In which there’s a whole new type of Polaroid in my collection!
This camera takes a kind of film that is no longer being made, the remainder of which is all expired and which costs between $2 and $7 per shot.
So naturally, I shot an entire pack of it in the bar last night.
In which Charlie just ups and gives me a whole entire box of old cameras.
So this happened yesterday:
That’s four Polaroids! And a Kodak! And three packs of Spectra! OMFG!
In which I accidentally buy a Kindle Fire.
I did not need a new device. My Kindle 3 (the model now known as the “Kindle Keyboard”) isn’t even a year old yet, and it works just fine. After I sprung (sprang?) for the expensive but elegant and cleverly-designed OEM leather cover with the built-in light, I could even read in the dark. It’s eminently portable, wireless, holds 1500 books, and I’d hacked it to display custom screen savers. It did not need to be replaced.
It’s just that I have a job now, and therefore there was money in my account on the day my clicking finger went ahead and decided for me. And now I have the Kindle Fire!
The Fire is a seriously great deal for two hundred bucks. The hardware is really nice for such a low price point — I hear they’re being sold at a loss (Amazon’s favorite market-cornering trick, see: the entire ebook industry). The device is fast, responsive, and has very nice screen resolution. It’s many, many times more elegant than that knock-off tablet I had briefly last year.
In which I tell you all about my avoidance of refined carbohydrates.
As you may remember, I went on a traditional low-calorie, low-fat, semi-starvation diet on January 5th. I did this because I was so fat I could barely cut my own toenails and I felt uncomfortable in my own body. I was twenty pounds shy of obesity, and at the rate I was gaining I’d have been clinically obese in a year or two.
I lost both weight – mostly water, at first – and inches for about five weeks. The experience, after the third or fourth week, was nothing short of miserable (save the pride I felt in my accomplishment): near the end of the diet I was obsessed with food and calories, and I literally spent most of my time planning my next meal.
By the end of the diet, my body was buying and consuming entire bags of potato chips without my consent. I was hungry all the time.
Then I read Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease, more or less by accident (someone must have recommended it to me, because I found the sample on my Kindle). It was astonishing, this book. Game-changing. Mind-blowing. It challenged every single thing I knew about diet and weight loss, and it did it with actual science. I decided that although a lot of the author’s conclusions were, by his own admission, anecdotal or theoretical at best, and needed more studies, I could do some experiments in my own lab: my body.
Continue reading The no-refined-carbs thing: an update on the experiment.
In which I may be talkin’ shit about the iPad, but I still totally want one.
There are these awesome people I’m friends with on Twitter. Right now they’re all pissed off at me because I don’t agree with them that the iPad is the Bestest Thing Evar And Proof That Apple is Ascendant In All Ways, and I have to quit discussing it with them or they’ll all quit following me. One of them’s pissed because I called him an Apple fanboi, and another told me that the iPad is a “cultural phenomenon.”
Well, the iPad is not a cultural phenomenon. It’s a boutique social networking device for university-educated white people who can’t be arsed to carry their 17″ laptops all the way to the couch so they can check their Facebook during True Blood.
In which I fly! To Seattle! On a plane!
Last week I went to Seattle to see my beloved Satguru, Amma, properly known as Sri Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi.
While I was there I enjoyed a lovely retreat, learned a new meditation technique, suffered a vicious spring cold, had a series of trippy spiritual revelations, and ate a lot of refined carbohydrates.
My friend Toni was slated to go with me and drive us to Seattle, but for some reason I kept blowing off making our reservations for the retreat and the hotel. Two weeks before Amma’s visit, she called to say that had to have a minor surgery that week and wouldn’t be able to go. Suddenly we not only didn’t have reservations, but I didn’t have transportation either.
And then things got awesome. Continue reading Om Sri GuruBhyo NamaH Hari OM
In which I share some of my research about diet and overweight. It turns out dietary fat is fine; it’s the refined carbohydrates – white flour, white sugar – and the HFCS that are fucking killing you and making all those children fat and sedentary.
On January 5th, I started a weight-loss contest with a group of online friends. I weighed 160 pounds. I’m 5’4″ tall, so my ideal weight range is 122 – 150 lbs. I was officially overweight. My gut stuck out farther than my boobs, I was shaped like an old person, and I was tired and lazy.
I tracked my caloric intake, and pretended to be enthusiastic about exercise even though I’ve never particularly liked it. I hit the dietary target of 20% protein, 30% fat, and 50% carbohydrates pretty regularly, although if you’re a vegetarian on a calorie-restricted, low-fat diet it’s really hard to get enough protein.
I limited my fat intake brutally. I drank fat-free milk, bought low-fat cottage cheese and yogurt, cooked with spray oil, ate lots of beans and legumes, and had huge salads just like they tell us to. After all, “everybody knows” that to lose weight, one must restrict calories and exercise more. And that’s what I did.
The only problem is that, as logical as they seem, both of those medical theories have been disproven in study after study. Low-fat diets do not lower disease risk or help in weight loss. Exercise does not help with weight loss because it universally increases hunger, in study after study, making semi-starvation diets impossible to stick to and any weight loss achieved temporary and useless.
And you don’t know that these low-fat/exercise theories of health have been overturned because 1.) the AMA just, you know, hasn’t gotten around to admitting that they accidentally backed the wrong theories for seventy years; 2.) giant corporations who sell tons of low-fat foods don’t want you to know about it; and 3.) the media tends to be conservative about diet recommendations that don’t make their advertisers money.
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I learned all that, I successfully followed my semi-starvation diet for eight weeks before I totally fucking lost control of it and found myself eating an entire bag of potato chips without conscious thought and arriving at Mexican restaurants before I even knew I’d decided to go out to eat. I’d lost 14 pounds, but found myself hungry all the time and obsessed with food. Continue reading It’s not you. It’s the food.
In which I went out to eat.
I went to my CCNA class today. It’s been on Tuesdays at 1:30 for two terms now, but today there was an Intro to ColdFusion class in the room (do people still use ColdFusion?) and my instructor wasn’t in his office.
So naturally I went to eat instead.
I ordered cheese enchiladas with rice and beans (even though I no longer eat the rice), but when the meal arrived there was shredded chicken meat in those enchiladas, so I politely sent it back.
The cook just pulled the enchiladas off and replaced them, so five bites into my new meal I got a mouthful of the chicken that was more or less all over the plate. (I haven’t had chicken meat in my mouth in twenty-odd years. I really don’t like it.)
So I ate one enchilada – carefully checking each bite for stray chicken – and some of the beans, and then lost my interest in the meal altogether. It was too chicken-y and I guess I wasn’t that hungry after all. The waitress picked up the plate, and probably noticed the pile of chicken I’d assembled.
When she brought me my check, though, she also brought me a complimentary dessert. Which I also didn’t want to eat, because it was nothing but refined carbohydrates and I’m not eating refined carbohydrates these days. (I ate a portion of it anyway, because it had been an apology and I didn’t want to be a bitch.) (I also left her a 49% tip, because it wasn’t her fault.)
Most complicated meal EVAR. No meat, no refined carbs. If I keep accumulating trendy eating disorders, I’ll never be able to eat in a restaurant again.
In which this is a quick primer for all y’all who are innarested in packing your own lunches all healthy and cute-style.
Matro said this, so I’m saying this:
Bento boxes are nothing more than lunch boxes that happen to be from Japan, so you can put non-Japanese food into them if you want (and I do all the time). They are compact, visually appealing, and reusable. They have a variety of accessories, including chopsticks, fork and spoon sets, sauce bottles, food cups, picks, food dividers, carrying bags, and more.
