Posts from — February 2010

photo by strategyjohn

There’s no birth certificate, so I can only guess. My work computer was born some time around 1995. Most days, it drags along like an old man with emphysema trying hard to choke out a long story.

Sometimes I’m patient and listen to the whole story—bearing each painful breath between breaks. Mostly, though, I just wish I could pull the plug.

“Open my e-mail, Microsoft Word, and the Internet,” I’ll say with three double clicks. At first, it stares at me like it’s waiting for a whistle or sign or smoke signal. Or maybe it’s just trying to understand my demand.

I imagine it thinks, So much to do! Such tiresome tasks! Should I open e-mail first? Or maybe Word? But the Internet is so nice. And what if I can’t get the e-mail open at once? Should I try to perfect that before I start on the others? What to do?

On a good day, I jostle it from a deep sleep at 8 a.m. By 8:20 it’s rearing to go, and I’m done longing for the Mac I have at home. By 9 I’ve finished reading e-mails and eating breakfast. If all goes well, my computer hasn’t yet taken a nap.

But yesterday it conspired with the rest of technology to thwart my plans.

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photo by d sharon pruitt

You guys rock. No, really. I’ve been reading all of the awesome comments you’ve left this week and it makes me so happy. There: Another thing that makes me happy. Add that to yesterday’s list.

Anyhow, just thought you should know.

This week has been dragging along as always—I think I have a chronic case of the Wednesdays—and despite our better judgment The Man and I put off grocery shopping for yet another day. Well, really, we made him put off grocery shopping since I don’t go. Yeah, he’s swell. So it looks like another painfully boring peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me today. (That’s only fun in a nostalgic kind of way when you don’t eat them for a week straight. Trust me.)

So I want to preface this post by telling you that I love kids. I think they’re great. I think they’re cute, especially when they say crazy things like, “You have really yellow teeth.” (Not that my sister did that or anything when she was three.) I have three insanely adorable nephews who make me laugh and smile every time I see them.

But…

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photo from cute overload
This makes me happy. Very happy.

By now you know that eating healthy foods—think whole grains, fruits, and veggies—exercising, and not smoking can keep your ticker tocking. Well, scientists say there’s another way you can lower your chances of getting heart disease: Be happy.

In a 10-year study of 1,739 men and women, researchers learned that happier folks were less likely to develop heart disease. They measured participants’ joy on a five-point scale and learned that for every point that measured happiness, excitement, enthusiasm, or contentment the risk of heart disease dropped by 22 percent. So unhappy people had a 22 percent higher risk of heart disease or chest pain than people who were somewhat happy. And those so-so people had a 22 percent higher risk for heart disease than moderately happy people.

The researchers say there are a few reasons people who wear rose-colored glasses may avoid heart problems. They may sleep more, have heart-healthy behaviors, have less stress or better handle stress, or they might just be physiologically different than their glum peers.

According to the researchers, people can significantly reduce their risk for heart disease if they do things that make them happy. So that’s the catch. See, making ourselves happier is easier said than done, isn’t it? I mean, when I’m down in the dumps, the last thing I want to do is purposefully make myself happier. (Yeah, that sounds depressing.)

So in case you’re feeling down but fear its ill effects on your heart, I’ve created a list of things that make me happy. You’ll probably have your own happy triggers (list ’em in the comments), but these always cheer me up…

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photo by thomas wanhoff

Ever read one of those articles promising a svelte body from sweat? You know, the ones that say soaking up heat in a sauna can cleanse your body of some horrible toxins? They talk about visiting a glamorous spa where everyone looks like Bar Refaeli, zoning out in a sauna, and buying a pair of skinny jeans on the way out. And if you don’t do it? You’ll be bloated, boring, and acne-ridden for the rest of your life.

Well, they fooled ya.

I read an article recently that said the idea of detoxing in a sauna is a whole lotta baloney. Rachel Vreeman, MD, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine and coauthor of Don’t Swallow Your Gum! Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health, told HealthDay that our body has it’s own detox process. The crazy ways we get bad toxins out of our bodies are … through the liver, the kidneys, and the colon. All right, not so crazy. I thought I’d build a teensy bit of suspense.

Should your liver, kidneys, and colon stop doing their jobs, don’t look to your sweat glands. (Really, how would that work?) Vreeman says that’s not the way our body does its thing. Instead, we sweat to regulate body temperature. As in: hot → sweat → cool.

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photo by scarleth white

Ah, Monday. You seem to sneak up on me like a creepy stalker. Sometimes I wish you’d go away.

But not today. That’s because this Monday is my sister’s birthday. So, Happy Birthday Jill! We won’t be getting together for her special day because she’s about 450 miles from where I live. But I’ll suck it up and eat a birthday dessert in her honor. (Selfless, I am.)

If she did live around here, I would have bought her a ticket to Shutter Island this weekend. The Man and I went on Saturday, and I’m still thinking about the movie. It was packed at 3 in the afternoon, and I was petrified I wouldn’t get to straighten my legs to prevent my knees from killing during the entire movie. (If any of you ever see me at the movies, I’m the rude girl with her legs resting on the seat in front of me. Talk about me behind my back but don’t sit in front of me. Let’s just say an hour with bent knees is pretty much torture.) Lucky for me, no one sat there. Whew, crisis averted.

I won’t go into too much detail here since you really need to see the flick for yourself. I will say Leonardo DiCaprio delivers a killer performance as always. I’ll also mention that I love Martin Scorsese’s work and this film is no exception. And I’ll let you know that there’s a twist to the story that makes you want to watch the movie all over again once the credits roll. That’s all you’re getting. Now go. Go see it.

In honor of my little sis’s birthday, I wanted to give you a few good gift ideas. And, no, none of these are what I got her. (It’s a surprise, folks!)

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photo by jessi.bryan
Overeat? Who, me??

I have a lot of bad habits. I eat dessert every day. I sometimes skip workouts. And I always sleep too late. You know what? I’ll probably do some of those bad habits this weekend. I’ll sleep till 10 and wake with a headache. I’ll O.D. on brownies or cookies or Hershey’s kisses with the paper flag still attached because I’ve scarffed them down so fast. OK, maybe that last one was a lie or long stretch of my imagination.

Everyone has bad habits. In fact, every time a new study is published, we learn about bad habits we never knew we had. Canned goods have BPA—so if you eat ’em, add that to the list. I could go on. Sure, I feel guilty 80 percent of the time because I feel like I’m not doing enough—I’m not eating healthy enough; I’m not exercising long enough or hard enough or often enough.

Despite my faults, I do have a few a few good habits I’d like to pass along. I’m going to give you the five healthy habits that make the biggest difference in my life. I won’t talk about the whole eat healthy and exercise … yada, yada, yada. Pretend those take precedence, then move on. Thanks.

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photo by liminalmike

Remember the movie Pay it Forward? Little Haley Joel Osment played a 12-year-old boy with big dreams who launched a so-cute-you-can’t-help-smiling plan to make the world a better place. Osment’s character does good for three people under the condition they’ll pass a good deed on to another three strangers. And so on until everyone in the world has been helped out a bit—and has helped others. I won’t give away the ending in case you haven’t seen it, but let’s just say it requires a few Kleenex boxes.

The whole paying it forward idea was the topic of a recent Liberty Mutual commercial (thanks for the specifics, Google.) A man picks up a child’s toy from the road; the child’s mother stops a stranger’s coffee from spilling, and an onlooker sees her. That man helps a fallen stranger up off the ground. And so on. The basic idea is this: When you do something good, people notice—and take action.

Turns out that’s true. Researchers writing in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science learned that good deeds inspire other good deeds. In their study, people who had watched a program featuring musicians and their mentors were more likely to help a stranger out than those who watched a clip from a nature documentary.

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photo by d_vdm
Yup, that’s The Man. I swear.

Happy Hump Day. I think all of these days off have spoiled me. Even though I was off work on Monday for the holiday, I still feel like the week should be rounding up right about now. At least we’re being spared another blizzard.

Instead of a real post, I wanted to use your collective brainpower to diagnose The Man. (Remember what I said about me using the Internet to play doctor? Yeah.) Anyhow, yesterday at the gym he did something goofy while bench pressing. He was fine during the moves. But the minute he stood up, pain in his chest-back-neck-shoulder area started radiating with intensity. He stopped lifting, but has been hurting ever since.

He’s not super specific when it comes to the pain—and I quote: “It’s like when you have a back spasm but into your neck and shoulders”—but this I do know:

1. It’s not centered around any one area, but it seems to have concentrated mostly in his neck and shoulders after a night’s sleep.
2. The pain isn’t stabbing.
3. The pain isn’t dull.
4. It’s not a heart attack—it feels like a muscle issue.
5. There’s no swelling, bruising, or other discolorations.
6. It doesn’t matter if he’s hunched over (shoulders rolled inward) or standing up straight. It hurts no matter what.
7. Laying down makes it feel better. Sitting or standing up makes it worse.
8. Sometimes he makes a squished-up face and says he can feel the pain in his Adam’s apple.

Anyone ever experience something like this? He’s taken a few Advil with Not Superhuman orders to repeat that throughout the day. (Um, did I mention I got my MD at Google University?) And yes he’s planning on visiting the doctor, but who knows how soon it’ll be. Most have been closed for a week thanks to Snowmageddon 2010 and are overflowing with patients.

We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. In the meantime, thanks for the help!

photo by smcgee

I’m not one of those people who has a stockpile of cookbooks with flour-and-butter gunked pages. Though I’m cooking more meals at home now than ever before, I still have a simple palate and short attention span. And, really, too many meals I find in cookbooks are high in fat and calories. So as much as I’d love to make this Brown Butter Pound Cake from Gourmet (R.I.P.), I’d never cook something so unhealthy—mainly because I’d eat the entire thing in a day. No joke.

Anyhow, there’s one cookbook I constantly turn to for quick, noncomplicated, healthy meals that are delicious: Everyday Food’s Great Food Fast: 250 Recipes for Easy, Delicious Meals All Year Long. (The pint-size magazine is also super.)

Well, now Everyday Food—from no other than Martha herself, though I doubt she has a hand in this less-fussy book—has a new cookbook, Fresh Flavor Fast: 250 Easy, Delicious Recipes for Any Time of Day. Sounds pretty much the same as the other book except that it’s divided by meal instead of season: Great = Fresh. Flavor = Food. Fast = Fast. But even if it’s the same deal with different recipes, I’m game.

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photo by dave lifson

Hope you all had a lovely Valentine’s Day weekend. The Man surprised me and took me to a lovely dinner on Saturday night (alas, it was all work no fun on Sunday). There wasn’t chocolate involved, but he made some cream cheese brownies later during the weekend. Dangerous.

I did make it to the gym Saturday afternoon which is a good thing considering how amazing his brownies are. I spent then entire gym trip concentrating on leg strengthening. I might have been yelping every time I sat down yesterday. And maybe I was walking like a cowboy.

Now that V Day is over, let’s move on to something a little less romantic … tuna. Yup, doesn’t that just scream date night? Really, though, I love tuna. For years, it was the only type of fish I’d eat. (Don’t ask me why. I know it’s one of the fishiest tasting. I guess it’s psychological.) And even still, it’s the only place I like mayo. On anything else, the white globby stuff makes me gag. In fact, I don’t even like to touch it. Or think about it. And now I’m doing just that. Ick.

Anyhow, I read an article today that said more than half of 300 tested samples of brand-name canned tuna had more mercury than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deems safe. But the same report only found that 5 percent of the tuna contained more mercury than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says is safe.

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