Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Christmas and New Year's



I find myself to be not as festive as I might like. Christmas had a lot of the regular things. Gifts, family, food. I'm actually sort of bored, however. I'm beginning to think that this may be why people have children. What else is there to do? The kids are the ones with all the activities, toys, etc. Plus, they get all excited about stuff. I got a camera and I really liked it.

Now, the next challenge is to decide what to do for New Years'. Unfortunately for me, Georgia Tech is playing in a bowl game on New Years' Eve and everyone I know is watching it. I hate football. Not sure what to do about it. Let me know if you have any ideas. It's depressing to think that I'll spend another new year going to bed early.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

If you ever wondered whether or not my cat has it better than you...

Take a look at this day in the sun:



This day on the sofa:



In fact, being hugged by me is maybe the worst part of his day:

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

I have a Christmas song in my head but otherwise...

I keep being surprised how late in the month it is because I'm really not experiencing Christmas at all. We have a small aluminum tree with attached lights which we put up on a table near the front window so that it looks, from the street, like we have a regular-sized aluminum tree. I completed my Christmas shopping the weekend after Thanksgiving. Thanks to the crappy economy, it wasn't very crowded. Now I just get up and go to work every day...nothing has changed. This sort of depresses me. Also, it's kind of hot outside. I will continue humming my song. "Ding dong merrily on high!"

Friday, December 5, 2008

...and three more...and two more...

The title of my blog refers to the mantra chanted by my mother's Jane Fonda workout videos when I was younger. People say that the way diet/exercise are treated in your family growing up informs your lifetime relationship with food and I think my parents did pretty well. I'm not overly obsessed, I don't think, and I'm not unhealthy. We ate well in my house, not much restaurant food, always sitting at the dining room table for dinner. I'm not sure what it takes to be someone who is effortlessly thin. Probably bags of marshmallows are out, but I'm not much of a binger so that doesn't help me.

Not that any of you care much, but, along with the rest of the country, I've gained on the order of 5-7 lbs. in the past few weeks. It's a combination of factors, including: stress associated with turning in my thesis, Thanksgiving, and a wonky knee that is maybe tendonitis (i.e., jumper's knee). I've been enjoying cookies, ice cream, chocolate, etc. as surrogates for rest/relaxation. Also, I've been actually physically resting as a proxy for mental relaxation. The result is that I'm now stressed about weight gain, in addition to my job and the economy.

Fortunately and unfortunately, I already go to the gym kind of a lot. The result of that is that I need to make some other change, such as diet (ew, worst possible change), or adding cardio (ew, running...I'm re-thinking the worst possible change). I decided to try stepping up my swimming game by trying to do 1-minute laps, in order to make swimming more rigorous. My progress so far involves the fact that it rained on the day I had decided to swim and no one wanted to walk to the CRC...so I didn't go. Sigh. This is an eternal battle. I wish it weren't.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Whooping Cranes Arrive in Tennessee!

I can't believe I didn't post about my whooping crane experience.

So, my Dad lives near a wildlife refuge that is along the fly-way for sandhill cranes.



So, we all went out, the day after Thanksgiving, to see if we could see some sandhill cranes, and the off-chance of maybe seeing a whooping crane. We called Kevin's parents to come too because they've just started birding. They brought Kevin's nephew, Zachary, which was fun.





Here's a picture of when we were totally excited to see a single whooping crane, which is the white dot among all the gray dots in this photo, way off in the background...you have to click on the photo to see it.



Well, so, all these fancy birdwatchers started showing up with fancy scopes and things and, ultimately was saw 8 whooping cranes! Eight in one place. None of birders or anyone had ever seen so many in one place! It was thrilling. Here's a picture of one of the bird watchers with his fancy camera and Zachary, having been given permission to look through the fancy scope:



When Kevin realized how much gear is involved, he thought he might like birding. Also, we do now have Whooping Cranes on our list, and that's a big one.

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus


The title of the blog is inspired by Emily's quiz, asking me how I feel about Christmas music. I think the answer is that it depends on my mood but that, for the most part, I like Christmas stuff. My coffee lady has had the stuff out since Halloween and I enjoy it. I don't really mind that it comes early anymore because time moves so fast for me now.

I did almost all of my Christmas shopping this weekend (crowd applauds) and, in the stores, they were playing Christmas carols that stayed in my head long enough for me to get through wrapping the presents in the Christmas spirit. I also proceeded to drag some Christmas stuff up from my dad's basement and put it all over the house (much to my dad's chagrin). My sister will be glad, when she arrives, that there is at least a little bit of Christmas stuff. She apparently put out Thanksgiving stuff last time she was at Dad's so we're decorating for each other. I moved my sister's pumpkin from the front steps to the back yard, changed the harvest wreath she put up for some giant plastic bells, and shook the dust off of the Christmas tree doormat (which has been on the front porch all year). Dad claims indifference toward Christmas decorations but I'd like to point out that he's the person who purchased the giant bells. One year he even got some of those light-up deer for the front yard, which have since broken.

So, bottom line, I like Christmas carols. The Little Drummer Boy came on in the car on the way home and I cried...