Vegas and the Twilight Slowpoke

Just to warn people, this blog post is going to be epicly long.

As people that follow me on Twitter know, I haven’t been posting because I had to take a trip up to Vegas last weekend with my brother to visit my mom, who was feeling down and out and lonely. I spent four days up there and have concluded the following:

• Buffets should be outlawed. Or, at the very least, they should post “No Pikko” signs outside. I went to two while there and probably ate a week’s worth of calories.
• The cute, fun stuff I remember is gone. No Star Trek at Hilton and no Race for Atlantis at Caesar’s. Boo!
• Everywhere you go there’s construction and according to my mom, a lot of it is halted due to lack of funds. It makes Vegas look gross and unfinished.
• You can buy a house for 10k. Granted, it’ll probably be as nice as a public bathroom, but still, 10k?
• People who choose to live in 117 degree weather need their head examined. Seriously, the heat was choking me. To death.
• The Hilo rain curse is still alive. We were there a day before it started storming with crazy ass lightning bolts flashing across the sky.

Anyway, today I used a bento box that I managed to sniff out at the Las Vegas Premium Outlet Disney Store. Yes, I, the great Shortie from Hawaii of Doom can find bento boxes even in the desert. I started my KUT program with MAFF today, so this bento had to conform to the new dietary guidelines I’ve been given. To be precise, one serving of protein and one serving of carbs with free veggies every meal and snack.

I’ve been given a little workbook to fill out everything I eat in, which is something I like because I did the same with my original go-around with Weight Watchers and I was very successful with that. I fried four shrimp in chopped garlic and olive oil, then added whole wheat spaghetti, salt, and pepper. Turned out good, but it was missing something. I’d have put in red bell pepper if I’d had any, but I was naughty and didn’t go grocery shopping on Sunday like I was supposed to.

The peas look pretty pathetic, so I’m going to make some eggs tomorrow with them in it and hopefully the egg will cover up the shriveled little things. That’s what I get for forgetting about the frozen veggies in my freezer.

The bento box is a princess one and I have no idea why, but it’s shaped like an acorn. ?!? The cover even has the criss cross part of the acorn top on it. If you happen to live in Vegas, these boxes were on sale for 3 for $10. There was a Minnie Mouse and a Mickey Mouse & Friends one as well.

I still have to go through all of the 500k Bento Contest entries and pick out a winner. I’m very sorry for all the delay, but I’ve been distracted lately by a lot of different things. The most recent one has been the fact that I finally got bitten (ha ha!) by the Twilight bug. I’d bought Twilight at Costco maybe a couple of months ago and after Bella moved to Forks, I accidentally dropped the book off the side of my bed and forgot about it until one day I had to go turn on the A/C by the window and happened to see it sitting there, looking sad. I picked it up and put it somewhere easier to see, but still didn’t get back into it.

After a conversation with Jenn, in which she told me it gets better when she meets Edward, I finally picked it up the day after I came back from Vegas. I plugged along rather slowly at first, but eventually got dragged further and further in as Bella and Edward had their cute little high school courtship. It reminded me a lot of how it felt when I met Mr. Pikko my freshman year in college. It was nice to find a writer who, despite a freakishly annoying attachment to words like “sigh” and “chuckle” and “growl”, managed to capture young-and-in-love with such a fiercely attractive emotional force for females. (spoilers coming) The book really had all the elements of a girl’s wet dream, which I found amusing as these little things are so easy to forget once you reach the dreaded age 20.

1) Edward is so gorgeous he’s hard to look at without induced drooling, but he still only has eyes for Bella? Hawt.
2) He watches Bella when she sleeps. Seriously, every girl has fantasized about her crush watching her sleep and tried to look nice and beautiful as they went to bed.
3) He’s a virgin and has never fallen in love til he met Bella? O! M! G!
4) He treats her like a goddess.
5) He’s a vampire and desires her so bad it takes every ounce of will power not to take her? Mega hawt!

I do have gripes though. For one, Stephenie Meyer is definitely not the most impressive writer. I mentioned the words she can’t seem to use enough and it drove me insane. “I sighed a deep sigh.” Ugh! (ha ha, another rib there) Mostly though, I’m mad she de-fanged vampires. WTF? Vampires are dangerous and sexy BECAUSE of their fangs. The C-shaped bite could have come from my overzealous rugrat just the same as it could have come from Edward. That’s massively lame. Though, I guess I have to come to terms that this is a young adult novel. If I want hot vampire action, I will have to return to Sookie Stackhouse.

When I finished Twilight I messaged Jenn and described the book as “delicious girl emotion porn”, to which she cracked up laughing, saying that I’d basically summed up Twilight in four words. So far, the first book remains my favorite, mostly because it was so much fun to read. I hated New Moon for the sole reason that my favorite character disappears for about 9/10th of the book. Eclipse was a lot better, but extremely frustrating to read. I don’t know whose head I wanted to slap harder: Bella for being a complete bitch about juggling the two of them around, Jacob for forcing himself on Bella when she’s clearly taken, or Edward for letting him.

I’m now waiting for Breaking Dawn to be delivered so I can finally find out what happens to everyone. For anyone wondering, I’m so far over on Team Edward that I wish Jacob would get squished in chapter one so that I don’t have to read anymore emo drivel. I’ve felt that kind of hole in my chest too, but Bella doesn’t have to read about mine for hundreds and hundreds of pages.

Anyway, on to the garden. Our miracle berries are ready!!! We have about a dozen ready to pick and eat, but we haven’t had the chance to do so yet.

Aren’t they gorgeous?? It’s very odd how they grow. We were pretty certain that there would be no berries after all the flowers looked like they’d been burnt off. I can’t believe this little foot tall shrub is giving berries already. Woo!

This is a pot of lettuce I’m growing. I sprinkled tons of seeds into this pot and was very frustrated when I noticed that only the seeds on one half were sprouting. So now I have them all crowded into this one corner and a whole lot of empty space.

While I’ve been slacking on the blogging, Buddy finally managed to potty train. His teacher had mentioned that there were some kids that potty train in a day or two and I’d thought that was impossible, except that’s exactly how he did it. He tried it once, then went back to diapers, just to frustrate me, I’m sure. Then just one day out of nowhere, I decide to put him into underwear on the way to school and just like that, he’s going all the time. In fact, he started going too much. It was really getting on my nerves to take him to the bathroom every 20 minutes. Anyway, I’m so glad that’s over.

It may take me a bit longer to get my bento groove back, but keep watching and eventually I’ll find a good routine for bentos on this style of eating. I started this program at 146.5. My goal is 20 pounds!