Rest in Peace, Gary Gygax.

You were quite possibly the biggest nerd in the world, and the rest of us inferior nerds will miss you dearly.

Al Gore: To my left, you'll recognize Gary Gygax, inventor of Dungeons & Dragons.
Gary Gygax: Greetings it's a...
[rolls dice]
Gary Gygax: ... pleasure to meet you.

Days where I feel fat suck, such as yesterday. I mean, I am overweight, but generally I accept my body as it is now and realize that I'm working towards a healthier body, so I shouldn't be ashamed of my current weight. But there are days where I can't accept the way I look. These end up in 1) extremely restricted food intake 2) overexercising to the point of complete exhaustion 3) some combination of the two. Luckily, I usually come to my senses by the end of day because I'm so damn hungry. The only benefit of these days is that they remind me of the inane obsession society has with weight and veer me towards healthy eating and exercise habits for a good time. I don't want to be a person who judges their mood for the day by the number on the scale.

A Few "Fun" Facts

35% of occasional dieters progress into pathological dieting.

In 1970 the average age a girl started dieting was 14; by 1990 the average age dropped to 8. (I believe I started around 9, myself)

While only one out of ten high school girls are overweight, nine out of ten high school juniors and seniors diet.

95% of individuals who diet as opposed to follow a healthy food plan will gain their lost weight back in one to five years.

In one study, three out of four women stated that they were overweight although only one out of four actually were.

Four out of five U.S. women are dissatisfied with their appearance.

42% of girls in first through third grades state they want to be thinner.

A study found that adolescent girls were more fearful of gaining weight, than getting cancer, nuclear war or losing their parents.

30% of women chose an ideal body shape that is 20% underweight and an additional 44% chose an ideal body shape 10% underweight.

One out of every four television commercials sends out some sort of message about attractiveness.

Model/Actress Elizabeth Hurley stated in Allure magazine "I've always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I'd kill myself if I was that fat."

What kind of messed up world do we live in for people to think that this woman is a fattie?

Apparently, I'm only a few dress sizes larger than her, too.

As part of my new diet and fitness plan, I'm trying out new foods and learning to cook them. I hate PETA in general, but I've acquired some damn good recipes from www.vegcooking.com, so I decided to start there. I quickly came across a recipe for Johnny Cakes and decided, because of the awesome name, that I needed to make them.

The recipe called for soy milk, but I only had vanilla-flavoured soy milk. I just used some of my parents' 2% instead; no biggie, it wasn't a big part of the recipe. I also reduced the salt used by a bit. The cakes were huge oil suckers and I ended up using a lot more oil than I thought I would. The final result:

(the digital camera was low on batteries)

The few little crumbles I had while cooking them made me look forward to the final result, but it was just bland as heck. Even drenched in syrup, all I could taste was the BLAND. The texture wasn't that bad though; nice and crisp on the outside (though overcooked in some spots) and soft on the inside. But bland bland bland. The only redeeming feature is that all that oil won't completely ruin my day; looks like vegetable soup tonight.

**/*****

I want to try something with Quinoa next, but I have no idea where I'd find it. Hopefully Safeway carries it. :?

Well, better get to working these abominations of cornmeal off. Yuck.

According to The Complete Canadian GED Preparation Book:

"Geometry is the area of mathematics that deals with points, lines, angles, two-dimensional shapes, and three-dimensional figures and is used to solve many everyday problems." (emphasis mine)

Um, yeah. Geometry, as much as I like you, I can't think of a single instance where I needed you in an everyday problem, much less many of my problems. Maybe I'll be using you every so often to, say, see if a painting fits on my wall, but I don't do that everyday. Sorry to break it to you, Geometry.

I'm glad to say at least my studying hasn't suffered due to Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. I played it for a good three hours straight last night and I have around 40% of the missions finished. Awesome game is omfg awesome. I've still been playing My Spanish Coach everyday, surprisingly. I guess I really want to be able to kinda talk to my fiance's parents when I meet them.

¡Yo soy anaranjado! :D

Well, my birthday was over a week ago and the party was a week ago tomorrow, but I still have the urge to blog about it. The actual day was pretty boring. My mom got me some roses (most of which still live today), chocolates, and cute little Valentine's Day doodads. My dad got me some Xbox Live points, so I purchased Zuma and Puzzle Fighter, plus a few stages for Beautiful Katamari. For my big present, my parents are going to put money towards my trip to visit my fiancé. Hopefully we'll get that all sorted out soon; I'll be working on getting my passport this upcoming week. My grandma's gift arrived a little late, but she sent a calculator (very fancy, but kind of lacking in function), a pen, a beautiful glass necklace, and a $50 cheque (hello, passport).

I had my friends over on Saturday; it was a blast. They got me a bunch of DS games and an adorable little card with a bee on it. Aw, they are so sweet. Sadly, the Xbox 360 has been forsaken for long nights of poking and prodding the DS. Anywho, we played Mario DDR, Mario Kart, Boom Boom Rocket, to name a couple. Gears of War took up a good amount of our time, surprisingly. My friend and I, both terrible at shooters, played through the first two chapters. We were so bad it was hilarious. We died so many times trying to fight that dang Berserker. A great celebration was had by all when that thing finally died.

The only bad thing that happened that day was the pizza. I was having a break from my diet, so I wanted a greasy, cheesy, stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut. I get my pizza and, after eating a couple slices, I realized that there was chicken on my pizza. I knew there was something odd, but I thought those strange chunks I came across were globs of cheese or something (this is how out of touch I am with meat). I ended up feeling sick and crying in a bathroom for awhile, woo. When my replacement pizza came, my mom dissected a slice and found out that this pizza had chicken too. How exactly do you mess up a pizza twice in the exact same way? Honestly. The third pizza came exactly as I ordered it, along with some free soda and desert, but I didn't really feel hungry anymore. By the time I ate my perfect pizza, it was cold. Oh, well.

Happy Late 18th Birthday to me!

I've had Luigi's Mansion since the Christmas of 2003 and despite of how much I enjoyed playing it, I didn't finish it until a few days ago. After a surprising amount of cussing during the final boss, I can finally say I've beaten the game. It feels disturbingly good.

I haven't been playing many other games lately besides Pokemon Pearl (recently got the seventh badge) and Guitar Hero II (beat a song in the seventh set on Hard, yay!). I've been more in a crafty mood lately; I finished up my fiancé's crocheted scarf (it ended up taller than my mom!) and did a bunch of papercrafts from http://paperboxworld.googlepages.com/. I'm going to work on a face cloth next (http://www.crochetnmore.com/facecloth.htm) and a card for my grandparents (http://cp.c-ij.com/english/3D-papercraft/event/pop-up-christmas_e.html).