I have been watching The Biggest Loser lately and screaming in my head...and out loud...every time I see it. And for days after, just ask S :)
...rant approaching...
I started watching because one of the blogs I read regularly commented that this season all the contestants would be working as a team to complete the challenge. Having had some history of the show, I found it excellent that instead of pitting people against each other the producers were having them work together. And really, it's a weight loss show and the only thing I like more than weight loss information is debt reduction information, so it was easy to find the time to watch. I have been disappointed to find that the rest of the season has not reflected that one episode. I have been continuing to watch for the same reason I watch Survivor: to assess and deconstruct the interpersonal relationships and drama. As a person who just doesn't fit into society very well, I find it fascinating to watch how others do it, both in real life and 'reality' shows.
My biggest complaint with TBL is that it takes a healthy challenge - losing weight and getting fit - and puts an unhealthy spin on it - making it entertainment for the masses and a platform for advertisers. Something about the unhealthiness of the show has been nagging at me and I couldn't quite pin it down. With the glory of Google I found this post on the blog Weighty Matters that explained what I was feeling reasonably well. I also found out from that post that the show outright lied about the accomplishment of the contestant.
Some of the questions that have been banging around in my head are: if the show lied about the contestant's time on the marathon, what else have they lied about? Why are they continuing to promote the unhealthy weight loss as a good thing? Are they telling their Fellow Americans that they are lazy and undisciplined, which is why they are fat? Are they sending the message that no matter what you are just not good enough (one contestant lost 17 lbs in a week and still didn't lose enough compared to the others)? Are they sending the message that you need to make gigantic changes to your life all at once in order to succeed? Is that even a sustainable plan?
I really do find it kind of sad to see that the show is so popular despite the unhealthy nature of it. I understand that a show about the slow progression of weight loss might be boring, or a show about minor changes having major impact might be dull. But at least label TBL as it is: pure entertainment, instead of: achievable goal for all. Even the title is insulting - you want to be labeled a LOSER? And the BIGGEST LOSER at that? Does anyone actually have any good associations with that phrase or am I the only one that has the image of a schoolmate putting an L on their forehead with their hand, pointing to me and shouting "loser!"? Massive weight loss and massive lifestyle changes just lead to a whiplash reaction of food engorgement. It would be great to see something more realistic being just as popular with the viewing audience.
...end rant.
As some of you may know, it is my goal in the Universe to please people. Specifically, my bosses. It's what I'm good at and I no longer question why. It is simply a matter of genetic makeup that I look for ways to always be in my employer's golden light and stay the Hell away from any Hairy Eyeball looks from the Upper Ups. Today I noticed that one of our rum flavorings was wrong. And by 'wrong' I mean 'gelatinous' instead of 'liquid'. This is a large difference in the product. I feel like I could have caught this error in the product sooner if I'd simply read the label which proudly said "rum gel flavor" instead of "rum flavoring". Kicking myself for missing the obvious (but also wondering why Shipping didn't catch it either before it was even sent to me) I did as I do and went to the person in charge of QA to inform her of the difference and have her come and look at it. I had to admit that I'd already started to pour the gelly rum into the liquid rum before I'd noticed it was different. I thought I'd get an earful about checking before pouring, but no, I was praised. The Owner was on the floor today and heard about the gel rum and came to look at it. I pointed out that the alcohol content was half of what it should have been, rendering the product useless for our needs. She took the new opened gel rum and the empty old bottle and told me what an excellent catch that was. She pointed out how the labels looked almost exactly alike, and I pointed out how it looked exactly the same in the bottle. I felt very glowy in her golden light, although I really should have read the label before opening the ingredient. Silly me even noticed the font was different and there appeared to be more words on the label, but I still hadn't read it first. But still, she complimented me and I took it with a smile :) Still warm from praise I heard her come up behind me and ask if I routinely took cakes out of the oven. I told her yes. She asked in her nasty voice if I'd been trained on how to bake cheesecakes. No, I hadn't, nor am I a baker with papers. So I said that no, I hadn't and that I was trained as the fall back person to take cakes out of the ovens when they were done if nobody else was around. I told her that since the Main Baker started working days instead of nights I hadn't touched the finished cakes. And I mentioned that the procedure had changed from removing the cakes immediately to taking the temperature first (to ensure doneness) and since I had no idea what temperature they should be, I always go and get someone now. She seemed...placated. Still with an ember of golden glow I went back to work. As I was finishing up, Owner, Big Boss, QA, and Purchaser came into my area asking to see the old rum liquid. Well...it was down Wash Bay drain by this point. See, I'd been trained that when something is contaminated it gets discarded. I'd contaminated the liquid by pouring some gel into it, told the Powers That Be, showed the Powers That Be, made a note of the weight and lot code, then discarded it. As per training. I got to listen to an earful with witnesses that I should have saved the liquid, that ingredients are never discarded until I receive written instructions on doing so. Sigh. Golden glow faded.
This is not the first time lately that the Owner has informed me of the correct way of doing something while being surrounded by several other people. She has the remarkable ability to make me feel like the problem is my fault for not intuitively knowing that she wants things done differently. It wouldn't be so bad if someone would back me up in front of her that I was trained to do things in that manner. That hasn't happened yet, but I'm still hopeful :)
Well, I was wrong about my boys' plans :) T did indeed go trick or treating with his friends. They dressed as vampires and he went as a drug dealer with J's long coat. T said the area he was in was mostly 'old people' so he didn't want to say what he was dressed as and instead said he was goth. J didn't go trick or treating, instead he just hung out with his group of friends.
S and I stayed in and handed out candy, but we only had 43 kids come to the door. I think that's about the same as last year, but it seems like so few. I think most of them were in the mall. S and I were in the mall earlier in the day and there were holy craploads of people there. The flu shot clinic was running and the line went as far as I could see down the mall. In addition to that crowd there were little kids dressed up going against the flow of traffic, trick or treating in stores. I don't know how, but there should be a better way of doing that. The kids (and parents and strollers) were blocking the entrances to some stores while they waited for their candy. Not safe at all.
The flu clinic was truly ridiculous though. Alberta made the mistake of not screening people to get the N1H1 flu shot and the turnout was underestimated. The government told people to wait if you are generally healthy and let those who need the shot go first, but people turned out in droves to get their shot whether they were at risk or not. So far Alberta has given out 300,000 of their 600,000 shots. Yesterday they closed the clinics after being open for only a week because of the way things were handled. When they reopen the clinics they will take pregnant women, children 6mo-5yrs, people under 65 with health risks, and health care professionals. Kinda the way it should have been done at the outset, I think.
As for getting the shot myself, I'll skip it thanks. All the information coming in about H1N1 seems conflicting, but the people dying of it seem to be women from 20yrs - 60yrs with an underlying health concern (primarily diabetes, asthma, obesity, and high blood pressure). I fit in the age range nicely, but am generally healthy. My boys don't have health concerns either, neither does S, so we'll skip it.
In the paranoid corner of my mind I wonder if the governments have blown the concern for the N1H1 flu way out of proportion in order to turn our attention away from something else. I mean, it's the flu. People die from the flu regularly (according to Wikipedia, about 41,000 people a year in the USA alone). H1N1 has only caused around 5000 deaths globally. It's just not as serious as the Spanish Flu of 1918, even though they are similar strains of the same virus. So it makes me wonder: what else is the government doing while our attention is diverted?
Halloween is almost here once again. I liked dressing up and especially liked the free candy idea...but I really wasn't wild on the idea of taking kids out trick or treating in snow and cold. Really, not my thing at all. All these TV shows of children dressed in their costumes in the warm evening did not take place up in Northern Canada. Here the costumes need to fit for school, and then need to fit over a snowsuit for trick or treating. A newish thing here is that children go to the malls to trick or treat as well as or instead of outside. Partially because it's warm inside a mall, and partially because parents are worried their children aren't safe outside, in the dark, and twenty feet away. Really, who would take/harm a child who's parents are nearby? And why would you send your little one out without you? I just don't see the danger if your child is accompanied by an adult.
One thing I did learn to do while taking my boys out was carry backpacks (one for each boy, Heaven forbid their candy got mixed up) and have them empty their candy into them about every block or so. That way their bags didn't get too full for them to lug around, and I was tailing them anyway so why not help out by carrying (eating) the candy? But then about two or three years ago I decided they were old enough to go out with their group of friends instead of with me and stay in the neighborhood. I figured they were in a group so there was less chance of them getting abducted and they knew the neighborhood well so they wouldn't get lost. But because I wasn't tailing them they had nowhere to empty the candy bags, so I got a call asking me to tail them in the car. I thought 'Really? I get to be the parent in the warm car? Awesome!'. It was a feast of candy in the car that night. Some of it would have melted so it had to be eaten right away. Really, it did. I had to rescue the chocolate and send it to safety in my tummy.
This year the boys haven't made plans for candy acquirement. T has a girlfriend and at 15 is too damn old to go out. As far as I know he has no plans for partying either. Thankfully he's a bit tame that way. So far. J has made vague plans of scaring little kids but I don't know if that will actually happen. His plans change rather abruptly most of the time, it's hard to keep up to knowing what he's up to.
T also didn't dress up for Halloween, instead he came home from school at lunch after being sick in the washroom. Poor boy. He at a banana muffin when he got home (after realizing that taking his house key out of his pocket this morning was perhaps a bad idea...luckily I was leaving work in five minutes anyway so he wasn't outside long) and is planning on calling in sick to work tomorrow. J did dress up for Halloween - as a plumber. Ok, he bought the costume at San Francisco in the mall as a last-minute idea. He called to get it approved and I didn't see a problem with it, although I couldn't figure out why he'd want to be a boring plumber. When he got home he showed me the costume which is a ball cap with 'plumber' on it and a shirt with two name tags over the breast pockets. One says 'plumber C. Bigby Hines' and the other says 'check out my caulk'. I was expecting a call from the school for inappropriateness. Nothing yet. Maybe there's an email waiting for me.
The last minute costume, while typical of J changing his mind, was because he'd bought an Obama mask the day before on his lunch hour. He showed a teacher who thought it was cool and then reminded him that the school doesn't allow masks. So J, S, and I discussed costume ideas and came up with: get some large black helmet for his head and dress in black to be a StickDude (J is stick-like in stature), businessman with bombs in the briefcase, drug dealer in a long coat with baggies of sugar pinned to the inside, suicide bomber with bombs on his torso, breathalyzer machine with the 'blow here' area at the...well, you know, army Sgt named F*ck You or Screw You, a giant screw with his friend being a giant U, dress as his principal with a name tag and run around yelling at students to get to his office, and my favorite....wear white pants and a white shirt under a white garbage bag filled with garbage to be....White Trash! That last one was the cause of serious belly laughs when J tried on a garbage bag. It fit but was very tight. Too tight. Hysterical laughter tight. Two garbage bags taped together was better, but posed the problem of how do you use the washroom and not destroy the costume? Since most of those ideas would be rejected by the school, he ended up at the mall. It was really difficult to come up with tame ideas once I started thinking of inappropriate ideas. My favorite costumes that I've seen online are this one, and this one (warning: not safe for work, involves male anatomy). I didn't suggest those. But when I need to giggle hysterically I think of that second one...about how it would bob and wiggle when you walk...
I was reading my sister's blog just now and she has a post on sleeping. Funny thing is that she's planning on sleeping on her couch tonight...and that's where I've spent the last week sleeping! Not on her couch, on mine, and both of us for reasons other than fighting with our guy.
For me it's because I have been one step past the edge of exhaustion all week. I had my period (probably TMI, but relevant) which may have contributed to the lowered iron levels of my already scarce supply of iron. I take iron supplements twice a day, but once a month for a week I could literally sleep around the clock. Combine that with being busier at work and back to working five days a week and I was just a zombie.
But even though my body was exhausted and desperate for sleep, my brain was firing off all synapses at once. I'd be in bed and the slightest noise would get me thinking "what was that, when will I fall asleep? I need to sleep now, right now, so relax, yes relaaaaax, am I relaxed enough? Ooop, S snored will he keep snoring? How will I fall asleep? What's it like to fall asleep? Why don't I remember the actual moment of entering sleep? Did J just leave his room? Is he taking Tylenol? I hope he only takes one. I don't want his liver to fail. How will I make sure he only takes one? Was that T getting up to use the washroom? Why do my boys stay up so late? Good heavens it's a school night, they should be asleep. When will I go to sleep? I'm so tired." And so on. It was driving me bonkers so I got up and made a bed on the couch where I instantly fell asleep.
I think the reason I could sleep in the living room is because the electronic hum of the TV and two computers was a constant noise instead of an intermittent noise. Every time S snored, shifted, rustled the covers, breathed, or twitched I would jerk to fully awake from slightly relaxed. Combine that with a wrinkle developing in the bottom sheet, S tugging on the top sheet, my pillow developing a lump, the covers being too hot then too cold, the covers moving slightly with S's large shoulders, and my nightwear starting to tangle, I was just inconsolable. While the couch wasn't super comfortable to sleep on, I did actually sleep for a few continuous hours each night.
Finally this weekend my brain seems to have settled down and I was able to sleep in my own bed (with S) right through the night. Now today I'm taking a Nothing Day to recuperate before going to work tomorrow. Nothing Days are something I read about in a book by Martha Beck: they are days when you only do what's absolutely necessary to survive and you rest as much as possible. So far I've read my book, cat napped in the sunbeam, rested, ate cookies, had hot cocoa (made with whole milk, yum), surfed the web, and started the laundry. For me, this is a very low activity day. Now I plan on spinning my computer chair around, putting my feet up on the chair next to me, and staring out the window until the laundry needs to be changed. I highly recommend Nothing Days :)
Ok, it's been a while since my last review, but everything I've read has been merely ok. I love to read, my brain feels like it needs to eat words to survive and so even though I've been reading every day there was nothing really that stood out. And then there was this book.
Waiting for Columbus takes place in modern day Spain at a psychiatric hospital where a new patient, claiming he's Christopher Columbus, arrives by force. He is a man found with no identification who genuinely believes he's trying to raise funds for a trip across the western sea of Spain to Japan. At one point I had to look at a map to see where Spain is, and whether or not it has a western coastline - indeed it does...but you'd sail right into Canada instead of Japan :)
Columbus's primary nurse is Consuela, a single woman in her mid-thirties that develops strong feelings for Columbus. He chooses her to bear witness to his stories about his journey to amass funds to cross the western sea, as well as his tales of love and friendship. While Columbus's stories are richly described bits of the 15th century, he occasionally peppers them with reality in the form of a hand gun or cell phone - enough to remind Consuela that Columbus is indeed from the 21st century. In between Columbus's stories the reader gets to find out why Columbus's brain felt the need to protect him with a fantasy world. We learn about Emile from Interpol in a secondary story line that weaves it's way into Columbus's world.
Reading the book made me want to go to Spain, even though not much of the country is described. Somehow the author paints Spain as a warm, kind, and relaxed place, rich with history and wine. Lots and lots of wine. Water is also featured heavily in the book, always described as a welcome and friendly thing, but never something someone is drinking. They are too busy drinking wine, coffee, and spirits.
Happy Thanksgiving! I've got my horn o' plenty stuffed with things to be thankful for. I'm thankful for all the usual things including family, good health, my job, warm house, food, running water...you get the idea. I'm even thankful for the bad or icky things in life, because without them it's hard to measure the good. Really, that's the only way I get through our long winters is knowing that spring follows.
Now, I need to get back to my Day of Nothing. That's right, a day with no effort at all. No going outside, no strenuous work, no major cooking, no answering the phone or seeing other people. Just sitting around the house in baggy clothes, reading my book, drinking hot cocoa, watching tv, and surfing the web. My shower this morning was the most physical activity that I'll get all day. Now...back to sloth mode...
