Meal Plans With Chocolate?

So I've been trying to write up and follow menus every week instead of cooking one-pot meals. It gives me some variety, as well as fulfilling all the food groups, but I must say I'm taking the easy way out most of the time. Now I may microwave some vegetables to add to meals throughout the week and make rice in my rice cooker or a loaf of whole-wheat bread in my bread maker. But primarily I'm relying on Amy's frozen dinners, veggie burgers, soup, and eggs for the entree. 

My special treat is a peanut butter sandwich day. Some of these easy meals are lighter in sodium than others, but at least I know the dinners are relatively healthy. And I just checked the Amy's website for sodium levels, and they include several meal plans for a variety of needs! I'm checking these out! Amy's Meal Plans

One of my biggest problems is my love of the late-night snack. I know this about myself, so I'm trying to limit my intake by doling out servings in sandwich bags and sucking on sugar free candy and frozen fruit bars. Last night I had my 3/4 cup of chocolate cereal along with 5 sugar free Werthers' while I read before bed. I just read a great YA book, btw, about the horrors of cacao farming in the Ivory Coast--The Bitter Side of Sweet by Tara Sullivan.
Kristin just recommended The Inexplicable Logic of My Life and read a lovely section of it about words as theories. 

Revising a Book Project: Ecocinema in the City

Jun 19, 2017 1:41 PM

This week I’m revising the introduction to a book project contracted with Routledge Press. A reviewer pointed us to some other research to include in our literature review, so my goal today was to look at a couple of pieces from urban sociologist Christopher Schliephake. One chapter in his Urban Ecologies: City Space, Material Agency, and Environmental Politics in Contemporary Culture, “The More-than-Human City: Material Agents, Cyborgs, and the Invasion of Alien Species” connects somewhat with our own work, Ecocinema in the City. According to Schliephake, films such as Metropolis (1927) to The Host (2006) and District 9 (2009) “question the anthropocentric view of the urban as a human habitat, re-figuring it as a space of hybridity and trans-corporeality” (xiv).

In his Ecozon journal, “From Green to Brown Landscapes—and Back Again,” Schliephake focuses more explicitly on the lessons of urban ecology learned from analyzing ecocinema. By reading the South Korean film Cast Away on the Moon through an ecocritical lens, he attempts to bring industrial brown and exurban green “in conversation with one another” (“From Green to Brown Landscapes”). Because Schliephake stresses interdependence between human and nonhuman nature, his approach aligns well with our own. 

Horror and Thriller Movies in Illinois

This week I started researching horror and thriller films set in Illinois and directed by Illinois filmmakers for our 2017 Embarras Valley Film Festival. This festival showcases filmmakers and folks in the film business from Central and Southern Illinois primarily. And our 2017 theme is thriller/horror films that will be shown the weekend before Halloween.

We co-sponsored Stay the Sweet by Quincy Joyner several years ago, so I knew we could begin with that one. But I know other local filmmakers have directed independent horror films, some of them set at the Ashmore Estates pictured above. Michael Savinsky directed Rag Doll back in 2011, for example, with one of my film students, Tyson Kroening, assisting and acting as a corpse. 

I plan to explore more thrillers and horror films set in Illinois. For now, though, I have a short list of Illinois directors of more professional horror and thriller films:

Manny Velazquez, Savage High (2015)/I Recorded a Murder! (2016)
David Ayer, Suicide Squad (2016)
John Carl Butler?
William Friedken, The Exorcist. Bug. Killer Joe
Reginald Hudlin, Marshall, Django Unchained
Mark Romanek, Never Let Me Go
Lee Sholem, The Doomsday Machine
 Robert Zemeckis, Monster House, Death Becomes Her
 Edward Zwick, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Gregg Toland (cinematographer)/William Wyler (director), Dead End?

Sister City Park Trail

Wrist Stories

I fractured a radial bone in my wrist in April and have been free of cast and brace only for two weeks. That means I have experienced only three Occupational Therapy appointments, and I'm feeling less than challenged.  I'm hoping I'll gain more flexibility and strength on my own. Today I did a downward dog for awhile in Yoga class, for example, and I did a few arm exercises with three pound weights in Jazzercise.