Dieting.

I'm still eating mostly turkey or chicken, with intervals of salmon (but no more than once a week because of the mercury). I ate so much turkey the lasttime around on the diet that I was entirely unable to stand the taste of it for two years after. It's tasting okay this time around but I don't know if that's the turkey or the 300-400 calories of bread-and-butter I'm eating with it. Not, perhaps, the most well-balanced lunch, but tasty.

I could eat a vegetable but there's a limit to how many little pots of food I'm willing to bring in to the office and cook every day. Besides, vegetables are tricky.

They say eat raw vegetables, and orange or leafy green ones, for the beta-carotene. But not carrots because they have too much sugar. Or peas because they have too much sugar and they're not "leafy."

One can hardly gnaw on an acorn squash every day at noon, okay? And I draw the line at raw sweet potatoes. I'm not even sure they're edible and I'm not volunteering to find out. Then there's the green, leafy vegetables. But lettuce doesn't count. Spinach does, but no human being can eat more than 1/2 cup of raw spinach in a day. That just leaves broccoli. None of those other green things count. (Brussels sprouts are not a vegetable. They're an evil communist plot to bring down Western society.)

Anyhow. I did the research and it's physically impossible to get 100% of the daily recommended whatevers from eating. You have to eat pounds and pounds and pounds of vegetables.

And "legumes" which is a fancy way of saying lots of different beans and things that look more like kinds of peas but are good for you. If forced, I can eat a lentil. I cannot be made to like it. I can eat a kidney bean (preferably with a bowl of chili wrapped around it) or a green bean without trouble.

Anyone tries to make me eat a lima bean and there's going to be bloodshed.

And there's something called "hummus" but I've never been sure what it's made of. I suspect some kind of bean but you can't be sure when something's been smushed into a soupy paste. It's non-delicious, though, so it doesn't matter.

Where was I going with this?

Oh. I remember. I did learn that, short of injecting a syringe full of lard into your heart, there are few more sure-fire routes to high cholesterol, clogged arteries, and heart disease than eating refried beans. I don't really like them, so that's okay. I eat moderate servings of black beans, instead.

I learned that that brown rice is preferable to any other starch. I adore brown rice. In fact, I'm going out tomorrow and eating a heaping helping, garnished with massive amounts of Chinese food. As I lean back in my chair and surreptitiously unfasten the snap on my jeans, I'll think smugly about how healthy I am.

I also learned that when health food nuts talk about "whole grain" breads, what they really mean is whole-grain rye bread, a substance more akin to fiberboard than food.

I know, I'm babbling. Now that Moe has broken into the sanctuary of my sketchbook, I'm too self-conscious to practice drawing any more. And I'm sick to death of playing Hearts. (Anyhow, those programmed players cheat.) That leaves me with nothing to do but bother you.

I figured it out and I've taken 17 vacation days so far this year. I don't know how many I should take (this company is pretty flexible about that kind of thing) but even figuring an optimistic 3 weeks entitlement, I've gone a bit over.

It's my nightmare come true...it's only August and I'm not entitled to take any more time off for the next 4-1/2 months. When Buehler gets back on Monday, I think I'll suggest taking a couple more unpaid days.

I like getting paid, but I really like not working.