GrumpysMonkey

Ever have one of those days where NOTHING goes right? Yeah. Been having one all day. Did have about 2.5 hours where I enjoyed myself and didn’t worry about all of the crap that’s going on. But now I think I should just go to bed to avoid more of this craptacular day.

I know things could always be worse. And empirically, I know that nothing that happened today was really all that bad. However, sometimes the little things just add up to total meltdown.

I hate it when I hit total meltdown. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, get out of the way.

Dr. Horrible is back online!

In my full time job, I quite often must type the acronym CAS. In my second life, (food writing), I often refer to CSAs. You know you’re tired when you type either of the following:

1. You must enable Integrated authentication on the CSA server.

2. There were some beautiful vegetables in my CAS box this weekend.

I need a vacation. Either that or my computer is growing carrots now.

I present two products.

1. TrueNorth Snacks. From their commercial: "I present to you, an incredible nut snack." Just say it to yourself quickly. Nut snack, nut snack, nut sack…

2. AsipHex: A heartburn medication. Asiphex, asiphex, asseffects.

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be the person who came up with those.

If you’ve been following the saga of my aching hips and my desire to run a (half) marathon… well, rather if you’re not, then you can stop reading now.

When I started running, I was fine for about 2 months. Then my hips started hurting. I ran with pain for a long time. I was stupid. Plain and simple. I kept running and kept hurting. Then I went to physical therapy.

I am now in love with PT (sorry honey). Before PT, I hurt on EVERY run, and almost EVERY TIME I stood up from a sitting position. I hurt just walking around the house. I hurt rolling over in bed.

Well, after 2 months of weekly sessions and a lot of work at home, I rolled over in bed one morning and… IT DIDN’T HURT! Then I went on a run and IT DIDN’T HURT! Then the next day, IT DIDN’T HURT. Rinse, repeat. I loved running without pain. It was so much FUN!

But then I slacked off on PT a bit. Not a lot. I had about 10 days where I didn’t do any exercises, but I still ran. And I started to hurt again. Not a lot, and not while I ran, but a little. So I started the exercises again and things got better. But then I started running a lot more.

I went from running 10 miles a week to running 16-18 miles a week. And I’ve plateaued. I’m not having a lot of pain, but I’m having some.

I spoke to the therapist yesterday about this problem. Her theory is that the endurance I built up doing my exercises just isn’t enough any more for the added mileage. So I’m to switch my PT exercises from 3 sets of 20 reps to 2 sets of 50 reps. She also added three new exercises.

After 2 days, I can tell you that I am SORE. Everything below the waist hurts. But I know it will get better in about a week. I just need to figure out how I can still walk and get through my days until then. 

http://www.drhorrible.com

It’s only available through today and then you’ll have to pay for it. If you have any time at all today, watch it.

Neil Patrick Harris as a wannabe villain. Nathan Fillion as the hero. In musical form.

I’m titling this part 1 because I think there may be more entries on this subject, but I’m really not sure at this point. I will say up front that no, I’m not pregnant. This post (series?) has absolutely nothing to do with marriage, babies, houses, or pets.

If you read my blog, you know that I am doing A LOT of writing these days. In addition to my full time job, I’m writing for the Cook Local Examiner, Seattle MetBlogs, Cook Local, and Fit Fare. Most of the posts are either cooking or food related. The Examiner posts, in particular, are dedicated to local Seattle cooking. Cook Local, is (obviously) dedicated to Cooking Local in a wide variety of locales.

A friend asked me a couple of weeks ago, if I’d thought about writing a book. Well, heck, I’ve written 4 of them. However, those were all technical books and all of the writing I’m doing OUTSIDE of work is decidedly not technical unless you consider recipes technology (which is a debate for another day).

She was, I believe, trying to prod me to actually give some thought to future book plans. She’s a writer (a good one from what little I’ve read of hers outside of blog posts), and I hope to talk with her more about this as I give it more thought.

I’m obviously trying to work towards something, although I don’t know exactly what. If someone asked me when I agreed to take on each of these writing gigs, why I was agreeing to them, I’m not sure I could really give them a solid answer.

I started Cook Local on a whim. I don’t even remember why or how we decided to start it, I just remember starting it. I started writing for MetBlogs because I liked reading the site and they asked for new writers. I started writing for Fit Fare for the same reason. The Examiner contacted me and asked, and I was so flattered that I said yes.

I’ve been a fan of food blogs and food writing in general for quite a while. John turned me on to the food blogs (and to blogs and RSS readers in general). I think at least in part, I felt like I had something to say. Or I had a way to say it. Maybe both. It is possible, or even likely, that some of this desire to break into food writing comes from the fact that I got 3/4 of the way through a novel and then got stuck and couldn’t ever finish it. Maybe food writing is nice and compartmentalized enough that I knew I’d never get 3/4 of the way through it again only to suffer from a horrid case of writer’s block and shattered confidence. And if I ever did, I’d only be 3/4 of the way through a recipe and I could always just pick another recipe and start over.

Though in general, I’m not always thrilled with my food writing either. I look at one of my favorite food writers – Orangette. Molly tells an amazing story with every post. I started out trying to tell my own stories on Cook Local. However, I consistently felt that my stories just weren’t interesting. They were slow, plodding, and awkward. So I stopped and focused solely on the recipes and ingredients. This seems to have worked for me so far.

So what am I working towards? A cookbook? Most of my recipes aren’t original. Sure, I’m starting to branch out and try my own combinations of flavors and ingredients, but if I was ever to write a cookbook, I’d need a hell of a lot more original recipes and they’d need to be a much higher caliber of recipe. I can make awesome lasagna and marinara sauce from scratch, but other than my staple of Italian recipes from my father, I’ve only got a handful of originals.

A book on local cooking? I think I’ve mostly missed the boat on that one, at least in the Pacific Northwest. The whole concept of the 100 mile diet has been around for several years now and there have been several excellent books on the subject. Do we really need another one? And even if we do, I don’t think I’m qualified to write it yet. Maybe in the future, sure. But now? I’m not sure.

A new cooking technique? Well, that would require me to actually develop one. That’s way too much work for my hectic schedule.

So what am I working towards? Does anyone know? If you do, can you let me in on the secret?

Just an FYI. If you wanted to comment on any of the previous posts (all 3 of them) and couldn’t, please try again. I’ve enabled anonymous comments as well as support for signing in with OpenID.

The trip to the pharmacy started out innocuously. I needed eye makeup remover. I wanted something natural, not tested on animals, mild, etc. So I go to the natural Pharmacy in town (Pharmaca for those of you lucky enough to have one in your town) and I can’t find the eye makeup remover. I ask and get pointed to the three options they have. So I pick one.

A few minutes later, the woman I asked for help comes over and says something like: “You know, we have this other option. It’s a microfiber cloth that takes off everything with just warm water. Even mascara.”

I’m dumbfounded. ‘Err, ok. Sure. I’ll try it.’

It’s a little more expensive than a bottle of eye makeup remover, but it is washable. Reusable. Non-chemically. Doesn’t require that I keep buying cotton balls. Or more plastic bottles of remover. Ok, what the hell. Worst case is it doesn’t work, I have to run out to Safeway at 11 pm to get a bottle of eye makeup remover.

I tried it last night. Holy shit. It takes off all of my makeup. Even the mascara. All of my eye lashes are still intact. Other than the 1 minute that it took for the water to heat up, it was faster than using a cotton ball, less messy, and easier.

Here’s the product: http://www.hydramitt.com/

(Supposedly it also helps your skin by ‘preserving the natural acid balance’ or something like that. I don’t really care. I don’t have to buy eye makeup remover any more.)

My job involves writing documentation for one of Microsoft’s products. In this job, I had to learn how to use an iPhone and write some documentation surrounding it. So last Friday I picked up a loaner iPhone and started playing around with it. My first impressions were not all that positive. Some of the UI felt klunky and it just wasn’t as user friendly as I expected an Apple product to be.

However then I kept on using it. I surfed the web a bit. It was so pretty.

Then we went out for lunch and I tried to take some notes in preparation for a blog post. Holy jeez. I typed almost an entire blog post with one finger in the space of a couple of minutes.

Then today, on the way to work, I typed out almost an entire page of script for a walkthrough while John drove.

The screen was pretty, the applications were snappy, and I could WRITE. EASILY. IN THE CAR.

Now I’m about as overloaded as you can get. I’m writing for 5 different blogs as well as my full time writing job. My massage therapist thinks my forearms are HUGE because of all of the writing, typing, and texting I do.

I just kept thinking how very much I could get done during downtime with this thing. I could write in the car on the way home. I could write while waiting for appointments. I could get blog posts half written whenever they happen (for MetBlogs for example).

The biggest problem is that I NEED to have a Windows Mobile phone for work. Plus, I actually do like Windows Mobile. That’s not just company loyalty talking, I honestly do like the operating system. So I have to pay for a Windows Mobile cell phone plan with a data plan. If I bought an iPhone, I’d need to pay for a second phone plan and data plan. That just isn’t in the cards right now. Plus, I would feel overly geeky carrying around two phones everywhere.

However, the iPod Touch has a good number of the same features and no data plan. It has wi-fi, which in Seattle, would often be enough. There’s free wi-fi a lot of places here.

So now I’m seriously contemplating purchasing the iPod Touch. I can’t say that when I get my next royalty check it won’t go directly to the Apple store. Ugh.

I need a shower now.