Because I am nothing if not lazy and gluttonous, my fitness program has been a rocky time, mostly because the idea of eating ONLY HEALTHY FOOD inspires the worst kind of anxiety in me, anxiety which can only be soothed by a gallon of ice cream and a whole pizza. Unfortunately, there are only two more weeks left to drop the remaining five percent body fat and gain the remaining four pounds of muscle. So the prescription for the next seven days is cardio, cardio and more cardio, on top of the regimented food plan I’m already struggling with. I hate cardio almost as much as I hate eating healthily. How am I supposed to choke down double servings of both? For SEVEN DAYS?????
Dooce is also eating healthily at the moment, but she is enjoying it so much that she is contemplating becoming vegetarian, or even vegan, a possibility which has apparently drawn a lot of people’s ire. For whatever reason. In any case, thanks to Dooce, I know how I’m going to eat my sweet potato tonight!
When I made the decision to enter graduate school in mathematics, I was motivated by fear. What could I possibly have been afraid of, you ask, that would have been worse than grad school? A list might be instructive (feel free to laugh at my crazy, mixed-up backwardness). I was afraid:
Of being unable to deal with the real world, and consequently dying penniless on the street
That I was unemployable with just a bachelor’s degree in math and that I would die penniless on the street
That I would be too lazy to take care of myself, to the point that I would end up dying penniless on the street
Of leaving the state and starting over somewhere new, and dying penniless on the street in some city I didn’t even know
. . . and of many, many more things that end “and thus dying penniless on the street” (Are you noticing a pattern? Turns out I’m not alone—Dooce’s personal fear history reads similarly.) In any case, going into graduate school for the wrong reasons is BAD. DO NOT DO IT. But the bright side is, I apparently have completed all the requirements for my degree, so I guess that’s it. I’m just wondering how the postman is going to fit my diploma in my microscopic mailbox . . .
My memory is not what it once was, but I believe I may have blogged about three-year-old Leta Armstrong before. In any case, Leta is the daughter of Dooce.com writer/blogger/designer Heather Armstrong, whose hilarious semi-maternal outpourings brighten the days of thousands one to four times a week.
I am not a mother, or even a father, but as the second of nine children, I have a lot of experience in laughing at the child-rearing struggles of others. In fact, since my six sisters range in age from one year and thirteen days older than I am to fourteen years, eight months and twenty-one days younger, for most of my pre-adult life there was at least one crazy three-to-five-year-old girl in the house, giving her Barbies haircuts, refusing to wear clothes that didn’t have Ariel on them, and insisting on wearing her “princess” dress to play in the dirt. So when I read about Leta going to bed with a bottle of shampoo, a basketball and the book YOU on a Diet, I feel a tiny bit of nostalgia.
Then I remember that a three-year-old girl’s main method of communication is screaming and whining, and the nostalgia passes.
Via Dooce.com: This, THIS is why Utah County is no fit place for any thinking being. Read the whole article—it’s a gem from start to finish. Some highlights:
The proposed resolution addressing Satan’s influence on those Marxist illegal immigrants
Mention of the LDS Church’s wrestle with the thorny issue of giving temple recommends to illegals
This quote from Don Larsen, author of the resolution:
If the Democrats take over the country, we will be dead, and we will have abortion and partial-birth abortion and the Republican Party will go into extinction . . . Nancy Pelosi and the ACLU would oppose this (resolution).
This quote from Utah Republican Party chair Enid Greene, on the BYU faculty members who supported the student protests against Cheney:
I’m not calling for BYU to fire them but if no one signs up for their classes . . . If they say the Vice President doesn’t have anything to say we want to hear, I’m not interested in having my daughter learn from them.
Lt. Governor Gary Herbert saying that “Utah County Republicans are ‘guided by correct principles’ and are the ‘best of the best’ of the Republican Party.” (quoting the Daily Herald’s paraphrase)
It’s sometimes interesting to imagine what our country would be like if we had a real president, and a real presidential administration. But that usually gets really depressing after about three seconds (I mean, what if we had had a real president during the 9/11 crisis? on March 20, 2003? during the Katrina disaster?) and to lift our spirits, we are forced to make cruel but accurate fun of the one we’re currently stuck with. Like so.
In better news, the House passed the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veteran’s Health and Iraq Accountability Act today, which will
Make sure that the troops currently deployed will be adequately trained and outfitted, and provide for the care of the veterans who are returning home.
Provide benchmarks for Iraqi involvement and American redeployment.
Set a firm deadline (March 1, 2008) for the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq.
Increase funding for the conflict in Afghanistan and for ACTUALLY COMBATING AL QAEDA.
If you have some free time, go check out Alexandre Duret-Lutz’s Wee Planets series on Flickr. The images are created from several separate photos (most of them taken by hand on a point-and-shoot camera!), stitched together into 360° panoramas like this one,
and finally converted into a “planet” using either polar-coordinate or stereographic projection, thus.
Via Dooce.com: Craig Ferguson of The Late Late Show explains why he has decided not to make fun of Britney Spears’ recent erratic behavior. I don’t have a drinking problem, but as someone with a different kind of “thinking problem,” I still found this video to be very educational, very wise and very touching.
Reading the monthly updates on Dooce’s daughter, Leta, is always a touching and entertaining experience, but the most recent post is the best so far. Here’s wishing you a happy birthday, Leta, and a wonderful year for your whole family.
Dervala‘s gorgeous, grey essay on depression struck a chord with me, and it may with you, too. If only more people understood the true nature of this disease, without having to experience it themselves.
Via Dooce.com, where you can find several articles on Heather Armstrong’s own struggle with depression and anti-depressant medications.
A Softer World, written by Joey Comeau (who is kind of hot), photographed by Emily Horne (who may very well be hot, too–straight guys and lesbians, help me out here)
This comic reminds me very strongly of my friend Fletcher, who is both a great photographer and a witty, non-linear conversationalist. [Via dooce.com.]
With its broad, manga-kissed artwork and over-the-top humor, Sinfest isn’t as good or as funny as the understated A Softer World, but it still has its moments. [Via somewhere else.]
Disappointing. The pacing was off, the world-building seemed almost hesitant, and the occasional use of omniscient third person felt intrusive and unnecessary. China Miéville is better than this. […]
The first thing I did when I picked up this book was look up Kovalevskaya in the index. As in Sofia Kovalevksaya, mathematical genius and pioneering female mathematician and academician of the 19th century. And there she was, a full page on one of my heroes. Weierstrass's unsung research partner.... […]
Laughably, ridiculously useless. Way too short, way too sparse, almost no workable examples, way too many typos. This was obviously thrown together at the last minute by a desperate author/publishing team. […]
