Pop-culture oatmeal

At the workplace, there's a big ol' flatscreen tv facing my desk and the channel is always set to a news station. Today CNN, yesterday FOX News and so on...I watch and listen between arguing, handing out cards, saying please and thank you, organizing, inputting, problem solving, and other daily tasks, and it is kind of strange how the nation gets hooked on the headlines and how fast they change. A few days ago, the media storm was around the pregnant marine's death and the manhunt that followed, today it is Heath Ledger's death. It's like one story eclipses the other continually and it seems a bit strange to me, but that is the culture...I sometimes get entranced too. I will say this about news and the such, there are a few blogs that I frequent and some i'm just checking out for the first time, most of them entertainment blogs and they can be a bit over the top and evil at times. It's one thing to poke fun at pop culture but Perez Hilton's blog made light of a British singer having a miscarrage and another of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter's crossed eyes. I do think these bloggers are starting to become quite sociopathic in their quest to get a little recognition, I mean poking fun and saying Heath Ledger died of smoking rocks and drawing crack rocks on the pic of him at the time of a young man's death is a tad absurd. But what can I say, that's the world we live in and people will be as they are.
Next thing, i'd like to make a confession...I am a foodie.
google it of you don't know what it is. So today I decided to post a recipe since that is my new obsession. I can't eat the way i'd like, you still at the gym and losing weight but I like to cook and find new recipes etc...Sounds a bit counter-revolutionary eh? Well hmm what can I say?
This recipe choice is inspire by my lunch for today, oatmeal. Enjoy!

Banana and Peanut Butter Oatmeal
This was my favorite one so far. The peanut butter and mashed bananas made this oatmeal was nice and creamy. The peanuts on top added a nice contrast in texture.
Ingredients:1/2 banana (mashed)
1/2 banana sliced
1 tablespoon peanut butter
1/2 tablespoon brown sugar (optional depending on how sweet the banana is)
1 serving oatmeal1 tablespoon peanuts for garnish

(Well since i'm at work you can't see the wonderful pic)

Sowing seeds...

It's kinda funny, in a sad kinda way that my blog is kinda sappy, perhaps it should be called e-motions instead of e-griot. I'm really not that sad a person, actually I smile a lot and have a fun quirky side, you should see for yourself. Anywho, last night at the gym, one of my friends we call "Pastor Rick" came up to me and a friend, saying that we needn't stay away from the gym as long as we did, we needed to keep health at the forefront of our lives with the other things that are important. Just as soon as my friend fixed her lips to start giving excuses as to why she had been absent, he told us about moving while you're going through, in other words not letting your entire life revolve around your woes. He also gave us a word about sowing into the areas in life one is most desperate in. He said that he gave away his last $40 when he needed money, when he feels lonely he calls someone else to let them know they were on his mind, when his wife wrecked his car, he got hers fixed> I know this seems like the opposite of what you should do, those things actually gave way to the things he'd lacked. He now has abundance in wealth, people in his life, and has a new car etc...Well I've got to go but i'll leave you with my thought for the day.

"When people can walk away from you let them walk. Your destiny is never tied to anybody that left. The Bible said that, they came out from us that it might be made manifest that they were not for us. For had they been of us, no doubt they would have continued with us. (1 John 2:19) People leave you because they are not joined to you and if they are not joined to you, you can't make them stay." -TD Jakes

New Years (re-visited)

So were into the hmm…second week of the New Year and my life hasn’t changed as drastically as intended. I have a bulleted register of about 15 resolutions for 2008, and now with about 13 of them broken already, all I have to do now is figure out what to do now. See the illusion is that the new year is a new beginning, and it can be but it can also be September 3rd or March 29th. And I’m starting to see now that change is usually ignited not planned the week before it happens. Change for me is ignited by some triumph or disaster into a flaming ball of “must-do, can-do, will-do”. I’ve waited all year to change my life, I’ve waited till the top of the week to start my new diet, new budget or whatever else was going wrong at the time. Last year, the spark that ignited the flame came on the fourth of July ironically, independence day. Towards the latter part of the year, I lost momentum, and my progress declined and then came to a sudden halt. Yesterday I thought myself into oblivion about change…It’s like I think but don’t do because I’m slightly afraid of the vice. An important person once said, “if you’re gonna bring about change do it and be done with it”…Perhaps I should take his advice because after seeing the movie “The Great Debaters” I gawked at the thought of being mediocre. I hate the thought that I could be behind a computer for the rest of my working life and I refuse accept living a mundane life, a life of struggling for paycheck to paycheck, crisis to crisis, a life accepting defeat. I’m sorry, No Sir Ree Bobby…I grew up in subsidized housing, in generational poverty, being immoral, having low self-esteem but that to me is a place where I will never accept being again. So while now I’m far away from that not so distant past, I use that one thing that works to my advantage to stay far away from that island of woe, and that advantage is persistence. Today I’m going to gym, tomorrow, bible study and so the story goes, it is my will to live, live well indeed