Staycation: Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of our week-plus-two-weekends-and-a-day staycation. It started off with something of a bang. Our girls have been in Oregon all week with my mother, and returned home this morning. Early this morning. As in, they woke up at 3am to get to the plane on time.

But apparently they did very well with it. Rather than sleep in the car (as I'd assumed they would), they delved into their books for the hour-long drive. Now that I think of it, I think this must mean they were reading by the strobe of passing streetlight...something we often remind them not to do...hmm. Anyway, by 9am their plane had landed safely and the girls and my mother were here.

We stopped home long enough to pack up a picnic lunch, then drove North for an hour, to visit my grandfather (my mother's father) and my step-grandmother.

Grandpa is well into the recovery phase of some surgery a few months ago, and looks like his old self again. He's doing his physical therapy exercises regularly, and his smiling, laughing nature is shining through.

Of all of my grandparents, he's the one I'm closest to. When I was growing up, grandpa was an optical surgeon. He was a busy man, but always made the time we spent with him count. He taught me to play pool on his billiards table, taught me to play all kinds of card games, and inspired my interest in all kinds of hobbies (the man tied his own fishing flies, painted beautifully, and even tried his hand at violin making). Summer days spent with him and my uncles in and around his backyard pool are the cornerstones of that collection of memories which, for me, define childhood.

More important than all of that, grandpa taught me a lot about how to be a good man. He loves his wife dearly and closely. He spends time with a person, not just near them. He has a constant, gentle manner. And he knows how to make a point without making you feel condescended to. I love my grandfather very much, and am very glad we made time to go up and visit. We should do that a lot more often than we do.

After a short visit, we headed South again, in order to get Mom to her plane home in time. In the evening, some friends dropped off their four children so they could go out for a little date night. Loud? Yes. Very. A constant demand on one's attention? Yes. But there's something very familial and fortifying about being surrounded by children. Maybe it's knowing that, yes, we can handle seven children at once. At least for a while. Don't get me wrong...three is enough for this family, and it was some small relief when their parents arrived to retrieve them. But it was also fun, and satisfying, and a very small price to pay for the reciprocal child-sitting we get in return.

So, one day of our staycation is over. But it was well spent. Today, day two, is all about spending time together around the house. More on that later, but I'm really looking forward to it.

Food log:

Breakfast: lots of chopped stonefruit, dressed with vanilla yogurt and granola

Lunch: turkey and provolone on whole wheat bread, and some baked potato chips.

Dinner: pepperoni pizza and milk

Snacks: three homemade chocolate chip cookies, a very small handful of Jelly Bellies.

Return of the Food Log, Stay-cation begins

Time to start the food log up again. I find it makes a big difference to actually hold myself accountable for everything I eat in this way.

Or that's the theory. And it works! But occasionally I slip. See "Dessert," below...

Tomorrow is the first day of a week-and-a-day stay-cation. We have all kinds of simple plans to enjoy the bounty of our home town, and spend all kinds of time with the kids. I'm really looking forward to it.

Our girls have spent the last week in Oregon with my mother. From the phone calls, it sounds like they all had a terrific, if exhausting time. The girls are a little homesick, and we're looking forward to picking them up at the airport early tomorrow morning. I miss them dearly. I've enjoyed spending time with my son, very much. But it'll be nice to have the whole family back together again.

Food log:

Breakfast: a bowl of granola with milk, eaten while holding a cat in my lap. Purrrrrrr.

Lunch: leftover mandarin chicken with rice, and sauteed summer patty pan and yellow crookneck squash direct from the garden. You know, as a kid, I HATED squash. Now they're one of my favorite foods. It's amazing what a difference it makes to eat really fresh, vine-ripened anything. A Diet Coke.

Dinner: thai beef lettuce wraps, two chocolate chip cookies. A glass of milk.

Snacks: a piece of my wife's zucchini bread. A Nature Valley granola bar.

Dessert: I was having an OK day, living up to my promises to myself. Until my wife suggested ice cream in front of the TV after our son was in bed. My will flagging, I dug into a nice bowl of Extreme Moose Tracks.

Blogstorm: Glorious morning, a stressful season, and the calm that's followed

As I drive in to work each morning, the last stretch of my commute faces my car and I almost due East. Dry and rocky hills line the horizon and occasionally, just occasionally, the skies fill with fluffy clouds and the sun cuts through in hundreds of shifting lancets. About three weeks ago, we had one of those glorious mornings. Thankfully, I had my camera with me, and fifteen minutes to spare.


By midday those wonderful clouds had cleared, leaving the skies empty and the sun blazing down. I work on the fourth floor of an eco-friendly office building, with a long balcony along one side. It's a beautiful and, sometimes, peaceful place to work.

On this particular day, I was feeling bloated and chubby again. Triamterene is a diuretic. Getting off the drug is, in the long run, a great thing. But, short term, it left behind a parting gift: five pounds of weight, gained in three days. It's water weight, but it's weight just the same.

Over the next couple of weeks, I struggled with the removal of the drug from my daily regimen. My blood pressure never got dangerously higher. In fact, it never really got much higher at all. But I had headaches for days. I felt tired and down.

It didn't help that I went through a very stressful time just then. Each year, as in most companies, our company conducts annual reviews of the employees. I manage a small team, and lead another, separate small team. So I had reviews to deliver, and more to contribute feedback to.

I take this part of my job very seriously. Feedback about performance should be constant, honest, and always constructive. It's a year round responsibility, and the part of my job that I take the most pride in. The annual reviews, however, are special. They're the one moment, during that year-round feedback cycle, where everything comes together, on paper, and transforms itself into adjustments to salary, and into bonuses.

So, for each of the people I manage, I gather feedback from many of their peers and leaders. Each person writes a self-review. I add my own opinions and notes into the stew and boil it down into, hopefully, a meaningful summary that balances recognition of all of the great talents and experience each person brings, with opportunities to improve, and to have a broader and more impactful influence on the team and the business.

It's important. I love this part of my job. But it's a LOT of work. And here's the really difficult part: the other part of my job, keeping up relationships with the other teams that depend on us, managing changing priorities, running interference for the team and removing their roadblocks, doesn't stop during review season.

So, for about two solid weeks, while my body was screaming and complaining, I was working all day, then going home to work on reviews at night. Often until the wee hours. The stress brought on another relapse of snacking, a reprise of my Diet Coke addiction, and a lapse in my exercise regimen.

Here's the good news: my reviews are finished. And well, I think. We're on to the next phase in the annual cycle: setting career development goals for the coming year. The stress is gone, replaced with a sense of accomplishment and some new energy. I've been working, over the past week, on renewing my commitment to eating well and exercising. And enjoying the little, very good, things in life. More on those as this blogstorm blows on.

Summer evening fun

We had a normal, peaceful Sunday today. Church in the morning, followed by an hour of easy socializing with friends in the hall over donuts, then off to the farmer's market. Stone fruit are still king, and we came home with some beautiful peaches and nectarines. The peaches have been so plentiful lately that my wife made peach ice cream yesterday. So, so good. Today we bought six baskets of strawberries. Three to eat fresh, and three to flavor the next batch of creamy icy goodness.

We hit up Costco for lunch and a little shopping. Then I introduced the children to Return of the Jedi. Star Wars and Empire Strikes back were last weekend, and they've been waiting very patiently all week to see how the story ends. Empire is my favorite, for it's plot and character development. But Jedi was the clear winner with the kids. Must be all those Ewoks, and the big bad guy turning good in the end.

Exchange of the evening:

MIDDLE CHILD: does Darth Vader die in the end, or does he turn out to be a good guy?

ME: nonplussed...no idea what to say..."Yes?"..."Both?"..."How the heck did you guess he might turn good, you insightful little girl?"...so I punted: "You'll see, dear."

This evening was peaceful and playful. We made some cold cucumber soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, then set the outdoor table for dinner. The hummingbirds were taking a last buzz around the honeysuckle. The crescent moon was riding high.


We had good food and good conversation. By which I mean that we had four different good conversations, each interrupting the other, often with our mouths full.

Then the kids followed the usual pattern, smoothly transitioning from outdoor dinner to outdoor evening play. Swings, pretend games and hilarity followed, punctuated by brief moments of irritated crying jags as our (exhausted) son lost this or that battle of wills with his sisters.


The kids are in bed. The kittens are snuggling up with us, overstimulated from a long day of attention from the children. My wife and I are catching up on email, facebook and my blog, and soon we'll settle into the couch for a little pre-bed television.

It's been a good day, really.

P.S. It's been a few days since I stopped taking Triamterene. My blood pressure, every time I've checked it, has been normal. So far, so GREAT!!!

P.P.S. These photos represent something of a victory for me. I'm finally gaining enough control of my camera to adjust exposure times (to get that motion shot), and to trigger the camera with the time for long-exposure, to minimize vibration (to get that shot of the moon). I still threw out about twenty photos to get these two, but I'm very happy with these pictures.

Food log:

Breakfast: bagel with cream cheese, banana

Lunch: Costco hot dog, 1/4 slice of cheese pizza, frozen yogurt, and a diet coke

Dinner: grilled tomato, swiss and ham sandwich, cold cucumber soup (yummy, but next time we'll swap mint in the for the dill, I think).

Snacks: two cookies

Photography, and Phamily-sitting

I had a nice walk in the neighborhood this morning, and brought the camera along in case something caught my eye. I'm very leery of photographing people's plants and houses without their permission, and even more leery of waking them up at 6:30am to ask for that permission. So, I altered my route and headed into a local park.

Near the entrance, the path dips down toward a narrow canyon. The walls are water-washed, exposing sedimentary layers, and cutting vertical channels into the canyon walls.

The photo isn't great. The morning light, with the sunlight diffused by the thick cloud layer, was dim. Contrast was minimal, and the wall looks washed out. The interesting ways in which the water has eroded the hillside are hard to make out, as a result. Think I'll go back some other time(s) when the light is different and try for a better shot.

This next one is a little better. The cliff is higher here, and more exposed to the light. I'm not totally happy with the composition of this shot. The palm tree is distracting, I think. Also, the balance is pretty lopsided. Big cliff on the left, little palm tree on the right, uniform gray sky above. This might look better with clearer skies and angled light, but this is the best composition I could find. What you don't see are the chain-link fence just above the cliff, the house hidden behind the swell of the hill, and the drainage culvert JUST off-camera in the foreground.

I played around with this one a bit in an editor, too, making a black-and-white version and adjusting the contrast and white levels to make it a bit more dramatic. Interesting.

A bit frustrated with finding interesting vistas, I turned my attention to closeup shots of interesting textures and colors. The bark of this tree is just amazing. The blues are so vivid. From this perspective, it almost looks like a Google Maps view of some alien landscape.

Notice the slighty-off framing on this shot. The dark patch at the bottom of the frame is the greenery behind the tree (and yes, I rotated this shot because it looked better).

I do like this shot. This bark is full of interest and character, to my eye.

And those, my friends, are the four shots that I thought weren't totally terrible. Photography is much, much harder than I'd thought. Not the technical stuff so much (though I did have any number of blurry shots in the lot...still learning a LOT about depth of field, aperature, exposure, etc.). It's developing a "photographer's eye" that really tough. Finding well composed, well lit, interesting scenes out in the chaos of nature. The upside? It's an interesting challenge, and you get pretty pictures out the other end :-)

- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -

Not a great day for my waistline today, I'm afraid.

My work team and I went to a local restaurant for lunch today. One that specializes in local, organic foods, including pasture-fed beef and sausages made on site. These folks know their sausage! All of the food I've tried at this restaurant is delicious. Fatty, but delicious.

We watched our friends' four children this evening. The kids had a great time, despite a couple of mishaps.

The two little boys (one of ours, and one of theirs) "fed" our younger daughter's beta fish. By dumping most of a cannister of food into the tank. The poor little thing was swimming through a multi-colored rain. My wife's quick work with a siphon seems to have cleaned the tank out nicely. Hopefully Moonlight (the fish) will be fine.

For a little added excitement, their little boy had apparently found his way into a box of prunes earlier today. The effect was...let's just say voluminous. And fragrant.

But, peace was found tonight. In the form of cheese pizza, and a good movie for the horde of children. My wife and I even had time to do a little work on some household projects. All in all, a good night really.

Food log:

Breakfast: granola with blueberries (again...need to get out of my comfort zone sometimes :-) )

Lunch: two sausages, purple potatoes, apple slaw and a little slice of Gouda cheese.

Snacks: one Hershey's single, small handful of salted cashews (too salty (again)...apparently I never learn).

Dinner: two pieces of pepperoni pizza

Hiking up Hills, Hiking up Tomatoes

I went on a little field trip at lunch time today. There's an open space park near where I work. I brought the camera with, and spent about twenty minutes exploring and taking photos. I think I took about twenty pictures. There are only four that I liked well enough to share.

Boy, taking decent pictures is HARD. There's so much to consider. Light, shape, composition, and most especially all the brick-a-brack and noisy mess of nature. I can't tell you how many pretty flowers or interesting shapes I saw, for which there was no way to frame up a shot without including a LOT of other junk.

The open space is accessible via a wide dirt trail from the parking lot. This terrain, all chaparral and scrub brush, is typical in our part of the world. The canyons are home to big scrub oaks, but the hills are topped by nothing taller than stumpy Manzanita trees. Unless you count the power line towers.


The skies, though, can be beautiful.


This photo is a good example of the clutter of nature I mentioned. The stump is kind of a mess of twigs, and the other kinds of plants make the bottom part of the picture pretty noisy and confusing.

I found this little rock stack in the middle of the trail. I wonder what it's story is?


I _think_ I needed a narrower aperture and a longer exposure here, to make it possible to capture both the rock stack and the background sharply. That's the correct theory, I think. But even if I'm right, I don't know how to make my camera do that yet. And I would probably have needed a tripod to hold a long enough exposure.

Also, this picture was taken by holding the camera about 3" from the ground, and guessing about the framing. I couldn't get my head into position to look through the viewfinder. Not without MANY more years practicing yoga, at least. :-)

In the shade of another Manzanita, there was a small outcropping of broken, lichen-covered rocks. I liked the textures very much, and the way the high mid-day sun finally found something interesting to cast a shadow on.


I really like this picture. But it suffers from a shallow depth of field, like the previous one. The farther recesses of the rock are a little blurry.

- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -

It was family night in the garden tonight. Dinner outdoors, followed by hanging around and helping Mommy and Daddy build a tomato enclosure. Last year, we tried making a big cube around the tomatoes, then tying up the branches with twine. Twine snapped. Staves broke. The whole thing finally fell over.

This year, we're putting our basic engineering knowledge to the test, relying on triangles to keep things upright. We've used zip ties to secure the cross pieces. So far, they seem to give plenty of grip to keep the cross bars from slipping down the uprights. We'll see. Using the long cross-pieces for support, we then zip tie in shorter cross-cross-pieces, pushing the tomato limbs over/up where they need to be. It's all a grand experiment, like last year, but I'm optimistic.

Also showing their heads in our garden are our yellow crookneck squash, watermelons, and various carrots and bell peppers. The carrots didn't sprout as many as we'd hoped, but we've left room for follow-on plantings.

I'm REALLY looking forward to garden-fresh watermelon in a couple of months.

- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -

My blood pressure was normal this morning. It's only been a day since I stopped taking the Triamterene, so it's early days yet, but I'm hopeful!

Food log:

Breakfast: granola with fresh blueberries and an amazingly sweet nectarine

Lunch: leftover veggie pizza, watermelon, and cole slaw

Snacks: a few cashews...too salty! A big chocolate chip cookie. So bad, but soooo good.

Dinner: a salad of lettuce, carrots and bell peppers from our CSA, tomatoes from our neighbor's crop, olives, dried cranberries and toasted pine nuts, with chipotle ranch dressing.

Walking at Sunup, Photography at Sundown

For the first time in a little while, I went for a walk in the neighborhood this morning. The summer birds are here. Mockingbirds and House Finches abound. I love listening to the mockers on my walk, especially.

I was nice to get back out there. I had a little cold two weeks ago. Last week, the gym at work held a special "Mind/Body" week, and held yoga classes of different kinds each morning. Great fun, and great exercise, but I couldn't walk and go to the classes. Then I whacked my little toe on something...thought I'd broken it. That kept me off walking for a few days.

I'm convinced that those little toes are God's way of slowing you down, and reminding you to walk mindfully. For something that doesn't stick out much at all (mine angle in, actually), they sure catch on passing obstacles often.

For fun, I've been messing around with our digital camera. You know all those mystical symbols on the controls? And all the deep, dark recesses of the Function menus? I found the owner's manual for our camera online, and have been slowly working my way through it. This evening, the sun was heading to bed for the evening and I took a few minutes out in the yard to see if I'd learned anything.

Here's our young son, goofing off and having fun. The sun was behind me a bit, hence the "one eye closed, with assistance" pose. Nothing says "lazy days of summer" like PJ's and vampire teeth.

This nice flower is one of our Agapanthas. I was trying to find an exposure that blurred the background beyond recognition, to put all the attention on the bloom. Couldn't quite get it, but I rather like the shadows the late afternoon sun brought out in this pretty blossom.

Here's my favorite from this afternoon. My wife and the kids went to the beach this afternoon. These sandals were left on the front porch, still dusted with fine grained happiness. I'll admit that the shoes were "posed," to get interesting shadows. I really like the way the composition came out. I tried a few different options on the exposure. This is the best of the lot.

Think I'll bring the camera to work tomorrow and see if I have time during lunch to take some more shots.

Food log:

Breakfast: granola with bananas, 1% milk

Lunch: roasted pork tenderloin, grilled asparagus, barley salad

Snacks: small handful of cashews

Dinner: leftover pork with leeks, leftover grilled veggie stack...ALMOST as good re-heated as it was the first night. Yummy.

Weight Loss, and Weaning

Today was a big day for me. I got on the scale in the morning and found that, after weeks of plateau and struggles with lapses and relapse, I'd hit a new low! I now weigh 217.8 pounds!

The most obvious, tactile indicator of my progress is my jeans. I've been wearing 38" waist jeans for a couple of months now. But they're getting loose on me. I haven't worn 36" pants since High School. Frankly, I didn't think I would again. I figured that my waist...at least the part the belt goes around...wouldn't be getting much thinner. But maybe not...

I also went in to the doctor's office this morning, for a checkin and a checkup. After going over my weight loss and diet changes, and checking my blood pressure a couple of times, my doctor and I decided to start cutting back on my blood pressure medications. We're dropping the Triamterene now. In a month, I'll get some blood work done, to check my Potassium levels (Triamterene lowers Potassium, while my other medication, Lisinopril, raises it). If they look good, and my blood pressure is still under control, we'll cut back on the Lisinopril too. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to get off the meds altogether.

As I said, it's been a good day. I feel fantastic about my progress. The bummer of the plateau is behind me.

Food log:

Breakfast: granola with organic strawberries and 1% organic milk

Lunch: leftover veggie lasagna, leftover collards with brown rice.

Snacks: one Hershey's dark chocolate single, chips and guacamole, cheese and crackers at a social event at work this afternoon.

Dinner: leftover spaghetti with meat sauce, steamed corn and green beans.

Dinner and Movie

Another good day. Church this morning, followed by a run to the local farmer's market. Grapes are in at our favorite stand, and we stocked up. Add in blueberries, strawberries, peaches, squash and a watermelon and I call that a successful morning spree.

After lunch, the kids blazed through their clean up, so we'd have time to continue the Star Wars marathon with The Empire Strikes Back. They really, really liked this one. Me too, though I've seen it many times. The storytelling is solid, solid, solid. I'd forgotten how much of a cliffhanger it leaves off with. The kids BEGGED me to put Jedi on, but we'd run out of time for the day. Next weekend...

For lunch today, I tried something new; a kippered herring sandwich spread, the recipe for which I found in Andrew Weil's "Eating Well for Optimum Health" (see links). Basically, it's sardines or herring, with some Dijon mustard, diced onion and a little lime juice added. On toasted whole grain bread, it was scrumptious. Looking forward to leftovers tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was wonderful too. We chopped up some roasted peppers, eggplant and zucchini, left over from our vegetable stacks of a few nights ago, and my wife whipped up some pizza dough. Add tomato sauce, grated mozarella and a hot oven and you've got PIZZA! A little basil from the garden, chopped up and sprinkled over the top, and it's ready to eat. We added some leftover cole slaw to round out the meal. Aaah.



Another week starts tomorrow. I'm hoping to get a walk in tomorrow morning, but we stayed up late watching The Kite Runner (good movie, GREAT book). We'll see.

Food log:

Breakfast: whole grain bagel with cream cheese, bananas

Lunch: kippered herring sandwich on whole grain bread, watermelon from the market, half an avocado sprinkled with salt and pepper, a Diet Coke.

Snacks: a few pita chips, a small bowl of ice cream

Dinner: roasted veggie pizza, cole slaw of cabbage, apples, cilantro and peanuts.

Lazy Saturdays of Summer

It's been a good day.  This morning I took the girls over to the pool and we spent a couple of hours practicing their swimming and diving, and just having a lot of fun.  The pool is way too warm, and tastes really strange, but spending time with them in the water is great fun.

After lunch, I introduced the kids to the formative movie of my own childhood: Star Wars.  I saw that movie fourteen times in the theater, in the year it came out.  I was Luke Skywalker for at least three Halloween's running.

I hate to admit it, but they weren't blown away.  I expected amazement.  I expected awe.  I expected them to see it the way I saw it, in 1978.  But no.  OK, they liked it.  They want to see it again.  They want to see the rest of the series.  Sure.  But to them, this movie will not be the iconic picture it was for me.  Maybe it's the dated effects.  Maybe it's the way so much is left implied and unstated.  Or maybe they just didn't like it as much.  Whatever the case, it left me a little deflated.  But we did have fun together.

I spent some of the afternoon cooking; one of my favorite pastimes, as you readers will know.  Tonight's dinner is called, in the cookbook at least, "Lombo di Maiale Coi Porri."  We just call it pork loin with leeks.  Couldn't be simpler, really.  Cut up the soft parts of four leeks, and braise until wilted in a little water, butter, salt and pepper.  Once that's done, brown the loin in a little butter for a few minutes, add some white wine, salt and pepper, to de-glaze the dutch oven and gather all those lovely brown nibbly bits on the bottom into the sauce.  Add the leeks back in, put on the lid and simmer for two hours.  Done.  The leeks go all buttery and sweet, the pork stays tender.  So, so good.

Here's the finished dish. The leeks, all reduced and scrumptious, are just left of the pork.  We've added a slaw of cabbage, apples and cilantro, dressed with lime juice and olive oil, and topped with roasted peanuts. The pork dried out a little, but otherwise, YUM.


We took advantage of the cool summer evening, and had dinner outside tonight.

Two nights ago, we made one of our other summer favorites: grilled vegetable stack.  You can make this with any vegetable that will grill up nicely.  That night, we used red peppers, zucchini, eggplant and green beans.  For the eggplant, it helps to slice it, salt it, let it stand 10-15 minutes, then rinse well.  This removes a lot of the bitterness, and tenderizes it a bit.  Then brush everything with olive oil, season to taste, and grill it until it gets those nice scorch marks, softens and sweetens.  We add a sauce made of reduced red wine, balsamic vinegar and brown sugar, then add dollops of goat cheese spiked with oregano and basil.  Delicious, and easy.  Make enough of it, and you've got a meal.  Or add something else, like spaghetti with meat sauce, as we did.

The kittens are passing the day in their usual way.  Nap, scamper, wrestle, purr, eat, repeat.

They've grown very tolerant of our little boy, thank God.  He has a tendency to hold them in his lap and pet them, and hold them some more, until they're squirming and meowing to be released, and then hold them a little longer.  But they don't bite or claw him, and the next time he goes to pick them up they usually stay put and let him.

Thor is learning, through extensive, untiring practice, to use his paws in new and creative ways.  His latest feat (pardon the pun) is opening cabinet drawers, in order to build himself a ladder up to the countertops.  We're training him to stay down, through liberal application of a squirt bottle's stream, but he's a determined little puss.

So, swimming, watching movies, and cooking, and eating outdoors.  Spending time with the kids on this clear, warm, beautiful afternoon.  It's been a GOOD day.

Food log:

Breakfast: oatmeal, with cinnamon, brown sugar, cashews and dried cranberries.

Lunch: Peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich on whole grain bread, baked chips, bananas.

Snacks: granola bar, a Dove single.

Dinner: pork with braised leeks.  Slaw of cabbage, apples, cilantro and peanuts.  Half a piece of whole grain bread.

Day 1 - redux

Back on the wagon, and feelin' good.  OK, it's just one day.  But a lifetime is made up of single days, and this was a good one.

I did miss Yoga this morning, as I bashed my pinkie toe into a step stool last night.  I heard a snap, and I'm hoping it was just the "knuckle" popping, but the toe hurts a lot today.  No swelling, no bruising, so it might well not be broken.  Here's hoping.

So, yes, I missed Yoga.  But I stayed away from chocolate and other sweet snacks today, except for one little "medicinal" piece.  I feel really good about that, after days of slippage.

Hopefully my toe will feel well enough tomorrow morning that I can go for my walk.  Time to rev up the exercise again!

And here's an odd bit of news.  As I mentioned, I've been snacking too much.  Lapsing.  I got on the scale this morning, expecting to have put a pound (or three) back on.  But I was down.  Down to JUST over 220 pounds.  I don't get it, but there it is.

My wife and I had a "date night" tonight, thanks to some good friends who added our kids to theirs for the evening.  We went to a (relatively) new burger place in town (The Burger Lounge).  This sidewalk cafe features grass-fed organic beef, organic produce and buns.  The burger was TASTY.  If you haven't tried grass-fed beef (wow...how WIERD is it to have to put THAT caveat in there?), please do yourself a favor and go find someplace that has it.  The taste is much more intense.  Much better.

We had a nice meal, and spent a long hour or two talking.  And nobody interrupted us.  Aaaaah.

We spent the rest of the evening shopping for home furnishings.  End tables and table lamps for our living room, and a mirror for our kids' bathroom.  Shopping on a date night?  A waste of time, you say?  Not at all.  We hit five stores in about an hour, and never once had to say "don't touch that," "come over here," or "we're leaving now!"  Aaaaah.

We love our kids, and love spending time with them, but sometimes it's wonderful to just be together, even if all we do is go shopping.

Food log:

Breakfast: fresh fruit, with some yogurt and granola on it.

Lunch: stir-fried rice with veggies and tofu, a Diet Coke.

Dinner: out tonight with my wife!  A rare treat.  We went to Burger Lounge, a (relatively) new place nearby, which features organic produce and grass-fed, naturally raised beef.  I had a hamburger and a diet soda, and split an order of fries with my wife.  YUMMY!  We'll be back.

Snacks: one little Hershey's Nuggest dark chocolate truffle, a Nature's Choice granola bar.

Letting History Be My Guide

I started this blog in order to record what I was eating, how and how much I was exercising, and what I was learning about food, fitness and myself.

Over the past two or three weeks, the commitment has been fading for some reason.  Maybe it was coming so close to the threshold of 220 pounds.  Maybe I was getting tired of watching everything I eat.  Maybe I was letting this turn into an exercise in discipline and denial, instead of a positive, life-enhancing experience.  Maybe the stress at work has been getting to me.  Whatever the reason, I've been flagging, and my weight loss has stalled.

Last night, I read this blog again from the beginning.  To my friend Cynthia, who suggested this blog as a reminder and inspiration for just this moment, I say thank you.  You were right.  I was going to need this.

So this morning, recommitted, I hit the gym.  I had a long, fast walk on the treadmill, did two sets of upper body weight lifting, crunches for the abs, and lunges for the legs.  I watched what I ate very carefully today.  OK, we had pizza for dinner, but that was balanced out with a load of fruits and vegetables throughout the day.

Tomorrow morning, the new old program continues.  A long walk around the neighborhood is on the agenda.

It's good to be back.

Food log:

Breakfast: fruit with yogurt and granola

Lunch: vegetarian cassoulet with wild rice

Dinner: two slices of pepperoni pizza, watermelon

Snacks: one mini peppermint patty, a granola bar

A new (to me) way of sharing photos

At work today, we had an all-day workshop focused on social software applications.  These are applications like facebook and LinkedIn, but also other kinds of programs that feature some content provided by the users.  Amazon, for instance, uses user-written reviews to great effect.  eBay is almost all user-contributed information (i.e. the items for sale, the bids, the user feedback ratings, etc.).

Flickr.com was already one of my favorite sites.  I use it to find photographs for all kinds of reasons.  I've used it on this blog to show you some of the places I'd love to go.  I've used it at work to find (properly licensed) photographs to convey some message in a presentation.  But I hadn't tried it for housing and sharing my own photos.  One of the speakers at today's workshop was from flickr.  It was a pretty interesting presentation, and it inspired me to give it a try.

So, a couple of photo sets have been put up there.  Some of these photos I've shown here before, but most will be new to you.  I'd be interested in hearing what you think.  Of the photos, sure, but also of flickr as a means of viewing photos in the context of a blog.  Would you prefer to see a few selected photos embedded in the blog?  Or would you rather see a bunch more photos, but a little out of context?

These are photos from a fishing trip I took, up into the Sierra Nevada mountains two years ago.  My brother-in-law, his brother-in-law, and their friends make this trip every year.  I've gone twice, and both times come back relaxed, grounded in nature, and much more in touch with myself.

These are photos from the family driving trip we took last year, up the coast of California and Oregon, and back again.  A wonderful time together, punctuated daily by interesting and beautiful sights.

I hope you enjoy them.

- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + -

This morning's yoga class was nice.  Particularly nice, because I learned a lot about a chronic problem I've had.  My hamstrings, and the tendons that run up the back of my upper legs, are very, very, very tight.  So tight that I can't sit up straight with my legs out straight in front of me.

When stretching, I could never get into the muscle, because the tendons would shriek with resistance.  So, I kept trying to lengthen them.  It's frustrating, because there are few leg stretches I can even get started on, because of this tightness.  Today I brought it up in class.

Turns out that, from where I'm starting, stretching with straight legs is the wrong place to start.  It puts all the strain on the tendons.  If I worked those tendons over and over, without also stretching out the muscle, I could eventually damage the connections between the tendons and the bones.  Instead, I need to work on the "belly" of the muscle (a great, figurative term that makes total intuitive sense to me), by giving myself permission to ignore all the advice my high school gym teachers gave me, and stretch with my knees bent.  It felt GREAT.  What was a frustrating, painful part of every stretching session has turned into something enjoyable.

I'm also hopeful.  Hopeful that, with time, I'll stretch out the leg muscles enough to get to the tendons in the right way.  Hopeful that, eventually, I'll have flexible legs. We'll see.

Food log:

Breakfast: yogurt, with strawberries and a little granola.  A cup of mixed chopped fruit.

Lunch: 1c egg salad, a greek green salad, a small handful of potato chips, a chocolate-chip cookie

Snacks: crackers with cheeses, fruit, and a little hummus.  A diet coke.

Dinner: leftover salad of romaine, beets, bleu cheese, fried chicken tenders, and honey mustard dressing.  A glass of milk.  Yum!

Just Fat

It's been a while since I posted here.  It's been a very busy week.  My father and step-mother finished up their wonderful visit, our little son and our eldest daughter both celebrated birthdays.  We've had a few different parties to honor the occasion, with one more to come.  A family party, an afternoon at a local miniature golf course with relatives for my son, etc.  Most evenings, I've been too pooped to post.

But, progress is being made.  I'm now at 221lbs.  A new low, and the official threshold (for my height) between Obese and (merely) Overweight.  So, now I'm just fat.  And it feels great!

I'm really enjoying the exercise now.  I'm starting to feel the exercise addiction one of the comments here referred to some time ago.  I look forward to each walk, each yoga session, and each workout.

I'm going to keep it short tonight.  Still recovering from the week, and it's already another one.

Sleep well.

Food log:

Breakfast: granola with bananas and 1% milk

Lunch: leftover chard soup with croutons and parmesan cheese, leftover grilled vegetables with herbed goat cheese and balsamic and red wine reduction.  Man, those veggies are good.

Dinner: thai beef lettuce wraps

Snacks: twelve M&Ms, a big bowl of French Vanilla ice cream and caramel...we took the kids to Coldstone Creamery for their free birthday club ice cream cones.

Fairs, Food and Fun

We're having a wonderful time in the family just now.  My father and step-mother are in town, visiting for a few days.  It's always so nice to reconnect with them, and spend time together.  Today, I took a day off from work, and the whole family went to the local County Fair.

For the children, the Fair is about rides.  Rides and ice cream.  Rides and ice cream, and cotton candy.  Rides, ice cream, cotton candy and carnival games.  Silly?  Not at all.  That's what the Fair meant to me when I was a child too.  And just LOOK at their faces.  They're living the moment, and loving every second of it.

Of course, I'm not too grown up to enjoy the rides a bit myself.  Here's most of us (that's me, in the goofy hat), enjoying a relatively slow cruise around in circles.  Our son is in my lap, and the girls are on the horses behind us.

The girls entered the daily art contest, and took home blue ribbons.  Those blue ribbons mean so much to them.  I still remember the blue ribbon I won in a school science fair in first grade.  I'm pretty sure the girls will never forget these ribbons either.

After the rides, the family walked the large animal barns, admiring the cows, sheep, pigs and other beasties.  We were nearly done when we discovered that our new kittens had a pair of...uhm...cousins?  Thor and Loki.  What?  Someone else thought to use these names for their pets?  We're not original?  Shocking.  These two are cute, but I don't think I'd want to try to pick one up and pet it.

The Fair also taught me a little bit about subjective beauty today, too.  There was a contest underway.  One of many at the Fair of course.  This one was an opportunity for young birdsmen (and birdwomen) to show off their prize roosters.  The air was filled with crowing.  Enough to convince me that, despite what I was seeing, and despite my rather ignorant and simplistic notions of farm life, these were, in fact, roosters.  That's what the signs said, anyway.

But I ask you.  Is THIS a rooster?

Or this?

Or this scraggly "bird"?

"No," I say.  Birds, yes.  But more like show poodles than proper working dogs.  Er, birds.

Then we rounded the end of the pens and there, right at the end of the next row, was a ROOSTER.

THAT's what I'm talking about.

Now for the irony.  And the part where I admit that my notions of proper rooster-farianism are only that...mine.  On this proud papa poultry's cage was a small tag, identifying the impressive bird.  Along with the bird's name and that of it's owner, was a description of its breed.  "Not a standard breed."  Sigh.

So when you think of your local Fair, what do you think of?  Animals, sure.  Contests for biggest pumpkin and least proper rooster, sure.  But, admit it.  The true Fair icon is Fair Food.

A good friend of mine recently described it this way: "The foods of the gods...diabetic, morbidly obese, toothless gods...but nonetheless gods."  Here's one of my favorite examples.  Favorite, as in, makes my teeth itch when I think about it.

But, there's a new iconic food in town this year.  Here it is.  The King crispy creation.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

From the point of view of my health, today was about what I didn't eat.  I didn't eat anything deep fried.  I didn't eat anything dipped in chocolate.  I didn't eat anything deep fried, and THEN dipped in chocolate.

This morning my father and I went for a long, fast walk.  Today we walked a LONG way, back and forth across the fairgrounds.  This morning I hit a new low at my weekly weigh-in.

It was a good day.

Food log:

Breakfast: oatmeal, with dried cranberries, assorted stone fruits, chopped cashews and a little brown sugar.

Lunch: the insides of the a Rubio's HealthMex burrito, and a diet coke

Snacks: a little of my son's chocolate ice cream cone (the nearest I came to Fair Food).

Dinner: a sandwich made from leftover salmon, a little mayo and sour cream to hold it together, lettuce and mustard on whole grain bread.  Two apples.  Another diet soda.  OK, not such a good day for my caffeine intake, but MAN was I tired by dinner time.

Love the cats...but could I get a good night's sleep, maybe?

We had a rough night last night. The kittens, finally truly at home here, decided that our bed would be a good place to try sleeping. Not so much sleeping, really. More like walking on our heads, licking our faces and nibbling our noses and fingers. Loki is a biter, you see...just in play, and not hard, but certainly a rude way to be awakened.

My wife and I didn't get much contiguous sleep. She's in bed already tonight, and I'm heading that way.

Aside from the feline nocturnal shenanigans and their groggy aftermath, today was a good day. I went for a nice long walk this morning, taking advantage of the slowing Summer pace of our morning routine, and stretching my usual thirty minutes to forty or so. It took a little while to work the stiffness out of my muscles and joints, but before long I was moving fast and enjoying it.

Yoga this afternoon was a mixed bag. I love the Ashtanga class. I get a GREAT sweat and stretch my muscles to a languid, deep, peaceful state. But, there are a series of poses that I find really, really hard to get into. The whole series of muscles, from my calves up through my hamstrings, through the glutes and into the lower back, are very tight. So much so that I can't sit up straight with my legs flat in front of me. Ninety degrees ain't happenin'. More like 100 or 110 degrees. This makes all of the forward bends on the floor, and many of the standing forward bends, really challenging. It just hurts to get started with these poses. My hamstrings prevent me from getting enough into these poses to even feel them in the muscles they're supposed to be stretching. Often, as today, I end up feeling discouraged and frustrated about two thirds of the way into the class (when we get to these poses). So it's about forty minutes of empowering poses I can do and enjoy, followed by fifteen minutes of frustration, missing that bliss feeling very much and wishing my hamstrings would let up already. By the time the Savasana rolls around for the last five minutes or so, my mental state is frazzled. What should be deeply relaxing is instead a five minute fight to get past the negative emotions and find my center again.

I do love the class. And I know, intellectually, that the more I do this the looser my hamstrings will get. But emotionally, it feels like I should be further along after months of practice. I'm frustrated with my body.

Right now, my body needs sleep. My eyes are closing, and it's time to heed the call.

Tomorrow is another day. A walk in the park while my daughter attends her ballet class, then back to the house to prepare for a family reunion in the afternoon. I'm looking forward to all of it very much.

Food log:

Breakfast: peaches, nectarines and grapes, with a little French Vanilla yogurt, granola and ground flax seeds.

Lunch: leftover salad from last night, half a quesadilla

Dinner: a slice of leftover pizza, steamed zucchini, a glass of milk

Snacks: blueberry crunch snack pack

Catching up, in technicolor

The pace of my posting fell off a bit over the past week or two. It's been a busy time at home, and at work. By the time the evening rolls around, I'm generally dead tired. So, I thought I'd take the time to catch you up with some goings-on at our house. Most of these area scenes of peace, of family, of exercise, of produce. The things that bring me peace.

Last weekend, the family and some good friends had a nice hike in the local canyon, and did a little geocaching. The first cache we found was challenging one. As in, twelve feet up in the air. Here's our eldest daughter, out on a limb. That little dark green box in front of her is the cache.


The hike was wonderful. We saw some wildlife, including a hare and several squirrels, and many of the local wildflowers were popping.








The garden in our backyard is popping too. The first of our purple greens are ready to harvest, and made it into the dinner salad this evening. Our blueberry bushes have a few juicy morsels showing up now too. Not more than a nibble's worth yet, but there's buds on them thar bushes!




Faithful readers will have heard a lot about our composting project. A few weeks ago we rented a pickup, filled the bed a couple of times with compost from our local landfill, and shoveled it into our driveway. Over the past couple of weekends, we've been filling wheelbarrows and spreading it out in our gardens beds. A couple of layers of newspaper, four to six inches of compost on top, and the rampant weeds now growing in our garden beds will be toast. We hope.


It's a dirty job, but the kids love digging in the big piles of compost.




Finally, a peaceful note. This morning, I came out of our bedroom to find that my little son had, at some point, come out of his own room and crashed on the couch in the living room. So sweet :-)


The kittens had found their own cozy spot. These two are nearly inseparable. When apart for more than a few minutes, one or the other will start crying out, bringing the other running. So sweet :-)


I had a great workout this morning. I cranked up the intensity during my warmup, increasing the incline on the treadmill, then did two sets, each with squats, crunches and a lot of chest work with dumbbells. I followed all that up with a nice long set of stretches. All of this with Radiohead's "OK Computer" on the iPod. Jammin.

On a scale of one to ten, today's workout was about a six. My Anusara "restorative yoga" class would be a 1. My morning walks are about a 4. Two weeks ago, when I increased to three sets and upped the weight on all exercises, then went to my Ashtanga class...that was a ten...maybe an eleven. Much pain and fatigue followed. I'm shooting for an eight, by slowly adjusting things. This morning felt like a step in the right direction.

I've also added a little extra workout on the mornings when my wife goes for her walk. I do two sets of pushups, crunches and squats. I don't know if it's helping, really, but it can't be a bad thing.

On another note, I've been discovering all kinds of music I like through Pandora. I created a station based around Wah!, and am really enjoying Krishna Das, Larisa Stow, Deva Premal, Laureena McKennitt and many others. If you haven't tried Pandora, give it a shot. I love it. And it's free. Coolness.

Food log:

Breakfast: granola and fruit again...it's fast and easy, but I'll tire of it quickly without mixing it up a bit. Need to buy more fruit.

Lunch: sauteed veggies...the last of my current batch...need to make some hummus soon, grapes, some small slices of sausage and cheese on crackers.

Snacks: a granola bar

Dinner: leftover Macaroni and Cheese, a BIG mixed salad, and a glass of milk. Here's a picture of most of the veggies that went into the salad. Organic veggies, in a rainbow of colors, are just plain beautiful.


At the back left, you'll find our purple green beans. They have a deep lustrous purple skin, and are bright green on the inside. I'm told (but haven't tried it yet) that they turn green when cooked too. We'll see.