Sunday, Jan. 09, 2005

Sunday, posted at 10:22 a.m.

Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com

The greatest food preparation skill I have learned in the last two years came a few weeks ago while listening to Howard Stern. He freezes bananas and has them for snacks. I don't know why I'd never thought of this before, but it's brilliant. They're really good. It's like you're eating a popsicle, except bananas are pretty healthy, with all the potassium and such.

I'm heading down to DC today, where Dave will help me build a website and purchase a domain name for my house concert venue. Then, I think we're going to grab Danielle and watch Hotel Rwanda. When she called me yesterday and left a message about it, I thought she had said A Fish Called Wanda. Nope, I misheard her. That movie came out years ago. I'd like to watch it again sometime.

I walked with $100 even last night from the restaurant. It was a slow night - usually you can make at least $150 on a Saturday night if you have the best section, which I did - but Zach and I enlivened it a bit by getting sort of drunk on company wine as the night wore on. Not really drunk, just sort of - enough to make me warm and loose-lipped, but not enough to make me stutter.

I'm currently deciding on my next big purchase, since I'm about to get my tax refund back. I feel the need to change my fitness routine in somehow. I either want to:

A. Purchase a treadmill.

B. Purchase an I-Pod.

C. Purchase a membership to the Stadium Place YMCA.

I think I would use "A" a lot. I get bored on treadmills at Bally's, because I can't watch TV. Plus, I get tired because it's right after I've lifted. I think purchasing one would solve those two issues. I could just run for a half hour or something in my living room while watching The Simpsons. I was going to buy one on Jan. 2 at Sears, because they had 0% interest for the year if you had a Sears credit card, but I was denied a Sears credit card. That was a blow to my financial confidence, but I guess the old credit score still isn't tip-top even though I get credit card applications in the mail at least weekly. I'm not sure how I could be a Dell Preferred Member but can't get a Sears credit card, though.

I think "B" would involve too much of a learning curve for my current schedule to provide time for. I'd really like to have a decent apparatus to listen to music while I run, though. I've never found a CD player that doesn't skip. Plus, I have to hold it in my hands because it rattles if I put it in the front console. Of course, it makes me kind of queasy to spend so much on what basically is a glorified walkman, especially when I know I wouldn't learn enough about it quickly enough to make it much more than that. Plus, I assume time is involved in getting tracks off of CDs onto the I-Pod.

I almost did "C" yesterday, because on Jan. 7 and 8, there was no registration fee there at the Y. I'd like to join there, because it's a great place and it's very near where I work and live. I wouldn't have to drive all the way out to Towson or White Marsh to work out. Plus, a lot of colleagues have joined there, and the idea of a fitness test is intriguing. Bally's is a standard gym. I'm not too happy with it but it does what it needs to do, I guess. But the idea of joining something that is like a community center, where I would run into students and friends, is appealing to me. Still, my Bally's membership does not expire for over a year, so I'd be paying for a double gym membership until that time. That sucks. I'm also concerned about this letter I got last week that makes my job situation seem tenuous.

I really want to lose 25 pounds. I have been steadily gaining weight ever since my eye surgeries over a year ago and need to do something to break it off. My daily workouts don't seem to be working, probably because I'm concentrating so little on cardio.