maura_ea's blog

Photo test.

I'm testing this blog when it comes to photos. So far, not so good. When I inserted a picture, choosing "default" sizing, it disappeared if I clicked on it.

Whatever. I just want to see where it stores the photo on Typepad...

One thing after another.

This weekend I did well at tracking my food, making healthy choices, and not dwelling on feeling like I was "dieting" but finding instead ways to work within my new healthy goals(1). I feel like I succeeded because I kept under my calorie goals all weekend while eating three squares and drinking lots of water. In fact, SparkPeople was telling me I wasn't eating enough(2)!

One problem I'm having is trying to fit enough fruits and veggies into my diet. I can't eat a veggie at breakfast - it's just not in my mindset - and I can't eat a fruit at dinner. So I have to fit all my fruit into breakfast, lunch & snacks and all my veggies into lunch, dinner, and snacks. But I just don't have enough calories for all that. I'm also trying to fit fiber & protein on top all of that.

However, in regards to a healthy ACTIVE lifestyle, I'm completely unprepared. I have no clothes to use to work out - only jeans and black nylon slacks that I wear to work. My sneakers no longer fit since being pregnant(3). We had no weight scale until I bought one this weekend.

I realize I was just hiding from having an active, healthy lifestyle. Out of sight, out of mind. NO LONGER. Once I got on that scale and realized how much I weighed I knew that I couldn't hide anymore. I'm going to weigh myself every night and not bury my head in the sand anymore(4). 

(1) I foolishly sat down and watched a documentary type show about snack foods, which was really interesting but got me craving stuff I shouldn't be having. However, instead of saying no, I found a sweet treat I could enjoy within my calorie range. I don't want to be "dieting" for the rest of my life, I want to find out how to live and enjoy food still.

(2) I'm not going to eat any more though, because I had to already add 500 calories onto my calorie range due to my breastfeeding. So as long as I'm not hungry I'm not going eat more yet. Maybe once I stop breastfeeding and my calorie intake is less.

(3) Did you know that when you're pregnant your feet swell and grow and often times do not return to normal? Yeah, it's true. I'm a testament to that.

(4) Weighing myself every night has actually encouraged me because my weight has dropped seven pounds since Friday night. Granted, I was menstruating on Friday and am no longer but I'm taking what encouragement I can get where I can get it :P

STEVE!

We watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs over the weekend, and I really liked it. It was a lot of fun and had the kind of quirky characters I love. My favorite had to be the monkey, Steve, who would just shout "STEVE!" randomly. I wish I could have a Steve.

Paul got sick over the weekend, some kind of food poisoning (and no, it wasn't from something we made) so that was a bit of a bummer. Had a sushi date with a friend which was really fun, and saw New Moon with my sister on Sunday night - it has gone into the discount theaters.

Haven't read much more of American Gods, but what little I have read has made me want to keep reading; yay! Did I use the semicolon correctly there? I saw this Oatmeal comic today and it's made me rethink my use (and lack) of semicolons. If you've never seen that site, you should check it out. The best part is that often time his comics can be purchased in large poster formats. I want to see a teacher put THESE in their classroom :P

Evy was using one of our footstools to stand today and she fumbled and plopped down on the ground awkwardly and bumped her chin on the wood frame pretty hard. Her intake of breath before she started to cry was long enough that I could actually explain to Paul what happened before she started to cry. Poor kid :( She's okay of course, I was worried that she'd bit her tongue or something but luckily not all of her center front teeth have come in so she survived. She woke up last night, needing to nurse, so I think she's having another growth spurt - oh joy.

It worked!

The import from Vox to Wordpress worked!

Some things I've taken note of:

EDIT: Not all of your privacy settings are wiped clean, thank goodness. If it was marked "private" - you only - it remains that way. However, neighborhood, friends & family posts become mixed in with the rest.

MOST IMPORTANT: All your privacy settings are wiped clean. I just realized this and so I'm trying to go through and find all my posts that I want to be private and hide them. For now I've made my blog private until I can get that worked out. There's stuff that I've made COMPLETELY private that I want to stay that way.

A) All the images seem to link back to Vox, so if Vox does eventually die then I'm going to lose all my images. Now that I've got the bulk of my blog, the posts, over to Wordpress I think I'm going to have to go back through and shift all my images to Flickr.

B) Comments imported! But the way that they work is they are linked back to Vox as well - so again if Vox die I'll lose all my comments.

C) The formatting is a little wonky on some of the posts; at first I thought it had to do with inserted images or other media but it seems to be with almost any post.

D) Image LINKS are still displayed even if the image is private - which I'm actually glad for. Though why I made an image private and not a post I'm not sure...

Anyhow, that's what I've observed so far - I'll keep updating!

Not to sound the alarm to jump ship or anything...

But Wordpress now supports importing from Vox! I'm importing right now, but I haven't seen the results yet. Its supposed to import not only your blog posts but also your comments.

Book Four, "American Gods" Continued

American Gods: A Novel

I'm struggling on getting through this book - and I'm only a quarter of the way through. I was enjoying it when I first started it, but the fact that I'm a quarter of the way through and I'm waiting for something to happen is not a good sign. What's worse is that something is happening, I'm sure to some people its considered to be happening, and I'm just not interested.

I find myself skimming a lot of it, particularly the descriptions, as I can't imagine what Gaiman is showing me. Does this make me a bad reader? I mean, Gaiman is this master story teller and I'm not seeing what he's trying to show me, I must be a bad reader.

Maybe it's that I'm not that familiar with "Gods" as I was raised a Christian and believe there is only one God - and so I have no idea who or what he's talking about. Sure, I know of Odin, but only by name. And who's this spider guy?

I'm going to keep going but I'm disappointed so far. I was expecting something amazing as Gaiman is so well spoken of. But I guess this is a good illustration of, what one reader likes another will not.

Of diets and trackers.

SparkPeople

As I mentioned I joined SparkPeople (which is free, by the way) - my decision propelled by the fact that they have a free iPhone app which is the biggest reason I was going to go with Weight Watchers. The app is nice as it lets me track; food, water, exercise, & weight. It also syncs with my online account so if I'm at a computer I can track there and then go to my phone later - VERY useful. I have to buy a new scale as the one we have at home is really inaccurate and I want to try and get healthy and lose weight without second guessing my goals and results.

I started tracking my food and water today - though I was already drinking more than the suggested water amount because of the breastfeeding. Lately, in the morning, I've been having two eggs & toast and tracking that was an eye opener. I had no idea that two eggs were so many calories! Tomorrow I'm going to have one egg but still a piece of toast as it's high fiber and I want to do a high fiber/protein combo.

SparkPeople - Tracking Food

I'm also going to kick coffee out of my diet, since I don't like it that much anyhow and it's become more of a routine thing than a necessary thing. If I just drank it black I probably wouldn't care as its just like drinking tea - but I put a ton of creamer in it as I hate the natural taste and that's where the calories come from. If I need it, I'll drink some, but I usually don't need it - I get lots of sleep.

This year marks five years at my current company and as a thank you they give you a choice of a gift from a catalog. Most of the gifts weren't really right for me but the did have a nice digital food scale - it'll fit right in with the new life style I'm trying to work on. It'll tell you the nutritional information for something like 7000 foods so I don't have to guess how much I'm getting.

I was really hungry when lunch came around and luckily we had a union meeting today so there was some food available. Even more luck, they had a TON of green beans left over which tasted great with the lunch I already planned to eat and was only another 80 calories or so - plus I get to mark it as a veggie!

SparkPeople - Tracking Water

Must bring veggies for myself from now on.

This week is not a good week to think about cardio exercise (because of the rain), but next week I'm going to really try and meet my goal of ten minutes of cardio a day. Ten minutes, that's nothing. If I can't do ten minutes there is something seriously wrong with me. I'm going to buy a HRM too, since I found out what my target should be and I want to keep it safe. I tend to push myself too hard when it comes to some exercising and I don't want to die :P

Up to date!

I've been slacking on blogging recently, and today I went through and
tagged all my un-tagged posts so I now feel more up to date. Its
amazing how my tag cloud transformed, "nook", "ereader" and
"barnes&noble" are pretty big now :P

Evy's sick - she got a fever yesterday and she had a pretty hard
night. It was the first time she didn't sleep through the night since
the day we brought her home, which - I know - is shocking to some, and
it was hard on both Paul and I as we weren't used to it. At first, I
took a lot of happiness from knowing I was giving her the comfort she
needed because she was falling asleep on my chest when I held her. But
then my exhaustion kicked in and all I could think was, "Why can't you
sleep on the mattress, why does it have to be me?!" But we made it
through the night and we'll do it again if her fever returns tonight.
When her fever didn't drop after a luke warm bath and some rest, we
decided to give her some infant Tylenol. I was so frustrated through
because A) They didn't list the dosage for children under two so we
had to call our pharmacist and B) When we did get the dosage it wasn't
marked on the dropper! Frustrating, frustrating, frustrating. But like
I said - we all survived and Evy seems to be feeling better. I just
keep my fingers crossed that it lasts.

I was going to join Weight Watchers, but the cost is a lot so I've
decided to try out SparkPeople instead given I'm not on a Weight
Watchers plan now so I can build around this new plan without having
to change. I'm scared. I'm scared I wont be able to do it. I checked
out their meal plan grocery shopping list for the first week and its
REALLY long. I know that I wont have to buy all this stuff for the
next week but the initial cost is a lot. There's a part of me that
wants to try and make my own meal plan but I know that it'll just be
full of ready made over-salted stuff that I already eat and I really
need to get away from that. Wish me luck!

QotD: License to Drive

Do you consider yourself a good driver? How many tickets have you received? What were they for?

Yes, I do consider myself a good driver though - like Kathy - I've found that not everyone likes my driving "style". I consider myself decisive, other people would call me reckless. I keep my distance when I'm in moving traffic, I follow the speed limit (now, when I was younger - not so much), and expect others to know the rules of the road. I don't drive as defensively as some which I think makes some people nervous, but assuming no one knows what they are doing would be ridiculous, I don't care what anyone says.

I've been in two accidents:

The first was a few months after getting my license at eighteen. I was following too close in the rain and when the guy in front of me wanted to stop to look at an accident I rear-ended him. While I know it was ENTIRELY my fault, I'm still frustrated with it because I hate people who stop to look at accidents on the side of the road and if he'd just kept going we'd all be fine.

Second was just a year or so ago when I t-boned a small sedan that pulled out in front of me to make a left from a shopping center. I had the right-of-way, I tried to stop, but wasn't able to entirely. Luckily no one was "hurt", though at seven months pregnant she wen to the hospital anyhow.

I've gotten two tickets:

The first was for gridlock, which means I pulled into an intersection, didn't have room to get into the lane, and so blocked cross traffic. I think the ticket was fair, but I think the situation was not. I was only the second car that went into the intersection and if the lights had been better timed then everything SHOULD have been okay. But like I said, I did block traffic and it was fair.

The second one was for speeding, which I didn't agree with AT ALL, but since my registration was really overdue I didn't say anything. He said he clocked me going forty-five through a right turn, um - that's not physically possible on most roads in most cars, but whatever.

Book Four, "American Gods"

American Gods: A Novel

Neil Gaiman

Book Count: Four

Title: American Gods

Author: Neil Gaiman

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 624

Synopsis: Released from prison, Shadow finds his world turned upside down. His wife has been killed; a mysterious stranger offers him a job. But Mr. Wednesday, who knows more about Shadow than is possible, warns that a storm is coming -- a battle for the very soul of America . . . and they are in its direct path.

One of the most talked-about books of the new millennium, American Gods is a kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an American landscape at once eerily familiar and utterly alien. It is, quite simply, a contemporary masterpiece.

Thoughts: I have to admit, while I'm enjoying the writing style I'm very confused with the story thus far. It might have something to do with the fact that I read the first 30 pages or so as a sample, bought it, and then read two books before picking it up again. Right now everything is a question and I'm not really fond of so many pages of questions and no answers. But! I am enjoying the style and I have a feeling if I just give it some more time it'll begin to unravel it's beauty to me.