Tonight for dinner I had a really simple–made with rather cheap products–sandwich. It was a ham sandwich with american cheese, light mayo and lettuce on wheat bread. With it I ate (too many) yellow corn chips, cottage cheese with tabasco sauce in it, and a few pepperoncini peppers. It was really, really good! Sometimes you are just in the mood for a cooler, simpler dinner instead of a big plate of hot, meaty spaghetti or something. The calories for the sandwich were 290, the chips 200, the cottage & tabasco 100 & the peppers were zero. All in all, a 590 calorie dinner. Perhaps more calories than you should eat at dinner but if you’ve had a nice, low-calorie day (I didn’t have a horrible day but it wasn’t outstanding) and if you’re eating early enough, I suppose it’s not that bad. I just got back from the gym and plane to eat a big bowl of freshly popped pop corn with salt (healthy snack) while watching the new episode of LOST at 9pm.

So you saw 2 of my three meals. What did YOU eat today??

This morning I wanted to try to get to work a bit early so I didn’t have time to chug a cup of coffee before getting out the door. Instead, I got my favorite drink from Starbucks–a venti Caffe Americano (2 parts espresso, 1 part water) with a bit of fat free milk and 10 packets of Splenda. And please, do not say a word about how insane 10 packs of Splenda are. It’s not that sweet, its the way I like my coffee, I’ve ordered it this way for a long time, and I don’t care if it seems like a lot of Splenda.. zero calories is zero calories unless you pass the 1 cup mark! (Wow, that was a lot of italicizing to get my point across!) The drink is around 4o calories. It’s seriously the best!

They were out of the fat-free/low-calorie coffee cakes I like so I opted for 2 petit Vanilla scones. They are not good for you so I don’t recommend them! They are a whopping 170 calories per petit scone. But damn, they’re good Don’t really buy pastries from Starbucks anymore now that we have our kitchen remodeld so I decided to splurge today. They were, as expected, tasty. So the scones were 510 calories : ( but… filling and worth it : )

First, yes I eat most of my meals (when I am at home, at least) in front of my computer. I actually eat breakfast(sometimes) and lunch in front of my computer at work, too. What can I say, I really love my computer Breakfast today is one half cup of quick oats made with water, with two tablespoons Splenda and one teaspoon of fat free milk added. It’s my favorite breakfast. Is that boring? It’s 155 calories. Probably should have more calories in the morning so that I have more energy for working out, but nothing else satisfies my hunger (without making me feel bloated) the way oatmeal does. Sometimes I make a cup instead of a half, which is double the calories. This is also really easy to make. A couple of minutes to boil the water on the stove, one minute for the oats to cook and boom! Breakfast. Pretty inexpensive, too. A carton of oats is around $2.50 and can make, many, many bowls of oatmeal. Throwing in a piece of fruit (banana or peach) is also quite yummy. So, now that you know what I ate for breakfast… what did you eat?

1. Natalie Dee. She’s a really funny web comic. The picture above is one of her comics. NSFW, though, because there are often comics based on some adult themes Her husband, Drew, also has a comic site and they also do two together that are cool too. You can find the links to them from her page.
2. Pretty on the Outside. Art and comedy and creativity all mixed into one site.
3. The Oatmeal. This is a new one for me. Matt told me about it and I’ve only recently been going to it. I don’t love all the comics, but a lot of the ones making fun of Facebook, Myspace, how we use words wrong, and people that we all know… well, they’re awesome.
4. PassiveAgressiveNotes. Some suck but everyone once in a while you’ll get one that’s so good you’ll be in tears. Trust me!
5. Break. Lots of videos. Lots of people slipping. Scaring each other. Experiments gone wrong. It’s great.
6. Urban Dictionary… the place where innocent words turn nasty and/or extremely funny.

That’s all I can think of right now. I am trying to run out the door to go to the gym so haven’t got too, too much time to really rack my brain! But I will most definitely do updates as I find new, cool site Until then, click links and laugh your heart out, people.

I can never apologize enough for that extremely stupid post title. It’s beyond lame. But…

Today our order of computer things came! Yay for packages and new computer stuff!

First, I got speakers for my desktop. I’ve never had *real* speakers because I usually have headphones on but after a few times of trying to watch videos and having no sound and not knowing where my earphones were at (frustrating!), we decided it was time for me to speaker it up.

I also got a big mousepad. When Matt bought his mousepad a couple of years ago he asked me if I was interested in having a hugemongous mousepad and I said no. In fact, I think I made fun of it a lot. But now that I’ve been editing photos and photoshopping a lot more, I’ve found myself needing more mouse space. Don’t know the measurements off the top of my head but it’s big and fantastic. Maybe I’ll mousepath for a bit and see how much of the space I’m actually using? Eek, I’d hate to see that I didn’t need the big one after all!

Lastly, we got a webcam. We thought about getting two but really, since they’d both be connected to desktops, would that really be needed? I don’t think so! So the idea of having a webcam is, yes you guessed it, video blogs or video posts. I’m not too keen on the idea because I hate the way my voice sounds when I hear it played back (I have a man voice !) but I’m sure once I get to internetting I will cave in. Plus, under the category of video blog, I can do reviews (of what yet I am not sure) which may be something I am interested in for a different website. Anyone have any other ideas for good posts that would require the use of a webcam? I’d like to hear them.

In other non-package-receiving related news… I started working on my posts for theme week starting next Monday. I wanted to get a few done here and there so theme week doesn’t become overwhelming. With gym, work, time with Matt, and trying to get websites done, sometimes things can be overwhelming so I’m trying to lessen the stress of it. Matt seems to think my first pie chart attempt was awful so… maybe I’ll approach it differently? I was going to hand draw each chart, scan it in, then edit/add stuff to them in photoshop. But apparently these look stupid! So maybe I will just make them in Microsoft Word? Or maybe I’ll JUST draw and scan them in? Don’t know yet. There’s five days in that week (duh) so maybe I’ll try a little bit of everything? They’re bound to be hopelessly terrible in the art-field but I at least want them to be entertaining.

Okay, a few weeks ago I posted about wanting to do “theme” weeks on my blog. After some soul searching (haha, not soul searching but I wanted to say that) I finally decided on one month’s worth of themed weeks starting Monday March 8th 2010. Exciting! Not only will this be fun for readers (all 5 of you!) but it will also make it easier for me to post everyday. My goal was to get at least 3 posts on here per week but now with themed weeks, I can write some posts ahead of time OR just have a better idea of what I have to do. Sometimes the ideas take the longest! So here are the themes I decided on, and let me know if some of these are completely lame (like Eddie Kitsis said at the Lost panel: “we stay up all night writing this great script and it’s like in the middle of the night the shit fairy comes because we get to work the next day, read the script and go, hey, this is shit! It was good last night! The shit fairy must’ve come and shit all over the good script and left this!”).

Week 1: “What’s for Lunch? Week” This will be a daily post with a picture of what I ate and drank for lunch, the calories, whether it was good or not, and why I chose this. It sounds sort of self-indulgent to think anyone cares what I eat but I know I would be interested in reading this about someone else.

Week 2: “Something Material I Love! Week” I will post a picture everyday of a material possession that I love, why I love it, and the details on the item. I am going to try and make this less obvious things like my favorite DVD or my favorite skirt. I’m going to TRY and make it creative… so bear with me!

Week 3: “Things I’m Proud Of! Week” Pictures may be somewhat hard to do for each of these daily posts, but I will definitely try! These will be any sort of thing in my life that I am proud of.. Is it wrong I really have to brainstorm on this one?

Week 4: “Pie Charts Galore! Week” I will draw a pie chart relating to things in my life with a different topic each day. This one’s fun because it puts some of my horrible artistic ability out in the open AND you can learn some stupid junk about me

So how do those sound? Any additional suggestions on posts within these themes? Oh, also, the “week” consists of 5 days… no weekend posts I’ve got a few other blogs to post on so I need the weekend for that!

Hope everyone is having a terrific Tuesday

EDIT: The picture in this post is a Google Image of the BaconorBeerCan[dot]com website. Its a really funny (but stupid) site my husband showed me and I really didn’t know what type of picture should go with this post… And I know you all hate pictureless posts! Go there if you want. Only when you can use sound so probably NSFW. Enjoy!

Over the weekend, my husband and I took a trip to Beverly Hills/Los Angeles to attend the second night of Paleyfest at Saban Theatre to listen to the panel of ABC’s show LOST. (Why? Because I LOVE LOST and begged the crap out of him to take me!) This trip we didn’t get that many good photos because it was really rainy on the way there and we weren’t sure if we could take our camera into the panel (edit: the pictures in this post of the panel, theatre, and hotel room were taken with my Google Nexxus One.. it takes great pics! I just resized them for Facebook & Twitter). I did, however, get a few good shots on the way there (like the photo of a Almond Blossom orchard above) and some cool ones of the hotel room. Driving around in Beverly Hills was truly amazing. We went down all the famous streets where celebrities shop and let me just say WOW. Everyone is driving a Mercedes or better. I mean, the best cars around here are the worst cars around there! I’d have to say we saw close to 15 Bentley’s in one day! It was amazing. And we drove around the residential areas… the houses were absolutely amazing! Beyond my wildest dreams! All  in all, the trip a lot of fun I just wish we would’ve brought our SLR camera to the panel So here are some high lights/low lights of the trip:

On the drive there, the conditions were really crappy. Some spots were pouring rain, others were not raining but lots of stop and go traffic. Regardless of the traffic or weather, there are always bad drivers. We saw so many people fly past us in the worst conditions and we just looked at each other and said “Seriously?”  So, naturally, we were bound to see an accident. I tried to take my camera out as fast as I could to snap up this car, because it was pretty messed up. I don’t think any one was hurt, as there were no ambulances to be seen. But that just goes to show you… drive slow and be careful or else! We saw another accident on the way home and the car was completely upside down. I think our whole time there we saw 3 or 4? That’s a lot

My shout out to my blog from the hotel stationary! We stayed at (if you can’t read it in the picture) Hotel Palomar on Wilshire Blvd. It was the least expensive/nicest (best deal) on Wilshire and it was really nice! The hotel was ultra modern with a funky throw back feel (i.e. weird wood paneling around the all-chocolate colored room doors.. very Shining-esque). We would definitely stay there again. The bathroom had a really cool over-the-counter stand alone sink with a big ornate mirror, the bed had an amazing wall-covering headboard and the bed had sweet damask pillows. We had a 45″ flatscreen TV and a cool lounge chair next to the window (which had a decent view). Granted, the room wasn’t the big and we didn’t stay long enough to try out any of the amenities, it was still a good stay. I had a really crappy headache after Paleyfest, so much so that we were willing to pay $5 to take the Tylenol in the hotel room but when I opened the box? No Tylenol. So Matt went to the desk and asked and they promised to bring me some up, no charge. They never came. That was the only downside. Parking was $33 a night but we parked down the street in front of some condos for free So all in all, I would not only stay there again but I would also recommend it!

Because we didn’t bring the SLR to Paleyfest–as you can see I’m pretty upset about–we came back to the theatre the next day to snap some photos of the sign board. The theatre (you can see pictures of the inside of it online) was truly amazing. It was so ornate and beautiful! I know “LOST” is over but I may have to go back for another show–Dexter, The Office, maybe?–and take pictures of the theatre because it was just that cool. We got to the panel at 6:00pm–actually maybe a pinch earlier–and there was a line about 400 feet long. 400 feet! When we were walking to the back of the line I kept thinking “How are all of these people going to fit?” but somehow they did. And even though we were in line for 30 minutes, the line moved really, really fast for a line of that size! Every 2-4 minutes the line moved up around 5 to 6 feet so it wasn’t that bad. I’ve never seen so many Dharma jumpsuits and LOST shirts in my life Anyway, our seats were in the mezzanine–and they were great. I mean, if I could do it over again I would be paying attention to the day the tickets come on sale and I would buy Orchestra seats before they were sold out.. because once they’re sold and you have to buy them from places like StubHub.com, the price nearly triples (that’s what we did)! But if you buy orchestra seats, they’re normally only $60-$100 and it’s totally worth it! At the end of the panel all of the people sitting in the orchestra seats got to go to the stage and get autographs! And while Matthew Fox (and many of the big stars from the show) were not there, Terry O’Quinn and Michael Emerson WERE there and they were beyond amazing! I would’ve killed for an O’Quinn autograph! But now I know for next time! Now for more about the actual panel…

The panelists were: Terry O’Quinn (John Locke), Michael Emerson (Ben Linus), Nestor Carbonell (Richard), Zuleikha Robinson (Ilana), Elizabeth Sarnoff, Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Jack Bender, Edward Kitsis, and Adam Horowitz. The moderator was comedian Paul Scheer (you might know him from MTV’s Human Giant with Aziz Ansari, or Funny or Die Presents) and everyone was really great. They opened with a sneak-peek of next week’s episode (short but really great scene of Sayid and Miles… Miles telling Sayid that he actually is dead and that he is no longer himself!) and went straight to the panel. People went ABSOLUTELY CRAZY when Emmy winner Michael Emerson came out. Then Emmy winner Terry O’Quinn came out and they went even more crazy! It was great to see that kind of love for the LOST characters who aren’t Josh Holloway and Matthew Fox! It was super interesting to hear about the writing process, how they decide what stays in an episode and what gets cut, and what they do when someone wants off the show. Listening to the writers was most interesting than seeing the actors! But here’s a jist from what was discussed: in the flash-sideways we learn that Jack is married and has a son… his wife in these flashes are someone we have already met on the show (could very well be his ex wife), Charlie is coming back, they are trying to work in a way for grown-up Walt (the actor is 17 years old now) to come back, we will learn the significance of Libby to Hurley, Rose and Bernard may not get revisited much more in the name of time, the love triangle between Jack-Kate-Sawyer will finally come to a head (yes!), and we will find out who the smoke monster was pre-Locke at the last episode. Everything will–they promised–come full circle! If I remember anything secret or interesting I will update the post. For now, that’s all

All in all it was a great trip but, like always, I am very glad to get home. While on our 6 hour car ride (yes, 6 hours!) Matt and I discussed a lot of our internetting (fake word but love it) plans and goals and I come back home feeling renewed and dedicated to making my full-time living from websites.. maybe one day so I can buy an amazing house in Beverly Hills? Hmm. All in all the trip was great. Wouldn’t do much different. Am REALLY looking forward to tomorrow night’s episode of LOST. But since last week was a Jack episode.. I may not get to see him But now that I’ve seen O’Quinn in real life, my interest in him has greatly risen! Long live Locke!

On an episode of Sex and the City, Aidan moves in with Carrie and they temporarily share one small apartment while waiting for the one next door to open up. Aidan asks Carrie to clean out her closet to make room for his stuff and she reluctantly agrees. A fight breaks out and it goes from something small to a main issue as fights usually do. And, in keeping with the nature of a real relationship, Carrie leaves (storms out, actually) to cool down. When she comes home to apologize, Aidan is still clearly angry. When she sees how he is behaving, she forgets her apology and is renewed with a whole new anger. Taking a day (or two!) to think about the arugment and their behaviors, they both realize how stupid the fighting was and jointly apologize.

I love this episode (the start of the fight is the quote that titles this post) because the situation is so universal to relationships. I find that in my own relationship it often takes a day or so to realize how stupid an argument is and how important the other things are.

So this leads me to my question: is fighting actually a beneficial tool in relationships? If we didn’t fight we might bottle it up and explode… and explosions are typically (but not always) impossible to make right. Whereas arguments (while not enjoyable) can sometimes lead us to see the other person’s opinion and help us find a happy medium in the situation. And everyone knows the best part of a fight is the first day or two after you make up… you are both so nice So would you rather have a relationship where you never fight… but when you do its a huge explosion that could possible perfect or ruin your relationship… OR… have one where you have maybe one or two fights every couple of months.. and they are agonizing but better things?

I know which I am… the second of the two. But that doesn’t mean that’s the right choice. Although I have to admit I think the second one is ultimately healthier.

Carrie and Aidan are the second choice as well and they end up breaking up. The man she marries ends up being someone who she has the first type of relationship with so… who knows, maybe they both work?

2/16 Before Work...

I think my birthday gift this year will be some plastic surgery.

So I am trying to buckle down these next few months and really kick my own butt as far as slimming down so that I am where I want to be come surgery time.

Today there are a box of huge, dense, rich, thick cookies the size of your palm in the kitchen at work. I said no to them. I need to keep up my will power if I’m going to look great come May.

If I can fight temptation here, I have to tell myself at home in the evenings it would be stupid to throw it away on something less delightful than a cookie.. and if I can say no to a cookie I can say no to anything

I will make myself feel happy in other ways. New clothes, maybe? Shopping usually does the trick.

But a birthday gift to myself would be getting where I ideally want to be just in time for my surgery. Hoping to get the surgery scheduled for my birthday, May 7th. It’s a Friday. Doable? Probably. Should schedule my consultation sometime soon then, huh?