Does Blood Loss Count as Weight Loss?

So I had an awesome picture of when I donated blood and all the iodine on my arm turned green for some as-yet inexplicable reason. But somehow in the process of saving it, it turned into a text file. That cannot be opened. Neato.

Anyway, a recap:

1. Last weekend was the Indian Wedding!! (When I find that dumb thing that I've been promising to find for days and days, I will use it to upload pictures from my camera to the computer. Here's some highlights:
a. Sangeet: traditionally a party where women celebrate with the bride, men have been coming to the Sangeet since about the 1950s. Most of the activities are still geared toward women, however. Because I was one of the tallest (best moment ever) women there, I helped bring Marinda (the bride) in under a canopy. I am not a huge fan of the way my bod looks in this picture, but that's okay, because:

b. Escorting the groom to the bride's "house"--traditionally marriages in India took place at the Bride's home--the family and friends of the groom would escort him there on a white horse or elephant, etc. Because there were a jillion guests and the bride lived in California, the wedding instead took place at a banquet center on a golf course--but the wedding party still went through the tradition of delivering the groom. It took a really long time for us to get from the parking lot to the banquet center--not because of distance, but just because we were all sort of unclear on what was happening, what our route was, etc. Finally the carriage just started plowing through the crowd and that got us moving--having horse drool on your saree is just not....neat.

all of us danced to celebrate. and danced. and danced. and danced. and got no closer to the banquet hall.

...so the horse had to come straighten us out--notice how ruthless the driver looks. If you look closely, you'll see that Amit (the groom) is holding a little baby. The baby's daddy is standing protectively to the right of the carriage. In Indian weddings, typically the youngest male member of the groom's family trides with the groom. Since, in this case, that would be weird, since the youngest male member of the groom's family other than the groom is the groom's older brother, they fudged and used Marinda's 3 month old nephew instead. Much cuter.

c. The wedding itself: was amazing. It lasted about a hour, and we loaded up on snacks and drinks beforehand. It was very ornate and deserves a blog post all to itself, but at least here's a picture of the most amazing part--the altar.

the wedding ceremony takes place in sanskrit. The dark-haired man to the far left who is just barely in the picture, translated for us. Marinda is on the altar at this point. You can't really see it, but she has a thick nose-ring connected to her veil. Amit is standing next to Marinda (though he's hidden by a pillar) and on either side of the happy couple are their respective parents. At this point, Marinda and Amit were both wearing cream-colored scarves that were bound together to represent their union. At this point, there was a fire lit on the altar, and the bride and groom circled around it four times, stopping before each time around to throw some puffed rice into the fire. Given the size of the altar, the heavy and abundant clothing the bride and groom were wearing, and the need to keep leaning over the fire to throw things in, I was constantly on the edge of my seat in the fear that one or the other of them was going to catch on fire. But they didn't, and at the end they exchanged heavy flower leis as a symbol of their married status.

2. Biggest Loser (neighborhood version) has started!! I'm super nervous about the first weigh-in, but I've been trying to exercise and eat right. I bulked up a bit for this--okay, I gained one pound--because I didn't want to lose when there wasn't anything on the line. The winner gets a cash prize contributed by each competitor as a fee for joining. I was stressed out, because I wondered if my "easy-does-it" slow weight loss would be okay, but having seen the results from last "cycle" it looks like the slow and steady people are the ones who win in the end. So I've recommitted to losing weight (but, oh! is it hard as school is starting, the days are getting shorter, etc. !!)

3. I owe the entire planet an apology because I drove so much this week. I drove down to school on Tuesday (2.5 hours), back home Tuesday evening because I forgot something that I needed for my friend to go to the football game this week (2.5 hours), back to school Wednesday morning (2.5 hours) and back home Wednesday night (2.5 hours). For members of our home audience who are keeping score, that's 10 hours in 2 days!! This almost goes without saying, but I slept a LOT yesterday.

4. Ooh!! and we got a new couch!! It is awesome!! Well, right now it's actually blocking our front door--which is not quite as awesome, but soon it will be set up and then it will be totally awesome. But we still have a couch problem, which is that Greta keeps crawling under our old couch, getting stuck because she's twice as tall as she was when she was a baby and could just run under there, and crying until she gets help. SHE NEVER LEARNS HER LESSON FROM THIS, and literally goes under the couch four or five times a day. We've stopped rescuing her, and now she is able to barely squeeze out on her own--it kind of reminds me of when I try to squeeze into my skinny clothes. This must be what it's like to have a kid who cuts himself.