Girl Scouts Ruin Everything

My friend David, who also works at Marsh, is a magical wizard.  He wakes at 7:30am feeling refreshed and full of boundless energy, eats some kind of power breakfast, showers, shaves, dresses, leaves the apartment and commutes from 108th street (-ish) on the upper west side to 46th and 6th, comes up out of the subway, goes through security in our building, rides the elevator to the 39th floor, takes his coat off, unlocks his file and desk drawers, turns on the computer, goes to the pantry down the hall to get some coffee, returns to his desk and opens Outlook to see what business needs addressed.

IN.  ONE.  HOUR.  Alarm to emails = 60 minutes.  Freak.

I... set up the coffee maker the night before - filling the tank with 5 cups of water and measuring out 6 scoops into the paper filter (always use 1 more scoop than cups!) - so I won't have to navigate that impossible task in my morning stupor.  The alarm goes off at 7am, I take the earplugs out, turn off my white noise maker, literally stumble into the kitchen, and power on the coffee maker with my right hand as my left arm catches me on the way to a torso collapse onto the counter.  I rest there for a minute till I'm sure the coffee maker's on, then literally stumble back to the bedroom and literally stumble into my literal bed.  10 minutes later the snooze alarm goes off.  10 minutes later the snooze alarm goes off.  10 minutes later the snooze alarm goes off.  At 7:30 I make snorting sounds and smash my face into the dog a few times, enjoying that warm sleeping doggy smell, and THEN I'm finally ready to get up.  But not do anything... until I've had 30 minutes of coffee, news, some knitting and 150 mg of Lamictal.  I force myself into the shower.  By the time I've shaved, dressed, fed and walked Sheldon, commuted to work and turned on my computer -- another hour and 40 minutes have gone by.  Oh, and by "commute" I mean take a 12-minute walk.

Alarm to emails = 2 hours and 40 minutes.  Freak.

This salad is a vegetarian "burrito bowl" from Chipotle - no guacamole. SO freakin' good.  And 11 pts. Here's an awesome site where you can calculate your Chipotle nutrition.  The dinner below is a quarter chicken all white meat from Dallas BBQ. I only ate half of the potato.

About a month ago, I added my name to an office order of Girl Scout Cookies.  Completely forgot about that till 2 boxes of Trefoils and 1 box of Tagalongs showed up on my desk today.  I ate 5 of the shortbread cookies (4pts) and 2 of the peanut butter ones (another 4 pts).  Then I took the rest of the lot and put them in the break room down the hall for someone else to enjoy.  Literally.

I Need a Better Camera

I'm very worried about this project.

These pics make it look like I spent the entire day eating sickup out of the toilets at the mental hospital.

This was breakfast.  Leftover lentil soup from Giorgio's Country Grill.  Much better than it looks here and a cup of it (yes, I measured) is only 3pts.

The best meal of the day was a late lunch at The Grey Dog's Coffee in Chelsea. They call it "Root Vegetable Soup," which is how they get away with charging $8 for a bowl of borscht.  Really good borscht, though (4pts) and I only ate half of that focaccia thing.  In the summer of '88 (I had just moved to the city) I met a cutie at some bar downtown and we hung out walking around Union Square and the East Village under umbrellas in a cool, misty rain for hours.  Eventually we ended up at The Kiev (now closed) at 2am eating borscht and cheese pierogies while little butterflies took off in our stomachs.  He apprenticed in a florist's shop on the Upper East Side and would bring me a new arrangement of flowers he was trying out nearly every time we got together. What a great summer - the perfect New York Romance.

Both his parents had recently died, and he lived with his sister and her husband on Long Island.  They had a bunch of animals around that he dearly loved - a couple of dogs, several cats, a bunny.  He called me late one night sobbing because his rabbit had died - truly a great, feeling, funny guy.  We broke up over my wandering eye, and he never would see or speak to me again.  I googled him recently and found out he now owns his own flower shop on 53rd.... 2 blocks from where I live!  Sometimes I think of dropping by - pretending I don't know it's his place.  I haven't seen him in 22 years, and I still think about him whenever I'm eating borscht.

Anyway, here's the rest of the day:

  (I only ate half of that half of a chicken.)

The First Meal of the Next Day

I haven't gone to bed yet, but since it's after midnight I guess this counts as the 1st of tomorrow's meals.  A cup of Kashi Heart to Heart, which is a great cereal because "Kashi" sounds sensible and fibery, and "Heart to Heart" sounds promising for both cardiac health and interpersonal relationships.  About a cup with 3/4 cup of skim milk = 4 points, which is about 200 calories.


The title of this post reminded me of The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco.  Not my favorite of his books, but I love the title, Eco is brainy, and the cover of the hardback is pretty, so when I read it it made me look smart and artistic.  The protagonist is the sole survivor of a shipwreck in the 17th century who finds himself washed up on the deck of another ship anchored off an island in the South Pacific.  He comes to believe the Prime Meridian lies directly between himself and the island he watches from the deck.  Get it?  Pretty awesome conceit.  If you haven't read Eco, though, definitely head straight to The Name of the Rose.