So cold

Well, I ate the cookies. And felt fairly guilty enough to run again. Also I was curious to get the distance I ran yesterday calculated correctly. It didn't warm up:

But I did find the correct distance--it was 2.42 miles! Over TWO miles! Though it did make for my worst pace average at 10:53 min/mile.

But I somewhat improved the pace today at 10:40. In the cold! I think I earned more cookies!

Bend the rules sewing

I recently took this book out of the library for some more sewing inspiration, Bend the Rules Sewing by Amy Karol:

Velina had a friend over and I thought the "No Cash Wallet" would be a good project for the girls and they were game. They both have a little sewing experience but it was easier for me to cut the fabric pieces for them since I did it from measurements rather than the pattern. But overall, they did a good job, though one can see it's not so easy to sew straight:

They enjoyed picking out the fabrics for the outside and inside:

Overall, a good job, right?

Do you Smash?

The latest craze in scrapbooking are Smash Books. Truth be told, the concept isn't new but I have to give a mad tip of the cap to their marketing. Here is their killer video that just gets you hooked:



Even the girl got hooked! So then I figured I definitely have enough paper and other supplies, including a Bind-It-All , so why not make our own Smash Book? I found a great tutorial for a near replica of a Smash Book on Francine Clouden's blog, but we decided to try her lovely simple spiral-bound journal first.

Ta-da!

Here are some of the papers Velina chose--LOVE these polka dots:

I was crazy about this bird paper--glad it's being used!

Velina also chose this lovely flower paper--man, what was I saving it for?

And here is some of her "smashing"--spontaneous penny art:

And some pix of her friends that she cut and wrote around:

Smashing, right?

Maus

I know this is a graphic novel, but I'm counting it as a book (book #5 of 10 for my New Year's Resolution, fyi). Really well done. Despite its "comics" form, the author/artist really conveys the gravitas of the Holocaust as well as the heart-aching aftermath of the lives of some of the survivors. I started reading it and couldn't put it down. I recommend it.

Is this a sign?

that I really need to get crackin' on one of my New Year's resolutions?

Yeesh, I was stuck behind this truck for a mile. A long, slow mile.

Finished, finally: The Now Habit

I finally finished this book I borrowed nearly half a year ago, The Now Habit (a book to overcome procrastination--oh yes, I totally see the irony):

Besides being more productive in general, or at least productive without the proverbial gun to my head, I'm aiming to be more efficient with my time for not only things I have to get done, but also things I want to get done.

Which of course, made me think of my New Year's Resolutions for this year:

- At 158 (about 2 pounds heavier than last year's New Year Day), I AGAIN aim to break 150

Argh, not even close. I managed to gain weight during the year but only drop back down to the 158 I am today.

- Manage productivity better: declutter and manage time better

Ok, honestly, I think I've gotten much better with the decluttering. I already got some positive comments from friends and family who have visited me now (and knew me before) and said I have definitely improved on decluttering. To my credit, I have really enjoyed having less stuff and often look for ways not to accumulate more stuff and still see what I can get rid of. One of my new favorite websites this year has been Unclutterer to help keep me in that mindset.

In terms of time management--hopefully this book will help me.

- Get a better workflow for post-processing photos (I have no trouble taking lots of pictures, it's the uploading and clean-up editing that takes so much time and daunts me)

Epic fail. Not even close.

- Get comfortable with flash--yes, including my 580EXII

Finally, a Yes!

- Do 6 photo shoots (including post-processing) in 2011 (including one inspired by the beautiful Tim Walker book my sister gave me)

Not close again. I did one planned shoot and one learning shoot this year so far...but didn't produce finished pix.

- Make stuff (using the stuff I moved out here to SoCar) - focus on upcycling

Okay--not bad here, I'm going to give myself a Yes. I had my porch redo, I upcycled a stained sweater with a patch, made French Macarons, and of course, made zippered pouches for my big project, "Crafting for Alzheimer's", where I used up a nice portion of my fabric stash. And best of all, now I'm really itching to do more...

- get out more--especially with the girl

This I could do better. Except a trip to the beach during her spring break, our excursions have been mostly for errands and taking her to her activities--though I will qualify that conversations, games, and any time I get to have with her has been quality, considering how much more time she likes to spend talking and hanging with her friends.

- read 10 books in 2011

Falling short so far--I have a near dozen books I have started that I haven't finished. In terms of finished books I read: This is Where I Leave You (by Jonathan Tropper), Bossypants (by Tina Fey), Ape House (by Sara Gruen), and The Now Habit (by Neil Fiore). Yikes, let's see if I can finish 6 books in 2 months.

- watch 12 good movies in 2011

I'm going to say Yes on this one. I did catch up on bunch of movies: Young@Heart, Pulp Fiction, Source Code, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, The King's Speech, The Social Network, Bridesmaids, The Town, Beginners, Crazy Stupid Love, Tree of Life, Cedar Rapids, Due Date, Horrible Bosses, and Bad Teacher. Though I wouldn't necessarily rave about all 15 of them, I'd recommend the first 10.

- write more

Well, this was vague, wasn't it? Write more than what? Hmm, I'll give myself a pass on this one. That's one thing confirmed from the Now Habit--much more specific goals.

Okay, let's see what I finish in these last 2 months of 2011!

Getting ready

I scored a chaperoning gig for the girl's 7th Grade dance. Like last year's dance, the girl is thrilled.

But besides setting up the cafeteria, providing gift cards for door prizes, donating to the sandwich trays, and baking a dessert, I am going to be one of the official photographers there taking group pictures! So I'm boning up on my flash use:

Kind of really excited!

Mean egg whites

Years ago in New York, "Power Breakfasts" came to be in vogue: high-powered folks would meet for breakfast to wheel and deal or power-chat at some high-end hotel's restaurant. But the interesting thing to me about these breakfasts was that apparently was it not only expected, but there was almost a competitive nature, to eat a very mean breakfast. The newbie or rookie would be spotted eating a breakfast platter with pancakes or hash browns while the top executives could be identified cracking a solitary soft-boiled egg or having plain oatmeal and black coffee.

Anyhoo, kind of reminds me of my breakfast:

I attempted to dress up the scrambled egg whites with some low fat cheese, but the egg whites still dominated this breakfast with their overwhelming plainness.

Blech. It would have been a perfect power breakfast.

Halfway through the first hardcore week

I am so sick of egg whites. And cottage cheese. And veggies. And other ridiculously healthy things.

See? This time I'm going hardcore

I got one of these:

It's a scale so I can actually measure the ounces of low-fat cheese I'm allowed. I also did a big shop at the grocery store and loaded up on egg whites, cottage cheese, veggies, and other ridiculously healthy things.

Cue: Theme to Rocky

Here we go!

Highlights from Mother's Day

For Mother's Day--I enjoyed one of my favorite dinners--sashimi and sushi!

Definitely a treat! We went to dinner on Friday night because I like to avoid the crowds on actual Mother's Day.

On Saturday, I enjoyed an Intro to Quilting class at a local sewing shop:

Surprisingly, I was the youngest one there by about 20 years. I kind of thought this was one of the skills one is supposed to pick up early on in life. It was definitely an intro class, explaining the basic concepts of quilting and how to use a rotary cutter. After 4 hours, here is what I had to show for it:

I'm going to confess that I'm a little daunted by quilting.

On the more productive side, I finally went through my hundreds of CDs:

And sorted some for donation, and put the ones that made the cut into these binders:

Now here's my next conundrum--I've been buying most of my current music as mp3s--should I still burn a backup CD to file in here?

And on Sunday morning, surprisingly, we woke up craving breakfast food prepared by somebody else and attempted to go to the Original Pancake House. What a mistake--because, duh! It was Mother's Day. The line was out the door. We tried another place, Cafe Strudel, but also line out the door. We ended up trying the brunch offering at a local natural food market, Rosewood Market--and surprise, no line at all!

I enjoyed their tofu scramble, vegan grits, tempeh "bacon", and vegan biscuit with nutritional yeast gravy:

Hope all the Moms out there had a great day!

SoCal Checklist: Vy Da, Indie Movie, Photo Shoot

Such a productive, satisfying day!

Got to enjoy these hard-to-find rice cakes at Vy Da (and they are PERFECT here) with my super trooper friend:

Got to check out an indie film (which are really hard to come by in Columbia, SoCar) with my indie-movie pal:

And I was able to squeeze in another photo shoot thanks to a very patient, game (and wonderfully photogenic) friend:

What a blessing she is to a growing photographer like me.  She totally came through for me.  I had a certain theme planned but I had to come up with a different shoot due to a rainstorm.  And frankly, I liked my new gameplan/shoot.  It kind of has a story and I would love to share it once I get my subjects' approval.  Because thankfully, she was able to dig up another subject for me who was ridiculously patient for my shoot.  Did I mention it was raining?  He turned out pretty darn photogenic too:

Unfortunately, one of the things that wasn't helping me was the rain that got on my lens (ugh-more than I realized!) and that the rapidly changing light proved challenging in terms of getting decent exposure.  It was very rare to get one that was the composition I wanted, with satisfactory exposure, and FOCUS (which proved the toughest in the rain).  But I did get a few, like this one:

Afterwards, we took our soaked bodies and got some hot soup and noodles at Ajisen Ramen:

Thank L and W for such a great shoot!

Great way to end a great day.

SoCal Checklist: Photo Shoot

Cute Kid Alert! Was able to snag a few snaps of this cutie after his parents and big sister went to work and school:

That look in the hoodie slays me!

Bonus! Got to hit Native Foods again. Man I LOVE their Reuben sandwich:

And color me satisfied when I can sit and free-refill-drink to my heart's content of their watermelon fresca:

(if anyone has a recipe for watermelon fresca-PLEASE let me know-I am ADDICTED)

Another thing on my checklist was to talk shop with a fellow photography friend, CJ, and get schooled a bit in photography outside my comfort zone: nature.  CJ has a natural eye and call to shooting in nature.  I'm not drawn to landscape and nature photography in general but sometimes I'm impressed by some of the epic pictures (Ansel Adams is a no-brainer) and what gets captured in some of these photos.  I asked CJ what makes him want to take a picture and he said it could be the way the light hits a flower or the shadows created.

I tried to see more through his eyes.

But it didn't come so easy for me.  Looking at the pictures I took, I was disappointed that I didn't catch the tree tops that I cut off until now:

I was attracted to this scene because it kind of had this post-apocalyptic feel, but again my eyes go to the tree tops I cut off abruptly.

Well, still learning! I totally appreciated branching out, learning, and trying new subjects.  Thanks, CJ.

Afterwards, a friend was having a St. Patrick's Day party, which I thought was really clever to have the day after St. Pat's--think of all the sales on St. Pat's merchandise the day after!  Of course what I really loved was hanging with friends, like the host and my super trooper friend (who put up with me so much on this trip!):

And these guys without their cutie-patootie:

And yes, what is a St. Pat's party without green jello shots?

Tasty way to end the St. Pat's celebrations!

More unpacking

Finally unpacked all the pictures that used to be on the fireplace mantle:

Hmm, I might have to get a bigger space for these.

I also hung up some paper lanterns, one of which is also a lamp.

Though I have got to do something about that hanging cord. I think there is some kind of clip that I can get to have the lamp cord lie flat against the wall. The shadow of the cord is driving me crazy.

I also unpacked more boxes. Since we had lost a bookcase to the move, I was hoping that we could donate enough to not warrant a replacement. Unfortunately, I think I lost that battle, though I did manage to fill another box for donation.

Anyhoo, it wasn't all work. The girl had some friends over and they made these pretty chocolates:

Sweet way to end the weekend.

I think I can recommend this shredder

Now that I don't have access to an office shredder, I wanted to order a little home-sized (and home-priced) shredder for all the occasional mail, documents, and expired credit cards, that should be shredded as well as the box of stuff I was overdue on shredding:

I found this Aurora AS810SD model for less than $30 on Amazon (free shipping--hooray!):

It went through that box of stuff pretty quickly, without any jams:

I know that I was supposed to get the kind of shredder that does the cross-cut but they were pricier, larger, and louder. And this was definitely a step up from my previous identity theft prevention measure: tearing up a document and putting the various hand-torn pieces in different garbage receptacles in the house.

But I did add this measure:

Adding coffee grinds and other garbage juice to marinate my shreds.

On a side note, for those that are wondering why I'm not recycling the shreds--our recycling system resembles a big unlidded plastic tub where everything (specific plastics, glass, and paper) goes. One reason I don't put these shreds in the bin is that they just might fly out of the tub, littering the neighborhood. Another is adding the annoying task, of pulling the paper shreds off the plastic and glass, to the recycling driver who sorts all the glass, plastic, and paper by hand into the separate bins on his truck. And finally, in the big, practiced scheme of things, it will be very onesie-twosie each week--just enough shredding to cling to a bottle and annoy the recycler.

Anyhoo, unless this thing craps out or spontaneously combusts soon, I give this shredder a B+. Great value, great size for home use--just wished it cross-cut.

Looky what arrived today

That's right, my new shredder (I found a bunch of old paperwork I didn't need anymore, like old credit card statements--hooray for internet statements!) and finally a CD binder so I can move my CDs from all those cases (gah! so bulky!) and those shelves into a simple binder. It also helps that I've been buying mp3 albums lately instead of CDs.

I'm looking forward to some more decluttering this weekend...

You're a Donkey Hole

I didn't slack this weekend. I accomplished setting up the computer and emptying a couple of more boxes this weekend, which took the ENTIRE weekend. The girl put the DVDs in the DVD shelves. I had other things on the the To Do list so I was a bit disappointed that only two things on the list got accomplished when I felt so busy.

But, I also finished a book, "This is Where I Leave You" (by Jonathan Tropper), which is on my broader To Do list. You know, the one for the year.

It's about Judd Foxman who, still reeling from discovering his wife's affair, suffers the loss of his father and is mandated to sit shiva with his somewhat estranged family.

I'm going to digress and mention one of my mother's gifts. Whether she realized it or not, she often spoke in similes and metaphors. I appreciate this knack of hers much more now that I'm older and realize the beauty of articulating a vision or thought so squarely without directly saying it. My favorite example is when we were visiting a newly married couple in their new house when I was about 8 or 9. There was a huge big meal and for dessert, the wife presented a huge platter piled with honeydew melon chunks. My clear memory of it was being excited by the generous bounty of the platter, only to be disappointed by the discovery that the honeydew melon was severely underripe. Despite this, we all politely smiled as we crunched away. On the drive home, my parents were talking about the couple's new home and I tried to join in adding something about all that honeydew. I remember to this day how my mother immediately scoffed indignantly, "Oh God, it was like eating a cucumber!" And I remember laughing so hard as a child, because my mom nailed it. That is exactly what eating that cold, hard, flavorless underripe honeydew melon was like.

Anyhoo, Mr. Tropper has a similar knack for similes and metaphors, like my mom: "...his bushy eyebrows unfurling like caterpillars" and "...we were a roomful of sweating dominoes, knocking one into another..." See? I can totally picture it.

Also, I enjoyed this book because Mr. Tropper observes with great humor, like his grasp of love over time: "Love made us partners in narcissism, and we talked ceaselessly about how close we were, how perfect our connection was, like we were the first people in history to ever get it exactly right. We were that couple for a while, nauseatingly impervious assholes, busy staring into each other's eyes while everyone else was trying to have a good time. When I think about how stupid we were, how obstinately clueless about the realities that awaited us, I just wanted to go back to that skinny, cocksure kid, with his bloated heart and perennial erection, and kick his teeth in."

Another favorite was capturing that sense when overwhelmed with so much going on in life: "Now it feels like I don't know much about anything. I don't know why planes fly, and what causes lightning, and what it means to short a stock, and the difference between the Shiites and Sunnis, and who's slaughtering whom in Darfur, and why the U.S. dollar is so weak, and why the American League is so much better than the National League." Man, me neither, Judd, I say to myself as I'm reading. I totally relate, Judd.

In some ways, I think the strength of this book lies in the beginning with Judd coming to grips with his marriage and separation after discovering his wife's affair. Here his writing is the most sharp with observational wit. The story feels somewhat stretched out when the shiva introduces a family of characters from a mother (a best-selling author who prefers not to look her age with the help of plastic surgery and offers various pop psychology platitudes) to siblings (including a player-type younger brother and an older brother with a grudge) to neighbors with intimate relationships with the family. Given how much detail was at the beginning regarding his relationship with his wife, it almost seemed like there wasn't enough detail regarding these later characters or plot developments, which left them rendered somewhat too outre or two-dimensional.

But overall, I'd recommend the book for the humorous writing style. It's an easy and enjoyable read. It also included one of my favorite examples of child logic: when called out for saying the word "ass", the parent (who demonstrates that swearing is a common occurrence) explains that she isn't cursing because "ass" is another word for "donkey". The next day the child, annoyed by his sibling, declares "You're a donkey hole!"

Brilliant. How is that not catching on?

Hitting the resolutions

For those who were concerned that I obsess about the number of my weight, I should clarify that it's kind of a reference point for me. It's not about being super skinny (and anyone who knows me really well, knows that I'm neither built, nor that motivated to be skinny). It's about feeling healthy, strong, and energetic. Right now, I'm feeling quite soft, paunchy, jowly, tired, and weak. I also know it's easy for me to continue on slow weight gain slide, so it is important to me that by aiming to lose weight, I at least won't be gaining more weight. I remember certain active high points in my life where I was both eating well and being pretty active and felt pretty darn healthy. And I associate my general weight at that time with it: 135-140. And that was after I had a baby, so I can't rationalize any current extra pounds to "baby weight". But I do allow that I'm getting older and can't be as active (due to time, that my body aches more easily, and that I'm living in the deep-fried South now) so I gave myself a 10 pound cushion, so to speak, which brings me to about 150.

I start off with this resolution because I know how to get there. I've been there before--I'm familiar with exercise and eating better. It's the follow-through that's a bit more difficult. Especially the eating, because as my daughter grows older (so fast!), some of our closest times are spent at meal time, watching a movie, or playing games. All of which are embellished with comfort or fun food, not water and salad. But I know I can make better choices--fresh fruit over ice cream, light popcorn over chips, etc. It's about just sticking with it.

And I also believe that one good thing can motivate another. I notice as I exercise more, I want to eat better. As I treat my body better, I get motivated to do other things--like declutter. I made a long list of tasks for decluttering and organizing throughout the house. I started with the kitchen table.

Before:

After:

And the counter. Before:

After:

Sad to say, this took me all weekend. A lot of time was spent deciding what to save and keep (or throw out--which felt soooo good) and the filing or storing it in a way so I'd remember where it was or making it accessible. Another plus of this time-consuming task was I was too tired to bet on any of the playoff games--which was a good thing since I pretty much would have bet that all the four teams that lost would have won. Thank goodness my laziness won over my football gambling hubris.

Anyhoo, I'm highly motivated to maintain this and aim to attack another decluttering task. Next weekend.