Despite just giving birth and getting only two hours sleep, Kent got 104 out of 110 on the test and expects to return from maternity leave in March as a captain.
Because that's just what you do, people.
(thanks, B)
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Firefighter Gives Birth, Aces Promotion Exam
The Fat Trap
A SURVEY today suggested that most women would rather be thick and thin than brainy and fat.
There's already a bias in your surveyor's assumptions if they're only asking women this question. That says a lot about what they're looking for.
(via BFB)
Dear Ladies at the Gym:
You can lift more than 15-30 lbs without looking like the Incredible Hulk.
I promise.
I've been sicker than a dog for the last few weeks, so yesterday was my first day back at the gym since the holidays. I have, however, been doing my daily free weights routine and taking the stairs everywhere, as usual, so there wasn't much guilt on my part about missing the gym. What I missed had nothing to do with guilt. I just missed getting to the gym. I liked the routine.
I cleaned out my closet the other night and got rid of all of my baggy pants, the sort that would literally fall down if I didn't wear a belt. I got rid of some shirts that I looked like I was swimming in, too. At the back of my closet I found a part of shorts I'd worn at Clarion five years ago, and found that they slipped right on.
So after three years of beating my head against a wall, the last year has seen me fall back to my set point with very little head-beating at all. Hooray for 30 lb free weights and tossing out dieting. I'm very happy at a size 14/16. I don't like being too small these days, though when I was a kid I obsessed a lot about being small and fragile and bullshit like that. Now I enjoy having some intimidating bulk. It makes it easier for me to yell at assholes on the train who try and harrass me. But I don't like being a size 20 because you can't find clothes anywhere and everything seems to look terrible on me unless it comes from Old Navy.
To be honest, the best part about being back to my old weight is that I *can* go to more stores and buy actual clothes there. One more size, and I can actually go shopping with size 4 Jenn at the shops she goes to and expect to find something there in my size, too.
That pisses me off, really. Why the fuck couldn't they have sold stuff in a size 20? I would have bought it. Think of the money they'd make! But then I'd be shopping with size 4s, and some of those women might find that really intimindating. Or something. I don't know what's up with that. Heaven forbid a size 2 woman get caught dead wearing the same style clothes as a size 20.
Pisses me off.
For now, it's nice to recognize myself in the mirror again. It took me three years to put on the weight, and three years to take it off. I guess that's fair.
My concern now is keeping 2 sizes of clothes in my closet instead of 4.
Sometimes I wonder if it's weird to gain and lose as much weight as I have in my life. And then I wonder if that's normal. And then I wonder if the problem's always just been the fact that I always thought I was too "big" for a girl and kept trying to diet and got lost in a binge and purge cycle that's kept me yo-yoing for years.
I want to get off the yo-yo.
I'm spending a fortune in clothes.
What I Plan To Do This Year
Because resolutions involve stuff like, "I'll join a gym and go until the end of January when I get burned out," and "I won't eat anymore chocolate until I go crazy and binge on it."
Plans are much more practical.
1) Move to NYC at the end of July
2) Pay off my credit card so I can put said moving-to-NYC costs on it
3) Find an apartment in NYC that costs less than the monthly income of an average two-person household (this is going to be tricky)
4) Buy a new computer under $1500 with a 3-year warranty (after paying off credit card? Because I'm currently word-processing on an ancient back-up laptop that wieghs 20 lbs, has a broken space bar, and can't connect to our wireless network)
5) Get a new job (in NYC) that pays me about as well as I get paid here
6) Apply to Viable Paradise, which I technically can't afford to pay for right now, but if I get accepted, I don't have to find the money until July. I need some new eyes to look over some of my work, and I need to hang out with other writers again. I'm starving for it.
7) Apply to Brooklyn College MFA Program (must be done this week. I put it off way too long and apps are due Feb 1)
8) Sell 3 short stories
9) Finish draft of God's War by March. Have revised and ready-to-hawk version by December.
10) Finish revised (for the bazillionth time) version of The Dragon's Wall and send to Agent by October
11) Get back to work on book two of the fantasy saga (Over Burning Cities) so I have a draft by June of 2007
12) Begin preliminary research and outline for my next stand-alone fantasy book about a feisty girl-turned-resistance-fighter and abused peace-pursuing man clawing out their own versions of an ideal country from the wreckage of a nation butchered by a Rwandan-like genocide. Currently untitled.
13) Finish reading the 20-odd books I'm currently in the middle of
14) Rescue the music stuck on all of my dead computers
15) Consolidate my student loans
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