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.

We had little impromptu Aussie craft-blogger meet-up today at Amy’s place to watch some episodes of Craft Corner Death Match. Joining us were Katherine, Helen, and Clinton. I wasn’t hugely impressed with the show, to be honest. I can see where they were going with the concept, but it’s got a few big problems for me:

• The Host. He sucks! He just gave off this whole “Man Show” vibe that we all seemed to resent. I get that they were going with the whole “Rarr! Wrestling meets craft!” thing, but some of his jibes seemed bordering on the misgynistic and insulting. I don’t think he considered anything the contestants made useful or beautiful. It was a big joke to him. I kept waiting for him to tell the contestants to “make me some pie, bitches.” And the bit where they had to reach into his pants pockets to pull out categories? REALLY unnecessary.
• The time limit. Ten minutes isn’t enough time to do anything. We also didn’t get to see very much of the contestants actually working either. The show either needs to expand to an hour or cut some of the (admittedly humorous) interstitial crap.
• The judges. What’s with giving scores to two decimal points? That’s just silly. Some of them seemed rather petty and vindictive to the contestants too. I understand that everybody wants to be the next Simon Cowell, but it’s just not very pleasant to watch.

So overall, I give the show 7.35 on originality, 4.46 on execution, and only a 6.329 on enjoyment. We had a lot more fun watching the fabulous Brini Maxwell afterwards…

And you thought iPod Shuffles were just for listening to… (That one with the Crisco and the poppy seeds makes me wanna barf though!)

Congratulations to my sister Amy, who helped organize the extremely successful Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Inaugural Celebrity Rock ‘N Bowl Event. The auction she put together raised $20,000 more than expected! Check out the pictures to see the celebrities that took place. All I can say is, if a member of my own family was in the same room as Ben Mackenzie from The O.C. and DIDN’T GET ME AND THE SNOOK AN AUTOGRAPH, she can consider herself OFFICIALLY UNINVITED TO ALL OF AUSTRALIA. Ahem. But congrats again, Sis!

US President Turns Off Australian Women. Well, no DUH. I like the picture they chose to illustrate the story though. Heh. Baby fish mouth.

Good Lord! 622 Music Videos. I don’t know who this guy is, but he ROCKS. Most of them are in Quicktime, it looks like. Lots of stuff from 80’s and 90’s. (Amy’s gonna be all over this.) I’m grabbing the two Matthew Sweet videos right now. Squee! (Link courtesy of MetaFilter.)

A little while later: Hey, that’s Samantha Mathis in REM’s “Strange Currencies” video, isn’t it? The forgotten little sister in the holy alterna-girl triumvirate of Claire and Winona. Major 90’s flashbacks here. And I really liked “At My Most Beautiful” too. I can’t figure out who the chick is. She looks like she could be one of the Phoenixes, but I can’t find her credited anywhere.

I just discovered that I’ve been suffering from Keratosis Pilaris my whole life! Well, I knew I was suffering from something, but I didn’t know what it was called. My brother’s got it too. I think I’ve been growing out of it, slowly, but it’s not completely gone yet. Damn bumpy arms!