Laughing at Myself

My mom is interested in buying an eBook reader.  I've done some research on them and sent her links to reviews, 'cause that's what I do.

Then I went to a Borders that's closing and saw their Kobo marked down to $60.  I don't want a Kobo.

Instead, I've become obsessed with the idea of owning a Nook Color.  It's TWO HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS.  And, God knows, I'd want a fancy cover purchased on etsy.  It's my way.

Here's a little glimpse of what goes on inside my brain:

I want an eBook reader.  (insert foot stomp)

Really?  How come?

'Cause I NEED one.


That's not a good reason.

Right.  Well, I could check out eBooks from the library!


True, but is that necessary?

Well, there was a book I wanted to read, and my only options were a) audiobook, b) eBook, or c) sneaking into a high school and stealing it from their library.


Okay, well, let's assume that you really, really want to read this book and it's not just an excuse to buy something expensive and unnecessary.  You do realize you could purchase this book for $7.99, and that's if you can't find it at a used book store, right?

Oh.  I suppose I could, but isn't that a waste of paper?  I'm only going to read it once.  I'm being environmentally friendly.


Are you kidding me?  Does that honestly sound like a legitimate reason in your head?

Don't get saucy.  It's your head, too.


Let's be honest.  You knit more than you read.  Also, you are able to get nearly any book you want from your city's fantastic library system.

KNITTING!  I need the eBook Reader for knitting!  I could look at .pdf patterns on my reader!  And that's why I need a color one!  Some patterns, like the one I'm working on now, have to be seen in color to work from the charts.


Any knitting books you own would have to be either purchased again or scanned and saved as .pdf files to view them on the reader.  Plus, there is no reason why you can't carry a printed pattern around.  It's more convenient than viewing it on a reader anyway, since you can physically mark on a copy of the pattern.

I need it for vacation.  Think how much space it will save!


Just how many books are you planning to take on vacation?  You're going to be doing a lot, and you'll have knitting as well.  It's not as if you're going to spend all day reading.  There will be too much to do!


You're not fun.


I'm tons of fun.  This just isn't a sensible purchase.  If you had an extra $250 lying around, which you don't, what would be the best use of that money: a) buying a Nook Color, b) paying a bill, or c) donating that money to Red Cross in response to the disaster in Japan?

Damn.  You're right.


I know.  I love you.  And I put it on my wishlist.  Maybe I'll get one for Christmas.



Does anybody else have these types of conversations with themselves?

Abundance Indeed

A 14.5" x 72" tablerunner named Abundance

92 stitches cast on

8 edge rows of 92 stitches each

44 repeats of the pattern, each repeat with 12 rows and 92 stitches in each row

8 additional edge rows with 92 stitches in each row

92 stitches bound off

50,232 stitches

Taking the Fork to Sanity While on the Way to Crazytown

This week I've been crazier than normal.  I can blame this on some minor, uninteresting things, but the reality is that I've just been in a funk and having a bad week.

When I got home from work, I saw that the lawn care people had been at my house for their first application of Chemicals That Probably Will Kill Us.  On their bill, stuck in a plastic bag and wrapped around our doorknob, the yard person had written:

Round 1, Fertilizer Look like you need to put grass seed down. you have alot of Dead grass.

After the angry grammarian inside my head calmed down-- Dead grass!  alot!  you have!-- I began freaking out about my dead grass.

Spring isn't the best time to plant grass seed.

If we plant grass seed, then we have to use special fertilizer.

If we plant grass seed, we have to water it all the friggin' time.

All the work we've thrown onto this stupid lawn is gone because we didn't water it during a drought.

A Master Gardener Intern cannot have a yard with "alot Dead grass."  They'll take away my badge!!

Then the sane part of me quietly asked, "What would happen if you don't plant grass seed now?"

The crazy shut up, cocked its head in thought, and said:

• My yard would look like poo.  Since my yard looked like poo before the chemical people started spraying it and looked like poo last summer during the drought, I am used to my yard looking like poo.  It really doesn't bother me much.  Grass is a stupid choice for groundcover anyway.  It requries too much maintenance.
• Lots of my neighbors have yards that look like poo.  Nobody will be horrified if I have "alot of Dead grass."
• I would have less mowing to do this summer.
• I could plant the grass seed in the fall.
• I could cancel chemical people for the whole spring and summer because why bother trying to fertilize Dead grass? 

You know, this alot of Dead grass thing is a good thing.

That opened me up to seeing other things that made me happy, such as this gem which was delivered straight to my mailbox:

Secret?  I do not think this word means what you think that it means.

Optimism

In a beautiful spring ritual as regular as the appearance of the crocus, the gardener once again is filled with the belief that she can start her vegetables from seed... despite past evidence to the contrary.



After all, the gardener rationalizes, this year is different.

This year, I have a grow light.

Wish me luck.

Well, Sort Of....

It is possible that one of my resolutions just made it possible to break another.

I have been happily paying myself for working out.  I've been stockpiling the money with the knowledge that I can use it to buy whatever I'd like.  I don't spend money easily, so it's been sitting idle.

And then I saw this post.

I love her yarn.  I love her sense of humor.  I love her color choices.

The first yarn I bought from her became this

and the second became this

Actually, it became two identical pairs of those.  I gave the other set away.  Andrew bought me a skein of her yarn for my birthday in the colorway Angst for the Memories, which I haven't used yet.

Love. Her. Yarn.

So, when I saw the post with a fantastic colorway and a new base, I ordered it.  I actually had to stop myself from ordering both available skeins of Also, I Can Kill You With My Brain, and then I had to stop myself from ordering both a skein of that AND a skein of Tardis.

On one hand, I think this is precisely the sort of thing on which I should use exercise money.  I love it, will get lots of enjoyment out of it, and the purchase supports a small business.  On the other hand, I recognize that one of my resolutions was to knit with yarn from my stash instead of purchasing new yarn.

I just am unable to care in the face of such perfection.  Bring on the new yarn.

Rules

Weight Watchers redid their program a few months ago.

Just in case you have no idea how WW does stuff, here’s the very quick synopsis:  Everything has a points value (now called points plus).  You earn points by working out, and you use points by eating.  You have a certain number of points per day based on your age, weight, level of activity, etc., and you have some bonus points you can use whenever you want during the week.

In other words, this is a plan created specifically for people like me who love lists, rules, and clearly set-out organizational systems.  If you use the online system, you also get an image of a bouncing star when you meet a goal.  I’ve been known to leave the window up when I get a bouncing star so I can watch it all day and feel proud of myself.

The new plan is smarter, I think.  The major change is that WW encourages users to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and less processed foods.  It does this in two distinct ways:

1.       Nearly all fruits and vegetables are “0 points plus” foods.  (Think “free” food if you’re used to the diabetic meal plan.)  Whoo hoo!  Bring on the bananas!

2.       The points plus value for most other foods has increased.  So, the frozen meal I ate at lunch used to be 4 points, and now it’s 5.  Even though I have more points to use each day under the new plan, I’m steered away from things I used to eat all the time (coughVitatopscough) because they’re higher in points than they used to be.

This plan works for me because it addresses (some of) my neuroses.  I have convinced myself that the outcome is directly related to how closely I follow the rules, that there is a direct correlation between action and effect.  It’s my favorite kind of plan.

Then I made quinoa-stuffed peppers.  Using the nutritional information from VT’s website, the points plus value was 7.  After dinner, I entered everything I actually put into the recipe, which wasn’t exactly what was published by VT, into the recipe builder in Weight Watchers and set it for 6 servings instead of 8.

For each ingredient I entered, the point plus value was listed beside it: 12 points for ¾ c. uncooked quinoa, 7 points for 1 ½ c. low fat shredded cheese, 0 points for garlic, diced tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, etc.  The total point value once I added up all those individual entries was 27.

27 / 6 = 4.5

That seemed low.  At the bottom of the recipe page on WW’s site, the points plus value for the recipe was listed as 61. 

61 / 6 = 10.2

Below that line is a link, “Is this total not what you expected?”  When I clicked it, a friendly yellow box came up to tell me that the recipe builder bases its calculations off of nutritional information of the recipe, not the points value of each individual item.

I badly need consistent rules.  I need to believe that the goals I have for my health are within my power to achieve, and for my specific brand of crazy that means that I have to have rules that never, ever change.

There’s a lengthy discussion about this on the Weight Watcher website, and I tried hard to believe the rationale they offer. 

But I don’t.

I don't find their explanation compelling.  If a carrot is 0 points, then it’s 0 points regardless of whether it’s in a recipe or eaten by itself. 

Someone suggested I don’t use the recipe builder and that instead I just add up the ingredients mentally and stuff in that number.

Maybe that would work.  Or maybe it won’t and I’ll gain all the weight back and I’ll get Type 2 diabetes and I’ll die.

‘Cause that’s how my brain works.  Once we get into shades of gray, I tend to shoot straight to the blackest gray I can find. 

I don't know what to do with this.  I keep looking for a positive way to end the post, but I haven't found it.

Well, there's the fact that I live such a privileged life in my developed country that I can spare energy to freak out about a change in my weight loss plan.  That's certainly true.  But that really only makes me feel like a jerk, so that's not especially helpful.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open.

Quinoa-Stuffed Peppers

Last night I decided to try a recipe I'd been looking at for weeks, Quinoa-Stuffed Peppers from Vegetarian Times.  Quinoa is something I only started eating after I became a vegetarian, and it's a good way to get some protein.

I followed the recipe relatively closely--no onion or celery, cheddar instead of pepperjack, less tomatoes--and I was pleased with it.  It's supposed to freeze well, but Andrew and I tend to put things in the freezer and never, ever take them back out.  I think I'll just keep eating leftovers.

I sliced a sweet potato very thinly, roasted it, and used that and some grapes to round out the meal.  I was really pleased with how lovely my plate was.

Here's the thing though:  I worked, stopped and bought gas, walked the dog, cooked, walked on the treadmill, ate, and cleaned up.  When I was finished and flopped down on the couch, it was 8:50.  I know that most recipes don't take this long to make, and I know that all the stuff I did was good for me and blah blah blah, but it isn't the way I want to spend most evenings.

And I have no idea how people manage to do this kind of stuff and have kids.  My hat goes off to them.