Dorkier than DDR.

I have started working out. To a video game. No, not DDR. Worse than DDR.

Yourself! Fitness.

For fucking serious, the exclamation point is in there.

It's totally designed for soccer moms. And it is kicking my ass.

I am super uncoordinated, so some of the movements are like whoa, but overall? I sweated and I will be sore. That's probably a good thing. And it's slightly less embarrassing than actually going to a gym, and a hell of a lot cheaper. It also doesn't require me to leave the house and potentially interact with my potentially irritating suburban neighbors, for whom I feel vague scorn, just because. I am a horrible person.

However, I have many delicious snacks in my house. I am hoping Kevin will help me consume at least some of them, as they are all vegan: apple pie (*vegan* apple pie, natch), organic raspberries, and Double Rainbow chocolate sorbet (bestest sorbet in the westest), and a 70% dark chocolate "save the animals or whatever" bar. (I do think that brand is silly. They give something like 10% of profits to some vaguely animal-related charity. The chocolate is decent, however, and reasonably priced, so I'll buy it sometimes.) I imagine he won't partake of the chocolate items, but he personally OK'ed the pie, so he better be in for at least half.

Fuck, I'm hungry. Today my awesome vegetarian coworker--with whom I have split pretty much every lunch since she started--brought homemade idly, which was all kinds of delicious. If you've never had them, idly are a little white cake made of ground-up rice or rice flour and a pale dahl, with a texture sort of resembling polenta. In restaurants, they are usually served with a cup of sambar, which is a kind of vegetable soup for dipping. She taught me how to eat it like she does, which is to put a couple idlies in a bowl and pour the sambar over it, then used the spoon to cut up the idly so more of the flavor soaks into it. Her sambar had something I thought was potato, but turned out to be bottleneck gourd, which was really tasty.

While I'm on the food kick, Kevin and I tried a Lebanese restaurant in Fremont the other night. The proprieters were chatting with a family when we got there, so we overheard some of their discussion of Beirut (apparently, it's a nice place) and how the restaurant had been at that location for something like 20 years. Impressive. We tried the fattoush salad, which was a little too tangy to finish, the falafel sandwich, and the veggie combo. (Sometime I think I should write about the "veggie combo" at several different restaurants.) The combo featured falafel, hummus, and yabraks, which appear to be the Lebanese version of dolmas. I didn't try those, but the hummus was delicious and the falafels were awesome. They were rich with spice and had a good texture, an even consistency, and weren't too greasy or crispy. Next time we go, I'd like to try the tabbouleh, order the falafels as an appetizer--just eat 'em straight or with some hummus--and try this one thing the owners had the table next to us try: something like hummus, but made with cauliflower. That sounded so intriguing.

And finally, here's this week's roundup of Netflix rentals:

Deadwood: Season 1, disc 3: This shit is getting good. I wasn't totally digging it immediately, but something about it said, "Give me a chance, you cocksucker." So I did, and I'm definitely into it now.

Ran: I have now officially seen it. Damn good and beautiful and fucking long as fuck.

Hard Eight: P.T. Anderson's first movie boasts an impressive cast and isn't a bad movie. I was expecting way more violence than it had, though, and I am not sure I totally understood the main character's motivations. It seems like it might bear repeated viewings, but that isn't high on my priority list.