Enough to Turn You Off Breakfast...

Or How Many Jars of Peanut Butter Does 1 Person Need?

I’m one of four women that work in office full of men; most of whom have Mechanical Engineering degrees. They are brilliant men but a few of them have their “quirks”. One of them has a "quirk" of some very interesting food choices.

Each morning, I watch this male co-worker put together a breakfast that makes my stomach want to gag. This breakfast consists of oatmeal (or granola) combined with frozen berries, nonfat sugar-free vanilla ice cream, and egg beaters. He mixes and stirs all these ingredients in a bowl. Then pops the bowl in the microwave until the egg beaters is of scrambled egg consistency. My stomach turns as he takes it out because it rather reminds me of a chicken egg experiment gone bad. But I guess the good thing of this experience is that it suppresses my appetite for breakfast most mornings.  Of course, it probably doesn't help that I've never been too fond of eggs to begin with.


Peanut butter seems to be the other food thing he’s been doing lately. He’s been on this organic peanut butter kick. The company kitchen now has four jars of organic peanut butter sitting on top of the refrigerator; one of which is organic Almond butter. Four jars?! How many jars of peanut butter does one person need? I was teasing another co-worker that there was a potential meeting for peanut butter anonymous group. “Hello! I’m a peanut butter junkie!”

Oh, and did I mention that he has a jar rotation process for the Almond butter. Every other day the jar is upside down on its lid. I guess this is to help with the oils circulating in the jar to help maintain the Almond butter correct consistency; a bit anal if you ask me.


He’s mostly been putting this peanut butter on celery stalks. I call them stalks because he doesn’t cut the celery into short pieces. He just tears a couple stalks off the bunch of celery. The other day he was putting the Almond butter on to a celery stalk and it wasn’t pretty. To me it looked like diarrhea on stalk. EWwwwh! Be still my stomach! Gee, I might be swearing off breakfast and peanut butter.

One of My Favorite Places to Run/Walk...

A park called Liberty in Salt Lake City is one of my favorite places to walk-run-bike.  It's about 2 miles from my third floor walk-up. It's not more than a few blocks from home as I'm heading towards the park that I find myself along tree line streets that contain a hodge-podge of bungalow houses, gingerbread cottages, ranch houses and combinations of what I don't know.  Among all this variety I find porches shrouded in vines where porch swings lightly sway as the occupants eat dinner, people watch, or strum a guitar.  Meanwhile, I walk by a variety of plants -- tulips, wisteria, lilac, rose bushes, flowering trees, evergreens, and the common variety of oaks, and elm trees that seem native to the Salt Lake City areas. 

I love the scenery as well as the people watching that I can do all along the way.  A family of five are out for a walk; the youngest member a boy costumed out from head to toe in spider man gear holding on shyly to Mom's hand as his older brother and sister race on ahead.  The gentleman strumming on a guitar trying to get the rift just so.  The older couple that are having an early dinner on their porch with their TV trays standing in front of a wooden bench where they are sitting together.  A mom overseeing her young son riding his bike with training wheels.  Various people mowing the lawn, trimming hedges and bushes.  People walking their dogs.  One guy having his dog pull him on his skate board.  The dog looks like he's having a blast as the guy yells," Mush!"  A father and a very young daughter feeding swans in the park.  Families having BBQ and picnics.  Young teens playing volley ball in the sand pits.  All this adds up to my favorite path for a run/walk.  These are all pictures that I took while on a walk Friday night after work.

People Watching at the Gym...

This morning while I was waiting to take my turn at a weight machine I got to looking out over the gym. It was interesting noticing all the different sizes and shapes; also the different attitudes while people were working out. Some of the people looked like they were doing a fierce battle with the machine. They had those determined mean looks on their face, and were just going at the machine like their life depended on it. Others were turning beet red and dripping as they struggled through their workout. I would place myself in this category.

Still others, mostly guys at the free weights, were straining and grunting galore. It rather reminded me of a morning where one guy was particularly grunting loudly when Diane and I were doing our circuit on the weight machines. Diane was struggling with a machine and I told her it would help her if she grunted like the guy over there. I kept on telling her to grunt and she ended up laughing so hard she couldn’t lift anything.

As my eyes continued to wonder more through of the gym area, I spied a short rather round blond man with his head lolling around that would have put Stevie Wonder to shame. His eyes were closed, head phones in his ears, and his face was between a smile and a grimace. I choose to think that it was a smile. He looked as though he was wondering around while on the elliptical in his own little world. It looked much like a happy place I would like to visit, and I couldn’t help but smile as I watched him. It’s all in the attitude of how you work out, and he looked as though he was having a ball of a time!

Meanwhile earlier this morning, I was on the elliptical machine next to the beautiful petite blond who had the machine at level 10 and was not even breaking a sweat. Here I was turning turnip red and sweat rolling down me on level 3. She’s looking around the whole time checking out guys and not even paying any attention to what she was doing on the machine. I saw quite a few guys checking her out as they went by, and I couldn’t help but wonder where my mother was when they were handing out these genes. I definitely missed out!

I felt like placing signs above us… BEFORE (above me) and AFTER (above her). Then put a HUGE disclaimer below that these results may vary and that they would require a great deal of starvation, an ungodly amount of hours working out, and quite a bit of plastic surgery (Shoot. Possibly even a complete overhaul!). AND yes, you too can be just like her! Not me, not in this life time! I would much rather join the Stevie Wonder guy in his happy place!