B is for Beta Test

this really isn't a post

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A is for Archibet (and Archive)

It's time to bring this one to a close, to put it in the archive. But I'm starting the alphabet over again here.

Z is for Zip-a-De-Do-Dah

Finally the weather has turned nice here. Blue skies, sunshine ... I broke out the sandals and pedal pushers yesterday--perhaps a bit prematurely--and rode my bike to work for the first time this year.

Today is even more perfect. As I was riding down Euclid on the morning commute, I found myself humming. I pictured the Shrimp and me in our playroom, with its key-lime-painted walls and the ABC sheers bowing in with the spring breeze, our Best of Disney Musicals album playing on our white plastic record player, over and over again. We sang and whistled along, dancing across the toybox, the gold carpet, the big round teal ottoman until Mom threatened to make us jump off the roof at the end of the song because that's what they did in the movie.

Y is for Yes

Yes, I do yet live. Yes, I am slightly crazy busy but I don't know exactly why. So, just hold on until I get back.



Also, check this out.

X is for (the Roman Numeral) X

Ten things that piss me off today:

1. my 10-year old acting like a total asshat this morning.
2. 10 boxes of Girl Scout cookies that I can't remember where to deliver.
3. sneezing 10 times in 10 minutes, despite taking antihistamines.
   
4. having to shower and blow dry my hair in 10 minutes. see #1.
5. we're out of milk.
   
6. it's grey, AGAIN. and cold. where is Spring?? where is it?? Come back already! I don't want snow on my daffodils!
   
7. my 10 little toes need painting, but I haven't found time to do that yet, so I can't wear sandals. booooooooooo.
   
8. having 10 things on each of my (2) to-do lists. I mean, seriously, I did work last week even if I was on vacation!
9. computers. There is no reason to behave this way, Athena.
   
10. the very fact that it is Monday, and there's a whole week yet to go.
    

W is for Work

cancelled due to clement Weather.

(not really. I'm on my way to jobsite now ... )

V is for Vegan (til 6)

I used to read Mark Bittman's food column in the New York Times, before I became addicted to Battlestar Galactica. Sad but true, time is limited and TV has temporarily derailed most online reading. Anyway, I was intrigued by his plan of eating a vegan diet until dinnertime, then enjoying meals with a bit of meat, cheese, even the occasional sweets. It seemed rational, and I tried it for a bit last summer, finally derailed by my love of cheese.

Right after the first of the year, the Husband came to me and said, I'm gonna try to lose some weight this year. Join me, support me. So I signed up for myfitnesspal.com, set a goal to lose enough weight to land me in the middle of the healthy BMI range, and started tracking calories.

Almost immediately I found the problem with planning to lose even just one pound per week. With an allocation of a little over 1200 calories per day, I basically couldn't eat anything I was accustomed to eating--not because I tend to eat unhealthily, but if I ate even half a normal lunch, I had only 500-600 calories left for dinner. The Husband plans meals and portion sizes around his calorie allotment, which is twice what mine is. This fact generates a lot of resentment on my side, but he is several inches taller, and male.

So I went back to the Vegan Before 6 notion. After a few days, I realized that what was really tripping me up was carbs. So now I'm basically doing a Vegan Atkins diet until supper--no animal products, no foods that have more than 5 carbohydrates per calorie--this time with all the force of a woman who was borderline anorexic for most of the teen years. And I suppose it's working, since I've lost 10 pounds in little over 6 weeks.

After listening to me for a couple of weeks, my officemate (who is six feet tall and dryad thin) decided to join me. That's definitely arcane enough for this middle-aged woman with food issues. she said.

The next day she came in with a box of Veggie Broth and a mug of green tea in her hands. Are you still drinking sodas? she asked.

I shrugged. Not so much.

Good. Because I'm giving up chemicals.

Huh?

Yeah, I'm giving up chemicals. Caffeine, carbonated water, nutrasweet.

They're trying to kill me.

Both of them.