The Burger???

Seriously, a few of you have emailed me and said you cannot see the burger in the background! What. I can see it! Is it my imagination? If anyone else can see the great big burger in the background please, please email me! If I don't hear from anyone in a few days I will be calling my therapist. Apparently, I am now starting to imagine pictures of food. Kind of creepy.

Dinner, Drinks and A Red Faced Waiter

Yes, it has come to this. I had to make plans a month in advance to have dinner/drinks with one of my dearest friends ever. Every time we make dinner plans I always have a teeny bit of guilt for whatever poor waiter/waitress who happens to serve us. You see, we don't get to see each other all that much, so when we do..... Oh Nelly! We take advantage! A minimum of four hours later we finally drag ourselves, reluctantly, out of the restaurant. Where the feeling bad comes in is that although the waiter did not necessarily need to worry about us (except to keep the drinks coming) he or she most certainly loses tip money when we show up. Our table most likely would have had at least a half dozen other people sit there during our lengthy stay! Opps, sorry for cutting your college fund or weekend beer money short dude. We got stuff to talk about. National world problems to discuss and people to laugh at. (This is the same friend that will engage in a hour long conversation with me regarding salad do's and don'ts, and the inner workings of anything, just about anything.)

So this dinner outing with my friend I am so excited to be out without people who order chicken nuggets, that I get to the restaurant 30 minutes early. Yeh, bellinis! As I sit there by myself sipping my lovely drink I wonder what one does while waiting in a restaurant alone. Of course the obvious answer is to people watch, which I must say I am very proficient at. I secured a seat near the door and I am carefully watching all incoming patrons. Watching people eat makes me want to vomit so I am out on that activity! The next step is to, of course, listen to other peoples conversations which at this moment is proving to be certainly interesting. A chick and her Mom are sitting in the booth to the right of me and she has been talking on her cell phone the entire time and eating. At the same time! (oh, and I know its her mom sitting in front of her because when she answers the phone she loudly tells the caller that she is having dinner with her mom) Talk about a combination platter of rude and disgusting at the same time! I mean, come on lady, I could totally see if you were perhaps the President of The World or maybe the Queen of something or other but seriously, to sit in front of your Mother and talk on your cell phone WHILE eating is just flat out rude and disrespectful. Ack. No respect.

Its about this time that I am multitasking effortlessly and with the swiftness of a lazy house cat. You see, I am not only watching the door, listening to the people around me but I am also emailing myself. Ok, I know this sounds odd but I, sometimes in the moment, email myself the blogs you read (after careful editing and swear word removal). This is when I get a call from my dinner date. Call goes something like: fuzzy, fuzzy, bleep - late, fuzzy, crinkle - work, leaving. Huh? The only answer I could give is: "Dude, I'm at the restaurant, having a drink, see you when you get here." I hang up and hope she shows up and curse speaker phone. I resolve myself to possibly eating alone. Whatever. Bring me a martini and some chicken nuggets! Ha ha.

Friend shows up. We talk like a couple of chicks hopped up on Red Bull. During this time, the booth beside us to the right has couples come and go without us really noticing. We visibly upset the poor young waiter (and laugh about it later) and realize on the way home that this is not the first time some poor unsuspecting waiter has misunderstood our reason for spending six hours in his section and resolve ourselves to continue the legacy. From this day forward, we shall continue to 'celebrate' just because we can and always because we want to.

Holiday Eating - Best Intentions

We have all set out on vacation all excited with the promise of not having to go to work, taking off our watches and experiencing new places and things. Vacation planning also comes with that little voice in our head telling us “you are not going to eat like a cow whilst on vacation”, “you are going to eat salads and love them” and the ever popular “fast food is bad and makes you fat. Don’t do it.”

So we set out in the car for our fun and fabulous journey with the best health conscious thoughts. That is until we have been driving for hours and your stomach starts to rumble. It is at this point the diligently packed rice cakes begin to taste like cardboard and you start obsessing about the burger. With a side of salty fries.

This is my friend’s painful vacation journey with the Health Conscious Food Fairy on one shoulder and the Just Eat The Burger, You Know You Want To Devil on the other shoulder:

Before I left on holiday, I already had in my mind that I wanted to start Weight Watchers but, NOT while on holiday, of course. My intention was to keep a food journal to see where I go wrong and to fix it from there. While on holidays, "where I went wrong" was blatantly obvious (Cheesecake Factory twice, McDonalds 3 or more times, In N Out Burger, Denny's, TGI Friday's, couple of hot dogs here and there.......need I say more). Anyway, I didn't get far in my so called journal but here is what I wrote.

Titled: Diary of a Food Obsessed, Trying To Watch What I Eat Woman - On Vacation.

Day One
Breakfast Day 1 - bowl of Mini-Wheats with skim milk - I tried not to be excessive with those scrumptious little devils - probably ended up with more than I should have anyway - that was at 7:30 am.
My stomach's been a little nervous as I get this way before travelling. Good news is I usually don't feel like eating much.

12:30 - We've been on the road for 5 hours. Just had 1/2 of granola bar. Stomach still a little "not right" but hungry too. We passed a McDonald's about an hour ago but if you thought the kids were hungry then, you should see them now. We're in the middle of Nowheresville with not a building, restaurant (person!) in sight.
BTW - I almost started my vacation last night with a Teen Burger & onion rings. I went for a jog and swore I was going to get home, jump in my car @ head on down to A&W. Thankfully I did not.


1:32 pm - Oh. My. God. (Jen Lancaster style). THAT WAS THE BEST BIG MAC EVER!!!

7:30 pm - Arrive in Cottage Cove, Oregon for our sleep over before driving to San Francisco in the morning. We head over to a lovely little diner and I order salad and soup (given the days earlier burger fiasco).

DAY TWO
I'm a day late writing so all I can remember is dinner at the Rainforest Cafe - Veggie burger minus the bun - but - I had it with potato chips. The rest of yesterday is a blur (or I blocked it out).

DAY THREE
Before I begin - we did a bit of walking today so chop some calories off the following:
Breakfast buffet @ the hotel (Hyatt). I truly only had 2 slices of bacon, small scramble of eggs, slice of canteloupe, decaf coffee, 1/2 blueberry muffin. Not so bad right?
We ate lunch at what is basically a sourdough factory (yum). I ate maybe 2 bites of my sandwich then a slice of the boy's thin crust cheese pizza (I'd like to emphasize the thin crust part), water to drink. I wasn't overly hungry. Possibly full on Jelly Belly's.....or I was saving room for the Cheesecake Factory later that night (best restaurant ever btw).
Our day carries on after lunch - Alcatraz, walking lots, trolley bus and public transit to Golden Gate Bridge and then the cab to the Cheesecake Factory - 2 words my friend - FETTUCINE ALFREDO. I also ordered the Strawberry Shortcake, took it back to the room but never ate it. Did I mention they serve warm, yummy bread?

UM…. THE REST OF THE TRIP

The rest of the 2 weeks went to hell in a handbasket. If I could draw a hill and me going down it....well, you know how it is. Ironically, I did come home weighing 1 pound lighter than before I left. Maybe I didn't eat as often? Maybe it was the walking? Hellooo Weight Watchers!

Hockey Playoff Wardrobe Etiquette

So I mean this in the nicest way possible. Ladies, if you feel so inclined to wear a hockey jersey to support your local team, wonderful. I implore you to please, please look in the mirror first. Especially before you leave your house. If you don't have mirrors - just refrain. Don't freaking do it. Yes, you are great and all for offering up your unwavering loyalty to a group of men on skates but seriously, you know how there are outfits out there that only super tall skinny chicks can wear (think skinny jeans) and chicks who are so awesome they can wear the proverbial burlap sack. The hockey jersey is not one of those things. At all. It does not matter how hot you are or how hot you think you are, you look like a complete idiot in a jersey. Really, you do. I know its a double standard here as far as the men go but again I would have to point out that its not to often you see a hot guy wearing a hockey jersey. Do you know why that is? Its because Hot Guy gets all excited that his hockey team is in the playoffs and plans a great party with martinis and appys and all that stuff. Just before the game Hot Guy throws on his hockey jersey and ...... Wait for it........ Looks in the mirror. Yes he does. Guess what he does next? Hot Guy takes the jersey OFF. And so should you.

Again, I am sorry. Damn it!

Ok. I am sick of getting in crap from the lot of you for not posting. I have been writing still. Longer stuff that is not blog worthy. I have also been very unhappy with the Blogger platform that I am using. They keep teasing me with cool layouts, which I promply use, then there are glitches in the darn things that freak me out. I am currently searching for a new platform. I promise to be more diligent with posting. I have at least fifty or so odd stories stored up just waiting for you all to use as ammo to laugh at me the next time you see me. I also have a couple of great stories that have been sent to me by friends that I can't wait to share with all of you. One of which is a friends "travel food log" which will have you killing yourself laughing not just at her but also at yourself for recognizing how often we have all set out on vacation with the intent of not eating like a pig and then doing just that! I, again, have to thank you all for your kind words. Nothing is better than sharing a private joke (at my expense mostly) with my pals.

A Bunch of Days.... And Not Counting

Just checked the marathon website to see how many days until the half marathon when my attention was directed elsewhere. Cool running gear. Oh yes and I am pretty sure you don’t have to be an official runner to buy this stuff. However, I believe not having stomach rolls is sort of a pre-requisite to wearing any kind of shirt that starts out looking like a girls size 6 and stretches to fit the average adult. Why did they call these shirts underarmour or dryfit? How about Sausage Bag?

I have taken a slight detour from regular training and have started the ever popular “Get primed and ready for Summer” marathon training program. This is a very intense program that, as it turns out, is much more time consuming than any other training I have done in the past. I have noticed that I have also not had any trouble finding people to ‘train’ with. Especially on the weekends. Or when there is something in particular to celebrate. Like the sun coming out or getting the lawn cut. A friend and I even made up a new rule a couple of weeks ago: When dieting, pick one: food or bevys? The rationale here is that if your going to consume calories, why not consume the good ones? So far, I believe, the new rule is sort of back firing on us because although we do not eat copious amounts of food during the training session, there is something peculiar that happens the next day. It is a crazy desire to eat a Big Mac. Still working out the kinks in the training program.

Now where did I put the blender?