Today I went to the gym, canceled my Planet Beach membership (long story), and worked on Prof. Clark’s spreadsheet until my eyes and neck were sore.

Oh, and I cooked a lot. For lunch I made tomato, basil, and mozzarella mini-pizzas with homemade whole wheat pizza dough served with a salad of arugula, radishes, caramelized onions, feta cheese, walnuts, and homemade sundried tomato vinaigrette. And for dinner I made Moroccan-spiced baked tilapia, couscous, and carrots and parsnips braised in a cognac-cilantro broth.  All of these dishes were fun to make, delicious, and healthful – for a change. Trying to fit delicious meals into my 1300-calories-a-day diet has really opened up my eyes to how I used to abuse butter, sugar, bacon, and cheese. I think I’m ready to make some permanent lifestyle changes. Diabetes and high blood pressure run in my family. I’ve been reading up on the Mediterranean Diet and it seems like something I can work with. Basically it calls for the elimination of butter and baked desserts, which is horrible, but one replaces them with olive oil and fruits. Other than that one should eat lots of whole grains, vegetables, and fish, and consume moderate amounts of low-fat dairy, nuts, and red wine.

As far as I know, the Mediterranean Diet doesn’t restrict one’s total calories, although I’ve had to restrict my own for this stupid month. It’s not that terrible though. We had the pizza and salad for brunch, then I ate a yoghurt as a snack, and the tilapia etc. for dinner. When I don’t cook I have three smaller-sized meals instead.

Incidentally, I’ve always thought Old Spice commercials were pretty funny (remember the centaur guy?), but they’ve outdone themselves with the new Terry Crews ones:


I also found out this morning that Wendy and her boyfriend Chris will be coming to Antigua for our wedding!! This is pretty awesome news.

I’M GETTING REALLY NERVOUS ABOUT IT. We still don’t have our vows written and we need to order a one more thing for the welcome baskets. But mostly I’m nervous about being a dork like always. I realize now that I would probably poop myself out of fright if I were in front of a church with 200 people watching. With the right blood alcohol level I might be able to handle 20.