- Stayed up until about 4 AM Friday night / Saturday morning and made some great progress where databases are concerned. It’s very nice to see my thoughts finally coming off the paper and onto the computer screen, and I’m looking forward to possibly even getting close to setting a deadline for the revamped site to go online!
- Discovered the other day that I think I need bigger athletic shoes. 🙁 The last couple of times I’ve exercised, my left foot was getting a little tingly about twenty or so minutes in…which scared the hell out of me because isn’t that one of the major symptoms for diabetes or something?! Well, I’ve been noticing blisters a few hours after I finish working out, so I think it’s just that my shoes are too tight. Weird because they’re the same size as my regular shoes, but whatever. There goes another forty bucks…
- Renewed my Disney pass last Friday, so I’m good to go for another year…at least as soon as the new one shows up in the mail. Probably won’t go again until March because the rest of my February weekends are filling up quick, but no doubt I’ll need a break by then!
- Am about ready to let my match.com membership lapse again if I don’t come across someone with a hint of manners, though. It’s pretty bad when my current standards as far as meeting women is concerned are limited only to “replies to my e-mails”! I don’t care if you’re interested or not (well, I do, but…) – just reply or hit the “No thanks” button within a few days time. Don’t ignore me altogether – that’s all I ask. :<
- Weight Loss Update: no change whatsoever. In fact, I’ve been fluctuating between 215 and 220 for a while now, so something’s got to change. One idea is that I might start keeping better track of calories and such again (yay spreadsheets), which is a pain but should help me to figure out portions better; another is that I need to incorporate more variety into my exercise routine because my body might be “getting used to” the all-cardio deal. Any suggestions???
- Went to Leeroy Selmon’s with Dad tonight for dinner and surprisingly had a very good salad that I’m definitely going to try to imitate the next time I go to the grocery store. Grilled shrimp, water chestnuts, egg, bacon, corn, bits of guda cheese (I think) with a mustard vinegrette – talk about a salad I could get used to! Of course, lord only knows what the calorie count for that bad boy was…
- And lastly, I think I’ve finally got a do-able plan to kickstart my writing once again. A nice pep talk Friday evening reminded me that if I really want to write professionally for a living, I should be writing pretty much every waking moment when I get home in the evenings and…for lack of a better descriptor…that’s just not happening. There are a lot of motivational and mental roadblocks that I need to break down and really, the only way for me to do that is simply by writing every single day. It might not have to be the Great American Novel, but the only way to break out of a rut like this is to keep working at it until it gives. And it’s tough for me because I haven’t written a truly good (in my opinion) humor column in nearly a year – I’ve got several dozen opinion columns that have never been published anywhere simply because although I wrote them, even I am afraid that they’re a bit too sarcastic and bitchy to be worth reading…and you know something’s wrong when I’m concerned about being too sarcastic!Even lately it’s all I’ve been able to write and I don’t want to ruin the image that people have of my work, but maybe it’s just a stage that I need to work through.So anyways, my plan for the immediate future is to sit down each night, after exercise and dinner, and write one column…or story, or chapter, or whatever. Seven columns a week on a regular basis is more than I’ve put out in a while, but maybe it’s time for a change. I know that there are a lot of reasons that I’ve enjoyed writing in the past … it’s time to get back to those days … so here’s to a wordier, happier tomorrow! And I’ll try to put a little something simple together to offer my musings online again by the end of the week – it won’t be pretty, but then again, I can’t guarantee that the writing will be, either… 😉
P.S. Thanks for the pep talk, Court. I’ll have those memoirs on your desk in no time!
I don’t know if this is true or not, but my friend at Foot Locker told me running/exercise shoes should always be a little bit looser when you buy them, because your feet swell when you work out. I always notice my shoes are tighter when I get home than when I’m walking to the gym.
Trevor’s (my housemate) mom is a nutritionist. The best thing you can do, apparently, is eat a lot more fruit, in general, but also eat like an apple or banana before you eat a meal. It fills you up a bit, and also satisfies your body’s desire for sugars. I’ve been eating a lot more grapes, which is good because they do all that, and they are very full of water, which is good for keeping yourself hydrated – also essential. 🙂
I think one of the biggest things I’ve noticed in Germany is that they don’t market food with the “diet” (here “diät”) label. It’s always “light” or “fit” or something, and they use that even less than usual. The American concept of fitting food into “bad” and “good” categories is kind of seen as stupid here, from what I’ve seen, anyway. I mean they obviously know not to eat like fourteen pieces of Apfelkuchen a day, but it’s also not “bad”…it’s just food. They eat way more kuchen, beer, chocolate, and bread over here than in the U.S., and I think it’s because these things aren’t “taboo”, which of course makes people want to eat more these foods in the U.S.! One of my German friends said that to him, the U.S. is the land of extremes – ie, good or evil food, and I have to say, I kind of agree, and I don’t think it’s a healthy outlook. It’s still so hard to not think like that here, especially because I still live with 4 other Americans in my building. 🙂 Good luck!!