Sunday, October 26, 2008

Goals Revisited

Since George and I will be heading to Boone in the morning for a short vacation, I decided to go ahead and recap my goals for this past week.

This Past Week's Goals:
1) Cook one new recipe this week.

I tried some low-fat pumpkin bread (see previous post), but it didn't turn out very well. I decided not to take it to work, but George said it was okay, and ate some of it. Perhaps he was just being sweet. :)

2) Start my Control Journal notebook (see FlyLady.net)

I found the Control Journal I started a couple years ago, and tore out the outdated pages. I haven't gotten any farther than that.

3) Continue with reading, weight loss, genealogy, and getting-to-bed goals, as a habit takes about a month to take hold, I've heard.

I didn't finish a book this past week, but I made progress on the one I'm reading. I should get even more reading done this next week.

I'm up .8 of a pound since last Sunday, but I had a large weight loss last week. I was down for the previous week at this past Wednesday's Weight Watchers meeting. One thing I've learned is that weight loss is a fluid process, and requires persistance and patience. Sometimes the body reponds in quirky and unexpected ways. I'm continuing to log my foods and exercises in FitDay.com, which has been interesting and motivating, so perhaps that will show me some patterns in time.

I continued to get in bed by 11, but may need to do better than that if I continue my running ways after the City of Oaks Half Marathon a week from today.

I made some good progress on my genealogy database this past week, mostly in the cleanup catagory. Several months back, I accidentally merged someone else's gedcom file in with my own, and had a lot of database clean-up to do, including deleting duplicate people and editing all the occupations from the other file that ended up in location fields. (For example, someone who WAS a doctor looked like he/she had a practice IN Doctor.) Now the database is a lot more normal looking, and I feel like I can move forward without worrying about that clean-up anymore.


Since George and I will be on vacation this week, I won't make any goals except to have fun and relax!

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Pumpkin Sawdust

I decided to bake some low fat pumpkin bread with walnuts Thursday evening, with the hope of taking it into work Friday morning. I went to two grocery stores to get everything, and was psyched about trying a new recipe.

I decided to change things up a little (creative and healthy cooking!) and use brown sugar instead of white, and whole wheat flour instead of white. The recipe already called for egg substitute instead of real eggs.

The outcome tasted, in my opinion, like pumpkin sawdust! And I like whole wheat stuff in general. This is one case where the batter was way better than the finished product!

I think part of the problem is that the Refectory has set a high standard for pumpkin bread! I'll just have to keep trying.



Monday, October 20, 2008

Goals for This Week (and How I Fared Last Week)

This Week's Goals:
1) Cook one new recipe this week.

2) Start my Control Journal notebook (see FlyLady.net)

3) Continue with reading, weight loss, genealogy, and getting-to-bed goals, as a habit takes about a month to take hold, I've heard.


Last Week's Goals:
1) Check out FlyLady.net and see if I can buy into.
I decided to work on some of the things FlyLady incorporates, but not go "whole hog" yet. I plan to start with the "Control Journal" first, which consolidates a number of things into one notebook, like schedules, routines, emergency numbers, and an address book.

2) Get in bed by 11:00 every night
Accomplished this goal Sunday through Friday nights, though it was right on the dot one night, and I felt it the next day.

3) Finish at least one book.
I finished two books again this week, a book of poetry called Sea Level, by Angela Leighton, and a current events book, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, by Robert Kagan.

4) Plan mountain vacation with George.
We've decided where we're staying and some of the things we'll do. Can't wait!

5) Lose 1.3 lb. this week.
Lost 3.8 lbs this past week-wohoo! I'm not surprised, really, as I had some interesting dieting revelations and activities last week, which I blogged about on my running blog here.

6) Add at least 5 names to my genealogy database.
Input about 15 names this week.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Busy Weekend

Boy, we've had a busy weekend! We didn't plan for it to be so busy away from home--it's just worked out that way so far.

George and I attended the Duke-Miami football game this afternoon, and my mom took a picture of the two of us to commemorate. Duke had a really good first half, but things started going downhill after the break, and Duke lost 49-31. Oh well. One of the highlights there was getting to meet the father of Desmond Scott, a top running back in North Carolina, who plays for Hillside High School in Durham and has committed to Duke for the next school year. (Wish he could've suited up this afternoon!)


Before the game, the Duke Libraries sponsored a Home Movie Day, where people from the comminity could bring old home movies to show on a number of projectors set up in different sections of the Rare Book Room. I let Mom know about it before they came to town, and she brought 30-40 old 8mm and super 8mm reels of film to show. George and I joined her at the library, and got to see a number of the films. It brought back a lot of old memories, including vacations to North Carolina and Disney World (this is when I lived in Alabama), birthday parties, holiday celebrations, a ballet recital, Girl Scout camp, church youth group, various pets, a Japanese tea party, and family get-togethers. (And those were just the films we had time to see before the football game!) Mom got some good advice and a recommendation for someone local who will transfer the films to DVD, and I really, really hope she does it!

Last night, George and I joined his family for a spur-of-the-moment dinner in Cary, which I really enjoyed. I happened to sit next to Papa, George's grandfather, at the dinner table, and he shared with me a story about his then-girlfriend (later wife for a gazillion years until she passed away earlier this year), whom he took barnstorming in Black Mountain while they were still dating. She didn't tell him until afterward that it was her first airplane ride! That was an interesting insight into her personality.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Goals for the Week (and How I Did Last Week)

Goals for this week:

1) Check out FlyLady.net and see if I can buy into (Bigger goal here: become more organized)

2) Get in bed by 11:00 every night (Trying to establish a habit here.)

3) Finish at least one book (Trying to form a habit here too, and also working on decreasing the number of library books I have stacked up in my home office! )

4) Plan mountain vacation with George

5) Lose 1.3 lb. this week (See last week's goals below to explain the oddball number!)

6) Add at least 5 names to my genealogy database (Again, another habit former. I had fun with this one last week! Bigger goals here: maybe putting a family tree book together or one or more lines, maybe joining DAR)



Last week's goals:

1) Lose 2 lbs. Well, if this didn't backfire! I actually gained 1.2 lbs this past week! Yikes!

2) Get in bed by 11:00 each night through Friday. This was a success! The lastest I got to bed was 11:01 one night. I noticed a difference in how I felt at work.

3) Enter at least 5 new names into my genealogy database. I ended up entering 30-40 names between a couple of different lines, and did some database clean-up along the way.

4) Finish at least one book. I ended up finishing two books, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami, and Death in North Carolina's Piedmont: Tales of Murder, Suicide, and Causes Unknown, by Frances H. Casstevens.

I enjoyed the running book a lot, especially since the author is a distance runner, and he wrote from personal experience. He also made some interesting connections between running and his work as a novelist.

Death in North Carolina's Piedmont was is a collection of true and locally "famous" stories of deaths in the North Carolina Piedmont region. The two people I'd heard of before were Tom Dula, who was originally from Wilkes County, where I have relatives, and Z. Smith Reynolds, who was from Winston-Salem, where I used to work. I especially enjoyed the story about Smith Reynolds, as I'd heard he'd died under suspicious circumstances, but I'd never learned how.

5) Run at least 21 miles this week. I ended up running 26.02 miles last week, and am a little tired. I'll probably scale it back a bit this week.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Post-race Visit to the Farmers Market

After running the Autism Ribbon Run 5K in downtown Raleigh this morning, I passed a sign for the Raleigh Farmers Market on my way home. I've never been to the one there, so I decided to pull off the interstate and check it out. It was much bigger than I expected, with several buildings as well as a restaurant. I didn't look at everything, but I did enjoy walking around for a little while. I'd love to return sometime! Meanwhile, I bought a red bell pepper and some squash.





One of the booths was run by McLamb Farms out of Johnston County, so I stopped and spoke to them. My grandmom was a McLamb from Sampson County, so I don't know if I'm related to those folks, but it was nice to chat.



I also enjoyed looking at the plant section!





Friday, October 10, 2008

How Many of Me?


HowManyOfMe.com
LogoThere are
1
or fewer people with my name in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Just the Book for Me

A couple of days ago, I decided to see what titles the library I work for has about podcasting, and I was thrilled to see that Podcasting for Dummies was held by the library--and available! I started reading it yesterday, and I think it'll provide a decent introduction to podcasting and give me a good idea about 1) whether or not I really want to do it, and 2) if so, what it takes.

At the 30Threads Blogger Bash I dropped in on a couple days ago, someone I met there mentioned that someone at her work had suggested borrowing library books instead of buying them as a way to be green. I smiled when I heard that, because I'd picked this book up during a visit to Barnes and Noble over the weekend, but put it down and decided to wait. At the time, it hadn't even dawned on me to check with "my" library to see if if was there. Yay!

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Quick (sort of) Update

Since I decided to some up with some goals for the week (AND post them to this blog), I must admit that I've felt more focused, just a day after coming up with and posting my weekly goals. I was starting to feel a little stressed and frustrated about how busy this month is turning out to be, and I think I was feeling worn down and a little out of control, at least as far as my schedule was concerned. Ever felt like your schedule was controlling you instead of you controlling your schedule? I was feeling a hint of that.

Goal setting is such a basic thing, and I've done it before, of course, but it's been a while since I've done it for my general life and made the goals public. I have my work goals, of course, as part of my annual evaluation. I have running goals when it comes to participating in road races. I have general ideas in my mind of where I want to go in my life, and sometimes I'll talk with George or others about my goals and dreams. Somehow, though, writing goals down, especially for others--strangers in the blogosphere to see, even, takes them to a different level.

One thing that spurred me to do this was something Scott Smith said on one of his podcasts, either "The Motivation to Move" or "The Daily Boost." (I subscribe to both through iTunes and listen on my iPod.) On the shows, he often asks, "Have you done your homework?" On one recent episode, it really hit home when he asked that question, and talked about doing something weekly toward your bigger, life goals. (I've heard him ask that question any number of times, but it made an impression this time.)

I've made some progress on my goals already, eventhough it's just been a day. I've lost .4 of a pound so far , read several pages in a book I'm working on finishing next, run 7.25 miles so far this running week, and got into bed at 11:01 PM last night. All of that, in addition to work and a meeting last night.

In reality, there are many more goals I could've added to this week's goals list, but I figured I'd set up a short list and see how things go. There can be a fine line between a goal list and a to-do list. My to-do list wouldn't be so entertaining, and there are other venues for that.

While I've got goals on the brain, I've done a couple of things podcast-related. I mentioned that I set up a blog as a placeholder for show notes down the road. Well, I did it here on Blogger, and I learned yesterday that it was tagged and blocked as possible spam, so I had to type in a password-thingy to have it reviewed. Sheesh. I'm not sure why a URL called goingtheextramileopodcast.blogspot.com sounds spam-like. We'll see that the Blogger powers-that-be say.

Meanwhile, I've signed up for a podcast account at podbean.com, and my url is http://goingtheextramile.podbean.com. Since "Going the Extra Mile" is the name of my blog about my personal journey of running, weight loss, and better health, I thought it would be a good name for a podcast too. I'm still a while away from starting a podcast, but it feels good to get started.

Monday, October 06, 2008

Goals for the Week

I've decided to start something new, having goals for each week and posting them here. I'll also post my progress (or lack thereof), either along the way or at the end of the week.

My goals for this week:

1) Lose 2 lbs. (I'll start with my weigh-in this morning, and no, I'm not sharing!)

2) Get in bed by 11:00 each night through Friday. (I'm tired of complaining about being tired!)

3) Enter at least 5 new names into my genealogy database. (I have so much info to enter, and I want to get back into it.)

4) Finish at least one book. (I have so many books checked out of the library that my shelves are overflowing. I've started several of them and am ready for some closure.)

5) Run at least 21 miles this week. (Last week I dipped under 20 miles for the week, and want to catch back up.)

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Busy Month

Why does October always seem so busy?! It's one of my favorite months of the year, and it seems like it's been a really busy month for me the past few years.

This past week, for example, I had commitments Monday through Wednesday nights, plus I helped with two training sessions at work. Friday night, George had another overnight test at a sleep clinic. Yesterday I worked my shift at the Junior League's Bargain Sale, then tried to get a long run in, but didn't make it very far. This morning, I attempted another long run before I had to go to church, where I'd signed up to be an evaluator for the second service.

This coming week, I have commitments Monday through Thursday nights, plus I'm signed up for a 5K road race on Saturday morning.

George and I are taking vacation the last week of October, so we need to finish planning that soon! Boy, am I looking forward to the vacation!

Friday, October 03, 2008

Me? A Podcaster?

This afternoon I started pondering what it would take to put together a podcast. Things that came to mind included:

1) Something to talk about
2) Equipment (and how to work it)
3) A website for show notes
4) A home computer with internet access

I have the last two taken care of now, as I just created a placeholder for show notes here on Blogger, and I've got the computer with internet access up and running now.

The first two items on the list have given me more to think about, and research, and think about some more. It's fun to think about, but makes me a little nervous too. :) This feels like a good challenge, whether I get any listeners or not!

Stay tuned!