Birds Gotta Dance

Go here, you animal lovers. It's great. I love it.

fever dreams (2)?

I woke up this morning (with headache) from a complicated, visually detailed dream that included hang-gliding (someone else was doing that), a huge ox, my grandmother sitting in the back of a car and me trying to do laundry in the front of the car, airports, my bridesmaid's dress from last year, and some other things, I think. Oh yeah - Christmas with empty stockings. The hang-gliding and ox were impressive. My dream started out as a documentary on someone hang-gliding near the coast, full of mountains and streams and estuaries - very neat. I'm impressed with the visuals that my subconscious can create, since I can't create them when I'm awake. Then, it switched to a scene where a man was driving a cart, pulled by the biggest ox you could imagine. He kept poking the ox with a pitchfork, which looked like a toothpick compared to the size of the ox. The ox turned a sharp corner in the road, and got caught up in telephone or electric lines, which was ironic since the rest of the scene was very pastoral and appeared to be pre-industrial. The ox gave up and went into a barn or building or under some eaves or something, and rain water poured off the eaves. Then we were at the bank of a river, and an American Indian came up, but as he approached it turned out that it was a film, and the actor was an Indian Indian in the role of an American Indian, and it didn't look quite right. Then I woke up or the dream morphed into the grandmother/car/laundry/airport/Christmas stocking dream, which was a pretty frustrating dream. I was glad to wake up. I passed a large blue jeep yesterday with a license plate that said "Bloo Ox," which made me think of Paul Bunyan and Babe, and I think that must have been where the gigantic ox in my dream came from. It wasn't blue, though.

dreams come true?

Speaking of dreaming of whales, this morning we saw a pod of killer whales from the ferry. So neat! I think I saw 5. I saw the first one before the captain announced them, I think. It was far away and just the dorsal fin was above water, and I wasn't sure if it was a whale, shark, or diving duck (since it kept disappearing). After the captain made his announcement, I moved over to the windows (amazing how many people did not do that!), and saw three whales traveling in tandem (although now I am not sure I know what "tandem" means), and then a single whale that was breaching quite a lot. They were moving. I took the 12:20 boat home this afternoon because I have some sort of bug, and I saw fish jumping, probably salmon. Maybe that's why the whales were there in the first place. It was an interesting day on the Sound, yesiree.

FYI, we do have sharks in Puget Sound. We have at least one species of small shark (dogfish) and probably more, and a few years ago, a UW professor discovered that there are sixgill sharks that live near the Sound floor. They are big, and I ride over them daily. Hmmm. And apparently, they have good, strong family values.

not much to say

It's Monday, and I had forgotten that I had a blog. So sad. Poor little neglected blog. I have nothing very interesting to say. I am trying to stick to the Weight Watchers thing, and my motivation goes up and down. I couldn't exercise this weekend because I have a sore leg muscle (the same muscle that marked the beginning of the end of my productive time at the gym, though there have been many since then), and I had bad cramps and all the things they entail.

I dream of cake and cookies and things like that. I dream that I am making them, or that they are just here and I will get to eat them. I never actually do eat them in my dreams, but I look forward to it. It's odd, because in real life I would not have had cake since I started at WW, and I may or may not have made cookies. Probably not, but maybe. And it's not as if I have sworn off them forever. I intend to have some at the right time, and other yummy things, too. And I have apple cranberry crisp in my fridge right now (and am not eating it right now, amazingly - we'll see how long that lasts!). When I first got my nut allergy, I dreamt about nuts. Mostly I dreamt about eating them and then freaking out, whereas the cake dreams are about the anticipation. And they are beautiful cakes, too. And I am looking forward to Mom's birthday cake, which was featured in last night's dream. I would never dream (ha!) of foregoing that cake. But I wonder if I am mourning cake and cookies. Actually, it's mostly cake. Cake that I get maybe two or three times a year - it hasn't been a big part of my diet. I should be mourning cookie dough, but I guess I haven't really given that up. Weird.

I also dreamed about upside-down six-gilled sharks and humpback whales and orcas and things like that, right outside the little dinghy I was riding in. Very exciting!

Mom and Dad are leaving for Italy tomorrow, so now I will be nervous until I hear that they are safely at home again. Someone said that worrying was the one kind of prayer he approved of. Who was that?

WW trepidations

So, I have now lost 7 pounds on Weight Watchers, and I am impressed, because despite trying for years on my own, I have never managed to do that. All sorts of exciting dreams of pretty clothes that actually look good on me are floating in my head. But I'm not there yet (and losing weight will not make my head, hands, or feet any smaller [the opposite, probably], nor even out other parts of my anatomy). And it seems like most people who lose weight with Weight Watchers proceed to gain it all back, plus much more. What's with that? I gather that is par for the dieting course. But then, we aren't supposed to diet, we are supposed to make lifestyle changes. So Weight Watchers must not be guiding their clients on that transition very well. They definitely seem to be on the diet path, rather than the lifestyle change path. (Of course, their solution would be that everyone should stick with them for life, and pay the not inconsequential monthly fee, too.) So I'm trying to make these changes lifestyle changes. I don't think I could eat like this for the rest of my life, because one must eat out and one must eat super rich and gooshy food occasionally. But I am hoping that I can keep that to special occasions, and limit the serving sizes when I do. So far, I have eaten out and done okay (I guess). I haven't had the gooshy food temptation yet, mostly because I do not have any in the house and haven't had time to think about making any. Also, since the WW thing is new (and costly), I am trying to make it work, so no gooshy food. But what happens with the cookie dough munchies strike? Okay, so I do have a plan for that. But what about Christmas and Thanksgiving, for pete's sake? Part of the joy of Christmas is Mom's birthday, with cake and steak - it's a perfect meal, really. And you can say that I should just have a small piece of cake, but now really, is that what I will want? No, I will want to indulge in it, which means having a large gooshy piece of cake and eat it all and want more (at inappropriate times, even if not immediately). Sigh. We'll be driving on Mom's birthday, anyway, but that just raises the question of when and where the cake will be. There must be cake.

And Halloween is Wednesday. Scary!

Ads that depend on poor math skills

The Weather Channel shows me a little weather report whenever I turn on my computer at home. It's nice and useful and funded by ads, such as the following one from Lowe's: "Get $70 off instantly. $5 off purchases of 1 gallon of Valspar paint or $20 off 5 gallons."

Can't I just make 5 individual purchases of 1 gallon each and save $25 off 5 gallons? To save $70, should I make 14 individual purchases of 1 gallon each to get that $70 off, or should I buy 15 gallons and save $60, and then buy two more to save $70? If I bought those 17 gallons individually, would I really save $85? Did anybody read this ad before it was published? Or does a gallon cost $5, or 5 for $20? That would be a nice savings.

short

Did you know: Teri Polo, an actress who has been on Northern Exposure and Sports Night, among other shows, dropped out of high school to become a model. She dropped modeling after a few years because she couldn't get a long-term contract because of her "height restriction." She was signed to Elite petite division. She is 5 feet, 8 inches tall.