randomness

Birthday Meme

I hadn’t planned on posting this to my blog, but since I’ve already posted my results in the comments of three different LiveJournals, maybe I should just go for it. For reference, I originally saw this on  sheryls‘ LJ, but it’s run rampant since, so I guess I’ve snicked this from pretty much the entire internets.

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birth day (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births and one death in your journal, including the year. [My 30th birthday is coming up on April 22nd, in a couple of weeks.]

Events:
1509 – Henry VIII ascends the throne of England after the death of his father.
1970 – First Earth Day celebrated.
1993 – The web browser Mosaic version 1.0 is released.

Birthdays:
1937 – Jack Nicholson, American actor
1950 – Peter Frampton, British musician

Death:
1996 – Erma Bombeck, American humorist and writer (b. 1927)

photography

Under the Radar

I was just updating my About page to reflect my upgrade in digital cameras and blogging software, when I noted that one of my links was broken. So, I went to the Konica Minolta site to find a new link to my camera’s info, and found this instead:

Konica Minolta Photo Imaging, Inc. ceased the camera business on March 31, 2006.

As of April 1st, 2006, Sony Corporation is providing customer service for Konica’s, Minolta’s, and Konica Minolta’s cameras (excluding single-use cameras) and camera-related products except for the binoculars.

Apparently, somebody must be behind on reading her photography magazines. I’m sure I should have heard about this before now. Ah, well. That sucks.

Incidentally, it looks like the specs on my manual-focus Minolta X-370s are no longer available online. You can, however, read about my new Minolta point-and-shoot. Hmm.

health & fitness 6 Comments

Insecurity

Am I so insecure?

I was deleting my trackback spam today when I came upon a real trackback to my blog. At first I thought it might actually be spam, but it looked legit, so I clicked on it anyway. In the last paragraph of the linked post, I read:

Breakfast Burritos are not something you use to lose weight. And neither are “low-carb snacks from Big Lots”. The whole “eat less and exercise more” thing has worked for me. This lady seems rather nice, but her energy into the planning of weight loss might be better used in doing things to actually losing weight. The fact that she is nice and this post is hating on her weight-loss plan, well, this makes me feel bad.

I immediately got that “I hate conflict” feeling in my chest, which goes hand-in-hand with my “I hate being wrong” and “I hate being hated” feelings. Not that this person hates me; they’re just dogging my diet plan. Which, considering my lack of measurable progress lately, I guess I can understand.

And, I mean, I can’t be too upset. After all, they did say that they feel bad that their post is all hating on my diet plan. That’s cool. I left them what I hope sounded like a nice (if slightly miffed) comment, inviting them to come leave a comment and join the discussion. I’m not averse to hearing other people’s opinions on weight loss.

Even so, this person’s post made me sit back and take a look at what I’m doing. I’m eating five small meals a day. I’m cutting back on fat and eating low-glycemic carbohydrates. I’m walking for a half hour every day, and I’m doing mild strength-training with my PUSH DVD three days a week. I’m sure the PUSH workouts will increase in difficulty as I progress onward, though.

I’m slowly losing inches, and very slowly losing weight. I guess that’s the positive way to look at it; the scale is moving in the right direction. But now I wonder if I should be doing *more*. Forcing my ass out of bed in the morning to do cardio, for instance, is something I’ve known I need to do, but I haven’t yet done.

Is it wrong that a complete stranger can make me feel so ill-at-ease with my fitness lifestyle? I was feeling positive and satisfied with my moderate successes. Now, I don’t know. I thought I’d been trying hard for nearly three months now. Suddenly, I feel insecure and pissed off and indignant and vulnerable and exposed and dumb and fat and wrong.

I’m not sure what to think of my reaction to this.

Update, 4/7/06: Now that I know that the “breakfast burrito” thing is a running gag on Manhattan Offender, I can see how I misunderstood the tone of the post. I can totally dig the burrito thing now. Last night, though, I really didn’t know how to take it. Like I told Rod over e-mail, I’m just going to chalk this one up to one of those strange internet things, and let it go.

gardening

Seedling Update


[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].

The seedlings are just over two weeks old, and they’re starting to show me what they’re made of. The catnip (above) is growing like mad, and I’m seriously contemplating planting it in a container, rather than in my soon-to-be herb garden. If I actually plant it in the ground, I expect that it will run rampant and destroy all growing things in its path.

The parsley is finally coming up, the sweet basil is growing tall and stately, and the lemon basil is about on a par with the parsley.

I’ve managed to kill four out of six hollyhocks, thanks to us being out of town during an apparently crucial watering weekend. (Who knew?) One had already died from damping-off, and three others just died of thirst. My two remaining hollyhocks are about 2-3″ tall and not very strong. One already needs staked, which can’t be good. I’m hoping they’ll grow out of it (so to speak).

randomness 4 Comments

Moving and Shaking

Good things are happening.

I’m feeling more fit. I’m doing something a little different at work, and the future is looking positive on that front. I’m paring down my hobbies and interests.

Paring down my hobbies, you ask? Yes, this is a good thing. This makes me happy.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve pretty much written off musicianship for now. I enjoy picking up the guitar every now and then, or singing along with the CD in the car, but I’m not likely to record a cover album to share with the internets.

I’m also in preparations to turn over the Saginaires / Northern Aurora alumni site — yes, the very first site I ever created — to someone who will take good care of it. I will shortly be posting a “job opening” to the alumni Yahoo Group, and the donor of the webhosting will be joining me in interviewing the candidates to choose who gets to take over the webmaster position. Ten years is long enough for me, and it’s not fair of me to hoard the site to myself when I haven’t touched it in probably a year.

I need to pare down some other things, too. I’m undecided as to the future of my podcast, although the more I think about it, I don’t want to give it up quite yet. My photography isn’t necessarily something I’ll be doing every day, but it’s damn nice to have good equipment and above-average skills for when I get the inkling to take some artsy pictures. And web design… well, I can’t see me going out for any freelance gigs anytime soon (especially with me actually using the techie part of my brain at work, finally), but I’ll probably do some minor tweaks on my blog, and maybe overhaul my portfolio one of these days. But I won’t feel bad if I don’t get to it right away.

As for things I do want to focus on… I want to get back into writing, as my long-neglected NaNo is calling to me. Gardening season is nearly upon us, so I definitely want to have time for that. And I’ve been being better to my body, exercising regularly, and that’s become something I want to continue. I definitely need to focus more on my LSM duties, as well. Oh, yeah, and do some chores around the house, too.

I’m afraid that, if I don’t take control of my hobbies and such now, I’ll feel guilty for neglecting everything under the sun. I’m still going to have more hobbies than the average joe, but I’m OK with that.

Priorities are good. Spreading myself too thin is not.