cold snap

oops. i guess my last post seemed pretty bummed and i may have mildly alarmed some folks out there. compounded by my jokingly sulky pics on facebook. not to worry, i'm doing just fine. one day of boredom and loneliness (a couple of hours, really) is bound to happen when moving to a brand-new city, no?

my sister called yesterday to check in and was sad to learn that i am living without cable, even. that's right, we have rabbit ears on top of a vcr that sits on the floor next to our tv. i've been spending my days on the internet (countless hours), emailing and reading celebrity trash blogs and the ny times. i'm three days and two classes into my free week of yoga at a great studio nearby, which has made me feel immensely better about things. trev and i are looking into bikes for me before the weather gets too cold. i test rode a couple of treks last week and although i should afford this one, i really want to afford this other one. of course i test rode both and why test drive the bmw when you can only afford a pinata? don't ask. i just had to know how it felt.

i've also been cooking a lot. doing quite well considering the lack of affordable produce compared to california. stuffed yellow zucchini? check. roast chicken with garlic and lemon and thyme? check. vegetable soup and baked butternut squash? check and check. tonight i'm enjoying the pedestrian delight known as a baked potato stuffed with broccoli and pecorino tuscano. it's yummy and simultaneously giving me lsd flashbacks. (long story.) trev and i had a huge vietnamese feast for lunch, which i topped off with a 5:30 tea time of jamon serrano and havarti on crackers. yes, i am not suffering for eats here.

anyway, talk soon. blogger has a scheduled outage in 2.

two wheels

for christmas, trevor proved what a good listener he is and presented men with a bicycle. i had been going on one day about how much i wanted one, especially since steph has one and we can go riding around the city. it has, since then, been sitting on the first floor of my building, gathering dust. it's lovely, actually, if i'm allowed to say that about a bicycle. i loved it upon sight - pearl white with green detailing, a happy reincarnation of my snowboard in bicycle form. like most bicycles here, it's a one-gear beach cruiser. just my speed - i can drive any manual transmission, but give me gears on a bike and i freeze up.

i had been stalling about riding it - something was always wrong. too cold, snow on the ground, i don't know the roads well enough, something. i was super excited to try, but also scared. i have a thing with bikes, some weird nervous chickenshit craziness. i remember as a kid riding around all the time, tearing up and down the joint like my ass was on fire. more recently i'm a nervous wreck and i guess two disastrous vacations expeditions involving mountain biking haven't really helped to alleviate that.

long intro aside, i finally got into the saddle this afternoon. and, drumroll... it was lots of fun, actually. a bit annoying because there are several big streets around me that bikes aren't allowed on, so i had to figure out some roundabout way to get to jiu guang for some grocery shopping. i tried riding on the sidewalks for a bit, but if you've ever tried walking - let alone riding a bike - on a sidewalk in urban china, well, it's not the best way to alleviate fears. the next concern was theft - my bike is shiny new and white. it literally gleams next to the other stacks of bikes standing by. trevor bought a couple of locks, but they're really more of a deterrent and anyway i'm just a big worrywart.

the impetus behind the bike riding arrived in the form of a fitness plan. i was cruising around on yahoo and somehow landed in the yahoo health section, and started idly reading the various articles and blogs about fitness and nutrition. (all of this as a method of procrastination for studying chinese.) lots of this at this time of year because of those resolutions, i expect, but also the reality is that most people that live in china carry a bit more weight than they do at home so i'm always aware of how crappy my fitness level is these days. it's hard to buy the nonfat yadda yadda or the flax seed this and that here, and most chinese food is oil city. i don't run outside because we are all concerned here about the repercussions of running outdoors in a highly polluted area. when i first arrived, i lost a ton of weight pretty quickly, but that was due to the non-sitting-all day, no-car change of status that my life underwent. i'm now back to the sitting-all-day business, and my gut reflects it. ew. i also took this free diet/fitness assessment where your diet is analyzed not only for calories + fat, but also for your nutrition. i'm think about my diet here a lot because i know how i am - the easiest thing for me to get is new york deli sandwiches (MONSTER MEAT sized, no less, because it would just be too much for me to consider eating in moderation) for lunch, and something fast at night since i get home so late. recently it's been these dried japanese noodles that i can't stop eating. my diet is abhorrent. i bought a big costco bag of raw almonds for snacks, but i also space out meals with crackers and those rice seaweed triangles from family mart. i'm a fast food junkie these days. if it's not ready in under 10 minutes, fuck it!

anyway, i do the yoga classes during the week, but every little bit helps, right?

p.s. the point of this entry was supposed to revolve around a conquering-my-fears theme but it really is turning into c's diet gripes. sorry.