Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Waiting on the internet...

Oh glorious day on which Paris Hilton was released from the confines of her prison! This momentous occasion evokes memories of Nelson Mandela’s freedom from the South African prison where he was so unjustly incarcerated… those who fight for equality and justice shall prevail – the bars of imprisonment are merely temporary roadblocks on the highway to, uh… I AM making the right comparisons here, aren’t I? Paris Hilton and Nelson Mandela? All kinds of similarities, right? I mean, I’m just assuming, based on the media attention…

So my internet connection is down right now… all I can do is type this up in Word (which is what I usually do anyway) and hopefully get a chance to post it later on. I hate it when I have no internet connection – I feel so cut off from the world. How did we ever survive without the internet? And cell phones? I mean, really – we used to get all of our news from actual newspapers and the six o’clock newscast. When we wanted to talk to people, we had to call them up on telephones, or send them written messages in envelopes, or go meet them face-to-face. Back when I was a kid and we moved around a lot, I used to write to my friends on PAPER… I had to pick up an actual PEN and WRITE things. Can you imagine the hand cramps?? I can only assume that if I’d had email and IM and a phone with text messaging capabilities that I might have stayed in closer touch with some of my childhood friends. It seems much simpler now to maintain relationships with people who are thousands of miles away…

Take Eric for instance – he’s all the way up there in Chicago, and yet we’re able to send Yankee voodoo messages back and forth during games. (Yankee voodoo, which, by the way, seems to be defective at the moment…) How would we ever pull that off if we were forced to send each message through the mail? Yankee voodoo postcards would by flying through the post office, slowing down the sorting process of all those bills and magazines and birthday cards… and even then, there’d be no guarantee that the mail would be delivered in time to change the course of Yankee history…

Okay, since I’ve started writing this, I have TWICE zoned out and attempted to check my email, even though I KNOW the internet is down. I think it’s just a reflex…

So Rick and I have embarked upon a new eating and working out plan. We try to be as good as possible about what we eat Monday through Friday, and then allow ourselves to “cheat” occasionally on weekends. I recently read that Jessica Alba eats this way. And, well, Jessica Alba is hot… she’s obviously doing something right. So I’m willing to try whatever plan she thinks is best. We’ve also, as I’ve mentioned a couple times, been walking about two or two and half miles around the neighborhood a few times a week. For me, this is in addition to whatever workout I tackle in the afternoon. And all our hard work is starting to pay off – since we got back from Hawaii, I’ve lost about eight pounds, and Rick has lost about six. Yeah, that’s right, Jessica Alba – I am SO gonna give you a run for your money. They’re gonna cast ME in the next Fantastic Four movie so I can wear that spandex bodysuit… uh… maybe… well, probably not…

What surprises me about eating right is how easy it is once you get used to it. Once you get rid of that “bad food, good food” mentality and realize it’s OKAY to eat what you want in moderation, everything falls into place. For instance, we’ve made Saturday night our “ice cream” night. And none of that light, sugar-free, fat-free crap. No, we head down to Ben and Jerry’s or Cold Stone Creamery and get a scoop of the REAL stuff. And then that’s it for the rest of the week. But since we KNOW we won’t be depriving ourselves forever, it’s simple to forgo the ice cream the rest of the week. I’ve never understood the “diets” that cut out entire food groups or relegate the dieter to a life of fat-free cupcakes. Personally, I could NEVER stick with a food plan like that forever… and the only way to take weight off and KEEP it off is to make permanent changes. I’d never be able to permanently restrict my carbs, for instance… I don’t know how people can do those low-carb diets. If I tried that, I’d be craving cake so badly I’d dive head-first into a Krispy Kreme at some point…

And on that note, I must go prepare some black bean mango salsa for tonight’s dinner. It needs to sit in the fridge for a few hours so all the flavors can intertwine and mingle… like a big black bean mango salsa party… (hey, black bean, have you met mango? Garlic, let me introduce you to red pepper… hey, you guys wanna play Twister?) Yes, I know -- it IS strange to give your dinner a voice… :)

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