Randee Dawn

Blackouts and slippery slopes

Blackout day! Today, several sites around the Internet will be blacking themselves out for 24 hours to bring awareness to SOPA/PIPA, legislation that wants to start the process of muzzling the internet on behalf of corporations. That's a huge generalization, but I've only got a few minutes here. It is funny to think how quickly we've become reliant on things like Wikipedia for information; there was one Twitterer who was amassing all the collective moanings of students saying they wouldn't know how to do their homework without it. Hello: Libraries. We're letting our kids down if the only way they think they can get information is via the internet. The collective hive mind is great and powerful, but only works if we have electricity and a hundred other things going right.

Anyway: Went out of town Friday through Monday. Did my best to eat Paleo by way of the convention food that was available; did bring nuts, dried fruits and real fruit but didn't have a proper refrigerator. The hard-boiled eggs in the staff den were so hard boiled you could have balanced furniture on them; the fruit was excellent, but three days of that is fairly dull. Got a lot of Caesar salads, but even there it's dodgy: No croutons, no cheese, and the dressing is also a no go, so finally I just threw up my hands and did my best. I had one very "off" meal at Redbones (ribs, dontcha know) and that's OK. Then came the cookies. It's a very short slope down to where things had been. That said, I'm back on track and doing well. Really -- not so much cravings, as we don't keep that stuff around the house -- but if you put cake in front of me I am going to start thinking about it.

Caaaaaake.

On a B road heading for the sea

Heading out of town this weekend, going up to Boston. Nice thing about the train is you can pack extra food and not worry about whether anything's going to be considered "liquid" or a "gel." I've made some more of the awesome Caveman Crunch (civilizedcavemancooking.com/grain-free-goodies/caveman-crunch/) and have dried fruit and real fruit and am taking salad. If all goes well we're supposed to have an empty fridge in the room. When you're staying in a hotel not just to sleep but to do most of your activities for three days, pre-packing seems to make sense. This will be the longest I'll be away from home since starting Paleo (not saying much, it only being Jan. 13 (Happy Luck Day!) but still.

The one "open" meal I'm allowing myself (we get three each week but it just hasn't seemed too necessary at this point) will be on Sunday, when we hit Redbones in Somerville. You can't keep me away from ribs forever! But as to the open meals: What I've decided at this stage (at least until we see how the scale is registering) is that rather than go a whole meal, something like salad dressing is something I'm going to leave open at the moment. It's a small amount, I don't use full-fat/sugar/what have you ones anyway, and the dressings Paleo provides that I've tried are thus far pretty wretched, with short shelf lives. So that's something I think is OK.

And that's my navel-gazing for today. On to Boston, where updates are less likely!

Making an ass out of you and me (mostly me) plus, pork recipes

Eh, so there you go: One week into the blog and I skip a day. It happens.

Still continuing Paleo, best as I can: We went to dinner on Sunday (discussed) and I had lunch with a colleague yesterday. Did pretty good there: No bread from the table, ordered more sea bass. It came with soba noodles, which I had swapped out for broccoli, so the only questionable item was the miso soup it came in, but that's mainly about the salt.

Last night for dinner I improvised with our pork cutlets, making up an apple-walnut-olive oil-sage-thyme concoction in the pan and then adding it to the meat that went in the oven. The thing about pork is it needs slow cooking and we don't give it enough, so the meat was a bit tough but the apple/walnut combo was delish. I have to atone for all my years of hating on walnuts. I still don't want them in my brownies, but alone and in recipes like this they are terrific.

Unrelated: Know how you sometimes hear what you wanna hear? Had a great example of that yesterday. I thought my colleague had said she'd have her company pay for lunch, but that made zero sense because she's a freelancer like me. She has no expense account! So I took 100% of the responsibility for the faux pas when it came out over lunch, and all is well. Yet another way in which life is not like a sitcom.

Open meal decisions

Week two of the Paleo!

That makes it sound more exciting than it is. Though seriously, it's not a bad food program to be on; I'm not really craving bread or chocolate. I'm certainly not over either of those things; I'd have a slice of challah and butter in a second if I didn't think it was the road to ruin, but I'm okay. Last night M and I went out to a restaurant for the first time since starting up Paleo -- Persian Glatt Kosher, if you like that combo -- and one nice thing about the "diet" is that you can do open meals. In theory, at this stage, I can do 3 "eat what you like within moderation" a week; I did maybe one all of last week. So while I didn't go bananas at the restaurant -- my main course was grilled sea bass with salad -- I also didn't feel bad having baba ganoush with two triangles of pita bread and a few pickles. The place even gave free fruit for dessert, so that was completely on schedule.

Weighed self; nothing huge to report but again, nothing to compare it against. Here's the baseline, and the best I can say is it wasn't horrible considering how much I ate over the holidays. It was reasonable, which says to me I probably dropped a bit last week before the weighing. But next Sunday should provide a better measure.

Also worth noting: Not feeling ill. Definitely back to normal now.

Unrelated: Saw a CBS Sunday Morning program while working out this AM that talked about charisma, and how something like 3/4 of people say this weighs heavily in their presidential decision-making. I guess I can respect that honesty, but the truth is charisma scares me a bit: It covers -- or can cover -- a multitude of sins, and I'm always a little wary of people who seem a little too ... glowing. Am I alone in this?

On the road to feeling normal

Day five! Feeling a whole lot better today. I'm still not going to say 100%, but almost entirely back to normal. Not sleepy, not nauseous, not anything out of the ordinary. So M was correct: Not a flu. Hurrah!

Benefits thus far: I always sleep well, but sleeping just great. Nice and deep, rarely up. M, who doesn't always sleep well, is also sleeping well (for him), but he tends to go in cycles. I'm crossing my fingers this is a result of less salt in his diet. (He's not full Paleo, but by dint of living with me, is at least partly so.)

One other item of note worth, well, noting: Today's elliptical workout was really tough. There are some days you breeze through it and some you just feel like you've never been on the machine ever, and today was one of those days. Wonder what's up with that.

Short (not really) and sweet (not at all)

Keeping things short today: Definitely feeling better, but I still won't say 100%. Last night, I told M that I was running a low-grade fever (went as high as 99.6, which considering I'm usually 97-ish is high for me) and he said that's all part of the process. So if I turn out to have a huge flu coming on, we know who to point fingers at!

I think he has a point, though. That said, it's more an emotional thing at this point: I think about not eating dairy, bread or sweets for an extended time and things just seem so bleak. And it's only four days in! I need to look into substitute recipes here, though of course I won't be 100% Paleo forever.

There's a terrific article in the New York Times Magazine, about how the body fights back at us when we try and lose weight. Here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html

In it, they speak with an older couple who have lost a lot of weight but have to exhaustively monitor their food behavior and work out over an hour each day just to maintain. It's tiring just reading what they have to go through, but it mimics my experiences. I feel like the human body is like a rechargeable battery: Every time you charge it up, the "memory" in the battery moves up so that eventually you can't get it to hold any power. I feel like every time we go on a diet or starve ourselves we're changing the information the body has about how we get food, and the body learns not to trust that it will come regularly or in amounts that are healthy, so it shifts gears and makes us work harder, each time, to lose it again.

Probably has no basis in reality. But anyway, the article is worth a read ... it says that the whole losing weight thing and keeping it off is so hard because our bodies are fighting back at us. I've only found actual success with a diet when I go into that incredibly exhaustive total concentration mode: 1000 calories a day, 30 minutes exercise, and an almost religious fear of going over the amount. That helped about 10 years ago when I lost about 30lbs, but it's just not sustainable -- at least not for me. I think I'm pretty realistic about my goals, but just getting to them without getting bored/exhausted/etc. before I get there is the really hard part.

So much for not going long. Must work. Feeling better, but a little hungry at the moment. Will see what's on the docket for breakfast!

Ick fades, yearning rises

While it seems unlikely anyone is reading this, I am endeavoring to be consistent! Here we are on Day 3 of the Paleo. Most of the icky feeling is gone, though I feel a teensy bit queasy. Also beginning to long for some cheese and bread.

But thus far: It is true that you aren't hungry. The only problem is the only way to sate that hunger are fruits, veggies, seeds/nuts and meat. And sometimes you just want something with chocolate.

The good news is that I have decided, against years of reverse belief, that I like walnuts raw. That and almonds. I didn't think my palate would expand further at this age, but there you are. Also, I had figs last night and they were delish!

In other unrelated news: So, Romney wins by a half a hair in Iowa? This does not surprise me. He is the Republican's Kerry: They don't really like him, but they ain't got nothing more presidential.

Day two: Aches, no fever, not much sleep.

Day two, trying to change the way I eat via Paleo Diet.

Seriously wasn't that hungry yesterday at all, but I noticed:

1) When I had a cup of soda I got a headache.
2) Toward the end of the day, just before bed, I got all achy and grippe-y like I was having a flu.

That last one lasted all night -- and I had to get up to urinate something like every half hour. Needless to say, it was a poor night of sleep. M says it's about detoxifying and I could feel like this for some days. That's something to really look forward to, even if I see the logic there.

Ugh. I think I'll be going back to bed after my work shift this AM. At least I have that option ... still feeling very joint-achy.

On the plus side, I found a butcher in Woodside -- just about a mile away -- that sells game meat! That will save a huge amount of money in shipping if what they have is any good. I'd initially thought I would go there later today but ... nap may call.

Just like starting over

Well, it's the start of the year, which means one of several things are going on: 1) I'm trying to blog regularly again or 2) I'm trying a new form of diet.

Surprise! It's both.

We'll see how long each lasts; I have lots of intention and not always good follow-through.

But in the effort to have one feed the other (no pun intended) I'm going to give it a shot here, wherein I mention just what weird stuff the Paleo diet is doing to me. Hopefully, weird stuff will equal "drop off the ridiculous extra poundage you've had on you for some time now" and then I'll be thrilled to be blogging about it.

But a few props: I got inspired by Heather Armstrong's post at her Dooce site a few months back:

http://dooce.com/2011/08/03/wherein-i-go-touch-more-insane

In theory, Paleo (that is, Paleolithic diet) is just another way to try and trick your body into being full while still dropping weight -- viz., Atkins. But I liked her approach -- she didn't see it as a whole-life-changing schmear, but as something that she could take week by week. It helps that Heather Armstrong does not appear to have ever been overweight (really) in her life, but I digress. I was interested. So I got the book, checked up on the Website (http://thepaleodiet.com/store/the-paleo-diet-revised/) and did some reading.

It ain't super-simple: No grains, no dairy, no starches, no sweets other than say, from fruits and dried fruits. Yes, I did repeat that: Fruits and dried fruits. But the other thing that hooked me is that they swear you simply will not be hungry and are not sitting around measuring out every single ounce of every single thing you're eating.

That worked for me.

I started today -- after really having a chow down holiday season. Sometimes that's the way to go; you want to get sick of eating all that crap and remind yourself just how sluggish it makes you feel, so you can jump right into the other stuff.

So here I am, most of the way through the first day. I had eggs and fruit and carrots and raisins for breakfast (there is a sample meal plan in the book, which I'm adhering to for now); lunch was tuna with onions and celery and homemade mayo (with flaxseed and olive oil), plus lettuce, and no-salt almonds on the side. Truthfully, I'm not hungry. Or I'm about 10% hungry, that kind of hungry you get when you're mouth- but not stomach-hungry. I will say that the "Brockaway Tuna Salad" I made as per the recipe -- which had 1/4 tsp of paprika -- kind of blew my head off. A little spicy, and I've had a bit of a headache since about lunch.

Then again, that could be from the one non-Paleo thing I'm allowing myself for now: Cherry Coke Zero. One mugful, which is fair. I will say that I've also felt a bit buzzed. I've been very productive today.

Downside: Aside from the restrictions, there's a lot of prep work for much of the meals. With January usually being a quiet month for freelance, that could work in my favor. But it isn't the same as popping a frozen meal in the microwave and coming back in 5 minutes. This takes some effort.

So here we are, day one, second day of the new year. Will update -- hopefully -- daily!

Of Spelling Errors, Not Paying Attention, and Web-Slinging

"Everything is going to be alright."

So said the engraving on the marble staircase at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan as I climbed up it yesterday, coming from an industry lunch that included as dessert little sugared donut holes ... with three dipping sauces. Sigh. But rather than inspire me, that sign just grated on my nerves: Let's get at least one thing straight -- "alright" is not a word. It may have been misused so much that some dictionaries include it, but the phrase is "all right." And in that case, everything is not going to be alright.

That kind of thing tweaks me. Sure, there are errors all over the place if you're the kind of word nerd who looks for them; I can overlook a misplaced apostrophe "s" on a hand-lettered sign. But when there's a printed, finalized, official version of something -- in this case, engraved in stone -- you have to wonder: Did no one along the approval process ever stop to say "That word .. it looks ... wrong. Let me go check on this." And the answer: Apparently not.

The same thing seems to have happened with "Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark," the Julie Taymor ("The Lion King," so wonderful) directed Broadway musical with music from Bono/The Edge you've no doubt heard (terrible) things about. I got a comped ticket to check it out last night ... and they're pretty much all true.

I've been dubious about the musical ever since I heard about it for two reasons: a) a musical? Seriously? and b) have you ever heard a more tone-deaf, corporate created title than "Turn off the dark"? It's like some teenagers got together and tried to be profound and instead made something so off-key that all you can do is go, "aww, they tried."

Instead, we end up with "Turn off the Dark," not as a working title -- but as the actual title of a Broadway musical about a comic book character. So I went in with a tablespoon full of salt to the performance. But bear in mind: I'm a sci-fi nerd, and I like musicals. So I was willing to be proved wrong.

And early on -- there was some promise. After a useless introduction with a Greek chorus of teens in theory "writing" a Spider-Man comic book, we meet the mythic Arachne -- a bold weaver who challenged Athena and was turned into a spider. The presentation on this bit is pure Taymor glory: Suspended women, silks, swings, large-scale storytelling. It's great, and I started to think that maybe this could go somewhere.

Alas, the whole thing bogs down once we get into "Queens High School" and have to start the whole horrible Peter Parker story all over again. How he's not popular (in fact, here he has no friends at all except his crush Mary Jane) and, he gets beaten up by bullies in a full song and dance number. Who cares? Let's get to the web-slinging. But no: There are confusing back-and-forth family scenes, nose-picking musical numbers, and a strange shift in time period. We seem to be in the "modern" day, right until we visit The Daily Bugle, with a zoot-suit wearing J. Jonah Jameson and a typing pool (!) straight out of "Mad Men."

Taymor pokes through at least one more time, which is welcome: Once Spidey starts doing some assistance around the city, citizens emerge in matching masked silver puppet heads, a surreal move that makes the montage they appear in work beautifully. There's also a good song after Parker's uncle dies, called "Rise Above" that takes a moment to kick into gear -- and is very rewarding.

Everything builds to the big Spiderman vs. Green Goblin fight scene at the end of the first act. But really, we have almost no motivation here: Why does JJJ hate Spidey so much? Why is the Goblin murderous, and why does he hate Spidey? I know these things are slightly better illuminated in the comics, but on stage they're just presented as fait accompli, which makes me not care.

I'd like to say the fight scene, and the scenes in which Spider-Man swings literally over the heads of the orchestra, is thrilling. It is, in some oddly terrifying way -- I kept thinking this 175-lb acrobat might drop on our heads at some point. I also wondered why the Spider-Man suit was so drab, and threadbare -- it looked like a costume from a high school play. It was ... impressive but not what I figure is awe-inspiring. The wires are obvious, and in the end I kept worrying about someone falling.

Nobody fell, but that doesn't mean what I saw had no technical glitches: The end of the fight scene left Spidey on the balcony and Goblin suspended over the stage; a quick 5 minute break settled things down but it revealed the audience for what we were: Wolves, waiting for just such an incident. By the time Spider-Man swung from off-stage with Mary Jane (we never actually saw any rescue) and lowered her down, it was just pathetic when they couldn't detach from one another for an extended pause. You just had to think: Is this what $60+million gets you?

And so we went to intermission. It was a long day. The network providing us with this opportunity did what they could -- there were chocolate-covered strawberries and tiny blue and red cupcakes waiting for us in the lobby. But I was tired, and having been told that the first act was really the one to see, I decided to bail. Yes, that's right, even for free I just couldn't bear to sit through the rest.

But I left thinking about those stairs at the Ace Hotel. There were a lot of approvals on this project. Somebody kept saying "yeah, that works, go ahead." But nobody ever stopped to look at the details and ask the big question: "Who really wants this?" The show may eventually open (there's a big revamp coming in April, in which I hear the song about Arachne's minions and their shoes will be cut ... oy) and it may hit the road and make its money back.

But I can safely say that everything is not gonna be "alright." This is bad on an epic, engraved marble, scale.