Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Quick one

You know how I frequently go off on the difference between health news as presented in the popular press and the actual scientific presentation?

Here's a quick example:

Housework cuts cancer risk from the Washington Times.

Do housework and reduce your chances of getting endometrial cancer from Medical News Today.

Exercise Improves Cancer Survival, Reduces Cancer Risk, Scientists Say...the actual press release from the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting.

Never to old for patches

When I was a kid, I absolutely dreaded the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports test. I was your typical bookish kid, which is to say, not stong, not fast, and not coordinated. As I got older, I also got pretty fat. I could never climb the rope, or do a pullup, or run the mile in the prescibed time. I knew I was never going to get the patch.

Apparently I have another shot at it, though. The program has been revamped as the President's Challenge, and adults now qualify, too. The best part is that I won't have my old gym teacher publicly humiliating me, all I do is log on every day and record my activity.

Granted, I've been doing a pretty good job most weeks of getting in at least a half an hour (sometimes I even record it here, though I've let that slide) without the motivation of a patch.

I am no great athlete, but I am in such better shape now that when I was younger. I'm kinda proud I was able to turn myself around, and now that I think about it, I want the patch.

And if I earn that, I may set my sights on a medal.

Pictures

When I was in journalism school, particularly in my photojournalism and editing classes, we would discuss the ethics of using photographs of victims. As much as you hear "if it bleeds, it leads," a lot of thought goes into whether it is right to actually show the blood.

In a lot of cases I would argue that it is. Not for shock value, but because the results of violence or catastrophe are a legitimate part of the story.

I have a friend who worked as a newspaper photographer in a small town. One night he was called out to shoot pictures at an accident scene. He went and started shooting...until he realized one of the cars belonged to someone he knew.

He destroyed the film. I didn't completely agree with him at the time. My logic was, he could have waited until he found out about his friend's condition. He could have turned the film over to someone else to develop. Just because he wasn't comfortable with the situation because it was personal doesn't mean it wasn't news, and it was his job to cover that news.

On Friday a bicycle commuter was killed in a hit & run accident here in DC. I heard the story on the radio but didn't pay very much attention. This morning I found out that the accident victim was someone I knew.

I don't know why I did this...maybe I was hoping that my e-mail was wrong...but I went back to a news web page to look for the facts of the story. The facts were there, and so was a picture. It wasn't graphic. It wasn't gory. It was just a picture of someone I knew...someone with whom I'd ridden, someone with whom I'd drank a beer or two...lying in the street covered by a blanket. It hit me like a punch, and I'm still shaky.

If I'd been editing the story I doubt I'd have given it a second thought.

I wish I didn't have to think about it now.

Vice & Virtue

This was a fundraising weekend. On Saturday we went to a wine tasting that benefitted my niece's school. This was how the conversations kept going last week:

Other Person: Hey, Nic, what are you up to this weekend?
Me: I'm going to a wine tasting fundraiser at my niece's school.
OP (in a tone of confusion/shock/surprise): Wine? Isn't your niece in kindergarden?
Me: Catholic school.
OP (in a tone of comprehension): Oh, ok.

Hey, it beats a bake sale. It was a good wine tasting...they had more than a dozen distributors there, each pouring six or eight wines. And these were different labels, too, not Kendall-Jackson. I tried a lot I liked, but my favorite was an Australian called Twin Beaks...the Shiraz, of course, but I the Merlot was really good, too...and lucky me, this wine retails for nine bucks a bottle. They also had huge tables of hot hor'dorves, vegetables, awesome pesto and bruschetta, and chocolate; coffee from the local gourmet shop; and a raffle where my sister won a basket of cheeses. They poured the wine generously and I ate like a pig, so I know I got my money's worth, and the school gets another cut from the case of wine I bought. Hey, this is my niece...I want her using Crayolas, not those cheap knock-off crayones that are nothing but wax and toxic metals.

The only drawback to last night was the abbreviated sleep...we had to get up at 6 to go a the Columbia's Cure 5K. Originally we were going to try the 25K bike ride, but the prospect of riding hung over (which I wasn't, actually, just a little dried out), coupled with trouble my knees have been giving me lately, made us opt for walking instead.

It was a touch cool and windy (making me very happy I'd decided not to ride) but the route around the lake was very pleasant. Victor took a lot of pictures, especially at the starting line of the kids' race, which was a riot...all those serious little people with their game faces on. We finished up the morning with a stop at my sister's house to help her eat some of last night's brie, along with bread, apples, and pears. I ate so much cheese I forgot we had chocolate, too.

So...overindulging, raising money for kids, exercising, raising money for the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults, and more overindulging. It is good to lead a balanced life.

Spring colors

Just a couple of pictures from my travels this weekend...

Forsythia, my favorite proof that sping has arrived.

See, I told you you don't need the Tidal Basin to see cherry trees.

I do love how the colors pop out in contrast to the brown and the grey. By the time the flowers fall the green should have come back, and then azaleas will bloom.

And then the weeds will start to overtake my yard and my seasonal infatuation with gardens will be over until next year.

Cherry Blossom time

It's that time of year here...the annual invasion of tourists for the Cherry Blossom Festival. In a fit of bad planning, I arranged to do some errands and meet a friend on the other side of the Potomac this morning, not thinking about the fact that today, with the kite festival and the tree stuff, would be a bad transportation day.

Luckily it rained, so the traffic wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. I have several days to go downtown in the next couple weeks, though, and I am very likely going to be grumbling and moaning about people who block the escalators and the doors to the Metro cars. I'm not really very tourist friendly, I admit it.

I like cherry trees, but I don't go to the Tidal Basin to see them. I don't feel the need...I have one on my street. My usual route home from work is full of them. I've actually only been to see the trees in bloom once, just a few years ago, when I was riding with a friend from New York who insisted that we go. He couldn't believe I'd lived here my whole life and only seen them on the news. They are pretty and all, but hardly worth fighting the crowds.

Hardly worth it...but if the weather is really nice, and I have some extra time next week while I'm down, I may try to go snap a few pictures. Because as much as I get frustrated with the crowds and their apparent inability to navigate public transportation, I wouldn't mind having the classic shot of the Jefferson Memorial framed with blossoms in my album.

Slackass lazy spinach-mushroom non-enchiladas

Tonight was one of those clean-out-the-leftovers, throw-together-something dinners. I had corn tortillas, portobello mushrooms, and spinach. Enchiladas would have been the obvious choice for dinner, but I am too lazy to actually make enchiladas. (I have reached a level of lazy beyond slackass. The only thing lazier would have been having dinner delivered, and actually this might still have been lazier because I didn't have cash, and searching through my jacket pockets and under the sofa cushions for money would have been more effort.)

Anyway...I did chop an onion to start, (and I did it without losing blood. This may have been my first onion chop since the stitches.) and diced up the mushrooms. Then I threw them and the spinach into a pan with some olive oil and let the liquid cook down. I finally learned this lesson from lots of watery lasagnas: cook the spinach!

Then I constructed dinner just like a lasagna: layer of enchilada sauce, layer of tortilla, layer of vegetables, some cheese. Repeat until everything is used up. Bake until hot.

It was actually pretty good, although the picture I took looks straight out of the Gallery of Regrettable Food.

Uh oh. He's added new stuff. I'm being sucked into the Lileks zone...if I'm not back in a week, send a search party.

Some days are better than others

Today wasn't toward the top of the list.

But tomorrow will be better, right, Magic 8-Ball?

Well...darn.

Pörkölt

Pörkölt is another of those old family recipes, this one from my dad's paternal Hungarian family, by way of my grandmother and mother (the men in dad's family were not particularly big on cooking.)

As near as I can tell, pörkölt just means "stew" or something equally generic, and from what I have gathered on the internet, every family has their own recipe using a wide variety of ingredients...just like everyone has their own version of that which we call chili.

This one is my pörkölt:

Brown about a pound of cubed beef in a large, heavy-bottomed pot with a good lid (or, if you want to do it the Crock-Pot way, in a frying pan. Or if you like washing dishes, go ahead and use the frying pan and you'll dirty a pot later.) Remove the meat and drain off some of the fat, unless you used very lean meat, in which case don't bother to drain it.

In the reserved fat, saute a chopped onion and a chopped green peppper until the vegetables are soft. (My mom and grandmother never used green pepper. I saw it in a recipe I found in a cookbook [pre-Internet, before I knew there were so many pörkölt variations] and thought 1. it must be more authentic that way and 2. it'd be healthier if I snuck in another vegetable. My grandfather was a notoriously picky eater; for all I know he's the one who got rid of peppers in our case.)

Add the beef back in and mix it up with the vegetables. If you want to do this in the Crock-Pot, here's where you transfer to the crock. (My mom always made this in her Le Creuset French oven, so when I left home a Le Creuset French oven was one of my first kitchen purchases...a tad pricy, but I have never regretted it. What I have been doing, and I just found this out about two weeks ago, is mispronouncing "Le Creuset" for my entire life. I am mortified. I should have known it...I don't speak French, but I know enough French words, and I should have realized there was a "zay" in there, not a "set"...and what's worse, my mom never corrected me. She thought it was funny. Is it any wonder I am how I am, with parents that cruel?)

Anyway, we were making dinner. Okay, you've mixed your browned beef cubes and your sauted onion and pepper back up in a big pot of some sort, right?

Now add paprika. Hungarian paprika, I hope it goes without saying, but the type of paprika is where I make another break from family tradition. My mom and grandmother used sweet; I like hot. I like to give the meat a nice thick coating of it...I think it works out to about 3 tablespoons...but this is definitely going to be a matter of personal taste. (I think from my experience I like my food three times more paprika-y than average Americans.)

Pour a can of tomato sauce over the paprika-covered meat and vegetables. I use a regular can (15 ounces?) because I prefer a thick sauce (and lots of it; the sauce is what this recipe is all about); my mom and grandmother used an 8-ounce can and added a little water (half a can or so, I think.)

Stir it up a little, then simmer over low heat for at least a couple of hours. If you are using a Crock-Pot, all day on low. (This is a perfect Crock-Pot dish, as a matter of fact. If you don't use the Crock-Pot, it's a good one to make a day or two ahead and just heat the night you're eating it.)

Check the sauce...add paprika if it's too bland. Add some tomato juice if you don't have enough sauce (or if you went too heavy on the paprika, I guess)...this is where the good lid helps keep your liquid in.

When I was a kid we had this with (on top of, actually) mashed potatoes. I'm not a big mashed potato fan, so I started serving it over egg noodles. Then I found (in a small town in southern Alabama, of all places) dried spätzle, which is how my great-grandmother served it. (Well, actually she made her spätzle. I hope she isn't spinning in her grave now at the thought of dried spätzle.)

Anyway, spätzle can be hard to come by...one of my local supermarkets stopped carrying it, and I was having my ex buy it for me in his neighborhood store, but now a different chain store near me has it again. Oddly enough it hasn't shown up in the yuppie grocery store...maybe it's too old Europe. If you've never heard of it, it's like little egg dumplings. It isn't your lowest-fat starchy side dish, though.

So there you have it...pörkölt and spätzle, dinner of umlauts.

Sorry you missed it

I just typed up the funniest blog post ever. Really, it was the best thing I have ever written in my entire life. If you were reading it now, tears of joy and mirth would be rolling down your cheeks. Your sides would be hurting you'd be laughing so hard.

But you aren't reading it, because I turned away from the computer, turned back, and my brilliant blog piece had inexplicably been replaced by "Warning: Page Expired."

I went forward. I went back. It was gone, gone, gone, and I had neglected to save, save, save.

I'm not rewriting it. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, never to be repeated. Recreation would not do it justice.

Good thing I'm studying Zen, or I'd be really crushed right now.

I feel shame

I just caught myself typing "It is the responsibility of the responsible person to appropriately respond..."

Multi-tasking

I'll be honest, with the Caps season grinding down, I was more interested in seeing the alumni players than the actual game last night. And the Maryland-Syracuse game overlapped the hockey game, too. So we had dinner in a bar to watch the first half of the basketball game, got to our seats in time to see the presentation of the old players, then for the first period I tried multi-tasking.

Even with good reception (which I did not have), basketball's a little hard to follow on a 1.5" screen, so I pretty much listened to the basketball and watched the hockey. Victor took this picture during the first intermission, when Maryland was attempting their comeback, which is why I'm so intent on the mini-tv in my lap. (Oh, and I didn't intentionally obscure my face; my hair always flops down like that. But you wouldn't have wanted to see my face when Strawberry missed that final shot, anyway.)

Never mind.

I gave up on the Type Pad experiment. I really like the photo blogs, but I wasted way too much time trying to duplicate the look of this blog, and I really don't need to spend more money (or time) on web stuff.

I do need to do something about the comment spam, though.

Anyway, I now return you to regular programming, already in progress.

Oh oysters come and walk with us

...over to http://shoes.typepad.com/shoes/

I'm flirting with Type Pad. I love the photo blog. The rats want their web space back (this blog...the test blog...the blog I started to learn MT for my "real" site...is taking over like kudzu.)

But MT templates don't go straight to Type Pad, and I may not have the patience to reformat. I'll be weighing pros & cons this weekend and we'll see what happens.

Caps game notes

The guy sitting next to me at the game tonight said "Hey, we're still paying part of Jagr's salary...shouldn't he play for us for a period?"

Although he did tie it up in the third (Jagr, not the guy sitting next to me...in case that antecedent wasn't clear enough for that pronoun), the Caps pulled out the OT win. The very small crowd was, quite honestly, not that excited.

I had to get a copy of the press notes to figure out who half the players were. There was one guy skating, number 64, and I couldn't read the name on his jersey. He wasn't on the roster I had. In the first he got called for a penalty and I said "Well, at least we'll hear who he is."

Nope. They never announced it. Wow. I guess even the PA announcer didn't know this guy...and he was close enough to lean into the penalty box and say "Who are you?"

(Turns out it was Roman Tvrdon, who was called up from Portland today. But this is weird, not being able to tell the players even with a scorecard...)

Flexitarianism

Flexitarian: noun, a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat. (from the American Dialect Society.)

I'd have thought such a person would be called "not a vegetarian." That's what I am...not a vegetarian. I do frequently eat meatless meals; in fact, decreasing meat has been a goal of mine for the last couple of years. My sister referred to me as a semi-vegetarian, which is just as silly...wouldn't everyone who ate any vegetables fit into that category? And the labels make it sound like the opposite of vegetarian is one who eats only meat. (I was going to suggest that such a diet would be impossible, but perhaps with Atkins...)

Apparently we occasional eaters of meals without meat are a growing trend, so we needed a name.

I respect vegetarians. I have several friends and a couple of family members who adhere to vegetarian diets (a couple of them are even vegan) and it can be difficult for them. Seeing them making meals out of bread and tossed salad has made me much more aware of having other protein options available any time I'm planning anything with food.

And, well...I'm the kind of person who will drive six hours to adopt a rat so he doesn't end up as snake food. I do feel kinda hypocritical about eating a hamburger. I do buy "natural" meat...those cows were happy, by God, 'til slaughter day!...except of course in restaurants, or when Buddig lunchmeat is on sale four packs for a dollar. And if I had to kill my own cows, it'd be nothing but gardenburgers.

Using that logic, I should be a vegetarian. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

You can call me a flexitarian, but really, I'm just wishy-washy.

Island of Misfit Toys

I got a new guy in my department. More staff is a good thing; we have some accelerated projects coming up and I was wondering how to get them done while keeping to my strict "I don't work nights and weekends" rule. Now that I have a new guy, I can make him work night and weekends.

No, no, I'm just kidding.

The downside to this is that I didn't get to interview and hire for this position, it was more like, his last boss wanted to get rid of him. Thing is, so did his boss before that. Last thing my boss said to me when he delivered the good news was "If you have any problems...document them."

Faaaaan-tastic.

So I asked around to find out exactly why this guy's getting dumped, and all I'm hearing is "He's weird."

Well, we're a company full of scientists. Everybody is weird. I don't know if it's the chemicals or the left-brain dominance or what, but we have some serious normality deficits.

I knew New Guy only well enough to say hello in the hall, and he's always struck me as painfully shy. Today he maybe talked a little too much, and I suspect that may be the weirdness...the other unsocalized scientists can't deal with his particular brand of social ineptitude.

And, well, the other three people in my group all have their little quirks, too. And while I specifically asked to have one of them transferred to me, her boss was relieved to get rid of her because she didn't fit in in their freak show.

I can only imagine what people say about me, weirdness-wise.

When I was thinking about it later, it really depressed me. I remember being terrorized as a kid, shut out by cliques who decided for reasons unknown to hate me. I remember the kids who wouldn't let me sit next to them on the school bus when they had the only empty seats. God forgive me, I remember ignoring other kids because someone decided they were too "weird" to associate with.

My sister is reliving the horror with my niece. Every time my niece comes home from school with "I hate playing freeze tag. The boys laugh at me because I run too slow then they push me when they tag," my sister has the residual pain from being picked on herself, with the worse realization that her children are going to go through the same misery, and there is nothing she can do to protect them.

Everyone I talked to about this today had a story, too. Everyone had been teased, picked on, or shunned. Everyone was weird. If this is a universal childhood trauma, I'm a little surprised to see it happening again with adults at work.

The woman I hand-picked for the department, the one who didn't get along so well with her old group, is pretty much my right hand. I told her we were getting New Guy, and asked what she thought. "People were pretty mean to him in the lab," she said. "They think he's weird...I liked him okay. But then, most of my friends are weird. I'm weird." She shrugged.

Hell, I'm weird, too. Maybe it will work out fine on the Island of Misfit Toys.

workout

gym, 60-second intervals, one circuit plus.

Jumping the shark

Yep, two blogs in a row that are quiz results. If I were a sit-com, I'd be having a flashback episode about now.

Anyway:

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

I took this one because it was a funny mix of Harry Potter and Myers-Briggs. I really am an ISTJ. I took the assessment professionally administered several years ago, as part of my layoff benefits, and I was an amazingly strong ISTJ. Our facilitator drew some little graphs to show how most people overlap personality types to some degree, but when I got my results charted, I had no extroversion, no intuition, no feeling, and no perceiving.

It isn't that strong any more, at least according to the online versions of the test I take on occasion. I am definitely still an ISTJ, though. And if you'd asked which Harry Potter character I am most like, I'd have said Hermione without hesitation.

This is a relief

25 %

My weblog owns 25 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?

It only seems like I blog every thought that crosses my mind, even when I know that no one but I would find it interesting...you wouldn't believe how many lame thoughts never see the...uh...pixels of blog.

Lost Weekend

Well, it wasn't exactly a lost weekend...I didn't go on a bender and I do remember where I was and what I did...it just passed far too quickly and I didn't get half of my to-do list done.

Most of the activities were rat related, boring errands or household repairs, and oh yeah, watching some basketball.

workouts

I have been doing them, I just haven't been recording every day.

It's been about two months of regular exercise now. I have toned up some, I have a little more energy (just a little), and there have been several times where I felt mildly crappy--headache, malaise, general bad mood--and then felt better after the workout. For the most part I'm only doing 30 minutes or so at a stretch. The biggest difference was with my cramps last month; I only had two days of maximum-dose naproxen and heating pads, and I managed to go to work and function the whole time. If that's because of the exercise, that will keep my ass in the gym.

This week:

Monday: rest
Tuesday: Gym, 60-second intervals, 1 circuit plus 6. I forgot which 6, though, which is why I need to type this stuff up.
Wednesday: Screwed up day, what with spending the morning in the ER with Victor. After an ill-advised nap that left me feeling jet-lagged, I did do a WATP Express dvd: 30 minutes, walking with stretchy band toning intervals.
Thursday: WATP Express 2 miles (30 minutes)
Friday: Gym, 60-second intervals, 1 circuit plus leg press, row, obliques.

Eating (and drinking) for a cause...

Mom and I had dinner at Agrodolce, a wonderful little restaurant out here in Suburbia. It's right in a strip mall with some chain family restaurants and big box stores, and it is exactly the kind of place that gets overlooked by people who hate the suburbs because suburbs are soulless, generic, lowest common denominator wastelands.

Agrodolce is packed every night of the week, by the way.

I had a garden salad with a roasted garlic-lemon vinaigrette, Pollo e Capacolla (chicken breast sauteed in a fontina cream sauce with broccoli and topped with capicolla over linguine pasta) and Hedges Columbia Valley Red.

(Yep, I drink red wine with chicken. Hell, I drink red wine with scrambled eggs and Twinkies. Not that I'd eat scrambled eggs and Twinkies together; that would be gross.)

Finished up with coffee and tiramisu, one of the few desserts I'll go out of my way to get.

I am a very happy girl right now.

A good excuse to eat with something other than moderation

Tomorrow, blow the diet. Forget all that gospel I usually preach about moderation and portion control. Yes, if you are in the DC area and are eating out in a restaurant participating in Dining Out for Life on March 11, order four appetizers and two desserts with dinner. It's for a good cause.

On Thursday restaurants in the area (check the list, Virginians and Marylanders, not everything is downtown) will contribute 25 to 100% of their revenue to Food and Friends, an organization that prepares, packages and delivers meals and groceries to people living with HIV/AIDS and other life-challenging illnesses throughout Washington, DC and 14 counties of Maryland and Virginia.

There's a reason I plug this, besides just that it's a good cause. It's a good cause near to my heart. I've volunteered at F&F for a few years now and I see the needs of the clients, the dedication of the staff, and the responsible way the organization uses their resources.

I also like an excuse to splurge on a giant dinner once in a while, although if this is like most years, I'll end up with a few lunches out of the doggie bags, too.

Oh, and if you are not in Washington...check out the Dining Out for Life page anyway. Scroll down to the bottom and notice that there's a select box with lots of cities listed...Baltimore, Indianapolis, LA, and more...that are also holding fundraisers. So wherever you are, eat up!

I blame Sesame Street

I have a very short attention span, reflected in my new penchant for posting a few lines on a variety of unrelated topics instead of writing something long and thoughtful...or even just long.

Sports...hopefully no news about a Kolzig trade means that there wasn't a Kolzig trade. I never saw Witt mentioned on the wires either (and I admit, I owe my company about seven hours of work to make up for a very unproductive day). The Caps did deal Mike Grier to Buffalo, though, and Calle Johansson is coming out of retirement to play for the Leafs. Well, I'll have lots of guys to pull for in the playoffs.
Oh, and (micro-rant)...people who know zilch about hockey shouldn't try discussing hockey on sports radio, and around here "sports" radio oughta be called "football/basketball/baseball radio."

Food...From the CDC: Physical Inactivity and Poor Nutrition Catching up to Tobacco as Actual Cause of Death. Health and Human Services launched a new consumer-oriented web page, http://www.smallstep.gov/, to encourage healtier behavior. A small step that I'd love to see is passage of the Menu Education and Labeling Act.

More to life than...The local hospital is offering a class in stress reduction, including a session on anger management. I'm thinking of taking it, because I definitely have some...deficiencies...in that area. Not as bad as it could be, though; in the class description for anger management the fine print said "Does not fulfill court orders."

Behind bars - and another roundup of mini-posts

This is my rat Pinky, saying "Yo! I was framed! Lemme out, ya lousy screw!"

---

I turned on the hockey game on my way home from work. I had to cringe at the sound of "Bondra passes to Alfredsson." I also cringed to hear that Charpentier was in net, although I confirmed when I got home that for now Kolzig is still a Cap. (Not so Anson Carter, though.) And of course I cringed at only three shots on goal in the first period.

---

Victor did go to the game tonight (we share the season tickets with my parents; it isn't unusual for us to trade off games) and beforehand met up with Eric from Off-Wing Opinion and some other bloggers. Victor was surprised I didn't want to go. I pointed out that before games I have dinner with Mom, and my mother doesn't know I blog; she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.

Apparently Victor'd never heard that punchline before.

Still, it's gratifying to have someone laugh that hard at your joke, even if you did steal it. (I'm not sure if this is true or an urban legend, but I've heard the original quip along that line came from Harry Truman.)

---

A friend of mine turned 50 this weekend. She'd been out of town and arrived home on her birthday to find her yard filled with 50 pink flamingos. Apparently there's a business that does this, sets up the flamingos in the middle of the night...another brilliant idea I wish I'd thought of. And this isn't a hint, but a yard full of flamingos would be really funny. (I live in a townhouse; you couldn't fit my age in flamingos on the lawn anymore anyway.)

workout

Strength training on my own today (no video):
Squats 2x12, 5# dumbbells
Lunges, 2x12, 5# dumbbells
Calf raises, 2x12, one 7.5# dumbbell
One arm rows, 1x12 5#, 1x12 7.5#
Chest press, 2x12 12# body bar
Fly, 2x12, 5#
Shoulder press, 1x12 12# body bar, 1x12 5# dumbbells
Lat raise 1x12 3# dumbbells
Front raise, 1x12 3#
Bicep curls 1x12 12# bodybar, 1x12 7.5# dumbbells
Tricep kickbacks 2x12, 3# dumbbells (Should my triceps be that much weaker, is it from fatigue after all the rest of the upper body exercises, or is this a concern?)
Tricep dip, 2x12
Back extensions, 2x12 (harder than I expected)
Crunches, 2x12 (1 set from the upper body, 1 lower. I definitely need improvement.)

Must find lunch now...

in Just spring...

I understand that winter is icummen (back) in this week (Lhude sing Goddamn), but for this morning, the world is puddle-wonderful and my little purple crocuses are blooming. I'll take pleasure in the flowers today.

(And I thank the English teachers in my past for making this post possible.)

Happy birthday, or not

At my nephew's birthday party, we all gathered around him and his Finding Nemo cake, and we sang the traditional "Happy birthday to you" song. By the time we got to the end, he'd buried his face in his hands, and as soon as he could slide out of the chair he ran away in tears. He told his sister to blow out the three candles. He refused all offers of ice cream and cake.

We're off-key, but this is the first time our singing was so bad we made a kid cry!

We never did figure out what was wrong. He and I went into the computer room and played some tedious game (his hands are so small he uses both of them to move and click the mouse, but he was better at the game than I was.) He stopped crying right away, and after about twenty minutes I told him I was going up for ice cream, and he joined me like it was a fine idea.

All I can guess is that he sometimes gets shy, and suddenly being the center of attention of fifteen adults was overwhelming for the poor little guy.

Ah, childhood, that idyllic time of joy, laughter, and sheer terror.

workouts

Wednesday - nothing
Thursday - gym, 40-second intervals, 2 circuits
Friday - nothing
Saturday - gym, 40-second intervals, 2 circuits

Deja vu

We had an off-site thing at work today, so I ended up taking a different route home, and coming home later than usual, in the height of rush hour. I wasn't too bothered by the heavy traffic, though, because it was still warm enough to have my windows down, and the radio station I had on was playing a string of songs from 20 years ago that I hadn't heard in awhile.

Sitting at a light in front of the building where I worked in high school I had a flood of deja vu. Same route, same traffic, same music (same dj, even, sort of...he was the later night guy then, not drivetime, and on a different station, but still...same voice from when I was a kid.) I can remember leaving the office on Friday nights, cashing my paycheck (at that bank right there, although the name has changed) and gassing up the car (at that gas station)...

The rest of the way across town was like that: remembering hanging out with my friends at that McDonald's. Playing softball at that park. Swimming at that pool. Family cookouts at my uncle's house down that street.

Of course I pass these landmarks from my life all the time, because I live and work in the same place I grew up. Which is probably how most people live, but so often I hear "Washington is nothing but a transient area."

I guess it is pretty transient, but hardly "nothing but." My dad plays poker every other Friday with guys he's known since grammar school. Our next door neighbor when I was a kid was a high school classmate of my mom's. I've run into childhood playmates at the grocery store and a kid I used to babysit is now a medical tech at my doctor's office.

Some of the memories aren't so happy...I realize that stopped at the light by the funeral home I've been to for too many wakes...but I'm thinking of those friends and neighbors now. What would it be like if I didn't still live here, didn't pass these places and remember these things?

Periodically I get fed up with the traffic and congestion around here. It's a densely-populated area getting denser...another townhouse development is being shoehorned in along my usual route, and already the traffic from the first wave of finished houses has added five minutes to my morning commute. Sometimes I look at classified ads in out-of-town papers and wonder if I should try somewhere else.

But tonight I passed forsythia bushes covered in buds, and I realize that those bushes have meant spring to me for as long as I can remember. When I did live elsewhere, all of eighteen months, it wasn't just the different seasons that felt wrong to me, it was the absence of specifics...the cherry trees on my grandmother's street, the changing colors in Rock Creek park, the forsythia around my old ball field.

I never really thought about it before, but now that I am thinking...I guess this means I have roots.

And another one gone

Michael Nylander to Boston for a 2006 draft pick and future considerations.

I hope the next few draft classes are full of good players.

(I admit it...every trade that isn't Kolzig, I get a bit more hopeful.)

Good luck, Sergei

Gonch goes to Boston. Funny, I was just on the Leafs site, making my way around the hockey news world, when Victor called.

In my travels I found something cool...a story on the NHL Player's Association page about Curtis Leschyshyn and his upcoming Tour de France trip.

Sports do go on after hockey season ends.

It's not personal

Victor's got pictures from the game last night. Me, I didn't go. I'm finding reasons lately not to...Saturday is my nephew's birthday, so I gave up my ticket to that game. Monday, Peter Bondra's new team, I'm working. I've got a new rat acquisition coming up, and I'm not bothering to account for games in making those arrangements.

It isn't that I don't care...I still care. And I've been a Capitals fan for 30 years; I've seen favorite players come and go, and as they say, the name on the front of the sweater is the important one, not the name on the back.

During the Carolina game last week they showed Dan Snyder on the Telescreen. Not surprisingly, there were boos from the stands. "Maybe Dan's here to teach Ted how to be a hated owner instead of a beloved one," I said. Victor pointed out to me that they haven't shown Ted on the Telescreen in a long time.

I don't hate Leonsis. I understand why he's dumping the salaries. I understand the rebuilding idea, and it might not be a bad one...during the lockout next year, most of our players will actually be playing, since they'll be in the minors.

But going to the games right now is painful in a way that I've never been pained. It's not the hockey. I've seen some bad hockey, I've seen unlucky hockey, and I've seen good hockey that just wasn't quite good enough. I guess it's the overall gloomy atmosphere...and I guess I'm contributing to that by not showing up and cheering.

I am checking the news every 15 minutes to see of any trades have gone down. Looks like Gonchar will go today. As I said before, Kolzig's is the trade that I'm dreading. The more I think about it, the more I'm realizing that the "It's just business, not personal" aspect to the whole thing is really bothering me. Seems like with Kolzig's family situation it would be better for them if he stays in DC. And from what I've read, he actually wants to stay. This isn't a guy saying "I want a chance to win a Cup" or "I don't want to be part of the rebuilding."

I'm sure I'll be back, once the soap opera is over and the focus is back on the game. Until then...well, it's not personal.

Hey, you got beans in my brownies...

There's a nutrition and fitness column and chat in the Washington Post called the Lean Plate Club. I read it regularly and have picked up a hint or two, and a few good recipe ideas.

The chat the last couple of weeks has had a lot of people raving about a lower-fat, higher-fiber brownie made with black beans. At first, I though that sounded revolting, but I'm actually starting to see the logic in it. Plus, it sounds so easy...puree a can of black beans, mix it with the box of brownie mix, and bake. I do love recipes that don't require measuring.

I haven't tried it yet (I'm not a huge brownie fan), but I am intrigued.

Along the same lines, I recently heard about adding pureed blueberries to ground meat for healthier, juicier hamburgers.

It sounds better than trying to make apple pies out of Ritz crackers, anyway.

workout

Did the 1 mile, then the 2-mile, WATP Express dvds. My knee is hurting and I didn't want to do the squat and quad machines; I may use tomorrow as a complete rest day.

workouts

Sunday: Walked the dog around Needwood, about an hour. Shape up with Dummies tape, mostly 3# dumbbells. Not much stiffness/soreness at all today, as opposed to last week after using 5# where I could barely walk. I guess I need 4#.

Monday: Bonus, no F&F, so I went to the gym. 40-second intervals, 2 circuits.

A variety of little mini-posts on my usual topics

Sports:

From NHL.com:

For NHL fans, it's the second-most wonderful time of the year.

While nothing beats the eight weeks of excitement during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the weeks leading up to the NHL trade deadline certainly serves as a tasty appetizer.

Ugh, not from where I sit. I keep bouncing around web sites (hence the stop at the NHL) looking to see if any trade news has been posted. I'm waiting for the rest of the shoes to drop, but I'm waiting with an upset stomach.

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Food:

I finally got the holiday ham bone out of the freezer and made navy bean soup yesterday, but it was sixty-five degrees outside. You can't eat soup on the first springlike day of the year, so Victor fired up the grill. I expected pictures of the flames on his blog, but instead he's contemplating chicken wings.

People have asked if I minded his Hooters addiction. My answer: only when he doesn't bring any wings home to me.

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Health & Fitness:

I have been enjoying my circuit workouts at the "quickie" gym; the women there are very nice, and I feel like I'm getting some benefit. But yesterday we took the dog out for a little hike (ok, a walk) around one of the lakes in Rock Creek Park, and it felt so much better to be outside in the sun, using muscles to actually propel myself forward. Keeping pace with a chubby beagle who needs to sniff every square inch isn't very difficult, but it was, as Victor pointed out, healthier than sitting at the computer all afternoon.

And I'm remembering to breathe, too.

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And finally...a joke:

Didja hear about the exotropic trombone player who loved Easter candy but only ate it on airplanes?

He was a wall-eyed, one-horned, flying purple Peeps eater.