11.30.07
Patting myself on the back.
I’ve been a very good girl this week. After last weekend’s eating and drinking slothfest, this week I ate nothing but unprocessed natural foods, worked out every day despite a foot injury which relegated me to the elliptical, and stayed away from my beloved wine fridge completely. I feel as though I’ve made up adequately for last weekend, and hopefully this weekend won’t prove to be too detrimental. Tonight Dice and I fly up to Boston to visit the family for a delayed Thanksgiving. Grandma does like to feed me, but she’s not one of those people who equate food with love. Although since I was born the preponderance of meals she’s cooked for me were Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, so if food does equal love, then she must love me a lot to feed me such deliciousness all my life.
Today is the last day of November. If you count strict running I’ve gone about 115 miles this month. If you count elliptical as well, I’ve gone about 125 miles. Not bad for one month, but not progress either. I’ve had an irritating foot injury that wasn’t bad enough to sideline me. Since I am not a quitter, and I have sometimes too much determination, I ran many times this month when I shouldn’t have and it made the injury, if not worse, then definitely no better. It’s impossible for me not to run, though, if it’s not in my blood then it’s definitely part of my routine, which is important to my life. I am not going to run today and will also take the weekend off, and hope for a miracle by Monday.
I’m a big fan of chili. On Monday I made a big pot of chili and I’ve been eating out of it all week. I use a Boca meat substitute that’s very similar to beef, and you can’t even tell the difference. Even Dice agrees that it’s exactly the same. Oops, you know what? I just realized Boca ground “meat” is processed. Okay, so I ate one thing processed. Two, if you count Luna bars, which you should, because they are. In other words, I’m a big fat liar. Even so, the chili was damn good.
All right folks. Leave the porch light on, I’ll be back on Monday.
11.29.07
Yes, I’m a nerd.
I have very little to report today. Still very busy around the office, which makes me feel frazzled and hectic. Also, all I’m thinking about are things having to do with work, which are 1. not interesting to blog readers; and 2. not interesting in general. The good news is that it’s 65 degrees and sunny out. The bad news is that the sun blares into my office, through the windows, and right into my face. Good times!
Yesterday I checked my Yahoo! email for the first time in three months. A piece of advice for those of you who use free email services towards which to shunt all your spam: might be a good idea to check it once in a blue moon before you have thousands of messages to sort through. Because interspersed amongst the spam are actual email messages that you might need. It was a joy to wade through.
Last night’s Jeopardy! episode was a difficult one. The final Jeopardy! question is always a good one, I love it when they announce the category and it’s super vague, causing the contestants to wager big money, and then they get it wrong and their spirits are crushed. Last night’s category was “the sea,” which could not possibly be more vague, and the question was wicked difficult. Two of the contestants bombed hard. It was an exciting game! I am totally going to get this and play it whenever possible. Yes, I’m a nerd.
Otherwise, I didn’t really sleep much this week so last night I conked out. It was good, and I’m refreshed today. I’m sure you’re all glad to hear it. And this concludes today’s lame-ass post. Thank goodness.
11.28.07
Musings on the quality of happiness.
Wow, super busy around the office these days. I do like being busy, it makes the days go by faster. Often, though, when I think about that saying it makes me feel disheartened. Because: why do I want the days to go faster? What’s waiting for me after this day has gone by? Aren’t I happy in the here and now? And don’t forget, every day lived brings one a day closer to death. DEATH, people. It’s around the corner. So I try not to use that figure of speech, because in reality I want nothing more than for every day to last a week. However, I do enjoy being useful and productive, a general side effect of busy-ness.
It does beg the question, though: am I happy in the here and now? For the most part I am the happiest I have ever been in my whole life. To be truthful about it, part of that has to do with getting older and wiser. Leaving the angsty 20s behind is a giant step towards contentment and personal fulfillment. While in my angsty 20s I often wondered if, when I reached my 30s and beyond, I really would settle down and end the angst. Part of me didn’t believe that would ever happen, most of me assumed that life is hard, and that’s the way it is. Well, life IS hard, but it does get a little easier. And one reason why it gets easier is also another contributing factor to my happiness in the here and now, and that is the accomplishment of certain goals. Goals like furthering ones career and buying property can most definitely make one’s life easier and in the process, increase the happiness quotient. If the quality of one’s life were of a state created by the above factors, wouldn’t time passing swiftly in effect decrease one’s happiness simply by decreasing the time one had left to appreciate that happy life? And/or causing anxiety as one realizes the limited amount of time left? Given that happiness is subject to perception, it’s allowable to admit that the perception of the fast or slow passage of time can alter it, in spite of the reality that time passes at a steady, unchangeable rate.
Part of my musing on the state of happiness has to do with the fact that I am slowly recovering from what was a pretty debaucherous long holiday weekend. A third factor that contributes to my general contentment in life is the high quality of health which I enjoy. (Not to confuse “enjoy” with “come by easily,” but instead “enjoy because I work damn hard at it every day.) Part of the reason why my 20s were so angsty was because I ate horrible food, drank a lot of beer, and eschewed exercise. That might sound like fun, but it pretty much guaranteed that I felt like crap all the time. Eating a healthy diet, drinking very little and exercising every day, to put it plainly, just makes you feel better. A lot better. The downside is that you feel that much worse after a couple days of debauchery, however that’s a small price to pay for the other 90% of the time when you’re on top of the world. It’s one contribution many people who haven’t experienced it tend to downplay, which is too bad because one’s health is the number one aspect of our lives that we have control over, and its benefits can far outweigh the factors outlined above. That old saying that nothing else matters so long as you have your health? True in many ways.
Of course, this whole thesis comes with the caveat that if I were to win millions of dollars in the lottery life would be much, much better.
11.26.07
Eating and more eating followed by, you guessed it: eating.
Hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving! I certainly did. Although I was disappointed not to see my family on that day, the Handitards did it up in style. Thursday morning Ray and Michael ran the Atlanta Half Marathon, and both did really well. I ran to the finish and back home again for a total of about 7 miles. Not as good as 13 miles, but I still felt less guilty about all the food I ate and wine I drank during the remainder of the day. We had enough food for 8 people. We got the Whole Foods turkey dinner for two and then augmented it with some extra casseroles. The only drawback is that there wasn’t really enough turkey, so I selflessly did not have any so that the boys could have more. I like turkey but I really love casseroles and rolls, so I just ate my fill in other things. Then we had three kinds of pie with ice cream for dessert. Yummy!
Friday night we decided to play games instead of going out, so first we all sat down and ate the leftovers from Thanksgiving. We basically ate a second Thanksgiving dinner and there was still food left over! That’s a lot of food. Then we played Trivial Pursuit which Dice won, of course, since he is the trivia master and lord of all things trivia. Saturday morning Ray and I ran 8 miles around the neighborhood instead of Stone Mountain, and then in the evening Dice and I went to the Brick Store for dinner, which was delicious as usual. Sunday afternoon we went to the recycling center, grocery shopping, and then spent a delightful afternoon at cheese dip where I ate more food than I thought I could fit in my stomach. And the rest of the weekend I pretty much sat on the couch and watched TV. A very nice weekend!
And now it’s Monday, bleh. My number one and only goal this week is to counter-balance the weekend’s over-eating. I am finding it harder and harder to stick to a healthy diet with the holiday season, but the knowledge that more over-eating indulgences are coming will hopefully keep me in check during the week, at least.
It rained on Thursday as a Thanksgiving miracle. Then it rained again yesterday and today. Drought be gone!
11.21.07
Happy Thanksgiving!
Have I mentioned yet how much I love Thanksgiving? It’s my favorite holiday. For one reason, because it’s an important holiday to my family. I’m from Massachusetts, and my family all still live there except for a few who are scattered about the New England states, and my ancestry is one of the oldest in American history. My ancestors go back almost to the Mayflower, don’tcha know. So my family has always treated Thanksgiving with more reverence than most others. The second reason is because it involves massive amounts of eating, and not just any food, but comfort food. With abandon. You are basically allowed to eat as much as you want, all day long. And the third reason why I like Thanksgiving is because there are no presents involved. All energy is placed into either traveling to a family destination or cooking enormous piles of comfort food. There is no energy expended towards buying crap that people don’t want, nor is there fake religiosity masking real commercialism. It’s just a day to get together with loved ones, and to eat. Win-win, in my book!
The Handitards are having Thanksgiving together tomorrow, just the four of us. Since we aren’t so much into cooking for 8 hours straight we decided to purchase the Holiday Turkey Dinner for 2 from Whole Foods and then augment it with some extra sides and desserts. This means minimal work on our part, which is always good. First off, though, Ray and Michael are running the Atlanta Half Marathon. The half marathon conveniently ends about 3.5 miles from my house, so since I can’t allow them to run 13 miles and then eat Thanksgiving dinner without running myself, I will run to the finish line, watch them run victoriously across it, and then run home again for a very easy 7 mile run, and even possibly detour a bit just to get up to 10. I feel that a 10 mile run would partly justify the dinner later that day. I’ve already run 6.2 miles today, and on Saturday Ray and I are going to Stone Mountain again to do the 10 mile track. What all this amounts to is less guilt for me, resulting in a wonderful, fabulous, gluttonous holiday.
A wee bit of TV news regarding Prison Break. So we watched what turned out to be what they are calling the “fall finale” last night. Prison Break does this every year, and it is the Most. Irritating. Practice. Of. All. Time. Basically what they do is get you all fired up and anxious until mid-November when they stop production on a cliffhanger until January. So you have to wait about three months until the next new episode. Oh my god, y’all. It’s so mean. It’s like two summer hiatuses in one year. It’s obvious that they do it to build suspense, but in my opinion it’s cruel and inhumane. More so because they usually start back up again when 24 begins its season in January, which means I simply don’t sleep on Monday nights because I’m so freaking wired from the Prison Break – 24 wham bam. It’s so good, and yet so evil. Evil!
Have a happy Thanksgiving, folks! I’ll be back on Monday.
11.20.07
I get hungry just thinking about it.
Tonight will be Grocery Shopping Excursion, Part 1, wherein we will go to Publix and purchase any non-organic items that will keep for a few days. And stop at Green’s for booze, as well, considering we will need wine (for me), beer (for everyone else) and champagne (to take baths in). Tomorrow is Shopping Excursion, Part 2, wherein we go to Whole Foods to pick up our turkey dinner and get any organic items necessary for the feast. Since we will be home for four days I also need to pick up food items to eat at home all weekend, so that also means extra food. Basically the starving orphans in Africa are getting a little less food relief this week because of me. Then again, I doubt starving orphans in Africa are getting organic emmentaler cheese, so it’s likely my personal food choices won’t affect the moldy rice drop-offs in Darfur.
I forgot to mention that on Saturday we took a guided tour of Oakland Cemetery, the famous Atlanta cemetery that reflects most of the city’s history. The tour was three hours long, very thorough, and highly interesting. Among the famous buried there are Margaret Mitchell (author of Gone with the Wind) and Bobby Jones, a famous golfer whom I had never heard of but is apparently the subject of a Hollywood movie so he MUST be famous. Ahem. Here I am in front of Margaret Mitchell’s grave. I never knew her married name was Marsh, I guess she was ahead of her time for writing under her maiden name.
And then afterwards we went to Six Feet Under for drinks where I did not get crab cakes, much to my dismay. But someone else got crab cakes, so at least the opportunity didn’t go to waste.
Last night Ray and I went to a Power Yoga class, which wasn’t so much powerful and stretchy and new-agey. We’ve come to terms with the fact that in order to get a good yoga class, with more advanced poses that require actual work, we must go to a yoga studio again. All the classes we’ve taken at both of our gyms are not up to our high standards. Which sucks because we pay monthly fees to our gyms in order to be able to run on the treadmills, use weights, and take fitness classes. And yoga studios are always making you meditate, or do breathing exercises or some other such crap. Damn hippies.
11.19.07
Planning for Gorge-athon 2007
Happy Monday, people! So, it was a weekend. Stuff happened, but nothing very exciting. Friday after work I ran 8 miles on the treadmill and then got up Saturday morning and ran another 5. The upshot of that scintillating story is that what I think is my hamstring behind my knee was none too pleased and decided to act up. Fortunately it doesn’t hurt at all when I walk, and only gets gradually worse when I run, so I am hoping that the day off (which really is 2.5 days off since I ran Saturday morning, took Sunday off, then I will run Monday evening) will heal it up. Also I’ll take a yoga class this evening and hope that helps as well.
Thanksgiving week! So exciting! We have our Thanksgiving feast all planned out for Thursday. It shall be both tasty AND delicious, if you can believe that. In the spirit of the holiday (Gorge-athon) I am not going to worry about bad foods and just eat them. Of course, I say this but most likely I will still feel a crippling sense of guilt. Mitigated slightly by the tasty and delicious food. I am going to bake up an enormous mac ‘n’ cheese, and when I say “enormous,” I mean that I will use one, and possibly two, of the biggest pans I own because you simply can’t have too much mac ‘n’ cheese. I would eat it for any meal. And leftovers are goooood.
11.16.07
I lost my mojo.
This weekend I’m hoping to see dead people. Or their graves, at any rate. Possibly with crab cakes. Does it get any better than that? Other things are going on, including pre-Thanksgiving preparations, about which I will elucidate on Monday.
The City of Atlanta is starting a pilot program wherein they choose certain lucky people to be the recipients of a second, much larger recycling bin for curbside pickup, in the hopes of getting more people to recycle more. The statistics on the news last night said that only 30-40% of Atlantans recycle, and they are targeting to get up to 80% to recycle by using the program. Since Dice and I are low-consumers we don’t fill up more than our one bin anyway, so although normally I would be all over this I will instead opt to allow another family that might be higher consumers to take part. I shudder to think that some people who fill up their bin then throw away containers that could be recycled simply because it’s not convenient to store it until next week, but I’m sure that happens. It kills me that people will choose an option that literally craps on their earth just because it’s inconvenient. It’s inconvenient to find a bathroom when you really, really have to go, but you aren’t going to wet your pants, are you? It’s the same idea, only there are much bigger repercussions from not recycling.
I had a terrible time at the gym last night. On top of the fact that I haven’t been able to get my mojo back since vacation I also got searing cramps which incapacitated me for a little while. In fact, I’ve been getting cramps ever since we got back from London, about every other day when I run. Last night it was so bad that after a mile I had to get off the treadmill and sit in a chair for about 10 minutes. And then when I got back on the treadmill I had to run super slowly which is about he most frustrating thing for a runner. Having the will to run, but not being able to, is a huge disappointment. Plus, because I wasn’t able to go the distance yesterday that means I have to do double today. If I can get 10 miles in today I will be able to stop fretting.
It’s pretty sad, though, that I’m not even doing a fitness challenge and yet I’m fretting about my mileage. Only 60 miles for the month of November so far!
In TV news, we watched Heroes last night. Thank FRICKING goodness that Hiro has come back to 2007. That storyline ran WAY, WAY too long. It should have been less than one episode. The worst storyline of the entire series. Worse than storylines in other shows that aren’t as good as Heroes. So I am happy and pleased that it’s over, also that the hot British guy is staying on the show, and finally that Peter regains his memory, because frankly having him mess around dealing with amnesia was like putting the show on hold. So, to recap: good episode, but only because it resolved bad storylines that held up the action, which can now go forward unfettered.
In cheese dip news, I’m feining for cheese dip. Will try to work in a cheese dip excursion over the weekend. Have a good one, y’all!
11.15.07
Fried chicken + cleanliness = happy Jenka
Last night I met two lovely lady friends for dinner at South City Kitchen, a southern restaurant in midtown which is participating in the Midtown Shop and Dine Week. The idea is pretty self-explanatory, it’s a campaign to get people to shop and then eat at discounted prices, and the restaurants taking part are offering a three-course prix fixe for $25. Such a bargain! I got there early because I had heard that there might be construction near 14th Street and the connector, and oh boy was there ever. Fortunately there was one seat available at the bar so I sat down and ordered a glass of wine while I waited for the others to arrive. Once they did we had a fantastic meal and a great time in general. I had fried green tomatoes to start, then buttermilk fried chicken served over mashed potatoes, green beans and gravy, and a lemon cake for dessert. Instead of saying it was the best fried chicken I’ve ever had I will only say that I can’t recall ever having more delicious fried chicken. My advice to anyone reading this in the ATL is to go there and try if for yourself, because it is worth it. It’s also not all that expensive. Considering I almost never have dessert, a salad and the fried chicken dinner would have been close to $25 anyway, so it’s not off the charts expensive at all. And if you do go, give me a call so that I can go with you.
I’m considering giving myself the gift of a professionally cleaned house for the holidays. I feel as though once a year (or so) it’s a good idea to do a complete overhaul, pay someone a stack of money to be thorough, and maintain from there once it’s done. I try to clean the entire house every weekend, but sometimes I get lazy. Also it’s my opinion that once you live in a house for a while you lose your objectivity about it, you can’t see the dirt in some places, you ignore certain things because they evolved in that way which you would have noticed right away in someone else’s house. Plus, it will give me (and more importantly, Dice) the incentive to pick up every little thing and put it away/throw it out. I’m not a clean freak, but I like a clean house. And both of us work full time jobs, and when you get home at 8:00 pm every night after the gym, you don’t really want to spend the next hour dusting and mopping. Dice is against the idea, but either he will cave or the idea will spur him into some cleaning action.
Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing: it RAINED last night! Only for about five minutes, but still: RAIN! I was reading in bed last night and Dice was sort of laying there not sleeping when it started, and he said, “what’s that weird noise?” It’s been that long since we’ve heard the sound. Although actually it rained while we were in London, but then again you expect it in London.
Is anyone going to watch the (80th) Democratic debate tonight in Las Vegas? I’m not, for several reasons, although I hope Hillary does well. Dude, they are hard on her because she is the frontrunner, not because she’s a woman! It happens to all strong candidates. She can take it. She’s tougher than most people I know. The Democrats for Hillary group are meeting at Manuel’s to watch it, if you’re into that sort of thing you should go!
11.14.07
Dorktastic.
Ho. Ly. Crap. So last night we settled in for some quality TV watching, and we were up to last week’s two hour Prison Break Lollapalooza. Wow! It was tension like we haven’t seen since the first season! So tense! So nerve-wracking! So good! And what with the bang at the end, my prediction is it’s only going to get better. I await the next episode (already banked on the DVR) with excitement. And not just because Wentworth Miller, if it’s even possible, got even hotter since last season. Rowr.
Dave’s comment from yesterday’s post reminds me of another TV-related thought. The other night we were watching the Halloween episode of the show Chuck wherein the main character and his friend wear a sandworm costume. This is a feature from the book Dune by Frank Herbert which I read approximately 86 times in my youth, and which is set on a desert planet where water is extremely scarce. (Yes, there are more books in the series but they aren’t worth reading. I didn’t even finish the third one.) Anywho, I’ve been thinking about Dune a lot lately because of the drought, and so when they mentioned the sandworm in the show I was all, “Of course, a perfectly legitimate costume; good show, boys! I would have dressed like Muad’Dib if I’d been there!” Until I realized how incredibly dorky that is. Like, off the charts dorky.
In other literary news, I finished The Last Chronicle of Barset last night. I must admit that the concluding chapter illustrates Trollope’s tendency to wallow in his own thought processes behind the writing, too much for the narrative so that it becomes all about him rather than the characters. Usually I admire this device which is a pet of his because he recognizes a level of sophistication in the reader by not pretending that the story is real and the writer-as-narrator doesn’t actually exist. This particular episode was rather too much and included an element of self-pity just to make it more interesting. Just one of the reasons why he is more of a B-rated Victorian novelist. I recognize the minor factors that hold him back from discovering greatness, but it doesn’t make me love him less. I shall move on to The Way We Live Now which has some characters that overlap with some of the characters from the Palliser series, and I might even start in on Romola by George Eliot, since Dice convinced me to purchase a hard-to-find copy at the Bookery I while we were in the I-thac in May.
See? Dorktastic today. I must redeem myself. Tonight I’m going to a girls’ dinner with the female half of the Canadians and our friend N. These two lovely ladies are about as far from being dorky as possible, so hopefully some of their class will rub off on me. In between bites of delicious fried chicken. Y’all.
