pet peeve of the instant

i was suddenly struck by something that annoys me. Whenever I say I'm trying to eat more protein to a vegetarian they always say "beans have a lot of protein." That's true--but beant have 6-8 grams of protein/100-130 calorie serving. chicken has 15-20 grams of protein (cooked the right way) for the same calories. Thus, beans cost more calories for the same protein payoff. That's all I had to say.

duct tape and soldered wires

new words for old desires

I haven't had time to write in a while. I was actually really busy on friday and yesterday I wanted to cut out early to go shopping for a fancy outfit with M. who is flying to Madagascar this evening (!) As a result I am trying to get my work done quickly today as well but I need to complete the slide sign-out sheet and people keep using it when I want to!

oh well.

i feel like i'm on the edge of thinking something. I've been sort of numb the last few weeks, sating myself with excessive amounts of lip balm, moisturizing lotion and bronzer. Now that i'm broke again I need to face my real life.

it's been nice having M. here. She has such a different perspective on things that it sort of keeps me grounded and on my toes at the same time. I had a decent run on sunday evening -- 35 minutes in teh 12-18-5 split that I had wanted to do. I'm going to aim for 40 minutes tonight while I watch NCIS (which better be on, I hope it's not some awards show...).

<-- a break occurred here while I filled in the slide sign out sheet and then processed the data on my slides -->

I have decided on my plan (exercise goal wise) for February. I had already decided that as far as running I wanted to maintain my current run lengths for this month. I have a history of over use injury and I want to build a good base before I push myself farther. So my goal for February running wise is to have all of my runs be between 30-40 minutes (40, 30, 35, 35 is my goal for this week. Last week I did 40, 30, 30, 35). Maybe I can shift the proportions within that assigned length. That is:

1. 40, 35, 35, 30
2. 40, 35, 35, 30
3. 40, 40, 35, 30
4. 40, 40, 35, 35

That is my proposed goal outline for February as far as running. Because I am not adding minutes or distance really this month (I want to go up to 50 minutes total, 45 minute long run in march) I felt like I didn't have a good, concrete goal. On the other hand, I have been inconsistent in my arm/ab workouts (although I do pushups and situps at work while I'm microwaving food....I've gotten some good stares).

Thus, my February goal is incorporate 3-4 arm/ab/leg weight workouts. I have 8 lb free weights at home so I'm not going to be doing a gym-quality weight workout but I am planning to find some exercises online and put together a 15-20 minute program that I will try to do in the morning (i have free time in the morning--get my lazy ass off the futon.)

so i think that is a good goal.

I don't think i'm fat any more. I am not yet slim/fit/trim/athletic either which is the goal so i'm not done dieting. But I don't think anyone would look at me and think i'm fat. And I do think that 5 months ago that would have happened. And I think this is something I can be very proud of, a real accomplishment already. But there is further to go. I know that i associate unrealistic life changing peace and happiness when I am a size 6 (from a 12 that will be pretty damn good) but more than that I feel the more in shape I get the more i feel like i really 'inhabit' my body. I didn't feel good--physically, emotionally, anything--when I eating everything in sight and I really didn't feel connected to my physical self. I think that living in my body, respecting it, pushing it, these are things that root me in the present. I live too much in my head, either hopelessly lost in the past or fearing the future with a sort of main intensity I can scarcely control.

But the present, as fleeting and frightening as it is, is the only thing I can really effect. I can't change the past and the only way I can control the future is via the present, by my actions day to day.

so many times in the past I have started an exercise/diet program and quit after 2 weeks because I felt like it was pointless. Months later i'll think back and wish i had stuck with the program because I knew I would look/feel/be better in the present if I had acted differently in the past.

this is my chance now, this moment with my heartburn and ipod playing, my cold fingers and the still slightly too tight waist of my pants (not fat pants!) but this is it, all I get to play with.

<-- another break while I finished processing my data for the day -->

It's 12:32. I'm hungry. I'm going to heat up my chicken breast and cut it up and put it in my salad. I also have some soy nuts to eat. I didn't bring in any more chicken because I almost threw up a little yesterday when I was eating it. I think that I will throw it out tonight. It is no longer working for me. I like the peas in the soup a lot. I need to cook another soup. Maybe one that has tomato in it. Maybe I could salvage this soup by adding stewed tomatoes to it... That is such a joey idea. It is almost guaranteed to end poorly and yet i am drawn to it like a moth to the flame. Let's burn. I'll do that this evening.

juggling failure

i dropped my balls. I discovered that I have made (1) consistent sample labelling error for the last 20 samples (1) dye label error for the same set of samples and an actual lab error for (4) samples. Gosh. I thought I was getting the hang of this. just shows I need to take it one day, one step at a time. I'm back down to 6 samples. we'll see how this goes on monday. my fingers are cold and i am hungry. at least I have fixed all the errors I can... I hope my data is not affected because of the dye label switch.That's the only thing i'm really concerned about. The lab error I can't fix. The label error is no big deal now that I've caught it. oh lord.

i feel like a crazy person

I have spent the last hour trying to contact a capital one service representative as I have been unable to log into my account. For various reasons I was concerned--not the least of which being that I needed to make a phone bill payment...blah blah blah blah...I spent an hour (! an hour!) trying the different available customer service numbers (i even considered pretending i was calling from canada) and tried every available automated option. I called so many times I memorized my 16 digit card number. I tried talking to the automated voice. I sent my version of an angry email. I finally was on the line having exausted all of the automated options and hadn't hung up yet. after 45 seconds of silence a voice asked for my social security number. I finally managed to speak to a real person--outsourcing at work here as a man with an indian accent finally answered--despite my frustration i was a bit embarassed to learn that the reason I had been unable to access my account was that i had changed my login name...oops. i'm a dumbass. When i did log in, however, I noticed that I had yet to receive a refund from the sundance catalogue! So i decided to call them and ask them to check the status of my refund (i guess once you start dealing with life details you might as well get them all done with). So i called sundance and that went a lot more smoothly. My refund should be coming in a week or so. That's fine with me.

The reason for all this was that i made a purchase from avon.com -- tinted lipslicks (just what i have been currently obsessed with) that were only $0.79! I bought all three colors (berry, opal, pink i think) and then set off on my customer service odyssey.

I'm finally feeling a little less frantic. I have to cut back on my money spending I've decided. I also need to purchase the GRE study books and get my ass in gear. Tonight is dinner with my aunt which should be nice.

I ran last night at 9pm (an hour late so i could watch a new episode of CSI and because I hadn't eaten by 8 pm...) I was going to try to do 35 minutes 12-18-5 but I ended up running 30 minutes at my slow pace, walking and then running another 5 to finish up. I was just too tired and my inner thigh muscles were a little sore from sprinting on wednesday I think. I realized I needed an easy run and that as long as I got on the treadmill and did 30 minutes that was fine. I'll try for 35 w/ the 12-18-5 split on sunday.

Kitten has been spending a lot of time in the bathroom. more than usual again. He sits on the bathmat and stares at the wall or he faces the other way and stares at the toilet. He jumps onto the toilet seat a lot (lid up) and I know one of these days he is going to fall in. He's not the most graceful cat around. This morning he jumped onto the sink to drink water out of my glass and knocked my hairbrush onto the floor. The noise scared birdy who then flew and landed on my face and climbed up onto my head, scratching my cheek in the progress. Last night kitten was sitting in the sink trying to drink out of the same glass but there was no water in it! he kept sticking his paw all the way in and then sort of looking at it like he didn't get what was going on. I just adore them both.

birdy had a nightmare last night. around 11:30 when I was getting ready for bed I heard her flapping around in her cage. I went in, turned the light on, uncovered her and started talking to her. She was pretty upset--feathers all up and wild-eyed but she calmed down and I let her ride around on my shoulder for a while while I took my pills and brushed my hair... bedtime things.

so that's the state of things here. Lots going on this weekend. Dinner tonight with my aunt and then into NYC to see my best friend tomorrow. Volunteering on sunday and then M. is coming for 2 nights until she leaves for madagascar on tuesday. I have to clean tonight but right now i am just very hungry and it is only 11 am! i am not going to make it until lunch. I think i'll go eat some low fat cheese and fruit.

later dudes.

Mr. McNaughty and Me (old picture). Also, why kitten never actually gets in trouble.  

i have been too hard

on my freaky looking chicken. I have lacked faith in myself and in my vision. I allowed myself to be swayed by people who said "joey, you can't bake chicken in water." Ha! To all you who doubted me, who probably worship at the altar of fried-lightly-in-olive-oil, I laugh at you.

to be fair, i didn't bake the chicken in just water. I laid my breasts along side each other in my baking tin. I poured in an undisclosed volume of soy sauce and then a smaller volume of balsalmic vineagar. I then sprinkled a liberal dose of adobe seasoning (with cumin) on top. The I poured enough water in the pan to cover (or nearly cover) all of the chicken. I put it in the oven at 350 degrees and left it alone. And you know what? it turned out to be pretty edible. I microwaved it a little too long this afternoon when warming it up but that is my own fault. I think being hungry helps but that is par for the course when you try to cook without fat.

day 2 of the carrot-squash-leek-onion-pea-fennel-curry soup experiment. I believe the soup would benefit from some salt. unfortunately, i have no salt here.

kitten was very naughty last night. I have been eating a breakfast-burrit0-esque thingy for dinner made with a whole wheat wrap (4/$2.50) from stop and shop. When i walked into the hallway this morning i found the package (with 2 wraps left) lying on the floor. A large hole had been chewed into the package and about 1/4 of each wrap had been eaten! Bad kitten. He may be having a relapse of his bread fetish. I was upset about the wraps being ruined but i think i came up with an alternate folding mechanism to deal with the missing quadrant. Kitten was unrepentant (sp?)

I just got back to the lab after going to the main campus for a talk about genetic variation in the population. It was interesting although I was under the impression that there would be food involved and that turned out not to be true. Not that I was going to eat the food but I like looking at it and I would have gotten fruit and a soda.

Run last night was ok, i was pretty tired it felt like and i never really hit a 'groove.' I ran for 30 minutes with 30 second sprints at 10, 14, 18, 22, 26 minutes into the run. I walked for a bit, ran for 5 more minutes and finished my required 45 minutes on the treadmill. good job me. I had finished my sugar free popsicles on tuesday and I thought that I would be ok with out them but at 7:55 I panicked (sp?) and ran (via the car) next door to waldbaums to restock. Round trip, door to door: 8 minutes! it was pretty cool. Then i ran and ate popsicles while I watched the biggest loser: restaurant family edition. I was surprised one of the ladies was only 163 lbs. She doesn't have more than 30-40 lbs she can lose (easily/healthily) and she lost 11 at the ranch meaning I don't know how big (n.p.i.) her contribution can be to the team's weight loss. Anyway, the fatter family always has a better shot at winning and that would be the other family. I was a little concerned about the committment to exercise and diet shown by the families on last night's show. I'm rather a conisseur (sp?) of 'the biggest loser' having seen every episode of every season and watched pretty much glued to my seat. These two families will be facing extra tempation because they both run restaurants (italian and diner) and I don't know how self-driven everyone is. Of course, I am just basing this on what I could see in the 43 minutes of edited content NBC showed. Who knows. I'll find out next wednesday. I do feel like I already know who wins because of the fat wins correlation but that only holds true if the fatter family pushes themselves as hard as the other family. All efforts being equal the fattest will win. But it doesn't just happen. there is committment involved.

So that's the state of things here. One more run tonight: I am thinking 35 minutes in a 12-18-5 (4.6-5-4.6) split with walking warm up/cooldown. CSI is a repeat at 8pm on CBS and although I've seen it I may watch it again. Probably I'll watch CSI: Miami on DVD. Blah blah boring I am.

later.

acceptable comments include...

...why joey, you're looking so slim/fit/not fat anymore...etc.

unacceptable comments include: anything cautionary or oblivious.
just thought i'd put that out there, no reason in particular.

i am settling down to enjoy my latest soup creation--finally engendered after great procrastination (ps: engender means 'to cause to come to be', not to assign a gender to my soup. it is sexless).

i feel it may be a bad sign that when i reached for my spoon it was stuck to a packet of antacids. soup verdict: ok, a bit too carrot-y. oh well, guess i'm going to be eating a lot of carrots for the next 2 weeks. i'm glad i put the peas in--they are a spot of brightness in my otherwise a little disappointing soup. i'm not sure what the problem is yet--it tastes almost a little bitter. alas.

on the upside: low cal, at least 3 servings of vegetables/serving. I will eat this. i went to stop and shop yesterday for veggies because i had become afraid of eating my old vegetables (4 weeks old at this point) and decided fresh veggies were in order, despite my exorbitant food spending last week. I also purchased more whole wheat wraps and had a tasty breakfast burrito-esque concoction for dinner last night (scrambled egg beaters, black beans + diced tomatoes, f.f. cream cheese + f.f. cheddar cheese. Microwave and then fold. allow to cool. consume slowly and with a beverage so as not to eat too quickly. Share only a little bit with greedy bird companion.) I also cooked my chicken last night and tonight I plan to prepare my vegetables for my salads. I was very productive.

i noticed yesterday that since purchasing my ring on monday night i have felt strangely uplifted. I am drawn to the explanation that the ring is bringing me peace (the supposed characteristic of amethyst) but i have also created an interpretation of the ring's structure--the amethyst is held in place by two prongs and it float on top of a fully round (maybe comfort fit) shank of solid, heavy white gold. When I was running on the treadmill (40 minutes, 3.25 miles, go me) I kept visualizing that deep purple amethyst floating in not-quite-security above the solid gold. It seemed applicable to my state of occasional peace, held above the solid core that is my self. I felt like each step on the treadmill, each healthy meal, each time I pull my heart out of the gutter, that i'm the prongs and the setting, i'm keeping my own peace by force but like all contentment it is fragile and must be looked after.

it's not a perfect metaphor but it feels right to me, right like the fit of the ring on my finger. I was surprised that i bought the ring because i really do prefer bezel settings and tend to worry about prong settings but i'm trying not to obsess about this one.

tonight i am planning a 30 minute run with some sprints (mini-sprints really) afterwards. Wednesday night is great tv except for at 8 pm (when i run, of course) but there is the biggest loser and project runway (! I have no life!) so i'm looking forward to that. my experiment comes out of the tetrad in about 20 minutes and then i'll have 1.5 hours of work to do on that.

i feel like i'm typing because i can't face eating the soup. when i try to eat more than one bite at a time i feel a little big like i might gag. i'm finding this very frustrating. perhaps I should puree the peas into the soup and then i wouldn't neet to chew--i could just speed swallow.

i discovered yesterday that I need to start studying pronto for the GRE's. Mostly for the subject tests (bio, chem, biochem...just thought i'd really really cover the bases....) but the outlines online seem to encompass everything i've ever learned (and 1-2 things i didn't) so i have a new project now. It is overwhelming but a little exciting too because it makes me feel like i'm doing something for my future.

i hate to say it but i think i might be finding the fennel seeds a slightly displeasing flavor note in the soup. they were supposed to add intrigue, exoticism and depth.

i worry when i (rarely) have company (basically my mom and my best friend, although i do have another visitor coming this weekend--a good friend from school who is preparing to embark to madagascar) that my food stores are unacceptable for them. I can make myself gag down my 'healthy' concoctions but i wouldn't wish them on anyone! it can be frustrating and a bit embarrassing but i will confess i am sitting here swalling this soup and feeling the hunger in my stomach abate with none of the pleasure formerly associated with tasty food. It is my own fault, other concoctions can be very good. I had warmed up high-octane oatmeal (+fiber buds, + protein powder) that i put some fat free whipped cream on it and let it melt and then mixed it all up. it tasted wickedly decadent. I enjoyed it immensely. I am halfway done my soup. maybe 7/12.

so now i have 10 minutes until i have to deal with my experiment. 1/4 of my soup to go. It is not terrible but i am a little sad thinking about having to eat it for the next 2 weeks. Maybe i won't make myself eat it all. maybe i'll cook tomato, carrot and basil soup next week. that soup was really good.

i found a book at stop and shop called pandemic so i purchased it to add to my ever expanding bio-thriller collection. I started reading it at home and stopped because i was pretty sure it was going to start freaking me out. i was supposed to read it at work but i haven't yet. whatever.

i suppose i'll go finish my soup. i can't think of anything else to say. there was a lot of fennel in that bite.

Picture of the day: an up close and personal shot of squirrely. This is when he had been eating pine cones and so his mouth was all sappy. I can't wait until my computer is fixed because there are so many pictures of kitten and birdy that I want to put up.  

quandary of the day

The FDA has approved an over-the-counter formulation (1/2 strength) of the weight loss drug Orlistat (Xenical). It works by reversibly inhibiting lipase, an enzyme which breaks down fats and allows for their absorption through the lining of the intestines. Studies show that it reduces fat intake from fat by about 30%, although I don't know if that is at the 120 mg/day prescription strength dosage or at the 60 mg/day non-prescription strength dosage. Additionally, any other neurotic, over-indulgent, excess loving people like myself may see the obvious way to turn non-prescription strength dosage into prescription strength dosage (= multiply by 2, perhaps more expensive). Of course, oily, foul smelling stool is a side effect but if you're willing to make the committment (which I am of course) this is kind of exciting.

So here's my quandary--I have already greatly reduced the fat in my diet. I get probably only 20-30 grams/day (at most, some days less) but this drug only works by inhibiting fat absorption. Now if most of my daily calories were coming from fat, say 70% (the number dieticians recommend not going above, http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/diet/advice/fat_intake.htm) this 30% decrease would decrease my daily calories by about 21%, give or take. That is a significan number for no exercise required--(2000 calories)x79% = 1580 daily calories. That's a 400 calorie a day reduction (= 1lb lost every 9 days) by doing nothing more than putting up with oily poop. I would do that.

Unfortunatly, if only 300 of my daily 1500 calories are coming from fat then a 30% reduction is only 90 calories/day reduced (1500-1410). At a 90 calorie/day reduction it would take 40 days to lose a pound relying solely on Xenical (or its new OTC version: Alli, pronounced Al-eye, yeah, I get it).

Thus the quandary: should I start eating more fat? If I started getting more calories from fat then I could increase the % calories reduced by taking orlistat. Because I shouldn't replace fruits and veggies with fat (for obvious reasons) I am left with trying to minimize by carb intake. But I like carbs. and I don't eat very many of them anyways. I suppose I could eat non-fat free cheese (which has a lot of fat) but then again, if you take a serving of cheese with 10 grams of fat and then take orlistat which eliminates my absorption of 3 of those fat grams, i'm still getting 7 grams of fat which is 7 grams more than if I had eaten fat free cheese in the first place!

Of course, numbers aside, cutting 90 calories a day from my total absorption works out to about 630 calories/week = about 1/6 of a lb. That could help me lose weight, even if the other 5/6 of a pound are up to me. As is, all 6/6 of the lb are up to me through diet and exercise. I guess every little bit helps. The eventual cost of Alli will be my final decision maker I think. Or, if I know I'm going to have a high fat meal I would take it. Ooh, i love that idea. Although I generally keep my calories and fat grams low I do have treats (February 4 is a family party and I'm planing on partaking in the festivities). If Orlistat is available by then I could take a dose before, during and after (or whatever is recommended) eating the tasty, fatty goodness I am certain will be available for consumption.

I have resolved my quandary. I am beginning to believe that blogging is like a cheap shrink. Maybe not a shrink, maybe only a 1/2 size smaller (get it...)

I didn't buy makeup at the mall last night. I did buy books at the giant book sale b/c the paper backs were only $1 and the hardbacks were only $2. It seemed silly not to. I spent $30. I did go into the mall but mostly looked at rings to try to decide on a january ring or to see what was available... I bought a ring. It's from Bailey, Banks and Biddle--a 2 prong set oval amethyst (deep, deep purple) on a solid, round shank of 18K white gold. It was initially $300 but was marked down 60% making it only $120 ($130 after tax). It fit just perfectly and although I'm not a huge fan of prong settings (i prefer the solidity of a bezel) I put the ring on and thought "this is it." It is really quite beautiful. I don't regret it although looking at rings was my supposed goal from this weekend in the city with my best friend. Oh well, I will have to look with a more distant goal (my 6 month diet anniversary ring) in mind.

I should go do some work I suppose. This adulthood business it difficult. It's going to be getting even more difficult in the near future as I have begun to think about preparing for the GRE's. I'm thinking: standard GRE and 3 subject tests--chem, bio and biochem. Might as well cover all the bases. If I take them over the course of the summer and fall that gives me 6-9 months of studying.

sounds good, right?

Picture of the day. 

oh lordy

Recent Events, in brief:

• Slept an obscene amount on friday/saturday nights. Bedtimes 4 pm and 6 pm respectively
• slept poorly on saturday night because forgot to take effexor. dreamt of crazy things from my past. woke up very sweaty and sad.
• went on first hike with adirondack club. Was the youngest by a factor of 2-3. only not gray/dyed hair. pretty much what i exected
• played with young opossum at wildlife park. very cute in a creepy, hairless, kind-of-prehensile tail sort of way
• had yummy dinner of whole wheat wrap with f.f. cream cheese, cheddar, mozzerella and beans/rice/tomato mixture
• took car to dealership to get fixed this morning. They said they fixed my door handle but it started to fall off again as soon as I got to work.

I think that's it. I'm still really tired and I don't know why. I slept poorly last night and now i am really hot -- too much chenille today. I am going to pursue taking karate again, there's a kenpo place near where I live and I want to see if it's feasible. That would be a way to meet people.

After the wildlife hospital yesterday I decided to stop at K-Mart/Old Navy on the way home. I was walking into old navy and was struck by this dire sense of pointlessness--i knew that nothing in the store would take away my feelings of abject loneliness. I went anyway, picked out some clothes, got in line... I was then overcome with a feeling of near repulsion because i just didn't want anymore sweaters that kind of/mostly fit... So i put them back, went onto K-Mart. Got a blush and another toy for kitten. He liked it although the wind-up motor totally doesn't work.

When I got home I found that kitten had vomitted (sp?) in the hallway (3x) the kitchen floor (1x) and on top of the burner of the stove (1x) Eeeeew! gross-tastic. On the upside, the stove was off so the vomit was not yet cooked. I cleaned up his pukie-pukies and removed any and all remaining wet food. Dry food only for the next few days. poor kitten.

I watched TV for a couple of hours and played with birdy and then actually went for a run. This is the first time that I have actually done 4 runs in addition to an alternative form of exercise (the 6 mile hike on saturday) and I was very proud of myself. The run felt good, easy (35 minutes at my 13 minute mile pace with 1 minute 10-minute mile pace intervals every 5 minutes) just something to keep me awake.

I am not running tonight. I am cat volunteering and then returning to monday night makeup. I am determined not to leave the mall empty handed and sad hearted. I will be reinvigorated. I will take pride in my accomplishments.

My aunt and I are having dinner on friday night at the japanese steak house--i told her to choose the place and I'm really really really hoping it's not only hibachi cause I hate that crap. Whatever. I got a late start at work today because of the car and so i'm waiting around, feeling tired and antsy.

My mom offered to pay for a shrink (to supplement what is covered by my healthplan i guess) and i'm thinking about doing it. I made up by own plato-esque set of judgements (work with me here, i think it's plat0). I am basing these on the does good b/c wants to, does good but doesn't want to, does bad and feels bad, does bad and feels nothing set of moral judgements.

My pseudo adult life could fall into 4 categories:

1. happy and succeeding
2. unhappy but succeeding
3. happy but failing
4. unhappy and failing

Of course, that is ordered with Success At Life being the defining value, not my happiness. I am currently at level 2: unhappy but succeeding (moderately). I think the reason I get so upset when I feel like i'm doing a bad job at work/life is because that drops me straight down to level 4 -- total and abject failure at life. I would like to be at level 1 but level 2 is still way better.

I miss my friends and that doesn't seem like it's going to change any time soon. I think that having 1-2 good friends and maybe (gasp) a couple of romantic possibilities, be they woefully far fetched, would help me to feel less totally desolate. So i'm going to check out joining a karate studio. I'm going to continue hiking (maybe choose some harder hikes, hard = young people?) and definetely do the young members options... I can only keep plugging away. Sometimes I worry because I feel like I don't have the energy to keep my spirits up.

Spirits up? you say. But you always complain about how sad you are. Well, yes I am sad but i get out of bed, get dressed, keep trying new things and trying to meet people. I keep trying and that is saying a lot. I keep failing though, which seems to say something also, either about me or my environment (me on a bad day, environment on a good day).

so that's it. keep plugging and chugging. Gotta cook tonight because I'm out of food. i'm eating campbells tomato and rice soup. I was going to have a salad but when I opened my bag of stop and shop greens (opened it for the first time damn it) it had already gone bad. I'm going back to my lettuce crisper.

later dude.

poem for the moment

The Improvement


Is that where it happens?
Only yesterday when I came back, I had this
diaphanous disaffection for this room, for spaces,
for the whole sky and whatever lies beyond.
I felt the eggplant, then the rhubarb.
Nothing seems strong enough for
this life to manage, that sees beyond
into particles forming some kind of entity—
so we get dressed kindly, crazy at the moment.
A life of afterwords begins.

We never live long enough in our lives
to know what today is like.
Shards, smiling beaches,
abandon us somehow even as we converse with them.
And the leopard is transparent, like iced tea.

I wake up, my face pressed
in the dewy mess of a dream. It mattered,
because of the dream, and because dreams are by nature sad
even when there's a lot of exclaiming and beating
as there was in this one. I want the openness
of the dream turned inside out, exploded
into pieces of meaning by its own unasked questions,
beyond the calculations of heaven. Then the larkspur
would don its own disproportionate weight,
and trees return to the starting gate.
See, our lips bend.

by John Ashbery

This is my poem for this moment. I am trying to find words which express how i'm feeling and my own are too tired.

40 minutes

that's how long i ran continuously on the treadmill last night-- 12 minutes at 4.6, 24 @ 5.0, 4 @ 4.6--making it my longest run yet. And it felt good, solid though not spectacular. I'm glad it didn't feel spectacular because then it would have seemed like a singular occurence but instead i felt strong (as opposed to euphoric). I haven't done any sprinting this week so i'm going to do some on sunday i think. Or saturday if i run on saturday. Which is unlikely because of the 6 mile hike i'm going on. Which I am looking forward to.

i was bad last night though--i got hungry around 9:30 pm and made 2 mozzerrella (f.f.) and ragu tortillas. They were good but I shouldn't have eaten them. I had a yummy dinner that I cooked also--thai-inspired coconut and lime soup with bok choy and sugar snap peas. yum. and a fake blintz for dessert (low fat tortilla with fat free cream cheese that i microwaved and then added raspberry jelly and some honey). yummy.

i am missing people a lot and I don't know how to stop it. I tried last night to convince myself to turn off my love, to just disconnect from it like you unplug an electrical appliance. But I couldn't. I guess that's a good thing--i think that sort of voluntary disconnect from your moral and emotional centers may lead to psychopathology. oh well.

i then tried to imagine that instead of seeing myself all alone that I see myself and my friends as bright starts in the dark sky of the whole world. Then i envisioned strings of light connecting me to everyone I care about and vice versa. It is a comforting image, the strands of like connecting all these scattered points, but I can only keep it up for so long. Then I realize I'm lying in my bed all by myself in a house with only animals for company and there is this moment when i'm so angry with myself that i'm alone and I'm angry with everyone in the world who is not with me (aka, everyone in the whole world) and then i'm just sad, sad and lonely. Then i get frustrated and make myself start envisioning the connected stars all over again. It is not then surprising that I don't ever sleep really well.

my boss is listening to music on the computer. I find this annoying because it means I can't listen to my ipod without hearing his music. It's sort of intrusive. whatever, he's the boss.

i have a gigantic adventure planned for this afternoon/evening -- a trip to a new sephora then to a new walmart and then home. It will be nice to do something but i'm still feeling very apprehensive about shopping. I realize I've spent about $200 this week on food and lip balm and that's kind of (ok, extrememly) ridiculous. I don't think i should order any beads from www.firemountaingems.com even if they have good ones because i have lots of beads and it's just not time yet. I'll pick some out for my birthday in a month or two. If things are still there I will take it as a sign.

I am going hiking tomorrow. I am volunteering on sunday. I need to cook my vegetable curry puree soup. I need to fill my day up with things so that I don't realize all of a sudden how alone I am. I am proud of running 40 minutes. That is the trail to being able to run 5 miles. I am confident that I will get there. Certainly by march/april when the weather will begin to warm up and the days to get longer. My goal is to be able to go running outside for long runs 1-2 times a week when the weather is cooperative.

done now. my thoughts are empty.

Actual "mouth feel" resulting from addition of xanthan gum instead of real fat :-( 

Tasty food additive. Supposedly gives "mouth feel" of fat. 

there goes the fear again

I was thinking yesterday that resistance to loneliness is like fitness--it takes a very long time to get in shape but only weeks to lose up to 50% of your aerobic capacity. It took me 7 months to find a routine by myself and only 48 hours with my friends to lose that routine entirely. So now i'm working my way through a path I've walked before, feeling like something is missing and knowing that it is. I've done this before and I know it gets easier, that I can function and eventually i'll feel normal again, even if normal isn't quite happy.

i have signed up for a hike this saturday--a 6 mile jaunt through a park not too far from my apartment (10 miles or so) so i'm excited about that (and that i'm following through with my hiking ambitions).

my current theme artist is the Doves--i'm not sure why. I listened to the CD 'some cities' the whole ride up to billsville and now i'm listening to their CD 'the last broadcast.' The music is not happy or sad, it has that more complex mixture of nostalgia, anger, hope and sadness. It fits right now. and it's peppy enough that i'm not falling asleep.

my goal for this evening is to cook dinner. I suppose that i'm setting my sights pretty low. I will make my goal to complete my grocery shopping and cook dinner. That is more reasonable. I am going to make a pilgrimage to super stop and shop for fresh fruits and veggies. Also for fat free tortillas or something along those lines. Last night i was hungry after running and cheated--i finished my last 3 tortillas with a yummy mixture of f.f. cream cheese, black beans w/ cumin, f.f. shredded cheddar and diced red onions.

the fancy f.f. mozzerella was a bust. i ate it and the onion soup au gratin was still good but only because i added some locatelli cheese on top of the mozzerella. I was looking at the ingredients and they included xanthan gum (it was starred because it was the only ingredient not commonly found in mozzerella).

from http://sci-toys.com/ingredients/xanthan_gum.html:

Description
Xanthan gum is a long chain polysacharide composed of the sugars glucose, mannose, and glucuronic acid. The backbone is similar to cellulose, with added sidechains of trisacharides (three sugars in a chain).

A polysacharide is a chain of sugars. Some familiar polysacharides are starch and cellulose.

It is a slimy gel produced by the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris, which causes black rot on cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower and broccoli. The slime protects the bacterium from attach by viruses, and prevents it from drying out.


Uses
Xanthan gum is used as a thickener in sauces, as an agent in ice cream that prevents ice crystals from forming, and as a fat substitute that adds the "mouth feel" of fat without the calories. It is used in canned pet food to add "cling".

I have do confess, it added neither 'cling' nor 'mouth feel of fat.' it added instead a strange similarity in consistency to trying to eat silly putty. Not that i've tried. So whatever. It's nearly pure protein but it was pretty pricey so while i'll finish this hunk i won't buy it again. . If only xanthan gum had been a success.

empty handed

i just came back from the mall empty handed. This was my substitute monday night makeup but nothing i saw seemed right. I liked lots of mac eye makeup colors, i perused the department stores and sephora...i didn't want anything. i think for the first time in a while i was in touch with what i actually wanted and that wasn't new lipgloss, it was friends around me.

the feeling of happiness and peace from earlier today has disipated becoming instead a profound absence. I think that company may be kind of like a shower bubble--take a hot shower and you can walk outside for a bit without really noticing the cold. my friend bubble is wearing off and i am missing them more than ever. oh well. i have to run in 18 minutes so i might as well get dressed.

i miss them.

a balm

for the soul

that's what this weekend was. I had such a nice time. I was so worried about it being hard/awkward/weird to see people again an instead i felt full and happy for the first time in months. It was hard to say goodbye to people, it was hard to drive out of williamstown but I felt a strange sense of satiety, as if i understood and accepted that while college is over for me, the mountains still tower in my dreams and my friends still live in my heart. I am making a life for myself here and that is a good thing. What i am doing is not without value and life can only get better, my loneliness can only abate because i am a person worth knowing. It was so nice (nice doesn't really explain the feeling, it was more like a trancendant peace, or some sort of warm glow suffusing my whole being) to be around people who said "i missed you" "i love being around you."

i had thought i was a different person, that the happy parts of me were dead or broken but i understand now that they are just lying fallow, regrouping until they have the nutrients (friends) to support the emotions of joy and laughter. I am not broken and while i may feel incomplete, i have not lost myself the way i had feared.

all of my friends seem to be experiencing the same sort of dissatisfaction/annoyance/disappointment with their jobs that I am. Heck, my job seems pretty good compared to a bunch of people's. I feel angry almost that this incredible flock of people was forcibly dispersed into a world that can't immediately see and appreciate how special they are, a world that forces them into entry level positions and intolerable mediocrity. It is like setting a diamond in plastic. it is such a waste. but there are times that make it worthwhile and that's what this past weekend was for me. I know i have been alone now for less than 24 hours (i dropped D. at the airport yesterday evening at 6 pm) and that i will become lonely again but even still, i feel revived, ready to get on with living instead of just keep breathing.

i will say more but i am feeling a little choked up now thinking about how good it felt to be hugged, to feel another person. I think words can fail to express adequately the depth of my affections and that a hug is much better suited to the task. To those who i love, these words are my hug.

from school

i'm writing from w. and it is strange in a good, fitting way. I was so afraid that i was going to break coming here, that it would be too hard to come and too hard to leave but it has been ok so far. I have hung out with the people who make my heart sing and my mind has been so quiet. i realize how much time i spend thinking at home, as if the silence around me necessitates some sort of constant internal chatter. I was falling asleep on an air mattress on the floor last night and all i could think was how quiet my brain was. there were no thoughts rushing through it.

i am excited to see my animals tomorrow. i am missing them a lot and at the same time i am beseiged by brief moments of panic that something has happened to them. i try not to dwell on that because there is nothing i can do from here. I changed all the batteries in the smoke detectors before going (venturing into my attic for the first time to ascertain the location of the beeping which had been bothering me for a week).

so more tomorrow, more from home, more when my brain must engage in discourse with itself. I do feel that there is some merit in thinking, as if my loneliness is a way of suffering for art, that the conclusions i reach are the reward for being forced to think. who knows.

anyway, i guess people know my blog address but i think i will still write about people. not that i have much to say, and certainly nothing unflattering. i am sad that it snowed while i was here and so i couldn't go running outside but there is always the future. there is always something still to come. and on the upside, i get to do monday night makeup tomorrow. i'm thinking mulch, a shimmery brown with gold. but the rest of it i'm thinking more hard about, as if i am not sure what the end result of displacing my desires toward shopping will ever resolve itself or if i have to choose to stop shopping, to stop engaging in hollow fulfillment, to just cut myself off.

and so the question becomes, if i stop trying to satisfy myself through placative measures will i find more actual satisfaction in life or will i just be empty completely, no real satisfaction and no fake satisfaction either.

Carolyn Knapp posited that perhaps the best we can do is a moment of peace, true peace and i think that i have that there. But it comes and goes. maybe peace is earned through frenzy, earned through understanding that which is not peace. who knows. i love these people.

if you came back as an animal...

...what would you be? For a long time i thought it would be a hedgehog or porcupine because i was so prickly. I called myself a "prickly pear cactus kind of girl" in my head and i'm not sure if i made that up or read it somewhere...

lately i've thought I would come back as a raven or a racoon because of my attraction to shiny things. who knows, i'm still deciding.

i am trying something. I got the link from another blog (no credit to me)although i did name him all myself.

adopt your own virtual pet!

feeling profound?

I am feeling profoundly awakened. Appetites was incredible. I finished it last night when I went home. The interesting thing is that the part that I read at home, after writing yesterday, continued to echo things that I have always known and believed to be true. I have long that the greatest human desire is to be known and to be loved, because of and inspite of, who we truly are. That is exactly what Knapp wrote toward the end of the book. To paraphrase incompletely, she believed that the great longing, the drive to be filled or fulfilled is a drive for connection and companionship, one that may never be satisfied forever; that the human experience is never satisfied, it is to be always wanted but to find within that stream moments of true peace, joy and contentment.

i believe that can be true. I am trying so hard to be true to myself and to examine my compulsions. I am driven to shop but I am not hopeless. I have been giving my diet a lot of thought also. I read a statistic somewhere that a 'good' runner should weigh no more than 2 lbs for every inch. That would mean I should stop my diet when I weigh 128 lbs. That is a wonderful number to me and for the last week it has been my secret, final goal number. What i realized yesterday though, is that I may never get there or that if i do, that weight may be unsustainable for me.

I had dinner out with my aunt last night and she asked if i had weighed myself and I said no, i didn't want to be disheartened. I came to a realization last night. I don't want to weigh myself until I'm ready. And I will be ready when I am happy with my body, when my legs can carry me up hills and over 5 miles of road, when I can walk into the Gap and know that i'll be wearing a size 6 pant. That is when I will weigh myself because that is how much I should weigh. It may be 135, it may be 140 it may be 130. And then i'll know the weight but it won't be just a number, an external symbol of some perfected state i've achieved. It will be just a description of something I have already accepted, my body, its strengths and weaknesses, curves and lumps.

This will take a while, to be sure. I figure I have months more to go on my diet. I don't care though. I don't feel hopeless like i used to. I am able to cook more things and enjoy my workouts more. That all means that I can stand the idea of being on this diet for another 6 months, and that I can eat healthy for the rest of my life (or at least try damn hard, the rest of my life is likely to be a good long time). I sometimes feel guilty i'm not starving all the time and feel like i should be 'dieting' harder but I know that if i do i won't be able to keep it up. If i eat nothing but tiny meals and never get a reward, never feel satisfied, i know that i'll just go crazy and give in to my temptations and desire for excess. I am hoping that i will be able to understand moderation, that i will take it into my soul and breathe the word enough, that i will know what satiety is and how it differs from gluttony and excess.

I hope these things and right now i feel a strange sense of calm, as if these things are not merely dreams but some sort of hopeful finality, not a destination but a description of the journey.

I have habits on the computer -- i shop, i go to jewelry and makeup websites, i look at petfinder and craigslist for animals that i cant adopt but wish i could. I think these need to stop. I think this sort of behavior is an anesthetic that irritates, it numbs me but at the same time drives me further into the turmoil of misdirected hunger. I have to learn satisfaction.

so that is my goal for now. To enjoy this weekend and not ruin it by worrying or being jealous or hating myself. I will go to college and be peaceful, happy to be surrounded by people i love but happy in my own skin too. Because that is where i live, under this shell this skin, in this body. That's what i can't escape and what i shouldn't be trying to. I will be happy with myself and when that happens, i think that i will find someone. I will continue looking. i will not retreat forever into my upstairs apartment with my cat, bird, various rodents and television. I am not throwing in the towel on human companionship. But i will be true to myself also. I am not giving up if i don't go to bars and parties. I don't feel comfortable there. I feel unhappy and i will not force that on myself. I will try new things, i will learn to take risks because it is ok to be risky if you are not fragile. I will take the 'handle with care' sticker off my heart but i will still handle it gently.

this has waxed a bit flowery and overly metaphorical. whatever. atleast i'm not going internet shopping.

things that i owe myself

i own my heart. i should not give it to someone who cannot receive it. I owe myself happiness that is not transient, faith in myself that does not lie in my pants' size, hope in the future and a belief that i am a person worth knowing and that i will not die alone.

i owe myself things--the power to hold onto hope but more importantly, the power to let go feelings that destroy me. My heart is too special to be left outside a door that will never be opened.

so that's my goal for now. to let go of that which hurts me and cling tightly to that which makes me strong.

what do i hunger for

I have started reading the book Appetites by Carol Knapp. It's extraordinary. the book jacket reads "How does a woman know, and then honor, what it is that she wants in a culture bent on shaping, defining, and controlling women and their desires?...how [is] a woman's appetite--for food, for love, for work, and for pleasure [shaped] and constrained by culture?"

It strikes me as stunningly relevant that I just happened to buy this book now, at this point in my life, where I don't know what it is that I want. I am following a path but I don't know if I am following it out of choice, out of a desire to continue learning or simply because I don't know what else to do. I have recognized my actions -- mostly my shopping -- as the externalizing or displacing of other, unfulfilled desires. I don't know how to change that though. I want things -- makeup, clothes, the perfect lip gloss or outfit or mascara -- with a desperation that scares me sometimes. I feel like a dog who can see a bone or smell it, and I talk myself down with false promises saying "you can buy that next week" or "you have plenty of things like that at home."

I went over to the main campus today for a demonstration of an automatic plate reader and after the presentation the corporate sellers were going to take people out for lunch (free sushi!) so of course I was going to go. But the longer I stood there waiting for people to rally for lunch to more insecure I got. I ended up not going, ostensibly because the restaurant was 20 minutes away and I needed to get back to work, but equally because I thought I was going to start crying. I have often posed the question "is it better to be lonely and alone than lonely in a room full of people" and I believe the answer is "to be lonely and alone." It is then possible to blame your loneliness on the physical absence of companionship and that is more easily remedied than what is my case -- the emotional absence of companionship. I was surrounded by acquaintances and felt so lonely, so unsure of myself that I wanted to flee. I wanted to go running and to make something of this feeling, to make it go away. I wanted something, anything but the ravenous desperation I felt come out of nowhere.

And it did go away. I went back to my satellite campus, did my work, read more of Appetites and now i'm writing, trying to figure out how to fix my heart.

I know on an intellectual level that I cannot buy my way out of this rut. I am trying so hard, i do believe that I am making progress here but I am so unsure of myself. I have said to my mother that it is nice to be so materialistically motivated, that is, it is nice that I can promise myself makeup and that makes me get on the treadmill and go for a run but I don't know all the time. Buying myself makeup is the highlight of my week but I realized over Christmas that I can't just keep making bigger and bigger promises and fulfilling them with ever more lavish gifts to myself. At some point the reward that I 'earn' for diet and exercise must become the muscles in my legs, my stride, my body itself. I almost wrote "the smaller size pants I put on" but that ties back into Knapp's thesis -- women's preoccupation with their weight is a say of externalizing and alienating their own sexual desires 'to be sexy is to be found sexy.' Is that why I run? I would say it is because I am overweight but i can tell you for sure i'm not worried about my health. I get on the treadmill because I want to be 20 pounds less than I am know and because I do believe that my life will get better when I weigh 135 lbs. I believe it so strongly i can't bear to challenge the assumption because at least it is something I can control. I can get on the treadmill, i can increase my mileage, continue to eat a healthy diet and slowly begin to emerge as the lean, strong woman I want to be. But i worry sometimes that even if I am wearring a size six and i'm pretty and slim, will I still feel so broken inside, so painfully lonely and worthless?

I had an interesting conversation with my male friend one time. He had been in a bit of a snit and when I asked him about it he owned up to and and said that sometimes he gets upset because he feels excluded and he feels that people aren't valuing him enough. He felt undervalued. When I feel excluded I feel value-less, as if my perceived exclusion reveals the deep truth of my inherent unworthiness. Unworthy of everything, a failure, a fake. I feel like a fake most of the time, as if my life is this river of air, of time and I am just balancing in it. I am treading water but still moving forward and when I realize I'm no longer where I started I am surprised because change is not something i chose.

Most of the time I try to limit the self destructive thoughts that i'm allowed. I try not to let myself call myself a fat loser, a failure, a fake, a waste of privelege. But often the only sentiment that gives me peace is the knowledge that I hate who I am now. I do, i hate my insecurity, my weight, my loneliness. I love parts of myself -- real or imagined -- my humor, my wit, my potential for beauty and strength -- but i feel like if i don't keep pushing myself, if i rest on my laurels I may end up being fat and lonely forever. I joke about being the crazy cat lady but i'm not joking. When I say it alone I say it in tears.

so is this a plea, a request? It can't be. I am the person in charge of my heart. I think i have created a clever rationalization system for my purchasing -- that of deserving, the twist being that I buy things not to complete myself but to reward myself. It is difficult to know my real motive. I buy makeup on mondays ostensibly as a reward but what about every other time? I have lain awake in bed this last week, ever since I knew D. was coming and we were going up to college, and I have wondered what mascara I should wear. I have settled on a light brown lancome defencils but I haven't bought it. Part of me, hell, all of me knows that this is unreasonable, that I am displacing my anxiety about seeing him and seeing my friends and then being torn from the bosom of my past with a singular worry about the right makeup, right outfit, right jewelry. But it is easier. And it feels like something I can control.

Right now i feel so tired. It is 2:40 pm and I am meeting my aunt for dinner at 7pm. I have to go running before then so i think that i will go home now and run (i have finished my work for the day). Last night I watched the episode of CSI "Big Middle" about a fat advancement conference -- i chose to watch it from my DVDs to remind myself why I run, why I don't eat (much) and why I can't give in to the apathy and vague dissatisfaction that would have me veg my life away in a semi reclined position on the futon, clicking aimlessly from show to show, looking for something familiar, something that makes me feel safe.

Oia, Santorini: the view from our deck as a storm approached. Picture from last summer. I am trying to remember the bigger part of the world and not the small part I live in every day. 

whelmed

I was thinking last night about my apparent paradox--I am underwhelmed with what my life feels like it's turning out to be but overwhelmed by how much work it is to keep even my pared down existence running smoothly. On the upside, I generated usable results at work today which means I am not totally hopeless in the laboratory and means that I can become a valuable asset. Thank god.

But back to being whelmed. I have been underwhelmed by a lot of things recently. I suppose the more proper description is disappointed but it is such a committment to be disappointed--it implies that you had expectations and that whatever the outcome, it fell drastically short. I'm not prepared to make that kind of committment to my failures. I am not disappointed with my life, i can't bear to say that, but I am underwhelmed by it. I am lonely, I haven't lost as much weight as I was hoping to have lost by now, I am not as good a runner as I thought I would be after 4 months running on the treadmill... I am not technically failing but I feel like I am coming up short. I called my blog "mug half full" in an effort to get myself to think positively. Mug half empty may have been a more expository title in light of my attribution personality but enough of this whining.

I think it is more beneficial to look at the good that I have accomplished:

• totally revamped eating habits: eating almost exclusively healthy foods and in moderation
• transition from complete inactivity to 12-14 miles exercise per week + minimal strength training
• weight loss of maybe ~ 15 lbs (I don't want to weigh myself for fear of being disheartened)
• I am making a life for myself here via:
• cat volunteering
• wild animal hospital
• learning how to do my job (and do it well, maybe sometimes?)

additionally I joined a hiking club today so hopefully I'll be able to meet some people that way and also get more exercise. I'm going to have to more my fourth run back to sunday if I am hiking on saturday...or maybe to monday. I'll have to play it by ear.

I am still terrified/excited about this weekend. I am trying not to think about it. I slept poorly last night--although I fell asleep easily around 11pm I woke up around 4 am and didn't sleep well after that. I finally got up at 7:15am to watch some of Buffy on FX. The episode was directly relevant to how i'm feeling--season 6 (i'd have to look up the episode) when the Trio turn Buffy invisible. At first she is happy to get a break from her life but when she finds out she is dissolving she realizes that she doesn't want to die. And that's progress.

So who knows. My plan for after work is to go explore a jewelry boutique that is supposed to be 0.61 miles from my apartment (thank-you mapquest) and is also supposed to sell jewelry from a designer I really like: Saundra Messinger. I have been scouring the internet looking for sites with her stuff and stores in NYC that sell it... and all the while if i had looked at her website with the list of 'where to buy' I would have found that there is a store right in Huntington Station (and one in Huntington and one in Jericho--3 stores w/in 10 miles!). oh the irony.

Kitten and Birdy 

Big News, Little News

• D. is coming this weekend and we are going up to college to see people
• The girl who was mean to me no longer volunteers with the cat organization
• mom came to visit me. It was fun and tasty.
• I did some apartment decorating.
• My rings from sundance were underwhelming and I have decided to return them.
• my new dove mousse is unsatisfactory. My hair is neither weightless nor manageable.
• I slept from 6 pm yesterday to 8:30 am this morning but woke up tired and disoriented.

I may have covered all my points.

I am so nervous and excited about D. coming to visit. I am terrified about seeing him again, terrified about going back to williams because the other part of me is filled with this sort of hysterical joy, a voice that almost can't be contained that is twittering with excitement. I am afraid of that voice, that joy because i know that this period of friendly companionship is an illusion, a brief respite of the past in what is my life now. I have worried for a long time that if i saw people and went back to school I would not be able to find even a measure of happiness upon returning to New York because my visit will have reminded me of everything I have lost.

But i think it will be better for me to stop stressing about that and to simply enjoy this weekend as it comes, to see people and be reminded that there are people in my life who I love and who love me, but know the whole time that I am not in college anymore, I am a grown up, a strong young woman, and that i have a life for myself here.

that said, i am super excited about this weekend. I am planning on going for a run at williams!!! It will be so nice to be in the woods again and to see the people who make my heart sing.

Plans/Projects:

• return rings to sundance: This requires going home, packaging the rings back up, filling out the return form and mailing them
• clean apartment/continue cleaning: self explanatory
• hang pictures in the treadmill room
• call aunt liz; arrange get-together
• write letters to professors from college about grad school applications
• apply for social security card
• with social security card: apply for NY drivers license
• bring computer and windows XP disc to main campus and have IT man fix my laptop.
• upload pictures to laptop

I know there are more projects I am supposed to complete. I can't remember them right now.

I slept deeply and yet fitfully last night. I was so tired when I got home from the wildlife hospital (where I gavaged a herring gull, fed owls and helped care for a newly injured cardinal) that i went to bed at 6pm for a 'nap.' I stayed asleep until 8:30 this morning. I did wake up a bunch of times in the night though, generally sweaty and shaken from whatever fucked up dream I was having. I can't remember how many dreams I had but i have a few bits from a bunch still in my head. One involved a bad guy/terrorist organization and I think i was supposed to defeat the head evil man and there was some diving to the bottom of the ocean and exploding coins involved. Later in the same dream-verse I believe I had to travel into the future (?) Because the bad man had switched identities with me in the past and lived as me for a number of years and was going to destroy the world by opening up the squid harvesting market as a source of food/energy. I had to defeat him again which involved showing how he had reengineered the lights on this far away planet to create a false sense of energy availability and was setting out to destroy earth. There was this complicated multi-step passage to get to the safe place in the future (which i think was at the bottom of the ocean) and i had to keep doing it and foiling the bad guy and and one point I think i might have died and at another I was fighting him in this sort of pseudo-Ender's Game battlefield/extreme mountain biking set up... It is all very confusing. But intense. My dreams are always so intense and I can't ever remember enough of the dream-universe to explain the motivation behind the things I was doing/had to do to save the world and they then lose something in the retelling. There was also something about William (my baby bro) and his girlfriend and I think they were both on some new drug and there was something about squirrely and maybe also Ben affleck and Jennifer Garner were there in a different part of the dream about my stealing back books from my childhood that had been left in a hotel and then we were all being chased and sneaking around and I think we ended up hiking to vermont where we went to another really big old building that collapsed and started a mountain slide when we tried to get in...

This is probably why I am tired/disoriented/shaky this morning. I always wake up from these dreams feeling like there is something important that i need to do but since in my real life I am not saving the world I end up not doing anything and feeling so lost and pointless. I think i am actually happier in my dream-verse where I have to complete a seemingly insurmountable task. If nothing else there are friends there--real or created for the dream--and waking up brings a sort of return to my pervasive normality.

Goals for this week:

• Join Adirondack Hiking club
• Run Monday, Tuesday, Wed, Thur (in case I can't run at williams b/c of really really bad weather)
• Monday: stride intervals (10 minutes); try longer sprint time (1 minute?)
• Tuesday: 2 miles @ 5.0 mph
• wed: 1.5 miles @ 5.0 mph
• Thur: 2.5 miles @ 5.0mph

all run goals depend on how i'm feeling that day. If i'm feeling really shitty i'm not going to aim for a new personal best run. That just sets me up for failure. Speaking of failure, i just remembered another part of my dream. It involved my forgetting that i was enrolled in a class and not attending it or doing the reading but then i had to take the final and I did really poorly and I disappointed myself, my teacher...everyone. Par for the course i suppose.

whatever. I'm going to try to calm down and chill out.

frustrating

today has been rather frustrating. Things started off well but i ran into a seemingly insurmountable stumbling block because I am unable to grid my last slide (work stuff). No one can figure out what is wrong so i'll probably just redo the experiment next week. I think the slide was printed crooked. Whatever.

Mom comes this evening and she brings with her my rings from sundance--i was talking to her yesterday and she said "hey joey, this package came for you." Apparently they were shipped to my billing address. Thank goodness she is coming! I like my gratification instant style.

I am wearing a ring I got this past summer with William in greece -- the inside out cut green tourmaline w/ Sterling band and gold bale. I really like it and it fits on my right ring finger. I was looking through my rings last night because i couldn't sleep and it occurred to me that if i saw this exact ring online for about $78 (a price i think comparable to the catalogues i've been surfing) that i would think i just had to have it, it is just what i like. But because I have it already I don't even think about it. It is already grouped into an 'existence category.' That's a term i just made up. It's hard to explain. I remember when and where I bought/received pretty much everything that I own and it's hard to assign a value to something after the fact. This is the 4th ring from my favorite store in Napflion. Or the 3rd. I'm actually not 100% sure. It is fun that I have a history with the store -- I stopped there my first week in Greece 2 years ago, then bought something there at the end of my semester abroad and then actually found it again with Willy this past summer. I could make up something about continuity, assign it a significance along those lines but i don't want to do that right now.

I was looking at rings at sundance (because i was frustrated that the computer science shit wasn't working) and they had a peruvian chalcedony ring that was nice but not exceptional (cabochon, no faceting) but it was called the dreamer ring and is supposed to help the wearer remember their dreams. That description immediately made me want it more, even though I don't believe at all that it will help me remember my dreams! I love that it has a significance to it! Sundance has this thing called a 'product story' about all their jewelry which has a blurb about the associations of the stone, the artist, anything special about the piece--and i find i really like that (except when I want to make up my own significance). So whatever.

Really good run last night--i wasn't sure it would be because I had had 2 good runs in a row and was pretty tired (still not sleeping well) but i ended up doing 1.5 miles at the 12 minute pace and 6 mintues of AT conditioning (my new made up interpretation of real training...). So that was good. And instead of eating more udon or casserole and moping about how i can't eat anything i enjoy becasuse of my diet...boo hoo hoo...poor me... I shut up and cooked the stuffed peppers I had been thinking about creating. I hollowed out a green pepper and put a layer of fat free cream cheese and then a mixture of green onions, diced tomatoes and rice that i had cooked and then topped it with fat free cheddar and baked it for about 20 minutes at 300 degrees. It was actually really yummy, especially the fat free cream cheese (which is good because i have only 9 more days to finish the whole tub, according to the instructions...)

So that's the state of things here. I'm hoping mom will be able to drive straight through and not stop for a nap but that's up to her. I'm going to go eat my salad from yesterday that I didn't eat and try to finish the rest of the day here...

toodles.

run:
0-3: 3.3
3-7: 4.6
7-25: 5.0
25-28: 4.6
28-30.5: 3.3
30.5-32: 4.6
32-32.5: 8.0
32.5-34: 4.6
34-34.5: 8.0
34.5-36:4.6
36-36.5: 8.0
36.5-37: 4.6
37-45: 3.3

diet:
breakfast: kashi, 1/2 grapefruit
lunch: casserole
dinner: stuffed peppers
+ vanilla pudding (1), soy beans, 2 clementines, 1 pear

kitten sitting. He was fatter here. This is from a year ago at home. But this is his favorite way to sit. It's pretty indecent. That's just one more thing that's so awesome about him.  

Kitten and I (from a while ago)

mid day

I think it is kind of inconvenient that I write this in the middle of the day. My thoughts from yesterday evening seem so long ago and I haven't really done anything of note today. But regardless. Yesterday I had a great run--my goal was to try to do a 12 minute mile. I did not only 1 but two and they both felt great. I ran for a total of 35 minutes (out of 45) and covered 3.53 'miles' (treadmill miles). It was my best run in a long time. I am actually looking forward to running this evening but i am also scared because as much as I enjoy a good run i feel like it is my body teasing me--it says 'you only get a good run for every 10 shitty runs' so I'm thinking to myself now that i'm due for 10 shitty runs.

kitten was really funny last night. He kept playing in the bathtub. For a long time now he has gone into the bath tub after my shower and he likes to lick the puddles i think. In the evenings though, when i'm in another room, he goes into the bathroom and either gets in the tub or paces on the side and cries his saddest, most pitiful cry. I almost always go to him and try to figure out what he wants but i had given up trying to understand what he was asking for, simply because nothing ever made sense. Last night though I decided to play with him through the shower curtain and he loved it! He went crazy wrestling with my hand through the curtain. We played for about 20 minutes before he got comfortable in the corner of the tub and started his obsessive grooming.

I'm trying to play with kitten more--i think i'd gotten a bit lazy because he plays on his own so well, i didn't feel compelled to play with him. But he loves playing with those toys-on-a-string type and so i'm trying to fit in about 20 minutes of play time with him each evening.

Day 1 on my new budget. So far I haven't bought anything though i did spend 2 hours online looking at rings. I am always getting ideas for my next 'motivational' item. I haven't really decided what i 'want' for january if i succeed in doing 4x 45-minute runs for the whole month. Maybe nothing. maybe something from sundance (but < $200). Who knows. I think that my obsessive net-window-shopping is actually not helpful to my attempting to limit my purchasing. Whatever.

I crafted yesterday and made about 6 pairs of earrings. I used my new sterling silver findings and they are really beautiful. I think i will craft more this evening. The only problem with crafting is that it always makes me want to (1) buy more new things or (2) restock anything i'm running "low" on (the parentheses are because I start worrying when my stock is low enough that i can only make another 100 pairs of earrings...)

I started having "deep thoughts" again last night as I was trying to sleep so i stopped thinking. I do think i was onto something yesterday with the idea i had about being empty. When i am better rested (haha, i almost typed 'wrested') i will give it some more thought. The poem i read last night before bed was "Practice"by Ellen Voight. It is really beautiful but i forgot to bring the text with me to post. Maybe i'll do it tonight. so: not much of note. I did throw out what pudding i had left because it starts to taste funny after about 2 days in the refrigerator. Good to know I guess.

I'm steeling myself to drink a mug full of green tea. I don't drink green tea. I don't dislike it persay but i don't like it either. I am trying to limit my coffee to one cup and so i had my one cup this morning. Then i had a cup of earl grey tea. I am pretty sure green tea is very good for you so i might as well start drinking it. Right now it's too hot though.

Yesterday: Exercise: Run (good)
0-3: walking
3-8: 4.6
8-20: 5.0
20-23:4.6
23-24: 3.3
24-36: 5.0
36-39: 3.3
39-42: 5.0
42.5-44: 4.6, 6.0 , 8.0
44-45: 3.3

and it actually felt good

Diet:
breakfast: Kashi crunch (a lot)
lunch: salad + casserole
dinner: udon
snacks: pudding (a lot. too much.)

I am trying to learn how to post a picture to my profile. Instead I put up two pictures of squirrely and I. That's cool too though. This is squirrely when he was really little and I was dropper feeding him. The other picture is when he is all grown up and living wild in our neighborhood.
hand-feeding squirrely

Squirrely and I 

...

i just ordered 2 rings from the sundance catalogue. I just got my new credit card yesterday and already I bought something. I think it was good for me to pay cash for everything but I don't like doing it. I know that i have to keep better track of the money I spend. To be fair, I did just discover the 'outlet' section of the sundance website and I got two beautiful rings. I haven't been able to find any rings I like around here (in L.I.) and I think that is some of why my tastes have strayed to the more expensive.

My plan is that in the beginning of march I will buy myself a gold+diamond ring for my right hand to commemorate my having been on a diet/exercise plan for 6 months. I am aiming for about $300 (the tiffany's stacking ring w/ yellow gold and a v.v.v. small diamond is $325). If i am good this month (january) and by good I mean if I complete a 45 minute (that's +5 from last month) treadmill exercise 4 days a week for 4 weeks I will get myself a ~$100 treat (ring or other jewelry). I vacillate between feeling frantic about money and fantasizing about buying more things. I do know that i can't spend as much money as I do. I am going to try to be more strict about wasteful spending -- drugstore makeup, salesrack clothing, pet supplies I don't need... By being cash only i've had to really limit what I've been buying and it has made a difference. Additionally, I now have so much nice makeup (a result of my monday night makeup excursions) that there really is no excuse for me to keep buying cheap makeup (other than the sick thrill I get at purchasing $50 worth of $0.99 makeup).

so that said, i have been thinking about my budget lately. I spend about $350 on food (that should be closer to $250, that's another thing i'm working on), $700 on rent, $100 to my savings and $200 on makeup (monday night makeup). That leaves me about $600 a month for other things (=$150/week). So i can blow $150 each week or I can try to save $75 every week and then buy myself a treat at the end of the month. I think the end of the month treat is a better option.

It is hard because my diet has taken a lot of the victual pleasure out of my life. I spend a lot of money on food because (1) fresh fruits and veggies are kind of expensive and (2) I am hungry a great deal of the time and go nuts at the grocery store thinking about everything I can cook for myself. I don't know if i have mentioned the fat free cheese and fat free/sugar free pudding obsessions I am currently weathering. (More later under: current food favorites).

I couldn't fall asleep last night for 2 reasons (1) I had taken a rather wonderful 2 hr nap earlier and (2) I read some poetry before bed. Poetry always gets me riled up, fills me up with thoughts I can't answer and wish I could express. Last night I just lay in bed and my mind wasn't racing the way it does with anxiety and too much caffiene but it was racing--searching almost for the right words and images to capture how I feel and how i think i fit into the greater picture of the world, the cosmos, man, humanity... these are things that keep a girl awake. I finally came back to the word "empty." I feel empty. I am so lonely I have grown numb. D. may come for a visit later this month and i'm excited about it but mostly so scared that if i see him and see how incredible it is to be around him and have a friend near me (physically), in my apartment, someone to talk to... that my peace here will be broken, that my haven will no longer be my presence, it will be his absence. Of course, I do want him to come. I have to be ready to deal with his leaving again though.

So back to empty. I just kept hearing that word--empty, empty, empty. It's why i buy so many things -- clothes, makeup, jewelry--why i reward myself with items--monday night makeup, motivation rings... It is some of why I am hungry all the time, beyond just dieting and eating less and eating more healthily, I feel like there is a part of me that is missing, that I am not yet whole.

I started thinking about the image of a shell or a skin (I read "Cottonmouth Country"by Louse Gluck before bed. More on that later). I can't tell if i'm fragmented--if all my pieces are here they're just broken, or if i'm empty, if i'm a shell and I need to be filled. But why do I want to be filled (and don't go for the immediate sexual metaphor)? I use a qualifier before every adjective when i'm writing. I want my lipstick and eyeshadow to be sheer--above all there must be no opacity in my life. So why all of a sudden is being empty so bad? Can't I be a vessel? Can't I be enough for myself?

I have so much makeup that I know I will never have enough. I think it is time for me to put my foot down and say "no more" (or, since that is too harsh, say "$10 per week on crappy makeup). That is something I can follow. I think i'll have my week start today because today I'm deciding on this. I do not make enough money to motivate myself with increasingly extravagant self-gifts. I am excited about the rings from sundance though.

I ordered the faceted bamboo coral ring (http://www.sundancecatalog.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=6796&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=21&iSubCat=84&iProductID=6796) for my left ring finger and the flame ring (http://www.sundancecatalog.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=6764&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=21&iSubCat=84&iProductID=6764) for my right ring finger. There are a few other rings on the site that I would like and maybe i'll think about them in the next few weeks (if I am good at spending less in real life). My mother is coming this weekend and I wanted to go to walmart to look at cheap shelving so I could make a beverage rack in the kitchen or better organize my DVDs...

But back to being empty. I sometimes wonder why i am drawn to rings more than other jewelry. I have a few ideas--I can make my own necklaces, earrings and bracelets. Additionally, I am drawn to other types of jewelry, i am just drawn more strongly to rings. I have created and exacerbated my obsession with rings by imbuing them with a sort of psychic power over occasions--that a ring and a ring alone can commemorate an accomplishment. Right now I am wearing my 'dreamer' ring on my left ring finger. It is my treat for my following my diet all december--i cut out peanut butter and junk cereal after thanksgiving. I hadn't lost as much weight as i had expected too and I had to take out those 2 things that i didn't think i could bear to give up. But i did give them up and I saw a difference in my diet almost immediately. So my 18k gold band and cushion cut pink tourmaline mean I am a strong person with desire, determination and drive. And it's also so sparkly!

So regardless. I see myself now as a big clay pot and I keep filling myself up with stuff, with possessions when I should be looking for people and experiences to enrich my life. I have a few ideas--i found a couple of local hiking clubs. One has a "young members" group and another one has a flat out "singles" group--either one would be a good way to meet people/guys I suppose. It costs money to join each group and I would have to check to see that the activities are on saturdays and not sundace b/c my sundays are filled with volunteering.

I think that if i limit my silly spending to $75-100 per week (maybe take out $100 in cash and use that for clothes/makeup) then i will have enough money at the end of the month for a commemorative, significant purchase. since i did just buy those two rings I only have $20-45 for the rest of the week. I like the $45 better. So: fun for the week = limited. I have a routine that i like that is a trip to the barnes and noble plaza so I can play with the cats at petsmart, buy a book to read at B&N and then get an icecream (!!) at cold stone creamery. But i have enough books to read right now and I feel like i was off my diet so seriously when i was home for christmas that it's too soon to think about having ice cream. Better stick with the ff/sf pudding. I was thinking earlier that if i froze the pudding and then blended it with a little skim milk in my magic bullet (!!) that i could synthesize an ice-cream like substance. I think that I have will try that in the future. I also have some recipes for low fat, low sugar bread pudding. That could be tasty (?)

Last night I almost started crafting but i got overwhelmed by my lack of sterling silver 2.4 mm rounds. I am deciding now that that is a silly objection and I should really do some crafting tonight. For my birthday I will pick out more sterling findings. And maybe next week I could order ~$50 worth of stuff from www.firemountaingems.com and use that as most of my fun money next week.

I feel empowered by my plan to enforce my budget.

anyway, I'm going to go make some more lists and have lunch.

yesterday:
Run: 45 minutes total
3 minute walking warmup
25 minute continuous w/ alternating 4.6-4.7 mph speed)
2 minute walk
5 minutes @ 4.6-4.7 mph
2 minute walk
2 minutes @ 6 mph
2 minute walk
1.5 minutes at 4.6, 6, 8 mph
1.5 minute cooldown

arm+ab workout: yes

diet:
breakfast: GoLean Crunch (300 calories)
Lunch: salad + casserole (450 calories)
snack: cheese + 2 apples: (300 calories)
dinner: casserole + 3 puddings (500 calories)
total: ~ 1600 calories (a little high)

i feel a little silly

having created a blog for myself. But excited too, as if my life is exciting enough to merit its own faithful record. Why today? Well, it is the first work day of the new year (for me) and I have nothing to do. Actually nothing--my boss is out of town, my coworker is out sick and without her I have no samples to process. So I am cleaning my desk I suppose, reorganizing my notebook, drinking coffee.

I like reading the running blog directory blogs because they motivate me. I have been looking for a good weight loss blog but haven't really found one that i connect with.

I think that since this is my first entry (real) I should give my backstory but that seems like a lot of work, especially since the primary purpose of my blog will be to clear my own head and not really for other people to read.

so why today? I think i have avoided having my own blog because it seems a bit self-egrandising (sp?) What part of my day is so special that other people would want to hear about it? But today I figure, no part of my day is that special. But it is only 10:58 am and I have a whole day to fill up here. And i had a busy weekend. And I have no one to tell things to.

I just graduated from college (June, 2005) and now i'm working as a lab technician in L.I. I live by myself with my animals (cat bird chinchilla hamster mouse) and i am really lonely. I would say not in that clingy desperate way but more of a life transition sort of way. It is really hard to be out of college. I miss my friends a lot. I miss classes. I miss everything being easy for me--not having to deal with meals or healthcare or phonebills or real life shit. In all honesty, i'm very good at school. I am miserable at dealing with real life shit. So as far as challenges I suppose this attempt at real life existence is a bigger challenge for me than grad school. But unlike school, when i accomplish things in the real world there is no pat on the back--no one says "good for you joey! you just payed your own phonebill!" i'm not graded on my real life accomplishments (which is probably a good thing most of the time seeing as i lost my walled 2 weeks ago and locked myself out of the house last friday) but still, when I do something i like to be congratulated.

That is very typical of me, seeking affirmation from an external source, and something i'm working toward being more internally affirming. But all things in good time.

This past weekend I slept a lot (which was good because i didn't sleep well last week) and I did my volunteer work. I do sunday mornings at a cat shelter (cleaning and feeding) which is normally wonderful but this past sunday a really mean girl (i guess she was late 20s early 30s) was just horrible to me and that upset me a lot. She doesn't normally do the sunday morning shift (which i do) but she was there that day because there was an open house in the afternoon. From the moment i walked in she ordered me around, which offended me since it's an entirely volunteer organization and she is not the boss of me. I am totally ok with helping and cleaning and that sort of thing but I chafe at being ordered around like an underling. She was outright rude to me more than once and toward the end of my shift she told me she wanted to talk to me. Since she had already hurt my feelings enough to make me cry i assumed she was appologizing and I said i didn't want to talk to her--i just didn't want to get into the whole thing again. I figured she would apologize for being so curt and bitchy to me and say that she wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding blah blah blah... Instead she starts lecturing me on how unhelpful I was, telling me if I can't take direction from an adult volunteer (at which point i interrupted her to tell her that I am in fact an adult volunteer, I am 22 even if I look 16) after which she said that she was basically a more important adult volunteer and if i didn't like it, i could just not come back! I'm sensitive to the point of it being a liability so at this point i was crying and saying "please don't talk to me like this, I don't come here to be treated this way" which is pretty much when she said "well don't come back then." So i put away the cat I was working with and got my coat and purse. I actually walked away from her while she was still talking and went out to my car to cry a lot and call my mom (see, I am super mature and good at this real life thing).

I was really upset at the idea that I could be asked not to come back and volunteer because that place is important to me--i don't have much going on in my life right now and working with the cats 2x a week are two of my highlights. So after about 15 minutes when i had composed myself (a little, not sobbing anymore) I went back in to talk to a couple of the people I normally volunteer with (I had seen the mean girl drive away when i was in the parking lot). I wanted to apologize to them for getting so upset, and i wanted to hear from them that I am in fact welcome to return. Everyone there was really supportive and said they were shocked and appalled at what the girl had said to me. In retrospeck (sp?) I think she may have thought I was a bratty teenager but regardless, she was really mean to me and made statements she's not in a position to make. So I was upset, but i'm feeling a little better about it all now, 2 days later.

After all that I left and drove to the state park where I volunteer for the sunday afternoon shift (12-4) at the wild animal hospital. I was never a big volunteer person before this but i have so much time to fill and I thought it would be a good way to meet people (more on that later. apparently stray cats and wounded birds not good boy-meeting material. More along the lines of middle aged women meetings... )

the wild animal hospital was great though. I did what i normally did--bathed and weighed the injured turtles, fed the hawks and owls, cleaned cages, mopped floors...But on a high note I gavaged an injured goose! Gavaging is a forceful hydration/sustenance technique where a long rubber hose is inserted down the goose's esophagus into the crop and the liquid is sqeezed in via syringe! I had to kneel on top of the goose, keeping its wings in place with my knees while I used my left hand to hold the beak open and in place. I had to pry the beak open with my right hand and then insert the rubber hose. It was pretty intense and my butt was really sore yesterday from being in the kneeling position for so long. It was really cool though.

The whole animals thing (my current obsession) stems from an experience this past spring in which I raised a wild squirrel. Once I figure out how to put pictures up on the site (i think i have to download a photoprogram but i can't install programs on this computer so i'll do it from home) i'll tell the squirrely story, which is pretty great.

...

i think sometimes if nothing is really happening in your life you have more to say about it than if you have actual things going on. All your little adventures become newsworthy because you have no standard of comparison. I suspect most of my entries will be like this one. I think i'll try to keep a food/workout diary to keep me honest on my diet. Right now i'm super excited about my latest discovery--fat free cheese! I made a casserole last night that i've been planning for over a week. It has a layer of eggplant, then stirfried onions and green pepper, then pasta, then tuna then f.f. mozzerella, all sandwiched with liberal doses of ragu. I baked it in the oven briefly and then had it for dinner last night after I got home from cat adoption volunteering and monday night makeup (more later under: motivations). It was really yummy! Like, actually tasted good not just 'palatable because i'm near death from hunger' (which is how some/most of my food has been lately; more later under: diet).


i used up all of my fat free mozerrella last night so i want to go buy more. I bought campbell's onion soup just so i could make fat free onion soup au gratin (with whole wheat bread, toast it and then bake it briefly with a healthy layer of pure protein-y goodness on top) but since i have no crock (necessary to make a crock of french onion soup au gratin i figure) I will make myself wait until tomorrow to have onion soup for dinner. I also have only $100 until my mom comes with weekend with my credit card and ATM card (see more under: ramifications of losing my wallet).

I am enjoying myself. writing about oneself is nearly as clarifying and therapeutic as talking about oneself! (i am kind of joking in the sense that i'm aware of how egocentric i am, and i'm kind of apologizing for it and just letting you know that i know too). This ties into an idea i had a while ago that I got so caught up in i thought maybe i would try to write a book about what it means to living a meaningful life but thankfully i got past that. Maybe i'll record my ideas here. That would be cool. On the other hand, if i don't follow through with this i'll delete my blog before I become one of those blogs with 8 entries in it from 2 years ago and nothing since. I always feel a little abandoned by those.

I have nothing more to say right now although i suspect I will post again later. My plans for the day include:
1. organize notebook/dest at work
2. have lunch (salad + casserole)
3. kill time
4. afternoon snack (low fat cheddar + apple + clementines)
5. go home
6. nap (if necessary, hopefully not)
7. cook super soup (more later)
8. go running on treadmill
9. craft? make jewelry? veg on futon w/ TV?

i miss the biggest loser. my tuesday nights just aren't the same without it.