What separates us from the animals?

Charlie generally has three responses to something new and unknown:

1. Chew on it
2. Pee on it
3. Bark at it

Generally the basic human responses, too...

Well, THAT'S new

I ran 3 miles in 30 minutes tonight, and it was easy! I even got faster every mile.

I might finish the River Run after all...
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This counts as cross-training, right?

I'm moving again. It's been 2 years since the last move, and I'm only moving two miles down the road, but it's still... moving.

I'm enjoying the evaluation phase of moving - where you look at each thing you own and ask yourself if you like it enough to pick it up at least twice. Amazing how often the answer is, "Ummmm, no." It also seems to be directly related to how heavy said item is.

I'm also enjoying what I call Moving Christmas - where you find all these neat things that you've completely forgotten you own. I will never need to buy another iPod charger or set of earbuds again. Ever. In this life or the next. I also seem to have a habit of getting a prescription filled and then forgetting I did.

And I'm enjoying the new place - I really like it, and it's spacious enough that I love the feeling of having a blank canvas that I can paint, but with my STUFF. Deciding where to put each item, how to decorate each room, how to organize the closets (yay!) is very pleasing.

Lifting lots of heavy things and getting cardboard paper cuts? Still sucks. After all, it is still moving.

Danger looming

My reaction to minor work stress, boredom, and tasks I don't want to do?

Snacking.

I figured out some effective ways to fight this. I don't keep any cash on me and I bring portioned, healthy snacks to work. Baby carrots, a Clif bar, pretzels and lots of water.

This has resulted in an alarming level of self-loathing - parts of me really hate other parts of me. More specifically, my stomach hates whatever b*tch part of me is hiding the Cheetos.

If I keep it up, there may be all-out civil war. I'm a little scared.

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Well, I'll be damned...

I came home from the optometrist and the grocery store to find that Charlie, in a characteristic lapse of judgment, had decided that one of the Playstation 3 controllers looked like a chew toy.

I yelled. He cowered. I tapped him on the nose with it. He looked contrite. But we've been here before, and it only seems to sink in for a month or so that just because it's within reach on the coffee table doesn't mean it's fair game.

Then I remembered something. When I was 5 or 6 years old and we had just moved to Bonaire, we acquired a dog. I don't remember the details - I think it was a stray, and I know my dad adopted it. I have no memory of the dog's name, so he'll be Dog. Dog, who was an outside dog, would roam the neighborhood at night and come back with... things. More specifically, things from other neighbors' homes. A piece of decorative coral left to dry on a porch, an empty bowl, and on one memorable occasion, a goatskin rug.

One morning, Dog came home with a sneaker - just one. For whatever reason, that's when my dad decided he'd had enough. I don't know where he got this idea. He may have come up with it on his own, but it seems more like a tip you'd get from some guy at work. Anyway, he took the shoe, scolded Dog... and then tied the shoe around Dog's neck. Left it there all day. That dog walked around, so damn embarrassed and ashamed, and never brought home stolen goods again.

So I had Charlie sit and tied the controller to his collar. He sat in that same spot, silent and motionless, as I put away groceries, cleaned the kitchen, and put food in his bowl. I untied it about 15 minutes later, and he's been quietly following me around ever since.



I don't know if it worked, but it sure as hell did SOMETHING.

If you listen to one thing today...

...listen to this:

Segment 3 with Sherman Alexie.

It starts as a pretty standard interview about his most recent book, but then turns into a conversation about good and bad, heroism and villany, and tribal identity that just resonated with me as so profoundly true and honest.

As he discussed how the events of 9/11 changed his view and showed him "the end game of tribalism," I realized he was explaining one of the essential struggles with identity. As soon as you identify with your tribe - I am American, I am liberal, I am Christian - you start encountering conflicts between how you feel and what the larger group believes. The way Alexie described his struggles with that issue was, for me, a complete "ah-hah!" moment.

Filet Mignon, Mojitos, and why I'm glad my dog never saw 'Waterworld'

Poor Charlie.

I was gone for a long time today. It felt like a long day to me, so in dog years, Charlie had already decided I was gone forever and it was time to fend for himself. I expected to come home and find he'd built a contraption to convert his urine to water and had painted a handprint face on one of his Wilson tennis balls.

He hadn't, of course. He just sat on the couch all day and almost spontaneously combusted when I walked in the door.

Tonight was a good night, though. Grace has named 2009 "The Year of Girls' Night Out (GNO)" and tonight was our first event. We went to MOCA Jacksonville for Best of Jacksonville 2009. There were over two dozen restaurants and sponsors there, and we tried food or drinks from every single one. Some of the highlights:

- Chocolate caramels with sea salt and chocolate-covered Cheerios from Claude's
- Beef-cured salmon tartar from Pastiche
- Steak and mac & cheese from Morton's (hello!)

All that, plus funky music and an open photo shoot for models who wanted to be on the cover of Jacksonville Magazine made for great fun and outstanding people watching. I swing back and forth on my feelings about Jacksonville as a city, but tonight - I have hope. This place could really be something.

Tonight's Food Network Observation

Endorsements

I've been thinking - why should politicians have all the clout? John Edwards can endorse Barack Obama and basically influence the course of history. Just by uttering one verb. "I endorse." Not just in politics either - anywhere, an endorsement implies that sales will go up, or more votes will be cast, or whatever. Prestige is increased.

Well, there are some things that I feel deserve increased prestige, so I hereby announce:

I endorse cruise vacations. Relaxing and filling and good for America - cruise vacations!

I endorse puppies. Adorable and squirmy and good for America - puppies!

I endorse The Office, 30 Rock and Bones. They're witty and clever and just crude enough. Also, good for America.

I endorse boy-cut undies. They're good for the 50% of America who wouldn't necessarily be expected to wear boy-cut undies due to their opposite gendered-ness. I realize this represents a reversal from my previous position on undergarments, but I've spend some time examining the facts and believe I am making the right decision.

And finally, I endorse my couch. It's so comfortable, I could spend all day napping on it and don't care if it's good for America or not. Vote for my couch!

Fight The Power

My friend Michelle bought a bag of Milano cookies today and brought them back to work. She settled in at her desk, opened the brand new bag... and found 12 neatly packaged, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT cookies inside. (Turns out they were Bordeaux cookies.) She was just disappointed, but I was more than that - I felt this was a wrong that must be righted.

So I called the 800 number. The 866 number, to be accurate.

Pepperidge Farms has the folksiest IVR system I've ever heard. "If you'd like to bend our ear about somethin', just go ahead and press 2." Seriously.

However, after a nice chat with Sylvia, I passed along her instructions. If Michelle just popped that bag of cookies in the freezer, in about 7-10 days, she'd get "several coupons for your time and trouble" as well as a plastic bag and padded postage-paid envelope. If she'd be so kind to mail that faulty bag of cookies back, Pepperidge Farms' crack team of investigators would fix the problem. And probably execute a bagging robot out behind the barn.

Sweet fancy Moses, it smells good in here (or, How I Became A Healthy(er) Eater)

My apartment smells delicious right now - if you like curry. I'm making curried lentils and vegetables, and the aroma wafting through my living room smells... well, if I walked into a restaurant and it smelled like this? I would eat at that restaurant.

It's just lentils, carrot, onion, celery, curry powder, ginger and garlic, brought to a boil and simmered for a while. I also made a yogurt, tomato and cilantro mixture to eat with it.

It's amazing to look back a few months at how I was eating before Lent kicked off this "eat less crap" phase. It was pretty common for dinner to be half a box of Cheez-Its, along with part of a dark chocolate candy bar (antioxidants!) and a glass or two of wine (heart healthy!) along the way. I don't think it's a coincidence I also sat around and watched a LOT of tv.

(Side note: the lentils taste as good as they smell.)

Anyway. Lent rolled around and I made the same sacrifice I do every year - no more fried food, no more foods made with processed sugar, no more fast food or anything grease-laden. Blah blah samecakes. But then the damndest thing happened:

I did it.

I started grilling fish and chicken. I steamed a lot of vegetables. I made the healthy choices when eating out, and ate smaller portions. There's a gallon of ice cream in my freezer that I bought on February 2nd. It's still unopened. The woman who could mainline a bag of chocolate chips like sweet Colombian nose candy was suddenly eating edamame for a guilty late night snack.

WTF?

So what did I do differently this time? I'm still not sure. But there are a few factors...

1. I started running. Three or four times a week, just for 30 minutes a night. I decided to do a 5K, and then I bought some sweet-ass running shoes.

2. I started reading. Specifically, I started reading Michael Pollan's
In Defense of Food.

3. I started feeling better.

All three of these small things made me want to keep going. What I ate started to matter more, not in a self-righteous earth-mother way, but just out of common sense. I honestly couldn't think of a reason I wouldn't keep doing this.

So Lent is over, and here I am with my curried lentils and vegetables, drinking water, happy as can be. I'll probably start eating less, um, healthy foods once in a while - I saw a girl with McDonald's french fries in the Atlanta airport last night and I almost tackled her to steal them - but that's definitely the exception now.

So.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Who knew?

Nerdly Fun: Geography

81

Thong or Consequences

So CJB, over at Tea and Robots, posted an opinion piece regarding The Thong. And while I think she makes some valid points, I feel I must disagree on a key point.

It's true - sometimes the thong is not your best option. I was appalled to find that, according to wikipedia, they make thongs for girls as young as third grade now. Your biggest concern in third grade should be which boy is running after you during freeze tag - not VPL in your Gap Kids khakis.

However. There are times when I would rather live with illusion of a smooth ass than be faced with the incontrovertible evidence of exactly where your underwear ends and the rest of you begins. White jeans on a chunky person, for example. Let me maintain my illusion that everything is fine under there. Please. Because when your pants are wedged halfway up your breakfast, it's not like a regular pair of undies makes it all ok. All that does is let me see what part of you is covered and what part isn't - while your pants are still making a beeline for antipodean parts. You might as well thong in this case, because the full monty isn't going to save you.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not always pro-thong. A good pair of boycut shorts does the trick most of the time. But sometimes... sometimes, it's thong. Or consequences.

Nederlandsiche Sugar High

Damn you, stroopwafels. Damn you to hell.

I gave up eating lousy food for Lent. Or more specifically, I gave up eating food that does lousy things to my body. I used the Justice Potter Stewart definition of lousy food: I know it when I see it. I gave up candy, cookies, ice cream and cake, of course. No deep-fried foods, no fast food, almost no red meat. I added lots of fish to my diet and doubled my intake of vegetables. This has been going remarkably, almost astonishingly well - to the point where I've had three unopened boxes of Girl Scout Cookies at my desk for over a month.

Until today.

Mike got home from Amsterdam last night. Before his trip, I had specifically not mentioned any kind of food and I had deliberately NOT asked him to bring me stroopwafels. I didn't even tell him about them - not what they were, not that they existed. Instead, I'd asked for a cheesy souvenir, and he obliged.

Then... he pulls out another bag. "Babe, these were the only thing I ate in Amsterdam. They're ridiculous." And tosses me two packages of stroopwafels.

I took them to work and frantically gave them away, but I wasn't fast enough for... well... myself. I ate four, and there's another package on the kitchen table now.

When I got home, I had leftover green beans for a snack, but I don't think that really cancels anything out. My Dutch Sugar High is still pleasantly buzzing around my head, but I expect to be a raging, tired bitch in about an hour.

STROOOOOOPWAAAAAAAFELS!!!!

For your own addictive deliciousness, click here: http://www.stroopwafelshop.com/

I will blog when I blog

We'll see about all this.