Random dumb thoughts

This page is to put those little weirdnesses of life that don't really fit anywhere else, or aren't worth a page of their own

Wednesday, May 28, 2003

Ah, laundry day -- both a wonderful and tedious day, especially if you have communal laundry facilities. However, I'm looking forward to going to bed tonight with the sheets fresh out of the dryer with that wonderful clean detergent smell. I always say I should do this more frequently -- sheets out of the closet just don't smell the same -- but with communal laundry facilities, you have to time it just so, and stand guard over your stuff. I also discovered that not every machine in our laundry room is hooked up to the credit card reader, so I had to wait for a dryer. I have resolved never to hoard quarters for the laundry room again.

Today's real topic is: How to kick the munchies/carbo cravings.

1. Stop eating. Well, duh. However, when one has the munchies, this just doesn't happen. I have found that the only way to stop eating is to stop eating -- and I don't mean for the next fifteen minutes. The plus side to stopping eating is that it's easy, it's inexpensive and you lose a lot of weight. On the minus side, you get head-rushy when you stand up, are extremely cold all of the time and tend to become incredibly self absorbed and have your head up your ass. This really isn't a good long term strategy, although it does seem like a good idea at the time.

2. Get out of the house. This could be a pretty good strategy, the only pitfall being if you pass by a place that sells something incredibly yummy. As this is America, and not the North Pole or Mars, this method pretty much is destined for failure. It's incredible how many eating opportunities there are in your average American neighborhood, shopping venue, or town center. I'm pretty good at resisting them when I'm not in my 'eating-like-I-have-a-tapeworm' phase, but when the munchies are present, I can always find something, even when I'm not eating blatantly carby foods. Lately nuts are the culprit -- used to hate them and wonder who ate all those nuts. Now I know. Raw cashews are the worst -- gone in no time. Raw pepitas are the best, I like them, but not enough to go through massive quantities.

3. Brush your teeth. This does work, but it works best when combined with #2.

4. Do your nails. Wet nails will keep those hands off of the nut bag for about an hour, during which time the munchies will pass. (Hmm, the first part of that sentence could be quite interesting if taken out of context.....)

5. Eat some lean protein, fast. A can of tuna with vinegar, hot sauce, soy sauce or salt, and celery seed makes a fine snack and will really kill the carbo jones. I recently bought a package of albacore tuna burgers from Trader Joe's -- really tasty, only 80 calories each and lots of nice protein. The only problem is that they're frozen and stuck together in a block. By the time they've defrosted just enough to separate one off of the block and get it in the pan, a half a bag of nuts may have been consumed, defeating the purpose of the tuna burger. Plain chicken breasts, cooked and marinated also work well, as does very lean roast beef.

6. Get to the gym. Get on a machine and keep going past the point where you want to throw up and until you get to the point where you're just bored and angry at the time being wasted on the silly machine. I have always found sweating vile and undignified, but will do it as a last resort. Here's the great lie -- "afterwards, you feel SO MUCH better, when the endorphins kick in". Bulls**t -- I think that's a myth perpetuated by the corporate executives at Bally's, Nike, and the major publishing houses with books to flog. Lifting weights on the machines is fun, though, although the next morning you usually can figure out which of the muscles you hadn't worked in a while.

Percentage of the time I do any of the above steps: About 50%, up from about 20% a few weeks ago, and down from 100% for the preceding five years. Cashews, anyone?

.: posted by Lily Wednesday, May 28, 2003

Monday, May 26, 2003

Some random thoughts on this Memorial Day:

1. Strawberries really do taste better if you get them fresh-picked from a local farm and not from Chile via the supermarket. The supermarket kind can often be indistinguishable from the plastic container in which they are packaged, taste- and texture-wise.

2. The Sunday of Memorial Day weekend seems to be when all the little old ladies dust off the big old Buicks and go for a pleasure meander. Yesterday I was nearly broadsided at the gas station by a big grey Buick driven by a tiny old lady who could barely see over the steering wheel. Later, as I was heading out to a barbecue, I was on the road behind the SLOWEST vehicle, which turned out to be yet another little old lady in a very large American automobile. I saw several more in the Target parking lot, as well.

3. Moral ambiguity time: Yesterday morning at 8:55 am, the phone rang and I was rudely awoken by one of the disabled vets/firefighters/police solicitiations that I often get. In general, I believe in giving to the cops and firefighters' charities -- they get paid not very much to do work that can quite often disable and/or kill them. So the phone rings, and the guy on the other end starts in with his spiel, thanking me for past support, etc. etc. Finally I tell him -- look, I have allocated my charity money for the year already and asked him did he really think anyone was going to respond to solicitations before 9 am on the Sunday of a holiday weekend? So he said, "what holiday would that be, ma'am?". "Memorial Day". Whoa -- major irony alert went off in my head! He then proceded to get really punchy and said that he thought it was Monday, and it being Sunday could explain why he had to crawl through a broken window to get into the charity place. I felt kind of guilty hanging up on the guy, because there is some irony to not showing charity toward the vets on Memorial Day. However, I stopped giving to most of those charities a while ago when a colleague of mine informed me that most of the charities of this sort only get about 10 percent of what you send them, and I've changed to giving more money to the local firehouse drive and the Red Cross.

4. Random Weirdness: I remembered to log into my hotmail account today, and in the midst of all the spam (over 100 messages in two weeks, and that's WITH the filter turned on) there was a note from the "Classmates message center" saying I had a message. Now, I've had messages from the Classmates site before, and these also turned out to be spam. I didn't really recognize the name -- definitely wasn't from my high school -- but when I thought about it, I could remember a kid from drama camp that I thought had that name. Sure enough, it was a note from a guy from drama camp. It's been 20 years! It was both a buzz and a little odd, because you don't register at Classmates via summer camp, so this means this guy had to do some searching to find me. There's a part of me that wonders why. I have found over the years that either I'm more memorable than I though, or else completely I might be self-absorbed -- I never think anyone is going to remember me, and I forget all kinds of people, but people always seem to know who I am. And before you go there, as he nicely put it in his e-mail "Yes, I'm gay...big surprise" -- so it's not some long-lost infatuation thing. He sounds happy, and it seems that he's kept up with the drama/comedy.

5. Flavored decaffeinated coffee sucks. I'm finishing up some French Vanilla that I had, and it's icky, even with some real coffee thrown in the cut the cloying taste of the artificial flavoring.

6. It's pretty weird to realize that what symbolizes Memorial Day in the nation's capital is.....bikers. Every year, Rolling Thunder zooms into town to do a large bike ride through DC on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. So for about a week in each direction, there are loads of motorcycles everywhere you go. It's kind of nice to see something that used to symbolize the counterculture now being a symbol of patriotism. The two really aren't opposites, you know.

7. My weatherpixie still doesn't know how to look out the window for the weather. I know that she's really based at the local airport and not at my house, but since I can see the airport from here, it should at least be close. There is no sun in the sky, dear - stop guzzling those G&Ts and go LOOK OUT THE WINDOW.

.: posted by Lily Monday, May 26, 2003

Sunday, May 25, 2003

Who says there's no such thing as a frivolous lawsuit? I think this chick is destined to be up there with the guy who doesn't want hot coffee at McDonalds, the smokers who are shocked, SHOCKED, that smoking might impact their long term health, and those people going after Oreos for being fattening.

I think I shall sue Home Elements because my sitting on their couch all day long is contributing to my fat ass, which is causing me undue mental anguish. Ditto Sony for their televisions, and Apple Computer for same.

It's the American thing to do -- it's in the Constitution, along with the right to have breakfast available any damn time you want, including spinach fritattas at 3:30 in the afternoon.

.: posted by Lily Sunday, May 25, 2003

Comments by: YACCS