For those keeping track

One month in, I’m down two pounds total. This is less than the pound per week I was aiming at, but given the holiday dessert eating I’ve been doing (more than I should) and the amount of exercise I’ve been getting (much less than I should), its pretty impressive. This next month, I’m going to start fitting in a ten- to fifteen-minute walk after my first hour of writing and before I dive into e-mail and forums and the like. It’s not a big change, but the goal here is consistency, and small steps that add up to big changes over time.

The belated weekend check-in

I just realized I forgot to do my first week check-in on the food and exercise. Boy, this bodes well for the coming year, doesn’t it?

I started out mostly just aiming for the three meals a day, and trying to figure out how much food I needed to eat to not be hungry two hours later but not feel bloated, either. It’s hard when you’re used to grazing.* I did allow myself desserts (leftover birthday cake mostly). I stretched when I thought about it, tried a few yoga positions — and came to the conclusion that I have lost all the core strength I used to have. Not really a surprise, but it gives me somewhere to start.

And the net result of all this effort? Three pounds down. I find it hard to believe such small measures could be so effective, so I’m leaning towards thinking maybe the previous week’s weight was high because of water retention. Either way, though, a positive start.

Of course, I’m thinking of all the holiday baking I’m not doing, too . . .

* The breakfast I’ve found to be most effective so far is 1-1/2 servings of oatmeal, prepared with milk instead of water, with 1 tablespoon crunchy peanut butter and 2 tablespoons Nutella stirred in after cooking. Egg-and-cheese sandwich on a whole wheat bagel is also good, but leaves me hungry about an hour earlier unless I also have a banana and a yogurt.

For the next year

First: if you’re subscribed to the feed, with luck (and guidance from the wonderful folk at TigerTech), it should be working now. Please let me know if it’s not. Now on to the main post:

It’s my birthday, and purple and blue hair to the contrary, I’m not as young as I used to be. (In fact, when I was young, I probably would never have worn such hair, being too afraid of what other people would think.) As we age, our bodies go through lots of changes — and as exciting as it might be to watch my daughter as she works at climbing higher in a tree because she can reach that next branch, or as worrisome as it can be to try to decide whether my son’s upper lip shows signs of darker hair, changes don’t stop when we become adults. We lose flexibility. Muscle tone becomes harder to retain. Weight becomes harder to lose.

This year, I’m trying to do something about that. Continue reading

The latest challenge

No, not NaNoWriMo.

One of the things I’ve learned through living in different areas of the United States is that most communities have things that they do that they simply assume everyone does because that’s the way it is around there. A simple example: I went shopping the other day for a recipe my son wants to cook, and I asked the lady at the seafood store for baby shrimp. She looked like she’d never heard of such a thing, and she asked me what count. When I told her 300 count, she looked at me like I had two heads. Evidently, here, they think shrimp don’t come any smaller than 41-50 per pound.

We ran into other assumptions when we were first looking for a home in Pennsylvania. Our real estate agent believed that all gas furnaces are deathtraps, due to explode within two or three years of installation, so she did her best to steer us away from houses with them. Which, being from the West Coast, we thought was ridiculous because natural gas was everywhere. Here, oil furnaces are more common. And since people here are used to them, no one ever explained to us what sort of maintenance would be necessary. We figured clean the air filters, and we’re good, right? Continue reading

The deep dark turning of the year

No power yet last time we were home. Boy and I flit from place to place, scavenging heat and Wi-Fi. PPL has missed two estimated repair times so far. Schools are still closed, and the boy’s hoping the Governor will waive the 180-day requirement because the first make-up day will be Feb 18, when we head up to Boskone.

Moravian College started classes up again today, and the library is open, so life around the valley is starting to approximate normalcy. I even filled up my gas tank at $3.49/gallon today.

On the downside, my proofreading gig got reassigned because I can’t FTP files back.

This weekend should be good, though — NaNo write-in at the library, boy has a couple of Scout events, and the city parade (which was supposed to be last weekend) is on Sunday. Oh, and I’m posting episodes of this year’s NaNo as I have time and access (only one so far); look for the tab in the header marked NaNoWriMo 2012.

Hope you’re all having a good week and have good plans for the weekend!

Not blown away

We live on the eastern edge of Pennsylvania — far enough inland that we weren’t subject to the devastation that hit New Jersey and New York. We lost power Monday night around 11, and we’re still waiting for it to be restored. Howevr, that’s all that we personally suffered. Continue reading

Memories

Our days, our memories, are what we make of them. Seven years ago today, my dad died. I still read things or see things that I want to share with him, then remember that I can’t. He died before my first short story was published, so he never got to see my name in print. When I first told him as an adult that I was working on a novel — for NaNoWriMo — he was impressed because he said he didn’t have the patience to write something that long. (I don’t have patience either; I have perseverance.) I think he would be proud of what I’ve gotten done so far, and what I’m working on, all the books and stories I have yet to write and release into the wild.

I don’t remember if I was thinking of him two years ago when I launched this blog, but exactly two years to the day, I wrote my first post on this blog, on series characterization. One person commented on that post. I get a few more commenters now.

And to reward those of you who find my thoughts worth reading and commenting on, I’m having a giveaway. The rules are simple: comment on this post to enter. The order you comment in determines your entry number — 1, 2, 3, whatever. (I won’t count my responses, or multiple comments by the same person. One entry per person.) I’ll use random.org to choose a winner. Drawing will be held next Thursday, September 20, at noon Eastern Time.

The winner gets a $25 gift certificate for Amazon or Barnes & Noble, their choice. (Or, you know, Kobo, or whatever, as long as I can purchase it on-line.)

origami bunnies

Origami plot bunnies!

Second-place winner gets a free copy of something I’ve written, their choice. (A coupon code for download at Smashwords in the winner’s preferred format will be provided.)

And third-place winner gets half a dozen colorful origami plot bunnies. Aren’t they adorable? They come in two different styles and a range of colors, and each one has a random plot element hidden inside.

Thank you all for visiting my blog, for making yourselves at home in my little corner of the Web. Good luck!

(By the way, this morning, I discovered that September 13 also marks the anniversary of John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever. Of course, he’s been doing this much longer and has a much, much larger audience. Maybe when I’ve been blogging for fourteen years, I’ll have half the audience he does now. One can hope!)

If it’s Tuesday, this still must be France

Or, I’m still proofreading. You may have noticed I didn’t get my weekly gratitude post up yesterday. That’s because my computer was busy crashing and corrupting files, so I had to do some disk maintenance, run a virus/malware scan (just in case), and repair disk permissions. That didn’t leave a lot of time for things like blogs. Continue reading

Springing around the yard

I already posted pics of my first flowers of the year, I know. Yesterday was such a lovely, sunny spring day, however, (as opposed to the current cool and overcast) that I had to take more pictures to share.

First up, a hellebore — pretty little thing, isn’t it? Well, not little like croci — it’s a couple of inches across the bloom.

Hellebore flower

Hellebore flower and buds; should be really pretty next week when the other buds open.


You might remember that we had a heavy storm at the end of October. Unlike many people, we didn’t wind up with trees split down the middle or huge branches littering our yard. We did have one split up in the tree, but as you can see from the picture below, that branch isn’t dead yet.
Maple in bloom

Maple tree is blooming now. Note the cracked branch, bent downward from the rest.


Also not dead, but not from a lack of trying on the part of the neighborhood deer, is my rhododendron. With a mild winter, they have to have had lots of things to choose from to eat. Why pick on my bush?
Chewed up rhododendron

Who's been eating my leaves? The neighborhood deer, of course!