People in Fat Houses Shouldn't Throw Scones

"Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." -New American Standard Bible





There are a LOT of things wrong with that clip from Rush Limbaugh's February 21st radio show. Here are just a few I want to address here, as it concerns nutrition/fitness/being a decent human being, things I think all have an important place on this blog:

• He's a straw-man argument, and not only that, the guy is attacking a single meal and demanding that it be the basis by which we judge ALL Michelle Obama's dietary practices, as well as the advice she gives.
• Rush Limbaugh is calling Michelle Obama fat or unhealthy, while he's overweight himself. Don't let the however many years old picture on his home page fool you, you can see right in the video that he's heavy again.
• It shows a profound disrespect of all women who don't meet the strictest of beauty standards. 
• It's the ramblings of a person who is totally disconnected from reality and who is surrounded by people who affirm his willfully ignorant and misleading crap. 
• It's intentionally misleading about the nutritional guidance offered by the first lady through the Let's Move program. 
• It paints the tired old image of healthy food being some variation of flavored air, 1/2 a cup of lettuce, or acorns, suggesting that healthy food is unappetizing and ridiculous. I'm sorry, but the Baconator is ridiculous. My stir-frys are delicious.
• It's not on the path of making this country better. 

I'm sorry, but unless you have a valid medical/scientific backup for your claims, you can't bitch and moan at someone trying to stop obesity and pretend you care about the well being of the United States. You don't care about two sides coming together and improving the nation because all you want is to tear down the other side and never give them credit for doing anything right. It's right to try to motivate people to exercise and eat healthier. It's right to eat a big meal after SKIING, an activity that burns over six hundred calories an hour for a 160 pound person, more if you're heavier. It's right not to mislead your listeners about what someone is saying in order to argue against it. If you have legitimate complaints about this program, address the points of it. You're not stretching the facts, man, you're lying. And that's a real bummer.

Are you kidding me?

It's really a drop in the bucket when it comes to all the unreasonable things Rush says, I know, but because I'd punch a baby in the face to be as fat as Michelle Obama, and because it's really frustrating for people to crap on the good work of others just because they're on the opposite side of the political spectrum, I wanted to address it.

Where are all the berries? Where is the tree bark?

Edit to add:

Apparently any kind of healthy changes intended to promote weight loss are negatively viewed by Mr. Limbaugh:

"I think those of you that regularly exercise -- playing softball, baseball, basketball, soccer, mountain biking, running, rock climbing, skiing, skating, running -- you're the people getting injured.  You're the people showing up at the hospital with busted knees and tendons and skin cancer, ankle sprains, knee and hip replacements, broken bones, concussions, muscle, ligament, tendon, cartilage strains and tears, tendinitis, rotator cuff tears.  All you exercise freaks, you're the ones putting stress on the health care system.  What happens when people don't regularly exercise and keep their weight relatively under control? Nothing! They probably don't even know their doctors' names." -Rush Limbaugh 

That kind of thinking is just scary.

Casa Loma Image Dump

I've been sitting on these pictures for far too long. I feel guilty for not posting earlier, and will therefore give the wildly abbreviated story here: Cat, Chris, and I went to Casa Loma last Sunday, and it was a lot of fun. We went to a diner on the way there and had cheeseburgers, walked up a bunch of stairs to get to the place,  used these funny cell phone-like audio tour devices to listen to historians and architects talk about the house, took a bunch of pictures while fighting with my dumb camera about lighting, went up multiple tiny staircases to get into one of the towers in the castle, searched the exterior of the building for a stone squirrel we heard about in the audio tour, and walked for a million miles until we were all worn out. It was fun and interesting and a little gaudy and historical. Here's a bunch of pictures from our day.

Halfie Birthday!

Happy half birthday, Chris! His birthday is August 25th and I did an underwhelming job of celebrating it with him (being broke and in another country didn't help), so I wanted to do a little party today, half a year between his last birthday and his next one. Thanks to Dad putting my checks in my account (because I FINALLY sent them home), I was able to buy party hats, balloons, some little presents, and a cake, which I had the bakery guy cut in half. It was great!

When he came home, Big Bear, the stuffed squirrel, Little Bear, one of Monte's chew toys (the hedgehog) and I were all wearing party hats, there were streamers on the wall, and latex balloons around the apartment. I couldn't get Monte on to save my life. We both sat down and had slices of delicious chocolate cake with milk. I got some of those number candles (2, 8, 5) and used the wax from a Babybel cheese to make a decimal point, so his cake said 28.5 on it.

For his present, I gave him the game pictured above, a card game with ever-changing rules and a pirate bent. The gentleman I talked to at the toy store said it was a lot of fun to play with his girlfriend, so I thought it was a good choice. We haven't played it yet. I also gave him a foam pirate hook, a bouncy ball with a skull and crossbones on it, and breaking with the pirate theme entirely, a pair of dollar store disk-guns, which we shot at each other while I screamed, terrified, throughout the apartment.

So it was a great little thing to do for Chris before he came home, and I was excited to get out of the apartment and rush around with a mission today. I've got a fewposts I have to crank out in the next couple days, one about ebooks and my suggestions for the cheapest way to read them, based on my experience, an easy meal for timid cooks, and a recap of the trip Chris and Cat and I took to Casa Loma. And I might end up posting about the Big Exciting Event of tomorrow, which is Chris and I going to a roller derby match. I'm so excited!

Weigh-In #5

Hello, Thursday! I think I might have been a bit rude to you last week, and for that I sincerely apologize. I guess today I just realize that, well, you're not so bad. What do you mean I'm only being sweet because I've lost weight? Don't be so ridiculous. But I guess since you mentioned it, yes, I did lose weight. Thanks for noticing, Thursday.

176.4 pounds, a welcome sight after last week.

With this weigh-in, I've lost 4.2 pounds since last week for a total weight loss of 10.2 pounds since January 20th. I imagine in the next week that I might gain a pound or two, since four pounds is a lot to lose in a week, but this is great. This is progress, and who knows, maybe it'll stick for more than a week. I didn't catch up on my workouts this week, but I didn't fall further behind, and I think I ate pretty well this week.

How I Ate:

According to my continued calorie tracking over at MyFitnessPal, I averaged a calorie intake this week of 1351. Of course it's somewhat imprecise when it comes to food I don't cook myself, but I try to get the numbers as close to accurate as I can. This week I ate a couple big meals, especially the ribs over at Chris's family's place. Man, ribs have a LOT of calories. They're so good, though! Ah, well. That was on Saturday. Sunday Catherine, Chris, and I went to Casa Loma (pictures coming!) and has cheeseburgers at a diner. We walked a LOT that day, but went home and had delicious/terrible leftovers from the day before, so more crazy calories. I should have spread out the calories to other meals, but I didn't, so Saturday and Sunday ended up being pretty big hits to my calorie count this week. On the other hand, I had days where I ate an awful lot less. We were a little pinched for fresh fruit and veggies this week, but we finally got to the grocery store and have been eating really yummy and healthy meals since then.

For lunch yesterday I had a meal consisting of brown rice, chicken breast, and spinach, a glass of water, as well as a little plate of celery, baby carrots, and strawberries. Also in the picture is my ebook reader.

How I Moved:

Though I'm really happy with my performance on my EA Sports Active 2 workouts, I didn't catch up any more on my missed workouts and I'm still behind two in total. I have about a week and a half to catch up before the end of the nine week program and I feel like a jerk. Oh, well. I still did four workouts this week. I also walked to and most of the way from Casa Loma on Saturday, as well as the usual small amount of walking around the city for groceries and other little things. I decided to turn off the in-game music for EASA2 and made a playlist of high-energy songs in iTunes. I still hear my trainer and the sound effects, now I just get to rock out a little more than I do with the bland and highly repetitive in-game music. I feel myself getting tired on the cardio portions because the music is pushing me, but it also puts me in a great mood to force myself to keep working when I'm tired.

How I Felt:


Well, it was another rough week, but it was better. I was better. I felt a little anxious about some household things, but I feel like we're getting them sorted. I've been better about the housework these last few days, and I'm having fun coming up with dinner activities. I'm reading, which is a bit distracting but also a lot of fun, and I got to talk to my good friend Curtis about my quitting Facebook for a story he's writing on social media. A lot of my friends seem to be having relationship difficulties, and while I feel terrible for them, it's really reassuring to bring issues to Chris and be able to communicate about these situations as hypotheticals. Things like, "If that happened with us, what would you do?" and just talking it out. That's really comforting. I know I'm going to miss him, but I feel a lot more ready to go home than I have so far. I don't want to leave Chris, but he has things (big, important, nerdy things!) to do here, and I have things to do at home.

It's okay. It wasn't a perfect week, but I feel good about it. I feel proud of the numbers I'm putting up, and so happy to have the family, friends, and partner I do, because I don't know if I'd be able to do it without them.

True Story

But I'm Sad

I've had some sad times this week, and it seems like even a wonderful day with Chris's family will only distract me for a while, and then I get dark again. I don't know. I feel guilty when I'm doing housework, because I have such a short time in Toronto and I'm spending it inside our apartment. I fee guilty when I go places, because I have stuff to do here. I want to go home to my family, but I don't want to leave Chris and my puppy. I'm just conflicted about everything, and it's leaving me in the dumps. I would really like not to be.

Weigh-In #4

Thursday again? How does this keep happening? Oh well, here we go with this week's weigh-in.

180.6 pounds. Not great, but not terrible.

This week we're holding right around the weight of last week, well, 1.2 pounds above that, actually. That makes for a total weight loss of six pounds, or 1.5 pounds a week. Though I wish I had lost weight this week, I'm happy to be at my target number for weight loss on a weekly basis. That's the good news. The bad news is that, hey, I had a bad week. And I earned it! See how in my weekly recap below.

How I Ate:

Well, my calories for this week averaged out at 1470 per day, which is around 80 calories more per day this week than last week. That's not great. I didn't eat as many fruits and veggies as I should have this week for whatever reason, and Chris and I ended up having five meals out of the house, which always means more calories than those meals would be at home. We ate lunch and dinner with his family, had two snacks (which I'm counting as a meal) on the day we were big time Canadian TV stars, ate dinner that night at Quiznos, and had brunchy foods at the engagement party. Mix in the fact that we were sent home with Chinese food from Chris's parents rather than the usual veggies and grilled meat. It was delicious, to be sure, but next weel will be better.

How I Moved:

Oh man. I haven't had a week this bad since starting EA Sports Active 2. This week I missed THREE workouts. Three workouts! That's 850+ calories! Ugh. This was a rough week, and between stomach aches and general down in the dumpitude, I just wasn't working out. Yesterday I made up one missed workout, so I'm only two down, but I have scheduled workouts for the next two days, so I probably won't be able to make up any more for a couple days, because pulling two workouts in one day is TOUGH. Also, the housework stopped getting done there for a few days along with the workouts/eating well, so now I have a bunch of that to do to catch up. What I'm saying is that I absolutely will catch up with my workouts, it'll just probably be a little while before I manage it. One of my goals this week is to be caught up on my workouts by the time of my next weigh-in. Considering we have four scheduled workouts and I have two extra to fit in there, it will be a challenge to pull it off, but I'll really have accomplished something if I can do it.

How I Felt:

Like crap. I've spent a lot of this week hiding in bed with a book or watching TV or poking around online. Or crying my big dumb eyeballs out. It's been a hard week. I learned the extent of Dad's sickness and got the news from Mom about how long the doctors expect we'll have with him, and yeah, I fell into a horrible hole. It's hard. It's awful. And right now, as much as I love and am grateful for the opportunity to be with Chris every day, what I wish I could be doing is spending time with my parents. I feel like they need me, and I need them.

I think it's normal to lose your head in times of massive personal trouble like this. The good news is, it could have been a lot worse. I gained less than two pounds. I believe this is because through it all I kept logging my calories on MyFitnessPal, and because we just didn't have a lot of comfort food in the house. I can't really cry into bowls of ice cream and Oreos if I don't have any. So a bit of preparation in having (mostly) healthy food around the house and the power of habit when it comes to calorie tracking helped me stay on course in a week when everything else went to crap.

I wish I had better news. I wish I could have lost a pound or two. But this was a bad week for me and it really challenged me. I didn't do as well as I would have liked, but I've got to let go of that perfectionism and embrace my successes. I'm human. I struggle with life. This is to be expected.

The last two days have been a lot more okay than the ones that preceded them, and I've been back to eating right/cleaning/working out as of today and yesterday. I suspect next week will be back in line unless things get turrible again. I'm sure I'll have difficulty and I'm sure I'll have weak moments, but I'm hoping and working for the best. I'll see you then!

George Stroumboulopoulos Last Night

Always ready for my close-up.

You're reading the blog of a TV star. That's right, a star of the foreign screen. Yesterday Chris and I were featured* on the CBC television show that's about half news, half some kind of celebrity interview. We were audience members, a prestigious job open only to the highest caliber of performer who can clap and cheer on command, turn off his or her cell phone, and who happens to be free from 3:30 to 5:00 on a weekday. Oh yeah. We're that good.

What happened is that one day I was searching for ideas of things to do in Toronto, and I saw someone suggest that you could attend a taping of a show at the CBC building in Toronto, which is only about a forty-five minute walk from our apartment. I poked around on the website and found that though the Rick Mercer Report didn't have any tickets available, George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight was wide open, and I'd, um, seen commercials for the show, so why not? I'll admit it, I didn't know too much about the Strombo show, but it was free, and we might see a famous person, so Chris and I signed up.

I met up with Chris at his work at 3:00. We walked to the CBC studios but were pretty early, so we stopped at Tim Horton's and split hot chocolate, a bagel, and some soup. Time passed and we headed back out to the CBC. After checking in at the ticket area to claim our seats, we rode an elevator to the fifth floor, hung up our coats, and filed into the studio, where no pictures were allowed. Good, rule-abiding people like Chris and I would never violate the sacred Strombo-audience honor code, but apparently someone did, so I have this picture to show you what it looked like to be in the audience:

Thanks for the photo, you terrible rule breaker.

Isn't that cool? Well, we got the rundown of when to clap and that we shouldn't touch George ("Unless he touches you first."), and then he came out. He told us what would be happening, that he'd do a current events rundown followed by an interview with Canadian Olympic gold and silver medalist for freestyle skiing for a future episode, since that day's episode's interview with civil rights activist Angela Davis had already been recorded for scheduling reasons.

Click here to watch the episode, and look for Chris and I in the lower left corner at the 12 second mark. That's his short hair! That's my headband! You can hear me laugh a bit earlier than most around the 5:20 mark at the Silvio Berlusconi joke, too. Apparently I was quicker at reaching the punchline of the dirty joke that was being made than most of the other audience members. I regret nothing. There's also, while we're in the gutter, a funny moment at 7:05 or so when George mentions a 10% cut to a budget that they had to redub later because he added an errant "n" to the word the first time he said it. If you listen, you can hear the edit.

Okay, coming into this I had very little idea who George Stroumboulopoulos was, besides a guy whose last name I never wanted to have to spell. Now I can tell you that he's a radio host, he's not this guy, he used to work for MuchMusic, and he's got great taste in audience members. Honestly, after watching him for about an hour, I did come to like the guy. He's great at engaging with his guest as well as his audience, he's funny, and while I don't share his love for heavy metal, I'd be interested in his other music suggestions. He's a cool guy, Chris and I had a fun time doing something neither of us had ever done before, and after that, we got to hang out with Catherine, since we were in her neighborhood.

We wandered around Queen St. and looked at all the fashionable places, ate at Quiznos, and poked around a three-story bookstore. After that, Chris and I headed home. My feet were killing me and I was so cold it took me about half an hour to warm up, and then I passed out. It was a great day, and one of those neat experiences you just can't have anywhere else.


*Featured meaning that we were on screen for at least one and a half seconds. Well, the backs of our heads.

Cancer Bum-Out Post

I always enjoy comics like this from

Steven Cloud at Boy on a Stick and Slither.

So today I found out from my Mom that the Dadcancer thing is bad, a lot worse than I thought. Until today, I knew it was cancer in the bones and lungs and brain, but just now did I have it spelled out to me. Once it moves from the lungs to other places, it's automatically stage four. That means it's inoperable. That means we don't hope to cure it, just to treat it. That means we're talking about a year now.

And now I'm dealing with all of that. It's hard. It's not fair and it's not right and it's just awful. It's awful for my dad, my mom, and everyone. I don't know what to do, but I guess I'm doing what I can for now. I'm leaving at the end of March. I'm going to work if that's what my parents want, and I'll do housework, and I'll be there as a daughter and someone to help support them both. I'll be with my sister. I'll be near some of my friends, though I've been crappy about maintaining those friendships and will have to be better if I want them to even hang out with me. I'll be away from Chris and Monte, but I'll have them on Skype. It will be hard at times, harder than I can probably imagine. But it's my home.

Today we went to the engagement party of one of Chris's friends. It was really pretty and everyone was very nice and fun, but in the middle of her dad's speech, I almost lost it. That would have been weird, since I had only met her once before, but it's just...why can't I keep believing that my dad will give a speech at my reception and walk me down the aisle and play with my kids? It's awful. This guy was like, a million years old. My dad's so much younger than that. And he was funny, but he's not as funny as my dad. And he was nice, but he's not as nice as my dad. And it's not fair. I know Dad would always tell me that life isn't not fair, but that was when I wanted to stay out all night or have a little brother or get a new toy, not when I wanted my dad to see me marry or finally find my calling or run a triathlon. Not when all I wanted was to make fun of him for turning sixty. He's my dad. This isn't fair. And it's horrible.

Just trying to keep a positive attitude is a tall orders some days. Not most, but some.