It’s Friday, with an hour left to work.
We’re going to Hilton Head Island, S.C. tomorrow morning, we haven’t done any packing yet and I’m ready for sun, sand & surf.
Time for some links to videos of Muppets.

Hey, it’s no Blues Brothers, but what is?

Here’s the bulleted, Muppet-y goodness:

• Feist on Sesame Street

Booking her for that 1,2,3,4 song had to be the biggest no-brainer ever.

• More Muppet Viral Videos

I blogged the Independence Day video, so I feel obligated here.

• Surprise Muppet characters

The Belz & David Caruso, for two.

Have a great time in my absence.

Some blogging & twittering may follow.

NOT a regular thing, just struggling for a metaphor to take my mind off of lazy blogging post-Hawaii.

Here’s what I’m digging today:

Lego is full of Win [Via Wonderland]:

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The Diablo III Cinematic and Gameplay videos.

They only make we want to play more video games, especially Diablo II, World of Warcraft and, strangely enough, Spore.

Muppet 4th of July [Via Muppet News Flash]:

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog Teaser:

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

I’m apologizing after the fact for clogging up my own post with embed videos, but this little blog experiment got me to thinking: what causes someone to embed video?

Are certain kinds of people apt to embed?
Are certain categories of video more embed-friendly?

It also begs the question: why aren’t you embedding video about your favorite TV show or the TV shows of your employer?

Good questions, all.

I seem to favor geeky, game-y and internet comedy videos but maybe those are just my personal preferences. I certainly watched a TON of So You Think You Can Dance & Design Star videos (don’t judge me) in the past week, but did I embed/link/blog them? No.

So anyhow, this is a somewhat lazy post with a message: tell me why you embed and/or deride me for my lack of taste in what I’ve embedded and/or copped to consuming.

G’night!

Submitted for your enjoyment and/or disdain without comment.

Season 3 of The Muppet Show on DVD:

Kermit the Frog sings Elliott Smith’s Needle in the Hay:

Kermit the Frog sings Nine Inch Nails’ (by way of Johnny Cash) Hurt:

Kermit the Frog sings Radiohead’ Creep:

Oh and there’s apparently going to be a Fraggle Rock movie. For real.

My family is currently obsessed with their health, more specifically eating “healthy”. The trend dates back at least to January 2006 when I decided - mostly as a New Year’s Resolution - that I was going to lose weight, eat better, exercise more and drop my sympathy pregnancy weight/body.

As I’ve documented here on many occasions previously, I’ve been pretty successful due in large part to eating a high fiber breakfast (usually oatmeal, a flax-fortified cereal or just plain, old Wheaties), cutting down on snacking a junk (no soda or candy bars) and working out religiously (I’m averaging almost 5 out of 5 workdays). So most of it is no-brainer stuff. Don’t eat like you’re fasting, just eat less and eat pretty socially-accepted “good” foods. More salads and fruit for lunch (my favorite is soup and a yogurt), less obvious crap.

I’ve also dialed back the gargantuan amount of water I was drinking. At one point I was flooding myself with 2 liters or more every day and I spent a good portion of my day in the restroom. It wasn’t so much water ownership as much as it was leasing/renting.

Anyhow, success is contagious and, fresh off having our second child, Jenn decided she too needed to tone up a bit. Vacationing in Hawaii will do that to folks. Plus, watching me get thinner by 40 pounds. Am I piling it on too thick?

So Jenn is doing a “Fit Trip” that encompasses 12 weeks of eating right by virtue of a food diary, working out more by turning in a weekly chart and 3 hydrostatic weigh-ins to see how she’s progressing. I participated in the second, mid-point weigh-in a few weeks back and it only made me want to get weighed-in again. Fascinating stuff [see original post].

The real topic of today’s post, though, is the eating portion of staying healthy. There’s a great lecture/chat/Q&A on You Tube of UC Berkeley Journalism Professor Michael Pollan speaking at Google about his new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto:

[Via BoingBoing]

There are too many gems to succinctly summarize but here’s my shot (actually Pollan’s own shorter version): “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much”

He tackles topics ranging from “nutritionism” to government farm subsidies to “Orthorexia“. A truly delightful speaker who obviously spent some serious time obsessively researching the topic of food and nutrition in America. I strongly recommend viewing.

Lastly I wanted to jump back into the personal. Since Raelyn is an impressionable, school-aged eater she’s just now starting to have real, lengthy, substantive, dinner-time conversations with us about her likes, dislikes and questions regarding food and nutrition. We have certain lists of “good” and “bad” foods, but we don’t deprive her of anything. She gets more than enough treats and traditional, memory-inducing childhood sweets, but we’re also trying to instill in her a sense of well-rounded consumption based loosely on “all things in moderation”.

It really is neat to see the gears in her head spin. Just this evening we had a discussion of the concept of “tender” meat. She concluded our talk by declaring the roast chicken we had was “tender AND juicy”. Good girl.

Aside from showing folks that video, my impetus for posting was to gloat a little bit. Judging by the basic guiding principles Pollan laid out in the talk (and my own success on the scale, in the gym and, most importantly, in the mirror) I’m doing pretty well.

Just thought I’d share.