Dehydration and electrolyte drinks

For a while now I've been feeling super dehydrated when I wake up in the mornings, like dry mouth, creased skin, and sometimes even a slight headache. Before you say anything, no, it's not a hangover. At first, I used to think it was a phantom hangover, reminding me that I should've gone out drinking the night before instead of staying in.

But after coming back from a run about a month ago and then devouring every salty thing in our fridge (most notably the rest of our pickles and half a jar of sauerkraut), I figured it must be some sort of electrolyte imbalance and plain water wasn't doing enough to get me back to feeling normal.

Of course, I did nothing about it for another month.

I'm not a fan of Gatorade or Powerade, and when I do drink them I have to dilute them by half. The flavors of Vitamin Water got old and started to taste nasty to me, probably because I associate them with actually being hungover.

So I ventured into the endurance sports mixes to replace the electrolytes lost during exercise or just generally living (I sweat a lot, see the reasons behind me not biking the 1.63 miles to work/school).

I first tried Hammer's HEED Sports Energy Drink, Lemon-Lime Flavor, and it was disgusting. That is not to say this mix is not recommended to all. The flavors are a matter of personal preference and it just wasn't sitting well with me. I couldn't even finish the water bottle and had to dump it out.

Since I really like Clif Shot Bloks as a source of nutrition on bike rides (it's like eating gummy candy, but actually good for you and quite necessary!), I figured their electrolyte mixes had a similar type of flavor and so I decided to give them a shot (pun totally intended).

I've now had their Clif Shot Endurance Drink, Lemonade Flavor, for two days and I find it tolerable, especially if I add it to ice cold water. It's kind of weird-tasting in room temperature water...the kind I drink normally.

The only problem I have with it is that it's very calorific. See the nutrition label below:

For a 16-oz. glass, I add about 1.5 scoops (a little less than recommended), which comes out 120 calories! And 20 g of sugar! Even Gatorade has less calories and only 4 g more of sugar:

The whole point of avoiding Gatorade/Powerade was to cut down on the calories. I need the electrolytes on a daily basis and not just when I'm exercising. And even when I exercise, I don't want to offset my hard work with a necessary drink that I don't get that much pleasure out of. It's good, it's just not 1/4 cup of ice cream good. (Yes, I have the number of calories in 1/4 cup of my favorite ice cream memorized. It comes in handy when comparing the worth of eating whatever I'm craving at the moment.)

Unfortunately, my timing was completely off in deciding to buy these things and right after receiving the Clif Shot Endurance Drink in the mail, I stumbled upon a recommendation by Outside Magazine, my favorite magazine thus far, of Nuun Electrolyte Enhanced Drink Tabs, which advertise the same benefits of electrolyte mixes and none of the sugar or calories. Well, no sugar, and limited calories (~6 per tablet).

I don't usually take any recommendations from gear reviews in magazines since I believe they're all sponsored and give a limited blurb on why this particular product was chosen over another (I need full-page comparisons, can't you tell?).

But I was intrigued by this one. I've always liked dropping tablets in my drinks as a source of flavor or nutrition so I figured I should try it. The price was a bit cheaper than the Clif drink mix (Clif: 45 scoops per bottle = 30 16-oz servings for $20-ish, and Nuun: 48 tablets = 48 16-oz servings for $24).

The nutrition was even better:

More sodium than Clif (360 mg v. 300 mg), more potassium (100 mg v. 75 mg), and magnesium (25 mg v. ~9 mg). That's not even considering the difference in calories (6 v. 120) and sugar (0 g v. 15 g).

That, and the bottles are pretty, and not messy, and there are a lot more flavors to choose from, 10 in fact. I got the 4-pack mix which includes the original flavors of lemon+lime, tri-berry, citrus fruit, and orange (I've heard orange is pretty bad as is the tri-berry...after I purchased them, of course).

And if I like the fizziness and the general flavors of the brand then I might go with the new flavor 4-pack mix, which would include grape, fruit punch, strawberry lemonade, and tropical. We shall see how I like them.

Regardless, I will have a lot of whichever electrolyte drink I like least to finish off so I think I'm going to go with the Clif one for rides where I still need to replenish carbs and calories, and drop a tablet of Nuun into the water bottle I take to class and work.

As for my electrolyte experience thus far? I woke up this morning with a dry mouth again. I have a feeling one 16-oz. serving in the morning is not going to be enough to get me through the day. But I don't really want to consume more than 120 calories of non-sports drinks so I'm just going to wait until the Nuun tablets come in and see what happens. Hopefully this will rid me of each morning's bout of dehydration.

8 days without booze
210.5 lbs 

P.S. I don't eat much sodium in my daily diet which is why I'm ok with packing this much into my system as a supplement.

P.P.S. I also drink a lot of water throughout the day, at least 72 ounces. It takes a lot to fuel this large machine. And even with that, sometimes my pee doesn't come out all that clear (TMI, I know). But when it is clear (or I have to pee as soon as I take a drink of water, like right now), and I'm still feeling dehydrated, I know it's an electrolyte problem.

P.P.P.S. I still can't believe I gained over 5 pounds just from two consecutive weekends of heavy drinking. Yikes!

Rafting and PBRing

I've been doing ok with the no alcohol thing, in that for the most part I'm staying away from beer. I did cheat a bit this past weekend, but since I wasn't hungover the next day, I'm not beating myself up too much about it. (I know, I know, a hangover should not be the deterrent but instead the calories associated with drinking that much booze, but it's a much more immediate effect and quite effective at keeping me away from the bottle.)

To give a little perspective, we went camping and rafting this past weekend. And by "we", I mean a super large group of friends who love to drink good, but oftentimes not-so-good, beer. When we arrived at the campsite Friday night, the first thing we were offered was beer. I declined, and continued to do so the rest of the evening.

Saturday came and we set out on an incredibly frigid and at times miserable but awesomely fun amazing rafting trip on the Arkansas River.

Our group, before putting the boat in the water. You can tell because we're smiling and happy. Just kidding. It was a lot of fun!

It was a full day trip so we left at 8 am, rafted for a bajillion hours, had lunch as it started to rain, bundled up in fleeces over our wetsuits and under our splash guards, and set out for another couple hours of rafting as the sun came out, during which time I decided it was a great idea to jump out of a perfectly safe and well-inflated raft into the rapids below.

Trying to warm up at lunch in the gawdy fleeces the guides had in their dry bags.

A large amount of chaos later, I found myself pinned between a very pointy log and our raft of what used to be 9 but was now 7 people. Apparently our guide forgot to mention the fact that we're only supposed to be in the water for about 20 seconds and then climb back into the raft and not go down the next set of rapids. Details.

The guy who had jumped in with me, got into the back of the raft, and then scrambled to the front of the raft, was the one who eventually pulled me out of the water, while everyone else in the raft, including my brother, paddled away from the log instead of trying to pull me out, which I would think would be a more effective way of rectifying the situation. By that point, there was enough separation that I kind of used the log and rock as a ladder to climb in, so I wasn't nearly as bad off as the last member of our raft who had floated down the river and had luckily been picked up by the other boat we were rafting with. Scary stuff. But incredibly fun.

The dude who grabbed me from the water. Yup, he's got skillz.

The guy who grabbed me out of the water later told me that he waited a second or two to pull me out because he felt my chest and life jacket could take the hit better than my legs. I kind of see his point, but it still knocked the wind out of me and probably would've broken my ribs had I not been wearing a life vest. Without the life vest I probably would've been dead, but whatever.

The calmest rapids of the morning (not the ones we jumped into, although these would've been a better idea).
Unfortunately I wasn't able to capture the amazing views so instead you get shrubbery.

Anywhos, after all those adventures everyone wanted a beer, naturally. I resisted because, 1) I had told myself that I wouldn't drink on this trip, and 2) I had an organic chemistry exam to study for (yes, while camping). So while everyone else played cards and had a merry good time, I took my stack of very thick books to the next picnic table and got some work in. Or at least pretended to. I was doing so well being a responsible adult.

But a game of King's Cup broke my will. When I returned from being a nerd, my peeps were playing the best game ever, and also a game you can't play without a drink in your hand. And that's how my typical night of drinking excessive amounts of PBR began. And merriment, and fun, and great pictures. So it was kind of worth it. Who am I kidding? It was totally worth it, that is, until I stepped on the scale this morning. Eww.

The best rule of Kings Cup:
If you swear, you have to keep your chin on the table...

...even during Thumb War.

All this to explain why I had a drink this weekend. Yikes. I really need to work on my will-power.

3 days without booze (I had to start the count over. Sadness.)
212.0 lbs

I feel like I'm in AA

It's Friday, and I'm still recovering from Memorial Day weekend. And by recovering, I mean my voice still sounds like I'm a 50-year-old chain smoking lady. Gross. And now I'm headed to the mountains for a weekend of Chili and Brewfest. Oy. I'm worried my body won't survive.

After Memorial Day, during which I and most of my rugby teammates went on a four day bender, I've decided that I can't do this anymore. I'm too old for this stuff and it's totally not worth it. Well, Memorial Day weekend is totally worth it, but I'm glad it only happens once a year because otherwise I don't think I'd still be alive (for the record, "it" is the rugby team working the beer tent at the weekend festival in town, which results in most of us consuming ridiculous amounts of free good beer, hence the four day bender).

So...I'm giving up alcohol for the summer. Well, until mid-August at least. My tolerance is too high, I gained 5 pounds this weekend, and I hate being hungover. Actually, my hangovers aren't that bad if I just stick to beer. Those pitchers of margaritas and long island iced teas with straws are not the way to go, I've found. They're not made for anyone over 25.

And I'm not kidding about the weight-gain. I'm up to 211.5 today, so I'm pretty sure the alcohol water weight has come down and that's really me. And besides that, I saw a picture of myself from the weekend and it's disgusting. See my gut below:

Side note:
Yes, those are a whole bunch of cupcakes. And Bloody Marys. Another Memorial Day Weekend rugby tradition is baking and icing a bunch of cupcakes to hand out to the runners of the 10k race held on Memorial Day morning. With 50,000 running people, we need a lot of cupcakes. And by a lot, I mean they baked 842 cupcakes on Sunday afternoon/evening. Insane, right? And then drank PBR at 8 am and handed them out to people. I had to skip the handing out this weekend because I need a couple extra hours of sleep to feel relatively normal on Monday so I could continue drinking. Another reason I need to stop with the booze. It's getting in the way of life. Ugh.

Anywhos, this is going to be a kind of mid-summer Lenten season, with some pre-approved breaks, such as this weekend's Brewfest and Res Fest in August. But that will be limited to three beers a night and has to have at least two weeks' notice of beer-drinking approval from me, so I don't just decide on the spot to have a beer and make this an exception.

At this point, I think alcohol is the number #1 thing holding me back from losing weight, nutrition-wise, and it's also the easiest thing to fix.

And so begins my countdown (or countup, whichever):
4 days without booze
(Today will eventually be reneged since there will be brewfesting going on in the afternoon, but for now, I'm kind of proud of that number.)

Wow, that sounds super alcoholic. Maybe I should change it to "4 days making good decisions". Hmm. Nah, I need the not-so-public shame and the realistic picture of my lifestyle. So instead, I'm going to bold it. And add my weight. There.

4 days without booze
211.5 lbs

A conversation with my running self

The other day I went out on a C210K run and, as always, got discouraged/bored with two more 2 minute intervals to go. Really? It's only 4 more minutes of running! I shouldn't be having these problems. So I sat myself down and had a little debate in the parking lot. Here's how it went:

Lazy, Running Me: This sucks! I don't want to keep running. I'll just walk home.
Motivating, Rational Me: Doing this is the only way you'll get fit for rugby season.
LRM: I wasn't fit this season and it wasn't too bad.
MRM: Wasn't too bad? You hated going to practice because the drills required running, and you were frustrated that you were much slower than everyone else only because you were too lazy to train in the off-season.
LRM: Maybe. But everyone is much better than me anyways and getting fit still won't get me a starting position.
MRM: You don't know that. And there's only one way to know for sure. Besides, running and getting fit is not just for rugby. You wished you were fitter on last week's mountain bike ride so you could enjoy it more. And you have a race coming up in a month that you wished you'd been able to run last time.
LRM: I'll just walk this part and make up the run tomorrow.
MRM: No. How about you run two more minutes and suck it up? And then you can rest a bit, and finish out the last two minutes. IT'S JUST FOUR MORE MINUTES OF RUNNING!!!
LRM: Fine.
[LRM starts jogging super, duper slowly, barely faster than a walk.]
MRM: So just because you're mad, you're going to mess up your times from the last five intervals? C'mon, you can get under a 10 min/mile pace for two minutes. It's downhill!
LRM: Hmf.

And then I started actually running. And grumbled the whole way home. But I did it and need to continue doing it until I learn to enjoy it, which better happen soon.

P.S. This is a true story. I really did talk to myself, out loud. Luckily there was no one around because people may've been concerned if they saw someone walking around in circles mumbling angrily to themselves in the church parking lot the day before doomsday.

A new love, and a new money sink

My brother's company's CEO owns a really sweet condo up in the mountains of Colorado. And the CEO is so awesome that he lets other higher-ups in the company use it when he's not up there himself. And those higher-ups are equally awesome in gifting the condo to their employees for special occasions, such as my brother's 30th birthday. And my brother can't possibly enjoy his time in a 3-story condo by himself so he decided to invite all his friends.

So in short, we got to spend the weekend at a pretty sweet condo nestled between the slopes of a ski resort and a river, complete with entertainment center, board room, and outdoor hot-tub. Hell of a place to play Sardines, I tell you!

Although the condo was amazing, it's not supposed to be the entire point of the story. The main reason I'm writing about it is that it got me into mountain biking. Like, for real. My brother and all his friends are huge mountain bikers and I'd never really understood what was so special about it. But then again, I never understood road cycling either and now I'm hooked, so I guess it all takes time. Whenever they said they were going on a mountain bike ride, I always passed and told them I'd meet up for the BBQ and beer later when they got back.

This time, though, the only other option was hiking and I. Absolutely. Hate. Hiking. Have I made myself clear enough? It's like walking, which I'm also not a huge fan of, but uphill and slower. Biking, on the other hand, actually gets you places in a reasonably quick amount of time, so I'm willing to put some sweat into it. Walking and hiking, on the other hand, not so much.

(Speaking of slow activities, this whole getting somewhere very slowly with a large amount of effort is probably why I hate running. It's so unpleasant and I get nowhere slow. Eww.)

Anywhos, I borrowed a mountain bike and then agreed to go on the trail everyone else was going on. Somewhat of a big mistake. We spent the first 4 miles or so going straight uphill, and then finally got to enjoy the next 3 miles of straight downhill:

I had to change the settings on my GPS watch to auto-pause at 0 mph instead of the preset 4 mph because, as you can tell, my watch was paused for the first 1,000 feet of climbing. Yeah, I was going less than 4 mph for most of the uphill. I would've been better off walking, probably. Uphill. With my bike.

Me on the ridge after 3 miles of uphill...my first mountain bike experience ever.

Even though the uphill thoroughly kicked my butt and I hated some portions of it, it was really satisfying to bike up a freaking mountain! The views were spectacular throughout and it was so much fun weaving between trees and biking over and around rocks and logs. Apparently I didn't slow the group down too much, since they didn't have to wait all that long at the top. And I beat my brother's girlfriend going downhill, not only in speed but also in guts.

Red cliffs looking the other way.

So yeah, it was an absolutely awesome weekend and now I'm in the market for a mountain bike. Yet another expensive hobby to drain my already sad-looking bank account.

The group at the top.

Notice the thunderstorms in the background of the pictures that we narrowly escaped. Metal bikes on the ridge + lightning = the fastest ride down ever.

Bike gear ratios

On my triathlon support group someone asked about gear ratios and I wrote out this whole thing for him explaining how to calculate them. Since I'm afraid I'm going to lose my original chart and/or forget how to do it in the future, I'm going to post a copy here. This site may soon become a place I list nuggets of triathlon advice in addition to chronicling my weight-loss journey. Hopefully one doesn't take over the other.

George,

That gearing website is over my head as well but I once took a gear class/talk/thingamabob and they greatly simplified the whole thing for newbies like me. Essentially the guy taught us how to rank our gears from lowest to highest, across all three chainrings/cranks/cassettes/whatever they're called (the name escapes me now). Out of the 30 gears I have on my bike (3 in front x 10 in back) I was able to rank them in order and can now shift more smoothly in that I don't skip gears when shifting going uphill and get less tired overall.

Here's how...it involves a lot of counting the cogs on each ring, so beware. Unless you're a good Googler, that is.

1. Figure out how many cogs are on each of your rings, both front and back. Usually for the front that's given in the specs for the bike (mine's 50/39/30) and for the back they give you a range (mine's 12-27, 10 speed). You can either Google that particular cassette/rear gear rings by getting the name and range off the specs website for your bike or get on your hands and knees and count them all. I recommend the latter, but I know it's not always possible. Oftentimes you can also guesstimate the spacing between the gears in the back. Steve is much better at that than I am.
2. For each gear, divide the number of cogs from the front gear by the number of cogs on the back gear, and multiply the whole thing by wheel size. For the purposes of ranking your gears relative to each other, you don't have to multiply by the wheel size, since the order of gears comes out the same regardless. I still multiplied since it gave larger numbers and was easier to compare and rank them later. For example, for my fastest overall gear (largest front gear, smallest back gear) and what I thought were 26" wheels at the time, I did the following: 26*50/12 = 108 and do that for all your other gears as well. You don't have to convert your wheel size to metric. Or you can multiply by some random number to take care of the decimals. The important part is divide the front gear by the rear gear.
3. Remove two gears with smallest front/smallest back and smallest front/2nd smallest back, and two gears with largest front/largest back and largest front/2nd largest back from your chart, for a total of four gears removed. You should never be riding in those gears since in those combinations, the chain is diagonal across the gear rings which is not good for either or the chain and grates on the components. So avoid at all costs.
   
4. Rank your resulting numbers from highest to lowest, with the lower numbers being lowest/slowest gears (granny gears) and higher numbers being highest/fastest gears (downhills). So the granny gears (smallest front, largest back) would have low numbers and the gears for downhills (largest front, smallest back) would have super high numbers.
5. Write it all out on a piece of paper and tape it to your handlebars. It really helps on the uphills especially with knowing into which gear you should downshift so as not to skip gears. Makes the climb smoother and more effective, in my opinion.

Below is my gear chart. The multicolored chart and numbers are the result of the formula I mentioned in #2 above: wheel size*front gear cogs/rear gear cogs. And the bottom chart is the ranking of the gears from slowest to fastest (granny gears to downhill gears). As you can see, I've crossed out the four gears I mentioned in #3 that you should never use and didn't include them in my rankings.

The numbers for the front and rear gears correspond to the number of cogs on each ring.

I've taped a little index card with the bottom chart info on my handlebars and try to shift in order. It's especially useful on uphills when I feel like I'm shifting too quickly or the one I'm in is just a tad too hard so I downshift and all is well. It's taken a little getting used to in figuring out what gear I'm actually in to be able to see where to go next, and I still find myself looking back at my rear derailleur quite often.

So during normal flats or rolling hills I don't really stick with the gear chart too much and just do it by feel, and don't really care if I'm a little bit off. As you can see in the middle gears of the middle chainring, the numbers aren't that different (first chart) and thus changing gears from say a gear combo of 39/17 to 50/21 (ranking 13 to 14) is about the same as from 39/17 to 39/16 (ranking 13 to 15). Here is where having an accurate wheel size comes in handy because you can see that 13 to 14 is 60 to 62 (not sure about the units...inches, maybe?) and 13 to 15 is 60 to 63, so only a difference of 1 inch between the two results, but you're going from 13 to 15 in just one gear change as compared to 3 for 13 to 14. So in those middle gears sometimes it's not important to go in order since the differences are slight and you can skip a ranking without feeling too much of a difference in order to shift less frequently.

Once you get to the granny gears or downhill gears, the differences are much more noticeable. Going from ranking 3 to 2 (30/21 to 30/24) is 37 inches to 33 inches, while ranking 3 to 1 (30/21 to 30/27) is 37 inches to 29 inches, a much bigger jump and thus a gear you probably don't want to skip.

Also, on the uphills it's easier to know which gear I'm in since the terrain is not changing as often and thus I'm in the same gear for a longer amount of time, but also because the differences between the gear combos are so great that I can generally feel where I am on the cassette. Overall, this has been really helpful in getting myself to ride in the proper gear and thus making my riding more efficient and smoother. I would highly recommend making a chart of your own.

Nifty little calorie cycling site

I've always wondered where people get their calorie cycling numbers, and now I've found it!

Here is not only a calorie calculator, showing your daily needs depending on activity level, but also giving some insight into what you should be eating and when with regards to calorie cycling.

My results are as follows:

And as you can see from the very bottom of the image, you can also calculate macro nutrient ratios (carbs, protein, fat) depending on you daily calorie intake.

Here's a snapshot of that:

Pretty nifty site. I don't really need the daily calorie thing since I have a GoWear Fit that tells me exactly how many calories I burn a day. But it's really nice to see how I should be calorie cycling for those inevitable plateau weeks. And the macro nutrient breakdown is really interesting.

Feeling discouraged yet again

I just got a text from The Roommie and it's somewhat disheartening:
"This is the most awkward proctor's night. The coaches are talking about recruiting another loose head and none of the team is talking to me. :("

Let me translate. Proctor's is a dive bar next to our practice field, and loose head is the position both I and The Roommie play. I actually only started playing loosehead about a month ago because my usual position is now occupied by one of the coach's favorites. Well, that's not entirely why she's starting all the time, because she is fairly good. But the fact that she's known the coach for eight years and moved out here to play for her sure doesn't help the situation.

Anywhos, I'm discouraged by that text because it's sad to hear you suck. Like, really suck. It's also another confirmation that I'm a huge outsider on this team, as if trying to hang out and talk to people but getting ignored instead wasn't indication enough. But that's a story for another day.

So I feel as if my plan to get super fit and super strong for the upcoming season is not going to be enough to get a starting position. At all. I just feel like all this is hopeless and I should just quit and wallow in my misery like I have been doing for years now.

But then I have to remember that this summer's plans are not just for rugby. Getting fit is not just for rugby. I've wanted to be thinner way before I started playing this sport so my goals shouldn't change just because there's a small kink in my plan for world domination. Well, at least on the rugby pitch.

And even if I'm not a starter on a super awesome team, I will still be thinner and fitter and (hopefully) happier. That, and I can't predict how good I'll be 50 pounds lighter. I mean, I was an All American (Second Team, but All American nonethess) when I wasn't exactly "thin" for my height. So who knows what will happen when I'm actually fit?

Blast from the past: 165+ pounds of awesomeness.

My whole goal for this summer was to come back in August and have everyone say, "Wow." I want to blow their minds by my hard work during our off-season. I want to show them what kind of rugby player I can be when I don't have all those extra pounds of padding weighing me down.

So let that be my motivation. Regardless if I make the starting side or not, I want to know that the only reason I didn't is because my skills aren't as good as someone else's, and not because my weight is slowing me down. I want to realize my full potential. Is that too much to ask?

Summer plans

It's that time of year when I get super excited about it getting warm and all the fun things I can't wait to do during the summer. These thoughts happen every year, and every year I fail to make them happen. So this year I'm going to do things differently and set specific numerical goals to make sure I do all the things I want to do but have put off doing because I'm too damn lazy. (I'm a fan of lists, if you haven't noticed.)

Here goes nothing:

• Go camping once a month.
• Take a bike ride once a week.
• Do a crazy hill ride twice a month.
• Have people over or go to someone's house to grill twice a month.
• Crew in a regatta once a month.

Mountains can be beautiful.

Some of these goals are social and others are things I've been wanting to do for a while. I keep complaining that I hate Colorado and living so far from a large body of water is torture, but I need to stop moping and make the best of living in this beautiful state. I really do enjoy it and can see myself becoming a mountain convert. That may be a stretch, but you never know. Regardless, I'm stuck here for a couple more years at least so I better start liking it sooner rather than later. I mean, I did spend most of my childhood backpacking with my parents and the view upon going over a pass is breathtaking. But c'mon, being one with sun and sea is pretty awesome too.

But nothing can beat this.

And, what inspired this post, you ask? Well, The Roommie is buying a road bike and thus I decided I needed some new cycling jerseys. Natural progression, right? So I've gotten bit by the cycling bug (from the comfort of my couch, of course) and got super excited about getting out on the road on my bike. And to make this excitement a reality, I needed some tangible but reasonable goals to work towards. Hence the list.

No more lettuce!

We (The Roommie and I) have been getting organic food delivered to us for about 3 months now, and you can tell it's not yet growing season. Most of the stuff we get is fruit from the tropics (mangoes, bananas, oranges) with a few hardy vegetables thrown in for good measure (squashes, root vegetables, cucumbers). Lately, though, we've been getting tons and tons of lettuce. Like, a bunch of it every week. And we are not good lettuce eaters. In fact, I hate lettuce, with a very deep passion. It has no taste, it takes up a lot of room in a bowl, and I feel like it's too much work to make it worth my while.

I know, I know. You're going to say that lettuce is the key ingredient in salads and I should be eating more green things anyway. But I refuse to make lettuce my green thing to eat. But I also hate letting food spoil so since we keep forgetting to switch out the lettuce for something else that would be much more delicious, we're stuck with eating four heads of lettuce before they go bad.

The Roommie hates letting things spoil more than I do, and so she's made it her mission to finish this batch of lettuce before it turns slimy. Her idea: cut all of it up and set it out on the table in plain view. Oh, and force it down my throat (just kidding about that last one!).

A crockpot of lettuce.

At one point last night, we had two massive mixing bowls of lettuce sitting on the counter, waiting to be eaten. But then we went out, imbibed (a lot), and got the drunken munchies. Only this time, we ate lettuce instead of chips. No joke. We killed one mixing bowl (about two heads of lettuce) between the three of us that were home. Wowsers! If these are my drunken munchies, then the only calories I have to worry about when going out for drinks is the beer. No more self-control issues when under the influence. Sweet.

I do have to say, I kind of like The Roommie's idea. Ever since she cut up the lettuce, I've been munching on it like it's chips. And I've had salad two days in a row now, which is highly abnormal. That may be due to the delicious raspberry balsamic vinegar she also bought, but whatever. Moral of the story is that her lettuce experiment has been a success! If only we could find a similar way to get everything else in our fridge eaten...