DAY ONE

The alarm went off at 5 am, offering me just enough lucidity to have to go to the bathroom. As I stumbled out of bed and hit the snooze button, I thought dreamily about how I would crawl back into bed, and how maybe I should set the alarm ahead to 6 so my sleep wouldn’t be disturbed.

As I sat on the toilet, however, I realized, Oh yeah, I have to get up and exercise, because I look like a beached whale.

(I realize that isn’t a very nice thing to say about oneself–and I know my friends, and Sean [who said some very nice things about the way I look last night], would disagree, but it was motivational, so I don’t regret it.)

I turned off the alarm completely, gathered up my cell phone, glasses, and wedding rings, and left the bedroom.

Last night, in order to prepare for today, I laid out my work clothes and my workout clothes on the dining room table. This was a very good idea, and I should keep doing that. One of the most time-consuming things in the morning is trying to pick an outfit, and it’s doubly annoying because Sean is asleep and I don’t want to disturb him. Doing it the night before (something that FlyLady suggests) solves both problems.

I pulled on my new yoga pants and a blue shirt, both of which I bought yesterday at Wal-Mart. I grabbed my camera bag and put my cell phone and keys in it, and picked up my 3 pound handweights. Then I hung my kitchen timer around my neck and set it for 45 minutes. Finally I was off, heading out of the apartment for a nice brisk walk around the complex.

I made the circuit twice, moving my arms around with the weights in alternating motions, trying to work as many muscles as I could think of. By the time I was finished with my second lap, my arms were feeling the burn.

Coming around to the final stretch, I went into the workout room at the apartment office, where I managed the stair climber for 5 minutes (yow), and then did some stomach crunches and leg lifts. To finish off my workout, I hopped on the treadmill and did some very fast walking.

I may actually have time to hop in the swimming pool after my workouts, which might be something I want to try sometime. This morning, though, I hurried back to the apartment, made Sean’s lunch, emptied the dishwasher, took my shower, and made my Slim Fast for the morning. Now I’m off for work, so I’ll grab my lunch Slim Fast from the fridge, leave Sean’s lunch in the bedroom where he can see it, and head off.

I’m feeling a little sore, especially in my upper back (I think from all the handweight stuff I was doing), but I also feel fairly energetic. I’m going to keep this up!

Aftermath

Yesterday, Mari, Kelly, Chris and I kidnapped Brooke and took her to Atlanta for her birthday. We ate dinner and played all sorts of games at Dave & Buster’s. It was pretty fun, although I’m not sure the expense (meal + game card + gas) would make it worthwhile to go again anytime soon.

While we were sitting at the table for dinner, our waitress took a picture of all of us together. I didn’t look at it until after I got home, when I uploaded pictures to Box of Bunnies.

It was sort of a wake-up call to me. I already knew my weight, from the gynecologist visit, but I had never quite realized what all that weight was doing to my figure. In the mirror, I only see my torso, which is an okay shape from the front (and I can just ignore the side view). This picture, though, was a side view of me sitting down. It is so horrible that I’m not going to show anyone, but think about how Jabba looked in Jedi and you’ll have a pretty good idea ;P It’s like I’m a lump of pudding, or a shapeless pile of lard. It’s disgusting. I couldn’t even believe it was me at first. Then I was so upset and frustrated that I resolved to keep the picture and look at it often so I would never forget just how far I’ve let my body go to hell.

Obviously, something needs to be done. I really don’t have the time to start a diet, mess up, overeat, and start the cycle again. I’m at the point where I need to stick to a lifestyle change. I want to be able to have a child, and while it looks like I have a chance, I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot by being too unhealthy to carry it. I also don’t want to be the kind of mother who is “too tired” to play with her kids. The time to get myself active and healthy is now.

I’m always scared when I commit to doing something positive for myself, because I’ve never really succeeded before. I’m always afraid I’ll let myself down. But that picture–ugh! I’m horrified even thinking about what I look like now. And I’m doing good; I’ve been biking and bellydancing (although this past week I haven’t done either :/). I need to keep up the exercise, add a little more, add some weight training, and start eating better.

Since I got the job, I haven’t been cooking dinner as much as I used to. I’ve also been eating out for breakfast and lunch quite a bit. This has done horrible things for my health as well as our bank account. Stopping this behavior will really help. I have been successful in cutting caffeine out of my diet–no more Mountain Dew for me!–so I believe I can do this. I just need to keep up my willpower. I stopped caffeine because of the horrible headaches I was getting. Surely back pain, sore feet, dwindling funds and an expanding waistline are good enough reasons to alter my eating habits.

For now, I’ve bought a bunch of Slim Fast shakes and shake mix. I’m going to try doing two shakes and a meal for my daily food intake. We’ll see how that works out.

I’m going to keep going biking with my friends as much as possible, and bellydancing too, but I can’t just rely on that anymore. I have to add more activity, especially during the weeks (like last week) that we don’t meet due to the weather. My apartment complex has a workout room that I can go to in the mornings and after work, and there’s a swimming pool too. I’m also thinking I’d like to buy some roller skates and take some passes around the complex every day, since that would be more fun than walking.

The hardest thing will be scheduling all this activity and also scheduling making Sean’s lunch for him and making dinners for both of us. I’m accustomed to a lot of idle time–in the past I spent it online, and more recently I’ve been spending it with my nose in a book. But that time is going to shrink, at least a little.

It’s worth it, though; I have to do this. I may even take the scariest step of all…and finally buy myself a scale.

Feelin’ kinda poopy

I stayed up really late (well, really late for me) last night, finishing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I had just gotten to the pivotal moment in the book–the revelation of You-Know-Who–when Sean asked me to rub his neck. After that, and some puttering around online (including a brief visit to #amrn), I went to the bedroom to get some sleep, but instead I opened the book and continued reading. It was well after 1 when I finally finished, all choked up with tears burning my eyes. Damn, that was a good book.

Hitting the snooze alarm until 6:20 this morning only delayed the inevitable. I dragged myself out of bed, threw some clothes on, started some anime downloads, and headed off to work, feeling like I was going to keel over at any moment.

When I got here, I found that some of my work from yesterday was unnecessary, and it seemed that I would have to redo it, so I did…only to discover that it had already been finished. Meanwhile, Robert was calling every few minutes to tell me to get some things ready for one of our drivers to pick up. He informed me that another of our drivers has quit in favor of a restaurant managerial position for which she is grossly overpaid. I can’t say that I blame her.

Robert’s out with one of the drivers giving free donuts to doctors’ offices in the hopes of getting an “in” with them for breakfast and lunch deliveries. We just signed Dunkin Donuts, and today will be our first day delivering for them. I don’t really expect to see any orders until next week, though.

It’s probably just my sour mood, but I feel like everything is so half-assed around here. I don’t feel that I’m on top of things at all sometimes. And I feel like we’re scrabbling to get by, doing things at the last minute, failing to plan anything. I want to change this, but I don’t know how.

On the bright side, Robert gave me a last minute project yesterday, and I not only finished it, but I did very well with it. It was a design project: I created the flyer that he’s using this morning to advertise the delivery service. I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.

That’s all the bitching I’ll do for now, I guess…except I want to mention that I haven’t been bike-riding all week, first because of the weather and then because I couldn’t get a hold of anyone. (I didn’t really try very hard yesterday, as I was looking forward to spending the evening at home alone reading my book. Sean went out with his friend Adam.) So yeah, I feel a little grumpy because I haven’t had my exercise, too.

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No, wait, I take that back. Men are blind!

My post yesterday was a response to the horrific state of the office when I arrived. I took some time out to organize, file, straighten, rearrange, and vacuum. When Robert and Julia, his girlfriend from New York, came in, Julia kept saying “WOW!”, while Robert’s only comment was, “Oh, you vacuumed? It looks good.”

I felt like saying, “Yes, vacuuming was all I did. I didn’t move anything or put anything away. It’s amazing what a little vacuuming, without touching anything else at all, will do.”

I was in a smart-aleck mood all day yesterday. ;>

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Men are pigs!

And not in the A.C. Slater “Oink oink, baby” way. They just seem to be unable to keep anything clean.

Bleh :>

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More the bomb than ever before

I may have led you to believe recently that I was, in fact, the bomb. And this may very well have been true at the time. But I tell you that now, more than ever, do I not only claim, but rightfully own the title of The Bomb.

Today I managed to bike all the way to the end of the trail and back and still make it up the dreaded Hill at the End.

I simply refused to fail, for over eight miles.

Mari, Kelly, and Brooke were with me. It was a really nice day, not too hot, and since we rode later in the evening the sun wasn’t really bright either. Most of the trail is shaded by beautiful trees, but in some places you come out into the light–today, those times were perfectly fine, as the sun didn’t so much beat down on us as just kind of bask us in its glow. The perfect weather for exercise.

I didn’t go particularly fast, but I wasn’t a slowpoke, either; sometimes I was towards the end but a few times I was leader of the pack. I did stop for water–lots of water–but the breaks were short and rejuvenating, and for the most part it was me getting on the bike and pulling out first.

I guess today I just really felt like riding.

Art, and remakes and revisions thereof

I started this as a response to Hai’s comment to my previous post, but it got long-winded so I decided to put it here.

Regarding the third Harry Potter movie: they did rearrange stuff, and leave a lot out (I was really looking forward to seeing Snape hover unconscious with his head lolling to the side…and they never explained how Lupin knew about the map, or about Prongs! Plus the movie ended early, etc…). As I was telling Brooke the other day, though, I guess I don’t see movies as “adaptations to a different format” so much as I see them as “retellings”. You know how several different people can see the same movie, but they’ll all talk about it differently? Or how the same event can happen to two people, but they’ll both give two different accounts? That’s how I see “remakes”–movie versions of books, anime versions of manga, etc. (This doesn’t typically apply to book versions of movies; I haven’t come across many book retellings that were all that great, because I think they try too hard to bring out the feel of the movie, instead of trying to be good literature.)

So I guess if someone’s complaint is that a movie didn’t include everything from the book it was based on, or if a movie rearranged things to make for a better movie, then I can’t agree that those are good enough reasons to dislike the movie. I feel that movies should be judged as movies, not as “moving picture forms of books”. The media are completely different; it is impossible to make a direct translation.

I think there is a sense in the US that the first version of something is automatically the best version, and everything else must be judged based on the first version. I get the feeling that later versions are supposed to present the perfection of the first version to new audiences, and when this is “unsuccessful” or when the new version goes in a different direction, those who were fans of the original don’t say “wow, that’s interesting”, they say “I want to rip out the entrails of anyone involved in the making of this garbage!” There is a keen sense of betrayal that I think can shoot any chance of good, collaborative, community storytelling right in the foot. Originality, in this particular genre, is not seen as a good thing.

People who know of my disdain for the Star Wars Special Eds (they ride the short bus) may think that I am being hypocritical here. Far from it. I would have no problem with George Lucas making new movies, and reinterpreting what he set down in the originals. My problem comes when he takes the originals and changes them fundamentally. You can’t disagree that the stories were changed. This is, I feel, more of a slap in the face to the integrity of the original work than would be making an entirely new version of it.

I have a strong sense of history in the arts. I feel that any piece that has been published should be allowed to remain available to the public. By revising and revising and then only releasing the revised versions on DVD, George Lucas is sweeping his original Trilogy under the rug. I’m lucky enough to have a set of laserdiscs, but I don’t have a laserdisc player, and my tapes won’t last forever.

A remake, on the other hand, does not in any way “undo” what has come before. It’s just a different version; a retelling from another point of view. Anyone who has studied history even a little should know that we never know the whole truth. Everything is shaded by bias and by the scope of perspective of the observer(s). Only by getting multiple perspectives can we even begin to approach “what really happened”.

I used to be really, really anal about “canon”. Basically, I wanted everything to fit, to be internally consistent, and to recognize that there was only one real “truth”. This gave me plenty of headaches on the AMRN, because we were constantly revising history in order to explain away GM or player disappearances, or to add in new Macross information. It drove me nuts. I felt that the integrity of the game was demolished every time it happened.

I think this mindset came from my childhood, when I believed that everything I read or saw on TV was real, out there somewhere in another dimension that I couldn’t reach. I was comforted by the fact that I could at least watch what was going on. Many times I would pray that God would send me and my family into one of the universes I loved. Back then, when I encountered a remake–like the Popeye movie–I had to explain it to myself as “pretend”, and later as simply more alternate dimensions.

But as an adult, I started to watch more anime, seeing how different stories have been made and remade and accepted not with cynicism and judging but with open-armed excitement at seeing an old story in a fresh, new light. And I slowly began to change my mind. New versions of something do not negate or invalidate the old. They’re all the same story, but told through different eyes. (And if that’s too difficult to grok, then the alternate universe theory should placate you.)

Media bias; plus, what I’m up to

I love it when Den Beste points these things out. What you see or read on the news really is just a matter of how the news organization wants to frame the information they’ve received.

I finished off Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with time to spare before seeing the movie last night. I must say, it’s my favorite book so far. That may have tempered my opinion of the movie, too, because I came away from it feeling like it was the best of the three, while Kelly was far less impressed.

Regardless of whether or not the movie is actually good, I stand by my opinion that the soundtrack is the best of the Harry Potter music, and is indeed the best from John Williams that I’ve heard in awhile. The man is my idol, musically, but of late he has taken to essentially plagiarizing himself. (For example, of all the music in The Phantom Menace, the only truly unique theme was “Duel of the Fates”. For a more relevant example, the main theme we hear when a Harry Potter movie opens or is advertised is almost exactly the same as a spooky, magical little melody from Hook.)

Having blown through three Harry Potter novels, I’m starting to feel like a real reader again. In fact, tonight I finally started reading The Time Traveler’s Wife…and it is really, really good. I’ve missed being a reader; I haven’t been voracious about it since sometime in high school. The only thing I don’t really like about reading is having to handle the books. There is no comfortable way to read. I have three typical positions, which I switch off as I get uncomfortable: on my back, holding the book over my face; on my stomach, with the book resting on my pillow; and sitting cross-legged, leaning down towards the book. Depending on the size and weight of the book, lying on my back, which is otherwise the most comfortable position, can be a true hassle.

I don’t particularly like reading things of novel length on my computer, because I have no real way of stopping. It’s not like I can put a bookmark in exactly where I want to (although I don’t know about ebook software, and whether or not this is possible with that). I have read in the La-Z-Boy we got from Sean’s parents, and it works out okay: I can prop my elbows on the armrests, which is something of a relief to my arms. Maybe with a pillow in my lap it would work out…

It might be fun to take a book over to the workout room at the apartment clubhouse and read while walking on a treadmill. I may try that at some point; more exercise would definitely be a good thing.

Work has been much better than it was on Monday and last week. I’m not sure what my problem was, but at least part of it can be attributed to hormones and lack of sleep. Yesterday I had something of a bad experience on a call, but I refused to let it bother me. I was pretty impressed with myself afterwards. If it had happened on Monday, I’m not sure what would have happened.

Mari and Brooke and I were supposed to bellydance today, but things didn’t work out. Hopefully we will be bike-riding tomorrow, and maybe we can squeeze in some bellydance too. I would like to get myself on a regimen of going through all the basic bellydance motions, several times each, every day. I got the idea from Mari; it would be a fantastic aerobic/muscular workout. Now I just need to figure out what time of day I want to do it. I would have time in the morning if I got up at 5 (like I usually try to), but I would also have time right after work, in the “dead” time between then and when I have to start making dinner. I suppose I could just dedicate myself to doing it during one of those two times.

I need to go grocery shopping and pick up some meat for the week, and vegetables. Perishable food is the bane of my existence…I have trouble actually using it up before it goes bad. At the same time, though, I really want to start eating fresh foods, and stop using packaged/processed products.

As a final note…I found a couple new blogs to read recently. One belongs to a 17 year old and the other belongs to a 73 year old. I found them through Blogger’s new profile feature…I have “emotion” listed as one of my interests, and out of curiosity I clicked it to see if anyone else had used that word too. Interestingly, only a handful of people came up. Of those, I found myself drawn to these two: goei and rare.

rare has a sort of rambling, stream-of-consciousness, yet somehow practiced and beautiful flow to his writing, and yesterday he wrote something that really touched me, so I would like to share it.

Hmm, corsets.

Mari got me thinking about corsets the other day–she said they really helped her posture, and she attributes her loss of back pain at least partially to that. I have been sitting horribly in chairs of late…it seems like sitting up straight is a huge hassle, but I always feel better when I do it.

Anyway, Mari took a corset quiz, so I took it too.

victorian
You’re a Victorian-era corset. How refined. What corset are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I really wonder how these quizzes work sometimes.

I am the BOMB! (Warning: two references to children’s stories!)

So, bike riding was awesome. I didn’t have to stop and walk at all, including the very last stretch where we have to labor up a long hill just to get back to Mari and Kelly’s place. I have never made it all the way up that hill before. Always, I’ve tried to give myself some momentum, pumping hard to force my way up the hill, and always I have fizzled out long before I reach the top. This time, I didn’t even try to speed up; I just kept going at a regular pace (yes, slow and steady, like the hare [tortoise! I meant tortoise! Sheesh, and I call myself a TMNT fan…]). Towards the end I was really pushing myself. I was almost there…I was almost there…it was like the Little Engine Who Could or something. And then I was there, and Mari and Kelly were congratulating me, and my legs were burning with the sweet pain of success.

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A little more on advertising

I’m going to eat dinner here in a bit, and then I’m going bike riding, but before I go I wanted to mention something AJ reminded me of in his comment to my previous post.

Psychographics is information about customers that is used to market to those customers things that they are specifically interested in. Giving a smoker a coupon to buy more cigarettes is an example of the most direct way to cash in on this sort of thing. You have the customer already; now it’s just a matter of persuading him to continue using your product.

(By the way, still quitting on your birthday, AJ?)

Another way to do this is to put similar items that a customer might be interested in the vicinity of an item you already know they are interested in. An excellent (and rather innovative) example of this is Google’s AdWords. Affiliate advertising on websites also tends to do this sort of thing. I’m sure this also happens in more traditional media, like television or newspapers, but to be honest I haven’t watched TV commercials or read a real newspaper in something like 10 years. (Go go Gadget VCR…)

I think my problem with traditional advertising is that it is static and passive and therefore obtrusive, out of place. Targeted advertising using psychographics is much better, assuming it’s done right, because it is at least relevant.

Many people have problems with targeted advertising because of how the targeting is done. Companies collect information from their customers, either through a direct poll or indirectly by watching what they purchase, what websites they go to, etc. Amazon.com’s website is fantastic at this. I’ve never seen another site that so perfectly advertises at every turn. Sure, they get a few things wrong, but in the long run I appreciate the “suggestions” their algorithms come up with for me. Not only do they track what I’m looking at and what I’ve bought, but they keep statistics across the board, to show me that since I like this thing a bunch of other people like, I may also like this other thing that people seem to like.

But of course, the issue for those concerned about privacy is the fact that tracking occurs at all. The idea that browsing habits might be stored somewhere and analyzed is terrifying to some, and others find it offensive that science be used to “target” them with popular products…it’s an affront to individuality and a nod to peer pressure.

Companies that use psychographics have to toe the line, making sure not to use the information they’ve gleaned for a sinister purpose while still cashing in on it.

I don’t really have a problem with my browsing habits being monitored. I’m not fearful that some big corporation is going to know my deepest, darkest secrets. Who cares if they know? (I doubt they even care.) And I certainly don’t think this sort of knowledge will enable them–or anyone else–to control me. Sway me with pleasant, similar items I could buy, maybe. But nothing that’s being done in terms of targeted advertising is denying me my freedom to choose for myself–as long, of course, that I can opt out of any mailings.

Amazon.com does do some annoying “fly overtop the content to get your attention” ads sometimes. I like targeted advertising, but I don’t like advertising that covers up what I’m trying to read. It’s worse than a popup ad because I can’t easily get rid of it. (Those ads on MSN are the worst–sometimes it takes several seconds to find the X, and sometimes there isn’t an X until the ad is over.)

The best sort of ad, I think, is the kind that is unobtrusive, relevant, and informative. I like Google AdWords because they meet these criteria. I do not, however, like it when people use AdWords (or something similar) without denoting them as ads. I don’t want to be tricked into thinking an advertisement is legitimate content.

In my ideal world, advertising would be just like any other Internet content: available when I want to look at it, avoidable when I don’t, and interesting to at least some of the people who come across it. Graphical ads on pages with mainly textual content would not exist. Ads would match their surroundings, fit in as part of the page. As far as mailings go, e- or otherwise, I would only receive mailings that I had chosen to receive, and I would be able to turn them off at any time.

Affiliate programs and AdWords are a step in the right direction. However, it’s difficult to implement these paradigms in traditional media. As the television and the computer grow into one creature, though, I expect that TV commercials will begin to change. We’ll just have to wait and see what they change into.

Journalism, and how to fund things without advertising

Interestingly enough, Den Beste recently wrote about the decay of journalism in the United States…I just read his piece.

I don’t know how I would solve the problem either, but I think turning all news organizations into nonprofits would be a good start. Of course, I’m not sure how this would be accomplished while allowing the organizations access to the technology and travel they need to get the story. I hesitate to say that they should be government subsidized, but I’m not sure that advertisers would approach them in the same way if they were nonprofit…and to be honest, I don’t think the news should have advertisements, and this change would certainly destroy their budgets.

It’s gotten to the point where I really just hate advertisements of all kinds. With the Internet, I can pretty much find whatever I need, via informative websites or word-of-mouth on forums or from friends. I can’t actually remember ever seeing an ad, thinking “Hey, I could use that!” and then buying something.

Most of the time I ignore ads completely. I throw away the coupon books and flyers we get in the mail, too. Coupons are a huge scam; they give you discounts on things you didn’t want in the first place. You’re not saving money, you’re wasting it on stuff that clutters up your house, or food that will sit and rot in the fridge because “it was such a great deal!” and yet no one wants to eat it.

I don’t need to even start on how annoying pop-up ads and spam are.

For some time now I’ve been thinking that advertising needs to be eliminated, or at the very least transformed. But I’m not entirely sure how, and that is why I can’t solidly recommend a way to take advertising out of the news.

I’ll probably post more about this later, but my lunch break is over now, so…ta-ta!

Yet another reason why politics and the media suck ass.

This is the story of a young woman who was lied about by reporters wanting a story and politicians hoping to smear John Kerry. It is also an example of why I would never go into politics.

There’s an interesting quote towards the end:

I started out as an ambitious young woman inspired by politics and the media. I’ve ended up disenchanted with both. If I had been an ambitious young man, this story would not have happened.

She’s right.

(I should mention that I had never heard of this story until I read this article. Am I just really out of it, or was this not as big as it seems?)

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