the rather unexciting but gnomish thought-provoking week
Well, here is the end of another week. This update turned out lengthier than I expected when I started typing it, so I'm putting everything behind cuts for now.
The really only constant thing that has gone on is the miserable sinus headache I've had for about 4 days now. I was initially afraid that I'd caught my friend Rhonda's sinus infection after our road trip to New York, but since there's no fever or anything too yucky in the drainage department as of yet (although just to be safe, I snuck in Vitamin C drops instead of candy to the movie last night), I'm thinking it might be either the weather shifts or the astronomical pollen count. Anyway, no matter what caused it, I'm ready for it to be done with. It's been so bad that I've been having to take Benadryl--aka gnomish sleeping pills--to get any rest.
Except for last night, when I managed to stay up late and go to see the opening of the new X-men movie. I won't post any spoilers here, but I was disappointed. I felt, to a much lesser extent (for those of you familiar with my undying hatred for the 2nd and 3rd Lord of the Rings movies), similar to how I felt upon seeing the Two Towers: that the people involved in its making, having proved that they are capable of making great movies with the first ones, for some reason do not live up to their capabilities with the sequel: they just want to get the story over with so they can move on to something else, or the overambition of trying to cram in too much stuff into the desired time span, or the directors knew people would see it no matter how much it sucked based on the success of the earlier films and just didn't put the same effort into it, or for any other number of myriad reasons. With the relative dearth of good new movies out there, I get angry at the directors of sequels to good movies when they turn out to be mediocre.
Speaking of sequels...the Pirates of the Caribbean one looks pretty sweet...except...I just don't know if I can take octopus pirates seriously. Zombie pirates=cool; Tentacled organ-playing pirates=questionable. Also, the trailer had some suspiciously bad dialogue on the part of Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, which I was hoping would have been addressed after some of the lines in the first one, but oh well. It should be fun nonetheless.
In other news, I've been taking baby steps to purge some of my clutter this week. Baby steps, admittedly...but hey, you take what you can get. On Tuesday, I addressed the piles of school papers that have been sitting in stacks everywhere for the last several semesters; on Thursday, I addressed my overabundance of clothing. It was actually quite thought-provoking, so if you care to read these thoughts, peek behind the cut. Keep in mind that thoughts on these purgings (as is the current writing on them) are colored by the pounding headache that has been sticking with me for the last five days (and the reason why I wasn't at the museum volunteering on the days in question).
The first set of stuff I looked at was the entirety of my grad school papers. By "papers" I mean not only the ones that I have written myself, but the articles, syllabi, random handouts, and other stuff I had. Excluding the articles and other readings, everything I had for my seven semesters in graduate school--including not only all my class notes, syllabi, graded papers, and handouts for the classes I took, but the notes and annotated drafts of my MA thesis, the notes and annotated drafts of my UNDERGRADUATE honor's thesis, and the notes and annotated drafts of the paper I wrote for AFS 2004--all fit into one small box. The standard storage size cardboard box that you get in 6-packs at Staples. It was kind of scary to think that that little box contains the material remnants of my overarching purpose in life for the last four years. I could wax on about how much more important the non-material components of my graduate education have been, but I won't. Besides, I will interject at the risk of sounding whiny and self-pitying--which to a great degree I suppose I am--so far none of it has done me any good in the job market anyway.
Note I did not mention the articles and readings. I actually have a large number of them that, if I put it all together in one big stack, would probably be about four feet high. I should probably recycle most of the SLIS ones, because trends in library science move so very fast and the non-theoretical readings become dated/obsolete very quickly. But for some reason I can't bring myself to do it. Maybe I've developed a complex because of the one-boxedness of the rest of my scademic career, but in any event it means that I have a great deal of organizing left to do--since I want them all grouped by author--not to mention more file folders to buy.
The purging of my clothing actually gave me more food for thought than did my papers. I did a clothing purge a semester or two ago, and got rid of a lot of stuff that didn't fit any more. I had to do another clothing purge recently, because I am an impulsive thrift-store, eBay, and online-clearance-section shopper and I once again didn't have any room for anything. Between the time that I started being a clotheshorse--during my freshman year in college, when I dropped a ton of weight and realized that I had a body that I could show off--and the nine years and fifty pounds of weight gain later, I accumulated a really wild spectrum of styles, colors and sizes. Some I didn't want to get rid of because I loved them and I swore I would fit back into them. Some I didn't want to get rid of for sentimental reasons. But all of it was cluttering up my space and my psyche, and some of it had to go.
Part of the clothes-ridding involved me accepting my physical self as it currently is. As previously stated, I've got fifty-plus extra pounds on my 5'2" frame right now. I hope to lose most of it, and I haveto lose some of it. I'm beginning to have joint and lower back problems; my cholesterol is through the roof, despite my vegetarianism--thank you cheese addiction and flawed genetics--and with my family history of diabetes as well as heart disease on both sides, I really need to start looking out for my health while I'm young enough for it to be easier. But I've also come to the realization that I'm never going to be as small as I once was. A big part of the weight loss that made me as little as I used to be was not psychologically healthy. I was working out 2 hours daily and eating maybe 1 meal a day (although with the booze calories I consumed on the weekends, you'd think it would have evened out), telling myself the whole time that this was what I deserved because I was fat. And the positive comments and attention I got during and after the weight loss from my family, the opposite gender, everyone but my roommate--who knew a little more about what was going on--really fed into that. I don't hate myself that much any more. This isn't to say by any means that I'm happy with how I look and feel. But I'm happier with WHO I am. Also, although I hate to be the cliched woman who gets into a stable relationship and balloons in weight because she's not "on the market" any more, that's something of the case here. J has always been supportive and very demonstrative of his attractedness to me. Now that we've been together long enough for me to realize it's more than my looks (or rather, my former looks) that he was/is attracted to, and that he is also happy with who I am, I have let things slide. I wonder if I might not have been more motivated to lose weight if he had made some comments. But he never has, other than to express concern over my physical and psychological weight-related health, and then only when I bring it up first in conversation. And I'm not going to blame my lack of weight loss on his not being psychologically manipulative. But to bring this lengthy tangent back to the original topic, I did realize that no matter what, I am never going to be able to push myself to get back down to the single-digit size I used to be. And let's face it, I like clothing, so if I ever do get back down to that size I will probably not mind buying new stuff anyway, especially since I would theoretically be buying sexy little stuff rather than the more baggy tent-ish stuff I have now (because I can't stand tight clothing when I'm fat). So I didn't keep anything that was more than two sizes smaller than where I am now. (I had stuff spanning six different sizes.)
That's had to involve readjusting some self-images, too, though. Mostly to do with age. I don't want to be one of those people that binds themselves into age constraints...but there are also things I just am not going to be comfortable doing any more. I'm not going to wear a plaid micro-miniskirt and pole dance for four hours while my boyfriend watches with his buddies from the back of the club. I'm not going to wear skin-tight low-cut tops to use cleaverage (cleavage leverage) to get the employee bonus for most additional customer member card sign-ups at my badly-paying part-time job. Some friends of mine talked me into dressing trashily (think leopard print and fishnets) to go to a hair band concert last year. I hated it the whole time because not only was I keenly aware that I had neither the figure nor the youth for the clothes I was wearing, but I was no longer willing to tolerate the physical discomfort of the style of clothing.
This isn't to say that my fashion sense has totally gone out the window. I don't care much for staying on top of fashion trends, but I do care for knowing what I like and what looks good--or I should say better--on me. My clothes have gone from club blacks and greys to more vibrant shades of greens and blues and reds that go much better with my fair complexion. I pay a lot more attention to the comfortable-ness of things, and their texture, the way they feel against my skin. Some of the stuff I got rid of because it didn't have a place in my self-image...but for a reason of personal change in taste, not physical change in weight. I kept things that I have an actual chance of fitting into before they rot in storage--pretty prints, interesting jeans and comfortable skirts that I like, and that can realistically be worn if I work hard for the next few months. Having drawers and boxes of pretty things that I can wear if I drop fifteen pounds is a much more immediately motivating prospect than having boxes of pretty things I can wear if I drop forty pounds, if that makes sense.
That isn't to say that I didn't keep anything that would take a lot more work to wear. I kept the little black shirt I wore for my boyfriend--now my husband--when we danced together to Simon and Garfunkel on my parents' old RP turntable when they were out of town for the weekend. I kept the funny T-shirts that my roommate got me. I kept the shirts I have that once allegedly belonged to the youngest member of Hanson (it's a somewhat amusing story, but ask me about it in person). And I kept a beautiful long blue skirt that I bought five years ago right before my weight really got out of control. At the time, I was just about eight pounds over where I wanted to be, and I found this skirt when I was wandering downtown on my lunch break from the little china shop I worked at. It has a background of deep variegated shades of blue, with occasional small abstract-ish floral patterns in gold or maroon or dark green. I bought it as a motivation to lose that eight pounds, and then life went crazy and things got rapidly out of hand. I originally had put the skirt in one of the four bags I took to Goodwill this afternoon, but when I went down to the car I found myself popping the trunk and rummaging through the bags for it. It's in the bottom-most part of the bottom-most drawer in the dresser. I never got to wear it when I first bought it; even though it's very much mroe than two sizes too small, I hope in my secret heart of hearts that someday I'll be able to wear it with a deep breath and a smile.
No new news on the job front. I've known for a while that I am slightly underqualified in terms of experience for all of the jobs I've been applying for; I've been hoping that my performance in the experience I do have would make up for it, but so far that hasn't seemed to be the case. What I really need is an Assistant Curator/Registrar position...but all the ones that are currently open are only part-time. I've whined enough about my lack of full-time employment, so suffice it to say that the uncertainty and the pall of disgruntledness it casts over the Jordan household continues.
J and I may go over to Kansas next week to visit his grandfather. More details on that situation behind the last of the cuts.
J's grandfather is doing relatively better. He'll never walk again, and he'll never use his left side again; he was not that far from deaf and blind before the stroke, and at this point he's pretty much trapped in an all-but-useless body. But he is responsive, and can recognize people, and according to J's mother, when he's not tired he can more or less get what people are saying and can make himself understood as well. Also according to J's mother, he has really appreciated all the family and church friends that have made the trip out to Kansas to see him. So we are debating whether or not to go and see him. Last week would have been good, but it was so chaotic with not knowing what was going on and whether or not having people out there would be good for J's grandmother (who has high blood pressure that gets much worse when there are lots of people around) that we didn't know what to do. And this weekend would also be good, but there are going to be a zillion people traveling, and also J doesn't want to go. His opinion is that it will be a 25-hour trip with less than 15 hours of awake visiting time, and that his grandmother will be stressed out with the family going crazy, and that his grandfather won't be expecting him anyway. While I am also not particularly enthusiastic about the 25-hour drive to the middle of nowhere, Kansas , I still feel that this is the sort of thing you should really do for your family. Especially since we didn't go for any holidays last year; and this may be the last chance we get to see him while he is in stable condition and still mentally cognizant of his visitors. So we'll see.
Adding complications to the matter is my recent severe falling-out with J's psycho brother, who likes to call and goad me into political arguments, which are impossible for me to win or even make convincing arguments on because J's brother, who for the record was once one of my dearest friends, and who I still consider a friend but I have a hell of a lot of issues with, is also something of a pathological liar (in the psychological can't-help-it sense, not necessarily in the ill-intended sort of sense) and will make up random facts that I am not confrontational enough to call bullshit on (and calling bullshit on them wouldn't stop them from being made up anyway, it will just make him pissy). Anyway, we had a nasty row when he in perfect seriousness advocated a "final solution" (his words) to the problems in Iran, and I lost all manners and berated him for the opinion that he is admittedly entitled to until he hung up on me. After three days of screening his calls, I finally picked up the phone today and let him apologize and made a (somewhat reluctant) apology of my own, but I am still not wanting to have to deal with him in person. He is planning on going up to Kansas sometime soon as well, and while I don't want for J not to see their grandfather because of my petty tiff with his brother, I also don't want more stress to be put on the family than is necessary, and having his brother and I tiptoe around each other would probably be really awkward. Although I like to fancy that J's brother and I are both adults and can behave in a reasonable manner. At any rate, we've agreed to never discuss politics again, under any circumstances whatsoever.
Other random bits of things I've been doing: rereading George R.R. Martin so that I can remind myself of all the political plots before tackling A Feast for Crows, switching cell phone carriers from Verizon to Working Assets (we're going to try and keep the same number), making a mondo batch of curried tofu/cashew/red bell pepper salad (yummy served over spinach), and being afraid to make my annual doctor's appointment because I am probably going to have to go on cholesterol-regulating drugs and I'm nervous about doing so.
Sorry for the lengthy update...hope everyone has had a good week, and has a good Memorial Day weekend! They are showing a plethora of bad movies on the Sci-Fi channel all weekend, so if anyone wants to come over and drink good wine and watch bad flicks, give us a call.
The really only constant thing that has gone on is the miserable sinus headache I've had for about 4 days now. I was initially afraid that I'd caught my friend Rhonda's sinus infection after our road trip to New York, but since there's no fever or anything too yucky in the drainage department as of yet (although just to be safe, I snuck in Vitamin C drops instead of candy to the movie last night), I'm thinking it might be either the weather shifts or the astronomical pollen count. Anyway, no matter what caused it, I'm ready for it to be done with. It's been so bad that I've been having to take Benadryl--aka gnomish sleeping pills--to get any rest.
Except for last night, when I managed to stay up late and go to see the opening of the new X-men movie. I won't post any spoilers here, but I was disappointed. I felt, to a much lesser extent (for those of you familiar with my undying hatred for the 2nd and 3rd Lord of the Rings movies), similar to how I felt upon seeing the Two Towers: that the people involved in its making, having proved that they are capable of making great movies with the first ones, for some reason do not live up to their capabilities with the sequel: they just want to get the story over with so they can move on to something else, or the overambition of trying to cram in too much stuff into the desired time span, or the directors knew people would see it no matter how much it sucked based on the success of the earlier films and just didn't put the same effort into it, or for any other number of myriad reasons. With the relative dearth of good new movies out there, I get angry at the directors of sequels to good movies when they turn out to be mediocre.
Speaking of sequels...the Pirates of the Caribbean one looks pretty sweet...except...I just don't know if I can take octopus pirates seriously. Zombie pirates=cool; Tentacled organ-playing pirates=questionable. Also, the trailer had some suspiciously bad dialogue on the part of Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, which I was hoping would have been addressed after some of the lines in the first one, but oh well. It should be fun nonetheless.
In other news, I've been taking baby steps to purge some of my clutter this week. Baby steps, admittedly...but hey, you take what you can get. On Tuesday, I addressed the piles of school papers that have been sitting in stacks everywhere for the last several semesters; on Thursday, I addressed my overabundance of clothing. It was actually quite thought-provoking, so if you care to read these thoughts, peek behind the cut. Keep in mind that thoughts on these purgings (as is the current writing on them) are colored by the pounding headache that has been sticking with me for the last five days (and the reason why I wasn't at the museum volunteering on the days in question).
The first set of stuff I looked at was the entirety of my grad school papers. By "papers" I mean not only the ones that I have written myself, but the articles, syllabi, random handouts, and other stuff I had. Excluding the articles and other readings, everything I had for my seven semesters in graduate school--including not only all my class notes, syllabi, graded papers, and handouts for the classes I took, but the notes and annotated drafts of my MA thesis, the notes and annotated drafts of my UNDERGRADUATE honor's thesis, and the notes and annotated drafts of the paper I wrote for AFS 2004--all fit into one small box. The standard storage size cardboard box that you get in 6-packs at Staples. It was kind of scary to think that that little box contains the material remnants of my overarching purpose in life for the last four years. I could wax on about how much more important the non-material components of my graduate education have been, but I won't. Besides, I will interject at the risk of sounding whiny and self-pitying--which to a great degree I suppose I am--so far none of it has done me any good in the job market anyway.
Note I did not mention the articles and readings. I actually have a large number of them that, if I put it all together in one big stack, would probably be about four feet high. I should probably recycle most of the SLIS ones, because trends in library science move so very fast and the non-theoretical readings become dated/obsolete very quickly. But for some reason I can't bring myself to do it. Maybe I've developed a complex because of the one-boxedness of the rest of my scademic career, but in any event it means that I have a great deal of organizing left to do--since I want them all grouped by author--not to mention more file folders to buy.
The purging of my clothing actually gave me more food for thought than did my papers. I did a clothing purge a semester or two ago, and got rid of a lot of stuff that didn't fit any more. I had to do another clothing purge recently, because I am an impulsive thrift-store, eBay, and online-clearance-section shopper and I once again didn't have any room for anything. Between the time that I started being a clotheshorse--during my freshman year in college, when I dropped a ton of weight and realized that I had a body that I could show off--and the nine years and fifty pounds of weight gain later, I accumulated a really wild spectrum of styles, colors and sizes. Some I didn't want to get rid of because I loved them and I swore I would fit back into them. Some I didn't want to get rid of for sentimental reasons. But all of it was cluttering up my space and my psyche, and some of it had to go.
Part of the clothes-ridding involved me accepting my physical self as it currently is. As previously stated, I've got fifty-plus extra pounds on my 5'2" frame right now. I hope to lose most of it, and I haveto lose some of it. I'm beginning to have joint and lower back problems; my cholesterol is through the roof, despite my vegetarianism--thank you cheese addiction and flawed genetics--and with my family history of diabetes as well as heart disease on both sides, I really need to start looking out for my health while I'm young enough for it to be easier. But I've also come to the realization that I'm never going to be as small as I once was. A big part of the weight loss that made me as little as I used to be was not psychologically healthy. I was working out 2 hours daily and eating maybe 1 meal a day (although with the booze calories I consumed on the weekends, you'd think it would have evened out), telling myself the whole time that this was what I deserved because I was fat. And the positive comments and attention I got during and after the weight loss from my family, the opposite gender, everyone but my roommate--who knew a little more about what was going on--really fed into that. I don't hate myself that much any more. This isn't to say by any means that I'm happy with how I look and feel. But I'm happier with WHO I am. Also, although I hate to be the cliched woman who gets into a stable relationship and balloons in weight because she's not "on the market" any more, that's something of the case here. J has always been supportive and very demonstrative of his attractedness to me. Now that we've been together long enough for me to realize it's more than my looks (or rather, my former looks) that he was/is attracted to, and that he is also happy with who I am, I have let things slide. I wonder if I might not have been more motivated to lose weight if he had made some comments. But he never has, other than to express concern over my physical and psychological weight-related health, and then only when I bring it up first in conversation. And I'm not going to blame my lack of weight loss on his not being psychologically manipulative. But to bring this lengthy tangent back to the original topic, I did realize that no matter what, I am never going to be able to push myself to get back down to the single-digit size I used to be. And let's face it, I like clothing, so if I ever do get back down to that size I will probably not mind buying new stuff anyway, especially since I would theoretically be buying sexy little stuff rather than the more baggy tent-ish stuff I have now (because I can't stand tight clothing when I'm fat). So I didn't keep anything that was more than two sizes smaller than where I am now. (I had stuff spanning six different sizes.)
That's had to involve readjusting some self-images, too, though. Mostly to do with age. I don't want to be one of those people that binds themselves into age constraints...but there are also things I just am not going to be comfortable doing any more. I'm not going to wear a plaid micro-miniskirt and pole dance for four hours while my boyfriend watches with his buddies from the back of the club. I'm not going to wear skin-tight low-cut tops to use cleaverage (cleavage leverage) to get the employee bonus for most additional customer member card sign-ups at my badly-paying part-time job. Some friends of mine talked me into dressing trashily (think leopard print and fishnets) to go to a hair band concert last year. I hated it the whole time because not only was I keenly aware that I had neither the figure nor the youth for the clothes I was wearing, but I was no longer willing to tolerate the physical discomfort of the style of clothing.
This isn't to say that my fashion sense has totally gone out the window. I don't care much for staying on top of fashion trends, but I do care for knowing what I like and what looks good--or I should say better--on me. My clothes have gone from club blacks and greys to more vibrant shades of greens and blues and reds that go much better with my fair complexion. I pay a lot more attention to the comfortable-ness of things, and their texture, the way they feel against my skin. Some of the stuff I got rid of because it didn't have a place in my self-image...but for a reason of personal change in taste, not physical change in weight. I kept things that I have an actual chance of fitting into before they rot in storage--pretty prints, interesting jeans and comfortable skirts that I like, and that can realistically be worn if I work hard for the next few months. Having drawers and boxes of pretty things that I can wear if I drop fifteen pounds is a much more immediately motivating prospect than having boxes of pretty things I can wear if I drop forty pounds, if that makes sense.
That isn't to say that I didn't keep anything that would take a lot more work to wear. I kept the little black shirt I wore for my boyfriend--now my husband--when we danced together to Simon and Garfunkel on my parents' old RP turntable when they were out of town for the weekend. I kept the funny T-shirts that my roommate got me. I kept the shirts I have that once allegedly belonged to the youngest member of Hanson (it's a somewhat amusing story, but ask me about it in person). And I kept a beautiful long blue skirt that I bought five years ago right before my weight really got out of control. At the time, I was just about eight pounds over where I wanted to be, and I found this skirt when I was wandering downtown on my lunch break from the little china shop I worked at. It has a background of deep variegated shades of blue, with occasional small abstract-ish floral patterns in gold or maroon or dark green. I bought it as a motivation to lose that eight pounds, and then life went crazy and things got rapidly out of hand. I originally had put the skirt in one of the four bags I took to Goodwill this afternoon, but when I went down to the car I found myself popping the trunk and rummaging through the bags for it. It's in the bottom-most part of the bottom-most drawer in the dresser. I never got to wear it when I first bought it; even though it's very much mroe than two sizes too small, I hope in my secret heart of hearts that someday I'll be able to wear it with a deep breath and a smile.
No new news on the job front. I've known for a while that I am slightly underqualified in terms of experience for all of the jobs I've been applying for; I've been hoping that my performance in the experience I do have would make up for it, but so far that hasn't seemed to be the case. What I really need is an Assistant Curator/Registrar position...but all the ones that are currently open are only part-time. I've whined enough about my lack of full-time employment, so suffice it to say that the uncertainty and the pall of disgruntledness it casts over the Jordan household continues.
J and I may go over to Kansas next week to visit his grandfather. More details on that situation behind the last of the cuts.
J's grandfather is doing relatively better. He'll never walk again, and he'll never use his left side again; he was not that far from deaf and blind before the stroke, and at this point he's pretty much trapped in an all-but-useless body. But he is responsive, and can recognize people, and according to J's mother, when he's not tired he can more or less get what people are saying and can make himself understood as well. Also according to J's mother, he has really appreciated all the family and church friends that have made the trip out to Kansas to see him. So we are debating whether or not to go and see him. Last week would have been good, but it was so chaotic with not knowing what was going on and whether or not having people out there would be good for J's grandmother (who has high blood pressure that gets much worse when there are lots of people around) that we didn't know what to do. And this weekend would also be good, but there are going to be a zillion people traveling, and also J doesn't want to go. His opinion is that it will be a 25-hour trip with less than 15 hours of awake visiting time, and that his grandmother will be stressed out with the family going crazy, and that his grandfather won't be expecting him anyway. While I am also not particularly enthusiastic about the 25-hour drive to the middle of nowhere, Kansas , I still feel that this is the sort of thing you should really do for your family. Especially since we didn't go for any holidays last year; and this may be the last chance we get to see him while he is in stable condition and still mentally cognizant of his visitors. So we'll see.
Adding complications to the matter is my recent severe falling-out with J's psycho brother, who likes to call and goad me into political arguments, which are impossible for me to win or even make convincing arguments on because J's brother, who for the record was once one of my dearest friends, and who I still consider a friend but I have a hell of a lot of issues with, is also something of a pathological liar (in the psychological can't-help-it sense, not necessarily in the ill-intended sort of sense) and will make up random facts that I am not confrontational enough to call bullshit on (and calling bullshit on them wouldn't stop them from being made up anyway, it will just make him pissy). Anyway, we had a nasty row when he in perfect seriousness advocated a "final solution" (his words) to the problems in Iran, and I lost all manners and berated him for the opinion that he is admittedly entitled to until he hung up on me. After three days of screening his calls, I finally picked up the phone today and let him apologize and made a (somewhat reluctant) apology of my own, but I am still not wanting to have to deal with him in person. He is planning on going up to Kansas sometime soon as well, and while I don't want for J not to see their grandfather because of my petty tiff with his brother, I also don't want more stress to be put on the family than is necessary, and having his brother and I tiptoe around each other would probably be really awkward. Although I like to fancy that J's brother and I are both adults and can behave in a reasonable manner. At any rate, we've agreed to never discuss politics again, under any circumstances whatsoever.
Other random bits of things I've been doing: rereading George R.R. Martin so that I can remind myself of all the political plots before tackling A Feast for Crows, switching cell phone carriers from Verizon to Working Assets (we're going to try and keep the same number), making a mondo batch of curried tofu/cashew/red bell pepper salad (yummy served over spinach), and being afraid to make my annual doctor's appointment because I am probably going to have to go on cholesterol-regulating drugs and I'm nervous about doing so.
Sorry for the lengthy update...hope everyone has had a good week, and has a good Memorial Day weekend! They are showing a plethora of bad movies on the Sci-Fi channel all weekend, so if anyone wants to come over and drink good wine and watch bad flicks, give us a call.