Ergonomically Challenged

Well, my new office is taking shape.  My bookshelves are in position, my cable modem and wireless router are hooked up, and the previous homeowners left behind a little glass-topped table that will look good with a couple of chairs at the "client" end of the room.  My former dining room table is now pretending to be a desk.  The only thing I lack is a decent desk chair.

The desk chair I had before was just about worn out and probably responsible for my recent attack of bursitis, so at the moment I'm sitting on an antique oak dining room chair.  It works fine as a dining room chair but leaves a lot to be desired as a desk chair.  Even with a cushion it isn't very comfortable for long-term sitting, and the height is just a little too low in relation to the table for computer work.  The angle of my hands and wrists is just begging for an attack of carpal tunnel syndrome.

So, the hunt for a new desk chair is on.  I need something comfortable and adjustable that looks good with the rest of my furniture and won't cost the national debt.  I want a cushioned seat and lumbar support and probably arm rests, too.  I've been checking the websites of the local office furniture stores and have only seen a few possibilities.  I guess I'll have to go test-sit a few to see how they feel.  Too bad I can't take my desk along to check the height.

"A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous." ~Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Carnivores to the Max

This week Barry had cataract surgery on his second eye and I once again provided his transportation.  To thank me, he took me to lunch at Fogo de Chao in Scottsdale.

Fogo is a much sleeker and more upscale version of Tucanos, the churrascaria we ate at in Albuquerque last year.  The burgundy walls, metal and art glass chandeliers, and servers in stylized gaucho costumes lend the restaurant a definite air of elegance, and the salad bar included grilled red peppers, beautiful plump asparagus in vinaigrette, smoked salmon, manchego cheese, and a version of tabouli as well as the expected greens and olives.  Here, too, the servers constantly circulated with freshly grilled meats on skewers, but the selection was heavily weighted toward various cuts of steak.  Side dishes that come with every meal include cheese bread, fried polenta, garlic mashed potatoes, and caramelized bananas.  The polenta was a little too salty for my taste but everything else I tried was excellent; the medium-rare baby lamb chops were particularly divine.  Even with small portions of everything we were unable to try all 15 of the meat selections, let alone the desserts.

The prices are more upscale as well.  Tucanos charges a base price of $13.95 for lunch and $20.95 for dinner; at Fogo de Chao, lunch is $28.50 and dinner $46.50 before drinks and dessert, putting it into the "special occasion" category for us.  Still, I will definitely go back, even if just for the salad bar ($19.50 by itself) and the ambiance.

"Click here to see the How to Fogo experience" ~ http://www.fogodechao.com

Inner Tubing

One of the problems of living with my parents has been a steady, insidious weight gain.  My mother cooks many of the same things I do but without the emphasis on cutting fat and calories.  Instead of putting butter or peanut butter on toast, she slathers on both.  She serves the toast with rather than instead of cold cereal.  Her portion sizes are not outrageous, but a mere extra 100 calories a day translates into 10 pounds of weight a year.  After unpacking my scale today I realized that I must have been eating about 300 additional calories per day because I've put on 10 pounds in four months.

To be honest, today's weigh-in was not the first sign that my waistline has literally been expanding.  A few weeks ago I was typing away at my computer when I noticed that my elbows were resting on something other than the arms of my chair.  It was the dreaded muffin top, or love handles, or spare tire - whatever you want to call it, it was those extra 10 pounds in a ring around my middle.

Always before when I've gained extra weight it's been evenly distributed all over my body.  I had been deluding myself that my weight was fairly stable because my pants have not been getting (much) tighter.  Alas, this is apparently yet another unwelcome sign that my body's estrogen level is sinking rapidly, never to return.

Now that I've more or less moved into my new place (more on the angst this has involved later) I can cut back on my caloric intake and, with any luck, get rid of the excess baggage as quickly as I put it on.  If not, well, I suppose I can indulge in the local pastime of inner tubing down the Salt River without even having to rent the equipment.

"A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts. " ~St. Jerome

Looking for the Door into Winter

One of my favorite books when I was growing up was The Door into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein, which is (more or less) about time travel.  The title comes from one of the habits of the narrator's cat, Pete.  Pete and his human once lived in a house with many external doors.  When Pete wanted to go outside, he would stand in front of a door and meow until Staff opened it.  If the weather was inclement, however, he would refuse to venture out, going instead to the next door and meowing there.  This continued until they had visited all the doors at least once.  The narrator's theory was that Pete thought one of the doors must surely be the door into summer, and he wasn't going to settle for anything less.

Here in the Phoenix area we've been suffering the same high temperatures as the eastern half of the country, although our humidity, thank goodness, is much lower.  Our noontime critter watching has dwindled to almost nothing as all the intelligent birds and beasts indulge in siestas during the hottest part of the day.  One critter still up and about, however, is my cat Rusty.

The day after we moved in with my parents Rusty discovered their screened back porch, an excellent spot from which to plot mayhem on quail and rabbits.  She prefers to go out there several times a day, which is fine with me, except...

...since the temperature hit 100 she's been going out and in and out and in and out and in until one of us gives up in disgust.  Apparently she can't believe it's really that hot out.  Well, neither can I and I'm not wearing a heavy fur coat.  Unlike Heinlein's Pete, she's not convinced that the next door over is the door into summer; instead, she seems to believe that if she glares at me balefully enough I can cool off the porch between one visit and the next.  She's not taking my failure lightly; I can almost see her thinking, "What kind of useless lackey are you?  I'm seriously thinking of trading you in for a model with temperature control and tuna on demand features."

Our new house has a screened back porch, too, and I'm expecting the same rounds of in and out there.  Still, winter is coming in just a few months, and then she'll be complaining that I didn't open the door into summer.

"Then he would stay indoors until hydraulic pressure utterly forced him outside.  When he returned the ice in his pads would sound like little clogs on the wooden floor and he would glare at me and refuse to purr until he had chewed it all out...whereupon he would forgive me until the next time.

"But he never gave up his search for the Door into Summer."

~Robert A. Heinlein, The Door into Summer

Seance Cooking

The book club I belong to has its next meeting a week from tonight, so I was relieved when my copy of the book we're going to discuss finally arrived from Amazon on Monday. I just finished reading it.

All of us are supposed to bring suggestions for the next book to each meeting, and we vote on which candidate to read next. The club is full of people who are (in my sister Sue's words) in "the helping professions," so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that this month's book is The Kitchen Daughter, a novel by Jael McHenry about a women with Asperger's syndrome.

The member who suggested the book told us that the protagonist used cooking as a way to shield herself from and cope with the outside world.  This bald description, however, does not do the novel justice.  Ginny, the main character, doesn't just use cooking to deal with the land of the living.  At the start of the book she discovers she can summon ghosts by cooking their recipes.  Her parents have just died, so she uses her discovery to try to solve the family mysteries they left behind.

Ginny is farther down the road toward autism than the Asperger's sufferer I lived with, but her reluctance to look others in the face, her sudden obsessions and equally sudden lack of interest, and her emotional overreaction to things that others wouldn't even notice were eerily familiar.  If the author isn't actually close to someone with Asperger's, she has done her research.  The book goes far beyond merely uncovering the quirks of Asperger behavior, though.  The language, particularly when Ginny cooks or thinks about cooking, is rich and evocative; I could almost smell the food she put together.  At times the book's exploration of how family members hurt each other most when they are trying their hardest to help was acutely painful, and even when it's not the tension and uncertainty Ginny feels as she fights her sister's attempts to sell the family home and move Ginny out (for her own good, of course) left me pretty tense myself.  I can't say much about the ending without giving it away, but it seemed both surprising and right.

I had intended to read this book and then donate it to charity, but I liked it so well that I'm making a permanent place for it on my bookshelves - and not just for the delicious recipes it contains.

[Amanda:]"I want to talk about your problem."...
[Ginny: ]"I don't have a problem."
"You do."
"I have a personality.  That's what I have."
~Jael McHenry, The Kitchen Daughter