Wednesday Weigh-In 20090311

Still haven't had a Girl Scout cookie or a sip of coffee!

When I cut out caffeine completely, I'm not very hungry. But even a cup of green tea in the morning can make me start foraging in my belongings for a protein bar at about 10:30am.

I skipped my usual Monday evening workout for a good reason -- we went to adopt another cat!

Waist = 37.25"
Height = 5' 9"

References:

1. Wikipedia BMI page
2. Tanita Scale with Body Fat monitor
3. Javascript must be enabled to view the data.

Recommended Reading From "The Renaissance Soul..."

It's time to return this book to the library: "The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One," by Margaret Lobenstine. But first I'd like to share some content with you:

Strategies for maintaining momentum:

• "When frustrated and tempted to give up, think what you'd say to a young child in such a situation."
• Use laughter to relieve tension.
• "If a key call makes you too nervous, pretend you're someone else making the call."
• Use music to either calm or energize yourself.
• "Think of someone who'd expect you to give up and prove that person wrong."
• "Create order in some small part of the area in which you are going to be tackling something difficult."
• "If you work best under pressure, have a movie or other event that begins at a specific time as your 'reward deadline.'"
• "If ... [you postpone working on a project because] ... you are afraid ... [to make a mistake], remind yourself that the Amish deliberately put a mistake in every quilt to honor the fact that no human is perfect."

On time management:

"Richard Leider and David Shapiro enchanted me with a twist on the popular hourglass analogy in their book Repacking Your Bags. Why, they ask, do we always picture ourselves living in the top half of the hourglass, where time is always running out? Instead, why don't we imagine ourselves in the bottom of the hourglass? There, every minute is followed by another minute that comes pouring in. Every hour is followed by another hour, and every day is just the first of many days to come.... With a bottom-of-the-hourglass perspective ... each event unfolds. We don't have to worry about time being 'spent' or 'lost.'"

Recommended Reading:

Album Cover Meme

I stole this from Petra, the extremely talented and witty author of The Wise (*Young*) Mommy. Here are the instructions:

1. Go to Wikipedia. Hit "random." The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to Random Quotations. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to Flickr and click on "explore the last seven days." The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use Photoshop or a similar program (such as the free, open source GIMP) to put it all together.

Here's mine¹:



See how Petra's turned out here.

¹ Credits: Image by anthonyko. Quote by Bobcat Goldthwaite. Wikipedia page available at Andreas Paolo Perger. It's interesting because Perger is actually a musician.

Grammar Advice for Bloggers

Don't use no double negatives.
Make each pronoun agree with their antecedent.
When dangling, watch your participles.
Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
About those sentence fragments.
Try to not ever split infinitives.
It is important to use apostrophe's correctly.
Always read what you have written to see you any words out.
Correct spelling is esential.

-- Harold Evans

Wednesday Weigh-In 20090304

Number of boxes of Girl Scout cookies in the house since Saturday:
57

Number of Girl Scout cookies I devoured in a frenzy of sugar deprived mania:
0, actually.

Really.

And I partook of no coffee since before February 25.

Waist = 37.5"
Height = 5' 9"

References:

1. Wikipedia BMI page
2. Tanita Scale with Body Fat monitor
3. Javascript must be enabled to view the data.

Breathing Room

On her Square Peg Reflections blog, Karen Caterson asks us where we could use a little breathing room...

I'd like to invite YOU to wonder something with me. Where could you use a little breathing room - a little psychic space? What could YOU wonder about that would offer you choices? It doesn't have to be big. My "wonder" is pretty small - just giving myself room to maybe skip a weekend of blog posts.

Where indeed, as in where do I begin?

The most obvious change that would give me space is not having to work for a living.  Some days I can barely manage to get myself to work, let alone deal with all its problems for 8 hours once I get there.  I don't think I need to elaborate on this one.

Severing Commitments would give me space, space in which I'd make new commitments, mostly.  I'm not referring to the type of commitments that involve family responsibility.  But my interests in some clubs and organizations that I belong to are wearing thin.

The volunteer work I do for a professional society can be overwhelming.  Running the meetings, writing newsletters, updating the website, recruiting volunteers, responding to members -- if you thought this was leading to a grammatically correct sentence, you're mistaken¹.  I long to see others take charge so I can lighten my schedule a bit.

Another big change -- I like to imagine myself quitting the Church choir, along with skipping Church on Sundays.  I get a taste of this every summer.  We don't sing in the summer, so I trade the Church experience for sleeping late on Sundays.  I stay in bed until 9:00am!  That frees up much more than superficial space.  Karen writes about psychic space, and skipping Church would deliver a lot of it.  Image the ensuing decluttering session:

• monotheism -- clear it out.
• patriarchism -- it's old, toss it.
• ascension to heaven or eternal damnation -- free to a good home!!
• everything happens for a reason -- quaint but useless.
• sins -- what was I thinking when I got that?!
  

What might occupy that space instead?

Now it's your turn!

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¹I did spell check it for you, though.

The Real Danger

Sandra Herold considered her pet chimpanzee Travis to be her son.  But on February 16, Travis brutally attacked Sandra's best friend and business partner Charla Nash.

According to an article in The Hartford Courant¹, "The U.S. House of Representatives last week approved legislation that would ban private ownership of primates as pets."

That same article observed, "Unopened boxes and bags of Travis' treats — Butterfingers, Fig Newtons, marshmallow Peeps and coffee cakes — are piled on the floor and counters."

Which makes me wonder whether Congress should've instead banned the private ownership of Butterfingers, Fig Newtons, marshmallow Peeps and coffee cakes as pet food snacks.

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¹"Travis The Chimp's 'Mom' Tells Their [sic] Story," by Alaine Griffin of The Hartford Courant