happy valentine's day

now have a chocolate.

just kidding :) but that was the message at work today. the building i work in has really great facilities managers who like to make sure that we know they appreciate us being their tenants. which is awesome, except, it seems that anytime they can possibly have a reason to feed out fat faces, they do so.

today, in the break room there were trays upon trays of: cookies, brownies, mini cheese cakes, chocolate dipped strawberries, brownie bites, & lots of other decedent sweet goodies. which, i'm proud to say, i avoided all together.

i even went out with jenn tonight to see the new drew barrymore/hugh grant movie "music & lyrics" & even though i was jonsing for one of those big boxes of resee's pieces, i sufficed with a watered down mocha coffee from the vending machine, but it was still all good. the coffee warmed me up, gave me a little bit of sweet, but i didn't feel massively guilty for inhaling a thousand calories of candy coated peanut butter chocolate.

& a very happy halloween to you all

no holiday candy for me, ok, well, i lied, i had ONE small jellied spider 'cause it looked black so i thought it was licorice, WOOT, turns out it was just grape, lame. i mean, it was ok, but definitely not worth it in the end. & there is a lesson in that, when craving pure black licorice, go to the source, don't mess around with what may or may not be actual licorice candy.

biggest challenge of the day for moi would have to be the ginormous sheet cake that sat next to the printer today, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. i did resist it, but just barely, i walked by it several times gazing at the box so tempted for just one little tiny nibble, but i did resist. & no, i don't really feel any better about myself for resisting. i know that i should, but here's the thing, in a way i have such a long ways to go before i'm remotely satisfied with my body again that passing up one little damn piece of carrot cake is not going to make me step out in the aisles & dance to brass monkey. not today.


so another halloween is nearly gone & it was, over all, a rather big bust for me. no parties, no apple bobbing, no pole dancing contests, no egging or tp-ing of anything, just an hour of over time & then going home to watch some bad cable tv.

but at least i got to look vicious at work:

you brought what for lunch?!

while rummaging through cabinets this morning to find something to bring to work for lunch i found a can of sardines & thought "hmmm, it's been a very long time since i've had sardines, i should take these for lunch."

ponder that for a moment. for anyone who doesn't know what sardines are, they are tiny fish cooked & packaged in oil that you eat, typically, with crackers.

yeah, sounds more absurd seeing it in writing than it sounded in my head this morning. here's the thing. i hate fish. like hate hate hate it. however, as a kid i used to simply love sardines. my mom would open a tin up & my brother & i would split it with her, she'd break the little fishies up & portion them out onto saltines, handing them to each of us, then one for herself, doing that until the tin was gone & our little hands were slick with oil.

ah, fond memories.

as i said earlier, it's been several several years since i've indulged in sardines. but they sounded good as i stood in my kitchen this morning at 7am in light blue flannel pj bottoms, with picturesque fences & happy little sheep staring up at me. maybe i was half crazy because i had just woken up, or maybe i was way too lazy to think of anything else that i might want to actually make. either way, i put the tin & some crackers in my backpack & i was off.

now as the day went on this little idea of mine seemed not so great as it had at first, & it just got to be a worse & worse thought as the day went on. however, i also didn't have anything else with me. & my scheduled lunch is at 3:45pm because i work until 8pm, which means the cafeteria & the store are both closed. in theory i could've driven the 9/10 of a mile to subway, got a sandwich & got back with plenty of time to munch my sandwich before i had to be back on the phones. but i made jack promise no more extraneous eating out, for our health & for our finances. & i couldn't exactly get this all worked out with him last night only to turn around & go to subway today for lunch, that's just not right.

so i had the sardines. well, technically not all of them. i managed to have about half of them before i realized i just could not do this. one important detail that had some how slipped my mind is that the last time that i had sardines was sometime before i had my gallbladder removed. i can hear the moans already from those of you without that particular organ that know where this is headed, for the rest of you, i sum up: no gallbladder=extreme difficulty in digesting grease. & sardines are canned in oil. uh, yeah.

another thing i neglected to think about is my coworkers. sardines don't exactly smell like roses, or pizza, or anything yummy. they smell like fish & oil, it's a rather strong odor that tends to linger a little bit, & drift & waft too. so about ten minutes after i opened them up in the next aisle over i hear someone spraying air fresheners, "ssssssshhhhhhh... sssshhhhhst... sssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh..... sssssssssshhhhhhhhhh..... ssshst....." lots & lots of popouri went into the air, & the ozone layer died just a little bit inside, er, outside.

& so i threw the rest of the little buggers away on my last break of the day, in the break room, far far away from anyone's desk. & right now i'm munching on popcorn & drinking half a 7up given to me by my kind coworker kim (thanks much!) & semi-lamenting the fact that i didn't take the 3minutes to make a tuna sandwich for lunch, 'cause at least that i know i can eat that & it smells a wee bit like fish, but not enough to make someone empty a whole can of glade into the air.

day 1- office pot luck

have i mentioned lately that i think office pot lucks are evil? ok, maybe not evil, but they are definitely not the friend of anyone trying to watch what they eat. today we had a pot luck to congratulate two people on their promotions, i don't personally know them, but they're part of the larger "team" so i was invited. my contribution you ask? i should've brought something semi healthy, but our sub-team was assigned chips or desert. so i bought a box of fla-vor-ice pops. you know, those liquid in plastic tube things that you put in the freezer & voila, a popsicle without the stick! blue is my favorite. i figured, it's summer, getting hotter outside, something other than cake or cookies would be nice. & they're only 25 calories each, not too bad for a refreshing snack!

back to the pot luck diet pot holes. some of what was part of our spread today: sloppy joes, tater tot hotdish, tacos, bbq meatballs, dorietos, spice cake, chocolate pecan pie, swiss turkey roll ups, raw veggies & dip, fresh strawberries & grapes, & lots of different regular soda. it wasn't as bad as it could've been, but also not particularly healthy either. i'll admit, that i did partake of a bit of it, after my morning work out. which felt a wee bit wrong.

after all, i had just spent an hour panting on the elliptical followed by 15 minutes of strenuous weight lifting to then go grab a sloppy joe & a couple of bbq meatballs? not exactly the smartest thing to do. then again, i also know myself well enough to know that if i wouldn't have given in & had a little bit of something that i would've went totally over board later on. the food was ok, but none of it was particularly fabulous, & part of that may be because i've been really trying to retrain myself to enjoy natural healthy foods. so things that are really greasy don't sit well with me. & while it did taste pretty good while i was eating it, about an hour later i was very sick. maybe my body's way of telling me to cut this fucking bull shit & give myself GOOD fuel instead of this crap? & on the other hand, it could be completely psycho-sematic & all in my head.

on the upside of thing, i got my jiggle free arms dvd from target.com this past tuesday, & i just checked my target account & my jiggle free buns are waiting for my postal carrier to deliver them, so hopefully i'll get that dvd today or tomorrow. then i'm just waiting on my transfirmer, which should be here before my birthday. then i'll be g2g folks. i would like to note while i HATE cutesy lazy text messaging & instant messaging, g2g is a gamer term for good to go introduced to me by my good friend josh. gamer chicks rule, by the way.

& yes, i do realize how it sounds saying i got my jiggle free arms in the mail & i'm waiting on my jiggle free buns. ah, if it were only that easy. in that case i'd like to order jennifer lopez's ass, gwen stefani's arms, jessica alba's abs, a vegas show girl's legs, & a porn star's tits. well, now i have a totally realistic ideal to work towards. <----hint: for those that don't know me well, that last sentence was sarcasm.

the journey towards health & weight loss is really like a roller coaster, it has it's ups & downs & often times makes you feel like vomiting. but, in the end it is a thrilling journey & something well worth talking about later on. i don't exactly feel that way at this particular moment in time, i feel more like skittering away from talking about/thinking about this whole thing. but i also know that, like the supposedly-bubble-gum-flavored-pink-penicillin they gave me as a kid for strep throat, this really is good for me. even though it's really yucky at the moment.

crunchy crunchy snap crackle pop crunch

nope, not a new breakfast cereal by kellog's, that's the sound that my knees were making yesterday when i was doing squats & lunges at work. maybe i ought to back up a little in the story? i work in a call center, the late shift, so i get to leave at 8pm. most days there are very few phone calls coming in the last couple hours of my shift. since i missed my workout yesterday morning i thought that i would take advantage of the slow evening & the fact that i just so happen to have some free weights at my desk. yeah, i am that much of an uber geek that i have free weights at my desk, i also have a balance ball too that i sometimes sit on. in my defense, it's hard trying to lose weight while working in a call center. we have treat friday every week! & any reason at all & we through a floor wide pot luck. today it was my supervisor's turn for treats. she brought in six pizzas & a box of ice cream sandwiches. seriously, how is a girl to compete with six pizzas & ice cream sandwiches?

in a valiant attempt to try to feel i'm actually getting something productive for myself accomplished while i'm at work i do try to get a bit of exercise in on those days that i don't do my morning workout, like yesterday. a very long story short: fiance sick+central air not working+emergency run to target for a furnace filter=missing my morning workout. i won't claim that i'm super motivated & that i workout between every call because it just isn't so. but with my new commitment my weights have stopped completely gathering dust.

yesterday evening, thursday, i had a complete pill of a member on the phone. the kind of person that just argues & argues & argues until they wear you down & give-in to what ever they want so they will just shut the f*ck up. i am proud of myself that i didn't give in to her. she finally got frustrated & said she'd call back another day. fine, do that, if the person who answers the phone has any sense they'll do the same thing i did. so fast forward half an hour. i was reading a book & rather bored & wanted a snack, & i remembered i had a couple miniature 3musketeers in my desk. i unlocked my desk & took one out & savored every little bite of it. then about 15 minutes later i wanted the last one. i even started to unlock the drawer when i spied my lonely free weights sitting on top of the file cabinet. i had a brief argument with myself before relocking my desk & picking up my weights.

i had 35 minutes left of work & so i figured i could do 30minutes of upper body work no problem, after all, these were only 2lb weights. yeah, right. they wound up killing me. i did get some upper body lifting done & then to rest my arms i started doing lunges. at 7:30pm the call center is very quiet, deathly quiet even, & to be honest i like it that way. it's too noisy earlier on when everyone's here. too much inane chatter that just annoys me. the bad side about the call center being so quiet is that i could hear every single grating crackle that my knees made as i lunged. & it really grossed me out. who knew that two little joints could make such a loud splintering sound? then, of course, because i was hearing my knees grate i began to feel the joints rubbing harshly, which then caused me great knee pain.

a year ago when i was much thinner i don't remember my knees crunching like that. i know that they have, in the past, sounded like they were going to splinter apart if i had to walk one more flight of stairs. then again, that was back when i was over 300lbs & i was able to out weight many of the minnesota vikings. also back around that time my dad started buying glucosimine, or something like that. an over the counter supplement to repair & strengthen cartiledge in the joints. i did take those for a while, even though they were wickedly expensive. then, as i lost weight, the creaking lessened & then stopped, & so did my daily supplements.

even though i'm pauper broke right now i'm very tempted to take a jaunt over to walgreen's or snyder's & pick up some of those handy-dandy-little-magic-pills to lessen my knee pain. because, i will admit, that i hobbled around most of thursday night, & i'm limping a bit today. then again, the old fashioned "more activity, less weight" may ease up that joint pain too.

blech, isn't it obnoxious how often the answer to a medical problem is "lose weight." i'm getting rather sick of it, &amp;amp; for the record, yeah, i know, i'm fat & need to stop being fat. i get it.