Linkdump for Wednesday

Canada is burning. Well, one town. But it's a scary type of burning.

Honestly? I'm really wishing lab-grown meat would happen more quickly. I would be delighted to switch to food grown this way. It would save water, save land, not hurt animals and still satisfy our carnivore side... if it all pans out. I hope it does.

Metafilter has a frightening story: one person moving out of New Jersey put the state's budget at risk. In other words, the super-rich are so rich that they can devastate a region just by leaving. I don't mind people getting rich, but this is obscene.

On a lighter note, Metafilter finds a jewelry ad to be The Greatest & Most Enigmatic 2-Minute Horror Suspense Film of Our Time. It's... wow. I think it is truly impressive that an ad featuring Gwyneth Paltrow could have so many continuity errors that it inspires crazy theories.

Having recently read a book on the history of Hawaii (I really should review it), this article makes perfect sense in a pathetic way. Yes, people really were that racist and greedy.

Students are now exempt from stringent FAA standards regarding flying drones. I still want a little drone to use inside the house.

Comic book writer Peter David writes about his weight loss battle.

And in other comics, Previews seems to indicate that Rebirth is a reboot after all. I guess I don't mind having my comics rebooted every 20 years, but every five years or so is getting tiresome.

Morning Thoughts

I haven't been writing consistently. I have no excuse to offer. I just haven't done it.

Maybe because my life is boring... I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind to write about is "deflategate" or "ballghazi" or (my personal favorite) "the squishy ball scandal". My first response on hearing it was to shake my head and say it wasn't possible. The refs handle the football almost every down, which means the difference had to be subtle enough they didn't notice it. That made me think there wasn't much to the scandal. But then someone did an analysis of fumbles by the Patriots, and suddenly I doubt my own doubts. If the Patriots have been cheating, they've been getting away with it for years.

I've been training Inkwell to sit when I am preparing his food for him. He does it maybe one out of every five times now. This morning he sat patiently while I got his food ready. That was pretty neat.

Starting my third week of calorie counting. My Monday morning weigh-in says I've lost one pound since last week. My first week I lost three pounds, which was probably mostly water. I started up exercising again this week... let's see how long I can keep it up.

After the last Seahawks win, I've had a particular song going through my head a lot... "It's not how you start, it's how you finish."

This Huffington Post article about addiction makes perfect sense to me. I'm addicted to a lot of things that are not "addictive" in the chemical sense. Which is why I dare not try alcohol, even if I wanted to. In short, addiction is caused by dissatisfaction, not by just by chemicals.

I'm doing Relay for Life again. If you want to donate, visit my profile page and contribute.

Lastly, here's Inkwell learning about catgrass:

Exercise...

So, I lost a lot of weight not that long ago. Then, after moving and getting a job I gained about half of it back, which was annoying, but not really unexpected.

I've had trouble regaining the willpower to start losing weight again (I wouldn't make a good Green Lantern, clearly). I've finally got back into the habit of writing down everything I eat and weighing myself every morning. By writing down what I eat I've reduced my total intake of calories a bit, but not nearly as much as I'd like. Next step is to start exercising again.

My desire to exercise has been zero. I have not had "time" because of my job. The result has been a lot of slobbing around, because in order to get exercise, you have to get up and move around.

We've been talking about getting exercise at work, with various ideas including walking outside. In general, they aren't bad ideas, but they aren't totally practical. Time constraints and weather issues make exercising during the workday unlikely at best. So I really need to exercise before work, or after work.

Because of the nature of my job, after work is not really an option. Depending on the day, I might have a quiet evening at home with the husband... or I might be at a council meeting, school board meeting or other event that needs to be covered. With weight loss like this, a person HAS to form habits. It's next to impossible to form evening habits with my schedule.

So that leaves before work. This is when I had the most success before. I'd get up every morning and do a Wii Fit routine and sometimes take a walk with the hubby. It was a good habit to have, and I regret not being able to keep it. I've been trying to get myself to start again, but somehow the mere act of turning on the Wii and going through the steps required to just get to the exercising has been too much.

My co-worker mentioned that there are some new iPhone commercials using the old "Chicken Fat" song. Yes, I am old enough that P.E. classes were still using the song when I went through school, so I exercised to it a long, long time ago. I happened to have a copy of the song on my phone that I downloaded some time ago, so I played it for her. We giggled a little, and that was the end of it, I thought.

Sunday morning I got up feeling very tired. There is no good reason to be tired after getting a full night's sleep, but there I was, tired. As I lay in bed and thought about it, I recalled that exercise tends to make me more energetic. I remembered that while I was losing weight, I had a lot of energy because I exercised regularly. Sleeping too much just makes a person more sleepy... exercising a bit has the effect of giving a person more energy. What I needed was a workout.

But laying there, I couldn't face the Wii Fit and the smarmy little voice of the program. I just wanted to get up and move. Then I remembered "Chicken Fat". I wondered how many of the exercises I could do. Seized by the inspiration, I jumped out of bed and set up the song on my phone.

It was a shambles. I couldn't understand half of what he said, and couldn't do half of what I thought I understood. Embarrassing. This is a kid's workout. I should be able to at least get some of it done. Still, I did a bit, and enjoyed it. Hubby-Eric came in about the time I gave up and asked what I was doing, so I told him. I said I might try it again Monday (today). He was amused.

Yesterday I hunted down some videos of people doing the full routine on YouTube, and found a good one that shows an entire group of youth working their way successfully through it. After noting how each of the exercises is done, I was ready.

So this morning I got up and started the routine. I was unable to do the push up and the sit ups, but otherwise managed it quite nicely. I was completely out of breath at the end, despite the breathing exercise. But it felt good. It got me moving, even if I couldn't do it all. And now I'm ready to face the day... let's see if I can keep this up at all, or if it'll fall by the wayside like everything else.

Linkdump!

Folks in the Puget Sound area should watch KBTC tonight starting at 6 p.m. to watch my husband and the Emerald City Androgums answer phones during Doctor Who.

Everybody is posting this one, because it's so awesome: This isn't the petition response you're looking for.

My husband is already pretty excited about the new Oz movie, but he's also a huge Danny Elfman fan so this news has him practically squeeing in delight.

Oscar Nominees. I have seen none of the movies. The Razzies Nominees. I have seen none of the movies. Oh well.

How Voltaire got rich enough to be Voltaire.

The lie of Nazi gun control. Not that anyone who is indoctrinated by the NRA will read and believe this, but hey, I like spreading the truth when I can.

Why Adobe (and other vendors) should give away older software. I admit it, I snagged InDesign, but haven't installed it yet. More at Slashdot.

Most of these 25 foods you'll never eat again actually gross me out, but I did like the crispy M&Ms.

Future gadgets that might be worth buying from CES this year. The only one that made me wish I could afford it was the solar battery back up.

The Onion does it again. I like the Toyota Highlander comment.

Oh man, I wish I could afford to get this Aquaman #15 Blank Cover variant with art by Fred Hembeck! I did buy a blank variant for myself, but haven't figured out what to do with it yet.

One of these years I will make it to GeekGirlCon. I hope it's soon.

More on lab-grown meat. Again, I have no problem trying lab-grown foods myself. I'd rather have a cleanly grown hamburger than some of the stuff that gets into hamburger nowadays.

Speaking of food, for the twelve-week-challenge I'm using myfitnesspal to log food intake and exercise. I would have used Calorie King like I did in the past, but it doesn't have an app for Android and the PC app hasn't been updated in years.

An update on my post from the other day. Yes, the student who died was the athlete. That makes it so much more painful for some reason.

Also, when I got in on Thursday there was a note on my desk from the editor pointing out that my Wednesday afternoon's work was pretty bad compared to my usual and asking me to do more proofing before turning stuff in. When I went to talk to the editor about it I quoted a techie, "Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debuging Monday's code." At least he understood.

Twelve Weeks

So, I'm part of a 12-week weight loss challenge at work. I'm hoping it will provide me the motivation to get back onto my former lifestyle changes that helped me lose more than 100 pounds. So far, I've managed to get a tiny bit of exercise in this morning and a half-mile walk in this afternoon. And I'm tracking all my food using my smartphone.

My goal is 20 pounds, but I suspect I'll come in closer to 10. I'll keep you all posted...

So You Want to Lose Weight...

I lost over 100 pounds over two years, carefully and slowly and under the care of a regular doctor at the time. This is the really simple version of what I learned.

1) You must actually want to lose weight, not think that maybe sorta you oughta shed a few pounds. You must have the desire and willpower to see it through. If you haven't got this, you haven't got anything.

2) Start by writing down everything you eat, and every physical activity that you do for more than five minutes. This will give you a baseline, and it may also reveal some habits you didn't know you had. With this baseline you can work on a program that will work for you.

To lose weight, you must use more calories than you take in. Period. End of story. There are no good calories or bad calories in weight loss itself. A calorie is a calorie. Therefore, your only goal is to make the IN calories less than the USED calories. There are two methods to do this, and a combination of both is by far the best:

METHOD A: Eat less. Reduce the amount of calories you bring in.
METHOD B: Exercise more. Increase the amount of calories you use.

3) Stop drinking calories. Your body thinks of solid foods as calories, and therefore drinking stuff with calories will not make you feel full even if it has a ton of calories. Stop drinking soft drinks, that alone will improve a lot of figures.

Switch to water, either plain or flavored. I prefer a touch of True Lemon in my water, and herbal tea in the winter. In addition to not having calories, water helps your body to flush out toxins and, yes, excess fat (in a very non-technical sense). So, switch to water. I no longer miss pop, and trying to drink one usually results in me gagging on the sweetness.

4) Reduce portion sizes. If you make your own food, put half of it away for leftovers. If you go to a restaurant, use a doggy bag for the same purpose. Most of us eat WAY too much. Consider investing in smaller plates, it apparently helps. But eat less in each sitting.

5) Walk whenever possible. If you have your mobility, use it. Walk whenever you can. Park on the far side of the parking lot, or at least not close to the entrance. Walk to the library or store. A little walking goes a long way. If you can't walk, find another activity such as swimming, and indulge in it at least once or twice a week. Seriously, that's all you need to make huge improvements. More exercise will yield better results, but even two hours a week will make a difference.

6) Form good habits. This is perhaps the most important piece of advice in many ways. The other stuff will help you lose weight, sure, but unless you make them into habits you aren't ever going to keep the weight off. Good habits are just like bad habits, they are hard to break. So harness the power of habit and make it work for you. Get in the habit of exercising and drinking water, and you'll find it harder to backslide.

7) Get support, but not advice, from those around you. One thing you really need is the support of the people who you deal with on a regular basis, particularly those who you eat with, such as family, close friends, and co-workers. They must be aware that you are altering your diet, so they know to not sabotage it.

As for advice, everyone has their own way to lose weight, and what works for one person may not work for everyone. I'm being intentionally vague about the specific methods I used only because counting calories is not something that everyone wants to do. It worked for me, but it might not work for you. Just like any advice you get from those around you: you have to adapt it to your own needs.

8) Set goals and keep track. I weighed myself every morning, put it into a graph, and watched the line go down. You might have a pair of pants you want to fit in, or the ability to walk a certain amount. Whatever it is, you need to set realistic short-term goals, as well as your long-term goal, and keep track of your progress. Reward yourself when you reach a goal. Not with food.

A note on keeping track. You will almost always hit a plateau where you simply will not lose weight. This is natural, and can continue for weeks. It's frustrating, and can drive you batty. But it's important. What's usually happening during those plateaus is your body is adjusting to the new reality by redistributing fat, tightening up your skin, and converting fat to muscle. A plateau is often a sign that you are succeeding dramatically. While it doesn't always work, a couple of days in a row of exercise can often kickstart weight loss again if you are on a long plateau.

9) If you mess up, don't panic. Allow for disaster days. A disaster day is when everything goes wrong with the plan, and you end up eating too much or not getting exercise. In the United States, Thanksgiving Day is automatically declared a disaster day no matter what your plans are. Our natural instinct when we mess up a diet is to abandon it, but instead you need to shrug, say, "Disaster Day!" and get back on the wagon for the next day. If you do not allow yourself room to make mistakes, you will never have enough room to succeed.

10) Vegetables are your friends. Eat lots of veggies if you are having trouble staying full. Eat a bowl of veggies and drink a glass of water every time you get hunger pangs, even between meals. I assure you that veggies will fill you up with very little calories. Add a glass of water, and you should find yourself good for another hour or two at the minimum.

11) Do not go hungry. Seriously. If you are hungry, eat. Just be careful about what you eat. If you start to get really hungry you'll end up bingeing, so plan ahead and bring small or healthy snacks with you where ever you go. If you suddenly get hungry, don't hit a vending machine, use the snacks you have AND drink a cup of water. The water is important. Drink it.

12) Stick with it. It's entirely too easy to give up, lose hope, get a few pounds off and celebrate with a big meal. Don't. Just keep it up for awhile. I kept it up for about three years, and only recently had a slide back into heavier weights. I'm losing again, but it's a case of getting back into my good habits and remembering what I did the first time. It would have been much easier if I'd just stuck to my original plan the entire time. Fortunately, many of the habits stayed with me, like my water-drinking, that I don't have as far to go.

Anyway, that's my diet book. I hope it helps someone. In the meantime, I think I'll try again to follow my own advice and get back to where I was in 2008, which was when I was at my lowest weight level.

More Links!

Just want to mention this again: Archive Binge helps you catch up with webcomics that have huge archives. I'm currently reading a few of the comics on the list. If you have a webcomic, I really suggest you get your strip on this site.

Speaking of webcomics, have you met Gronk yet? Not a huge archive on this one, just start here.

The comic book blogosphere is up in arms about a stupid ad by a Maryland candidate for State Senator. To me, the picture gives the opposite impression of what she's trying to convey. Kids that young advanced enough in reading to understand Superman, X-Men, and Marvel Previews (?!) are probably very well educated.

OH MAN! Rich Johnston reports on legal trouble that SLG is having over their horror comic Winchester, which I enjoyed as noted here. I'm not sure what the problem is, except that it apparently involves trademarks. It's a pity, because I wanted to see more of that book, and this fight not only makes that unlikely, it might take down SLG entirely as a publisher.

For some reason, DeviantArt doesn't think inkers are actual artists. Their terms of service have declared that any artist must have created the work entirely by his or herself. No collaborative projects allowed. So inkers who have been putting up examples of their work are being shut down by the service. Anyone got the full scoop on this? The second link there indicates that they are only opposed to inking without permission, so is it a copyright issue solely?

You may have heard about Google allowing you to make free voice calls to any phone in the US or Canada? Well, I made two yesterday. The first went through fine, the second didn't.

Want to see Hamlet starring David Tennant as Hamlet, Sir Patrick Stewart as Claudius and the Ghost, Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius, Mariah Gale as Ophelia, and Edward Bennet as Laertes? Well, now you can watch it online at PBS.

The magic diet elixir is... water. For some strange reason, if you drink a full glass of water BEFORE a meal, you are likely to eat less. Who would've thought?

Oooh, Metafilter collects some learning resources links in a post with a great first line.

I adore this post by Ursula Vernon. She's saying, HEY, BUILD IT HERE! to the mosque, and for selfish reasons, too!

WOW, that's a deal! Getting frozen yogurt for 38/100ths of a cent per ounce! *sigh* Want to read something scarier? Some of the people in the comments don't understand why the math is wrong. Hint: the unit specifies cents, not dollars.

A comparison: Kindle, iPad, print magnified at 26x and 400x. I put the latest generation Kindle on my wishlist because it looks pretty good despite the flaws.

A new stove to make all other stoves cry, but will it catch on?

Here's a Doctor Who teaser trailer, but after you watch it, be sure to go to this link. If you don't, you will feel like a fool.

Pretty good for a fan effort, yes?

A respected teen author is dis-invited to a teen literary festival. As a result, other authors withdraw from the event. More here, including links to other authors talking about the situation. I originally heard the news from Sherwood Smith.

Basement Cat is heartless.

An extra pug for the in-laws.

And lastly, if you have any handy prayer weasels, please get them ready to spin. Eric and I are going to need all the help we can get in the next few weeks.

Today's Walk

Today's walk was an interesting one. Now that I have a working GPS, I decided to contribute a little to OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is an open source mapping project. See, the problem with most maps is that they are proprietary, owned by someone or another. And most of these proprietary maps even have intentional errors that prove if someone steals their data. The goal of OpenStreetMap is to collect real data and provide it free of charge to anyone who needs it.

What good is this? Well, the experienced mappers who have been working on this project for years jumped in when a couple of companies provided high quality satellite images of Haiti, and mapped the disaster area quickly with data good for the GPS units of rescue workers on the ground. The result was lives saved.

On a less dramatic level, mappers in Europe have put in local restaurants and other points of interest so that people can find their way around. Some places are so detailed that they even include the location of streetlights. Other people have mapped hiking trails and riding trails, giving people good information on where they can safely wander. In short, the maps are useful to lots of people, free to use, and can be quickly updated by users on the ground if there is a mistake.

The hardcore mappers all have GPS devices that connect to their computers and can upload tracks of their progress. My GPS doesn't connect, I can only get location information and enter it manually. But they've made it possible to enter information even if you can't upload, using a Flash application. The learning curve isn't exactly simple, but I played with it for awhile and figured it out. In fact, if I have one complaint about the project in general, it's that all the information is focused on people who have a GPS unit that can upload. But you don't need a GPS to contribute. Street name correction and adding of local points of interest is needed for just about every town. Just as long as you only add data you confirm, not information from other maps. If you have a GPS, you can contribute a lot more, including exact locations of roadways and intersections.

In the United States, there is a whole bunch of information already added. The data is from the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system (TIGER) which is used by the US Census Bureau to find homes. It's public domain, but it's also full of errors. So one of my tasks is to go through and check the TIGER data against what I see while walking around. The TIGER data is also a bit out-of-date, so I plan to add new roads. And adding the rest of the Stepford Neighborhood I live in was today's walk.

I walked zigzag through the streets of the newer half of Stepford Neighborhood, and the GPS tells me that I walked 1.18 miles with an average speed of 2.9 miles an hour. I suspect I actually walked faster than that, however, because I stopped repeatedly to take GPS coordinates and it takes a few seconds for the GPS to register that I've stopped. Gmaps Pedometer tells me that I walked 1.19 miles, which is close enough to the GPS data that I'm less worried. Tomorrow I plan on adding a pedestrian shortcut that I found but didn't mark on my walk today (because I didn't take it). And after that I'll try to find one piece of data to check or confirm each day.

It's a better goal than going to a store and spending money, particularly on food.

Walkies!

Awhile ago, hubby-Eric's father gave us a GPS to play with. He said it doesn't work indoors, or under trees, or when it's particularly overcast... which made it a bad fit for Seattle. But out here in Churchville there are almost no trees and the weather is generally nice. So today I went online and hunted up a user manual for the thing, and then took it along on my walk to find out how far it thinks I went versus what Gmaps Pedometer thinks.

I took a MUCH shorter walk today, figuring that after going over three miles in the last two days I should vary my routine just a little. So I went on a walk around the neighborhood that Gmaps Ped says is about 0.51 miles. That's half a mile, not bad.

The GPS told me that I was on a perfectly flat surface, that I was averaging 3 miles an hour, and that I went a total of 0.48 miles. Hrm. Not a horribly dramatic difference, but a difference nonetheless. I think I'll have to take the GPS along on some other walks and see what the difference is. I've been relying on Gmaps Ped for a long time and never expected it to be totally accurate. But if it's way off on the longer distances, I might end up a little concerned.

By the way, the GPS says that the elevation at the foot of my driveway is 692 ft. Fun.

Prepping For Emerald City Comicon

I have to get in shape after a very bad winter for me. I really let myself go, eating poorly and too much and not getting nearly enough exercise. I've gained nearly 10 pounds, which I'd like to re-lose (At least that's nowhere near the 120 pounds I've lost in the last few years...).

So I've set myself a goal of preparing for Emerald City Comicon by walking or biking every day in addition to at least one small Wii Fit workout. I plan to do this right up until Friday March 12th. Then after ECCC, I will transfer my goal to the Winkie Convention (Facebook page), which is July 23rd to July 25th, not including travel time.

Today is day one of the Pre-ECCC Training and Prep. This morning I did a Wii Fit workout, short but sweet. Then just before lunch today I walked to Ace Hardware and back (2.1 miles). It was a little longer walk than I had planned for my first solo jaunt, but I survived. My heartbeat took way too long to slow to normal, and I hurt a toe where my shoe jammed it into its neighbor's uncut nail. My toenails are now neatly trimmed, so that shouldn't happen again.

Yesterday hubby-Eric and I did a 1.3 mile walk, so I got a good start. But I'm relying on you, my dear readers, to help keep me honest with comments of encouragement here or on Facebook. Your help was vital in my previous weight loss efforts (every single comment meant the world to me), so I hope you all don't let me down in this effort.

Update: Someone just asked privately how I get my precise distance data, if I have a GPS or Pedometer. No, I use Gmaps Pedometer to check out my route when I get home. I can't say enough positive about this site, and I'm beginning to think I should support them somehow. Maybe I'll have to buy a shirt sometime.

Links

Martian Space Penguins!

Salads aren't healthy unless you make 'em yourself and make sure you know exactly what's in it.

Somebody came up with a very nice, and very accurate graphic of on-line news page layouts from a few years ago versus today. The rise of clutter, the reduction of readability.

Freeze-Frame Vanity Cards.

This is just weird enough to post: Tautonyms.

Pulling water from the air. Like on Tantooine or Dune.

I think I would have worn these wristbands during the long time we were without health insurance. Now that we have insurance, I wouldn't feel right about wearing one, but that's ok because I can't afford one either (though he'll send them free to people who are uninsured and want one (because I have insurance I won't take advantage)).

Not for the weak of stomach, Darryl Cunningham posts a ten-page story about working in a dementia ward. Usually I post his Dalek drawings, but this is much more serious. He continues with other shorts: It Could Be You hits home because it is me. I suffer from depression and have all my life. I have had many people tell me to just "get over it" (thankfully never my husband). Some other shorts: Mad or Bad and Cut. Intense stuff, and I think I'd buy that book if I can afford it when it comes out.

Is it Tuesday?

Mark Evanier expresses an opinion on calorie counts on menus that matches my own opinion almost perfectly.

Michael Ian Black praises Weird Al.

Um, I'll believe this when I see it, but it sure seems unlikely to me. In other Doctor Who news, the BBC has an article about the Doctor Who books (thanks Denise). Be sure to read the comment by Scott Peters (scroll down).

Wait. The "officers had a difficult time reading the addresses because of overcast skies." Tell me this is a joke. Overcast skies? If it had been sunny, would they have said the sun got in their eyes? These officers need to have their eyes tested before being allowed back on the streets. And a reading test to make sure they can distinguish different numbers might not be a bad idea as well. Sheesh. At the very least, they need a class in "making better excuses when you completely screw up and endanger innocent people."

---

And lastly, here's Moby the Mower, sitting in one of the rare non vegetated parts of the yard just after I'd spent some time today mowing. I lowered the body of the mower a notch and went over most of the yard, and figured out some places that I'm going to have to level soon.


I also took apart two sections of my temporary fence. While I was taking one section apart, a dog came up to me and examined the fence, which I'd put back in place to unravel the string. The dog looked up at me with a look that said, "Why is this here in my way?" He frolicked back and forth, wagging his tail at me while I worked. I attempted to take his picture, but apparently erased it. Finally I got the fence enough out of the way so the dog could go into my yard (despite me saying, "shoo! Go away!" to it constantly). He ran up to the new fence and then turned to me with a look that said, "What? Another thing in my way? Are you insane?" I told the dog that he was on his own, at which point he attempted to wiggle under the fence. He couldn't, he was too big. He wandered up and down the fence, and apparently decided that he couldn't get through the fence. With one last rueful look at me, he left the yard via the other side.

Tomorrow, if it isn't too hot, I plan to use Wimpy the Weedwhacker to clear up some of the bits and pieces that Moby couldn't get at.

Unrelated to Anything Else

Three years now I've been working on losing weight. And it's worked.

My Weight Loss History on One Page.

Links Links Links!

I was ready to lose weight, but Mark Evanier's story was the trigger that gave me the strength to actually do it. In a couple of weeks it will be my 3rd weight loss anniversary.

Absolutely stunning video of the night sky over at Bad Astronomy. Wow. Cool stuff. I hope Eric and I get a chance to spend a night out in the desert over here sometime to watch the Milky Way.

A very strange story from Japan, where Google maps ran into an unexpected problem with a historical map overlay. Apparently class distinctions are alive and well.

I love this story of a baseball player whose host family is an assisted living facility.

Switched at birth.

As if being a cab driver weren't hard enough, false accusations of assault by preppy drunk idiot girls can only make life worse. I hope the driver wins the case. Thank goodness he had a camera in his cab, or he would've had his life completely ruined.

Mystery of the clock... how did this timepiece survive an ill-fated Arctic expedition?

Wow, the first draft of Star Wars was really really bad. Almost worse than bad. Wow.

More creative ads in Unusual places.

Source code for breathalyzer is crap. Great, now we can't trust breathalyzer tests, either.

LOLCat Theology.

Pugs for the in-laws. I saw a pug in the neighborhood today when I walked to the library. It was sharing a yard with three dachshunds, and looked positively giant next to them.

Unrelated to Anything Else

It's been awhile since I reported on my weight loss. Long-time readers know how I lost over 100 pounds in roughly two years. When hubby-Eric and I moved to Eastern Washington, I gained a few pounds back due to shabby eating and my unwillingness to count calories in the chaos. I'm now a couple of pounds over where I want to be, but making progress towards getting back to my standard weight.

I thought I'd post a link to Mark Evanier, whose posts about gastric bypass surgery were part of my inspiration. This post is about Dom DeLuise and weight. What Evanier says about fitting into the world is true. I do feel like I fit into the world better now that I'm not hovering near 300 pounds. I'm not even close to being skinny, but I no longer feel obese, and that makes a huge difference.

My Weight Loss History on One Page.

Links

If Maps Could Fight, a comic strip about WWII.

Colleen Doran publishes Boadicea (Boudica?) Warrior Queen of the Celts from the unpublished The Big Book of Wild Women.

Picture Is Unrelated. A blog of unrelated odd images. NSFW. Not Safe for Sanity, either.

Doctors make patients sign EULAs that forbid online reviews. If my doctor asks me to sign such a thing, I'll have to ask what she's afraid of.

The Health Care Debate. I support a single payer system. I'm tired of for profit insurance execs deciding who lives and who dies.

The United States of Obesity.

Joe's 13 things that creep me out. I'm linking to this because of number 8, although number 9 is one of my childhood nightmares as well.

Sita Sings The Blues is free and available to watch. Read the links on the bottom of the post for the whole story.

For the in-laws: PUG WEEK at Sheldon! Monday! Tuesday! Wednesday! Thursday! Friday!

CameraPhone Zen

Miss Piggy and the Wii Fit?

We were watching the Theresa Brewer episode of the Muppet Show today. In this one, Miss Piggy goes on a diet after overhearing Kermit state that he's canceling one of her performances because she's porky.

At one point, she starts working out to a TV fitness program. At which point hubby-Eric suggested that an updated version would have her working out on a Wii Fit. And no doubt the Wii Fit being much the worse for it by the end.

This random thought brought to you by the Muppet Show DVDs. I hope we can someday afford the Season 3 set.

Status Update

I haven't been writing much here because I've been busy with the holidays and, yeah, I admit it, playing on Facebook. I actually have had to install Leechblock to get myself away from Facebook and back into the real world (thanks to Colleen Doran for the tip).

As you know, hubby-Eric and I moved recently to Eastern Washington, and have had our first desert winter weather, which the neighbors assured us was strange weather. Usually this area gets almost no rainfall, so the snow was a bit of a surprise to longtime natives, although it was also no big deal. I learned that Eastern Washington snow is completely different than Western Washington snow. In Seattle, the snow is heavy and wet and freezes together overnight. Here it's dry and dusty and can be swept away with a normal broom. Until it gets compacted, then it becomes a little more annoying. But it's much easier to drive in and just generally deal with over here than in Seattle.

I documented our harrowing Christmas Eve trip over Snoqualmie Pass to visit relatives. What I haven't documented was my OCD fear of the house burning down/being burgled while we were away. I want to get a webcam so I can keep tabs on the house while we are away. That would relieve one of my minor stresses. I found a decent-looking webcam for around $60, but we don't even have that to spare right now.

Frankenhaus is still not sold. Countrywide doesn't like the offers on it, and wants more money. We've explained the situation (the foundation was MUCH worse than we realized), but they don't really care. Sometimes I wish they'd just foreclose on us so we don't have to deal with them anymore. As it is, our credit is being battered by the current situation and there's not a thing we can do. We can't even pay our current bills, much less the mortgage on Frankenhaus.

After the Sleep Study, I've been taking a timed-release melatonin capsule to adjust my body's rhythms to my schedule. This has mostly worked. I'm getting tired later, and I can wake up a little earlier. It has been hard to judge with the interruption of our standard schedules with the holiday, but now that we're getting back into the swing of things, I'm feeling a little more alert in the mornings and getting more done right when I wake up.

The Sleep Doctor prescribed Yoga to help with my anxiety, so I decided it was time to really get back to the Wii Fit (thank you again, twin sis, for getting it for us... we WILL pay you back someday). First thing I'm doing when I get up each morning is a session of Wii Fitness, mostly Yoga. In addition, Eric and I agreed that the moment he gets back from work each day, he gets the TV for his Wii Fit session (no Olbermann for me until he's finished). I need to find a regular time for my second session, but one step at a time!

Over the holidays, I gained back 10 pounds because I stopped counting calories and, worse, stopped caring for over a month. I felt awful the entire time, but man my taste buds were happy! As of Monday, I'm back on the calorie count, and Eric has asked me to track his calories as well. My goal is to stay around 1700 calories a day. Eric's got 2000 a day to work with. So far, we've done well... but it's only been two full days. We still have some leftover holiday candies and such that need to be slowly and carefully consumed during snack times. I'm working on that, too. I plan on making some 100 calorie packs soon. Wonder how small they will be?

At the Oogaboo New Y'Oz party I was introduced to another snack food that I need to find a source for. AppleSweets are low calorie and keep the doctor away! I'm going to see if I can get the local Safeway to carry them. Wish me luck.

My comic book reading has been sporadic lately. I'm finding almost no joy in the regular DC line. I still like the kid's line, but that's the only place I'm reading about my characters. Getting the comics every other week or so via mail order makes for different reading habits as well. I miss going into the comic shop and shooting the breeze with the owner. I don't miss the compulsive list checking to make sure I got every book that was supposed to ship.

My Agatha Christie reading is proceeding apace, but other reading fell by the wayside over the break. I need to get back to other books. I'm still having Kindle Envy after playing with Granny Who's Kindle over the break, but I'll get over it. I'd better get over it. Even if someone got it for me, it wouldn't arrive for another two months. So that's a non-starter.

At this moment, I'm listening to a windstorm howling through the neighborhood and feeling glad that I didn't put the house flag back up after removing it last night when the wind was bad. I think it's time to do some housework. Then maybe I'll start hunting for links for a linkdump. Yeah. Leechblock has got me off Facebook for a bit, maybe now I can get something done.

Unrelated to Anything Else

I haven't lost any weight in the last four months. I haven't really gained any, either, so I'm satisfied, if not happy, with my progress. My life went into a bit of turmoil recently, with the move, and that completely threw me off my diet. However, I managed to hold onto my good habits enough that I didn't start regaining weight. That's why I'm satisfied.

I still have some weight to lose. My BMI still says I'm overweight (26), and I can see some parts of my body I can lose a lot of fat from before I become thin and sickly (or stickly). But until I settle back into a regular routine, which I hope will happen soon, I don't expect to be doing much more than maintaining at my current weight.

I guess the fact that I've managed to keep the weight off through four chaotic months is probably a really good sign, right?

My Weight Loss History on One Page.