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February 2009
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April 2009

In the Garden of Gross

On Saturday mom and I went out and removed two dead/dying shrubs from the front yard. We knew they were bad - brown leaves, white moldy-like substance on them, etc., but we had no idea it was quite THIS bad:

Gross2 

The branches towards the bottom were black like they'd been burned in a fire and they were covered with weird alien-looking creatures that oozed pink slime when poked:

Gross 

I was fascinated and grossed out at the same time. I took precautions - wore a mask and gloves and safety glasses - but I still felt disgusting and couldn't wait to get in the shower when we were finished! It actually went very fast - both shrubs were completely removed in two-and-a-half hours. They were so dry and brittle, they just snapped off! I was quite relieved as it was very warm and that sun was just beating down on my head! 

Mom and I have decided to not bother planting anything out front at least for this year. We're thinkingg of just getting some nice bark and putting some pots with flowers out there. Something that looks nice, but doesn't require much maintenance!


"Pizza"

Coolest cake EVER!!

Pizza1 

A girl at work made this cool "pizza" cake for the party we're having today. She used frosting for the tomato sauce, shaved coconut for the cheese, fruit roll-ups for the pepperoni, licorice drops for the olives and Swedish fish for the green peppers. The crust is regular white cake. Inspired, I tell you!

Pizza2

 


Coming Soon: National Poetry Month

NPM_LOGOa

 

April is National Poetry Month. In celebration I'm going to try to write some new poems, share some old ones I wrote eons ago during my angst-ridden youth (and, yes, probably embarrass the heck out of myself in the process!), as well as post some of my favourite poems written by real poets, and a random poem from some of the books I own. I'm also going to participate in Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 30th), and snap a photo for the Free Verse Photo Competition. Stay tuned!!


The Fullbar Experiment

So, I heard about this Fullbar thing on TV a while back - it's a flavoured puffed wheat bar you eat with 8oz of water a half hour before a meal. Supposedly it makes you feel so full that you'll eat less, kinda like gastric by-pass surgery, but without all the cutting and changing the size of your stomach. In fact the creator of the bar is a bariatric surgeon who apparently wanted to help those of us not fat enough for surgery to lose weight.

Well, I found some of the bars at Long's Drugs recently, and yesterday I tried one before lunch.

Fullbar 

Fullbar2

It's pretty good taste-wise. I had the Cranberry Almond which also contained a lot of cinnamon and sunflower seeds along with the almonds, cranberries and puffed wheat. It did make me feel full - although to be fair, I should confess I had been snaking on strawberries, red grapes, a Kashi cereal bar and half a fresh (as in still warm and gooey!!) rice crispy treat throughout the morning, so I could easily been just as full from all that. But, I must say that I had all morning been planning on getting the special from the Cafe downstairs (pulled pork sandwich with cole slaw and fries), but felt so full by noon that I just heated up the Healthy Choice Fresh Mixer (Southwestern Style Chicken) meal I'd brought from home, and it took me the whole lunch hour to eat it, rather than wolfing it down in ten minutes like usual.

So, in conclusion, I guess this first Fullbar experiment wasn't a very good one. I will have to try it again, on an empty stomach this time, to see if it really fills me up. Stay tuned!