I couldn’t resist trying to get a shot of the full moon tonight. Click it to look at larger versions.
Month: January 2010
Weight Loss Plans I Just Invented
Okay, I could sell these diet plans and make a bunch of those little piles of cash that you see in cartoons, you know the little bundles that thieves are always pulling out of wall safes? Okay, those.
Now these weight loss plans have not been verified as safe or effective by anyone, including me, doctors, or the lady who has to re-fold the shirts after I pull some out and hold them up to see if they have long sleeves or not.
Plan 1: Laptop Fat Melt
I’m pretty sure that I’m rendering the fat off my legs with this laptop. Even through the laptop lap pads I’m using (YES! TWO OF THEM AT ONCE!) it’s still pretty damned warm. I like to think of this as George Foreman Grilling myself. Of course, this should only remove fat from your thighs and not from any of the rest of you so be prepared to have people stare at your new Popeye-like calves.
Plan 2: The Airplane Diet
This plan is only as expensive as the destinations you choose. So you start at an airport near your home and find a flight that will cover at least one meal, preferably two. Then you fly and only eat the food they serve on the plane. Except that food is so gross that nobody wants to eat it. Voila, weight loss. The key would be to just keep picking up new flights in each place you land so that you never eat any meals that aren’t served on a plane. You could very well die of starvation, so please use this plan under the supervision of a qualified travel agent.
Plan 3: Pica has a Purpose
For you gals who’ve been pregnant, remember when they warned you about pica? Ya, I guess pregnancy triggers pica in a lot of people. Also kids between the ages of 1 and 6 tend to get pica, and you know most of THEM are pretty thin! So according to Google health people with pica (or on the Jody Pica Diet) may eat
- Animal feces
- Clay
- Dirt
- Hairballs
- Ice
- Paint
- Sand
I’m going out on a limb and recommending you stay away from any kind of feces. Look, we want to lose weight, not get thrown in a mental hospital.
I know they tell you to consult with a doctor before starting any kind of diet. I’d like to point out that if you consult with a doctor before beginning any of these diets, I’d rather not have my name mentioned. Ever. I’ve never seen you before in my life. Get out of here, you knuckleheads.
Jody vs. the Target Shelving Unit
I am not a handy person. We should get that out of the way early. It would be a lie to present myself as the kind of person that Home Depot would ask to write a “How To” guide. More likely, I would write the kind of guide that they were selling at Lowe’s that will apparently cause you to do something that could burn your house down.
But one of my hypothyroidism side effects is the whole clutter thing, and my addiction to buying storage materials that don’t always solve the problems they were intended to solve. My most recent purchase was not storage bins, interestingly. It was actually a small metal shelving unit thingy that I bought to put in the hall closet so that I can store some of my “I have no place to put this” pots and pans.
This shelf looked to be a good size to just tuck into the closet, and the box said “No tools required!”. I have some tools, but any time I don’t have to use them, I’m happy.
Today, while the oil company guy was doing my annual burner cleaning [no cavities!] I decided to put the shelves together. After all, the box had been sitting in the kitchen for a few days now. All the parts appeared to be included. More than enough, in fact. There were 3 extra snap-one-y things, and there were 8 little caps that served no known purpose (they weren’t listed on the parts list, nor did they logically have any place in the assembled shelving.) Speaking of the parts list, the drawings for parts C and D were indistinguishable. So that was helpful. Imagine two 2 inch lines. That’s basically what they showed me. Lastly, there were 4 parts missing, I believe because between the instructions being printed and the materials being packed up, they decided to go with a different model for C and D and there was no longer a need for a separate part to connect them. They had built-in connectors.
Okay, so I figured out all the parts and pieces. I started to read the directions, which clearly said “2 people required for stable assembly”. You know, there are a lot of different ways to interpret stable assembly. I’m pretty stable. Would doing this alone make me unstable?
The directions also highly recommended I use a rubber mallet to complete the last steps of assembly. Okay, show of hands: who here thinks a rubber mallet is actually a tool and therefore the “no tools needed” claim on the outside of the box is pure crap? Ya, that’s what I thought.
It was getting to be time for me to go to work, because the oil burner guy was done. My shelving was pretty much the most unstable thing I’ve ever built at this point. I didn’t have time to get a rubber mallet before leaving, so I’m just hoping the dog doesn’t try to climb on the thing while I’m gone.
If you want to try to simulate the stability of my shelving, get 4 sharpened pencils and a piece of paper. Jam one pencil into each corner of the paper. Stand this up on your table. Voila. You have a paper shelving unit from Target, with no tools required!
How Could I Resist?
I have owned the bigdumptruck.com domain for 13+ years now. I use BigDumptruck as my user name on a lot of sites (including twitter and flickr). I also collect Department 56 Christmas buildings (I started with the Dickens Village, supplemented with a couple of New England Village houses but for the past 4 years or so I’ve become obsessed with the North Pole Series – the fun Santa’s Village buildings.
Last year I spotted a must-have: Dumpy’s Toy Trucks. It’s a dumptruck, tilted back! See the wheels and the cab and the hood?! It’s awesome, and was my choice for the house I could buy this year. I don’t think they’ll come out with one any time soon that I like as much (or is as appropriate for me).
