Observations of Paris (oldie but goodie)

It's very easy to maintain a vegetarian diet in Paris and even easier to abandon one.
You can survive solely on nouns with a few verbs sprinkled in for flavor for an entire week.
French women really don't get fat.
French chefs definitely do not use instant mashed potatoes.
Harcourt Verts actually do taste better, and are not, as I suspected, just green beans with a fancy name to get you to pay more.
It is surrealistic to be sitting in a Parisian restaurant, hearing people speak French all around you, eating French food, drinking French wine, and suddenly realize you are listening to the Eagles Hotel California in the background.
If you buy an all day transportation pass in Paris, it just doesn't matter what bus you get on.
Let's face it, can any American really hear a French police siren without thinking about Inspector Jacques Clouseau.
French women eat croissants du chocolat for breakfast, clean their plates at dinner and are always eating amazing pastries and desserts. Why don't French women get fat?
I have heard a lot of stories about rude French people. I have yet to have any person be rude to me in France. Maybe it's the "Don't blame me, I didn't vote for George W Bush" button that I wear?
If you are lactose intolerant, steer clear of the 3 Fromage sandwich. Trust me on this one.
French women smoke a lot, which could account for why French women don't get fat.
No matter how long you stare at a historical marker written in French the meaning will not magically come to you if you do not speak the language. (I'm going to guess this one is true in any language, but would have to do much more traveling to prove the theory. At this point in time, I've proven it to be true in Japanese, German, Spanish, French, and Egyptian)
If you see a fat woman in Paris, she's probably American. It's probably me.

The denouement

Well Team it was a real Hollywood ending for the Emerson Late Shift and their production of Tea & Thievery.

While Kristen and Sara worked their hardest to get everything edited and the reshots and rerecords, we knew from early on that we were coming down to the wire. Colette, Linda and I did our best to support and do what we could, but the weight of the world was on their shoulders and they held up like champs.

As late afternoon approached, technical issues continued to plague us and caused us to get closer and closer to the 7:30PM deadline for submission. We tried calling a few lifelines but no one could really help us until we decided to call the 48 hour film project hotline where Ben Guaraldi was on the phone, talking us through some of our issues and trying to debug our problem. He also strongly recommended that we finish working IN THE CAR and get our butts down to Lir in case we had even a slim chance of working through our technical problems in time to submit. At 6:00PM we piled into Colette and my car with Sara and Kristen continuing to work as we drove, and was Jessica packed and ready to be taken to the airport for her 9pm flight. On the way downtown, Kristen realized she hadn't had anything to eat all day! So I knew my first job when we got there was to get some food into her before we lost her :-)

By the time we got to Lir, we were almost over one hurdle and ready to move on to the next. At 7:15 (by our computer's time) we began the final process of burning the file onto the flash drive to be turned in. The progress bar on the program reported that we were looking at 13 minutes and we started emotionally preparing for the inevitable late submission that it looked like we were destine for. That is until Ben announced to all in the room, (including several people in our same position) that there was 20 minutes left! Their "official" time was in fact 5 minutes slower than our time.

I quickly took my place on the submission line while the file finished downloading. Once that progress bar disappeared, Kristen quickly ejected it from the computer and Colette ripped it out of the computer and handed it off to me. Our "official" check in time was 7:27! We made it with 3 minutes to spare!

Needless to say, it was a relief to get it in and on time no less. It was truly an incredible sense of accomplishment and of course relief.

Unfortunately there were some compromises we had to make in order to make the "on time" deadline so Jessica's fabulous music that she worked so hard on all weekend didn't get in, some of the footage that we really wanted in also didn't make it, and a few additional edits that Kristen wanted to make had to be bumped off the priority list. And probably most nerve wracking of all is that we never got to test the media before we handed it in. Once it went into the sealed envelop we were not able to access it. It's in the hands of the film gods now.

The good news is we know the file worked as we have now watched it several times and LOVE IT. However that said, we'd like to see the final product we wanted to create make it to the "youtube" version. So, to that end, Kristen, Sara, and Jessica are going to continue to work on it and since we aren't even allowed to post it on you tube until the end of the week at the earliest, we will post the project that we wanted to do film instead of the one that we wound up with.

Thank you all again for all your efforts over the course of the last 48 hours. And most especially to the extraordinary effort and hours logged from Kristen, Colette, Sara, Jessica and Linda for whom 48 hours was really almost a straight 48 hours  -- combined, this team got as much sleep in the last 48 hours as a single human usually gets in one night. To them, the biggest round of applause and appreciation. And to all of you my thanks!

Hopefully we'll see you at the screening Tuesday night, if not, we hope you will love what we post on You Tube and we'll be looking for your comments when we do!

r

The Daily Debate

It's dark. It's 10 degrees outside.

When the alarm goes off at 5AM, my brain kicks into gear explaining to the rest of my body all the reasons why we should stay in bed and forget about the perfect 35 consecutive day streak I have getting up every morning and going to the gym.

Before I know it though, the covers are tossed back, legs are kicked over the side, and feet are on the floor.

Guys, my brain implores, think about how warm and cozy this bed is. Look at these soft, flannel sheets, feel the warmth of the heated mattress pad. The rest of my body is moving slowly but not listening to the pleadings of my brain.

Yesterday, I had yet another horrible sinus attack. I was in bed by 7 and my head is still killing me. But now, I seem to have reached for my workout clothes.

Guys, come on, give me a break. Just one day. It will be fine, maybe we'll go later when the Advil kicks in.

Now shoes are on. Pills are popped. Coffee cup is full. I'm ready to go. My brain takes one more shot at it.

Look guys, missing one day isn't going to kill us. Back, listen to me, your twinging. You know that's not a good sign. You could herniate a disk again. Calf and Shins, come on, I know you are with me, remember how much pain you have about 15 minutes into the walk. Let's give you poor guys a rest. Feet, listen, just stop and listen. You're hurting, I know you are. Let's just stop this silliness and go back to our nice, warm, bed. No one will ever know. No one will be the wiser. We can keep telling people you've had an unbroken attendance record, who the hell is going to know the difference?

And then I look up and I see that we are in the Y parking lot. It's 5:30am, the doors have just opened.

Oh, fine, might as well just get this over with. And so starts day number 36.

Everyone Needs a Cheering Section

Today, it was just me and a few other crazy people who trudged to the Y in the sleet and freezing rain at 5:30AM. It was really nice when I got the two thumbs up from Wally, my trainer, when I broke 50 crunches for the first time today. (When I first started at the Y, I could barely get to 10). But then as I was leaving, a very fit, very trim, elderly man, stepped out of the wellness center as I was grabbing for my coat coming off the track. I had seen him a few times when I was in the wellness room doing my resistance training but had never spoken to him.
"Leaving so soon?" he slyly smiled.
"Hey, I've been here since 5:30, where've you been?" I sarcastically retorted.
"In bed sleeping!"
"Probably a better use of your time on a day like today," I answered.
"Well," he said, "you're doing great!"
I was shocked, did he mean today? or in general? Had he taken notice of me before?
"Thanks," I said, "I'm not seeing any physical evidence of it, but I'll take your word for it."
Then he told me how there were those a lot worse off than I, which I had agreed and noted that I had seen them at the Walmart, which he found quite amusing. Then he repeated, with a smile as he walked toward the door, "You're doing just fine, I'll let you know if I think it's going otherwise."
"Thanks!" I yelled after him. It's nice to know someone's watching my back(side). Literally.

Filler Up, My Tank is Empty

Tomorrow starts month number two at the Y and this is the “make it or break it” for me. Was this just a flash in the pan or a lifetime commitment to being healthy? Last night on the way home from Brian's I stopped and picked up some extra workout clothes. Either these will sit in the corner mocking me for the rest of my life, or I will wear them out. Only time will tell.

So today, the new dietary recommendations came out. After reading through most of them, I have to say, GROW A PAIR USDA.

Brian and I have been doing a lot of reading on nutritional research and data. But the bottom line is this: The human body was not meant to be this sedentary or eat what we typically eat.

So let’s get down to basics. Food = Energy. It’s the fuel we use to drive our bodies, period. Over the course of the last 100 or so years, Americans have started using fewer and fewer calories during the course of the day. Let's not even go back through the millennia for a list of all the activities we are not doing (we are not hunting, gathering or foraging anymore let alone running for our lives periodically during the day). Just over the course of the last century, we’ve stopped walking to town, plowing the earth, churning butter, grinding flour, chopping wood just to name a few activities no longer on my daily chore list.

And since the invention of television and its evil cousin the computer, we mostly sit. Which is basically like leaving the pilot light on the stove, hardly any fuel usage at all. Additionally we are no longer living in cycles of feast and famine, so while I try to explain to my body it no longer needs to store all that energy in the form of fat in the event of a famine, it's not listening to me.

So many of us are going out and running around the streets or down in our basements or gyms pumping iron on ergonomic torture devices, but it’s just not the same. Our bodies are designed to be constantly in motion working and/or sleeping (not at the same time). And so most of us, those who are overweight and beyond and you know who you are, are taking in far more calories than our bodies need and/or want.

And it's not just how much we eat, but what we eat as well. There is plenty of evidence that the rise in Americans' collective weight coincided with the not only the invention of television and the proliferation of the automobile, but the farm friendly government subsidies that led to CORN being in almost everything you put in your mouth. The fact is the USDA is not going to come out and tell you to stop eating products with high fructose corn syrup in them. But you should run to your cabinets right now and purge everything in your house that has it as an ingredient, and then if you have time, watch King Corn. Now, look, I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories. I do think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. But lest you think that a powerful source cannot have information suppressed, drop me a line after you watch the Kennedy miniseries on the History Channel. I have now been high fructose corn syrup free for 3 months (thank you Ryan and Adria), but when Brian found the TruWhip at Whole Foods this weekend (fat free, all natural whipped topping with no high fructose corn syrup) it made my life complete.


Does anyone really have a clue how many calories you either A. need or B. are eating over the course of a day? I didn't. The recommended calorie intake for women my age is 10 - 12 calories per pound of your weight, per day depending on your activity level with 12 calories per pound being the marathon runner and 10 being the slug. I'm some where in between. And when you actually add up the calories of EVERYTHING you are putting in to your mouth, you cannot believe how quickly this calorie quota is filled. My first few days changing my eating habits, I was out of calories by noon. When I mentioned to Brian that it's not fair that he gets over twice the amount of calories in a day that I do, he pointed out that if I too wanted to weigh 240 pounds I was welcome to keep up with him. Touché.

Obviously I can pay someone like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, or Nutrisystem to count the calories out for me, balance the calories intake properly, and tell me what to eat when, but why should? I'm a relatively smart person, with 2 computers, an iPad, and a smart phone at my disposal. Surely I can do this on my own. And I need to do it not just until I drop a few pounds but I need to maintain it forever. The reality is this is my calorie limit for life period. And well, it’s just depressing that's all. Because it just doesn't go very far.

Some people have sexual fantasies. I have food fantasies. I fantasized about a great breakfast I was going to make Brian to show him that we can have our fabulous diner breakfast for far fewer calories. The menu called for a western omelet, home fries, bacon and sausage, fresh fruit and toast. I set out to do the necessary modifications to fit into Brian’s 500 calories per meal food plan.

Ok, so the 3-egg omelet went down to two eggs. I used low fat cheddar. I didn’t use any fat to cook with just all natural, Trader Joes, zero calories, olive oil spray. I carefully picked out and weighed a tiny red-potato, which I chopped up and sautéed with a couple of tablespoons of onion and green pepper. I carefully checked the calories on the Morningstar farms breakfast patties and started to add up the calories all together to figure out how much fruit to slice up. And whoa! how many calories in a little tiny 4 oz red potato? Are you kidding me? Well right then and there, I realized that I had not only hit, but had exceed his limit. Bread, even at 45 calories per whole grain slice had to go back in the bag. Fruit remained in the drawer. And all I could think of was: if that very carefully prepared and counted meal was over 500 calories, how many calories must be in that breakfast when we order it from the greasy spoon diner down the street? I was shell shocked for the rest of the day. All day long I kept saying, “Can you imagine how many calories are in that [fill in the blank] meal we had at [fill in the blank] restaurant”

But the sad fact is that right now 1400 calories is my pathetic limit. And that's just to lose 1/2 to one pound per week. Once I get down to the weight I want to maintain, I can soar back up to about 1800 calories per day. I guess I’ll have to wait until then to reintroduce myself to pizza. Until then, I guess I'll just keep having my nightly pizza fantasies.

Let Me Walk On That

Epiphanies are coming fast and furious these days.

Last night I decided to go to the free "Meditation" class at the Y. I don't know what I thought it would be, but what ever I thought it would be, it wasn't. This was meditation to take a "spiritual journey." Unfortunatley the room was small and the town is smaller so escape was futile. Ashem works in mysterious ways....

After we got lavender oil dropped on our head and the lights were dimmed, she talked us through opening up the space above our heads and allowing each of the chakra colors to stream into our body, and she talked and talked and talked. She wanted us to get in touch with our spiritual guide. Well I don't know about that, but I did get in touch with my inner 5 year-old boy, when just as we were supposed to feel the yellow chakra flowing through our pelvic area, someone went into the bathroom that shared a wall with the classroom, tinkled, and flushed the toilet.

So I survived the hour and all the various and sundry chakra colors entering and filling my body and then, thankfully it was over. But not before I heard something that really blew me away. She gave some "tips" for meditating at home. Don't lay down, most people fall asleep (well duh), reclining is better, and best of all, walking. WALKING! Walking she said allows you to get into the perfect meditative state. Eureka!

Now, this explains a lot. Most of all, why I hate treadmills. And for that, kind reader, you'll have to come with me to back to a class I took when I was teaching many many moons ago. The class was called F.A.T. City (FAT = Frustration, Anxiety, and Tension) and nothing that I've done before or since has affected me more. The class is intended to put people in situations that allow you to experience what special needs students experience in the classroom. It was a profound experience. But here in lies the crux for this story.

In that class, we learned that all the tasks in the world are divided into to categories: associative and cognitive. Most things for normal functioning brains are associative, meaning you can do more than one thing at a time (talk on the phone and take notes for example, or in my co-workers cases, play computer solitaire.) But there are other tasks that are cognitive, meaning they take all your brain function at once. The example the instructor gave was driving. Most of the time driving is an associative task, you can drive and talk and listen to the radio all at the same time. But imagine, that suddenly the sky opens up, it starts to pour - it's dark and you don't know where you are. What's the first thing you do? Turn off the radio and say to everyone in the car, Shhh. Suddenly driving has become a cognitive task. (Ok many of you who have driven with me are now saying to yourself, For Robin, driving should always be a cognitive task and I can't argue with that, I'm a terrible driver, but this is about walking).

I realized why I HATE treadmills! For me, walking on a treadmill is a cognitive task! Maybe I'm scarred by my early childhood memories of poor George Jetson being constantly sucked under the treadmill over and over again and no one there to help him. But when I'm on a treadmill I literally concentrate on every step I take. So walking on the treadmill was never a place where I did my best thinking. And certainly watching TV or reading a book made it even worse as a time for my brain to cut loose. This also explains why I hate to walk with another human being (on a regular basis) it's nothing personal, it's just I realize how much I love walking when my brain and I are alone with each other. I also realized, I lost my perfect walking companion - Hazel.

So now I know, why I walk past all those people in the morning in the nice, climate-controlled room on those very state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line treadmills that the Y is proud to boast they just purchased. This is why I prefer the track to the treadmill. And despite my father's claims to the contrary, I CAN in fact walk and chew gum at the same time. And more importantly, I can walk and think at the same time.

Having that time alone with my brain every morning has been great. It's like we get on the track, and I take the leash off and let it run. Of course every once in a while it circles back mostly to belt out the chorus of the song it's just heard on the ipod or struggles to think about whether or not I clicked off the last lap on the clicker, but eventually, I can cajole it into running back out in the wild and seeing what it can fetch.

I composed this blog entry on my walk this morning. Ok so it's not War and Peace but come on, I've only been walking for 10 days, give me time. And if you have a problem that needs to be solved, give me a call and I'll walk on it.

The Writer's Discipline

No one has ever accused me of being disciplined. Ask any of my teachers, grades k through well, ever. I tend to wait until the last minute to get things done, which in this day and age, seems to be gaining favor and even has a new moniker: Just in time (whatever).

I think about the Maslow chart from psych 101 where different people needed different levels of stress to be motivated. Mine was way on the right/stress side. The more stressed I was the better I performed.

The problem is that as a writer, I also know that the more time I have for a piece of work, the better it is. Writing, like wine and cheese, gets better with age. First and foremost, it gives Lisa and I more time to go back and forth on it. And there is no doubt in my mind that the more she looks as something the better it gets. Take the first chapter of my book. She just looked at it again for the first time in probably about a year, and there are new edits! yes! and brilliant ones at that. My friend Kerry introduced me to the old writer's axiom "If I had more time, I would have written less." It's true, the longer I have to work on a piece, the tighter and crisper it becomes. So then my instinct to procrastinate is in direct conflict with my goal to succeed as a writer. So the course is clear: I must develop a better writing habit.

I have read many writers work on writing. They all have a method they are happy to pass on and might work for you. But none work for me. I read one writer who sits at his computer every day for 4 hours. He types gibberish if need be until something intelligent comes out of his brain on to the screen. Others just write, about anything, forcing themselves to put words together every day no matter what. None of that is going to work for me. My brain and my fingers rebel.

Lisa, like a good manager, pushes me and that helps. "Where's the next chapter?" the email will say. "Can you send me back the copy with the edits in?" But sometimes, like last night, I just want to veg: watch 2 hours of on demand TV, play computer solitaire, and go to bed. The problem is that isn't going to get the book finished.

The good news is this, I woke up feeling so guilty about my lack of productivity yesterday, I banged out a new chapter this morning. So therein might be the solution to my problem. Guilt. Lisa is Catholic, I'm Jewish. We should have a lock on this. Once the book is published, the next book will be, The Secret to A Good Writing Habit: Guilt. Oye.