The Wendy’s Chili Finger was a HOAX! Whoa!

Roo Poo Paper. The mind boggles. I didn’t know you could make paper out of poo! I guess it’s probably just mostly vegetable matter anyway, huh?

Korean Barbecue Do’s and Don’ts. I’m hoping to take the fam out to Korean BBQ in Strathfield if/when they come to visit in January… (Link courtesy of Not Martha.)

As all my reserves of willpower are currently being used in sticking to the diet, I hesitated all of about three seconds before clicking on Kevin‘s link to the Star Wars Episode 3 Script. And now I’m spreading the guilt around by offering the temptation to you. Suckers.

What Type of American English Do You Speak? I’m 75% General American English, 10% Upper Midwestern, 5% Dixie, 5% Midwestern, and 5% Yankee. I figured that much. A lot of them I had to think about though, since I don’t use many of those phrases over here. I should totally write my own quiz: “Which version of International English do you speak?” Question 1: Do you say a) ass, b) ahhhss, or c) arse? Question 2: How many syllables are in the chemical element with the symbol ‘Al’? (Hint: You probably have a roll of it in your kitchen.) Question 3: Is it a) ketchup, b) catsup, or c) tomato sauce?

I got a million of ’em. (Link courtesy of Brigita, who definitely pronounces ‘envelope’ and ‘amen’ correctly but regrettably stuffs up ‘aunt.’)

Does this make anybody else spitting mad? This is the kind of crap that makes me grateful to live in Australia right now. As long as a drug is legal, a pharmacist should be required to dispense it. If you’re not happy with that, you shouldn’t be a pharmacist. Simple. I have a moral objection to Feathers yarn, but you don’t see me withholding it from customers, now do you?

What a bad day. Couple of days. People called in sick to work so I had to serve customers two days running, meaning I had no time to work on our website, meaning I’m even further behind on a project that was nearly impossible to begin with. I dreamed about work all last night, so mentally I just worked, like, a sixteen hour shift. My iMac is officially borked again, so I’ll be desktop-less for another week while it’s getting serviced. I had a stupid, pointless argument with the Snook this morning that left me on the verge of tears. My allergies are acting up. It’s raining and the Golf Umbrella People are out to get me. All I want to do is go home and eat deep-fried macaroni and cheese til I go into a food coma.

Does anybody have any surefire methods of cheering yourself up that don’t require eating lots of crap that’ll ruin my diet?

I officially lost one kilo during Week 2, bringing my total loss to three. And I got another gold star! I totally wasn’t angling for that one, either. Emily just asked if anybody had done anything new that week, and I mentioned that I’d played squash for the first time. (I had my boss Albert, who plays a lot, give me a lesson yesterday. More on that in a minute.) So she gave me another star. Yay! Things are progressing nicely. The Snook and I made an extremely yummy (yet very low point value) Shepherd’s Pie tonight using kangaroo mince. I’ve also noticed that my EXTREME HUNGRINESS seems to have dialed back a bit, and I don’t need to eat as much at lunch to ward off mid-afternoon STARVATION. Several people have told me that I’m looking skinnier (most notably when Amy complimented my actual ass on Saturday) but it’s easy to write them off as just being nice, you know? But the scales don’t lie, baby!

Oh, and as for squash… I thought it would be pretty easy to pick up, given that I played tennis all through high school and I did a rotation of racquetball during college PE. Unfortunately, it took me a really long time to realize that a squash ball doesn’t, you know, BOUNCE. Albert would hit one off the front wall and it would bounce once, and I’d be waiting in the position I’d expect to hit a tennis ball from. And then the ball would bounce again three feet in front of me. It was like playing with the deadest tennis ball in the world. It took me a good fifteen minutes to mentally adjust and get into a position where I wasn’t lunging for every shot. The other big change is that in squash, all raquet speed is generated from the wrist, whereas in tennis you mostly use your arm. But you don’t have time to use your arm in squash, so I had to un-learn four years of tennis swing. We didn’t actually get around to playing a game; I was having enough difficulty just returning the ball reliably. I was getting a hell of a workout though. I think we’re going to make this a weekly event…

If anybody is interested, I just worked out how many WW Points are in the Peters CarbSmart ice cream: 1 Point per 50g. There you go!

I had my first diet-related dream last night. (Or shall I say… nightmare?) I dreamed that I was walking through the kitchen and there was a cookie sheet out with loads of fresh, warm peanut butter cookies, and I just grabbed one and stuffed it into my mouth. And then there was some sort of giant chocolate bar, and I was breaking pieces off and eating them before suddenly I was like, “OH MY GOD, WHAT AM I DOING? I’VE RUINED EVERYTHING!” And I just remember the awful feeling that I’d stuffed it up and that there’d never be any point in trying to continue. I was so relieved when I woke up.