A Simple Plan

Winter                                                    Waning Moon of the Cold Month

Chili smells have begun to fall down the stairs and enter my study.  Smells pretty good, especially after  a workout on the treadmill. I’ve up the difficulty by two incline levels over the last week or so and it feels good.  Need to find a personal trainer who can get both Kate and me jump started on a new resistance program.

Also, in dietary news.  I have the found the secret to a healthy weight:  eat less food.  No kidding.  I know.  Obvious, right?  Here’s what I’ve done:  first, I imagined the portion I would cr400_late-summer-2010_0200eat for a meal and cut it in half.  Surprisingly, not a hard thing to do.  Still satisfying.  second, I decided that I had to have a vegetable serving and a fruit serving at every meal.  Again, obvious.  You’re probably already doing it, but I’ve slouched along on the fruit/veggie thing.  Now, each meal.   third, I stopped eating while watching TV.  This is an important change for me because it led to a lot of mindless eating.  Now if I want a snack while watching TV I have to turn off the TV, go make something and eat it in the kitchen at the table.

Oddly enough, this relatively simple minded plan has worked.  I’ve dropped ten pounds + since beginning it.  The good news is that there’s nothing I’ll ever need to stop and it allows me to eat what I want, just less of it.  And, actually, this is something, too, it makes it possible to have two really good meals out of what would have been one and done.  I love that.

The Moral Test of Government

Winter                                             Waning Moon of the Cold Month

“It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”   It is still said.
Hubert H. Humphrey

Ouch.  Latin infinitives and indirect statements.  I’m on Chapter 25 (of 42) of Wheelock now and the grammar and vocabulary isn’t getting easier, it’s getting harder.  Suppose this should not be a surprise, but I kinda hoped…  My mind has pressed out against my skull, then bounced back, a coup contracoup injury occasioned by working too damn hard.  Ah, ok.  I love it.  Still, in spite of the strib this morning, this love does hurt.  At least now.

The legislative grist mill has begun to grind and this time the sacks will be filled with coal dust as lives, especially lives of the most vulnerable, suffer hit after hit from the budget cutters.  There was an NCIS Los Angeles (see, Latin and pop culture within two sentences of each other.) recently that I thought was corny, about a military number cruncher who wanted to make the numbers names.  The plot was corny, but the point was not.  Just as military numbers mean real people dead or maimed, so do the medicaid, general assistance, aid to the disabled and the elderly numbers mean real lives damaged, often beyond repair, because most of these folks are on the edge all the time.  It takes the smallest thing to set them on the downward spiral.

The DOW Goes Up; The DOW Goes Down.

Winter                                                  Waning Moon of the Cold Month

“I do not have what I own, nor do I have what I do. I only have what I am.” – D. Trinidad Hunt

Rising temperatures, even rising toward freezing, activate the doer in me.  I want to get out and plant vegetables, check the bees, but that time is not yet, is still a long ways away, so I’ll focus on the hydroponics, Latin and Titian for awhile.  Colder temps activate the thinker, the reader, the researcher and they still dominate.   So, it’s to the books.

The DOW goes up; the Dow goes down.  Life goes on; joy is found.  All I have to say about the market.

I still have one printer in spasms.  I’ve tried fixes from the manual–yes, I RTFM!–I’ve tried fixes from the internet.  I’ve tried letting it rest and I’ve tried hitting with this and than for an hour at a time.  Enough to make me sputter.  Guess I’m gonna have to give and take the damn thing to a repair guy.  The shame of it all.  One other task defeated me, setting up a home wireless network.  That required the GeekSquad. I like to DIY electronics.  Not this time.