You probably should skip this …

This weekend I was browsing the Internet searching for a page or app that could calculate calories burned during strength training. One had a pull-down menu that didn’t include weight training, but did let you choose from several other physical activities, including …

Instinct magazine headline fail.

Jesus, Instinct magazine. I was already letting my subscription run out because of crappy writing, but this validates my decision even more.

(For Mom B and other readers who aren’t familiar with “The Soup” or “Community” [or his guest-starring appearance on "Pushing Daisies"], his first name is Joel.)

Full disclosure?

Blog with caution!

Work Wife has started blogging again, and we started discussing the peculiar — or is it? — dance of disclosure that comes up when we decide what to write about, and how we do so.

What’s for dinner: Shrimp stir-fry with citrus ginger sauce

Also known as: “Trader Joe’s frozen food, with a twist.”

Here’s to a particularly good Friday

This is the first night this week that I haven’t brought my work laptop home with me to either finish up some client work (now dangerously close to being done) or finish up a freelance article that had become an unfinished albatross around my neck.

I worked at Dairy Queen in high school, and as we discovered at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant a few weeks ago, I can STILL serve up ice cream so it looks like this.

Last night I sat in front of the screen and forced myself to at least finish the bulk of the article, even with an interlude that allowed for a Dairy Queen run. 

Bellying up — or down

I will have visible abdominal muscles by my birthday, June 19.  I don’t need the full Ryan Reynolds, above; I will settle for, say, Eddie Cibrian here. (Also, I’m not sure if this shot of Jason Statham makes me relieved, or sad.)

• To keep me on track: If I don’t, on June 20 I will post a photo of my Shame Stomach here on the blog, and give $50 each to Westboro Baptist Church — best known for picketing funerals and “God Hates Fags” — and the National Organization for Marriage.

Being a drip and keeping quiet

I haven’t been too productive this week. All of the residents of Casa Flor are in various stages of fighting off or recuperating from colds; I believe I am the most successful of them, which I credit to the massive quantities of sleep I’ve been getting. On Monday I got home from work at 5, slept until 8, woke up Mr. Brooks for a dinner run*, and was back in bed by 9.

* Here’s how classy we roll when we’re not feeling up to par: We left the house wearing our sleep clothes, and halfway there decided to eat inside the restaurant anyway. “Eh, it’s not like I’m going to meet Mr. Right at a Wendy’s on a Monday night,” I said. “At least not this Wendy’s.” And the day before, rather than mow through a box of tissues, I just used a flour-sack dishtowel as an ersatz handkerchief.

iTuned In: Let’s dance!

Mi salsa es caliente.

The other night on one of my semiregular iTunes binges, I stumbled across a track that included the word tarantella in the title and was immediately ready to download. In honor of one of my latest purchases, five songs that have dances in their titles.

What’s for dinner: Spice-rubbed chicken

[Jan. 11: For some reason I never posted this little gem from Dec. 15, so it counts as my effort for today instead.]

It has been months since I cooked a meal at home, not counting Thanksgiving, so tonight on the way home from the gym I decided to hit the grocery store instead of the drive-thru.

Goodbye stranger, it’s been nice …

“So, have you started The Purge?” Mr. Brooks asked while I was in Denver last week, a wry little smile creeping across his face.

Then he turned to our friend Sarah to explain: “Every year, right around the holidays, Sam goes through his Facebook and phone and gets rid of people — like, by the dozens. If you’ve made him mad, or haven’t talked to him in a while, he deletes you from his life.”