I and a large number of others attended the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition volunteer night last Wednesday, and on Friday, I went on Critical Manners in a group of just four, including Reama, the ride’s organizer. We rode north on Polk Street to Fisherman’s Wharf—how fresh the air smelled as we neared the water!—and then back along the Embarcadero to Market Street.
On Saturday Tom and I saw There Will Be Blood. If for some reason you have to see only one of There Will Be Blood or No Country for Old Men, definitely see the latter, but I’m crazy about Daniel Day-Lewis and he is in nearly every frame of There Will Be Blood, so it seemed highly worthwhile.
That same weekend, I saw on DVD The Prestige, a clever tale about two magicians, one played by Christian Bale, and The Ballad of Jack & Rose, which I had seen before, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis. I had forgotten that Paul Dano was in it, too. He was also in There Will Be Blood and is the perfect foil for Daniel Day-Lewis: where Day-Lewis is sharp, intense and exact, Dano is the opposite.
I saw my dentist this week and griped that my teeth, which are increasingly sensitive, are making me kind of unhappy, and slightly worried, as I was hoping they would remain serviceable for as much as another 40 years. The probable main culprits are two staples in my diet: citrus and tomatoes.
My shopping list often reads, in part:
5 tomatoes
3 cups tomatoes
28-oz can tomatoes
2 tubes tomato paste
Tomatoes are in everything: peanut butter and tomato sandwiches, pasta sauce, many bean dishes. Then there’s the near-nightly arugula-citrus salad, a boldly robust variation reliant on tons of chopped nuts and cheese and a full tablespoon of olive oil.
I’m sure that you, like me, are sick of salads that contain fewer calories than are expended in the effort of eating them—I call mine a salad that gives rather than takes, and pride myself on cramming a thousand calories into each one.
Mark said that if one is going to eat tomatoes and citrus, brushing of the teeth right afterwards is actually not a good idea, because it can drive the eroding material into the teeth, but that it can help to rinse one’s mouth with water.
I’ve been on a dairy jag lately, which has changed my life profoundly for the worse, with near-constant nose-blowing and a violent dry cough, so, what with one thing and another, I’m going to try to cut down on citrus fruits, tomatoes, and dairy. So much for the thousand-calorie tangerine-enhanced salad, though I will do my best.
New bike lights have been obtained: a second blinky for the rear, in orange, a Planet Bike Blinky Super Flash, and a very bright white light for the front, which can be set to blink or not, a CatEye Compact OptiCUBE. Both are LEDs.
The latter makes a reflective street sign flash from nearly half a city block away, which is thrilling. Reama has something extremely similar, but even brighter, which I think is from Performance Bicycle.
I already owned a white headlight for the front, but it’s kind of a hassle to put on. I spend much more time keeping it charged up than I do using it, and was starting to think about switching to a Light & Motion headlight. However, Eric at Freewheel said he thinks my current light is just fine (thus saving me about $400), though when it dies, Light & Motion is what he would recommend.
The latest issue of the League of American Bicyclists’ magazine contained a wonderful article about a super-sized woman, Joan Denizot, who wanted to ride a bike, but discovered that the weight limit for many bicycles is only 200 or 225 pounds, so she started her own company to make sturdier bikes, Super Sized Cycles.
I loved that she emphasized that the main idea is not necessarily for large people to lose weight, but to be able to enjoy the outdoors on a bicycle if they want to. I sent her a note saying how pleased I was to read about her brilliant idea, and got a nice note back.
I’ve taken up, again, a goal I have had forever, of developing the ability to have lucid dreams. I remember my dreams very easily, sometimes six or seven in a night, which is the first step in lucid dreaming, but have had only three or four lucid dreams in my entire life.
I promise not to recount too many dreams here, because hardly anything is more boring, but then, if I can describe my visit to the dentist, I guess it won’t hurt to mention that I dreamed last night that I was serving in a war and that Mark Wahlberg was my fellow soldier and also boyfriend, and that when a man in a suit died in top of me, drenching me with blood, Mark Wahlberg was sweetly solicitous.
No comments:
Post a Comment