randomness

I never used to be a big fan of the tomato. Ketchup, sure. Spaghetti sauce, oh you betcha. But the raw material? Pass. I think it was in college that I really started liking the tomato.

Lately, I can't get enough of them. I buy the "on the vine" ones at the grocery store, because they smell more authentic than the fake plastic greenhouse variety. Now that it's real, grow-em-in-your-garden tomato season, I've been keeping an eye out for produce stands.

There's a gas station about a mile from our house that has been a work in progress for about 3 years. For the last two of those years, the building has been fully built, but there are no gas pumps and nothing inside the convenience store. It's gotten to the point now where I am not sure it's ever going to open. Which is really no big thing, since there are half a dozen more gas stations just a little further down the road. I'm never running on fumes to quite the extent that I couldn't just eke out a couple more miles.

Anyway, for the past couple months, a produce farm guy has set up his cart in the parking lot of this gonna-be-a-gas-station. From the road, all you can really see are watermelons, and not being a big fan of watermelons, I always passed him by. Then, on the way home the other day, I noticed that he sells tomatoes, too. Woohoo!

I bought two last night, and I'm not sure if the $1 I paid was over or under-priced. Doesn't matter, though, because MAN. Fresh tomatoes kick some major ass. It's been so long since I had one...I ate most of one last night, and I'm usually a 1-2 slice kind of girl. I'm probably going to have the canker sores to prove it soon (I usually get them after eating a lot of tomatoes or oranges), but it was totally worth it.

Rob's been watching the Tour de France for the past couple days, and sometimes I watch it with him. I've tried to get into it, but I really just can't. I know that there's strategy involved, and that it takes an amazing amount of endurance, and I have an enormous respect for anyone who can go 30 mph on a bike for hours, sometimes up a mountain. Hell, I can't even go 15 mph for ONE hour on a flat road. Of course, I don't ride a competition-class road bike (hybrid), but still.

Anyway, I've tried to get into the sport, but try as I might, it still looks like a bunch of guys on bikes. Sort of like how, to me, the Indianapolis 500 is a 500-mile left turn with crashes. The scenery is pretty, though.

While Rob is into the Tour de France, I've been catching up on my reading. I bought The Shipping News from Amazon the other day, on a recommendation from someone in a writing workshop that I did for one session before realizing once again that I don't really want to be a writer.

While I can't say yet that I hate it, I can say that I don't really care for Annie Proulx's writing style. It seems all over the place to me, and I'm having a hard time getting into the story after four chapters. Besides which, this guy's life is just incredibly depressing. The book won awards and shit, though, so I guess I should just keep reading and maybe it'll get better.

I've also got a book about the running method I'll be learning in a few weeks, so I've started to page through that (mostly in the car on the way to work--I skimmed at red lights). And then my new Real Simple came yesterday, and I bought a copy of Runner's World at the grocery store last night too. I can't really say I'm well read, but what I lack in quality, I make up for in quantity.

The South Beach experiment is going well so far. I don't follow phase 1 completely (I eat more nuts, don't avoid caffeine, and fall victim to the occasional starch or sugar), but close enough that I don't think it's going to make much difference in the plan's effectiveness.

I don't really have a problem with cravings (knock on wood), and I have noticed that my appetite has been more constant in the last couple days than it has been for the past few weeks. Not constant as in "hungry all the damn time", but constant as in "holy crap, it's 1 pm. Why haven't I felt hungry yet?" So apparently, the blood sugar regulation part is working well.

My workout energy level actually seems to be up, which surprises me a little. I'm not sure if that has more to do with a good night's sleep on Monday night or the change in diet. I'll really know more in the next couple days, when I really expect to see a bit of a drop. Since I hope to continue to work out at the pace I have been these past few weeks (5-7 workouts/week) indefinitely, I'm curious to see how my new moderate-to-low carb diet works with that.

I'm just all about the trial and error.

Speaking of workouts, the start of July means that a new quarter has begun. I'm 0 for 2 on my company's quarterly workout incentives this year (0 for 12 overall), and I really want to get it this time. This means that I have to come up with a schedule that will use the company's facilities at least 3 times per week (the requirement is 36 times in a quarter).

The problem is, I don't really like the company's facilities as much as my new gym. Since my weak knees have put the kibosh on my running program temporarily, everything at the work fitness center other than the sculpting classes inspires nothing but boredom. The track is nice, but it's too hot to walk the track in the middle of the day, usually. I may have to just suffer through it, though, or maybe come in early one day a week and walk in order to make my 3-a-week. We'll see.