So I went

I dragged myself to the gym at 8. I'm glad I went. I hit the exercize high as I was finishing a mile run on the treadmill. I only ran a mile, but I did it the whole way at 6mi/hr. I used to be able to do two miles at that pace (I know it's not great, but I was working my way up). I think that by the weekend I'll be back at two miles at 6mi/hr. Then I power walked another mile on an a gradually increasing incline.

I think some of what kept me going was watching CNN. They were doing a peice on racism in America. The part I really paid attention to was about Colorado Representative Tancredo who compared Miami to a third-world country. His reasoning is not based on poverty, living conditions, illiteracy or crime statistics, but on the fact that immigrants who settle there don't completely assimilate into American culture, because they continue to speak Spanish instead of English. And he claims that he is not being racist. Mainly because he expects immigrants from anywhere to assimilate into "American Culture."

Now, call me a geek if you want, but when I hear the word Assimilate my brain automatically goes to the Borg - you know those creepy bio-technology hybrid people on Star Trek that lived in a hive-like environment. They were the bad guys. "Resistance is Futile" and "prepare to assimilate" were about the only things you heard from them. They wiped away individuality to the point that the only thoughts a borg had were the thoughts of the collective.

Tancredo went on to say that "multiculturalism" and "mulitlingualism" might be alright for the individual but was not good for a country or a community. Tell that to Quebec you jackass. What I don't understand is how homogony is supposed to help America. Is he wanting us to be even more intolerant as a whole nation than we already are? And how exactly is not being homogenous the equivalent of a third-world country? Unless he's thinking of places with sharp splits where genocide is taking place, but that is hardly happening in Miami. Well, unless a ton of people start taking Tancredo seriously and decide to take drastic action if the immigrants don't start acting more "American."

Another problem that I have with Tancredo's comments is the singling out of a Latino area. When ever people start mentioning Latinos and Hispanics everyone's mind jumps to illegal immigrants. The line between a race of people and a group of people defined by their actions is becoming blurred in many American's mind. Evidence of this is one of those dumb email surveys that friends send "Fill out all the questions and send it to everyone you want to clog the inboxes of with useless information they already know about you." I got one that had a question "How do you feel about Hispanics?" And the person (an acquaintance, I assure you) who sent it to me replied "as long as they are here legally I'm okay with it. But they should find a legal way of coming to this country or leave." I usually ignore those surveys, but this one I sent back with a scathing remark that the term "hispanic" does not refer to somone's immigration status. There are multi-generational hispanics and latinos in this country that are citizens and their parents, grandparents etc were citizens.

Whoo...I'm getting upset just thinking about it. Obviously it hits close to home for me. I get mistaken for alot of different nationalities. I walked into a chinese restarurant once and the Chinese girl behind the counter asked me if I was Chinese (my licence plate is chinese, but I am not). I've gotten Greek, Italian, Lebonese and even just everyday white. Some people do guess latino, I've had two people get it right on the first try. I understand because I always think that I look white. I inherited my father's fair skin and Irish nose. I did grow up closer to my mother's family and culture. Until we started having Thanksgiving with my Aunts (who like to deny their heritage due to percieved racism, and real racism when they were growing up. I've always admired my mother for being proud of who she was. Unlike my aunts, she realized that it's other people's problem with her, she just is who she is. The one thing I can say about my very conservative mother she is truely color blind.) my family always had Mexican food on Thanksgiving. It was the time that we got to pick our favorite giant meal and it was always Mexican with close to everything my mom knew how to make. I didn't grow up speaking Spanish, I had to take it in high school, but the other students always said I got A's because I was genetically pre-desposed to the language. And we didn't follow any "traditional" customs, so in someways I felt like I was just another white person who knew a little bit about another culture. I think that is why I have it so bad for J. He is like discovering the other half of myself.

Anyway...sheepishly I get down from my soapbox. I don't know where that outpouring came from.

The anger I felt toward this man spurred me on to more physical activity and revived my brain cells a bit too, I think (hence the coming back and blogging).

I stretched out after my run/walk. I couldn't take anymore of the Racism stories. I was planning on leaving but I saw that a guy from my dance class was also about to leave and I was afraid he would want to walk out with me. He's creepy. He leads by grabbing onto my wrist instead of my hand, which besides being dangerous (it can really hurt the girl because you're gripping her instead of the other way around) it's rude. It says "I don't trust you to follow my lead, therefore I will grab you and make you do what I want." He was the one obessed with dipping a couple of weeks ago. He would spin me around and then grab me with a force I thought was going to leave bruises to dip me. I did not want to walk out with him. So instead I hopped on the rowing machine and did 5 minutes at 1/2 the max resistance.

Last winter, when I first started my working out habit, I was doing the rowing machine alot. I would do 20-25 minutes at 1/2 or 2/3 of the max resistance. I was looking at my arms while I was stretching. I like my arms now. It has just been the last few months, but my triceps have finally started to stand out and I've gotten that cut that defines my shoulder. I know I got that from the twice a week weights and ballet (don't under-estimate the benefits of having to hold your arms out Jesus-like for the better part of an hour). Since my new job fucked up my work out schedule I haven't gotten to do much of either of those things. I don't want to lose the results that I've worked for.

Like the eating too. I was being fairly healthy. I wasn't doing fast food or vending machines. In the past month though I've had pizza at least 3 times that I can remember. And by pizza I don't mean a piece of, I mean the whole freaking thing. Ever since I took this new job my healthy eating has gone to shit. I keep eating out of the vending machine at work because it's there on the way to the break room. Yesterday I had trail mix, a candy bar, pretzels and a diet coke on top of my PB &J and apple for breakfast; salad, cous-cous and "chick'n" for lunch. I feel better for having gone to the gym, but I need to re-unite with my healthy eating habits.

This morning we had a breakfast meeting and I'm stuffed. I hope it gets me through the afternoon and I can make myself a sensible dinner.