Challenge Anyone??? More Details ...

No soda or fast food until November 1st.

Okay so here's the nitty gritty ... I worked really hard and lost eight pounds, then started working three days a week sitting in front of a computer all day and gained every pound back. I know it's mostly because it's so much easier to grab fast food than to prepare healthy meals ahead of time and also because it's so easy to grab a soda out of the fridge at work when I hit that afternoon slump. So I thought I would challenge myself for a whole month to not have any soda or fast food and see what happens to my weight and I thought I would see if anyone wants to join me. Now i'm not one to drink a lot of soda or eat a bunch of fast food anyway but I do enjoy a coca-cola from time to time and have let myself drink way to many of them since starting back to work.

So .... no fast food, with the exception of a salad and if it has meat on it the meat can not be fried. And no soda of any kind meaning no coke, sprite, dr. pepper, etc. Beer and wine and tea are fine. I actually just read an article about researchers finding even more health benefits of having a glass of wine a day. And also an article about how sugar is one of the most addictive substances and how rats in a lab chose sugar over cocaine even if they were already addicted to cocaine, they switched to the sugar water. That should tell you something! I really think there is a strong link between our obesity problem and sugary sodas. Why we have soda machines in the public schools here is beyond me. Anyway ... those are the details. I've got two joiners already ... anyone else interested?

So for the entire month of October ... no soda or fast food. I actually started a couple of days ago but if you want to start on the 1st that's cool too.

Links to articles everyone should read: SUGAR and WINE

Quote from Better Health News: Did You Know...According to a new research study, refined sugar is far more addictive than cocaine -- one of the most addictive and harmful substances currently known. An astonishing 94 percent of rats who were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between sugar water and cocaine, chose sugar. Even rats who were addicted to cocaine quickly switched their preference to sugar, once it was offered as a choice. The rats were also more willing to work for sugar than for cocaine.

Some Random Pics ... Recent Trip to Bradenton

Taking advantage of high speed internet at work .... these are some random pics from our recent trip to Bradenton. I didn't crop to the good parts like I usually do so bare with the unedited versions please. The burning truck was something we happened to drive by and nobody was hurt.

New Rocket Yarn Colorways

"TIE-DYE"




"BETELGEUSE" - Thanks Erika for reminding me of this star. This is my favorite of the new colorways. Might have to dye myself one of these. :)




"HIPPIE PIE"




"HORIZON" - sold within hours of listing on Etsy. And this is the one I really didn't like all that much ... go figure.

Interesting ....

Pick your presidential candidate.

If you've ever been in a lake in Florida you need to read this article ...

Deadly Amoeba

Eyes and Ears

My eye was bothering me over the weekend and when I woke up yesterday morning I knew I had to go to a doctor. Four hours, a walk-in clinic, four prescriptions and three hundred dollars later ... I have an eye and an ear infection. Sounds fun, huh? I'm the only one in the family lucky enough to have contracted this so the boys are at daycare, Brett's at work and i'm working from home today. I'll be considered no longer contagious around 2pm tomorrow ... 48 hours after starting treatment. The drugs were so expensive because I had to get the super-expensive, only-comes-in-name-brand drops for both my eye ($54) and my ear ($88) because i'm still nursing and am allergic to penicillan and sulfa drugs. It took the doctor and nurse almost 45 minutes of research (which i actually really appreciated) to find a treatment combination that would allow me to continue nursing and not break out in hives from head to toe. My ear has been bothering me off and on since last november so I was pretty sure it was infected. I've been healing it naturally but then it feels better and I forget about it so I forget to keep taking my natural regimine for the next two weeks to keep it from coming back. So i've basically had an ear infection of varying degrees for about ten months. Sounds fun, huh? I knew as soon as she put that "look in your ear thing" in there that it was going to be bad ... first by how badly it hurt compared to not feeling anything when she first looked in the good ear and second by her comment of "not so good" in a heavy accent of some sort. I figured since I was there I might as well take her up on some sort of drop to knock it out. Now had I known that little teeny tiny bottle of drops was going to cost $88 I might have stopped by the health food store first instead of filling that particular prescription. Oh well ... in the grand scheme of things $88 isn't that much to get rid of something that's been bothering me for so long. She told me to rest my eyes and not do any computer work for the next few days but with a bill like that and daycare to pay for who can afford to do that? I am following her rule of not going to the office though.

And on that note, my laptop is booted up and ready so off to work I go ....

Sock-a-long Progress

Not much progress to report since I had to rip out the second sock so many times that I lost count. It's established now though and I actually got to work on it for about thirty minutes last night before getting too tired to keep knitting. I've learned that hard way not to knit when I get really tired. Too many dropped stitches and such. Hopefully i'll be able to make some decent progress while watching football this weekend.

And here's the dress i'm knitting for Juliana, my cousin Eric's baby. Isn't it just the cutest? The part with the straps at the top is the front. I just have to add i-cord straps to the back side, seam it together and weave in the ends. I just love this pattern and plan to knit many more.

And speaking of Juliana .... here she is. Isn't she a cutie pie??? We got to see her for the first time when we went to Bradenton last weekend.

Interesting ... Fellowship Church

While their beliefs seem to be a little stronger on the bible than my own, it still sounds more like something i'd be up for than anything else i've seen around here so far. Of course the kids would make it difficult for us to go check it out but I thought i'd share. Click here to check it out.

I'm So Proud ....

Houston didn't cry at all this morning and Brody only cried for about 30 seconds. Yay! :)

Question of the Day

Where were you September 11th, 2001? Leave your answer as a comment.

Where was I? I was waiting for Brett to get back from class so we could head to the airport. Yep, we had plane tickets on 9/11. Boeing was sending us on a house hunting trip because I was transfering to Johnson Space Center.

I Can't Even Believe It ...

What, you ask? Where do I begin? I can't say it was a great weekend because of the horrible thing happening to my uncle, but it was a good weekend because I got to see so many of my family members ... and got to hang out with my uncle for a little while. It's absolutely crazy what cancer can do to a person in such a short time. I saw him in February and to be honest, I could have seen him on the street this weekend and not known it was him until I heard his voice. Unfreakinbelievable. Even having seen its progression first hand with Brett's mom, it's still so hard to process. I can't even talk about it anymore right now.

And what else? So Uncle Buck up and dies on us and Uncle Ken is diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. What do I wonder? What else? Bad things happen in threes and i've been waiting for the third and hoping and praying that it doesn't hurt as much as these last two things. They say that birds are messengers and that if there is a bird tapping on your window or one that just won't leave you alone is some other way, that you will soon receive important news. About a week before I found out about Uncle Buck and Uncle Ken, there was a bird tapping on my kitchen window like a maniac ... inside our porch just tapping away ... I kept trying to shew it away so the dogs wouldn't get it but it wouldn't leave. And then I got the news. Well a few weeks ago a bird landed on the sidewalk next to our house. I thought he had a broken wing and I picked him up so the dogs wouldn't eat him. He didn't have a broken wing at all, instead I found a gaping hole in his chest like he had been attacked by something. I'm thinking "hole in chest", "lung cancer" ... oh shit. Was the first bird for Uncle Buck and the second for Uncle Ken? Is something really bad going to happen sooner than I expect? Brett put the bird out of its misery since it was obvious that we wouldn't be able to save it and decided to go back to my yardwork but couldn't stop thinking about my uncles. (I know i'm rambling here, it happens, bear with me. bear with me? or bare with me? english help please?) And again, wondering what that third horrible thing would be.

So yesterday I find out that a family friend was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Greg is a friend of my dads (Dad B.) and has been for as long as I can remember. He and his wife Donna went on skiing vacations and cruises with us when I was growing up. We had a lot of good times together. Donna is an academic advisor at FSU and helped me through a tough time with some decisions in college. They also had to listen to me throwing up all the way back the port after I drank a little too much on the last day of a cruise we all took together when I was about seventeen maybe? And jokingly reminded me of it when I saw them last October. Good stuff, huh? I wonder now how they are coping and if there is anything I can do. I just feel so damn useless. Why can't I do anything to fix this? Why does this keep happening? Why is cancer tearing apart so many families? And who is next? Will it be me? You just never know. I'm only 31 and have already lost so much to that terrible disease. And to top it all off, The Bradenton Herald had an article in the sunday paper about a large number of Bayshore High students who have died of cancer. Bayshore High is in my home town and I know many people who went there. Apparently they tore down the school and built a new one because of all the issues. Now there are something like 65 people who went there in the late 80's and early 90's (yep, my age group) who have been diagnosed with and/or already died from cancer. Link to the article here.

And the worst part of all of this is when I think about Uncle Bucks mom and sister and neice and nephew. And Uncle Ken's son and daughters and grandson and my aunt and my grandma. I know it hurts me but the pain they are going through is so much worse. And that makes me even more sad. And the fact that I can't do anything about it ... well that just sucks and leaves me feeling terribly frustrated.

Sock Progress & Daycare

It's coming along slowly but at least i've managed to work on it every day since the beginning of the sock-a-long, even if only for ten minutes. I'm just over six inches into the first sock leg. We're doing some driving today so I should finally get a good bit of uninterrupted knitting time. Wheeeee! :)

Well Brody is doing much better at daycare. He still cries when I drop him off but they say he's happy and playing by nap time. And yesterday he didn't even cry at all after his nap. And he's finally eating there too. He didn't eat lunch or snack for the first three days because he was so upset. Now Houston is a completely different story. He was great the first week but the second week was just terrible. He cried the whole way there and they had to literally pry him off of us on both wednesday and thursday. It was absolutely awful. I was very close to taking him home yesterday morning but I reasoned with myself, and along with the very sweet ladies at Happy Hearts comforting me, decided it would be best for me to go on to work. I cried myself all the way to the office but once I got there I had so much to do that I didn't let myself think about it much. Brett and I are about at the point of drawing straws to see who has to do the drop off. It's absolutely awful and makes me feel terrible for leaving them.

Starting next week i'll only be making the drive to Live Oak on wednesdays so i'm really looking forward to that. That gives me about an hour and a half to two hours of my day back and means i'll be able to pick the boys up a little earlier. Work is going well. The first day things were pretty foggy but by yesterday they were much clearer. It's been a while since i've had to think in terms of vectors and forces. My brain is treating me well though and it's all coming back. I'm probably not finishing jobs as quickly as they would like me to but i'm getting faster on each one. And i'm really enjoying having eight uninterrupted hours of deep thinking ... as strange as that may sound to some of you. Guess i'm still a nerd after all. :)

Are We Smarter Than Apes?

They needed to do research for this???

link to article about incident at daycare

http://www.lakecityreporter.com/articles/2007/08/30/news/top_story/news01.txt

Sock-a-long Progress

Pattern: Garter Rib from Sensational Knitted Socks

Yarn: Rocket Yarn, of course, in a yet to be named, designed for my hubby colorway.

Day 2:

Day 3:

I didn't get to knit much today but it's coming along. I've got about 5 inches done on the first sock now. Excuse the crappy picture, please.

Well it's back to work tomorrow. Brody woke me up early this morning so I decided to go for a walk before Houston and Brett got up. We ended walking over four miles. How's that for some motivation on a lazy holiday? Now i'm super tired and my legs are already sore. I'm sure they're going to be nice and stiff after sitting at a desk all day tomorrow too. I'm soooo looking forward to some cooler weather. It's been so hot I haven't wanted to run at all. This was probably the first day in about three weeks (maybe more) that i've actually gotten out there to sweat. Something about it being 100+ degrees makes it hard for me to make myself go running. Imagine that ...

Snarktember Sock-a-long ... let the games begin!

I dyed these the day before the sock-a-long began. I was worried about running out of yarn while knitting for such big feet so I decided to dye two skeins the same colorway. I love how it turned out and should have enough left over to knit a pair of socks for myself.

Gator football, sock knitting and beer on a saturday afternoon. Does it get any better? :) This is the progress I made today. Doesn't feel like much but at least i've gotten started. I had to wind both skeins of yarn today before I could start. I am soooo buying myself a ball winder with my first paycheck.

First Day of Daycare

Before ...

and after...

Houston's Birthday

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