Another Vegan Boyfriend

I have written before about Brendan Brazier, a vegan former Ironman triathlete who has won several major races. Now I can add Rich Roll to my list of people I admire for their athleticism and will power. Boy, would I love to be a female version of these guys. All I have to do is find two extra hours each day since that's how much Roll works out.



By Dana Shultz for Diets In Review
Imagine the typical middle-aged American dad. What does he look like? Slouchy business suit, slightly overweight, balding? If this is the person you’ve pictured, consider Rich Roll the exact opposite. At 45, Roll, a father and entertainment attorney in Southern California, sports a tall, slim physique with well-defined muscles, and dons athletic gear most days. This is a far more accurate picture of this middle-aged dad who became an elite athlete practically overnight. Roll defied all odds when, at the age of 40, he became an Ultraman – someone who has completed the three-day race in Hawaii that spans 320 miles, including a 10K ocean swim, 260 mile bike ride, and double marathon run. Becoming an Ultraman is an impressive feat for anyone, but especially for Roll who, just six months prior to the race, was 50 pounds overweight and nowhere near athlete shape. The father of four used to enjoy lounging around and eating a steady diet of pizza, burgers and dairy products. But now, he is 100 percent vegan – practically the opposite of his former self. So what inspired the change? Roll reached his eye-opening low point when he was climbing the stairs in his home the night before his 40th birthday and became winded and had to stop to catch his breath. It was in that moment that he decided to make a change to better his health and fully committed himself to his transformation, which led him to complete his first Ultraman race less than one year later. Where most extreme athletes would just hope to finish the race, Roll placed 11th without any formal training. “I couldn’t have imagined it [happening],” said Roll in a 2010 interview with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. He’d never pictured himself at the place he is now, but he admits he’s never felt better. As for how Roll went about his transformation, he says it took plenty of determination; but it began with food. After analyzing his diet, he determined that eating a vegan diet would be the healthiest route. So instead of pizza and burgers, Roll now eats fruits and vegetables; no meat, no cheese, no eggs or dairy. And despite how many calories he burns in his two-hour-a-day workouts, he says his vegan diet satisfies his body and is capable of powering him through his intense training sessions. Roll credits his high performance and new vitality to his diet change, saying “I’ve never felt better. My body has never performed better as an athlete, as a father, and as a human being.” After workouts, the elite athlete says the most important thing to do to help your body recover is to get electrolytes, replenish your glycogen stores, and provide your body with protein. For an example of what Roll eats, a typical breakfast is a blended beet, kale, pumpkin seed and apple juice smoothie. It’s these types of super foods that fueled Roll’s transformation, which took him from overweight dad to fitness guru. Just two years after the switch in 2009, Roll was named one of the “25 Fittest Men in the World” by Mens’ Fitness magazine. In his new book Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World’s Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself, Roll talks about his amazing transformation into an extraordinary athlete, vegan, author and ultra-marathoner. Besides just sharing his story, Roll’s ultimate goal for the book is to inspire others to get healthy. “My hope and my inspiration is to be able to play a small role in trying to create a healthier America.” While this may sound like a lofty goal for one man, big challenges haven’t stopped Roll before.

FYI

My blog functionality is having some technical difficulties. I can't get to the list of my posts, so I can't get into any posts I've already started in order to finish them. It's driving me crazy. Blogspot says it's a known problem and they're working on it. We'll see, but if you see something crazy appear on my blog, I can't get to it to fix it.

ADDENDUM: It seems to be related to Firefox. If I use Internet Explorer and can access my posts. I imagine (hope) they will fix the problem, but for now I'll use explorer.

Quiet

I just finished this audiobook (from Gabriel) and loved it. Although people are not 100% anything, but complex combinations of characteristics, I am an introvert... at least much more of an introvert than I thought. I need to recover from hours of social activity which exhausts me, I prefer to sneak away with a book, I work much better on projects if I work alone, I prefer to shop alone, I am happy to be with someone I love but don't necessarily have to be talking to them, and I don't enjoy conversation with acquaintances just for the sake of talking. Those are just a few of the traits that have sometimes made me wonder, "What is wrong with me? Why don't I seek out social situations and often try to avoid them?" Cain uses the term "differently social" as opposed to "antisocial", because introverts are social with the people they are closest to but don't tend to seek out social gatherings with others. An extrovert receives their mental health break by getting together with a bunch of people the way an introvert needs to go off on their own to take a walk, read a book, cook a meal, or whatever. Cain points out that being an introvert is not the same thing as being pathologically shy. When I was a child I was quite shy and nearly panicked if someone I didn't know well came up and spoke to me. Fortunately I've outgrown that and feel quite comfortable talking with just about anybody, but you probably won't catch me using a heat seeking missile to get a chat-fix!

From Amazon:  
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to partying; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over brainstorming in teams. Although they are often labeled "quiet," it is to introverts that we owe many of the great contributions to society--from van Gogh’s sunflowers to the invention of the personal computer.

Passionately argued, impressively researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts, and how much we lose in doing so. Taking the reader on a journey from Dale Carnegie’s birthplace to Harvard Business School, from a Tony Robbins seminar to an evangelical megachurch, Susan Cain charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal in the twentieth century and explores its far-reaching effects. She talks to Asian-American students who feel alienated from the brash, backslapping atmosphere of American schools. She questions the dominant values of American business culture, where forced collaboration can stand in the way of innovation, and where the leadership potential of introverts is often overlooked. And she draws on cutting-edge research in psychology and neuroscience to reveal the surprising differences between extroverts and introverts.

Perhaps most inspiring, she introduces us to successful introverts--from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Finally, she offers invaluable advice on everything from how to better negotiate differences in introvert-extrovert relationships to how to empower an introverted child to when it makes sense to be a "pretend extrovert."

This extraordinary book has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how introverts see themselves.

True. I now understand why I need to get away to myself after having been with lots of people, not unlike a drowning man who's dying for that breath of fresh air. So don't feel bad if I disappear for a while. I'll be back after I paint a masterpiece or invent a new computer.

Where In The World...

... is my sister? Depends on the day, but right now she and Ken are in the Yukon, that's Canada for the geographically challenged. Their ultimate destination is Alaska. Yesterday was Martha's birthday and I called her on the off chance she would answer. Answer she did! Where was she? On a boat in the middle of the Yukon River. I was able to wish her a Happy Birthday while Ken was snapping pictures of Bald Eagles. Wow.

Martha's blog is very interesting and I encourage my family to check in from time to time. Many of the photographs are stunning and the history of the area and natural world (which is so different from mine) she describes is fascinating. Click here to get there.

ADDENDUM:  They have arrived in Alaska!

 Unbelievable.

African Music to My Ears

I highly recommend you listen to this book instead of read it. It's a series of short stories by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie and read by Adjoa Andoh. Listening to the stories in a true Nigerian accent made them come alive!

From Amazon: "Winner of a Commonwealth Writers' Prize and an Orange Prize for Fiction, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie continues the literary tradition of Chinua Achebe, one of her greatest influences, in this brilliant collection of stories. Focusing on life's many clashes - tradition with modernity, African cultures with American - Adichie delivers a series of haunting, character-driven tales." Click here to listen to a sample.

Most of these stories have appeared first in various periodicals such as The New Yorker and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Jumping Monkey Hill is the most autobiographical story, taking place at a writers workshop in Cape Town. One of my favorites is A Private Experience in which a Christian woman and a Muslim woman find themselves hiding in a building together to avoid a street riot. The title story The Thing Around Your Neck is about a woman named Akunna who obtains a much longed-for American visa and goes to live with her uncle in Connecticut, only to have to move out to avoid his unwanted advances.

Here is the NYT Book Review of The Thing Around Your Neck. A reviewer in The Times said, "Stunning. Like all fine storytellers, she leaves us wanting more." I agree, but make sure you listen to this book. Two thumbs up.

A New Threesome

This is one of my favorite pictures:

Lupe, Teddie, and Banu birdwatching. 2007-ish

Obi, Banu, and Lupe birdwatching. 2012   :-)

Velocity

I enjoyed reading Dave Egger's Zeitoun and thought I'd try another of his books, but I am so torn about this one. Eggers is an interesting writer and this book is full of humor as well as pathos, but the story itself is repetitious and frustrating. I kept asking, "So why are these characters doing this?"

The plot involves Will and Hand, two twenty seven year old best friends since childhood who travel to different countries in order to give away $37,000. Why? I'm not sure. Will comes into this money accidentally and tells Hand he has to get rid of it. He doesn't invest it or give it to a charity like normal people. Instead he asks Hand to go with him to random countries to give the money away, but he doesn't seem to have any screening process to decide which people should be given this money. They get into some pretty crazy situations and as most young guys do, they say some really funny things.  During their travels there are frequent flashbacks to their pasts, particularly the traumatic event six months prior in which their other best friend, Jack, gets killed in a freak car accident. Hand is definitely sad about it but Will is close to losing his sanity due to his overwhelming grief. These interruptions in plot are a relief, since the random way these two guys decide where to go next and their utter ineptitude in giving out the money made me want to stop. Frankly some of those parts were boring. I got so close to just putting it in my give-away pile before finishing it.

But I didn't. Something about this story was compelling. The torment which takes hold of Will makes him talk at great length inside his head.  The reader is privy to these thoughts, so as Hand may be talking to a taxi driver we listen to Will as he remembers, describes, rambles, screams, deconstructs, and falls apart. We suffer his torments inside his head with him. It's hard to leave a person when you're inside their head.

I was pretty sure the ending would be vague and it was. I feel like a book must have a point, or what is the point of reading it? If you ask me what the point of this book was I'd be unable to give you a coherent answer but that may be my shortcoming. Maybe it was over my head.  I guess I give this one a thumbs down.

The Rest Of Last Weekend

When I uploaded the pics of my deck tomatoes I discovered the rest of my pictures from last weekend when Cyrus and Kai were here. We start with the new tents Saeed bought for the boys while they were napping. I had asked him to find the boys something they could play with that didn't necessarily have to involve me. I was finding it hard to get anything done (food preparation, cleaning up, etc.) due to all the "Nama, Nama, c'mere!" Trust me, I love to be beckoned by the two cutest little boys on the planet, but we have to eat! So we decided a tent would be irresistable.

Chappu the little adventurer checked it out first.

Tippy reached in through the crack enticingly making Chappu pop through it to check out what was going on.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds...

... while visions of Baba's promised surprise danced in their heads.

After nap time came the discovery of Baba's surprise!

 Tent activities in the kitchen:

Children love silliness. I'm only too willing to oblige.

Kai laughing and laughing. Too bad one day he'll think I'm an old biddy.

The instigator of most of the silliness, also the photographer for the above two pics.

When Shirin and Gabriel got home Kai was actually still taking a nap, so Cyrus invited his mommy into his new tent:

When Kai came down from his nap he was SO happy his mommy was back.

She looks pretty happy too!

Tomato Update

The first of the tomatoes I planted is starting to redden.

And there are more to come!

Another Stray

I never know who I'll see at the bowl. Usually it's Moxie (the black one) but today it was this tabby calico. Sigh.... if people would just spay their animals.