Archive for July, 2008

July 30th, 2008 - My first massage in over a decade

As promised, I scheduled my first massage after getting to 155#. (Not sure how I’ve done it this quickly, but I’m down 8 pounds already.) I tried to get one for the weekend, but she’s only available M-F. So I did it last night after work.

It was lovely. Heavenly. Relaxing. I wanted to sleep on the drive home–so next time, we’ll see if Eric can drop me off/pick me up. For the rest of the evening, my sciatica didn’t hurt. ::sigh::

Wish I could get one every week. But it’s $55/hour massage ($35 for just upper body 1/2 massage). It’s a great incentive to keep losing weight!

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July 30th, 2008 - First raspberries–from my own garden!

Last night, Maggie and I checked out the garden. We’d rushed outside hoping to catch sight of the jets flying overhead, but we missed them. So we went to the garden instead. Poking around here and there, Maggie snacked on a bean while I checked a few plants and pulled a few weeds.

Then I saw them. Huge. Red. Globular. In the vicinity of…my raspberries? YES! There were two ripe raspberries out front. We dashed through the front gate and checked them out. They were about an inch long; one was actually two grown together. We split them both. Oh they tasted so good. Fresh, warm, uncrushed. And there are more to come! (I don’t remember what variety I planted out front; I’ll have to check my garden book at home.) I cannot wait for the rest of them this summer–and so many more next summer!

Maggie also ate chives, rue, and basil before we went inside for bed. And expressed interest in garlic and onions, but the ground was dry so I couldn’t pull any up. (And in all sorts of other plants that are either inedible or not yet ripe such as the lilies, lamb’s ear, tomatoes, zinnias, and ground cherries.)

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July 25th, 2008 - Ruined peaches

We’ve lost nearly a third of our peaches, I believe. To stem the tide of ripening, I put as many as would fit–nearly an entire box–in the fridge. This is something the company even recommends on their website and brochures.

Took the first ones out over the weekend, as we’d gone through the other two boxes (eating, freezing, drying, juicing, and making pie). At first, they weren’t ripe. Then Eric had one and it was mealy (brown and icky inside and inedible). Then Emma and/Jedi (mostly like Emma) ate all but one (about 8). (To our horror as they are considered poisonous to dogs. The vet said don’t worry, but they might get the runs. They spent the rest of the day outside; thank goodness it was beautiful outside.) Then I ate the one I’d taken to work to riped. Well, I didn’t eat it. It, too, was mealy. I tested the others I’d set out. They all have this weird feel to them. So I’m betting they all are mealy.

I wonder if I can still cook with them? I have some pot pie tins which would be perfect for a mini pie (can even bake it in the toaster oven) and will try that tomorrow or tonight.

I’m really frustrated since that’s $30 and a third of the peaches I was looking forward to for the winter. :(

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July 23rd, 2008 - Losing weight

I’m doing a rather un-simple thing this summer, but ultimately, it should make life simpler. Like the majority of Americans, I need to lose weight. This is something I’ve never admitted to anyone other than my husband before in my life. I was always a pretty decent weight (well, looking back at pictures from 7th-10th grades, maybe not?) except at the end of grad school when I was underweight for a year. But oh so slowly, the weight crept up. Not excessively; I’m 5′6″ and 161#, BMI 25.something. But enough that it’s bothered me.

Part of it is due to the sciatica, which has decreased the amount of cardio exercise I can do. Until a year ago, I walked 10,000-14,000 steps every weekday. then I started realizing the sciatica disappeared when I was sick and sitting around the house a lot. Sure enough, I cut back on the walking and the sciatica got better. I tried pilates, yoga, and deep water aerobics at work, but they all exacerbated the pain as well.

So, since I’m not going to lose weight with exercise, that means I have to eat less. Which is really hard for me as I believe I’m a pretty good eater overall…although I do like snacks and dessert. So I’m counting calories at Calorie Count Plus (from About.com). And I have daily goals, rewards, and punishments set up. This post is to help keep me accountable and to get it written down on…um, the screen I guess.

I must eat less than 1700 calories a day. We may drop that to 1600 after 1-2 months, still not sure on that. 1500 is what I’m aiming for, but I don’t want to kill myself just because I go a little over a few days.
If I go over 1700 twice in a week, I pay for Eric and Maggie to eat at McDonald’s. This is the major punishment Eric thought up to keep me on track. Maggie has never eaten at McD’s and I never want her to. (I’ve watched SuperSize Me and other books/movies about the fast food industry. I have eaten at only one fast food restaurant since–the locally owned Culver’s.)
At the end of the month, I have to pay the house $2 for each day I go over my calorie allotment. (Why $2? Because that’s about how much I’d get if I took my monthly allowance, less charitable donations, on a daily basis.)
Whenever I lose 5#, I can go get a massage. I’ve only had one or two in my life and I’d love to get them all the time. They are the ultimate indulgence to me. I never ever spend the money for them, however. So now I’m going to. Eric’s gym specializes in rehab, and has a massage therapist available. I am hoping that she can work around my sciatica appropriately. (After it was massaged in physical therapy–granted things were pretty bad at that point–my leg cramped up and the area was blazing in pain.) Oddly, I will pay for this out of my spending money, which means I could do it or could have done it at any point in time, but it’s still a big huge treat that motivates me!

I started on the 12th. So far, I’ve lost 5 pounds! I’m going to go with the 5s (155, 150, 145, etc), however, so one more before I get a massage. And I have to keep it off, so one brief appearance on the scale doesn’t mean I go make an appointment for that very day. I recognize weight can shift (and scales can be off) so it has to be an honest 5#. It was relatively easy last week, but this week, I keep wanting to eat junk food and trying to avoid eating what’s good for me to save calories for candy and dessert. Not so good. :( But at least I recognize it happening.

The website is great–it has a huge database of foods, both whole/natural as well as brand name processed, with nutritional info. You select what you’ve eaten (or plan to eat) and it tracks the info for you. You can also put in your own recipes and it figures out the nutrition. This is great because I make a lot of my own foods. I didn’t realize it was there at first and almost when to other sites for this piece of things. Thank goodness I started reading the help pages! (Hello! What do I always tell my faculty to do? Read my help pages….) Turns out my fruit bread is worse than I thought but my veggies burgers are better than ones in the store. Too bad I like the fruit bread so much…so I’m trying to just have regular bread.

Oh my goodness! I just checked: The amount of fruit bread I have has less calories than having two slices of bread with butter. Aack. But I log the bread one piece at a time and the butter is also separate. So it *seems* like less than the fruit bread which is counted as a single serving. I should also figure out exactly how much butter I use–is it really a tablespoon?

Well, anyway, there it is. And yes, I’ll let you know if I have to pay for Maggie to eat McD’s food and am totally humiliated. Otherwise, what’s the point of doing it if no one knows?

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July 22nd, 2008 - The universe is trying to tell me something

In the past week or so, THREE blogs I read have linked to the same video: Grace Writes about it the day after my birthday. And I can’t find the other two. I thought it was Tia or Blogging on Purpose but neither of them have it. Oh well. thank you to whoever did post it and make my day!

Then today my Astronomy Picture of the Day was the video as well.

Last week, after watching the video a couple times, I bought the soundtrack (one song, written, as far as I can tell, for the video but I’m not sure) and I’ve listened to it an awful lot. Combined with inspiration from reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, I’ve been trying to meditate with it as well as each night.

I’m not sure exactly what the universe is saying, but it has to be something important to have come up even on the picture of the day…when it has nothing to do with astronomy and isn’t a picture!

What is it?

Interested in the song? Here’s more info at Amazon, where you can also buy it. Here’s one person’s info about the lyrics:

The text is from the Bengali poem Gitanjali (”Stream of Life”) from Rabindranath Tagore:

Bhulbona ar shohojete
Shei praan e mon uthbe mete
Mrittu majhe dhaka ache
je ontohin praan

Bojre tomar baje bashi
She ki shohoj gaan
Shei shurete jagbo ami

Shei jhor jeno shoi anonde
Chittobinar taare
Shotto-shundu dosh digonto
Nachao je jhonkare!

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

I wish I knew what praan means.

And see more of Matt at Where the Hell is Matt? including a previous tour of the world (mostly dancing alone) and outtakes.

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July 17th, 2008 - In search of Seymour Papert

I wonder if any of my readers, other than my brother, who sent me this story, are familiar with Seymour Papert, but just in case, I wanted to share. Seymour Papert was one of my luminaries in graduate school: he worked with kids and computers. Not just worked with them, he did amazing things. Ever heard of the computer language Logo, or turtles (in relation to computers), or LegoLogo, or Lego robots? Thank Seymour Papert. They were all his ideas for teaching kids programming.

18 months ago, he was in a severe accident and suffered traumatic brain injury. The Boston Globe has a feature story about his recovery efforts. I hope he recovers, as he was still contributing, even in his late 70s, to the field of educational technology.

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July 16th, 2008 - about this time last year

I just read a lovely post by a lady approaching her birthday, where she revists the last few years and decades. I thought it would be fun to try to do the same thing. Since I haven’t done it in the past, I might be hazier than she is.

Oh, yeah, it was my birthday on Monday.

A year ago…2007
Things were about the same. I was participating in One Local Summer, something I’m not doing this summer. Monkey and AnnMee (my brother and his now-wife, then-fiancee) were visiting and we went blueberry picking, something I managed to never even mention in this blog.

Two years ago…2006
Monkey and AnnMee were visiting us before they’d started dating. I was already hoping they’d get married. I was buying a lot of stuff, like a compost bucket (that we still love and is still in great shape), worms for vermicomposting (which did not work out), and a hand cranked cell phone charger (which didn’t work out as I got it shortly before I sliced my thumb open with the blender and couldn’t use it). We were sighing in relief that we hadn’t bought the Elmwood house and dealing with lead paint in our current house. (By Dec 07, she was safe.

Three years ago…2005
I was dreaming about building our own home (scroll down to the 2005 entries) in the country.

Five years ago…2003
We were working on our homestudy for adopting from Russia. (Hmmm, not to carry on a theme, but that didn’t work out either. Or did it?)

Ten years ago…1998
I was trying to realize that I needed to break up with my emotionally abusive boyfriend. I did so in mid/late-August. I didn’t actually realize it until early August but I’d known all summer something was really wrong.

15 years ago…1993
I was spending the summer in Pennsylvania, where I knew absolutely no one but my parents and some of their friends. They moved there the previous year and I thought it would be a good idea to spend the summer with them. I found work through a temp agency working as an over, short, and damaged clerk at a shipping company. It was actually quite fun and like no other job I’ve ever had. (Including that I always wore a dress! In a trucking terminal, no less. And we had about one visitor a week. I don’t know why we had to dress up.) I really wanted to go back to the MidWest and help with the major flooding, but my brother was visiting from Hungary (he only came home once in 3 years I believe).

20 years ago…1988
I turned 16 and had my second birthday party. I had saved a copy of the hand drawn invite from my 9 year old party and reused it. One girl was actually invited to both parties!

25 years ago…1983
Couldn’t tell you what I was doing….

Oh this was so much fun to write! I hope I remember it again next year. :)

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July 8th, 2008 - Strawberries and peaches

On Friday, I went to a U-Pick strawberry farm only 15 miles away (as opposed to the 30+ miles I’d previously gone and just couldn’t do again). And they have raspberries, too! Can’t wait for that. I forgot how much time this takes. Oh, picking them took only 2 hours including the drive. But after getting home, I had to process them all right away. That took another 3 hours. I had about 22 pounds. Had some fresh plus about 20 pints put in the freezer. I’m thankful for my slicer this year; it’s intended for slicing hard boiled eggs, but is fantastic for strawberries. Maggie helped–and for once it really was a help! She picked the berries out of the sink and set them on the counter for me. I was a lot faster when I didn’t have to reach down into the sink.

I didn’t expect to get 22 pounds. The guy said that a full flat would be about 10#. And I didn’t fill mine up, as I wanted to be able to easily carry both of them. I figured I might have 8 pounds in there. Imagine my surprise at over 11 pounds each! [Oh! Now I know where my missing cash went! The berries cost about $30!]

Found out earlier in the week that Eric actually does like strawberries, just not plain. He tried them on top of the chocolate gelato ice cream I made and LOVED it. He didn’t care for the bundies, however. Bundies are a family recipe of a slightly sweeter drop biscuit that we always used for strawberry shortcake. Correction–he likes the bundies, but as a plain biscuit, not with berries on top. On Friday, I made a pound cake for him. Oh my goodness is pound cake rich and heavy! He adored the cake, even plain. I found it a bit rich and prefer the bundies (of which I made more Sunday). I also made more ice cream. The fresh berries are almost gone. We’ll probably start eating the ones from the freezer shortly.

Then Monday we picked up peaches from Tree-Ripe. Eric talked me into 3 boxes this time. That’s 75 pounds of peaches! For $99. The nice thing is that they aren’t actually fully ripe, so I didn’t have to spend the rest of the day processing them. I was going to get 2 and then get one or two more when they come back in 2 weeks. But a lady in front of me commented that last time, they ran our of peaches before they got back to Oshkosh. And I didn’t want that to happen. It’s also unfortunate that they aren’t ripe as we all want to each some peaches NOW, especially Maggie as they are her favorite fruit. Maybe I’ll set some on the porch where it gets quite hot.

This is a very expensive grocery month. But oh such a delicious one. And we’ll be eating berries for months to come. And it will get more expensive: blueberries and raspberries will also ripen in the next couple weeks.
By the way, I found out about the berry farm on Craigs List of all places. I was bored and wandering around all the categories. So surprised…and I wasn’t sure it wasn’t going to be much of a place from the rather short ad. I was surprised to learn it’s been in business over a decade (although new owners recently) and they have the raspberries and other items as well.

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July 3rd, 2008 - Book review: Alas, Babylon

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank is another post-apocalypse novel, only this time written in the early 60s about a nuclear war in the late 50s. Far more realistic than The Rising! For example, by the time the group is working on their survival, they spend the entire day (adults and children alike) working on feeding themselves, and they still go to bed hungry.

On the other hand, not quite as gripping a tale. I skipped many long passages of military-related prose. The characters weren’t nearly as interesting nor attractive to me. Perhaps because none of them were much like me, and all the women were fairly typical male portrayals of 1950s women (ie, quite sexist). It’s also quite racist, however the Black family is the most prepared for catastrophe and without their food supplies and knowledge of the land, the main characters never would have survived. The the main character somewhat understands this, but doesn’t make that much of it beyond one or two brief mentions. Quite obviously a book from the early 60s.

Despite that, a good apocalypse novel that I’d recommend.

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July 1st, 2008 - Is this any different than a lawn service?

Eric sent me a short story about a new company in San Francisco that will maintain an organic garden in your yard. It makes it sound unique, but it sounds a lot like having a gardener or lawn service, except that it’s organic. The one difference is that you can have them grow more than you’d eat and you become part of a CSA (except you still have to pay for the CSA, albeit at a discount). The big picture is a distributed urban organic farm.

I’m a bit ambivalent…until I remembered that I’d love someone to help in my garden. I’m quite afraid that my sciatica will prevent me from doing as much as I’d like. Or I just spend my summers in pain, which isn’t much fun (like this summer and last). I ADORE having a garden right outside my door. I wonder what it would cost to have someone else do most of the work…. and would I love it as much?

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July 1st, 2008 - Book review: The Rising

I love post-apocalyptic books. Many are set in the future, long after the apocalypse. Lately, I’ve also been reading ones set in the present day (or the past, with the apocalypse happening during the 20th century). Unfortunately, many paint a pretty unrealistic picture of the characters’ ability to change lifestyles and survive. The Rising: Journeys in the Wake of Global Warming, by Tom Pollock and Jack Seybold, is one of those. A mostly excellent book, despite the shortcomings. I didn’t want to set it down, and spent one evening reading it from the time I got home from work till I went to bed, late, with 100 pages still left to read.

The premise is that in 2005, two more Antarctic ice shelves break off causing a sudden major rise in the sea level, beyond what was predicted. The story follows a bunch of characters (who of course come together before the end). (I’d swear I read another reviewers who had trouble keeping track of them– I didn’t–on Bloglines, but I can’t find it back.) Only one couple are farmers while the rest are typical Americans (plus an ex-con), but amazingly, they all come together on an estate and by the end of a year have become self-sufficient (sort of; I can’t reveal some plot twists).

Yeah, right. Like they could actually learn all of those skills–and teach them to each other–in the course of a summer and a fall.

The other part that drove me nuts is that one major character has an ability to see the future and then to heal. She teaches the latter to the others. So they don’t need a doctor anymore (although there is one in the party). This new agey part was quite annoying. I can live with the back to the land skills–most books like this get folks going on that part awfully quickly–but the book ends up relying on these extra-ordinary skills for the reason why this group survives. And for why they all end up together as well. They were “drawn” here because of their connection to these abilities. I think the book would have been far better if this part had been skipped. The doctor could have helped those who were injured and sick and it would have been more believable.

The inspiration for the book was an Astronomy Picture of the Day (a site I look at every day) of the Antarctic Ice Shelf Vista titled “It’s all gone but the mountains.”

I’d still recommend this to anyone interested in possible global warming outcomes–the science as well as the story are interesting and gripping. I’d read it again!

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My Adventures in Simple Living

Archive for July, 2008

July 30th, 2008 - My first massage in over a decade

July 30th, 2008 - First raspberries–from my own garden!

July 25th, 2008 - Ruined peaches

July 23rd, 2008 - Losing weight

July 22nd, 2008 - The universe is trying to tell me something

July 17th, 2008 - In search of Seymour Papert

July 16th, 2008 - about this time last year

July 8th, 2008 - Strawberries and peaches

July 3rd, 2008 - Book review: Alas, Babylon

July 1st, 2008 - Is this any different than a lawn service?

July 1st, 2008 - Book review: The Rising

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