Saturday Randoms

I'm off to Vegfest today (this is being written Friday night).  It's a Seattle vegetarian festival, and it's pretty darn awesome.  The only tiny problem is that even rock hard stomachs like mine feel a little queasy after the combination of hemp juice, spinach burgers, pomegranate juice, soy ice cream, veggie dogs, etc.

I was going to start the gluten-free, dairy-free, high fructose corn syrup-free, soy-free "thang" on April 1st, but what they hey...I'll start Sunday. The main impetus is that I have felt like complete crap for the past few months.  Cold turkey is going to be HARD, so I think I'm going to allow myself 2 servings of gluten and 2 servings of dairy a week.  That's the equivalent of 2 slices of bread and 2 ounces of cheese a week.  In the grand scheme of things, that's not much.  The hard part is that chocolate has dairy in it.  No chocolate.  I have a foreboding feeling about all this, like I'm a crack addict who has to give up crack. Perhaps the Betty Ford clinic will take me. 

I went to the library today looking for some good teen books.  I have to say that if you're not interested in vampire books, you're SOL in the teen fiction section.  This vampire craze is freaking insane!  Everyone is writing vampire books.

So where have the Sweet Valley High books gone to die?  I remember there used to be whole SHELVES of those books, and they cannot be found anywhere now.  The only reason I was looking for them today was that I read an article (somewhere) that they are revising the SVH books for the new generation.  You know, adding cell phones and making Jessica and Elizabeth skinnier.

For those of you who aren't SVH fans (yes, I read at least 50 of those dang books when I was a kid...), the books were extremely formulaic.  Within the first 5 pages, the twins were described as having perfect size 6 figures.  Apparently size 6 is too fat nowadays to be considered "perfect," so Jessica and Elizabeth are going on a diet.  They're probably perfect size 0s now or something.  Anyway, I wanted to see what the remakes of these books were like.  That was all.  However, both libraries I went to didn't have the old or new SVH books.  They just had tons of vampire books.  So, again, where did the SVH books go to die?  There had to have been MILLIONS of those books printed over the past 25 years.  Where are they? Landfills, probably.

My next random thought of the day is that I really don't like animals in grocery stores.  Yes, I know there are people who need service animals.  Service animals can be recognized because they are usually well-behaved and calmly alert.  Dressed up poodles who are yapping while in the cart are obviously NOT service animals.  And the dog is sitting in the same spot where I'd put my food....yuck.  I'm sorry, animals in grocery stores - unless they are service animals - are unsanitary.  What if the animals have fleas and then hang around produce? Can't people leave Fluffy at home for half an hour while they get their food?