What the heck am I eating anyway?

I am royally sucking it up in the diet department, people. I've been taking notes for the past couple days in a big executive type meeting. When you are an executive type, they tend to feed you all manner of delicious treats as an incentive for sitting through long-ish meetings. It just so happens that there is a corresponding opportunity for me to snitch some of the sumptuous treats. Like a cookie. Or two. And maybe some chocolate covered almonds. Perhaps a soda, or three. There might have been a bag of chips in there somewhere. I wasn't fully conscious after the two cookies, chocolate almonds, and sodas. Did I mention the cookies were that big soft delicious kind with hunks of chocolate that melt in your mouth? Well I'm mentioning it.

In other eating news, I was chowing on a bit of lunch meat out of the bag last night (sometimes I just can't be bothered by bread) when the description on the front on of the bag caught my eye. Given, this was not the kind of lunch meat where you can actually tell that it once belonged to an animal. This was more like the uniformly colored perfectly shaped thinly sliced material that may or may not be used to line airplane hangars. The thing that caught my attention was that there were no less than four verbs to describe how this substance had been coerced into posing as lunch meat. Something like "Chopped, Formed, Beaten, Humiliated, Pressed, Taunted, Cooked." I can't remember exactly.

Intrigued by the verbage, I flipped the package over to check out the ingredient list. The first two ingredients were "turkey," and "mechanically separated turkey." Now I ask you, what exactly is mechanically separated turkey? And how different must it be from actual verifiable turkey that they are required to list it as a separate ingredient? What are they separating the turkey from? Dog saliva? Discarded radiator caps? Violent chipmunks? And how exactly would a machine be able to separate turkey?

Can you imagine this? As my feverish little brain reconstructs it there is a vast conveyor belt littered with various turkey parts that the dog food company rejected. Hovering over the belt is a computer sensor with four different settings. The first setting reads "Shrug, Looks like turkey to me." The second reads "Okay, now you're stretching it, is that a toe?" The third reads "Damn, I didn't think that color existed in nature." The fourth reads "Oh Dear Heaven above, NO! For the love of humanity!"

Okay, so machines spout narratives in my head. What of it?

Wanna know the worst part? I kept eating it. I know I ought to be severely bothered, but I'm not really. I guess it's that good German-English ancestry. When you come from people who stuff innards into pies and crunch on gristle like starlight mints, a little verb overwhelmed mechanically separated meatish substance is nothing doin.

Grossed out yet? You're welcome.

Cyndi

Random Happenings

Oy. I suck. I am so not good at this posting thing. I'm just too easily distracted. And lazy. And boring. No matter.

So the score card for this week: Worked out 4 of 4 days. I haven't done so well on the eating, but I've made a point to work out twice as hard the day after I've had a not so healthy din din. I swear I can be perfect all day, but when it comes to dinner, the cravings kick in like mad. I have come to the conclusion that it is just not realistic for me to do the healthy eating organic thing 6 days a week for the rest of my life. I have to be able to work on my favorite foods or I won't stick to it. And if I don't stick to it, then I'll eventually be right back where I was no matter how skinny I get. So eat I shall, and like it I will. So there.

So in other news...
Last Saturday we saw Jake perform in a ballroom dance competition. He did amazingly well and even won a silver ribbon. The boy can even move his hips! This is not an altogether common thing for men. Typically the white man dance involves alot of arm shaking and stepping from side to side. Not Mr. Jake though. He's going to be quite the lady killer, I know it already.

I saw two movies that I absolutely loved and they couldn't be more different. The first: Rocky Balboa. No, I'm not kidding. Okay, you can stop laughing now. Really, knock it off. I myself have been a long time mocker of Sly Stallone. I mean the guy was born in the US and he still seems to have trouble with the English language. Not to mention the lip thing. Anyhoo, despite the fact that the script writer managed to work the words "Hey yo" into the movie about 785 times, I actually found it moving. At one point Rocky gives a soliloquy to his neo-yuppie weenie son. The whole point of his rant is that life is not about how many crippling hits you can doll out, it's about how many crippling hits you can absorb and still keep standing up. It struck a chord. Believe me, no one was more surprised than me. I was expecting ample fodder for a snark-filled blog post. I feel cheated.

The other movie was Moliere. It's a french film (with subtitles) and is all about the French playwright Moliere. It is one of those rare finds that is beautifully filmed, perfectly acted, deliciously hilarious, and achingly tragic. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. From Rocky to Moliere. I am a weirdo, aren't I?

What else is going on? Well Gilbert is still crapping freely upon the floor. The sweaty grunting dudes still fight me for space at the gym. I'm blissfully happy with my man. And that's about all in my boring little life.

Cyndi

Cracks, not just for plumbers anymore!

Look at me look at me! Here it is, Tuesday, and I'm posting two days in a row! (--patting herself on the back--Ouch. I need to stretch more. I think I may have pulled something in my excitement.)

So yes I worked out yesterday and yes I stuck to my diet. But Heather is right. Cake is fun. The wagon is not fun. But the wagon happens to be headed to the beach. And the cake happens to be headed to my thighs. I'm thinking I'd much rather spend a vacation camped out on the shore than doing finger bounces off the dibits on my thighs. (Shudders)

Anhyoo, to the topic at hand. I realize I'm being a bit behind the times here, as super-ultra-mega-lowrise pants have been in fashion for some time now, and I think are actually on their way out again. It's not that I have anything against these pants personally. In fact, I was grateful when wastlines dropped below the belly button. This was a definite win for hippy gals like muhself.

But with power comes responsibility, young one. As far as I can see it, with the power to wear lowrise jeans comes the responsibility not to flash your back cleavage to innocent bystanders. But the other day, I was flashed no less than two buttcracks! And not sweaty hairy plumber's cracks. No sir. These were clerical cracks. Cracks bent over doing some filing. Filers wearing super ultra mega lowrise slacks. How did these office cracks happen? The math is pretty simple. Hmm, math. Howsabout a word problem?

If the waistline of your pants rests one tenth of a millimeter above your bum crack, and your pants travel in a southerly direction at a rate of three inches when you squat and bend over, whose hiney will arrive at butt-crack city first?

A. Walt the janitor's
B. Donald the mechanic's
C. Yours

Correct answer? C. Yours.
Explanation: A. is incorrect because Walt is a janitor and therefore would wear a school mandated uniform. Typically school mandated uniforms are enabled with anti-crack-flashing mechanisms. You know, for the kids. B is incorrect because Donald is a mechanic, not a plumber. See how tricky I am?

Perhaps ladies are under the impression that flashing their cracks is somehow more acceptable because they lack hair (well, hopefully.) Perhaps the grunting dudes in the gym would agree, but as a chick, I must quote the great Whitney Houston. Crack is whack.

Cyndi

I knew this would happen

I had such high hopes for this whole blogging thing. In the section of my brain where perfect motivated Cyndi lives, I had grandiose delusions about the whitty topics I would pontificate on daily. Unfortunately perfect motivated Cyndi has to wrangle with working out at lunchtime Cyndi, busy assistant Cyndi, and certainly not least, lazy vegetative Cyndi. As you might imagine, when you have that many people living in your head, it becomes a bit of a challenge to get them all to agree to doing the same thing at the same time.

As a result the daily posting thing has not worked out so well. I realized just this morning that I hadn't posted anything since last Tuesday. That wouldn't be so bad, but I also sucked big time at the diet thingy last week. So no posting, AND bad eating. I'm feeling some major guilt. I'm not really sure why I should feel guilty, but I do. In order to alleviate this guilt, I shall give you a round up of the goings on of last week that you missed. Trust me, it's not all that interesting.

Wednesday: Cyndi has to attend an all-day meeting to take notes and thus is unable to make her way to the gym to see her sweaty grunting dude friends. Tired and lazy after taking notes for 8 solid hours, she skips working out when she gets home. And eats half of a roast chicken and a baguette. Bad Cyndi!

Thursday: Cyndi spends her lunch hour trying to arrange a catered lunch for a work party and misses going to the gym again. After an afternoon reading over catering menus and drooling puddles on her desk, she attends a meeting where there is birthday cake. The fluffy kind that perfumes the air with refined sugar and saturated fat goodness. Driven to a ravening frenzy by cake-smell she goes home and has for dinner four kinds of cake, a Big Mac, a Big and Tasty, and fries. (You don't want to be around when I raven. It's downright frightening). Not suprisingly, she does not rise from her cake and burger grease stupor to work out.

Friday: Cyndi has a lunch meeting she must take notes for, and cannot go to the gym, again. Having ordered lunch and delicious desserts for the group, she silently prays that someone, anyone will eat the giant strawberry shortcake. Respite does not come and the shortcake is left uneaten. Feeling sorry for the lonely little shortcake, Cyndi devours half and in an amazing show of restraint, brings the other half home for Andy. Later that evening, figuring the week is screwed Cyndi and Andy eat Panda Express for dinner. And left over cake.

Saturday: 30 minute workout, Chinese leftovers for breakfast, Bajio for dinner, nuff said.

Sunday: Bajio leftovers for breakfast, lunch/dinnery thing at Chili's with Scotty and his beautiful new bride, Marcie.

Talk about falling off the wagon! Sheesh. Sadly, and not surprisingly I did not lose any weight last week. In my humble opinion this would be the hardest thing about changing one's diet to lose weight. Sometimes you just feel like eating naughty food. And when you give in, you feel all guilty and wretched and bloaty. It makes it all the more difficult to haul my cake-laden bloaty self back onto the wagon. But that's what I gotta do people.

And so a new week begins, and dutifully I shall do my best to be on the wagon rather than chasing along behind it panting and stuffing my mouth with cake.

Off to the gym! Grunt!

Cyndi

Dude! My Little Pony's Guide to Being Hard Core at the Gym

The last time I got all crazy and lost a bunch of weight, I did it all in my house. Literally. All I did was Power 90, which never required me to work out in public. I remember now why I liked that so much. The part I really don't dig about working out in public is not other people seeing me, but me seeing other people. I know that sounds a little snobby, and maybe it is. But y'all didn't see what I saw yesterday at the campus gym. All I can say is, w.o.w.

I had meetings back to back yesterday which forced me to go to the gym at noon, which is of course the busiest time. On Friday I had the weight machine section all to my lil ole self. Yesterday it was overrun by sweaty grunting dudes. I say dudes because that is what every single one called eachother. Dude! (grunt)Awesome squat thrust! Dude (grunt) look at your tri's! Dude! Come one dude (grunt)! You can (grunt) do it dude! Dude! Yeah dude! Bring it (grunt)!

But there was one dude that put all the other dudes to utter shame. He was doing an exercise that I have never before seen, and which caused me a burp of laughter that hopefully the dudes might have mistaken for a grunt. (They're big into the grunting, those dudes.) He was balancing on one of these.

While he balanced, he was doing rowing pulls. All the other dudes were in awe. Dude! Do you see that dude! He's like crazy, dude! Look at that dude on that thing! Dude, you're hard core dude! Since when did incorporating a 1980's childs toy into a work out make one hard core?

Dude! I wanna be hard core. I am sooo bringing my My Little Pony to the gym today. Maybe I could work it into some sweet leg presses. I could sit it on top of the weights so that the pony would go up and down with each press. Surely that would impress the dudes. Especially if I worked in a couple good grunts.

Dude! Look at this chick dude! She's like got a pony on her weights dude! Whoa dude! She's psycho hard core. Yeah, I'd rock.

Cyndi

Poker Tournaments for the Pokerly Challenged

This weekend found us driving down to Andy's brother's house for a visit with the boys. (Actually the boys were with us, and we drove down to visit Andy's brother and family. Fear my sentence construction. Fear it!) As is tradition whenever the Olsen family gets together, we played a game of poker. I have long suspected that I am not a great poker player, but after this weekend, I feel fairly certain that I may in fact be the worst poker player in the world. I went out the first time before Matty had even depleted half of his chips. After being bought back in, I found myself out again after five minutes.

I wonder if they have poker tournaments for pokerly challenged individuals like myself. I can see it now. After rigorous skill level testing, they place name cards out at the tables, aligning players of equal skill level. I search among the tables until I find my name.

Slyly I peek at the other name cards at my table. They read "Spike," "Charles," and "Crocus." Crocus, I muse to myself, that's an odd name. One by one the players arrive, while my table remains empty. And then an usher comes by and places at the table a dog, a three year old, and a potted plant. Spike pants. Charles drools. Crocus remains stonily silent. My heart lifts. I may have a chance!

Four and a half minutes later I walk away from the table chipless, deeply admiring the potted plant's poker face. I didn't even see that bluff coming.

I guess you can't be good at everything. Someone as gifted as I am shouldn't be envious of others' poker skills. I mean, I'm really excellent at popping my knuckles. And I can put away a whole bag of chips in a single sitting. Those count as talents, right? Right?

Cyndi

Congrats Cotty and Marcie!

Well, I am officially old now. My baby brother is getting married today to a cutie pie named Marcie. Scotty, the little brother whose nappies I used to change on occasion. Scotty, who I can remember dragging his nuggy bear around the house. Scotty who I recall toddling around with a green binky clasped between his lips and his hair an explosion of crib-mussed curls.

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Of course there are plently of other things that make me feel old. More and more each day I lose touch with what is young and hip and happening and such. Of course the fact of that I used the word "hip" puts me closely in the line with the "break a hip" crowd. In any case, enough wallerin'.

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So updates. I know I haven't done this in a while, but I assure you I did not fall off the wagon. I've still been working out regularly. In fact, my work has a gym on the campus and I signed up for a membership so I could work out at lunch time. Me! I did this! (I know, I nearly fainted in shock as well. Or it could have been from the hunger.)

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This gym membership has raised another issue though. Communal nudity. As in, "locker room" nudity. Yes, I realize that this is a private venue and all. Somehow I've just never gotten over the shock of having a buck nekkid stranger smile at me and say hello. Maybe I really am a prude. Anhoo, I'll save that topic for another post.

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Cyndi