I don't mind the rat race but I could do with a little more cheese.

I love eating salads and steamed veggies, but man do those foods get caught up in my braces.

And speaking of salads and steamed veggies, I've been reading Edith Blum's
Eat, Drink, and Be Gorgeous: A Nutritionist's Guide to Living Well While Living it Up. The constant references to "gorgeous"-ness, as if the reader were Carrie Bradshaw, have been grating but I'm mostly able to mentally skip over those and enjoy the author's underlying message which is essentially that you can eat anything you want, anytime you want, but go for quality and use moderation for the less healthy items. If you want chocolate, get the most expensive, rich chocolate you can find and savor the ever-loving heck out of that chocolate. I like that message. :)

She does provide information about healthier food choices and methods of cooking those items as well as recipes and meal planning ideas. This is what I love most. I mean, I'm pretty happy with my daily lunch of salad and Lean Cuisine, but I'd like to mix it up a bit and eat fewer processed foods. I've made some small changes such as swapping out shredded cheddar cheese for crumbled feta on my salads (increased protein, whoo!) and eating more organic fruits and veggies. I'm looking forward to replacing my instant oatmeal with steel-cut oats and my "light" fruity yogurts with Greek yogurt and fresh berries, honey, and flaxseed.

That said, last night's dinner consisted of a Vanilla Coke Zero, tortilla chips, and Pancho's cheese dip. I logged every bit of that in my food tracker and did not ruin yesterday with the splurge. Sometimes you've just got to throw caution to the wind and have a gooey crunchy cheat/treat. And then you go back to the nutritious foods and feel so much better. :)

Stowed all camping gear (minus the bed) into its area in the basement. I even decluttered enough to find homes on the shelving unit for the new feather bed, comforter, wool blanket and cushions. The other wool blanket has a home in the blue trunk in the sewing room. The blue trunk also houses four stackable square baskets, two sets of camping sheets, another blanket, and all the flour sack and linen towels.

Put away all SCA clothes. The craft room is ALMOST back to its natural state of order. It should be completely straight, minus dusting, this evening.

Dyed my hair dark brown. Hubbyfink wishes it were red. Heh. As I look back through my hair gallery, I notice that my hair was about this color back in 2006 and sort of auburny in 2008. I wanted to go darker, but the color suggestions on the dye boxes scared me off.

Sauteed for the first time ever. I made chicken fajitas Saturday night and it was a big deal. I love to bake and am fairly good at it. I am not fond of cooking. Or rather, I wasn't fond of cooking. Now that I'm discovering that it's not too terrifying or hard, I'm actually sort of enjoying it. Plus, I'm excited about the opportunities this has opened up for preparing vegetables beyond "raw" and "steamed". Hee.

I've now seen whiteout conditions and I don't want to experience them again. I'm halfway expecting to dig Jack Nicholson out of one of the snowbanks lining the front walk when we're able to escape our home. Any minute now, I will start typing "All work and no play make Melanie a dull girl". Hubbyfink made the mistake of saying "yes" when I asked if we have an axe.

In less ominous news, I have a pot of spicy chili simmering on the stove. It was looking a little too thin so I tossed a couple tablespoons of flour in to make it more roux-like. Now it's almost perfect. While I may not like to cook, I suppose I'm not too bad at it. Plus, some of the knowledge from all those cooking shows I watch must've slipped into the ol' brainmeats. Neat!

Last night's homework assignment did not go well. I've been playing with Google SketchUp in my copious free time by building 3D models of our basement floor (and impressing the pants off Hubbyfink in the process), so I've gotten pretty good at house models. Furniture models? Not so much. After six hours of work I was finally able to create a decent virtual turned wood leg for a sofa and soften the edges of sofa cushions. I still can't build the spindly armrests. *grump* If tonight's conference call ends on time, I'll join the live classroom conference and learn how to do these fancy things.

It looks like Hubbyfink and I will head back home a day early. The Sunset Symphony I'd planned on attending Saturday is no longer what it used to be and, since everybody else has already made plans for Saturday evening, there's no point in Hubbyfink and me hanging out alone. Mom is sad but understands; and she brightened up when I reminded her I'd be back in just three months for Bear's first birthday.

Plus, I miss my Margiekitten something fierce.

Today I got in the pool and the water felt like natural (cold!) spring water. I found an air mattress -- which I think is actually a sleeping/camping air mattress as opposed to a lounging/pool air mattress -- and used it to keep my body precariously perched just above the frigid water whilst baking my alabaster skin. Yes, I applied copious sunscreen. Pete has asked me on my next dip in the pool to dive down to the bottom and retrieve something which fell off the vacuum. I honestly don't think I'm up to that even if the air temp does hit the low 80s tomorrow.

beaznuts, his wife, Hubbyfink, zipmeister and I met up for dinner at Ya-ain (actually, it's "Rain", but the R is backwards), a "Sushi Bar and Bistro". Beaz and brother John RAVE about this place. I found it rather lackluster, to be honest. Everything I ate was either spicy hot or bland, the atmosphere was chaotic with the too-loud stereo system and the (numerous) large, flat screen TVs showing either the American Idol finals or a basketball game, and our server left MUCH to be desired. Give me danabren's sushi joint any day of the week, and if they're busy I'll settle for Sekisue as a distant runner-up. The frozen custard afterwards (I've blanked on the place's name...) nearly made up for the disappointing sushi.

Tomorrow night is Johnny's graduation ceremony. I'm sure he's pumped, but I've seen so little of him lately that I don't know what's going through his head. I do know that he's getting excited about going to UT:Knoxville. He had signed on to play football for Lambuth, but has since decided that he really doesn't want to be a football hero and would rather rule the school on charm and good looks. I'm quite sure he'll be the BMoC in no time at all and not just because he's freakishly tall. ;)

I gave up fried food for Lent. I figured I'd be healthier for that little sacrifice in forty days. I can skip fried chicken and I'll miss doughnuts, fries and onion rings, but I don't neeeed those. Hubbyfink probably didn't even notice that I didn't swipe any fries off his plate last night. This afternoon I realized that I'd forgotten a segment of fried foods: chips.

Potato chips, meh.

Corn chips, meh.

Tortilla chips, oh no! Needs must score some baked tortillas soon.

He brought me a pulled pork sammich from Willards. Om nom nom nom!

(Can ya tell my boss is out this week? Actually, I'm not slacking that much. I'm waiting on replies to numerous emails.)

As a kid, there weren't enough peanut butter crackers in the world to bribe me into eating spinach. But as an adult, I can't get enough of the raw stuff. Ditto broccoli. But please, please, for the love of all that is holy, don't cook it! I adore raw veggies, but there's just something about cooked vegetables -- aside from a light steaming -- that makes them disgusting.

Edited to add: I do like Hannah's squash casserole, but I think there's bread in there which increases the tastiness factor significantly. Ditto Mom's green bean casserole which is chock full of cream of ick (mushroom or celery) soup.