I didn’t lose the six pounds in six weeks, but I lost half of them and my body fat percentage went down a bit, so I choose to feel happy about the progress. I focused more on exercise, hooray. Nicole and Oz both made it!
This week marked two years since I stopped eating meat. So, time for my annual tally!
In 733.71 days, you have saved:
0.2760 cows
60.599 chickens
0.6733 pigs
2.0199 turkeys
0.1615 ducks
114.46 fishTotal: 178.19 animals
Thank youSee what 178.19 animals looks like
And then there was this cute popup!
This comes from a veg*n calculator, and is discussed a bit here.
That two-thirds of a pig reminds me of an irritating ad insert in the paper the other day by some Indiana pork producers’ group. It said, roughly, Indiana Pork Feeds Every Hoosier, 5 Million People Around the World, and 15 Million Americans!
Sorry, folks, you don’t feed me. And there might be a few equally irritated Jews and Muslims in this state. Their website states the group “provides the pork needs for every man, woman, and child” in Indiana, which is better phrased since at least that allows as how I might not have any pork needs. I won’t bother giving them a link and increasing their traffic.
A fur-free Olympian has been a bit controversial, but I gotta say, she’s got the abs needed for her lines of work:
Thanks for allowing me to rant today! Back to my tofu.
David called on his way to a client’s house. “Well, I finally did something I always thought I’d screw up. Every time I think, Hey, don’t forget to do this stupid thing you’re going to forget to do. How many garbage disposals have I installed? About {large number which shall remain undisclosed}? Yeah, that’s right, about the same number of women I’ve slept with.”
This is how I found out the Previous Number of Partners. We haven’t really been interested in discussing the numbers in the last four-plus years.
It was actually pretty funny, since he just kept going about how he apparently forgot to remove an inlet plug and the client called to say the recently-installed disposal wasn’t working, and of course I was at work at the time, which prompted all the guys in our trailer to start discussing this way of relating previous partners to appliance installations, does he give discounts, etc. Meanwhile I was listening to our CEO’s voicemail about quarterly earnings, which I had to replay since all this discussion kept interrupting.
When I told Nicole later, she admitted she had only installed one garbage disposal and forgot to remove the inlet plug too. I thought this was a sweet euphemistic commitment to her husband, to which she replied, Oh puke.
Update on the Six Pound Challenge: It’s still six to go but in a lot less than six weeks since I regained a couple pounds! Oops.
Proof!
Week zero:
Week one:
Note my Teva-farmer-tanned feet and my pink capri jammies with turtles. That’s our very unfinished basement bathroom.
Of course tonight David discovered I have cellulite when I sit a certain way. I can’t believe this is its first appearance in the last four years. Ah well.
This man is in denial about his baldness:
Walt snoozes on my pillow on the couch. He’s not supposed to be up there.
I took the dogs out on the front porch last week. They really enjoyed watching the world go by. Now you can see why we need to paint the porch–we are not responsible for (nor can we remove) that seafoam green.
Sorry for the dim lighting… Harry the big bun met the pups a few days ago. He jumped away when Walt licked his nose.
I had dinner with Nicole’s family last night (she made great veggie burgers from scratch, including the bulgur I bought at the cult), and we took a walk with little Ainsley after we ate. Nicole announced that she and Oz are having a six-pounds-in-six-weeks weight loss challenge for bragging rights and stamina at GenCon, and since it’s always helpful to have a kick in the pants, I decided to join the challenge.
I’ve never worried about my weight, but in the last year I learned it no longer maintains itself–some evil post-30 metabolism drop. I have to watch what I eat to some degree, and go out and get sweaty more often than I really want to, and fortunately that’s been enough. Usually. Sometimes I have to get really serious about it, so I’d better do it now before I have to buy new pants.
I’ve been back on fitday.com, a very useful site for tracking what you eat and how you exercise, and I finished the last piece of cheesecake before my weigh-in, so here we go!
So, folks, anyone want to join us? I can even give you guest posting access if you’d like to write your own entries about it. 
You do not have to reveal your weight!
BTW, exciting dental update: Had a cleaning yesterday and I’m grinding my new teeth! I have to wear the guard or I’m going to crack $30k of work.
I walked 65 MILES last week (Mom had a pedometer) and didn’t lose a pound!
Maybe that’s why I look a bit ragged at Pompeii. (Mom walked that far too!!)
I went mountain biking for the first time in several years today, with someone from the cycling club at work so at least I didn’t get lost (or mugged). I did, however, fail to make it all the way up a hill, put my foot down onto nothing, and fell off the side onto a big rock with my bike on top of me and did this:
The latter is after David tortured me with Betadine. The Betadine itself doesn’t hurt, but rubbing all over the scraped area sure does!
The place where I fell was only a couple of minutes from the end of the trail, right before an area named Tetanus Hill because an old rusty car is buried in (and sticking out of) the singletrack. My experienced guide fell off too not long after I did, so I didn’t feel like a complete idiot. I don’t remember ever getting hurt while biking before! It stings. I suppose it’s like running to Mom after scraping your knee. I just hadn’t had the pleasure in a long time, and Mom would have been WAY gentler with the cleanup.
No fried chicken for vegetarians, right? Well, after craving some for awhile, I finally made the Al Gore challenge recipe, but I did it in an electric skillet like my parents always used. It seems slightly healthier than dunking the chik’n in a vat of oil (and easier to clean up too).
Coating the chik’n (I added some paprika to the recipe and reduced the nutritional yeast)
Frying, mmm. For those who were confused, this is FAKE chicken!
Not sure if this qualifies as a healthy meal, but it could have been a lot worse!
David actually liked it, and he’s a pretty harsh critic when anyone cooks. I think I’ll brown the chik’n a bit crispier next time and maybe tone down the batter, since it was more seasoned than I used to eat. But it was still good! The basic concept should apply well to my family’s chicken tenders recipe, too. And I’m going to try beef burgundy soon!
If I haven’t mentioned it, one of the best inventions ever is the rice cooker. I rank it pretty close to the top, which includes the internet, tampons, and pay at the pump.
Speaking of the pump, Dawn asked in the bike commuting comments about the emissions and money saved by my recent biking. The calculators I’ve found online assume a gasoline-powered vehicle, and I don’t know how much worse my diesel vehicle spews, but the basics for the 50ish miles I biked last week (instead of driving, not “extra” miles at the gym) led to about 2000 calories burned, 50 pounds of toxic emissions not spewed (25 lbs CO2), and about $5.50 saved in fuel. No, not drastic numbers (I do have a very fuel efficient vehicle and that savings is not what spawned this), but I feel healthier already. I hope the planet does too. I liked the bumper sticker I saw today: Live like you live here. Much more positive than this other one I saw (I think that’s a gas pump handle):
ETA: For the 50 miles vs. my SUV, which I really only drive to haul stuff but did bring to work today so David could use the Jetta for errands which required a lot more driving, I would save $11 in gasoline and 58 lbs of CO2 in the atmosphere. And David’s truck would have used $18 in gas and spewed 94 lbs CO2. Amazing how much difference there is from one vehicle to another!
I rode about 50 miles to and from work on my bike in the last week since I started this little commuting project. Observed:
Without my laptop, the backpack isn’t that heavy. Well, I guess it still is, but not so painful. I leave a lot of shower and clothing items in the locker room at work, but I do tend to overpack no matter how I’m traveling. I discovered the way in is 150 ft negative elevation change over the whole route, which means riding home is really hard work to recover that (not to mention the up and down of the bridge both ways right by work). That isn’t a huge change in elevation, but when you suddenly weigh 180 lbs with all that stuff on your back, you have knobby tires, and there’s a headwind, it can take almost an hour to go seven miles! I am ready to get a rack and/or panniers to help with the load. I can probably leave the heavy U-lock behind because no one is going to cut a cable lock at my security-controlled workplace populated with upstanding people. I hope to get a new cross strap for my Timbuk2 bag and just carry it messenger style like it was designed, instead of inside the backpack. I must learn to part with more things.
For Bike to Work Day this morning, almost thirty of us left from a bike shop in Irvington to ride together downtown. I was riding just behind the people in the video in the local paper’s sidebar coverage. Riders from 11 points in the city met at the circle for breakfast, press conferences, free bike parking… pretty much all of which I missed because our eastside group arrived late at the circle, and my coworkers were leaving together for our plantsites then.
The ride in: Michigan Street
Waiting forever for a train
It was a nice mix of people: racers on road bikes in team spandex, random people like me on mountain bikes, and regular joes in jeans on cruisers. I don’t think those groups mix a lot otherwise, but the point was to highlight bike commuting and riding in a group provides safety and camaraderie, even when you don’t know anyone else.
I liked this shot of my coworkers converging at corporate headquarters for a group picture (which I don’t have). I noticed a lot of them are carrying backpacks too so maybe we just need a lot of stuff at our jobs!
It was a gorgeous day today and I spent more time on the bike trail for scenery, but the ride home still hurt with all that crap on my back.
Today my hippie leanings came closer to full circle when I commuted to work on my bicycle. I thought about it a week or so ago when the cycling club at work was trying to attract interest in a charity ride and Bike to Work Day, which is next Friday the 16th. I figured it sounded like a good idea, what with my wish to lose the perpetual five extra pounds, my tree hugging (spewing fewer diesel fumes daily has to be a good idea, no matter how efficient my fuel mileage may be), and what the heck, why not set an example for other drivers who are feeling the fuel price pinch? It hasn’t hurt me yet, but I might need this backup transportation someday. Also I saw what I guess was a muskrat, which has to be a good sign for the day. Or something.
I happen to live at one end of an underused greenway (and parkway) that follows a meandering creek. The greenway and parkway are inefficient for cars with all the creek-following, but it makes for a pretty ride and the lack of cars is great for biking on the road. One does risk serious corporeal damage on the divided highway that makes up the rest of the route after the greenway ends (if Indianapolis would just finish the planned greenways I’d have one all the way to work, but I’m not holding my breath on that one), so on the advice of another bike commuter who has taken this route for years (and who was hit by a car last month), I just took the sidewalk in that area. The highway goes to the city dumps, industrial areas, and the airport, and there is so much debris-dropping large truck traffic that it’s the one area I’m uncomfortable taking the pavement. No one was on the sidewalks so it all worked out. Hey Indy, how about some bike lanes on Raymond?
I waited for a few lights and had to navigate security gates at work, but other than that it was a direct route of about seven miles. I predicted the one rude/dangerous thing a car did, turning in front of me with no signal, and I didn’t need my pepper spray for any dogs or thugs, so I’d say it was a success. I was in the showers at work within 45 minutes of leaving home.
Of course now I’m thinking of all the doodads I would like to buy for my bike, a Gary Fisher I purchased several years ago but I haven’t mountain biked in the last few years. I’ll probably go for Kevlar-belted commuter tires rather than the knobby ones I currently have, panniers to replace my backpack, and I need to finally learn how to change a flat. I had all the stuff to do it but now the tire levers are missing and I never have had a flat for practical experience. Would my roadside assistance come? They say as long as I have my cell phone I can be in any vehicle…
Bike to Work Day (and bike month) is observed all over the country. Indy has events planned for next Friday. Will I see any of you on Monument Circle for breakfast in spandex?
Michiana readers: your bike to work week is June 2-6 because you are pussies about May weather.
Yesterday at Petco, Pippen was so zonked he looked very dead.
This is for you, Matt.
David and I went out for sushi last night, and then Mike and Carla invited us out to the Chatterbox, the first time I’d been there. It was incredibly crowded for awhile but we eventually were able to sit down, thanks to Carla being on top of chasing down people who were leaving and generally being willing to talk to anyone (just ask Doreen). Carla found a footless army man in the bathroom and he did not burn.
After a few drinks, David went up between sets to talk to the pianist, “Doc” Virginia Jefferson, who had him play with her for a bit. He’s looking for a jazz teacher.
BTW, I got $22.37 for my recycled crowns. I won’t spend it all in one place.
Let’s just see how that title affects site searches.
I usually get a new pair of slippers for Christmas. I wear them every day at home; I like to take off my shoes as soon as I’m in the door and get comfy, but the floor’s too dirty to go around without slippers. (It could be freshly swept and mopped and I still wouldn’t want to go around without footwear. Issue #1.) This year I asked for slippers from a different company than my usual brand since the old company started selling rabbit fur items and I didn’t want to patronize them. Somehow I still got multiple other gifts from that company, but that’s the way it goes.
Anyway, the new slipper place sent a catalog of supposedly comfy shoes and appliances, including items to wear to deal with bunions, corns, hammer toes, etc. I can’t speak to bunions and corns, but I do have a “mallet toe,” which is basically a toe that curves down sharply at the last joint. It’s similar to a hammer toe but a different joint is involved.
(That x-ray is not my feet. It was just a lot less gross looking than putting up a picture of actual feet. The middle toes are mallet toes.)
Seeing the appliances got me thinking about whether such an item would help me. But what does it help? Frankly, I am not bothered by 32 years of a mallet toe. Every once in awhile a new pair of shoes will cause a blister on top of it, but I wear very sensible shoes (I’m boring like that, Issue #2) and rarely have a problem. To read about mallet toes online, you’d think I ought to be hobbled and scheduling surgery.
Also, I hate feet (Issue #3). I think my brother used to torture me by putting his feet on me. I am forever grossed out by the image of my dad cutting his toenails on newspaper in the family room. My mom has this funky sideways toenail (which I may get someday too due to the same surgery I had on my toe) that just freaks me out. David can touch me with his feet sometimes, but only if I can’t see them nor feel the nails. And I better think they’re clean. It’s not necessarily better when he wears socks because I sense all the dirt and hair that must be on them from wandering the floors in our house or the day of sweat if they just exited work boots.
After reading about how treacherous mallet toes are, I wondered if the reason I only wear sensible, comfortable footwear is because my body knows if I picked heels and cute things I’d be in pain. See, I’m highly evolved, not lacking in fashion sense. Mallet toes are normally caused by bad footwear choices. Being lucky enough to be born with my toes all curled backwards against my feet and around each other and then wearing a bar between my shoes to straighten out legs and feet, I didn’t have the chance to screw up my toe via bad shoes. Mom says I was too crowded and I looked like I’d be crippled when I was born, but frankly I walk fine, ran track (poorly but I doubt it was related) and get around like anyone else. An orthopedist once found one leg longer than the other, but as long as I row starboard and not port, I’m not in pain. And I can even go port now and then.
Many foot things stand out in my life. The moon boots I had to wear because they were practical, per my Dad. And how relieved I was in 6th grade when my mom and I were in cahoots to buy new fashionable boots for me and stash them away as a Christmas gift so it would be too late to return them. The bread bags I had to wear in the moon boots because they leaked (I have met others subjected to this same punishment). The monster feet slippers with crashing sounds my high school roommate gave me. My frequent purchase of men’s shoes because my feet are too big (11) to find women’s shoes about 90% of the time. Once I found a pair of women’s size 10.5 hiking boots and they’re awesome. Nothing else fits as well and I’ve never seen that size again. Hence, the crying jags when I attempt to shoe shop. The jelly shoes that were popular when I was a kid and that I wasn’t allowed to have because they were bad for my feet (which led me to believe that all girls in jelly shoes had uncaring, ill-informed parents).
There you go. Feet and I are not friends. And if someone ever finds a very comfortable, semi-stylish, work-appropriate non-leather shoe in my size, please tell me. VERY comfortable is required. Lots of support. My feet hurt when I don’t wear tennies to work, and it’s hard to get away with those most days.
Strangely enough, two other local bloggers (Must Be Motherhood, Distracted by Something Shiny) talked about feet and shoes this week while I was drafting my post. Is it the time of year for robins to return (saw the first one yesterday) and feet topics?
This has been a really bad week and the hurt is still a little raw on this one.
My ongoing illness morphed into the flu a week ago, such that I didn’t leave bed for days. I managed to throw food at the rabbits a couple of times and finally had to call for help when I just couldn’t do it myself anymore. David, otherwise a terrible nurse because he’s so paranoid about catching the illness, went in to feed and clean the rabbits with Dawn’s phone coaching. He came to get me and said something was wrong with Annabelle.
My poor girl was limp on her side in the cage. I hadn’t been in there in just over a day. I cleaned her snotty nose so she could breathe better and tried to assess what was going on, but she was basically nonresponsive. Her breathing and heart rate steadied a little (I thought… who knows) after I cleaned her up a bit and supported her. We headed to the emergency clinic in a winter storm. David had to scrape tons of ice off the car while I huddled in it with Annabelle (and her pal Joey in the carrier in the backseat) trying to keep myself vertical. I was really sick.
The long drive to the bunny-safe, more humane emergency clinic in town in the terrible weather behind us, the technician whisked Annabelle away in the fleece bed in which I’d brought her. The vet told me he was surprised she lived through his quick exam. Her heart rate was half normal and her body temperature was not even registering on the thermometer (it measured down to 93, and normal for a bunny is about 102). She was in shock. He could try fluids/incubation to see if we could bring her back overnight, but I asked for euthanasia.
She fell asleep in my lap with the sedation and Joey climbed on her a couple of times. I still don’t know if I should have tried something. Would I have acted differently if I had been well? I would have found her illness much sooner in the day, I assume. I have a lot of bunny experience, but not with shock, and since the vet wasn’t a bunny expert (critical in many emergencies but maybe not in this one?) and acted like she could die at any moment, it made sense to help her be comfortable in this safe way.
One of my bunny vets did the necropsy the next morning. Annabelle had the most advanced liver disease she’d ever seen, as well as advanced kidney disease. Were these the cause of her mild incontinence and wobbliness now and then? Was she in shock because of the end stages of these diseases? Did I cause more problems by feeding her extra pellets since she didn’t keep weight on easily? It’s probably normal that her last bloodwork didn’t really signal the problem because rabbits with organ disease typically don’t show much in the chemistries until failure is imminent. But what might I have learned or done a few hours earlier had I not been sick?
Many of you will remember that Annabelle had one eye due to being shot in the other one just before she was found and brought into rescue. She still had the pellet lodged in her head all this time, and despite the ongoing URI issues she faced, none of that factored into her final illness according to the vet.
Joey is doing well, hanging out in the same fleece bed where Annabelle spent her last night. It’s so hard to lose these guys when they are so happy and healthy one day and then they crash the next.
I have never been considered a shiny-happy, uplifting person to be around. I’m known for sarcasm and associated with the phrase Get Over It. But goodness, I hope I don’t come across as whiny. I’m sure there are some days that I do, no doubt about it. Still, there’s a blog I keep going back to because this poor, poor person just has so many annoying relatives and bad things happening to her and she just keeps making excuses about how it’s never her fault, her life is unfair, she surely couldn’t do anything to improve her lot, and when things get better she’ll do x and y and never complain…. then good things happen and guess what? She complains. I can’t stop reading it because I wonder how hypocritical the next post will sound. Ok, now I’m sounding bitter. I guess I’m just glad I’m not around this person, say, at work, because I think she’d drive me crazy! I don’t think this blogger reads here so if you’re all paranoid or something, don’t be. Most blogs I find either funny/entertaining/interesting/educational or just realize I don’t have a lot in common with the person but it’s their life so hey, blog what you want. I rarely visit I Can Has Cheezburger either but I see why it has a following.
Ah, the internet. One of the best inventions ever. Why is watching other people whine or fight with each other so entertaining? When my grouplist readings lapse as I get busy, I sometimes stop back in only when I get an announcement that it’s back on moderation due to some controversy. That’s a great time to get caught up!
Meanwhile, if you work in a cubicle and have a computer and coworkers around, this video will make you laugh. Note the Lundberg guy. My favorite part is the CRT on the copy machine because the guy can’t get his document to print.
Bad Day at the Office
My work week has been pretty intense, but so far my laptop has cooperated, so I’ll let it live.
And pet sterilization is now the law in Los Angeles!
Now I shall whine: I have had a sinus infection for over a week, and I’m tired of the reverse-sneeze-sounding (you’ll know what it is if you have a dog) attempts to get the green strings to either be in my nasal area or in my throat but not stretched in a gooey line to be in both places at the same time. I can actually pluck them out like a slimy noodle. Gross, huh?
So, any guesses on how much I’ll get for cashing in my old crowns? (Hint: you are looking at three to four thousand dollars of work, and my guess is dividing that by 100 will be close.)
And here’s the evidence of the long restoration:
Scene of the crimes (looks like it was impression day based on the pink goo in the gun)
Taking measurements with molds (you should have seen the crazy contraption I wore on my head when they adjusted my bite)
Rare footage of the prepped front teeth. This was in May, and I wore resin fakes for several months while the rest of the teeth were prepped and then permanent crowns were made. I think the lowers in front may have been already shaved in this picture in prep for veneers… I don’t even recognize my old teeth anymore.
And finally, in the little bathroom next to the clinic, someone had made repairs in the wall with a rather janky patch. Sometime after this helpful graffiti, it was more properly repaired. The clinic is on IU’s Indy campus, and the whole place has the flavor of state university rather than traditional dentist. (One place I looked when deciding how to do this project had LCD screens on articulated arms at each dental chair so you could watch cable while waiting and be sold dental procedures with video explanations.) I appreciate that state school dollars aren’t being wasted on decor (or drywall patches, apparently). Maybe some money will be freed up now that the basketball coach is gone.