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“Volunteers told members of both parties in separate discussions that women wearing hijabs, the traditional Muslim head scarves, couldn’t sit behind the podium.”
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“All of the interviews from last night are that he did in fact refuse treatment,” police Sgt. Lynne Benton said Wednesday. “Unless we can disprove that, charges probably won’t be filed in this case.”
links for 2008-06-18
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“There are millions of people sharing links to news articles on blogs, message boards and sites like Digg. If The A.P. has concerns that go all the way down to one or two sentences of quoting, they need to tell people what they think is legal and where
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Imagine: You put your one-month old down for a nap, then take a nap yourself. You wake up to find that your 6-month-old puppy has torn off your baby’s diaper and attacked his privates.
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I just wanted to point out that CNN misspelled George Takei as “Takai,” proving that they don’t even know how to PRONOUNCE his last name. Hi, professional journalists! How’s things?
Starting Week Seven
So, here I am, at the beginning of Week #7 of Weight Watchers. I’ve acclimated myself to how the program works. I know the Points® values for the foods I eat most often. I’ve adjusted my way of eating, slowly but surely, toward more veggies and less meat.
Now it’s time to really make the commitment.
Because I’ve lost less than three pounds in the past six weeks. And I want to see more results.
Meetings are helpful, and weigh-ins impose a sense of accountability that might not otherwise be in effect (despite my incessant blogging about my weight). Still, when I’ve gained nearly a pound in a week without meaning to, it’s hard to hear about the woman who’s lost 57 pounds — and not just hear about her, but hear HER, herself, explaining what’s different now, saying how she’s still got a long way to go, and referring to Flex Points as “devil points.”
It makes me want to cry sometimes. What are these people doing differently from me, that they lose five pounds in a single week, and I can’t even do that in a month and a half? What’s wrong with me?
I ask myself that a lot, it seems.
Of course, when I get like this, it makes me want to crawl into a little hole and eat one-point fudge bars all evening, and not do the things I should be doing (mainly exercising), and that doesn’t help matters. Me skipping out on Aikido tomorrow would be a Very Bad Idea™, since I need to get back into the swing of things.
But, damn, I’m just so depressed. I’d rather curl up on the couch and take a nap.
Aaron tried to cheer me up, and he did a pretty good job of it, too. “You’re all depressed over 0.8 pounds?” he asked, and reminded me that I’m still headed in the general direction of where I need to go. That was helpful, and made me feel better, to an extent.
I need a little Aaron on my shoulder all the time, to drown out the little Diana on the other shoulder that berates me for sleeping in too late and not exercising enough and generally being a schmuck in so many ways.
links for 2008-06-17
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“For the Clarity’s release in California, Honda said it received 50,000 applications through its Web site but considered only buyers living near hydrogen fuel stations in Torrance, Santa Monica and Irvine.”
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‘The ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found the [White House Office of Administration] does not have “substantial independent authority” so it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.’
Go Green: Buy Local
When I was a younger lass — say, in high school and college — I was a bit more environmentally conscious than I am now. I was really into recycling and buying recycled products, and my mother placated me by buying Green Forest recycled bathroom tissue and paper towels.
I also walked a lot in high school and college, but that was mainly from necessity, not so much from a sense of reducing my carbon footprint. Not that anyone knew what a “carbon footprint” was back in the ’90s.
These days, I find I’m much less environmentally conscious than I once was. Recycling is more of a hassle than a given (except for donating to Goodwill, which is ongoing, mainly because I’m a packrat). Walking everywhere (especially to work) is just not feasible. I use more disposable products than I need to. Now, getting myself back to the environmentally-conscious side of things is more of a “what am I willing to do” gambit, kind of like dieting. What am I willing to give up? To change? Am I willing to adopt a slightly different routine?
This weekend, Aaron and I took a trip to a couple of local produce establishments to try the whole Buy Local concept. Thompson Farms, just a few miles from our house, was selling fresh strawberries — you can’t get much more local than that! Granted, the hand-sorted high-quality quarts were $5 each, which is a little pricey, but they looked great. (They also had jam-and-jelly grade quarts for nearly half that price.)
We then visited Monnette’s Market on Reynolds, also just down the road apiece. There we found produce that wasn’t *quite* as local, but still more local than the friendly neighborhood megamart has, I’d bet. There were Canadian tomatoes, complete with a sign deeming them safe per the FDA. There were homegrown strawberries (not as ripe as the farm berries, but cheaper), and I can only assume that most of the produce was locally grown. We got some bell peppers, tomatoes, green onions, pineapple (yes, I know it wasn’t locally grown), vidalia onion (also not quite local), and an impulse buy of some fat-free chocolate muffins.
So, our first foray into buying locally grown produce was relatively successful. We’ll see if this is something we continue, or if it was merely an interesting excursion. Monnette’s actually has some competitively priced deli items, too, so we might end up going back next week for more of our normal shopping.
Not sure what the next step in “reducing our carbon footprint” will be. I’d like to keep taking baby steps toward joining the revolution.