Stream of Conscience

That would be me! Of course, it helps if you start the month off at your highest weight ever. I never weighed myself consistently this month, but every once in awhile I’d step on the scales. I continued to drop pounds as the month progressed until last week. By that point I decided I had enough food in the frig (from my previous adventures in cooking) that I didn’t need to do any more planning, shopping and cooking. I’m not sure if that was a good idea or not.

Since I had some pesto sauce in the frig (from a pesto salmon recipe I’d tried), I decided to enjoy some pasta with pesto. The spaghetti was yummy, but certainly filling. Then, to add insult to injury, I baked one of the pecan pies I’d planned to make for Christmas dinner with friends (which I ended up not having). So of course I had to have a couple pieces of pie every night.

The number on the scales increased a few pounds in the final few days, but I still lost (more than) one pound this month.  But now that the holidays are over, it’s time to get back into the groove.

I must now bid adieu to the Five Ingredients/15 Minutes cookbook.  My initial plan was to use the American Heart Association Cookbook, but because it’s so large, I found myself a little overwhelmed by it.  So instead I’ll be using Saving Dinner, the Low-Carb Way. The cookbook is by Leanne Ely, a nutritionist I found through Flylady.  I’ll talk more about the cookbook and the Saving Dinner website at Stream of Consciousness throughout the month of January.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

As the month (and the year) come to an end, it’s time to review what worked in the kitchen and what didn’t.

What worked:

1. The Five Ingredients/15 Minutes cookbook.  Great recipes and fairly easy.  A good way to ease my way back into cooking regularly.
2. Planning meals, preferably a month at a time.  For me, it’s best to sit down once (maybe twice) at the beginning of the month to decide what I’m cooking and when.  If I wait to plan the last half of the month in the last half of the month, it won’t get done.
3. Vegetables are our friends.  The big surprises were sugared carrot (which have more of a nutmeg taste than a brown sugar taste) and asparagus with blue cheese vinaigrette.   The cauliflower with buttered bread crumbs was also quite good.

What didn’t work?

1. Mushroom couscous.  I was really looking forward to this dish.  I took a couple bites, but on about the third, I spit it out and sent it down the drain.  I’m not sure what went wrong.  Maybe the couscous was too old, or the mushrooms were sliced too thickly (I bought them presliced), or beef broth shouldn’t have been the liquid of choice.  I might try it again sometime, making some tweaks, but not for awhile.
2. Chicken with roasted red pepper sauce.  The chicken was fine.  The roasted red pepper sauce was awful; which really surprised me because I like roasted red peppers.  I ate one serving of it, but when it came time for leftovers, it went the way of the mushroom couscous.  I was able to salvage the chicken with some pesto sauce I had on hand from a pesto salmon recipe I’d made earlier.  And while the pesto salmon was good, I think the chicken was better.

And so tomorrow, in addition to maybe watching the Outback Bowl (go Hawks!),  I’ll sit down with my American Heart Association Cookbook (5th edition of their first cookbook) and decide what I’ll be eating in January.  As for what I’ll actually eat tomorrow, perhaps it will be leftovers from dinner out tonight.

One last post before I switch themes.

What a crappy Christmas.  I woke up around 6 a.m. with a headache.  Took some Advil, went back to sleep.  Woke up about 9-ish, still had the headache.  Took some Benadryl Allergy (thought it might be sinus related).  My stomach didn’t feel up to my normal Christmas morning treat, orange cinnamon rolls, so I ate  1/3  bowl of oatmeal and had a little tea instead of my usual coffee.  Put some Christmas music on and started opening presents.  I didn’t make it through the CD or finish the presents.  Went to bed and never got up again except to go to the bathroom and vomit.

I was able to get up on Friday, but still didn’t feel all that good until well into the afternoon.  Yesterday I felt much better and got quite a bit of work done (mostly finishing up wrapping and packing presents* and breaking down boxes).

* I believe I have mentioned before that I don’t worry about getting Christmas presents out by the 25th.  After all, if you get everything by Christmas day, what do you have to look forward to after Christmas?  Nada.  Which reminds me, I still need to get the gift cards sent.  Somehow  the 25th slipped up on me before I realized it.  Probably because we’ve so busy at work.

I had been so looking forward to having 4 days off.  Now it’s almost over.  :(  At least this week should be fairly quiet.

I think I’ll be heading back over to Stream of Consciousness after this.

2008:  the year I single-handedly helped the economy—but obviously not enough.

It was also the year I experienced my first ever broken bone and had a foot punch a hole in my ceiling.

The year started off with a whiz-bang.  Well, more like a oof-bang.  On the first Monday of 2008, I fell down the steps at work and fractured a bone in my foot.  It’s the same leg I’d severely sprained about 20 years ago, and now I can truthfully say that a sprain does indeed hurt worse than a break.

Nothing much else happened this year that I can remember.  Except that I bought a new computer (the old one crashed… hard), and a new HD television (so that I could enjoy the season premiere of Supernatural in its full glory after having  suffered through the longest summer hiatus since the beginning of television.  (Do I love this show?  You bet!  If you’re not watching Supernatural, you should be!)

I finished up the year by buying a new car.  I’ve been trying to clear out the clutter in my home and found I really need the room an SUV provides.  So, after some good research (thank  you Consumer Reports online), I bought a Subaru Forester.  But as I was driving it off the lot, I felt I’d made a horrible decision.  I’ve always had a certain dislike of SUVs and mini-vans; and it drives so much differently than my (used) Lexus did.  But now that that I’m getting used to it (and loading up the back), I’m quite pleased.

Oh, about that hole in the ceiling.  Our condo building started having its roof replaced this fall.  (It’s expected to continue until February.  I just love the smell of tar in the morning.)  My section was the first they did and is completely done now.  But on the first day of work, one of the roofers fell through a hole in the roof and didn’t stop until he’d gone all the way through my ceiling.  Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the roofing company paid for the damage.  The contractor that did the repair did a fabulous job, so I’m keeping their number for other building fix-ups I may have.

Other than that, the cats and I are the same (Gigi is still a sweetheart, Kimmi a timid mouse, and Shadow an annoying… well, an annoying shadow), except another year older.

I always feel a little hypocritical when writing these summaries about me and then ending it with just a sentence of “I hope all is well with you.”  But I do (hope all is well with you), and this format gives you a wonderful (and easy) way to reply.  So, if you do stop by to read (even if it’s in August), you’re welcome to write a reply.  (Thank you, Web 2.0!)  I’d love to know what you’re up to, and get your e-mail address in the process.  (And if you’re not tired of reading about me yet, you can check out my 2007 year in review as well.)  

Oops.  I missed posting Tuesday here at SoC, although I did post at my new Theme Park, where I’m testing out various WordPress themes (designs, layouts) to see which would be the best for me to use as a template for my own theme. And because I need to be proficient in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets, what gives a web page its “look”) to create a WordPress theme, I’ve been trying my hand at the CSS Zen Garden.  I’m studying some of the designs (& designers) there to help me get a better handle on CSS, and perhaps even inspire me in the process.

I actually finished a design yesterday.  It’s pretty simple, but it still gave me lots of trouble.  I do need to go in and clean up the CSS file, and tweek it just a little bit.  But the great thing is it looks pretty much the same in Firefox, IE, and Safari (which of course is the reason for web standards in the first place).  I don’t know about Opera, though.  (Opera’s for Macs, isn’t it?  Or do they have a PC version?  Safari used to be Mac, I believe, but now there’s also a PC version.  And yes, if I want to be serious about designing websites, I need to have a Mac.  But no one pays me to do this, so I’ll just live in the PC world for now.)

Oh, I did also work on my 2008 Christmas letter.  It’s basically done but I haven’t posted it yet.  (It’s really short because this year kind of fell short, ya know?)  I suppose that could have been my post for yesterday, but alas, twas not.  I’ve kind of faded on this whole NaBloPoMo thing anyway.  I never uploaded the “badges” and I don’t think any of my entries have been counted, because I haven’t entered them from their site.  So, meh.

I went to the ophthalmologist today.  I really just wanted to see the optometrist, but it was probably good to see the doctor.  They dilated my eyes, and by the time I was finished with everything, the sun had set.  On the drive home, all the lights radiated numerous beautiful, spikey rays of light.  Headlights, taillights, stoplights; they all melded into a sea of red and green and white twinklies.

I’m still seeing the spikeys—and the white background as I type is nearly blinding me—so tonight’s entry will be short.  Of course, the whole purpose of going to the eye doctor and getting new glasses was to use up the money in my flexible spending account.  But my vision plan is apparently of the ginormtrous type.  I bought two pairs of progressive bifocal eye-glasses with chi-chi frames (one mucho expensive and one moderately expensive, both with bling!) and the newest in non-glare coating (since the old non-glare coating sucked) for $205.  Oh wait, that included the doctor’s visit.  For less than $200.

Now I’m going to end up losing money in my flexible spending account.  But at least I’ll look fabuous in my new blingy glasses.

And the law won.

When I went to bed last night, the humidifier by my bed was low on water, but I thought I could make it through the night.  However,  I woke up around 6:00 and it was empty.  I could feel my sinuses filling up, but went back to sleep.  When I finally woke up at 10:00 (very late for me!), my head was pounding.  Lesson:  when in doubt, fill up the humidifier.

The swollen sinuses caused me to have a weird dream about Sue.  I’m sure it was triggered by the pilot episode of The Legend of the Seeker I watched last night.  I dreamed I was back in Iowa, and I was passing through Sue’s town on a tour.  Except that Sue was living in the southern part of the state and I couldn’t remember her last name.  We’d planned to meet, but through those crazy obstacles dreams put in your way, I never made it.  She did, however, hook up with some of the other people I was touring with (which happened to be my old high school classmates).  That part of the dream was also triggered by a tale from my past I’ll write about sometime.

The headache has passed, but I’ve spent most of the day on the computer, trying to get a handle on CSS and WordPress.  I’ve yet to successfully install WordPress on my computer.  The good thing is I understand the problem this time, and as far as I can tell, it’s not me.  The bad thing is, I have no idea how to fix it.

My weekly step up on the scale was quite successful this morning.  But despite my bragging yesterday, I’ve decided to order a pizza tonight.  There’s a place I really like called “Mangia, Mangia” (”eat, eat!” for those who don’t know Italian).  In the past I’ve had their Greek pizza and 4 season pizza (my favorite).  Tonight I’m trying the pizza melanzana.  Before I lived in Italy, I never ate eggplant.  Now I quite enjoy it.  (The other thing I never really cared for before Italy was olives.  Now?  Yum!)

Oh, pizza just arrived.  Ciao!

Boy, this planning & cooking meals thing is pretty great!  I’m enjoying the Five Ingredients·15 Minutes cookbook so much I’m not sure I’m going to want to change cookbooks come January.  I haven’t eaten a dinner “out” (which for me means ordering pizza) all  week.  (Breakfast and lunches are another thing, but lets take it one meal at a time.)

The biggest surprise for me this week was the asparagus with blue cheese sauce.  I’ve never been a big fan of asparagus, but these were are delicious!  And it’s not just the blue cheese sauce.  Even the bites without sauce were tasty, even though I did overcook them just a smidge.  The great thing is now I know how to cook asparagus and will do it even better the next time.

I had a great feeling as I drove off to the supermarket this morning.  I’m not exactly sure what it was.  Perhaps it was satisfaction that I’d actually met a goal.  Maybe it was that I’m feeling better because I’m eating (slightly) better.  Perhaps it’s that I know what I’m cooking tonight and tomorrow and am actually looking forward to it.

It’s such a strange feeling for me to feel successful.  It’s something I’ve struggled with all my life.  Several years ago, I finally came to the realization I sabatage myself.  Just when I’m this close –><– to meeting a goal, I fall back.  I’m sure I haven’t been “cured,”  but maybe I’ve made a dent in the armour.  Or, it could just be the manic part of my mini-bipolar.  But whatever it is, I’ll take it. 

Earlier today it suddenly dawned on me that today is Friday, and I hadn’t yet planned any meals for the upcoming week.  Then I realized, Yes, I had! Last week, when I sat down with the Five Ingredients·15 Minutes cookbook, I’d made plans for the entire month!

Of course, it’s much easier to do that when one is cooking only on Saturdays and Sundays and then eating left-overs the rest of the week.  I seriously doubt I could plan a month of meals if I had to cook every day.  My sister-in-law Margie could do that, but she was 1) a terrific cook and 2) remarkably organganized.  She’d create a 7×4 hand-drawn grid, fill in what meals she’d make on which days, and post it on the inside of a cupboard door.  So simple, yet so functional and so smart.  Just like she was.

I’ve been reading a series of blog posts at Lorelle on Wordpress about fan blogs. Turns out I started SciFi Chicks for all the wrong reasons. But I do know how to do it right.  In the mid-90s I became infatuated with Benjamin Bratt. Here’s how the story goes:

In those days I enjoyed Law & Order (the original, which was the only one at the time).  And while not a huge Chris Noth/Mike Logan fan, I stopped watching when he left the show.  I’d seen this picture of the actor who was going to replace him, and while he was the most handsome guy I’d ever seen, I’d never heard of him, and the description of the character didn’t interest me.

Almost 2 years later Benjamin Bratt was featured in an article in TV Guide. This was the picture that accompanied the article.  It wasn’t a particularly attractive photo, but he sort of looked like a guy I had dated, so I read the article. This guy had lived the life I’d dreamed of! He grew up in San Francisco, majored in drama in college and played the saxophone in high school. (Ok, I didn’t know that last one until later.) I was hooked!

I started watching Law & Order again. At the time his résumé/filmography wasn’t that big and I began gathering videos of everything he’d done. I started a web page on Tripod using one of their templates. Within a few months, the site had grown to the point I wanted to do things that the template didn’t do. So one Saturday night I went to the mall, bought a book on HTML, and a monster was born.

The site grew and grew. I became somewhat of an expert on Benjamin Bratt. I received e-mails from high school chums, people who’d talked with him at the airport, saw him dining with Julia Roberts, people who thought I was Benjamin Bratt.  I made friends with other fans.  I also learned what it takes to design a web site, and I learned my strengths and weaknesses.

I kept the website up for several years, but it started to languish as we came into the new millennium. While I struggled to reignite my passion, the fanbase dwindled to only a few people. Finally, earlier this year I put the domain name up “for sale.” A young woman took it over and the site has flourished. I still see only the same few names in the discussions, but she’s doing such a wonderful job with it, I think it will grow, especially with the success and promotion of The Cleaner.

Tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, I’ll discuss what I’ve done wrong, and how I hope to fix it.