some good, some bad
Well, the Sox didn't trade Manny, and they haven't lost since the big to-do about him, so I guess it's safe to start posting here again. Now my only problem is that a deer ate all my cherry tomatoes. I was devestated. About 30 or 40 unripe tomatoes and one ripe one, which I went outside to pick, gone. There are about 15 or 20 left, and a few more flowers, but still, it was a blow. On the other hand, the cucumbers are going like gangbusters.
Dom next door says he doesn't think he'll put in a garden next year. Me, I'm planning m fence. It's going to have spikes on it, I think.
She made it to the keyboard!
I haven't written in a while, and it's only because after my business trip this weekend it took me a few days to regain the desire to live. You know how those one-day New York ventures can be: sucks all the will to breathe right out of you. This morning, however, i woke up without the immediate desire to cause myself physical harm, so things are looking up. I guess you could say that i've been a bit depressed about the whole being a colosal failure at my job thing. People say things like "it'll pass" and "you're not a colosal failure, you just look like one to everybody else" and other uplifting things, so that's nice of them.
Now for something NOT depressing: Exactly one month to the wedding! I wish i had a little bit longer, you know for the not eating thing to kick in, but on the other hand i'm super excited about seeing my friends, and seeing my family, and getting all partied-out. Most of all, i'm excited about finally marrying the greatest most wonderful man in the world. Katie Holmes, eat your heart out, i am so much more in love than you are.
I think i pictured this day marrying this person when i was no older than 12 years old. Except in my original fantasy he had longer bangs. And i was a bit thinnner.
If only you could literally work your butt off at work.
Despite our quick bout of suicidal tendencies earlier in the week, the Squibix family has been pretty bright and cheery lately. Part of the sudden burst of crooning is probobly due to our honeymoon plans finally being... finalized. I'm excited to visit the Vinyard for the first time, and also to TAKE A F-ING VACATION FROM WORK OMG I ONLY GOT ONE DAY OFF AT CHRISTMAS AND I'M READY TO KILL MYSELF!!! Woops, i promised no suicidal thoughts in the entry... sorry. Only about 3 weeks until i start my vacation and Oona comes to visit and we can do fun things together like shop and get our nails done and ...er... shop. And lie down, lie down for a long long time. Did i mention i needed a vacation?
This morning i woke up at 119. (lbs, for you losers who have never met me and have no idea what i'm obsessed with.) After running and drinking water and showering it was back at 121, but bygones! Only 9 more early-morning lbs to go and i'll be as thin as i was in high school. It took me about 4 months of annorexia at the time, but i think now with weight training i could speed up the process a little bit. OMG i'm kidding!!! I do eat food; mom stop choking on your smoothie!
(My new favorite blog, Stacy Nightmare, says OMG a lot, and i think it is totally snorting through my nose hilarious. But she is a commedienne whereas i am not whereas if you are annoyed because OMG is not funny, i get it, i'll stop.)
If you read this blog, and if you are my friend, and if you come to my wedding, and if you do NOT comment on how beautifully thin i look, you deserve to be cursed with cellulite.
TGIS
Thank Goodness it's Saturday, which is friday to leah, meaning the last day of my workweek. This week has been a loooooong one. It started with that trip to New York; let us never speak of it again. On the plus side, my sudden burst of depression made it easy to transition into crash dieting and as a result i only have four lbs to go before i hit my wedding goal weight (if i get there in two weeks and am still fat, then i'll lower the goal, so no worries about me slacking off.) I am doing pretty well on my new diet, if i do say so myself. One week down already. As the weight goes down, what goes up? Mostly the cussing. All of a sudden i'm in a big group of people and say "G-d Damn it, i want a F-ing piece of Pizza." I think it's dieting induced Terrets. Is that how you spell that disease, or am i talking about some architectural feature on a Castle? Dan, help me out in the editing!
Dan is helping out A LOT this weekend, as he does always, but this weekend in particular because i told my parents that i would take care of their dog Lokie, but then left him in Dan's care all day. After my parents dropped Lokie off, i called Dan to see how it was going so far and i heard Lokie HOWLING and HOWLING in the backround like he had just been orphined! Tears your heart out, the sad song of a poor puppy. Thankfully, Dan took him out for a good run in the woods, and then Lokie remembered that he likes us and calmed down. I can't wait to go home and take a good walk with the puppy myself. We want a puppy of our own someday! But ours won't be quite so howly...
Only 20 days till my vacation starts; i counted. 20 days to vacation, and 22 days till Oona!!!!!!!!!!! Oona is my other best friend, the one i'm not marrying, and she lives in Seattle, which is too far away. While she's here i'm going to try to convince her that she should move into my spare bedroom and work at my jewelry store. Then i will have everything that i want in the world!
setback
I figured it was inevitable, and indeed, it has now happened: putting in another plant, I punctured the sprinkler pipe with the pitchfork. It's tough here, operating without having any idea where that pipe is; I mean, no idea until I run into it with the shovel. I don't even know where all of the sprinkler heads are, so disguised are they when not actively sprinkling. Anyways, I hit the pipe the other day and put a couple holes in it. The sprinklers still work, but the section I holed shows rather less water pressure than would be ideal; besides, of course, the jet of water that somes out of the ground where the break is. I wouldn't have even realized that there was a problem, since now that the sprinker system is functional I don't pay it particularly close attention, but for the tunnel that the escaping water carved to the surface. Did I mention that the system operates under considerable pressure? I made some rudimentary repairs, so we can at least run things again, but further work is still needed.
Ben Franklin would not be proud
We've got the 'early to rise' bit down lately, but we haven't been doing so well with the 'early to bed' portion of old Ben's advice. Maybe that's why, though I haven't been sick for a while, I'm not doing particularly well in the wealth department; no one would accuse me of any notable wisdom either, I'm sure. I did experience a little good news wealth-wise when the govenrment (federal) gave me back everything I paid them in taxes this past spring. They call it 'qualifying for no-tax status,' which means they feel sorry for me. No complaints here, though: I'll take it!
In any case, today we plan to impliment operation early-to-bed tonight. Too bad the terrible humidity make it too hot and uncomfortable to sleep, almost!
licence to numptial
Yesterday Dan and i walked over to the Bedford Town Hall to apply for our marriage licence. The process was relatively quick and painless: blood test no longer required in the state of MA, although we did have to sign and certify that we were not siblings, parents, or grandparents of eachother. Cousins apparently can marry each other just fine, as can gay people, but since we're neither cousins nor gay, the process was rather run-of-the-mill and scarcely triumphant.
On the official document we had to fill out, Dan accidentally made a mistake on one of the letters of his mother's middle name, and the town clerk made him write the entire licence all over again. When he made a mistake on the second copy i was almost sure that this was a stalling technique and he didn't really want to marry me. But sure enough, third time's the charm and we finally got that document all properly filled out.
If Dan wasn't too happy about forking over all that personal information to "The Man" who's watching all of us from the Bedford water tower, he got paid back by snagging two vintage computers from the trash pile on the way out. Good thing we're only getting married once, otherwise our house would be filled with cream-colored remnants of early technology which, on a good day, can barely scrape by running sammy-the-worm-that-eats-bricks.
Onto Leah news, from now on i am going to put my weight update on the second page of my posts, so that people who don't care (90% of everyone) can skip the obsessive-compulsive insanity. We'll call it the w8upd8 for coolness. If only i could make that "up" an upward facing arrow sign, that would be AWESOME!
I went to a kickboxing class last night, because the gym was uber crowded with all the losers who start off the week with good intentions, and then taper off after Monday. This happens EVERY WEEK. Don't they learn they're not getting any skinnier this way? Anyway, i had no desire to fight my way through the crowds for a machine, so i headed upstairs to see what kind of classes were going on. The kickboxing was not so much of a cardio workout, as it was a kill-my-ass with hurty nonstop kicking workout, but even so i'm not even sore today. so next week i will not waste my time. Also, there were like a MILLION women in there who were skinnier and more musclier than me, which made me feel like CRAP, since for a second there i thought i was doing pretty good on my whole pre-wedding kill-myself thing. What are these women who are not even getting married doing with tanned arms and perfect abs??? Why do i suck so much at the thinness? Why am i so short?
Also making me feel like crap, i was talking to Oona on the phone about my w8 goal of 115, and she exclaimed "That's what i weigh!!" Oona, who is 5'6" is now 4 lbs lighter and 5 inches taller than me. My new weight goal is 110, and Oona is only allowed to eat cake and cookies until September. Also, i saw joanna the other day and she looks like she's been hitting the gym lately. Ladies, STOP! New rule: If your weight is less than mine on September 4th, this is an automatic disqualification from my wedding party. I am now taking applications for replacement fattys from off the street. The only qualification is that you must look massive in pink.
This morning i weighed 118.5 ... then 119.5 .... then 119.5 ... then 119, consecutively with about three seconds during tries. I plan on bying a new scale as a second opinion.
6am friends are the best kind
Interesting events on my run this morning:
While walking along the road to get to the bike path a big truck pulling a cargo bed slowed down next to me and the driver yelled out his window:
"Hey! Were you at the club last night"
"The Boston Sports Club?"
"Yeah! Remember, i talked to you about the song!"
"Oh yeah. Well, nice to see you again."
"Top of the morning to you!" And he drove away.
Great, now i'm that infamous girl in the weight room that dances to the songs so fanatically that i get stopped on the street by people... who are driving IN THEIR CARS.
About a half mile into my run i heard footsteps behind me as some tall man caught me up and started to pass. When he said "Good morning" i replied in my most sarcastic voice, "Oh sure, just go ahead and pass me!"
"Speed up and you can run with me!" he said, which is when i realized he was homosexual and therefore nice and trustworthy.
"Okay. Mostly i just trot along by myself and work on wedding-planning."
"Oh no, when's the funeral?"
"September 4th."
"Holy shit, that's soon!"
"I know! Why do you think i'm out here running at 6:30 in the morning?"
Suffice it to say that we had a nice run and a nice conversation, even though i almost died at the end from doing my five miles a good clip faster than i normally do. He was just visiting the area, so he told me he'd take me on a run through Central Park if i ever come to New York. YEAH RIGHT, like i'm ever going back there again.
At least i'm making friends!
w8upD8:
This morning the scale said 118, and then 118, and then 118.5 and after that it wouldn't move from 118.5 Apparently my jubilation at losing a pound weighs half a pound itself. I need a scale with more significant figures.... So that i can ponder MY Significant Figure. (OMG! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I slay me!)
lights, camera, marketing hype!
So the 11th annual X-Games have come and gone, making this post less than timely; but ESPN being what it is they're going to be showing the segments in reruns for the next three months, so my coments here will not be out of place. If you haven't read it, it's new to you! And what I want to comment on is, the practice common among ESPN X-Games announcers of terming the eXtreme competition 'action sports.'
Now, 'extreme sports' I can understand, or 'alternative sports'; I consider those two names, both of which have been used in the past, to acurately describe the events in question. I guess the marketing folks behind the X-Games wanted to make things a bit more mainstream, though, and felt that monikers that conjured up Vin Diesel and grunge were not ideally suited to getting through to the average American--or something. But it leads to the obvious problem, which I'm sure you see just as I did. 'Action sports'?! As opposed to the sports that don't involve sweaty men and women running around throwing and hitting and kicking things?
When I brought this up to Leah, though, she immediately saw what I didn't. What I failed to consider was, the X-Games are on ESPN; and compared to their usual round of poker, billiards and darts, skateboarding is very active indeed. So I guess I have to let em get away with it. In any case, it won't stop me watching the fun: it's good stuff! Not nearly as exciting as baseball, though.
early to rise: the revenge!
So I think I'm going crazy: I heard sprinklers this morning, early this morning; like at about four in the morning. I thought it might have been ours going off for some reason, maybe because of the power outage we had yesterday, so I went to turn em off. Only if it was sprinklers it wasn't ours, and when I went back to be I couldn't go to sleep. And I couldn't go to sleep for, like, an hour, and finally I gave up. At least I got some things done when I was awake. But I don't think it'll work in the long term.
In other news, I went to Fire and Ice for lunch today. Fire and Ice is a trendy chain where they save money on menu planning by just giving you a whole buffet of raw food that you pick out and give to the cooks who stand in the middle of the restaurant. Then they cook it on this giant skillet they have there. It was kind of fun, and my food ended up tasting good, but I was very nervous putting it together. I enjoy cooking myself, sure, but when I'm at out to eat I generally enjoy the efforts of the chef.
I plan on sleeping well tonight.
too hot to live
So last night at bedtime it was 85 degrees upstairs in our house. That is not comfortable for sleeping. Aside from leaving the air conditioner on downstairs (downstairs is where it lives) and pointing a fan up the stairs, all we could do in that situation was not go to sleep. So we stayed awake until we fell asleep, which I guess is the usual way of doing things, but in this case we proceded with the two steps in a somewhat more deliberate manner. We had some very intellectual discussion, I can assure you: it ranged from sociology to Sarte. Maybe that makes up for the fact that our evening's entertainment also included a Lifetime original movie.
Today, though, it rained like it's never rained before, so sleeping tonight shouldn't be nearly as bad.
stormy weather
It's amazing how much a change in temperature can affect our impression of the time of year. Yesterday was hot and melting and all the back-to-school sales seemed ridiculously out-of-place; after torrential downpours yesterday evening (absolutely torrential!) today was gray and cool, and I felt like I should be breaking out the backpack. Not that, you know, I'll be going to school or anything myself; but it takes more than a measly 5 years to shake that feeling!
All in all I like the cool better, and not only because I think I look cuter in a sweatshirt (to say nothing of those sweaters Leah bought me!). Sleeping, obviously, is much more pleasant under the current administration; ditto biking. And while it may signal the beginning of the end of the garden season--and even then the acorn squashes will be a while--but that just means it's time to start thinking about next year! There's a bulb catalogue around here somewheres...
Hiatus
Dan wants me to stop writing mean things and bad words on the blog, which cuts down my interesting share-able thoughts to just about nothing. So i'm going to take a bit of a hiatus from writing in the blog for the time being. I agree, it's wrong to say bad things about my customers, and about people in the gym and at starbucks, and it's also not good karma to call people a variety of names of which only some are appropriate for network television. It's just that, being so stressed out from the wedding coming up, and WAY too much work at work, and also not eating, i just can't motivate myself to spend time writing about nice things like the garden or the rain or the ambient temperature, as does my calmer better half. So for the sake sparing our delicate readership from implication in my sins, and for the general sake of my soul not going to HELL (one last bad word before i go!) i'm going to leave Dan in charge for a while, until i become a nicer and more internet-acceptable human being, which should be sometime after the wedding, or at least in the next five years or so.
As for the w8upD8s, y'all will have to satisfy yourselves by seeing me at the wedding, and hopefully whether i'm thin our disgustingly grotesque will be come as an exciting surprise! Three weeks to go!
cya,
leah
pretty weak
So like I said it got 'cold' here, in that the temperature went from wicked hot to pleasant and bearable, and what happens? I get sick. A cold, if you can believe that. Now, folks say it's the sudden change that causes problems rather than the absolute temperature which is attained, but I still feel like my infirmity is pretty shameful. Oh well, that was a couple days ago and I think I'm about better now. On the subject of relative temperature, while we're on it, I was chatting with a friend of mine from Mongolia* the other day, and he informed be that in Mongolia the winter nights get down, occasionally, to forty degrees below zero (farenheit, natch), and in the summer 100É is not unheard of. That's interesting enough on it's own (for me, anyways), but even more worth mentioning is the fact, apparent to anyone with more than a 3rd grade education in mathmatics and yet still startling if you haven't thought about it, that the midpoint between those two extremes of Mongolian temperature is thirty, which you'll note is still below freezing. We know a hundred is hot; what that means, then, is that forty below is colder than I could ever imagine. They live in yurts there, too...
*In actuality he is not from Mongolia but the good ol US of A; I actually went to high school with him. But he's been in Mongolia for some years, and was only back for a visit.
growing pains
So there are some things that are hard to grow, or hard to make grow, at least the way you want them to. Grass is an example. And then there are other things that grow on their own and all too readily. What I wonder is, why the complicated plants are the ones we want, while those that are entirely self-sufficient are deemed unacceptable and indeed deserving of extermination? It seems like someone put the puritans in charge here. As you probably guessed, these thoughts were motivated by me spending a good portion of the afternoon today weeding the lawn, where all of a sudden a large number of ferocious predatory plants has begun attacking my poor defenseless grasses. I don't know if I just let things slip, or if they really did just all spring up in a short space of time: I hadn't been weeding before, but that's because I never saw any weeds! I worked hard today though, and watered grass and weeds alike with much sweat of my brow, and I did about a quarter of the whole lawn. The weeds aren't so bad, are they?
And speaking of things that grow out of control, we have this Russian Sage stuff in our side yard, and I guess it likes it there, because it is as you would say thriving. Which is fine I guess, since apparently somebody missed one and it's somehow not a weed. It has purple flowers. It pretty much took over the whole bed that it's in by the expedient of sending out long roots underground and then springing them up suddenly as new plants. That's all well and good, but this morning I noticed a disturbing escalation in the sage's spread: it sent a root down through the basement foundation and sprung a new plant right out of the wall! That doesn't seem right, somehow. If nothing else it demonstrates to us in graphic detail why our basement floor gets wet when it rains.
Unrelated: boing boing brings the world news of the machinama talk show This Spartan Life, the coolest new internet phenomenon of the week. Check it out.
just pathetic
The Red Sox are out on the road, so Fenway Park is free for other uses; and the use to which it is being put this eveing is, we find, a Rolling Stones concert. Now I don't know too much about the Rolling Stones, and I confess I haven't heard any of the music that made them so famous in their heyday (that 'Satisfaction' excepted, of course); but I do know that they are, now, what you could describe as past their prime. I saw Mick and Keith on the tv the other day and they looked like nothing more than those egyptian mummies, when you take em out of their sarcophogi and unwrap em and all. Kind of baggy and leathery, if you know what I mean. I guess too much exposure to the sun can take it's toll; that, and all the heroin.
Worse than that, though--since plenty of old people look leathery these days, especially in Florida--is the clothes. Now, the best (or at least the most charitable) way to describe the Stones in these days would be 'elder statesmen of rock and roll'; I have to say, guys, that the classic rocker garb of your youth is no longer particularly becoming or even, um, palatable. Silk though the rags around their heads may be, they still appear ill on those 97-year-old visages. And I'm all for people continuing to play music into advanced age--so much the better, indeed, even in those musicians who disdain anything with the slightest appearance of artistic growth and development--but lose the sixties outfits, please. The rest of us are in the twenty-first century now: it's just you who're in your sixties. And it's not a good look.
cars troubles
It's clich» to complain about traffic, but man are there too many cars in the world. We were driving home from an appointment this evening, and it was just ridiculous. You may say it's impossible to get home while moving at an average speed of 0 miles per hour, but somehow we managed it. While we're complaining about the automotive world, here's another thing: remember when I posted about gas prices last summer. $2.19?! Ooh, that's sooo high!! Well guess what: I filled up today at $2.67. The apocolypse is upon us.
Ithaca is gorges!
For a while my most-commented-upon article of clothing was my Pom-pom shirt, but I believe it has now been eclipsed by a shirt my brother gave me, featuring the classic 'Ithaca is gorges' slogan. It may be because I've been wearing it more these days, or it may be that Homestar Runner is fading in popularity; or maybe it's just that everybody has a soft spot in their heart for the best little haven of socialism in upstate New York. Everyone who's been there, that is. No one else has any idea what the shirt, the slogan or the city is all about.
The comment I got today came at the Farmers Market, which is apropriate. The Lexington Farmers Market, even, which was instituted this year; and what a pleasant institution it is! There should be Farmers Markets every night of the week, for two reasons. One, what a great thing to get fresh organic food at a human price--cheaper, indeed, then the stale chemical produce from the grocery store; two, that way I wouldn't have to remember which day of the week is market day and consequently miss most of em. I didn't so much remember today as I did happen to drive by, and then stop the car. Got me some arugala. Good times.
poor old Fenway
They should be playing baseball at Fenway now, but the Rolling Stones tore up the field so much they had to push back the game an hour. The poor groundskeepers have been working around the clock for who knows how many days since those 'rock-n-roll' barbarians tromped around the place a couple days ago, kicking up divots and whatnot, but they still didn't manage to get things in order; it's thought that the additional time will be sufficient to return the field to a playable condition. Well, if it is or not, they still have to go: this is already the start of 14 games in 14 days!
Allowing ancient rockers to mess up the grass isn't the only damage that the current Sox management are doing to Fenway and baseball in Boston, neither. The latest story is that they're working on getting the old park on the Fens made a recognized historic site, which means they'd get tax breaks for 'improving' it. What?! What makes Fenway historic is it's very uncomfortableness and unsuitability for a modern game of baseball. Updating it, adding seats all over the place, modernizing the concourses--those don't preserve the historic spirit of the park at all, beyond the spirit of wringing the maximum amount of money out of the fans. No, they can't have it both ways: either Fenway is historical, in which case they should get out of there, turn the poor old girl into a museum, and build a beautiful modern park; or it's not, and the owners are just too cheap to put up a new stadium when they have one where they can get away with charging $21 for bleacher seats and sell out every single game. The first option is what I'd like to see; the second is the truth of the situation here.
blowing hot and cold
A couple weeks ago, life was simple. It was really hot during the day, so we closed the windows and shades; then, at night, we opened everything up as much as we could to try and get some relief. No more! Now it's still hot during the day, so windows need to be closed; then it gets cool in the evenings so we can open em; then at night it gets so cold the need to be closed so we can stay warm. It's hard to keep up with. I blame the wide temperature ranges, together with the very welcome drop in humidity (this evening, though, is not a part of that drop) for the fact that all the skin is falling off the tips of my fingers. It's not pleasant, really.
Still, we got nothing on weather compared to those poor folks in Louisianna and Mississippi. Hurricanes can be fun up here, but when you're looking at your house falling down you can't get the same thrill out of the whole business. News reporters don't have that problem though, nor anchors: their thrill and delight at the breaking news excitement is obvious.
So, I haven't been posting so much lately, but I have a good excuse: the wedding is now in less than a week (like, a week from today, but in the afternoon). After that's over with, though, you'll see great posts back again, with a vengeance. And it won't be as much weather stuff, neither. Or maybe it wil be. Maybe it'll be even more! We shall see.
all mod cons
We have a fancy underground sprinkler system here, of which I have spoken previously. One of the fanciest features it offers is its programability: you can set it to go on at preselected times on the days of your choosing. Which is very nice, except that as it isn't coupled with a rain sensor of any kind, I feel the need, if I hear even the slightest sound of rain during the night, to leap up and rush downstairs and turn it off, so it doesn't start sprinkling on already wet grass or, even worse, while it's actually raining. Of course this happens with sufficient frequency that I begin to figure I'd be better off turning the thing on manually in the morning, if you add up the sleep I'd gain with each method; but I have to feel that that just wouldn't be as modern. The future is here, today! I'd be even happier if the whole thing were computer controlled; one day, perhaps.
I feel I should mention something about why I don't want to be watering my grass in the rain. As you might imagined, my natural instinct for conservation has something to do with it, as does my frugality with the water budget, but those aren't the key elements by any means. No, what's really important is that I always thought folks running their sprinklers in the rain looked really dumb, and I want to make sure I'm never one of those people. Yes, I care about appearances that much.
Leah's friend Oona is here staying with us, from today until the wedding, in which she will server as the Maid of Honor. Her presence has already brightened up our lives lots!
ingredients only
I was in Whole Foods yesterday to buy snow peas, and the woman behind me in line was there with her three kids and her babysitter. She sent the kids to wait outside with the sitter while she unloaded her cart; she was getting two kinds of premade pizza and some packaged mashed potatoes. Something else too, but I forget what. You'd think what with the full time professional help somebody in that operation could find the time to cook some real food, but I guess not.
And it's not just rich and/or alternative types who have given up cooking for reheating. Go to the regular old grocery store, and fully nine-tenths of the food there is premade stuff; even the produce section is stocked with pre-mixed salads and pre-cut fruit. Besides the fact that it's what most people are looking for, the supermarkets have good reason to fill up with prepared food: how else would they fill all those cavernous shelves?! In any case, I do my part to buck the trend. All that prepared food can't be healthy; also, since I have neither kids nor a job these days I have less excuse than anyone else for not making my own meals. Good thing cooking is so much fun!