then toss the salad myself at my desk afterwards. I love a perfect plan. It’s when the Universe doesn’t cooperate that I run into trouble.
All went as planned until I was in the cashier line. I successfully maneuvered through the payment process when I realized they had “to go” plastic bags at the end of the line. “Ah ha!” I thought. “I shall ease the burden of carrying the salad and dressing containers all the way back up to the fifth floor by making use of these thoughtfully-provided carrying devices.” I was reaching to put my lunch in the bag when disaster struck!
One of the containers of dressing rolled off of its (admittedly precarious) perch on top of the salad container and fell in what seemed like slow motion to the floor. Whereupon it (of course) burst open and spilled sesame dressing all over the floor, my new 9 West black stiletto pumps and my foot. Had my hands been free, I might’ve tried to catch the stupid thing, but I had a bag in one hand and a salad container and another container of dressing in the other hand so I was forced to watch helplessly as the event unfolded. I even knew before the container hit the ground that the damn lid was going to come off.
What I did not anticipate (having never felt it before) was the awful sensation of cold, oily dressing dripping down inside my shoe.
Oh, and did I mention this was the height of the lunch rush so there were like 20 people in line behind me and probably 200 or more seated in the cafeteria as a whole and if any of them managed to miss the initial “splat!” they certainly didn’t miss the cafeteria staff yelling at the top of their lungs “Spill! Spill! Hurry and get towels and a mop because this stupid gringo girl just spilled sesame dressing all over the floor and down her shoe!” At least, that’s what I assume they were screaming. It was in Spanish. I’m sure at least the “stupid gringo” part is correct.
Meanwhile, I’m still standing there, frozen, with my salad in one hand and bag in the other and thinking “Oh God, there is dressing in my SHOE!” Of course, they brought enough towels to clean up the floor, but not enough for me to clean up my foot or my shoe. Plus, there are still 20 some people in line behind me who, now that they have recovered from laughing their asses off, are starting to get pissed because I’m in the way of the line moving forward and really, how could I stand there and take my shoe off and try to clean off my bare foot and continue blocking the line and, well, this is California and we shoot people for holding up traffic.
So I know I have to get out of there.
And there is no bathroom on the first floor.
And it’s LITERALLY a quarter-mile trek back to the elevators to get back to my office where there IS a bathroom.
Yes, I walked a quarter-mile in salad-dressing-filled stilettos back to the damn elevator while carrying my salad (that I so didn’t want to eat any more) and feeling my left toes go “squish” with every step.
I ride the elevator back up to my office and go to my desk to put my food down. Because even though I’m probably not going to eat it now, I am sooo not taking food into the bathroom. Because, you know, that’s just gross.
Then I finally make it to the bathroom. Take off my shoe and wash my foot off (all the while PRAYING that none of my co-workers are going to come in and ask me why the hell I’ve got my foot propped on the edge of the sink. Next step is to try to get the dressing out of my shoe with damp paper towels while at the same time not ruining the leather. Assuming, of course, that the salad dressing didn’t already take care of the whole ruination thing. That’s when I realize there’s dressing all over the bottom 3” of my new black trousers. Swell.
Now, I’m late for my meeting so I have to put my still-slightly-damp shoe back on my not-quite-dry-yet foot and race to the conference room where I spend the next hour hoping that no one else notices that I reek of sesame dressing.
I am nothing if not the epitome of grace and style.
Let me set the scene.
I work in a 15 story building that is part of a sprawling complex of connected office buildings. On the first floor, buried in the center of the maze that is the entire complex, is a cafeteria. Except it’s not just any old cafeteria. It’s more like the biggest mall food court you could possibly imagine. There’s a grill station, an Italian station (including little pizza boxes for your own personal pizza), a Chinese station, a HUGE salad bar, a made-to-order sandwich station, a giant bar of breads and desserts, a huge soup selection, several frozen yogurt machines and various and sundry other little stands and shelves of fruit, chips, jello, cheeses, hard-boiled eggs and well, just about every food you could possibly imagine.
Then there’s my favorite – the toss-to-order salad station. They have a Chinese Chicken Salad with sesame dressing that is awesome. Normally, I go over there, pick up a CC Salad package, hand it to Francisco (the designated tosser of salad) and he tosses it all up for me with the dressing and other accoutrements. The only downside to this is (as I learned on a previous occasion) that if you go get your salad tossed, but then don’t get to eat it right away because you return to your desk to maybe find out that there was a meeting you completely forgot about which proceeded to suck up 2 hours of your time and when you finally escaped and went to eat your lovely salad, you found that it had become a wilted pile of mush with melted, no-longer-crisp wonton chips on top. And since, of course, the wonton chips are the best part of the salad, the whole thing was ruined.
So, lesson learned. Do not put the dressing on the salad unless you can eat it right away. Oh, and also, maybe remember to calendar your meetings in Outlook with reminders so you don’t space out and forget about them.
This brings me to the day in question during which I had a busy morning that ran into the lunch hour so when I finally got a break I realized I only had 15 minutes to run get my lunch before heading into a 12:30 meeting.
Which leads one to ask WHY do people schedule meetings at lunch time? Don’t they know I get cranky when my blood sugar is in the basement?
But I digress (as usual).
Having learned my lesson about the wilted salad, I formulated a cunning plan to avoid the soggy wonton chip issue. I would pick up the salad package and then ask Francisco to give me a couple of the little “to go” containers of dressing. I’d go to the meeting and then toss the salad myself at my desk afterwards. I love a perfect plan. It’s when the Universe doesn’t cooperate that I run into trouble.
All went as planned until I was in the cashier line. I successfully maneuvered through the payment process when I realized they had “to go” plastic bags at the end of the line. “Ah ha!” I thought. “I shall ease the burden of carrying the salad and dressing containers all the way back up to the fifth floor by making use of these thoughtfully-provided carrying devices.” I was reaching to put my lunch in the bag when disaster struck!
One of the containers of dressing rolled off of its (admittedly precarious) perch on top of the salad container and fell in what seemed like slow motion to the floor. Whereupon it (of course) burst open and spilled sesame dressing all over the floor, my new 9 West black stiletto pumps and my foot. Had my hands been free, I might’ve tried to catch the stupid thing, but I had a bag in one hand and a salad container and another container of dressing in the other hand so I was forced to watch helplessly as the event unfolded. I even knew before the container hit the ground that the damn lid was going to come off.
What I did not anticipate (having never felt it before) was the awful sensation of cold, oily dressing dripping down inside my shoe.
Oh, and did I mention this was the height of the lunch rush so there were like 20 people in line behind me and probably 200 or more seated in the cafeteria as a whole and if any of them managed to miss the initial “splat!” they certainly didn’t miss the cafeteria staff yelling at the top of their lungs “Spill! Spill! Hurry and get towels and a mop because this stupid gringo girl just spilled sesame dressing all over the floor and down her shoe!” At least, that’s what I assume they were screaming. It was in Spanish. I’m sure at least the “stupid gringo” part is correct.
Meanwhile, I’m still standing there, frozen, with my salad in one hand and bag in the other and thinking “Oh God, there is dressing in my SHOE!” Of course, they brought enough towels to clean up the floor, but not enough for me to clean up my foot or my shoe. Plus, there are still 20 some people in line behind me who, now that they have recovered from laughing their asses off, are starting to get pissed because I’m in the way of the line moving forward and really, how could I stand there and take my shoe off and try to clean off my bare foot and continue blocking the line and, well, this is California and we shoot people for holding up traffic.
So I know I have to get out of there.
And there is no bathroom on the first floor.
And it’s LITERALLY a quarter-mile trek back to the elevators to get back to my office where there IS a bathroom.
Yes, I walked a quarter-mile in salad-dressing-filled stilettos back to the damn elevator while carrying my salad (that I so didn’t want to eat any more) and feeling my left toes go “squish” with every step.
I ride the elevator back up to my office and go to my desk to put my food down. Because even though I’m probably not going to eat it now, I am sooo not taking food into the bathroom. Because, you know, that’s just gross.
Then I finally make it to the bathroom. Take off my shoe and wash my foot off (all the while PRAYING that none of my co-workers are going to come in and ask me why the hell I’ve got my foot propped on the edge of the sink. Next step is to try to get the dressing out of my shoe with damp paper towels while at the same time not ruining the leather. Assuming, of course, that the salad dressing didn’t already take care of the whole ruination thing. That’s when I realize there’s dressing all over the bottom 3” of my new black trousers. Swell.
Now, I’m late for my meeting so I have to put my still-slightly-damp shoe back on my not-quite-dry-yet foot and race to the conference room where I spend the next hour hoping that no one else notices that I reek of sesame dressing.
I am nothing if not the epitome of grace and style.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Less talk, more pictures
I promised not to be "all weight loss all the time" and yesterday's entry WAS a bit wordy...even for me. So, shutting up now and just posting cute bead pictures. These are some recent ebay auction wins:
The picture doesn't show it that well, but there are hidden depths of glittery turquoise sparkles in these beads when viewed in real life. And yes, they ARE as yummy as they look.
And then there are the cute fish beads:
I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, but every time this seller lists these beads, I end up buying more because I am obsessed with them. Maybe because they remind of that time that I OD'd on the Victoria's Secret Lip Plumper Lip Gloss?
KJ
The picture doesn't show it that well, but there are hidden depths of glittery turquoise sparkles in these beads when viewed in real life. And yes, they ARE as yummy as they look.
And then there are the cute fish beads:
I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, but every time this seller lists these beads, I end up buying more because I am obsessed with them. Maybe because they remind of that time that I OD'd on the Victoria's Secret Lip Plumper Lip Gloss?
KJ
Monday, April 09, 2007
The Kelly Plan - Step 1
Step 1: No More Denial
I’ve learned a lot on this weight loss journey that I’ve been on, but if I had to pick the number one most important thing that’s allowed me to succeed it would be this:
Weight loss and denial are two diametrically opposed forces.
Can’t have ‘em both. They can’t occupy the same space. Sort of like matter and anti-matter.
Now, when I say “denial”, I don’t mean that I was unaware that I was overweight. I do own mirrors. Several of them. But, since I wasn’t ALWAYS fat, somewhere along the way I developed the ability to ignore the fact that I was getting bigger and bigger.
Well, mostly ignore. Every once in a while reality would crash down, I’d feel like crap, I’d resolve to do something about it, I’d fail, I’d feel like crap again. I couldn’t stand that crappy feeling so I’d go back into denial to escape from it. Denial was a defense mechanism for me that kept me buffered from dealing with my problem or the pain it was causing me in any real or meaningful way.
I think anyone who has a weight problem (and no, I’m not talking about those skinny bitches who are always complaining about needing to lose 10 lbs. when what they really need to do is EAT SOMETHING once in a while) has probably fallen into this trap. Otherwise, we’d have successfully stopped the weight from piling on years ago, right? But it’s easy to ignore a few pounds here and there until one morning you wake up and now you’ve got what seems to be an insurmountable amount of weight to lose.
Do any of these sound familiar:
“Okay, so I’m not as skinny as I was in high school. Who is?”
“Yeah, I could lose some weight, but I don’t look THAT bad.”
“I’m already fat so who cares if I eat this cookie/piece of cake/entire carton of ice cream?”
So, how do you get off the denial roller coaster? Personally, I think it takes something big. Something life-altering. Because, again, if it was easy, we’d have done it already. I firmly believe it’s not a matter of will power. Everyone has will power – otherwise none of us would get out of bed in the morning when the alarm clock goes off. But will power is too weak to stand up to a problem this big.
What is this “something big?” I know what mine was, but I suspect it will be different for everyone. However, since this is MY plan, we’ll go with what worked for me. It started small…with a simple prayer: “God, please help me lose weight.”
Let me tell you, be careful what you pray for because prayer? It’s some pretty powerful stuff. I just thought I was asking for some help not taking a second (or third) doughnut on Friday mornings. What I didn’t realize (because of that lovely down comforter of denial) was that God had a plan for my life. He wanted it to be better than it was. Happier. More fulfilling. And, as a side benefit of all those things I’d get weight loss, too. But, to make all that happen, he had to get rid of all the things that weren’t working. Which was pretty much my whole entire life. Emotionally abusive husband? Gone. Depressingly dead marriage. Outta here. Dead-end, boring-as-hell job which gave me plenty of free time and incentive to stuff my face? History.
In other words, my entire life was standing in the way of me losing weight and being healthy and happy. So, my entire life had to go. Which it did.
And it was painful.
And it sucked. Big time.
And normally, it would have been grounds for me to gain another 20 (okay 50) lbs. But when everything gets completely stripped away like that and you’re left with only yourself and your faith in God, it gets pretty hard to keep that blanket of denial over your head. I finally was forced to sit up, take a good look around and deal with what I saw.
Now, am I suggesting that you jettison your entire life or go run join your local church before lunch time? Nope. I AM saying that it’s time to open your eyes, take a look around and figure out what in your life is working or not working for you. What is contributing to your weight problem? What are you going to have to do to make that mental change that will finally allow you to succeed THIS time?
I know not everyone is going to want to hear this, but for me, it was my faith. As things began to crumble around me, I prayed to God like I’ve never prayed before. I told him that I was powerless in trying to overcome my weight problem. I’d tried and failed so many times and I was terrified to go through that again. My marriage was hanging by a thread, I had a toddler to raise, the X had ruined us financially, I’d just lost both my grandmothers in less than a month and I didn’t really see how I could possibly attempt another diet right then.
So I asked God to take the burden on for me. I suppose this is sort of like the first step in a 12-step program where you admit you’re powerless over whatever your problem is and that you need help to overcome it. Frankly, I cannot imagine having achieved a 75 lb. weight loss without His help. I’m just not that strong and I couldn’t have made the attitude adjustment or the life changes I needed to make without Him directing everything according to his plan.
So, after all that meandering drivel, what actions do you need to take for Step 1?
There are two. First part is to take a good long look in the spiritual/emotional mirror and face up to whatever you find there. If you’re a person of faith, enlist God’s help with making these changes in your life.
Some suggested areas to look at:
Is there something wrong in your life that needs to be dealt with? Job problems, marital problems, an ailing parent, etc.? Start looking for resources to help you tackle this area and get it under control.
Do you have health issues that could be contributing to your weight? Seek out the right doctors and don’t take no for an answer until you get results. I’ll talk more about this one in an upcoming entry.
Do you have a good support system in place? People who will help you with items 1 & 2 above and be there for you during the process and not sabotage you?
What’s your ultimate goal? Is it realistic? We can’t all be a size 0, you know, and it’s time to just admit it. Is your weight issue genetic? You might have to work harder or have more modest goals if that’s the case. Same if you are extremely overweight. Maybe in that case, any weight loss is a supreme accomplishment and you might want to make your goal more about being healthier, living longer, cleaning up your diet, etc. That’s where I started (because, you know, exercise is yucky!) and I lost my first 30 lbs. JUST by cleaning up my eating habits a LITTLE bit. More on that later.
What’s your lifestyle like? Are you a bona fide couch potato (like me)? How will you get around that? Maybe you’re an overscheduled, stressed out, go-getter and you need to consider slowing down or simplifying some things to make room for exercise. Or, you need to plan healthy eating strategies for when you’re on the go. McDonald’s doesn’t count.
What motivates you? And no, chocolate is not an acceptable answer. Do you want to sleep better? Live longer for your kids? Those are a couple of mine, but if you’ve read anywhere else in this column, you know fashion played a huge role for me, too.
Second action is…and please try not to hate me here…buy a scale if you don’t already have one. Get on it and deal with what it says. And, yeah, I know, it sucks. I was firmly convinced for years that having a scale and weighing myself daily or weekly would only make me feel worse about myself and therefore stymie any attempts at weight loss. But, in the end, I found avoiding that number only helped me stay deeper in denial. After all, if I wasn’t sure exactly how much I weighed, then I couldn’t be THAT overweight, right? In fact, I convinced myself that as long as I was under 200 lbs., I was okay. And of course, I HAD to be under 200 lbs because how I could I possibly weigh over 200 lbs.? Just not possible.
Until the day I stepped on that scale and it read 225. Even now, I hate admitting that number in public, but I’m doing it so you know that A. I can take my own medicine (no more denial!) and B. So that you know I wasn’t just a “few lbs.” overweight and that if I can get down from that level, ANYONE can do this!
Now I get on the scale every morning and I even have this nifty Excel chart I made up to track my numbers. Because that’s just how I roll, yo. I like to chart things into nice, neat little categories. I am somewhat of a freak, but then, if you’ve been reading this blog, you already knew that so let’s move on, m’kay?
I’m not saying you have to do this daily – maybe a weekly weigh in is better for you. I am saying that accurate information is necessary for ME to keep myself from falling back into denial. It also helps me stay on track each day – if I’m on a downward trend, I can have that extra cookie today or at least recognize that if I eat that extra cookie, it means an extra 20 minutes at the gym that night. And hey, sometimes I choose to eat the cookie. Sometimes I don’t. The point is, I’m making an informed choice. I know what the consequences of that choice are going to be. Before I put that cookie into my mouth I can ask myself “is this something that is moving me closer to my goal or farther away?”
The scale also helps me identify when I hit plateaus and need to think about tweaking my food/exercise regimen again because my body has adapted to what I’ve been doing. I think plateaus are the main obstacle to sticking with a food/exercise life change. It’s easy to stay motivated when you’re seeing real progress. It gets a lot more frustrating when that progress grinds to a halt and you start to ask yourself “okay, tell me again WHY I’m working out 3 nights a week if it’s not doing anything.” Therefore, being able to recognize a plateau and take steps to overcome it is a hugely important part of making a permanent change.
One suggestion I have for not letting the scale become more than an information-gathering tool is to not make your ultimate goal be a particular weight or even a certain number of pounds lost. Make your goal about being healthier, having more energy or, if you must have something specific, pick a (realistic) clothing size. My first goal when I started out was to just clean up my life and be able to sleep better at night and have more energy in the daytime. After that, my goal was to not be limited to shopping only in plus-size clothing stores. I didn’t even have a particular size in mind – I just wanted to buy clothes somewhere other than Lane Bryant.
I’m probably coming off like one of those reformed smokers who is on a campaign to make EVERYONE quit smoking. That’s not my intention. I just think that I can’t be the only person struggling with these issues and we all have a duty to help inspire and support one another.
Even if you decide you’re ultimately happy with where you are (and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you’re being honest with yourself and your physical health is good – no diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.), I think a good life inventory on occasion is never a bad thing.
In the next entry on this topic, I’ll go a bit more into how I got to be overweight in the first place, the emotional and body image issues that played a part and the underlying medical problems that also contributed. I think it’s important to recognize that weight is SO not about will power or having a sweet tooth.
Maybe some of my personal issues will strike a chord with someone and help them take a step on the path toward health. Because while the weight loss is a terrific side effect, that’s not what it’s all about.
KJ
P.S. Yes, posts on other, non-diet-related topics are forthcoming. But I just got back from a week of vacation (hence the lack of recent posts) and this is what I had ready to go. So, this is what you're getting.
I’ve learned a lot on this weight loss journey that I’ve been on, but if I had to pick the number one most important thing that’s allowed me to succeed it would be this:
Weight loss and denial are two diametrically opposed forces.
Can’t have ‘em both. They can’t occupy the same space. Sort of like matter and anti-matter.
Now, when I say “denial”, I don’t mean that I was unaware that I was overweight. I do own mirrors. Several of them. But, since I wasn’t ALWAYS fat, somewhere along the way I developed the ability to ignore the fact that I was getting bigger and bigger.
Well, mostly ignore. Every once in a while reality would crash down, I’d feel like crap, I’d resolve to do something about it, I’d fail, I’d feel like crap again. I couldn’t stand that crappy feeling so I’d go back into denial to escape from it. Denial was a defense mechanism for me that kept me buffered from dealing with my problem or the pain it was causing me in any real or meaningful way.
I think anyone who has a weight problem (and no, I’m not talking about those skinny bitches who are always complaining about needing to lose 10 lbs. when what they really need to do is EAT SOMETHING once in a while) has probably fallen into this trap. Otherwise, we’d have successfully stopped the weight from piling on years ago, right? But it’s easy to ignore a few pounds here and there until one morning you wake up and now you’ve got what seems to be an insurmountable amount of weight to lose.
Do any of these sound familiar:
“Okay, so I’m not as skinny as I was in high school. Who is?”
“Yeah, I could lose some weight, but I don’t look THAT bad.”
“I’m already fat so who cares if I eat this cookie/piece of cake/entire carton of ice cream?”
So, how do you get off the denial roller coaster? Personally, I think it takes something big. Something life-altering. Because, again, if it was easy, we’d have done it already. I firmly believe it’s not a matter of will power. Everyone has will power – otherwise none of us would get out of bed in the morning when the alarm clock goes off. But will power is too weak to stand up to a problem this big.
What is this “something big?” I know what mine was, but I suspect it will be different for everyone. However, since this is MY plan, we’ll go with what worked for me. It started small…with a simple prayer: “God, please help me lose weight.”
Let me tell you, be careful what you pray for because prayer? It’s some pretty powerful stuff. I just thought I was asking for some help not taking a second (or third) doughnut on Friday mornings. What I didn’t realize (because of that lovely down comforter of denial) was that God had a plan for my life. He wanted it to be better than it was. Happier. More fulfilling. And, as a side benefit of all those things I’d get weight loss, too. But, to make all that happen, he had to get rid of all the things that weren’t working. Which was pretty much my whole entire life. Emotionally abusive husband? Gone. Depressingly dead marriage. Outta here. Dead-end, boring-as-hell job which gave me plenty of free time and incentive to stuff my face? History.
In other words, my entire life was standing in the way of me losing weight and being healthy and happy. So, my entire life had to go. Which it did.
And it was painful.
And it sucked. Big time.
And normally, it would have been grounds for me to gain another 20 (okay 50) lbs. But when everything gets completely stripped away like that and you’re left with only yourself and your faith in God, it gets pretty hard to keep that blanket of denial over your head. I finally was forced to sit up, take a good look around and deal with what I saw.
Now, am I suggesting that you jettison your entire life or go run join your local church before lunch time? Nope. I AM saying that it’s time to open your eyes, take a look around and figure out what in your life is working or not working for you. What is contributing to your weight problem? What are you going to have to do to make that mental change that will finally allow you to succeed THIS time?
I know not everyone is going to want to hear this, but for me, it was my faith. As things began to crumble around me, I prayed to God like I’ve never prayed before. I told him that I was powerless in trying to overcome my weight problem. I’d tried and failed so many times and I was terrified to go through that again. My marriage was hanging by a thread, I had a toddler to raise, the X had ruined us financially, I’d just lost both my grandmothers in less than a month and I didn’t really see how I could possibly attempt another diet right then.
So I asked God to take the burden on for me. I suppose this is sort of like the first step in a 12-step program where you admit you’re powerless over whatever your problem is and that you need help to overcome it. Frankly, I cannot imagine having achieved a 75 lb. weight loss without His help. I’m just not that strong and I couldn’t have made the attitude adjustment or the life changes I needed to make without Him directing everything according to his plan.
So, after all that meandering drivel, what actions do you need to take for Step 1?
There are two. First part is to take a good long look in the spiritual/emotional mirror and face up to whatever you find there. If you’re a person of faith, enlist God’s help with making these changes in your life.
Some suggested areas to look at:
Is there something wrong in your life that needs to be dealt with? Job problems, marital problems, an ailing parent, etc.? Start looking for resources to help you tackle this area and get it under control.
Do you have health issues that could be contributing to your weight? Seek out the right doctors and don’t take no for an answer until you get results. I’ll talk more about this one in an upcoming entry.
Do you have a good support system in place? People who will help you with items 1 & 2 above and be there for you during the process and not sabotage you?
What’s your ultimate goal? Is it realistic? We can’t all be a size 0, you know, and it’s time to just admit it. Is your weight issue genetic? You might have to work harder or have more modest goals if that’s the case. Same if you are extremely overweight. Maybe in that case, any weight loss is a supreme accomplishment and you might want to make your goal more about being healthier, living longer, cleaning up your diet, etc. That’s where I started (because, you know, exercise is yucky!) and I lost my first 30 lbs. JUST by cleaning up my eating habits a LITTLE bit. More on that later.
What’s your lifestyle like? Are you a bona fide couch potato (like me)? How will you get around that? Maybe you’re an overscheduled, stressed out, go-getter and you need to consider slowing down or simplifying some things to make room for exercise. Or, you need to plan healthy eating strategies for when you’re on the go. McDonald’s doesn’t count.
What motivates you? And no, chocolate is not an acceptable answer. Do you want to sleep better? Live longer for your kids? Those are a couple of mine, but if you’ve read anywhere else in this column, you know fashion played a huge role for me, too.
Second action is…and please try not to hate me here…buy a scale if you don’t already have one. Get on it and deal with what it says. And, yeah, I know, it sucks. I was firmly convinced for years that having a scale and weighing myself daily or weekly would only make me feel worse about myself and therefore stymie any attempts at weight loss. But, in the end, I found avoiding that number only helped me stay deeper in denial. After all, if I wasn’t sure exactly how much I weighed, then I couldn’t be THAT overweight, right? In fact, I convinced myself that as long as I was under 200 lbs., I was okay. And of course, I HAD to be under 200 lbs because how I could I possibly weigh over 200 lbs.? Just not possible.
Until the day I stepped on that scale and it read 225. Even now, I hate admitting that number in public, but I’m doing it so you know that A. I can take my own medicine (no more denial!) and B. So that you know I wasn’t just a “few lbs.” overweight and that if I can get down from that level, ANYONE can do this!
Now I get on the scale every morning and I even have this nifty Excel chart I made up to track my numbers. Because that’s just how I roll, yo. I like to chart things into nice, neat little categories. I am somewhat of a freak, but then, if you’ve been reading this blog, you already knew that so let’s move on, m’kay?
I’m not saying you have to do this daily – maybe a weekly weigh in is better for you. I am saying that accurate information is necessary for ME to keep myself from falling back into denial. It also helps me stay on track each day – if I’m on a downward trend, I can have that extra cookie today or at least recognize that if I eat that extra cookie, it means an extra 20 minutes at the gym that night. And hey, sometimes I choose to eat the cookie. Sometimes I don’t. The point is, I’m making an informed choice. I know what the consequences of that choice are going to be. Before I put that cookie into my mouth I can ask myself “is this something that is moving me closer to my goal or farther away?”
The scale also helps me identify when I hit plateaus and need to think about tweaking my food/exercise regimen again because my body has adapted to what I’ve been doing. I think plateaus are the main obstacle to sticking with a food/exercise life change. It’s easy to stay motivated when you’re seeing real progress. It gets a lot more frustrating when that progress grinds to a halt and you start to ask yourself “okay, tell me again WHY I’m working out 3 nights a week if it’s not doing anything.” Therefore, being able to recognize a plateau and take steps to overcome it is a hugely important part of making a permanent change.
One suggestion I have for not letting the scale become more than an information-gathering tool is to not make your ultimate goal be a particular weight or even a certain number of pounds lost. Make your goal about being healthier, having more energy or, if you must have something specific, pick a (realistic) clothing size. My first goal when I started out was to just clean up my life and be able to sleep better at night and have more energy in the daytime. After that, my goal was to not be limited to shopping only in plus-size clothing stores. I didn’t even have a particular size in mind – I just wanted to buy clothes somewhere other than Lane Bryant.
I’m probably coming off like one of those reformed smokers who is on a campaign to make EVERYONE quit smoking. That’s not my intention. I just think that I can’t be the only person struggling with these issues and we all have a duty to help inspire and support one another.
Even if you decide you’re ultimately happy with where you are (and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you’re being honest with yourself and your physical health is good – no diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.), I think a good life inventory on occasion is never a bad thing.
In the next entry on this topic, I’ll go a bit more into how I got to be overweight in the first place, the emotional and body image issues that played a part and the underlying medical problems that also contributed. I think it’s important to recognize that weight is SO not about will power or having a sweet tooth.
Maybe some of my personal issues will strike a chord with someone and help them take a step on the path toward health. Because while the weight loss is a terrific side effect, that’s not what it’s all about.
KJ
P.S. Yes, posts on other, non-diet-related topics are forthcoming. But I just got back from a week of vacation (hence the lack of recent posts) and this is what I had ready to go. So, this is what you're getting.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Kelly Diet
Or
How a lazy-ass donut addict lost 71.5 lbs (so far).
I’ve been receiving lots of compliments on how much better I look since the weight loss. Which is nice. However, it's not something I’d normally mention because it seems like bragging, but I bring it up because the compliments are inevitably followed by this exchange:
Random Complimenter: “How much have you lost?”
Me: “71.5 lbs. so far and working on another 13 to go”
RC: “Wow! Ohmygoshhowdidyoudoitwhatplandidyoufollow? Tellmetellmetellme!”
Me: “Uh, well, y’see, my husband left me for another woman and…”
Awkard silence.
This keeps happening so I’ve started to think that maybe I need to come up with a better response. That’s tough, though because it’s not like I can just say “Weight Watchers” or “Atkins” or whatever. I've sort of made up my own thing as I’ve gone along and for whatever reason, it’s worked. Now, I don’t have anything against all those other diets. I’ve tried just about all of ‘em myself and many of them have good points. I think Weight Watchers teaches great portion control and how to keep a healthy balance in your diet. I think the low/no-carb Atkins philosophy has a point about an excess of carbs being a problem when dieting.
But the big thing I learned from all of these various regimens is that I COULDN’T STAY ON THEM SO THE WEIGHT CAME BACK.
Let me say that again.
I COULDN’T STAY ON THEM SO THE WEIGHT CAME BACK.
So, it became obvious that I needed to create a regimen that I would be able to stick to for life. Not only is yo-yo dieting bad for you (because we all know you never just gain back the amount you lost – you always gain 10-20 on top of that) but I was no longer willing to accept failure as an option.
Now, I’d love to say that I was immediately struck by a brilliant, inspired and complete diet plan which I put into action and followed religiously from the moment I thought of it.
Those of you that know me well should please stop laughing and pick yourselves up off the floor.
Didn’t quite happen that way. It’s been more of a process that’s evolved over the past year and a half. I thought I’d document it, though, because maybe someone else can find some or all of it useful.
And, okay, I’m a teensy weensy bit proud of my achievement, too.
Basically, I can boil my philosophy down to 3 steps (remember, I’m going for that pithy response for when people ask me questions that doesn't involve me saying "okay, first thing you do is get your husband to dump you for someone else" because call me crazy, but I don't think many women are going to be able to stick to THAT plan.)
STEP ONE: No More Denial.
STEP TWO: Change your eating habits (notice I didn’t say “eat less”).
STEP THREE: Exercise more.
Yeah, I know. Step 3 bites the big one, but there’s just no getting around it (see step one about no more denial). However, you don’t have to worry about it now because we’re going to put it off as long as possible. Something I’m sure we all excel it because, let’s be honest, if we were brimming-with-energy-go-getters-who-love-to-exercise-all-day-long, we wouldn’t need to lose weight in the first place, right?
I’ll break the steps down in more detail in future entries. I’m going to sprinkle this stuff in occasionally amongst other topics because life is NOT all about weight loss. I’ve got other good stuff coming up – bead pics, beach pics, a book review, etc.
KJ
How a lazy-ass donut addict lost 71.5 lbs (so far).
I’ve been receiving lots of compliments on how much better I look since the weight loss. Which is nice. However, it's not something I’d normally mention because it seems like bragging, but I bring it up because the compliments are inevitably followed by this exchange:
Random Complimenter: “How much have you lost?”
Me: “71.5 lbs. so far and working on another 13 to go”
RC: “Wow! Ohmygoshhowdidyoudoitwhatplandidyoufollow? Tellmetellmetellme!”
Me: “Uh, well, y’see, my husband left me for another woman and…”
Awkard silence.
This keeps happening so I’ve started to think that maybe I need to come up with a better response. That’s tough, though because it’s not like I can just say “Weight Watchers” or “Atkins” or whatever. I've sort of made up my own thing as I’ve gone along and for whatever reason, it’s worked. Now, I don’t have anything against all those other diets. I’ve tried just about all of ‘em myself and many of them have good points. I think Weight Watchers teaches great portion control and how to keep a healthy balance in your diet. I think the low/no-carb Atkins philosophy has a point about an excess of carbs being a problem when dieting.
But the big thing I learned from all of these various regimens is that I COULDN’T STAY ON THEM SO THE WEIGHT CAME BACK.
Let me say that again.
I COULDN’T STAY ON THEM SO THE WEIGHT CAME BACK.
So, it became obvious that I needed to create a regimen that I would be able to stick to for life. Not only is yo-yo dieting bad for you (because we all know you never just gain back the amount you lost – you always gain 10-20 on top of that) but I was no longer willing to accept failure as an option.
Now, I’d love to say that I was immediately struck by a brilliant, inspired and complete diet plan which I put into action and followed religiously from the moment I thought of it.
Those of you that know me well should please stop laughing and pick yourselves up off the floor.
Didn’t quite happen that way. It’s been more of a process that’s evolved over the past year and a half. I thought I’d document it, though, because maybe someone else can find some or all of it useful.
And, okay, I’m a teensy weensy bit proud of my achievement, too.
Basically, I can boil my philosophy down to 3 steps (remember, I’m going for that pithy response for when people ask me questions that doesn't involve me saying "okay, first thing you do is get your husband to dump you for someone else" because call me crazy, but I don't think many women are going to be able to stick to THAT plan.)
STEP ONE: No More Denial.
STEP TWO: Change your eating habits (notice I didn’t say “eat less”).
STEP THREE: Exercise more.
Yeah, I know. Step 3 bites the big one, but there’s just no getting around it (see step one about no more denial). However, you don’t have to worry about it now because we’re going to put it off as long as possible. Something I’m sure we all excel it because, let’s be honest, if we were brimming-with-energy-go-getters-who-love-to-exercise-all-day-long, we wouldn’t need to lose weight in the first place, right?
I’ll break the steps down in more detail in future entries. I’m going to sprinkle this stuff in occasionally amongst other topics because life is NOT all about weight loss. I’ve got other good stuff coming up – bead pics, beach pics, a book review, etc.
KJ
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
This weekend was on fire, y'all!
Wow, it was a gorgeous weekend here! Mid-80’s on Saturday and mid-90’s on Sunday. Don’t believe me? Here’s the proof:
And, of course, being So Cal, when the mercury gets above 80 degrees, we have to catch on fire. Here are photos of one of the two fires that broke out over the weekend (as taken from the top of the parking structure at the Irvine Spectrum). 
To avoid the heat and smoke, I spent some time shopping at the Spectrum (got some great sale stuff at Ann Taylor Loft – finally being able to shop in “normal size” stores so totally rocks!) and then I went down to Laguna Beach with a friend and we just walked and walked and walked on the beach. It was so gorgeous. My pedometer says we did 3.5 miles and burned 500 calories.
So, of course, then we went out to dinner. I was good, though. Just had a salad w/ grilled shrimp and no dessert (despite the fact that we were at a French bakery-type place and the waiters kept going by with this unbelievable dessert tray). Good thing we were sitting out on the balcony overlooking the ocean so I had that fabulous sunset view to distract me. In fact, I was so distracted, I forgot to take a picture, but it’s one of my goals to get down to the beach more often this year so I’m sure I’ll be able to post a picture another time.
That’s all I’ve got for now.
KJ
Monday, March 12, 2007
I need sleep!
I have two things to say:
1. I need to find whoever had the brilliant idea of extending daylight savings time and kill them. A lot. In slow painful ways possibly involving iron maidens, the rack or being thrown to sharks. And yeah, okay, I know it’s supposed to be all energy-saving and good for the planet and stuff, but is that really going to matter a whole hell of a lot when I am up on a clocktower with a high-powered rifle taking aim at people because I’ve gone psychotic from sleep deprivation and too much Diet Coke which I will have downed by the gallon in the vain attempt to compensate for actual sleep? Isn’t it enough that I’m awakened on the weekends at 6 AM by a 4 year old yelling “Mom, I pooped” from the bathroom across the hall? Now, this has to happen at 5 AM because of some stupid law that some stupid greenie Congressman passed? Ed Begley, Jr. is behind this somehow, I’m sure of it. Well, I’m coming for you Begley. I’m coming for you and I’m high on 27 Diet Cokes so you’d better watch out! Y’know, if we’d just build more nuclear power plants, we could all get some freakin’ sleep!
2. On a completely unrelated topic, I have finally found THE perfect pair of pants. The waist is neither too high nor too low. They are not pleated (hate you pleated pants! you are evil and must be stopped!). They do not have tapered legs and therefore they do not make you look like an ice cream cone with feet when you wear them. They’re cotton with a touch of stretch which is just about the most perfect fabric combo EVER. They come in petite and plus sizes and three different lengths. In fact, I liked them so much that I bought one pair in “ankle” length to wear with flats and one pair in “regular” length to wear with heels. They even come in a “curvy” version for those with a little more “junk in the trunk” than the rest of us. LOVE YOU Gap “clean stretch cotton” pants.
Now, don’t you feel lucky to be privy to the inner workings of my (perhaps slightly crazy) brain? Because this is what I live with every day, people, thought processes that careen randomly from one totally unrelated topic to another. NOW do you see why this whole extra Daylight Savings thing is a BIG mistake? Big. Huge even.
You’ve been warned.
KJ
P.S. People, please stop buying pleated pants. I’m begging you. Also, no more tapered pants unless you are Nicole Richie who, as a walking skeleton, is perhaps the only human being who can get away with them. And pants that are pleated AND tapered? Run. Fast. You should possibly be screaming in horror while doing this.
P.P.S. Not sure if your pants are tapered? It is getting hard to tell what with some designers calling things “straight leg” which are actually tapered and calling things “boot cut” which are actually straight leg. So, an easy test. Take the leg of the pant and flip it up in half so that the hem hits about where the knee is. If the bottom of the pant is narrower than the knee area, you’ve got tapered pants. Put them down and walk away (except for you, Nicole, you can go ahead if you want to, but also grab yourself some cheesecake or something because you’re scaring everyone, m’kay?) If it’s equal to the knee, you’ve got a straight leg pant. If it’s SLIGHTLY wider than the knee, it’s a boot cut. If it’s lots wider, then it’s a flare leg. Note that flare legs are NOT necessarily the same as wide legs.
1. I need to find whoever had the brilliant idea of extending daylight savings time and kill them. A lot. In slow painful ways possibly involving iron maidens, the rack or being thrown to sharks. And yeah, okay, I know it’s supposed to be all energy-saving and good for the planet and stuff, but is that really going to matter a whole hell of a lot when I am up on a clocktower with a high-powered rifle taking aim at people because I’ve gone psychotic from sleep deprivation and too much Diet Coke which I will have downed by the gallon in the vain attempt to compensate for actual sleep? Isn’t it enough that I’m awakened on the weekends at 6 AM by a 4 year old yelling “Mom, I pooped” from the bathroom across the hall? Now, this has to happen at 5 AM because of some stupid law that some stupid greenie Congressman passed? Ed Begley, Jr. is behind this somehow, I’m sure of it. Well, I’m coming for you Begley. I’m coming for you and I’m high on 27 Diet Cokes so you’d better watch out! Y’know, if we’d just build more nuclear power plants, we could all get some freakin’ sleep!
2. On a completely unrelated topic, I have finally found THE perfect pair of pants. The waist is neither too high nor too low. They are not pleated (hate you pleated pants! you are evil and must be stopped!). They do not have tapered legs and therefore they do not make you look like an ice cream cone with feet when you wear them. They’re cotton with a touch of stretch which is just about the most perfect fabric combo EVER. They come in petite and plus sizes and three different lengths. In fact, I liked them so much that I bought one pair in “ankle” length to wear with flats and one pair in “regular” length to wear with heels. They even come in a “curvy” version for those with a little more “junk in the trunk” than the rest of us. LOVE YOU Gap “clean stretch cotton” pants.
Now, don’t you feel lucky to be privy to the inner workings of my (perhaps slightly crazy) brain? Because this is what I live with every day, people, thought processes that careen randomly from one totally unrelated topic to another. NOW do you see why this whole extra Daylight Savings thing is a BIG mistake? Big. Huge even.
You’ve been warned.
KJ
P.S. People, please stop buying pleated pants. I’m begging you. Also, no more tapered pants unless you are Nicole Richie who, as a walking skeleton, is perhaps the only human being who can get away with them. And pants that are pleated AND tapered? Run. Fast. You should possibly be screaming in horror while doing this.
P.P.S. Not sure if your pants are tapered? It is getting hard to tell what with some designers calling things “straight leg” which are actually tapered and calling things “boot cut” which are actually straight leg. So, an easy test. Take the leg of the pant and flip it up in half so that the hem hits about where the knee is. If the bottom of the pant is narrower than the knee area, you’ve got tapered pants. Put them down and walk away (except for you, Nicole, you can go ahead if you want to, but also grab yourself some cheesecake or something because you’re scaring everyone, m’kay?) If it’s equal to the knee, you’ve got a straight leg pant. If it’s SLIGHTLY wider than the knee, it’s a boot cut. If it’s lots wider, then it’s a flare leg. Note that flare legs are NOT necessarily the same as wide legs.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Insert witty and snazzy title here.
It’s Friday so it must be book review day (occasionally, anyway). Oh, and bead picture day. But more about that later.
Here are the books:
1. “Bedlam’s Edge” – Mercedes Lackey, et al. I used to really like this series when I was younger, but I think I’ve outgrown it. It’s very “teen” reading to me now. I know – I’m older than dirt. Still, I thought it would be interesting to read an anthology set in that universe and see what other writers have made of it. I think if you’re not a fan of the “Bedlam” or “SERRated Edge” series, it’s probably not worth bothering with. If you are a fan, the stories are okay. Not fabulous, but not bad either. There’s an interesting note at the back that gives the history behind the genesis of the series that long-time fans will appreciate.
2. “Light My Fire” – Katie McAlister. Yes, it’s romance and yes, my usual bitching about the over-the-top sex scenes applies. Oh, and also, the heroine is dumb as a box of rocks (of course) and yet there’s so much funny, crazy stuff going on and the dialogue is so snappy and humorous, that I’ve become a big fan of this series. The exchanges between Aisling and her demon-dog, Jim, are worth the purchase price alone.
3. “The Smoke Thief” – Shana Abe. Great background and interesting set up completely ruined by typical romance-genre crap (i.e. the high-handed jerk of a hero to whom the formerly smart, but now completely helpless heroine is hopelessly attracted despite hating, no wait, loving, no wait, hating his guts). Too bad. It had promise.
4. “Blood Bound” – Patricia Briggs. I will read ANYTHING that Briggs writes. She knows how to spin a good yarn and this second installment in the series is a significant improvement over the first book (which was good, don’t get me wrong, but this one is better). I really like the way she’s infused the getting-really-overdone-and-tired urban vampire/werewolf story with the Coyote mythology. She’s perfectly captured the contrariness and inclination to trickery that is the epitome of that particular archetype. Don’t know about Coyote the Trickster? May I suggest Google?
5. “My Big, Fat, Supernatural Wedding” – Edited by P.N. Elrod. I’ve been really disappointed in anthologies lately. Seems like ever since MZB died, no one’s been doing a very good job with them. This book was a terrific exception. For one thing, there isn’t a clunker of a story in the entire bunch and that’s VERY rare. For another, the quality of authors who contributed is much higher than usual. Normally, you might get 1-2 big names and the rest are unknowns (and after you read their stories, you realize WHY they are still unknowns). But this book gives us P.N. Elrod herself, Jim Butcher (yay, a Dresden story to tide me over until “White Knight” comes out), Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Rachel Caine, L.A. Banks (whose regular books I think are crap, but they’re very popular and her story in this book is actually quite good). This was definitely a lot of fun to read.
6. “Blood and Iron” – Elizabeth Bear. Get ready to Google again, big time. Because if you don’t have a very thorough knowledge of Celtic mythology, the Arthurian cycle, the Sidhe, the ballad of “Tam Lin” and various other bits of fantastical and arcane knowledge, you are going to be hopelessly lost in this book. Heck, I know all that stuff like the back of my hand and even I was scratching my head at times going “huh?” Some of the dialogue exchanges, in particular, were beyond obscure. On the other hand, I suppose that is to be expected when dealing with the Daoine Sidhe – in fact it’s one of their claims to fame. Despite the confusion, though, this was an excellent book. I loved the kelpie (one of those things you’ll need to Google if you don’t know what it is) and its relationship with Elaine. I thought the werewolves (do they have to be in EVERY single story now?) and the Prometheans seemed extraneous to the story which should have focused more closely on Elaine.
Okay, on to the bead pictures. I hit a local show a couple of weeks ago and picked up some new and unusual trinkets. I got a great deal on these faceted cubic zirconia briolettes:
Look at those colors! Let me assure you they are even prettier in real life. I already have designs planned for them and can’t wait to get the time to sit down and get going on them.
Then, I ran into a fused glass artist that I had last seen at the L.A. Gift Show. My friend Laura and I bought quite a bit of stuff from him and I guess he remembered me because he gave me a super deal on these small pendants and even threw in a freebie – the pretty green/blue/purple square in the center.
By the way, the scan on these sucks. They look very dull and grayed-out. In real life, they are brilliant with color and sparkle.
Then I hit a couple of my favorite metal vendors. Got a mess o’ heart sterling silver heart charms for a design I’ve been planning for a long time. Oh, he had some fleur-de-lis charms, too, so I got some of those for my mom as it’s the symbol of her sorority – Kappa Kappa Gamma. She’s wanted me to make something for her forever and now I have the materials.
Also got these pretty hammered components in both sterling silver and gold. I just got a few to try out, but if they work out the way I hope, I’ll be getting a lot more.
Lastly, here’s a picture of the most unique thing I found at the show (which is saying a lot because I’ve been to so many of them that virtually NOTHING is new any more):
Aren’t these treated copper beads and clasps SO pretty? I especially like the swallows – VERY So Cal.
Everyone have a great weekend. It is supposed to be sunny and warm and in the upper 80’s here all weekend so I am going to the beach. In March. Woohoo!
KJ
Here are the books:
1. “Bedlam’s Edge” – Mercedes Lackey, et al. I used to really like this series when I was younger, but I think I’ve outgrown it. It’s very “teen” reading to me now. I know – I’m older than dirt. Still, I thought it would be interesting to read an anthology set in that universe and see what other writers have made of it. I think if you’re not a fan of the “Bedlam” or “SERRated Edge” series, it’s probably not worth bothering with. If you are a fan, the stories are okay. Not fabulous, but not bad either. There’s an interesting note at the back that gives the history behind the genesis of the series that long-time fans will appreciate.
2. “Light My Fire” – Katie McAlister. Yes, it’s romance and yes, my usual bitching about the over-the-top sex scenes applies. Oh, and also, the heroine is dumb as a box of rocks (of course) and yet there’s so much funny, crazy stuff going on and the dialogue is so snappy and humorous, that I’ve become a big fan of this series. The exchanges between Aisling and her demon-dog, Jim, are worth the purchase price alone.
3. “The Smoke Thief” – Shana Abe. Great background and interesting set up completely ruined by typical romance-genre crap (i.e. the high-handed jerk of a hero to whom the formerly smart, but now completely helpless heroine is hopelessly attracted despite hating, no wait, loving, no wait, hating his guts). Too bad. It had promise.
4. “Blood Bound” – Patricia Briggs. I will read ANYTHING that Briggs writes. She knows how to spin a good yarn and this second installment in the series is a significant improvement over the first book (which was good, don’t get me wrong, but this one is better). I really like the way she’s infused the getting-really-overdone-and-tired urban vampire/werewolf story with the Coyote mythology. She’s perfectly captured the contrariness and inclination to trickery that is the epitome of that particular archetype. Don’t know about Coyote the Trickster? May I suggest Google?
5. “My Big, Fat, Supernatural Wedding” – Edited by P.N. Elrod. I’ve been really disappointed in anthologies lately. Seems like ever since MZB died, no one’s been doing a very good job with them. This book was a terrific exception. For one thing, there isn’t a clunker of a story in the entire bunch and that’s VERY rare. For another, the quality of authors who contributed is much higher than usual. Normally, you might get 1-2 big names and the rest are unknowns (and after you read their stories, you realize WHY they are still unknowns). But this book gives us P.N. Elrod herself, Jim Butcher (yay, a Dresden story to tide me over until “White Knight” comes out), Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Rachel Caine, L.A. Banks (whose regular books I think are crap, but they’re very popular and her story in this book is actually quite good). This was definitely a lot of fun to read.
6. “Blood and Iron” – Elizabeth Bear. Get ready to Google again, big time. Because if you don’t have a very thorough knowledge of Celtic mythology, the Arthurian cycle, the Sidhe, the ballad of “Tam Lin” and various other bits of fantastical and arcane knowledge, you are going to be hopelessly lost in this book. Heck, I know all that stuff like the back of my hand and even I was scratching my head at times going “huh?” Some of the dialogue exchanges, in particular, were beyond obscure. On the other hand, I suppose that is to be expected when dealing with the Daoine Sidhe – in fact it’s one of their claims to fame. Despite the confusion, though, this was an excellent book. I loved the kelpie (one of those things you’ll need to Google if you don’t know what it is) and its relationship with Elaine. I thought the werewolves (do they have to be in EVERY single story now?) and the Prometheans seemed extraneous to the story which should have focused more closely on Elaine.
Okay, on to the bead pictures. I hit a local show a couple of weeks ago and picked up some new and unusual trinkets. I got a great deal on these faceted cubic zirconia briolettes:
Look at those colors! Let me assure you they are even prettier in real life. I already have designs planned for them and can’t wait to get the time to sit down and get going on them.
Then, I ran into a fused glass artist that I had last seen at the L.A. Gift Show. My friend Laura and I bought quite a bit of stuff from him and I guess he remembered me because he gave me a super deal on these small pendants and even threw in a freebie – the pretty green/blue/purple square in the center.
By the way, the scan on these sucks. They look very dull and grayed-out. In real life, they are brilliant with color and sparkle.
Then I hit a couple of my favorite metal vendors. Got a mess o’ heart sterling silver heart charms for a design I’ve been planning for a long time. Oh, he had some fleur-de-lis charms, too, so I got some of those for my mom as it’s the symbol of her sorority – Kappa Kappa Gamma. She’s wanted me to make something for her forever and now I have the materials.
Also got these pretty hammered components in both sterling silver and gold. I just got a few to try out, but if they work out the way I hope, I’ll be getting a lot more.
Lastly, here’s a picture of the most unique thing I found at the show (which is saying a lot because I’ve been to so many of them that virtually NOTHING is new any more):
Aren’t these treated copper beads and clasps SO pretty? I especially like the swallows – VERY So Cal.
Everyone have a great weekend. It is supposed to be sunny and warm and in the upper 80’s here all weekend so I am going to the beach. In March. Woohoo!
KJ
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Holy Running Machine, Batman!
I have an announcement to make.
Last night, I ran.
That’s right, you heard me. I RAN! As in running, to run, ran, people. In case you’re wondering why I’m making such a big deal out of this, let me explain that, up until last night, I was a non-runner. A person who could not run. Well, couldn’t run without wanting to die after, like, three steps.
And yeah, some of the running aversion was because I was fat and out of shape for a number of years, but it goes way back before that.
I was a champion swimmer in elementary school and junior high. I still have my trophies and boxes of ribbons and medals – including a bronze medal for my 3rd place finish in the 400 I.M. relay (I swam the butterfly lap) in the Junior Olympics. Couldn’t run back then, either.
In high school, I was a dancer and a member of our state championship drill team. I danced up to 6 hours a day. Every day. I marched in 7 mile long parades. While dancing. While wearing white marching boots that after mile 2 started to weigh about 8,000 lbs. In 100 degree weather. I danced 6-minute long dance routines and marched double-time down the entire length of a football field and back EVERY DAMN DAY.
I weighed 116 lbs. I was IN SHAPE.
But could I run the ¼ mile for the annual physical fitness test? Hell, no. I failed that stupid thing every year (although I kicked ASS on the sit-ups and push-ups).
I don’t know if it’s an allergy thing (as in, maybe all my allergies reduced my breathing capacity) or what, but I have never been able to run more than a few steps without feeling like I can’t breathe which then leads to the whole wanting to D-I-E thing.
Until last night. I have vanquished the running beast! I’ve been doing interval training (3 minutes at “normal” pace and then 1 minute at “fast pace” alternated for 30 – 45 minutes) on the elliptical or treadmill machines at the gym in order to goose my metabolism into coughing up these last 20 lbs. that I want to lose. Last night, I changed the 1 “fast pace” minute to a full-out “run” minute. And I did it all the way through my 35 minute session.
And I did not die, nor did I come close to feeling like dying.
THIS IS A FREAKIN’ MIRACLE!
Tonight, I’m upping the running sections to 2 minute intervals.
Cue the Flock of Seagulls music: “And I raaaaaaan. I ran so far awaaaaayyyyy…”
KJ
P.S. I ate blueberries and yogurt for a snack today. And I liked it. What’s next? Tomatoes? Squash? It’s possible a pod has taken over my body because this for sure is NOT me. I do not run and I do not eat fruits and vegetables. I. Just. Don’t. I am maybe becoming a pod person…
P.P.S. Except maybe not because squash? No. Just…no.
Last night, I ran.
That’s right, you heard me. I RAN! As in running, to run, ran, people. In case you’re wondering why I’m making such a big deal out of this, let me explain that, up until last night, I was a non-runner. A person who could not run. Well, couldn’t run without wanting to die after, like, three steps.
And yeah, some of the running aversion was because I was fat and out of shape for a number of years, but it goes way back before that.
I was a champion swimmer in elementary school and junior high. I still have my trophies and boxes of ribbons and medals – including a bronze medal for my 3rd place finish in the 400 I.M. relay (I swam the butterfly lap) in the Junior Olympics. Couldn’t run back then, either.
In high school, I was a dancer and a member of our state championship drill team. I danced up to 6 hours a day. Every day. I marched in 7 mile long parades. While dancing. While wearing white marching boots that after mile 2 started to weigh about 8,000 lbs. In 100 degree weather. I danced 6-minute long dance routines and marched double-time down the entire length of a football field and back EVERY DAMN DAY.
I weighed 116 lbs. I was IN SHAPE.
But could I run the ¼ mile for the annual physical fitness test? Hell, no. I failed that stupid thing every year (although I kicked ASS on the sit-ups and push-ups).
I don’t know if it’s an allergy thing (as in, maybe all my allergies reduced my breathing capacity) or what, but I have never been able to run more than a few steps without feeling like I can’t breathe which then leads to the whole wanting to D-I-E thing.
Until last night. I have vanquished the running beast! I’ve been doing interval training (3 minutes at “normal” pace and then 1 minute at “fast pace” alternated for 30 – 45 minutes) on the elliptical or treadmill machines at the gym in order to goose my metabolism into coughing up these last 20 lbs. that I want to lose. Last night, I changed the 1 “fast pace” minute to a full-out “run” minute. And I did it all the way through my 35 minute session.
And I did not die, nor did I come close to feeling like dying.
THIS IS A FREAKIN’ MIRACLE!
Tonight, I’m upping the running sections to 2 minute intervals.
Cue the Flock of Seagulls music: “And I raaaaaaan. I ran so far awaaaaayyyyy…”
KJ
P.S. I ate blueberries and yogurt for a snack today. And I liked it. What’s next? Tomatoes? Squash? It’s possible a pod has taken over my body because this for sure is NOT me. I do not run and I do not eat fruits and vegetables. I. Just. Don’t. I am maybe becoming a pod person…
P.P.S. Except maybe not because squash? No. Just…no.
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