Body image issues

At the Nike store, trying on work out gear, and I feel fit, muscular and empowered.  Hear me roar.

Cross the road to the Gap, try on a bathing suit and apparently within the last 5 minutes I've transformed from strong confident woman to pudgy dumpling with low self-esteem.

Briefly wonder whether Nike dry-fit leggings and a tank top (with built-in bra, suitable for medium impact workouts !) are appropriate beach wear.  Probably not.  Damn.

Pet peeve du jour

People who complain about colleagues using the "reply to all" function indiscriminately and cc'ing everyone in the company, by, you guessed, it, using "reply to all".

Now can we all just let it drop and get on with our lives and the rest of our overflowing inboxes, or will the original offender apologize to all, followed by a handful of good humored "don't worry, it happens" replies, also addressed to a few hundred people ?

Good intentions.

Hypoallergenic deodorant.  
No aluminum salts, no paraben, no alcohol.  
But at the end of day, ew, what's that smell ? 
Oh wait, it's me. 

You know

.... that point of "too much work" when it ceases being a challenge and instead just feels like you're trying to bail water from a sinking ship with the help of a teaspoon ?  

That point when you've worked all day practically without a bathroom break, but you still have 29 items on your to-do list at 6:30 p.m. ? 

When you receive a new email every 4 minutes on average, so you barely have time to read them all, let alone act on them ? 

When you think fuck it, it won't all get done no matter how hard I try, so I might as well just play Mafia Wars on Facebook, even though all those Zynga games are kind of pathetic ?

Yeah. 

30-second review, Wolfman

The best thing about this was the constant amused glint in Anthony Hopkins' eyes.  Which makes no sense, because his character's wife slits her throat - or does she ? - and dies in his arms, he is estranged from one son and the other is horribly mutilated and killed by a mysterious beast.  But on the other hand, maybe it makes perfect sense, because old Tony is thinking "OK, so this isn't very good, but I've gotten paid, and you're still sitting in a theater watching this, so mwahahahah, suckers".

Self-appointed beauty police warning.

If you want to give your face a healthy glow in the dead of winter - and why not - please go easy with the self-tanner applications.  Or you run the risk of looking like the woman I saw today in the metro, with lily-white hands and a dark bronze face.

And if it's too late and you have gone down that unfortunate route, at least try to keep the fiddling with your hair, glasses, etc to a minimum so that the contrast is not so glaring.  Thank you.

30-second reviews

because I haven't done these in a long time.

Brothers: what, no Oscar nod for Jake Gyllenhaal ?  I'm surprised.  And it's always good to see Sam Shepard do his thing.

Sherlock Holmes: hey, it's Tony Stark !  In 19th century London !

And another thing.

I'm searching through my iTunes, trying to make a motivational playlist for the gym. However most of my music is more of the sit around and have a bourbon and another cigarette genre, rather than, "woo hoo, let's get our heart rates up!" type.

Yoga and Pilates...

... not cutting it anymore in the battle of the bulge, and the studio I went to was pretty expensive. So I've gone and joined a real gym, with cardio machines and weights and loads of those scary Les Mills classes which are all called Body Something and feature REALLY loud music and overenthusiastic fitness freaks who yell and punch the air and are probably an entirely different species than me.

The good news is they also offer Pilates so at least once a week I'll be able to take a class where I'm not the totally uncoordinated newbie.

Met with a trainer today so he could show me the ropes and he asked, as they do, what my goal was in joining the gym.

"Be able to eat more and weigh less" just got a blank stare, until I said "No, just kidding, I'd like to improve my cardiovascular fitness and maybe gain some muscular definition". Then he nodded approvingly and suggested a routine for me. But honestly, eat more, weigh less. Isn't that why everyone joins a gym ?

Back to the grind

Holidays are over.

No more waking up from a nap and thinking, hmmm, must be time for another meal soon.

Speaking of which, back to eating more reasonably, instead of having leftover foie gras for breakfast.
Back to drinking "everyday" booze instead of the treasures of my uncle's cave: Margaux, Pomerol, Volnay, Pommard, Ruinart, and Laphroig Quarter Cask.

Ho hum. 

It always makes me sad

Waiting for men in white coats

... To come and take the Mac away. OK, so they probably won't be
wearing white coats. I'm just happy that after months of slow
performance and sudden freezes, someone from the FNAC helpline finally
admitted that yes, it could be a hardware problem, and that they would
indeed repair or replace, instead of telling me to do yet another
clean install and implying that I "don't know how to use the Mac".

Actually that wasn't implied, that was actually said out loud. Right,
so for instance all I've got running are Safari and iTunes, out of the
blue the computer freezes and won't respond to trying to force quit
the programs, the disk utility warns that the hard drive is failing,
and it might be my fault because I don't know how to use a Mac? Wanker.

Anyway, here's hoping it gets sorted, and thank goodness we were
obsessive about backing up files!

Baffling

Why would a perfume company hire one the most beautiful women in the world to be the "face" of their new fragrance and then photoshop the hell out of her, to the point where her head looks like it's been stuck on an anatomically incorrect mannequin ?

There are days

...when I enjoy Pilates and yoga classes. Not today though. Today they
were 2 hours of discomfort and inadequacy.

A blah day...

made better by a trip to WH Smith.  Got the New Yorker's Book of Food and Drink, Foreign Tongues, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.   New books are always a good antidote to whatever ails you.

Then went out for dinner to a fondue place in Montmartre that serves wine out of baby bottles.  Yes, it's a bit of a tourist trap,  but it was more fun than expected.   I had last been there when I was a teenager, believe it or not, and it hadn't changed a bit.  Even the waiter was the same.  He used to be a metal worker and started working there 21 years ago, is retiring at the end of the year.  Crusty and irreverent and funny and intolerant as only an old-time Parisian waiter can be.  Plus, I scored a phone number.  I've still got it baby, whatever "it" is. 

Madness.

An orange alligator/croc skin pattern iPhone case in a shop window near work has been calling me.  Sounds bling, but trust me, it's a nice shade of orange, and I wear mostly neutrals, so it's good to have a shot of color in a fun accessory.  Anyway, I assumed, as one does, that it was decent quality plastic embossed to look like leather.  Turns out, it's real, and it costs the princely sum of 490 €. 

I'm not sure what is more pathetic, that some people would actually spend that much money on a case for a phone (global financial crisis?  what's that?), or that this is the topic for my first blog post in 2 months.