Librarian

The concept of four workout levels seems to be helping me. I was doing a Level A or B workout for 60 minutes a day for several months, but that all fell apart and I’ve recently had a fair amount of resistance to getting started again. But the Levels notion is helping because I realize that I have no resistance to Level C exercise and just a little resistance to Level B exercise. I imagine if I keep that in mind and start doing a little more, that eventually I’ll wear down the resistance to doing an occasional Level A workout.

• vacuum main part of house
• clean loft bath

• eat more asparagus
• eat more salads
• start sprouts

• everyday—log on 43T

• design top of driveway
• plant 3 trees
• design kitchen garden
• organize materials from class
• plant everything
• vines class?

• email BR
• Friday meeting
• Board report
• don’t forget next Tuesday’s FRB meeting

• update Chautauqua website

• rethink and reorganize my daily tasks
• continue experimenting with no daily to do list
• call HVAC people
• bread for B
• Ks on Sunday
• Possibilities for Saturday: Chinese Culture festival, Flowers and Food Festival, Farmers Markets
• celebrate birthday with brother
• watch Kansas vs Darwin

12: (1) about 5 minutes

13: (2)
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28: (17)
29: (18)
30: (19)
31: (20)

12: (1) walked 3+ hours at the Botanical Garden

13: (2)
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I decided that what I wanted for my birthday was a new set of Best Year Yet goals. Does one get better at setting ten good goals for the year if you do it year after year? I feel like I need practice. I think this list reflects more what I’m actually doing, what I’ll realistically get done, and a better balance of different parts of my life. There are 233 days left this year, counting today, so it’s time to get going.

Top Ten Goals
1. Empty the old house and sell it.
2. Devise a landscaping plan and begin to implement it.
3. Unpack.
4. Exercise 233 times.
5. Do yoga or stretch 233 times.
6. Eat natural foods, including lots grown locally.
7. Fulfill my duties as Chair of the Computer and Information Technology Special Interest Group and member of the Hospitality Committee for the Missouri Library Association.
8. Do NaNoWriMo.
9. Write a nonfiction book proposal.
10. Be involved in my community.

• vacuum the main house

• make chicken stock
• make chicken and noodle-style dumplings
• eat asparagus
• go to Farmers Markets on Saturday
• plan to eat my haul from the Farmers Markets
• do something that resembles exercise each day
• shop at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, grocery

• plant mints
• plant thyme
• plant sage

• request an ILL book from KPL
• have R call K’s—Mother’s Day?
• truck appointment
• call HVAC company for inspection
• bank
• bread for B
• cartooning class info to B
• clear Yahoo In Box, Gmail In Box, backpack
• Chautauqua meeting Monday

• clean the loft bath
• clean the half bath
• vacuum everywhere
• get rid of the trap
• get rid of the trike
• clean and move the rug
• get rid of the instruments

• eat lots of locally-grown asparagus, greens, strawberries, and rhubarb
• make several entirely local meals
• grow my own sprouts
• re-form my daily exercise habit

• plant everything (mostly herbs and veggies)
• keep it weeded and watered
• organize the materials from my landscaping class
• design the top of the driveway
• plant three trees

• clean
• bring home the keyboard to give away with other instruments

• 5-16 meeting
• write report for 5-30 meeting
• 5-30 meeting
• contact all of our speakers and let them know how things are going

• Mother’s Day at K’s?
• another day at K’s?
• celebrate my birthday with R
• celebrate my birthday with my brother
• start cartooning class

• Chautauqua
• Meacham Park Neighborhood parade
• CFUH book club

My other goals are on hold until the old house is emptied.

In recent weeks, I read:
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
_Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
_Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

The first lays out the argument for why you might want to eat more local foods—for environmental and, even more, for health reasons. The second are two very different attempts to eat more locally.

Plenty is by a young couple living in an apartment in Vancouver and attempting to eat only food (including all ingredients) within 100 miles for one year. They struggle.

AVM is about a family with a bit of land and some background in producing both vegetables and meat. They also set less strict rules for themselves, wanting only to eat local produce and meat for one year.

It’s kind of fun to read them back to back because most of us would be kind of in the middle in terms of resources for pursuing such a project. Both are well-written, but, of course, the Kingsolver book is beautiful.

The person I was replacing had her last chemo treatment last week, so I worked my last few days for her last week. I did usability testing on their website and it really was helpful in pointing out the problems, some with very easy solutions.

I’m quite glad to be done with this for now. It was fine in the winter, but was getting to be more and more stressful each time I went in. But, it turns out it’s going to be cool here one night this week, so maybe it’s just as well that I haven’t got my planting done.

The upstairs is virtually empty. It was clean until I had the furniture guys pick up the armoire for repair—they’ll return it to the new house. It was dusty and dusty behind it, so I’ll need to vacuum up there once more.

R has made a lot of progress in recent weeks, including most of the remaining books—which are now scattered in piles in the living room of the new house waiting to be sorted. Oh well. At this point, it’s more important to get the old house emptied than to keep the new house looking the way I want. I’ll get back to that later.

I haven’t weighed myself in over a month and assumed my weight wouuld be well above the line that gets me to a 25 pound weight loss by the end of 2008. But, it turns out, it’s right on the line!

Part of that is due to getting well ahead earlier in the year. But part of it is because a bad day of eating just isn’t what it used to be. The new healthier habits I’ve developed over the last couple of years have an effect even on bad days. I might have one or two junky things on a bad day, but I don’t spend the whole day grazing junk food anymore. And I don’t have more than one or two bad eating days in a row—I just start feeling drawn back to my kitchen and to healthier foods.

I signed up for the One Local Summer blogging challenge—blog a meal a week that is made from all local ingredients from June 1 to August 31.

• emptied my Yahoo mail box—can’t remember the last time I had it completely empty

• baked 2 loaves of bread—one salt-free for my kidney-challenged friend

• donated to the Foster and Adoptive Care Coalition for Mother’s Day in honor of my mother-in-law. I’m not sure if she’ll think it’s better than flowers, but I do!

• took two short walks

• ate a salad and an apple and assorted other healthy things

• cut up a whole chicken and blogged about it.

Two of my loans were recently paid off, so I’m reloaning that money to:

Gifty Aggrey of Ghana for her clothing business

Catalina’s Group of Peru for their various farming and market activities

Following Adar’s quote of Flirt’s instructions:

click on “customize”, which is in the top right-hand corner of the right column on your home page. Then check the boxes for “Recent Activity” and “The 43 Universe’. This will make it easy for anyone looking at your page to navigate around and find your recent comment/entries to cheer or comment on.

It’s easy!

I’m wishing for an ability to reorder the things that show up in the sidebar. I’d like the cheer activity at the top so I can see who’s been cheering me when I have cheers of my own to give away.

• met the furniture guy at the old house—he’ll return our repaired armoire to the new house in a couple of weeks.

• cleaned a bathroom at the old house—one down, two to go. When that’s done I think we could finally call the real estate agent.

• took a carload of clothes to the Missouri Council of the Blind’s charity shop.

• helped R set up the bookcase and dresser we previously moved so that now they can actually, you know, be useful and store stuff.

• moved the dry mount press to its new home on top of the dresser in the loft that we’re going to use as a financial office and project room.

• worked on a webpage for the Chautauqua.

I tricked the list gods today—I made three lists so no matter what the theme of the day turned out to be, I’d have a list to match! I don’t know why it’s so important that I do things off a list, but it does make me feel more accomplished. The theme turned out to be work on the old house.

• vaccuumed the upstairs, including using the dust attachment on all the trim

• cleaned and moved two chair mats

• removed and disposed of the old shower curtain

Beyond that, I

• picked up a carload of clothes from a friend’s father’s house—he died unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago. Having been in that situation myself, I knew that one helpful thing was to offer to pick up clothes and take them to a charity shop. She took me up on the offer.

• made risotto—it wasn’t perfect, but this is a dish that’s going to take some practice.

Another day of not doing things on the list

• ordered a shirt to replace my tattered and too large chambray shirt that I still reach for every morning to throw over a t-shirt when the weather is too cold for short sleeves and too warm for long

• baked no-salt bread for my friend on a renal diet

• helped R move books from the old house

• went to my first meeting of the Kirkwood Chautauqua organizers and volunteered to do the website

• improved my mood from pretty darn grumpy to rather cheery

I guess this is doubly important on days when I do very little on my list, but do lots of things anyway.

• helped keep R more or less sane while the chemistry in his new stock tank water feature went insane and he worried about his two new goldfish.

• started Madagascar Vinca seeds.

• baked two loaves of bread—the first one was not well-formed (but tasted good), we’ll see how the second turns out. If it doesn’t rise much either, I’m going to blame it on the yeast.

• copied the needed papers for the Enron stuff and got it ready to mail

• watched a movie in French (with subtitles)

• ate reasonably well on a stressful day

I guess this is doubly important on days when I do very little on my list, but do lots of things anyway.

• helped keep R more or less sane while the chemistry in his new stock tank water feature went insane and he worried about his two new goldfish.

• started Madagascar Vinca seeds.

• baked two loaves of bread—the first one was not well-formed (but tasted good), we’ll see how the second turns out. If it doesn’t rise much either, I’m going to blame it on the yeast.

• copied the needed papers for the Enron stuff and got it ready to mail

• watched a movie in French (with subtitles)

• ate reasonably well on a stressful day