Musings of an Internet Axolotl

so post-prom made for a pretty lazy day today. the elevated temperature (seriously? it's only April 13) further induced the desire to Not Do Anything. the obvious solution? chill some brewskis and fire up the grill!

another bit of plunder from my grandparents' house (almost ready to put on the market - heck, when we were there last week taking the furniture out a guy came back and asked when it was going to be for sale!) is a full-sized Weber kettle. big enough to cook a whole chicken! (which is what I did tonight.)

i love to grill. beats inside cooking all hollow on a day like this. and sitting around on the back patio, watching birds at the bird feeder while we ate one of their distant relatives... it was pretty darn spiffy.

i'm still going to bed early tonight, though!

So this week was apparently the time for my semi-annual run-in with food mold and the inevitable aftereffects thereof. at least it happened on my day off. :/

( maunderings on recent obituaries )

You Are Italian Food

Comforting yet overwhelming. People love you, but sometimes you're just too much.

Yeah, Italian food. That just figures - pasta has always been my favorite comfort food. Mmm, starchy goodness.

In related news, I started calorie-tracking on Friday with the theory that this may turn into a diet. Turns out that among the extras in Excel 2004 (Mac) is a "Daily Food Diary" worksheet, where you can enter your target numbers for calories and fat grams and it'll tell you at the end of the day whether you were over/under your target numbers. Interesting. I'm really looking at the nutritional panels of the stuff I'm eating. Who knew how much sodium was in prepared foods? (Lots of people, I'm sure.)

This comes about because my doctor opined that I could stand to use 20 pounds. Well, yeah. At least he's not trying to force me to match "BMI", which thinks for my height I should weigh about 50 pounds less than I do. This is a number I haven't been at since my sophomore year in high school (my weight on my first driver's license). It ain't going to happen unless I got stranded on a desert island without a knife...

But anyway, the problem is most of my weight gain in the past few years is around the middle. Classic "beer gut" (wish I'd had the beer to justify it). Also supposedly the worst place for a guy to collect fat. So... counting calories. rah.

Fortunately, I like salads a lot. You can eat a lot of salad w/o many calories, even with dressing (if you choose your dressings wisely). Unless, of course, you're one of those people who covers 'em with shredded cheese... I hate that trend. If I wanted cheese on my salad I'd order a Caesar (mmmmmm... one of the more evil salads as far as calories go, but Oh! So! Tasty!!).

Meanwhile, some poking around with a multimeter (finally found the repair manual for the range) reveals that it may be the oven selector switch, not the thermostat, that's the problem. That'd be nice. And if not, turns out that replacement stoves are on sale at Sears this week. Might be worth it (what am I saying, might?)...