HFCS: effika’s blog

3-5 days every workweek I spend about $4 on lunch. This is a lot less than many of my coworkers, but it still adds up. I can’t get home for lunch every day and I’ve got to eat something. I am pretty happy with this arrangement, but I would appreciate that extra cash. That’s extra yarn (or a few more bucks towards my student loans)!

Long ago, while I was in training, I would take my lunch, since I had a fridge to stash it in. Now that I’m actually doing my job, I’m out in the field most days and for 11 months out of the year my car is too warm to use as a fridge.

Don’t ask me how I wound up here, but in a completely unrelated search-fest involving grapes I found myself at Good Housekeeping’s website. Good Housekeeping, apparently, has reviewed a bunch of lunch boxes. While most of them were very kid-oriented, their top pick was the adult-friendly L.L. Bean Flip-Top, which GH claimed held food at 40ºF for 3 hours (at room temperature). My trunk in Oklahoma during the summer is anything but room temperature, but with the addition of an ice pack I think I can keep my food safe long enough to get to lunch.

With the addition of a few of those tiny Tupperware containers (to keep the tomatoes ect from getting the bread soggy) I think this set-up could be less of a hassle for me. I’d have my lunch wherever I’m at and whenever I want it (not 15m after I decide to get lunch), I’d know how much dressing gets slung onto my sandwich, and slicing up vegetables every few days is something I can handle.

What do you guys do for lunch?

I attended a course for work recently. All of the instructors had laugh lines, and it made me smile. It was heartening to see that 20 years from now the people who do my job weren’t just a mess of worry-induced wrinkles.

Laughing at an establishment’s handy-work is never good, especially when I’m trying to get them to fix stuff correctly (in a permanent, easily-cleanable fashion).

Today I was in a place that had mouse droppings. The owners assured me they’d found the entry point for the mice, and had plugged it. They pointed to the ceiling, where a jumbo-sized glue trap was plastered over a hole.

I started to laugh and had to cough it off, blaming the heat in the storage room as I walked back out to the dining area.

I see all sorts of ridiculous things, and what breaks my well-tempered laugh reflex? A glue trap stuck to the ceiling.

So as absolutely none of you know, I’ve started lifting weights. I really enjoy running (and will probably start that up in earnest soon once Jay has a regular schedule at work), but I also would like to not look like a bag of skin and bones. One summer in high school I ran every day until my legs were jelly, far longer than my family’s lazy dalmatian wanted to run. Upon seeing me in a tank top a friend’s mom (David’s) decided I had an eating disorder, even though I was constantly at their house eating pizza and making chocolate chip cookies at 3 am.

I’m not really a very strong person, physically. My legs are great at making me run, but my arms suck at lifting heavy things and my back gets tired easily. For instance, I’m having to work up to using 10lbs with this exercise. I’d like to turn the extra 15 pounds I picked up after college into muscle.

The real point of this post is that lifting weights is making it hard for me to be my slouchy gluttonous self. If I slouch in my chair at work or don’t stand up straight I get uncomfortable. Tonight Jay and I went out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, one we haven’t had the chance to go to in a month or so. I was really hungry so I ate quickly, visually gauging what was usually my full point for that meal. I always over eat here, but normally not enough to be too upset over the consequences. Apparently muscles aren’t as accomodating as the normal lumps of fat in my abdomen when I over eat. Those lumps of fat never complained when they got smooshed out from a large meal, but muscles apparently prefer to not be distorted like that.

Also, Fiber One Caramel Delight cereal tastes exactly like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but it has 9 grams of fiber in one serving! It’s sugary cereal for grown-ups.