Tag: life

Say no to artificial sweetener

‘Diet’ foods weight gain puzzle

Scientists from Purdue University in the US now believe that a sweet taste followed by no calories may make the body crave extra food.

So, instead of being better for you, artificial sweeteners give you cancer, metabolic syndrome, and make you fatter.   Artificial sweeteners are not actually food.  They are chemicals that trick you into tasting “sweet”.  Every study I’ve ever seen says they’re bad for you.

So, stop eating them.  Just eat less sweets.  You don’t need that diet soda.  You don’t need the little blue and pink packets of powdered crap in your coffee.

I’ve found, as I’ve cut down on drinking soda, that I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to.  I used to LOVE Coke.  Given a choice, I would almost always drink that.  Then I found beer, and that took away the top spot, but Coke was always my top non-alcoholic drink.

I still drink it sometimes – I don’t believe in cutting things that I enjoy out of my life completely just because they aren’t good for me.  If I generally eat healthfully, then one bacon cheeseburger with fries and a large Coke every once in a while isn’t going to kill me.

In any event, you should stop consuming artificial sweeteners.

Happy New Year!

So, it’s 2008. The wife and I are enjoying the day off. Well, I am, at least – she has work to do. I think I’m going to bake some bread (Still trying to get a loaf of whole wheat to turn out as nicely as the white loaf did).  And I’ll probably play around on the computer.  Maybe even do something constructive. I don’t have any big resolutions. I’m trying to be more organized and motivated, get more done, and that sort of thing.

The tv is on, and there was just a commercial for a toilet cleaner that kills 99.9% of germs deep down into your toilet.  The commercial ends with a mom walking out after cleaning the toilet, patting her young son on the head as he goes to use it.

I have a better idea when it comes to protecting your kids from germs in the toilet – tell them not to stick their hands in it.  I mean, come on.  Cleaning is great, but toilets are dirty.  You know what we put in there, right?

Anyway, I resolve to be less annoyed by stupid things like that.  I’ll probably still write about them sometimes, though.

Thanks for the reminder – give blood

DCist: Morning Roundup: Answering ANSWER Edition

Summer blood shortage worse than usual (click here to find donation opportunities).

The wife and I talked about this a little while ago and haven’t done anything about it. Maybe after our houseguests (arriving today and Friday, I think) are gone, we’ll actually go give blood. Neither of us is really thrilled with the prospect. I gave blood once, during a high school blood drive. I didn’t feel faint, I didn’t pass out, but the nurse nearly took out the needle. I’ve never liked thinking about what goes on underneath my skin. It all seems too complicated, and if I think about it, it might stop working. So I like to pretend that I’m solid skin all the way through.

It’s not the blood that bothers me. I don’t get freaked out at the sight of blood. But while giving blood, I was shaking a bit. I sucked it up and finished, though. And I should do it again. I don’t remember my blood type, and I don’t think it’s one of the rare or really versatile ones, but I’m sure someone can use it.

Anyway, I’m going to give blood.  You should, too.  You really don’t need ALL the blood you have.  There’s bound to be someone who needs it more.

Away again

Starting tonight and continuing until next Tuesday night, I will have no internet access.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I will have some internet access through AOL dial-up.  But that doesn’t really count, does it?

Anyway, I won’t be posting.  But I’ll be back next week.

Observations

I was just in the restroom at work, and a short, balding man came in.  He had made an attempt to hide the fact that he was balding by getting a really bad haircut and wearing an ugly shirt.  It didn’t work.

He tried to fix his hair, then walked out.  It was all I could do to resist telling him not to bother.

Dinner with the wife out of town

Steak, fries, beer The wife is in Vegas for work, so I’m left on my own until Thursday. Last night, I cooked a frozen pizza for dinner, but tonight, I thought I’d do something a little nicer. When I was in college and lived near my paternal grandmother, she used to cook me dinner sometimes. It was nearly always the same thing. Steak, steak fries, and peas. She always had Coke to drink, and always had something for dessert. Here I’ve substituted a Red Hook Long Hammer IPA for the Coke, and I was too lazy to cook the peas, but the rest of the dinner is all there.

I made a pretty big greasy mess of the stove, and I overcooked the steak, but it was immensely satisfying nonetheless. The wife, apparently, is going to a sushi buffet with some coworkers tonight, and ordinarily I would be jealous. But not tonight.

I do miss the wife, but she’ll be back soon, and I also appreciate the time alone. The cat and I are hanging out (she was helping me cook. And by “helping me cook” I mean “poking around in the trash and sniffing the bit of leftover gristle in there”), watching some tv, and enjoying our freedom.

You can see the rest of the pictures of dinner here.

On Blogging

I feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog lately.  That’s probably because I’ve been getting more traffic to From Harvard Street, and that makes blogging more interesting.  It’s always nice to have people reading your stuff, and maybe doing some commenting.  Harvard Street is tied to a location, and right next door to the 2nd “bloggiest” neighborhood in the country according to outside.in, and so there are tons of people looking for local DC blogs.  All this blog has going for it is me bitching about things.

As a brief aside, I cooked a delicious dinner tonight.  Tilapia sauteed with some olive oil and garlic, a little pepper and oregano, served on top of homemade black bean salsa, with steamed cauliflower on the side (The wife LOVES cauliflower).  We had a really nice bottle of wine that she bought me for Christmas, and we’ve been enjoying the nice weather with all the windows open.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about consolidating the two blogs.  Mostly I’ve been using this one for general thoughts, and the Harvard Street blog for things related to DC.  I’m not sure if it really makes sense to keep them separate.  On the other hand, it’s probably a huge pain to take a wordpress blog and a typo blog and combine them.  I’m sure there’s a tutorial somewhere, but I’m also sure I don’t feel like doing it.

So, as usual, I’m rambling.  To summarize, the additional traffic I’ve been getting at the other blog has made me focus more on it than this one, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.  Thanks for reading, though.

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007

Perhaps a strange source for this news, but I am honestly saddened to hear that Kurt Vonnegut died last night.  He wrote some fantastic books, and some equally (perhaps even more so) fantastic short stories.  I highly recommend that anyone who reads this should go out and find something he wrote and read it.  Cat’s Cradle was one of my favorites.

My source for this news, noted above, linked to this article, which is a nice read.

Things are getting back to normal

A little while back, I moved this blog to a subdomain, breaking RSS feeds, and confusing the spam robots.  I’m happy to report that my spam comments are back up to the numbers they were at before I moved the blog, which I suppose means that people have more or less figured out that you have to come to the blog subdomain.

I haven’t been posting much lately because I still don’t have internet at home, and I can only spend so much time doing this at work.  I have to say that because my team lead reads this.  In reality, I spend at least 6 hours a day working on Complaint Hub related things.  Just kidding, Andy.

Anyway, word from the condo association is that Comcast may be out as soon as tomorrow to install something or other, which means that we should be able to make appointments to have cable/internet hooked up on Thursday.  This is excellent news.

So, I hope that, by next week, I will be online at home, and everything will be right with the world again.