Category Archives: Evangelical Christianity

 Okay, just for the sake of sanity and dealing with boredom, I’m going to kick it old school and do the type of blog entry that I generally hate.  I’ll keep it all to one post, and if it sucks too badly I’ll just delete it later.  The type of blog that I hate is one where you spend your time reading pointless updates about random shit…….which, now that I think about it means I hate my own blog because I thrive on the random AND the pointless.  I’m currently on a business trip out east, and I’m staying at a hotel right next to a strip mall that could literally be in any metropolitan area in the country…….I can look out the window of the Hilton and see a Chipotle, Boston Market, Borders, Bed Bath and Beyond, Quizno’s, Sam’s Club and McDonald’s.  There is absolutely nothing that sets this place apart from Omaha, Des Moines or Tulsa.  So as I sit this close to the nation’s capitol and still manage to be bored, I’ll give you updates between now and Thursday with a handy little timestamp…

 March 10th, 2008- 11:25PM EST:

Two things…..First, I HATE to fly, and I have to say a lot of the pressure is lifted when you are finally at a “normal” enough weight to fit into a cramped airline seat without completely alienating the person  next to you.  Hooray for that.  I know how mundane that must sound to most of you, but for me it was a real breakthrough.  Secondly, I have zero embarassment about the fact that I can only eat or drink a small amount before I am full…..so it’s fun to eat four “happy hour freebie” mozzarella sticks at the Hilton lounge in front of your co-workers and say, “damn, I’m full”. 

The best thing about the trip so far is this African guy downstairs named Lawrence…he’s kind of a bellboy/concierge/go-to guy that I liked immediately due to his eagerness to engage us in conversation about the whole New York Governor scandal, why it was okay for us to snatch Noriega and bring him to the U.S., etc.  I’m going to tip this guy every time I get a chance, because that sonofabitch earns it.  They have a shuttle here to run you around where you need to go within a five mile radius, and earlier tonight when we were sick of paying hotel prices for drinks he commandeered the shuttle and ran us over to a liquor store.  When you go above and beyond to take me to a liquor store so that I can numb myself to the fact that I’ve got several days of corporate hell in front of me, you are my friend.  I’ll get a picture with this guy tomorrow and post it on here, because he just fucking rules.  So far he is the greatest thing about Gaithersburg; the strip mall capitol of the east coast……

 March 11th, 2008- 11:58PM EST:

Do you all remember that scene towards the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest where Nurse Ratched calls out young Billy, who just got laid and lost his stutter?  Well, my first day of training was a lot like that.  Nurse Ratched goes “Aren’t you ashamed?”, Billy says “No, I’m not” (no stutter!), then she says “You know Billy, what really worries me is how your mother is going to take this”.  Then the meltdown begins……”Um, um, well, y-y-y-you d-d-d-don’t have to t-t-t-tell her, Miss Ratched.”  To which she replies, “I don’t have to tell her? Your mother and I are old friends. You know that.”

Flash forward to ME at 8am EST this morning when I go down to the lobby to meet the group of people with whom I will spend the rest of the week…….and suddenly I morph into Billy….”P-p-p-please d-d-d-don’t m-m-m-make me do this…….n-n-n-no…NO!…n-n-no….p-please, NO!  N-n-n-NOT gonna d-d-do it!”…..first I slapped myself across the face, crying uncontrollably, and finally grabbed someone’s Snapple bottle, broke it and started carving gouges down my cheeks. 

It didn’t do any good, I was totally fucked at that point.  Apparently they get this reaction all the time.  The rest of the day is not worth mentioning, SO…….flash forward to 7:30PM EST this evening and I’m standing in front of the White House taking pictures.   You don’t have to be clairvoyant to know that I’m not the biggest fan of the current administration, so NORMALLY I’d be getting pictures of me grabbing my crotch, giving the finger or simulating autoerotic asphyxiation with my belt, right in front of the rose garden.  But….there is something about the vibe down there that just…..scares you.  It’s either the centuries of history, or the spooky amount of security and surveillance that you DON’T see that makes it too formidable to properly fuck around.  In fact, I was downright polite to people…..like, OLD SCHOOL polite.  I didn’t start saying “my liege” and shit like that, but when I went to ask one of the White House cops the quickest way to the National Archive area, it blew my mind because it came out like, “Excuse me kind sir, would you do me the honor of illuminating the path by which I may best traverse this fair city and find the archival landmark that will surely put me closest to that jolly tavern known as Cafe Atlantico?”.  I guess they get this all the time, because he goes…”Certainly, you just go straight down this street, which will turn into Pennsylvania Avenue on the next block, follow that till you get to 9th street and turn left”. 

Really, DC is one polite fucking city, at least up in the serious tourist corridor.  It’s too polite and people are way too helpful when it comes to teaching you how to use the metro or give extremely useful directions.  It bothered me.  Fuck that town, man.

So dinner at Cafe Atlantico was fantastic, and I’ll write about that on another site for the food nerds who won’t roll their eyes when I wax poetic about how the combination of eel, jellied pineapple and toasted quinoa is a miracle that will eventually bridge the gap between the tastebuds of the elitist gastronomist and the lowly midwestern housewife.

As I rode back on the train from Metro Central to Shady Grove, I went to an emotional place that  I have not experienced since I was eighteen years old and I was riding the train between New Haven Connecticut and New York City.  The diversity of the travelers prompted me to pull out my food-nerd journal and take notes, as I connected with them in my own personal way…..it’s not often that I look at random people as actual human beings and make broad, emotional assumptions about them.  There is a weird nobility to the stereotypes I place on strangers as I completely understand them after nothing more than a few seconds of observation.  I became this portly Hugh Grant character who takes his patented self-deprecating method acting to a level where literally shitting your pants makes you the most smoothly murderous player in all of whoredom.  So I look down the length of the train and see the gaunt, bookish girl with the ponytail, who is just TOO immersed in her book, zoning out in a way that makes a total scene….in order to ignore everyone around her, and I realize that she is secretly into the most exquisite styles of heavy BDSM.  And there is the well-manicured business boy who takes such joy in brandishing his iPod that he loses control and begins to quietly dry-hump it and weep into a kerchief.  The aggressively happy and loud Spanish girl in front of me is so animated and intense about making her points to her shy friend that when she gets off at the next stop and leaves the other girl behind, the entire train car feels bad for the lonely refugee because she has nothing left with which to entertain us when she is sitting alone.  The obviously wealthy deaf man down the aisle is so flamboyant when he is signing to his friends he can’t know how loudly he is smacking his lips as he mimes along.  The fuming, angry African immigrant next to the door is grinding his teeth so hard that he is drooling.  There is a construction worker talking to his friend, and he has taken this train ride so many times that he doesn’t even know where he is…it’s simply a reflex action when he gets off at his stop.  My favorite character of all is the tortured old man in his North Face jacket who buries his face in his paper to ignore his smiling, yammering wife.  I miss those people now. All of them.  I miss them like I’m missing my crazy dog who is sitting back home at a kennel thinking I’ve abandoned her. 

Did it take surgery to calm me down enough to jot random observations onto a notepad like I did when I was eighteen and on the train to New York….and not only that, feel comfortable enough with myself to publish such pointlessly sophomoric imagery based on total strangers?  I couldn’t figure out what brought such high-minded bullshit into my head, and I still can’t figure it out. In order to break out of it, I stole a big fire hydrant from underneath one of the seats and carted it through the Shady Grove station.  And the only reason I did it was to see if my cab driver would give me a strange look when I heaved it into the backseat.  I wonder what he is going to do with it.  There was no way it was going with me onto the plane on Thursday.

 March 13th, 2008- 12:58AM EST:

 Unfortunately, I was unable to complete a blog entry this evening, but it was due to events out of my control.  Jimmy the Cross-Eyed Cripple, Spastic Petey, Incontinent Gary, Louise the Hemophiliac Stutterer…..I apologize for not being able to fulfill my “Make A Wish” obligation to you and write a story where you all had parents who actually cared enough about you to not live a life of sin and curse you with such hideous afflictions.  When you grow up you will have to learn the hard way that there are people in this world who think it is “all about them”.  I was dealing with one of those people for the past hour or so…they were all like “hey, I’ve got cool things to say that you can’t help but respond to”…it cost me my integrity and it cost you a momentary, yet sweet respite from the fact that you are……fucked.  Hopefully I’ll catch you on the flip side…….or not.  I’m traveling tomorrow and by the time I get home I’m probably not going to be in the mood to crank out anything for you.  The only reason you were getting it tonight was because I was bored and didn’t have any drinking money left.  When you are saying your prayers before you go to sleep (or Petey, whatever it is you do in an iron lung at night), I want you to remember……it’s your fault your parents drink.  Hey, you were going to hear it from someone, so it may as well have been me.  Just keep counting your blessings…if you were my kids I probably would have drowned you or sold you off for parts by now.

 Your Friend,

Jerry

 March 14th, 2008- 12:09PM CST:

Got home last night, and more than anything I’m wanting to catch up on all of the HowardTV episodes I’ve had to miss all week.  You have no idea how serious I am about that.  Guess I also need to catch one of the million reruns of the season premiere of Top Chef as well…….I wish they would rerun No Reservations from Monday night.  I hear it was the first not-shitty episode in a long time, so of course I was out of town and stuck with hotel cable programming.  Yes, I DO know about the invention called a DVR…..but all of that money goes to my HowardTV subscription.

Anyway, I was going to put a picture up here the other night but forgot to take my USB adapter to upload pics onto my laptop.  I’m not sure about the picture quality because my desktop monitor is about to die.  But this is my Kenyan brother from another mother.  Other than my meal on Tuesday night, he was the high point of the trip.  He’s the kind of guy I would be more than happy to go out and get alcohol-poisoned with, because he’s a smooth talker and great storyteller….even better than ME, and definitely cooler than all of my damn friends combined (Yes, ALL of you! Bow to the master!).

Then of course I guess I’m obligated to throw in the gratuitous shot of dumbass’s house….

 So that’s it, a run of the mill update type of blog entry with pictures.  I hope to not have to rely on that type of thing very much, but travel stifles my creativity.

Oh yeah, I’ve been noticing something weird lately…I’ve lived alone since I got home from surgery in August, and I live in a nice, quiet crime-free zone where I don’t really have to lock my doors (but I still do).  Nothing is ever missing, unless it’s something that my crazy dog thinks is food, but sometimes I’ll notice that my computer and mouse are all askew and the resolution on my monitor will be reset to something huge.  If it’s a poltergeist, it really needs to work on its methods.  Anyway, final boring observation of the day.  I’m picky about my keyboard and mouse placement.

Oh man!  I know it!  The craziest concept I could have EVER come up with……..yet here it is. 

This was an especially shocking revelation for me.  Not just because I’m about as far left as it gets when it comes to things like gay marriage and public vivisections for anyone who thinks the Patriot Act was a good idea, but also because I live in this weird alternative universe of my mind that is always more interesting than reality.   One of the most interesting facets of that universe, which also happens to be the most gay, has to do with my  roommates.  Basically, I live with Tim Gunn and George Tekai; men who inspire me with their quick wit, charm and seemingly endless supply of wisdom and kindness.  Life isn’t always easy for me despite the tough facade that I use to keep people at a distance, so their constant input helps to temper my outlook and my mood.  I don’t feel as if I expect them to micro-manage me, because I pick up on resentment pretty quickly, and that is not a predominant vibe in our house.  It is all about give and take, and we all bring our unique sense of humor and style to the party.  And honestly, with all of the changes that come with bariatric surgery, people like Tim and George are EXACTLY the type of people you can depend upon to voice realistic concerns as well as their heart-felt support. 

I won’t go into too many details about our daily routines, or how tough it is to coordinate schedules when you have three busy men in the house.  Suffice it to say, we do make the most out of our quality time together when we are in town at the same time.  We have a traditional high tea (which we all make fun of) any day we’re together…..whether the event has to happen in the morning, afternoon or evening….schedules dictate that.  I can’t really say that we watch much TV or anything, we generally serve as each other’s entertainment and sounding boards.  We’re just a fun group, and I have to say that it feels GREAT to play the “attention whore” role with these guys.  How I write is exactly how I talk…anyone who speaks to me regularly can tell you that.  And I have no problem knocking these two over with a feather when I start in with one of my tales or theories.  George’s signature “oh MY!” never gets old, and you can work Tim into a tizzy without even trying….”JERRY!  You have got to get it together!  That girl is what?  Twenty three?  What do you two even have to talk about? But even worse, my GOD, those BANGS!  Her GRANDMOTHER may have been Bettie Page, but that look was dead before she was even BORN! Just awful!”

So I know what you’re thinking, these are the only two guys who make me feel butch and I’m using them for that.  Now I can’t prove a negative, but I will say that you are totally wrong.  We have a mutually respectful and supportive relationship that works equally for all of us.  Each of us brings a unique sense of style, humor and support to the relationship, and there’s just no way to qualify that for those of you who view the scenario with some weird preconceived notion.  There is a level of bonding that goes beyond explanation or rational thought…and I think that is the exact type of inexplicable dynamic that is the cornerstone of our friendship.  Obviously, I can only theorize about THEIR bond with each other.  From what I witness, it is honest and fun , and there is no evidence that would make me believe otherwise.  As far as what “I get” out of all of this, and I guess you can call it feeling “butch” if you want to, are those quiet and private moments where (and maybe this is all in my head) I feel like I can act as some sort of sentry or protector for these two gifted men.  I want to protect the world in which they live…and there are times at night when the conversations are winding down, before we all retire to our rooms, and I make some final and ridiculous act of showmanship.  I’ll make some insane point about wine or women that has absolutely no possibility of resolution, then suddenly leave the room in a flourish and hear their laughter as I shut my door and head to bed.  Once I’m ready to go to sleep and I can hear that they have retired as well, and the house is silent and dark, I will simply stand in my doorway for several minutes appreciating who they are and wishing for the best of all possible things for them….silently channeling Atticus Finch in my own protective and fatherly way.  It isn’t much, but when I do it I mean it…and you can either understand that or you can’t. 

So…..how are great guys like THEM ruining America?  First of all, I’m no social theorist or city planner, but I’ll start this off by telling you to think of the “cool” parts of your town.  More likely than not, they are what Paul Fussell would refer to as the “Bohemian Enclaves”.  In Kansas City, the 39th St. corridor is a good example of the exact phenomenon I’m talking about.  It is the part of town where you’ll find a high concentration of galleries, high-end and ethnic eateries, weird little boutiques…..basically wherever your gratuitous and ubiquitous “FIRST FRIDAY” ground-zero happens to be.  You like those places?  Well so do I.  You know who you have to thank for them?  Gay people (and artists).  You know who is responsible for their imminent destruction?  Gay people (and artists).

It sounds insane, but follow along with me here…… the majority of the “cool” parts of town spring up where there was once urban blight.  This is not always the case, but it happens enough to map a trend.   Space is cheap so artists will set up studios.  Once they have established the territory and there is enough of an infrastructure to support life, the trendier urban gays (and developers too…I know that) come in and begin to rehabilitate houses and turn industrial space into nice lofts.  I’m not breaking it down like this to sound flippant or demeaning, I dearly love all that hipster shit….lofts, markets, studios, ethnic grocers and eateries….those things are all right in my comfort zone.  And let’s face it, I’m white, you’re white, we’re ALL white….so we make it easy for ourselves to overlook the fact that we’re capitalizing on blighted areas that were abandoned by the urban poor….it’s all in the name of progress, right?  Right.  God bless the bountiful bowls of pho, overpriced art glass and the homemade candles the hippies are so fond of creating…….and God bless the gay (and artist) pioneers for creating these sanctuaries…..

But this is as far as it goes before it is ruined.  If you know of an area like this that is currently thriving with all of the locally owned and independent businesses, take one last look before it is gone.  In “Fear and Loathing…”, Hunter S. Thompson notes a similar phenomenon when he says “So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark….that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back”. 

The wave in your Bohemian Enclave has already crested, and it has begun to roll back.  It is a victim of its own progress and white-ness…..because things are about to get a little TOO white…..

How, you ask?  No punches pulled here, this is how the damn gays (and artists) are ruining America…..

It’s a typical Thursday evening at some kind of themed bar or restaurant in a stripmall, and Todd and Tina Exurb are chatting with their boring friends about whatever boring shit people yack about out there in their pre-fab tombs.  Then suddenly you hear “OH!  I read in the local alternative paper about this restaurant that opened up in a part of the ghetto where they don’t automatically kill white people anymore!  Oh, they said it was GOOD!  They use SAUCES!  We need to all get in our gigantic Humvee’s and get down there!  Sometimes I feel like the waiters out here don’t respect all of the money we spend, so this is new territory for us to monopolize waitstaff and leave SHITTY TIPS!!  WHEEEEEEE!!!!”.

And so it begins.  The gayness and artistry have drawn in the very worst of humankind….yuppies who like all of the trappings of that environment but think it’s still too “icky” for them to actually live there.  With the suburban buzz created by Todd and Tina Exurb, comes the totally familiar and totally corporate…..they want the same five dollar Starbucks drink that they can get out at the cookie-cutter stripmall….the independent coffee shops just don’t do it right, they never make it sweet enough and the staff isn’t hip to the fine art of kissing yuppie ass.  So just like the 39th St. corridor in Kansas City, Starbucks comes in, followed quickly by Chipotle.  Soon the “icky” factor subsides enough for Todd and Tina to realize….”oh look at all of these quaint houses and lofts…they’re so much cheaper here than they are out in our paradise of suburban sprawl….and those roving gangs of black teenagers our friends warned us about haven’t done a home invasion and massacred an entire white family in AGES!  I want to LIVE HERE!”.   Then because you obviously need one on every block, Walgreen’s comes in and takes up space, and before long the corporate dollars have driven overhead so high that the independent shops and restaurants can no longer afford to exist in the area that they made successful.  So the damn gays (and artists) flee the scene to create and ruin the next Bohemian Enclave.  One minute you and I are blissfully strolling the avenues of our hipster nirvana, and the next minute we’re getting cut off by gigantic SUV’s driven by total fuckers who think they may have seen an empty parking space right in front of whatever familiar retail chain they cannot live without…..

And yeah, as soon as more people in the West Bottoms of KC can afford to put air conditioning in their lofts and shops, it will all happen there too.  Todd and Tina can’t ruin it for everyone until they can do so in a climate controlled environment. 

Whether it’s corridors like 39th St. or Westport, or it’s the gigantic and hideous pre-fab ready-made communities like Zona Rosa or The Power and Light District, one thing is certain….people with absolutely no taste are running the show.  Now I can’t blame the gays (and artists) for the prefab communities, but just knowing there are cooler parts of town to spend your weekends makes the development of those monstrosities even more torturous.  You can’t even have a decent dinner in them without being inundated by the rudeness of the overgrown fratboys who don’t see a problem with wearing their favorite team’s ballcap at the dinner table, or their tanorexic skanks who literally have their cell phones surgically attached to their ears……so thanks gays, artists and gay artists….THOSE are the people you are drawing to our happy little biospheres!  As soon as they pick up a copy of the local alternative rag at Applebee’s and read about the good work you’re doing…….the ruination cometh!

Now, I don’t want to sound like even more of an elitist dick than I already do, so I will say this….I understand that big box stores and corporate chains have their place in this world.  I do realize that unless you just have a ton of money, you can’t venture down to the hipster brasserie every time you don’t feel like cooking and want to feed your family.  I know that it would be insanely cumbersome to visit ten independent stores every time you go shopping when Target has everything you need in one spot.  What pisses me off is the fact that the need for comfortable, familiar, brand-recognition generally wins out over its locally owned and operated counterpart.  Taking advantage of the kid’s menu at Chili’s is one thing…..fucking over a local business just so you can save ten cents on a cup of coffee is another issue entirely.  The suburbs are already there, and they have everything you need….feel free to visit the Bohemian Enclaves but don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.  We have enough McDonald’s, Ted’s Montana Grills, Hooters, brewpubs, sports bars, GAP’s, Old Navy’s, and all of the other shit that is apparently like crack to Todd and Tina Exurb.  Always having one of those places two minutes from wherever you happen to be isn’t the “new manifest destiny”…..it’s time for you to fuck off now.  Seriously.  You people who view the corporatization of every square inch of ground as progress, just because it’s familiar to you and easy, embody everything that is ugly about The Ugly American. 

My GOD I just get so worked up because of those GODDAMN QUEERS (AND ARTISTS) coming in and doing something cool and then leaving us with all of the corporate chain bullshit! 

Obviously, the real point of this post other than to vent my frustration at corporate sprawl, is to give my readers a tool with which they can blow people’s minds.  Everyone who stops by here and takes the time to read my rambling is obviously very intelligent, attractive and cutting edge…..so I don’t have to spell it out for you but I will anyway.  We ALL know at least five or six Huckabee-lovin’ dumbasses, and I’m sure you all love to jack with their feeble worldviews as much as I do.  Now, you can either approach the topic from a standard Socratic methodology or go with the whole “your enemy of your enemy is your friend” angle, but the point is to get people to equate homosexuals (something they hate) with stuff like Wal-Mart (something they love).  Be sure to leave enough holes in your argument like I have, so that they don’t just blow you off.  If you make too airtight of a case they’ll just ignore you instead of engaging you with their banter (as evidenced by my “Why I Hate Guys Like Huckabee” post….it just made TOO much sense).

So there you go, have fun with it.  And speaking of corporate hell, I’ll be in DC for the next several days for the type of training that could be accomplished in a few hours, BUT being corporate America they take way more time than necessary to insure that everyone is tortured as they teach to the dumbest person in the room…..

I’m sure I’ll be checking in here at some point, I just wanted to get this extra-lengthy ramble recreated so you’d have some entertainment……..I hope you all have a great week, even you damn gays (and artists)! 

 Be warned, this post is one of those boring surgery-related updates, I’ll be back to my usual bullshit later this weekend when I share about the lord telling me exactly how the damn gays are ruining America…….I know, I was pretty shocked to hear it too.  And I’ve never heard the lord say “damn” before, so my guess is he was totally serious.

I just got back home from my six month checkup at the surgeon’s office.  In short, my blood work looks fantastic and I am down a total of 110 pounds.  He told me this is above average, and I was glad to hear it because I have no concept of what “normal” weight loss is anymore.  I was worried that the few times my weight loss has slowed down as I worked through the “things that stall progress” portions of the learning curve may have put me behind.  But, with the holidays jammed in there along with my laziness due to the weather when it comes to physical activity…..I’ll gladly take the 110.  I know many people will react to my attitude like I’m crazy or ungrateful because losing that amount of weight in six months is phenomenal, but to them I say…..it has still been a hell of a lot of work to get here, the surgery is just one tool in the constantly evolving arsenal. 

I guess everyone who has gastric bypass is paranoid about their vitamin intake, with all of the stories about people ending up in wheelchairs due to B12 deficiency.  With that in mind I grilled my surgeon pretty good to make sure all of my levels were okay.  All of the biggies were well within “normal” range, and even though I’m very conscious of getting them all in every day it was good to hear.  I had some worries about the efficacy of the sublingual B12, but that looked just fine.  Protein levels are great, and my blood pressure has been steady lately around 127 over 74.  My Vitamin D levels were a little low, which was kind of a suprise because I take an extra supplement every day for that.  The doctor wasn’t too worried about it and told me “as soon as you stop being such a gothic queer and get out in the sunshine when the weather improves that will change”.  He kept poking me in the chest as he told me that.  As I rained blows down upon him I thought to myself….”you know, I really do move around much easier now!”. 

Before I shit-hammered my doctor, we did have a good discussion about animal vs. vegetable proteins, satiety and worries about pouch-stretching.  I also told him that about once a week or so, for whatever reason, something just won’t begin digesting quickly enough and the pressure will build until I go to the bathroom and hack it up….then everything is fine.  He chalked it up to the learning curve, and I can’t say that I disagree because it is happening less and less frequently.  Sometimes my stomach is more sensitive than others I guess, and sometimes when I let myself get too hungry I either eat too fast or don’t chew enough.  Using vomiting as a release valve is just a disturbing thing to have to do….and I wouldn’t even call it vomiting, it’s more like deep coughing now.  As far as proteins go, one thing that is becoming extremely obvious is that when I eat animal proteins like eggs, beef, etc., I feel full quicker and I stay full longer.  Then when I eat a vegetarian meal (which I’ve been doing a LOT more lately) like that chickpea mixture or this 13 bean chili that I really like, I notice I can eat quite a bit more of it without getting full.  My concern was that I may be taking in too many calories, and of course the paranoia about stretching the pouch with too much volume was the biggest worry.  He assured me that vegetable proteins are going to digest a little quicker, meaning you can eat more without getting full as quickly, and that if the weight keeps going down then you’re not stretching the pouch.  I’ll monitor how much of the various vegetarian/bean dishes I consume, with his comment in mind that “if you’re eating too much at once you’ll know it”.  I DEFINITELY know what it feels like to eat too much now, this is all just such a big learning curve that I didn’t know if there were any big drawbacks to a more vegetarian lifestyle after surgery.  When I did my last stint with the KU weight loss research project, the protocol we followed was to eat 3 HMR meals per day along with all of the fruits and vegetables (minus potatoes and corn of course) we wanted to eat.  I did lose some weight doing that, even eating HUGE volumes of fruits and vegetables (8-16 servings), so it only stands to reason that using beans as a major protein source won’t hurt me.  Also, the concept of “a lot of” anything is so different now…..when I eat 3/4 of a bowl of vegetarian chili I think of that as “a lot”.   Speaking of that, I get a lot of my stuff from Whole Foods now that I can afford it due to the quantity I need, but most stores do carry “Bob’s Red Mill” items.  Their 13 bean soup mix is excellent, and I don’t have a label here in front of me but I believe it’s very high in protein….something like 12 or 14 grams per serving.  That stuff, plus the greatest product ever invented…New Whey liquid protein, guarantees that a veggie diet can include enough protein to keep you healthy.  Maybe I really am a gothic queer like the doctor said, because beans, tofu and seitan are my favorite things to eat now along with bloody cuts of beef and various entrails (my iron levels are a tiny bit low, so now I can really come out of the offal closet without shame).  No in between there…..I do love seafood a lot, but the hell with poultry….I’m all about vegetarian dishes (I have dreams about the Korean dish Soon Tofu, and the Indian chickpea miracle called Chana Masala) but I’m just as happy to eat straight-up gore foods like liver, tongue and sweetbreads.  Maybe it’s just a subconscious thing that won’t allow me to become too much like hippie scum and go vegan…..all I know is that pieces of animals that processed some type of fluid are magically delicious. 

I guess that’s about it for today.  In all, a great day.  The weather is decent, I’m making good progress with my health, and I don’t have a ton of crap to do for work before this weekend.  I am behind the eightball when it comes to homework, but when am I NOT?  And joy of joys, the “Bodies Revealed” exhibit opens at Union Station this weekend so I’ll be seeing that very soon without having to travel to a different city like I thought I would.  I wonder if the same religious protesters who used to picket in front of my store when I managed a Priscilla’s will be there to greet me…….it will be like old home week!