Last Splash

The gene pool could use a little Chlorine.

Oh Whitney...

I was pleasantly surprised to find The Bodyguard on during my late-night, I have tomorrow off work, viewing party. I totally haven't seen it since, like, the 10th grade. Remind me again why we thought The Bodyguard, Clueless, and Speed were movies that warranted watching once a week? In any case...I was sad to discover that, yes, Whitney Houston was truly amazing at everything she did, which proves the lesson once and for all to us: stay away from crack. See what it does to you? She was so real and pure and talented, and now she's...well...have you ever seen the Mad TV video spoof of "whitney" and "mariah" singing "I'm not insane"? I highly recommend it. If only she had stayed with Kevin Costner...she wouldn't be crazy, and he wouldn't have married that "I don't have a real career so I'll call myself a handbag designer" blonde chick.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 18:03 | link | comments (2) |
meow, film guide

What's on my mind?

So, Hugh Grant has the new movie coming out, American Dreamz. I LOVE Hugh Grant movies. Not Hugh Grant, just the movies he makes. I know he plays basically the same character in each one, whether he's a slacker or the Prime Minister, but the movies themselves (particularly About a Boy and Love, Actually) are fantastic! And I can stomach him much easier without Elizabeth Hurley, who still hasn't made any movies that people might actually want to go see for any reason other than her breasts. Anyway, back to my point. I may be late on the draw with this, but if you've seen the previews it's got something to do with American Idol and the President. Now, long ago sometime during the Bush vs Kerry election in the early days, I was really struggling. The lesser of two evils thing was really getting to me, and I couldn't understand how this bi-partisan system failed to produce any candidate with the stamina, attitude, reserve, and qualification to actually run this country. And then it dawned on me. American President. We were sitting around one night talking about how we wish there were more "normal Joes" running for office, and that we would never get anything done as long as we continued to support candidates that had spent their entire lives in politics, therefore being corrupted by association. So, hello: we elect our President through reality TV. Anyone who wants to be President has to "audition" and then go through rigorous debates to get down to the top 12, and each week they have to do some kind of task, like balance a city council's budget or spend a day doing charity work, and then we vote for our favorite each week until we have one President standing. The runner up can be the VP. It's Brilliant, I tell you. More people vote, we get a normal person that may actually listen to more than just his advisors, and after surviving American President, he'll have some balls (unlike aforementioned presidential candidate).

posted by: Cannonball14 at 14:43 | link | comments (3) |
political bullshit, film guide

So, I've discovered what my new favorite thing in the world it...registering for a wedding. Come one, it's like shopping except I don't have to spend any money. It sounds totally obnoxious of me, but I'm getting sucked into it like it's some kind of underground world that only "brides and grooms to be" get invited to party at. And I HATE being a bride to be on most days. Any time another newly engaged bride meets me, I want to run away to keep from getting sucked into all the fake "are you getting married here in town" questions that are really just meant to be like "oh, Caffe' Luna, that's a nice place for a reception, we're having ours at the Fearrington House...ha ha ha...mine is a FOUR star restaurant" bullshit. They act like we're supposed to be all bonded for life now because we're in that "special time" in our lives. I've gotten about, um, 3 1/2 things done, bought a new car, had a few breakdowns about buying a wedding dress, started a diet, and besides that and finding bridesmaids dresses for incredibly cheap, my wedding planning is at exactly the same place it was 2 1/2 months ago. I don't have a DJ or a cake or invitations or flowers...and I really don't know where the money is going to come from to pay for those things other than credit cards...I start most conversations with my fiance' or bridesmaids with "because I'm cheap, we're going to just do this..." and then explain about ordering flowers online to make bouquets, only having candles for centerpieces, and buying ourselves a nice shiny new video camera to record the wedding ceremony, because we'll be making a future investment and be able to take it on our honeymoon and have it when babies come out, etc...instead of paying the same amount for some guy in a tux to eat my reception food and set our wedding DVD to some cheesy Celine Dion music.

But I digress so...back to the registry...I feel like I could decorate the new house we won't be buying for a year with my registry...dishes, table linens (but not tablecloths because we don't know what size...) centepiece bowls, towels, patio furniture, rugs...the list is endless. It's so exciting. Dishes and barware especially. Our entire collection of glassware consists of NCSU plastic cups we stole from games and the free wine glasses you get when you go to a tasting. I have one nice set of traditional pint glasses that will stay, and I might keep my multi colored plastic IKEA glasses because sometimes you just need that, but the rest of that shit is gone! And, you know that one pattern of Pfaltzgraff that EVERYBODY YOU'VE EVER KNOWN has owned? You know the one, kind of dark-cream-oatmeal colored with the brown fleur-de-lis like thingy in the middle? Well, we have a hodgepodge of 2 sets of those...his parents before the divorce and my grandmothers (that belonged to an older cousin before me). Can I tell you how glad I will be to see those go? Whew...I cannot wait! So far, we've totally agreed on everything except flatware. Oh well, you can't win them all! I'm starting to wish we could register for interior paint and curtains and faucet fixtures, but that's going a little overboard. And all of this from a girl that didn't know if she wanted to register at all because we already had enough cookware!

posted by: Cannonball14 at 16:23 | link | comments (7) |
bridezilla

Just a quick rant about the basketball tournament. Um, Bullshit?! This is the worst bracket I can remember in years...rankings make no sense, the Big East has 8 teams in, the ACC has 4 (along with the Missouri Valley...very even conferences, right). I know the Big East teams are deserving, but you are telling me that you play in a conference with the Number 1 team most of the year that also carried an average of 4-5 teams in the top 25 all season, and a team like Florida St can't make it in (who recorded one of Duke's 3 losses)? Not just that...but so much value is placed on end-of-season play that NC State is a 10 seed, at 21-9, and Indiana is a 6 seed at 18-11? I'll tell you what all that is about: Gonzaga, the Division I Darlings, needed an easy 6 seed in their bracket, and Littlepage apparently thought we just wouldn't notice. George Washington really got shat on as well..they should have been a 4 or 5 seed team. Now they have to play Duke in the 2cd round. I really want to pick GW...every instint I have tells me to do it, because I know Duke can choke if Williams gets into foul trouble and Redick isn't 'on', but they also just won the ACC championship, and the game will be in Greensboro...advantage, Duke. Can I tell you how happy I was that Carolina got a 3 seed, and didn't get the close-to-home DC pod? I'm so excited and pissed I can't breathe! I filled out one of my brackets last night...I'll probably do a couple more today in some online games...it's just fun stuff. March Madness oh my...and when that's over it'll be time for Hockey playoffs...bought our half of the Rounds 1 and 2 strips yesterday...yippeeeeee.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 14:04 | link | comments (5) |
the sports report

Maybe I AM a Libertarian?

I've gotten quite good and enjoy "menu-planning" on my weekdays off. It's hard to go to the grocery store with J because, honestly, we love food, and the two of us together is a deadly combination. (We had to invoke the Mulligan rule...you know, stick to the list except you can each add one non-list item, and only one.) Anyway, I love having weekdays off, and I love doing my grocery shopping on a non-busy workday in the afternoon, so I sat down this morning to plan our menu until the next grocery trip I take. I got onto a website I heard about through some other Weight Watcher's people a couple of years ago, called "Dottie's Wight Loss Zone" (dwlz.com for anyone looking). It has some good recipes, and also point values for a lot of restaurants if you're into that and you can survive a kooky lady's crazy website...lots of links, but that's why it's free instead of Weight Watchers where you have to subscribe to read the recipes.

Anyway, I clicked on this link about restaurants disclosing their nutritional values, and THIS is what I found:

    To:  U.S. Congress

    The people who have signed this petition demand that restaurants should be required to provide nutritional information to customers.

    Stricter regulation by Congress is necessary to push this issue. Americans are getting fatter and fatter everyday. By forcing restaurants to     provide     their nutritional information, health-concious citizens can make better choices in their diets. This is not just a vanity issue; it is a health issue. Obesity is killing countless Americans. Because not all restaurants will volunteer their nutritional information for consumers, they must be forced to protect the health and well-being of their customers.

Please sign this petition in order to demand legislation to help curb the obesity problem.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

 

 

Now, I'm all for restaurants letting me know the nutritional value (well, with the exception of a few places like Maggiano's or The Cheesecake Factory where I'm really not going to pay attention to them) because it's hard to go out with friends and not know if something has "hidden calories" or is cooked in butter even if it doesn't clearly state that on the menu.

But I am VEHEMENTLY AGAINST the Government forcing anyone to do anything, unless it is preventing you from harming someone else. And someone may argue that restaurants are hurting Americans and contributing to the Obesity problem, but honestly, as an overweight person, I can tell you that no restaurant made me get fat. I don't go to a restaurant and hear the waiter saying "are you sure you want the salad? you don't want the deep fried philly cheesteak with high sodium au jus?" (Except this one little European guy who used to work at the Subway in the food court...I would order salads with no cheese and just vinaigrette dressings and he would sprinkle Parmesan when I wasn't looking...)

Just the line "they must be forced to protect the health and well-being of their customers" makes me want to vomit. Honestly, are we a society of people who no longer believe WE have power over what actions we take? Do we have to rely on others to even make our FOOD decisions for us? Anyone who has read my blog knows that I am definitely not a Socialist...I think it's one step from Communism, and people who actually would sign this petition and send it to their Congressmen confirm that theory. How about this for a bright idea? How about calling the customer service department of each restaurant you dine in and asking them to post their nutritional info on a website. If they started getting 10 calls a day, eventually they would have to satisfy their customers, but it's not their job to watch out for your weight, and it's certainly not up to our already overburdened-with-ridiculous-agendas-and-catering-to-the-lobbyists government to waste my tax money to set up a "task force" to force restaurant owners into nutritional compliance (what would Paula Dean do? shut down the infamous Lady and Sons?). Next you'll be asking Congress to make restaurants adhere to what they feel is a fair price for the food.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 16:59 | link | comments (1) |
meow, political bullshit

Self-confidance is a crazy beast. I've been feeling unattractive lately, and I can't really point out why...I haven't gained weight, but I'm not losing any either. And when I try to 'diet' the stress of dieting gets to me, and then I eat an asiago cheese bagel for breakfast and it snowballs from there. I've learned something very frustrating about shopping for wedding dresses...although 62% of women in the US are a size 14 or larger, most "full-service" bridal salons only carry sample dresses in sizes 8-14. So, if I want to see how a dress might fit on me, I have to endure fake sympathy from a size 6 bridal consultant as she brings me size 12 and 14 dresses to try on, most of which don't zip, some of which I can't even get over my lucious birthing hips, and then I have to step outside the comfort of the fitting room into the mirror room, where 3 or 4 people smaller than me watch as my mom and I look at the dress in the mirror, with her pulling it closed in the back so we can get a reasonable sense of what it will look like "in the right size" as the consultant so tactfully puts it. And then I'm expected to order a dress that I haven't even tried on for $800, for the most important day of my life.

On the outside, I'm probably seen as a very self-confidant person. I walk with my head up, take long strides, make eye contact if I see someone looking directly at me, don't fidget with my hair or self-conciously pull at my clothing. When I am in said bridal dressing room, I make jokes about my size, I make my mom laugh when I say things like "let's see how much of me we're gonna fit into this one". But after a day of this I do break down. I cry in the car, feeling frustrated and like I shouldn't even attempt this until I lose 20 pounds.

The most annoying part of being overweight comes from other people. People who are already a great, healthy, beautiful size and complain about all these "fat areas" they have that no one else can see. Men who are my height and weight 180 and complain that they're too heavy. Skinny girls who say "I know how you feel...trust me, it sucks being this thin...I would kill to have boobs like yours." I think that one hurts the worst, because until my freshman year in college I was one of them. I was 5'8" by eighth grade and weighed 115 from then pretty much until my senior year of high school. My nickname was "flatty". Boys seemed to like girls with bodies back then (when did that change?). I broke up with every boyfriend I had in high school because we progressed to the "second base" stage and I was embarrassed for him to touch my non-existent breasts. However, I know these girls are lying because I never wanted to be one of the fat chicks: I wanted to be one of the girls who had skinny waists with a little bit of a booty and some C-cup boobs. I didn't want to be the amazon girl that was already wearing a size 16 and had DD's. Nobody wanted to be that girl. And now I am.

And as hard as it is to admit that you don't have to be fat to be disgusted by your body, that is the way I feel sometimes. I hate hearing people who look good to me complain about their weight, their stomach, their flabby arms, whatever. I feel in a way like I've earned my right to complain. I know what it's like to be a girl that guys check out, I know how it feels to get whistled at and have doors held by strangers and see two guys looking at you while talking to each other across the room, and it hurts to know I am not that girl anymore. I am the observer now...the one watching the perky blond get the door held for her, and watching the same guy walk past me without acknowledging that I exist. (I am the girl who is beautiful in the face, but...)I watch men come into my store to shop for their wives and know that if they're a fairly young, attractive man, 90% of the time when I ask what size they need they are going to say "xs" or "4". I hated browsing the match or yahoo personal ads years ago and noticing that maybe 1 in 10 men used the words "slightly overweight" or "a little extra" when they chose what kind of body type they were looking for. (And "curvy" doesn't count when the other options you picked were slim, slender, thin, athletic, etc...you're just looking for a skinny girl with big boobs.)

None of these things are really important to me anymore, because I know I've found the man that loves everything about me, but it hurts just the same.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 16:00 | link | comments (1) |
meow, the retail beast, bridezilla