January 2008

I recently tried out a new machine at the gym: it’s made by Life Fitness and called the Summit Trainer. As you can see from the picture, it’s a lot like if an elliptical trainer and a stair climber got it on and had a baby. It mimics a hiking motion and is really pretty hard but rewarding.

I liked it a lot - it’s one of those in-between machines that tones your muscles while you get a cardio workout at the same time. And after I added it to my weekly grab bag of gym activities, I started noticing how well the machine worked out my butt. I’m talking about a noticeable physical difference as well as general mental ass-esteem. As someone who despises squats and lunges and as someone who has beat up knees, it was totally awesome to find an ideal glute exercise.

I also noticed that the other people who used the Summit Trainer also had nice asses - sure, their asses were of all shapes and sizes, but every last ass of the regular Summit users was, in their own way, generally looking gooood.

Here’s the thing, though: why is it called the Summit Trainer? To me, the word summit brings to mind Everest, crampons, crags, and possibly getting lost until you are dead or at least until you are hungry. If I really wanted to summit something, maybe I wouldn’t be a half-block from my house at the gym, I’d be somewhere in the wilderness, getting to the top of things for no reason.

It is at these moments that I once again lament not being an advertising big wig in charge of everything. It took me over a year before I even tried the Summit Trainer. But what if it had been named something a little closer to my actual experience? Closer to its greatest feature? What if it were called the Ass Machine?

I can see the commercial now - a woman sitting at her kitchen table, hands curled around a steaming cup of coffee, talking candidly to the camera. “The Ass Machine really effected my ass,” she would explain, as if she were talking to her close friend. “It’s fun to do, it’s challenging, and you feel and see results.” She would smile, take a sip from her mug, and say, “I don’t give a crap about climbing things. I just want a powerful, slap-worthy caboose.”

Sometimes I really wonder how I could possibly be unemployed.

Up above, please observe a new page for book reviews. I’ve even separated my reviews into three categories: The Hall of Fame, The Hall of Shame, and The Hall.

And if you are one of the four people who actually pay attention to the book reviews, wondering why there hasn’t been one for a month — don’t worry. I’m about three-fourths of the way through five different books right now. It’s only a matter of time before I decide to finish one instead of start another one.

In line at the grocery store tonight, there was a woman with a toddler standing in line beside me. The toddler was a girl in her terrible twos - she was having tons of fun taking candy from the checkout aisle and then putting it on the ground. The mom was busy trying to get the groceries on the belt and having trouble doing two things at once. I didn’t have anything better to do, so I asked the toddler about her Dora the Explorer mittens, which then turned in to a silly mitten game that I cannot explain the rules to.

The mom said, “Wow, you’re really great with kids,” and I smiled and went on my way. Little did she know that I, a former nanny, had unlocked the secret to rearing and controlling all toddlers, regardless of class, temperament, race, or location.  It is simply this: treat children as you would a drunk.

Think about it: toddlers can’t walk in a straight line. They cannot consistently find their nose when their eyes are closed. They struggle with the ABCs. If you are looking after a toddler and get distracted for a few moments, chances are the toddler has thrown up in a weird place.

Once I had this solitary commandment of toddler care down, nannying was a breeze. I simply started to pretend that my charge was nothing more than a friend who had a few too many and now needed my assistance. Anything that I couldn’t manage, I would just think, “How would I get my drunk friend to do this?”

Having trouble getting your toddler to cooperate? Distract them. They won’t remember a thing in five minutes.

Trying to stop your toddler from crying? Hold them close and say, “It’s okay, I’m here and I love you. You’ll feel better in the morning, and maybe we can make some omelets.”

Trying to get your toddler to put his pants back on? Deliver a short lecture mentioning the temperature and the general importance of pants. Then force the pants onto their legs while giving a nervous smile to passers-by.

Having trouble getting your toddler to bed? It’s okay, they will eventually pass out anywhere, sometimes in odd positions, often in the middle of sentences.

Trying to stop your toddler from driving a car? DO ANYTHING YOU CAN TO STOP THEM FROM DRIVING A CAR!

As you can see, I’ve thought this through and tested it extensively. Sure, the two aren’t exactly the same (I’ve never had to stop a toddler from hitting on my roommate, and I’ve never had to punish a drunk by taking away their Little Mermaid DVD except for that once) but I think it’s a valuable lesson for parents and nannies everywhere.

Thanks to my lovely web-nymph Robin, who I think might dabble in dark, powerful magic, comments are up and working smoothly. It’s amazing/sad how much I missed the feedback. Especially about the thing on Britney Spears’ boyfriend’s face. I feel so alone.

I also fixed my RSS feed so that it feeds entire posts instead of just teasers. That really seemed to get to a lot of you.

In other news, the ads thing is working out even better than I had thought, and I hope it isn’t bothering anyone too much. This whole writing life idea might just be feasible, and it’s because of you guys.

Now I have to make the long commute to my couch and get some copy written . I will have the Food Network muted in the background. I will play offensive music. I will take breaks to tease my boss with a milk jug cap. I will blow my nose into a dish towel. In short, I will live.

UPDATE: I’ve fixed all of the subscription buttons (and technorati favorite buttons) to the left. All by myself. This is a small miracle. We are ready to roll.

I know that I’ve solemnly vowed not to write about or make fun of Brit until she received proper medical attention or, at the very least, stopped acting bat-shit crazy.

However - and this is a big however - I simply can’t go on without saying something about her new paparazzo boyfriend Adnan Ghalib’s facial hair.

I mean this literally. Whenever I see his picture, I make this noise - a noise that is different from any other noise I produce, a noise that sounds kind of like when Chewbacca gets upset about something Han Solo has said. The noise is completely involuntary. The noise comes from a pain in my soul.

The thing that bothers me the most about the thing on his face is not that it’s the worst facial thing in history since Hitler. The thing that bothers me the most isn’t that it looks like a prank that someone pulled with a permanent marker while Adnan Ghalib was napping. The thing that bothers me most is not that no matter how hard I search the internet for a picture of how far the thing goes down his neck, I cannot locate one.

No! The thing that bothers me the most is that it looks like he puts painstaking time and effort into it, day after day after day after day. That each morning he wakes and thinks to himself, time to make that thing on my face just perfect for the ladies! As if he knows of the soul-noise I make and takes pleasure in that noise.

Some people said that Britney Spears hit rock bottom when she shaved her head. Others put forth that she finally lost it when she was carted out of her house on a stretcher. But in my mind those small dramas were all leading up to this terrible final tragedy: the small moment that she first kissed Adnan Ghalib, her bottom lip grazing the perfectly manicured and possibly gelled thing on his face.

If you want to look at the bright side of this, I think it would be that facial things like Adnan Ghalib’s facial thing make it easier for us to pinpoint and avoid some of the most utterly creepy and super-sketchy guys out there.  That is, if the half-unbuttoned shirt and wrap-around glasses didn’t tip you off first.

As you might have noticed, a few things on my blog aren’t quite running smoothly yet. Here are the things that aren’t up and working yet:

Comments. I mean, you can post a comment, but it will just do some weird stuff and, I think, possibly post your comment on every single thing I’ve written in the last five months. At first, I was like, “Why can’t Robin fix this in like five minutes?” And then I remembered that on a good day I can barely attach documents to my emails. I’ll let you know when commenting is up again. Because I know you want to comment on this picture.

Feedburner. My little orange feed icon to the left still burns a feed to my old blog instead of this one. The little orange feed icon next to my web address up above does work, if you want to use that one. I’m supposed to fix this problem, which means you shouldn’t hold your breath.

Technorati. That button also sends you to my old page. Again, I’ll fix this after my successful brain transplant. Or maybe I’ll mess with it this weekend. Whichever comes first.

If you find problems other than these, do drop me an email (that’s how I found out about all these other things).

As for the rest of my life, things are glitch-free. I’m two days in to my paid-vacation/jumpstart-in-self-employment week. I’ve already completed a big project and am working on another one, although it’s tough to not know where your next job is coming from pretty much every day.

So far, everything is going well, though. It’s nice to work really hard at one job instead of two and it’s even nicer to be on a business call while in your jammies. Sure, it’s tough not to cut through the business-talk to yell, “I’m in my jammies!” or “Dr. Phil is on mute!” but it’s worth it. Even though I’ve already had to hit two close deadlines, the stress is such a different kind of stress from the stress of, say, having to get a monthly report spreadsheet done by a certain date.

My boss, Ripley, however, has been acting very inappropriately. Even in the first two days of our professional relationship, she has:

• Drank out of the toilet.
• Sat on my lap during a meeting.
• Demanded that I stroke her body from head to foot.
• Demanded Fancy Feast.
• Attacked my feet.
• Blatantly, blatantly refused to wear a tie to work.

It’s as if she’s flaunting her power and treating me like a worthless pawn.

Especially now that I have more time and energy to cook, I’ve been working on eating less processed foods and making more stuff from scratch.

Recently I read an article (which I can now no longer locate) about how MSG is often not listed on labels and appears in many surprising and popular foods — even stuff like Campbell’s Soup. This led me to look at the label of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup that I had in my kitchen — turns out they throw some high fructose corn syrup in there for good measure. It’s like nothing is safe from that stuff.

This led me on a mission to learn more about making my own soup. What did I learn? That making soup is as easy as throwing a bunch of fresh junk into some broth. It doesn’t take a genius or a soup scientist.
And while heating up a can of soup only takes a few minutes, making your own doesn’t take that many more. For example, today I made a show-stopping beans ‘n’ greens soup in 20 minutes. Not only was it cheap to make, but I can eat it all week and freeze the other half for later. Even better, I don’t get the MSG or sugar and I can add or leave out any ingredients that I don’t like or don’t happen to have.

In a large soup pot, throw in

• one cup of chopped onions
• a half cup of food processed celery (I like the taste of celery but hate the texture, so I food process the hell of out it)
• four chopped slices of bacon
• two chopped carrots
• diced garlic to your liking (I like a lot)

Cook these things for about ten minutes, or until the bacon is cooked through and the onions are see-through. Then add:

• A 15-ounce can of white beans
• Six cups of chicken broth
• A cup of uncooked whole wheat pasta (I like the spirals)
• Whichever spices your into (rosemary, thyme, and red pepper for me)

Let this stuff simmer for about ten minutes, or until the pasta is al dente. Then turn off the heat and add in about 10 ounces of spinach (or your green of choice) until it wilts and turns bright green.

And for my veggie friends, this one is easy to turn vegan — just ditch the bacon and replace the chicken broth with vegetable broth.