Why?

They've started a Weight Watchers at Work program at my workplace. For some reason, this is annoying the crap out of me. I can't quite figure out why.

It's partly that I fear it may create food police, it's partly the ludicrous amount of company-wide promotion, and it's partly the note on a bag of chips left in the communal food area: "Cleaning out because I'm starting Weight Watchers! :)" But it's more than those reasons--there's some gestalt at play. I can't pin it down.

I mean, it's really nice that the company responded to an employee request and started this. But it's bugging me. Maybe after it actually starts my fears will subside and it will annoy me less. Incidentally, no one else seems annoyed by it.

Meanwhile: Thriller, still an incredible album 25 years later. I'm groovin' to Billie Jean as I type. The kid is not my son.

UPDATE: AH! This abstract explains much of WW resistance. Viva la resistance!

Don't Like

Blog Friends, let's take a moment of listing Things We Don't Like That We "Should". Together, we can purge our Shoulds. I'll go first:

• green tea
• whole wheat pasta
• Lord of the Rings (at least the movies)
  
• God
• puppies

There, I feel better already. Well, OK, I do like some puppies, but I got on a roll there.

GRE Diagnostic

Oh man. The Kaplan CD diagnostic test says I am at 95th percentile verbal (yay) and...10th percentile quantitative. That's really bad.

But here's the thing: If you don't remember the basic geometry or algebra rules, you can't apply them. I read a lot, and you know, talk, so my vocabulary remains sharp. I hope that once I review the darn math, it will come back.

Mmmmm, Harvest Bread

It's more of a golden-brown in person, not so red nor so yellow.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

My favorite character just died. I'm a wreck.

This Weekend in Projects

O, what a snowy day. We must be breaking some sort of winter record for accumulated snowfall.

Snow awakens in me a desire to create little projects. Maybe playing with some brush calligraphy, or finally making a binder of my favorite Architectural Digest homes. These will not actually happen, I always know in the back of my mind. There is reading and meditating to be done, plus mundane chores: cleaning, paying taxes. But there are two projects that will happen this weekend.

One, I will create my own variation on my beloved Harvest Bread from Nashoba Brook Bakery. I'm going to omit the apricots and figs, and just stick with dried cranberries, walnuts, and candied ginger for now. One day, once I've practiced on the simplified version, one day when I wake up in a mood of unabashed decadence, I'll spring for all the ingredients. This bread sounds like disgusting overkill on paper, but it is truly wonderful. The sourdough sponge for my own rendition is bubbling to life as I type.

Two, I will henna my locks again. The nice people at the nice natural foods store (from whence comes my unsulphured dried fruit) now carry henna already prepared in a cream, which will hopefully create less powdery mess in my bathroom.

Otherwise, taxes, cleaning, PBS, and finishing The Subtle Knife before embarking upon The Amber Spyglass. I disciplined myself between the first two books, dutifully reading an unrelated book in the middle to make the series last, but I feel such willpower slipping away with each page I turn...I may dive directly into the third and final.

In the Land of the Landscape Architects

Yesterday, I drove faaar across our fair state to visit the open house for the Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) program at an excellent state university department. This program also offers a dual degree with a Master of Regional Planning (MRP). I wanted to see what that was about.

The Landscape Architects were really running this show. Not a Planner in sight. Everyone was very nice, and they showed us their beautiful models of would-be parks, squares, and revitalized urban areas. The faculty and students talked in vague ways, and when they got specific, they used vocabulary I did not understand (swales? whosey-whatsey software?), while the other prospectives nodded.

Two thoughts began to shimmer at the edge of my mind:

1. These people were landscape architects, and that is a different tribe from planners, even though they share a peninsula (or, in this case, a building).
2. Most, if not all, of the other prospectives had already applied to the program.

(Why is Blogger turning my numbered list into a flowered list?)

Eventually, I escaped to visit the regional planning department. They were unaware that MLA was hosting an open house that day, which made me suspect that a dual degree might not be as easy as they want me to think. I liked the regional planning professor, and what she told me about the department, and the prospect of a potentially free education; I do not like that the department is on the other side of the state. I also left with the happy impression that I could get into a planning program, no sweat.

The RP gave voice to one of the thoughts at the edge of my mind. "You're either a planner or a landscape architect," she said. "By nature," was the implication.