Yes, after today I will have made it 2/3 of the way! So far I have lost like 6 pounds (while sitting on my tush most of the day and not even pretending I’m excercising), eaten a big plate of spinach salad with impunity (spinach sets me off), and am no longer putting honey on cold steak and pretending its a Snickers. (not as bad as it sounds, but not a Snickers). I have also learned the following:

1. venison spaghetti sauce tastes better on roasted squash than it does on pasta.
2. Snickers are completely unnecessary to life, even when they’re not made of steak
3. cheese, while a good treat, is actually not necessary to life, either
4. burn wounds heal exceptionally fast on the Paleo diet (don’t ask)
5. holding a baby, while not a substitute for birthday cake, can give you the willpower to say no
6. salsa makes every bit as good a salad dressing as anything else in a bottle

After the first 2 weeks, a lot of my more blatant cravings died, which has been nice. At first it was cookies, Mandola’s foccacia, and stuff like that. Now, the things I’m most looking forward to having after the month is over is a glass of wine and some queso, although I don’t miss the tortilla chips – actually, to be honest, they sound kinda gross. But a big bowl of, I dunno, green peppers or even broccoli florets and queso, that sounds really good. I still am looking forward to a cookie, but only a really really good one. And one of Scott’s lattes. I do miss my coffee, though I’ve survived without it far better than I anticipated.

Ten days left and I’m really glad I did this. Even if it doesn’t cure my other issues, I think I’m going to look at food a lot differently after this, and in a really good way.

Zombies will never be the new vampire. Why? Because vampires will never need to be renewed.

You may be tired of them. You may not get why everyone’s obsessed. And the current craze will die down. But it will never die out. And it will be this crazy again in the future. Because vampires, sorry but I have to, don’t die.

Vampires and zombies both make easy symbols, but vampires can be sexy while doing it… there’s nothing sexy about a zombie. Vampires can represent self-centered domination and but also repressed id – the idea that we can rise above our baser instincts. Zombies? Pretty much stand as a reminder of our inadequacies, our inability to truly live, our nothingingness in the grand scheme of eternity. Vampires are a symbol of one person and his or her struggle to not give in to the lure of power. Zombies are a symbol of the masses, all of us lost souls in a crowd of rotting flesh. Vampires give us a chance to live forever. Zombies remind us that from the minute we are born, we are already dying.

So zombies might be the flavor of the month; I’m cool with that. Heck, I have my own zombie story rattling around in the can. But they are not, and never will be, the new vampire.

I can’t decide what I think about it. I grew up thinking it was a terrible idea, but then I also think insurance companies are a terrible thing. The basic debate seems to come down to, what do I want the government to provide for people, and what do I want to provide for myself. What are the basic “rights” that we have as human beings (if there are any in addition to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”… although technically, then, was TJ supporting government funded health care in the case of fatal disease?). Well, for people who say “Nothing. We provide everything on our own.” OK, your world has no schools, no military, no police force, no firemen, no trash collection, no electricity, no… I think the general public will agree that the government should provide some services. My tax dollars pay for other people to go to school, even though I don’t have kids. And I’m OK with that because I believe that an educated nation is a stronger nation.

Well, by that logic, is a healthier nation a stronger nation?

I do believe that what we have is failing. I also believe that the government makes a tangled mess of everything it does. So… what does that mean I support? If I haven’t mentioned it yet, I love our new president. He always sounds so polished and thoughtful when he speaks, like we’re led by somebody with a good brain. He also says things in a way that I can totally understand, no legal mumbo-jumbo or political sidespeak that says nothing. He can admit when he doesn’t know something, and, well, let’s face it, if you’re the Leader of the Free World you can’t possibly know everything you need to know. I prefer people who can admit that. So, I’m presenting a press conference clip that I found of Obama talking about what Obama wants for Health Care. It actually makes sense to me, and it’s certainly better than the random talk from “a good source” that I hear everywhere else. I hope that he can get what he wants. (Isn’t that what he asked from us? Hope?)

Paleo Diet Day 8… having doubts. I slept until almost 11:00 today. I can’t remember the last time I did that. Granted, I don’t actually know what time I went to sleep last night (I finished a book; more on that later), but I don’t think it was much after midnight, so that means I slept for ten hours. Is that normal? I feel pretty good energy-wise, though. I mean, I woke up happy and ready to go. Just, you know, really late. And I ate an omlette today with no salt on it (and the only thing that had salt in it was the hearts of palm) and so that’s still interesting. Apparently the 7-11 day range is the toughest part when you really start the transition from old carb ways to new protein ways. I’ll do another self-checkin at 14 days – that’s giving it 2 weeks and a little time past the “week and a half” marker that everyone keeps talking about, and see then what I’m thinking.

Books! I have read 3books in the last 4 days. They’re all from Moning’s Fever series that I raved about two entries ago. And the third book’s ending about killed me. Luckily Dreamfever, that’s book 4, comes out on the 18th of this month.  However, I’m terrified because the cliffhangar endings have gotten worse with each book, and I’m just really not sure how much more cliffhanger-y you can get than the end of book 3. I mean EVERYTHING went wrong. Everything. And since the books come out about a year apart, that means that I’ll read book 4 next week and then… wait until next July or August to find out how the series ends??? (Book 5, Shadowfever is the last one.) So, as much as I highly highly highly highly recommend this series, I recommend waiting until the release date for book 5 is announced, and then start the books about a week before that. You should finish just in time to get your hands on the last book and see how it ends, and you won’t have my misery. I HATE this year delay thing, I mean, I know she needs time to write a quality novel, but seriously? The publishers already have it at this point, right? HOP TO IT DELACORTE! YOU CAN RELEASE A BOOK IN LESS THAN A YEAR FROM RECEIVING IT. Try like… a couple months.

My office. I am trying to clean it out, but I have also decided to rearrange it. I think the arrangement is not what I need. I’ve started dabbling in Feng Shui, and while I think a lot of it is weird, some of it also resonates with me in these strange ways. They’ll talk about “chi” flow and I’ll be like, “That sounds new agey and weird” (almost as weird as when I talk about a peron’s chi). But I do get better “chi” – that feeling of flow, energy that’s got a vibe to it,  you know what I mean? – when things are arranged certain ways as opposed to others. So, since I agree with the basic principle behind which Feng Shui is founded, I’m willing to give it more of a try. When I first moved into this office, there was pretty much one way to arrange it, due to the furniture that was in here, but now we’ve removed a piece (and we’re going to remove another soon) and so I’m getting options.

*sigh* I’m such a dillettante. The more I try to learn things, the more it becomes apparent to me that there are no facts, only opinions, half of history is a myth (or a distortion at the least), we can’t understand other people, much less other cultures, because we cannot go back and relive our individual lives as somebody else. The best we can do is accept that everyone has a different set of values,  life views, preconception of history, and while you will never truly “get” it, theirs is every bit as valid as yours.

Or maybe I’m just too lazy to do good research.

or maybe both.

Love that show, btw, but then I might’ve mentioned somewhere along the way that I think Joss Whedon is a demi-urge. But seeing Epitaph 1, the dvd only finale, inspired me to rip off Indexed and make this:

Whedon Indexed