I Felt Like a Movie Character

Often times in movies there are the scenes of a married couple where the male is just poking along, minding his own business, doing his thing. Along comes his female partner and starts grilling him about something, asking his opinion and sharing with him some of the scenarios and schemes she's worked up in her head. All the while, the male is shell-shocked and has no idea what to say or do because anything he says or does is probably wrong.

It happened to me this morning. Granted, I'm not married but it happened as I was biking to work today. As I'm starting the final climb up the hill to school, I hear my name called out by my colleague who is out walking her dog. She's currently on a sabbatical but wanted to hear what I had heard about a certain situation at school. I had no idea what she was talking about and then she wanted me to start help address the situation even though I'm not even involved in the scenario. But now, I have no choice but to address the situation. This conversation led her to go all Dr. Phil on me in another issue in my life.

Fifteen minutes after seeing her, I parked my bike and was like a deer in the headlights. What just happened? All of a sudden in one conversation, I am now involved in a situation I don't want to really be involved in and also forced to think about the fact that I'm approaching a problem with the wrong construct.

I was just trying to get to work this morning.

Beets

For those of you keeping score, my weight loss has been successful. So far, I've lost 10 pounds since the end of August. One of the secrets has been to eat many more fruits and vegetables. And since I have the Saturday Alemany Farmer's Market right in my neighborhood, getting fresh produce is a snap. One of the things I have been doing each and every week is to buy something that I don't know how to cook (or sometimes have no idea what the item is) and figure out what to do with it at home. I call it the "chance" item.

Sometimes I lose and get something I'll never buy again. But, a couple weeks ago, I bought beets. I've discovered I LOVE beets. Each and every week since, I've bought beets (I've discovered I particularly like the pink ones I think that are called chogas). I boil them, peel them, dice them and eat them like candy. The fact that it turns my pee a tinge of red is kind of a cool bonus.

This past week, the "chance" was persimmons. They are in season as over half of the vendors were selling the orange fruit. I'm not sure they will rise to the level of beets, but they will not return to the also ran pile of this weird cantaloupe/honeydew hybrid that I though was gross.