During today’s six week visit to the surgeon’s office, doc said I can begin lifting weights again. Neglected 10 lb. body bar says, “About frigging time.”
Go Waltzing To the Zoo
Category Archives: Your Groove I Do Deeply Dig
My Spheres Are In Commotion
I can’t believe I heard about Dance Your Ph.D. today. It’s been going on for years! Be careful, some of this science is a little loud.
Look at this brilliance!
I don’t understand this at all, but I love unitards and enjoy a good hat.
On a personal note, this is as good an explanation of arthritis and joint replacement as you will find anywhere.
The Lemon Flower Is Sweet
Yesterday, we took the train to New York to meet with an orthopedic surgeon. The surgeon gets my jokes, which is way dreamy, but the trip was exhausting, so we spent this afternoon riding bikes around Sandy Hook, minutes ahead of splashy-bangy weather. And there were clams.
No Walls Only the Bridge
On a clear day, you can see goddamn Coney Island.
The tourists are gone, which means tourists like us arrived at Sandy Hook this weekend. I’ve been waiting for this weekend since it turned cold last winter. Pete and I drove down to the park, rode like Jehu to this snack bar/rest stop/unprotected beach and sat on the roof for small snacks and lots of fluids. I was actually as happy as I have ever been in my entire life. If someone calls you on the phone and says, “For $10,000, Jed, do cream cheese, dried cherries and fresh basil make a good sandwich?” Well then. You say yes.
Where the Chess Players Used To Sell
I am pay-attentiony, so I am aware of stuff and shit, as Dad used to say.
Pete and I grew up in the same town, playing in the same woods, stomping in the same creeks and, when our town finally got a grocery store, walking up and down those same store aisles with our moms. That ShopRite left town and was replaced by another grocery store, which changed companies and names several times and recently moved to another building in the same mall for more, cleaner space. We know this Stop & Shop inside-out and backwards, so we were both perturbed when about a month ago, we found it in an uproar as the staff rearranged it. Last weekend, the stupid partitions, bread racks and crooked handwritten signs were gone, so the current arrangement has a look of permanence. It is our habit to walk in the front door, stop at the Hot Wheels display – because Hot Wheels! – and head right for the natural foods aisle against the left wall. We turned the corner and skidded to a rough stop.
At last, my camera phone captures both angst and ennui. Pulitzer, please!
Ta darling, you’re saying, just because spokesmodel Andrew Zimmern says don’t make it so. Perhaps the perimeter is optional, not optimal. Oh yeah?
Picture your favorite grocery store. Chances are the fresh produce section, the meat and seafood departments, and the dairy case are all located around the perimeter of the store. This is where you should concentrate most of your shopping time. Why? Fresh foods are generally healthier than the ready-to-eat foods found in the middle aisles. This helps you better control the fat and sodium in your diet.
Staid Reader’s Digest:
Shop the perimeter of the store. That’s where all the fresh foods are. The less you find yourself in the central aisles of the grocery store, the healthier your shopping trip will be. Make it a habit — work the perimeter of the store for the bulk of your groceries, then dip into the aisles for staples that you know you need.
Doggone, even WebMD:
Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot. “There are exceptions – honey – but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren’t food,” [Michael] Pollan says.
These helpful people agreed strongly enough to make YouTube videos about this topic. Not food, and certainly not natural food, but it is a lie and a very cynical manipulation, isn’t it? Anguished cries of Mommy, HoHos are health food! must rend the air a hundred times a day.
At this point, I was looking for store security but they were probably on their phones, too. In grocery stores, everyone is. Possibly with the Mayo Clinic.
Crossposted to Brilliant@Breakfast.
Some People Are In Charge Of Bombs
What’s clucking up at the Henhouse?
Fox News Says Gabby Douglas’ Leotard, Other US Olympic Uniforms Not Patriotic Enough
Bless us, a grown man is talking smack about a teenage girl, so it’s got to be about fashion. He must be very butch. So says the assistant principal:
[David] Webb noted that gymnasts “adjust their uniforms within boundaries sometimes,” but he still had an issue with the “anti-American feeling.”
…
“If you want to be in the Olympics, you’re playing for your country,” said Webb. “The Chinese are wearing red predominantly as that’s their national color, if you will, so why not us with the red, white and blue? There’s a meaning behind the red, white and blue that has been lost.”
Gymnasts sometimes push up their long sleeves and judges sometimes penalize for it. The rules are very strict. Last night, Gabby Douglass was chewing gum in the stands and I was as shocked as if I’d seen her eating actual food.
Has the gold medal. And detention, apparently.
Believe it or not, Webb, who should be arguing about hall passes in the Mr. Blackwell Middle School in Nowhere, Pennsyltucky, is in a state of high dudgeon over little pink leotards. I mulled over the pink uniforms too, but I wondered how the designers got away with it. The elite athlete of questionable patriotic fervor is a teenage girl; in the general population, teenage girls carry pink phones in their pink purses and wear sweats with the word PINK plastered on their tiny teeny butts. Teenage girly-girls wear pink and our women’s gymnastics team is composed entirely of teenage girls whose femininity is seriously and publicly policed by the US Gymnastics Federation and the Olympic authorities. Some committee okayed these uniforms made by the blistered hands of tiny Chinese slave-children. Just kidding. I’m sure they were slave-adults.
Not on the team but still pretty, which counts bigtime in gymnastics.
Also: it never crossed my mind that Alicia Sacramone might have been the intended wearer of the fuschia leotard. No. Not at all. No. She looks great in fuschia.
Assistant Principal Webb again:
‘What’s wrong with showing pride?” Webb asked. “What we’re seeing is this kind of soft anti-American feeling that Americans can’t show our exceptionalism. Frankly, if they are offended about our showing our exceptionalism then they have that right and I don’t care. And neither do most Americans.”
Gymnastics has rules against showing your exceptionalism. Or your cootchy. Don’t do that. It’s a big deduction.
What is this frustrated jerkwad talking about, anyway? Four other girls were dressed the same unpatriotic way. He doesn’t mention them. Maybe he wanted Gabby Douglass to roll a tank down the vaulting runway and end every routine with a military salute? This is stupid and inappropriate and in keeping with Mouthbreather-Americans’ fetishization of all things military and flaggy. Yes, this is an international event, but the point of the Olympics is peaceful competition between nations. That point is lost on a lot of people. So what the fuck is this guy doing in turning one teenage girl’s outfit into a nightmare of thwarted hypernationalism? And doesn’t it sound a lot like what the Henhouse cluckers say about President Obama?
If the Lights Keep Flashing
No black athlete, male or female, has ever won the All-Around gold at the Olympics.
Drinking Heavy Water From A Stone
Daria: We’re leaving for Geneva tomorrow on Sandro’s birthday. Tonight, we’re having his favorite pizza and cake. Tomorrow, there’ll be leftover pizza and cake. He’ll have guilt-cake every day we’re gone.
Tata: So when you get home, he’ll be sullen and fat. And you’re just as bad a mommy as when I left for Ecuador on Miss Sasha’s birthday!
Daria: Hooray! I’m only the World’s Second Worst Mommy since you did it first!
Tata: Hooray! When is your flight?
Daria: We arrive in Geneva on Saturday after two nights in London.
Tata: You’re going to London tomorrow? Are you out of your mind?
Daria: Yeah, Laura said that yesterday. You guys are going to London during the Olympics? We looked at each other and said, Hunh.
Tata: You. Did not know. About the Olympics.
Daria: Yep, that’s what happens when you don’t watch TV.
Tata: If Dad were still alive he’d die laughing.
Here But I’m Not Here
During this morning’s off-road bike ride, Pete came to a sudden stop and I skidded right into his back wheel. On my hands and knees in the gravel, I said, “Pretend I meant to do that. Also: my rear brake is shot.” Thus we spent part of our afternoon in the bike shop.
You Follow You Wherever You
Pete and I went out for a rather long bike ride through Johnson Park, over the Lynch Bridge, around Bucchleuch Park, down College Avenue and along the river to the boat house, where we ate empanadas that tasted like garlicky sunlight.
Poor Impulse Control 