Here’s a great track that will always amp up your Saturday evening. From 1988, here’s Inner City with “Good Life”.
J.P.
Friday Dance Party.
Stunningly beautiful with a gorgeous voice, here’s Sophie Ellis-Bextor teamed up with Freemasons and “Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer”.
Goals.
So in mid-August I set some health-related goals for myself. Today I conquered the second goal and because of this, I am feeling quite good today.
The first goal was to stick to a plan while not going off on some weird diet tangent that promised to reduce me to the size of Twiggy in a month but then would blow me up to twice the size if I inhaled anywhere near a Pop-Tart. I believe eating normal, regular food but at reasonably sized portions (I call it “Leave It To Beaver” portions) is the way to go. With the help of MyFitnessPal (as recommended by our friend Jeff), I can say that I have gone for over 25 days of sticking to my plan. Goal #1? So far so good.
The second goal was to get my weight to Army standards. Now I know I’m not in the Army nor have I ever been in the Army (back then they would have asked, I would have told…) but I figured that the goal of being within Army regulations was a good milestone along this path I had plotted for myself. So this morning I felt quite good to see that the scale gave me the number that put me within regulations. I even jumped on the scale three times to make sure that the number was consistent.
I don’t like throwing out numbers, but I’m going to:
29 Aug 12: 209.0 lbs
05 Oct 12: 191.8 lbs
Watching what I eat because I record everything I eat has been a really good first step. Earl and I have been walking after supper at least three times a week for the past several weeks. We recently moved our walk from the nearby high school track to the mall, where there’s more to see, it’s warmer and we can be like old people racing around the perimeter of the mall.
I have also pledged to continue cycling until the snow plows chase me off the road. When that happens I’ll move the road bike into the basement (for days when we can’t see beyond the front porch) and start taking the trail bike out on days when we’re not having a blizzard. If the snow becomes an issue this winter, I’m going to take up snowshoeing. I hear that’s a great cardio workout.
My next goal is known to only Earl and me and I’ll probably peacock (using peacock as a verb sounds a little dirty) when I reach that goal, but for now I’m feeling good and I’m feeling more _balanced_ than I have in a while.
Debates.
A couple of weeks ago I was really interested in what was going on with the Presidential race. I wanted to know who stood for what and what money was going to whom and who was going to propose the best ideas for getting this country back on its feet, once they defined what “getting this country back on its feet” meant to them.
I think I ODed on politics.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch the debates last night. I sat down and started to watch the pre-game show on CNN, but with all the technical difficulties they were having, I got frustrated and started sending out Tweets scolding CNN for not having enough tin foil on their Rabbit Ears. But as long as John King can touch a giant iPad to do something that doesn’t really need to be done, all is well with the world, right? By the way, Wolf Blitzer still gives me the creeps and has done so for nearly 30 years. I miss the crossed eyed Bobbie Battista.
Neither candidate really excites me. Of course I’m going to vote for the one that is going to make sure that my marriage remains valid (and any gay man or lesbian that votes for someone that thinks they shouldn’t be married obviously hasn’t experienced the joy of love), but other than the same sex marriage thing, he really is the lesser of two evils. There is something to be said about personal responsibility. While I think that there should always be a safety net, I think people should do everything they can to avoid the safety net. It’s a last resort, not a lifestyle.
So instead of watching the debates last night I ended up just watching the Twitter stream, and to a lesser extent, watching the new ADN (app.net) stream. I’m becoming less of a fan of Twitter and more of a fan of ADN simply because the latter is not ad supported. I can handle $36/year for the service. My withdrawal from my Dunkin’ Donuts habit has already paid for that.
I think the biggest thing about the election for me is that everyone just bashes each other. Spectators are trying to turn it into a reality-show version of reality with everything but brawling at the debates. Candidates have nothing positive to say. They just accentuate the negatives of the opposition. “I don’t know what I’m going to do but look at what that fool did!”
It’s quite disheartening.
I’d probably have to run this by my husband, but the day someone declares my marriage nullified is the day we move out of the country. End of story. Ain’t no debating that.
Halfway.
So I do a silent little happy dance when it turns 12:30 on Wednesday afternoons. This happy dance is in honor of the fact that at 12:30 we are exactly half way through the work week. Half way! That’s right, we are on THIS side of the work week now and the duration between now and the coming weekend is shorter than the duration between now and last weekend. That’s what being over half way means!
This is how my brain operates.
I probably should speak aloud as to what all this means, this tendency to measure my work intervals by how close they are to the the weekend. I mean some things should remain unspoken and this is probably one of those things. I have learned the important politics of being unspoken and I’m finding that sometimes it’s a good way to go.
However, because we are over halfway through the work week, I will share a little “yee haw!” out loud.
Yee haw!
Now back to your regularly scheduled program.
Lights.
When I ride my bike in the morning before work it’s still rather dark out. I take the usual safety precautions; I have a headlight and a taillight on the bike and I deck my halls with boughs of holly. Add a star and I’d really be lit up like a Christmas tree. People can see me.
Unfortunately, folks appear to not be in the habit of turning on their lights while they’re driving anymore. In a ten minute span during my ride I saw at least four cars driving in the relative darkness without their headlights on. I find this perplexing. Are they confused by the operation of the light switch that’s (usually) integrated with their turn signal? Do they think that the car will perform it’s automatic magic and turn the lights on for them and quite frankly they have no idea how to turn their lights on anymore? Do they just not care? Do they not notice the darkened dash in front of them because they’re too busy texting?
I’m finding this trend alarming. Not only is it dangerous that the driver can’t really see where they’re going, but it’s also dangerous to the rest of us on the road. Personally, I think that cars are becoming too automatic (many turn the lights on for you if you want it to) and therefore people are getting way too lazy. And then the plague of apathy that is gripping this nation is really no help, either.
If it’s dark out, please turn on your headlights. You’d be amazed at what you see when you can see where you’re going.
Autumn.
I’m totally getting into autumn. Earl and Jamie sat down for supper last night and realized that the paper napkins had been replaced by ironed cloth napkins. For that extra special touch, Jamie showed me how to fold a napkin restaurant style.
I’ve been doing more cooking. I made a meatloaf the other night that turned out pretty good (Earl said it was delicious) and I approached it in a healthy way, opting for leaner beef and turkey instead of going with my normal approach.
The dining room now has it’s autumn decorations scattered about. I organized the hutch yesterday so that I can easily get to the holiday tablecloth and the like when the need arises.
The washer put on enough miles to get to LA and back yesterday but things are clean in the house.
And I changed the litter box.
I’m always excited about this time of year and part of the reason is because I start to fall in love with the house again. I don’t know if it’s the weight loss, the exercise or the decision to smile more often, but life is quite good these days.
The Road.
Back in 1996, when Earl and I were dating and hadn’t moved in together yet, I drove him down this road and showed him a house that I really liked. It was a fairly simple house that had been built in the 20th century. It was set back from the road about 100 feet. The house, though simple in design, still had a fairly sprawling feel to it as it had been added on to each end over the years. Tennis courts were on the lot adjacent to the house and landscaping and the like indicated that it was all one property.
The property was settled on a road across from large, open cornfields, which were protected from the road by a row of large maple trees. It was such a beautiful, peaceful setting for me, and I could imagine looking out the picture window on the front of the house, through the maples, across the field and onto the hill that was off in the distance; the last hill between the Adirondacks and the Mohawk Valley.
The house in question was for sale but was way out of our price range at the time. Earl and I were just talking about living together in the apartment he was living in at the time, a house would be further down our timeline together. But there was something about that house and that road. I just loved it. So peaceful.
The road in question, at least the portion between two parallel, fairly-main roads, is home to a couple of stone farmhouses, an Amish family in a very simple, white house and a few newer houses. Each lot is at least a couple of acres. The southern side of the road, aside from one of the farms with a stone farmhouse, is all working farmland. It looks like corn was the crop of choice this year. The entire portion of this road is flanked by maple trees.
During my bike ride today I found my way over to this road simply because I still have a certain fondness for it. It is paralleled to its north by a river, which runs behind the house I loved back in 1996. I stopped for a moment to take the photo at the beginning of this entry and after hearing the fake shutter sound from my iPhone, I just paused and listened to the stillness. I could hear birds doing their thing in the field. The hum of farm machinery was faint but still indicative of work being done on a Saturday morning. And I could hear the river doing its thing behind the houses it passed by. Here and there I could hear leaves dropping as they’re apt to do this time of year. The maples aren’t in their fiery glory yet; the peak leaf-peeping weekend is still a couple of weeks away in these parts, but I still felt that that road was still an ideal for me.
The house in question has long been sold and its owners do a fantastic job of taking care of it. I smiled as I rode by and continued along my bike ride.
Perhaps someday.
Friday Dance Party.
From their 1989 second album, here’s Exposé with their Top 10 hit “What You Don’t Know”.
iPad.
So I’m trying to fall in love with my iPad again. I know that I am a very lucky geek to have the new iPad, and I do enjoy using the device, but I’m trying to love it. I’m trying to convince myself that I don’t need to bring a laptop along when I go somewhere, that my iPad will do everything that I want it to do.
I can watch television on my iPad (I just finished “Downton Abbey” and am now ready for the new season), I can read magazines, I can go through email, browse websites, hunt down porn if I so choose and I can be connected to the internet anywhere there is cell service with this nifty little device.
The one thing that I struggle with is writing. And quite frankly, I love to write. The lack of a keyboard on an iPad is the issue; I usually end up using an Apple bluetooth keyboard, but it feels kind of weird to haul such a keyboard into a Panera or other café. It sort of feels blasphemous.
A few months ago there was a Kickstarter project for a device called The Brydge, which basically added a keyboard to your iPad and turned it into something quite like a MacBook Air. The Brydge is rather pricey though at around $180, $200 if you want upgraded speakers. This is a nifty idea, I suppose, but I’m really picky about keyboards. Because of the speed at which I am able to type, it’s really important that I have a full-sized keyboard. Back in the days of my original iPad, I had a case with a built-in keyboard but it was this Barbie’s Doll House version of a keyboard and my fingers didn’t know where to travel to. My brain was more confused than usual when my pinky was aiming for an “a” and all I got was a caps lock light turned on. Any by the way, who needs a caps lock key anyway? I find any prose written in all caps to be quite offensive to my eyes and sensibilities. Didn’t we give up caps lock around the release of the Apple ][e?
So I’m trying to find a way to love my iPad and make it work as my primary portable device. I know I wouldn’t want anything smaller; I have my iPhone 4 to handle those duties. I guess I just need to find a way to get the perfect keyboard attached to the thing. The Brydge? It’s a possibility (though quite pricey). I feel funny asking about iPad keyboards at the Apple store because the associate will quickly gasp in horror before composing himself back to Apple-standard friendliness. Maybe I need to go to Best Buy or something of that ilk and see if there are some keyboards that I can try out.
I’d love it if any of my Apple happy/iPad using readers have a suggestion.
