365 Day Photo Challenge – Day 1

Mar 022012
 

I got a new camera for Christmas and have still haven’t had much time to tinker around with it. I’m trying to rectify that now. I’ve been researching some tips for taking better pictures and have noticed a lot of folks posting about 365 day photo challenges. The idea is to post one picture every day of a moment in your life, all the while working on taking better pictures. It sounds fun, so I’m going to give it a try. I’m a horrible blogger, but I will try to remember to come post the pic over here every day. I’ve also set up a Facebook album for it.

I took a quick pic this morning to get started:

Here is Ruki sitting under my work table. She was in such a mood this morning. Her body looks so tense by the way she’s sitting. I reached down to pet her and she grumbled. I dare say my cat may not be a morning cat. :P

Ruki is ready to face the day

Dec 162011
 

Bring it on! :P

 

Oh, right, the Christmas tree…

Dec 102011
 

How ever could I forget to post the obligatory pic of the tree, eh? Ok, here you go:

All better now. Have a happy day! :)

Noteshelf App for iPad

Dec 102011
 

Noteshelf, I love you! I just downloaded this app and am addicted to it already. It’s a freeform note taking app that allows you to write, doodle, draw, or whatever else you can do with a stylus. I like that you can change ink colors and highlight text too. You can even add adorable icons to your page too. I added a tiger face, presents under the tree, and snowmen.

They also offer paper varieties. Here’s one example I liked, graphing paper:

I’m such a visual thinker that something like this is super helpful. It allows for more freeform than typing does and I’m very excited by that. I foresee less doodled sticky notes in my future. :)

Um, I also foresee some much needed work needing to be done on my penmanship. Lots of work…. :P

A much needed reminder

Dec 102011
 

I’ve been especially sulky this week. Most every day I got dribs of bad news in. By Friday I was ready to hide under my bed. This morning I got up still in a mopey mood, but I dragged my ass out of bed and headed out to run errands. I started the car and U2′s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” began to play on the radio. And as always, the song forced to take a moment and just appreciate all life has to offer.

I was first introduced to the song in 1988 by a then new friend of mine, Julie, who happened to be a huge U2 fan. We met at a Summer Youth Work Program at Bear Mountain. Here’s a picture from that summer. Julie is on my left. Another friend, Shelly, to my right. And there’s a reason this picture is crooked, only this many years later, I can’t remember what it was. :P

This may have been the best summer of my life. I don’t remember ever being so happy. We debarked trees with machetes, cleared deer trailers, built a shelter, and swam in all the “do not swim” lakes. A college student was our supervisor and drove us around in a white van that had no seats in the back. So we just piled on top of a giant wooden toolbox and tried not to fall off. The danger of driving through the woods like this never occurred to any of us. Julie and I would often times sit on one side of the box, sharing a walkman and listening to a U2 song. We’d  sing/shout it from the top of our lungs. Thinking back, I don’t remember anyone else in the van with us minding. Well? We were all kids.

“Sunday Bloody Sunday” was the song we sang most and the one I most identify with that summer. After, I lost touch with Shelly (we were from different school districts) but Julie and I kept in touch because we both worked at Army football games. Julie was adventurous and had a great sense of humor. Even then, her vibrance told me she embraced life. It’s been more than 20 years since I lost her to a fatal car crash, but I’m still reminded of her every time this song plays. I’m reminded how much she laughed. How much she loved to sing. And I’m reminded most how quickly it can all be taken away.

But today, as I listened to the song, I took stock, and reassessed. My own recent miseries are irrelevant when I put it into perspectives like this. I want to laugh hard. Embrace life. And to not be bothered by the things that keep causing me grief. These things that keep happening may be out of my control, but how I let them effect me is in my control. I will do the best I can and try to remember every day to be thankful for the wonderful things life does offer.

I’ll leave you with the song that started my whole rambling thinking:

Highlights from Thanksgiving Weekend

Nov 272011
 

I hope you had an amazing holiday weekend! Mine was excellent, and I’m sad to see it over. Boo to that part! Anyway, here are a few of the highlights:

Plus, I caught up with family and friends. And I hit a new distance record in running for me — 5 miles. Woot! :) I got to play lacrosse some. Oh! And I applied for school to get the math degree mentioned in my bucket list. Yay!

The big thing I did this weekend though was to take time and reflect upon the year and mull over the direction I am going. I’ve got my graph paper out and will be building my Character Tome, thank you Nerdist for that idea! I’m still fussing with what to call it. So far I’m leaning towards Project Vohm. And I just got sidetracked while I was writing that thinking of a visual map on the wall made out of scherenschnitte. Ooh, that could be fun. But also perhaps a little too time intensive. :P Regardless of how I set up the map, I plan to have something sketched out by the end of the year so I can hit the ground running in the New Year. Woooo!

I also took some more time to reflect upon what I’m thankful for. It’s been a difficult year so it was nice to pause and think about positive things. I’ve tried all month to write a post reflecting on the things I’m thankful for, but it ended up being to hard to write. So I’ll just share a clip from the ramble I posted on Facebook on Thanksgiving:

“I kept meaning to write a blog post about what I’m thankful for but then I just kept getting all weepy…I’m a spaz like that. So I’ll just sum up, thankful for family and friends. Love you all! Thank you for all your love and support. Thankful for the happy expansions to our family this year too. Woot! Also thankful for finally finding doctors who actually understand PCOS and are nice too. And for music that makes me feel alive like Zoe Keating’s magnificent cello playing. And thankful for discovering the zen that comes in running. And so damn thankful to be able to use my lacrosse stick! I can go on and on. I’ll end with being thankful for the quite moments with Ruki. Sure, she’s included in family too already but so what. :P”

Rambly yes. But fitting too.

So, all in all, one awesome weekend.

Hope you have a wonderful rest of the weekend! :)

I’ll leave you with a song by Robyn that I found myself hitting repeat on a lot while I was running:

Enjoy!

The start of a bucket list

Nov 212011
 

I was inspired to put together my own bucket list recently. A friend posted hers on Facebook. Plus, Tony from NCIS has been working on his lately. It keeps coming up and so it’s been on my mind. Anyway, I finally wrote it down. I’ve cropped off the more personal stuff but otherwise this is my list so far. And now that I can see this list, I can work harder at attaining these goals. Woot!

An interview with Mark Hamill

Nov 182011
 

Pretty nifty interview with Mark Hamill at Imperial College London in 1978:

On quitting Weight Watchers

Nov 172011
 

I just hit that cancel my account button on the Weight Watchers website and found the experience cathartic. I could swear that tension released from my shoulders and my natural scowl softened a little. I feel free. And I feel like I can finally take charge of my diet again.

It wasn’t always bad. When I joined in September 2010, things were pretty good. I got the hang of the system and was losing weight pretty quickly. Then the day after Thanksgiving they changed their entire plan. So everything I had just learned became useless. Yay. And right in time for the holidays. Wooo!

But I took it as a challenge to re-master the new plan and did okay with it. By May 2011 I had lost 75lbs. And then everything went kaput. My weight plateaued for the most part. I would go up a couple pounds, then down a couple. Yo-yos do not make good diet companions. Neither do automated message prompts that lean toward the negative. “Did you really get the results you wanted? Maybe you should re-evaluate the plan and figure out what you are doing wrong.” Or “Maybe this plan isn’t for you.”

Those aren’t the exact messages I would get, but close enough. When you are doing well with the plan, you get the “Hey, great job.” Messages. Or sometimes a warning, if the machine things you are losing two quickly. “Did you just lose 3lbs this week? Tsk tsk. Try to keep it to 2.” But when you hit a plateau or if you yo-yo a little, the fabulous Mr. Negativity comes out, or at least that’s how I thought of him. Oh and yes, I started to think of it as a sentient machine. An evil sentient machine, of course!

It got to a point where I no longer wanted to log in because Mr. Negativity would get in the way of any positive tools on the site. “HAL? Is that you in there?” :P

Seriously though, talk about a moral killer. Yes, I had a difficult summer. Plateaus are hard. And yes, I was stressed more than usual and I comfort ate. So I wasn’t helping the yo-yo effect.  But do I really need to have a machine telling me how badly I’m doing like that?

In case you aren’t sure, I’m gonna tell you. NO! We do not need machines telling us how badly we are doing in life. Life is hard enough as is.

To add to that, Weight Watchers had other diabolical happenings going on behind the scenes. The points would change out of nowhere! I’d find out when I logged in what I ate and would discover that the meal had increased in points overnight. Uh. Hello? WTF? I contacted them and apparently they readjust them all the time and will never let people know this. Fun, eh? That certainly makes it hard to budget points for the day.

And this is what I got out of a system I was paying for? No thank you. Releasing myself from that website seems to be the best thing I’ve done in a long time. I can track what I eat for my diet on my own. And I think I’ll finally be able to get over this plateau and get past the 75lb mark too. I’m feeling inspired to tackle the plateau!

Probably crazy that I’m re-kicking off my diet as we head into holiday season. Crazier still because I had an OMG cake moment today and had to have cake for lunch. Had to! No judging! Well, ok, you can maybe judge a little. That’s fair I guess. I am ranting about a diet system while I eat cake after all. :P

The diet will re-start up again tomorrow. You can even hold me to that. :)

End ramble.

I blame the squirrel

Nov 162011
 

I was doing so well keeping up with blog posts in September. And then my posts stopped. Sure, I posted pics of Ruki twice, but this is just sad. Especially since I had things to talk about.

First I went on vacation to Woodstock, Vermont. Woo! I saw owls! And promptly lost my mind for a while going back and forth and staring at each one like any proper crazy person would. This particular owl came closer and squawked at me. I suspect she was telling me to go away. :P

I went up there to see covered bridges and it was depressing because two of the bridges were closed from Irene damage. The Quechee Bridge was washed out and the Taftsville Bridge had some dings from getting hit with debris. But the bridges I did see were awesome, as was the Quechee Gorge. Here are the pics I took from this vacation.

I was going to write about vacation after I returned, but I had a crazy busy workweek that ended with New York Comic Con. The highlight of NYCC for me was that I finally got to see Mark Hamill in person and hear him do the Joker voice:

It was awesome! But yes, my phone is not the best camera. Some day I may even get a real camera and take fancy pics with, you know, clear resolution and what not. Crazy talk, I know.

After NYCC, I had planned to do write ups on the con and on vacation. But then the strangest thing happened. Some time during the night, a squirrel crawled up inside my head and died. Tragic. Yes, indeed. It’s the only explanation for what happened that I can think of. The next few weeks turned into varying degrees of hell as it decomposed. Bleh.

I think the most frustrating part of it was that I had to skip the 5k I was going to run in last weekend. But there will always be others, so not the end of the world or anything. Doesn’t mean I didn’t do a few dramatic fist shakings to the sky, since that always helps. If you haven’t tried it, take a moment and give it a try. Feel any better? :P

In any event, my head is almost clear of squirrel. And that means I have no excuse for bad blogging habits. Routine. Try, I must.

That is all.

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