Calorie Reunion 2012

Hello everybody! I missed you while I was out sick again and then galavanting around Southern Minnesota. I meant to post this on Monday after I got back, but somehow it's Thursday and who knows how that happened.

Maybe these guys picked me up and didn't tell me about it.

I'll tell you about my excellent adventure down US Highway 169 after the warp.

A little less talk.

I meant to post about this last night, but I got wrapped up in the fervent and delightful chaos that is hanging out at Salihah's house. In addition to her 5 boys, her little two-bedroom home was packed with her mom and another friend as we bounced around between making bottles, doing dishes, and serving up this delicious shredded chicken taco meat stuff from the crockpot. I was also half-heartedly trying to take part in an online orientation for a new class (more on that later) while balancing a baby on my lap, but that ended pretty fast. The evening culminated in dill pickle chips, Cheetos Puffs®, and sweet-n-salty candy bars while browsing (and ridiculing) fall-layering knitwear online. It was bliss.

This lady would have been disappointed in us.
And BTW, that new "MyPlate" alternative to the Food Pyramid doesn't make sense in any language.
I tried reading a brochure.

This post was supposed to be about taking action. We'll get there.

20-Minute Mile.

Thanks to the magic of Google Maps and the Paintbrush tool in Photoshop, I have artfully illustrated here the route of my lunchtime walk today. There's more about it in the exercise section of the post but I didn't have anything pithy to lead off with today. Shocking, right?

Ok so maybe it wasn't really a mile, but since I don't have one of those awesome wheel-distance-measuring thingamajiggers my dad used when he worked for the street department, who can say with real accuracy how much I ever walk on these meandering journeys I take? Oh, he would just die if he realized I have no idea what that thing is called. It will confirm his constant assertions that we were in fact never listening to him!

Anyschnitzel, this isn't about walking certain distances or not disappointing your dad. It's about taking pictures and then showing them to people on the Internets to prove you actually walked.

34th time's the charm.

As my dear friend Salihah would say, I made my 34th revolution around the sun last week. I didn't blog on that day because A) I had kind of a crappy day and B) I don't celebrate birthdays so posting about it would just frustrate people who wanted to wish me well and I only like frustrating people sometimes and those times are usually when I'm in a good mood and want to mess with some heads.

Please don't ever do this to your child.

Anywhoodles, I'm older and that's that.

Staycation.

You didn't hear from me last week because I was totally and completely unplugged from technology (well, as much as one can be here in Minnesota without heading Up North to BWCA and getting lost/wet/eaten by a bear). I mean I was not tweeting, blogging, or facebook-ing. I was also not working for three magnificent days plus the weekend. It was basically amazing.

Let's pretend that dog is Willy the Cat, ok?

It would behoove you to read about my lazy exploits ahead...

Rotten zucchini.

Blogs are like fresh vegetables. You get all excited about all of the beautiful things you could grill, roast, or dip in tempura batter and fry (YUM!) and for a little while, you bask in the colorful glory of reds, greens, purples, and yellows of the Earth's bounty. Then you forget all about them for a month while they go soft and wrinkly in the crisper drawer. Well, you don't REALLY forget. You think about them every once in a while, and you pull them out and see if they're really, truly dead or just "ready for chili". Guilt sets in, and you start to avoid the fridge altogether while you cook out of your pantry (old Cheers episodes) and bring home takeout (MasterChef Season 3) or just gorge yourself at the State Fair (Mr. Mom on Netflix). There are apparently a lot of things you can do on the Internets besides blogging.

Maybe these people can come up with something to freshen my blog every once in a while.

In the interest of not becoming one of those people on Hoarders, today I am dusting off some carrots that still have some life in them and making chicken and dumplings. As you can tell from reading this, I am also posting on my blog.

Going for the Gold

I knew the Olympics were going on during Ramadan, and I had thought a little bit about how hard that must make the competitions for the Muslim athletes who will be fasting for around 18 hours a day. But not until this morning did I consider how much personal sacrifice is made in an effort to win worldly rewards like gold medals, and promotions at work, and tacky little statues of bowling men, even. People train for most of their lives to be Olympic athletes. High-powered executives lose countless hours of sleep while burning the midnight oil at the office, ordering in Chinese food and taking off their ties at some point (oh, is that just in the movies?). Even league bowlers spend a lot of time and money to get the accolades of their buddies and the jealousy of their beer-bellied rivals.

Walter is not even messing around here. Smokey was over the line.

Non-Lebowski fans, just forget about that picture. You don't really need to know.

One Mississippi.

Count to six. I'll wait.

There—a child just died of hunger. According to the World Food Programme, this happens every six seconds. Think about it too much and you will dive into a depression hole so deep that not even an hour-long episode of 30 Rock guest-starring Kristen Wiig and Zach Galifianakis will get you out.

Disgusting!

But we do have to think about it a little bit. Bear with me.

Hope floats your boat!

My little poll to the right timed out today, coinciding with the start of Ramadan (now it makes sense, huh?)—and while not a lot of people voted, the favor went overwhelmingly to hope as a motivator. I used to be crippled by procrastination and have some flare-ups now and then, but I'm mostly driven to accomplish my goals by a hybrid mixture of hope and encouragement.

I'd love to hear from you about your tricks and tactics to banish the "I'll do it later" monster from your life.

Finding flowcharts for my blog on the googles is my version of drawing a pterodactyl.

Next!

Goofy sandwich with Business Bread

Yesterday I had a true day off but I accomplished a lot at the beginning and end.

I forgot to blog about it, so here it goes. Just to update you on my whole sleep study appointment, it didn't happen. Due to the efficiency of the State of Minnesota in dropping people from their healthcare plans the minute they forget to pay, I couldn't keep my appointment. There's no way I was going to pay for it and try to get reimbursed. As my pops says, I was born at night but not last night. Anyway I got a ton of stuff done with my day off including an oil change (half off with handy direct-mail coupon!), grocery shopping, a bunch of e-mail answering, and other odds and ends. I did pay my insurance premium too, so I'm back in business for my new appointment over a month from now.

After all that productivity it was time to get stupid. I got together with two besties and we ate ice cream truck treats, halal beef jerky, chips, and other junk. We decided it would be a good idea to dye our hair with henna and proceeded to make a huge mess all over our heads, the bathroom, and other areas of my friend's apartment. We gabbed and made dinner while the chunky, nasty dye paste cooked under plastic bags tied over our heads. It was great.

I'm the skeptical one. Toni's shock-ed. Salihah is very smug about her news.

Onward!

Warp Level

It seems I've sort of skipped over a few days here, kinda like when you warp in Super Mario Bros. and end up in World 4 by going through a tube. Yeah, we can just say I warped, rather than admitting I neglected to blog.

Ironically, you can lose whole days in real life playing this game too.

Ok, now that that's over with, on to writing the things! The things that I am thinking!!

80% ain't bad.

The post title will make more sense later on but for now, I just have to say that people are fun and they make life great. There. Most of you who know me will read this and go, "Say, WHAT?? Who are you and what did you do to my cynical and socially isolated friend?" It's true that despite the fact that I talk a lot, I rarely actually want to talk to anyone (we'll leave that to the therapists to figure out).

However today there were lots of other-people-funnies, most of which didn't require me to be in the conversation. The boss's kids were at the office and totally cracking me up, making jokes about how they're so African they play catch with an eraser and other side-splitters. One of our colleagues in Ethiopia was using some hilarious broken English in an e-mail, and our Bosnian contractor screamed some super-good admonishments into the phone at one of his workers. Ok this was yesterday but it was too good to leave out. He actually used the phrase, "This isn't gypsy land. This is real land!" I can't believe I survived the laugh attack.

The theme here seems to be that I hang out with a lot of diverse people (true) and they are funny as a result (totally). This makes me seem slightly insensitive (guilty) but it's all in good fun and I love every one of these characters for their unique personalities.

We got nothin' on the East Africans, let me tell you.

The sweeping generalizations are over (for now).

Not the worst Monday ever.

This one wasn't too shabby! We'll pretend I didn't take a really dumb way to work as I experiment with the best route to the new office which is right smack in the middle of no-highway-even-close-to-here-construction-zone. There is a Pizza Hut nearby, but who does that help? No one. Anyway even though I was a bit late, I got a ton of things accomplished, we had a reasonable staff meeting, and now I'm home with the AC on, blogging the night away with you.

It looks a little like this except I have red hair and wouldn't be caught dead in a Snuggie.

Did you know there are superhero Snuggies? Sheesh.

Thick and Thin.

I've decided I will once again post every single day, as I did "in the beginning", no matter what I have actually done toward my goal of 20 minutes a day of Islamic studies and exercise. I think (no, I KNOW) it helps me stay motivated when I'm accountable, and I miss writing every little thing that comes into my head, whether for your amusement or not (most probably not).

He seems to get the idea.

Today is just a quick little post—don't worry. I know how to take 'er easy on a Sunday.

Digging out.

It's been a while—I missed you! I just looked at the date on my last post and it was the day we started moving our office. That part went fine—the movers were super-efficient and professional—but the ensuing two weeks of nonstop hold music and frustrating, circular conversations with our phone and internet "provider" were about as unproductive as my year off from college in 1998. At least I didn't lose my driver's license for a month and my job at the grocery store forever like I did that year.

This creepy Monopoly Man is riding a narwahl. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Maybe moving to the next part of this post will help you get your mind off that infographic nightmare.

Reader's Digest

This thing has sort of turned into more of a digest than a daily blog lately, but I feel a sense of accomplishment listing out the things I've done in the last few days. So until stuff calms down at work/home (When would that be you ask? Well, NEVER!) I am going to continue to take some liberties. At least I'm not all sloth-y and avoiding you because of how ashamed I am for not doing anything. That would be worse. Right?

After seeing this adorable baby sloth I feel bad suggesting they're lazy.
In fact, they're just slow. Physically.
Not sure about their mental quickness. No time to do sloth research.
I'm not lazy, just busy. Really!

Longest photo caption ever!!!

We don't need to talk about that.

Let's not talk about how I lost another blogging week without knowing what happened. Let's gloss right over that. Good. Thanks.

Now my dear blog-ees, please know that I love you. A whole lot. I just seem to be having some trouble getting back to my routine and all these pesky things keep piling up on me. The biggest one is that the organization I work for decided to buy a building. Around the first of June. And they decided they needed to close within two weeks. I KNOW!! And THEN they decided that we need to move into it before the end of the month. OKAY.... And guess who's in charge? YUP.

This was basically me when I got the news of my new part-time job-within-a-job.

Well, we move Monday/Tuesday and despite some scares today with the phone and internet demons, I mean people, somehow things are on schedule. Alhamdulillah.

Back in the saddle. For now.

Wow, it's not easy to take the reins again once you bust a wheel and your wagon goes all wonky and off the trail and you lose a horse to cholera and everyone in the back of the wagon is screaming and bouncing around every time you hit a rock. That has been my experience anyway. Being sick and then going to camp and all of these other things put my Exercise/Islam/Blog schedule into the ditch and those towing people take forever, especially when you're Out West in a wagon.

I promise this was the first google result for "Oregon Trail Wagon Game".
The Muslims will totally get the oddity of name #5 in this case,
and the reverts around my age will be like, WHAT?! when they put it with #1.

I somehow didn't die of dysentery in the past 30 days though, so let's get this show on the road!

Camptastic!

Once a year, I turn into a 17-year-old girl (which I never really was in the traditional sense...) and I go to camp. Well, at least for the past two years. I hope it's forever. This last weekend was three days of 84 girls 15-20+ and nonstop screaming for all different kinds of reasons (spiders, mosquitos, cheering competitions, being picked to line up for dinner first, you know). It was a blast.

I think if a boy somehow made it into camp, he would dissolve on impact with the girl fumes.

Doctor Day.

How could it be a whole week since my last post? Being sick has totally put me out of commission in so many ways. I haven't seen friends in person either, and I've basically just gone home every night after work to try to sit still and not be dizzy with a splitting headache. So I finally made appointments with my doctor and the Target Optical eye exam guy just to rule out an old prescription causing the problems.

Today I got some answers and some pills, plus a whole lot more.