Calorie Restriction Society

Yeah, it's a little weird, but it's a little of what I'm into right now. Don't worry, it probably won't last that long. I'm very whimsical like that.
Basically the idea goes like this: Your body has the capacity to efficiently digest X amount of food. When you've digested that X, your body is no longer as efficient of a digestion machine and thus you wear out due to the inefficiencies. You might get cancer, or whatever evil disease you might die from. So what you do is eat less calories per day than you would normally and slow down your metabolism a bit. In this way you live longer and in a more healthy state because you don't wear down your body early. They've shown that this works.
The important thing to remember is that in those less calories per day you must get the exact (or more) amount of nutrients that you need to be healthy. That's pretty much the main difference between this and anorexia. Eat less, but make each bite count more.
Here's a pretty good article about the whole thing.
I've been doing this for a couple weeks now less than perfectly consistently. I feel a lot better and I've discovered that I'm less sensitive to not eating constantly. Previously, If I didn't eat for four hours or so I would get this gnarly headache that would not go away. But now I don't seem to have that problem. I have some theories as to why this is. Perhaps in another post I'll get into that.
Here's another article.
I think the most fascination side effect of this is the amount I'm learning about food. Did you know that a plain bagel has almost 400 calories? That's ridiculous. I wouldn't waste that many of my calories on something so useless nutritionally now. And as a result I'm eating much less of those things that probably were spiking my blood sugar. Cool stuff. Food is life.

Roomba Love!

Today's my birthday. For all practical purposes, I was going to ignore today as a birthday day and instead just play it like any other day.
Last night my honeypot, and I'll say this correctly, got dragged to Gary Danko. I like good food. But my frugality or miserly ways prevents me from eating out at places like these very often. My guilt or bad feelings about the cost destroy the fun. But I decided it was my birthday, and I haven't really treated this day appropriately for a couple years. Today's my birthday!
The restaurant was amazing, and worth every freakin dollar. But, I probably won't ever go there again. I just don't need to. Once was enough fantasticness for me.
A couple days ago I spontantiously, but with much subconsciously thought, bought a roomba. Or maybe that was more like a week ago. Anyway, the roomba arrived, and right now it's vacuuming our living room. I can't believe how much dirt it's collected from the kitchen, which it finished a little while ago. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to live without the roomba again. And I'm simply not kidding.

My Bad Luck Shirt

After a bunch of unfortunate delays, I finally made it to San Francisco on Sunday, but my bag didn't follow me. This isn't the first time that a bag got delayed for me, so I wasn't too worried about it. They said that they'd probably be able to get my bag to me by 8:00PM the same day, so it would really be a pretty minor inconvience. Unfortunately, my bag didn't arrive. Several calls later, I can finally track my bag online, but there is no updated status.

So I wake up today in a particularly bad mood. For whatever reason, I say fuck it, I'm wearing my bad luck shirt today. If today's going to be a fucking bummer, I may as well live it up. Work was... troubling. Nothing too bad right now, but things aren't working out for me, and I'm hoping to avoid big trouble later. At about noon, I hear from the airport, and they say they are going to deliver my bag from 6-8PM. For whatever reason, this doesn't cheer me greatly.

I get home, and wait. The driver shows up at about 9PM. I already know I'm fucked. But there was nothing I could do. I took that bad inside and checked for my GPS. I knew it wasn't going to be there. I know not to pack expensive things in checked luggage. I've made the mistake before, and got screwed then too. The security guys are going to scan your luggage, and if they see something weird, like electronics, they're going to open the bag. And if it's not them, it could be the guys at the airport, or the guy that drives it out to you. The airline refuses to take responsibility, and if they refuse to take responsibility, there is no reason for them to protect against theft.

I'm not superstitious enough to actually believe it's a bad luck shirt. I have just happened to have had some particularly bad experiences while wearing the shirt. Of course it's all coincidental, and my bad feelings about the shirt probably create a self-fulfilling prophecy. But come on, my bad attitude doesn't have anything to do with my GPS being stolen.

Lessons Learned:
1.) Don't pack expensive items in your checked luggage. I actually know this one, but it's been a while, and I wasn't thinking along those lines when I packed.

2.) Retire the shirt already. Maybe I'll burn it in the desert, or maybe I'll just tear it to pieces in a more personal ceremony.

3.) Don't tempt fate. Just because something bad is going to happen, it doesn't mean that things can't get even worse. I had an upset stomach once, so I decided to eat Taco Bell. I figured, if I already have an upset stomach, how much worse could it get? Much worse.

Flying the Sierra (aka Flying the Dog)

We just got back from a family get together at my honeypot's Mom's house. The weather was pretty nice, and the weekend was mellow and fun. We hung out and played with the horses, the dog, some games and each other. It was a nice change of scene.

My honeypot and his sister are into Acroyoga. They have various interesting looking postures that they can do where one person is "flying" the other. Like this. He thought it would be fun to "fly" the dog. She was remarkably tolerant of this behavior. (It's amazing what some animals or even humans will tolerate for a little bit of attention.)

All in all it was a good weekend.

Too many photographs

I've been in Jersey since Monday night, and it hasn't exactly been a thrilling trip. I don't really know anyone beside family out here any more, so I've spent a lot of time watching TV, fixing some things, and not much else. It doesn't feel like there are any new experiences to be had over here anymore.

One of my cousins wanted some old photos for some project she's putting together, so my mom and I went through all the old albums. It was surprising to see all the photos of when I was a kid. I barely know anything about the people in the photos anymore. They all seemed so important at the time, and now they're completely irrelevant. Then there were the photos of the family, some of them going back as far as 1914. It was weird to look at photos in which everyone had passed on. Unpleasant to think about how little they left behind. My mom also has a lot of photos all over the condo. I'm not sure how I feel about having to look at dead people everywhere I go.

It really hasn't been that bad of a trip. Thanksgiving was nice at my cousin's place. I got to catch up with everyone, sort of. It was nice seeing my mom, my uncle, my sister and her husband. It'll be nice to be back in California though.

Careful Consideration of Creative Crafts (and Aliteration)

On Saturday I met up with a friend and had a canning party. We bought some basil, onions and tomatoes at the nearby farmer's market and canned a red sauce and an Indian saucy thing. The red sauce was really more of an orange with the heirloom tomatoes we used. Too bad we were only a couple months late in buying the tomatoes. Next year I might try and can when the tomatoes are plentiful (and cheap), instead of waiting until possibly the last weekend they're available.

The other highlight was having breakfast with my long lost friend who moved to Dublin for a girl. Considering how indecisive he can be, it's a wonder he made it over there. I'm really glad he did because she's really special (and I think it was good for him to go.)

Another highlight was my friend's 31st birthday party on Sunday night. It was quite an event. Besides the homemade enchiladas (complete with homemade mole saucy, that was out of this world) it was an experience to be around so many toddlers. It was chaotic. I was whelmed. I enjoyed watching them be themselves and explore, but wow, those kids sure do have a lot of energy. The parents looked a little .. run down. Especially the ones with the 7 week old. I suppose that's to be expected.

The picture above is the canned goods and the finished hats. The green hat was made by my honeypot and includes some daring dinosaur fins that stand straight up like a Mohawk when worn. The other hat is one that I made in about a day and a half. It helped that I was stuck in an hour and a half of traffic just to get to work. I made about half of the hat then. No, I wasn't driving, I was carpooling.

Another exciting thing in my life is riding my bike to work. I have this super fun bouncy fold up commuter bike that I rode the end of last week to work. It's pretty fun. It has shocks on the seat post.

And the last thing worth mentioning is that I finally finished my wedding album. My work generously bought me this silver engraved wedding album right after I got married and it's been sitting on my desk these many months beckoning me to fill it with the best pictures of our wedding. I finally went through all my hundreds of pictures from friends and hand picked the best ones. I'm impressed with the result and I'm excited to have it (Thanks Stephanie!). There really is something to the tactile nature of physical pictures as opposed to digital ones.

That's one of the reasons I'll be watching closely the success or failure of the Kindle. Amazon's replacement for the book. I can't imagine every giving up the ability to curl the edges of my paperbacks while reading. (I'm currently reading Wicked by Gregory Maguire.)

My Favorite Pictures from New Zealand

Waitomo Caves, Waikato, NZ
This was one of the highlights of this adventure. We had a group of 8 friends traveling around the North Island, and on one of our last days we spent about 6 hours or so cruising through this cave on a private tour. It was amazing. There were glowworms that looked like stars when it was dark. (Their poop glows to catch bugs. Ingenious!)

At the end of it was a sump. This was where the water complete went under the rock for a couple meters and you had to just trust that there would be a room after swimming through this tunnel. Very scary. (I didn't do it.)

---

Wellington, NZ
This mustache party was in honor of our friend, Lance. Lance and Erika moved to Wellington for the year. They will thankfully be moving back home soon. They've been missed.

We were out wandering about and we saw these adhesive mustaches and thought "Why not have a mustache party?" And so it was.

---

Ferry between Picton and Wellington through Cook Strait and the Marlborough Sounds
This is an example of how scenic it is here. This was taken from the ferry on my way down to the South Island while traveling on my own.

---

Kaikoura, NZ (East Coast of S. Island)
We went on a three or four hour hike that went around the coast of this peninsula and cut across. It was breath taking beauty every where you look, and I spotted this different cloud formation.

The best part of this sunny day was we had finally headed to the East Coast after traveling along the West Coast for days in the rain. This sunny day was a delight.

On a different note, have you guys checked out the geotagged photos - yahoo map mashup? It's a little slow, but you can go anywhere and if you're patient enough, see some really cool pictures taken exactly there. You may find it here: http://flickr.com/map/

Craft Time in the Air!

It all started with my honeypot losing his home made hat (from last year) and then later asking for some crochet instructions. And now he has one completed hat, made by me (seen in the picture on his head); and another hat that is almost done, made by him (seen in his hands). Note the start of his dinosaur fins. He inspired me to pick up a craft that I haven't really been doing much of lately.

A couple days after this instructional request was his first ever craft night. Which happened to fall on his 31st birthday. The craft night had a very good turnout, was fun and very crafty!

Last night we stayed at home and crafted some more. I finished off some semi-curtains and have been crocheting all weekend long. (You can see our new semi-curtains behind my honeypot on the right of the window.) We've been doing more projects around the house lately. It's nice and cozy.

My trip to New Zealand was great fun and I intend to do everything I can to have another trip soon. (That would be probably a year or so with work vacation limitations and all.) Basically everywhere in NZ is scenic. Everywhere. The people are friendly, it's very organized, and they have tons of amazing hikes all over the place. Even though the island is relatively small, there is a very large variety of ecosystems and terrain types there. It's amazing!
Pictures here.