Trail Note
As I ran up Wilson Street to Newtown early this morning, watching the sun rise and chase away the storm clouds, I decided to declare last week’s diet funk officially BUSTED. I feel really great. I ran two laps around Centennial Park Wednesday night and cut a minute or so off my time. (Albert pushed me to a faster pace than normal on the first lap, which made up for my very slow jog on the second.) Last night I went to boxing class and worked up such a sweat that I actually made the mat slippery. (Note to self: Find terrycloth sweatband.) Then this morning I had a great little forty minute jog up to Newtown and back. I’m eating well and tracking my Points again. I guess the lesson to be learned is that occasional lapses are totally okay, but that my body can’t handle prolonged periods of rich food and drink like it used to. I was seriously out of it for four days.

Hey Aunt Deb, aren’t we supposed to be 1/32 Native American or something? Which tribe are we? I hope it’s the Sioux. They rock. (*wondering how one donates money to a tribe*)

CouchCam is currently SvenCam, thanks to a mischievous Snook who didn’t want people watching him while he was home sick. So now you get to watch me make frightful faces as Sven’s revolving shiatsu hands make it all better…

At long last, I have the footage you’ve all been waiting to see: me and the ladies from the Knitter’s Guild rockin’ it on Sunrise. It’s a fairly big file (about 10MB) and you may have to download the whole thing before it plays. Yeah, we’re like postage-stamp-size and the sound isn’t perfectly synced, but you get the idea. You can see all four clips from when they cut to us, including the final one where I get to sit next to Kochie. A massive thank you to Snookums for the editing and encoding! Here it is…

Addendum: Ack! I just tested it and noticed that – on my iMac, at least – when I click the link I get a page of gobbledygook. Right-click and Save As, however, works fine. So do that if you have any trouble.

An Unpaid Endorsement
I have a new lunchtime addiction: Vermicelli‘s rice paper rolls. They just opened around the corner this week and they’re great! I’ve had the lunch special twice now, and my favorites would have to be the Sesame Beef rolls (they taste like bulgogi!) and the Portuguese Chicken salad. My only regret is they don’t have any nutrition information so I can accurately add up my Points. (I’m going to count them as slightly higher than the Sumo rolls, since they seem to have more meat.)

Dudes! Shhh… The new Rowan magazine is here! Some of the patterns are freakin’ weird though. For example, what, pray tell, is the knitted item in this picture? (It’s that stupid armband.) And I just feel really sorry for this poor male model. (He probably thought he was going to be all Blue Steel, but instead he’s more Derelicte.)

Need a laugh? Someone asks MetaFilter for the funniest jokes that don’t involve making fun of anyone. They tend towards puns and wordplay, but there are some real gems in there. I like the one with the big horse and the little horse. Oh, and the Snoop Dogg jokes. I am a sucker for Snoop Dogg jokes.

On a whim, I bought some KiwiBerries at the grocery store this morning and they’re currently ripening on my desk. Does anybody know how to eat these? Do I just chew them up, skin and all?

I have had a really busy non-busy weekend. (Busy in the sense that I felt like I was on the go constantly; non-busy in the sense that I feel like I got absolutely nothing accomplished.) Friday was St. Paddy’s Day so we headed over to the Papists’ for some beer and truly excellent Irish stew. (Seriously, Major, I want the recipe.) Saturday morning I was off to Newtown for my quarterly Depo injection, at which time I realized that my new Pommy doctor is actually Sir Bob Geldof. Sir Bob wants me to have a bone density scan to make sure I’m not losing calcium from the hormones. Whatever, Bob. I also met up with Miss Jane, who lent me Miss Fee’s knitting swift and ball winder. The Snook and I then had a lot of fun figuring it out so I could turn my five skeins of Harmony (color 801 Natural) into five beautiful center-pull balls. In the afternoon I was back to Newtown for SSK where I completed my gauge swatch for Rogue. Later that night I also experimented with different knitted hems. I like the twisted stitch hem the pattern recommends, but I quickly realized it wasn’t going to work with cardiganizing the pattern (since the hem lies on the bias rather than flat). So I tried a few widths of stocking stitch and then knitting my cast-on edge up into a tube, which seems to work well. I went with eight rows and I think it’s going to look nice. I also tried out one of the side cable panels just to make sure I was understanding the symbols right. Then I actually washed my swatches and laid them out to dry. (I know! Who does that?) Checking in the morning, I’m still a tiny bit tighter than the pattern suggests – I get more like 4.75 than 4.5 stitches per inch – but I’m not knitting it any looser. It’ll block to the right size. I did manage to go on a run Sunday, thank God, because Sunday night ended up being an orgy of consumption. One of Rodd’s cousins (well, kinda) got married and we attended the reception in Pyrmont. It was the biggest, funnest, most ostentatiously Italian gathering I’ve ever been to. We drank ridiculous amounts of wine and danced to “That’s Amore!” I ate everything – in a good way. I mean that I tried absolutely everything they put in front of me. Anchovies, olives, mussels, oysters (natural and kilpatrick), nonnata (which, since I now know what it is: *shudder*!), prawns, ocean trout, EVERYTHING. As I said to Ma Snook at one point, “Did you ever think that the girl who cried because you tricked her into eating yabbie paté would be eating this stuff?” (She maintains that there was no deception involved.)

So diet-wise, yeah… It’s not going to be a good week. But I just need to write it off and get back to work, right?