The winner of the Lipton bike giveaway was Christy, who has already been contacted and confirmed her win. I mentioned the winner in a blog post last week, but several people have asked me who won since then. So, there you go. It was Christy, not you, terribly sorry. I wish I could give bikes to everyone, but unless you want one still attached to a bike rack, I can't possibly afford to do that....continue

I should really caption this "Awkward situation that did happen." You know how sometimes you'll be followed by someone who isn't actually following you, but just happens to be going the same place as you are? Well, last Friday there was a guy at the grocery store who was shadowing me for about 20 feet as we walked past the frozen food and fish counter in tandem. I darted down this aisle to grab some tampons, figuring I'd lose him. I assumed he'd walk as briskly as possible away from the feminine hygiene products in silent horror. But no, instead he stopped directly behind me, only 3 feet away from the maxi pads. I pretended to scan the labels, but I was completely distracted, as if his presence made me illiterate. I finally turned around to see what his damage was. That was when I saw him grab a...continue

Suddenly the only light in my apartment was the glow of my widescreen monitor and a beeping started counting down the minutes until the battery in my power supply would die out. It was only 10:00pm on a Saturday and I wasn't ready to go to bed. "Well then, I guess I have absolutely no reason to do Pilates!" So I did, in the dark, by the light of my Dynamo Radio/flashlight. It was the free gift I got for renewing a credit card membership, which is way cooler than the pedometer I got last year. If the apocalypse ever comes, I won't have to raid convenience stores for AA batteries to see the demon spawn of hell attacking. I can just hand crank the battery charger myself! I'd been avoiding working my core that day because my core was sore. I let my exercise routine slip during my book...continue

While I'm really proud that I ran a half-marathon and still have the shiny medal to prove it, THANK GOD THE TRAINING IS OVER! Yes, that is deserving of big, blocky, all-capital letters. My training program took all the fun out of exercise, and exercise is hard enough to do when it is fun. Some days I would look at my training schedule and think, "Oh, dear Lord. I have to run 45 minutes tonight or else I'm going to collapse in a pile of goo at mile 10 on race day." That was the dreadful thing, knowing that I had to do these long-ass runs or else I might not be able to complete the race. And I'd already told a bazillion people I was running a half-marathon, so I had to do it. The training took up so much of my time, that I eventually stopped doing anything...continue

If you've got your headphones plugged in as you secretly read blogs at work, you can click over to Capessa and listen to videos of an interview I did last week. I was a bit surprised to see videos on the page because I did the interview over the phone and I hadn't noticed any cameras hidden in the eyeballs of the stuffed animals on my bookshelf. They did a great job of illustrating my thoughts with photos and even made me giggle a little with their PhotoShop skills. It makes me wish someone would follow me around with a computer screen that would flash relevant imagery behind me as I talk. That would be far more impressive than simply talking with my hands. Anyway, I can tell they put a lot of work into it and actually went back and read my blog, which is always appreciated. I sometimes...continue

Near the end of my two-mile trail run, a woman in a black sports bra and black gym shorts ran past me. I ran another minute or two. Then a woman in a black sports bra and black gym shorts ran past me. Oh crap, I thought. Running in 86 degree weather and 53% humidity has given me heatstroke and I'm now hallucinating. Then my brain kicked in and I realized I'd just run past a water fountain, which the woman probably stopped to drink at after she passed me, considering that is was 86 degrees with 53% humidity after all. Heatstroke averted, brain A-OK, if operating at slower levels. It did make me momentarily wonder if an earlier moment during my run had also been a delusion. I wasn't a quarter of a mile down the trail when a shirtless, barefoot man wearing nothing but ripped jeans and naked...continue

Contest! Woo-hoo! If you enjoyed the video above (and even if you didn't) you can enter to win the Half-Assed Prize Pack in celebration of the release of my book, Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir. The prize pack includes: A $25 gift certificate to Amazon.comA signed copy of Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss MemoirA signed galley copy. (Galleys are early uncorrected proofs that are sent to reviewers.)A Burt's Bee's gift basketMy favorite kitchen gadget, the apple corer and slicerA Spaghetti Scepter from the PastaQueen Interested? To enter, all you have to do is: Embed the video in your blog, MySpace, message board post - whatevah. The code to embed the video is here: Link back to this post: http://www.pastaqueen.com/halfofme/archives/2008/06/how_to_lose_192.html E-mail me a link to your entry at contest@halfassedbook.com I'll check your post to verify you did everything correctly and then you will be entered for the prize. The contest runs from now...continue

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Last Sunday I did something I've been threatening to do for years, something that required extreme heat, something that required specialized utensils, something completely bizarre and unimaginable which took an hour and 15 minutes. I cooked all my dinners for the week. Lately I've been so hungry for dinner when I come home that I haven't been willing to wait 20-30 minutes to cook something healthy and wholesome and all that crap. I've been eating TV dinners or stopping at the grocery to buy overpriced sushi. A week ago Sunday I noticed my fridge contained a couple of zucchini and yellow squash in the fresher drawer in danger of going bad, a bag of fish fillets I'd thawed out several days ago, and a chicken breast I'd been meaning to grill for days. "Crap!" I thought. This stuff was either going to go bad or kill me when I did...continue

It's odd to be sitting in bed writing an entry about how my chronic headache started destroying my life because right now I feel fairly fine. I've felt fairly fine for two weeks. I'm still working on the world's record for longest headache, but it's dialed down to a level 2 or 3 instead of a 5 or 6. I'm able to go about my life without thinking about my pain ever 5 minutes. When the headache is bad, all the normal thoughts I have during the day get pushed out, like flood waters washing possessions out of my house. The only thing that exists is the pain. It's nice to have my brain back, at least for now. However, there have been times in the past couple months when I've not been grateful to be in possession of my brain considering how badly it has been hurting. It's made...continue

On Tuesday, June 17, 2008, we will be replacing the deck to your building. Please make the necessary arrangements to have the things you need that day from your apartment. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your patience as we make PASTAQUEEN's PALACE a beautiful place to live. Respectfully, Community Manager Well, I'm glad they stuck this note in my door before I stepped out my front door and plummeted to my death on Nice-Neighbor-Bill's front stoop. Sometimes I think of the most likely ways I might die now that I live a relatively healthy life and heart disease is off the list. Choking to death is always at the top of my list. Living alone, there have been several times when a clump of food has gone down the wrong way and I've momentarily wondered if I'm going to suffocate in my living room. My fate would...continue

I'll be chatting on the Maria Sanchez Show on KVTA AM-1520 today at 3:25pm PST (or 6:25pm EST) assuming I get my ass home from work on time. You can listen live at their web site http://kvta.com/ or on the air waves if you live in California. Tomorrow, you can listen to an interview I already taped at HealthyLife.net with Faith Ranoli from 1-2pm PST (that's Pacific Standard Time so it'd be 4-5pm Eastern Standard Time). Just click on the "Listen Live" button at the top of the home page at the appropriate time. If any of my coworkers are reading this, they probably just keeled over in shock at the idea that I could talk for an entire hour about anything. I'm sort of a quiet one. ETA: Here's a link to the Maria Sanchez interview. I had a lovely little 15-minute chat with her. Thanks, Maria!...continue

I have an open question for all my readers. Is there anyone out there who does not have a vice? Is there anyone who does not have a habit or addiction that they fall back on when bad shit happens? It seems like everybody's got something, be it food, alcohol, or overzealous fingernail biting. I'm curious if there's anyone out there who is miraculously well-adjusted and just does a lot of yoga. If not, what is your vice? Mine's definitely food. (Like, duh.) ETA: I'm not talking just about bad habits or things we do that are bad for us, but specifically about behaviors or addictions used to relieve pain or anxiety. I was talking to someone recently who said one of the unspoken rules of Alcoholic's Anonymous is that to quit drinking you start smoking. So I was wondering, is it inevitable that you are always going to seek...continue

I bought muesli at Trader Joe's because it sounded exotic and foreign, like Vegemite or Weetabix. Then I brought it home and realized muesli is essentially granola's cousin, only with more cornflakes and dried blueberries and possibly crystal meth. (I'm not sure what those little round things were.) There are certain foods I should not be allowed to buy and muesli can now be added to that list. Lately, that list has become my grocery list. I was doing really well for a week and then, holy shit, I found myself plowing through the fridge at 11 o'clock at night, stirring peanut butter into ricotta cheese just because I wanted to eat SOMETHING. The next day I gave a coworker a ride home and was relieved I hadn't left any embarrassing music in the CD player, but was less happy that the Krispy Kreme bag from breakfast was lying on...continue

Why is my mother distributing condoms in front of my workplace? Well, we were on our way to the tea room. No, wait, we were going to stop at the quilt exhibit first. Okay, let me start at the beginning. I'd been in the Indianapolis State Museum many times, but only to pee before running long distances around downtown. They hosted the mini-marathon training series I ran in, but they also host exhibits about history and arts and crafts. How versatile of them! My mother and I wanted to see the Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting and Quilting Blocks and Binding Blocks exhibits. We don't quilt or knit, but we like to pretend we could. The museum is also home to the L.S. Ayres Tea Room, a recreation of a restaurant ladies lunched at in the L.S. Ayres department store before it was torn down. I live on the north...continue

You can still win $25 at Amazon.com! You've still got 4 days left to enter my Viral Video Contest and be entered to win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com, a Burt's Bee's gift basket, a free autographed book and a spaghetti scepter. (Do it for the spaghetti scepter.) Details are here. Catch me in South Bend I'll be in South Bend, Indiana, holding court in the Barnes & Noble at 4601 Grape Road at 4pm on Saturday, June 28. I'm sold out of autographed copies on my book site, so this is one of the last times you'll be able to score a signed copy unless you randomly bump into me on the street while carrying a copy. Please spay and neuter your pets It's important to control the pet population...oh wait, sorry, this has nothing to do with me or weight loss. I'm just flashing back to the...continue

I taped a delightful interview with Robin Kall last night for her radio show, Reading with Robin. It will air at 7:00am tomorrow morning, Saturday, June 28 on WHJJ-AM in Providence, RI. You can listen to it live on the radio station's web site here. Thanks to Robin for inviting me!...continue

I'd never parked on the roof of a grocery store before. I'd never been to a grocery store that had parking on the roof before. Now that the Fresh Market has come to town, I can check that off the list, because that was right up there with "pet a monkey" on the list of things I absolutely must do before I die. I had to park on the roof because every single resident of Indianapolis was as stupidly excited about the opening of this grocery store as I was. Yay! I'm not the only food dork! I've been driving by the construction site every day on the way home from work, hoping for the day when I can easily stop off to buy overpriced sushi instead of detouring several miles out of my way to buy overpriced sushi. When they changed the banner from "Coming soon" to "Coming June...continue

"Opa!" Our waitress exclaimed and then she lit our cheese on fire. This was one of two reasons my mother and my brother had decided to go to the Greek restaurant to celebrate his birthday (the other being the rumor of a belly dancer that remained a rumor). We never miss an opportunity to set dairy products ablaze, especially if we're not the ones risking 3rd degrees burns on our forearms. After the flames died down in the silver platter of cheese in our waitress's hand, she set it on the table and placed a basket of bread right under my nose. After she walked away, I picked up the basket and placed it as far away as my unburned forearms would reach. "No cheese for me," I said before anyone could ask. I kept my hands folded in my lap, waiting for the salad I had ordered earlier. I...continue