blog@cliffdweller

I'm no vegan. I'm not even a vegetarian. Nor am I anything else when it comes to diet, really. I see what I want and I eat it.

I've been through phases where I haven't eaten any beef (talk about a hard thing to explain to my Texas relatives), or when I've shied away from milk, or chocolate, or wheat.

I've been diagnosed with a jillion allergies. If it's processed food from the neighborhood supermarket, I'm probably allergic to some ingredient contained therein.

In the past year or so I've really started paying attention to the things I eat. I have eliminated MSG, olives and olive oil completely from my diet, and I seriously consider the ramifications before I eat anything with processed sugar, corn syrup (especially HFCS), chocolate, caffeinne, or wheat. I still eat them, but only sparingly and with full knowledge of how much of each I've eaten recently.

Also in the past few weeks, we've been on the adult cycle of trying to lose weight. So we started doing Slim Fast. If you don't know, it's basically a starvation diet where you drink a canned beverage for breakfast, one for lunch, and then "have a sensible meal" for dinner. YOu also get to eat three snacks of around 100 calories each during the day.

It's nice because there's no thought that goes into it, and it's fast. Two minutes after you decide it's time for lunch, you're finished and ready to go back to whatever it is you were doing. Each can of goo has around 200 calories in it.

So it adds up thusly: 200ish calories at breakfast, 100ish calories at around 10:30, 200ish calories for lunch, 100ish calories around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, pig out and eat as much as you can at the restaurant for dinner. :) So before dinner you are supposed to have had around 600 calories. Which isn't much. But it's doable.

And it appears to work. I've lost around 10lbs since beginning in June.

The problem is that Slim Fast only comes in 6 flavors: Vanilla, Strawberry, Coffee, and 3 different kinds of chocolate. With the chocolate allergy and the avoidance of coffee, that leaves me with two flavors for most of my "meals".

So we went to Whole Foods to see what they had to offer on the meal replacement aisle. We bought one of each to try them out and see what I think, and I had one of them for lunch today.

Here's the rundown: Today's sample was "Vega Sports Natural Plant-Based Performance Protein" – the "Vanilla Flavor." I know, I said I was bored with vanilla, but that was Slim Fast that actually tastes like vanilla. This is some Vegan protein thing that taste like freshly mowed lawn with a hint of vanilla. I didn't want to stray too far from the norm…

While Slim Fast lives up to it's name (it's fast), this one required mixing it with a liquid. I chose Milk, because I didn't want it to be too vegan, or vegan at all, for that matter. Plus I wanted the extra calories that milk had to offer. And while I may sound like I am whining, I had to stir and stir and stir. This stuff has a natural aversion to being mixed with milk. It took almost 10 minutes of stirring to get most of the powder dissolved in the cow juice.

But science must go forward, so on I went.

The resulting drink, and I think I'm being fairly liberal when I call it that, was cold and green. Those are the only nice things I can think of to say about it. I drank it over an hour ago and my throat is still grainy/gritty. mmmm.

I'm not hungry. I can attest to that. We'll have to see how it goes as the afternoon progresses. Right now, I'm thinking it's almost time for my mid-afternoon snack, but I'm not craving it like I have been. Maybe this is a good thing, or maybe just mixing it up a bit is the good thing.

Again, the jury is still out. I'm still stocked up with Slim Fast in the fridge, but I have more of these non-HFCS things to try out. I'll stay in touch.

Tonight Tim and I went to Kristin's graduation ceremony. I counted 340 kids in the program.

They did all the usual things. They had choirs, they had the band, they had 14 valedictorians (all with perfect 4.0s), they recognized the foreign exchange kids, they had speeches and they processed.

The main speech by their principal was a rah-rah go out and conquer the world speech that sounded pretty good until further reflection.

She encouraged them to never surrender, never give up, never compromise.

That sounds all well and good when you're talking about your own personal values and your stance against personal things, but that's not how she phrased it.

It felt more like she was saying don't listen to the other side. The Republicans are wrong. Or, if you are a Republican, then the Democrats are wrong. Never surrender. Never compromise.

What the hell kind of thing is that to teach our children. What ever happened to things like "share" and "turn the other cheek" or "working for the common good". Are we too anti-everything-not-us now that we don't dare ever compromise? How is any committee ever going to get anything done?

I don't like where these kinds of thoughts are headed. What do you think?

So, congrats Kristin! 12 years in the making! Stand up for what's right but know that you can't always have it your way. Sometimes you'll have to work with others instead of working on them. But you knew that. Now, go out and make the world a better place…

Safari 5 was released quietly today and I have to say so far I really like it. I approve. Go download it from Apple if you haven't already.

Yeah, that iPhone 4 hardware is cool and all. Renaming the operating system iOS was genius (it was iPhone OS). That FaceTime thing is cool, with it's easy switching from front facing and rear facing cameras, and it's supposed to be open-sourced tomorrow so hopefully people will get excited about new technology instead of bitch more about the lack of old stuff.

(Did anyone catch the coy way Steve said FaceTime would be on over 10million iDevices this year? not iPhones, but iDevices. Does that mean front and rear facing cameras on iPods and (dare I say it) iPads?)

Yeah, I watched all that and I simply must have one. Or two if Tim wants to use one, too.

But the cool thing that came out today that I can use today was Safari 5. It is faster. It has some cool plug-ins coming (Coda Notes from Panic is one I'll require all my clients to use from now on…). My new favorite feature is the reader.

When you are looking at a blog like this one and there is too much going on (pictures, ads, links, surveys, etc), just click the reader button next to the URL at the top of the page and it'll dim out the website and scroll up a white page in the center with LARGE text and embedded pictures and none of the extra clutter. Gone is the color layout, gone is the crap you don't care about, gone is the microscopic print that my old eyes can't read.

I'm sure the pureblood designers hate this, but we users are loving it! Go Apple!

…now if they'd just start syncing iTunes wirelessly to my iPhone like they do to my AppleTV… I'm just sayin'…