Wednesday Weigh-In 20111130

The traditional Thanksgiving dinner didn't seem to cause me any weight gain even though I had three platefuls of food plus two slices of pie. My stomach was extremely distended and painful for nearly an hour, though.

Waist = 36.5"
Height = 5' 9"

References:

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

Cat Number Four

My Mother-in-Law had been feeding the cats in her backyard for several months. One of her customers took residence under her porch and produced two kittens. The little Tom was killed when he tried the cross the busy road. So my mother-in-law allowed the little Queen to live inside her enclosed porch. But the porch is unheated, and she couldn't keep the kitten in the main part of the house. So she implored her daughter and granddaughter to adopt her.

My wife drove the cat home three weeks ago. By now we have an established procedure for adopting a new cat. (You can't just let loose a new cat into a home with an established cat population. The existing cat will threaten and possibly attack the newcomer.) We placed the new cat in the laundry room with her own food and water bowls and litterbox. It's not a large area, but it turned out to have a few great spots for hiding. My wife repeatedly asked me to "find" the cat because she (my wife) worried that the cat disappeared. So twice I dragged the cat from remote corners of the laundry room.

Then my wife decided to let the cat into a more comfortable area -- the carpeted part of the basement. Overnight, the cat again "disappeared," but there was a clue as to where she went -- the broken overhead light diffuser indicated that she had gotten into the drop ceiling where she spent the entire next day.

When I got home that night, both my wife and daughter were peering into the drop ceiling trying to locate the cat. They finally lured it out into an open area of the ceiling, so that I was able to remove tiles one-by-one to try to catch it. Eventually the only remaining tile was the one she was sitting on, but she managed to scoot away. At least my daughter saw the direction that the cat took off in, and I located the hiding spot. Finally, I grabbed the cat and dragged it from its spot.

I was very impressed by the cat's good behavior. No, not the shyness and aversion to us moving, living, breathing animals. But it tolerated all my somewhat manly handling without much protest, even though it was clearly terrified.

The cat is now upstairs with us in the Master bedroom and hides under the bed or in the closet. But it does sleep on a small afghan on the floor when we're not around and even cavorts playfully after we go to bed. She will not go on the bed unless my wife picks her up and places her there. Then she will stay for as long as she's being petted or brushed, and then toddles off to her hiding spot.

I don't like to use the flash when photographing cats, but I did in this case. Here she is, peering out at me from under the bed, more fur than flesh:

Thank You

I have so much to be thankful for. But on this Thanksgiving Day, I want to devote this post to the eight individuals who have signed up to be followers of this blog.

Thank you Kim, JeannetteLS, Jacqueline Hough, Peppermint Twist, shard, Amy Rae, Tirsden Frozenrayn, Tonya0504.

And thank you to all other readers and commenters (or commentators, for all of you fans of English).

Blessings and Joy to you!

Wednesday Weigh-In 20111123

I'm giving my diet a lot of slack because last week I weighed less than my minimum target weight range. I just have to make sure I don't rebound too much!

I should be fine tomorrow if I stick with just turkey and vegetables and stay away from the carbs and gravy. I will allow myself a piece of pecan pie.

Waist = 37"
Height = 5' 9"

References:

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

Wednesday Weigh-In 20111115

It occurred to me this Tuesday morning to do the weigh-in today, rather than wait for tomorrow and possibly forget.

I'm trying to catch up on sleep -- the one hour switch from Daylight Savings Time to Eastern Standard Time tends to mess my sleep schedule up. Last week I was staying up the extra hour later. But then I'd get a "second wind" and stay up a few hours later. This week I'm ignoring the time and going to bed when I need to.

Waist = 36.5"
Height = 5' 9"

References:

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

Wednesday Weigh-In 20111109

There was no weigh-in last week due to the power outage. So I have created a bogus weigh-in with values that are interpolated from this week and two weeks ago.

It's not that I need electricity to do the weigh-in. Rather, I had other things on my mind. And I didn't feel like stripping down to my tighie-whities to take the measurements. I always weight myself either nude or wearing only briefs to get a consistent reading. Even the fat reading requires bare feet. Standing on cold metal contacts with bare feet in an unheated house is not my idea of fun.

But now things are back to what we refer to as "normal."

Waist = 37.0"
Height = 5' 9"

References:

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

More Power Outage Ruminations

I had been working outside when the power was restored. I heard a neighbor's generator shut off. Immediately I looked at my house and noticed that the lights were on. I dropped my bow saw and ran up the hill to the house, pulling off my work gloves as I ran.

My first priority was to plug in the well pump motor and then set the circuit breaker for the furnace. But when I got down into the basement, it was so much darker than the outdoors. I couldn't see where the pump's plug was. I turned on my small key-chain flashlight to help me locate the plug and outlet.

Then I opened the breaker panel door, located the furnace breaker and switched it on. I was disappointed that I did not hear the circulating pumps start up. The power was out for so long that the furnace clock reset to midnight, which is programed as a setback period of no heat and hot water. So I would have to open the manual to figure out how to set the time on that furnace.

It wasn't until then that I realized that I didn't need the silly flashlight. I could just turn on the darn light in that room! I had actually forgotten that I could flip a switch to get light! I set the clock on the furnace computer and felt relief that it fired up.

Next I flushed the two toilets. We were running low on water in the bath tub, so it was hard to get enough water in the bucket to do a proper job of flushing. The water in them was dingy, but at least we kept the solid waste down the drain.

Then I went into the kitchen to call my wife (she was on a bus trip to NYC) and then her mother to let them know that we got our power back. Fortunately, my mother-in-law's power was already restored, so she didn't have to make the trip over to our dirty house to shower and warm up.

I spent the next twenty minutes loading the dishwasher, cleaning the sink and cleaning the floor around the pet food dishes. We had put off all this cleaning in order to conserve water. Besides, we had no desire to handle a wet sponge in a cold house for cleaning.

After that, I went back outside to pick up my gloves and bow saw and then cleaned up the remaining loose branches before it got too dark.

I had already thrown out most of the food in the freezer. But there was this one container of bean soup that my wife had put in there just a few days before the outage. I decided to make that my supper, along with some spelt bread toast topped with ghee. I ate in front of the laptop, enjoying the Internet at leisure. I suddenly realized then that I would not be participating in NaBloPoMo this year. (Then again, it's taking place on Blogher. Phooie. I wonder if there's a BlogHim for all us male bloggers? Probably not -- we're too lazy to do something that cool.)

I scooped the cat's litter boxes and eventually took a hot shower after my wife got home.

Ruminations on the Northeast Power Outage

We were without power from 3:52pm on Saturday, 10/29 to 4:15pm Saturday of the next week -- seven full days. The power outage was due to a heavy snowfall that brought many tree limbs down on power lines. The snow collected on deciduous trees whose leaves had still not turned color and fallen. Since the trees were not accustomed to bearing that much weight, they broke. I have never seen such devastation up close in my entire 48 years.

Our home was not damaged. However the fixture atop the lamppost was partly smashed. But worse is that the nice wooded path I blazed many years ago is now blocked by dense tangle of heavy branches.

When we lose electricity, our furnace does not run, so we lose heat and hot water. Of course, we lose lighting, refrigeration and entertainment. Since we have well water, the electric pump would not run, so we also were limited to whatever water had collected in the tank just prior to the outage. We had to limit water use severely. Fortunately, I had prepared by filling the bath tub with water about halfway. This allowed us to fill buckets for flushing the toilets. I also did collect snow melt from a downspout for additional water for flushing. Initially, I hadn't planned to fill the bath tub until just before bedtime. But we lost power for a few minutes prior to the main outage, so I decided to do it earlier as a precaution.

Thank goodness for Chinese restaurants. The place that provided our supper on Sunday was able to cook with propane. We bought the food there and brought it over to the supermarket, which was powered with a generator. We lived like that for most of the remaining days. We were also fortunate that one of our daughter's close friends got power back early and invited us to shower and do laundry, as well as hang out and eat meals there.

This power outage was inevitable. New Englanders are proud and protective of their trees. Roads and power lines were after-thoughts in communities that were founded near Indian footpaths by early settlers. Couple this with a profit hungry power distribution company, and you have countless trees that overhang power lines that run parallel small roads. There are still broken limbs dangling above the restored lines (or lines that haven't been hit yet). Those limbs will come down during a wind storm or the next heavy snow fall.

In Spring, one of our trees broke from gusts of wind. The part that remained stood a few feet from the power lines in front of our house. I called the power company out to have a look at it. I was certain they'd be concerned that it could fall and take down the lines. The representative was tactful in that he himself did not laugh. Instead, he explained that if he were to call in a request to have it removed, they'd laugh at him. "There are a thousand other trees much worse than that one," he said.

But the limbs that fell appeared healthy. And there are dead limbs on our trees that are still intact. So even if the utility had made an effort to remove damaged trees, the power outage would have been just as widespread as it was.

Shadow Shot Sunday Columcille

Yet another photo from the archives. We've been without electric power for the entire week due to a freak October snow storm that caused many tree limbs to fall. Power only just came on today at about 4:15pm.

So this shot comes from a trip we took to PA about four years ago for a family reunion. We made a mini-vacation of it and also visited Columcille.

Wednesday Weigh-In 20111102

This is a simulated weigh-in that's interpolated from 2011-10-26 and 2011-11-09....

Waist = 37.125"
Height = 5' 9"

References:

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