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April 30, 2009

Hold on to your hats

Life at Men's Health continues to chug along, despite some other magazines' struggle in this faltering economy. Truth be told, I'm sick of all the recession talk, as everyone is I'm sure. But, it must be said that economic woes make me even happier to be at Men's Health...

My days are varied and exciting. My writing for the magazine has dimished as I take on projects for the Eat This, Not That! book series. We're currently gearing up to come out with a few more books this year. I'm excited to uncover the restaurant's most egregious menu items. There are a FRIGHTENING amount of dishes with 1,000+ calories. Hold on to your butts, as Samuel L. Jackson once said.

The Today Show segments are the best examples of how eye opening Eat This, Not That! research can be. We often show the caloric, sodium or sugar equivalents to any given dish. The anchors often go ga-ga when they learn that a salad is the equivalent to three big macs. (No way!!!) My favorite segment involved an animated Al Roker talking to DZ about worst "healthy" foods at the super market.

I'm also approaching a major milestone. Next week, I take my first vacation since I graduated in 2007. And, I'm sort of a go big or go home kind of gal, so I'm going to MOSCOW for that vacation. Okay, so my brother's current residence and job there helps a lot, but still. I'm beyond excited to go abroad. I haven't seen my brother since August and it's been even longer since my passport got stamped.

I'll have to check out Men's Health Russia while I'm there!

April 28, 2009

Home Sweet Home Run (Or, You, Sunshine, Are My Sunshine)

Greetings blog readers!

I guess I owe all of you an apology for depriving you of my musings for so long (as penance I will make say 10 Hail Marys and make 10 fart-related puns before sundown). As you can probably guess, I've had next to no free time lately, and even less "pretend to look busy while I blog at work" time (another casualty of this country's dangerous workaholism).

Fortunately, the postcard-quality weather that us New Londoners have been experiencing over the last few days has kept my mood at "Sunny" and safely away from "Stressing myself out to the point of balding" (if I lose this head of umber curls then we'll all know that life is truly meaningless)....

....This past weekend I had a much-needed two nights of sleeping in my own bed (no, my lovelife hasn't blossomed like spring's floral bounty, I've just been traveling a lot).

On Sunday, I got a chance to finally hit the field with my fellow young Whalers for their weekly game of kickball on a mysteriously unused local baseball field (its vacancy may have something to do with its 1:1 rusted metal:grass ratio). Despite my pre-game jitters (mostly coffee-related), I actually played a decent game, proving to be the only player among three dozen or so whose skill level was neither expert nor abecedarian (still can't believe that is a word). It was a fun afternoon despite the fact that my team did not emerge victorious, maybe because our captain was drinking a beer with one hand and smoking a cigarette with the other at all times (a teammate commented that he possessed both the body and the vices of Babe Ruth).

The previous night, I played a fun gig in the building directly next to my apartment, making for possibly the easiest transportation of musical equipment ever (except maybe for every concert ever played by a flautist). We were performing for a photography opening featuring the works of current Conn students, so there were plenty of familiar faces in the crowd. I got an up-close look at many of those faces thanks to the fact that three of the more popular photos were hanging about 12 inches from my head, which I guess is an invitation for people to lean in over my bass and squint at pictures of train tracks (the squinting helps you look like you know about photography).

Other than that, I've been pretty much swamped! Upcoming time commitments include Welcome to Florida's performance at Floralia this coming Saturday (woop woop, on track to reach my goal of 10 Floralias), our show that evening at the Middle East in Boston (not the first time I've played Floralia and a gig in a different state on the same day), our continued work on the new album all day Sunday, and Jeebus McNeebus right back to work on Monday (just writing that sentence made me tired).

Fortunately, there are only a few weeks left until students leave campus for the summer, and since two of my main work responsibilities involve students, I'll have a somewhat reduced number of things on my mind in the not too distant future. Until then, I'll keep on self-medicating with plenty of takeout dinners (no time to go to the grocery store) and a 10:30 bedtime (nothing interesting ever happens at night anyway).

Toodles!

C-Rei

April 8, 2009

Alaska Whetha They Wanna Paahty (Or, License to Grill)

Wowie zowie, it's been a long time since I've logged on to get my blog on (it took me one hour to think of that opening sentence).

I hope everyone out there has been enjoying the occasional sunshine of the emerging spring. I for one am eagerly anticipating being able to grill the majority of my dinners (I've been eating wads of raw ground beef since November and could really use a hot meal and a stomach pump).

My life has been moving along at its typical break-neck pace with hardly a minute to stop and enjoy what's really important in life (for example, I didn't get to watch the most recent episode of "Lost" until Sunday. SUNDAY, people!).

One particularly exciting time drain that has recently entered my life is the new Welcome to Florida album we're working on. After many delays and reschedulings, we finally got a whole weekend together to record as many tracks of bass and drums (a.k.a. the instruments that actually matter) as possible. I'm happy to report that we laid down 11 songs, all of which sound great! We have about 8 or 9 more songs to record, then we'll pare it down to the best 15 or so and get this bad boy printed up. And don't forget, I'm still accepting suggestions for an album title!

In local New London news, Mitch and I have new downstairs neighbors. They just moved here from Alaska and are both musicians, so they don't have anything interesting to talk about whatsoever at all (it's opposite day). I'm looking forward to having a weekend free once the weather is nice so we can have a deck party and get to know each other. Blog-readers, you're welcome to join us!

Well I am SWAMPED at work right now, so I had better get back to the grind, but I'll post another update soon. Much love, y'all!

C-Rei