Things I'll Miss on My 30 Mile Commute

Nothing! Haha. No, actually, I will miss the countryside just a little bit, especially with the fall colors (although those are gone for the most part). I'll miss the horse farms with all the lovely horses grazing. I'll miss the farmer's markets, too. It's amazing all the land for sale between here and Cincinnati. Soon, it will become Cincinnati-Dayton like Minneapolis-St. Paul. The two are getting closer and closer together.

What won't I miss? Taking 40 minutes to get home from work. I'll have about an hour more out of my day to get things done. Perhaps I'll get the urge to exercise more? Maybe. That'll have to be after I get all unpacked, and look after my dad and his surgery. He's having his prostate removed...no cancer, but the doctor says it'll become cancerous if it's not removed soon. But, being closer to "home" will make doing that easier, that's for sure. I can hardly wait. Now if I can just get through tomorrow when the move actually takes place. Ugh.

Tags: work, commuting, Cincinnati, Dayton

Must Be Nice

So the other night, an online friend of mine I met on Second Life showed me pictures of the home theater and his wife built in their basement. Whoa. It really looks like a small theater, complete with seating and home theater lighting...and of course the required 52 inch plasma television and surround sound (but, I can't see that, heh). They had the money to do it, so they took the plunge. Don't get me wrong. I like my gadgets, but I can't see spending thousands on making a home theater. Maybe a nice LCD TV and surround sound speakers, but that's it for me. If we by any chance get a bonus next year, I think I'll make the plunge and get an HDTV, since we'll be switching over to that anyway. But that's a ways away...I gotta get moved in first!

Tags: home theater, television, HDTV, LCD TV, plasma TV, Second Life

Donny and Marie - Back Again

So what...now Donny and Marie Osmond are famous again? I admit, I was in love with Donny when I was about 5 and they had their own variety show. That was in 1976. Now that Marie Osmond has appeared on Dancing with the Stars, it seems that she (along with Donny...because you can't have one without the other apparently) are making the rounds on talk shows. They recently appeared on Larry King Live, and got "blindsided" by him asking Marie if her son was in drug rehabilitation. Damn. I guess when you feel like you have to live up to the goody-two-shoes,"I'm a little bit country" persona you've built for yourself, any sort of information like this has to be kept hush-hush, because she said, "how did you know about that?" Um, he's a journalist (of sorts). They find out stuff, you know? And as it turns out, the tabloids were going to publish it, so I think Larry King kind of did her family a favor by getting it out in the open before the National Enquirer (or whatever rag was going to publish it) did. Anyway, I wish her son luck. Rehab, as we all know too well, often needs a few takes for it to work.

Tags: television, Larry King Live, Marie Osmond, Donny Osmond, Dancing with the Stars

Moving, How I Hate Thee

I really, really need to buy a house. Why? Because then, it's less likely I will move ever again. Seriously. Going through all the stuff I've accumulated over two years is depressing, only because it shows me how bad of a pack-rat I am. And given I move next Thursday, I don't really have time to purge now, so everything is coming with me. Oh, unpacking will be just as fun, I just know it...

But then, every now and then, I have a fond memory of moving, mainly the ones having to do with new stuff my parents bought me when I moved into my first apartment. My mom got me one of those espresso machines, which I think she really wanted for herself...because she drank coffee, a lot, and I didn't. While I enjoy a latte every now and then, it's not my life's blood. So, it sits under my counter and collects dust. I should just give it away, but it holds too many memories, especially with my mother having departed this plane of existence 4 years ago this month. But that's another blog entry entirely, and one I don't want to write...because even thinking of writing it makes me tear up a little. *sigh* So maybe, tomorrow I will get out the espresso machine and have myself a latte in honor of Mom and her coffee-loving ways. :)

Tags: moving, espresso, coffee, blog, apartment, pack-rat

Museum or Home Gym?

Going off of my last post about the Shangri-La Diet, you will be surprised that a lot of people have used it successfully without exercise. Whoa. I'm still going to exercise, but I'm not going to do it intensely as that usually makes me want to eat everything in sight, since my body requires more calories to make up for the deficit exercising causes. One of these days, I hope to be able to have a place big enough to be able to buy decent home gym equipment. My new apartment has a second bedroom, where my elliptical trainer and desk will go. But it's definitely not big enough for more than that. I'm not saying I want a full-blown gym with all the latest equipment, but maybe a weight bench would be good, rather than having to use a chair that's not really the right height for me. Or perhaps a Pilates Reformer, because that's the most effective piece of equipment for me, anyway. Oh well, someday I'll have a house with enough space. The question is...will I use it, or will it become a museum? Hmm....

Tags: Shangri-La Diet, home gym, Pilates, exercise

Freakonomics and...Weight Loss?

I've been reading the Freakonomics blog on The New York Times website...yes, I read about economics, believe it or not. Granted, it's economics for the masses, but still. Until I started working for a publisher that produced economics textbooks, I had this idea it was all numbers and math...both of which I hate. But, there's a whole world that people like Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt have opened to people like me, who just want to know how economics can affect our daily lives.

One of the topics they recently covered is weight loss by means of bariatric surgery, which definitely isn't for me since I'm only about 10 pounds overweight. But I still found it interesting to read, and ended up clicking on a link that took me to an article they wrote in 2005 for The New York Times magazine covering the "Shangri-La" diet. A scientist experimented on himself to find out the best way to lose weight, and ended up concluding that when it comes to food, our body and brains don't know it's not the Stone Age. Your brain thinks it's not going to get much to eat all winter, so it better store up what it can to make it through the starvation period. Basically, our brains want us to weigh more than we should, just in case we should ever face starvation. Thus, we have a "set point" according to Seth Roberts, the author of The Shangri-La Diet (he's a professor emeritus at Berkley), and it can be controlled by diet.

What's the trick to doing that? According to Roberts, we have to break the taste-calorie association so that the set point is lowered. By breaking the link between taste and calorie consumption, the body will no longer crave calories due to a particular taste. He proposes two ways of doing this, consuming either sugar water over a period of no less than 30 minutes to avoid an insulin spike, or taking tasteless oil (light olive or canola oil) between meals, the serving size depending on your weight. You also cannot eat anything one hour before or after consuming the water or oil so there is no taste associated with this. This has apparently worked wonders for some people, who report having appetite suppression to the point of forgetting to eat.

So, I'm going to try this to see what happens. I tried the oil last night and felt totally nauseated. My touchy gall bladder didn't seem to like it, apparently. Today, I'm trying the sugar water. So far, so good. Now, I have read that "supertasters" have to do stuff like hold their nose and wash out their mouth after consuming oil, because they can actually taste it. I must confess, I think I'm a supertaster, because that oil tasted pretty good...and I can taste that bitter substance that supertasters can taste (everyone else either can't taste it, or they don't think it's that bitter...trust me, it is!) Felt nasty going down, but it tasted buttery to me. The sugar is not associated with any taste or aroma, so I'm hoping that it'll work for me. I'm drinking it right now, actually. And I'm not hungry or tired like I thought I might be after consuming 3 tablespoons of sugar in about 24 oz of water. We'll see what happens.

Tags: Freakonomics, Shangri-La diet, New York Times, Steven Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner, weight loss, supertasters

Do Our Political Views Influence Our Taste in Entertainment?

Aha! I knew it! Conservatives by and large don't have a sense of humor, and they're less likely to watch "cerebral" material like documentaries and educational programming...or at least that's what a poll conducted by Zogby and the Norman Lear Institute found. Here are a few bullet points from the poll:

• Who has a sense of humor? Not only do liberals give Comedy Central a big thumbs up (31% watch it daily, compared to 6% of all other respondents), you are more likely to find them watching comedies than moderates or conservatives.
• While liberals are more likely to be found watching drama, comedy, documentaries, and arts and educational programming, those are the genres that conservatives are more likely to avoid.
• Cerebral material like documentaries and arts and educational programming all appeal more to liberals, who are 57% female.

It also confirmed my suspicions about music:

• Out of 15 musical genres, conservatives were more likely than the rest of the respondents to listen to only two of them: country and gospel.
  
• Liberals, on the other hand, are more likely than other respondents to enjoy almost every music genre, including world, punk, Latin, hip-hop and rap, blues, reggae, electronica, R&B and soul, jazz, folk and traditional music. Rock was the most popular genre among liberals (67%).

And here's the kicker when it comes to games and sports:

• If you play Grand Theft Auto, it’s more likely that you’re a liberal. But if you like auto racing, we’d bet you’re conservative. Conservatives are four times more likely than liberals to follow NASCAR (5% vs. 20%).

But, to be fair, there are some things that everyone seems to enjoy, too:

• House: one of the very successful TV shows with almost an equal number of adherents across the political spectrum.
• News: over 70% of each political group said they watch the news everyday
• Football: in almost every demographic category, and across the ideological spectrum, football is the most popular sport. Sunday Night Football has a stronger conservative following, but it is very popular among moderates and liberals, as well.
• Movies: although moderates like them best, movies were the most popular type of TV programming for every political type.
• Classical music: although moderates are less enamored with it, classical music barely nudged ahead of rock as the most popular music genre overall.

Of course, this is just a poll. And we all know polls can't be taken without a grain of salt. But I do find this one particularly interesting, and in some ways disturbing. Why aren't conservatives watching as much educational programming or documentaries as liberals? Is it because they feel it could be liberally biased? Maybe. Who knows?

Tags: politics, Zogby, entertainment, Comedy Central, NASCAR, football, arts, music

Spock Rocks (No, Not Spock from Star Trek)

Every now and then, I like to do a search on myself to see what information the Internets has on me. Turns out there's a new site called Spock which allows you to search for people or information using tags, such as "green eyes" or "Hanover College" (both are tags I used to describe myself in Spock, heh). Plus, by signing up, you can have Spock send you alerts whenever anything new is posted about you on the Web. Nice feature, isn't it?

I've never really seen a search engine like Spock before, so I put in the name of one of my favorite television shows, Grey's Anatomy to see what sort of results I'd get. Would it be links to the television show itself? Or maybe it'd take me to other people's blog postings about the show? Nope. Lo and behold, I got a page full of the actresses' names and pictures, with Katherine Heigl topping the page, and Ellen Pompeo (who plays Meredith Grey) coming in third (see the screenshot I took for proof). I found that most interesting. Guess Katherine is more popular that Ellen? I'm sure she'd love to know that, given I've heard she's got just a slightly inflated ego in real life.

So, I decided to do a search on my absolute favorite television show, Heroes, to see what the results might be. Guess what Spock found? Another listing of the actors and actresses, with Masi Oka at the top of the page, and not Milo Ventimiglia much to my surprise (and dismay...since he sorta lights my TV screen on fire as Peter Petrelli every Monday night).



Given this is a site about and for people (for the most part...it is not a social networking site like Friendster or Facebook), I'd say it works pretty well since the two searches I did on television shows (not the actors or actresses mind you) resulted in people, not the shows themselves. That's pretty cool. I'll keep this site in my bookmarks for sure, because I'm sure it will come in handy on those days I want to see what the Web has on me.

Making Way for the More Modern

Just the other day, I saw footage of one of the older Las Vegas hotels being imploded (on purpose). Even though I've seen tons of footage of implosions, it never ceases to fascinate me to watch a building fall in on itself, with the help of tons of explosives. It sort of saddens me too, because sometimes it's a piece of history that's being destroyed to make way for something newer. Not that I'm opposed to modernization, but a little part of me wishes we could somehow keep the old edifice, and build a new one in a different location. Guess that's not really feasible, though. Oh well, guess that's what pictures are for...to remind us of what used to stand in the place of its replacement.

Travelling with an Umbrella

The only time anyone in my family got travel insurance was when we went on a cruise. In most cases, I can't see getting it, just because it's an added expense. But when you think about the chances of a hurricane, tropical storm, or an outbreak of that cruise ship virus (name escapes me) interrupting your trip, it kinda does make sense to get it just for this type of trip. Luckily we didn't need it, but it felt nice to have it. Given I haven't really been on a real vacation since then, I haven't had the chance to look into it. But maybe the next time we go on a cruise (I think my dad might want to do another one, maybe an Alaskan cruise!), we'll end up getting it again.