Category Archives: Food

Another Spring Break is Gone

Posted on 14 March 2010 | 3 comments

One of these years, I am going to actually take a Spring Break, one where I go somewhere and do something different than what I have been doing for the other 51 weeks of the year. If BSU’s spring break came a little later, I’d go on a motorcycle trip, but I am afraid I will leave and then it will snow. Then I wouldn’t be able to come home, because I am not riding in the snow. As it is, I never accomplish everything I wish to accomplish in the week anyway, so why don’t I learn to take a break. This year, for example, I had a list a mile long, but I did not complete the most important thing on that list. Because I had been putting off grading and my teaching related concerns to put out other little forest fires, I spent the entire break grading and planning for the rest of the school year and not working on my dissertation proposal.

I had every good intention of sitting down for a long spell with the thing and really hashing through it. That will have to happen in the evenings of this week. I have to get this thing finished and turned in as soon as possible. I am tired of looking at it. The part that sucks about having to do it this week is that Bec is leaving for Minnesota on Saturday, so I won’t be able to spend any quality time with her before she goes. I hate that. At least she’ll be back on Wednesday (?), and I should have everything finished by then.

However, I will have my lifeguarding class all weekend next weekend, so I won’t get to spend any time with her then either. When I say all weekend, I am not exaggerating. It meets on Friday from 6pm to 10pm and Saturday and Sunday from 8am to 2pm. I guess I will be running in the evenings for the next two weekends. And, they are long runs, too. Eight and nine miles for the next two Saturdays.

Yesterday I ran seven miles at a 12:30 to 12:45 minute per mile pace, but I still had difficulty sleeping last night. I think it was a combination of all the life-stress I am experiencing right now, the stupid daylight savings time change, and the fact that I drank a tall regular bold coffee. I haven’t had that much caffeine in a long while. At least I didn’t get heart palpitations this time. I did it because Starbucks is doing a bold coffee promotion in which you get a little card that has all their bold coffees listed. If you drink a tall of all eight of them, you get your choice of a free pound of bold coffee. In the end, you pay as much for the eight tall coffees as you would for the pound of coffee, but since you end up with both in your belly, it sounds like a deal to me.

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I am thankful for time well-spent and weird Lily Tomlin movies.

Food:
Breakfast: banana, juice, pop tart, chocolate milk
Running: shortbread
Lunch: almonds, Pure bar, coffee with honey and soy milk
Dinner: onion rings, Scotty’s French Quarter Quesadilla, 23 oz. Guinness
Snack: small bag of Cadbury eggs

Exercise: walked the dogs two miles, ran 7 miles

3 Comments

Posted in Beer, Coffee, Dissertation, Food, Insomnia, Running, School, Teaching

Fat Assery and Some Random Rants

Posted on 10 March 2010 | 3 comments

There is nothing quite like spring to bring out the weirdos and the not-nice. Do you remember the old song “The Freaks Come Out At Night”? The lyricist, I am sure was on to something, but I think he missed a more apropos song, one I like to call “The Jack Asses Come Out in the Spring.” What, you may be asking yourself, brought on this little tirade?

I was not even one mile into a 4.5 mile run today—one that went quite well, I might add—when some jerk yelled, “Fat ass,” out his window at me. Man, I get so sick and tired of that. Had it not been for the fact that I just read a Runner’s World column about the disadvantage runners have against motorists, I would have yelled something back at him. As I ran—possibly one reason the run went well—I milled over in my mind what I would have yelled back at him. Here are my top ten responses:

  1. F*** you, Melon Farmer.
  2. Oh, yeah, you, you, jerk face.
  3. I might be fat, but I am running, Idiot.
  4. Wow, I hadn’t realized that my ass is fat. How fat would you say it is in comparison to other asses you’ve perused?
  5. Would you say that my ass is fatter than the rest of me, or is that just the part of my body you decided to ridicule today?
  6. When was the last time you ran farther than from your house to the car/McDonald’s/donut shop/or whatever location you choose?
  7. Jesus loves you.
  8. Astute observation.
  9. Some people find this fat ass attractive.
  10. F*** you, Melon Farmer.

Or I could also use the old reliable: “I may be fat, but you’re ugly. I can lose weight.” I wouldn’t use that one, though, because I apparently can’t lose weight. If you follow this blog, you know what I eat and how much I run. I have been the same weight for over a month now, and it’s starting to make me angry. I have to keep reminding myself that I am not doing this to lose weight, but I am doing it to feel better and to get healthier. On both of those fronts, I feel successful, so I guess I shouldn’t be discouraged. And, I can run six miles in a little over an hour, which is way better than the 18 minute miles I started out walking. I hadn’t intended for this post, the first one in more than a week, to be so negative, but some events just rattle us. I couldn’t not post about getting called fat-ass yet again.

I haven’t posted for a while for multiple reasons. I didn’t think I had anything nice to say about some people, and I was afraid I would be incredibly hateful. I just took my mother’s advice and didn’t say anything at all. I think I am mostly over being angry at this particular person, but she is definitely someone I will not waste time being friendly with anymore.

I also have been insanely busy with school work, which is exhausting, but not as exhausting as socializing with people. I have such a hard time making small talk. It wears me out to be with people I don’t know very well, and sometimes it wears me out to be with people I know well and love. Sometimes I just want to move to Montana and build a commune for just a few select people to live on. I get in these moods where I want to buy an RV and just drive from place to place, doing odd jobs, trying to make a living, and seeing the sites. I think that would be the life for me. Sometimes I think I am not a putting down roots kind of girl, but I have put down roots. It’s spring. I get antsy.

I have done some great cooking in the past week. I made this recipe and this recipe but without the shrimp. They were both delicious. Yesterday Abbie and I spent two hours making homemade tortillas (frying some of them into salad bowls), banana cream pie, whipped cream, raisin pie, and all the stuff for burritos and taco salads. We pretty much rocked it. Tortillas are a blast to make, but I am confused about how some people make them so round. Ours were shaped like squares, fish, triangles, and oddities. We need to work on presentation, but taste we pretty much have wrapped up!

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I am thankful for the beautiful scenery on my run today: the river, the new trail, the people feeding the ducks, and the bright, warm sunshine.

Food: banana, orange juice, pop tart, chocolate milk, almonds and M&Ms, piece of banana creme pie, pop corn, lentils and rice, beer

Exercise: walked the dogs, ran 4.5 miles, bike to village and back

3 Comments

Posted in Food, Running

Things Have Kind of Fallen Apart This Week

Posted on 1 March 2010 | 2 comments

Over the weekend, it was my intention to get all of my grading finished for the students at both Burris and BSU, but it didn’t happen because of my stupid computer. I am about to get a really big flash drive, so I don’t have to depend upon my computer anymore. It’s beginning to act like it might crash again soon.

On Saturday, I spent the morning editing some student work, making all sorts of great comments on their papers, and typing up some professional documents (letters of recommendation and the like). When I sent my students’ work to them (supposedly with my comments), they both wrote back and said that they couldn’t see the comments. My lovely computer decided not to save any of the changes I had made and instead only re-saved their original documents. Awesome. I decided to check on the other documents I had spent the morning writing to see if they were safe and sound. No dice. Everything I did on Saturday had to be re-done on Sunday, so I lost my grading day. Boo.

Other than the loss of some documents, the weekend was great. It was Abbie’s birthday weekend and we went to Ivanhoe’s and gorged ourselves on ice cream. I had a vanilla malt with chocolate chip cookie dough in it, and I ate a delicious grilled cheese sandwich and some cheesy fries as well.

On our way to Ivanhoe’s we went geocaching, which is a whole new experience for me. We found a couple of caches in two of my favorite cemeteries, but the one that was supposedly by Matthew’s Covered Bridge was nowhere to be found. Either it was buried in the snow, or someone had stolen it. We had a great time romping through the snow to try to find them, though!

On Sunday afternoon, after I had rewritten all the work I had done on Saturday, we went to Welliver’s which is a smorgasbord in Hagerstown. We go there every year for Abs’ birthday, and we always end up eating way too much. I had more food than I thought I could possibly eat, and as a result I got pretty uncomfortable last night. At least I didn’t get diarrhea or throw up as a result. I did however sleep for about twelve hours. I am just not used to eating that much food, but I suppose I felt like I should because it is so expensive, and I definitely don’t want to do it again any time soon.

I felt like I could eat that much food because I ran nine miles this weekend: six on Saturday and three on Sunday. It felt pretty good, but my “recovery run” on Sunday felt harder than the six miles on Saturday. I guess it was because my legs were already so tired from the long run that I exhausted them on Sunday. I am looking forward to next weekend when we get to go to Indy on Saturday morning for the practice run, but I am looking more forward to it because it signals the beginning of Spring Break.

Of course, Spring Break is an oxymoron. Spring Break should be called Spring Catch Up on Everything. I have to finish out the schedule for my Burris students, do the taxes, work on my dissertation proposal, grade everything under the sun, and a couple of other things during the “break.” I am sure I will succeed in getting it all accomplished, though, because I always do.

On a sad note, my cat Mojo died last night. He has been sick for a long time, and the vet couldn’t even figure out what was wrong with him. When we went downstairs this morning he was just lying there in the middle of the floor. Dead. At least he is no longer suffering, and he got to eat like a king last night. We got some extra special food for the cats yesterday, and he ate most of the can. Of course, he threw all of it up, undigested, half an hour after he ate it, but he still got to have one delightful last meal. Now, sadly, he is in the freezer in a garbage bag, waiting for the ground to thaw so I can bury him by Mushi or with the other pets at my parents’ house.

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I haven’t done much in the way of memorizing, nor can I think of something new to be thankful for today.

I do not want to list my food consumption or my exercise.

Peace.

2 Comments

Posted in Food, Relationships, Running, Winter Weather

So Many Things I Want to Write About

Posted on 23 February 2010 | Leave a comment

There are so many things I want to write about today, but because of a few people who read things here, take them out of context, and spread them around, I am going to censor myself today. It’s a hard thing for me to do, but it’s probably in my best interest. There are so many exciting things going on in my life right now, that I have a nervous, throwing up feeling every time I think of some of them and I don’t want anyone to steal that joy.

One thing I have to say is that I love my education majors! We had an excellent discussion tonight about one of my favorite children’s books Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. We talked about race and ethnicity, class, land and money, power, gender, education, hegemony, Emmett Till and the Jim Crow south. The discussion was a far cry from the one we had when we talked about book awards that are given strictly on the basis of race. The next time I teach this class, I think I will make sure we discuss those awards after we read this book because I think it helps the students to see why it is important to have book awards like the Coretta Scott King award. After reading Mildred Taylor‘s book, they seemed to have a much better understanding of the racial and ethnic inequalities in our culture that have been and  still are present, though they did point out that the book seemed to be almost tilted the opposite direction. Well, yeah, she’s writing on the heels of the Black Arts Movement.

Tomorrow, I will return to writing Lent entries, but I have had a weird beginning to the week, so I haven’t had a chance to work on my memorization and consideration of the fifth chapter of Matthew. Tomorrow’s text involves adultery, divorce, and oaths, Oh my!

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I am thankful for great days and hopefulness.

Food: banana, juice, chocolate milk, almonds and M&Ms, two grape pop tarts, vegan lasagna, apple, grapefruit, pure bar, green tea

Exercise: ran 3 miles, walked the dogs, walked from Burris to RB

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Posted in Food, Lent, Reading, Running, Teaching

It’s Been Weird Lately

Posted on 22 February 2010 | 1 comment

I’ve been doing quite a bit of helping other people sift through their writing, but not doing a lot of my own writing. It feels a bit strange to read the writing of other people and feel compelled to comment on what I see, but it feels even stranger to be asked to do so by some people who I consider to be way better writers than I am. I just string words together to tell about my experiences, and they hone and craft nouns, verbs, adjective, and adverbs into expressions that could hang next to Monet’s paintings in the gallery. In a cliché expression, they create art and I just put things on paper. I am like the Andy Warhol of writing, only not good or clever.

Don’t let that paragraph make you think I haven’t enjoyed the past couple of weeks. I have. I got to read essays about Mary, learn about Medieval disabilities, understand why a friend ended up in Zambia, and critique letters of recommendation. My skills are multi-faceted. I offer then for free, even when I am not asked. 🙂

I am still working on the SotM, but I didn’t get a chance to work on a passage for today and rather than rush it and pretend like I learned some more, I think I will simply stop here. I need to finish reading a book for class tomorrow night anyway.

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I am thankful for the writing opportunities I have had recently.

Food: banana, juice, grape pop tart, chocolate milk, horrible decaf americano, grapefruit, apple, almonds and M&Ms, vegan lasagna, mac and cheese, porter, salad with two fake burgers

Exercise: walked with Abs for about half an hour, walked the dogs

1 Comment

Posted in Food, Lent, Writing