A Confession (And Also An Unrelated Product Endorsement)

I'm addicted to breakfast cereal.

I once would have said that I just really loved breakfast cereal, but I think I'm past that now. I crave it. I justify my wanting of it. I can eat three or four bowls of the stuff a day. And while it's not really BAD for me in itself, the kind of consumption I do... well, I don't think it's healthy that so many of my carbs/calories come from basically the most processed food you can buy.

So I've given it up.

And come to the dramatic realization that I have to cold-turkey, like a drug addict. Because I can't just eat one bowl of cereal. The box is there, in the kitchen, and it's like 120 calories a bowl and it's really easy to talk myself into just one more bowl.

So as of yesterday, I'm cereal free. And if I fall of the wagon on this, I'm going to go ahead and declare myself Entirely Devoid Of Willpower and A Failure. (I have to draw such dire lines because otherwise I'll let myself fail.)

I Googled the 12 Steps and while I've clearly surpassed the first one (I Admit That I Have A Half-A-Family-Size-Box-A-Day Problem), the second step is a stumbling block. I do not thus far admit that Only God Can Save Me From The Honey Buzzers.

I think probably fresh fruit and veggies can save me from the honey buzzers. And water. And lots and lots of hot tea whenever I want it.

But the reason I'm blogging about this is simple: I'm going to be cutting a lot out of my diet very quickly. This is the kind of stuff that research suggests we can actually become physically addicted to, so I'll probably be really grumpy, and have a headache, and maybe say things about your mother being an elderberry sniffing hamster. I'm sorry. I have a problem.

RAPID SUBJECT CHANGE OFF THE PORT BOW!

Nobody knows this, but I've been on the quest for the perfect protein bar for years. It's been a constant internal struggle between 'the lowest calorie/highest protein content ratio' and the 'I'm pretty sure all these chemicals are going to kill me.'

Basically, for a while I was swapping back and forth between Clif Builder (270kcal, 20g protein, and mostly organic stuff) and Pure Protein (180kcal, 20g protein, and mostly chemical stuff) and I wasn't really happy with either option but there you go.

And then I found Quest Protein Bars. And I'm really stoked. The apple pie flavor (my favorite) is 170kcal, 20g protein, and... well, allow me to illustrate the point:

The above picture is of two bar ingredient labels. The top one is a Quest bar (the mixed berry, which I don't like as much but is acceptable). The bottom one is a Lean Muscle Bar. It has more calories, less protein, and do you see those chemicals?

The Quest Bar labels are like, "Ingredients: Actual Fruit To Make Fruit Flavors."

I love them.

So basically, you know, I'm having dinner.

It's my birthday tomorrow - you might have heard. And all weekend, I'm having dinner.

See, I tend to plan my days around one, maybe two events. That way everything else I need to do can fit into the cracks around those events. So when you make a plan with me, like having dinner, if you make it far enough in advance, chances are you're the only thing on my docket for that day. That isn't to say that I don't have a million other things to do. It just means that everything else is flexible.

Tomorrow I have two things planned, and they're close enough together that even though they don't overlap, it still stresses me out. Bike Dad is taking me mountain biking for the first time (provided the bike gets over its issue, more on that later after I've fixed it because I prefer to post in the aftermath of catastrophe and not during, as you may have noticed) and then the Collective is feeding me the dinner of my choice, which as previously mentioned is tempeh sweet potato curry and saffron rice.

THEN on Saturday I'm going to run 14 miles in High Point in the morning, have corn pancakes at Tex n Shirley's, and at some point (probably following a crashnap) I'll go over M. Chef's house and we'll be making birthday veggie lasagna, my choice following my query/challenge of "How many veggies can you stuff into a lasagna and still have it be lasagna?"

THEN on Sunday I'll be up early for a 60 mile bike/6 mile run, followed by a ride to Winston-Salem to have Family Birthday Dinner, which always sounds like a great time but usually turns out to be kind of upsetting because the answer to "Can't we all just get along?" with my family is generally a wide-eyed, innocent, "What? It isn't my fault we're arguing!" and the Beanie Baby and I wind up sitting in the back room watching Dangermouse while they argue about who started the argument.

But I'll be getting my mom's scratch-made carrot cake and maybe if I stick my fingers in my ears and say, "Lalalala can't hear you it's my birthday," every time they start, it won't happen. I can't hear you, chief, I've got a banana on my head.

I was explaining the hectic-sounding weekend to the UberTransFan and I ended, quite lamely, with, "So basically, you know, I'm having dinner." There was a long, bemused pause, and then I whined, "And they all want to know what kind of cake I want!"

I love cake. But three cakes three nights in a row is a bit much to contemplate.

I got this song in a free Amazon sampler, and I freaking love it:

Apologies for the live video quality. It's all the internet had to offer.

"I don't eat food. I eat science."

Two milestones, two mornings in a row:

I ran my first 15 yesterday morning. Officially the longest I've ever run, and I didn't crash or burn. I even successfully downed an Accel Gel mid-run and drank a little Gatorade. I had a stomach cramp for about 5 minutes, but I pretended I didn't and it went away; I also had a little GI issue towards the end (literally in the last mile) but I kept running and told myself that at the marathon, there would be Port-a-Johns for that sort of thing.

I'm really happy that I could do it, considering how slow and crappy I've felt lately. I'm starting to think that maybe I won't get quite the time that I was thinking I would before I got injured, but I'll definitely be able to finish. This Saturday I'm back down to 14, and then next week is my first 16!

I'm gonna keep trying the Accel Gel, because they're the sponsors at Richmond, which means that probably they'll be handing them out at the race. If it's an emergency, I need to know if I can take them or not.

This morning, I rode my first 50+ solo. The tandem ride I did with Bike Dad doesn't really count because I think he helped me out a lot and if I had died, he would have just dragged my ass back in. This was my first ride where it was all on me, to live or die. I did it and I'm happy about that. It was the first part of another rider's 120 mile group ride. She had scheduled a jump-off at mile 57 and I started the ride knowing I was going to take it, no matter how I felt at mile 56. I ate a granola bar before and sucked up an Accel Gel at the mile 30 pit stop.

I honestly think I could have done even better this morning if I didn't have to pee so badly between miles 20 and 30 that I could barely think. After the pit stop, I was riding much better. One of the other riders pulled up beside me and said, "You are an excellent climber. You go up the hills like they're not even there." Which made me happy, and made me even happier when I found out that she did IronMans.

I think the hills are a cross-over thing - I think the leg muscles you use to run are the same ones you need to attack hills, so my status as runner-who-bikes has me at an uphill advantage. I actually find downhills sorta difficult and I've noticed that that's when I tend to fall off the group.

After the marathon, Bike Dad and I are going to train longer distances. I want to bike to Ocracoke Island one day. (That's 272 miles. But part of that is a ferry ride.)

Friday is my birthday. I think I might be finally crawling out of the depressed, anti-social funk I wormed my way into. I hope so because Catface Meowmers is making me tempeh sweet potato curry for my birthday dinner, and I'm going to make funfetti cake the way I like it (shallow pan and almost crunchy), and it would be really awful to be depressed and snappish while eating funfetti cake in between monster servings of curry.

(Seriously, Catface Meowmers' curry is a reason to get up in the morning if you think you don't have one. Especially with saffron rice.)

I have to go feed some cats now.

Interesting Fact About Me

I keep a list of restaurants around the country that I want to visit. There are a lot of places in New York City, which means I'm just waiting for a reason to go there so I can eat, but some of them are really far out there, and if I'm ever in the area, it'll be specifically because I came to eat at that restaurant.

And I have no problem doing that.

Currently, though, I'm thinking about Peanut Butter & Co, in NYC. Which is a whole restaurant devoted to peanut butter sandwiches.

I am fanatical about PB&J and Fluffernutter. I could eat them 3 meals a day, everyday, except there's other delicious things that get in the way of that scheme, like Broccoli with Garlic Sauce and Mellow Mushroom's Tempeh.

I can cook pretty much anything I could possibly want to eat. I can saute, bake, poach, whatever. I love doing all those things, and I have no objection and actually enjoy the time involved. I just really love peanut butter sandwiches, so I tend to eat like a bachelor who may or may not know how to do his own laundry.

I hate jelly, though - for me the 'J' in PB&J is 'Jam.' For me, if it's clear and void of fruit, I don't want it. I think preserves and whole fruit jams work better with the peanut butter and stick to the bread more pleasingly. Also, I prefer to make my sandwiches at least 20 minutes in advance and let them sit, J side down.

And sometimes I cut them into little triangles like my mom used to for my school lunches, before I read Harriet the Spy and decided that I wouldn't eat anything except tomato sandwiches at school.

Just so you know...

See these? Yeah, I made them.

'Ameliorate' is one of my favorite words.

This morning I woke up at 7 when my alarm went off. The plan was, "Get up, eat breakfast, go riding, come home, eat lunch, be a productive and fully functional adult."

Except I opened my eyes and my first thought was that someone had been beating my quads with sticks. Possibly several someones, and possibly with Alloy 1090 Carbon Steel sticks, which I've recently learned is the hardest metal known to man. When you talk about things harder than Alloy 1090, you have to use words like 'diamond' and 'ruby,' neither of which make good beating sticks.

I optimistically rolled out of bed, thinking that maybe getting a little blood flow into my legs would ameliorate the problem, but as I hobbled across the basement, I squinted up the stairs and thought, "No freaking way." And if I don't feel like climbing six stairs, I really don't feel like riding 30 miles.

So I went back to sleep. I'm okay with skipping a day of riding, because I've put my legs through hell lately, swapping between two kinds of bikes which put stress in different places, doing all the aggressive hip flexor strength training the Orthodoc prescribed, and trying to ease into running without easing too far out of biking. I'm running around the track tonight, and I'm hoping having the fresh(er) legs will pay off for me.

No, I'm still not gonna push it and try to actually do a track workout, but I might aim for under a nine minute mile while jogging around. I think that's achievable. My ankle really hasn't hurt lately, except in places when I'm 99% positive it's the brace keeping it from flexing the way it wants to. I can't wait to get out of this brace.

I just considered and nixed the idea of posting pictures of the scabbing, irritated sores on my ankle because of the brace. You're welcome. Moving on.

So I slept in.

Well, I slept until 10:30, and that feels really late to me. Then in the spirit of being a lazy unemployed bum like I'm told I am, I woke up, rolled over, put my glasses on, and resumed watching the episode of Food Network Star I had paused the night before.

It felt unspeakably lazy, but I think I really needed it. When I finally got up, I did my morning calisthenics and went to make coffee. When I brought my joe back downstairs, ready to watch the latest episode of Masterchef, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

And then I stopped and looked again.

Because for the first time in about two weeks, maybe more, I liked what I saw.

My self-esteem is a strange and fickle thing. It's cripplingly low and annoyingly high, occasionally at the same time. I generally think I'm attractive in my opinion, but that other people probably don't see me the same way I see myself.

Usually the mental battle for me is to convince myself that it doesn't matter what other people see so long as I like myself. I genuinely believe that anyone can be attractive if they have confidence and believe in the themselves. Lately I haven't been able to look at myself in the mirror and see anything worth being attracted to. Is it the lack of running? The social and personal failures? I figure it's the same reason I want to go on a solo road trip so badly I could cry. There's something ungrounded bouncing around inside of me and I don't like it. I don't feel like people should want to be around me right now. I'm a shell person - something hard and superficial, hiding something secret, soft, and waiting to be subjected to heat and seasoning.

But this morning, I liked myself in the mirror again. And that's a step in the right direction. You have to learn to scramble before you can poach, right?

I'm going to break the 4th wall of the egg metaphor to mention that I don't really know how to poach an egg. I know the basic technique but I've never liked soft yolks so I never bothered to try it out. I've poached pears but that's really not the same thing. I like pears, but they're only good for about five minutes of their life span - all the rest of the time they're either too hard (which is when I usually eat them) or rotten.

That right there is as close to a discussion of recent events and my feelings as you'll ever get out of me. I'm really looking forward to track tonight.

Today is hereby declared Cake Day.

I bought this cake for myself with a Daily Deal coupon. It comes from Spring Garden Bakery, on Spring Garden Street in Greensboro, NC. Their phone number is 336-272-8199.

I'm telling you this because I'm not kidding or even really exaggerating when I say it is the most delicious cake I have ever eaten. The UberTransFan agrees so it's not just me.

Key Lime Chiffon Cake

A Most Inconvenient New Hobby

I woke up last Wednesday and decided I was going to make something.

I made coffee, but this did not satisfy the impulse, even though I used a cone filter and that usually makes me feel appropriately fussy and involved in the process. I went for my bike ride and tried to shake the urge.

Saturday I was sitting at Tex n Shirley's with my Jabronis, eating my favorite corn pancakes and trying not to sulk about the fact that I had missed out on yet another Saturday morning long run. The desire to make something got louder, and louder, and then said, quite clearly, "Make candy."

I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to make the crunchy sugar things that The One With Manners brings back from Esther Price in Ohio. I didn't know how to do this. For all I knew, it was very difficult.

But it was goddamned gonna happen.

I went back to the house I was petsitting at, took the dogs out, and looked it up online. I surmised that it was called 'honeycomb candy' and the recipe was, like, 4 ingredients, which reassured me.

Then I spent 2 hours trying to find a candy thermometer within driving distance. I called many stores, and had this exact conversation:

"Hi, do you sell candy thermometers?"

"What?"

"Thermometers that go over 300 degrees? Most meat thermometers stop at 220..."

"Uh, lemme check..."

(Five plus minutes of hold music.)

"No."

I finally broke down and called the notoriously expensive specialty store that they say you have to pay $20 just to walk into. And I had this conversation:

"Hi, do you sell candy thermometers?"

"Yes, we do."

I was so relieved that I didn't even ask how much it was before I jumped in my car and drove to buy it. And it turned out to be about $12, totally reasonable considering that some of the completely inappropriate meat thermometers were upwards of $30. And this wasn't the first time I'd wished for a candy thermometer, so I consider it a good investment.

A quick stop at the Food Lion for the rest of my extraordinarily cheap supplies, and I was ready to go.

Weapons Assembled. Status: Battle Ready

So according to the internet, I mix 3/4 cup of sugar with 3 Tablespoons of honey or corn syrup and 4 Tablespoons of water. Obviously I wanted to use honey because it tastes better and is better for you. Also, bees are cool.

I make perfectly geometric shapes and communicate by dancing!

So I mixed all of those things together in a pot, and put it on the stove on high heat with my nifty thermometer clipped to the side. The internet said DON'T FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STIR so I didn't stir.

After a couple of minutes, this is what it started looking like.

This is when I should have taken it off the stove.

This is when I actually took it off the stove.

This shit was nasty, y'all...

So I burned the first batch, but that's okay. It was my first time and no one but The Beast was watching me. I waited for it to stop being the temperature of lava, and then broke it up and threw it away. I may have tossed some other pieces of trash over it in case, you know, someone went through the trash and felt like laughing at me for it.

I put all my ingredients back together and started over.

Round 2... FIGHT!

So, the really cool thing that I was entirely unable to photograph because both my hands were busy is what happens when you dump the baking soda into the pot. You wait till the sugar-honey-water starts to turn a certain color and then you quick-quick-quick pull the pot off the heat and throw in the baking soda. Then as immediately as humanely possible, you whisk - but not too much - and magic happens.

Well, Alton Brown would say it was science.

It immediately turns this whitish brown foamy color like the foam you see on the beach after the tide goes out and expands very, very rapidly. So then you have to dump it onto your baking sheet, which you have already coated with enough butter to make Paula Deen think it was edible. You have to dump it quick because it has already started cooling and pretty soon you won't be able to dump it.

Also don't let it touch your skin because it's lava.

Delicious, delicious lava.

Totally looks like the surface of the moon, right?

Then you walk away from it for a little while. I contented myself with watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which serendipitously was on television. After about half an hour, it was cool and hard and I broke it up into pieces, trying not to crush the pores out of it.

Like soldiers, ready for battle.

So then I covered them all in chocolate. I made dark chocolate peppermint, and chocolate peanut using extra crunch Jiff peanut butter.

And now I have a hobby that is most damaging to my waistline. If anyone wants candy, please tell me, because it's so fun to make and sodalishus but I am eating way too much of it.

Bones About It

One of my favorite product review blogs, The Impulsive Buy, is accepting submissions for another staff writer, and I want that gig. So I decided to write a product review, just to show them my writing style. They asked that I include pictures, so I decided to do that, too.

This is what happened.

----------------------------------

I'm petsitting this weekend, and this dog, while very sweet, is made of crazy. She's so high energy she vibrates. She doesn't have an ounce of fat on her body. She's the living embodiment of a Powerplate Platform. She may be endorsed by Madonna.

Others tell me that she calms down and acts like a normal dog sometimes, but she almost never does around me. I walk in the door and she starts bouncing from me, to the wall, to me, to the other wall... she bashes into furniture and sometimes gets so excited she pees on the floor. I've been around dogs my whole life and watched many episodes of 'It's Me Or The Dog,' so I ignore her and walk through to the kitchen, settle myself around the house, and avoid eye contact.

It doesn't work.

And since the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results... this time I came armed with a very special technique happened upon by The Librarian. I call it, 'Give her something to eat besides my face.'

I brought these:


They came in a three pack for $7.98 at Walmart, and I spent a few minutes standing in the pet toy aisle, eying them suspiciously. Would three be enough? I'm petsitting all weekend, after all, and even though these were the largest white rawhides offered (any color rawhide + white carpet = disaster of biblical proportions) they didn't seem all that large to me. How much peace could $7.98 bring me?

Anything was better than no peace at all, though. After all, there's a really great Chinese takeout place near their house, the best I've located so far, and I want to be able to eat my Broccoli with Garlic Sauce on previously mentioned white carpet without stress.

Here's a comparison photo of one of the bones with the face it would hopefully be replacing:

(Serious face because it's serious business.)

As you can see, they're fairly close to a foot long. They're light and feel dryer to me than a lot of the rawhide products I've handled in the past. The label makes it very clear that they're not for human consumption, so I can't speak to their taste. I can speak to the fact that they Tamed The Savage Beast.

For, you know, a little while.

I'm not a dog. I don't understand the appeal of dry, untanned animal hide, but then, I've also never had the impulse to roll around in rotting dead animals, which I'm given to understand is a favorite past time of members of the Canid family. But I tossed the first bone onto the floor and for the next four hours, the Beast's entire attention span was focused on something that was not me.

Within the first twenty minutes, she had gotten one of the ends completely off. I think I was right about these being somehow drier that regular rawhide, because when she got it separated, she left a trail of crumbly little rawhide bits on the carpet. The rest of the bone put up a good long fight before it succumbed to the Beast's Big Sharp Pointy Teeth. It took a while.

Sometimes the Beast tried new techniques, including one that involved letting gravity do some of the work and just opening and closing her jaws.

I really do love this dog.

And this Chinese food.


The Dragon Wok on Skeet Club in High Point, for you locals. Same shopping center as Feeney's Frozen Yogurt.

Item: Exer-hides Rawhide Bones
Price: $7.98 plus tax
Size: 16.2 ounces (for 3 bones)
Purchased at: WalMart
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Taming the savage beast. My delicious dinner.
Cons: Eventual defeat. Little bits on the carpet. Gross if you think about it too much. Extra gross if you Google it.

Food Network Masterchef. Wait. That's not right...

I stream Masterchef and Food Network Star on Hulu while I do other, real stuff like sit-ups and homework. I frequently get the two confused so if I'm talking about something that happened on Masterchef that didn't, I probably mean FNS, and vis versa.

The thing I have to remember is that Gordon Ramsay is on Masterchef (but he's nice, so it's hard to remember that it's him) and Giada's boobs are on FNS. I honestly don't understand the appeal of Giada. I mean, I get the low cut shirt hello cleavage thing because I am a red-blooded American lesbian and even green-blooded, queer Vulcan men would get that, but I'm inevitably distracted from the cleavage by the fact that she looks like a bobblehead.

I clearly remember that I used to find Giada attractive. Let me see if I can... yes, a quick Google confirms it.

This is Giada ca. 2008:
And this is Giada now:
I mean, jeez.

But so I'm watching FNS, and there's this contestant called Jyll. Yes, Jill-with-a-y. I'm not even gonna begin to complain about that, because for all I know her parents could actually have named her that. No, what I'm complaining about with Jyll is the fact that she is constantly referring to things as "Jyllicious." I get that portmanteau is cute and people like 'em. I'll eat the hell out of some brunch with a spork while listening to Motown and writing in my blog.

But when you refer to something as "you + delicious," my brain assumes that you're saying it literally tastes like you, which just seems really unsanitary in a catering situation.

SOMEONE got a Wilson Phillips song stuck in my head.

Got up and rode 25 miles this morning. I'm trying not to get too down about the fact that I can't run, so I'm coming up with a list of reasons why biking is more fun than running. Here's what I've got:

1. I can eat breakfast and drink coffee and then immediately go biking without major stomach issues.

2. I can carry stuff with me. Like my wallet and my cell phone, and a bottle of water so I don't have to hunt down public water fountains mid-run.

3. I can wear regular clothes - well, regular enough to bike straight to class or to a restaurant. I can also carry a change of clothes if need be (see #2).

4. ...

Well, I'm working on it. Biking is a lot of fun, but it's just not as satisfying as running. It feels like something fun to do on the side instead of something I can focus my energies on and accomplish. I think I'll always bike, even once I'm running again, because it's fun and good for me and intellectually I know that, but running is... running. It's really great to have biking as a back-up in case of injuries like this, though.

Life is hard when you have a Better'N Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jelly Sandwich in your backpack, and it's an hour till lunchtime. I'm not hungry but I love PB&J so much that I just constantly want to eat it. I'll finish one sandwich and still want another one. It's not logical or graceful. And ever since The Librarian turned me on to Better'N Peanut Butter, it's practically compulsive. I love that stuff. I eat it with a spoon, I smear it on apples, I put it in baked goods and oatmeal and... if they ever need a spokesperson, I'm there. But they don't, because their product is so awesome it sells itself.

Luckily, I can't eat in the Superlab. So as long as I stay here, my sandwich stays in my backpack.

I've been watching this show called The Voice on Hulu. This is the contestant I want to win.


It's basically American Idol, but if American Idol was doing it right. I.E., its main focus is musical talent and vocal ability. The contestants auditioned for the teams blind, so they were judged completely on how they sounded. There are sixteen year old kids versus women in their 40s and 50s, and neither of them have an advantage because they're being at least partly judged by people who know what the fuck music is supposed to sound like.

The one bad thing about it is that Christina Aguilera, who I love (as previously discussed in this post), comes off as extremely awkward and kind of... stupid... on camera. I'm positive she's not really like this, and it's just her feeling awkward about being on camera. I mean, she's not known for doing this type of thing. She's a goddamn musical prodigy. She sings.

And damn, does she on this show. She'll be coaching her contestants, and they won't get a rift right, and she'll say, "No, more like this." And without hesitating or even taking an extra breath as far as I can tell, incredible sound just erupts from her mouth.

And then her poor little contestants get this look in their eyes like, "Yeah, um... you're Christina Aguilera, and I need to go change my panties."

Obligatory Acknowledgement of Father's Day

My dad isn't a sentimental guy. He doesn't like greeting cards, or meandering trips down memory lane; all that is my mom's purview. She's the one who wants flowers and phone calls on her birthday and would happily spend the rest of our lives going over the giant plastic storage tubs full of photographs she took when I was a child, insisting I remember events and people I have no memory whatsoever of. I'm more like my dad, but I do all those things for her, because she likes them, and I like to make her happy.

I'm not totally insensitive to my dad's needs. He just doesn't really have them. Sometimes I do precious father/daughter things because Mom wants them done, but mostly I just hang out with my dad because he can be fun to hang out with. We don't "bond." We just hang out. We've known each other for a while, you see.

But I still had lunch with my dad today. Because it's farking Father's Day, and my dad likes eating at Emma Key's, and why not? Everyone around me lives far away from their fathers, and couldn't hang out with them today, and it made me unaccountably grateful for the fact that I live so close.

And, yeah, my mom and Albuquirky Aunt were there, and he and I were both grumpy for various reasons, but it counts. He had a Carolina-style burger (for those of you who don't know, that's a burger built like a real hotdog - chili, slaw, onions, mustard) (and chili means spicy ground beef in a sauce like a condiment, not soup with beans) and I had a "Vegan Cake" which is basically a falafel burger made with black beans. They almost never have the vegan bread but I'm not really vegan, so I don't care. It's yummy. You'd think a burger and shake shack would be the last place a lactose-intolerant vegetarian would like to eat, but I love it there.

Then obviously we ate ice cream because if I can't run, I'm going to eat goddamn ice cream. And since all this happened between 2 and 4 pm, I wasn't hungry at dinner and basically ate some greek yogurt with cereal out of habit at 9.

I found a cereal I don't like One Bit At All - Cookie Crisp! Honestly, it's this weird combination of chocolate and... not-chocolate... and it just doesn't work for me. The BearCat-CatBear says that it's really meant to be eaten in milk, but I don't like eating cereal in milk, so there you go. I like dry cereal, or cereal in yogurt if I'm feeling adventuresome. The best thing to me is Corn Flakes and strawberry yogurt. Seriously.

I'm talking about food here because that's how my dad and I communicate. Through food. We share a near-maniacal need to Eat Well. He taught it to me, through exposure, taking me along on all kinds of quests - the perfect hotdog, the best barbecue. I cringe, thinking about the various picky eater phases I went through, including the phase where I ate nothing but chicken caesar salads, and all the food experiences I could have been having instead.

Wednesday, my last night in Winston-Salem, I walk in the house after my crappy, ankle-stabbing run, and sitting on the counter in Grandma's kitchen was a styrofoam takeout container. Inside was a vegetable plate from the best shack in NC - and I mean it is literally a shack - Snook's Barbecue. I don't know if their barbecue is any good but I do know that they make hands down the best cabbage in the world.

Sometimes Dad can make things right without even knowing that something was wrong. That's why he's Dad, and everyone else is just a schmuck. (Kudos if you get the reference.)

Happy Cheese Day!

I meant to run 13 miles this morning with The Bad Influence, but instead I cut it short to 10 because I need to go see an ortho for my ankle. I decided on the way home that I would just bike until I get it x-rayed, because biking doesn't seem to bother it at all.

I don't wanna go to the doctor because I'm terrified that she'll say something is horribly wrong and I can't run again ever, but I need to suck it up and do the manly thing here.

And since my ankle hurts and I'm depressed/scared about it, I had twice the reason to have my usual Saturday Ice Cream Lunch. Yes, it's a thing, and yes, I really do it. See, I eat really big after my long run. Big enough that I'm usually not hungry for lunch. I get snacky about 2PM, and I started having my weekly dose of ice cream around that time. So it's easier just to say I have ice cream for lunch on Saturdays.

I've been planning for this one since Wednesday. I hunted for a week for the flavor of ice cream I wanted - Blue Bunny Red Carpet Red Velvet Cake - and finally found it at WalMart. I wrapped it up in plastic and shoved it in the very back of the freezer so no one would eat it until after I cracked into it, because I usually like the very top of the ice cream best. I got home and cleaned my 'room' to the point of feeling like a human and not a cave troll. Then I loaded up my mason jar I brought back from The Girl Who Says Fuck A Lot's wedding, because I've found it's the best receptacle for eating all sorts of things.

This is the best idea someone ever had. Seriously. It's vanilla ice cream with pieces of red velvet cake and a cream cheese frosting swirl, and it really is as good as it sounds. Sometimes ice cream flavors don't hit the notes they promise you, but this one is really that good. The red velvet cake bits are chewy and chunky like you're eating ice cream cake, and the cream cheese frosting is there without overpowering the taste of the red velvet.

My one criticism is that I was right - if I had not been squirrely and crazy and come to the ice cream eating party late, I would have had a lot less cake and a lot less frosting. Further down in the container, all of the additions were pushed to the outside and there was just a big pile of plain ice cream in the middle.

So now I'm in an ice cream coma, watching last season's Next Food Network Star, listening to Aarti talk about her 'tummy' like she's three and cringing knowing that she wins. When my brain wakes up a little bit more, I'll try to find something worth watching.

I probably wouldn't do anything for a Klondike bar.

Just finished taking my Geosystems exam - thank God I found out one of Grandma's neighbors doesn't protect their wireless network, so I could just get up, make coffee, and power into it - and since I budgeted 2hrs for it and finished in 1hr10mins, clearly I need to entirely squander away 50mins.

Track last night was awesome.

I mean, it didn't seem awesome while I was doing it. It was a relatively cool day, and I showed up to track without knowing what I was going to do (I never know what I'm going to do because I don't know what I'm doing), so when The Math Teacher showed up as the only person around my pace ability and she didn't know what we were going to do, The Librarian suggested we try 400s. Since track workouts aim for 3 miles total, that's 12 400s.

At about the eighth one I started trying to scheme my way out of doing the rest. "Why don't we drop down to 800s, or do a mile repeat?" The Math Teacher was too busy actually recovering during the minute rests we were taking, and so I talked myself out of it by realizing that there was something actually very comforting about the fact that I knew I only had to go around once. I felt better about trying to kill myself, knowing that it would be over sooner.

But round about the second lap of my cooldown, I found myself thinking, "Hey, that was fun!"

I was maybe a little delirious.

So then after track we ate Mexican food, and then went to an Irish pub to meet some friends because, hey, we're Americans. So then I wound up driving back to the cats in WS (about a 40 minute drive if I'm being paranoid about speed traps) at like 11pm.

Which could only mean one thing: I needed a good snack.

I adore 24hr grocery stores. I adore 24hr anything, to be honest, because truthfully I'm bad a remembering Time. The BFFFE asked me to bring her home Subway last night and I said, "Sure," not remembering that Subways close at night. So now I'll be slouching into the house this morning with belated Subway and a guilty expression.

So I went to the Taj MaTeeter at Friendly Center, in search of provisions.

I wound up with these:

Apparently I've been out of the loop for a while, just eating the plain White Cheddar rice cakes because they're AWESOME, but I wanted a crunchy snack that I could eat while driving without leaving a mess, and rice cakes leave a mess even if I'm not driving while I try to eat them. Last time I looked at Quakes, they had two flavors: Cheddar and Caramel Apple. The Cheddar are good, but Caramel Apple flavor paired with a crunchy texture I associate with salty things is too jarring for me.

I was torn between the Kettle Corn, the Sea Salt and Black Pepper, and the Sweet Chili. I veto'd the Sweet Chili first simply because I didn't like the word 'sweet' in the name - that's a word they use to reassure people things aren't that spicy - and the final decision was somewhat arbitrary.

I like Kettle Corn. I kind of liked these Quakes. They're a little too sweet for the amount of not-salty they are, if that makes sense. I like my Kettle flavors to be evenly balanced, but the first bite was all sweet, no salt. After a while, the salty flavor started building up in my mouth, but it wasn't as obvious when you ate the Quakes the way I like to eat them - in little nibbly bites. I like the texture. To get a good balance between sweet and salty, you had to shove a whole cake in your mouth. Not as fun. There was also initially an eggy taste - like in Corn Pops - that didn't fit into the description, but it either went away or faded into the background.

My final review is that I wish I'd gone with the Sea Salt and Black Pepper. But I will next time. In fact, I'll probably pick some up today, when I stop at WalMart as part of my Search For Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream. I actually went to the Blue Bunny website last night and did a 'store locator,' and all the stores that popped up were WalMarts. Ergo, WalMart is hiding my ice cream.

Yes, Cheese Day isn't until Saturday, but I'm preparing in advance. Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream.

Every time I twitch my toes, they pop.

Yeah, I'm the worst blogger right now. I don't have regular internet, and I've been relying on my iPod Touch to check emails (and play Words With Friends). The people at Caribou are starting to recognize me. But this afternoon is devoted to studying, which means obviously I'm going to stall for as long as possible by writing this blog and catching up on my reading.

I had a good long run this morning, 13.3 miles at an average 7:59 pace. I'm pretty sure I was going faster for most of that, but my stomach started throwing a tantrum in the last mile, mile and a half, and I had to cut my pace way down. It was the first time I really decided to stick with the FSA group for the long run, and I'm beyond happy that the decision didn't blow up in my face.

Oh, FSA - Fast Skinny Assholes. That's what The Librarian calls them. They're those long-legged, lean runners you hate to see when you're out because they're prancing along through fields of daisies while you're about to die.

Usually on these long group runs, we divide up naturally into two pace groups, without any discussion about it. For a while lately, I've been kind of waffling in the middle - if I stay back, then I end up accidentally bullying the second pace group into a faster run than they want, while if I try to hang with the FSAs I worry I'll get left behind. I've been getting a lot faster, though, so I decided to try today.

It occurred to me as we were running down a street that it must have looked pretty funny, five tall guys and little bitty me. Every single one of them was at least 4 inches taller than me. I usually don't notice how short I am but I think my brain was a little desperate for distraction.

Also, I saw and sort of met Molly Nunn at last night's PM in the Park 1-miler, and she's tiny, maybe only an inch or so taller than me (if that). So that got me thinking about size. I still wish my legs were longer, though. I'm all torso, and you don't run on your torso. But I don't think my height in and of itself is what's going to hold me back.

My Fake Boyfriend, The New Girl and I were volunteering, and we got these shitty posts standing at turns and making sure no one went the wrong way. My Fake Boyfriend also had to tell people in cars that they couldn't go through the gate because there was a race on. Apparently people complained to the point of near fisticuffs about this. I have no sympathy for them because I think people who drive cars in parks are going to the Special Hell. With the child molesters, and people who talk at the theater.

So naturally we were all bored out of our minds, except for maybe 30 seconds every ten minutes when a heat blew past us. So we texted each other. Mostly complaining about how bored we were, and talking about how cool Molly Nunn was. She was warming up before her heat and she actually stopped to ask me if it was ok to warm up on the course. I said yes, of course. Because she's Molly Nunn. She can do whatever she wants. She ran one mile in 4:59 less than 10 minutes later. When you're capable of going that fast, what am I gonna do, stop you?

The New Girl was laughing at My Fake Boyfriend and I because we were, shall we say, in awe of her form? If you've ever seen a picture of Molly Nunn, in person she's actually even prettier. And very polite. Actually, both winners, male and female, were excruciatingly polite. I was really happy that David Roche won. He was just so happy and nice to everyone beforehand, even stopped his warm-up to thank me for volunteering. And then he ran a 4:23 mile. The lesson here, I think, is being nice to volunteers who are grumbling and swatting at mosquitoes makes for good race karma.

-GOSLINGS-

I'm having dinner with my dad tonight. Hopefully he'll want to eat early and also hopefully he'll want to eat Thai or maybe Indian food. Though I would also love me some Mellow Mushroom tempeh. I brought a couple of apples to Caribou since I tend to get hungry about 2pm on Saturdays. Not hungry enough to warrant lunch, but too hungry to wait until dinner.

Actually, he just texted me requesting Emma Key's, on Walker Ave. I told him about the place soon after it opened and he really likes it. They have a good veggie burger option, make their own barbeque sauce, and put Tabasco in their ketchup, so I really like them, too. Plus the guys who work there (and perhaps own the place, I can never tell) are really fun.

I told him that he couldn't have ice cream there, though, even though they have great shakes, because I'm taking him to The Full Scoop after dinner. They're new (new to me, anyways, I don't know when they actually opened) and awesome. I love house-made ice cream, in general, and they really seem to hit home runs with their flavors. I've been planning to eat their cookie dough for a week now. I love Cheese Day.

I guess I should probably study something now. Lady Gaga's Born This Way album is released on the 23rd. Are you ready?

Aw, it's a crusade, now.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I did something I don't normally do - I complained about something to someone who was responsible for that something.

I wrote to Clif bar saying how much I wished they would come up with some new flavors of Builder bar. They have all these magical mystery flavors of regular Clif: Maple Nut, Iced Gingerbread, Carrot Cake, Apricot, Peanut Toffee Buzz, Crunchy Peanut... this list goes on.

The Builder options?

Chocolate. Peanut Butter. Lemon. Chocolate Mint. Vanilla Almond. Cookies n Cream.

That's it. That's all they got. It seems like a lot until you eat them all the time, and then you realize that you're locked in this tiny box labeled "Good Quality, Natural Ingredient Protein Bar That Doesn't Taste Like Total Ass" and you start to feel insane. You might even eat other protein bars made with mostly chemicals. You might purposefully choose to eat a protein bar that you know tastes like total ass, just to remind yourself to be grateful for what you've got.

So I wrote to Clif and I told them that I was a loyal consumer of their product (I've been eating Builder bars since I started paying attention to my food at the Canyon), I really appreciated their company's philosophy, could they please please please add some more flavors to the Builder line-up. I pointed out that they had added several nice flavors in the Luna Protein line-up, which I enjoyed, but it's a 12g vs 20g protein difference, and that mattered.

I got a nice email back where they plugged their various products, but then said they would go 'poke' the Builder team. And you know, that's a good response. Maybe they'll add my opinion to a stack of similar opinions and one day that stack will get high enough to be dealt with.

Then today in the mail, I got this:

Well played, Clif. But I will not be distracted.

I turned the movie off before the scene where he died. I couldn't watch that alone.

I have favorite things. I wish sometimes that I had some kind of marketable skills - like a professional athlete does - so that I could be given free things in exchange for telling people about how great they are.

Today I decided that if I'm ever being interviewed by someone and they ask me what the secret to my success is, I'm going to tell them it's the broccoli. People would be shocked by the amount of broccoli I consume. And according to my research, it's fantastically good for me. It has high levels of vitamin c, potassium, and folic acid as well as fiber, for starters. (It's also an excellent source of something called indole-3-carbinol, which they're still researching but has to be good for something and probably means I won't get any kind of hormone related cancers.)

It's not that much of a secret that broccoli with garlic sauce, from almost any Chinese takeout place, is one of my favorite foods and my number one choice for 'what kind of take-out do you want?'

Other food-related favorites include:

Favorite Sandwich: Vegan Tempeh Sub from Mellow Mushroom
Seriously, Mellow Mushroom has the best tempeh outside of when Laura makes it at her house, which doesn't happen that often. And this sandwich is just really delicious and makes it entirely alright that I can't eat their pizza except on Cheese Day.

Favorite Soda: Diet Mountain Dew Supernova
That's actually a lie - I love Diet Coke a lot, but I've quit drinking dark sodas because they say that the phosphoric acid in them leaches the calcium from your bones, and I want my bones to be as strong as possible because I use them to run.

Favorite Restaurant: Pho Hien Vuong
Otherwise known as 'that Vietnamese place on Spring Garden.' Chances are I will drag you there at some point in your life. They know me there. One of the waitresses will correct me if I put in my usual order wrong, and remind me that I don't want ice in my water.

Favorite Ice Cream: Ben & Jerry's Half-Baked FroYo
Yeah, it's frozen yogurt, not ice cream, but I like the texture of the yogurt when combined with the bits of brownie and cookie dough. Other people on the internet seem to really hate it, but that's ok because more for me. Any birthday cake ice cream with actual pieces of cake in it also wins.

Favorite Cereal: Product 19
Though I did have an affair with Kellogg's Eggo Cereal for about a week. It's waffles. And cereal.

Favorite Protein Bar: Clif Builder's
I also really like the new Luna Protein line, but they only have 12g of protein in them so they're more of a snack type bar than a meal type bar. I like their texture best - that they're all natural and have no trans fat in them happens to be a bonus. They also give me a lot of B vitamins and iron and stuff. I really, really wish they would come out with some new flavors. Yet another reason I wish I was famous for something. If I was famous, maybe Clif would listen to these words and give me more options. If I was famous for being an athlete, I would ask Clif to sponsor me. I'd love to wear Clif gear and eat Clif products all the time.

Seriously.
It's cereal. And it tastes like waffles.

And when we got home, the Jehovah's Witnesses had left us a note.

At the Diner this morning, post-run, I asked the waitress to please see if the chef would put pimiento cheese in my omelet. "You gotta be kidding me," she blurted out, and from that moment on I was predisposed to not liking her.

One, it wasn't that outlandish a request. Omelets have cheese; pimiento cheese is cheese. And two, if you're a waitress, you don't judge your customers to their faces like that. Once they're gone, or you're in the back, you judge them hard, but you don't make them feel like freaks, even if they are freaks. I'm not a freak. I just wanted pimiento cheese in my omelet.

She wasn't a very good waitress anyways. She didn't make big mistakes - everyone's food was right, everyone got coffee and water - but there's a line between being a good, unobtrusive waitress and one who genuinely isn't paying attention, and she was on the 'not paying attention' end of the scale. I usually excuse poor waitressing, because I had plenty of bad days back when I was waiting tables, but for some reason this woman really bothered me.

Also, my pimiento cheese veggie omelet was fantastic. I'm so glad I decided to order it, judgment or not. Moving on.

Today's run was fast and soggy. I ran with The Ultramarathoner and we wound up at an 8:02 pace. I know he probably could have done it faster but I appreciate the fact that he said he was fighting an injury and hung with me. 12 miles at 8:02 makes that one of the best runs I've had so far. I never really felt 'dead' - I think my system has finally managed to adapt to longer runs. For a while I would just constantly feel out of fuel but I felt good today. It gives me hope for when I start pulling the even longer distances.

I've never run over 14; they say anything over 16 feels like an entirely different ballgame. We'll see. Before Richmond I'd like to do one distance over marathon distance, just so I know that I can hold it for the entire 26.2. Maybe some Saturday I can con some people into running the extra with me. I gotta figure out my food/drink plan, too. The One With Manners swears I'll like the sport beans, and I instinctively trust her because her clothes always match. Most of those gels just look like snot rockets and I don't want to feel that in my mouth for miles and miles. Sometimes I brush my teeth twice before I go out.

It was raining for a little while this morning, and I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to see because of the rain on my glasses, but it stopped just about the time we hopped on the greenway, and by the time we got back to the cars most of the heavy water had been throw out of my shoes. They're still wet, of course, but not sodden.

Right about now, though, the storm of the century should be starting up. The cats are appropriately insane and I have to drive to a job in High Point in about an hour, so that should be fun. The job should be fun, too, because it's on my feet all night and my hamstrings are still bitching at me. But I'm gonna do it, because I need the money. None of my other applications have even rated a call back.

If you're reading this and you know of any job openings in the Greensboro area, let me know. I have great references, experience in a variety of fields, and tech skills. I hate to beg but I really do need income.

Reality Ramble

I've been watching this show called America's Next Great Restaurant, despite (or because) the fact that it has Bobby Flay playing host in it - next to Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle. It's hysterical, watching Steve get more and more pissed off every time Bobby mangles his company's name, which is every 15 minutes or so because they're clearly looking for 'the next Chipotle' and aren't even trying to hide that fact.

Side note: has anyone ever been to Chipotle? I know there's one off Battleground across the parking lot from Brixx, but Brixx has lactose free cheese on barbecue sauce-pineapple-red onion pizzas, so I've never even considered going across the parking lot. I mean, I've parked in front of it a couple of times.

Steve Ells is the star of the show. Dude is a beast. Except not literally, because literally he's this nerd in big, square glasses who, to borrow one of my favorite descriptions of Spencer Reid ever, "looks like a pipe cleaner with eyes." But he gets shit done, man. He plows through the contestants and doesn't even bother hiding his ever-growing contempt for the entire thing.

I actually almost applied to be on that show, because I do have my idea for a restaurant that I'm sitting on, but it wouldn't work well as a chain and I don't like the idea of 'fast casual' dining - are you sitting down or are you scarfing it on your way out the door? Decide.

I'm glad I didn't, because then I would have had to meet Bobby Flay, and that would have gone something like this.

Me: "Why are you in a field where you have to speak a lot if you clearly have a speech impediment you are embarrassed about?"

Bobby Flay: "We will not be investing in your concept."

Me: "No, but really. I can hear that they dubbed you in post. How many vocal takes did you have to do to get that one?"

Bobby Flay: "That means you have been eliminated from this competition."

Me: "I got that. Explain to me why you use chipotle peppers in your cooking so much if you can't say it?"

Bobby Flay: "Security, please remove this contestant."

Me (being dragged out the door): "You could just say, 'smoked jalapenos!' People would understand!"

This is why I'll never make it in Hollywood.

You make souffle sound like no big deal.

This is my new favorite website: Cooking For Engineers.

I love the way they break it down, the fact that every step includes pictures, and that they make their recipes conversational, the way I would get them from my dad, if he was patient enough to actually tell me how to make anything instead of just grumbling when I don't get it right.

You would like that having a Culinary Institute trained chef as a father would mean that I have the knowledge of how to cook deep in my bones. But that's not the case - I'm basically self-taught. I learned how to chop things, and stir pots, and do dishes, but that's about it. By the time I was old enough to really learn, my dad had quit the restaurant business and was working as a handyman. I learned to lay tile, nail shingles, and paint walls. My dad only ever cooked on special occasions. My mom taught me most of the basic kitchen stuff, like how to boil water.

But once I reached an age where they considered me old enough to operate the stove myself, there was an attitude of DIY that pervaded the food culture of my house. We didn't eat out very often and the idea was that there were always enough ingredients in the pantry for us to figure out something. My cooking skills evolved slowly and out of necessity. I found beginner's recipe books in the library and read them until I understood enough to access the ones mouldering in the basement.

I mean, sure, I got lazy and ate a lot of tuna salad, but my tuna salad spiraled out in crazy directions - I went through my curry phase, and my mirepoix phase, and my balsamic vinegar phase - god, the balsamic vinegar phase. I wouldn't be surprised if I still reeked of the stuff sometimes, years later.

But I've always, really, truly wanted to learn how to cook, from someone who really knows. And those are the days when I look over at my dad, and sigh, and go back to watching the Food Network.

And next time I go home for the weekend, I'll help my mom make dinner, and learn something new that will make her widen her eyes and say, "You didn't know how to do that?"