Coffee and Astronomy

I'm not a very loyal addict. My half-pound of coffee arrived today and my brain is steeping in a comfortable brown bath. I'm not even thinking about chocolate anymore. I am most certainly not thinking about warm gooey chocolate brownies fresh from the oven, of dipping Hershey's kisses in gnutella and then in fondue while surreptitiously scouting out the premises to finagle a moment of privacy in which to take the fondue head on, literally, or ripping off all my clothes and jumping into Willy Wonka's chocolate pool and seeing if my lungs can extract oxygen from liquid chocolate. If they can extract it from liquid oxygen, I don't see the problem. Coffee is fantastic.

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone is getting a little more exciting, though I can't shake the quasi-guilty feeling of reading something that may or not be quasi-pulpish. The only thing I can say for sure about it is that I'm still reading it. But I may reread The Name of the Wind when I'm done. Meanwhile in Lamb, Jesus is making friends with the abominable snowman. Biff has just proposed the theory of evolution to him and Jesus rejected it even faster than he did Biff's theory of universal stickiness (gravity). Good fun.

As soon as this entry is done, we're going to watch The Matrix. It's been a couple years since I saw it last, so pile on the shaming. My dad may disown me if he reads this and believes it. Mom will have to raise me all on her own, and the four of us (my sister will also be present) will have dinner together occasionally and talk to each other through her.

Dad (to Mom): honey, will you tell my former son to pass the salt?
Mom rolls her eyes
Me: It was only one time! For two years! How long are you going to punish me for this!?
Dad (to Mom): what are we watching after we finish this glorious dinner?
Mom: ...The Matrix?
Dad: and who's not invited?
Sister crosses fingers, hoping it's her

Speaking of epic, for those of you who are always complaining about hearing Stairway to Heaven in every corner of the room, listen to Astronomy by Blue Oyster Cult. It was my go-to track for short distance running, the two times I subjected the local gym's treadmill to that kind of unholy contrast between awesomeness and mediocrity.

30 day trialarama

I'm experiencing extreme withdrawal. If any of you have ever been addicted to heroin, tips would be much appreciated right now. Today is the first day of six 30-day trials, the most important being a rerun, a classic, a killer, a challenge about which epic love songs have been written - no sugar. I don't know why I do this to myself, I would not approve if I were me. So far I've managed to slip into daydreams about candy roughly every 10 minutes. If I could just do a reality check every time I craved a piece of chocolate, I'd have already had 50 lucid dreams today.

The other trials are:
2. 300 pushups / planks mix & match, where a 2 minute plank is equivalent to 50 pushups. In 30 days, my lower back will have bigger pecs than my chest and I won't be able to do planks anymore because my abs will touch the ground. Children will use me as a rocking horse.
3. Read with Yuan Yuan in English for 30 minutes. Currently we're halfway through Lamb (The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal), hopefully we'll finish that this month. I'm accepting suggestions for the next book. Candidates need to be either extremely funny, or at a middle school reading level.
4. Being vegetarian. Piece of cake as chocolate is the only meat I care about.
5. Stretching - 2 mins each of 5 different stretches. I hear that being flexible can extend your lifespan and it makes sense; corpses are the least flexible people I've ever met.
6. Blogging every day. This one started yesterday. I've failed the previous two times I attempted this one, but will never admit it.

No sugar is undoubtedly the hardest; I've yet to invent a doable 30-day trial that's harder. Even the trial of doing 25 pushups every time I wanted to sit down, and the trial of no sitting down at all for 30 days (except to poop), pale in comparison. I've been to the fridge more times than I've done pushups and there's never anything new there. I've forgotten all about Mario. Unless it's secretly him that my subconscious is looking for in the fridge.