Take My Temperature, Please

I think I must be sick. Sparkpeople sent me an e-mail today about a challenge they're running in the month of May - a "Sweatsuit to Swimsuit Bootcamp" challenge, to be precise. Basically it's an exercise challenge. I'll be doing 30 minutes of cardio exercise five days a week, of my choosing, and then SEVEN days a week, I'll be doing short videos that they'll have posted on their website. The challenge is designed to jump start my diet and tone me up in time for swimsuit season.

Well, first of all, I will NOT be wearing a swimsuit any time soon. I want that down for the record.

But I liked the idea of seeing a larger drop on the scale by the end of May, and I liked the idea of seeing my measurements go down even more. So, even though I HATE exercising, I signed up.

I'm going to be much more fit by the end of May, that's for sure. :)

This challenge just seemed to be coming at the exact right time for me. The scale is not going down as fast as I would like at all. I've been doing this for something like 7 weeks now? And I haven't even lost 10 pounds. I'm not too disappointed, because I have lost some weight, and more importantly, I can feel a difference in my body (and I can see the difference in the numbers the tape measure is showing me, especially in my waist). But I'd like to get that number down, damn it. :)

So. I'll be riding the exercise bike, riding a real bike or walking five days a week. I'll be doing short exercise videos (using a resistance band, which I need to buy) seven days a week. And I'll be weighing in and measuring on May 30th, to see how I did. I'll let you know.

Pornographic Banana

Today at lunch, I picked up a banana for an afternoon snack - only this thing is HUGE. Easily big enough to be two afternoon snacks. When I showed it to Jamie, he called it a pornographic banana. He told me to blog about it. So here you go.

I wonder how many hits I'll get with people searching for dirty banana fetish pictures? Ick. I shudder to think.

Did someone say pornographic banana?

***

So, I have recently discovered online comics! It seems like a weird thing for me to discover and actually enjoy, but I have been loving them! First I linked to Girls with Slingshots, which I fell in love with, so Jen linked me to Questionable Content, which I also loved. And then I found Girl Genius, and had a blast reading that one - it's full of adventure and has a plucky heroine, and it's just amazing, really. I caught up with that one recently, and now I'm sad that I don't have any more to read. Sigh. I guess I need to find a new comic to catch up to now.

***

I'm just about to finish the book I'm reading - "Nineteen Minutes," by Jodi Picoult, so I went online and reserved my next book with the library. Next up to be read is "The Road," by Carmac McCarthy, who it turns out also wrote "No Country for Old Men." I liked that movie a lot, so I'm interested in reading "The Road." I love finding new books to, well, love.

***

And now I'm out of things to talk about, I think. Talk to you next time! And let me know if you check out any of those comics (or if you know any others I should read).

***

Nine and a half inches of banana, baby. Oh yeah. :P

Warning: Super Long Movie Post Ahead

I watched three more Best Picture winners over the last week! I'm speeding through this list, which is good, but I'm kind of sad, because it won't be long before I'll be done with this! It's been a lot of fun watching all of these movies, it really has.

Anyway, on to the movies I've seen lately!

We'll go in the order I watched them. First up:
Gentleman's Agreement
1947
Gregory Peck
Dorothy McGuire

It was kind of odd watching this movie, because I don't think the subject matter is all that relevant today. Maybe I'm wrong, and if I am, you can tell me (I tend to live in my own little world sometimes, and my world doesn't always resemble the real world much). This movie is about a reporter (played by Gregory Peck) who goes undercover in New York City as a Jew, to blow the lid off anti-semitism.

Is that still relevant? It would never occur to me that people were still anti-semitic, but I also know how horrible people can be, so maybe they are, and I just don't know.

Anyway, he tells everyone he is Jewish, and feels the effects of it. His kid gets beaten up, he is denied jobs and apartments based on it, and is basically just made way more away of how horrible people can be. And this includes his fiance, who is in on the story, but who still manages to say and do things that come off as bigoted. Throughout the movie, I actually thought he was with the wrong woman - why marry the woman who has to tell herself to be open and not go along with everyone else on this issue, when there is a beautiful woman at the magazine he is working for, who is NOT in on the secret, and couldn't care less that he's supposedly Jewish? But no, he sticks with the other woman instead. It's his fiance who explains the title of the movie - a "Gentleman's Agreement," in which people who don't agree with the anti-semitism just stand back, go along and ignore it, instead of speaking up about it.

It was a good movie - I enjoyed it. I gave it 4 stars out of 5. It made you think, and made me hope that this problem really is in the past.

Up next:
The Greatest Show on Earth
1952
Charlton Heston
Betty Hutton
Jimmy Stewart
Dorothy Lamour
Cornel Wilde

This was a really entertaining movie. It followed the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey circus as it traveled the country putting on shows for the masses. Brad (Charlton Heston) is the manager of the circus, Holly (Betty Hutton) is a trapeze artist who is in a relationship with Brad (but he's more in love with the show than he is with her), The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde) is a famous trapeze artist who swoops in and takes the center ring away from Betty's character, and lots of other characters fill out the cast.

The main story lines in this little drama are a love triangle between Brad, Holly and Sebastian, and oh yeah - Jimmy Stewart plays a clown named Buttons, who never takes off his face paint. Why? Because he's a doctor who is on the run from the law - he's wanted for murder.

Along the way, Brad puts an end to a cheating scheme put on by one of the midway booths, which puts him under fire by the thug behind the crooked guy. This leads to a hold-up of the train carrying the take from the shows, and also leads to a train wreck.

All in all, this was a very entertaining movie, but it could have been a lot shorter - if you took the scenes that just showed the circus acts out of the movie, it would be probably an hour shorter.

Oh, and probably no one reading this has ever watched a Road movie (Road to Singapore, for example), but those movies starred Dorothy Lamour (a secondary character in this movie), Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. They must have shot them at about the same time as this movie, because in one scene where Dorothy is singing, they scan the crowd to show Bing and Bob sitting there eating popcorn and watching her sing. Ha! I think that was my favorite part of the whole movie. I love the Road movies.

I gave this one 4 out of 5 stars.

Last but not least is my favorite of the three:
Marty
1955
Ernest Borgnine
Betsy Blair

I LOVED this movie. And why wouldn't I? It's a romance! Ernest Borgnine plays the title character, a 34 year old Italian man who still lives at home with his mother. His younger siblings have all married and are having kids of their own, and Marty is still single and taking all kinds of heat from the women in the neighborhood because of it.

But he doesn't want to be single! He wants to find love! But he has been shot down and had his feelings hurt so many times that he's given up hope.

Enter a Saturday night, which he plans on spending at home alone, until his Mother convinces him to go out to a dance club. She wants him to find a woman, too! So out he goes, with his single friend.

They get to the club, and they're just standing around watching people dance. Marty asks one woman to dance, but gets shot down. But then it starts to get interesting. A woman comes in with her sister and two men. Her name is Clara. She's a 29 year old school teacher, who is single and has been set up on a date with her sister's husband's friend. One problem - the friend is a sleaze.

Unhappy with the "dog" he had been set up with, this friends proceeds to approach Marty and offer him $5 if he'll take this dog off his hands and escort her home, leaving the sleaze free to go off with some other woman he's seen there. Oy. Marty, being a gentleman, is offended by this man's offer, and tells him no. But his interest is piqued, and he watches as this guy approaches another man, who accepts the $5. But Clara rejects the invitation to have a strange man take her home, and is left alone.

And what do you know, Marty approaches Clara and starts to talk to her, and they actually hit it off! They bond over being dogs and rejected so many times throughout their lives. They're having a great time, and spend hours together that night, and leave promising to see each other the next day.

These plans start to be derailed by Marty's friends and family, and I was really afraid that he was going to do the wrong thing, but he came through in the end. I'm a sap, I know this, but I love romantic movies, and this one was great. I want to own it on DVD someday.

I gave this movie 5 out of 5 stars.

There, I'm all done with movie posts for the day. Aren't you happy? And the length of this surely makes up for me not posting yesterday, right? :) Thanks for reading! (And go rent Marty, you'll love it.)

Time Traveling

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to give up the Sims for a while. This may not seem like much, but when you consider that I thought about the Sims each day about as often as a teenage boy thinks about sex, you can see that it's really rather huge. Huge, but not unprecedented - I've taken breaks from playing before. But this time is different.

You see, for me, the Sims has been more than just a game. I've played it, yes, but I've also read online stories written using the game. I've contributed in online communities of people who are all as obsessed with the game as I am. I've developed friendships of sorts with some of them. I've spent time online, downloading custom content for the game. Basically, I've obsessed over it, played it as often as I could, and thought about playing when I couldn't.

But for the last couple of weeks, not only have I not been playing, but I haven't even been interested in reading the stories, or with participating in the communities around the game. It's like the Sims switch in my brain shut off.

I won't say that it's permanent. I may very well be back to playing before too much time has passed. But for now it's like I've been transported back in time, to 2002, or 1995, or any time before I discovered this game. I'm kind of liking the change.

And I'm glad that I haven't really been transported back to 2002 or 1995. I was horribly depressed over the death of my mother in the former, and I was single and desperately lonely in both the former and the latter. All in all, I'm way happier now.

And I'm not missing the virtual world of my Sims at all.

For now.

Sunny Saturday

Today was the first nice, warm day we've had here - it's 80 degrees out right now, and it's almost 7:30 at night! I love it. We went from being cold to being almost hot in just a couple of days - ah, you gotta love Central New York weather.

Today I actually got out in the warmth a bit! I trimmed back a wild bush on the side of the garage, and pulled out some chain link fence, which we're going to use around the pool, so that it'll finally be fenced in.

And then I planted my three trees! My hands were filthy when I came in, and I loved it! I actually like planting trees and flowers. Now I just need to buy some decorative fencing to go around them, so I don't accidentally mow over them. Hee.

Later on I went out and picked some daffodils, as you can see above. I love these sunny yellow flowers so much! They're my favorite spring flower.

So I had a pretty nice time out in the fresh air today. I hope your Saturday was just as good as mine!

Arboring all over the place

Today when I walked to lunch, there were some agriculture students outside, handing out free beechnut trees. So of course, I took one. On the way back from lunch, Jamie took one too, and gave it to me. Now I have two new trees to plant at home! Woo! I hope I can keep them protected and alive long enough for them to take root and start to grow. I'll have to put a fence of some sort around them, or I'll run over them with the mower for sure. (I'm not the most graceful.)

Happy Arbor Day, folks!

Middlesex

The most recent Pulitzer Prize winning novel that I read was Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides (which won in 2003).

I LOVED this book. I think it's my favorite of the ones I've read so far for my 1001 list (which doesn't count To Kill a Mockingbird, which I read a few years ago and is still my favorite Pulitzer Prize winner).

Middlesex tells the story of a family - but not just any family. The Stephanides family's story begins with the main character's grandparents, who immigrated to the United States in the 1920s. The big family secret is that said grandparents were both first cousins and brother and sister. Scandalous!

This incestuous relationship resulted in two children, and planted the seed for a genetic condition that would eventually show up in Callie (Cal) Stephanides, grandchild of the immigrants. This condition results in a hermaphroditic child who appears to be a girl, and is treated as such until puberty, when the truth is eventually revealed.

What made this book so captivating, though, wasn't just the unique circumstances of the family, but the relationships in the book and the characters themselves. They were wonderfully written, and I just couldn't wait to find out what happened from page to page.

This was an excellent book. I'm glad I read it.

Nine Years

When I was a kid, I was sometimes afraid of her. When I was a teen, I was ashamed of her (I was a stupid teen). When I was an adult, she became my best friend.

Nine years ago today, she died.


She left a hole in my life that I will never really fill - no one can ever replace a mom. But at least it doesn't hurt me anymore to think about her. I can remember the good stuff now, the stuff worth remembering. We used to go shopping almost every Saturday. She used to like to go into the arcade at the mall, and put quarters in the crane machine until she had a few toys to take home to Baby, my dog. She used to call me every day just to talk.

In one of the last days before she died, I was sitting next to her bed, and she traced my face with her hand, like she was memorizing it. I felt the ghost of that touch for a long time after she was gone.

I love you, Mom. I miss you every single day. I wish you could have been here long enough to meet J. You would have loved him - he wishes he could have taken you to a Yankees game. I hope you're seeing that I'm happy.

Nine years went both very fast and very slow. I will miss her forever.

Kitty Picture Time

I should never have scanned those pictures in yesterday - the ones of Bo and Baby, I mean. I'm glad I have them electronically now, but I put one of them on my desktop wallpaper at work, and it's making me miss them so much! Sigh. I guess I need to change the picture to one of J and/or the current dogs.

So, on to happier things - kitten pictures of cats who are actually still alive and living with me at this very moment!

I just love when kittens sleep all jumbled together! It's so cute. The orangish/tan one is Kate and Lucy's brother, who was adopted by someone else.

Sleeping with their stuffed animal buddies! (These pictures are all at the house of the person who had the Mama cat, by the way - I do not own any furniture made out of material this ugly.)

Lucy is such a beautiful cat, and she was an adorable kitten, don't you think?

I look at this picture, and then I think of how freaking HUGE Kate is now, and it amazes me that she was ever this small. Poor fat Kate.

But you can see the signs of impending fathood already - she's bellying up to the milk bar all by herself! :) I kid. I love my Kate, scaredy fat cat that she is.

Okay, pictures of the past are over for now. Tomorrow it's back to current day, most likely with a short recap of an amazing book I read recently for my quest to read 10 Pulitzer Prize winning novels. See you then!

Breaking My Own Heart

Yesterday I went into my bedroom and dug out the bag of junk that I took out of my old desk when I gave it to J. I was looking for some cross-stitch supplies, but I found a little treasure instead. Pictures. And I scanned some of them in for you.




I call this the "Baby on Dock" series. Because it's my first Rottie, Baby, on the dock of a house my Mom and I rented in the summer of 1994. We lived on a pond. It was great, but we got kicked out in the fall, because the owner wanted to move some relative in. I miss swimming in the pond, though.

A cute story about swimming in that pond - Baby didn't like swimming; Rotties aren't swimmers, I guess, or at least she wasn't. I loved it, though, and would get in at the shore and swim straight out for a while before turning around and swimming back. Whenever I did that, Baby would stand on this dock and whine. She was worried about me swimming that far away from her - how would she protect me if something happened to me? She was the sweetest dog, she really was.

This isn't a series, because I only scanned in one picture of Baby on this porch. But she looked cute here, and I wanted to include it. Please just ignore the grossness of said porch. It needed a paint job BIG time. Whoa.

Baby and Bo were great pals. Bo was quite a bit younger than Baby, but she never minded having him around, and when his puppy antics got to be too much, she'd snap at him and straighten him out, and then all was well again. She was an incredibly patient dog.

Another shot of Baby and Bo. So freaking cute! Again, please ignore the porch and just focus on puppy sized Bo, grabbing at Baby, as she just endures it in silence. I love dogs so much, and I loved these two just a ton.

So, as much as I loved Baby (and Bailey after her), no dog I've ever had has really compared to my Bo. I almost teared up just scanning these pictures in. He was a truly special dog, and one I don't think I'll ever forget. I wish he were still here with me.

This picture in particular kind of kills me. It was very overexposed (which I fixed to an extent with photoshop), but this is him, you know? His ears were always like that - one up, one down. He was such a handsome boy.

Sigh.

Okay, from an animal I miss every day to a person I miss every day. This is my Mom, with her dog, Chrissy, in 1992. I never would have guessed at the time that Chrissy would outlive Mom like she did.

Sigh again.

Okay, that's enough for now. I'm just depressing myself. And wishing I were home, so I could hug J and Bernie/Willow/Rosie/Duff. Hugs are good.

(Tomorrow will either be an entry about a Pulitzer Prize winning book I finished recently, or kitten pictures of Kate and Lucy. Depending on my mood and if you guys reply as to which you'd rather have.)

I Love Sundays

Sundays are the best day of the week. J is usually home from work, so we get to hang out together, which I love. It's cheat day, so I don't worry about calories for that one day. And sometimes we do fun things. Like today!

I got $50 in my Easter card from J's parents, so we went to the mall and I bought two pairs of shoes for the summer! Woo! And then we went to Michael's, and I bought the supplies to start a cross-stitching project. Yay! That alone would make it a great day. But there's more!

We also went to Johnny Rocket's for lunch (a 50s style restaurant in the mall), and had fabulous burgers. Then we went and visited J's parents. And then we got soft serve ice cream on the way home! It almost feels like summer!

I also got quite a few rows done on the baby blanket I'm making for my nephew's baby (due in May), and I got the floss all organized for the cross-stitch project.

It was a great day. Woo! Only one more week until another Sunday. :)

Today

Pictures I took today.

Some days are better than others

I was so good yesterday - I ate perfectly, and stopped when it was right to do so. I felt so happy and proud of myself.

Today is a whole different day. Not so proud today. But ah, that's why there's always a tomorrow, right? So we can fix what we screwed up the day before?

(Current internal debates: whether or not to still have the leftover macaroni and cheese for dinner, even though I've already eaten pretty much everything I should eat in one day. Also, should I ride the exercise bike today, or just do it tomorrow? Does it really matter which day I do it in, as long as it gets done? Hmm.)

Becoming healthier and more fit is a long, sometimes painful process.

Rediscovering Hobbies

I've been thinking for a while now that it was time to take a break from the Sims. I generally would have it on whenever J wasn't home, as something to do to fill the hours alone. But it's spring, and I was feeling the need to do other stuff. So I haven't been playing for the last couple of weeks, and I'm working on remembering how to fill my time with other hobbies.

And with that in mind, I went online last week and ordered this counted cross-stitch pattern. Isn't it cute? It looks a lot like our Rosebud, and I'm doing this up as a gift for J. Of course, even without the Sims taking my time, it'll take a long time to finish this thing - it's going to be fairly large, and it's really involved. It'll be fun to do, though - I haven't cross-stitched in a long time.

I've also picked the baby blanket back up that I'm making for my nephew and his wife's new baby, which is due in May. My sister is going to California to visit them in June, and I'd like to have it done by then so that she can take it with her. Why ship something that she can transport for free? :)

Once I get done with that baby blanket, I have to make another one, this one for my brother's baby, which is also due in May. He just e-mailed me today to tell me what color they want (pink), so I'll get started on that as soon as I finish this one.

I am going to be a knitting/cross-stitching fool! It's a good thing I can do both of these activities while watching TV and DVDs.

I'm sure at some point I'll start going through withdrawals from the Sims and will go back to it - I've never gone more than a few months without playing since I got the game in the first place. But for as long as I go without playing, I'm going to have fun rediscovering my old hobbies. Oh, and spending time outside, too! It's spring, after all. :)

Tired

I'm so tired. Today I woke up half an hour earlier than I needed to, and couldn't go back to sleep. So I went ahead and got up, got ready for work, and went in half an hour early. That in itself shouldn't have made me so tired tonight, but here I am, exhausted. Maybe it was riding the exercise bike? Who knows.

Anyway, this is a lame excuse for an update, posted solely because of Nablopomo. I'll do better tomorrow. Right now, I'm shutting my computer down and heading to bed to watch TV with J.

Good night!

Zelda in Condo

This morning, while I was getting ready for work, this is where Zelda was hanging out:

In case you can't tell, her butt is on the bottom half of the condo, while her upper half is on the top. You can see that more clearly here:

I do so love my Zelda. :)

Hormooooones

Every month I have one day a week where I feel the need to eat everything that isn't freaking nailed down. Today, in case you were wondering, is one of those days.

My period is due in a week. This is not a coincidence.

Gah.

***
So, yesterday while we were at J's parents' house, his Dad turned on Turner Classic Movies, which was just starting a showing of Ben Hur. So I watched it, saving myself getting that one from Netflix.

Ben-Hur
1959
Charlton Heston
Jack Hawkins
Haya Harareet

What didn't I know about Ben-Hur? Just about everything! When I thought of this movie, I thought chariot races, I thought Rome. That's about all. I had no idea it took place at the time that Jesus was growing up and getting crucified. I had no idea there was religion in it at all.

Yes, I knew almost nothing about this movie. I liked it, though. Charlton Heston, younger than I think I had ever seen him (to me he will always be an old man, I guess), played Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew who was arrested and enslaved for something he didn't do. He was sentenced to working as a rower for ships of the times. He spent over three years as a slave in these ships, chained to the boat, rowing. This lasted until the ship he was in got involved in a battle, the ship was sunk, and he saved the life of an important man.

This man takes him under his wing, and even adopts him, but Judah wants nothing more than to return home - you see, his mother and sister were arrested at the same time as he was. He wants to find them.

So he returns home in search of them, and finds his home a wreck, but with some familiar faces around.

And I don't want to give away the whole movie, in case you might ever watch it, so I'll stop there.

It is worth watching. Just be prepared, because it is four hours long. My butt was tired from sitting on J's parents' couch by the time it was over. I would recommend it to anyone to watch once, although I don't think I'll ever feel the need to watch it a second time.

I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. A very good movie, but SO LONG. Oy.

***

Okay, that's all for today. I'm going to get back to work, and try to avoid eating anything else until dinner time. Stupid hormones. :)

Easter Bunny Ugh...

It's a good thing Sunday is my diet cheat day, because the Easter bunny brought me chocolate. I have a stomach ache now.

I'm sure you can draw a direct line from that first sentence to the second one.

Happy Easter, people. Good luck nursing your chocolate induced belly aches. :)

Duff!

Today was McDuff's 11th birthday! He got cupcakes and got to spend most of the day on the bed while J and I watched DVDs. All in all, it's his perfect day. :)

Happy birthday McDuff!

Good Friday Night (Ha! I made a pun)

J had today off, so I left work a little early and came home. We went out to eat, and I rode his exercise bike for half an hour, and now we're getting ready to re-watch last night's Hell's Kitchen.

It's a good night. :) Talk to you all tomorrow.