Re: the comments on shoes, take my advice and throw away your flip-flops. this morning while walking my dog, and wearing flip-flops I tripped and fell face down on the sidewalk resulting in a trip to ER and nine stitches on my face. I threw out the flip-flops and the tee shirt and shorts I was wearing , too bloody.I have the start of a beaut of a black eye.
OW! I hope you have a couple of ice packs and some pain meds handy.
Allison If those are Keen sandals they are generally very comfy but too expensive for the short length of time they last. Teva makes some very good cushioned sandals. You might also want to google "water socks".
to everyone whose parents have ever negatively commented on their weight. It may have not hurt too much but it's something we can probably never quite forget.
I now have a role model among my doggie "pack" as far as happiness and enjoyment of life goes. Young Happi (the dog who is tethered to the newel post in her house and who cringes whenever she hears the male voice in her household) was so full of joy today it made me laugh out loud. She is so smart and fast and such a flirt and tease. She kept 3 boy dogs running after her and outsmarted them at every turn, using a green squeaky toy. Finally they all sat, exhausted and dejected, on the shore while she paraded through the water, head and tail held high, triumphantly squeaking "her" toy!
There is someone who has taken all the lemons her short life has dealt her and who continues to make pitchers and pitchers of lemonade!
Happi's joy at being alive today is an image I will keep dear for a long, long time.
My own family weight "issues" have much more to do with my sister than with either of my parents. But, since none of y'all are getting paid for this, I won't subject you to the details.
It holds true, I think, that the people we love the most are the people that can hurt us the most.
Does anyone know anything about Google+? All I have heard is that it's Google's answer to Facebook and is apparently "invitation only" at this stage. I got an invitation from a good friend, but I'm trying to figure out if I need one more social networking tool in my life. You'd think - considering that I'm a 33 year old, single, professional woman living in a large metropolitan area - that I'd be dying to join more social networks. You'd be wrong.
ARRRRGH! I spent 12 hours writing something on this with a pair of analysts just before I went on vacation.
Which means I have no personal experience of it, of course, but still, I can tell you that they think it's going to do better than Buzz, Google's most recent failed attempt at social networking. Buzz just did not work out. Having learned from that debacle, Google+ has launched with less fanfare than Buzz. It's still in a limited field trial, which is why you can't join Google+ easily or readily, because Google hasn't even announced it's a beta test yet. (They're still pretending its not by not calling it that.) After it truly rolls out, it probably will be easier to access.
Our social media analysts are watching to see whether Google gives developers APIs which will add value to the service.
Google will probably be modifying Google+ based on results from the field trial, and might listen to your critiques or solicit input from you.
There is no way Google or other big companies are going to let Facebook run the world all by itself unchallenged. Too much $$$ there. So, babe, I do not foresee you being left alone peacefully with your chosen mode of social media interaction.
My son got me on Google+. I'm still trying to figure it out. Confusing (IMO) and I do Facebook and have little problem with it. Not sure at this point if I'll continue or not as there are not that many people on it. We'll see. But I do think it's better than Buzz (which was totally confusing). At least this has an interface similar to Facebook, but my sister sent me an email regarding my sending her something I had shared (didn't remember sharing it) which was pretty close to spamming someone IMO.
I was an avid Fb user for about 2 months. Then I got a little tired of it. Same reason as not being interested in most people's blogs after a bit. The social networking tools can be great but there's a whole lotta dreck on them too. Most of us online are NOT good writers or very effective communicators. We're enthusiastic though!
I got tired of myself here - whining about DH, going off plan, gaining a lb., repeat ad nauseum, and now I really try to vary what I'm posting. My excuse for all the dog stories.
Back to weight stuff - I am now under red line and will stay that way for the rest of the summer and beyond. As most of you can surmise I've pretty well given up getting down to 130 and staying there - too much - so my goal now is to remain in the 132 - 134 range. That's pretty narrow but I have to check myself often or I go overboard.
I'm really happy for those of you who are finding maintenance easier after a couple of years of it. I'm hoping to get there sometime around 2015
This morning is all about fresh red peaches & a very talkative mockingbird flapping on top of a cone-shaped shrub in the courtyard of my building.
After work tonight, I have to take a busted Roman shade to the Home Depot in a nearby town, because it's under warranty & they will restring the shade for free. That particular Home Depot is one of my least favorite places in the world. The parking lot is chaotic & Darwinian & full of contractors' white beat-up trucks & they look like they don't care if their doors dent the side of your car. Also, I will never go there in the morning because of all the packs of guys hanging out waiting to get picked up for a day's labor. I know they just want a job, to make a living & send money home, but there's too much testosterone in the air & idle men are more prone to eyeing passing women & saying stuff. Okay, so that's not the worst that can happen. But it just makes me ... uncomfortable. And makes me avoid the Home Depot till late in the day.
Bargoo, these summer sidewalks look peaceful enough, all gum-splotched & warm from the sun, but you never know when they will leap up & attack you. Seriously, that's a scary thing to hear about. Particularly when I'm still relearning how to walk in my various pairs of sandals (and getting over new blisters in new interesting places). Were you alone? Being alone can be good or bad. My pain over my own spectacular faceplants has often been compounded by embarrassment, as people run over to ask if I need help. Were you helped? Was the blood from a nosebleed or getting scraped up? I hope you're recovering & any errant gravel that got in you has been picked out. (I can show you two places on my body where part of a sidewalk from my childhood is forever enshrined like a tattoo. I think I fell off my bike. But maybe not. My mother was always telling me, "Pick your feet up. Don't sprag your shoes.")
Saef - I have a busted Roman shade, too, but mine is out of warranty. Ick. We have a couple of Home Depot stores around here that sound like yours, but for the most part ours are pretty okay any time of day. Comes from being in Atlanta - our stores are often walked by high level THD executives so they keep the day laborers out for the most part.
Michele - my dad was never overly critical about my weight, though he did point out to me that boys don't like fat chicks more than one and would ask if I really wanted to be eating whatever I had in my hand. I believe that he was trying to be helpful, just didn't really know how to say what he was thinking.
I have had a bad week this week. The AC got serviced Tuesday morning, wouldn't turn on downstairs Tuesday night and the pressure was low, but had started working again by the time the tech got there to check it out at 5:30. After he left it wouldn't come on downstairs again and the air pressure was low again. I think it just won't recover quickly when turned off anymore. It was working this morning, but the utility company had to turn off the power to change our meter and I had a hard time getting it to come back on again. I'm pretty frustrated - every summer we have had some kind of AC drama. I'm trying to decide if I want to call the tech out again.
The last time the sidewalk jumped up and bit me, I was wearing my regular walking/running shoes. After inspection of the piece of concrete that attacked me, it became evident that it was not the sidewalk at all, but my own uncoordinated walking as there was nothing there to trip me. I must have kicked the back of my left foot with the toe of my right foot and I lost the nail on my big right toe to prove it. (And I had to call DH to come and pick me up and take me and the dogs home as I couldn't walk.) The dogs were not helpful at all. You'd think one of them would have licked the tears off my face but all they did was hover over me and give me a strange look as if to say "whatcha doing down there, Mom?"
And my Mom always told me not to drag my feet (and to stand up tall with my shoulders back). I do have good posture and I still don't drag my feet! What gets me is people who wear flip flops and drag their feet. The reason they're called flip flops as you're supposed to hear them flipping! I get irritated listening to people dragging and not flipping the flip flops!
But my dog drags his feet--I don't know how to make him stop. You can always hear him coming in the house because of his feet dragging. He has a rather odd way of walking compared to our old lab. Chico sashays. Buddy trotted.
Shannon, hang in there & don't eat over it. (My A/C was out for most of the summer last year & I can relate.) I wish I could send you over a virtual bowl of gazpacho & some cold curried chicken salad (made with Fage yogurt rather than mayo) for your supper.
Now to work. I've got 13 pages from an analyst in Hong Kong to rewrite, sentence by sentence, as his English is not good. Though I remind myself it's much, MUCH better than my command of any foreign language (including Spanish, which I studied up through undergrad years).
Did I tell you guys about the document from two weeks ago with the "thinking chair" in it? This was by an analyst in India. I couldn't figure that one out for the longest time. What was a "thinking chair"? (One of my male coworkers said his thinking chair was the toilet. Heh-heh-heh. [Insert Beavis laugh here.]) Then it finally dawned on me while making coffee that what he meant was "discussion table." The phrase was actually "bringing an idea to the discussion table."
Ooo saef, that gazpacho & chicken salad sounds yummy. Is the chicken salad the recipe from the Fage website?
Funny about the 'thinking chair'. I did technical writing for my dad's company in college - we had plants in France, Italy and Spain. Our Italian group had written some of their own docs that I had to roll in and some of there phrasing was interesting. More so in the ones that they had translated to English themselves, and their English was fantastic. It wasn't grammar, it was more just different word choices. We built machines that sorted fruit by color and condition using cameras and a computer program that my dad wrote.
Last edited by Shannon in ATL; 07-13-2011 at 11:36 AM.
My doggy story for the day-- twofold....
Dewey startled Jozi (my Great Dane) and she snarled at him. He yelped and expressed his anal glands! Then he was freaking out about the smell and rubbing his butt and sniffing it! I had to stop and give him a bath. Now he is snuggled up on the couch next to me under a blanket with a snuggle (suckling) toy! What a baby.
The second part is he is HUGE! The vet keeps asking if I'm SURE he is miniature. When I had him at the vet on Monday for his shots (4 months), he was 11 pounds! He still has all of his baby teeth. He should have been about 10 pounds FULL GROWN. He looks full grown but he isn't. He's starting to look a little chunky so the vet did suggest we cut back on his puppy kibble a bit. And we're going to make sure he gets more exercise! I emailed the breeder because I knew his mom was 10 pounds, but I didn't know how big his dad is. She emailed me back that the dad is tiny and 8 pounds and she has NEVER heard of an 11 pound puppy at 4 months, even a standard dachshund. I'm just hoping he is an early grower and he stops growing soon!
When I got up this morning I saw my right shoulder is bruised, so I landed on my right shoulder and the right side of my face. My first concern, did I break a leg or hip, that didn't seem to be so, but blood was gushing from my face. When I got home from ER I threw my tee shirt and shorts away that I was wearing.The area where this happened is right next to a preschool, there are always parents going in and out but yesterday not a person in sight. It was hard for me to get up because of a previous broken shoulder that never healed properly.It is very limited in use. I finally got on my knees and just literally forced myself up, in the meantime my dog was not interested in my dilemma he just wanted to get on with his pooping business. Outside of being sore and feeling cruddy as I can't shower yet, I look like I have been in a barroom brawl.
When I left my office yesterday around 11:40 I had to reroute around an accident just around the curve from the lower driveway into our parking lot that looked pretty bad. Couldn't figure out what happened - all I could see was a red minivan on the side of the road, perpendicular to the road itself with the rear end up against the fence along the tree line on the side of the road and the hood crushed. There were no other cars involved. Got back here this morning and found out it was the brother of one of my new employees who had just dropped her off for work and was leaving. He was killed. They don't know what happened - a witness saw it and said he wasn't driving too fast, that he just didn't hold the curve and clipped a utility pole, over corrected and went into a tree. I guess by the time I got there they had used the wrecker to pull his car back from the pole to try to get him out. It is so sad. They are African immigrants and don't have a lot of family here I don't think.
Shannon, how awful! I heard a similar story (similar in the sense of an unexpected death) recently at work -- there was a regulatory person we didn't know assigned to our project out of the Miami office who we were told would be out for a few weeks with a broken arm. Turned out his broken arm had surgery, got infected, and he died. Scary how fragile life is.
Saef, I love the "thinking chair."
Michele, I don't know much about small dogs but that does sound big for a Dachshund. I guess he is trying to grow up to be like Jozi.
I went to the dentist this morning. Looks like I have a cavity that I have to go get filled in a couple weeks. It's funny because I was just commenting to DH that I haven't had a cavity for a while and I am probably due for one.
We're starting to get zucchinis from our garden! The zucchini plants look much healthier this year than they have in the past. Meanwhile we have been picking tomato horn worms off of the tomatillo plants. The tomatillos have a million flowers and baby tomatillos, but nothing seems to be getting bigger. Maybe we are just being impatient. We've gotten a few beans too, but we get them a handful at a time so it's hard to really use them properly.
(the dog who is tethered to the newel post in her house and who cringes whenever she hears the male voice in her household) was so full of joy today it made me laugh out loud. She is so smart and fast and such a flirt and tease. She kept 3 boy dogs running after her and outsmarted them at every turn, using a green squeaky toy. Finally they all sat, exhausted and dejected, on the shore while she paraded through the water, head and tail held high, triumphantly squeaking "her" toy!
for all the dog stories.
- so my goal now is to remain in the 132 - 134 range. That's pretty narrow but I have to check myself often or I go overboard.
Scary how fragile life is.
