Merry Christmas to me!

…but if your name is “Snaphappy Fishsuit Mokiligon” to begin with, “Variable” doesn’t seem so bad, does it?

Yes, I would totally change my name if I was that guy.

(When pronouncing “Mokiligon” I keep wanting to say “McGonagall” ;D)

Just LOL.

(It’s Christmas Eve! Sean’s going to get me a special, secret present! I’m so excited! But I’m trying to waste time until he gets it, so that’s why I’m online! Whee!)

Yes, I know I already said that. But look at this:

I’m what I consider a spiritual agnostic (I think there is more to this world than the eye can see, but I don’t know the shape and form of what that is) who honestly respects Faith and has no time for intolerance. That’s good for my good Liberal cred, but I tend to get in trouble with my peeps when I defend Christians in the same breath I defend Jews, Muslims, Pagans or Atheists. Especially at Christmas.

Dude, it’s Christmas. In American society, that’s become a thoroughly secular ritual, in a land where we need all the secular rituals we can get. If that secular ritual grew out of a Christian tradition… well, said Christian tradition grew out of pagan traditions too, and besides, who gives a damn?

I swear, this man is my hero. Read the whole article. He rules.

I was good over Halloween, and I was good over Thanksgiving (I even lost weight over Thanksgiving). But now that Christmas is here I’ve hit a stumbling block.

Baking cookies is a horrible thing when you are trying to diet. I have a nasty habit of sampling the goods.

Since I’ve been busy, with baking and shopping, I haven’t had the time to exercise…and I’ve been lax about getting dinner ready, meaning that we’ve been eating takeout and fast food.

Yesterday was my first step in turning this all around–I went biking and burned something like 700 calories–and I’m proud to say that, at last, I have maintained instead of gained. I just need to keep it up.

I saw this article on MSN this morning, and thought I’d share it. There are some good ideas in there for how to keep from pigging out at all the holiday parties…I’m going to three this weekend, so I can definitely use the advice!

Went biking today. Finally.

And I found the coolest place!

I sort of knew it existed–a couple of times, when passing over the railroad tracks at Augusta Water Works, I’d noticed people biking down a small trail alongside the tracks. I’d wondered where exactly it went, but I’d never braved it.

Today, as I approached the tracks, I realized that I was on the verge of turning around and riding back after a mere 20 minutes of biking. I wasn’t interested in going forward and trying to get downtown today. It seemed too far for not much payoff–I knew I would be too tired to do much exploring in town. And I was in the mood to explore. As I told Brooke, exploring is the best way to burn calories ;>

So I turned and went on the trail.

It went along the tracks for awhile, then cut off into the woods. It forked, and I rode down a euphoric drop to a clearing with a few railroad ties dropped in it. There was a view of the river below through the trees. Glancing around, I discovered the continuation of the trail, and headed off.

I honestly have no idea where I was. The trail wound around and around, occasionally coming out alongside the water and then plunging back into the trees. It was BMX to the max…twists and turns, hills and gulleys. There was even a tiny little footbridge that I rode over in a rush of adrenaline.

At one point the trail finally broke free of the trees and curved along an enclosed body of water. I’m really not sure what it was, but there was a road just beyond it. I don’t know what road it was either, but I do know that I had turned right to get to that point, away from the water I’d been riding alongside before. The train was ahead at that point; I heard it sound its whistle. As I continued along, I noticed that I was riding along the train tracks, and eventually I made it back to where I’d first gone in.

Time in the forest: 30 minutes.

It was so beautiful, all of it. Leaves and pine needles covered the forest floor. Trees bowed over the trail. Dark, fallen trunks peppered with white mushrooms had chunks sawed away so that I could pass through them. Vines hung down and occasionally smacked me in the face :)

There were two colors of wood sign everywhere the trail forked, a red one and a white one. I think the red one meant “rough trail”; for some reason I always went towards the red, and I always ended up on a hill that was way too steep (up and down, both), or catching my pedal on a root, or careening around a curve that would have deposited me in the river (after a long fall down a tree-covered hill) if I hadn’t braked properly.

Syuusuke was awesome…he handled everything without a complaint. Braking on pine needles wasn’t nearly as slippery as I expected, either.

I kept talking to myself while I was in there, shouting, “This is so much fun!” and “Brooke will love this!” and “HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE!!!!”

All in all, I had one hell of a time. I was so ecstatic as I finally emerged from the trail that I yelled at the first person I saw, “Have you ever been back in there? It’s crazy!” The person, an older gentleman in a camoflage jacket riding a very tall bike, and I got into a conversation about the trail, and then my bike (it’s got a unique shape, after all), and then we wished each other well and headed off in separate directions. I was giddy during the 20 minute ride back.

I definitely have to take the camera in there sometime.

I get so offended when people tell me step-by-step what to do in a situation I’ve dealt with many times–a situation, in fact, that I was the first to deal with, and am still the only one to deal with.

I mean, really offended.

I don’t need an instruction manual on how to perform tasks and work with systems that I created, thanks.

However, as I stressed in the comments on my previous post, this is not a bad thing. It just means I have to redefine what Snopes is in my head.

Today, we have a story about an urban legend involving a woman who forgot to actually enclose the money she intended to send with her Christmas cards. It’s a funny joke. In the discussion, we get this bit of feminist deconstruction:

One further element of the tale deserves comment: the sex of the transgressor. Traditionally, during the holidays, our culture stresses activities which are still seen as more a woman’s province than a man’s. Cooking, decorating, baking, shopping, card and letter-writing, entertaining, and concern for others are at the forefront of the season, and whereas a man who fails to do well with any of these barely provokes comment, a woman is seen as having fallen from grace much more ingloriously if she comes up short with any of them. The busy executive in the story thus has to be a woman for the transgression to be perceived as utterly embarrassing because a man who failed to enclose the checks wouldn’t make for nearly as horrifying a tale. Moreover, the story contains an element of punishment for women leaving traditional duties behind in favor of competing in the business world. Working outside the home may cause them to have less time for family and friends, thus legends like this serve to warn women against taking up such lives by pointing out what could be lost or compromised.

I found this really interesting. It is definitely true that men are not the backbone of holidays. For example, I don’t expect Christmas cards from my single male friends. The few exceptions (thanks, Mr. J! thanks, Uncle Steve!) really just underline how odd it is in our culture for a man to think about things like that. My husband would be perfectly happy if we never celebrated a single holiday ever again, birthdays included. Back home, if something was going to happen for a holiday, like a dinner or a group present, it was almost always the girls who had to coordinate it. And of course, you don’t see too many guys baking Christmas cookies.

The unanswerable question here is, would guys be into holiday stuff if the culture placed the responsibility for holiday merriment on their shoulders? Or is there something ingrained, genetic, that causes men not to care about this sort of thing? Do men find holidays tiresome because they are not in control? Are they bamboozled by the idea of a deluge of “woman stuff”?

A related question: if women simply stopped doing holiday stuff, would men get bored eventually and start up some traditions of their own?

The World May Never Know, but it’s interesting to think about. In the past, as I recall (I was never much of a student of history while in school, much to my later dismay), men were far more involved in social activities–in fact, social activities were male dominated. When and how things changed is interesting to me. Was it the women’s movement that eventually wrested social power into the hands of women? Was there something else going on?

Regardless of the cause, I think that women are still learning how to manage social affairs. My husband has a very simple, honorable approach to his dealings with friends. He helps without expecting anything in return. He takes care of his friends when they need him. And he’s very matter-of-fact about it; to him it’s clear-cut when he should do something and when he should stay out of it.

Meanwhile, I find myself constantly confused by relations with other women, wondering what to do when. I, like all of us, think in a conniving way, rather than a straightforward one, when considering my objectives. There are layers and layers of complexity added to each relationship that somehow make sense in my head but are not easily reproducible. In the past I’ve wondered if this complexity was simply part of how the female brain works, but now I think it’s more a matter of what we are taught growing up. There haven’t been that many generations between now and suffrage. Before that, women didn’t know how to control social situations because they didn’t control them. They had no frame of reference. All they did know was how to manipulate from behind the scenes to get what they wanted. That is what women specialized in, and that is what they taught their daughters.

In this modern world, we have a set of very intelligent people who are sadly ill-equipped to deal with their power. We can take lessons from our mothers on this, but I think we’d be well advised to start looking to men as well. Maybe it doesn’t have to be as complex as we are making it.

It’s something to think about. I know I’m far from a definitive answer.

Yes, that is a long-ass time from now. But I’m just glad to finally have a date! Whee!

Check out this snippet from today’s “double-snark“:

Let me finish up the ComiXpress discussion by talking about quality of printing. This is black and white, including the cover (I believe that covers at least can be printed in color over at ComiXpress, but that’s not what Hynes and Grant elected to do). It’s about the right size for what we think of when we think of comic books, and it’s nicely put together. More to the point, my brain thinks “comic book” when I hold it, not “saddle stapled bunch of paper,” which is a good sign. It prints to glossy paper for the cover, and then what feels like a seventy pound laser safe paper for the interior. From the reproductive qualities, I assume it’s produced on the current generation of Docutech printer/copiers, or a competing brand that does the same thing as the Docutech. There is a little bit of streak in the greys, owing to xerographic instead of offset printing, but that’s expected and hardly a dealbreaker.

Yes, I used to work at Kinko’s. I own my McPast, damn it.

Does he rock, or what?

I was actually really impressed that he knew all that about the printing, just by feeling and looking at the paper. That’s the kind of knowledge you get by doing. I need more of that.

That phrase probably isn’t very clever to the Japanese…in fact, if a Japanese person reads it, she’ll probably say, “What a dork.” (Maybe she’ll assume I’m a military otaku.)

Regardless, the Christmas cards are out. They may actually arrive on time. It depends on our illustrious postal service.

The international cards probably won’t be on time, but you never know.

I do know, however, that the card going to my host family in Japan will be on time…because it’s a New Year’s Card. Yay Japan! It’s actually supposed to be a postcard, but I didn’t have any that were fitting. Also, I was going to take a picture of it to share, but I forgot before I sealed the envelope. Doy.

This is what I wrote:

あけましておめでとうございます
皆様の御健康をお祈り申し上げます

平成十六年　元旦　<– see this? I messed up and wrote Heisei 16 instead of Heisei 17…;P
ヘザー・メドズ

For those of you who can’t decipher it from the About.com article, I’ll romanize and translate:

akemashite omedetou gozaimasu	Happy New Year!
minasama no gokenkou o oinori moushiagemasu	Wishing everyone good health.
Heisei juurokunen gantan	Heisei Era, year 16 (oops), the morning of January 1
hezaa medozu	Heather Meadows

I’d told Sam yesterday that I was going to write an actual letter, but time constraints got the better of me…plus, after finding the standard style for the postcard, I wanted to follow it as best as I could.

Hopefully my host family won’t hold my mistake against me…that’s what I get for copying the kanji from the About.com article instead of figuring out what it would be on my own ;P

(I also don’t know if “medozu” is the best way to represent “Meadows”…meh. And I forgot to draw a rooster on the card!)

I met a woman today who was featured in the March issue of Shape Magazine for losing 266 pounds. She’s the daughter of one of my coworkers, and she used to work for Smoak’s Bakery back when they were still open. By watching her fat intake and portion sizes, she has kept the weight off for 7 years. When my coworker made fudge the other night, this lady came in, leaned over it, inhaled deeply, and said, “Ah, that’s good.” She never ate any of it.

She said today that she works out 5-6 days a week.

Obviously, diet and exercise are the keys. I just need to get back on the horse. These past couple of weeks have been bad. Parties at work, cookie-baking at home…I’ve started to just snack and snack and snack, and since it’s been cold, I haven’t been biking. Here’s the graph of my weight for the duration of my diet, since it started on October 3:

As you can see, I’ve sort of stalled. I need to start working out more, and not wussing out when it’s cold. There’s a workout room over at the apartment office; I can go there.

And I need to stop snacking :P My coworker’s daughter said in Shape that TV was causing her to overeat out of boredom, so she stopped watching it and started reading instead. I need to cut down on the habits that cause me to eat out of boredom, too.

Today at work was really bad…I had nothing to do after finishing up my work (I got done in like an hour and a half), and I had to sit there smelling the gingerbread house. When my coworkers all brought in food for another party, I just kept nibbling and nibbling. I even drank punch instead of water. I don’t know how much pumpernickel bread and spinach dip I ate; I know I ate way too many sugar cookies.

I’ve tried to put it all in DietPower. Hopefully I was close. If I am, I ate something like 1300 calories. (Eeep.)

I want to say that it’ll be good when the holidays are over, because then I won’t have all the temptation…but to be honest, I can’t just count on that. I have to make a permanent change within myself. After all, Christmas happens every year. ;P

Kitagawa Keiko is good. I thought she played Rei very well in the live action series, and her looks aren’t bad either.

But look at this girl.

Absolutely gorgeous, sultry, mysterious, with a hint of sadness, surrounded by red.

It’s Rei.

Via BoingBoing, some photos about the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Ginza, Tokyo. I should try to visit that building the next time I go.

The New York Times has an article about bloggers who become novelists.

I need to start writing more interesting things so that thousands of people tune in daily, and a publisher will write me and say, “Hey, want to do a book?”

Yes. That would be awesome.