[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].
Taken at the Toledo All-Star Review, 17 June 2006.
(Yes, I just got the film developed…)
This Will Be Me In 15 Years
Courtesy of Jill Shalvis:
Last night was Back to School night for the High School. It’s set up so that parents can experience the day as their child does. My daughter handed me my schedule. AP Calculus, AP Science, Weight Training, Leadership, and AP English. I looked at the schedule and felt the nerves jump in the pit of my stomach. “I already survived high school, I shouldn’t have to survive it again.”
Totally. Going to be me when I have a kid in high school.
Smells Like Spring
I realized just now that the smell of spring reminds me of living off-campus during the summers at BGSU. Particularly, the upstairs apartment/duplex on Troup Street, across from the TV station. The one with the unusually short screen door that Aaron would bash his head on every damn weekend. That was the summer of… 2000, I believe.
Of course, this same spring breeze also reminds me of sitting on the porch swing of my efficiency apartment back in 1999; or laying on the top bunk of a borrowed futon-loft in the room I rented in 1998, at 2am with the window open. Spring, to me, smells like standing alone, feeling grown-up, being responsible, but without feeling the weight that true responsibility carries.
Someday, when different memories are fresh in my mind, maybe spring will smell like something else to me — gardening, or travelling, or having the kids home from school. That’s a long way off, though.
The smell of spring makes me feel alive, like something new and different is around the corner, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s because I prefer warm spring weather over the cold of winter, or because spring means the daylight hours are longer, or because spring meant the end of school for so many of my formative years. Or maybe it’s simply because the greenery finally makes its appearance.
At any rate, this 60-plus-degree weather is fantastic… even though I know it won’t last the week.
The Not-Really-Big Reveal
For anyone who’s been interested in what my freelance gig is and how it’s turning out, I thought I’d share with you the HTML mock-up I’ve created for my client. They chose this design out of over half a dozen Photoshop composites, and I spent this week creating a stylesheet that I can plug their content into. After I do that, there will be some content-management issues to tackle and some bells and whistles to add.
So, there you have it: the midpoint of my freelance project. I think it’s some of my better work, IMHO.
Numbers
I never thought I was much of a numbers person — not after snoring through a stats class my Freshman year of college, then struggling through other collegiate-level maths. I’ve discovered, though, that I enjoy finding and tracking trends, be they at work or in my weight loss.
I’ve been seriously bummed this week, and losing faith in the SparkDiet, because I’ve remained at 201.5 pounds for the past nine days straight (not counting one day when I lost half a pound, then gained it back the next). The only thing that kept me from totally giving it the big heave-ho was my $10 wager with James. For total SparkPoints earned, not for total weight lost, thank goodness.
At any rate, I have my own Excel spreadsheet and graph that I’ve been updating over the past, oh, more than four years, and I’ve incorporated weekly averages into it. I average my weight for the week, Sunday through Saturday, and subtract that average from the previous week’s average to help gauge my weight loss. I’d forgotten that last week’s average was 202.2, and it turns out that this week’s average is 201.4 (thanks to that one lower day), so I actually lost 0.8 pounds since last week. That makes me feel better.
SparkPeople, though not exactly the diet I would have chosen for myself without the online tracking, at least has some nifty graphs relating to food and exercise and goal-setting. It tells me that my recommended daily fiber intake is 25-35g, and informs me that I’m consistently below that level. I can also see that my protein isn’t as high as a former low-carber’s should be. So, my goal for this week is to meet my recommended fiber and exceed my recommended protein levels. Those things alone should push a lot of the evilness out of my diet.
Today will be fun. Today, Aaron and I are meeting Jason at the Happy Rose Buffet, where I will be selecting only the healthiest items possible, having only one plate of food, and sticking mainly to sushi. I will set a good example, and I will be proud of myself.