Crud on my pants
So, I've been at work for over an hour and I go into the bathroom and on the front of my pants there is this spot of crud. Gross. It is some kind of dried up, crusty food spot. Probably humus from last night. Most of my clothes are one day wear only, but I do wear my pants multiple days. I don't like to do laundry more than I have to. Usually I check for crud though. I guess my quick glance this morning wasn't good enough to determine my brown cords weren't fit for public display. I stood there, in the bathroom, scrubbing with a wet paper towel. It was really ground into the cords. There is still a little crud left. I couldn't quite get it all to come out. Luckily, I am wearing my long purple sweater which comes down right to the crud, making it less prominent. What if I had worn my brown button up sweater? My spot of crud would have been on display. Disaster. Most days I'm just barely holding together a presentable appearance.

Blah and bugs...
I'm feeling kind of blah today. I think it is sort of 'end of the year' blahs and 'I wish I was doing more creative stuff' blahs. Making a vegan gingerbread house and vegan cookies has been the extent of my creativity lately. Maybe with the new year I will find some revived creative energy, post to my blog more, make a zine, something. Maybe I will actually exercise too, instead of thinking about exercising and then not. The cycle of slug-like behavior and continuing to feel slug-like is a vicious one. Slug and blah are both 4 letter words. Tonight I'm going to dinner with Jorge at Yahala, the best Lebanese restaurant ever! That is exciting! Otherwise, I still feel kind of blah... bugs is also a 4 letter word, and so is mold. I found tiny little white bugs in the kitchen cupboard. I exterminated them last night. Gross.

I'm a parking space stealer
It wasn't totally obvious, at the time, that this person was waiting for the spot that was about to be vacated. I didn't even notice the impending vacation. I was desperate for a parking spot on my lunch break and was circling through the tiny lot of the strip mall that contained my subway lunch target. I was starting to think of where else I could go for lunch and still make it back to work on time. Christmas shopping traffic was brutal. Suddenly there was a car in front of me. He was facing the wrong way. I just kind of looked at him and tried to figure out what he was doing. He looked back at me, exchanged some words with his passenger and then turned and continued to drive through the parking lot. As I pulled forward, some people appeared at their car and began the lengthy process of leaving their parking spot. "How lucky!" I thought. Then I thought "Oh, that person was waiting for this spot", but decided to move because they were blocking my progress through the parking lot. Crap. And then the same person was behind me in their SUV, and I was waiting to take the parking spot that was going to belong to them. I needed that spot though, I had to eat and get back to work. What to do. I decided to take the spot and rationalize my actions. I had to get back to work. They were probably out doing some random Christmas shopping, and they may have been old enough to be retired = time for them to look for another parking spot. The worst part: they had to wait behind me for about 3 minutes while I waited for the spot to open up. I was anticipating some possible road rage. They just sat there though. I pulled into the spot, they drove past me, and out of the lot. I'm a parking space stealer!

When fake meat tastes a little too real...
I like fake meat. Fake chicken patties, fake chicken nuggets, fake burgers, fake corndogs, tofu in meat-like form, but sometimes fake meat crosses the line and becomes too real. I was excited to go to the "the fake meat place" with Jorge Thursday night. I hadn't been there for a while, and my memories of the "meat" were pretty fuzzy. Except, I did remember the fake shrimp, white with some kind of applied orange color to fairly accurately represent a real cooked shrimp. We ordered kung pao "chicken". This dish was really good, tiny deep fried nuggets of some tofu substance. Jorge wanted to have the full fake meat experience, so we also ordered a mixed meat noodle dish. The "beef" was the least meat-like, slightly spongy, but it looked pretty real. As I mentioned, the "shrimp" looked very shrimp-like, and it tasted kind of like shrimp. Then there was the "ham". The "ham" was the most meat-like. I started to eat it, and I began to feel a little queasy as I looked at the little white stringy bits hanging out of the pink veggie protein flesh. How do they make it look so much like ham? I kept going. Mind over matter. I kept telling myself "it isn't meat, it's made from a plant". I barely finished my one little piece of ham. I felt queasy the whole way home and vowed never to eat fake ham again.