Month: December 2010
Since the end of the year is the traditional time to reflect (which, whether it is at New Years or some other time, it is always good to look back and reflect), I have been thinking about 2010 quite a bit today.
It has been difficult to figure out how to really sum up this year, since, looking back, it has been one of the more unique years of my life. The best way I could think of is that it was the year of kitty wiggles. Continue reading “2010 Year End – Kitty Wiggles”
5 am.
Woken up at 5am by… Diana. She was standing next to the bed with a line of children behind her, shaking my foot asking “Can we get up now? Can we? Can we?”
But it has been wonderful so far. Yesterday was great to see my family, although my mom is in a lot of trouble. Let’s just say that the buckeyes turned out just fine. I wonder how many of our exchanges 8-10 buckeyes are? 😉 Just teasing, they taste grand, and thankfully are almost gone.
It’s time for Ella and I to help Owen finish up his Lego project, then get in shower and head off to Diana’s parents. There has been a request for Rock Band to accompany us, so it should be a fun time there as well.
Happy holidays to everyone!
Well, I’m still losing and have lost exactly 26 pounds overall! However, I had my body composition test since I lost over 25 so far. For future reference, when they say “Do your strength training or else half the weight you lose will be muscle”, they are right. I did plenty of walking for good aerobic exercise, but very little resistance exercise to keep my muscles regenerating. Consequently, I have lost a lot of weight, but only 14 lbs is fat loss. 10 lbs is muscle (I think the remaining 2 are just water since there is less of my to hydrate, and believe it or not, properly hydrated half of our weight is water.)
So, tonight I am definitely starting my resistance exercises with a vengeance. It may slow down my weight loss (which is already slowing a bit with introducing real food), but I’d prefer most of my weight loss to be actual fat.
But my pants are too big and people keep telling me I look slimmer, so I’m certainly not complaining. Even if I have lost some muscle, I still have lost a lot of fat and now weigh less than I have in the past decade. That was one goal for me since when Diana was pregnant with Samantha, I put on A LOT of weight – even more than Diana and she was growing a person. Not surprisingly, that was when my insulin levels went through the roof, but I managed to lose a good amount of weight over time and got down to 225.
Of course over the years I crept slowly back up, but have finally dropped below my post-Samantha lowest weight. My next goal is to get past my pre-Samantha weight of 190.
Also, other good news is my blood pressure is still lowering. My systolic (top number) is the lowest I’ve ever seen it with 110, and the diastolic (bottom) is staying in the 70’s, which works for me. Much better than the 145/100 I had at my last physical. It’s close to a 30 point drop in both values. Definitely a good sign.
In 2011, I hesitate to say I will have more “free” time since I’m sure I will be busy, but I will have more time not spent sitting in an office working on stuff I don’t want to do, and will instead sit at home and work on stuff I do want to do. With that, I am working on getting my writing going again (especially since I still need to fix that summer budget shortfall).
Well, with 2010 trying to get a couple more jabs in on the way out I did get some exciting news this afternoon. I have been accepted to write an article in a book to be published next year! I’m still waiting to get the details, and I don’t know how much non-disclosure stuff there is. I don’t think anyone but my family actually reads this right now, but once it’s on the internet and Google finds it, it is potentially everywhere. So to avoid getting caught by search engines, I’ll just say it involves a recent “dreamy” movie And Philosophy. (And of course I can go into more detail at Christmas.)
I’m very excited about it since not only do I REALLY love that movie (unanswered ending and all), but I am working to involve myself more with mainstream philosophy and not just the ivory-tower academics. Sometime in the next month I am hoping to start another blog on philosophy of mind and cognitive science issues that is more mainstream and accessible (don’t worry, I don’t expect you all to be readers). Although far from that scale, the basic vibe and guiding vision I’m aiming for is like what Carl Sagan’s Cosmos was to astronomy, but turned inward towards our minds, as well as other minds – from non-human animals to theoretical AI and ETs. But that is another blog.
For now I’m excited to be accepted for this book and need to start researching and outlining how to turn my abstract into a full article. Yay!
P.S. “Writing Project 11A??” Since a lot of the writing projects I hope to work on this year might be things publishers don’t want talked about before they make announcements, I figure it’ll be easier to just label everything simply so that I can talk generally about them. So this is “A” the first first project of 2011. Hence, 11A. Seemed simple at least to my brain.
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