When I was in North Carolina, we went to see Stereolab play, only my brain got a little twisted and thought we were going to see Stereophonics. So when a French chick with a keyboard walked out, I had a small epiphany. "Oh, StereoLAB! They're good too, but I guess they won't be playing the theme to the British version of The Office." Stereolab was good, but their opening act, Atlas Sound...well, I hope someone steals the audio equipment off his tour bus so he will stop spreading his sonic misery across the country. During the concert I witnessed the most odd and extraordinary bout of multi-tasking that I've ever seen. It was so weird that I did my best to record the action for you, as though I was present for a yeti sighting. Alas, the room was lit only by Christmas lights, so even after applying a brightening...continue

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I usually eat oatmeal for breakfast in the mornings because I am sleepy and lazy at seven o'clock in the morning. It's easier to dump a packet of oats in a bowl, add water and microwave it than to prepare an omelet or scrambled eggs. However, the protein in eggs is good for me and keeps me fuller longer, so I sometimes make peanut butter crepes on the weekends. They're pretty quick too, though I have to clean more bowls, beaters and skillets later. I grabbed this recipe from Erin Shea's site, Lose the Buddha over a year ago, though she calls them peanut butter pancakes. I prefer to call them crepes since it sounds more egg-like. I'm sure someone will tell me why it's absolutely erroneous for me to be calling them crepes, but I don't care, they'll always be crepes to me. I also doubled the recipe because...continue

I can't believe it happened again. No, really, I can't believe it actually happened again. Dear City of Indianapolis, Please stop throwing a parade every time I go downtown on the weekend. I'm flattered that you think I'm so awesome that there needs to be a parade every time I grace your metropolis with my presence on the weekends. But next time, I swear I will plow through your bright orange blockades to get into the parking garage. Thank you, Jennette Fulda In June I tried rendezvousing with my mother to visit the tea room when I was detoured by the gay pride parade. Last Saturday, I drove downtown to take part in the Cultural Trail bicycle tour and couldn't get past the roadblocks for the Circle City Classic parade. How many parades does this city have in a year? And is there a parade warning list I can be...continue

While the current state of the US economy is about as funny as the obits section, what is funny are the photos accompanying most of the articles about economic gloom and doom. You can't take a picture of the economy, so most media outlets are running photos of people reacting on the stock market floor. Except they are all reacting in the same way, which is rather humorous when you see the repetition over and over again in every article. I would show specific examples here, but out of fear of prosecution respect of copyright law, I will instead post my personal interpretation of the art accompany articles on the current economic crisis. It is a play in three acts. Act 1: The stocks have fallen and they can't get up. Act 2: Oh wait, they have Life Alert (aka 700 billion from Congress). They can get up after all!...continue

I'm giving away some more free stuff so the Internet will love me. Love me, Internet! Love me! I am the uncle you never see who tries to buy your affection with snow globes from Florida! I've got seven Starbucks cards worth $5 each that I will give away to seven randomly selected readers. To enter, leave a comment on this entry specifying what you'll buy with your $5 card, which could be a coffee or an item from their new line of breakfast items. Yesterday I had the pumpkin and cream cheese muffin and it almost made the pain of the day go away. Almost. ETA: This is open to international readers too, though I don't know if the cards work internationally. It would also help if you actually have a Starbucks near you. ETA: Whoops, I forgot to set a deadline! Comment on this entry by 11:59pm...continue

Ever since I met Stephanie O'Dea at the BlogHer conference, who blogs at A Year of Crockpotting, I've wanted to try a crockpot recipe. Only, I don't own a crockpot, which made it a little hard. So I called up my mother, who is the warehouse supervisor for the miscellany of our lives, and behold, she conjured up a crockpot from the back storeroom (aka her 2-bedroom apartment)! Note its olive green complexion, which was as popular in kitchen appliances in the 70's as disco and wide lapels. This crockpot was a wedding gift that outlasted my parents' marriage. I decided to test how well Rival built their slow-cookers with the Crockpot Applesauce Chicken from Stephanie's site. 4 frozen chicken breast halves or thighs 1 1/2 cups of applesauce 1 T dried onion flakes, or 1 yellow onion, chopped finely 1 T apple cider vinegar 1/4 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp...continue

As I laid on my chest with needles sticking into my shoulders, the Chinese lady said, "I'm going to hook these up to electricity, ok?" I tried to nod, but couldn't with my face snug in the massage table frame, so instead I said, "Ok, yeah, sure," which just goes to show how awful my never-ending headache has become. Not only did I let a woman I had just met who spoke in a thick accent I only 88% understood send electricity through needles she had stuck in my back, I paid her to do it. Last Thursday I had acupuncture. It's one of about three dozen things on my checklist called: "Things that might cure the headache, but probably won't, yet I still have to spend thousands of dollars on just to make sure." I am not a big believer in Western Eastern healing arts, however I do believe...continue

Hey there, everybody. Nice to see you again! Today the web server fell down. Went boom! All the comments and entries from Sunday, October 12 at 3:02am to Tuesday, October 14 at about 8:00pm are gone, never to be seen again. They're hanging out with at least a dozen of my email messages. Fun! I was able to restore my latest entry about acupuncture by copying it from Google Reader (thank you Google!) but your informative comments are gone. So if you left me a link or a name of a book, could you go back and enter it again? Thanks. If you sent me an email somewhere in the missing time, you should probably send it again. I was able to get a list of the subjects and senders of several of my missing emails, but I don't know if I have them all. And Deb T, if you...continue

Congratulations to the winners of the Starbucks giveaway who I have already contacted and all of whom have already confirmed their wins: Pauline, tina (with no capital letter), Tina (with a capital letter), Donna B, Megan, Chrissy and Sara. Thanks for playing! And don't worry, I weeded out all the double comments so no one had an edge over anyone else (except if your name was "Tina," apparently). And thank you, web server, for waiting until after I'd drawn the winners to meltdown. Judging by my readers' devotion to Starbucks, if I'd lost any of the over 400 entries, I would have been thrown in a vat of hot expresso by a mob of cranky, decaffeinated readers...or perhaps they would have scalded me with a salted hot chocolate instead. After reading all your entries, I felt like an overwhelmed barista during the morning rush. You also gave me some ideas...continue

When I was in North Carolina, I got to stand next to liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen makes me think of Terminator 2. It was good to know that if the T1000 wandered by, I would be able to disable him long enough to scream and run away like a little girl. The liquid nitrogen is stored in my sister-in-law's lab for reasons I don't know, but probably has to do with fancy research techniques I know nothing about. Same thing goes for all these vials and bottles on the shelf. We stopped by the lab because my sister-in-law needed to split some cells so she would have material to do her experiments. She studies inflammation pathways in cancer cells. That's right, she's helping to cure cancer, which pretty much makes everyone else's job look insignificant in comparison. Here she is, kicking cancer's ass, which involves stylish purple gloves and something...continue

I was standing on an unfamiliar porch, holding a stuffed animal from a Maurice Sendak children's book, when I saw a man smoking a substance I wasn't entirely sure was legal walk around the corner half a block away. He was black, so the fear I suddenly felt made me feel like a racist white girl. Sure, I was in a questionably safe part of town and, sure, his manner of dress and body language would have provoked suspicion even if he was white, but he wasn't white. He was black, and when I'm scared of black men I feel racist even if my fear is justified. I'd taken the Wild Thing with me on my trip to North Carolina for my friend Elise's blog project, Where the Wild Thing Is. All I had to do was pose the adorably scary creature amongst local landmarks, snap a picture, and submit...continue

The title of this book is so over-the-top that I decided I had to read it when I was offered a copy to review. Toxic Fat: When Good Fat Turns Bad sounds like the title of a B-grade horror movie and the cover is loud enough that I could hold it up in the street and stop traffic. The book is written by Barry Sears, who is probably most famous for creating The Zone Diet. In the book, Sears says the recent rise in obesity is due to three things: increased consumption of cheap carbohydrates (like chips and cookies) which increase insulin resistance, increased use of cheap vegetable oils high in omega-6 fatty acids, and decreased consumption of omega-3 acids typically found in fish oil. He says this leads to an increased level of arachidonic acid (a fatty acid and the "toxic fat" mentioned in the title) which causes inflammation...continue

My allergist says I am not allergic to food. As a former 372-pound woman, this comes as no shock. I wanted to be surprised and to discover an easy cure for my never-ending headache. I was hoping the doctor would say, "Just stop eating dairy products and you'll have your life back!" Sadly, the 20 minutes I spent lying on my chest with a grid drawn on my back after being scratched fifty-something times with a variety of food samples only led to the obvious answer: the former fat girl is not allergic to food. Though he has not cured me, I like my allergist very much. I was hesitant at first, sitting in his waiting room which looked like it had not been renovated since the early 80's. I further psyched myself out as I waited in the examination room reading a chart with about 90 things I did...continue

When I opened the cupboard to see roots growing out of my sweet potato, I knew it was time to make some muffins. Sweet Potato Muffins 1 medium sweet potato (8 oz) 2 cups dry oatmeal 1/4 cup Splenda 2 teaspoons cinnamon 5 egg whites and 1 egg 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract Preheat oven to 350° F. Puncture the sweet potato several times and microwave it for about 8 minutes. Scoop out the orange part and mash it in a bowl. Mix it with the rest of the ingredients. Grease a muffin pan and spoon the mixture into the cups. Bake for approximately 30 minutes. This is a quick and easy recipe which is high in carbs and protein. I used to mix it up before I did weights and they'd be warm and ready at the end of my routine, ready to refuel my muscles. I usually halve...continue

I have a lot of photos of myself sitting in front of cake. I noticed this when I dug out my mother's photos albums and boxes of unsorted prints looking for a good "before" photo earlier this year. "No wonder I was so fat. I was always eating cake!" I thought. Then I realized that, no, I wasn't always eating cake. We just always took pictures of me on my birthday, at which we always ate cake. These pictures do provide a good timeline of how I've aged over the years, and what my taste in pastries was at the time. So today, I give you a history of cake. Age: 10 Wearing a corduroy jumper made by mother. I was currently obsessed with headbands. Looks like we got out the fancy metal plates for the occasion! I love how my hands are encircling the cake, as if to say,...continue

Yesterday at work we made hamburgers with Krispy Kreme donuts as the buns. I don't know why. These things just happen. One minute you're talking about chocolate-covered bacon and the next you're daring your boss to cut off two years of his life in two Krispy, greasy bites. A lot of supplies are required to make donut burgers: a griddle, glazed donuts, ground beef, bacon, cheese, eggs and of course lettuce and tomatoes. Don't forget your veggies! If you ever make these at your own workplace, a fried egg works well to cover up the donut hole. Don't forget to toast your donut on the griddle for extra crispiness! But have thick plates and lots of paper towels because these are prone to drip. I myself did not have a donut burger because the day before that we had frosted carrots for my birthday. See? There are twenty-eight carrot...continue

I'm going to be in Chicago eating a lot of oatmeal with 15 other health and fitness bloggers between November 7-9 for a Quaker Oats Living Proof blogger's conference. It's always fun to be invited to these things, but it always makes me feel slightly bad talking about it because it seems so elitist. "Look at me flying off for freebies all weekend! I'm so fancy! Whee!" Seriously, who needs that? When I went to the BlogHer blogging conference this summer I remember feeling the same way. There were all these parties going on, in fancy restaurants or in hotel suites, and some of them I was invited to and some of them I was not. Some parties I wouldn't have gone to even if invited, but being on the outside can be lonely and a little sad. Which is why I'm glad we're planning a reader meetup during the...continue

I had intended to run for 20 minutes but decided 18 minutes was good enough because otherwise I'd be scraping my lung off the carpet after I threw it up. I was a little disappointed with myself. It was only 6 months ago that I ran a half-marathon and now I am struggling to run a half-5K. If you don't use it, you lose it, unless of course we're talking about weight, in which case you gain it. "I don't know how you do that," said the 50-or-60-something man who was running on the treadmill next to me in my apartment's exercise room. In light of the current economic crisis, I've decided to ditch my YMCA membership and use my complex's resources instead. I'll just have to cross my fingers that no one is using the elliptical machine when I want it and remind myself that a little patience will...continue