Found in my electronic chapbook.
Pick interesting names. I know there area lot of John Smiths in the world, and I wish them well, but I certainly don”t want to encounter any more of their number in fiction. p. 228
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
I had my usual breakfast of yogurt, banana and Grapenuts this morning and I realized that I”ve failed to mention my 6 oz. glass of grapefruit juice each morning. I had a hardboiled egg for a protein boost at mid-morning. Lunch was also my usual of turkey w/Swiss, carrot sticks, celery 1/2 of an apple w/lemon juice, along with 2 oz. of feta cheese and six black olives for a snack. Dinner was a can of Healthy Choice chicken and dumplings with 1/2 cup of my homemade multi-grain croûtons cooked in olive oil and mixed herbs and a slice of tomato.
It strikes me that I need to start a reference page for all of this so that I don”t have to type out details like the above when there”s nothing new to report.
After dinner I drove to the library and on the way home a salt craving hit me and I bought a bag of pepperoni pizza Combos. I didn”t look at the bag at the time like I should have but my stop is a perfect example of how portion size is deceptive. In his book, The End Overeating, David Kessler writes that Americans understand that a serving size is a bag/can/bottle/plate of whatever they buy. The seven-ounce bag of Combos contains seven, one-ounce servings.
Mars, yes that Mars, knows damn well that people who purchase a bag of Combos will erroneously assume that the bag contains a single serving in the same way that everyone believes that a 12-oz can of soda contains a single serving. (What, you didn”t know that a 12-oz can contains two, yes two, 6-oz servings?)
So what did I get for my seven, one-ounce servings? 980 calories (420 calories from the 42 grams of fat, half of which were saturated fat); and 1,960 mg of salt.
And there”s something on the bag that I don”t understand. High up the label touts zero transfats, but down in the ingredients it lists hydrogenated oil. I thought those were one and the same. How does Mars get away with this?
The problem is keeping your cool in the face of ignorance so blinding, you just want to explode. The trick is to remember that almost nothing you say in response is going to destroy these people”s credibility more than the words that come out of their own mouths. Chase has mastered this approach.
A few things to get off my chest.
Wait a minute now. I read where “public-private collaborators” have announced that University Hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic are telling vendors that they better locate in the Euclid Avenue Corridor.
I really don”t have an argument against trying to get more medical businesses to locate in the city. But the threats came over as a bit over the top.
And isn”t it a bit hypocritical of Steven Standley, chief administrator of University Hospitals, to tell vendors “You need to move into the city, or we will find somebody who will.” So he told the Plain Dealer. That”s a blunt threat.
It is an especially a two-faced threat for a Continue Reading »
Found in my electronic chapbook.
Watch out for the falling stars. Sometimes a name will pop into your mind. It has such a nice feel to it and fits your concept of your character so perfectly that you don”t realize you”ve heard the name before. Or even seen it in lights. p. 227
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
I craved some protein for breakfast and fried two eggs in a tsp of butter and toasted a slice of multi-grain bread with a second tsp of butter. The low-sugar orange marmalade (my favorite) would be a better choice, I think. I”m having a mug of black coffee (Sulawesi) at the Phoenix coffee house on Lee as I write this.
Lunch is my turkey w/Swiss, Feta and black olives, plus the carrot sticks from yesterday and my 1/2 apple in lemon juice.
I took my car in this morning for rear brakes and an upper, rear strut mount that took longer than I thought it would. I finished reading Jan Chozen Bays” Mindful Eating and I”ve decided to buy the book. It starts out slow, not offering new information for me, but finishes very well. I took the car in at 0815 and at about 1000 I was starting to get a little antsy and feeling a bit puckish. I walked out into the foyer and looked at the snack offerings – 50-cent sodas, 45-cent chips, etc. – but decided to take a walk instead.
I went around the block once – east on Carnegie to 55th, south on 55th to Prospect, west on Prospect to the little park near where Ruthie and Moe”s used to be and then back up to Carnegie and back inside to Target Auto. I stopped at the vending machine again and bought a 1 oz. package of Fritos for 45-cents.
Now I”d been reading along in Mindful Eating and set out to put a bit of it into practice. First I sat down with the package and read list of ingredients: corn, corn oil, salt. That”s it. I was surprised. After I spent a minute or so reading the package, I opened the bag and stuck my nose in for a deep whiff. They didn”t smell the way I remembered from my teen years when Fritos, French onion dip and root beer were my comfort foods. The chip smelled fainter, like shadows of those long ago remembered chips.
What happened next amazes me. I took one chip, smelled it, put it in my mouth and allowed it to dissolve. The chip wasn”t as salty as I remember, I”ve always been a saltoholic, eating celery as a snack because I could dip the stalks in a mound of salt and bliss out. The chip fell apart and I slowly chewed the bits into paste and sucked on it until all the salt was gone and the remaining corn meal turned sweet in my mouth. I pushed bits to the back of my mouth and swallowed them little by little until my mouth was empty. I paused, allowing my mouth to relax before repeating the process.
I didn”t count the chips, it never occurred to me to count the chips, but according the interwebs there are 32 pieces in a one-ounce bag. It took me three hours, 180 minutes to eat those 32 (or there abouts) chips. That”s around 5 1/2 minutes per chip. That blows me away. I noted several times where I was almost starting to speed up, but I caught myself and returned to mindful eating.
Over the course of those three hours, I also finished Mindful Eating and made the decision to buy my own copy so that I can mark it up. I also marked one more book to order from the library: Don Gerrard”s One Bowl: A Guide To Eating For The Body And Soul. One bowl eating is a concept I”m familiar with, having bought a bowl several years ago at the Cain Park Art Festival that I eat many of my meals from. Gerrard”s basic thesis is that the stomach is about the size of your fist and that if you”re trying to eat more than that, then you”re overeating.
Bays also addresses the idea of Right Amount, it”s No. 2 on her list of Six Simple Guidelines For Mindful Eating in chapter 4. There she discusses measure such as filling the stomach only eight-parts full: hara no hachi bu. She also quotes the monk Ajahn Chah”s suggestion that we should stop eating five mouthfuls short of full.
When I eat a whole, large pizza, something I started doing with pizzas from the Pastime Lanes in Marietta when I was 16 – I also bought my first illegal beer at 17 there after work with Brian Worstel and a guy I can”t remember from toys at Hart”s, I think – and had my own money, I can only imagine the damage I”ve done to my poor stomach (the image of the glutton from Seven comes to mind. How”s that for scary?)
The chips kept me going until 1300 when I ate my olives and feta cheese as lunch. I ate the turkey w/Swiss, carrots and 1/2 apple in lemon juice after 1500.
When I got home I ate my second 7.4 oz. Buffalo burger with red onion grilled on the George Forman, a thick slice of tomato and A1 Bold ‘n” Spicy sauce. After I ate that I just didn”t really feel like a cuppa Tension Tamer.
It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.
WALMART”S BACK-DOOR STRATEGY IN INDIA… Walmart continues to push its back-door strategy for expansion in India, building a wholesale infrastructure that will it allow it to crush home-grown competitors shoiuld it convince the government of India to wave the rules regarding foreign investment. Keep reading…
ARE YOU LIVING BETTER YET…? I really do wish we could past the commercials on both sides of the Walmart discussion, but I know they have their place. If one of these videos encourages a Walmart shopper to look deeper, to read and to enter the conversation, then all our communities benefit.
Keep reading…
CROSS-BORDER BATTLE MAKES ALL LOSERS… Washington-state Blogger Michael Costello is doing a Snoopy Dance of Joy over the misfortune of the people of Moscow, Idaho, particularly its mayor, because he”s getting a new Walmart in Pullman, Washington, and Moscow is losing its. Writes Costello: Keep reading…
WHEN IS 24/7 A BAD THING…? When, it appears, you”re talking about a planned Walmart supercenter in north Baltimore. I”ve written before about the development of this store in Baltimore, but I am surprised that residents are not happy that the store may be open around the clock. Keep reading…
PUTTING PRESSURE ON CHICAGO”S ALDERMEN… Reading about the political maneuvering over Walmart”s must-have second store in Chicago makes me wish I had the time to attend all these meetings, to get on the phone with the players and take a read on just how earnest they are. Keep reading…
LYING TO CHICAGOANS… This video from Chicago”s CBS 2 is filled with inaccuracies and the mouthing of common wisdom that are just two of the reasons that I don”t pay any attention to local television news. To say that Walmart is more efficient than competitors is ignorant. Keep reading…
HOW DID YOU DO IN 2009…? If you”re one of Walmart”s top five officers, the good news is that in fiscal year 2009 together you took in $65 million. The bad news is that if you happened to be Michael Duke you took a huge pay cut over the previous year, taking home a measley $19.2 million.
Keep reading…
I”M BEGINNING TO LIKE PETER BELLA… No. Pete isn”t winning me over to his point of view, but he writes well, is articulate and has more than a little of that Chicago grittiness that I used to love in Mike Royko. In his most recent jump on Walmart haters Pete writes: Keep reading…
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.
Found in my electronic chapbook.
Avoid confusion. This might be too obvious to mention but for the fact that even published writers slip up from time to time, hurling Carl and Cal and Carol and Carolyn all into the same chapter, peopling a crowd scene with Smathers and Smithers and Dithers and Mather. Be conscious of this sort of thing and avoid it. p. 227
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
I dropped three pounds (this is what a hectic day does to you) to 255 pounds this morning. My breakfast was as before: yogurt, Grapenuts, banana and black coffee.
I”ve packed nearly the same lunch — no cucumber today, but I did add some feta cheese and black olives to the mix. My work day begins at 0730 when I have to pick up a packet of 8th grade Ohio Graduation Tests to administer to a student this afternoon. I haven”t time to make any eggs this morning (I need to hard boil three or four tonight for mid-morning protein boosts. I”m not sure what I”m going to do for dinner this evening. If possible, I”ll try to slip home for some soup between my 1545 and 1820 students.
I did stop to make a single egg, single slice of Stone Oven multi-grain (I can eat this stuff straight it”s so good) bread cooked in 1 tsp. of butter. I ate half at 0800 and the other half at 0900.
I ate my turkey w/Swiss sandwich and celery sticks for lunch and did make it home in the evening for a can of Healthy Choice chicken tortilla soup with 1/3 cup of homemade multi-grain croutons (toasted with olive oil and herbs) followed by my 1/2 apple in lemon juice for desert.
The Feta and black olives went uneaten and will go into tomorrow’s lunch.
I had my mug of Tension Tamer before going to bed.
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