The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The good:  My fitbit says I've been walking about 2.5 miles a day!

The bad:  That's really only 5000 steps, half the arbitrary recommended 10,000.

The good:  My bike is finally done and it's awesome!

The bad:  I um, apparently have forgotten how to ride a bike.  I mean it's been 10 years, but I didn't think you could forget things like that!  It's awful.  I'm so disappointed.  I'm going to have to practice a lot before I'll be able to go anywhere meaningful on it.

The good:  It's Friday and we're all going to the City tomorrow!

The bad:  I've been working so late I haven't done laundry and don't have anything awesome to wear.  Also, I really need my nails attended to, they look trashy (-ier than usual).  I am dying my hair though, I'm not a TOTAL bumpkin.

The good:  I had 8 points left after dinner so I got to have a slurpee for a treat!

The bad:  I really can't see a downside to this, except I'm kind of sticky now.

change up:

The bad:  I really don't think I'll be off my cpap machine for burning man.

The good:  I learned how to make it work!  I'll need to make a dust box for it (Tupperware and furnace filter sort) and I saw a way at Maker Faire to put together a solar charger for a deep cycle battery.    I can also use the battery to power a swamp cooler I want to make from a 5 gallon bucket.

The bad:  I think that will eat up any money I was planning on using to build an art project.  Perhaps I will be an art consumer rather than an artist this year.

I can't think of anything ugly to post, and that's good!

Zzz!

I haven't slept well for the last couple nights.  I think I will tonight though.  I'm heading to bed right after I post.  

It's been a good day though.  I weighed in and I'm down 4.8 pounds.  Plus, my company just started a program where not only is the Weight Watchers program free, but they're going to start PAYING us to lose weight.  I'm getting $200 just to sign up (minus the 42% tax rate for bonuses, but hey, free money!)  I've pledged to lose 1 pound or more per week for the next month, and then I get some amount more money at the end of the program, which is some number of weeks, 12 I think.  It's variable due to prize drawings I get into by showing up for Weight Watchers meetings, and I didn't pay much attention beyond it should be some few hundreds.  It's definitely significant enough for motivation!  Oh, I won a fitbit zip at work too, which is compatible with my walkadoo program at work and much better than the pebble I was using to track steps.

I stayed within my points today and had awesome food.  They had veggie paninis at the cafeteria, and I made a really yummy chicken mole dish for supper, and then baked s'more stuffed bananas.  For purposeful movement I walked around the buildings twice, getting just over 6000 steps and making my 2 activity point a day goal.

Bed now, soooper tired.

Are long weekends even worth it?

There's always double work upon returning!  Also, working at home has pros and cons, the cons being that it's super easy to work until late into the night, which I just did.  I literally got out of bed, came to the computer, worked until it was time to get Evy, went and picked up a replacement goldfish for one that died last week, fed us, showered us, put her to bed, and sat back down to work.

I stayed within my points though!  Even if it was stuff like toast and lean pockets.  I just remembered my commitment to doing some sort of purposeful exercise every day, so I jumped up and did nekkid hula hooping for like two minutes in the living room.  It didn't work out too well because the hoop kept hitting things and I had to hold my boobs up so I didn't run over them with the hoop.  I'm sure it would have been hilarious had anyone been there to see.  In any case, it counts!

I'm not going to jinx it by saying I'm going to leave work at 5 tomorrow, because that always guarantees that I don't leave until at least 6, but I'm going to try and factor in some time for myownself.

Multitasking

I'm writing tonight while watching a replay of an official Burning Man newbie orientation.  It's available here.  The sound gets a little better.  I knew a bunch a bunch of the material already, but I probably learned at least 5 tips that will be invaluable.  Sheldon's online looking at tents and stuff, but when he clicked on a foldable yurt that stays cool enough to sleep until 11 am and can be built for around $200, I was in love.  I want to see if that will be a feasible thing to build and haul out there.

For Mother's day Sheldon refurbished the junked up bike I got for Christmas in 7th grade.  He painted it candy apple red and magenta, and replaced a bajillion bits of it.  It should be ready this week, and I'm super excited about it.  I'll be taking it to the playa, but before that I'm going to ride it a LOT.

As far as an art contribution, I'd wanted to make an LED cube, but when I looked at the parts for what I wanted to do it was over $500!  Plus, it really didn't seem that interesting, so I'm back to the drawing board.  I have an idea forming for a harp like thing...my little midsized keyboard is in peril!

I'm wondering also about something to give as a gift.  I think we're going to be tight on space, so small is key.  Something useful would be neat too, rather than just a gee gaw.  Hmm...

In diet news, I stayed within my points today.   We had to drive down to Oakdale to get Evy, a four hour round trip, but we stopped at a fruit stand and got cherries and really gorgeous strawberries to munch.  I had enough points left this evening to have a homemade cheeseburger on a ciabatta roll, mmmm.   I didn't get to be really active, but I did hula hoop for a few minutes, so I made my activity goal.

Aaaaand I'm back

That last thing back there on April 3 was a false start it seems.  I never really started tracking or anything.  I don't quite know why, and it doesn't really matter.  TODAY I did track my food.  I messed up a little at dinner because I ate too much naan at the Indian restaurant, but all it did is dig a little into my weekly points budget, not a problem.

I've been using my activity trackers all along, but that's because it's easy.  I haven't gone out of my way to work out since then except maybe twice.  I have been being mindful about trying to seek out activities that involve a lot of walking around.  I got 12 activity points the day I went to Maker Faire, and 10 the day I helped Sheldon with his photo safari class.  I was limping back to the car the night of Maker Faire!  One 90 degree day I went out and brushed horses with Evy, and I made myself sick within 20 minutes moving around in the sun.  It's obvious I need to step it up or else I'll be miserable at Burning Man.  I've gotten so out of shape again that this week my goal is nothing more than "do something that is "moving on purpose" every day.  It doesn't matter what or how long because goals should be reasonably attainable and not suck!  Today moving on purpose consisted of hula hooping as long as I could (maybe 3-5 minutes) three separate times.

Today I sat down for a couple hours and meal planned two weeks worth of dinners.  Dinners are my downfall right now.  I'm TIRED when I get home from work and anything sounds like a good excuse to grab take out or heat up a pizza rather than cook.  Not having a required ingredient was a great excuse.  Nothing that I could throw together in the house that was healthy sounded good either, as it would usually be something like a bit of baked chicken breast, white rice, and frozen vegetables.  So I chose 10 dinners that were both healthy AND looked like something I'd actually enjoy eating and I went out and bought all the ingredients at once.  So instead of something blah I'll be making things like tomato beef ragu with ricotta and mint, or soy and honey glazed tofu and vegetable skewers.  I'm looking forward to cooking and eating it all up in the next couple weeks.

Ooh, also a friend of mine is helping me out, and we talked for an hour or more yesterday about goals and what they should be and HOW the heck to start going towards them instead of just floundering around.  We also talked about headspace stuff like self worth and image and the like, all things I REALLY need to examine more.  I got action items!  I'm not ashamed to say blogging is one of them, as well as making the meal plan, tracking and moving.  I think that as tending toward s on the D/s spectrum, I'm feeling a bit overly gleeful about having specific tasks to complete!  I'm actually kind of torn between the hard way of thinking "This is something I'm doing for myself to reach my goals, and that pleases me."  and the much easier (in my convoluted brain), "Ooh, I'm going to do these action items and I'm going to do them absolutely flawlessly, and everyone will see how perfectly I can do these tasks, and my friend will be SO pleased, and pleasing my friend makes me happy!"

How's that for a stream of consciousness blog entry?  I'll talk about Burning Man stuff tomorrow maybe.

Not Doing Well at All!

Hi!  The last few weeks have been so rough.  Work got more interesting, but also quite a bit harder and extremely frustrating.  Sheldon started pretty much working full time between all his thousand jobs.  We're trying to implement a "no screen from 6pm to 8pm" policy in the house to make more family time and to keep Evy from doing nothing but watching.  It's spring, so weekends are absolutely packed with fun things to do, and also a few obligatory things.  In all this most of my exercising and all of my dieting has gone out the window.  I don't know how many weeks it's been since we've been grocery shopping.  This morning for breakfast I literally had half a chicken burrito and a handful of Easter candy.  I realize it's Wednesday and I didn't bring my gym clothes to work either.  It's also weigh in day, and I'm sure I've gained again this week.

So basically I need to get back on the wagon, like, um, now.  Didn't I say something about getting back on the wagon in the last post?  Well I think I got run over by it instead.  It's a good bit like addiction.  I have to take each meal as it comes.  I may as well start now.  I'll be getting the 7 point pasta primavera bowl for lunch, even though I really want the chicken pesto sandwich!  Hold me to that OK?  It sucks because any time between now and lunch I could cave and talk myself into that yummy chicken sandwich instead.  In some ways it's even worse than addiction, because I can NOT remove myself from food.  When I quit smoking it was REALLY hard, but I was able to remove myself from situations where I would want to smoke.  Trying to eat correctly is like quitting smoking with a pack of ciggs and a lighter in my purse, and someone asking me to go have a smoke with them three times a day.

So, Burning Man news now, eh?  We have a place to camp, I think.  Well, I'm pretty sure.  I asked a friend if it was possible to camp with them, and he said yes and put us on their google group.  The trouble is I'm unclear who actually has a say in who can and can't camp with the group, so I'm worried there is some big conversation about it going on behind our backs about why we were let in, and maybe there's not enough room, or they think we're clueless or annoying and would rather us go elsewhere.  Inside my head is an awful place to be sometimes, I'm pretty sure everything is just fine...logically.

I did NOT get my bicycle fixed before March 31.  I did stop at the local bike store yesterday for a part I need, but they close at 6 and it was 6:05.

I'm now planning to also build something lighty and electronic.  I think it will be an LED cube.  That's within my ability.  I just hope it's within my time!  I keep meaning to research this in the couple hours of leisure time I have in the evenings, but by that time I'm pretty scattered and just end up chatting with friends and browsing facecrack.

I've also been thinking about clothes.  There are some playa-wear pinterest boards, but they are for small people.  It will be very hard to buy the things I need while retaining a proper playa style.  I want to be well equipped and also not lame and dorky!

Why does Blogger say the word "playa" is spelled wrong?  I'm quite sure it's a word!

Why the heck is your name Beauty?

Ok, so here's the post that I got stuck writing and stopped blogging for a month.  Here's the funny thing, when I opened up the draft to work on it, I hadn't even gotten one sentence in, not even one word had been written.  I remembered having written a couple paragraphs, but I think I erased them because it was going off on a tangent I didn't intend.

Oops, there, I did it again.  It's been a few more days since I wrote that first paragraph.  I am generally known as the queen sized queen of the overshare, but beauty is something I don't know how to write about.

Ok, well here's the easy part:  My blogger name is Beauty because a guy, a friend, named me that.  I met him on a neat Callahan's Cross-time Saloon forum, in which the people tried to recreate the atmosphere of the bar in Spider Robinson's books.  It's still around.  You could find it if you looked.  Anyway, that was seven years or so ago.

I registered for this blogger (or whatever it was called then) account around that time.  The name Beauty makes me cringe.  It's not "me" in the least.  Most of the time I don't dwell on it.  I might be able to change it.  I've honestly never tried.  For complicated reasons, I wouldn't dream of changing the name my friend gave me.

Just a wee bit later, I rolled the name into an anonymous sex blog with protagonists Beauty and The Beast.  It wasn't as corny as it sounds.  I made that private when I decided to use the account for this blog though.

Ever since I started the blog I've felt the need to explain why my blogger name is Beauty when it's so unlike "me."  I know, I've said that twice.  I'm not quite sure what I mean either.  So in order to research this I asked Ken (my friend) why he named me Beauty way back then.  He told me that he named me that on purpose because he thought I was beautiful and he knew I didn't think so, and perhaps if I saw it enough times I'd believe it.  I think that was nice of him, but I still don't believe it.  :-)