Prosaic Paradise

So I was really psyched at the advent of “Vitamin Water 10”, the low calorie version of one of my favorite drinks. I’ve read science back and forth on the health value of the original, and people are always decrying the sugar. Well no more! So thus I found myself delighted to see several flavor options of Vitamin Water 10 appear at the lunch buffet.

I was still delighted as I sat drinking my “energy: tropical citrus” drink with the less pleasant but tolerable stevia taste. At least, I was until I was idly perusing the nutrition information on the bottle and read the following quirky youth-targeted marketing blurb on the label:

“calories per serving – that’s 10 minutes of online ‘dating'”

AUGH!

Dear makers of vitamin water,

I do not want to associate that with my morning health beverage. Ever. I mean, seriously? I immediately didn’t want to drink your product anymore because I was thinking… GOD! GROSS! I mean really. I’m drinking over here.

Sincerely,
Kim

Tags: health, stuff

Last week I signed up with a gym again for the first time in a decade. Last time went really poorly and they got lots of my money and I never went. This time I have a buddy and a better grasp of time management and money management and far less invested in what other people think of me*, so hopefully things will go better. It’s actually the same gym – Sportfit in Laurel. It’s convenient and their rates are reasonable. My initial trainer assessment is tonight. I hope she kicks my ass!

For a brief evening last week, Jen and Jack and I revived Pork Chop Night. Back when we were roommates, one organic roommate-bonding event we liked to have was dependent largely on Shake N Bake. When you’ve had as good quality roommates as I have, sometimes you can actually miss having roommates…

Oh and of course Saturday I got one of the last unadorned patches of skin on my right arm… well, adorned. The design was actually a last minute addition though as it turns out it’s taking up a pretty big chunk of real estate! I’d stare at it all the time if only I could stare at the back of my upper arm. More on that with pictures when I have time.

Spring Break? What Spring Break? Did that even happen? I’m in the hole by 3 days on reading livejournal and over a thousand posts on google reader. And I kind of don’t want to spend my beautiful weekend on the internet. Work has been pretty intense and soon I have three Chemistry tests in rapid succession. What’s a girl to do? How should I expect folks to read and comment on my blog if I don’t take the time to do likewise? If only I could read in my sleep. Ending is better than mending… I probably shouldn’t have done Brave New World on audiobook, eh?

Oh, and then Wednesday night I got home from running to the post office (next time if the taxes are prepared 3 weeks in advance? I better sign and mail them then.) to find that Nicolas was running back and forth to the litterbox, squatting, and not producing anything. This ended with us at the Ellicott City emergency vet staring into a microscope so we could see for ourselves the RBCs and crystals. Here he is displaying the malfunctioning parts. Ultimately, he just had the preliminary issues, not a total blockage, so we’re changing his food (feeding them separately is a giant pain) and giving him antibiotics and hoping.

* Much of the thinking last time went: “What if I look like an ass and I use the machine wrong in front of everyone and they all see that I’m a moron and then they drop pig’s blood on my head and laugh at me and I murder everyone!” Those are very discouraging thoughts to have before going to the gym, so I didn’t go.

Tags: cat, health

Have you ever had a blocking item on your to-do list? An item that seems so big that you don’t want to start it or can’t envision starting it, or an item so overdue that you feel shame when you think about it? And then the net result is that you don’t want to look at your to do list because you don’t want to think about that item? And it casts a pall over your entire idea of things to do because you clearly can’t get even one thing done?

I have gotten better at handling the “too big” case using techniques from the general GTD approach, that is to say breaking big tasks into individual concrete smaller tasks. Sometimes I forget or put up a mental block but in general, I know how to attack that.

It’s much harder for me to battle the shame situation. I’m in that one right now; I promised two people handwritten letters and for some reason I began to feel like I didn’t know how to write those letters or I got paralyzed with indecision about them. Two very simple virtually unaccountable tasks, and now I avoid my own to-do list. At least I can see the problem, right?

Of course, part of the issue right now is precious little time spent not at work, in class, or doing homework for class. Not much to be done about that.

So how do you guys handle it when you find you’re avoiding your to-do list?

Tags: productivity

I tend to be a little militant about going off the beaten path and liking movies that no one else likes. (The Ice Storm, About Schmidt) I also tend to be turned off of movies that everyone else likes, which is really reactionary and dumb. But as faults go, that’s pretty small right? Well for once let me say some nice things about movies instead of being one giant parade-rainer-onner. (See: My feelings about The Matrix, Batman, Snatch, etc.) (I just said to Jack “What are some good movies I’ve been a jerk about?” to get that list.)

Some movies I don’t much hear about that I think are awesome in no particular order:

Beautiful Thing (1996) It’s just an incredibly cute coming out story. Of course, there are tears… there always are. This actually has an 89% Rotten Tomatoes, but if it’s so critically acclaimed, how come no one’s ever seen it?

The Faculty (1998) You can’t go wrong with Bebe Neuwirth and Jon Stewart. Most friends of mine know of this awesome tongue-in-cheek horror flick but I’m putting it out there in case you don’t.

Guarding Tess (1994) Pre-Face/Off Nic Cage. Totally heartwarming and interesting and features a smart lady.

Streets of Fire (1984) A slightly surreal 80s noir B movie… I don’t even know where to begin, I only know I love it. Amy Madigan appeals so much to my little tomboy heart, and Michael Pare has just the right retro understated cool going on. He’s like a premonition of the Winchester brothers.

The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) Don’t laugh at me or look away immediately. This movie is totally what you expect and not at all what you expect at the same time. Have you been patiently waiting for Gary Cole to come to your door ever since that kid said “Someone’s at the door” back in 1995? Then if nothing else, watch this movie just for Gary. And maybe don’t root for Greg and Marcia?

Corrina, Corrina (1994) Oh. So you thought Ray Liotta could only play mobsters and psycho killers. And that Whoopi Goldberg could only play nuns and the center square. Well. You were wrong.

House of Fools (2002) I got this on a whim, I think it was one of my first netflix rentals. I was so surprised to be transported into a vibrant story and well, obviously more surprised to see Bryan Adams actually show up. The taglins says a true story – so, maybe someone did summon a very vivid hallucination of Bryan Adams to Chechnya. I don’t know but it makes a great film.

Rat Race (2001) I have Paul to thank for this one. I laughed so hard I had a brain aneurysm and had to go to the hospital where someone comically botched my heart transplant by letting Rowan Atkinson get his hands on said organ. Alright, no, but I have to say after seeing this movie I rented It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and it was not half as funny. Maybe it’s a generational thing.

Stealing Harvard (2002) My first notice of John C. McGinley. “I was hungry, so I heated up a brick of cheese.” The reason my beloved calls me “m’lady” that has nothing to do with a renfaire. So many things to recommend it, yet an 8% on the tomatometer. Whatever, haters. Your Tom Green backlash is comforting, I’m sure.

Cursed (2005) Bound to be a classic of the tongue-in-cheek horror genre. Obviously smart casting – Milo Ventimiglia before his Heroes debut, Christina Ricci at any point in her career, Josh Jackson… well, OK, we all know I have a totally biased opinion there. Watch for some fun cameos and stop taking everything so seriously.

This post was inspired by Average Jane who in turn was inspired by Think Lynsen. That’s a whole mess o’ underrated movies!

Tags: movies

I finally threw caution to the wind. I finally broke up with my steady er, phone service. I finally was fully seduced by what many call the jesusphone.

I just spent all night syncing music to it… ratcheting back from being able to have all my music is hard. I already slapped 12g on there without even thinking about it, leaving not so much room for apps.Which is why I’m posting this. Not because I want to be an iPhone jerk, but because I want to know: What apps???

Also, if anyone knows the mystical buttons I’m supposed to push to get calls to come in (the mystical completion of the number porting) to the phone, that would be helpful… it may not even be ready yet, I’m not sure.

I love the Palm. PalmOS has been wonderful. I wish them all the best with the Pre. But they’re not releasing it for any provider I’d sign up with.

Tags: stuff

I’ve been holding on to some fun stuff as the semester rolls on, making my brain useless. But let me break the silence!

Quo Vadis Marketing VP and embracer of Web 2.0 Karen offered some J. Herbin inks for bloggers to review a while back and I jumped at the chance! I’d just purchased a bottle without prompting (Gris Nuage, which I will report on later) and at the time could not get my hands on the colors she was offering.

The first color I am reviewing here is Lierre Sauvage. I was suffering indecision about what pen to try this in, so I finally grabbed something thematic – the green Estie.

The nib on this pen is a little finer than I am used to but that didn’t disrupt my enjoyment of the ink itself, which behaved very well dipped as well as once I filled the pen. I felt like I could trust the flow even in a potentially untrustworthy or unfamiliar pen.

The green is nice and bright. I would say that this is what you expect out of the crayon when you flip the label over and see that it says “green” as opposed to “forest green” or “jungle green” or “magic mint”. BiffyBeans described it as “cartoon grass green”. Based on that, I ran outside and pulled some grass from my yard and included that in my pictures for comparison!

So below is the brief writing sample I made. (On my Rhodia pad, for the paper enthusiasts.) You can see that you get some depth of color to this – it’s not completely flat although that will of course depend on your nib. But I think it concentrates well, and in the ends and dips of strokes you see a darker shade.

Green is generally my favorite color. Since my local pen emporium Bertram’s Inkwell doesn’t carry J. Herbin inks (yet?) the first green I ever bought was a Private Reserve, which I do still like. But this is much brighter than the Sherwood Green I got then, and thus more useful when trying to comment on documents or things like that. So I think the love of this ink is dependent somewhat on what you want to use this for.

Check out this close-up. Can you imagine looking at that much green-ness for page upon page? I totally can, but then I’m weird. I feel like a bright green like this energizes and delights. It helps that the ink performance is so reliable! I’ve continued to write with this since I took these photos, and I have to say I’m pleased and impressed at the consistency.

The bottle itself is a feature in that it has a pen rest! For a hobbyist like myself the attractiveness of the bottle is important and we definitely have a winner here in that department. Note however that while the bottles of ink seem cheap compared to others, you are only getting 30ml. (I tried to find reference to a “demi-courtine” as a french unit of measure anywhere other than in the context of this ink – I couldn’t, except in books about the military written entirely in french. In that context, it seems like it’s a military unit.)

You can order this ink in many places, but my current internet shop of choice is JetPens. They’ve just stocked some of the Herbin colors, so check it out. It looks like Lierre Sauvage itself is out of stock in many places, but if I get a lead on where you can order it I’ll put the link here.

Tags: Stationery

Today we hosted the ritual of the discoloration of the eggs. I almost forgot! Considering this is the third year I’ve got pictures of it, that is quite irresponsible. I had some Dudley dyes that included a brown dye that was pretty nice. My designs were not inspired as they have been in past years, but I had a good time nonetheless. This was a real weekend off and I feel at least a little bit more relaxed. Click through for the scary Cthulu egg and the baby-eating chair actually trying to eat a baby.

Tags: Friends

I speak to you today as a recovering picky eater.

Yes, it’s been a decade since I first allowed shellfish into my life (thanks to an unreasonable butter coverage), and I’ve been merrily opening my seafood options ever since. But I still somewhat identify myself as a picky eater. I’m not sure what threshhold you have to cross in percentage of foods you will eat to be an ex-picky eater, but I must be fast approaching that.

See, I started out as every parent’s nightmare. I ate jelly sandwiches because I couldn’t abide peanut butter. I would not enter any restaurant that did not serve spaghetti. When I went to friends’ houses for dinner, I wrestled with nature – to not eat anything weird – versus nurture – to be polite. (I could write a blog post every day for a month just about embarassing memories like this.) When it was time for a kid’s birthday trip to Pizza Hut, I worried about going hungry. When handed a deli sandwich, I would dissect it, seeking out only the cheese and the meat, and only that which had not touched dreaded condiments.

This was how I spent almost 20 years. So technically, more than half my life. Of course, every bird must leave the nest, and ultimately, off to college I went where I met my food mentor & BFF, Telf. Telf is a food hobbyist. An adventurous chef. And it is to her that I owe the opening of possibilities beyond a list that would fit on one side of a sheet of notebook paper. Here she is in her natural habitat, last year, preparing to provide myself and some friends with a meal that will be remembered for years to come. That meal included prosciutto-wrapped dates. I still think it’s positively hilarious that I will eat anything with prosciutto or dates in it, let alone something that is solely composed of prosciutto and dates, but I am writing this now hoping that knowing this will give someone out there some hope.

You might be wondering how she did it. Well, it took a smidge of peer pressure (“Everyone else is eating it…”) tempered with a bit of good-natured ribbing (“Well, we know Kim won’t eat it!”) helped along by a that most motivating of factors, starvation due to lack of funds. At some point, once the door had been opened, things started to trickle in until I had some health issues later on, and then they started to flood in.

I still remember when Steph took me out for tapas around 2001. Even then, almost everything on the menu was horrifying. I think I ate only potatoes and acted like a child. Last year I asked to go to the tapas restaurant for my birthday!

Now I can eat salads with something other than iceberg lettuce in them, including actual dressing which I eschewed for many years. I eat not only shrimps with butter all over them, but some varieties of fish (raw even!!) and scallops. I am sitting here right now eating an intact sandwich called “The Last Cowboy” (creatively and mysteriously named by our local deli) which includes horseradish sauce.

There are still some things I won’t eat. Broccoli is edible, but not exactly on the top of my fun foods list. Mayo, mustard and ketchup are verboten. (Unless we’re talking about cocktail sauce, but I choose to continue the fiction that cocktail sauce is not just ketchup with horseradish in it.) Mushrooms still taste like glorified, smooth dirt. But hey. Those things are gross!

So if you or someone you love is a picky eater and want help, I am available to sponsor you.

This post was written for the Living Out Loud project hosted by Genie at inabottle.

Tags: food

It’s rare that you ask someone to cut your hair and they do exactly what you want stylishly and accurately, in a way you can maintain. Very, very rare. But I waited long enough and my patience was rewarded.

This was my hair before. This is what I asked for – a kind of a Callie from Grey’s Anatomy thing. (BTW who is the awesomest person on that show? Callie Torres. Yeah, that’s right.) Bree had to blow it out to make sure the lengths were right so yesterday I just had this pic to show for the result. Which, well nice, doesn’t display the full accuracy of the haircut! So today before book club came over I grabbed this shot of the new hair:

OK So my self-portrait skills aren’t the greatest yet, but hopefully you can see that she nailed it.

Book club met here to discuss Brave New World. Most folks know I don’t go in for dystopias much, and this book was no exception. I just don’t buy the line, in part because I’m overly idealistic and in part because I care more about real terrible shit that’s happening today. Nevertheless, there are some salient points in the book that stiull apply, although some of it seems positively quaint. I am reminded however of countless other dystopian novels I feel obligated to read so I can speak with authority on them – Anthem, Handmaid’s Tale.

I had to call out of my tattoo appointment Saturday, and spent the day ensconced on the couch rotting my brain with NCIS (♥ McGee), Supernatural (oh, the angst!), and L&O: CI (soaking up the Noth). I found out today that I got a flawless victory on my Chem exam, so in retrospect, I deserved the relaxing of the neurons. I expect a little more out of myself next weekend!

Tags: book club, hair, TV

I woke up this morning after a vivid dream that my friend April had decided, due to some kind of weird urban tribal urge, that she needed enter and scale an abandoned high rise building. The building was maybe 20 stories tall, and painted entirely, boarded windows and all, a terrible chalky shade of red. It was clearly derived from my imagination after too much viewing of detroitfunk, a site I morbidly obsess over when awake anyways.

RedExit by Jeremy Brooks (used under Creative Commons)

It was one of those situations informed entirely by contemporary horror movies, and I tried to explain to her that going in there was certain death at either the hands of some kind of Saw villain or evil ghosts. Nope, she informed me blithely that despite the obvious imminent doom, she had her cell phone and she’d stay in touch, but she had to get to the top floor of that building.

What followed was some kind of combination of movies I’ve never seen but heard about & a very House of Leaves kind of thing & Cube. She is relaying all these terrible torturous (physically and psychologically) things over the phone to me, and I’m trying to get realistic law enforcement officials and stuff to go in there, and I can kind of see things in my mind’s eye, etc. At the end, two people escaped; some approximation of Fred & Daphne from Scooby Doo. The evil killer/ghost/whatever had done something to Fred’s phone to try to lure him back in, but Fred rigged it to bomb the building.

Then I woke up with a song in my head that I’d doctored in my sleep to be “In ten years there’s going to be one million noodles.”

I think my brain is a little fried. I owe lots of people lots of things – I owe my blog more posts, I owe two pen pals handwritten letters, I owe some ink reviews, I owe myself the favor of getting in front of the 8-ball at work. How that translates into the evil high-rise and noodles, I don’t know.

Oh, and as a note, when someone says “I’m really tired” never respond with “You look really tired.” If they didn’t already know, they probably don’t want to.

Tags: Dream