Back Home and Into the Calorific Stuff

Today we drove from Calico Ghost Town near Barstow on I-15 to the San Francisco Bay Area. The drive took about eight hours. We stopped at the China Town Buffet in Bakersfield for lunch, and at Starbucks in Merced for the 3:30pm stretch-the-legs stop. Far, far too much was eaten at the buffet. I only had one plate of food (whereas many people in the restaurant had four or five) but it was that calorific, cheap Chinese food that you just know is furring your arteries and killing your brain cells even as you chew it. Well, never mind, it tasted good!

By the time we got home it was 6:00pm. Our kitchen is still out of action - though close to completion - so we headed into town for a pizza at the California Pizza Kitchen. Yum. Yes, I know I should have had the salad but the pizza was calling.

No exercise of any kind today. Yesterday we spent a couple of hours ambling around the Calico Ghost Town, which doesn't count; and the day before we spent an hour and a half walking across the sand dunes at Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley, which does. I am determined to pick up the pace a bit with exercise now we are back.

I've finished reading the pink health book "Younger Next Year", or whatever it's called, and I'll review it soon.

Too many lentils

I had lunch at a friend's house today: lentil soup, wholewheat bread, and cheddar cheese. Tasty, but I've been suffering ever since. Have I mentioned that I have Crohn's Disease? Which means that too much fiber is A Bad Thing. We made up for that with a visit to Zao Noodles in downtown Palo Alto for dinner. I had bought bread and soup for dinner, but couldn't face Round Two of nutritious virtue. Maybe we can eat that tomorrow when I am scrambling between the end of Deep Thought's medical clinic appointment and the start of my dance class.

In the interests of mutual education, I have just started reading "Younger Next Year for Women: Live Strong, Fit and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond" by Chris Crowley and Henry S Lodge. It's aimed at women in the late 40s who are menopausal - so not quite me just yet. So far the main ideas seem to be (1) give up eating fast food of any kind and (2) exercise six days per week. I'll report further when I've got past chapter two....