Animal, vegetable, protein powder

My new nutrition plan, my new culinary exploration, my new grocery shopping on the edges of the store, my new eating experiment near the month mark. In some ways it is coming easier. I turned out a meatloaf-like meal last night without a second thought. I continue to use items that I'd never even heard of before in large quantities. Flax meal is like candy. Egg whites are liquid candy. Man, I like candy.

I dig what I'm eating. I feel good about the meals I'm making. They taste right and healthy. I feel good and strong. I'm working at it, sometimes multiple hours an evening. I know there is room for improvement, but I sense that the fruits, the vegetables, and the real stuffs that I ingest are way better than my previous canned existence. I'd like to explain this feeling in grand terms, but I am unable. Just last month, I continued to feel like what I was cramming in my mouth was wrong. It was sustaining me. It was filling me up. I just felt like I needed to do better. I don't know where that sense came from, but it was repetitive and gnawed at me. Now, better is what I'm eating. I've found it and that's awesome. I've had to go out of my comfort zone to do it. It has taken planning. It has taken a bigger chunk from my wallet. It has taken blending, chopping, slicing, and some humility as I've had to admit that I don't really know my way around the kitchen at all.

Globally, internally, it feels good. This inner glow breaks down in two important ways. First, I get really hungry. There's no way I'm not getting the calories I need, but I still crave food. I'm eating more meals, more complete meals than ever before and hunger still strikes like a baseball bat to the back of the knees. I think hunger is more mental than I'd previously realized. That hasn't helped me control it yet, but I'm going to start working on it. The second breakdown is with sugar. When I eat sweets, I lose my mind. Sugar tastes like magic. It makes my tastebuds do the triple jump and follow that up with a hundred meter dash. I want to grab handfuls of it and rub it languidly in my beard like I'm in a sugar shampoo commercial.

Those feelings are really hard to control. For now, I'll continue to sugar shampoo and host track meets in my mouth, but I hope to master these feelings and the hunger soon. If I can do that and sustain my momentum, I will be doing well in the next month.

The last two top ten lists

I've been putting this off, but I think it's time to finish what I've started. The first of the last top ten lists is a dedication from Nerds vs. Dorks which I'm grateful for because I am struggling mightily.

The final top ten list is a list of career moments/events in the last decade. I've had this list since the beginning, but I'm a little reluctant to admit that I have a job, let alone a career.

10. Extending my temp job
9. Allocation
8. Having an office built around me
7. Working as a ski lift operator
6. The PM revision
5. Surviving
4. Getting hired
3. Helping people help people
2. Getting a promotion
1. Getting vested

That's it. We're moving on to the next decade.

A list of things I've done today
I haven't been to work in 3.5 days. The list of things I'm doing to occupy my time has started to get more interesting. I have
-re-threaded a drawstring in a pair of shorts using a safety pin, but not very effectively.
-sewn on a button.
-made my own hummus.
-cooked chicken.
-made a blueberry protein shake for now and one for later.
-made (poured maple syrup on) sugar on snow.
-made quinoa.
-shopped for a camera.
-watched the final episodes of the mini-series Tin Man starring Zooey Deschanel.
-shoveled snow.
-washed dishes.
-written a blog post and a list (in progress).

It's not even 6; the garlic in the hummus is stinging the upper part of my mouth, there's a book of short stories calling my name (rather softly), a workout, and high winds still to come.

and I feel fine

There's a low constant hum that covers multiple city blocks. It's like a heater struggling to start, or a snow-blower running low on fuel. The euphoria of Saturday when snowball fights reigned and passing neighbors smiled in amusement has been replaced by a white-grey dread. People no longer bound out of doors and down the middle of the street bending to form a snowball or a ready-made sno-cone. Now they trudge. They've bundled a little tighter. The bright colors of winter wear seem a little muted. Playing in 20 inches of snow with the hope of missing work dancing on the falling flakes is replaced by shoveling 10 more inches with the flakes flying horizontally. The weather and the city's accompanying emotion have gone from Lady Ga-Ga inspired party dress to the long walk of shame home. That walk seems to grow longer with each hour. The questions of where will we put the snow? and what do you mean the snow plows have stopped due to dangerous conditions? don't seem to be real. How can they be?

We still have power. Others have lost theirs. At the risk of being too dramatic, I can't help but wonder how fragile we are. I can't help but think about global warming either. Could this be a harbinger of things to come?

I read the newspaper stories about young neighbors taking care of their older neighbors and I talk to my friends who have shoveled driveways and pushed cars out of snow drifts. The spirit of community rises in these situations. Could this too be a harbinger of things to come? It seems just as likely.

Super Bowl commercials

Once again I'm late to the Super Bowl commercial reviewing party. Heck, John was reviewing them live. I've read a few reviews, given it some thought and decided only a few are even worth mentioning. I may be getting old and crusty, but this year's crop of commercials was pretty sad. The jokes weren't funny. The sex wasn't sexy. The animals were kind of weird and the babies were a bunch of milkaholics. What gives? Further, why did so many ads with similar themes/gimmicks air together? Bad luck?

-The Tim Tebow ad was nothing. This commercial has defeated us because it entered the conversation long before it aired. I bet 75% of the audience would have missed it had we not heard about it for a week. Too bad, so sad. public relations-1, personal politics- 0.

-The Google ad was quaint, quiet, engaging, interesting and darn good. Google is verb. Google is life.

-My favorite commercial was the Kia Sorento ad. I haven't seen this ad on any of the lists. Dude. This ad had a sock monkey on a jet-ski. It had a robot doing the robot on the dance floor. It had the toys in a slow-motion Reservoir Dogs walk. If toys think the Kia Sorento is cool, then it must be cool.

Wait. Am I being sarcastic? Yes, but I still really liked the ad.

Doritos? Bud Light? The Hangover on wheels with a whale? Whatever. Until $2.5 million brings us together again next year...

6 more weeks of winter

I'm lucky to be alive. I've taken up a nutrition plan and therefore cooking that involves more than a can and a skillet. This is all well and good and time consuming, but it means that I'm putting knives to use like never before. I am not properly trained in knives. In the last 10 days this has not been more evident than while attacking an avocado last night. Compounded by my lack of patience to achieve the proper soft ripened green mass, I recklessly attacked a poor avocado. The thing about an unripe avocado is that it is far from defenseless. What it lacks in technical ability it more than makes up for in hardness. I peeled and I poked. I sliced and I chopped in a near fruitless effort, all the while narrowly avoiding slicing, dicing, and generally ginsu-ing my own fingers down to the bone or perhaps beyond. Today at work I touched skin that had obviously been cut, but hadn't bled.

After a long struggle with an avocado and the laughs of my flatmates, I finally gave in and tossed my guacamole to be in the blender. It chopped most into a fine green mess, but some avocado chunk remained. The recipe did say to leave some chunks for texture. What says texture like 1/4 of an avocado uncut by the spinning blade of a blender?

More kitchen adventures to come.