General Chat Thread - Please Participate
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On my last hike with my friend, he asked, "Have you ever thought about taking ibuprofen before you hike? Because you look like a broken broomstick."
My posture is from weird s it going on in my hips and back. Whatever. I have a unique gait. Even when I had a Halloween costume that totally hid my identity, friends knew it was me from my walk/limp. Whatever.
I love watching the recovery portion of those strokes where the blade skims across the water out of the wind and above the current. Beauty in motion. Keep rowing!
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My wife was a personal trainer for a while and she still "reads" how people move when walking. Occasionally she comments on an unusual gait, usually with her best guess of what's going on with their hips or back.1
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This is a copy/paste of a Newsletter I receive.
The purpose of a calorie tracker is to have a rough estimate on the amount of food and energy you require.
Everyone's is about the same.
We all have goals within them. Protein. Carbs. Calorie targets.
But if you implement it and you don’t lose weight. THAT IS OK.
Reduce calories another 10% until it works.
I’d rather you had 2 weeks not losing fat than the alternative.
Which would be you starving in your first week, breaking from your diet and binging coming to the conclusion that you’re not cut out for dieting.
Which just isn’t true!
So use that amount as a reference, then move from there.
If you’re too hungry and losing weight pretty fast, maybe eat more.
It's about finding the sweet spot for adherence and sustainability.
You are to be your best own scientist.
Until tomorrow.
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SherryRueter wrote: »It's about finding the sweet spot for adherence and sustainability.
Exactly!!2 -
@SherryRueter, I think that's spot on! Those estimates are a starting point, not Revealed Truth; and a routine we can stick with long term to reach goal weight (and stay there) is the bigger prize. Good stuff!1
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I was originally scheduled to drive to the coast for a dive shift at the aquarium. It was a shift to make up for a Monday that I missed. Well, it turned in to an extra shift because there were a few Sunday shifts added in part to help one of my team members keep up with their requirement. He is a doctor who works at the hospital and also is in the National Guard. His only days off are Sunday and Monday, and sometimes he gets called in for an emergency. Sometimes he has guard duty. It's important stuff! There is only one Monday shift each month, and no Sundays. So I urged the dive safety officer to put some Sundays on the schedule, and I rounded up a few folks to go. Sweet. So when I found out that there was a trash pick up on the river today, I cancelled my participation in the dive shift. That was earlier in the week.
Well, I noticed that this cleanup was in a different city. It was too nice a day for driving, and there's a football game in town this evening. So I didn't do that either! Instead I rode my bike to town because a bolt that holds the rack on had fallen off last night on the way home. They fixed me up. I came home and did some yard chores.
First I did annual maintenance on my Marionberry canes. It's kind of too early to do it, but it's so much nicer to do it when it's not raining. The thorns are mildly annoying. I cut out all the canes that fruited this year and most of the new ones. I set up four or five of the new canes to fruit next year. That filled the yard debris cart pretty well.
I mowed the back yard. It kind of needed it, and rain is on the way. I use the mulcher and leave the trimmings. I got out the discharge chute and mowed the orchard. It is the first time I've mowed it this year. I whack it with the string trimmer in late spring, first to knock things down to reduce fire risk, and again after I've collected all the seeds that I can from the camas. I cleaned out the mower afterwards.
I had a little room left in the green waste cart, so I trimmed back about a third of my peonies - the ones that had already undergone some senescence and turned brown. There's more later. I trimmed up some of the honeysuckle. Itchy and stinky, I took a shower and then washed a load of laundry
I roasted some cauliflower and made some short grain brown rice. I sat outside to eat it while feeding peanuts to the scrub jays. Then I got on the roof and spread the moss deterrent and cleaned the gutters.
Now I'll go join some friends to watch the ball game. Our team will almost certainly lose, but it's still fun to hang out with friends. Tomorrow? Rain coming. It isn't supposed to really get going until 14:00, so if I'm up early enough, maybe I'll go ride my gravel bike. If it really just starts raining, I will go to the gym since I keep putting it off with the excuse that it's great weather.
How was YOUR Saturday?3 -
How was YOUR Saturday?
It was sunny and pleasant on Prince Edward Island so I spent most of the day outside... put away the barbeque, cleaning up leaves, putting away deck furniture, you name it. We've going to bring my old Honda mower down to Texas. I bought it in 2008 and it still starts first pull each time!
My wife search online for most of last year, trying to find a good used mower in our area of Texas with zero luck. Since I mainly use the lawn tractor on PEI, the old Honda only got fired up once... when the mower belt on the lawn tractor broke. The grass in Texas is very different from what I'm used to in Canada... hopefully the Honda can handle it.
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Friday night, a friend called and lured me into going up to the campus farms and looking for the comet with binoculars. It's kind of too-bright even there, but she wasn't up for a longer night drive. She saw the comet, I didn't. (My vision stinks. One eye is 20/20 but has a chunk of floating tissue from an old retinal tear that looks to me like a big, mobile floater. The other eye has developed a film on the cataract lens, so is 20/60 or worse. I'm scheduled for a YAG procedure to fix that, but it isn't until January.
I can drive legally and safely, but seeing a faint comet through binoculars is a different matter.)
Saturday morning, I helped with a thing at my local YMCA where I and the rowing club president were showing members how to use the rowing machine, or offering technique tune-ups for those who already knew how. It was fun!
Sunday, I went to a state rock & mineral group's show/sale. Also fun to look at interesting rocks, gems, fossils, etc. The only thing I bought was a couple of very small quartz spheres. (Joked with one of my fellow rowers that they'd let me predict the weather 2 minutes in advance, not as far-seeing as a big crystal ball.
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First photo (poor quality, sorry) is a display of fluorescent minerals under black light. There's renewed interest here in one colloquially called "Yooperlite", a sodalite-syenite mineral that's found in Northern Michigan. (Called that because Michigan's upper peninsula is referred to as the "UP" (pronounced "yoo pee"), and the residents referred to as "Yoopers". Lower peninsula people are "Trolls" .) This was a variety of fluorescent minerals from various places, though. (Yes, it's also an indirect selfie. It was dark in the booth.)
A display of beautiful but expensive opals:
Part of a fossil display:
. . . and a couple shots of random pretty minerals:
After that, I went to a nearby good restaurant for a Greek salad and some Margherita pizza.
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Several years ago, my friends and I rode our motorcycles over to the UP... checked out the Whitefish Point Shipwreck Museum, stayed in the National Park, rode through the Tunnel of Trees road, you name it. Had a great time!! Yoopers seemed like good folks to me!!2
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I love the pictures of the minerals, fossils, rocks, and gems. I can't help picking up cool rocks. One of these days maybe I'll find an emerald. So far just petrified wood, agates, jaspers, and fossilized clams on the coast and just a few other fossils.
A friend of mine has a "Weather Bagel." It's a bagel on a string. You hang it outside near a window where you can look at it. If the bagel is swinging, it's windy. If the bagel is wet, it's raining.3 -
Happy New Year.
One of my traditions is making and eating collard greens, black eyed peas, and cornbread (sticks & triangles). I also gave away a nice plate full to neighbors. Good thing. My recipe makes 30 pieces of cornbread (16 triangles and 14 sticks). I always appreciate help eating them. They are so good...
I'm going to stir the leftover greens into the cow peas before storing to eat tomorrow and the next day.
My neighbor is going to make chili soon; I'll make more cornbread for the occasion. I'm actually kind of glad they didn't make one of THEIR new year traditions - sauerkraut balls. They are tasty when hot out of the oil, but holy cats they're little grease bombs.2 -
There is a southern tradition to make Black-eyed Peas & rice. Recipe is called Hoppin' John.
Add in collard greens and cornbread and you're in southern heaven. lol1 -
I contemplated making Hoppin' John this year but opted instead to just go with the cow peas.
I enjoy making cornbread, and I make a pretty good version. That's always a given. It's nice to have help eating it. It's one of the good luck foods for the new year that is supposed to attract good fortune. It's the gold color; it is said to attract wealth.
I love beans, so it's always a good excuse to make some blackeyed peas. Some say they represent coins - adding to the wealth for the coming year. Others say that because they swell when soaked and/or cooked, they increase prosperity. That's pretty swell!
The collards? Aside from all the calcium which is a good thing to eat, they represent cash money - the kind you fold in your wallet - when eaten on new year's day.
Some years I cook the greens and beans together. This year they were separate dishes. I mixed the leftovers together though.
Another popular thing to eat is pork. Well, if you're making traditional black-eyed peas or collard greens, there would be pork. I use "vegetarian pork" most of the time (olive oil). The explanation is that when pigs root around, they always move forward. We look forward to the new year and not backwards at what we can't change. I think that's where the neighbor's sauerkraut ball tradition comes from. And guess what? The dishes I took over to my neighbors came back later with some different foods - slow roasted pork with cooked sauerkraut and even some kind of sausage.
Will any of this guarantee that I have a good year? Hell no. But it's tasty, and it sure can't hurt.
Happy New Year!
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