Street Fair

Unbeknown to me there was a street fair in Park Slope today. So when I went to meet my friends for brunch at Moutarde, one of my favorite brunch places (the French toast is to die for), I came across a world of interesting things. A Park Slope street fair is like nothing I've seen before.



The view south on 5th ave, I couldn't believe the number of people, where did they all come from?



There were a whole bunch of vintage cars.



And like any good street fair, lots and lots of junk food (but I didn't eat any!).

And then there were the funny things...



The painless hair remover stand,



the 7-11 stand,



the spider bouncy house, and



the Dr. Pickle stand.

Part of me wished I hadn't carbo-loaded at brunch, but I resisted temptation and didn't get any crap, fried or otherwise. LM and I finished week one of the Couch to 5k program today. Week 2 involves 90 seconds of running, I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a challenge. Weigh-day tomorrow and I'm excited.

Fatass No More

Even though I don't want this to be a blog that sounds like that Big Fat Loser TV show, I do occasionally need to post about my weight loss. So far I've lost 8.8lbs, go me! Minus my cheeseburger and fries tonight I've been doing really well. Exercising every morning, eating well, and the only difference in my life from when I was a big fatass is that I have more energy, I'm happier, I'm sleeping better, and I feel great all around.

One of the things I'm doing is the Couch to 5k program. I've never been a runner, I've never been able to run for a sustained period of time. It hurts my knees, it hurts my ankle, it hurts my toe, I can't breathe, blah, blah, blah. So I'm hoping this will work. I'm doing it with my friend LM for extra motivation. We've done the first two workouts and while it's certainly challenging, it's not impossible. And it's almost starting to feel attainable. We'll see. Maybe in 8.5 weeks I'll be posting pictures of me crossing the finish line of a 5k.

In the meantime I'm going to savor the fact that it's the weekend. I made it.

Passive Aggressiveness

I have this friend, she's a work friend, and she's a lovely girl, but she's very insecure. And, unfortunately, this insecurity comes out in the form of being nasty to other people. She's someone who loves to dish it out, but she just can't take it. She's also prone to these temper tantrums, where someone does incredibly minor, but it sets her off and she sighs loudly or slams her hands on the table and then storms off and doesn't speak to anyone. She's called me a liar, she says things like "Ok, then I guess you all just don't want me there," etc. So I've adopted a new approach, I just say, "ok." Today she said she guesses she isn't invited to lunch anymore and I said, "I guess you're not." Is this the most mature thing on my part? Maybe not, but what am I supposed to do? I'm not in middle school, I don't want to deal with this. So I'm ignoring.

Yesterday, in my exhausted stupor, I forgot my most important news: I lost 6.4lbs last week!! I was so excited. Clearly I don't expect to lose that much every week, I have realistic expectations of 1-2lbs/week, but it felt good to see such a large number. Definitely a motivator.

Monday, Monday

Today I joined Weight Watchers. I've always been against diets and Weight Watchers because I don't feel like you can sustain them and it annoys me that crap like those 100 calorie snack things (don't get me started on those) can be fewer points than fruit or whatever. But after speaking to someone at work who's been doing it for a month or two I realized that I can make it work for me. If I don't want to eat that processed crap then I won't eat the processed crap, it's more of a way of practicing portion control and holding myself accountable. And so far I really like it. It fits well with my obsessive planning personality. So my first goal is to lose 9.6lbs and I will keep you updated (but not in an annoying, dramatic, emotional dear diary way).

Some things I keep meaning to mention...

We're doing a book on Vans, the sneaker company, so as a promotional thing for Book Expo a select group of people got to design their own custom Vans and order them free of charge. My attempt at being creative:



I don't really think I'm a stars person, but I really liked these. We'll see how they look in person in 5-7 weeks.

Not that I really paid close attention to Madeline Albright's pins while she was Secretary of State, but this exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design sounds really interesting. I've never been to MAD, but it's definitely been on my list of places I want to go.

And this exhibit at the New Museum (another place I need to visit) sounds interesting as well. Maybe I can bring AF when she's here in May.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I lost 5lbs this week! Tuesday is my official weigh day and I shed 5lbs. Not too bad! That's like a thing of flour. It makes me feel like my getting up early to workout is working out and is definitely a motivator when that alarm goes off at 6:07. Of course I ate one and a half doughnuts, 2 pieces of pizza, a beer, and then a burger and fries tonight, but what are you going to do? It's St. Patrick's Day. If god gives people fasting for Lent a dispensation I think I should get one too.

I've wanted to write a post about the economy since I decided to start this blog. The recession/depression/run of bad luck that we're having now is really scary. My company is doing well and we're very lucky. Everyone in the company got a (fairly modest) bonus last week, thanks mainly to the success of our biggest title. However, things aren't so good elsewhere. The company in the offices downstairs from us laid off 100 (!!!) people last week. The Metropolitan Museum's book buying office laid off 3 people out of the 7 or 8 that work there. And overall you just see a general sense of panic.

New York Magazine had an interesting little piece about how people in NYC tend to panic more and about how much worse the impact if the recession seems to be in NYC. It's crazy to go to work every day and hear about how much money we're making, yet we're still in this recession mode and everywhere else I look there is bad news.

All that said, one thing did make me feel a lot better. The interview with Ben Bernake on 60 Minutes this week was fascinating. If you haven't see it you need to check it out. I'm ashamed to say I didn't know much about how the Fed worked before last week's 60 Minutes and I'm even more ashamed to say that I didn't know anything about Ben Bernanke until this week. Since he was appointed by Bush I assumed he was an under-qualified-corrupt-idiot, but apparently he's not at all. I was very impressed and reassured.