K-Squared Ramblings

Just saw “Orpheus.” On tape.

Okay, no Slayer army yet, but I have yet to see what happens on the Buffy that showed while we were elsewhere. And Willow under a different writer is sort of like Willow on speed.

And where the hell is Cordy getting her clothes? Evil Pregnant Sluts ‘R’ Us?

Weighing in

3 pounds gone so far. Yay me!

I’m having way too much fun with this, I think. One of the impromptu group leaders is into eating small amounts of high-point foods (think half a can of full-calorie soup, or a very small serving of lasagna) along with large amounts of the boring kinds of point-less veggies. Another one eats salad all day and supplements it with frozen entrees at mealtimes. And here I am having a portabello sandwich with roasted peppers and goat cheese. (Yeah, it was 7 points, but if my low-point bread hadn’t gone moldy–ONE DAY after buying it–it would only have been 5.)

Hawaii is going to be a challenge, but it’s better than it could be. I’ll be in the land of tropical fruit, after all, and it’s early enough in the plan that there shouldn’t be any willpower issues or getting bored with things. I am NOT going to lose the ground I’ve gained….er, regain the ground I’ve lost….whatever. I wonder if my magic mug will travel well.

Sheesh….

The closer the Hawaii week looms in my schedule, the gladder I am that it’s almost here. The next two days in my war-hawk-populated workplace are going to be bad enough. If there weren’t going to be auditors in the place forcing us to behave, I would feel like handcuffing myself to my chair to keep from throwing down with the large woman across the aisle. I’m making myself take half-hour lunches so that I’m not in the vicinity of the TV when people are bitching about the fact that some people have opinions that don’t match theirs and are allowed to express them. I’ll have to post instead of talking as this thing drags on, I guess. It’s just unnerving when going to choir seems like it’ll be less stressful than surviving a day at work.

What about second breakfast?

The materials from Weight Watchers had an interesting line near the end: “You’ll be amazed at what you learn about yourself when it comes to losing weight.” Well, they might be exaggerating a bit, but there’s at least a grain of truth in it. Looking over my food logs for the last two weeks, I have learned something.

I eat like a hobbit.

Seriously. I have breakfast before I go to work, which usually means I eat around 7 am. By 10, I’m starving, so I have a snack. This tends to be almost as much food as I had for breakfast. If I have lunch at 12:30, like my official schedule says, then no matter how much I eat, I’m ravenous by 5, sometimes even as early as 3. The one exception to this is if I indulge in food that’s really bad, like greasy-spoon Chinese food or a meatball and cheese sandwich. It does me no good to have a snack when I get hungry in the afternoon–it might as well bypass my stomach completely, for all the effect it has. It has to be a full dinner or my body doesn’t acknowledge that I’ve been fed. And once I get that, I’m fine the rest of the night.

So the main thing I have to watch out for is super-sizing my second breakfast. As long as no PHF’s throw chili fries at me, I think that can be done.

Maybe they can display it in the Justice Department?

… It seems like they could use a reference copy.

CNN: Missing Bill of Rights copy recovered

No Backpedaling Here

Now this is really unusual: Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle is standing by his criticism of President Bush’s diplomacy.

Usually when a high-profile politician or activist says something unpopular they make some lame excuse about “well, what I meant was…”

You rarely hear someone say “I said something stupid,” and hardly ever do you hear them say “I said it, and I meant it.”

It reminds me of a story posted on This Is True a while back about a French politician who was spotted in the audience at a cabaret show that included male nudity. True editor Randy Cassingham summed up the response as “Yeah, so?”

Tech Support

I had an email conversation with someone over the last two days, which, in another industry, might have gone something like this:

Customer: “My light won’t turn on.”

Me: “Make sure it’s plugged in.”

Customer: “It still desn’t work.”

Me: “Try changing the bulb.”

Customer: “No, it still doesn’t work.”

…

Customer: “Hey, I plugged it in, and it worked!”

I have to wonder: did this person misread my advice as “make sure it’s unplugged?” Did he simply ignore it? Did he think it meant “check to see whether it’s plugged in, but don’t change the situation one way or the other?”

Why do you call up tech support if you aren’t willing to follow the directions we give you?

The worst part is, he probably thinks he solved it himself and we didn’t help at all.

Note to self

Next time salsa marked as “mild” beckons from the shelf at Whole Foods, check to see whether it’s made by a company specializing in vegetarian products. If so, do not buy it thinking the heat level is the same as mainstream food marked as “mild.”

I don’t know what it is with vegetarians and hot peppers, but from what I’ve seen, 95% of people who are vegetarians seem to be unable to eat anything savory that’s not doused liberally with their favorite El Scorcho. Some people have suggested that it’s because vegetarian food has no flavor in and of itself, which I know to be complete bull. (No pun intended.) I order vegetarian food from restaurants and pack it in my lunch for the same reason that I order dishes containing meat–because it tastes good. But I’ve heard that a good number of vegetarians started out finding the taste of meat to be disgusting, so maybe their taste buds are just different. How anybody’s mouth could transmit signals of anything other than pain when chewing on capsaicin-loaded food is a mystery to me, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Just so long as people with high pepper tolerance realize that not everybody floats on nuclear-strength Tapatio.

More Than Meets The Eye

According to the Transportation Security Administration’s list of Permitted and Prohibited Items for airline passengers, “Toy Transformer Robots” are on the approved list of carry-on items.

Which kind of makes you wonder: Before this version of the list was written up, was someone kept off a plane for carrying Megatron or something?

There are worse places to be stuck than Hawaii.

Well, deadline day is today, the U.N. is in all likelihood not going to budge, and we’re due to leave for Hawaii on Saturday. Makes for a very freako situation. Welcome to my life.

Kelson and I were discussing this last night and decided that if anything happened between now and then, we weren’t getting on the plane. Now that it’s about 95% likely we’ll have to fish or cut bait on that decision, I’m thinking we’re probably no more in danger on the plane than either here or in Hawaii. First off, Hawaii is U.S. soil. There’s not a lot of other soil around, really. Plus, it’s already been bombed once, and as Lilo says, “It’s nice to live on an island with no major cities.” Second, there aren’t many tall buildings in SoCal. Sure, somebody could crash the plane into Disneyland, but what a way to go. Third, and probably most important, security is going to be on red alert from today forward, no matter what happens. It’ll probably mean I have to wear a non-underwire bra at LAX and mail my Swiss Army knife to the hotel, but I’d like to see a terrorist try to get through. (Try. Not actually do.)

And if they shut down air travel when we’re due to come home, well…..see above.

Only 306 Days Left!

Today I got a renewal notice from Network Solutions:

Your domain name registrations will begin expiring on
Jan 14, 2004. Act now.

Nature’s Semantics

Katie and I were shopping at Whole Foods yesterday, and I saw a box labeled “Nature’s Burger.” It was a mix for making a vegetarian burger patty.

One of the strangest things I’ve seen in vegetarian/vegan products is the suggestion that somehow meat and dairy products are unnatural, but that processing the hell out of a few dozen vegetable distillates into something that vaguely approximates the experience of ground beef is “natural.”

I mean, I’ve seen slogans like “Nature’s alternative to cheese.” Do they find this mysterious vegetable-based mass lying around somewhere? No? It requires industrial processing? Well it’s not natural, then, is it?

In a similar vein, the abbreviation of organically-grown-and-processed to simply “organic” can make for some rather amusing phrasing. The coffee grinder had a sign explaining that it was used for both organic and conventional coffee beans, and if you wanted to ensure that your coffee “remained organic,” you should grind them at home. And yes, I knew what they meant, but I couldn’t help thinking, “What, they’re suddenly going to become silicon-based?”

Does anyone else remember Sneakers…

…and this exchange:

Whistler: I want peace on earth and good will toward man.
Bernard Abbott: We are the United States Government. We don’t do that sort of thing.

Somebody please shoot me. Preferably in the arm, with an IV of food.

There are two things in this world that I can’t stand to eat: blue cheese, and my words. When I arrived in this office, about this time last year, about half the women in the place had just signed up with Weight Watchers. For the next month, just about all I heard, especially in the lunchroom on meeting days, was points this and points that and how many points does that have? One day, a client brought in a huge jar of pretzels (deli pickle-jar size) and nobody would eat them until someone posted a sign on the jar saying “3 = 1 point.” (Over half the jar was gone in 30 minutes.) I couldn’t deny that the program seemed to be working for most of the ones who took it seriously, but the level of obsessive commitment freaked me out. I swore I wouldn’t become one of the herd next time it came around. Then I watched myself pack on 15 pounds over the next year.

Mooooooo.

The whole thing would have to start on a day when we have no groceries in the house and are coming up on a weekend. I ended up with oatmeal for breakfast because there wasn’t anything else in the place I could eat and still have points left for dinner. Especially when there’s a darn good chance that dinner will be eaten somewhere besides home. I can’t believe capellini friggin’ pomodoro is 6 points for half an order while a strip of bacon is only 1 point. (Must be all the olive oil.) At least I’ve found a mug that makes drinking indiscreet amounts of water palatable. (The 9-11 memorial freebie we got from some vendor, of all things. Holds 2 cups!)

What I can’t figure is where they get their daily points ranges. The upper end has been lowered for nearly everybody since the last time the other women did this, so instead of the 22-29 I’d have had then, I have a max of 27. I’m trying to budget for 6 per meal and then add in snacks. I honestly don’t know how people with an 18-23 range can survive on that little. I’ve been hungry all day, and this is with half a bag of baby carrots sitting within arm’s reach (they’re gone now).

And I ran the numbers on what I used to eat in Arroyo Vista, spring quarter of freshman year, when I lost 15 pounds, reached what doctors would just barely call a healthy weight for my height, and felt like crap the entire time. I was eating between 30 and 35 points on the days I followed my formulaic meal algorithm, and I was losing the entire time. So where they get off maxing me out at 27, I have no idea. Maybe they figure 99 percent of people are going to cheat? Maybe if they put the max back at 29, fewer people would.

At least I don’t have to eat blue cheese.

Sleep and the art of punctuality maintenance

My alarm clock is a stupid mofo. Of course, considering that I got it specifically because it was simple to operate and didn’t have any strange features, that shouldn’t surprise me. But it’s beginning to piss me off that I have to turn the alarm function completely off every morning to shut it up, and then remember to turn it back on every night (because if I do it immediately after turning it off, it just starts up the alarm cycle again). I’ve woken up late (i.e. initial flying-open of eyes takes place more than 15 minutes after the desired time) about six times since getting this clock, which is more than I’ve done in the last five years, maybe even more than in the last 10.

And the corker is that any other clock I might get is going to piss me off just by its existence. I mean, have you shopped for bedside alarm clocks recently? They’re all postmodern sculptural chunks of weird, and badly balanced for trying to hit a specific button when your nervous system isn’t quite up to par. Boss-types trying to unravel the mystery of a chronically late worker should ask if their clock is the type where the only button you can find in the dark is snooze, and the OFF button doesn’t work if you’ve hit snooze so you have to wait for it to go off again or make your bedpartner do it for you. My last radio worked that way for the last year of its life, but only because the OFF button (which was nicely marked with a little raised bar) refused to work consistently and had to be rattled like a machine gun. The last thing a sleepy person wants to do is play Braille with an array of trendy little buttons, all alike, just to get out of bed. The second to last thing is knocking the radio over because it’s taller than it is wide, or hitting the volume control with an errant finger.

Now that I think about it, the last thing a sleepy person wants to do, actually, is get up. So clock hatred comes naturally. Good thing you can’t get arrested for a hate crime against a clock. Yet.

Snrglt…

The woman across the cubicle keeps talking about someplace in Wildomar, and every time she says it, I hear Voldemort….