bibliaddict

Great recipe

2009-03-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

Found a wonderful recipe for Oatmeal Cranberry Flaxseed Cookies on the Baking Bites blog. Made a batch and brought them into work to share. I think two or three of these would be a great breakfast option.

Round 3

2009-03-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

It's always welcome news to hear that caffeine has a few health benefits, aside from the one that keeps me sane before noon. If it boosts my metabolism as well as my attention span, it has to be good!

BMI is 33.9 = BAD. Would definitely improve if I got daily exercise. Must resume daily lunchtime walk...

Conscious eating round 2

2009-03-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

To try to snack in a more healthy manner, I've been keeping the house stocked with apples. When I start checking the refrigerator for a little something, I consciously say "Eat an apple, then see how you feel." It's kept me from eating an additional meal's worth of food for a "snack" on more than one occasion.

I've looked into food allergies since being diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I believe I have a sensitivity to wheat; I feel much better when I avoid bread & cereal products, and have lost a bit of weight as well. It's amazing to find common allergens as (seemingly unnecessary) additives in so many foods. A friend's sister has three children with gluten and dairy issues, and has to pack a cooler of food to go ANYWHERE.

Round One - Not down for the count

2009-02-19T11:20:00.000-08:00

I tried a few of the nutrition quizzes suggested in the H&W blog, and discovered I need to avoid fast food joints all together - I made every possible wrong choice between selections meant to sound healthy and actual healthy choices. I'm better off packing some homemade hummus and carrots than hitting Taco Bell during lunchtime.

I also am trying to eat a little something for breakfast. I usually go without, but since I'm boiling water for coffee or tea, I'm now putting together a small bowl of organic, old-fashioned oats with a little honey and cinnamon. Another option that I've tried is this Swiss Oats and Fruit recipe my coworker Mary found and shared. Instead of all milk, I add half milk, half plain lowfat yogurt.

1/2 & 1/2, on the double

2009-02-10T11:28:00.000-08:00

Fixing my coffee at Wawa today, I wondered how many calories I'm actually consuming since I like it rather light, and half-and-half is my additive of choice. Each little tub is 20 calories, but since I pour from the jugs, I have no idea how much I'm using. I always think that I've got a low-cal drink because I don't add sugar, but I could be adding a couple hundred calories without really thinking about it.

I guess what I'm aiming for is to be conscious of all the invisible calories I'm ingesting without becoming an obsessed, measure-everything-to-the-microgram diet psycho.

Weigh In

2009-02-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

Stepped on the nice digital scale here at work: 209.4 lbs

I've been up as far as 235, and I've held steady at this weight for about a year. I'm going to try to wean myself off bread & pasta over the next few weeks and see if it has any effect. Also going to try a few moves in the am&pm to tone up a bit.

Lunch is now typically hummus, carrots & an apple. Easy to prepare in advance and package up in little tubs. I've got a leftover pork chop for dinner, and maybe some spinach & feta cheese on the side.

A new challenge

2009-02-05T10:01:00.000-08:00

I've signed up for Ocean County Library's 2009 Health and Wellness Challenge in the hopes that it will help me gain some new (and good) habits.

I'm a fan of...

2007-12-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

...Sarah Houghton-Jan's Librarian in Black blog. She plows through tons of articles, feeds and websites and culls out some gems to pass on to her blog readers. Thanks to her I'm now addicted to webcasts of the Australian Broadcasting Company's Office-like sitcom The Librarians. Frazzled head librarian Frances O'Brien navigates panic attacks and diversity issues while overseeing daily operations on the Middleton Interactive Learning Centre.

CJRLC Tech Challenge 2007

2007-10-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

I meant to participate in last year's challenge, but life got in the way. In any case, I've done the following for the 2007 CJRLC Tech Challenge:

This blog
Bloglines
Flickr
del.icio.us
LibraryThing

Now I need to write a few posts on Library 2.0!

Some Library blogs

2007-09-25T06:18:00.000-07:00

Take a look at all the library folks blogs you can read at LISwiki's Weblog Directory.

Here's a cute picture:

Where she's gone...

2007-06-27T17:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Chris at ASD Blog for turning me on to Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin, a wonderful book that I would recommend to anyone mourning the loss of a loved one, especially a young person.

Our protagonist, Liz, is just fifteen when she's killed in a traffic accident. She awakes on a cruise ship bound for the island of Elsewhere, where her grandmother (who passed on before Liz's birth), meets her at the dock. Liz has some trouble adjusting to her new afterlife, finding a vocation, falling in love, driving a car without a license. Folks on Elsewhere age backwards until it's their time to be born again on Earth, and Liz is frustrated (as many adolescents are) about being on the edge of adulthood. Ever as she grows younger, her outlook on life matures as time passes.

I like to imagine my cousin Tatiana, who passed away on May 26, 2005 at the age of 18, having an afterlife like Liz. She'd have two grandfathers and a grandmother to look after her, three aunts on her father's side to hang out with,

I did a stoopid

2007-06-27T13:07:00.000-07:00

I accidentally deleted my blog, without having backed it up (of course). All the entries below are from another blog I've been meaning to consolidate with this one anyway.

Things you may not have known about me...

2007-06-26T13:39:00.002-07:00

A meme from my sister Carrie

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:

B)Four movies you would watch over and over:

C) Four places you have lived:

D) Four TV shows you love to watch:

E) Four places you have been on vacation:

F) Four websites you visit daily:

G) Four of my favorite foods:

H) Four places I would rather be right now:

Here...
...here...
...here...
...and here

Get dressed up for the holidays...

2007-06-26T13:39:00.001-07:00

From my coworker Christine comes this link, sure to become a 21st century Christmas tradition.

You MAKEd me love you...

2007-06-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

How I love MAKE. It's a periodical. It's a blog. It's a source for links to awesome, cool, wacky, sensible DIY projects, big & small:

Build a

Finding my way

2007-06-26T13:37:00.004-07:00

I am so totally in love with Wayfaring, a Google app for creating personalized maps with "waypoints" for points of interest. Each waypoint can be individually tagged, you can fill in links and/or other info, and upload a picture. You can print them out for easy reference, and even trace a route from point to point.

I'm working on a map of all the places I like to go in the Village.

via Library Stuff

O Xmas tree

2007-06-26T13:37:00.003-07:00

When I was really small, my parents took my sister and I to get a cut tree for Christmas. In the frigid Chicago winter, Meg and I managed to find a tree that my parents swear looked like this one, an exact replica of the tree from A Charlie Brown Christmas available from Urban Outfitters.

via Boing Boing

Lost and Found

2007-06-26T13:37:00.001-07:00

St. Anthony is not the only one to turn to anymore when you've misplaced your keys. Professor Solomon, an expert "findologist", has written How to Find Lost Objects, his method for locating any object you've lost track of. At only $6.95, how can you lose? Now where did I put my wallet? It was right here a minute ago...

via the delicious, nutritious Boing Boing

Just what we need...

2007-06-26T13:36:00.004-07:00

...more gross sound effects coming from inanimate objects. As part of a project entitled Sensory-enhanced Domestic Object, several NYU students suggested sounds for garbage recepticals, including crying, burping, munching and yummy noises. As if humans don't make enough of these sounds already.

Via Boing Boing

I tawk like dis...

2007-06-26T13:36:00.003-07:00

Well, my little town does lie south of the Mason/Dixon line, so YEEE-HAW!

Your Linguistic Profile:

45% General American English

35% Yankee

20% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

En vacances

2007-06-26T13:36:00.001-07:00

Took our annual trip to the Great State of Maine and visited our usual places:

Pine Grove Campground in Medway, ME
A lean-to in Baxter State Park's Katadin Stream campground
Set up camp at White Birches
Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, ME
We rented bikes from Acadia Bike and pedaled to the top of Day Mt.
We ate lobsters and clams and blueberry cake at Thurston's Lobster Pound
Paid a visit to Nervous Nellie's Jams & Jellies on beautiful Deer Isle, ME, to replenish supplies
Scott slipped away for a second lobster at Beal's Lobster Pier
On the way home we hit Polly's Pancake Parlor for sustenance
Another regular stop on our way home is the Yankee Candle Outlet

Floating up and out

2007-06-26T13:35:00.006-07:00

During an acupuncture session, my acupuncturist played a cd of Tibetan singing bowls. The room was darkish and it was easy to focus on the tones of the bowls, and I could feel myself detach from my body for a few seconds. Each time it happened I became conscious of it and snapped out of it, but I was able to keep the sensation a few seconds longer each time with practice.

He burned me a copy of the cd, but since someone burned it for him, he didn’t know the title or the artist.

See more progress on: Have an out-of-body experience

Wanna go to New Zealand...

2007-06-26T13:35:00.005-07:00

...someday. I watch the LOTR films with the sound off as a substitute travelogue.

See more progress on: New Zealand

Coveting

2007-06-26T13:35:00.003-07:00

Having a large music collection, half of which is on vinyl, is quite frustrating. I either have to buy everything again in whatever new format is available, or convert what I already have to digital and store it somewhere. I’ll need to give up sleeping to have the time to do the conversion.

My friends next door, whose music collection is also ginormous, both have Ipods. I am totally jealous of the storage capacity of those tiny things, and that you can have any song that pops into your head at your fingertips.

Right now, buying an Ipod is out of the question. I don’t have $300 to drop on a luxury item, and my boyfriend would want one too.

See more progress on: get an ipod

Another passing

2007-06-26T13:35:00.001-07:00

Our little old cat Schnee passed away this morning. We had always referred to her as our "slightly dented" cat because she was a starving stray with all sorts of medical problems when we adopted her almost four years ago. She had abcesses, ear mites, a thyroid imbalance, half her teeth missing and was deaf. My friend Val told me the first time she saw Schnee that the cat was not long for this world.

She was an "expensive date," requiring medication, vet visits for blood tests and injections of fluid for dehydration, different food (with no teeth, kibble wasn't working for her), special litter and a separate box, wee wee pads for her frequent accidents, etc.

She was worth every penny.

From the first day we brought her home (Thanksgiving, in fact), she was the most affectionate lap cat imaginable. She would follow me around, waiting for me to sit down. In a flash she would claw her way up and stand on my chest, yelling at me, then curl into a little ball and go to sleep.

She had the distinction of having several nicknames, so many that I'm sure people thought we had eight or ten cats instead of three:

Ariel - this was the name we gave to the vet the first time we brought her in; her official medical "handle"
Schnee/Schneekatz - this was her "real" name, which Scott gave her after coming home from her first vet visit. We never bothered to change it with the vet. I always add "Katz" to the end of their names.
Schneebles - Scott liked calling her this
Yodels/Lulu - the first year she was with us, she was always hungry, first due to malnutrition, later due to overactive thyroid. She would croon for food or attention "Loooolooolooo". It sounded like yodeling to me.
Myodels/Myo/Myodely-Myo - I figure since cats say "meow" if they could talk, they would say "Myes". By extension, I add the m in front of her other nickname, then shortened it.
The Old Lady - we have no idea how old she was, but she had a lot of miles on her.
Ladykatz - Despite being pretty beaten-up, she was a fluffy little white kitty who loved to be in someone's lap. The sound of her nails clicking across the kitchen floor sounded like little high heels, and I never saw her run.

I Woke Last Night to the Sound of Thunder

2007-06-26T13:34:00.005-07:00

Last night there was a terrific thunderstorm; loud, bright and long. A particularly loud crack of thunder made me think of Tatiana again.

She was sleeping over my parent's house. It must have been while her mom was battling breast cancer and her parents didn't want her home by herself. I was sleeping in my sister's old bedroom for some reason, and Tati was in my brother's old room.

A thunderstorm started up and Tati scurried in and cowered next to my bed.

"Can I stay in here with you?" she squeaked.

There was a futon on the floor, so she dragged her pillow and blanket in and settled down, at least until the next rumble. She whimpered, so I hung my arm down and held her hand. The storm passed and we both eventually fell to sleep.

It is amazing to me how completely petrified she was. I don't know if it was the loud, abrupt sounds, or that a thunderstorm is completely out of human control, that made her feel so vulnerable. I love thunderstorms for just those reasons.

I have a list of things that remind me of Tati:

Thunderstorms
The Gilmore Girls
When someone rolls their eyes
Wednesdays (the last day I saw her; the day she died)
The movies School of Rock and Under the Tuscan Sun
The song "All Star" by Smash Mouth

Mmmmmm, chocklick...

2007-06-26T13:34:00.003-07:00

Catherine, a friend of my sister's whom we both met at the Lord of the Rings exhibit at the Museum of Science, Boston, last November, came down from Massachusetts for a visit. She very kindly brought everyone their own individual sampler of chocolates.

They are to die for.

Mom's BD

2007-06-26T13:34:00.001-07:00

Spent the day with good ol' Mom for her birfday. We went to Recycling the Past in Barnegat, NJ to look at all the rusty wrought iron stuff Mom would love to put in her garden. I kept trying to remember the last time I'd had a tetanus shot, just in case...

We also visited Gunning River Herbs for a few plantables and some advice on a ground cover for a super shady area in my yard. I'm awfully good at killing things, even cacti. Just call me the Black Thumb.

Ode to My Snooze Button

2007-06-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

I love falling back to sleep; stealing a few more minutes to be semiconscious. I've had entire dreams in the nine-minute intervals between the electronic beeps of my alarm that have made me think I've slept another eight hours. I even set my alarm clock about 20 minutes ahead, so I can have the pleasure of hitting the snooze a few more times, yet still get up on time.

Absence

2007-06-26T13:27:00.006-07:00

I meant to write during my vacation, but life happened instead.

On Wednesday, May 26th, my 18-year-old cousin, Tatiana, passed away. She had spent the last 18 months dealing with leukemia and the caustic medication used to beat it into submission, and had managed to complete her high-school graduation requirements and be accepted to Cornell University, among others.

Her parents made every sacrifice to be by her side through all of this, providing emotional and moral support, giving her every minute they had. To suddenly have the center of your existence disappear must be agony.

La di da, la di da...

2007-06-26T13:27:00.005-07:00

I'm currently working on two book reviews, but I'm having a hard time doing it. Many semesters of lit classes and the research papers they require have left me crippled in the written opinion department. I keep looking for references to cite to support how I feel about a story, and they just don't exist.

Doublethink

2007-06-26T13:27:00.003-07:00

I keep flip-flopping on which blog to teach, so I started writing step-by-step directions down. LJ is looking better for community-oriented types; no HTML to add links to friends, and joining communities is easier. Changing journal appearance is complicated, however, and the choices are narrow. The menu bar is awkward and getting places takes multiple steps.

Blogger is prettier and easier to use for individual purposes, but is not so good in the community department. Having to add links with HTML only works if the user knows how, and I don't fancy teaching something I barely understand to folks with negative familiarity. Entry management is easier than LJ; the Edit Posts list works much better than going to each entry in an archive. Dashboard is pretty self-explanatory.

I asked my supervisor about floating a questionnaire out to our Internet users to gauge interest and help decide what audience we'd be teaching to. Teens know HTML and Blogger would probably be a sexier choice for them; it's the older patrons I'm wondering about.

Hmmm

2007-06-26T13:27:00.001-07:00

I'm a techno lame-o, so I bought a book to tell me how to do the basic crap.

Tampered with my profile, so now everyone can know Something About Me.

Don't all worship me at once.

My first lovely post

2007-06-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

Since I decided to create and teach a blog class at the public library where I work, I thought I should set up a few blogs outside of LiveJournal (my home turf) to compare ease-of-setup & use.

Blogger was definitely a faster, easier setup, akin to creating an email account. The interface for creating a new post is like email, too; much "sexier" looking than LJ, as well as simpler and more user-friendly. If I'm teaching older folks with less computer literacy than myself, the similiarity to using email will be a big plus.

Not messing with HTML to get text effects = bonus!

I'll do some more 'sploring & report back.