Dave's Thoughts of the Day: June 14th

Hidee Ho, and a good Friday to you all!

My face is almost all the way back to normal.  Most of the week, I struggled with some very swollen eyelids and a sore face.   Finally, as noted, my buddy pointed me to some rest and "heat compression" on my eye sockets.  Worked like a charm.  I didn't do it all the time, but the application was frequent.

Now, my eye lids no longer hurt or feel sore when I touch them and my eyes look back to normal.  The only thing that's weird is that my face is moulting.   If that makes any sense... I'm moulting!   Imagine if you have to take a chap stick and put it on your whole head.   That's me.   My entire face is peeling after it restored moisture to my formerly dry skin.  That took a pile of water and some good rest, along with the heat compression to the eyes.

Given the recent health of my eye sockets, I had to spend a lot of the last two days without my glasses on.  Bear with me if this yields some typos in today's blog entry.

The sports scene is accounted for itself.  Lots of great sports this weekend, so I won't bore you with the details. 

Who is Jesse Williams and why do I care what he's doing with his Samsung Galaxy S4?

I and my colleagues on the internets have been introduced to a Phillies fan who lives in the Bay Area.  I don't know what to make of this.  ...she roots for the *Phillies.*

I *love* Peter Gabriel's work.    His contributions to Genesis, all his self titled albums with his warped photographs for the cover, So, and whatever I missed.  He's tremendous.  

Phil Mickleson shot a 67 in his first round in the U.S. Open yesterday.  This is a tremendous accomplishment, and I'm really surprised he could do so well after his long flight.  Great work by Phil.  Now to see how he blows it during the weekend and falls out of contention, hee hee, I can't wait!

Is that wrong?  Is that mean?   I really enjoy watching Phil Mickleson make bonehead shots after great shots to balance out his work in such wild ways.  Why can't he shoot more consistently?  That's what people will say, but I say let him shoot his way.   He's full of spectacular moments... spectacular wins, and spectacular FAILS too.   Let's enjoy Phil for who he is.  It's obvious Phil himself is enjoying who he is and enjoying life.

People would get so mad at Phil... oh he's not intense enough, why isn't he more focused blah blah.  He wins well enough to earn a good living and he's comfortable with himself.  Why's that so bad?  We can't all be the Type-A personality.

Yesterday I picked up a Godmother sandwich from Bay Cities.  You know, they can really intimidate you with that parking lot which fills up so easily.  Most people running through there would give up... "Oh look how busy it is, they don't even have a parking space!  It's too crowded, let's go home."

Not me... I know how it works there.  People go right in and out of Bay Cities over in Santa Monica.  I knew a spot would open up if I drove around and around the block enough times.  After about five minutes, the spot was open and I went right in to park.  Wasn't so bad.

Ordering the sandwich looked daunting too -- it wasn't.  They were prepared for the big rush of traffic today.  I took a number and got called within a 5 minute window.   So the guy asks what I want this time, in a very busy crowd in there, and I asked for the large Godmother with hot peppers.  Exceedingly common order, so much so that the sandwich crew was a step ahead.

They told me that there's a ready-made one in the basket in front of me.   He was right, so I took one and checked out.   They only do these ready made ones, I learned, when there's a huge crowd.  I have mixed feelings about this.

I'll explain.  I took the Godmother home and ate it in short order, but the whole time I thought "this sandwich is not as cold as it should be... it must have been sitting out there for 20 minutes."

Given the cold nature of the sandwich, I was disappointed to have some room temperature ingredients in effect.  Generally I wouldn't be this picky but the texture of the sandwich can be affected.  When the sandwich is freshly prepared, it's cold and everything comes together.   Here, some of the meats and cheeses were coming apart, like an ice cream sandwich that melted a tad in the sun.  The sandwich itself was still amazing, but on the pallette it felt a little dissheveled.

It's fine, but not optimal.   Not to mention, it doesn't get crowded like that all the time, so I'll have to remember to go to Bay Cities when it's less crowded next time, but I really appreciate the effort by them to give people their sandwiches faster.

This feels like a real donut day, doncha think?   Friday, Fathers Day Weekend, offices, donuts.   Boom, good train of thought.  I hope to act on this my friends.

If I may toot my own horn for a moment, I believe I did a great job making healthy eating choices this week.   Yesterday I ate a sandwich with lettuce, tomato, cheese, and some italian cold cuts.  All pretty good ingredients with fewer preservatives.  It was all on a nice ciabatta like roll.  The day before I had salmon for dinner.  Really fresh, really good.   Grilled wonderfully.   The day before that I had some very thin pizza and a little dessert.  Last night, I had a bowl of chicken chipotle soup with potatoes and beans, and the chicken, courtesy of Campbell's.

No nuggets... no greasy burgers... no tacos.   Just well organized natural food in moderate portions for the most part.  Ah!  I also partook in a few english muffins.  

You know one thing you might not know?  I don't eat candy very much.  Most of the time it's forced upon me via gifts.  For instance, a halloween party or christmas, I get little bags with pencils, pens, and a couple pieces of candy.  Sometimes I'll get a whole box of chocolates.   I have extremely rarely bought candy on my own.  I get skittles and tic tacs sometimes.  Once in a while, like once a season if that, I buy a snickers bar.   Other than that, any candy I get I usually just eat sporadically.

I got a little box of five chocolate pieces for Valentines Day.  I am only NOW eating the pieces from the box which I opened on Saturday.  I eat one piece a day, and I might have skipped a day.  There's only one piece left.  This is considered aggressive candy eating behavior.

Usually I just let the candy sit in the cupboard and I forget all about it.  I'm sad to say that frequently I discover candy that's 2-3 years old and I'm forced to trash it.

People I know, especially relatives who are obese, like a whole other body worth of body fat on them, make me curious.  How do people like they get so fat?   I came up with some theories.

One, candy.  They eat tons and tons of candy.  I bet the frequency of candy eating on their end must be 2-3 times a week, maybe more.   A bag of M&M's, a candy bar, some licorice or chocolate, and that thing.

Two, an inordinate amount of meals.   I can relate to this practice from my own experience.  I used to just eat a meal any time I felt like it... prepare a sandwich or a mound of snacks, munch, then after a while, go make another meal.    Once I did, I started to balloon way out of control.  This was ten years ago.  My family was worried about me!  I had to encumber an extremely strict diet... I remember getting addicted to diet sodas back then.  It was really tough, but it saved me.  Anyway, leading up to that epiphany, I was having 5-7 meals a day.  It was rough.   Now as part of this, the others who I know that happen to be this fat were not only eating this many meals, but they were loading up the truck like moving day.  Those plates were loaded!

It takes a lot of mental ruminations to realize that you can get the same satisfaction from one round of food as from three rounds of the same food if you *just* give it time.  The biggest problem with weight loss with most people is patience.  You *need* the patience to get to better health.   Best example of this paradigm is popcorn.   It only SEEMS like you need the large popcorn to get the most out of popcorn, but I would bet you 9 times out of 10, most people with the small popcorn would be too lazy to go back to the counter to order more pocorn. 

I tend to play this half way and get the medium.  Eat some of it, then save the rest for later.  The sticking point is value per dollar.  There's usually a buck difference between the small popcorn and a large popcorn.  This is a genuine conundrum!   Why would I not extend the value of my dollar to get more popcorn?   Valid point!   However, if you're at the theater alone, the extra 50 cents is not worth destroying your metabolism.   Now, that's a hard conclusion to reach, but those who make it will go far, as the Oompa Lompas say.

Oompa Loompas, though, were a bunch of sanctimonious jokers.   They keep stressing good diet and health and morals and look at *them.*  Devious little fat oranged faced goobers who eat candy for a living!

How can we entrust the advice of persons who can't even exert proper self control at a chocolate factory, my friends?   I take their doompaty doo advice with a grain of salt.

Did it ever blow your mind, when you were a kid, that salt would be used to make sweet confections?  Cookies for instance... it combines, like, Vanilla, flour, sugar, AND salt.  Whoah... mind blowing.

Tortillas...   I'd be surprised if anyone was definitive about the tortillas they liked.   You can't, in my view, use the same ones for everything.    Carne Asada tacos are fine with flour tortillas but they are perfect with corn tortillas.  Enchiladas simply *can't* be made with flour tortillas.  They would fall apart.   On the other hand, fajitas make no sense at all with corn tortillas.  It just depends on the situation.

You ever have a party and get a box of cookies, or a bag of tortilla chips for the party, and you're left with over half the box or bag?   Frustrating situation because you spend the rest of the week trying to finish the box, but you can only eat one cookie at a time, or a few chips at a time.  Before you know it, you're still stuck with leftovers, the food is stale, and you're sick of cookies.

I don't drink on a daily basis, but the reason for not drinking more has less to do with alcohol and a whole lot more to do with calories.  Each of those beers and cocktails is a good 300 calories!   I cannot afford to put extra calories like that into my system.   So, whenever I can, I try to avoid it.

Social situations, vacations, weekends, I'm all in, but during the week I keep it dry.

Even if I were to get donuts, as I suggested in this space, I'd commit myself to one donut, maybe two.  Not more than that.    A true fatty might try to stuff the envelope box and go after a half dozen.     How many donuts do you think Mike Francesa can eat in one sitting?  I'll estimate six. 

That's all from here, enjoy your Father's day weekend, and salute your pop!