more thoughts about food and its hold on me.

Sorry I've been away for a few days. I've been busy working and going from thing to thing. But in the meantime, I've been eating up a storm. My first real meal was the Vegetarian Delight from the Thai Spoon, a pile of lightly sauteed veggies with rice. I've had a mostly vegetarian diet, with a few forays into the milk category, but I've found it's nearly impossible to eat vegan unless I only eat at home. My first foray into eggs and butter was a cranberry muffin. It was pretty good. Especially after vegetable soup for lunch.

Veganism. It's really hard. I think okay, I'll eat a bagel, but no cream cheese on top or butter. Then what? some peanut butter? on an everything bagel?

Then of course, I realized that chocolate has milk in it. I won't live without dark chocolate. I can live without some cream cheese, even my daily mocha (oh glorious source of calcium), but not without dark chocolate.

So I am just going to try to avoid milk and dairy products on their own as much as I can, and eat things I want to eat whether or not they have milk in them or not.

I haven't missed coffee much, but there's something about the habit of it that I miss, but I still haven't figured out an adequate substitute. Mostly I've stuck to iced green tea. Or water.

Other than the occasional dilemma in regards to food (to eat Doritos or not; I did.) coming off the fast has been going well. I haven't had any bad experiences and my stomach seems to be in good shape. The only thing I've come up against is overeating, which has long since been a problem for me. No solid food for two weeks made my stomach shrink a bit, but I have a hard time leaving food on my plate.

Having time off from school has been pleasant, but I seem to be busier than ever with working. Last Tuesday, I got to sit in on The Simpsons class that I had to drop and it was nice to be in class again, but also nice to know that I didn't have to do any of the work or care about the quiz, or anything. The only annoying thing is the guys in the class (and there are mostly guys) sit around and quote lines from episodes to each other. This is slightly endearing a few times, when you're between the ages of 15-20 and the Simpsons haven't been on the air for quite so long...but it's another thing entirely these days.

I'm going to be housesitting for the next few weeks....should be fun. I always like having a break from home.

I've become as bitter as I was before leaving the coffeeshop in just a short four weeks. The people are fine. The place is okay. Kim's not that bad. It's like going back to your grade school after being in high school. Everything is the same, but some things are different. And you can't really go back there. So I've been there, but it's been with such halfheartedness and a sense of feeling overgrown, out of place, a Gulliver being tied down one bean at a time.

I've been looking forward to sushi night on Monday with my brother at the Tokyo Marina (my favorite sushi place). I am not sure if I am going to eat fish or not. I thought about only eating it on special occasions, but that's kind of silly. We'll see. Man, those PETA people really appealed to me through my sense of austere environmentalism. they've ruined animals for me.