Unexpected Visitor and Eating to Live

Hiya –

I hope everyone had a swell swell – stress free Christmakkah.  I spent a considerable amount of time reading, eating, hanging with family and trying to download the three Twilight soundtracks to my iTunes library – and not necessarily in that order of priority.  Earl the cat stayed at the condo in Atlanta and was generally glad to see me come home on Monday.

I left to head home to Asheville last Thursday afternoon, but not before Conference Room C had an unexpected visitor.  We do have regular (if not odd) visits from our supervising attorney and the rare visit from the general counsel of the company (go team, job well done, and all that).  About mid-day one of the administrative assistants heard us laughing and decided to come in for a visit. She stayed and visited with us for a little over 20 minutes.  She apparently joined the company around the same time I started contracting there – about four months ago.  For 10 minutes she explained to us all the ailments she has had since joining the company, including, but not limited to, problems caused by her “weak capillaries” (her words, not mine) such as burst blood vessels in her eyes, causing blurry vision and dizziness, sore ankle due to her horseback riding, broken tooth (leading to decay and inevitable root canal) and bronchitis.  It is very possible I missed something, but I think you get the point.  She is a veritable smorgasbord of infirmities.  For the remaining 10 minutes of her visit she talked about all the law firms she has worked at over the years (I would guess her age to be between 55 and 60) and how absolutely horrible the lawyers have been – I believe she specifically said “lawyers are all liars and cheats – every single one.”  She then verbally paraphrased a 10 page letter she wrote to the office manager upon her departure from one of her former firms.  Her last words to us before returning to her desk were “the jokes about lawyers are all true.”  On her way out she chuckled, coughed and then wished us a Merry Christmas.  When she was safely around the corner and out of earshot, I turned to Juniata and Tanya (Clare was already off enjoying her holiday) and said “She doesn’t know we are lawyers, does she?”  They said, in stereo “apparently not” and we had a good craic (Gaelic – sort of means fun) laughing about it before burying our heads back in our computers.

OK – now to the important stuff.  In my previous blog I mentioned a “weight loss competition” that started and then fizzled out.  Well, my fellow competitors, namely Stacey Thompson and Mel Beam, and I ARE NOT GIVING UP.  We have decided to take our health seriously.  We are obviously not getting any younger and it is time to take action.  I think I mentioned several blogs ago that I have, over the years, purchased all kinds of exercise equipment and videos – only to pile such items up in the cupboard unused.  Similarly, Mel has purchased, read and then forgotten about untold numbers of diet and “living healthy” books.  Her latest purchase, Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s “Eat to Live” book is about to get used!!!  Starting at the first of the year Stacey, Mel and I are going to start implementing a healthy weight loss program that we hope will bring lasting results!!!  We are going to work together and support each other along the way.  If you want to join us, grab a copy of the book and give me a shout out.  We will include you in our support system.  The basic idea is to completely cut out (at first) all animal products (vegan baby) and then ultimately significantly reduce our intake of animal products so that they are a minimal percentage of our overall nutrition.  Giving up meat will not be difficult for me.  For over ten years now I have been meat free except fish (except for a few months in law school when I went back to eating birds – but the birds ended up being fried birds, so I quickly went back to just fish).  However, not eating cheese and other dairy products will be a little bit trickier.  I loves me some cheese.   One might say I hanker for a hunk of, slab or slice or chunk of - I hanker for a hunk of cheese.  BUT, I am up for the challenge.  I am excited about sharing it with Stacey and Mel and whoever else wants to join in and I am excited about being healthy when I turn 40.  Mel and I have already made plans to get together once a week to cook up our vegan dishes for the week.  We will cook enough for the next week, freeze it up and then enjoy!  For the first six weeks we will pretty much be eating fruit and raw and cooked vegetables.  It’s gonna be a challenging six weeks and should produce some interesting blog posts!!!  Wish us luck!!!

In the right corner we have...
"Ain't Nothin' but Mean" (soon to be lean) MELISSA BEAM!!



In the left corner we have . . .
"Gotta B Grim" (soon to be trim) STACEY THOMPSON!!

And in a completely different corner altogether we have . . .
"Hell 2B Dealt" (soon to be svelte) AMY SULLIVAN!!

Check out “Forks Over Knives” on Amazon.com if you have a spare hour and a half.  It’s a great video that addresses the benefits of cutting out animal products.  Just put “Forks Over Knives” in the search function and you can rent it for $3.99 or something like that and watch it on your computer.

I hope you all have a fun and safe New Year’s Eve!!!!!  Great things are going to happen in 2012.  I just know it!!!!!  Clean your house and eat your greens and black eyed peas. 

Ciao for now!

In a Nutshell

Well, hey!!  It’s been a while since my last post (over 3 weeks).  Either you have missed me terribly or you were hoping I had disappeared for good (don’t tell me which).  I suspect the posts will continue to be a bit sporadic during the holidays, but I will try my best to keep you updated.  A lot of little things have happened over the past few weeks – rather than belabor each point, I have decided to give you a bullet point update and then leave you be until after the holidays:

·      Thanksgiving:  We, the Ladies of the Conference Room, all showed up for work one day to find a flyer taped to the bathroom door and in various public and open places around the office in which we work.  It basically said “come one come all to our office Thanksgiving feast where we will share fellowship and good food”  We’re not stupid now, we understand that “come one come all” doesn’t necessarily include the “Ladies of Conference Room C.”  So we decided to lay low and see if anyone mentioned it directly to us.  We had already decided that, even if invited, we would likely thank them kindly and eat our sack lunches in the protective shelter of Conference Room C.  But we were thinking it would at least be nice to be invited. We weren’t.  A day later our supervisor came by “C Side” (much like West Side, but in Conference Room “C”) and Tanya was hell bent on bringing it up somehow.  I’m not sure at this point how she managed to find her opening, but it generally went down like this (the rest of us holding our breath) Tanya: “yeah, it was pretty quiet on the hall the other day, I guess everyone was at that luncheon.”  Supervisor (hanging head – never thinking we would actually bring it up, but this isn’t the first time she has met us – soft spoken and genteel we are not): “Iiiiiiiii know.  I asked if I could invite my contract workers and was told No - that it was only for employees.”  We all just kind of looked at her and let that statement marinate in the room a bit (letting the true spirit of Thanksgiving swirl around the room and then quickly escape through the air vents).  So I looked at her and said, “That’s OK, Counsel on Call (that’s who we contract with) is having a three hour seminar next week and Holiday luncheon – we plan on going to that.”  We had been, up until this very moment, reluctant to say that we would all be absent for half a day to attend the seminar/luncheon.  She (1) appreciated that I had broken the silence and (2) jumped all over how wonderful that luncheon would be and for us to have a great time.  Problem solved. 

      My own personal Thanksgiving with the family at Knotty Pines in Mentone Alabama was loads of fun!!

·     The Contest:  A week and a half ago I was uber excited to tell you about a weight loss contest I had going with two of my dear dear friends (who are members of this blog).  However, that contest lasted about as long as a cat on a highway.  I’ll let you know later whether or not it is dead or just on life support.  Stay tuned.

·       Cookie Thief:  So, Tanya went to a client meeting one day and the client had a box of Fudge Covered Ritz Crackers – Limited Edition.  She found them so delicious that she simply HAD to bring a box with her back to Conference Room C.  She went to 5 different Publix grocery stores before she found them (apparently they are only in the suburbs – us townies are not refined enough for the chocolaty Ritz I guess).  Anyway, we savored them the day she brought them in and then closed them up and left them neatly in the middle of the table so we could eat the rest later.  When we came in the next day the box was open, the actual cracker tray pulled out and an entire row of fudgelicous crackers gone!  The evidence was in front of my designated seat as if the perp had taken a load off in my chair, gobbled down the crackers and then, almost about to be discovered, had to rush out without hiding the evidence.  Now, I assure you, had the cracker box not been found in such a state we would have been none the wiser.  We would have assumed we ate them and gone on eating from the box not knowing we had just consumed stranger cooties.  We hatched a plan to put this fudge snacking (sorry – couldn’t help myself) thief in his/her place.  We typed up, in big bold letters, a note that said “TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. THANK YOU FOR EATING OUR COOKIES.  YOU MIGHT AS WELL FINISH THEM OFF.”  We put the note inside the box (so you would see it if you pulled the crackers out) and closed the box.  We placed the box just so on the table – in a place we would remember and propped a highlighter on the box so we would know if it moved.  When we got in the next day, the box had clearly been moved, the cracker tray had clearly been pulled out and then shoved back in with the note, but no more crackers had been eaten.  I guess we showed them who the boss was of Conference Room C!

·       Evil Jello:  Ok, I’ve mentioned our supervising attorney.  We actually really like her.  She was a contract worker with Counsel on Call before she got her current job – so we consider her to be one of us.  She does, however, have a couple of peccadillos that fly all over the Ladies of Conference Room C.  Firstly, and it should be mentioned that she is no more than a size 4, she is absolutely obsessed with calories and has not once entered Conference Room C without mentioning something negative about food – and the comment is usually focused on something we are eating or have offered her.  We have stopped offering stuff, which is too bad for her because Clare is quite the baker and brings in the yummiest things!  She came in for a visit the other day and I was eating a Jello out of my lunchbox.  She said “What are you eating.”  I said “Jello – it’s cheesecake flavored.”  To which she responded “Oh, it’s Evil Jello.” “No” I said, “it’s not evil.  It’s just Jello.”  Secondly, she is a bathroom talker.  I personally am not offended by this habit, but Juniata HATES it.  She talks at you through the stall while peeing.  I have dubbed it “trickle talk.”  She will go days without visiting Conference Room C and then someone will get caught in the bathroom with her for a trickle talk update.  Tanya suggested that Juniata let some gas rip – maybe that would dissuade her from making conversation.  Might work.

·       China:  The other evening Tanya’s son (he is 8) was doing his homework.   She noticed that he was more focused than usual.  Out of the blue – with no particular emotion – he said to Tanya “Mom, I am going to work really hard in school so China won’t take over.”  Out of the mouths of babes. 

·       Plenty of Fish:  Did I tell you that I signed on for the free dating site Plenty of Fish?  I think I did.  Anyway, I really don’t do anything with it.  It is funny to look on and see who “wants to meet me” or if someone has actually sent me a message in my inbox.  If someone says they “want to meet me” they don’t actually send a personal message – so I typically ignore those requests.  Only a handful of men have actually sent me personal messages.  Two of those men were below the age of 25.  Really?  I don’t think so.  One of the messages was “Hi, love the smile” – cute message, but he looked like an infant.  The other message was “Hey, what’s up.  Wanna get into something?”  Again, really?  I almost responded “something like what?”, but I just let it go.  I suspect the answer would have been “my pants.”  The other few were like in their 60s.  Really? Really? Really?  It’s either one extreme or the other.  Anyway, we use the website to amuse ourselves during the day when we need a break, but today’s “meet me” took the cake.  I look at the picture of the dude and think – hey, he actually looks pretty good, he’s not 22 years old or 60, he is not holding a gun or standing in front of his bathroom mirror with his shirt off.  So I scrolled down to see what he does for a living – personal trainer – ehhh, usually I shy away from those because they typically expect their date to be a fitness freak, but he asked to meet me so I kept scrolling.  I finally get to the part  of his profile where he tells you about himself and it begins as follows:  “TIRED OF ONE SIZE FITS ALL WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAMS THAT DO NOTHING FOR YOU OR YOUR SELF ESTEEM? IF SO, IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO TRY IN HOME PERSONAL TRAINING WITH ME.” I’ll tell you what does nothing for my self-esteem guy, having you cruise the site for chunky girls, luring them in with hopes of a date only to bust out the “I DON’T WANT TO DATE YOU – I JUST WANT TO HELP YOU LOSE SOME WEIGHT.”  How about you go !@#$% yourself!!!

And that was my last few weeks – in a nutshell.  I am too tired from searching the big box retail stores for a Star Wars boys bathrobe -So I am not going to proof this blog – just ignore any goofs.  I hope you have a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Festivus or Christmakkah (like me!).  Love y’all.