taken directly from arachne8x, because I'm too busy laughing to type. For maximum Win, click on the link to the "fanfic art" in the ETAs. Hilarity incarnate.

Really really bad.

No I mean it....

Bad in one of those, you have to read it aloud to your friends sort of way.

Bad in the.... did I really read this? kind of way.

You are warned.....

Its bad.....

but OH.  SO.   GOOD*

http://vandonovan.livejournal.com/1088311.html - NSFW

In an effort to wrangle this seasonal thing to the ground and be Happy again, I've been reading The Food-Mood Solution by Jack Challem. It starts out pretty good - points out some vitamin/mineral/amino acid supplements that can work for specific issues, and talks about the components within the brain that help you control your mood, etc. I already put a couple of them (namely, the amino acid Tyrosine, chromium picolinate and a B-12 supplement) to use, and they seem to be working very well. All good stuff.

My problem with the book is a few things:
• The author's obsession with deli turkey. I'm 2/3 through the book, and he has recommended having "a couple slices of deli turkey" about 20 times. While I appreciate the importance of protein, the book is very protein-focused for my taste, and I've already observed multiple times that my body works best when I focus on vegetables, with a bit of protein in the mix.
• The author's regurgitation of standard, pat "de-stress your life" examples. He covers keeping a gratitude journal, doing yoga, detachment, forgiving yourself/others, using "I/Feeling" statements, etc. He also addresses laughter, and embracing humor, which brings me to problem #3:

• The statement: "Laughing at sarcasm is a little like laughing at someone who tortures kittens. It's a red flag."

A-what-wha? The whole section on having a sense of humor annoys the living bejeebers out of me. He seems to indicate that you should laugh OFTEN, but only to certain TYPES of humor, because other types are offensive and hurtful. He also says that "wit and puns reflect a sharp perceptiveness about the common absurdities of life," then goes on to insult Don Rickles, of all things.

It's just strange. But you know, the supplement advice seems to be good, and the way I've been eating (apparently, sugar and refined carbs are now my mortal enemy) the last few weeks has done wonders. So at least I have that.

The next book in the list (I'm still debating ordering it from the library, since they sent it back the last time I ordered it) is Food & Mood by Elizabeth Somer. I've already read the chapter on SAD, and the book looks worlds better than this one was.

Every day I get a little more pleased that a) I live in Watertown; b) I live within a 20-minute walk to the Watertown Free Library; and c) I made a commitment to reduce the number of books/DVDs I buy and get them from the library instead.

Today's discoveries:
• five movies I wanted to see, including Freaks, one of the very first Midnight Movies;
• a whole pile of TV shows on DVD, including Queer as Folk and The X Files - ooh, and Mystery Science Theatre 3000!
• I can use my library card to learn French for free - something I've been curious to do for a while now. They also have databases for German, Spanish, and I think Italian and a couple of other languages. Yay!
• I can request just about any book that I want for pickup - and I mean *any* book. The next on my requested list is Biomicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. It was recommended by a new contact, and it's a subject I've been curious about since hearing about it at the Green Media Show.

Truly, I geek out about the strangest things. Tonight's adventure: watching the debates, and doing some research into companies I want to meet at Expo East. Tee hee - foodies. My life so rocks.

p.s. Apparently, waking up at 5:30 does good things for my mood. Who knew?

From tisana:

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

"And sometimes people fall in love."

from Opening Up, by Tristan Taormino. Technically, the closest book to me was an instructional manual for a Magicolor 2300 printer, but there was actually no page 56 anywhere.

Yes, I know I got it last night, but apparently, it's a VERY quick read.

Skinny Bitch was, well, interesting. Definitely not what I expected - to be honest, it's more of a treatise on why everyone should be vegan than anything else (along with charming descriptions of factory farm conditions and the activities of slaughterhouses - and oh my goodness the quotes from slaughterhouse employees! I went to bed feeling that I would never eat meat again). Other than that, and a rather obnoxious way of wording things (for example, "you know why you have a lard ass? Well, it's because you're shoving yourself full of shit" - that kind of thing), it's a fairly good read, and doesn't say much that I wasn't already aware of.

In short, eat vegan, don't drink, eat organic, don't have caffeine, and don't eat refined sugar (or sugar substitutes, which are actually WORSE for you than sugar).

So maybe I should become a vegan Mormon if I want to be skinny?

The one thing that troubles me about the book, though (aside from the language, and the blatant pandering to animal-rights activists), is their list of "acceptable" products, which include many, many varieties of fake meats, vegan "cheeses" and other things that personally, I don't find much better for you than the real thing. While I'm fine with limiting meat even further than where I already have it (literally once a week or less), are you really telling me that fake sausage or baloney or soy cheese (or soy "yogurt," which is the world's most foul substance) is healthier for me than an ounce or so of real cheese, or one egg from a local farm that I trust? I have a hard time buying that.

So, definitely an interesting read, and I will cut out some things (for example, coffee and diet soda are very much OUT of the diet, thankyouverymuch), but I don't think I'll be jumping on that bandwagon anytime soon.

So, I just spent WAYYY too much money at Borders. This is what a couple glasses of nice French white will do to a gal :-)

On the list:

Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin (hell, can't hurt)
The Freedom Manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson (my new hero, who wrote How to Be Idle)
Fair Shares for All by John Haney (a foodie memoir - RESEARCH!)
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (yay!)
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Atonement by Ian McEwan (yeah, I'm a fan of him - LOVED the Cement Garden, so psyched to check out this one)
French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano (well, actually - they do. But I don't care. Still love the idea)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (FINALLY).

I've got some reading ahead - just finished The Savvy Girl's Guide to Online Networking. It's a good one. Still waiting on Natural Capitalism - it's just not grabbing me at the moment. Think I'm going to get started on one of the new books.

In other news, weekend was AWESOME. Nick and I have started a habit of going to Wilson Farm on Saturdays for our produce (I tell you, that place makes me delirious with joy), along with Whole Foods for the balance of our food (which might turn into the nearby Trader Joe's next week). I am a very happy Dani now in the kitchen.

Also, PENZEY'S! I got to go to PENZEY'S! I convinced Nick to go with me, and we went to PENZEY'S! There are new spices in my kitchen, including a Moroccan spice blend that I whipped up myself on their recommendation, which I used to great effect with eggplant, chickpeas and tomatoes. Dani is now a VERY happy girl.

Also, I got very pretty new fish, and they're happy in the tank. All is well in my world.

Now I just need to make time to write. Damn, I knew something was off.

it would be this cookbook:

Easy Exotic: Low-fat Recipes from Around the World. It's by the woman who hosts Top Chef - She's a bit on the bland side personality-wise, but the food looks awesome.

Just sayin. RIGHT up the ol'alley there.

In my ultimate dream fantasy life, I will go on a culinary vacation where I learn how to cook food in a foreign country. Preferably, the French countryside.

In the second ultimate dream fantasy life, I will retire to the French countryside, or at least own a cottage there.

Yep.

... is a fine book. While I'm certainly not one who appreciates or promotes office politics (in fact, it's one of the reasons I left corporate America), the book has a great way of breaking situations down into their core archetypes and giving you guidelines for which "roles" will help you handle them, without giving you a step-by-step "follow this checklist" shtick.

One minor hiccup: there's an alarming number of typos in it for a book that stresses the importance of attention to detail.

From Eat, Pray, Love:

So Sofie and I have come to Pizzeria de Michele, and these pies we have just ordered - one for each of us - are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that the pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship withthis pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers. she's having a metaphysical crisis over it, she's begging me, "Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm? Why do we even bother eating food in Stockholm?"

I need to be friends with this woman.

I am in love with this book. Totally, deeply, wonderfully in love with it.

NOW I can work.

from How to be Idle (which I finally finished):

Waking dreams, lucid dreams and daydreams, as well as being a source of pleasure in themselves, can also be of practical use in helping us create visions of our ideal life. Once the vision is in place, then the life will eventually follow. Be brave, idleheart! The difficulty is that we get ourselves caught in a double bind: we work so hard that we do not allow ourselves time to dream, and therefore we continue to work hard because we have not had the time to dream up an alternative.

Dani says: so true. So really damn true.

Again, great book, and one that I can honestly say I'm better for reading. Today, I give myself a break from reading, but will get some work done (feeling inspired now), and then it's Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, which oddly enough I had purchased the day before hotel_jewelweed insisted I should read it. Should be good.

from How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson:

The idler's desier is to live with no rules, or only rules that have been invented by himself. He wants to develop the inner strength to have complete power over himself. He refuses to hand over that power to any authority whatsoever, however benign that authority may appear to be. And the fewer rules there are, the less potential there is for transgressing them all the time and therefore wasting energy in guilt. It is easy to become, in the words of Thoreau, "slave-driver of yourself." We create sets of behavioral rules for ourselves and then feel bad when we fail to live up to them.

Dani says: yuh-huh. It's scary how much I do this.

The management guru and friend to the idle Charles Handy invented the idea of chunking. This gives him one huge holiday every year... "I worked out that I need 100 days a year to make serious money. I do that by teaching at various seminars. I also need 100 days to write and read, and roughly 50 days per year for my causes and campaigns. That leaves 115 days which we can use for our own pursuits. By chunking it that way, we can spend 90 days sitting doing nothing - except eating, drinking and discovering Italy in Tuscany."

Dani says: I just found new goals.

Apparently, it seems I am more of an idler at heart than I usually credit myself with being.

Brilliant book. Really, truly brilliant.

btw, back from Philly - it was a good trip, but exhausting coming home.

As part of my new mission to start incorporating non-work-related books into my life, I discovered How to be Idle: A Loafer's Manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson. At first, my thinking was "I could use a bit more idleness in my life; this could be interesting," but actually, the further I read it, the more it actually makes sense - especially in terms of how my work ethic has expressed itself over the years - too much time spent unproductive because I'm convinced I need to be moving ALL THE TIME in order to actually be working, all while secretly knowing that if I slowed down a bit, I'd get a lot more done. A quote:

Idleness as a waste of time is a damaging notion put about by its spiritually vacant enemies. The fact that idling is enormously productive is repressed. Musicians are categorized as slackers; writers as selfish ingrates; artists as dangerous. Robert Louis Stevenson expressed the paradox as follows in An Apology for Idlers (1885): "Idleness... does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class." Long periods of languor, indolence and staring at the ceiling are needed by any creative person in order to develop ideas.

I'm liking this book, and realizing a few things about myself and my past. Growing up as I did, in a way that could only be described as lower middle class that was always trying to be middle-middle class (not so much on belistiwa's end of things, but my father basically lived on credit, and I can blame most of my financial insecurities and obsession with shiny things on him), I developed this strange obsession with working hard and "moving up in the world" as early as I could possibly remember. I even got my first job canvassing at 16 because I couldn't stand using belistiwa's Bic disposables and wearing old ratty clothes. I started working 10-hour days minimum so I could buy my own shaving cream and clothes, and vegetables.

Now, I'm not sure what my excuse is, except for the fact that the constant busy-in-front-of-computer thing just doesn't work for me. This is why I built in a certain amount of flexibility in my office; I have not only the desk with the comfy task chair but the nice arm chair with ottoman for reading and working on the laptop. Time to put both to better use.

"These are the top 106 books most often marked as 'unread' by LibraryThing's users." The ones I've read are in bold.

( cut for those who don't care ) So, yeah - not being much of a sci-fi/fantasy fan and not having much required exposure to the classics (although there are likely a few in here I forget having read from school - I was the one with the book in my nose 24/7 pretty much all through school), I wasn't expecting much from the list. But considering that 10 out of the 17 books I've read are among my favorites of all time, I'm still pretty impressed with myself :-)

I do have to read In Cold Blood soon.

that a weekend trip to Maine for a wedding does NOT require bringing more than maybe 2 books, one of which you're almost finished with anyway.

It is also the decision that you're only going to work in terms of your business this weekend, which means that yes - the laptop is coming with me - but I'm only going to relax and figure out a marketing calendar for the year ahead.

And, Gods willing, I'll experiment with Ta-Da List, which I'm very excited about - mostly because it gives me the option of actually CATEGORIZING said lists, which is nice.

So, I bring the Art of Self Promotion (attention 0uroborus: READ THIS BOOK), This is Not the Life I Ordered (attention most of the women on my list: READ THIS BOOK), and my latest issue of HOW.

And I figure out this weekend HOW the hell I'm going to market myself in the coming year, and WHEN I'm going to do it.

Can I mention that it's endlessly amusing to me that Nick gave me all manner of guff about being ready to go at 9:30 AM, and here I am ready to go and he hasn't even showered yet??? I will admit, however, that the glorious DPW guys jackhammering my street at 8 this morning helped quite a bit with that.

And I can't bring myself to go to the gym. In fact, I actually have a bit of a headache (probably from being dehydrated).

Ah well. I'm thinking about a minor production gig I agreed to (VERY minor, but still - a bit resistant to it), and about the application for a teacher training program I'm interested in. Funny how making these weird life-decisions gets you all thoughtful. Also funny how this thing I was so sure of (having a studio) can be tossed into doubt after a couple of years actually living the dream, and now I'm stuck with figuring out how/where to shift things.

Mind you, I don't want to GIVE UP the studio per se; just shift it - make it more what I originally wanted, when I first had the thought in early 2005. And, oddly enough, I'm starting the process of making it what so many others said that it couldn't be - a way for me to do all the things I love every day, and make a living from it.

Time to read The Slash Effect, and see how other folks handle having multiple (and apparently completely unrelated) careers.

it is such an amazing blessing to be able to work on my laptop on the deck, with two huge and ancient trees looking over me. I think the yoga I did yesterday is paying off - I'm very calm and centered and happy today, and was even able to deal with a mini-meltdown from the neicelet without getting angry. Plus, today's my regular yoga-overload night, which means more calm and centered (and hot tub after - yippee!)

All is well today, and I'm plugging along with the work. There's a few minor home-ish things I still need to take care of, but I think I'm going to spend some time planning for next year and focusing in on my marketing plan again - the last plan I did feels too aggressive now, and I want to focus on getting clients that are really ideal for my business and moving away from the more low-ballish ones or the ones I have to chase down for months to get them to work with me. Methinks a re-read of Creative Business Guide to Running a Design Business is in order.