friday the 13th (part 1)

I start writing a new novel just about every day. In my head. I find myself spontaneously thinking up opening lines as we walk to school. As if every day of life is a whole new book. Friday the 13th was frosty and foggy and the combination had a definite creepy yet beautiful feel to it. Is there such a thing as a novel that is comprised entirely of opening sentences? If not, I shall be the first to write it.

A deep, night frost was dislodged by a rush of warm morning air.



A heavy fog stole away the distant cars and noise, leaving the quiet of the pond.



There were no sign of the ducks or geese. Or kids walking to school.



Yet a feeling of something present, something watching could not be shaken off....

Mwah ha ha ha ha.

Or something like that.

can she do it? #3

Day Five

I woke up early this morning and thought it would be enjoyable to do my workout right away. So I did it. What is happening to me?

I'd also like to report that after just five workouts, I am vaguely near being able to perform a push up. Hold your applause people. I consider myself to be fairly strong. I lift big, heavy things in the garden all the time. But the muscles required to do push ups are another matter entirely. And wow, do I have a long way to go. The goal? Twenty push ups. How long will it take? As long as it takes. Otherwise, I'm getting used to the cardio (jumping jacks etc) and strength training. The workout is too brief to feel sorry for myself. That's a good thing.

What I like about the Shred DVD:
-you can do it in a very small space
-it takes just 20 minutes
-you can do it without any special equipment (I use my yoga mat and 5lb weights, but one could substitute holding shoes or cans for the weights and forego the mat)
-there are several levels of intensity (I'm still on Level One. I'll kick myself out of Level One when my heart rate stops going insane during the workout.)

On the food front, did everyone go out and buy brussel sprouts or what? Ever since I posted about my current obsession for brussel sprouts, they've been sold out at the grocery store. My withdrawal symptoms include thinking about them approximately every four minutes. I hope to get my next dose before the weekend is over. Sheesh.

I hope the rest of you who made fitness pledges are sufficiently shaking your bootays.

So far my accomplices are:
Kelly
Tristan
GardenLily
egorman
Kate
Suzi

If anyone else wants to commit to taking steps to improve their health over the next thirty days, please dive in.

Life is now.

linky dinks #19

Greetings fellow inhabitants of the third rock from the sun,

Linky dinks #19 brinks yet another eclectic mix of portals to the great, weird, and disturbing is-ness that is our home planet. I hope you will enjoy your journey.

gorgeous portraits and the artful life
At one very artful point in my life, I had a lovely little corner apartment on the third/top floor of an old building in downtown Toronto. There were massive trees right outside the windows and, with the south and west facing views, it was very beautiful.

I was drawing up a storm in those days, creating portraits with oil pastels. I hung clothesline the whole way around the upper walls of the apartment and hung up my creations with clothes pegs. I was studying American Sign Language at the time and one of my teachers came by to drop something off. When he saw my drawings, he hired me to do illustrative drawings to use as teaching aids. He needed scenes with, quite simply, lots of things in them (anything I wanted, representing anything you might encounter in your day) so he could show them to students and teach them the corresponding ASL signs. He himself was deaf and did not speak, so the illustrations would relieve him of pantomiming everything. I kind of suspected he was hoping for a romance with me, which never blossomed, but in hindsight I often wished it had. He was very sweet. But in the mean time I got to actually earn a living (for a while anyway) as an artist, getting paid handsomely for something I really loved doing.

This memory came back when I saw this lovely portrait of nienie. With a few exceptions, I have not painted or drawn in a very long time. [nienie]

birth of a new ocean...in the middle of a dessert [NPR]

ridgewalker pete shows you how to tie up your food when camping in the wilderness. Unless of course you want that bear to eat your rations....[ridgewalker pete]

connecting the dots: blogging in Denmark
a wee dig through the archives will uncover some beautiful images [connecting the dots]

shark performs lifesaving c-section...on another shark
rather amazing and brilliant [nzherald]

Mona Lisa collage created from old motherboards and computer chips [wired.com]

What if it was illegal to be fat (or thick-waisted)?
Would North America slim down if our health coverage depended on it? Japan is leading the way. I'm curious if the pressure will trigger an increase in disordered eating. [globalpost.com]

The attack of GM veggies
Genetically modified foods bring concerns for many reasons. First of all, it's tampering with nature. That always has negative repercussions. It's difficult to find words for how serious this is. Nature is its own self-regulating and perfect system. Every time humans have messed around with the natural system of checks and balances, we've created a mess bigger than we can find out way out of. Think of the problems caused by relocating indigenous animals to other parts of the world where they have no known predators. Same goes for various plants that have been introduced to new lands with dire, invasive consequences.

Genetically modifying foods is the most distressing example of this underway today. Every food has characteristics that run it through a system of checks and balances not only within the food chain but the cycle of life. As soon as you eliminate 'undesirable' traits, you've skewed the system. There will be fallout. And we're eating it.

Second, companies that genetically modify foods, own the rights (patents) to those seeds. This means farmers who use these seeds for crops cannot save any seeds for future crops. And farmers who do not use these seeds but find them growing voluntarily on their land, are in violation of the law (patent infringement). Many farmers have been dragged through the courts until they are flat broke just trying to defend their rights to grow what they want without super powers like Monsanto controlling their every move. Be afraid.
"The gigantic bio-tech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years." Not only are they changing the basic structure of the foods that feed the world, but they are elbowing out diversity in favour of limited types of modified foods that defy weeds and diverse weather conditions. There used to be over a hundred types of corn, now we're down to just a few, and much of it is used to produce high fructose corn syrup, the oh-so-sweet killer found in numerous processed foods, and to feed cattle. Corn-fed cattle develop serious digestive problems. Grain fed ones do not. This may sound good on paper but our natural world came equipped with vast diversity for one very basic reason: SURVIVAL. Monsanto is on a mission to, basically, take over the ownership and control of all food seeds on earth. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Save your seeds. Insist on laws that demand labelling of GM'd foods. Boycott genetically modified foods. Support your local farmer and/or grow what you can. We're the unknowing guinea pigs in a corporate experiment to see what the long-term effects of these modified foods are. If the possible health concerns don't freak you out, consider the ramifications of corporate ownership of our entire food supply. Rebel, dear earthlings, rebel!
[the world according to Monsanto]
[genetically modified food - wikipedia]
[little homestead]
[king corn]
[food, inc.]
[will genetically modified foods make you sick?]

That said, I shall leave you with a smile nice wet tongue.

I'm guessing there was peanut butter on the lens.. Preferably from non-modified, organic peanuts...moo! [pixdaus.com]

glimpses #3

My current food festish? Brussel sprouts. How? Stems off, cut in half. Ten minutes in olive oil in the cast iron skillet, then add 1/2 cup water for another two minutes. Salt. Pepper. // While they are very good right away with a squeeze of lemon, the next day, after they have spent the night in the fridge, they. are. di. vine. DEE. VINE. I'm not a night time eater but I wake up in the night thinking about them. Counting the hours until I'll be hungry again so I can devour some more. Three meals a day. Me. And brussel sprouts.

Moderation Schmoderation.



I photograph this neighbor's garden a few times a year. I love the tall grasses. I've got winter photos of it somewhere in this blog....



Kazula says hi. Which also happens to be Guineapiggian for where's the parsley?

On the fitness front: Day #3 of being tortured by Jillian Michaels: completed! My soreness is a mere 5/10 today. Yesterday was a 8/10.

How's everyone else doing? Any new joiners? Suzi (no blog?) tossed her hat in the ring earlier today. She'll be walking or doing yoga, depending on the weather. Sounds like a plan, Stan.