Month: March 2009

The Unequivocal, Completely Logical, Perfect Sense Making Truth Of Day Light Savings Time (I Think)

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

I have always been a fan of Daylight Savings time.  Seriously.  I like the variety.  The change in the routine.  Every so often it gives me something new to shake things up and that’s a good thing.  I never really understood why people complained about the change and acted like it was a big deal.

I was young and naïve.

This weekend, things were a little odd for me.  My honey do list was long (and by honey do I mean, “honey, do.”) (And by “honey” I mean me.  I’m single and live alone.  Who else would I mean?)  So I was a good little boy and I got up early to get started.  I stopped by K’s Drive-way Sale (this is like a yard sale, only it was held in the drive-way instead) (just in case that needed further explanation) (which, I’m sure it didn’t) (but I wouldn’t want to take any chances.)  Then I met with Michelle for Lunch (remember that comment in the last post about weighing in on Friday so as not to be affected by any bad behavior over the week-end?  Yeah, I’m just sayin’) and then did about six hours worth of shopping.  E-gads did I shop, and I didn’t get it all in.  Groceries had to wait till Sunday.

I went home, put everything away, cooked and ate dinner watched a little TV and went to bed early.  (And by early I mean it was still Saturday and not Sunday.) (No really, I went to bed early.  In fact it was even before 11:00 when I went to bed.)  I went to bed early because I knew it was the start of Daylight Savings Time and I knew the time was going to spring forward.  (Can we really still say that when it’s no longer spring?  I mean congress went and screwed with Daylight Savings Time and now it’s still officially winter according to the calendar and we’re moving the clock forward?  So what, now it’s “winter forward, fall back”?)

I woke up on Sunday morning when my alarm went off at 8:30… Of course that was really 9:30 because I hadn’t changed the time on the clock yet.  (Sidebar:  I have three atomic clocks in my house and the only one that is not currently an hour slow is the one on my night stand and that’s because I manually changed it before I went to bed last night.)  After showering and dressing I headed out to the grocery store where I was pleasantly surprised to see that I got all my shopping done in less than an hour and I got great produce. (I guess there’s something to be said for grocery shopping at 11:00 on Sunday Morning and not 8:00 on Saturday night.  Yes that’s right, folks!  I have a booming social life!)  I was home by 12:30 and putting away groceries.  My refrigerator is slightly larger than a thigh-high hooker-boot box, so this was a significant undertaking.  I ended up rearranging the majority of the fridge in the process.  I finished the groceries, whipped up a batch of banana bread (if you can call hand mixing a stick of butter and a cup of sugar “whipping up” a recipe), made a nice spinach and steamed shrimp salad (see, Salad!), and cleaned the house.

Since the DVR was clear of my weakly must-sees (shocking, I know!) I read for a little while before cooking dinner and then watched Iron Chef America while I ate.

Now, this post is not really about my activities in the last 52 hours (much to your relief I’m sure), the real point is that by the time Desperate Housewives was half over last night, I was fighting to keep my eye’s open.  No fewer than three times I had to hit the rewind button on the remote because I had missed something that happened or something someone had said.  And so the minute Desperate Housewives went off, I threw in the towel, knowing I’d never make it through Brother’s & Sisters.  I went into the restroom to take care of the usual before bed business including brushing my teeth and reinserting my Invisalign.. aligners, and headed for the bedroom.  And as luck would have it, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, wide awake, and thinking to myself, “Tomorrow morning is going to suck!” And that’s when it occurred to me, Daylight Savings Time is a cruel trick of nature or Congress or Benjamin Franklin or the Easter Bunny or Whoever!  Why, in the name of all that is holy does the time change for Daylight Savings Time occur at 2:00 AM on Sunday morning?  This is just cruel, particularly in March when the clock winters forward and we lose an hour.

Think about it.  It’s Sunday morning and your alarm clock is going off at 9:00, only your body thinks its 8:00 and doesn’t want to get up yet.  You force yourself to get up but your body is displeased and rebels for the first hour or so until finally it kicks into gear and goes with the flow. You go through your day and all is well until evening when your body is ready to call it quits from not getting enough sleep but it’s only 9:00 and you don’t want to go to bed too early because you know if you go to bed too early you’ll wake up in the middle of the night and then you won’t be able to get back to sleep until its almost time to get up and then you won’t want to get out of bed.

You do get up, because you have to be a responsible adult but your Monday is ruined because you didn’t get enough sleep and so you kill an hour or so at your office writing a semi-nonsensical blog post about the time change being bad and the whole thing could’ve been avoided if the time change just hadn’t happened.

Here’s what I propose.  Daylight Savings time should begin and end at 2:00 AM on Saturday morning giving us the entire week-end to adjust, and not just one day.  Then Monday will be just fine and everyone’s blog posts will make sense and all will be right with the world.  Conveniently though, today is National Take a Nap Day and I think I’ll do just that!  The end!

Weighing In on Weighing-In

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

If you’re like me, you find it hardest to maintain your diet or weight management program on the week-ends.  How strange that it’s when we should have the most free time that we have the hardest time planning our meals.  It is with this thought in mind that I’ve decided that Friday morning should be my official “weigh-in” morning.

I’m not trying to mislead anyone with this strategy, but as any dieter knows it’s discouraging to see those numbers not going down and if a Monday morning weigh-in reflected the less than perfect behavior that could take place on a week-end it could be very discouraging.  On the other hand, if the week days are filled with responsible actions and pre-planned meals that result in some better weight loss, then the number on Friday morning might be more encouraging.  Besides, if you do fuck it up on the week-end then you’ve got the rest of the week to bust your ass to make up for it, right?  That’s not really the point of this experiment or of this months fad but we’d be lying dieters if we didn’t admit that strategy has been employed by each of us on more than one occasion.

This morning I weighed-in at 300.2 pounds.  This is actually more than my weight yesterday morning but still down three pounds from my weight on Monday morning.  Three pounds in five days is not too shabby.  Now the Fad of the Month is salads for lunch and that’s been my main focus but to be fair I am taking other steps.  I’ve had fruit smoothies almost every morning this week for breakfast and I’ve been trying to eat sensible dinners.  I’ve also been making a concerted effort to drink more water.  I’ve been addicted to Diet Pepsi since 1991 and I don’t really see that changing any time soon.  Water bottle

I bought one of those trendy water bottles you see at all the sporting goods stores (or, in my case, in the house wears department at Target) and I fill it up from our cold water dispenser in the office.  My rule for myself is every other container of beverage has to be the water bottle.  So I drink a bottle of Diet Pepsi, I drink a bottle of water, I drink a cup of coffee, I drink a bottle of water, etc., etc.  Now, this water bottle is a 25 ounce bottle and for the most part I’ve consistently filled it at least four times every day.  I’m drinking 100 ounces JUST of water every day.  That doesn’t include the 48 to 72 ounces of Diet Pepsi and the cup or two of coffee all while sitting in my office.  As you might imagine, I have become exceedingly familiar with every square inch of tile on the wall behind the tall boy urinal in the Mens Room.  My friend “Anonymous” (who has granted me permission to refer to her as K) told me, “Your body will get used to the increased water consumption and you won’t have to pee as much.”  I’m still waiting for that to happen but to be fair it’s only been a week.

So far though, the salads for lunch, has been working out nicely, but it would be easy to get bored with it very quickly.  If you don’t get creative I could imagine it would be easy for this fad to crash and burn.  More on that in my next post.

First Fad of the Month

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

Like any good fat person, I’ve gotta start out slow so the first Fad of the Month, which actually did start on March fir-second, is just simple ole salads.  Everyday for the month of March I’m having Salads for lunch.  This may not sound like much, but with the choices I have available to me around my office this is an undertaking. My office building is on the outskirts of “Downtown Oakland” and there isn’t much going on in the way of food around me.

Directly across the street is Golden State Pizza.  Naturally, I order Chicken Nachos from Golden State Pizza, because what else would you order from a pizza place?

Up the street is Burger Gourmet.  Great burgers!  Good management.  But from a nutritional perspective, what can you expect.

Up he street even farther, and around the corner is a deli which makes good sandwiches.  Offers some decent fare nutritionally speaking but quickly tiresome if it’s the only option available to you.

Around the corner is Axtlan Tacqueria.  The food is awesome, but if you’re looking for any kind of weight  management, forget about it!

On the next block over you can find a number of restaurants whose cuisine style ends in “ese”.  This is almost always a problem for me.  My experience has taught me that I do not care for most Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Koreanese, Indianese, Greekese, Meditarraneanese types of food.  There are a  few things in each of those categories I might be able to get by on but not many and most of them are not nutritionally beneficial.

The point is that I have a limited supply of viable restaurants at my disposal if I plan to eat out for lunch and partake of the Fad of the Month, so there will be a lot of packed lunches this month.  I don’t know, realistically, what kind of results to expect from this month’s fad.  I would like to think that Salads for lunch will take the place of higher calorie less nutritionally valuable fare and make a difference in my weight but I might find that I’m not saving that many calories and if I’m making up the lost calories somewhere else, well, I may well not see any results at all.

Here’s what I do know.  On Monday, I weighed in at 303.2 pounds…  I want to shoot myself in the head just seeing that number, let alone telling my readers about it.  This is the most I’ve ever weighed in my life and 3.2 pounds above my “If I reach XXX pounds I’m going to kill myself” threshold.  On Monday, my friend from work, who had requested to remain anonymous and will therefore be referred to as, “Anonymous”, and I went to Quizno’s for lunch.  We went there because I already know there is at least one salad there that I can enjoy and feel fulfilled.  I ordered the Black and Blue Salad which has 670 calories including the flat bread and the dressing.  This struck me as a lot of calories, and it may be a lot for one  meal, but upon further investigation I realized that I would have otherwise ordered the “Little Sammies Meal”.  Two Bistro Steak Little Sammies (560 Calories), a bag of Sun Chips (280 Calories, or more) and a Chocolate Chunk Cookie (380 Calories).  I always drink diet soda so that’s free as far as calories are concerned though not free as far as negative impact is concerned – according to some “experts”, but nonetheless, I would otherwise have consumed 1220 Calories on that meal and not thought twice of it.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I brought my salad lunches with me.  Tuesday was lettuce, Julienne of a quarter of a Granny Smith Apple, a handful of chopped walnuts, a handful of Crazens, a tablespoon or so of Shredded Parmesan Cheese, and 3 oz of chopped chicken.  Topped with about four tablespoons of dressing made with 6 Tablespoons of Olive Oil, 2 Tablespoons of Orange Juice, and one Tablespoon each of Lemon Juice, Lime Juice and White Balsamic Vinegar.  I don’t know the actual caloric value of that salad but if I had to guess, I’d say there were more calories in the dressing than in the food.

Wednesday was more lettuce, 3 ozs of Chopped Chicken, one green onion chopped, a Tablespoon or so of sliced Almonds, A handful of Crazens and the rest of the dressing from Tuesday. On Wednesday, I weighed in at 302 pounds.  I’d like to take that weight difference and accredit it to my Fad of the Month, but I’m nothing if not honest, and the honest truth is, it’s too soon to tell.  The weight difference might just be because I had more calories than usual on Monday.

This is why we take the month to test the Fad.  One day, or one week isn’t long enough to evaluate the product.  We will see where I stand on March 31st and then we’ll know how this first Fad, which, admittedly, I sort of made up, has measured up to our expectations.

Being of Sound Mind and Body

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

Forever-stamps
On a recent trip to Costco, while standing at the check-stand, I saw a small sign stating that they sell stamps and recalled that I needed a book of stamps.

Now if you’re anything like me you’re wondering what I needed with A book of stamps.  I mean doesn’t everyone pay their bills on-line and use e-mail instead of snail mail to communicate with friends?  Well the answer is simple.  I mail my rent check to my Landlady.  I need exactly one stamp exactly once a month so a book of stamps lasts me a long time.

“Oh you know what, I need some stamps,” I said to the pimply faced young man running the cash register.  The cashier added the stamps to my tab and sent me on my way.  It wasn’t until I got home that I went to take the stamps out of the cellophane package he had handed me to put them in my wallet.  There I stood, in my bedroom, in front of my dresser, on top of which resides all items that go into my pockets when I leave the house.  I tore the cellophane wrapper open and pulled on that sheet of stamps and that’s when it hit me.  This sheet of stamps feels rather thick. I pulled the sheet out of the packaging and slid my fingers in opposite directions like you do when you’re separating two sheets of paper and sure enough, I didn’t get some stamps!  I didn’t get one sheet of stamps!  I got five!  Five Sheets of stamps.  A veritable shit load of stamps!  I didn’t get just 20 stamps, oh no, I got 100 stamps!

“Shit!” I said to myself.  “I didn’t want all these stamps!  What was I thinking buying stamps at Costco! I can’t believe I didn’t realize I was buying so damn many stamps!”  And then I started to think.  At least they’re forever stamps, and with 100 stamps I’ll have stamps till I die! I’ll have to leave them to someone as part in my will:

“To my brother I leave my 37” LCD TV, to my Sister I leave my cedar chest and to my Nieces, I leave my Tickle Me Elmo and the remainder of my collection of Forever Stamps.

Hell, they’ll probably have to leave some of them to their own kids!

My anguish and dismay were quickly abated a week later when I learned that the Postal Service would again be raising the price of stamps from $.42 to $.44.  Suckers!  I’ve got 98 stamps I only paid $.42 a piece for.  Keep raising the price!  I don’t care!  I have my lifetime supply forever stamps!