Posted by GJ on July 24, 2007
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/238959
Jul 24, 2007 04:30 AM
Suzanne Carere
Special to the Star
Product: Quarter Chicken Breast (skinless).
Price: $7.49.
Total calories: 210 calories in 124 g.
Manufacturer: Swiss Chalet.
The Position: Swiss Chalet’s chicken breast dinner meets the Health Check criteria and is a healthier choice than most fast-food meals.
Ingredients: Chicken.
Nutritional breakdown: 0 g carbohydrate, 38 g protein, 7 g fat (2 g saturated, 0 g trans).
Analysis: I recently watched a friend painstakingly peel all the skin off her Swiss Chalet chicken breast. I could tell she didn’t want to but she’s concerned about fat calories and knows that skinless chicken breasts are very low in fat.
I hated to burst her bubble, as I reached for her skin, but that’s true only if the skin is removed before the chicken is cooked. According to the Canadian Nutrient File, a cooked skinless chicken breast has only 2 grams of fat.
In the case of rotisserie chicken, the skin holds most of the fat inside as it turns into oil, allowing the meat to absorb it. According to Swiss Chalet’s online nutrition table, the meat contains almost twice as much fat (7 g) as the skin (4 g).
Alternative: A clear alternative is to stay at home and cook your own skinless chicken breast. Another is to get the dinner with salad and no-fat raspberry vinaigrette dressing.
Take it or leave it: If eating rotisserie chicken, accept it’s higher in fat and adjust your fat intake elsewhere.
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Posted by GJ on July 21, 2007
Ancient manuscripts? 200 year-old dusty books?
Or perhaps a signed copy from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series:
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Posted by GJ on July 16, 2007
I went to sleep Sunday morning, during the wee hours. I woke up Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours to eat, then back to bed for a more-or-less unbroken snoozefest until Monday morning. Incidentally, I was still late for my morning meeting!
This is truly a sign, but of what I’m still not sure. 
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Posted by GJ on July 13, 2007
The old university habits are the same, although the marks are decidedly better. Taking extra courses through the Canadian Securities Institute - for amusement, mostly - demonstrated that I have not broken away from the habit of cramming over a few days, rather than following a graceful study plan over several weeks.
At least completing the textbook readings hours before the exam doesn’t seem to do me much harm; I passed both my Canadian Securities Course (last year) and Derivatives Fundamentals Course by a comfortable margin. It’s important to note, however, that these are multiple choice exams. I’m sure I’d struggle a lot more if these were short answer exams!
Let’s not dwell on my poor study habits too much, though. A huzzah that I passed!
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Posted by GJ on July 11, 2007
I get a little annoyed when I reflect upon the continual decline of my reading habits over the years. It’s been a graceful slope over the last 10 years, but these days I find my readings to be almost entirely online and of a more informal, current nature. Novels are entirely gone, and technical books dropped off a couple years ago. I can’t keep up with my Economist subscription, either.
While online reading (blogs, news sites, articles) is not without merit, I do feel that I lack the level of measured, focused style that only comes when an authour expends a considerable amount of time crafting a book. To resurrect a healthy habit, I’m going to try committing to reading one book per month! The book might be a novel, or it might be a technical book, or it might be a self-help book; as long as it’s a book.
I’ll use my Twitter status (displayed on the right sidebar of this blog) to note what I’m currently reading. This serves 3 purposes: 1) to share what I’m reading with my friends, 2) motivation of a public commitment, 3) track which books I’ve read.
I hope this works!
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Posted by GJ on July 9, 2007
Some of the pictures I took in Paris ended up in an online restaurant tour guide, Schmap. Someone found my food pictures from Chez Clement (Montparnasse) on Flickr and subsequently contacted me asking for permission to include them:
Picture #1
Picture #2
I guess the work of adding descriptions to uploaded pictures has some value after all!
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Posted by GJ on July 4, 2007
To counteract “Numb Butt Syndrome” (NBS), I decided to give the exercise-ball-as-an-office-chair notion a try. I was encouraged that there was at least one coworker that I recently met that is happily using it, for both sake of embarrassment and efficacy.
Once decided, it was a quick task to visit my local chiropractor to purchase a ball. Did you know, however, that exercise balls need to “rest” for at least 24 hours after initial inflation, preventing any use? Or that one must be careful to change seating locations periodically to prevent deformation?
The verdict after the first day of the use? It’s softer than any chair I’ve ever had, and a lot more fun. My posture is going to take some time to improve though. And, of course, I got a lot of visitors gawking at the sight of a suit on a ball. 
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Posted by GJ on July 3, 2007
Traipsing through the Internet wilderness as is my wont, I came across this charming little amusement.
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