Zeo's Thoughts and Wanderings

I had every intention of sleeping until my alarm went off at 6 am. However, my cat, appropriately named Nemesis, had other ideas. Come 5 am, she's meowing, loudly and insistently, outside my bedroom window. Yelling at her to shut up makes her meow even more insistently, as now she knows someone's there. So, I got up, stumbled to the back door, let her in, shoved her away from the bedroom door so she wouldn't dash inside, and tried to go back to sleep. Gave up around 5:13. Now she's trying to sidle up to me, wanting pettings, but I keep telling her, "No, I'm mad at you."

This is why I won't have kids. I can barely deal with needy cats.

Yesterday, while grocery shopping, we went to Sprouts. Sprouts is having a "Gluten-Free Jubilee" this month, 25% off all GF products. The location we went to had a little display right up front with a lot of their GF products. One of the things on display was a large stack of Annie Chun noodle bowl soups. Yeah...those aren't GF. First ingredient is Wheat Flour, yet there they were, with a big "Gluten Free Jubilee" poster on them. We found a manager and pointed it out. She double checked the ingredient panel, said, "oh," and thanked us for pointing it out. Guess we'll see later if it's been moved or not. :)

But, I did take advantage of the sale to get some more pasta. Tinkyada PastaJoy brown rice spirals, spaghetti, and elbows. I think they're still more expensive than Trader Joe's brown rice pasta, but we weren't going that far north last night. Also got some Glutino vanilla creme sandwich cookies.

And Fresh and Easy is dangerous. They have yummy gelato pints for $1.99. The dark chocolate is very good, and Matt liked the banana gelato. We just went in for milk, butter, and a grill pack. Ended up spending close to $30. Matt found a 4-pound box of strawberries on markdown for $2.50. We processed those right away; I learned from the last time we bought a big thing of strawberries. Now if he just remembers they're in the fridge.

So, a week or so ago, our friend Chris was all, hey, we're back in SWG, you gotta come back, it's fun again, etc etc etc. After some research, Matt and I decided, why not? Last weekend, we reactivated our accounts, and set up to have our characters transferred from the old, closed server to the new one our friends were playing on.

Characters are available last night. I logged on, looking forward to playing with my Master Chef character again. But, now, she's just a level 7 Domestics Trader. WHAT??? That can't be right. I figured something got messed up in the move, so I e-mailed SOE to ask, "Hey, what happened?"

I am so, so ticked off. They claimed that looking at the logs, they couldn't find any record of any masteries at the time of the NGE (whatever that is). So my "level 7" stays put. What really ticks me off? Matt had an alt that would have only translated to level 7 in the transfer, and they, without him asking for more than a transfer, bumped that character up to level 10!!

I've already responded, asking them to check again. I would not have given up my Master Chef title, not after it took me a year of grinding to get there. If they come back and say again, "Nope, sticking at level seven," then I'm going to have to say, "Okay, then, I want to cancel my account and I want my money for this month back." No way do I want to go back to grinding my ass off.

Add this to the way I've been feeling the last two weeks, and that comes out to "sick day." I just can NOT handle anything today. I'm going back to bed before I throw up.

So, I had my annual doctor's visit a week or two ago. Found out my cholesterol is out of whack, so, the doctor wants me to lose 7 pounds in the next three months, and stick to a low-fat, low-carb diet. I'm not sure how "low-carb" I'll be doing, given the gluten-intolerance and no whole wheat, but I'm going to go back to the Sugar Solution book and find some good recipes. I know I want to do the quinoa with peppers and beans again, once I'm allowed peppers again.

I also set the seven-pounds-in-three-months as my WiiFit goal. I start that up again tomorrow, now that the Wii's set up again. I'm actually looking forward to getting back to Rhythm Step and Advanced Step, not to mention Rhythm Kung Fu and Rhythm Boxing. Also, the yoga and strength training will help, since I can feel myself stiffening up again.

We watched Bedtime Stories last night. It was cute, but I'm glad we caught it on a Starz free weekend rather than paying to see it in a theater.

One thing in it _seriously_ bothered me, and it's something I'm seeing more and more of. Apparently, "gluten-free" has joined the ranks of rice cakes and tofu as comedy shorthand for "healthy but disgusting." Bedtime Stories and iCarly both used "gluten-free" as a punchline for food, and Bedtime Stories seriously Did Not Do The Research: the cake at the girl's party in the beginning is called a "gluten-free wheat grass cake." Um, for the most part, wheat grass isn't considered gluten-free because it can contain seeds that CONTAIN GLUTEN!! Also, same character also regularly fed her kids WHEAT GERM. Um, yeah, GLUTEN.

Also, on Facebook, twice now I've seen the initial reaction to something gluten-free being automatic disgust. Food2 posted a link to Alton Brown's gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, and people were replying, "Ewww, why would you do that?" Several people with celiac or gluten intolerance gave well-worded replies, but the "Eww" reactions continued. A friend of mine posted that she made gluten, dairy, and egg-free cupcakes for her daughter's preschool class. First reply? "I hope you made her some real ones later!"

Just because something is gluten free, dairy free, and/or egg free does NOT mean it's disgusting! I've been living gluten-free for three years now, and when I make a dish or dessert to take to an event, it's going to be gluten-free. I have a co-worker with dairy and peanut allergies, and we trade recipes back and forth. He's made a few gluten-free dishes (including that Alton Brown cookie recipe!), and he likes them. I subscribe to multiple mailing lists and a magazine devoted to allergy-free cooking. Very rarely do I come across a dish I'd label as "disgusting." The fact that I haven't really lost weight on a gluten-free diet must mean that the food's pretty good. :-)

And as for whether or not they're "real," think of it this way. If you were to make a wheat-flour, butter, and egg-based cupcake for a child with celiac, dairy allergies, and/or egg allergies, that would be tantamount to offering that child a pretty little cup of poison. For him, that gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free cupcake IS "a real cupcake." And I know the mix my friend used. It's as good as a standard mix. I've had a gluten-free cake mix, Pamela's Decadent Chocolate Cake, that I think is better than a wheat-based mix, and several non-allergic friends have said is the BEST chocolate cake mix they've ever had. It's very moist, very rich, very dark chocolate.

I know my ranting won't stop the world from thinking alternate baking methods are "weird" or "disgusting." But it helps me get it off my chest.

But for now, I think I'm going to have some gluten-free biscuits with turkey and gluten-free gravy.

So, I may have mentioned this cookbook before, but I've started using it again this week. All the recipes made exactly two servings. It's been working well; I make the dish for dinner, and have the second portion as my lunch the next day. So far this week, I've made cheese'n'beef bundles, zucchini and beef casserole, and zucchini frittata from it. Some notes for my own reference:

cheese'n'beef bundles: since we're using very lean ground beef, I can probably leave out the egg and the bread crumbs (or in my case, flaxseed), which would make the small patties easier to handle, and not taste so "slick" when cooked.

zucchini and beef casserole: make sure to cook the ground beef finer, so it distributes more evenly. Layer the thin-sliced zucchini in the casserole dish rather than mixing it in with the beef and tomato sauce. Leave out the macaroni, as it doesn't really add anything to it.

zucchini frittata: get a new non-stick skillet so there's a better chance of it staying a frittata and not becoming scrambled eggs.

Next week, though, if I want to continue the trend, I'll have to double the recipes, so Matt can have some dinner, and lunch the next day, too. Although, with the frittata, it's going to be breakfast rather than lunch, and I'm not sure what to take for lunch. Maybe I should see if the veg soup in the fridge is still good.

So, it's Saturday. I figured, since we didn't have a lot of grocery shopping, we'd go, get that taken care of, get a flu shot, plan what to take for lunches, get the kitchen cleaned, get Dave & Tammy's box in the mail...

No. Matt wanted to get the brakes checked on the car. So, he went to Just Brakes, where we had them fixed before. I think he left around 8:30 or so. It's now two hours later and he's still not back. We don't have cell phones, so I can't call him to find out what's up and how much longer it's going to be.

So since I don't know how long it's going to be, I can't start anything, because I want to leave for grocery shopping as soon as he gets back.

This is one day when 2 cars would be SO convenient.

Ashes to Ashes starts filming series three soon. April 2010, it starts airing on the BBC. I'm hoping the person who posted series 2 on YouTube can post series three, too. The finale of 2 was such a total mindscrew.

IO9 recently created a (admittedly very subjective) top 100 scifi shows list. How many of them have YOU seen?

( Let's take a Fantastic Voyage... )

Better than half, so not too bad.  The older shows killed me.  And Outer Limits, but no Twilight Zone?

The other day at work, Matt was looking around his company's website, and his coworker said, "Oh, how cute, you're 'pretend shopping.'"

In days past, it was called "window shopping," back when you could walk down Main Street, looking at store window displays and daydreaming about items therein. Now that a large portion of Main Streets are empty, being replaced with shopping malls and big box stores, the "window" portion of window shopping has become an artifact of language. To window shop, one must actually enter the store and stroll the aisles now.

Online, there aren't even aisles to stroll. I went through the pages of the MMS catalog today, adding items to my cart, just to see how much the order would be. It was very easy to quickly get over $100, just with a few fixed oils and a bunch of flavor oils. The colorants took it up, too. But, instead of completing checkout and spending money earmarked for something else, I just printed out the page, so when I _do_ have money to spend (and when the weather's cooled enough that the waxes and butters won't melt in transit!) I'll remember what I wanted to get.

Pretend shopping. Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes, it's depressing.