The best wedding reception I never had a.k.a. my book release party
After running 13.1 miles in a half-marathon, I bet most people hobble home and collapse on the couch or a bathtub full of ice. I decided to hobble home and then hobble back downtown to PAR-TAY! It was somewhat difficult marching up the spiral staircase to the dining room at The Milano Inn where I was holding my book release party, but I made it to the top without tripping or without anyone looking up my skirt...I think.
I've never thrown a party before in my life. Even my childhood birthday parties were hosted by my mom, who bought the cake and ice cream and whisked my hair out of the candle flames before my head was set on fire. Since she'd proven herself so well in the past, I put her in charge of organizing this brouhaha. Thanks, Mom! There are a lot of questions that go into planning a party, like, where do we hold it? Do we serve food? How many people are going to come? Why am I so stressed out planning an event that is supposed to be fun? Little did I need to worry though, because I had a fantastic time, which is why combined with finishing a half-marathon earlier that day, I considered it to be one of the best days of my life.
My cousins Allison and Adrienne and my Aunt Elaine helped me and my mom set up the room. As people started to trickle in, I greeted them and started signing books. One of the cool things about having a book published is that you get to write in other people's books and it's not considered vandalism.
To keep the guests entertained as people kept arriving, we introduced the "Lick the Produce" quiz. I printed out images of all the fruits and vegetables I've tried in the Lick the Produce series over the past year and made people fill out surveys guessing what they were. Nicole helped us out by doing a lovely Vanna White impression.
It wasn't done just for fun though, it was done for free pasta! Since I'm the PastaQueen, I decided I needed to bestow my bounty upon the winner. Ari over at FiberGourmet donated a lovely gift basket that we gave away to Nancy, who got the most correct answers with 11 out of 28. (It was a hard quiz!) Here's a picture of me and my mom (the PastaQueen Mother?) with the basket.
As you'll notice, I am holding a Spaghetti Scepter, lovingly handcrafted by my Aunt Donna from a pasta server, ribbon, sparkly jewels, and lots of hot glue. She surprised me by spending the night making them as party favors. Thanks, Donna!
Next up I read the "Trail Mix" chapter in my book in honor of Indianapolis since it takes place on our local nature trail. I tried not to talk to fast and to project my voice. I hadn't read the chapter for a couple months, so as I was reading I was also scanning slightly ahead so I wouldn't trip over the words. My heart stopped a little when I saw that the word "bastard" was coming up and glanced at my mom's church friends in the corner of the room. Oh, well! If they were okay with a book titled Half-Assed hopefully they weren't offended by my potty mouth.
After that I did a Q&A. At the end my mom just happened to ask what I would be doing this weekend and I made my big Today Show announcement. After that we ate and I got to talk to my friends and meet several of my readers. It's so awesome to meet people in person and finally put faces to IP addresses. It's odd, but I would probably recognize a lot of you more by your email addresses than your actual names. I was a little worried that I might be crashing somebody's diet by serving spaghetti and meatballs and fettucini alfredo and lasagna, but Lord knows I needed the carbs after all the running around I'd done that day.
Amy and Nicole took a picture with my cover signs, pretending they were standing in my fat pants too. I stole a couple of their pics for this post and Allison sent me the rest. Thanks for the photos, guys!
And then people started to trickle out and the party was over. My Aunt Elaine and cousin Allison posed me for several pictures, making it truly like the wedding reception I never had. Instead of stuffing cake into some guys face, I held up my Spaghetti Scepter next to my book sign. For several hours I was transported to a parallel dream world where I had no problems, everyone was happy for me, and there was lots of pasta. The happiness just glowed outwards and I had a great time, even though my feet were battered from running and started to hurt in my heels.
Then I went home and slept for nine bazillion years.
Thank you to everyone who attended! I hope you had a good time too. Special thanks to my mom, Donna, Elaine, Adrienne and Allison for all their work and planning. Thanks to my publisher for the signs and their other support. And kudos to our server Barb who cracked me up and truly earned her tips by walking up and down the stairs from the kitchen to our dining room.
Maybe we can do this again some time.
Posted by PastaQueen on May 9, 2008 at 11:23 AM | Tags: book, book release party, fiber gourmet, lick the produce section, pasta
TiVo alert a.k.a. why I'm flying to New York this weekend
I answered my cell phone and the woman on the other line said, "Oh my God, you're in the TiVo."
"I know!" I exclaimed to my Aunt E. "Isn't it crazy?" If you've got your TiVo remote handy, you can use it to search for The Today Show and set it to record the Sunday morning Mother's Day show on May 11th. (ETA: Local air times vary. Check your listings.) I'll be promoting my book and wearing an outfit that hopefully makes me look very slim. I'm set to appear on the same episode as Susan Sarandon. Do you think she'll sing Rocky Horror songs with me in the green room?
My appearance has been planned for over a week, but I've been afraid to mention it for fear that it might not actually happen. God knows I could still get bumped if terrorists blow up the Brooklyn Bridge that day. And there's still a paranoid part of me that wonders if I'll get to the studio and they'll decide I'm too fat to go on TV. TV anchors are such teeny, tiny people in real life that I'm sure I'm going to look huge in comparison. However, now that travel arrangements have been made and I've sent them lots of photos, I feel like this might actually be happening. That, and my name is now appearing in common household electronics, as if my spirit is haunting the blender.
I don't know yet who will be interviewing me, though it will probably be Jenna Wolf or Lester Holt. I wanted to thank everybody who's been involved in making this happen and scheduling my plans. (They know who they are.) I feel very lucky to get an opportunity for national exposure like this and I'll try to do you all proud. At the very least I'll try not to trip over the camera wires.
If you were at my book release party this weekend, I broke the news to you first. Speaking of which, I will try to write a post about the party this week (as soon as I give up sleep and sort through the photos).
The funniest thing though is that when I pulled up the listing on my mom's TiVo, there was a bit of an optical illusion due to the font selection and how close the letters were together. So instead of looking like "Jennette Fulda" it looks like someone named "Jennette Fukla" is scheduled to appear. I don't know who this Fukla chick is, but she better not steal my thunder.
Thanks in advance for all your good wishes!
Posted by PastaQueen on May 7, 2008 at 9:38 AM | Tags: book, susan sarandon, today show, tv
Autographed books available!
Get your personally signed copy of Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir, lovingly autographed by the author herself, for the list price of $15.95 + shipping and handling (I WILL ship internationally). Buy your copy here.
You may also include the name you want me to sign the book to and a message you wish for me to include. I reserve the right to reject any messages I don't want to sign, so requesting something like, "I'll never forget our wild night in Vegas" isn't going to happen. Thank you in advance for your support!
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (19)Posted by PastaQueen on May 6, 2008 at 10:21 AM | Tags: autographed, book
Half-Assed blog book tour
I'm going on tour - a blog tour. For the next three weeks, I'll be making stops every week day at different locations in the blogosphere to talk about my book
We're kicking it off today with the woman who helped get this whole book thing rolling, Kalyn Denny of Kalyn's Kitchen. Here is a schedule of the rest of my stops, which I will update with direct links to the posts as they go live. It should be lots of fun, so I hope everyone will check it out!
Monday, May 5: Kalyn's Kitchen
Tuesday, May 6: CalorieLab (interview)
Wednesday, May 7: Life of L
Thursday, May 8: Big Fat Deal
Friday, May 9: Cranky Fitness
Monday, May 12: DietGirl
Tuesday, May 13: Diet Blog (guest post)
Wednesday, May 14: Elastic Waist (interview)
Thursday, May 15: Livin' La Vida Low Carb
Friday, May 16: Back in Skinny Jeans
Monday, May 19: Manic Mommy (book giveaway!)
Tuesday, May 20: CalorieLab (review)
Wednesday, May 21: Elastic Waist (guest on video show The Daily Special)
Thursday, May 22: The Skinny at the Florida Sun-Sentinel
Friday, May 23: Roni's Weight Watchen Page
Monday, May 26: The Diet Naked Blog formerly "The Amazing Shrinking Mom" (book giveaway!)
I also wanted to thank the following blogs for posting reviews before I got my act together to schedule the blog tour.
April 10 - In My Heels
April 24 - Morgan Gets Thin
April 26 - Yet Another Weight Watcher's Blog
And if you've posted a review, interview, revealing photos of me and want to be listed in this post, e-mail me and I'll include a link. Except if you posted revealing photos, in which case I'll send you a cease and desist letter.
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (10)Posted by PastaQueen on May 5, 2008 at 10:06 AM | Tags: blog tour, book, half-assed, reviews
My first half-marathon: What, no bagels?
Yesterday was one of the top ten best days of my life, which is an odd thing to say about any day I wake up at 5:30am.
My mom and I drove downtown and parked in my office's parking garage, which is conveniently located 4-5 blocks away from the starting line. Thus we avoided any parking nightmares and I felt slightly better about the monthly garage fee they take out of my pay check every month. I felt chilly in my long-sleeved shirt and sweater as we walked towards the starting corral. The sun was still rising, but from what I could see the weather appeared gloomy, though thankfully it wasn't raining. Thunderstorms had whipped through town the night before and there were still some puddles in the road.
As we got closer and closer to the starting corrals we encountered more and more people. It felt like I was in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind where everyone is inexplicable drawn to the mountain at the end of the film. I was one of thousands of people converging on a couple blocks of downtown Indianapolis for a shared, unspoken reason. 35,000 people run the half-marathon, so to prevent congestion they divide us into starting corrals from A-Z based on our estimated finishing time. I was in S. As my mom and I sat on the blockades, we read people's bibs and occasionally I would whisper to her, "Look! That person is a B!" as though I'd just seen a celebrity. I only saw one A and I felt like I should kiss his running shoes in tribute to his superior athletic skill.
About 15 minutes before the gun time, I got into my corral. This is when I started to feel a little self-conscious about the sign I'd taped to my back.
I figured there were 35,000 people in this race, and most of them would be passing me, so I might as well use my back to promote my book. I felt a bit silly about it, but I figured I wouldn't have to make eye-contact with anyone who read it, saving me some embarrassment. I checked my phone and saw I'd missed a call from Laura, another blogger running the race, and called her back, but we weren't able to find each other before the race started. Sorry, Laura!
At 7:30, the race started! It looked like this:
Can't you smell the excitement? As I said, I was in the S corral, meaning thousands of people in the A-R corrals were ahead of me. So, we waited.
And we waited.
Someone threw a beach ball into the crowd which we bounced around. Slowly we started walking in fits and stops to the starting line two blocks ahead of us. As we got within 100 yards of the starting line, people started walking faster, then we were jogging, and then 18 minutes and 15 seconds later I was crossing the starting line thinking, "Oh, hey, I'm running a half-marathon. How weird." Then I did some mental math and tried not to be discouraged by the fact that the elite runners were already past mile 3 by now.
The race course was very similar to the training series course, except for the pit stops where the asphalt road could barely be seen beneath the trampled paper cups. At first I tried tossing my cup into the trash cans, but they were overflowing by the time us slower runners passed by, so I settled for aiming for the gutter instead. I had brought my headphones and MP3 player along, but was surprised to find I didn't need them because so much was happening. There were good cover bands and bad cover bands and bagpipes and cloggers and square dancers all along the route. I wouldn't even be able to plot out the race course on a map because I wasn't paying attention to the street signs. I just followed everybody else. There were time clocks at each mile marker, so I kept checking my pace bracelet as we ran, mentally trying to add 18 minutes to the time. Mental math is hard when you're running a mini-marathon.
Near mile 6, I started to think about walking. I kept running anyway. Then we came upon the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As part of the race, the runners do a lap around the Speedway, though I was only going about 2% as fast as the racecars. We ran down a steep ramp to enter the stadium. Awesome! So fast and so easy. Then we had to run up a steep ramp to get on the track. Not awesome! So slow and so hard.
It was at this point that I realized the weather was freaking gorgeous. The sun was shining bright, a cool breeze came across the infield, and I was actually a bit hot. I couldn't believe I'd thought about wearing my fleece vest this morning. Suddenly all those people in shorts and tank tops that I'd laughed at in the morning cold seemed a lot smarter than me. I rolled up my long-sleeved shirt and kept running around the track.
And kept running around the track.
And kept running around the track some more.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is evidently two and a half miles long, as I now know very well. After we exited the speedway, we passed a family sitting on lawn chairs in their front lawn drinking beer and watching us run by. After I passed through a Gatorade station, my feet started sticking to the pavement. Oh no, how many seconds was that taking off of my time?
At mile 10, I decided I needed the cheesy techno. I put on my headphones and it was only a dance remix of Bryan Adams singing "Run to You" that got me through the next mile. I started wishing the pit stops would come closer and closer together so I'd have a good excuse to slow down and walk. Someone ran past wearing a shirt that said "Are we there yet?" Good question.
Somewhere before the 12 mile marker I slowed down to walk for a minute. Then I started running again. As we got within a mile of the finish line the signs started telling us how much farther we had to go. 1 mile left. 3/4 of a mile left. At 1/2 mile left I stopped to walk. My lower abs were aching and my toes were starting to hurt.
As we approached the 1/4 mile left sign, I could finally see the finish line. I started running again. A woman on the sidelines yelled, "Go, Jennette!" While I know she just read my name off my bib and had no idea who I was, it was very encouraging. Some people next to me actually started to sprint to the finish line. Jerks. I would have tripped them if I wasn't so damn exhausted. As I kept running and running, the finish line came closer and closer. It was very unexpected. For the last leg of the race in my training series runs we had to turn a corner and then turn a corner and then turn another corner and BAM! there was the finish line. Now I could actually see the end heading straight towards me.
And then I crossed the finish line. I couldn't believe it was over. No, really, I didn't quite believe that it was okay to stop running. For the last three miles I felt like I'd be running forever, that the rest of my life would be spent drudging along, trying to finish an endless race. I imagined that decades from now my relatives would be driving past 10th street, see me and shake their heads sadly as I plodded along trying to finish that damn mini-marathon. "Keep going, keep going, keep going," I had told myself and now I got to say, "Okay, stop." It made the race suddenly seem much shorter. A 13.1 mile race is much shorter than an endless race.
I threw my hands up victoriously for the photographer, though I was so tired my palms probably didn't reach above my head. My official time was 2 hours, 33 minutes, 26 seconds. Then I got lots of free stuff that only cost me $50.00 in registration fees. At the recovery area I grabbed a banana, apple, potato chips and a rather dry, chocolate chip cookie. But no bagels! What was this? All the training series runs had bagels afterwards, but suddenly there were no cinnamon crunch or French toast bagels in sight. Where were you when I needed you, Panera?
People sometimes joke about hobbling after runs, but I literally did hobble to the family reunion area to get a big hug from my mother.
"I'm so proud of you," she said.
"Thanks. Can I lean on you?" I replied. And then I did. I leaned on her for a whole minute before I felt strong enough to stand up again. Someone must have rearranged the layout of the city in that time because suddenly the parking garage was a lot farther away. Even today, my quads are sore, my toes are sore, my shoulders are sore, and if I breathe in really deeply my lungs are sore.
Before I left, I was standing in line to get my picture taken with my shiny finisher's medal and I heard a girl in line behind me say, "That's so awesome." While she might have been referring to her chocolate chip cookie, I think she was referring to the sign on my back with my book cover which said, "I lost half my weight, now I'm running a half-marathon. I hope this idea isn't half-baked!" Her comment made me smile a little bit, because while I'm mostly a humble person, it is pretty awesome isn't it? I really did lose half my weight. And I really did just run a half-marathon. When my mom and I returned to the parking garage, she said there were a lot of things she'd thought I do in life, but never this. "I never thought I'd have an athlete in the family." And we didn't even have to adopt the illegitimate child of an NBA superstar to do it. It's me.
Then we stopped at a bakery and I stood in line, sweaty and gross in my full running gear, to buy a huge cinnamon roll. Because seriously, no bagels?
Posted by PastaQueen on May 4, 2008 at 3:34 PM | Tags: half-marathon, indy 500 festival, mini-marathon, running
Twas the night before the mini
The great thing about running a half-marathon tomorrow is that I get to eat lots of carbs. I will try to remember the joy of gorging myself on bread and pasta when I'm running in the rain. The cold, wet, rain.
When I picked up my pace bracelet at the running store yesterday, the clerk asked me, "Got your outfit picked out?"
"Yep," I replied like I was an A-student proud to be prepared for a pop quiz.
"Is your shirt white?" she asked as she rung up my gel pack purchases.
"Um, yeah it is." How did she know that?
"Better wear a dark sports bra," she said as she handed me the receipt. Why would I wear a dark bra with a white shirt? That didn't sound like an ensemble that would land me on the cover of People's best-dressed issue. Then my brain made the connection:
White shirt + Rain + Bouncing for 13.1 miles = Girls Gone Wild: Mini-Marathon Edition.
A black bra it is!
I've got my checklist of items to bring. I'm going to lay out my outfit and all my stuff tonight. I've got maps to the locations. I'm picking up my packet at the exposition tonight. I'm eating my carbs and drinking my water. I feel prepared.
After the race, you can still come to my book release party at 3pm at The Milano Inn downtown. There will be plenty of food and I'll be selling books! Hope you can make it. I will try to post about the race and the party as soon as possible, but it might be a couple days after the events because, boy, am I going to be tired.
By the way, for anyone who was wondering, I think my appearance on the local Fox Morning News show went pretty well yesterday. My VHS tape of the show has a big, squiggly stripe of interference halfway through my segment, so I'll try to rip it off of my Mom's TiVo sometime later and post it on the book site when I find the time, as well as a post over there about what the experience was like.
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (40)Posted by PastaQueen on May 2, 2008 at 7:52 AM | Tags: fox morning news, half-marathon, mini-marathon
Is low-calorie food healthy food?
Yesterday's review of the Hungry Girl
All sparrows are birds
Not all birds are sparrows.
Some sparrows are black.
If Lulu is a black bird, is she a sparrow?
Except this is a more complicated since not all low-calorie foods are healthy and not all healthy foods are low-calorie. How do I write an "if, then" statement for that?
One of the reasons it took me so long to start eating healthy is because I couldn't figure out what "healthy" meant. What do you eat when you eat healthy? Rice cakes? Tofu? It's even more confusing because you have to look at a person's overall diet and not just a single choice they make for one meal. They might eat oatmeal for breakfast, but then chomp on fried onion rings laden in trans-fat for dinner. Or they might be making a lot of low-calorie choices, but are eating so much packaged food that their sodium levels are higher than Lot's wife. There are so many components that qualify a healthy eating style that you might be doing well in some areas and failing in others.
As many people pointed out, the Hungry Girl recipes use a lot of sugar substitutes and sugar-free ingredients that use - dun,dun,dun - chemicals! There seem to be two camps on the use of chemicals in foods, people who don't want to touch anything that is not natural because they believe it's bad for their bodies and people who don't care as long as they can have something sweet with no calories. I admit, I'm one of the latter people who doesn't care how much Splenda and Aspartame they pump into me as long as I can have something sweet to drink that is low-cal. However, I also understand why people are cautious about artificial ingredients. Your body is your most valuable possession and you get to decide what you put in it. I always wait until a software release has been out for a couple months before upgrading so the developers can work out all the bugs. I figure the people who are cautious about artificial ingredients are just waiting it out to see if we all develop an extra arm a decade from now. And, boy, are they going to be jealous when we do! Who wouldn't like to have third arm? I would be an awesome drum player!
I also don't believe that just because something is artificial it is bad or if it's natural it's good. Arsenic is all natural and it will kill you. Thousands of the medications we use today are artificial and save lives every day. All I would say is that the artificial products are newer and we might not know their full effect on our bodies yet. I'm willing to take the risk, but I understand why others don't want to and fully support their decision. I'm lucky that I'm still rather young and I can chew on Tupperware and still feel okay. I'm sure as I get older that will not be the case and I'll have to start watching things like my cholesterol or my sodium levels. But for now, I'm not too concerned about that stuff.
I know some people just don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners. And other people are actually capable of putting one teaspoon of honey in their yogurt and stopping right there. I have never been able to do that. Instead, I find myself sucking honey out of a plastic bear's head in the middle of the evening like a zombie eating Winnie the Pooh's brains. So, in comparison to gorging myself on real sugar, eating a lot of fake sugar seems better by comparison.
There is also a theory that artificial sweeteners make you hungrier than eating natural sweeteners because your body is expecting to get calories when it tastes something sweet. When it doesn't get those calories, supposedly this makes you want to eat even more than if you hadn't had the fake sugar. I have no idea if this is true or not. There is the odd fact that people who drink diet sodas evidently tend to gain more weight than people who don't. I will say, I lost almost 200 pounds drinking diet sodas all the way. It sure was a lot better than drinking normal sodas with hundreds of calories every day.
Perhaps that's what it's about, not necessarily having the best diet on the planet, just a better one. Maybe we shouldn't aim for the impossible task of eating a completely healthy diet, just a healthier diet. You don't have to be the healthiest eater on the planet. No one is going to give you a prize. But you can almost always make improvements to your lifestyle, so perhaps it's better to focus on that.
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (58)Posted by PastaQueen on April 30, 2008 at 7:57 AM | Tags: chemicals, food, healthy eating, hungry girl, low calorie
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