Once in high school, all the girls in our class had to fill out a survey on our attitudes towards food. Being not so evil then, I filled it out truthfully.
-Do you eat when you are stressed? Yes
-Does eating alter your mood? Yes
-Do you eat to celebrate an accomplishment? Yes
The questionnaire went on with many different permutations of the questions above. Apparently, the correct answer to those questions was "no," because the school counselor pulled me aside and told me that I had an unhealthy attitude towards to food. I was on the road to obesity or bulemia if I did not change my ways.
12 years later, little has changed. Take Sunday for example. I have been working (amazing I know), at my computer at home. For some odd reason, I still have never gotten out of that undergraduate mode, in which I just seem to think more clearly in the wee hours of the morning. So it is 2 am Sunday morning, and I am feeling a little blue and stressed. I go to our pantry and see the box of Cheezit's my roommate let me open earlier that night. MMMMMM stolen salty original cheddar goodness. Since nothing accompanies salty snacks better than procrastination, I started to read my "Destiny" horoscope.
"You are single, because you choose to be single. Although you surround yourself with friends, your independent ram spirit does not want to be tied down so you think of clever ways to keep people at arms length."
By the time I finished this tragic horoscope reading, I had burrowed my way through more than half of the box. I read the box and to my horror it is a 160 calories a serving, one serving is a paltry 27 crackers and there are nine servings to a box. Perhaps having cheddar halitosis and a cheddar gut was my way of keeping people at arms length. Something to think about. Oh well, at least the combination of carbs and fat in the Cheezits gave me a little energy boost so I could continue working.
Later when the sun came out, my friends B and S called to see if I wanted to go on an outing. It was a little cold and blustery, but an outing seemed appropriate for the first day sans rain in 9 days. The highlight was a dozen and a half sugared cider doughnuts. Fried crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, they were the perfect answer to the cold. After eating 4 doughnuts, I fell into a deep food induced coma. When I woke up, I brushed off a little of the excess sugar caught in the corner of my mouth. Gosh, doughnuts make me happy.
-Do you eat when you are stressed? Yes, doesn't everyone?
-Does eating alter your mood? Yes, it makes me feel contented, happier. If it didn't, then I would be wasting a God given pleasure.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Friday, October 14, 2005
Spit
As I was walking down the street, a older red head woman in a plastic rain scarf spit at me. What does it mean?
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
A Parental whirlwind (late entry)
Last week my mother officially retired. She had been postponing her retirement for the past year and a half, claiming that she wanted to save up to buy some fine china. (This excuse was not accepted by anyone, since it was clear that work provided my mom an environment to socialize and have a little time apart from my dad. But we let her get away with it.) So as their first outing as a retired couple, the two of them hopped on a plane to visit their delinquent daughter. Before leaving, I asked my mom what she wanted to do when she was here. Her reply was, "Evil Twin #1, I want to do whatever you do. Remember when I came to visit you in college, and I ate the 2 dollar pizza that was soooo large? Like that."
Well, parents if that's what you want, I'm going to bring it.
When they arrived on Friday night, it just started to rain. Prior to that the weather had been beautiful: sunny warm with a cool autumn breeze. They also arrived to the disappointment of millions of members of the Red Sox Nation, who suffered a humiliating defeat on their own turf. I was a little stressed out too, because in their attempt to be unimposing, they had made no plans and I started wondering what I was going to have them do.
On Saturday, we toured Harvard Square and MIT. They enjoyed the campuses although my father could not understand why all the tourists were at Harvard and not MIT. MIT, he thought gave him a far more authentic college experience because he at least could see kids studying.
Another point of interest was taking public transportation. 1) They could not believe how convenient it was. 2) It was much cleaner than New York's. 3) And this was their favorite part. It was 35 cents for them to take the train and 25 cents to take the bus.
Many of my friends are fascinated, by my parents. Mainly, I assume, because both of them have an incredible knack for saying highly inappropriate comments and because they are miniature and have cute Korean accents they get away with it. Evil Twin #2 even took a 5 hour train ride from New York to say "hi." ET#2, D, T, my parents and I met at a Malaysian restaurant in Brighton for dinner. Surprisingly, my parents were well behaved. Yes, my father seemed to misunderstand every question asked him. Yes, my mother giggled at everything. We had a lovely meal chitchatting with my peeps. ET#2 came back to the apartment with us. She was cornered into doling out some legal advice to my father. She did this with the patience of Mother Teresa.
On Sunday, we took a tour of the Boston Public Garden and Beacon Hill. My mom and I attempted a run through of Filene's Basement, but it was way too crowded.
For the authentic grad school experience, I dragged my parents to Anam Cara the Publick House, one of many Boston/Irish Pubs. We waited in line for a wooden table, with my pint of beer. Soon enough friends started to enter through the door. We stood around making small talk, and finally found a table to accommodate our group. After ordering more beer and some bar food, we settled in our table. Sunday nights, unbeknownst to me, is trivia night so our table decided to participate. Admittedly, we had a slow start. I could not figure out the rules of the game. The Bunker Hill Community College team was beating us quite handily. But something happened. My dad got halfway through his PBR (he really just wanted a Budweiser) and all of a sudden he became an asset to the team. With B, S, V, C and myself we had an impressive number of years of higher education, many of those in the Ivy league, but my dad had the years of experience. He remembered watching Dick Cavett on TV, answering one of the picture rounds. Most importantly, he convinced us all he knew the answer to the final question.
"Out of the 30 companies used to calculate the Dow Jones Industrial average, what is the only one that was a part of it when the Dow Jones was established in 1896?"
"Edison's company, " he said "General Electric."
So we went with it, betting the maximum number of points allowed. And....We came in third place. (Bunker Hill Community College left in our geriatric dust.)Winning a 15 dollar gift certificate and the pride of knowing that we were a little smarter than the other drunk patrons would last us a while.
Well, parents if that's what you want, I'm going to bring it.
When they arrived on Friday night, it just started to rain. Prior to that the weather had been beautiful: sunny warm with a cool autumn breeze. They also arrived to the disappointment of millions of members of the Red Sox Nation, who suffered a humiliating defeat on their own turf. I was a little stressed out too, because in their attempt to be unimposing, they had made no plans and I started wondering what I was going to have them do.
On Saturday, we toured Harvard Square and MIT. They enjoyed the campuses although my father could not understand why all the tourists were at Harvard and not MIT. MIT, he thought gave him a far more authentic college experience because he at least could see kids studying.
Another point of interest was taking public transportation. 1) They could not believe how convenient it was. 2) It was much cleaner than New York's. 3) And this was their favorite part. It was 35 cents for them to take the train and 25 cents to take the bus.
Many of my friends are fascinated, by my parents. Mainly, I assume, because both of them have an incredible knack for saying highly inappropriate comments and because they are miniature and have cute Korean accents they get away with it. Evil Twin #2 even took a 5 hour train ride from New York to say "hi." ET#2, D, T, my parents and I met at a Malaysian restaurant in Brighton for dinner. Surprisingly, my parents were well behaved. Yes, my father seemed to misunderstand every question asked him. Yes, my mother giggled at everything. We had a lovely meal chitchatting with my peeps. ET#2 came back to the apartment with us. She was cornered into doling out some legal advice to my father. She did this with the patience of Mother Teresa.
On Sunday, we took a tour of the Boston Public Garden and Beacon Hill. My mom and I attempted a run through of Filene's Basement, but it was way too crowded.
For the authentic grad school experience, I dragged my parents to Anam Cara the Publick House, one of many Boston/Irish Pubs. We waited in line for a wooden table, with my pint of beer. Soon enough friends started to enter through the door. We stood around making small talk, and finally found a table to accommodate our group. After ordering more beer and some bar food, we settled in our table. Sunday nights, unbeknownst to me, is trivia night so our table decided to participate. Admittedly, we had a slow start. I could not figure out the rules of the game. The Bunker Hill Community College team was beating us quite handily. But something happened. My dad got halfway through his PBR (he really just wanted a Budweiser) and all of a sudden he became an asset to the team. With B, S, V, C and myself we had an impressive number of years of higher education, many of those in the Ivy league, but my dad had the years of experience. He remembered watching Dick Cavett on TV, answering one of the picture rounds. Most importantly, he convinced us all he knew the answer to the final question.
"Out of the 30 companies used to calculate the Dow Jones Industrial average, what is the only one that was a part of it when the Dow Jones was established in 1896?"
"Edison's company, " he said "General Electric."
So we went with it, betting the maximum number of points allowed. And....We came in third place. (Bunker Hill Community College left in our geriatric dust.)Winning a 15 dollar gift certificate and the pride of knowing that we were a little smarter than the other drunk patrons would last us a while.
My parents did a little more sightseeing and returned to California on Tuesday. Their main objective of making sure I was okay was fulfilled. They were comforted in knowing that I do not live in a crack den, I am not starving to death, I can take public transportation around the city, and being over educated can win you the occasional drink at the local bar.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Through the looking glass
Through out the years I have surrounded myself with fascinating individuals. Most of my friends share core values of loyalty, kindness and humor, and often little else. And while sometimes this makes my life a little difficult when bringing my friends together, the trade off of knowing such a diverse group of people is always worth any small aggravations. This weekend a close friend from high school got married. Attending this wedding was like walking through the looking glass. Its hard to say which world is the real one, since it boggles the mind think that both my version of reality and hers could coexist on one tiny planet.
Too many tales were amassed for one blog entry. Many of them entail me drinking way too much alcohol. And perhaps I should consider drinking less, as things did get a little out of hand when I grabbed the right buttock of one of the wedding attendees because his friend dared me. (Fortunately, he did not mind. Actually I think he thought I was hitting on him and he was hitting on me, but I have a bad sense of these things.)
But you can get a ET#1-getting-out-of-control story any time. The event(the wedding) and the other events (the tennis tourney, drinks etc..) were fun, but far more interesting was the environment in which they were set. My friend is from East Hampton, and for those of you who may not know, it is a an affluent resort town in New York. Well technically, it is a village but let's not get caught up with semantics. Luckily the wedding was off season so that most of the wealthy New York City vacationers were absent. However, enough were around to make people watching a main event.
Now it is true that I do not have the greatest self esteem when it comes to my appearance, but there is no greater blow to that esteem than being surrounded by flawless blond amazons. Amazons that are for the most part really fun and kind, and probably with procreate with their extremely wealthy husbands and spawn off another generation of beautiful people.
Which brings up self esteem buster #2. Every once in a while you get a tidbit of a conversation about how someone just bought a flat or a condo in London or Manhattan, and I would reel back thinking about how much money they had laying around. I told my sister this and she said now she understood who could afford some of the houses in California. (She and her husband were speculating that even if the two of them caught Osama bin Laden, whose reward for capture was 25 million, they still would be never be able to afford the property taxes on the house they bought with the money.)
Taking a step back, the people in the Hamptons were entertaining like they jumped out from the pages of a Judith Krantz novel. It was as if I glimpsed into the future in which entertainment will be fully interactive. I talked and they talked back. I told them about my research, they told me about places visit in the south of France. One woman had bandages on her 3 of her toes, and told me Jimmy Choo's always were painful, but weren't they worth it. I just nodded even though I did not think it was worth it.
I wish I had the energy to write about the sea of Mercedes, Jaguars, and Lexuses from people who live in a city with public transportation. I wish I had the energy to say that the joy of drinking top shelf liquor is that you are NEVER hungover the next morning. I am a little tired from my trip to the other side.
Too many tales were amassed for one blog entry. Many of them entail me drinking way too much alcohol. And perhaps I should consider drinking less, as things did get a little out of hand when I grabbed the right buttock of one of the wedding attendees because his friend dared me. (Fortunately, he did not mind. Actually I think he thought I was hitting on him and he was hitting on me, but I have a bad sense of these things.)
But you can get a ET#1-getting-out-of-control story any time. The event(the wedding) and the other events (the tennis tourney, drinks etc..) were fun, but far more interesting was the environment in which they were set. My friend is from East Hampton, and for those of you who may not know, it is a an affluent resort town in New York. Well technically, it is a village but let's not get caught up with semantics. Luckily the wedding was off season so that most of the wealthy New York City vacationers were absent. However, enough were around to make people watching a main event.
Now it is true that I do not have the greatest self esteem when it comes to my appearance, but there is no greater blow to that esteem than being surrounded by flawless blond amazons. Amazons that are for the most part really fun and kind, and probably with procreate with their extremely wealthy husbands and spawn off another generation of beautiful people.
Which brings up self esteem buster #2. Every once in a while you get a tidbit of a conversation about how someone just bought a flat or a condo in London or Manhattan, and I would reel back thinking about how much money they had laying around. I told my sister this and she said now she understood who could afford some of the houses in California. (She and her husband were speculating that even if the two of them caught Osama bin Laden, whose reward for capture was 25 million, they still would be never be able to afford the property taxes on the house they bought with the money.)
Taking a step back, the people in the Hamptons were entertaining like they jumped out from the pages of a Judith Krantz novel. It was as if I glimpsed into the future in which entertainment will be fully interactive. I talked and they talked back. I told them about my research, they told me about places visit in the south of France. One woman had bandages on her 3 of her toes, and told me Jimmy Choo's always were painful, but weren't they worth it. I just nodded even though I did not think it was worth it.
I wish I had the energy to write about the sea of Mercedes, Jaguars, and Lexuses from people who live in a city with public transportation. I wish I had the energy to say that the joy of drinking top shelf liquor is that you are NEVER hungover the next morning. I am a little tired from my trip to the other side.
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