:Kalliope Lane

I’ve been a fitness infomercial junkie lately. I recently bought the Core Secrets package with the stability ball, and Billy Blanks’ Bootcamp (Billy of the Tae Bo fame). I’ve gotta tell you, the Bootcamp is kicking my ass, and I’ve only been doing the Basic Training video. I think it will definitely be effective if I keep it up.

It really makes me want to take Tae Kwon Do! I love the kicking! I could pretend I’m Buffy or Sydney from Alias. I might have to seek out some classes…

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I bought the best chocolate bar today: Terra Nostra’s Dark Truffle bar
Yum! The inside isn’t what I’d call “truffle-like”, but it’s still rich chocolatey goodness.

I also made a kickass vegan “egg salad” today to use in my lunches this week at Jury Duty. I started with the Happy Hen salad from Vegan Vittles, and added some paprika and scallions, and more tumeric & relish than it called for. I thought the tofu salad I’d bought from Nature’s Bin was tasty, but this really takes the cake. Or the egg salad. Whatever.

Well, the moving day was rather anti-climactic. As I was pulling onto my street for the last time I fought back a few tears, but by the time we got out of the car I was okay. I took a few token pictures outside of the frozen lake and the house.

It turned out to be less of a moving day than a “let’s go see the new house” day. We only took over one load of stuff, so Tom and I felt like we didn’t really help at all. But we got to finally see the house, which is still being worked on quite a bit. They move in for real and stay their first night tonight. It’s really lovely, but definitely not my mother’s typical style. Regardless, I think she’ll grow to enjoy it. I don’t think she’ll ever get over the location, however. It will be much better for her once the deck is built. You just can’t build yourself a lake in the backyard, though.

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I get to experience jury duty tomorrow for the first time. It should be interesting to see how it all works, but really, I’m just looking forward to sitting around and reading all week.

I’m also going to bring along my notebook. I have to revamp my story for my 2YN course - I just couldn’t do a straight realistic fiction storyline. It felt really bland and didn’t seem to have conflict that really mattered to me, so I’ve added fantasy/supernatural elements. I feel much more comfortable with it now, but I have to catch up and redo all of my previous assignments.

Comments should be working now. Think I fixed it!

Tomorrow morning Tom and I go to help my parents and sister move to their new house. I’m really not looking forward to it, but not just because moving isn’t a fun job.

I’ve put off visiting the house since Christmas. I meant to spend a day or two there before the big move happened, but now it’s too late. Denial didn’t stop the moving day from arriving, but it stopped me from having to be sad about it all the time.

I may take some pictures of the half empty house since it will be my last chance ever to do it, but they may just be horrifically depressing to look at later.

I suppose one just has to focus on the good aspects of the new, right? I’ll try that.

I really watch too much television. Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I never turned on the cursed machine in the evening. I imagine that I’d be so productive, that I’d clean my apartment, write my paper, write novels. In reality, I’d probably just be battling against wanting to read too many novels instead. I’m just an addict for story, whether it be in the form of a book, tv show, or movie.

Despite the fact that I’m not always proud of my television addiction, I’m still going to spend my post talking about shows that I watch!

Finally there was an episode of Alias that seemed back on track to me. This season has seemed lost, without any arc for the characters or plot. There’s been a lot of cheese in my opinion (the spy neighborhood episode, the hallucinogenic Sydney episode), and not enough gritty story. I enjoyed last night’s tension between Sloane and Sydney. The story wasn’t focused on Sydney in a silly way, there was a good plotline, the resolution wasn’t laughably ridiculous*, but it still had good Alias fun in the form of undercover missions and cute outfits. I just want them to get to the real season arc. I just don’t care much for stand-alone episodes that aren’t leading anywhere big. And where’s the Rimbaldi plot? Is it dead? We need Sark, we need Will, we need a damned VILLIAN!

Lost is one of our new favorites. Not a whole lot to say about it except that it keeps me guessing, the cast is great, and it’s original. What’s with the polar bear??

Veronica Mars is my Buffy/Angel replacement. Quippy dialogue, cute sassy blond girl (Veronica is much sassier and clever than Buffy, probably shouldn’t compare much here). And her dad is great.

House. Ah, Dr. House…I have such a crush on him. He’s an older, grumpy crabass with a sparkling wit. I heart Dr. House. Shall I say it again? He’s reason alone to watch the show, but there’s also the saucy hospital administrator, House’s pal oncologist friend (Neal from Dead Poets’ Society), and the entertaining mystery each week.

*We really couldn’t get over the convenient antidote found in the fridge last week — in the knick of time! In large quantities! Gimme a break. Those endings are a little too pat, and the danger of the conflict just isn’t real. Did I really think Sydney was going to kill her father? Was something horrible for the course of the season going to happen because she was bit by the “vampire” man? Boo. Maybe all of the lit I’ve been reading on plotting techniques is making me a crabby tv viewer, I don’t know…

We received the best letter in the department yesterday! It was a photocopied letter informing us that this gentleman has an idea for an experiment which would attempt to induce mutations in bacteria by means of telekinesis. Yep! Telekinesis.

Telekinesis always reminds me of one of my favorite books when I was in elementary school, The Girl with the Silver Eyes. It was about a girl who had telekinesis because her mother had taken some bizarre drug during pregnancy. She finds a group of kids just like her and they tackle some big conspiracy. I adored this book because I wanted terribly to have special powers when I was young. (I still do! Hee…) I wanted to be Princess Ariel from the cartoon Thundar the Barbarian…or one of the girls from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, or one of The Tomorrow People (does anyone else remember that show? OMG! They even remade it in the nineties!). I was obsessed the big oversized book about the paranormal in our school library. Levitation! Automatic writing! Astral travel! ESP! When I got older, I enjoyed fantasy fiction in all its forms. Apparently I desperately wanted to escape the boring limits of the real world.

I also wanted to be every evil princess there ever was (from Sinbad, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, etc.). The evil princesses were always prettier, sexier, more powerful, and more interesting than their shiny good girl counterparts.

So what do these things say about my nature, especially from such a young age? Probably not much good, so I’ll leave it at that!

I went on an exotic fruit spree the other night. I got myself a Fuyu Persimmon, some Kumquats, and…a Durian.

The persimmon wasn’t impressive. It was blandly sweet with a faintly mangoesque texture. I threw most of it away after sharing with my office assistant.

The kumquats were the real find! I’d tried them a few years back and thought they were yicky little things, but wanted to give them another shot. After managing to peel the sucker, I bit in and again thought it was a blechy, bitter little sad-excuse-for-an-orangelike-fruit.

So I went online to research my persimmon (which I wasn’t sure was a persimmon at the time). I discovered that you must eat the peel of the kumquat! That’s where the sweetness is, wouldn’t you know. And I have to say, yes, it makes all the difference! My only complaint is that such a small fruit shouldn’t have such sizable seeds.

And on to the Durian.
It’s my fault, really it is. Why was I intrigued by the disgusting descriptions that I found online? I can’t really say. I was hoping, I suppose, that those few who described the wonderfully creamy, custard-like insides would be right.
Durian really is the stinky fruit. It smelled just like the stinkbombs I remember from my junior high hallways. Just like it. And it’s just as potent. I did taste the tiniest amount, and while it was somewhat creamy and sweet, it was creamy and sweet stinkbomb, and so I must say I don’t really care for it. Rotten egg breath just isn’t appealing.

I had to wrap the thing in several paper bags, then in a garbage bag, and then take it out immediately to the trashcan. I thoroughly washed the counter, cutting board, and knife. I opened windows. I sprayed air freshener. I burned incense. And still I smelled it in the kitchen!

I finally tracked it down to a smidge in the bottom of the sink. It was approximately 1/16th of a teaspoon. I wiped it up and threw away the paper towel. But then I had to wrap up the paper towel in several layers of plastic bags!

And so went my Durian adventure. Not so fun as I’d hoped.