Please sign

Please sign the petition.  Those of us affected by it will thank you.  Those of you who will have a family member or friend experience breast cancer will thank yourselves in the future.

Reading: On Method Acting

 

Finished On Method Acting by Edward Dwight Easty.  A good overview of the technique and exercises, although it was a pretty dry read.  This was actually a book I bought for Renee after we got started in community theater.  I’m really more of an amateur actor, but this book gave me a lot of great points to work from.

Book 15 of a goal of 12 this year.

And yet again…

Dean Vegas and Jaqueline “She Is the King” Feleich

And again…

Small shot of Dean Vegas performing at the Elvis Presley Festival.

A brush with Elvis again…

From our lunch mentioned in last post. Dean Vegas and Jaqueline “She Is the King” Feleich with IV’s Restaurant’s “The King’s Last Dessert”.

A brush with Elvis…

Had a really great lunch today with Dean Vegas, Jack Smink and Jaqueline “She Is the King” Feleich, who are in town performing in the Elvis Festival this weekend.

It’s always great to meet new people, but especially when they’re that entertaining. Very nice people, check them out.

Day 30

Today ends my official experiment in going vegetarian for 30 days.

I was not 100% faithful to it – I did cheat on a couple of occasions.  It can be really difficult in the Deep South to abide by a vegetarian diet, particularly when you eat out a lot.  And when your only alternative is a “salad bar” with wilted lettuce and a couple of parched tomatoes… well, willpower isn’t everything.  But outside a couple of incidents, I made it pretty easily through the month.

Some lessons learned in the experiment:

• My energy levels rose significantly.  I had heard about this effect from other testimonials, but assumed it wasn’t working since I never really felt some kind of transition.  But by the end of the month, I noticed I wasn’t getting sleepy before 3 AM and had absolutely no problems getting up at 7 and pushing it hard all day.  Plus the hazy brain that normally settled in around midnight just never came – I was going strong up until sleep.
• Even after a full meal, I never got that bloated feeling that I was so accustomed to.  No more “stoned on dinner”.
• Protein can be a concern for vegetarians, particularly weightlifters.  But I seemed to do just fine with eggs, peanuts and beans.  I never got tanked during workouts and was really happy with the results from the gym.  I actually toned up more this month than any previously, but that could also be that my higher energy levels were producing a more intense session.
• I was surprised to learn that I really didn’t miss meat at all.  Whenever I did get a bit of a craving, I found grilled mushrooms and veggie burgers pretty much taste just like beef.
• I really got my taste for vegetables back – of every sort.  One of the greatest meals I had during this time was a veggie plate from a local Japanese place with zucchini, onions, watercress, carrots and seaweed.
• I also found that eating beef at this point really makes me sick.  The smell and the taste of the char on your tongue is still as seductive, but now I get a queasy stomach, gas, the works. The one time I cheated with beef was a disaster.
• I lost weight, but not as much as I expected to.  Having cut out so much fat, I figured I’d just shed it off like crazy.  I ended up losing about 8 lbs over the course of the month.
• The best take-out vegetables in my town?  Captain D’s!  No, really – the new mixed vegetables and broccoli sides are nicely steamed with no butter/oil I could taste and a light dash of seasoned salt.
• The worst personal downside to eating vegetarian – I couldn’t find anything I wanted to put hot sauce on.

Overall, this experiment was greatly successful.  It brought back great childhood memories (we were heavy vegetable eaters) and got me to open my taste buds to a lot of things I wouldn’t have consumed before. And I love the energy boost.

From this point, I don’t think I will commit to a genuine vegetarian diet – it’s just too hard to do here in the land of Sizzler, fried fish and the church social.  But I am definitely pushing my meat intake to the minimum from here on out.  The health benefits, the energy boost and the great taste are just too good to miss out on.

Reading: The Dead Sea Scrolls Revisited

Around the holidays I usually ask for books.  Sometimes this bulk of material gets stuck away on a shelf and I don’t get to it like I planned.  I found this book on my shelf, completely unread since I received it this Christmas.  And since Amazon has been delaying my last shipment, I completely devoured it.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Revisited was a great read.  I had a cursory knowledge of the Dead Sea Scrolls, meaning I understood that they were the remnants of an Essene library outside of Jerusalem and that they supported the Bible’s credibility.  I now understand how ignorant I was.

The book is an easy read and divided very logically, although it comes to an abrupt end.  It’s obviously the work of a scholar and not a novelist.  From this work I gained an understanding about the documents themselves, the uncertainty about the community that kept them and got some perspectives on Christianity that I would never have gleaned from Christian authors.

Book 14 of a goal of 12 for this year.

Surgery

Renee came through the surgery with flying colors.  The lump was malignant, but did not appear to have spread to the lymph nodes.   We’re being warned that she will need chemotherapy and will get hit pretty hard with it, so we can use all the positive energy you can spare our way.

Reading: Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man?

Tuesday we stopped by the bookstore and having a shipment of books already in-route from Amazon, I grabbed a magazine.  On the way out, I saw this in the bargain book bin and since this ~250 page book was cheaper than my magazine, I got this instead.  I have Charles’ other book and enjoyed it, so I thought it would be better time spent.

Unlike his previous book, this isn’t about Charles Barkley at all.  Rather, it’s a series of interviews with prominent Americans with peppered comments from Charles on racism and race relations.  It was a little disjointed, and I don’t think it really made any points other than racism is a bad thing and someone needs to do something about it.  But I will give him points for attempting to use his notoriety to call some attention to the issue, and it was great to hear from many of the people he selected.  I wouldn’t have expected some of the responses I read.

This is book 13 of a yearly goal of 12 this year.