Snow, Chocolate & Vicodin

Got out of bed, opened the curtains, and what to my wondering eyes did appear?


All the branches are loaded with snow.




















Everywhere you look...

Ha. That's one way to make sure I get white camellias!











Giveaway du jour: Want to win an iPod shuffle or gift cards? It's easy. Link to Jennette Fulda's new book, and you'll be entering into a drawing.

Actually, I was going to link to her site anyway, because I loved the book trailer she created to go with the release of her memoir: Chocolate & Vicodin.

I can't imagine having to deal with a headache that doesn't go away -- for years. It's all the more impressive that the book trailer is funny.
Warning: contains bears.



Exercise du jour: Walking. Slowly.
Done! And not all that slowly, actually. Turns out that a mad, frantic rush for the Max train is good exercise. Thankfully today wasn't icy. I need to do more exercise that will push the boundaries. Maybe I should run for the Max more often.

Naughty Camellias, or Pink is the new White

Last September... loads of potential blooms there...

Quote du jour: Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination.
- Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897

In today's news, I’m mad at Home Depot. (Yes, that is news. Usually I’m mad at Lowe’s.)

Last fall I planted seven, count ‘em seven Camellia trees (C. japonica). Only one of which bothered to put forth a few blooms last month. According to the label, it was supposed to bloom in the fall. Which, last I checked, ain't January.

Oh, I suppose I'll bloom a bit...

The others were “supposed” to bloom in early winter. Considering winter is two-thirds of the way along (at least if you believe the calendar), I’d say they’re confused. They’re not the only ones.

I planted these trees according to a plan, damn it. I was going to be this fancy dancy landscapey person, so I alternated the colors carefully: red, pink, white, red… all the way down the row.

I even left the labels on the plants, so I’d remember which one was which. (Yes, I could’ve written that info down, but then I’d lose the piece of paper.)

Here’s a picture of one of the camellias, which is thinking about considering the faint possibility of maybe, just possibly, starting to bloom a bit.

To bloom or not to bloom... decisions, decisions...

What color does that bud look to you? To me, it looks dark pink or maybe red.
Here’s the label came with the camellia tree. It's still attached; I never took it off.

White? It's not even remotely Caucasian...

Either the camellia is suffering from an identity crisis, or Home Depot has an issue with truthiness.

So yesterday, I blew money on a camellia that was already in bloom. I like the looks of these flowers, the color and the form. Plus, the label matched the blooms that were actually on the plant.

Not ashamed to be labeled a pinko

I like that I know what the heck I'm planting ahead of time, which makes me feel a bit more in control of the landscaping. The only drawback is the name of the variety.

Is it just me, or does that sound like the name for a naughty type of massage implement?

I realize that this camellia is also pink, not white, but a) I liked the particular color of pink b) I like the form and c) I couldn't find any bloomin' white camellias. (Sorry, guv. Slipped into Cockney dialect for a sec.) Besides, this one was intentionally pink. Plus, I bought it at a store that was not Home Depot. And I got to include a bit of spring color in the grey despair of Cubicle World.

Bloomin' camellia with a cuppa tea

Exercise du jour: Look, all I'm going to commit to is 20 minutes on the elliptical first thing in the a.m. before doing anything else besides getting out of bed and opening my eyes. After that, everything is negotiable.
Done! Plus, 3 miles walking. Plus, I didn't annihilate a single cow-orker today. That definitely calls for a star!



Quote courtesy of QuoteGarden.

Back to work, back to exercise... yeah, I'm enthused...

If you want to 'get in touch with your feelings,' fine — talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts.

- William Safire

Site du jour: I loved this news story: Philly homeowner forecloses on Wells Fargo.

Weird du jour: I don't know if you've ever read Young House Love, a blog written by a young couple who love buying older houses and renovating them. They posted about a note that the previous owner had left hidden in their house when they bought it.

It reminded me of another note, left beneath a pond in case the pond was ever dug up, which I thought was funny, albeit in a very dry and sarcastic way: "One of the more bizarre reasons could be that the removal of the pond was the direct result of a bite on the ankle from a Wildebeest, but I shall not speculate."

Whether the note was funny or just strange, what amazed me was the number of people who commented on it. The thread denigrated into a series of insults on the subject of Obsessive Parenting, Obsessive Note-leaving, and Obsessive Crank-commenting. Damn, but people take life on the internet seriously.

Exercise du jour: Usually, I know ahead of time what exercise I'm going to try for. Today, it depends on whether the weather listens to the weather man (i.e. nasty, in which case I walk) or good enough (in which case, I wanna bike). It was over 50 degrees on Monday, sunny and spring-like. Hard to believe that it's going to be snowing in another day or so.
FAIL. Didn't exercise morning, noon, or night. I decided to oversleep through the morning exercise, work through the lunch-time hail, and have a headache in the evening. I suspect the first two influenced the third.

Get up and go... while you can

Quote du jour: We should consider every day lost in which we do not Dance at least once.
- Nietzsche

Hugh photos du jour: A whole page of photos of Hugh running on the beach. Some day, summer will come again. Maybe.

Let's see. I can get up, go out into the cold and the dark, and pedal to work.
Or, I can go back to bed, where it's warm and comfy, and dream about running away to a tropical island.

Motivation du jour: Woman Dies in her Cubicle. No One Notices.

Ever feel like no one notices all the effort you put into your job?

Well, hopefully they at least notice you’re alive and breathing. If not, you could find yourself in the same situation as Rebecca Wells, a 51-year-old woman who died in her cubicle Friday in Los Angeles County.

Though she died on Friday, she was unnoticed at her desk in the Department of Internal Services until Saturday. The county coroner is yet to determine the cause of death.

When she passed away, Wells, who worked in risk management, was performing an audit. Despite not noticing the deceased, one of her coworkers remembered, “She was always working, always working.” Maybe, after this event, her coworkers will check on one another more often.

I swear, that makes me want to get up and work out. I can't (yet) rearrange my life so that I no longer have to sit in a cubicle for ten hours a day, but I can make sure to include time in my day for doing something besides sitting.

Exercise du jour: Cycling! I'm going for it!
Done! Well, as much as I could do. I am soaked to the skin, cold, and a bit grumpy. It's not that I think the Fates are conspiring against me, but -- oh, who am I kidding. All day, no rain. When did it start raining? A couple minutes before I started my ride. I hadn't gone two miles before I was soaked to the skin. As soon as I got home? Yep, that's when it stopped pouring. It's going to be warm and sunny all weekend. Until I head back to work. Then, they're thinking snow.
Coincidence? Ha!

She who hesitates doesn't ride her bike to work

Quote du jour: Home is whatever you can rebel against.
- Pico Iyer

You (i.e. I) gotta get up earlier and leave earlier for work if I want to leave the house pedaling.
It's not stormy out right now. It's not even snowing... at least, not on the route I take.
So what's keeping me here? Besides my natural inclination to stay where it's warm rather than face the cruel, cruel world out there.
Sorry, can't talk now. Gotta go.

Exercise du jour: Cycling to work. 16 miles.
FAIL. Well, I didn't do the full 16. On the other hand, I did haul myself out the door and on the bike. It's not my fault that as I'm pedaling along, the rain changed to thick, heavy snowflakes. All of a sudden it felt like I was cycling along in a snowglobe that someone had shaken up. Kinda hard to see where I was going. The evening ride didn't have the predicted thunderstorm, but on the other hand it did have lots of black ice, which I don't like much either.
Maybe I'll give myself a star for trying even though all the Fates conspired against me. I did get some miles of cycling in, though not as many as I'd wanted.
There! Take that, Fate!

Love and other vices

Quote du jour: Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age. - Anais Nin


Site du jour: In honor of V-day, I thought I'd throw out this site, where the romance publisher Harlequin describes why they decided to patent the kiss.

This invention, The Essential Romantic Kiss ("The Kiss"), involves a method by which two people can reciprocate their romantic feelings towards one another in a manner that deepens attachment, provides pleasure and promotes physical and emotional well‐being. Further, this method improves with repetition, can be performed at virtually any time and, if registered by the US Patent Office, will be freely available to all persons everywhere in the interests of enhancing romantic love and generally making the world a better place.

In case you think I'm kidding, here's the seven page kiss patent.

And, in other news, there's an anti-Valentine's day movement in Malaysia. "Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said Monday's celebration of romantic love was "not suitable" for Muslims." The idea is that Valentine's day encourages vice. I don't get that. Commercializing romance is crass, maybe, but I have trouble associating heart-shaped chocolates with vice.

Hmmmn... well, okay, I guess I could think up a few associations...

Shout out du jour: Have to say, I love Xenia's Valentine's Day card. I am envious.

Exercise du jour: Really, considering the day, I should be indulging in some patented kind of vice-encouraging exercise. But I refuse to post that as a goal here. It's not That Kind of Blog. Instead, I'll settle for posting the goal of bicycling. Is there such a thing as bicycle vice? Hmmmn.... maybe I'd rather not know. Forget I asked that question. Nevermind. I really don't want to know.

FAIL. I am a failure. Or at least I feel like one. It was a dark and stormy day, with lots of rain falling vertically and wind blowing horizontally, so I guess I can give myself a pass on the bike ride. But in the evening -- of course! -- another computer crisis from a long-distance relative. Moral: exercise first thing on the elliptical. Evenings are not safe. [In this case, literally. Another cyclist was killed riding in that storm, even though he was wearing lights and was off to the side. A car, driven too fast for the conditions, "didn't see him" in an intersection.]

Rodin's unpatented version of The Kiss courtesy of Ulleskelf.

Me & Alfred Hitchcock

Yes, it's a photo I used once before. But it's cold outside, and this photo is hot.

Number of migraines: 1
Number of days entertaining said headache: 4
Minutes of exercising accomplished: 20 (on Tuesday)

Le sigh. At least I made it to Friday. Why does a headache leave you feeling wiped out? I mean, it's not as if I were working out or anything. Unfair, I call it.

Site du jour: Celebrities riding a bicycle. Somehow, I hadn't associated Alfred Hitchcock with bike riding. Sadly, no pictures of Hugh on the site. Yet.

Exercise du jour: Call me optimistic, if you will, but today the aim is to ride the bicycle. If Hitchcock can do it, why not me?
Done! Alfred was an inspiration. Or else having the wind at my back made the ride seem easier. 12 miles and all's well.


Photo courtesy of Barbara.Doduk

Love the one you're with. Even if it's a machine.

Okay, some of you need to wash your minds out right now. Sheesh.

Ellie's a very respectable exercising machine

You might have noticed that there has not been a galaxy of sparkling gold stars on the blog lately.

Partly that's because I'm being picky. In the old days (i.e. last year), I'd stick up a star if I got any exercise in for the day, even some easy-paced walking. Now, I want to achieve the specific exercise that I posted or it doesn't count. At first, I wasn't sure if this was being persnickety or holding myself to a higher standard. Maybe both.

I think, on reflection, that it's a bad thing. I should post the exercise I do, even if it's not the exercise I want to do. Otherwise, I'm shooting myself in the foot here.

For example: sometimes I won't have time to jog, but I could slip in a quick* 20 minutes on the elliptical. However, since I'd posted that I would jog, it seems 'not good enough' to do what I can and ellipt. So I'll either not post the star up on the blog, since I didn't do the 'right' exercise, or -- wait for it -- I'll end up skipping exercising altogether for that day. The idea in the back of my mind, vague as it is, is something along the lines of "If I can't do the exercise I want, there's no point in doing any at all." Please feel free to point out that idea is pretty damned stupid. I agree. It's just my perfectionist tendency cropping up in a new guise.

Thankfully, I don't usually fall into that trap -- especially now that I've dragged that vague idea out of the back of my mind and subjected it to the unkind light of analysis. I generally do get in a few miles of walking even if I do nothing else. I keep the running (sic) total on the sidebar up to date.

Goal of the week: The computer is turned off at 7:07 pm. No cheating.
Done! Well... it will be in six minutes. I shan't be leaving any comments on any blogs tonight.

Exercise du jour: 8 miles on the bicycle. If I can't do that, I'll at least slip in a couple miles of walking at lunch and 20 minutes ellipticalling when I get home. One way or another, I'm gonna get that star up on this post.
20 minutes on the elliptical. The headache doesn't want to exercise tonight, and I'm humoring him. (No, "the headache" is not a euphemism for a significant other.)

*As opposed to a slow 20 minutes. Time expands or contracts during exercise depending on the excellence of the playlist on the iPod.

Plugging the time sink

Quote du jour: I named my iPhone 'The Titanic.' Now, every time I plug in the phone I see the message 'The Titanic is syncing.' - from Twitter.

Word du jour: Dalliance: Waste of time in frivolous action or in dawdling.

More and more, it seems to me that what's holding me back has changed. I'm no longer facing the challenge of overcoming my Inner Slug so I can get out there and exercise. The I.S. seems to have accepted the fact that most of the time it's going to lose. What I now have to wrestle with is the peril of time sinks.

You know the sort of thing. People* who hang out on Facebook talk about Farmville. Gamers have to deal with World of Warcraft. And there's always online Scrabble games. You just open the computer/phone/iPad up for one minute... and then look up an hour later to realize you've stepped into another time sink. Even something as simple as answering a few emails can cost you more time than you realize.

I've conditioned my mind and my body to accept exercise, but I find that I can get sideswiped by Life coming along and demanding my attention Right Away. If I had been more conscious of the time I frittered away, I could have gotten the exercise in first and not had to postpone it for another day.

Managing time is like managing a budget; it's one of those thing that I always have trouble with. I'm going to try to fix this with going on an Internet diet.

Goal of the week: The computer is going to be turned off promptly at 7:07 pm in the evening, and not turned on again until the following afternoon. Hell, I'm online all day at work; I can answer an emergency email if I have to. But no playtime for Merry. (Wah)

I'm going to try that for one week and see if there are any improvements to the a)weight b)exercising c)house organizing d)life.
Done! Yes, I know it's actually 7:09 but I am out of here!




Exercise du jour: 2 miles jogging. I need to do this earlier rather than later. No putting it off until the evening... 'cause 99% of the time that means 'never.'

Done! Not brilliantly, not briskly, but done. Why do my knees hurt? For that matter, I'm getting a headache. I wish being virtuous was more rewarding.

*i.e. everyone on the planet besides myself, my mother, and one of my brothers.

Photo courtesy of Fotologic.

If it's Friday, that means...

If it's Friday, it's time for Hugh... oh hell, it's ALWAYS time!

Quote du jour: I am of the firm belief that everybody could write books and I never understand why they don't. After all, everyone speaks. Once the grammar has been learnt it is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say. - Beryl Bainbridge

Site du jour: This site probably would appeal only to people who like snark or who like writing that pays attention to things like spelling, grammar, and diction ... so you'll understand why I liked it. Reasoning with Vampires. The blogger parses the Twilight books according to the rules of English grammar. Funny.

Exercise du jour: 2 miles jogging at an easy, relaxed pace -- my knees have been bothering me since I got on that dratted bike. I think it must need a tuneup or something like that. I mean the bike needs a tuneup. Unless there are tuneups for knees.

Photo courtesy of cool guyz.

Brainless exercising

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Wince-inducing quote du jour: Sheridan and Delenn are the 'Arthur and Guinevere' of Babylon 5. - Bruce Boxleitner

[For those who've never watched Babylon 5, Bruce Boxleitner was the actor who played Sheridan, i.e. one of the two romantic leads. I don't think he's read a lot of Arthurian tragedy. ]

Site du jour: Annals of Improbable Research, "research that makes people laugh, then think." If you ever need to know about the aerodynamics of a boomerang, this is the site to visit. Even sometimes has useful stuff, like the notice of the FDA recalling a candy called Toxic Waste. My current favorite is a study on how computers are being used to write novels. No, not by you typing on the keyboard. The computer itself indulges in Brainless Writing.

Exercise du jour: Brainless exercising. Actually I think that might help. I think too much about exercising when I should be out doing the dang stuff. 2 miles around the track.
Done! You would've been proud of me. I looked at my schedule for the day, saw that it was back-to-back meetings all afternoon, and decided to go out running Early. (You know me. I never do anything early.) It was a quick impulse decision; I didn't stop to think it through. I did start to answer Just One More Email, but then I realized that if I sat there for another minute I'd start to dally, which would lead to dilly-dallying, which would lead to 6 p.m. with no exercise done. So I went for it.
p.s. All you people suffering through snow and below-insane temperatures? I'm sorry for you, I really am, but today was absolutely beautiful: bright sunshine, blue skies, and all the trimmings. Crocuses are starting to bloom. I think we're getting all this good weather at your expense. Maybe this would be a good time to visit?
Plus, 4 miles walking.

Back in the saddle again...

Quote du jour: I'm afraid sometimes you'll play lonely games too, games you can't win because you'll play against you. - Dr Seuss

I haven't been on the bicycle in months. It's not as if the roads are icy, so I don't really have a decent excuse. I just didn't feel ready. Have to be organized to commute by bicycle. Have to pack clothes to wear at work, find clothes to wear while cycling, get up early enough so that I can cycle in and still get to work at a reasonable time...

Exercise du jour: Cycle a measly 8 miles. That's not too much to ask. The real challenge is getting the brain and body to grasp the concept of getting up and pedaling away in the dark. Once I get on the bicycle, it's all easy. Well, easier. Here I go.
Done! Well, most of it. 6 miles. But I allowed the star for getting up when it was cold and dark and pedaling toward a distant and coldly beautiful sunrise. Did I mention it was cold? Just checking.*

*I probably shouldn't complain, since it wasn't much below freezing and that's balmy compared to some people's weather. But I bet they didn't forget where they put their gloves.

Change of plan

Quote du jour: If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

Site du jour: This is probably something that would only amuse academics, but I liked the honesty of it: The Journal of Universal Rejection.

The founding principle of the Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR) is rejection. Universal rejection. That is to say, all submissions, regardless of quality, will be rejected. Despite that apparent drawback, here are a number of reasons you may choose to submit to the JofUR...

I'm tired of wrestling with wildebeests, so I've made a decision. Rather than keep increasing the distance, I'm going to stick to a mere 2 miles at lunch, but work on getting 'em done a little faster. It's not as ego-boosting, but I can fit it into the schedule.

It really does make me feel I'm accomplishing something if I can write "Oh, I ran 10 miles today." (I would love to be able to write that. Just once. Maybe someday.) Being able to go a lesser distance but in a faster pace... it's not as impressive. But what the hell. If it makes me fit rather than quit, then you must acquit I'll do it. It's better than trying to achieve a goal that can be easily sidetracked by life, work, and relatives.

Exercise du jour: 2 miles round the trail at lunch. Rain? Who cares. Work pressure? Bah. I'm gonna go for it.

Appreciating simplicity

Not sure if he's checking his deodorant or realizing that he could've had a V-8.

Quote du jour: I realized that if I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.
- Charles Lindbergh

Site du jour: Hummingbird webcam. Phoebe the hummingbird keeps coming back to this back yard in Southern California, year after year, to nest in one of the rose bushes. The owners finally set up a webcam so that people could watch. The webcam has developed quite a following.

Exercise du jour: Small goals today, after last night's marathon of talking someone through connecting to a wireless network when they have trouble getting around a computer. Walking. It's simple, it's basic, and I can do it no matter how tired I am.
Done! That's the great thing about small goals. Easy victories. I think I should throw one in more often.

Photo courtesy of Tabercil.

What are you looking at? You were expecting something?

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What?

Why are you looking at me like that?

Yes, I know I swore I'd run 3.5 miles yesterday, but that was written BEFORE 1 pm. Which was the time when, in the middle of the work day and indeed about an hour before I was due to give a technical presentation in the presence of several highly placed VPs and Very Important Personages, that my mother called me up at work, all frantic because they suddenly decided that they needed to reconfigure her router so that my niece could install a wireless card on her computer.

[Far be it from me to point out that one doesn't need to reconfigure the whole bloody router to install a wireless card on a computer that is in another room and indeed on another floor. I highly suspect that this person-whom-they-paid-to-do-the-install couldn't have bought a vowel if you gave him a wad of cash and the entire friggin' alphabet. But I digress.]

And after my mother in the Bay Area called me, then my brother (niece's father) in the Upper-Right part of California called me to try to perform a dual long-distance diagnosis of the problems. Then it was the turn of my brother in the Upper-Left part of the state, the one who'd actually bought and installed the damn router. [Note: these definitions of 'left' and 'right' do not reflect the actual political views of the brothers in question... oh wait. I just recollected their political views. Okay, let's just call it a coincidence.]

Then there was the long evening call to rehash all the things that the technician had done/not done/screwed-up-to-the-point-where-I'll-have-to-fix-it. I finally got to the point of saying Yes, yes, yes, I realize that all of this is terribly important and the fate of the free world depends upon it my niece will probably have to not wait until the last moment to do her work work hard to get her homework done on time. But that will have to wait for another night because ONE of us has to get up in the MORNing tomorrow.

And do a 3.5 mile run, damn it. At this rate, I'm going to have to declare Exercising an emergency in its own right.

Done! Took a longer lunch than usual, but lord knows I'll make that up pretty quickly. It was a beautiful day. It smelled like spring.

Winter

Quote du jour: I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape.
- Andrew Wyeth

Site du jour: Think you know what's been going on? The Pew Research Center has a political quiz that will test your knowledge.

Exercise du jour: Jog 3.5 miles. Or a reasonable fascimile thereof. No wildebeests.

Update du 10:01 pm: I would just like to record it here, for public record and for my own personal satisfaction, that IT'S NOT MY FAULT.

Photo courtesy of Lerdsuwa.

It was a very big wildebeest, if that helps

I didn't post anything this morning because I got tired of writing sniveling posts filled with piffling, petty reasons why the exercise didn't get done. That sort of thing is depressing and it's boring. I know I'd pledged to post my feeble excuses, as a way of holding myself accountable, but it makes for a damned feeble post.

So I've decided to take another approach:

• I didn't get the 3.5 mile jog yesterday because a nuclear bomb exploded right directly on the track.
• I didn't get the 3.5 mile jog in today because I had to rescue an innocent golden-haired child from a rampaging wildebeest before flying off to Stockholm Oslo Maui to accept the Nobel prize for Incredible Wonderfulness.

There. Nothing to do with indigestion, extremely late MAX trains, or general time mis-management.

I refuse to feel guilty about a rampaging wildebeest.

Exercise du jour: A measly 20 minutes ellipticalling

Would you pay me to be awesome?

Quote du jour: Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain

Monday? Already? Whose brilliant idea was that? I'd be tempted to go back to bed, but there's too much work to do. My vow for today is to get the run in no matter how much work lies in wait.


Site du jour: The Awesome Foundation. They give away money to encourage people to be more awesome. (I realize that some of you guys are awesome for free, but I'd definitely be more awesome if someone were paying me to be.)

Exercise du jour: Still need to do the 3.5 jog that I couldn't fit into the schedule on Friday.

Update du 10:12 pm: Look, the plain truth is that I'm hopeless. I only managed a 2 mile run on Friday, due to work constraints. Today, I didn't even have that excuse. It was beauuuutiful running weather outside today, and I kept putting it off because I had more work to do. Like the work couldn't have waited until after the run?
I thought I'd have time to do the run tonight, not knowing that the Max would decide to have emotional problems tonight. In other words, I got home over an hour later than scheduled and didn't have time to run. Does it help that I walked 4 miles? No, I thought not.
On the plus side, I did spend so much time at the Max station that the guy sitting next to me started mentioning my sparkling eyes and bubbling personality... does that mean I resemble a bottle of champagne? I would have been more impressed if he hadn't mentioned his several ex-wives. I mean, one ex-wife is a tragedy, but several ex-wives looks like carelessness.
To quote Scarlett O'Hara, "@#$!"*

*[That's also been translated as "Tomorrow is another day." Today, I prefer my version.]

Photo courtesy of Tableatny.

Blogland needs more pictures of Hugh Jackman

Quote du jour: When I became an adult I put away childish things, including the fear of seeming childish and the desire to be very grown-up.
- C.S. Lewis

Site du jour: Finger length indicates athletic ability. An odd study lifted from Dr Mirkin.

Having a ring finger that is longer than your index finger is associated with greater athletic ability in men (American Journal of Human Biology, Mar-April 2009) and in women (British Journal of Sports Medicine, December 2006). The longer your ring finger is compared to your index finger, the better athlete you usually are (Strength Conditioning Research, published online August 20, 2010).

The ratio of the ring finger to the index finger is determined by how high your testosterone levels were in the uterus before you were born. Testosterone stimulates bone growth. Men exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the uterus also tend to have higher levels of testosterone later on.

On the average, men tend to have longer ring fingers, and women tend to have longer index fingers. The higher the testosterone in utero, the greater the length of the ring finger and the more "masculine" the resulting child - whether male or female. The difference between men and women in digit lengths usually is greater on the right hand.

In men, a longer ring finger is also associated with increased risk for prostate cancer; see the 12/5/10 eZine.

Exericse du jour: Jogging 3.5 miles at lunchtime.

Photo courtesy of Nehmans2020.

Do not truffle with my affections, pseudo-chocolate!

Quote du jour:

Mrs. Slocombe — Well, I said to him, quite sternly mind you, I said "If you don't take your hands away, young man, I'm getting off this bar stool and going home!"
Miss Brahms —And did he?
Mrs. Slocombe —He did not.
Miss Brahms —And did you go home?
Mrs. Slocombe —Eventually.
- Are you being served?

WTH du jour: They had an open box of “chocolate” truffles in the kitchen at work. I took one, even though I could see by the label on the box that the main ingredient was palm oil. It tasted rather gross.

I then had two more, to make sure I didn’t like them.


Site du jour: Boredom Enthusiasts Discover the Pleasures of Understimulation. No, that's not a link to The Onion. That's from the Wall Street Journal, for pete's sake. A conference on boredom. There's something out there for everybody.

Exercise du jour: 20 minutes climbing stairs. Gotta work off those truffles somehow.


Real chocolate truffles courtesy of Nieuw.

The Battlestar Galactica Workout

So, confession time.
No, not like St. Augustine.

I don't spend money on gym memberships or things like that, but even my freestyle exercising can cost money. Especially when I run out of motivation.

When the inner slug waxes wroth and kicks my motivation down the street and into the neighbor's recyclable bin, I tend to bring out the heavy guns re: exercise motivation. In other words, I go shopping.

As a Luddite, my inclination is to ignore anything new. That includes the "hot" TV shows... at least until they've had time to cool off. But after years of denial, I finally watched the TV series Battlestar Galactica. I needed something to watch while I did the elliptical, so I downloaded the first season and watched them while I pedaled.

If you've never seen the show, it's got a lot of conflict and tension. That is a great way to make the time pass while you're exercising. Anyone have any other tense TV shows or movies that help with the workout?


Exercise du jour: 2 miles around Nike. Hopefully at a nice, brisk pace. Maybe I should try to watch a TV show on my iPod while jogging around the trail. Or maybe not. I can just see the headlines. (News at 10: woman injures herself while jogging. "We told her to use a treadmill," friends say.)

Done! Weird -- awful run, hated it. Still faster than the other day. Except that for some reason my knee is bugging me.

Page from Augustine of Hippo's Confessions courtesy of Tomisti.
Cylon courtesy of Fernando Estel.

That kind of day

Quote du jour: Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.
- Ranier Maria Rilke

Do you love your job? And if so, why?

Interesting fact du jour: The new Starbucks drink, the Trenta, is actually larger than the average human stomach.

But-it-sounds-so-true du jour: U.S. renews its contract with ground squirrels.

The Department of the Interior announced this week that ongoing negotiations with the nation's population of spotted ground squirrels have been resolved and that the rodents are now contracted to continue activities on U.S. soil through Dec. 31, 2015. [Source The Onion.]

Exercise du jour: 15 minutes with my stairmeister, Fred A. Stairs. Plus, squats, walking.
Done! Total of 1056 steps.

Impressive-looking graph courtesy of Webber.

Is it okay if I'm assertive?

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Quote du jour: I'd like to be assertive, if that's all right with everyone.

Site du jour: Get up from your chair every four hours, or else. Another study that finds sitting at a desk all day is unhealthy, even if you do exercise each day. Getting up even for a minute or two trims the waistline. The article suggests that the act of rising up from the chair, using the large muscles of the legs, provides a small but significant workout. (Another reason to do squat!)

I need to be reminded about this. When work is all about pressure, I feel guilty for taking a lunch break to eat -- I eat at my desk instead. (See? I'm a good, hard worker. I sacrifice my lunch time for work.) And taking a whole hour to get out of the building and run around in the rain seems utterly frivolous.

This is all in my head. So long as the work gets done, nobody cares if I get all self-sacrificial. My problem is that the amount of work I need to do, and the time I have to do it in, are not realistic. Not when you consider that they want it perfect.

The heck with all that. I'm back in the habit of exercising every day, and I'm not going to give that up, gain weight, lose momentum, and stress myself out just to make needless brownie points.

So today I am going to ignore the nagging little tug of guilt at the back of my mind, and put myself first at lunch time. I Have Spoken. (And putting that assertion up here is another way of making sure I don't cave in when lunch time rolls around.)

Exercise du jour: 2.5 miles around the track. It shall be done. At lunch.
And behold! I did run at lunch. Odd weather: the sky was blue instead of grey, and this was this bright yellow thing up in the sky that made the run much hotter than a normal January workout.

Disaster averted

Quote du jour
Captain Sheridan: Are you trying to cheer me up?
Susan Ivanova: No sir, wouldn't dream of it.
Captain Sheridan: Good, I hate being cheered up. It's depressing.
Susan Ivanova: In that case we're all going to die horrible, painful, lingering deaths.
Captain Sheridan: Thank you, I feel so much better now.
- Babylon 5


Sunday afternoons flat out stink.

The combination of a weekend ending and having to face the thought of going back to work is hard to take. Especially on winter afternoons, when it gets dark so early. For some reason, that makes it seem like Monday's coming all that much sooner.

Anyway, that's my only explanation for the sudden impulse I gave in to:


I don't even like frozen pizza. It's as if the imp of bad eating simply wanted me to buy something bad, anything. It was sick of me being good.

Funny thing is, I bought the stuff and took it home, then realized that I didn't want to actually eat it. The eyes and the taste buds conspired to convince me that they really, really needed this stuff. The stomach said "Hell no!"

So disaster averted. Maybe just the act of buying the stuff was enough to satiate the impulse, some kind of shopping therapy? I have no idea, but I'm not complaining about the money I spent. It's cheaper than a therapist.

Because if I don't post this, I won't do it

Bizarre du jour: Okay, so you probably already know that the Wikihow site can be a bit odd at times. They offer articles like "How to be more popular" or "What to do when the airplane is on fire and the pilots have developed amnesia and can't remember how to land" (or something very close to that). So it's always a good idea to take their posts with a grain of salt, if not a whole shot of tequila. Even so, this one has me stumped: How to make people think you're immortal. I mean... why?


Inappropriate quote du jour: Feeling guilty has never burned a single calorie. - John Tesh

Bah. What does John Tesh know.

This blog is all about guilt.

Well, okay, it's all about getting me to get out there and exercise, but guilt plays a huge part in that. So I'm posting this up here to make me get out there and run today. There are people running under far worse conditions.

Exercise du jour: Jog 3 miles
Done! Finally. A good run. Rain, shmain.

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Dominique M. Lasco

Dancing with the stairs

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Quote du jour:I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Site du jour: The 20 Worst Drinks in America. I have to say I was shocked at the caloric contents in some of these drinks. I was also shocked that the Sobe Green Tea isn't really that good for you. (But gosh! It had such a healthy looking label!)

The quote and the site du jour don't have any bearing on my life as a whole. They just seemed to go well together.

Exercise du jour 15 minutes with my local staircase, Fred A. Stairs. Not dancing, really, more like plodding. But dancing sounded much better. Also, some squats. If I'm feeling better, some walking. (I'm thinking that even if I feel rotten, I could get 15 minutes worth of exercise in. Probably.)
Done! For a short exercise session, stair climbing is an excellent way to get a workout. (10 flights again. 480 steps. Well, down and then up again so 20 flights, 960 steps.)

Like, y'know, totally, dude

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Quote du jour: Be yourself; everybody else is already taken.
- Oscar Wilde

Yesterday while eating lunch I looked down and realized an awful truth: I was eating tofu and bean sprouts. It was a bit embarrassing to realize that I was living up to the stereotype of a typical Californian.

But what the hell. I am a Californian; my family has lived there for several generations. Maybe I'm just now starting to blend in. While I haven't started wearing Birkenstocks and doing macrame, I do find being Californian a wonderful excuse for any new thing I want to try.

Sample conversation

Other people: What, you're doing something new and different? Why?
Me: I'm from California.
Other people: Ohhhhhh.... I see. [Patting me on the arm.] You poor thing.

Why is this -- do people in Peoria never try doing anything new?

Exercise du jour: 2.5 miles jogging.

I don't know if it's stubborn or stupid, but I'm still trying for to jog outdoors in winter. Today is supposed to be warmer. Also wetter, but that I can deal with. I've got a towel, and I know how to use it.
Done. Finally. Didn't have any kind of pace -- I'm not feeling great -- but I told myself that sweating is a good way to kick a virus out of your system. If it turns out that it makes things worse, then I guess I'm screwed. We'll see.