Yay, I'm employed!

At my interview this morning, I said "detail-oriented" and "organized" and "responsible" and she said, "You sound like a perfect fit" and proceeded to hire me on the spot.  So I'm an official seasonal data entry bot at School Specialty.

I start June 11.  8-4:30 for two weeks training and then 9-5:30 the rest of the summer, plus occasional 8-12 on Saturdays.  7.25/hr and anything over 40 hours is time & a half.

Yay, real job!

I have a job interview on Thursday morning for a data entry position at School Specialty.  I would be working 9 hours a day Monday-Friday and 4 hours on Saturdays.  That's almost 50 hours a week at 7.50/hr.  Which means I could potentially make enough money to pay for the rent for my apartment next year.  Which would rock my world.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

:)

Went out with the girls last night - Katsu-Ya and Deja Vu.  Good times.  I forgot how much I missed people from home.  Spent the night at Cameron's afterwards and realized that I'm inclined to fabrication.  By that, I mean, that I'm happy with him when I'm with him and it's when I'm apart from him and feeling lonely and sorry for myself that I start to wonder.  So, it's obviously just a method of distraction and nothing serious.

School Specialty called me back today for one of their summer data entry positions.  I could easily handle sitting in an A-Ced office 20-30 hours a week punching numbers.  So, I have to take a 10-key online test to see what my kpm are and then I go in for an interview.  I hope I get it.  I need a job.  Badly.

Yep... I'm bored.  Time to go grocery shopping.

There's this boy... I think he likes me.  And it's always intriguing to find that someone other than your significant other is attracted to you.  At least, I've always found it intriguing.  It sort of causes there to be a bit of vicarious mutal attraction.  And it causes you to wonder... should I see how this could go or stick with what I know?  Or at least, it causes me to wonder.

It's not that I love Cameron less because of this.  Or that I'm less attracted to him.  Or that I'm even seriously considering doing anything.  But that question appears in the back of my mind... could it be that I'm supposed to be with this person instead?  What if I'm wrong?

But then again, I never trust my judgement.

Lots of things have piled up in the past year to make me wonder about my judgment in a lot of matters and I have been inclined to just go the "easy" way and stick with what I know, what is safe... because the unknown is scary.  But what if the unknown is better?

I need to be psychic.

I read a fascinating article today in the New York Times.  It's an exerpt from a new book called "Rethinking Thin: the New Science of Weight Loss - and the Myths and Realities of Dieting."

---

A couple of scientists decide to study weight loss in the obese.  The subjects of the experiment were subjected to four weeks of a diet which allowed the scientists to assess their metabolism and caloric needs.  This was followed by four weeks on a 600-calorie/day liquid formula diet, which helped them lose an average of 100 pounds.  Finally, the next four weeks were spent on a diet intended to help them maintain this new weight.

The scientists discovered what they wanted to know - that when obese people lose a significant amount of weight, their fat cells shrink to normal size.  The subjects were released, a 100 pounds lighter and expected to enjoy the rest of their lives at that healthier weight.  However, that wasn't the actual result.  All of the subjects regained most, if not all, of the lost weight back, regardless of their attempts to keep off the weight.  So, the scientists tried the experiment again, and again, but the same thing happened each time to each group of people.

But since this was a research study, the investigators were also measuring metabolic changes, psychiatric conditions, body temperature and pulse. And that led them to a surprising conclusion: fat people who lost large amounts of weight might look like someone who was never fat, but they were very different. In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.

Before the diet began, the fat subjects' metabolism was normal — the number of calories burned per square meter of body surface was no different from that of people who had never been fat. But when they lost weight, they were burning as much as 24 percent fewer calories per square meter of their surface area than the calories consumed by those who were naturally thin.

The Rockefeller subjects also had a psychiatric syndrome, called semi-starvation neurosis, which had been noticed before in people of normal weight who had been starved. They dreamed of food, they fantasized about food or about breaking their diet. They were anxious and depressed; some had thoughts of suicide. They secreted food in their rooms. And they binged.

The Rockefeller researchers explained their observations in one of their papers: "It is entirely possible that weight reduction, instead of resulting in a normal state for obese patients, results in an abnormal state resembling that of starved nonobese individuals."

In response to this study and its findings, another study was performed to determine what would happen if thin people, who had never had a weight problem, became obese.  The subjects of this study packed on 20-25% of their original weight.  This took almost six months for most of the subjects, even though they were all eating as much as possible each day.  Some consumed 10,000 calories a day, an amount so incredible that it would be hard to believe, were it not for the fact that there were attendants present at each meal who dutifully recorded everything the men ate.  It was discovered that once the subjects had gained the weight, their metabolisms increased by up to 50 percent.  They had to eat over 2,700 calories per square meter of their body surface to maintain their new weight, having needed only 1,800 to maintain their original weight.  At the end of the study, they all lost the weight quickly, returning to their normal weight and maintaining it as easily as before.

The implications were clear. There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body's metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.

Some research scientists were interested by the findings of these studies and posed the next logical question: Is body weight inherited, or is obesity more of an inadvertant, almost unconcious response to a society where food is cheap, abundant and tempting?

Scientists then did a study of nature vs. nurture, using a Danish registry of adoptees originally intended to study whether or not schizophrenia is inherited.  This registry had medical records for every Danish adoptioin from 1927 to 1947.  The information included the heights and weights of the adoptees, their biological parents and their adoptive parents.  All the children had been adopted within their first year of life.

The study revealed that the adoptees were as fat as their biological parents, and how fat they were had no relation to how fat their adoptive parents were.

The scientists summarized it in their paper: "The two major findings of this study were that there was a clear relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that genetic influences are important determinants of body fatness; and that there was no relation between the body-mass index of adoptive parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that childhood family environment alone has little or no effect."

In other words, being fat was an inherited condition.

The paper also pointed out the implications: "Current efforts to prevent obesity are directed toward all children (and their parents) almost indiscriminately. Yet if family environment alone has no role in obesity, efforts now directed toward persons with little genetic risk of the disorder could be refocused on the smaller number who are more vulnerable. Such persons can already be identified with some assurance: 80 percent of the offspring of two obese parents become obese, as compared with no more than 14 percent of the offspring of two parents of normal weight."

A similiar study was performed with twins - identical and fraternal - to continue the nature vs. nurture debate.  However, they found again that whether the identical twins had been raised together or apart, they had nearly identical body mass indexes.  There were some variations in the BMIs of the fraternal twins, but again, most of the BMIs were very similiar.

The researchers concluded that 70 percent of the variation in peoples' weights may be accounted for by inheritance, a figure that means that weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other condition, including mental illness, breast cancer or heart disease.

The message is so at odds with the popular conception of weight loss — the mantra that all a person has to do is eat less and exercise more — that an obesity researcher tried to come up with an analogy that would convey what science has found about the powerful biological controls over body weight.

"Those who doubt the power of basic drives, however, might note that although one can hold one's breath, this conscious act is soon overcome by the compulsion to breathe," Dr. Friedman wrote. "The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty. This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight."

---

This is, of course. just what I wanted to read as I head into a summer where I plan on working my ass off to... well, work my ass off.  I will not tolerate being obese anymore.  Harrumph.  Stupid genes.

Info & quotes (in italics) taken from Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside from New York Times, May 8, 2007

"Well, better be off.  I've got to annihilate the planet Thraal at four, and I'm already late.  Do you think I should use my trusty Zharkian death-ray and fry them alive in a millisecond or nudge an asteroid into their orbit, thus unleashing at least six chapters of drama as they try to find an ingenious solution to defeat me?"

I'm reading a fabulous book called Something Rotten, by Jasper Fforde.  It's the third in a serious of detective novels about a woman named Thursday Next.  As the book jacket says, "Detective Thursday Next has had her fill of her responsibilities as the Bellman in Jurisfiction.  Packing up her son, Friday, Thursday returns to Swindon accompanied by none other than the dithering Danish prince Hamlet.  But returing to SpecOps is no snap - as outlaw fictioneer Yorrick Kaine plots for absolute power, the return of Swindon's patron saint foretells doom, and if that isn't bad enough, back in the Book World The Merry Wives of Windsor is becoming entangled with Hamlet.  Can Thursday find a Shakespeare clone to stop this hostile takeover?  Can she vanquish Kaine and prevent the world from plunging into war?  And, most important, will she ever find reliable childcare?"

It's a fabulous hysterical romp through fiction, filled with witty puns, literary references and laughter galore.  I strongly suggest it to anyone who considers themselves a bibliophile.

In other news, I just read the Arts section of the NYT.  Being a musical theatre geek, it is a common activity for me.  Today, I was entertained by the sheer diversity of the various topics dicussed.  Legally Blonde, the musical, recently opened on Broadway, at the Palace Theatre.  Although it's written up as a sugar rush, chock full of nauseating sweetness, I'm interested in hearing the music.  The sorority girls have been transformed into a Greek chorus, with a Supremes-style sound.  Other than that, however, it seems that it may turn out to be less than a worthwhile show.  The reviewer ends his article with, "...you wonder uneasily if the message of Legally Blonde isn't just that it's O.K. to be pretty, but that it's not O.K. not to be."  Unfortunate.

Next, I read an article about Donna Murphy, who is starring as Lotte Lenya in the new musical LoveMusik, which is about Kurt Weill.  To be honest, I started reading the article to find out more about the musical, having developed an interest in Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill while working on "Surabaya-Santa" in Songs, but I continued reading mostly because of the gossipy, and slightly snippy, content of the article, in regards to Murphy's infamous 'on again, off again' behavior during Wonderful Town.  She apparently hemmoraged her vocal cords (I didn't even know you could do that!), but she didn't want to quit the show - and probably couldn't, if what I know about contracts is true.  So, she told everyone it was just a flu.  She stuck it out and took time off when she needed to not sing.  Her doctor told her that if she kept singing, indeed, if she kept speaking, she would destroy her vocal cords.  Eventually, she ended up leaving the show a month early.  I guess the producers, unsurprisingly, were not pleased, as she was one of the "big names" that drew people to the show.  But apparently, the producer of LoveMusik was one of the producers of Wonderful Town and all he had to say was, "Donna was my first choice from the beginning.  I had no trepidation at all.  She's one of the hardest working actors I've ever worked with.  I just hope she doesn't get the flu."  Ha.

Has anyone ever read Anna Karenina?  If not, I'm about to spoil the end for you.  It's a Russian novel where the heroine throws herself at a train at the end.  Now, I'm okay with turning novels into other forms of art - ballets, operas, musicals, whatever - but, within reason!  There is currently in production a ballet and an opera of Anna Karenina.  Explain to me the artistic value of a ballerina throwing herself at a train.  How do you even do that on stage?  Yes, yes, I know... they land a helicopter in Miss Saigon, they sink the boat in Titanic (although they had TONS of technical difficulties with that one), but come on... how do you throw an actress/dancer at a train... on stage... without needing to replace her every night?  Bah.  Russian lit.

In other news, Cameron is going to be here in an hour, so I am off to clean up my room and shower.

Ciao!

1. Cameron officially moved out of his house.  His lovely queen size bed is amazing and comfy.  His room is almost organized.  He managed to get me hooked on Firefly and Family Guy this weekend.

2. My mother is forcing me to disguise my licentious pre-marital relationship with Cameron by lying to my grandmother.

3. I spent 8 hours in Valders on Saturday at Solo & Ensemble.  God save me.  Larissa did a lovely job - she's going to State for her classical piece (because she's really a black woman inside) and probably for her musical theatre piece (but we don't know yet for sure).  Show Choir (wonder of wonders) is also going to State.  Somehow.  God only knows. 

4. I am ready for this show to open so it can end.  Verily frustrated.

5. I am pooped, so that's all the update you get.
5b. We're doing Urinetown and Baby next year at UWSP.  Thus the entry title.

Cameron, of course, went back to work this week - my spring break.  I'm very glad that he gets to go back to work, and I am very disappointed that I don't get to spend every waking moment with him.

Thus far, I have spent every waking moment either cleaning out my room or helping Heather, Nate and Cameron clean out the duplex that they are moving into by the end of the month.  Yay for Cameron getting out of his parents' house.  Boo for the woman who just moved out of the duplex leaving it a toxic wasteland.  Well, not quite, but pretty gross.

Anyways, I'm already wanting to move back up to Point, except for the fact that Cameron can't spend Thursday thru Tuesday with me every week anymore, since he's back to work.  Boo.

In other news... I don't really have any other news.  No word from MWTAs yet, although the 3 companies I'm really hoping for all went to SCTAs (another set of cattle call auditions) which just happened last week, so maybe they're still deliberating.  *fingers crossed*

Oh, cutest thing.  Cameron showed up on Friday (when I got home) to take me out to lunch, with an adorable teddy bear for me (named Bare Bear the Bear, cause he's naked.  Haha.) and a copy of Casino Royale.  :)  Friday night we went to see Lara in The Sound of Music. 

Sidenote: Wow.  That was a painful experience.  Not Lara, of course.  She played Mother Superior and sounded beautiful.  What was painful was the fact that they did not cut a single note of music, the director failed to understand that scene change music only plays until the scene change is done AND he told the stage manager to pull the curtain as slowly as possible - to "build anticipation."  More like build conversation.  I felt like every scene change was an intermission - and so did everyone else, based on the talking during blackouts.  Comments heard were, "How many intermissions does this show have?" and "This is the show that never ends."  Poor kids.  Lighting and sound seemed to be flying by the seat of their pants.  I swear - they only used the one electric up by the board.  It was BAD.  And half the time microphones weren't on, or didn't turn on until halfway into the first line of a song.  Painful.  Costumes weren't bad - except that the postulants (wannabe-nuns) were wearing habits that were cut ABOVE the knee.  I don't think that's correct.  The kids generally did a nice job singing (although Capt. Von Trapp couldn't carry a tune in a bucket - but he definately could act, which was a pleasant surprise.)  It's too bad their director didn't have a clue.  Scary.

After the show, Cameron and I went to Perkins and sat in front of two of the most brainless females I have ever seen.  Not only did they spend 45 minutes discussing whether or not they snored ("No, you don't snore, you just breathe more heavily when you sleep."  "No, I've been told I snore."), they also somehow decided that because asthma and heart murmurs can be hereditary, so are hemaroids.

Saturday, we went car shopping, test-drove a cute little Dodge Neon, bought me a cute outfit from Torrid, bought Cameron some gorgeous pinstriped pants from Old Navy, and then went out on a date.  :)  We went to Victoria's for dinner (ran into Katie (sorry, it's Kaytee now) Coyle... which was slightly awkward) and then we went to see 300.  I actually really liked it.  If anyone's interested, the guy playing the King is Gerard Butler, who played the Phantom in the new Phantom of the Opera movie.  And the woman who plays the Queen also played the female lead in The Brothers Grimm.  The guy who played Faramir in the Lord of the Rings movies is also in it. 

Sunday, I slept in.  In the afternoon, Lara and I went grocery shopping.  Cameron came over for dinner and we had corned beef and cabbage (a day late), before we went to start cleaning out the duplex.

That was my exciting weekend.

Anyone want to do anything this week/weekend?  I'm home til Sunday afternoon, unless my parents really start driving me crazy.  :)