Day 11 - Sun

I think I hit about 30 minutes of exercise, but a lot of it was stretching and getting the body comfortable more than raising the heart rate up seriously. Nevertheless, it's becoming a very welcome habit to wake up, visualize cool seafoam green energy healing my body, doing breathing meditations and then getting up and walking around my house and doing calisthenics and jogging in place. No jumping jacks today.

Last night, I went out with friends to a thing called Green Drinks. Not really sure about the moniker (sustainability, mixing with like-minded people, blah, blah, blah, very nice), but for me, it was really just a chance to get out and see people, meet new ones, something I desperately need to keep doing. Now, they had free food, which I love. Free food has been one of the highlights of my existence for a long time. It's a little odd, but perhaps only because of the degree to which it is a highlight - free food ranks about as highly as, say, a winning lottery ticket for a $100. And just as 99% of the time you would not reject the winning lottery ticket, I typically would not turn down free food, no matter what kind of diet I'm trying to stay on.

(I note to myself that there is some impulsivity here that probably ought to be controlled...I think of the mice and peanut butter on snap traps...)

The free food offering was meatballs, pigs in blankets (I love those too much) and ziti with sauce. What is it about free food and ziti with sauce? I have to assume that it's quite cheap to be so ubiquitous in the free food selection. But you find it so frequently as the "vegetarian" selection in catered food, whether at a buffet, a served dinner, or even in fancy prix fixes that there must be something about it beyond being cheap and easy to make. Tasty? The reviews must be mixed. The ziti I had last night was fine by me, though I wouldn't vouch for other people's tastes. But more than once, I have come across ziti that was overcooked, mushy like watered cardboard with congealed sticky tomato sauce that bind the limp cardboard-y pieces of pasta together, a bit like filler paste or caulking more than food. In the end, I really don't think it's about how it tastes, or even how easy it is to make so much as how iconic it is in the free food pantheon. In the end, I think ziti with sauce makes repeat appearances because of a lack of creativity on the part of the free-food offering community, loosely called. Then again, I suppose the argument could be made (perhaps should be made) that creativity comes at a premium. Hmm, creatives should probably agree, but shouldn't being creative be the default? (ah, another discussion, another time...)

How about rigatoni with salt, pepper, Italian herbs tossed with extra virgin olive oil? Mmmm! Super easy, super tasty, can be served hot or cold. Or rotini with chopped red onion, mixed chopped vegetables, tossed in a light vinaigrette? So many ways to go about this...

Anyway, I was a little afraid that eating that food would adversely affect my pain, but it seems to have been ok. I feel a wee bit puffy today, which I assume is because of the salt and animal fats. But I actually felt worse before the event, possibly because I went with a friend to IKEA. Not sure if the friend or IKEA had anything to do with the pain? One thing I know for sure, though, is that between visualizations and exercise, the pain is ameliorated.

Today I am grateful for sunshine. Yes, very prosaic selection, I understand, and you might see that it's been a tempting topic for a few days. But what an effect on mood sunshine has. I was thinking about how many people in the northeast and cold northerly states want to be somewhere else during the winter, and I fully understand this. However, as I sit in my house on this January day with an exterior temperature of 32 degF, and an interior temperature of not much more, the sun is shining and reflecting off the yellow siding and white trim of my house which I can see out the window just beyond my computer screen. It's lovely - really, truly, lovely. The brightness of the white muntins, the faded yellow of the vinyl siding, the sheer brightness of the sun - I can only use a comparison of other senses. It's like a cool refreshing drink, a tonic that brings instant relief, a soft warm blanket. It's energy directly imbibed through the eyes into the body, and taking a moment to really see it, I feel the sun's energy as a healing force. That's something to be grateful for, no?