Four minutes and eighteen seconds about why the Christian Right can't be allowed to control civil marriage laws. (Good satire, not heavy-handed.)

I wasted this morning playing around on Second Life, but this afternoon I got potting soil for my container garden and planted tomatoes, peppers and pole beans. Then I started weeding the back peony bed, which is overrun with creeping charlie, dewberries and violets. I found my clematis, which was lying on the ground being smothered, and I put up some poles for it to climb. I need a trellis, but this will do for now. This is one of the kinds of clematis that dies back all the way in the winter, so I can start fresh next year.

You know, violets are very pretty when they bloom early in the spring, and there are a few days where the violets and forget-me-nots look just beautiful together, really lovely. But they are garden thugs. They will move in and take over the neighborhood, so I am watering my front bed so that tomorrow I can go on a search and destroy mission.

You can't just pull up violets. The stems break off, but they leave that little tuber or whatever it is, which serenely sprouts more leaves. You have to dig them out. So, tomorrow I get my little digging tool and go after them. All of them.

Cover me. I'm goin' in.

Hey, this Pepsico boycott is from our old buddies at the American Family Association. Why don't you go to their website and click on "Contact Us" and let them know what you think? I thanked them very much for the list of gay-friendly policies and activities that Pepsico sponsors, and for the list of snack food Pepsico and its various subsidiaries makes. And I promised to buy every single item, twice. And I told them why, politely. And I hoped that God would have mercy on them for their promotion of hatred, division and intolerance.

Come on, it's easy. Everyone should do it, and then everyone should tell everyone else to do it. And then call Pepsico's Board of Directors' Concern Line at 1-866-626-0633 and tell them to hold firm and to not give in.

Go on. You know you want to.

ETA: I just tried to call the Concern Line. The mailbox is full. Let's make sure it's full of supportive messages!

Buy Pepsi!

There is a move afoot to boycott Pepsi and Pepsico products. The reasons can be found on the referenced site, but they are reproduced here for your reading "pleasure:"

* Pepsi gave a total of $1,000,000 to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) to promote the homosexual lifestyle in the workplace.
* Both HRC and PFLAG supported efforts in California to defeat Proposition 8 which defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. HRC, which received $500,000 from Pepsi, gave $2.3 million to defeat Proposition 8.
* Pepsi requires employees to attend sexual orientation and gender diversity training where the employees are taught to accept homosexuality.
* Pepsi is a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

Gee, I never knew all those things, but now for sure I will be happy to buy their products! Thanks for the heads-up, Haters!

You won't hurt my feelings if you skip this one. Of course, I'll never know. Unless you write and tell me. And the fact that you went to so much trouble to tell me you didn't read my post, now, that might hurt my feelings.

We haven't been doing so well on eating this past week. I was really feeling bad most of the week, and Paul and I both had various evening engagements, which meant essentially that there were few "family" dinners and a lot of catching as catch could. Thursday night I had pizza with some of my students. (Yes, I could have had a salad, but I was building rapport, don't you know.) And then last night, we conspired to celebrate his unemployment and my last class of the academic year with...

Chicken wings. Yes. Chicken wings.

We are bad.

So tonight it was back on the wagon with an absolutely delicious chickpea and spinach stew over cous cous. It was killer. This is definitely a keeper; I got the recipe from Vegan With A Vengeance. Lots of Middle Eastern/Indian spices. Yum.

This morning I weighed in with a new low, by a half a pound. So I guess pizza and chicken wings are weight loss foods now.

I am fond of this idea.

Is anyone else watching Desperate Housewives anymore? I still love it, but it's getting worn around the edges.

Anyhoo, ( I'll put potential spoilers for last Sunday's episode behind a cut, in case you haven't watched it yet. )

I cannot believe how crappy I feel. Friday night I started coming down with a(nother) cold. Zicam isn't touching this one. It's the fourth day and I still have all kinds of symptoms that I won't get into, but let's just say I feel really. really. awful.

And it's the last week of the quarter so I have to be here and I have to teach.

Bleagh.

SIX POUNDS!?!?!?!? I know I've been eating kind of badly this week, but gaining6 pounds?! In a week? No way. Uh-uh. This cannot happen. That's 21600 calories above my daily requirement for the week, which is an extra 3000 calories a day and change. I think I'd notice that. I was going to blame alcohol (I've had more alcohol this week than normal) but at roughly 100 calories per shot, I'd have noticed that. Or, conversely, I'd be too dead to notice at that point.

OK, back on the wagon. Luckily I have ingredients for a really good butternut squash-tomatillo soup and for multi-bean cold salad. Tonight, I cook.

Dang. Six pounds. This sucks.

ETA: Only two weeks of class left! Yay!

Buddy is getting more feeble by the day now. A hard decision is drawing closer, but I don't think I have to make it yet.

Should I filter my food/weight/eating angst posts? Let me know in comments what you think; if you're bored by them (and I doubt that they have universal appeal) let me know and I will create a friends filter for them.

Last month, I wrote about having a dinner party without meat. Well, tonight was the night. I made the menu I was musing about. Thursday night I baked acorn squash for the emapanadas. Then Friday night I prepared the filling and the pastry. Today I spent two hours rolling pastry and folding empanadas. We had spicy rice and a salad, and guacamole, pico de gallo and sour cream on the side. It was great! Even my non-vegetable-lover friend loved it. And I have enough left over for another dinner.

These empanadas are really good. Reeeealllly good.

On Sunday, Laura graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Pittsburgh. We were all there, perched way up in the nosebleed seats at "The Pete." I didn't even attend my own undergraduate graduation, just because of this; parents gazing down on a sea of black robes, wondering which dot is theirs. But now we have Jumbotrons and text messaging. We watched the Jumbotron until we saw her ("There she is!" we yelled in unision), and that enabled us to find her in the line of processing graduates. When she got to her seat I texted her our location, and then in my bright red dress I stood in the aisle waving until she found me. We were able to keep chatting almost all the way through the ceremony, although my phone was on its last electrons by the end.

A lovely weekend. My lovely girl.

Ladies and gentlemen, this morning the scale told me that I have lost 16 pounds since Feb. 1. I can't believe it. It won't stay that low. It will bounce back about 3 pounds and then slowly, over a couple of weeks, get back to this morning's low, but nonetheless...

WHOO HOO!!!!!

I don't know why my clothes aren't feeling roomier than they are. No one at work has said "Hey, you losing weight?" (and my colleagues are people from whom I would feel very comfortable taking that). But they will, sooner or later.

In the meantime I'm going to dye my hair and then make up the attic suite for halfdreams and linaeloisetook. And get some things from the grocery. And then sit down. I still have this cold, and I feel better, but if I overdo, I'll crash. And I don't want that.

I am somewhat of a history buff when it comes to my adopted home town. (I grew up in Chicago, but I've lived here a lot longer than I did there.) This is a small city, easy to navigate and small enough to really get to know, and I've enjoyed finding out about neighborhoods and their histories. When calsabon was little and had a doctor's appointment, I'd schedule it for first thing in the morning. (This doctor was very busy and got backed up very quickly, so being the first appointment was the only way of not spending the entire day in his waiting room.) She found these appointments a little depressing, so instead of taking her straight to school, we'd get lunch and then do a little Rochester history trip. We went to the county hospital and looked for the gargoyles. We went to one of Rochester's more historic neighborhoods and looked at a preservation project that was going on at the time, rebuilding the concrete gateways to the street. We drove through Mount Hope Cemetery and found Susan B. Anthony's and Frederick Douglass's graves. We never took a really long time, but it was fun for both of us, and took some of the sting out of periodic doctor's visits.

The library here in town has an online collection of photos, maps and postcards. I look up Rochester photos and postcards on eBay as well. Lately, I've been looking for cityscapes that have their locations noted. I find that city or intersection or building on Google maps, and then use street view to see how much it's changed. Most of what I find (particularly of the downtown area) has changed to the point of no longer being recognizable, although often I can spot a building or a cornice that hasn't fallen to the wrecking ball. It's fun, though, and oddly hypnotic.

One can find postcards, boxes of them, and photos too, in any antique store in town. (Especially if the shop has the word "collectibles" on the sign!) It might be a fun project to pair old postcards and photos with contemporary photos from as much the same vantage point as I can. There is a person in our neighborhood who has done that with local photos; she has a brilliant pair of pictures of a local church. One is the church with the Erie Canal in the foreground, flowing serenely past. The second is the same church from precisely the same angle (she did a great job!) with Interstate 490 flowing serenely past in what was the old canal bed. It's startling. The church hasn't changed at all it seems, but the landscape surely has.

I think the next time we're near Village Gate, I'll have to go flip through some of those old postcards.

I have a cold. I HAVE A COLD. I HAVE A &$#@ING COLD!

Damn it! I wash my hands until they are rough, dry, scaly claws. I am careful about using other peoples' pens and calculators. I try to keep my hands away from my nose and eyes. And yet five days before calsabon's graduation, I am sniffling and sneezing and feeling chilled and shivery. Why couldn't it have waited one more week?

I'm home today. I am taking pseudoephedrine sulfate and loratidine (I also have mold allergies which are exacerbated by wet weather in the spring and fall). I bought some Zicam too; some friends swear by it, although I'm pretty sure it's ineffective, but what the heck. I'm drinking tea and canceling my choir rehearsal tonight.

I will be on the upswing by Friday. OK, Saturday at the latest.

I will. I will.

And this is a good new low! I am now down 13 pounds. Mr. OddP is down 20. This is good for both of us. I haven't been this weight for over 10 years. In 2007 I lost weight when I was home recuperating from shoulder surgery, but I am now down 4 additional pounds from that weight. Whoo and hooooooo!

We went kayaking Friday evening. It was beautiful, sunny and clear, a little cool, but I'll take that over hot and humid any time. The creek is running very high right now, so the first upstream half was work (man, am I out of shape!), but coming back was like flying. That's sooooo much fun. Paddle like crazy when you're moving with the current, really work at it, and you'd swear that you're barely skimming the surface of the water. We saw lots of nesting geese. (I almost typed "nesting geeks;" I wish I were a cartoonist. I have a very funny picture in my mind.) The whole creek looked different, because I've never been out on it this early. The reeds are all last year's crop, brown and flattened by wind and snow. The new crop is just beginning to poke out of the marsh. The yellow flag iris are coming up too. I'll have to start bringing my camera along with me. I could do a photo essay on "Irondequoit Creek: Rochester's Hidden Wilderness In Three Seasons."

(ETA: I find that yellow flag iris are considered noxious weeds; they overgrow shorelines and choke out other plants. I haven't seen that happening in Irondequoit Creek, but maybe I'm naive. There is lots of purple loosestrife which is certainly a noxious weed. But it's also very pretty as one paddles past it.)

My left shoulder was very sore after the trip, though, and that worries me a little. It was sore, and I was having exactly the same problems with my arm that I'd had with the right shoulder before the surgery. Not to the same extent, by any means, and now it feels much better. I couldn't put my hand in my pocket, though, and that was a symptom of rotator cuff damage. Maybe, if I go out every day and paddle as hard as I can, I'll injure it enough that... Nah, that's just crazy talk. Right?

OMG. Acorn squash and black bean empanadas with sour cream and guacamole FTW! (Yeah, I know. Sour cream. Sue me.) We needed some pico de gallo too, which we will have next time, and I have to figure out a way of folding and sealing the empanadas so that the edges don't burn before the top is browned, but yeah, these are goooooood. I made 12 and still had half of the filling left over. I baked 8 and froze 4, because I want to see how they react to freezing; we'll have them later this week. (I froze the rest of the filling, too, to see if it's still good after thawing.)

Golly, these are the best.

From Veganomicon, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. They take 2 and a half hours to make (not working all the time), but they're worth it.

Your lucky day! Here's the recipe!

About two weeks ago, I seemingly lost about 3 pounds overnight. It was cheering to see that number on the scale, but I knew that the next day it would have bungeed back up, and I was right. It seems that my pattern is to lose two or three pounds suddenly, regain them immediately, and then spend the next couple of weeks slowly drifting back down to that lower number, where I stay for another week or so, and then boom, another two or three pounds and an immediate rebound and another slow decline. I don't get it. I mean, it's all right; I'm only losing two or three pounds a month, but if that keeps up until fall, I can live with that. I eat fairly healthily without counting quantities now, and I like that. It just seems odd, that's all.

Spicy black bean soup with whole-grain baked pita chips. Mmmmm - mmmm! Oh, and I am varying my usual strawberries and blueberries and banana and spinach and soy milk and flaxseed smoothie. The last few days it's been a banana and a peeled, sectioned and frozen orange, maybe a few chunks of frozen mango. Some ground flaxseed, a drip of vanilla, a cup of soy milk and 6 cups of raw spinach, and I'm good to go. It's also a beautiful, bright green, not a muddy brown-green that the red/blue berries and spinach produce.

Now, there's 45 seconds you'll never get back.

We have excellent vision coverage where I work, so I am slowly building up a collection of eyeglasses for every outfit. Today we debut the new blue look:

I loves 'em, yes I do.

Amazon.com ranks books by their sales. Best seller lists and some searches depend on sales rankings.

Amazon recently sent out the following policy change:

"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

OK, sort of strange, but adult materials aren't really competing with the latest Nora Roberts book, right? Well, let's see some of the books that have lost their rankings:

The Mayor Of Castro Street, a bio of Harvey Milk by Randy Shilts. Adult?
Celluloid Closet, a history of how motion pictures, especially Hollywood films, had portrayed gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters, by Vito Russo.
The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students WTF?
Brokeback Mountain
Maurice
Giovanni's Room
The Well of Loneliness

Wait a minute. I thought "adult" meant "erotica." Since when is a college guide erotic? Except of course, all of these works (and many more) are queer-themed. Apparently anything having to do with GLBT people in any way is "adult" material. And that means that none of these works, no matter how popular they may be, will ever be on any best seller lists. Judging from the quote from Amazon above, it will become more difficult to find them on searching the site as well.

Oh, by the way, try searching for Playboy. No ranking removal there. There's lots of very explicit heterosexually-themed potboilers on Amazon's list, all safely ranked, but a college guide for gay teens is deemed too racy. (Oh, if you want to buy it, though, you still can. They'll take your money.)

This is disgraceful. Take a look here for a more comprehensive list of some of the unranked works, and then go here and sign the petition. Then use this address <connect-help@amazon.com> to write directly to Amazon.

This is a kind of corporate censorship.

ETA: Now if you go to Amazon.com and do a search on "homosexuality" the top 8 hits are books on "healing," religious-themed or parents' guides to preventing homosexuality.

I often find myself out of step in the feminist world. Not fundamentally, of course; I was a female physics major in the 1970s. Enough said. But I also was brought up by my mother, who was pretty independent but who was also a mostly literal person. She wasn't good at nuance; subtlety earned a dismissive flip of the hand. The notion of the patriarchy would have drawn an "Oh, good Heavens" and a laugh. I am not my mother of course, but I hear her voice quite often in my head and I find myself arguing with her sometimes and agreeing with her other times.

However, I do not have any problem with the feminist bashing of !Patriarchy-Approved! women's clothing. I like comfortable clothing that looks good, feels good and isn't designed with the male eye in mind. In particular, I wear flat shoes because I am on my feet in front of a classroom for hours at a time, and besides that I think I have arthritis in the big toe on my right foot. It hurts, anyway.

But today I succumbed. Yes, I did it. I bought a pair of alligator-patterned red high heels. They have a rounded toe and a narrow heel (which normally I dislike, preferring a more substantial heel) and they are RED. They match the dress I bought for calsabon's graduation from the University of Pittsburgh, and did I mention that they're red?

I hope I don't have to walk more than a quarter mile in them.

OMG FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY WHEN YOU COME TO MY LAB FOR TUTORING AND YOU HAVE A COLD DO NOT EVEN THINK OF TOUCHING MY CALCULATOR OR PENCIL WHEN YOU ARE WIPING YOUR SNOTTY NOSE WITH YOUR HAND!!!!! YOU ARE 20 YEARS OLD! I HAVE KLEENEX RIGHT THERE ON THE TABLE! WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU????

Thank you. I just had to get that out of my system.