Fashion Fix

I pack my gym bag every night before going to bed. I’m usually a little distracted doing several things at once. Once I forgot to pack underwear and had to race to Fred Meyer to buy some. Yesterday I packed one shirt and then changed my mind at the last minute. Oh boy. So I ended up with a light pink shirt and black bra. This isn’t the 1980′s so I went to Target and bought another shirt.

I like this one.

Yearly Physical – The Results

Went in a week or so ago for my physical. They drew blood and ran my stats. Survey says that my cholesterol is pretty good: 188. But my LDL is a bit high: 110. Doc says it should be less than 100. So I will start eating oatmeal again and lay off the butter. But the serious good news is no evidence of being pre-diabetic. Diabetes runs in my family. I have quite a few members of my family with it and I’ve always been a bit scared that I will end up with it.

I figure that if I lay off the meat (aka burgers and fries) and butter, I should be in a good spot next year when they run my numbers again.

The Skinny On Our Situation

Okay. Many of you have expressed confusion about our situation. Here is:

Aleta: Living in temporary housing in Medford, OR
Andy: Living in Portland, OR

We (Me, Andy, the snake, and the two cats) are moving to a more permanent structure in Medford/Ashland, OR area. Andy has to get the apartment ready to move while I work. Everything happened with my new job so fast that we didn’t have time to get a new place. So for the time being we have to live apart. Obviously I’d like to have my husband, cats, and stuff with me. But this is our reality and we will be together soon.

My Hungry Brain

I’ve noticed something interesting: when I’m leaner and have been eating low calorie, low sugar, high fiber food – it’s easier to say no to delicious junk food. It’s easier to control my cravings. I don’t get that nauseous hungry feeling (if you’re chunky you know what I’m talking about). When I’m heavier and not being even remotely good about eating, then all hell can break loose close to meal times. I obsess about food and continue eating when I’m not hungry.

Well, I might not be crazy. A study led by Yale University and University of Southern California researchers have found that:

“What happens in lean people, when their blood sugar is not dropping, is that their executive function lights up — the area involved in making decisions,” explains Robert Sherwin, professor medicine at Yale and senior author of the paper, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. “This executive function controls the reward system, which is much less activated. But in obese people, that executive control is not activated when their blood sugar isn’t falling. So they have continued activation of their reward system and that system dominates even if they’re not hungry.”

You can read more here.

I’m no different than the millions of people trying to get a hold on their weight and ultimately their health. I have spans of time I do really well: eat well, get plenty of exercise and start chipping away at some of the weight that has accumulated. Then slowly that unravels and I’m eating enough salty snacks to satisfy a herd of cattle.

I started wearing a pedometer. I began on my most sedentary day: rest day + conference call overload. When I got home I checked and I had taken less than 4,000 steps that day. I was horrified. My desk job + love of the Internet + working downtown (everything is super convenient) + addiction to television was turning me into a lazy sedentary person. Granted I run but beyond that I don’t really do much. Yikes!! It’s 10am and I have 2084 steps under my belt so far. Let’s see if I can get to 6,000 for today..

Flickr Fun

So I attempted to clean out my Flickr account which has tons of duplicate and frankly uninteresting photos in it. So I went delete crazy. But then Flickr RSS Feed on the right hand side of my site was not displaying photos….So I Google my issue. After reading several pages, I just deleted the Widget. It’s a nice day. And I have things to do. Maybe its a synch issue and maybe not.

Update

I haven’t written in a few weeks. I haven’t had much to say. I’ve been running and training for the Bend Marathon. Andy continues the job search. This weekend we are going over to Bend to check out the course. It will be nice to get out of Portland for the day (and night if I can convince Andy that we need to camp). I think the biggest coolest thing is that Andy has been cooking all sorts of greens. And they are delicious. I would post a photo but I eat them too fast. We’re enjoying the summer and trying keep the wheels moving.
Cheers.

Faces of Joy

Sometimes it at the finish line:

Sometimes its out on the trail:

Forest Park

Or with someone you love:

With your sweetie

Or with something you love:

Or some place you love:

Faces of Pain

Sometimes it’s out on the course:

26.5 mile training run.

Mile 23 of Vernonia Marathon

And sometimes its inside:

Frustration

I’ve been really frustrated lately. I’m frustrated about work, my running, weather, etc. So pretty much everything. Things are not moving as quickly as I would like. I know. Cry me a river. First world problems. I know.

I did find a list of ways to overcome frustration. I like numbers seven and fourteen. I’m working on number 32. That’s the hard one. I try to force things to happen which is often one of the worse things you can do.

So what am I going to do to get out of this funk? Maybe I will sign up for that swimming class I’ve been looking at. Or the German language class. All I know is that I don’t want to keep having the mornings I have been having.

Why I Didn’t Attend the Networking Event

Recently I signed up for a networking event hosted by PSU’s Multimedia Professional Program. It sounded like a cool thing: people talking about their digital marketing success stories and breakfast. Okay. Mostly I was curious and wanted free breakfast.

Here’s where it gets interesting. I was on Meetup.com checking out a few tech groups when I saw this event. So I signed up. I got an email last Tuesday from Meetup.com reminding me about the event. So the next morning, I get up super early and head downtown. I get to PSU’s Rec building and don’t see any signs telling me where to go. I go the dude with the computer who’s sitting behind a desk. He checks and says he has no information about this event. I go up and down floors looking for the event and cannot find it. Turns out I had the wrong date. Okay. Bad me.

I get to my office with a bagel in hand and send an email off to the coordinator the the Multimedia Program asking what floor the event will be on. She responds that it was in the confirmation email I received. I looked through all my emails and no there was no floor mentioned. I communicate how Meetup.com didn’t include this information. She tells me I have to register on another site for this event. Okay. I’ll play. So I register yet again for this event. I notice that only 4 or 5 people have registered including her. Not much of a networking event, huh?

This might have been the end of the networking saga but then I receive a reminder email late last week about this event. Okay. Great. Then yesterday I received another email from the coordinator reminding me about the event. At this point, I am officially annoyed. I registered on two sites and received 3 reminders about this?

So last night I realized I had a lot of meetings today and so much to do. I decided that the ‘networking event’ simply wasn’t worth the effort I had put into it.

Moral of the story: promoting your event through multiple sources is good but don’t make your participants work this hard to attend an event. And for goodness sake, three reminder emails is absolutely ridiculous!