Master Cleanse: T-24hr

24 hours to go, and I am not doing well. I eat a piece of cheese and all I can think is, this will be my last piece of cheese for ten days. And for everything ... it's goodbye coffee. I'll miss you most of all. Goodbye potatoes. I'll be back. Goodbye nuts. Don't go bad while I'm gone, ok?

It's not helping that this is my first day off the patch and with no smokes for emergency back-up. That's 24 hours of no nicotine at all. I. Am. Bounce. Ing. Off. The. Walls. I'm going to need an ambien or something. The tequila didn't help. Nor did the whiskey. Well, the whiskey was cheap, so what can you expect ... but it was damn good tequila.

Sniff. Bye-bye tequila.

But on the other hand, I had to go to Ross's [Fashion! For Less!] to get a work-out shirt, as mine was covered in mud from my bike ride this morning. I skimmed the discount rack and picked up some sweet and oh so stylish - I'll be a hit in Paris, I know I will - shirts that were maybe just a little small for my current body but which will fit me just fine in my new one. Which is due to arrive in ten days.

I just got my body fat tested, and took my own measurements, so here's the old body ... not bad ... but not what it's gonna be: 195 lbs, 14% bodyfat [or 26.6 lbs of fat, but waist:hip ratio say 20%], waist 36.5, hips 39, chest 43, arms 15, thighs 23, calves 15.5.

So [get ready for a Bridget Jones' moment], 15% bodyfat is the healthy cutoff for men. I'm too close to the border - especially given how much I work out and bike. Every pound of fat equals 1/4 inch in the waist. 10% bodyfat will give me a 35"waist and 187 pounds.

And all I can think is - only a 35" waist???? Frak that. If I'm going to suffer I want to see better results than that. I need to be fabulous by Paris. My clothes demand it.

Flight Plans

This is more for back-up and my own easy access. I'm really not doing it to taunt you.

Although, if our frakkin president does try to invade Iran, at least you'll know where I am. If I'm in Paris, I'm staying. If I'm in the desert, and heading deeper into it & hiding until it's over.

Not everything is set yet. I'll come back and fill it in as we settle on details.

• Thu Mar 22 / Honolulu-Dallas / American Airlines 102 / depart 8pm arrive 8:10am Friday
  
• Fri Mar 23 / Dallas-Paris / American Airlines 48 / depart 5:25pm arrive 8:55am Saturday
• Sat 24 - Mon 26 in Paris at Hotel Jarry, 4 Rue Jarry 750104, 10e arrondissement
• Tue Mar 27 / Paris-Amman / Royal Jordanian Airlines 118 / depart 5:40pm arrive 10:15pm
• Tue Mar 27 - Thurs Mar 29 in Amman at (not set, possibly Hotel Canary, Al Karmaly Street, Jebel Weidbeh). Billy arrives Wednesday at 2:50 pm
  
• Fri Mar 30 - King's Highway Amman to Petra (not set)
  
• Sat Mar 31 - Sun Apr 1 in Petra at (not set). Rich arrives ... sometime in here.
  
• Mon Apr 2 - Wed Apr 4 in Wadi Rum trekking with Aodeh
• Thur Apr 5 (not set, either Madaba or Aqaba) at (not set, possibly Mariam Hotel)
• Fri Apr 6 / Amman-İstanbul / Royal Jordanian 165 / depart 12:20pm arrive 2:40pm
• Fri Apr 6 - Sun Apr 8 in İstanbul at Hotel Ekelktik in Beyoğlu. Billy arrives Saturday at 6:35 am.
  
• Mon Apr 9 / İstanbul-Heathrow-LAX-HNL / Turkish 1979, AA 137, AA 297 / dep 8:05am arr 8:55pm
  

Master Cleanse, D-2

Thursday will be my last supper, and Friday is D-Day ... I start Master Cleanse then. It's really my last chance - Paddling Season starts March 12, and there's no way I can do a fast during the racing season.

The basics: you drink as much as you want to this mix, for ten days:

• 10 oz water
• 2 TB Organic Grade B Maple Syrup
• 2 TB freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/10 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

Drinking a laxative tea [whatever the frak that is] at night, and 32 oz water with 2t salt in the morning, is optional.

Gah, it sounds vile. I've never done a fast, so I'm curious what it'll be like. Giving up coffee will probably be the hardest part. I'm looking forward to the health benefits, and maybe even the spiritual benefits, and dreading the pain.

There's no particular reason for me to do this particular fast, except that a few friends have now recommended it. It seems as good as any - although I'm having serious problems with some of the ridiculous claims I read online about it. It's as if none of these people have an inkling of how the body works [one promoter claims being tired on the fast is a symptom of your body fighting off toxins - as opposed to the more obvious explanation that you'll be tired because you aren't getting enough calories].

There's all kinds of new-age nonsense tied in with it, but all that is balanced by one amazingly graphic article from the Guardian, The Enema Within.

So I'll have to ignore the new-age ramblings, buck up, and suffer for ten days - until I either find my abs or find god. I'll go with whichever comes first.

Rosie's Response

From Rosie's blog ... I'll give her some respect for this ...

2 day i found
beau sia
poet
on you tube

with great delivery
wonderful editing
set in a school room
he spoke

an open letter to all the rosie o’donnells

“ching chong ching chong
is not an accent
it is a racist interpretation of a language
often associated with
being buried alive in a mine shaft”

“i would never make fun of who u r
and then make u feel wrong
for just trying to inform u
of y i shouldn’t say
whatever it is i am about to say
about plus sized lesbians”

“so listen 2 me
because i dont think ur evil
i dont care if ur mean”

“learn from this rosie
apologize darling
tap into the humanity
i know that u posses”

2 beau
an open response
to ur informative creative
and quite beautiful video

i apologize
for any and all pain
caused to any and all
by my comments
ignorance
lack of compassion - empathy
understanding

u r right
i didnt get it

i know
my intent
was not to harm
yet obviously i did

there ya have it

and beau
before u refrain from all observations
comments or comedy
in any context or capacity
about the queer community
in all it variations

arttst 2 artist beau
say whatever it is u need
i trust
after seeing u 4 all of 3 minutes -
ur soul is in the right place
ur aim is 2 enlighten
not debase
as is mine

peace out
rosie o’donnell - plus sized lesbian

Beausia

Still on the anti-racism trip tonight. This? Is awesome.

FOX attacks Obama

Where the fuck is the DNC and the Civil Rights organizations? I don't care if a trashy heiress or a washed up comic says n___a on tv, or if a retired basketball player thinks I'm a faggot. It's all wrong, but in the grand scheme of things, minor. This, now ... this is racism in its most vile incarnation.

Mud and Discos

It was a pretty busy weekend here - it started with a nice bang, but ended with me being all dressed up & with no place to go.

The dinner Firday night went well. I'll post the good recipes in the next post. The avgolemono, potatoes, chickpeas, and watermelon are all keepers. I still need to work on my bean recipes - I still can't seem to recreate some of the awesome white bean dishes I had in Turkey and Greece.

I slept at Allen's Friday night. We woke up at 4:30 to a cold, cold rain. I wanted to bag,& if I had been at my own place I would have. Instead, Allen, Roz, Rob T, & I piled into his truck & headed onto base. We couldn't find an open coffee shop, so I had to make do with Red Bull. It was horrid. I refuse to believe that anyone actually likes this stuff. I think they've all been brain-washed to think it's cool, and that everyone is scared to admit that, really, it tastes like a chemical soup.

At least the rain stopped. It turned out to be a beautiful day. We had four teams running (top), and maybe the same amount there to drink and cheer them on (bottom). I placed myself near the biggest mud puddles to get some good action shots (second). I did a bit better this year in getting more pictures of our guys (third) and less of random hot marines (fourth). Partly, it was because there were fewer random hot marines [there were still a ton, but it wasn't as overwhelming as last year]; partly, it was because my camera battery was low.

The full pics are online here.

Saturday evening I went with Billy and Jerome to Restaurant Epic [Grand Cafe's Anthony Vierra's new place downtown - he partnered with the Changs of Little Village to open it. He's still at Grand Cafe, but (according to the waiter) GC is his mom's restaurant, while this one is his]. The food was very modern, and very well done - we ordered a mess of appetizers, the best of which included seared scallops in a mango sauce, wild-mushroom blintzes, a spinach salad with hot bacon dressing and a poached egg on top, and a "fire and ice" mousse with Mexican chocolate and a touch of cayenne.

They didn't have their liquor license yet, but they claim to have a 'signature' sangria. I'll be the judge of that ... but based on the menu so far I'd guess that it'll be good.

Afterwords I joined Dawn for her birthday party at Pearl. Pearl claims to bring the "luxury lounge experience to Honolulu." Why, they even had velvet ropes! I think that must have impressed all the girls in little black dresses (all of which were far too tight for their chunky little bodies) - the place was packed. If I ever want to find a Filipina wife, I'll come here. There was a whole wall lined with bachelorettes eyeing every man who walked by. It would have been so easy to score here. I don't know why straight men complain so much.

It's located on the roof of a mall, so it didn't surprise me that the velvet ropes were guarding a minor ante-room to hell. And while I was impressed with the decor, the service and music sucked beyond words. I finally managed to buy two bottles of wine for our table after about forty minutes of negotiating with our waitress. Dawn was bummed out about some issues when I got there, but she agreed to dance. We found a dance floor with tables in the middle of it (which makes no sense to me) and packed with girls holding cocktails. Which - that's just trashy. Don't ever bring glassware onto a dancefloor. Even Britney knows better than that.

So we danced half a song to some mediocre hip-hop, and then the dj switched to heavy metal oldies. I'm serious - it was Sweet Child of Mine. Not remixed, and not redone ... it was the original whiny ballad in all its whiny glory. We tried to dance, but between the Asian girls on one side doing faux-lesbo hoochie moves and white girls on the other doing rocker-chick groupie moves to the dj it was all too much. We fled into the night.

Too bad, 'cause I had just enough wine in me that hell was starting to be fun. At least I didn't pay to get in (jumped the queue, but that's another story). Dawn dropped me off just outside Waikiki, just after midnite ... and that was it. I was all dressed up, didn't want to go home, and didn't want to go to frakkin' Angles or Fusions. So I walked around a bit, tried calling some guys who I thought might be up [no luck], and finally gave up on the night.

Sunday was recovery. One of my cichlids went on a killing spree, so I caught him and moved him to a guppy pond. I went to the petstore to replace the victims, did laundry, did the dishes, cleaned up the corpses of the birds my cats caught while I was out playing, and studied some more Arabic. Exciting all the way.