Fiber, Fiber And More Fiber

Hi all.

No new job yet. Still working on that.

I'm currently trying to survive working nights – it's amazing how much my internal clock despises this. I just can't get into the swing of it.

This is probably due to the fact that after working 11:00pm til 7:00am, I'm still expected to be back online by late morning.

I'm rocking four hours of sleep, at best. Thankfully, this won't last much longer, then some other poor idiot gets their turn. But that's a story for another day.

Aside from feeling like shit due to lack of sleep, I've felt like shit in general for the better part of two years now, which I've attributed to having gained 20 pounds.

A note to my relatives reading this – yes, I know. You don't think I need to lose weight. I was too skinny before. Appreciated, but it doesn't help the psyche, especially when I can't get my Irish-potato-picking-line-backer shoulders into that knockout dress hubby bought for me six years ago.

Sorry Mom..... you know I love you :-)

Anyway, I found another diet that sounded reasonable and promising. Eating healthier might make me feel better, after all.

I haven't gotten all the way through the diet book part yet, but I can see it involves a buttload (HA!) of fiber, in the form of oats, groats, insane amounts of veggie, and more oats. Apparently I'm expected to poop out all the excess fat.

Yes, I know, it's cleansing. I'm down with the oats. I even like oatmeal. I'm just a little nervous about spending that much time in the toilet.

The main gist of the book appears, so far, to be: cut the crap out of your diet (not literally, as you will be doing a lot of this), eat fresh things, lots of fiber, exercise, and watch meal portions. Duh.

Okay, so the recipe book does have some good info. I've made a few of the dinners, the beef stew and the chicken cassoulet, and they're not bad. Mostly, they just need some bang. Like extra garlic and spices. Blair's Death Sauce is always helpful. Besides, it's all natural – that's what we're going for, right? It's got no calories and no fat. WIN ! Just don't use more than four drops. Hubby refers to it as Wow-wow Sauce (thanks Mr. Pratchett).

I also found most of these recipes make enough for at least eight people, and I need to cut it in half, or I've got leftovers for a month.

The exercise part is difficult to work in due to my current schedule. I'm hoping once I'm off working nights, my daughter and I can go running again.

I'm thinking though.....maybe I should get Leonidas a leash and walk him. Heh. He needs a bit of exercise, he's looking a bit tubby:

I've Got A Rocket

I've been a Goldfrapp fan since Black Cherry. Their new cd reminds me of every 80's pop song I heard during my teens and twenties.

But in a good way.

Quite frankly, it's a cool slice of awesomeness.

This is the video for the track Rocket. I just love the way Alison Goldfrapp keeps looking over the guy in duct tape, and making those crazy eyes.

Priceless.




You can go to the website here.

It's pretty cool.

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand.

Atlas Shrugged.

Go read it.

Bits O' Things

I've got a few posts half-written: some bits about Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street, an opinion on the liberal nonsense we see in our neck of the woods, as well as something about a local celebrity.

I'd like to say it's coming, but right now it's not even breathing heavy.

Soon though.

I'm finding resume writing to be a bit more of a challenge than I originally thought. This, mostly due to the fact that I haven't written one in ten years. I've just slid into new positions with each company merger.

It also doesn't help that once I finally decided to give it a go, work cranked up the volume, and gave me the "impossible project". It's much like being thrown into a pool of water, filled with sharks, and not knowing how to swim.

You would think the goal would be to simply survive and get out of the pool, but then you're told you're actually going to be tested on your high-dive.

Carded And Crabby

Friday night I stopped at the wine store. Exhausted, I waited patiently in line while the gentleman in front of me figured out how to swipe his debit card at the check out.

After driving back to Pennsylvania from the I-78 circle of hell, all I wanted was to get some wine, hit the grocery store, then go home.

I put my purchases on the counter, the clerk gives me an odd look, then squeaks out: “Ooooooh sorry! Can I see your driver's license pleeeeez?”

“You cannot be serious,” I groaned, while digging back into my bag.

I start wondering if she's just incapable of recognizing someone who's obviously 20 years over the legal age; then I figure the store must've had trouble with young'uns scoring booze, so now they're gone into reactionary mode, carding everyone, including 80 year old grandmothers.

I hand her the license, and then the confusion hits her face. I could tell she's trying to do the math in head and it's not working out the way she expected. She looks at me, then the license, then back again.

“Ummmm.....sorry about that. We have to card everyone under thirty years old. Uh, you really don't look your age.”

“Right. So, can I get a box for those bottles?”


Meh. There was a time when I thought it was great to get carded. Now, not so much.

Hubby and I were discussing this, and came to the conclusion that there's three life stages for getting carded.

First stage. Just after the 21st birthday. You hope the clerk asks for your license so you can proudly show you've reached that magical age.

Second stage. Anywhere from thirty to forty years old. You get carded and think, “Yaaah! I still got it!”.

Third stage. After forty. You haven't been carded in years. You forget it's even relevant to the checkout process at the wine store. When it does happen, it's just another three minutes of your life you'll never get back.

Hmmm? What's that brittle, crunching sound?

Yep.....it must be the crustiness taking hold.

Slow

Blogging's been a bit slow this week. Sorry. I love writing, but this week I've loved sleep a bit more.

Seems no matter what time I leave for work in the morning, I still get there around the same time. I-78 is like a slow intestine that only moves once every morning. This is extremely frustrating, as it took me two hours to get to work on Monday.

I'm playing around with leaving earlier and earlier, hoping that if I time things right, I'll hit it just as the highway BM is heaving forward, and maybe - just maybe, can get to work in under an hour.

Along with the exhausting commute, I put in twelve hours on Saturday in support of a project. It's amazing how that can throw off your weekly schedule – and sleep. So I've been hitting the pillow around 8pm every evening, leaving me only two hours to get the dinner made, the teenager crisis worked out, and the rest of the home life straightened.

So, yeah. I've poked around the interwebz locally, and was surprised to find there are jobs. I've updated the resume and plan to get that out there asap.

In other news, I'm shocked to say that most of the snow is actually gone, with the exception of the dirt-glaciers surrounding the driveway. It was so nice this past week, I managed to get Wulfgar, The Gently Used Volvo cleaned up. That lasted til I got home from the car wash. Even though it wasn't raining, there's been so much snow melt that the roads are all mucky anyway.

Oh well. I'll take this over twenty inches of snow any day.

What A Gorgeous Day!

Had the day off, and went hiking on the trails behind the house.

There's still a considerable amount of snow, but many areas were starting to clear.

Saw lots of deer trails, both muddy and snowy.

Click to enlarge:
















Oddly, we found a midden heap we never knew about. After poking around on the internet, it looks like most of these bottles are from the early 1900's. Too bad the jam jar is broken...according to the interwebz, it could be as old as 1895.

Spring

I actually saw a rainbow on my way to work yesterday.

A freakin RAINBOW, people!!

So it appears Spring may be on the horizon. Our local wacky weatherman says we'll see up to 50-something degrees this weekend, and the worst might be over.

Here in Pennsylvania, when we go straight from extremely bitter cold and snowy, to warm and sunny, it lasts til the end of April, then we get one last storm that dumps six inches of snow on us. Like Mother Nature throwing us the finger.

Temperatures have been warmer this week, and most places are seeing a lot of snow melt. Our backyard is melting, and has maybe four inches of snow left (down from twenty), but the glaciers along the sides of our driveway may be here til May. They're still at least four feet in height.

In other news, I took my daughter to the soccer sign up at the local high school on Tuesday. This is the school she'll attend next year.

I don't go into "that town" much, and I have to admit, I've never been to that school at night before. I knew it was in a crappy section of town, but I was woefully unprepared to see drug deals going down just outside the parking area.

Around the school itself, there were several bombed-out crack houses. Boarded up windows, garbage in the yards, shady types floating around. The works.

This isn't friggin Philly or NY. It's just a small town that's been overloaded with transient people from the city. Back in the 70's and 80's, people moved from NY, NJ and Philly to the Poconos - many looking for a better life and lower taxes, but many others came to sell drugs, real estate scams, and hide from the police.

It's Bronx-lite.

In light of those facts, along with the general lousy reputation and lack of funding for this particular school, we've been forced to look at other schools.

We'll have to cut back and really budget our money, but if it means she'll be better prepared for college and considerably safer - it's worth it.

Mr. Somebody Needs A Slap

Our school district has the organizational skills of a dead squid.

Most send home information about school sports, and tell us important things like when practice starts, where it's held, if equipment is needed, and if a physical is needed.

Not our school district. Instead, they have a fancy-schmancy, new electronic dialer system that calls us at 3:00am with a recorded message anytime there's a school closing. Or it calls during dinner to tell us there's a bake sale on Friday.

Sports tryouts? PTA meetings? Nope. Nada. Nothing.

Instead, we rely on the teenager grapevine approach:

“Mooooom!” whines the teenager living in our household, “I need to get a physical by next week so I can play soccer.”

“I thought you were going to get all the information first, so we could talk about it,” I reminded her.

“But I just found out tryouts are next week!”

“Okay. So what time is soccer practice over?” I asked.

“I don't know,” says child.

“Is there a sports bus that takes the kids home afterwards?”

“I don't know.”

“Who is the coach? I'll just call him.”

“I don't know.”

“How do you know tryouts are next week?”

“My friends told me.”

“Who told them?”

“Somebody.”

“Okay, so Mr. Somebody came to them in a vision and told them of the impending tryouts? Really? You're not seriously telling me that no one knows when and where practice is, who the coach is, and how long it will be?”

Teenager stomps off.

Until recently, I had a very flexible work schedule. During that time, I encouraged my daughter to do sports or other extra curricular activity. She couldn't have been bothered.

Now that I have ZERO job flexibility, and work an hour away, playing school soccer has become a moral imperative.

So.

To sum up: My job stinks like an old gym sock, and now I've got a pissed off teenager too.

I really need to play the lottery more often.

And Also...

Yay! Another blizzard!

Last night we got about six inches. That's on top of the ten left over from the storm two weeks ago.

There's two large glaciers at the end of the driveway.

So, to my mother, who is visiting her brother and sister in Hawaii right now - you got out of Dodge just in time!!