Scary Stuff

Drove about 7 miles from home to see the Arcadia Fire, it's pretty close as it is. Here are the first few shots, I have two rolls of film to develop of it too.

Gettin' scared

It's finally caught up to me, I'm starting to get scared. I have done all my homework, I have a great surgeon, I have a great support system, and I am scared anyway. I have moments where out of nowhere tears stream down my face and I literally shake in my shoes. I have moments of telling myself that this is madness and I should cancel my surgery date. I have moments of being sure that I will be the one in a million who has some off the wall complication and my life will be ruined. It is ridiculous, but that doesn't make it any less true. It's funny what our brains do to us sometimes.

Dissapointment

I have a friend that I have known for 24 years. 24 years! I am only 29! Needless to say, we have always been closer than close. She moved to Vegas last year, we have been missing each other big time but we keep in touch. I messaged her last week when I got my surgery date because I knew she would want to be one of the first to know. I got a message from her today that said "May 7, so I guess you aren't coming to Vegas for my 30th birthday..." (her birthday is May 10). Excuse me?!?!?!

I am so upset I don't even know what to say to her. I have not responded yet because I know I won't handle it well until I calm down, but, really, if anyone should understand my reasons and be supporting me, I would think it would be her. I guess I am just hurt and really disappointed by her actions.

Am I over-reacting here?

Got my date!

I set my surgery date yesterday, May 7!!! I can't believe how soon that is! I am so ready, and I am nowhere near ready, all at the same time! LOL

Catching up

I finally got all the internet issues worked out and can seem to stay connected for more than a couple minutes at a time, so, this weekend I will proof read and post all the stuff I saved up over the past week, I just posted the letter C post, and I have all the rest waiting in the wings...stay tuned.

Random acts...

Have you ever felt like you HAD to help someone that you had never met? I get that way a lot...I am a fixer. Usually, I just tell myself there is nothing I could do that would help, and move on. Not today.

The blogger community is odd...especially the women. Most of us have never met each other, yet we are fiercely protective of each other. We may have nothing in common other than the fact that we blog, and that is enough. We love each other, we fight for each other, we are protective of each other, sometimes to a fault. We laugh together, rage together and (probably more often than any of us would EVER admit) we cry together.

I was over at Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper and I read about Miss Ann's raffle, which she is holding to help out Lisa, over at Clusterfook. Lisa has just been diagnosed with cancer, ovarian...third time. If you know ANYTHING about this disease, this is not good news...according to Miss Ann, she want's to send the proceeds to Lisa so she can take her kids to Disneyland. Go...go to the raffle and buy a ticket. Go. Now. Oh, and the prizes she has rounded up ROCK!

Also, I have yesterdays NaBloPoMo post about the letter C, my internet at home is wonky and I couldn't get it posted. It is saved on the puter at home, so, I will post it tonight if the internet is behaving.

The Letter C

Today we address the letter C!

I decided to look up the history of the word "chef" (natural choice, right?) We learned it in cooking school, but only broadly.

Here is what I found...

According to Wikipedia it is basically a bastardization of the word chief...I can fancy myself a chief. However, wiki also notes that it has become a term used to indicate skill set rather than position...so maybe not a chief after all.

Since I trained through the Cordon Bleu program (at CSCA), I feel I cannot contemplate what it means to be a chef, without mentioning Escoffier , who is widely considered to be the father of French cooking...however, I also wanted to mention some of my own personal favorite chefs.

So...first and foremost for me has to be Thomas Keller. I WILL eat at the French Laundry one day before I die. And I will pay several hundred dollars for the chefs tasting menu, and I will attempt to be there on a night when Chef Keller is in house so I can meet him. The man slays me, brilliant brilliant brilliant. Incidentally, his cookbook is the only one I own just for show, the food in it is not practical and some of it truly beyond my tastes or abilities...but as a foodie, it is one you just have to say you have it (you can find it here or here.)

Next...Anthony Bourdain. I know, everyone knows who he is now that he struck himself up a deal with The Travel Channel, but for a long time he was simply a "chef's chef", he cooks the kind of food I strive to cook, and he is funny and real (on a side, I LOVE his show). His book Kitchen Confidential was recommended to me when I started cooking school and it is on of the only representation (I will talk about the other in one moment) of what it is like to be a chef that I have ever found to be even close to true.

Third on my list...Michael Ruhlman. He wrote my other favorite "chefs" book, Soul of a Chef. Besides being a great author he is also the kind of chef I wish I were, and hope to be someday. He cooks for the love of the cooking, and the food, and nothing else. He gets huge respect from me.

You may notice that my top 3 are all men. While huge strides are being made, this is still mostly a man's world. Women are still expected to be pastry chefs and relegated to making things "look pretty". In that world, there are a few women who stand WAY out against convention.

Sara Moulton is one of them. She is the reigning executive chef for Gourmet Magazine, as well as being a world class chef, author, and all around great person. When I was in cooking school we had to do a project for one of our classes, a big presentation. My group and I chose to tackle the subject of female chef's and the dichotomy that exists between us and "the good ole boys" in our profession...we sent out DOZENS of questionaires to female chef's that we respected, and the ONLY one (outside of the female chef's teaching at our school) who returned it was Sara Moulton. Probably the busiest of all the women on our list, and yet the only one who took the time out to lend her thoughts to some budding chefs. I will never forget that impression of her.

Also on the list of great ladies, Cat Cora. Before becoming one of the few female Iron Chefs she popped up here and there on various television shows and honed her cooking chops at a few different restaurants, and she also founded Chefs for Humanity, which is a coalition of culinary pro's geared to fill the food needs of those affected by emergencies, as well as working toward eradicating hunger. Anyone who founds a humanitarian agency is A-1 in my book!

Since I listed 3 men, I guess I will keep it to three cool female chef's, and close it off with Alice Waters, as it is nearly impossible to have a real discussion about the great women of our field and not come around to Chef Waters. If you have not heard of Alice Waters, it is likely you have heard of Chez Panisse, her first restaurant, in Berkeley CA (she also had Cafe Fanny, also in Berkeley.) Chef Waters has long championed fresh, locally grown ingredients, and her fantastic food is a testament to just how good those things can be. She totally inspires me to hit the streets and head to the farmers markets in search of inspiration to make amazing food.

OK...enough about chef's I think!

I can't think of a cohesive title....

I have a lot to say. I also have nothing to say.

There is a lot going on right now, lot's of things that I want to talk about, I just...don't. I do not restrict this behavior to blogging. No one has heard from me. I have emails that have been sitting here for weeks. I have phone messages to return. I have at least one text message I never responded to. I am just...lazy. I think it's something in the water. I have noticed similar posts on a lot of the blogs that I read. Everyone seems to be caught up in a wierd web of self absorption and laziness.

I have been giving a lot of thought to my lack of motivation. Not only is it not restricted to my blog, it is also not restricted to my "communication". I have done NONE of the things I want to be doing to get ready for my surgery. I am not making any serious steps to shed any more of the weight I want to lose pre-op, as a matter of fact, I have been eating so horribly that I won't be surprised if I have gained the next time I am weighed at the Dr's office. I can see the old demon "self-sabotage" rearing it's head. I know I need to squash it, it gets me nowhere, except fat and unhappy, as it always has. I guess I should consider it a small personal victory that I am now at least self aware enough to know that I am doing it to myself. It makes me wonder, if I had discovered this level of awareness a few years ago, would I have managed to smack myself straight before I got here?

Kim over at Big Girl in a Big City wrote a great post yesterday about dedicating the month of April to several goals of bettering herself. I really want to join her in this month of self discipline and "on-track-ness". Kim set herself a list of rules that she wants to follow for the month, regarding food and exercise, etc. So...here are the rules I want to follow for the month of April. I think they are totally do-able.
1. Make good food choices.
2. Don't beat myself up when I make poor food choices, acknowledge it and move on!
3. Walk EVERYDAY on my lunch break.
4. Walk EVERYDAY after work.
5. Support groups, go to them, every group that falls within the bounds of my schedule, I cannot do this alone, and I need to accept that fact and start getting the support that I need from other people who have been there.
6. Yoga. I have already pre-paid for a bunch of classes, and they are just sitting there waiting for me to come take them!
7. NO CARBS AFTER 5PM. I set this goal for myself weeks ago and totally let it go, it is time to get back to work kicking the carb monster!

So...let's see. I have my endoscopy set for next Wed at 7:15 in the morning, and that is it! Last test, and once the results from that make it to the surgeons office I can set a surgery date! It's still not real (I suspect that feeling this way also has something to do with my general malaise and laziness), I told someone the other day (did I blog this before?) that I am not going to TRULY believe it until I wake up in recovery and the Dr tells me it all went fine. But, it's getting here!

Other than that...we got another dog. I took pics but they are in the camera, which is with Chris, in Dallas at a weeklong management training thingy. I will post them when she gets back. =) She is adorable (the dog, although Chris is adorable too), same age as Max, also a Basset, a little smaller than Max and SO SO sweet, totally happy and at ease as long as she feels loved, a great fit for our family so far.

Ummm...yeah. I better get to bed. I have to be up early for a long commute tomorrow.

Ta!

Check out my fancy new domain name!

Well, I sucked it up and bought my own domain name for my blog! The idea, is that if I am paying for it, I will use it...we'll see how that goes. Make sure you update your bookmarks (I know you all have my bookmarked, admit it!).

The new one is www.shelley1978.com

Ta!

The Letter B

In my pondering of letters this morning, it occured to me to google "The History of the Letter B"...I had no idea our letters had such storied pasts!!!!

Per Wikipedia..."The letter B might have started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. By 1050 BC, the Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as the beth." Who knew??

If you go to Learner.org you can hear a bunch of different audio files of pronunciations.

And, of course, it is hard to resist checking out The Devil's Dictionary" to see what entries they have for words starting with B. My favorite, Baptism which they explain as "a quick, pleasant dip in the church pool, with some long, dry consequences forthcoming; e.g., the sermon which follows."

NaBloPoMo

The theme for April is letters! I am choosing to take this literally, and choose something having to do with a letter of the alphabet for each day (what I will do after 4/26 is a mystery!).

So...A...aardvark (yes, I will explain.) Marcus and I were playing a game that involved pictures of animals...one of them was an aardvark, which we had to look up, because I had NO CLUE what it was (thank goodness for www.boardgamegeek.com, someone has posted a list of the animals...seemed odd, but handy!). So...for my "A" posting, I am posting some information about the aardvark, because it is wierd and topical to my life today.





From Wikipedia....
The Aardvark (Orycteropus afer) ("Digging foot") is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. [1]. It is sometimes called "antbear", "anteater", "Cape anteater" (after the Cape of Good Hope), "earth hog" or "earth pig". The name comes from the Afrikaans/ Dutch for "earth pig" (aarde earth, varken pig), because early settlers from Europe thought it resembled a pig. However, the aardvark is not closely related to the pig; rather, it is the sole recent representative of the obscure mammalian order Tubulidentata, in which it is usually considered to form a single variable species of the genus Orycteropus, coextensive with the family Orycteropodidae. Nor is the aardvark closely related to the South American anteater, despite sharing some characteristics and a superficial resemblance.[2] The closest living relatives of the aardvark are the elephant shrews, along with the sirenians, hyraxes, tenrecs and elephants.

Edit: 4/2 @ 9AM...I thought to look up Aardvark in The Devils Dictionary and this is what I found..."an audacious creature chiefly remarkable for its length of tongue, fondness for ants, and precociousness in lexicons".