Miscallaneous

Back in February or March, Issa mentioned on Facebook that she was going to do the 30-Day Shred.  What, I thought, is the 30-day shred?  Perhaps I even asked her.  Or perhaps I looked it up.  Either way, I thought it might be good to mix up my workout routine a bit and try something new.  I’m pretty good about taking walks, but I need something that builds a bit more muscle, and gets my heart rate up higher, since I rarely walk as fast as I could/should.  It’s cheap on Amazon, and the reviews are great, so I went ahead and ordered it.  The first time through, I really liked it.  It was difficult enough to get me sweating a bit, had a good combination of cardio, weights, and abs, and best of all, it’s only 20 minutes.  There are days when 20 minutes is really all the time I can find for exercise (though I always seem to have time to watch TV with a glass of wine in the evening, don’t I?  Or to read a book?).  So I kept it up, and after about 10 days or so, my knees started really bugging me.  I’m pretty careful with my knees, and I was doing most of the exercises along with the skinny “beginner” girl, rather than with the more muscular “advanced” girl.  So what’s with the knees?  I looked around online, and it seems that you’re not supposed to be doing any kind of jumping around without decent shoes on.  What?  I foolishly had thought that if I were on a carpeted floor, that would be enough.  At the beginning of the video, Jillian says that all you need is light weights and a mat.  Nothing about shoes.  Then again, she doesn’t say anything about needing a bra either, and I clearly want one of those, and a good one, if I’m going to be doing jumping jacks.    So I took some time off from the DVD for my knees to recover fully, and pulled out my cross-trainers.  I’ve done it since then, but not every day.  You know what?  I’m fine with that.  The whole premise is that you’re going to work hard and fast, and you’re going to lose weight and get in shape fast.  You know what?  I didn’t get out of shape fast.  I’m not actually in terrible shape.  I prefer to have a more balanced approach to life, not the all-or-nothing gung ho/sit on the sofa mentality that seems to plague our culture today.  I’d rather do a variety of exercises, as long as I do something almost every day, and see what that does for me.  I don’t care about losing weight, but I do want to stay healthy, and I do want to be comfortable in my own skin.  When I exercise, I cope with stress better, I feel better, and I think I look better, no matter what size I am.

Along these same lines, I’ve decided that I want to swim this spring and summer.  We live in a townhouse with a pool, which I don’t use very often.  It has to be really uncomfortably hot out for a few days before the pool gets warm enough for me, and it’s small, so you do two or three strokes, and bonk your head on the other side of the pool.  Well, Maya’s joined a swim team this spring, and I’ve been taking her to practice in the evenings, and watching the kids get a bunch of great exercise while I sit there and watch.  Last Thursday (when it was 91 degrees), I found myself wishing I could swim as well.  Then I thought, um, I can, we have a community pool that is open year round, pretty much all dang day, and I can go swim there for $5 whenever I want to.  So Friday before work, that’s just what I did.  Can I tell you, it felt GOOD.  Really good.  And I got my heart rate up, probably did a bit of sweating (though who knows when you’re in the water), and maybe built a little muscle.  I went again on Tuesday, and then yesterday I pulled out the 30-day Shred, and marveled at what DIFFERENT work outs they are.  All the more reason to mix it up a bit, I think.  So I’m thinking a couple days a week of workout video, a couple days a week of long walks, and a couple days a week of swim should be a good exercise routine that won’t get too boring.

Speaking of boring, sometimes it’s just hell to figure out what to make for dinner.  On Tuesday I asked Ted and Maya if there was anything in particular that they wanted that night, and Ted said he’d like pasta.  My first thought was to make an old favorite of ours. But then i thought, what the hell, perhaps I should look around in that same cookbook, and see if I can find something that we’ve never tried before. I came across a recipe for Tagliatelle alla Bolognese that seemed promising. I’d not had Bolognese until recently, at a place called Rigatoni’s. (Their tag line is, “You’re gonna like Rigatoni’s”. I like how they don’t over promise. Not love. Like.) Theirs is tasty, so I thought it would be good to try. Looking at the recipe in my cookbook, I thought it was strange that the recipe didn’t call for tomatoes, and that you don’t brown the meat or the vegetables. But I’m a believer in giving a recipe a fair shake on its own terms, and only once I’ve tried it as written will I make changes. At least, I WAS a believer in that. Now maybe, I’m a believer in a more prudent approach, like, “If this looks weird, look for another recipe”. Anyway, it was super easy, though it had to simmer for a few hours. I work from home, so I could do that. The result? Meh. I didn’t like it. The meat had a funny taste, the flavor was overall bland, etc. Heck, the recipe didn’t even call for salt and pepper. See the picture up there? That’s step one, which is to put all of the ingredients in a pot together, including meat, veggies, and liquids, and then slowly bring to medium heat. It looked like dog food to me. Blech. After that disappointing dinner, I went looking around for other Bolognese recipes. What a rabbit’s hole THAT is. Look at the debate over here. Seems like even the people from that region of Italy can’t decide what goes in the stuff. Tomatoes…some say yes, some say no. Milk. Same thing. Pork. Bacon. Wine – some say red, some say white. They ALL said to saute the veggies first, and also the meat. My recipe is the only one that calls for meat soup. I’ll try again. I complained on Facebook, and VGrrrl sent me the link to a recipe she’s wanting to try, but hasn’t yet. It looks simple enough, and more trustworthy than my trusty cookbook. Sigh. Nothing like a bit pot of leftovers in the fridge that you don’t want to eat. Gosh, I wonder if I could somehow salvage the stuff at this point?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIRG0QOEkyM[/youtube]

Anyone worried about the upcoming rapture, scheduled for May 21, 2011?  Though there are those who say October 21, 2011.  Either way.  As an atheist, I’ll be left behind to suffer while the righteous amongst you go live with God or something.  I’ll miss you.  Do me a favor though…you don’t need your money, right?  So will you set up a wire transfer to send your money to me on Monday, May 23rd?  If the doomsday freaks are wrong, and the rapture doesn’t happen, you can always cancel the transfer.  It’s a win-win.  Once I get the money, I’ll go pick up your pets and take care of them for you, k?  Good.  Glad we got that figured out.

And what about the idea of banning chocolate milk from school cafeterias? Any opinion on that? One side of the argument says that kids don’t need the sugar. Give them only regular milk, and they’ll drink it. The other side says no, too many kids won’t drink plain milk, and thus won’t get the protein, vitamin D, and calcium that milk provides, chocolate or otherwise. I’m skeptical of the study showing that milk consumption drops by 35% when chocolate is removed from the schools, seeing as how the study was commissioned by the Milk Processors Education Program. I’m also skeptical of the claim that chocolate milk in our kids lunches is making them fat. The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Dietetic Association, American Heart Association, and National Medical Association all say that the nutrition in chocolate milk outweighs the downside of added sugar, and that kids who drink chocolate milk are no heavier than non-milk drinkers.

When I was in school, we had regular milk four days a week, and chocolate milk as an option on Fridays. I don’t know if there were kids who only drank their milk on Fridays, when they had the chocolate option. I love milk, plain and chocolate, so I drank it whenever I had a chance. Esp since we often had powdered milk at home, which sucked, so real milk was a treat. Personally, I think the solution isn’t so much in the chocolate milk as it is in the other crap that’s served. Get rid of the double bacon cheeseburger* (on an organic roll at my daughter’s school) and deep fried everything, don’t have donuts and brownies and so on available at all times of the day. Get rid of the truly empty calories that are offered, and then whether a child has a nutritious glass of milk or a slightly less nutritious glass of chocolate milk with their meal won’t be as much of an issue.  Thinking about it even more, look at the amount of sugar in yogurt.  A flavored yogurt has more sugar than a cup of chocolate milk.  Are schools going to ban yogurt, too?  I seriously doubt it.

* I have nothing against burgers. I love burgers. But why not just a plain cheeseburger? Why a bacon double cheeseburger?

Then there’s the story in yesterday’s SF Chronicle that the price of a ‘cheap’ public education may go up to almost $8,000 a year, due to a $1 BILLION dollar shortfall in the California State University budget. That means a lot of kids won’t get to go to college. Or will graduate with huge debt. And if these provisions go in, the CSUs won’t take any new students next spring. Here in California, we have pretty amazing state schools. A lot of kids save money by going to a community college for the first 2 years, and then transfer to a CSU or UC for the remainder of their studies. That’s what I did, and it’s what Ted did. The fees at a CSU back then were about $400 a semester, so about $800 a year. That means they’ve gone up 1,000% since 1987. I was barely able to afford college, because of the living expenses and books. But at least I could scrounge up tuition. Now? Not so much.

Lastly, I’m sure you’re all wondering about my hair. Tossing and turning at night, wondering if I’m going to stay sorta brunette or not. The answer is, for now, yes. The thing is, the color has faded quite a bit, and the bleach blonde is showing its way through. My roots don’t look as bad as they do when I’m all blonde, but they don’t look good. Sigh. So my hair is a lot lighter now than it was when I had it darkened. But the roots are still darker. Blech. Anyway, I’m going in on Saturday to get it done, and I’m thinking I’ll stay dark blonde at least a while longer. Though apparently, I’m starting to get some gray hairs, so it may make sense at some point to go back to blonde, because it’s not as much of a contrast. What the hell.