Did you have a good weekend?

Rob and I went to Park Here! an indoor space in Nolita that has been converted into a springtime park. There were fake trees, fake grass and scenery of lush foliage on the walls. People were spread out on the “lawn” picnic-style, eating from the food vendors that had set up shop there. Recorded birdsong was piped in to give it an even more authentic “outdoors in nice weather” feeling, and there were even real dried leaves scattered around! It was weird and a little dystopian, but we were still a bit sad to step back into the snow.

Our friends the Robicellies were vending cupcakes so we hung out for a while, doing our best to convince the skeptical that chicken and waffles cupcakes are really good.

Wow! With the exception of Bari, you guys all picked the ad featuring “leaping Jessica” – including Jessica! I appreciated hearing your opinions and reasons, especially since I TOTALLY DISAGREED WITH YOU. I was gung ho about using the yellow holding hands photo. Your smart observations changed my mind. Thank you sincerely.

***

Are you on Pinterest? It’s a lot of fun collecting inspiring images and having a place to keep them all. You can follow me here.

***
Excellent zero PointsPlus recipe coming next week. The card reader for my camera went belly up and I can’t get the photos off! Bummer!

Happy weekend.

So… the time has come to start advertising. You know, to grow my business. The one where I do the art that I love and meet amazing people and they give me money. That one.

I don’t know who the hell this kick-ass life belongs to either.

It’s… it’s not scary, but it’s close. It’s exhilarating! I’m really excited.

Will you help? I need to pick a banner ad. Rob and I made two, I can’t decide which one is going up, and I need to know before February 1.

Those are the candidates above. Your vote, in the comments… Go!

I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

Who has two thumbs and has lost 15 pounds? This chick! Actually, make that 15 point two!

This means that I hit my mini goal of weighing **5 pounds – actually I passed it and I’m down to **4.2 – and I feel SO GOOD! Like, “Oh, am I walking around in my underwear again… oopsie!” good. Pause in the mirror to dance around in my skinny pants like an obnoxious commercial good. It’s reached epic levels of cheesy up in here. I got a cute key chain at my meeting for hitting my goal, and Esther took it and rubbed some love and encouragement into it for me, because she is awesome.

This brings me to my advice for the week: make some weight loss friends. This gets tough sometimes, and having people to talk you down off a ledge (or a milkshake) is awesome. Even more awesome? Having someone to high five you when you reach a goal.

Can I talk about why I’m using stars instead of real numbers? Because I feel like that’s weird without explanation. I don’t give a CRAP if you know how much I weigh, but I don’t want to be difficult to relate to. I started writing about my Weight Watchers … uh, “journey”? … because I hoped it would encourage other people who are trying to loose weight, too. This way, if you weigh much more than I do, or much less, you can still read these posts, be encouraged, and not feel like my situation is very different from yours. It’s not, of course; in the end, it’s all calories in vs. calories out, but that can be hard to remember on frustrating days.

Later this week, I’m bringing you a killer dessert recipe that is has ZERO PointsPlus and DOESN’T SUCK. Stay tuned.

Remember my Secret Pizza Word from October of 2009? Basically, there is a secret word only I know, and if you say it in front of me I owe you a cheese pizza. The guy who gave me the idea had the rule that you had to immediately stop whatever it was that you were doing and buy the sayer-of-the-word a pizza right there and then, but since that might not always be feasible, I made a coupon out of an index card. It’s also fun to see exactly how long the word has been in effect.  You can see it’s pretty road weary – I’m writing the next one in pen.

Anyway, sitting around my living room on Friday night, Allison from Robicellis mentioned that she used to play Cranium, and I gasped.  She raised an eyebrow while I dug into my wallet and pulled out the well-worn, totally goofy coupon I had made a year and a half ago.

My secret word was cranium!  It was well after midnight, but the pizza place was still open (I love New York), and since there were a few of us, I ordered two.  It had been my secret alone until about two weeks ago when I spilled the beans to Jen about what it was and how I was sad it was so obscure.  My next word is much more common. You still get no hints.

(Sorry about the crappy iPhone photos. Actually, they’re probably fine, but vanity dictates I tell you I snapped them with my phone.)

Emily wins the award for cutest look of disgust.

Matt probably wins “Most Dramatic”.

Patrice – fourth photo included to show how unbelievably unkind my husband is.

This is also my sex face.  You’re welcome.

Topher and Rob are playing it cool.

I used this photo because the movie had lots of funny and cute “mom” stereotypes, this being one of the most charming.

I didn’t want to watch this after seeing the summation of the story from the trailer – lesbian couple with two kids meets their sperm donor and one starts sleeping with him with him – because I expected it to boil down to a less-crass but still-insulting version of that infamous line from Chasing Amy: “All every woman really wants… is some serious deep-dickin’.” I just don’t want to hear it or anything else that promotes the really stupid but prevalent idea that “a lesbian is a woman who just hasn’t met the right guy yet”, nor did I want to watch anything that makes gay people seem like they are radically different from anyone else in a relationship.

Still, everyone said it was good, so I waited for it to be available on Netflix. I was pleasantly surprised, because none of that happened, and all the issues that came up were because they were a normal couple dealing with a difficult situation. Phew!

Two thumbs up!

Stephanie Thompson gave me a gold star. It was certainly not for my killer fashion sense. Rob calls this coat my “serial bomber” coat, and says it makes me look crazy. He’s right, but I don’t care because it’s so warm, and also because my grandmother told me it was cute once. It is approximately nine sizes too big.

Anyway, thank you, Stephanie!

Penny: I’m a Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know.

Sheldon: Yes, it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the Sun’s apparent position relevant to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality.

It’s usually easy for me to ignore the horoscope thing, but with the new “earth is at a different access so everyone’s signs are suddenly different”, I’m hearing a lot about it and, frankly, it’s annoying the snot out of me. I separate people into two categories: those that understand how science works, and those who care about what their sign is.

If you fall into the latter category, I will always sort of be judging you.

I’m currently doing Weight Watchers, and every week I blog a bit about what I’ve learned and experienced, and whether I’ve lost or gained weight for the week.

Rob was away all last week, so I took the opportunity to stay up late eating popcorn for dinner, going out with friends to restaurants he finds too fancy (aka French restaurants that serve everything butter-laden and gobbed with cheese), and lounging around the living room with girl friends polishing off bottles of wine. Oh, and I had a photoshoot with about eight different kinds of cookies, which I was NOT going to let go to waste! (They mostly got passed out to excited friends, but I def. chowed down on a few.)

Remember last week when I was optimistic because I had fruit in the house? That optimism had dissipated by the time I got on the scale, but, even with the pitfalls of this week, I’m down one pound, and I owe it to the bananas and oranges I’ve been having every day. I’m now hovering right above my mini-goal of **5.0 pounds. Next week, if I concentrate, I’ll hit it!

You guys, my advice for the week: eat fruit. The oranges are particularly lovely right now.