Tomorrow is April 1st. I'm warning you ahead of time. Do not believe stories of amazing new inventions, newly discovered animals and anything from the British Press. Amy Winehouse is probably not really joining a convent and Brangelina didn't cancel the wedding because Brad's has gone crawling back to Jennifer Aniston. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Bring a spare scissors to work, just in case your officemates decided to bubble wrap, shrink wrap, aluminum foil or build a little house around your desk. Here's a primer on retaining your dignity tomorrow, and if you're still confused about whether or not you're being fooled, you can always consult this website, which sheds light on the situation.

April Fool's has gotten kind of a mean slant in the recent century, but it doesn't have to be that way. You can just use it as a reminder to laugh a lot. Here are five totally fun ways to celebrate April Fool's Day tomorrow:

aries (Mar. 21st-Apr. 20th)
"You never get a second chance to make a first impression." What a great proverb. Too bad it's from a dandruff commercial. And you know anything having to do with advertising is usually just a big fat lie. So don't be too quick to dis every flaky-scalped hottie who looks over their snow-covered shoulder at you this week--they'll probably turn out to be a Pulitzer Prize winner or, at the very least, a Prada model.

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image via cookography.com

One of the saddest things in the world (and I am talking about those smaller, lower level kinds of things that are daily Life Nuisances, here, that are so annoying without which we'd have time to cure cancer and come up with a workable solution for World Peace that preferably involves red jellybeans) is a Monday after a really excellent weekend. Mondays are usually difficult, but you'd think the memory of a good weekend would sustain you. Instead it taunts you, ow.

How to make things better? Add back one of the things you miss most about a so-nice weekend--the leisurely, delicious breakfast. Cookography has an easy to prepare, shove into the oven baked eggs recipe, stuffed with bacon, cheese, tomatoes and delightfulness that can be whipped up fast and baking in the oven while you're bathing, getting dressed, and dicking around on the Internet because you don't want to get out of your pajamas. Knowing you could have a little ramekin full of love piping hot and ready to sustain you through a long and difficult weekday might even keep you from hitting the snooze button for an hour and a half. Probably not, though. But it'll help the morning suck less.

One thing that The Biggest Loser really tries to highlight is that the choices we make have consequences. The choice between an Egg McMuffin or a Sausage Egg & Cheese McGriddle means that we've got an extra 200-500 calories sitting in our gullet, but if we'd only have picked their sponsor's oatmeal, then we'd save even more calories, and be just as happy about it. Hey, I can't fault that, as I'm very pro-oatmeal and am all about incorporating easy swaps in my life, but yeah, enough with the commercial fakeouts, okay?

Then there's the choice to work out or the choice to sit on one's butt and apparently fail drastically at weigh-in (which, on this particular show, means that you ONLY lost 4 pounds in a single week as opposed to 6 or 9 pounds), but let's face it, the only people making that choice are the people sitting on the couch watching The Biggest Loser.

And there's that rascally choice we make to be born with male genitals or female ones...whoops, we don't make that choice, but on this show, you're kind of screwed as a girl. Guys can eat like crap and lose weight faster! And on the show, all the boys will pick on you and take every opportunity to target you in challenges, even when it's pretty obvious that they are shooting themselves in the foot in the process.

How did this happen? That it is practically April, and snow is falling from the sky. I recall signing up for winter--I said yes, I am aware that winter happens, and that it will happen to me, and around me and near me, when I move to a state that has got winter. I am not exempt from winter, and I will live in the winter, and hopefully I will not die in the winter, and will in fact, live to see spring, for which I also signed up.

As far as I can recall, the first day of spring was March 20. And I know, March 20 is kind of early, still in the year. March is a cold month, a winter-sounding month, a month with weather still in it--the kind of weather that has, in fact, worn out its welcome. But by the end of March, when it should be slinking off, ashamed that it has been such a crappy guest, it should be trying very hard to make amends, to play nice, to say hey, I know I kind of sucked, but I hope you can forgive me with this, a run of warm and sunny days that make the sap run and your heart pound and your clothes come off, because it is the season of growing! And doing it.

You have to check out this video from the folks behind Wallace and Grommet. They used the audio from interviews of folks around the country to make clay-animated creatures chat about their physical appearance in what turns out to be a striking comment about self image and physical appearance. Okay, it's funny ha-ha too.
 

Are you one of the unlucky ones who live in a terrible nightmare land where Winter is standing steady and firm, with one foot on the throat of Spring and one hand flipping you off? Are you bitter? Are you angry? Do you wish you could kick Winter in the nards? More importantly, do you wish you were warm? I bitterly and angrily wish I were warm, please.

The idea of these beautiful little art scarves by Alyson Fox? They warm my heart. They would also warm my neck so beautifully! If you live somewhere where weather is more crazy than malevolent (San Francisco, I look directly and meaningfully at you) and you like to be funky and fashionable, these, too, are for you. If you live in weather of hate, these will also come in handy (oh please soon) when you are complaining bitterly about how cold the air conditioning is but are secretly delighted. And looking pretty cute.

Back to our one year retrospective, let's look at the major milestones in our second six months on the Internet:

In September, Anne's photo project grew by leaps and bounds and we found out that you're all super hot. Sarah showed us how easy it is to make red lentil soup, talked about her personal best and took us to the roller derby. The gorgeous and fantastic Diet Girl did a guest post on how she became Not-On-A-Diet Girl. Anne took Pilates, swam laps, wrote lists, got a tattoo, went to a wedding and posed for an awesome bathing suit picture. Weetabix talked about her childhood bike, dealing with her friend's mom, dealt with the mental process of writing for Elastic Waist and the loaded question "Does this make me look fat?" She also talked to Victoria Moran and made some grilled cheese. And we learned that a lot of us have artificial sweetener monkeys on our backs.

In October, the first episode of The Daily Special introduced us to Kim and Comment Boy while Sarah talked about tomatoes. Anne curled under an electric blanket, cleaned out her closet, discovered gravity, and had a craving for fish sticks and mentioned that she was starting to feel like maybe moving away from San Francisco. Weetabix had a sordid relationship with jeans, sprinted up eight flights of stairs and didn't die, explained why fat girls are not always not easy and how sometimes, sex isn't easy either. Weetabix also fell asleep, raved about golden supreme apples, ranted about The Biggest Loser, and had a huge girl crush on Anne Burrell. At Halloween, we looked at how monsters relate to body image while Anne talked about how fun it is to be someone else for a night and Sarah gave us her Halloween picks. And you all raced to be the 1,000th commenter. Go you!

In November, we gave Lori her own very own lifecoach guru. Anne got mugged, thanked you, got a massage, marked her body weight halflife and announced that she was moving to Utah. Victoria postulated why women diet all the time and you don't call it a diet but you do watch what you eat, while Kim smashed chocolate cake all over her face. And Weetabix talked about restaurant portions, noticed that something very creepy was happening to Barbie, told a story about school lunches and started the Self One Month Makeover.

The most painful part of the writer's strike was the lack of fresh episodes of The Office. On Thursday, April 3, the gang is back! Since we can't give anyone a yogurt cap in gratitude, we're totally hitting you up with the secondary characters in this week's MFK. Which of these guys is going to take you to Sandals Resort for a wild, clothing optional weekend? Which one is going to go the way of Ed Helm and get beheaded? Which one will never ask you to hyphenate your name, a la Jan Levinson-Gould? And no, giving you Michael, Dwight or Jim is just too easy. Darryl too, because we already know that everyone would do him. No, you get to tough out these choices.

• Toby
• Creed
• Kevin

The comments are eagerly anticipating the awarding of the Busiest Beaver Dundy.

Confessions of a Carb Queen--It's a small book, oddly shaped, and I expected it to be a quick read, but it went by even more quickly than I expected--all of it gone over the course of a few hours in an afternoon. I'm reluctant to say I binged on the book, the way the author binged in her life, bringing her up to her highest weight, but I'm not making a rude joke--that's how it felt. That same unpleasant, unhappy feeling of being unable to stop doing something you really don't want to do.

The first half is a wildly confessional, lavishly described festival of gorging on fast foods, one drive-through after the other, smothered with self-hate and loving descriptions of just how disgustingly fat and ugly she was at her highest weights. It felt uncomfortable, sitting there and reading these outsized, exaggerated accounts of eating. And it felt uncomfortable, being enveloped in so much self-loathing.