hold the sugar on my salad please

why does mcdonalds take a perfectly good idea and ruin it by adding calories?

i ordered the new fruit & walnut salad today thinking mmm.. apples and grapes and walnuts, and a low-fat yogurt dip. sounds healthy - looks healthy in the picture. even their description makes it sounds healthy.

you wouldn't think that this little healthy fruit salad packs 310 calories and 13g of fat. this, my friends, is the SAME amount of calories and fat as a regular cheeseburger, with less protein and more carbs.

they could have shaved 40 calories off of the salad by using regular walnuts instead of candied.

add this to my 400 calorie grilled chicken sandwich (i wanted a salad, but they were out of lettuce) and i would have been better off getting a cheeseburger and regular order of fries!

lesson learned - always check the nutritional information on fast food items BEFORE ordering them!

what do you call this?

so si and i made our weekly trip to home depot on saturday to get some fun things like closet shelving and painting supplies.

the check out girl was happily beeping our things until she came across an item that the system didn't recognize. she scanned it 4 or 5 times before deciding to do a price check.

with a puzzled look on her face, she holds up the item and asks us, "what do you call this?"

now, being a girl who is not familiar with every item at home depot myself, i would understand if she was holding up some strange tool or doo dad.

but no, our brilliant check out girl was holding up a paint roller.

i looked at her with an "are you serious?" expression and said "um. i call it a paint roller"

and she then tries to describe it to the kid in the paint department on the phone, without using the phrase paint roller at any time. i believe she said "it's metal, and kinda rolls, and has a white cap on either end".

she finally got the number and sent us on our merry way, forgetting to deactivate the anti-theft device. of course we set off the alarm and had to stand there for another 10 minutes while they checked everything.

at least we got the whole home depot experience.

yup, even the hot dog.

tinkle tinkle

while in the restroom at work (yes, i know, i've broken my 2 ground rules. whatever), i was startled to hear the women in the stall next to me start talking really loudly.

was she talking to me?

wait. was she talking on a cell phone. while peeing???

yes. yes she was.

and that means that the person she was talking to could hear me doing my biznes. since this was a restroom, and not a phone booth, i didn't feel particulary bad or embarrassed, but i was a bit taken aback. especially since it's a small bathroom with only 3 stalls in a small office building. not like it was at a bar or something, you know?

then i hear her say "oh that? i'm in a public restroom"

i would have told them i was near a serenity fountain.

but then the flush would have probably given it away.

thud

i fell out of bed last night.
actually, i was pushed.

see, si sleeps in kind of a rotated "v" shape, with his head and feet on his side of the bed and his butt on my side of the bed.

the problem is that i sleep the same way.

so when we're, well, butted up against each other, the bed becomes too small.

apparently si thought i was crowding him, because he kept nudging me over until..

thud.

me, sleepily rubbing my head while si frantically asks if i'm ok: "you know, i could sleep on the couch if that's the way you feel"

he felt horribly bad about the whole ordeal.

i will milk it for all it's worth.

JOKINGLY, of course.

lost in translation, part 2

converstation that took place while remodeling the closet.

si (inside closet, knocking down a wall): "can you bring me the torch?"
me ("supervising" the demolition): "um. do you want to burn the wall down?"

si sticks his head out of the closet and points to the flashlight.

where's ty pennington when you need him?

we live in a crappy apartment complex.
oh sure, it looks nice on the website - in the same way that britney looks good on her album cover.
suffice it to say that we're essentially living in a mold infested college dorm.

we decided to buy a house. after days of looking at Houses In Our Price Range (aka Crack Houses), we found one that we love. a 1932 1 bedroom bungalow, with a den and basement and great backyard! it needed a little bit of work, but we were so happy that it was actually livable with all the essentials like floors and walls and a dead squrrel-free kitchen.

once we bought the house, all flaws became glarengly obvious. how will we fit our clothes in these closets? this one-butt kitchen needs to be at least a butt and a half. hey, what's that big burn mark on the hardwood floor? wow, is all this electrical work original?
we decided that we'd do some remodeling.

the closet was first. we thought: "we just have to knock down a wall, build a new wall, add a light and a door, paint it and we're good to go! this should only take 1, 2 weekends at the most".
we quickly discovered that the real world is not the same as an episode of trading spaces.

we started the project by heading to home depot and got out of there 4 1/2 hours and several hundred dollars later.

it's been three weeks and the closet still isn't done.

list of major items that still need to be done in the 7 weeks before we move in
- old coal chimney knocked out
- 2 doorways removed
- new appliances and cabinets installed in kitchen (including a dishwaster, which currently doesn't exist)
- moulding in bedroom replaced
- walls in every room painted

it's totally worth it.

choose the blue

found these sites (buyblue.org ,choosetheblue.com) where you can see the percentage of $ donated to political campaigns. I was pleased to note that the place we spend roughly half our income (costco) is 98% blue and horrified to find out that the other half of our income spent at home depot supports the dark side.

other highlights :
buy from estee lauder (91), barnes & noble (98), bed bath & beyond (93), ticketmaster(95), arbys (100), sonic drive in (100), hyatt (87), expedia.com (95), hotwire.com(95), progressive insurance(100)

avoid fruit of the loom(100), circuit city(96), hormel (100), saks (95), cinemark movie theaters (97), columbia house (100), wendy's (91), darden restaurants (red lobster, olive garden -91), hooters (97), brinker restaurants (chilis, maggianos, macaroni grill - 92), outback (NO! 98), pizza hut (95), colorado rockies (100! i'm ashamed), drury inn (98),

surprises: fox cable networks - 61%?? thanks, but that still doesn't make up for fox news.
target.. how could you be 73%??

snort

si was snoring (or more appropriately, snorting) so loud last night that he actually woke himself up.

this is not an uncommon occurance.

of course, it's the only way he is forgiven because it gives me something to laugh about all day.

unsupervised bulk buying

so if you're trying to lose a few pounds and eat healthy, i don't recommend sending your boyfriend, SOLO, to costco for lettuce, chicken breasts, and yogurt.

because he will inevitably ALSO buy one or more of the following:
- cheesecake that serves 12
- flat of jumbo muffins
- 5 gallon bucket of ice cream
- 5 pound tub of i can't believe it's not butter

banana nut is my favorite.

lost in translation

conversation between me and my (british) boyfriend:

he was in the bedroom and i was in the living room.

si:"sweetie, do you know where my khakis are?"
me: "check the closet, i just did laundry"
si: "what? why are they in the closet?"
me: " i always put them in the closet, that's where they go!"
si (coming into the living room, picking up his car keys off the counter): "here they are on the counter"
me: "huh? your khakis are in the closet."
si: "i was looking for my CAR KEYS, not khakis you silly poppet"

sigh.

this may be dangerous for me

as someone who already spends more time than she should on the internet, i can't help but wonder if a blog is really the best idea.

my ground rules:
no blogging at work
no blogging about work

right. let's see how long that will last.

re: the name of this blog

ask any british guy to say "fluffy puffy puppy" and prepare to melt at how cute it sounds.