Succulent cabbages

One of my goals is to eat four (yes just four) fruits and vegetables every day. Having this goal has made a difference. Also being able to check it off on my 'Joe's Goals' scorecard is very satisfying. Now four fruit and veg is actually not enough - I checked the Canada Food Guide recently and women in my age group are to eat 7 - 8 servings daily. Sigh.

However, four is a whole lot better than two say I. Baby steps, baby steps. I'll never get there if I have to aim for eight all at once. Wednesday last week was a red letter day though because I ate six servings of the dreaded veg and fruits. I am so delightfully goal oriented!

In related news, the New York Times Health section reports that the adjectives we add to our veggies influence how willing we are to eat them. See Would you like your veggies plain or succulent?.

I'll have some burnished blueberries, blissful bannanas and charming cabbage thank you very much!

Chocolate hack

Here is a tip combining two of my passions - health and chocolate. Like chocoholics everywhere, I was delighted when the health benefits of chocolate were discovered (or were they just made public?). Now we know that eating your daily chocolate is an essential cancer prevention strategy.

But not just any chocolate. It must be a 'high percentage' dark chocolate. And unfortunately the higher your percentage of health enhancing cocoa, the more bitter the chocolate.

Now usually I don't venture any higher than 65 - 75 percent. Higher than that, eating is no longer a pleasure. But I received a bag of Lindt 85% chocolate squares for Christmas. Not to seem ungrateful, I choked down a square or two and then left the rest.

Now I have discovered an excellent hack. Take your bitter little square of health and put it between two biscuits. Tea biscuits work well. Here I have used digestives. Mmm.... Somehow the biscuit brings out the chocolatey goodness of the healthy chocolate, making it taste not so healthy anymore.

Of course, thanks to the amazing Lifehack.org for the title idea.

The joy of imperfection

Perfection is the enemy of the good - I've heard that a lot lately. We're surrounded by images that some think are perfection - I'm talking about advertising of course. Beautiful young people in their teens or twenties, mostly white, all blissfully happy, and by the way, asking us to buy this or that. It's hard to watch these images every day and not feel that we just don't measure up. No woman ever has a zit, or flat hair, or even a white hair or two. 'You should look like that' I tell myself.

I think real life is also beautiful - but you can miss it if you are looking for things that correspond to the images created for us by the best minds in California.

Here is a post about The perfection of imperfection by the Cheerful Monk. He says among other wise things that our imperfections are what make us loveable. There you have it - be perfect with no love. Or be imperfect and be loveable. I know which I am.

The other day I went for a walk along College St., Toronto, between Bathurst and Ossington. I was looking for colour in this grey January, and found it at a corner store selling flowers.

Exit music

I've just finished reading Ian Rankin's Exit Music. I enjoyed it - it's a noirish crime novel featuring the moody, hard-drinking, pop-music loving Inspector Rebus of Edinburgh. You can see the dark mood right from the cover, which is in moody blues and blacks. I always enjoyed picking this one up for the stylish cover alone.

The story features lots of banter between old friends and colleagues Siobhan and Rebus as Rebus makes his way through his last week and last case before his retirement. Siobhan is torn between her love / mentoree relationship with her boss and her itching to get on with things her way and maybe a promotion. Rebus is typically unwilling to 'go softly into that good night' of retirement, as it were, and sees in Siobhan his younger self perhaps. He is wistful for that past ambition but also weary of the chase.

I loved the lesser characters that pop up throughout - for instance, this small portrait of two mortuary attendants:

The nightshift consisted of just two men. One was in his forties and had the look - to Rebus's eyes - of an ex-con. A faded blue tattoo crept out of the neck of his overalls and halfway up his throat. It took Rebus a moment to place it as some sort of snake. The other man was a lot younger, bespectacled and gawky.
"I take it you're the poet," Rebus guessed.
"Lord Byron, we call him," the older man rasped.

Ha ha ha. The book is full of these little throw-away scenes. I guess that's one of the things that makes Rankin such a good writer - there is humour bubbling through the darkness all the way through the book.

So however many problems, discouragements and trials you face, can you still smile? Or at least toss back a drink and put on some sulky rock music and see it through somehow? Life is difficult, but also full of humour. That's what Rankin is telling me anyhow.

Have your read Exit Music? Or any Rebus books? Do tell in the comments if you like...

How to get over a breakup

Breaking up is an almost universal experience, and it's one I've been going through lately. So in my quest to do this correctly, or mitigate the pain in some way that doesn't involve ingesting illicit substances, I googled to a relevant site at wikihow. I am to accept my pain, talk to my friends (but not too much) and keep my distance. I'd say I've fallen down in the keep my distance category. I'm now making up for that failure, and it hurts a lot. Maybe trying to be friends prevents honestly accepting that it's over.

But but but....to keep someone totally out of your life who was so important just weeks ago? Does it make sense?

Can you be friends after a break up? If the partner in question has lots of good qualities as a friend? I'd love to know your thoughts.

Eat Pray Love revisited

I've had a closer read of the travel / yoga book Eat Pray Love and now I quite like it. It gives a breezy and humorous treatment to Gilbert's year long journey of self-discovery in Italy, India and Bali (Indonesia makes it three 'i's').

Gilbert is having a post-divorce identity crisis and goes on a sensual / spiritual year of renewal to try and come to terms with her experience. I can really identify with the urge to escape a tired world-view. Gilbert first renews her senses in Italy, then brushes up her spirituality in India, then finds love in Bali.

I like that she takes pleasure so seriously that good pasta becomes an almost mystical experience. Then I identify with her struggles with meditation, where her lost loves come to the fore. Isn't it always a struggle to get over a love? For me it is a struggle, and seeing Gilbert wrestle with this was cathartic for me. She actually ends up climbing a high tower and doing a letting-go ritual complete with mystical communication with her ex, which finally frees her to move ahead with her life.

In Bali she befriends a charming ancient healer called Ketut and basically hangs with him. He teaches her a few things - one that I like is smiling meditation. No need to twist yourself into pretzle like yogic poses Ketut informs Gilbert. You just sit and you smile. That's it. Smile at your whole body, including your liver. Makes you beautiful! Well, if meditation is going to make me beautiful, what better reason to do it? I am trying this meditation technique out!

Career sense

More from the sunny day, though now it is raining dismally.

There's a huge discussion on careers over at Get Rich Slowly. The writer of this very useful blog asks his readers the perennial favorite question - 'How do you find work you love??' There are 61 responses so far....

Lord, I wish I knew how to do that also. A lot of the responders say they tried a variety of work and stumbled on something good. Another group wishes they had the funds to go back to college and train for what they'd really like. A small contingent says they were super focused on a career while young, trained for it, then found they didn't like it once they were doing it.

Sigh. My personal view for myself is that I have a decent occupation as a technical writer. It could be that I need to try working in smaller companies. The big companies have their advantages, but aren't the best fit for non-conformist moi.

Who loves me? Who is the boss?

At last the sun peaked out and I went to Bellwoods Park where it was very windy. Seeing the sun is a treat this time of year.

I'm reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It is written in a very chatty and breathless style which I find somewhat offputting, so I am skimming. I agree with the critics of this best seller that Gilbert is self-obsessed and has very middle class concerns and apparently no money worries whatsoever. Not a regular Jane. But, I'm reading it, so it does have interest for me.

At one point, she complains to a wise medicine man in Indonesia about her troubles with love (an ex-husband and ex-boyfriend prey on her mind). Then she comments that these must be petty concerns for him to advise on compared to questions of how to find enlightenment. And he replies that there are only two questions that people have - 'Does this person love me?' and 'Who is in charge?' That's it - those are the human concerns.

Who cannot relate to that? I know that questions of love pre-occupy my sorry dating ass. And when I'm working in a corporate environment, anyway, questions of the pecking order do unfortunately seem to take a lot of emotional energy.

Mosque tour

I took a tour of this amazing new Hindu temple and museum a week ago. It looks like a fairy tale plunked down in an industrial park! The architecture is amazing - thousands of pieces hand carved in India and 'glued together' here on the outskirts of Toronto.

It was an interesting experience being almost the only white person among so many people. Overall, though the Hindu religion is extremely foreign to me, I found the temple had a warm, welcoming feel to it. I did not feel out of place or especially foreign. A few people were praying, but most were just looking, as I was.

In the temple itself, every surface except the floor is carved and decorated. It is all white, so the impression is of an extemely ornate wedding cake. Lovely. I highly recommend the trip to see this.

See the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir at 61 Claireville Drive. ('Mandir' means temple.)

Great goals tool

I've started using a new free tool to keep track of my progress with various goals - Joe's Goals. It's simple and easy to use. What are my goals? Oh, the usual - exercise, eat veggies, etc. The main one that is different from most would be 'apply for jobs'. Got to get on that....

Classics I read in 2007

I also re-read two classics last year - George Eliot's Middlemarch and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club). Both create a complete and detailed world that I love to disapear into. The world is so far from my own, yet the characters are universal enough that I can recognize myself and people I know in them. Part of the draw of both books though is the rural setting in a time that was if not simpler at least easier to grasp. I will read these again. A possible classic to re-read next year is War and Peace.