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By Katie Kish, November 6, 2011 10:28 pm

This is really the only recent picture I have of me that is full body - I tend to avoid them.

Last night I weighed myself and I am officially the heaviest I have ever been (again). I have no one to blame but myself… I spent the majority of the summer working midnights at an inbound Ontario-only call center (so we got like… 3 – 5 calls a night). There were a lot of McDonalds and pizza nights, so I ended up gaining back all the weight that I lost last year. My guess is that I weighed more before we took our trip to Italy since I came back a pant size smaller.

So, I am back on Weight Watchers and this time it’s the real deal. I’ve never been a “fat pride” girl, but I’ve always been pretty content being plus sized. I’ve never really felt the urge to be a size 4/6 or been (too) jealous of those who are. I like my curves a lot, actually. However, I want to be curvy… not lumpy. And more importantly – I want to be healthy. I am really sick of feeling heavy, and constantly scared that I’m going to die young of a heart attack or something… that’s not something a 24 year old should be thinking about! So for the sake of my love for John, our future kids and my desire to see the world for as long as possible … I need to do this properly this time.

The new WW is fantastic… you get more points overall (I don’t even use my points up in a day…) and all fruit/veggies are 0 points – which is amazing… because I love fruit. But it means that things like bread and chocolate have gone up quite a bit. But so far it seems to be working. I’ve traded in my evening munchies for grapes and light popcorn instead of …pizza, wings, candy, chocolate, peanut butter sandwiches.. etc etc etc.

I plan on doing the full on before and after shots, with updates with pictures every three months or so. My goal is to lose 100 lbs over the next year – 2 years… (my more immediate goal is to lose around 50 – 60 lbs before I go to China at the end of next May) I’m taking it slow and not pushing myself since we all know that’s how you become successful. This will really be about making better habits and life decisions to live better for the rest of my life.

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By Katie Kish, January 28, 2010 10:57 am

I mentioned a while ago that I started dieting pretty hardcore. …Cutting my calories by like 65% and biking everyday. It went really well for the first month (-9 lbs!) but December was a bit of a hard one (-4 lbs …) and January isn’t looking so good (I haven’t weighed in yet). It’s hard to get in shape in the Winter, so I’m looking forward to the summer. But I’m still eating pretty good (no chips or candy or crap) and I get on the bike once in a while…

I guess the most exciting update is that I’ve lost 19 lbs! Almost my first 20 lbs! …So I’m only 51 lbs away from my weight loss goal and I have 9 months to do it. That shouldn’t be too hard.

It’s really starting to show and I’m really starting to feel the difference. My old pants fit again, my bras are gigantic on me, and my shirts are getting baggy. So, success is still here! And it really feels great. I can’t wait for summer…

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By Katie Kish, June 28, 2009 6:28 pm

I missed the Center for Inquiry Leadership Conference this year… My sister was in town and it was pride weekend. But…I did not actually end up going to a lot of pride this year, just a bit. Friday night my sister, a few of her friends, John, Allen and me all went to Fly. It was packed, hot and sweaty. We wouldn’t have gotten in (HUGE line) but by dumb luck we ended up asking the right person directions on how to get there ending up in the VIP line. Inside there were super buff half naked gay men all over – which I would usually love. However it was so freaking busy you literally couldn’t, breath in most areas, go pee without someone watching or move an inch on the dance floor without getting elbowed all over your body. It was like a Streetlight Manifesto concert, only with more sequence. We mostly stayed in the basement and danced the night away to BritBrit and Gaga then made a visit to McDonalds – an inevitable event when with the two Kish sisters.

I skipped out on the pride festivities on Saturday night and saw a movie – but today I went to the Center for Inquiry to meet up with Emily and a few others to join in on the big event – the gay pride parade. I didn’t actually make it through to the parade (I started feeling *really* sick…mono?…ugh), but I did stand around waiting in the parade line for it to start for over an hour. During that hour I saw what anyone would expect to see… Transvestites that looked like a Fruit of the Loom commercial, a naked rendition of Elvis, at least 8 Michael Jacksons and a few naked 60+ year old men with cock rings of various colors and shapes.

Since I was feeling sick I wasn’t really all up in the whole screaming and dancing and smiling thing, so instead I just stood, watched and observed. My observations can be summed up in these four points:

1. Some people are damned hypocritical. We were all wearing t-shirts that said “Atheist Pride” with a big rainbow flag behind the words. In addition we had a big banner that said “Atheist Pride”…banner:

Thanks to Roy for doing the banner, despite the fact it sort of looks like their doing a “Heil Hitler”…………

Anywho…We ended up getting put between Kijiji and some homosexual version of alcoholics anonymous (who, for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to as “the gay sober guys” despite the amount of nicotine and caffeine they were all sucking back). The gay sober guys saw our shirts and automatically started to laugh. Soon after they finished laughing their gay and sober leader announced that they had a new chant… “We don’t need a whiskey sour, because we’ve got a higher power!” and then laughed and laughed and laughed. This became their new favorite chant to scream out. Every time someone new joined their group to do the parade, we would see them get a whisper in the ear, us get a pointed finger and then BAM the whiskey sour chant. So, there we were… Atheists coming out to support and be apart of the pride festivities. We were there to show our appreciation for the emancipation of the homosexual lifestyle and these gay sober guys decide it would be fun to mock and make fun of us. It’s interesting how quickly people forget how crappy it feels to be made fun of and feel like the odd man out. Preeeeetty lame, gay sober guys, preeeeetty lame.

2. It is one big. freckin’. party. When the pride festivities began they were part of an overall attempt at activism and acceptance for the gay community. Now that the gay community is accepted (in Toronto) – it’s just one big party. I’m not really all up in that. Pride would be better if it were not totally devoid of any sort of intellectual stimuli or activity. There could be education seminars on HIV/AIDs, same sex unions, safe sex talks, lectures on different gay issues around the world… any number of things. But instead it has become an excuse to drink from Friday at 5 pm until Monday at 3 am while being naked, loud or sparkly (or any combination of the three). It’s really great to celebrate the fact that they’ve been liberalized, but there could be activities that didn’t involve Jack Daniel and meeting everyone’s Prince Albert.

3. It perpetuates a lot of stereotypes. I’m not gay, but I have a lot of gay friends. At least 3 of these friends do not attend pride. They want nothing to do with pride. And more than anything they get fuming mad when their lifestyle is associated with what happens at pride. On top of this I know countless numbers of people who only have the view of gay people as they are seen on Church and Wellesley on the last weekend of June. This is not a good thing. Gay men and women are not all sparkly, partying, crazy, naked, inebriated people. I really think this ties in with my last point. The gay community is given this stereotype by a lot of people as being super fun – but if there were other activities it might tone down this stereotype (might, but probably not). I don’t know how to fix it. I just know that it is a problem that my uncle thinks my best friend is irresponsible, promiscuous and immature because of what he has seen at pride.

4. Holy commercialization batman. Toronto makes SO MUCH MONEY from pride. …And after buying a spot in the parade line, I now know why. It costs hundreds of dollars for corporate companies to even just walk in the parade. It costs thousands to get a float. To get a really BIG logo in the parade (without getting kicked out of it) it’s more thousands of dollars. The bars get crowded, cramped and stay open later than they are supposed to, pulling in more money. There are street vendors, sold out hotels, packed restaurants… even H&M was sold out of all male, size small, t-shirts. When we asked about the issue the sales associates answer was “We always sell out of smalls during pride”. Money Money Money. No wonder Toronto plays their pride up so much. It’s one of the biggest simulators of the economy here – and really… it takes so little effort to put on. Bizarre.

Anyway – it was fun. Everyone had fun. I wasn’t there for long, but for the time I was there it was fun. Next year we’ll keep a few things in mind:

- bring the “There’s probably no God” banner so people will recognize us
- bring WAY more people and advertise a lot more
- remind Transnational NOT to hold the Student Leadership Conference on the same weekend!!!!
- bring candy and condoms to hand out
- wear more sparkly clothes
- music.music.music

It was a good learning experience, and thanks to Em for putting it all on. Happy Pride!

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By Katie Kish, March 30, 2009 2:19 am

I came across this…somewhere…A thing in Elle magazine letting you all the great things you can spend your money on.

Included

• sunglasses
• bracelets
• dresses
• umbrellas
• shoes
• earrings

All ranging from $1 to $25…I would like to direct you to another site. I would like to suggest that you go to this site instead…for $25 or under you can get for a family:

• Gift of peace
• seeds for a garden
• a chicken
• radio
• mosquito nets
• oxfam bucket
• hygiene kit
• safe water
• more seeds
• household emergency kit

Just before writing this post I nearly spend over $120 on getting my lip re-pierced. I decided to buy a few mosquito nets instead. ….My face and a few children will thank me for it.

*completely unrelated bits*

john and I decided to go to the World Conference. Then we decided not to. Then we decided to again…but now we’ve decided not to opting instead in favor of my mom’s scrumptious easter dindin.

I has also decided to run for FAC president, then I decided not to…then joe convinced me to run again…but then I convinced myself otherwise opting instead in favor of joining OXFAM or something similar next year. I’m done with secularists.

Finally:

This website REALLY bothers me……………”Read less Know more”

Why why why have we become this despicable generation of immediacy! We want things fast, entertaining and sexy or we don’t want them at all. That really bothers me…quite a bit. So I’ve decided to start reading at least a book a week, hopefully 2 or 3…in order to just slow down…and enjoy things. Because you can’t really get a book immediately. You have to read it, and that takes time. I’m also going to keep knitting. …Maybe other people will see me knitting and decide it might be a fun thing… you never know.

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By Katie Kish, December 12, 2007 2:40 am

I’m 20 and I live on the far end of town… so I take a taxi quite often. Sometimes I just don’t feel like waiting for the bus after work, but more often I’m out too late and the buses have already stopped running. I recently realized that some of the most interesting things have happened to me in cabs. Whether is be cute life lessons, or really strange happenings… I just love taxi drives. I just thought I’d quickly share some of the interesting taxi stories that I have built up in my little head:

Tonight I hopped into a cab to go downtown to meet some of the guys from work for a beer or three. I get in and tell him that I would like to go to the Jimmy Jazz and he says alright. After a few seconds of silence he goes “Strawberries?” … confused I say “Excuse me?” … “You smell like strawberries…” … “Oh, well its not actually strawberry perfume” … “You’re right, it’s more like Pez.” he says to me, as if that makes anything less weird. On the not of Pez he continues… “have you ever watched people on the bus? They look like pez dispensers. When the bus driver hits the breaks, they all tilt their heads back at the same time, and no one even realizes that they look like a child’s candy dispenser. Next time you’re on the bus, you should look”… “……….uh, yeah. I’ll do that.”

After the Jimmy Jazz I call another cab. This driver seems to be pretty normal. I get in and we drive for a bit… but then, OH but then… I Hate That I Love You by Ne-Yo and Rhianna came on the radio. And apparently this 50 year old East Indian man likes the song, because he cranked that shit and sang every single word. Even the parts where Rhianna goes super high and does the wavy voice thing. He totally belted it out. Weirder than that was after the song had finished… he just turned the radio off and kept driving without saying a single word. …We both just sat there. In total silence.

I was at my friend Ellen’s house after a wicked night of downtowning… (her house is like a 6 minute walk from downtown, so when bars close, we go there…) and it was getting late so I called my cab. It was going alright, but then when we were about to go past the main roads he locked all the doors… “I just wanted to lock you in.” … “uh, why?” … “well because drunk people are going to try and jump at you and get into the door. And if they get it open they are going to pull you out and probably punch you in the face.” … “oh. okay.” Then he told me about 8 stories from when that actually happened.

Often i get into the car and they ask me where I work. This has led to many conversations – one time I ended up selling a guy a Rebel XTi, he came into Future Shop the next day and got it. Another time I got a lesson on managers and how to use human resources to our advantage, and how we absolutely should be going to HR with our issues. Another lady told me to appreciate people at work who looked out for me, and gave me a big long lecture on “team work”… it was cute. But annoying.

I think this one is my absolute favorite… The nicest old woman ever gave me a drive from work to home. We talked about how important loving our jobs is and if we don’t that we should quit… and a little other small chit chat sort of things. When she pulled on to my road she said “You know, when I moved to Guelph, I used to live on this road. I lived in that house there.” She pointed to a house on a corner surrounded by huge pine trees, an apartment building and another house and sporting a relatively small back yard. “But back then, those trees were about 3 feet tall and my back yard was an apple orchard.”