grossed out

a few weeks ago, i encountered a woman who grossed me out in the bathroom so much she was almost a man, man. now, normally i don't really pay much attention to what's going on in the stall beside me when i am in the ladies room, but this i could not help noticing. there was a glint of gold on the floor beside me, so i checked it out. two little foil wrapped chocolates sitting on the floor, next to a stainless steel coffee mug. um. on the floor. in the bathroom. in a stall. and one by one, the person next to me, unwrapped and ate the chocolates and washed them down with her coffee WHILE SITTING ON THE TOILET. she literally came out of the stall licking her fingers. i am filled with disgust. and now i think about this every time i go into the bathroom.

desperate times...

nothing is more depressing than being forced to eat the LAST PIECE OF CHOCOLATE in your entire stash because your raging hormones are in more control of you than that dog was in control of son of sam.

i wish i had some more chocolate.

what's going on with the needles?

i have decided to give a little knitting update. some of you will be bored to tears by this, while others will be fascinated i am sure.

baby blanket #2 is complete! it came out even better than the first one, so let's hear it for some practice. in fact, i have already given #2 to alyce, whose baby is due in early april and whose baby shower was this past weekend in boston. she loved it, so my work there is complete. blanket #1 has been photographed and packed for shipping to little ella, the daughter of friends in san francisco, but i admit i am SLOW with that whole getting to the post office thing.

now i am hip deep in a second felted bag, which will be a birthday present for sonya, who has expressed GREAT jealousy of the one i have already made. (it is safe to discuss this here, as i KNOW sonya never reads weblogs--she has not the time.) the cool thing is that sonya basically told me what she wanted by expressing her envy of MY bag and then talking about the colors she would have chosen for it. so voila. that is her b-day present.

i am also making a grey wool scarf, a silver scarf, a blue heathered scarf, and a purple scarf with some extremely expensive yarn. i like having a few scarves going on as back-up.

what's next you ask? next on the larger project list is baby blanket #3, and then i will be done with baby blankets for a bit. THANK GOD, as i am a little bored with them at this point. i have some new books, so there is a list of things i am DYING to make after i finish up these few gifts i have going on. i am DEFINITELY making us a set of lace pillow cases. and i am definitely going to try out this baby dress that terrifies me, but MUST be done. and there is also a fabulous pattern for a knitted cashmere teddy bear that i think i just may have to tackle just for the hell of it.

i love the women in my knitting group, by the way. it's awesome to have time to sit and just talk to other women. all of them are awesome, and we are all so different--they are a group i would never have met any other way. let's hear it for knitting class, which started it all! :)

in other, non-knitting, but sort of related news, i now have access to my website and all my photographs again, now that the hippie has built us a new file server to run alongside our webserver. so yeah--expect a knitting webpage from me in the near future, folks. i have pics of everything i have made, i just need to get them up and running. maybe this weekend if you guys are lucky...

geek moment: destruction of the earth

some EXTREMELY geeky humor shared with me yesterday by samantha:
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html^*

i am still laughing. but then, i am a geek. :)
* the sam on this website is not MY sam. this sam is a total stranger.

food, a retrospective

i have been thinking again today about health and fitness and nutrition, and about all these changes i continually try to implement in my life. it's hard to keep it up, man.

i admit, i have been very bad on the fitness front lately. it's been so long since i went to the gym that the personal trainers are starting to email me to see if i have, in fact, died. granted, i have not been having the best run of health luck lately, but we all know that it's just too easy to use that as an excuse. *sigh* so i am giving myself another day to recover from the cold and the general run-downedness (is that even a word?) i have been dealing with this week, since tomorrow is friday anyway. but come monday, i am going to make the sincere effort to restart at the gym. i have some new gym clothes, which SHOULD be inspiring me. but instead i am looking to the ill fit of a certain taffeta bridesmaid's dress for inspiration.

on the food front, however, the changes i have made are a bit more solid. the hippie and i redid those first two weeks of the south beach diet, and that was good. i am, as i have said before, floating around at just under 200 pounds. and now that we are out of those first two weeks, i don't care if we follow that diet all that sringently anymore. i think i have made some somewhat permanent changes that are causing me to have an overall healthier outlook on food.

as i was explaining to samantha today, i no longer even come close to craving anything processed. i have become an avid label reader, and i am put off by anything containing dyes, tropical oils, hydrogenated and/or partially hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, and "flavors," be they natural or artificial. i also have sodium and sugar and fat limits for myself. put that all together and there goes anything processed. it is almost ALL bad.

i don't remember the last time i had a potato chip. i have not had a french fry since january 3rd. i have pretty much eliminated potatoes from my diet altogether, as every nutrition book i have ever looked at recommends.

so yeah, go me.

now, all that said, i still have no will to resist my PMS cravings for chinese and indian food. and man, when i want chocolate cake, i do not stop until i get it. and yes, i still put sugar in my tea. if i am away on vaction, i don't think about it all very much, although i still don't eat fries and chips and crazy amounts of simple carbs. so it's not like i am some eating angel over here.

but man, when i see moms at the mall happily feeding their kids fries and soda, i want to run over screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" i think if i ever have a kid, it will be hard for me not to be a food nazi.

i am rambling, i know. but like i said--this is a retrospective.

and you know, the weirdest part is what i DO miss. i miss oatmeal creme pies. i miss pop tarts. i fucking LOVE pop tarts! but oh well. if my ass is skrinking, i guess it's worth it. i think so anyway...

ask me in another 6 months.

V-Day

happy valentine's day, people. i gotta say, this is the dumbest holiday known to man. it seems designed to make you feel like crap if you are alone, when--hello??? what is so wrong with being alone??? and it is designed to imbue all parties with an odd sense of obligation if you are in a relationship. half the couples i know get into fights on valentine's day because someone falls short of the other's expectations.

and yet, we are all somehow susceptible to this madness. as rational as we are, we all secretly want the stupid roses and the jewelry and the chocolates and to be swept off our feet. but who the hell wants that just becasue one's S.O. feels obligated to do something special so that he/she does not get into trouble. all in all--this is just not a fun day for any but the most shallow of people.

so yeah. we, like most couples, have our traditions in spite of our mutual general disdain. ours is cheap mexican food and a buck-fifty movie. so tonight, we are heading to el rodeo for some diet-blowing mexican. sadly we are denied the buck-fifty movie, as the theater is being remodelled, but i am sure we will figure something else out. maybe if we feel really crazy, we will go print out some academic papers at the NCSU library. and i WILL eat some chocolate before it's all said and done.

we are just off the hook--i'm tellin' ya...

more starbucks, please

*sigh*

today after lunch i went to starbucks to get the hippie a cappucino, as he was stuck in a nasty meeting and could not get away to come to lunch and he loves cappucinos and i thought i would cheer him up. i even got them to put the cappucino into his migo so that it would stay hot while he was eating the lunch i was bringing him, which turned out to be a good thing, as we ended up delayed because of the president who was driving to the airport and therefore caused the highway we were on coming back from lunch to be shut down FOREVER!!! but i digress...

anyway. so i was in starbucks, which as you know, i LOVE! and i was DYING to try the new drink of chocolatey chocolateness, the chantico, but denying myself this blessing as i am dieting and TRYING to be good, especially as yesterday was the first time in like 7 years that i have weighed and not seen a pesky 2 as the first number of that weight, and i would like to keep it that way. so it is unfortunately going to be a little while before i can have a chantico. this makes me sad.

google > mapquest

who knew messing with online maps could be so entertaining?! this morning, the hippie pointed me to google maps, which is AWESOME and makes mapquest look like it was written by third rate monkeys. check it out. really.

this has street level maps of my tiny little hometown even. and you can pan around on the maps. and the directions don't suck. all in a web browser! yes--i am impressed.

spring's a-comin'

i can tell spring is coming becasue the people in my neighborhood are all starting to work on their houses. i always like watching what they all do. our 'hood is filled with beautiful old houses, most of which have been well kept and are shown the love on a frequent basis.

right now, i am watching the people who moved into the tiny brown bungalow last year try to decide what color to paint it. i have always thought this house needed to be a different color, as it has been all dark brown since we moved into the 'hood. i mean ALL brown--the trim, the brick, the wood siding--all of it. so when the new people moved in, they immediately won my approval by painting all the trim a light clean cream. and now they have long strips of different colors painted on the front siding--they are either going to pick a nice medium williamsburg blue or a darker cream. either one will be great, although i badly want to stop at their house and recommend that they go with the blue. i am SURE they are dying for my input.

i am also watching the people who added a new front porch onto their formerly box-like house last year, who have just stripped down to the wood to repaint their classic white and who are adding a second floor screened in porch. very cool.

and last but definitely not least, i am keeping my eyes on a complete renovation of a huge beautiful old house from 1918 that was in DESPERATE need of it. you should have SEEN what the former owners did when they redid the exterior of this house--EW!!! words cannot describe the madness that leads to the romoval of a second storey porch to add on huge oversized house high faux neo-classic ionic columns. but the new people--THANK GOD!--are taking it back to it's original double porched glory. the sad thing is that they keep getting vandalized--someone made off with their original copper gutters. further, and somehow worse, someone took an antique cast iron bathtub from inside the house! atrocious what some people do. but i am sure this place is going to look FABULOUS when they finish it. go cool people!

all of this makes me want a house to fix up. but i can wait--a good house is worth waiting for. :)

the most boring post so far...

our lunch today was cut short by all the people in the kitchen at our office. can we say overstimulation? i don't know why, but sometimes all the hustle and bustle in there just grates on me, and i have to get out of that small room with 50 people in it eating, microwaving their frozen meals and leftovers, buying Bad Food from the vending machines, and arguing about politics and the cost of oats. sometimes i want quiet. like now.

so i am spending the rest of my lunchtime alone in my office, quietly blogging about nothing much.

tonight i get to meet emily for some knitting at last. we have been trying to manage some time together for over a week! i never seem to have enough time with her now--i got spoiled by spending so much time with her when i was laid off. today is one of those days where i sort of miss the solitude of home and the ease of keeping up with the household chores and the time to make things. i haven't made a wire thing in over a month! but oh well--at least the bills are getting paid.

god, could i write a more boring post?! i am going to shut up before i put you all straight to sleep.