boom
    Today's Cooking Tip:
    Slicing meat for stir-fry is best done frozen. The more solid the freeze, the thinner the possible slices. Use force and a sharp knife; slice against the muscle's grain for more tender beef and pork.


4.30.03 Fat Fits

I am surrounded by many people who do Odd Things to Get Fit; I mostly eat cookies and walk. Sometimes I feel strong and lovely and other times feel like a gigantic bag of jello, but I do not do Odd Things. I used to be fairly inclined to compulsive behavior--when I worked out, I did so incessently; when I watched what I ate, I stopped eating; when I smoked, I inhaled 3+ packs a day; when I...well, yes, I have a lot of Interesting Stories from my past, don't I? I decided to stop being a freak, and now I eat what I want (ice cream for breakfast! salad for dinner!) and am a little too fat for My Ideal but am also quite healthy, barring back issues.

Swimming Buddy recently coined my new favorite term: ass-pocalypse, as in "pizza, soda, cookies and mac-n-cheese--the four horsemen of the ass-pocalypse". I read this on the same day that I got paid to eat pizza for dinner and reviewed a bookthat will have people tapping themselves on the head to lose weight. Today, I told Swimming Buddy about a favorite blog of mine that suggested last week that third-wave feminists have tougher lives because we have body issues and then hate ourselves for having body issues. We are "supposed" to Embrace The Fat! But Fat Kills! Such Confusion!

What I keep thinking is how I wish our lovely American Culture didn't have a habit of turning sensual pleasures into agony. Ever since J.H. Kellogg and his grains-n-chewing freak show, food's been our enemy and our best friend, depending on what you eat, how you eat it and how much of it ends up in your tummy. Food is medicine, food is love, food is guilt, food is addiction. Food is never just fun, like, say, frisbee. Or petting a cat.

We have always been the best-fed part of this small partly-green planet, so it sort of makes sense that food would become imbedded in our minds in the form of archetypes; the Chocolate Empress, the Beefy Trickster, the Crispy Bacon Siren. Perhaps I will make my fortune with a food-based tarot deck. The four suits could sweet, salty, sour and bitter!

At any rate, I wish people would stop doing Odd Things. What is wrong with "some"? What is wrong with "a little jiggly"?


4.28.03 Chingity-Ching This month, Boom has been much like a slot machine, only Vegas has better odds. Apologies for the tiny number of updates, if You People even bother checking any more. I wouldn't blame you. Honest.

So the surgery is scheduled for the upcoming Friday the 13th, as only one person has pointed out so far. It's been 1998 all over again at "work", which is more profitable than it is fun, just like 1998. Today was fun, though, as I got to review Dr. Mercola's book, "The No-Grain Diet". It uses a technique based on the Emotional Freedom Technique, a system of tapping yourself and saying Nice Things at the same time. Oh Yes. I am not be the only person hoping this becomes The Next Big Thing.

I ran into a little trouble with the Sims. Having two kids are an automatic goal, which does not sit will with Miss Childfree By Choice So There. I know It's A Game. Still. I keep wondering if my character Fanny Spice had stayed hooked up with Pauline instead of Peter, if the goals would've changed. Perhaps "convince Peter to donate sperm" or "adopt Vietnamese orphan" or something. Anyway, I don't like playing a game where I can't escape crying babies. Boo to Sims.

I also just played my first-ever game of genuine coin-op Tetris. It's, like, fun! Frankie Say Relax! You spin me right round, baby--right round! Like a record!


4.15.03 Three Cherries! If I had a fancier site, I would make a little "chinggity-ching-ching-ching" Vegas noise that would go off like a slot machine whenenever I updated. Instead, I will tell you some Big News:

I'm fusing ol' crappy, my darn blown out disk! Met with Dr. Competent for the second time, and he basically said that it would most likely help, but that it was up to me. After a 20-minute chat, I had decided to probably do it, but not surely enough to schedule it up. They'll remove the disk that causes me pain and add in some bone chips and a few rods and screws. Recovery time isn't quite as bad as expected, but it sort of depends on how much actual pain I'm in. I plan on finishing up the Citysearch project and getting it done, so aim to come visit sometime in June. This struck me as funny: This doc prefers morphine to methadone. I didn't ask why.

Mostly, I now work and play the GameCube version of the Sims. Terribly hooked. When I'm up and around living my life, I keep picturing little Sim motive meters--bladder empty! flush! now go have fun! time to eat! clean up before the flies come! My character keeps forgetting to feed her fish and they die. Does this mean my real-life cats need more attention? Lord knows they don't need more food.


4.7.03 Random Reinforcement I'm not really struggling with the Springtime Sleepies and a larger-than-I've-become-used-to workload. No, no, I update so infrequently for your benefit. If I updated daily, you would take me for granted; if I never updated, you would never have learned all you now know about pain medications and baking and weird Asian IPs. This every-so-often pattern insures you keep coming back for more, just the way you like. Too bad I can't skim the top from the billions of dollars in gambling revenues, as I am Doing My Part to keep humanity off balance.

What have I been up to, you ask? Getting paid to eat and shop. Going to doctors. Reupholstering chairs. An enormous amount of mending. Working on new recipes for lemon bars, shortbread and crock pot coffee cake. Playing games and watching movies. Mostly, though, thinking too much. A Random Sampling, for my Randomly Reinforced Readers:

  • Why do people still combine the words "rich and famous" when so often the two are separate?
  • The shock I feel when a gay/lesbian friend refers to a past that involves dating those of the opposite sex. Does everyone feel that shock? Like they did something naughty or weird, by following a societal norm.
  • So many people write a book. How can I make sure mine is my first book? *more later*
  • I'm pretty sure Smaller Cat can read my mind. How can I learn how to read his?
  • When did every restaurant become a "bistro"?
  • Where can we start fixing our governmental problems? I didn't know what to do when they built the stadium we didn't want, I didn't know what to do when Bush became president, I don't know what to do now. Do you?
  • Who the hell planted not one, not two, but over a dozen species of plants in the traffic circle that are known for taking over the area in which they are planted?

    I am Officially Freaked about back fusion. X-rays and preliminary meeting today, MRI tomorrow, follow up next Monday. If I had scanner, I would share some great clip art from the "So You're Going To Have A Fusion" pamphlet. According to the Clip Art Book, they cut open my butt muscles, scoop out some pieces of bone, stitch back the muscles and then get to the fusion part--removing the disk, roughing up the surrounding area, inserting the bone bits and screwing the vertabrae together. It's the cut muscles and angry bone that hurts a lot for weeks after. You'll be relieved to know that the blood bank is very safe, with a 1 in 300,000 chance of HIV and 1 in 10,000 chance for some form of hepatitis. I will be my own blood bank, thank you. Who cares if I faint? Anyway, if you want to read more about all this, the various linked articles here are pretty good.

    **I have decided that what the country needs is our own Nigella Lawson--a Demeter-esque Brit who is Queen of Gastroporn. My book advance will include funding to procure a gay stylist. In the meantime, I am swishing up my copy--it had gotten a bit preachy and I'm veering it back to funny/cranky.