Sunday Thoughts

Catholics traditionally celebrate today as Mary's birthday... so Belovedest made gluten-free cookies!

(One of the many things that I love about Christianity is that there is almost always a good excuse to celebrate something!)

Weekly Round-Up

Weekly Round-Up

This week I….

... Helped my sister Chrissy move into her new house

... Finished my temp job.  (I really enjoyed it, much to my surprise.  The pay was pretty dismal, but then I compared it to how much I make crafting and then I felt better.)

... Showed Arwen how to use the compost shifter.

... Had friends over for BBQ and gluten-free beer.  (It wasn't bad, apparently.)

 Obviously, she knows Belovest can cook!

... Harvested our first strawberries!

But I Thought 40-Year Olds Were OLD!?

Yes, that would be 40 candles stuck in ice cream.  100% gluten free!

Thanks to everyone who came and who sent their best wishes!

Health Log

I’m tired of my pants not fitting. 

And I’m tired of conflicting advice about which of my favorite things to eat I shouldn’t or how impossibly long and hard I’m supposed to exercise. 

Plus the scale seems to jump upward when I have gluten. (No!  Say it isn't so! Please, please, please, can I be wrong about this?)

AND I've noticed that monitoring something can actually improve it. (It's one aspect of the Hawthorne effect. More on that later)

So I'm just going track what I'm doing.  I had tried to say "No sweets until my weight drops below X," but before I do that, I want to see if sweets matter more than exercise than getting lots of sleep, etc.  It's me.  I gotta do an experiment!  (Yes, there are flaws in this one.  But I'm trying to keep it simple.)

Here is my health log.  (NOT my diet long!)  This is the second one.  The first one I accidentally left off the sweets category...

FYI: The Hawthorne effect was named after an experiment in a factory in Hawthorne, IL.  The researchers wanted to see if productivity increased depending on lighting (and other changes).  They gradually increased the lighting and productivity did, in fact, increase.  Then they slowly decreased it—and productivity continued to go up!  They concluded that just knowing their work was being monitored increased the workers’ efficiency.  Their conclusion is disputed, but I have found that it has worked in getting my dissertation done and in tracking our budget.

Weekly Round Up

• We decided to postpone making our raised beds, in particular since our design ideas keep changing.
• We scooped up three free 5 gallon buckets via Keep Nebraska Beautiful's Materials Exchange program.
• We found a tiny gluten-free bakery whose products don't taste like grit or sawdust: Easy Eatz.
• Our wedding gift to our dear friends Jen and Michael is going to be DJ-ing their wedding reception and we are almost done with the music!  All that is left is burning the CDs.
• I worked on the denim picnic blanket, which is also almost done.
• I found some temp summer work.  I'm not sure how long it is going to last as it is culling, organizing, and moving an AV collection.  Could take four hours, could take two weeks.  I'll find out tomorrow morning, but I'm just glad to bring in some extra income.
• On Wednesday Mom and I went to Omaha to pick up some dresser drawers and see my godson Alex's Mother's Day program at St. James/St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.  (The dresser itself was too beat up to repurpose into anything, although some day I want to turn a discarded dresser into an entertainment center. 

Anyway, Kindergardeners are just inherently cute.  Afterwards we went out for ice cream.  Such is the sweet stuff of life: