My World … and welcome to it!
I live in my own little world but it's OK. They know me here.
Star Trek Into Darkness
Whether you’re a casual Star Trek fan, like I am, or a full blown Trekkie, this is one Star Trek you do NOT want to miss. Trying to watch this on the small box at home is NOT going to cut it. Trust me! Two and a half hours of warp 8 fun, adventure, and misadventure will keep you on the edge of your seat. J.J. Abrams and crew just blew this one out of the park. They took seminal moments and characters from past movies and the original TV show, tossed ‘em into a blender, hit frappe and came up with a stunning, turned on its head storyline. Of course the SFX are spectacular as well but the story simply overshadows them.
Whatever you do, do NOT go looking on the internet for info and especially stay away from IMDB because you’ll be sorry if you do. Just listing the cast and their characters will give away a huge chunk of the plot. I walked in not knowing anything and am happy I didn’t. It was much more fun to try and figure out who was who, what was what and why do those character names sound so familiar?
Speaking of the cast, again they have all done an absolutely stellar job of bringing the original cast back to life. Each of them has the mannerisms, speech patterns and look of the original cast down pat. It just makes it so much more fun I can barely stand it.
And don’t let the 2.5 hours scare you away. It just zooms by. Just go easy on the liquid refreshments beforehand and during because I promise you there is NO safe place to make a potty run. You WILL miss something.
The Michael-Baker household gives this one an enthusiastic two thumbs up.
On to more mundane things, I ran across a link the other day on FB which made me stop in my tracks and go hmmm. This sentence, in particular, really caught my attention: “It takes 30 grams of protein per meal to create muscle turnover.” When I got out my calculator and started adding things up I realized I have been shorting myself big time.
Well I’ve tried everything else so WTH. Breakfast wasn’t to difficult to fix, I just added a couple more eggs to the menu. Since I’ve been skipping lunch altogether I had to go label reading in the pantry. Tins of wild herring boasts a nice and tidy 38.5g per tin. Packets of water packed sardines, OTOH only have 16g per pouch. I’ve been eating a few veggie chips to go along with because that’s all I want. Dinner has been a bit problematic but I’ve managed two days in a row to hit the magic number. Took a little creative thinking but I got it there.
The interesting thing about this is that I immediately stopped wanting something a few hours after eating. No more grabbing a handful or two of raw almonds as I wander through the kitchen. I’m curious to see if this will actually finally force my body to start letting go of the extra weight. One can only hope. And if it doesn’t then it’s back to the drawing board.
Last thing … just a view across the creek.
Posted in Diet Woes, TV & Movies
Is it socialization or biology?
This post is a commentary on a recent webinar I watched. Unless you’re a paid member of that forum you cannot view it so you may want to skip this post as it won’t make much sense. Or maybe it will.
Right off the bat there was a comment in the email announcing the webinar and on the download page itself that caught my eye. “…we are designed to have sex (front-to-front, which is different than every other mammal!)” Not so. I refer the good doc to the bonobo chimp. He repeats this error about 12 minutes in.
Within the first 5 minutes, doc has managed to confuse/conflate socialization with biology. He stated (and I’m paraphrasing here) that what women look for in a mate is someone to “give them everything” while a man only wants one thing. That is not biology. That is socialization, pure, plain and simple. I challenge anyone to find any species out in the wild where this is true. And let’s face it, we are, whether we like to admit it or not, animals, like every other animal on the planet. We just think we’re more “special” than we really are.
Lust (biology) and love (socialization) are two completely separate things. Something I recognized when I was all of 19 and a very, very callow (and emotionally messed up) youth. Lust makes you long for the object of your desire (you can call it affection if you want but it’s still “desire” in every sense of the word).
Love comes with time. Love keeps you from making your spouse sleep with the dog when he farts in bed and pulls the covers over your head. Love keeps you from punching a hole in the bathroom wall when the love of your life uses your razor to shave her legs. For the 4th time. Love grows. Lust fades.
13 minutes in doc says that estrus is what drives “chimps” mating behavior. He might want to go read about the bonobo chimp again. Females have been known to snag a male and drag him off into the bushes for a couple of weeks of fun and games. Simply for fun and games. He also makes the claim (which I find completely without merit) that signaling went from an engorged rump to the clitoris. Really??? And just how, exactly, is a male supposed to SEE an engorged clit unless he has his nose right up a woman’s hooha? Given that the clitoris is the female analogue of the penis, on a very tiny scale, I really don’t understand how that is supposed to work.
There follows about 20 minutes of disconnected chatter about various studies, plenty of opinion and more inaccuracies. He finally hits a little pay dirt when he starts talking about, of all things, The Brain. Seems a study has been done by putting a woman into a “functional MRI” … not sure what that is … and running the machine while she orgasms. Evidently a woman’s brain lights up like a christmas tree which doc finds fascinating (as did I when he explained it) because it bears a striking resemblance to a brain having a seizure. Which made me laugh because frankly, that’s about what great orgasm feels like. Although I have never experienced “the little death.”
At this point he begins to actually get some information going that is sort of useful, mostly interesting and mostly driven by his personal beliefs which are colored by the notion that humans are meant to pair bond. That, btw, is the underlying subtext of just about everything he says at this point. If you have read Sex at Dawn you will find that this has been the biggest issue in studying sex. People cannot step away from their preconceived notions about men and women and be objective. Doc is also having a little trouble doing this.
At this point I am only about halfway through and his off-the-cuff style is really wearing me down. Doc, I love ya to death but, I’m going to tell you what the sycophants on your forum won’t. Your communication skills need work. I don’t think this is going to go down well but someone has to say it. I thought the problem I have had understanding what you were saying was because my education is out of date and not nearly equal to yours. With time, a whole bunch of webinars and blog posts later I realize it isn’t me. It’s YOU. This is not meant as a negative criticism. Dammit I WANT to understand what you’re trying to convey. You are smart, funny, extremely well educated and well read. But — you just aren’t getting the point across EASILY.
It isn’t just about “hurting my head” with your ideas and notions. It’s about the fact that what you are saying doesn’t compute! And my suggestion, FWIW, is to make an outline for your webinars. Go over the outline and flesh it out so you have a roadmap to follow. Maybe even write out key sections and READ THEM ALOUD to see if they make sense. On blog posts, edit EDIT EDIT EDIT. Stop tossing off first drafts as though they were finished products. They aren’t. You really need to remember that most of your current audience is composed of people without a sound scientific background. You need to speak English.
I hope, if doc reads this, that he will take it in the spirit in which I offer it. As someone who desperately wants to understand WTH you are trying to tell us but who just is not getting it. And not for lack of brain power, either.
If I have more to say when I can finally limp through the remainder of the webinar I’ll post it tomorrow.
Posted in Health
Scandalous
I’ll admit it. One of my guilty pleasures is watching Scandal on ABC. It’s stupid. It’s insipid. It is fraught with idiotic commentary on public life, private life, torture, killing, sex — pretty much you name it.
Last night’s season ender went too far, however. First of all I apologize for not knowing the characters names. See how much real attention I give it? Anyway. Huck (one of 2 characters who’s names I DO know) has been working with one of the two women in the group. She is not the type to engage in torture but there she went — quite gleefully I must admit. PULEEZE. It was about as believable as what’s-her-face on Gray’s Anatomy suddenly becoming gay. It was a really really bad transition and still annoys me. If she was supposed to be gay or bi she should have been right from the start. I wander. Back to Scandal (same woman writes/produces both shows).
Then there was the double triangle? Between the “president,” his wife, Olivia and Jake(?). The “pres” has been boinking Olivia on the side while still having relations with the wife who turned up pregnant last season. Due to a whole bunch of sudsy events the “pres” and Olivia were on the outs but he was having her watched by Jake(?). Jake and Olivia got it on and their steamy rendezvous was recorded.
So here’s my gripe about THAT little bit of nonsense. Turns out the “pres” knocked off a dying supreme court judge who was threatening to spill the beans about how our “hero” got elected (dirty little secrets … stolen elections, rigged voting machines in Ohio, the usual). So Cyrus, who is the real bad guy in all of this blabs about the murder to Olivia (his best bud, the “pres” had confessed it to him) and then takes the DVD of Olivia and Jake and shows it to the “pres” all in the hopes of putting the “pres” and his wife back together in time to win a second term because Cyrus believes he is the real power behind the throne.
OK. O confronts P who says to her … “I was going to forgive you for Jake.”
EXCUSEFUCKINGME?! Let’s just hold on here a second buster. YOU were busy boffing the old lady AND your girlfriend at the same time but because while you and O were splitsville and she got a little from someone else YOU were going to forgive HER????
Did Olivia call him on it? Hell no. BTW I like the actress, Kerry Washington but she really needs to work on her facial expressions. I’m getting real tired of the wide eyed-mouth-slightly-open-you’ve wounded me deeply bit.
So that’s my rant for today. I feel so much better. I’m sure you do, too.
Back to important stuff, like my health. I’m not doing real well following the Primal meal plans. Figures. My excuse for the last week was hubby was in Loveland so I was on my own. Cooking for one is a PITA. So I bought a rotisserie chicken from Safeway, a bunch of salad fixings, whipped up some balsamic vinaigrette and that was pretty much what I ate for dinner for 4 days. Breakfast is pretty much the same every day. 2 slices of bacon, 2 eggs scrambled in the bacon fat, a sliced tomato (a SMALL one) and a mug of bullet proof decaf. I’ve been eating later so rather than eat lunch at 2 or 3 I have a small snack. Most days it’s a small organic apple and a piece of stick cheese or a handful of raw almonds. Later on in the evening if I get hungry I’ll have a few more raw almonds.
So the menu service I subscribed to is pretty much wasted money. I did manage to follow the menu a couple of times. We both liked the “grok rocks” (prunes dipped in melted chocolate — and hey, don’t knock ‘em. They were quite tasty.). I did the zucchini eggs one day and they were good but first thing in the morning about all I can manage is the bacon and eggs. Or coconut pancakes which I try to keep to once a week or so.
Anyway. Guess I’ll go one more month with the service just to see if I get off my duff. If not then it’s adios to that. I think what I really need is a cook.
Posted in Diet Woes, TV & Movies
Working up a sweat.
Something interesting has been happening lately. I’ve started sweating at the drop of a hat. Yeah it got a little warm the other day … 90 or so … but that doesn’t usually cause me to perspire. I might get a wee bit dewy but that’s been about it. Not this past week. Granted a couple of times were after I had done my strength training routine and that’s enough to get anyone sweaty. But I also was just doing a little bit of housework and nothing very strenuous.
So why bring it up? Well, according to my neurosurgeon “buddy” this could be a sign I have regained leptin sensitivity. Well hoorah for me. I’d start whining about why aren’t I losing weight except I suspect I already know the answer. You cannot sit on your big fat ass day in and day out and expect things to change. Yeah yeah yeah. When I did the Zone about 16 years ago that’s sorta what I did. But honestly, even then I was moving more than I am now. In the last couple of years I have become a slug. Parked in front of the computer wasting my time first just with games then Facebook and those games.
I need a 12 step program for Zynga.
Which is why I decided to go join the local gym. It’s a shrine to St. Arnold, btw. Complete with a ginormous mural of the big guy on one wall and framed copies of magazines with him on the covers. It’s smelly. It feels like a guy place. And I don’t care. All I want to do is lift enough to get some strength back, lose some flab and start feeling better about myself.
I could have gone back to the Y. But honestly I just wanted to push myself a little more than that. Plus the Body Shop is about $15 a month less. I’m stuck with them for a year but hey, I wasted close to 2 years membership at the Y by NOT going.
My plan, which actually is beginning to come together, is to walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes before I lift. I go twice a week. On off days I have several options. I have a box full of The Firm videos which I dearly loved about 20 years ago. So I’m thinking I can do one of those once or twice a week. I have a Pilates reformer out in the garage which I’m bringing back in and I can use IT once or twice a week. I have a Wii Fit with balance and yoga games on it. That will be used. And I can always go for walks with friends.
I’m not going to go crazy like I have in the past and try to work out for an hour every single day. It never worked for losing weight anyway. And I don’t need the stress.
All of the above coupled with some sensible eating, well I don’t know what I’m going to get. I’ve all but given up on ever being slim ever again. But at least I quit GAINING. That’s something. I’m trying very hard not to hate the shape I’m in. It’s not easy. I’ve fought this for 30 years and frankly I’m sick and tired of it. I’m obese. That is an inescapable fact of my life. I managed to get there by starving myself for decades, then slowly developing raging insomnia, and up until the hyst … major anemia. Then somewhere along the line I got hooked on wheat/sugar and that helped blow me up a little more. So I give up. I’ve eaten healthy for nearly 3 years now and the scale won’t budge. My body is as stubborn as I am. I’m done fighting it.
Posted in Diet Woes, Nutrition and Fitness
Those who can, do …
And the rest of that stupid line is “those who can’t, teach.” Stupid because if you can’t you have no business trying to educate anyone. I have been thinking about this for a bit now … hang on and I’ll show you how I got there.
There’s a lot of bloggers out there on the interwebs these days. Yours truly included. Some of the sites are interesting, some are maddening, some are boring (mine probably fits that category so far), some entertaining, some enlightening. I like to be enlightened. But what happens when someone is trying to edumacate their audience and ends up confusing them instead?
I have, indeed, run into this. It is beyond maddening. And naturally, as I have always been wont to do, I blamed myself for not comprehending what was obviously the keys to the Universe, Life and Everything.
But. (there’s always a “but”) I got to thinking this morning about teachers and how I’ve experienced the gamut from beyond lousy to priceless and everywhere in between. Which took me back to the summer I took a class in elementary linear algebra. I foundered the entire quarter and barely passed the class. It was like banging my head on a brick the entire time. I couldn’t believe how I had breezed through calculus only to by stymied by ALGEBRA.
Came the Fall quarter and intermediate calculus class. The instructor was a visiting grad student who, in the first fricking 2 days of class, clarified EVERYthing about elementary linear algebra that had me so confused. It was then I realized the guy teaching the ELA class was a lousy teacher. It wasn’t ME. It was HIM. And yes, I breezed through the intermediate calc class as well.
Good teachers are not very plentiful. Great teachers are as rare as hen’s teeth. I can count the great ones I’ve encountered on the fingers of one hand and have a couple of fingers left over. That is a sad commentary on 16+ years worth of education.
As to blogging … writing skills don’t come easily to everyone any more than teaching does. But you can overcome lousy skills with a lot of practice which means edit edit edit and edit some more. Read your post out loud if necessary to see if it flows the way you want it to and says what you want the way you want. First drafts are seldom (unless you’re me, 
) ready for prime time. Hell, even I go back over a draft a couple of times before I press the send button.
So here’s to the great ones. The skilled ones. The erudite ones. And here’s to less confusion and more clarity all around.
Posted in The Daily Grind
Fast checkin
It’s been one of those weeks. I finally got the bills and the checkbook done this morning. Hey! I’m getting better. Not that long ago it took me 7 days into the month to get it done!
Then sanity prevailed and I finally got to the gym (I signed up a month ago) for a run-through with the owner. I swear he was trying to kill me. I am going to pay for this BIG time tomorrow! The machines are pretty similar to the ones I’m used to at the Y so it shouldn’t be too tough to get back into the swing of things. Assuming I’m not totally paralyzed still by next Tuesday which will be the soonest I can get back in.
No sunshine today so no vitamin D solar therapy. boo. According to my weather widget there isn’t any on tap for tomorrow, either. Maybe Sunday. I’m trying to get to 20 minutes each side daily. I really want to get untethered from the tanning booth.
I’m thinking of making myself do some yoga daily. I really need the stretch. AND those Zumba dvd’s are calling to me so I supposed I should crack one open and check it out.
I ordered this sauerkraut crock from Amazon and cannot wait to give it a try. It’s expensive but so is the real sauerkraut from the health food store. I paid EIGHT DOLLARS for a pint jar of the stuff. It was fabulous but too much money so I decided to make my own. I mean, the only ingredients are cabbage, water and salt. How tough can it be?!
Iron Man 3 starts today but hubby is headed down to Loveland on Monday so I guess I’ll have to wait to see it until he comes back home. Or maybe I’ll go by myself then go again when he gets home. ;)
And now it’s time to go fix dinner … pork chops and the last of the good sauerkraut. MMMMMM. Yum.
Oblivion
We saw Oblivion yesterday and I have to say I was quite surprised. I used to be a huge Tom Cruise fan circa Top Gun & Risky Business but after the way he dumped Nicole Kidman I pretty much lost all interest in him and his movies. Which is why it’s probably a good thing for actors and other celebrities to keep their private lives very very private. But I wander.
Although the plot was pretty easy to suss out it was still quite engaging. The sets and costumes were great and I actually managed to forget most of the time that I was watching Tom Cruise. I am curious, however, as to why there seems to be a dearth of American actresses these days. It’s seems everywhere you look there’s some new Russian or Eastern European woman who looks like she might be 14. Why IS that?
Anyway. Back to the movie. No surprise it was based on a graphic novel. It has that feel. I loved the shades of gray used for the destroyed parts of Earth and how the only place where new life was to be found was full of glorious color. The sound effects for the drones were also very well done. And scary. They could have skipped the whole two-women-in-love-with-the-same-man plot. Sharing is good, people. Especially when the population has pretty much been wiped out of existence. This whole pair-bonding shit has gotten so far out of control we’re about to devolve the entire species back into the caves and trees we sprang from.
Whew. Yet another aside taken care of. The movie. It was delightful to see Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Ser Jamie Lannister in Game of Thrones on HBO) in a small but fairly important part. His American accent, btw, was beyond perfect. You would never ever guess he’s Danish.
So over all, the Michael-Baker household gave it two thumbs up (wink and a nod to my favorite movie critics. Gene, Roger, we all miss you!)
I do have to add that the entire time I was watching it, I had the weirdest and spookiest sense of deja vu I have ever had in my life. I still haven’t figured it out. Hubby said he felt the same way. It lingers even this morning. I don’t get it. Oh wait … let’s trot out a conspiracy theory — maybe there were subliminal messages embedded in the film, LOL. Whatever. It’s the weirdest damned hangover I’ve ever had.
This is one I’d definitely recommend to see in the theater if you can.
