I like it when you say this kind of thing! It always means something good is about to happen. Some kind of growth is happening.

saef~I'm so sorry about your coworker. I get how you feel that she was the same age as you.

Someone once said if you live long enough you'll get cancer of some sort. I mean just the sun's radiation causes cancer and you really can't not be in the sun some of the time (except for those who are allergic to it and have to stay indoors during the day, but that's a whole different problem).

Weight finally down after 1 1/2 weeks of being mostly OP. I'm just .7 shy of 8 pounds off. My jeans are feeling more and more loose.

Saef-- I'm sorry about your coworker. Thank you for the reminders to be happy where we are. I was down five pounds from my calorie counting and now I've been up the past two days (a pound). Rather than fret about it, I'm going to focus on being happy and enjoying life. Dh leaves Friday and we are going out for sushi tonight. The scale will most likely be up more tomorrow. So what.

That being said, I promised myself a particular reward this weekend if the scale remained down. I'm going to have to rethink whether or not to go through with it. Hopefully the scale will cooperate and my decision will be easy. If not, then I'll see what my frame of mind is!

Up four pounds since Friday: 155 staring at me on the scale after breakfast. I knew from how my body looked that I was either retaining fluid or had gained.

Breathe. Get through the day's meetings, get work published. Be there for coworkers wandering into my office or calling me to talk about our late colleague.

Get to spin tonight to work off tension.

Go to bed early -- and plan to wake up to a whitened, dangerous world, and being sequestered for at least 24 hours as the latest storm vents on us.

And again Atlanta is frozen in.

Bah.

Saef - good point on thinking about the good things and simple joy of being alive rather than obsessing over weight and clothes and so on and so on. I want to do that.

to everyone. Like Becky, I've been lurking. Haven't felt chatty. I'm hoping to swing back soon.

I am ready for winter to end. Found myself sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store today, binge eating two-bite brownies from the package. Can't remember the last time I did this. SIGH.

And tonite is DH's birthday dinner so we are having chocolate cake for dessert - that's why I was at the grocery.

I have also been eating a bag of jelly beans every night this week. Can't seem to get any energy going from anywhere. And starting Friday I have 10-hour days for a week. SIGH.

It's the winter blahs I know but I can't seem to find my way out of it.

Dagmar

Dagmar, we've survived to mid February in what's been a very unusual winter. You've additionally had to deal with move, house fixes, kitty scares, immature DH ... it's a lot. Sugar can't fix it and is making it worse. You know that. Once you get into the sugar ****, your brain changes. Enjoy the birthday dessert (it's life, gotta go with it), and then go forward and deal with the evening jelly beans. In three days, you can break it.

saef, best wishes on riding out the snowstorm and the scale storm. I am sorry about the passing of your coworker; I think it's impossible not to be alarmed and feeling vulnerable when same-age folks we know pass. It does definitely drive an opportunity to refocus. One of my college buddies died very suddenly recently and it has played a part in some of the choices I am in the process of making now.

shannon - stay warm and safe!

Silverbirch - news is beginning to get out over here about just how severe the rain/wind has been in the UK. Gusts of 108mph? Possible flooding that will make Hurricane Sandy look like a gentle spring shower? I will be thinking about sunny skies and dry weather for you!

Allison - congrats on the drop!

michele - I think you deserve a reward for your consistent pursuit of a healthy lifestyle. Don't tie it to the scale - it's only one feature and it's variable.

I haven't weighed in a couple of days. Right now I don't feel like it's necessary. I'm happy and busy and for the moment it's easy to make good choices. There's nothing it can tell me that I don't already know.

Another drop this morning! Totally unexpected, too. I suppose I did a good job yesterday. I just usually don't get two drops so close together. I'm right on track for the wedding as long as I continue to stay OP.

Becky, thanks. It's pretty desperate in many parts of the country.

The 108mph wind last night was here or what we think of as local. I've had a clouds/weather project for a few months, and I was brought up by a Naval engineer. I heard the warnings from Tuesday and saw the storm coming for myself so I got food in on Tuesday and made sure we were all at home and all hatches battened down yesterday. It was wild for five or six hours. It went over by about 9pm or so and we had power back this morning.

The floods have been going on since before Christmas. Lots of talk about 'Biblical proportions' and pictures of acres and acres of flood, and older people and babies being transported by kayak and in RIBs. It's really only since the water has reached larger cities and the Thames and the very populated areas around London that the penny has dropped that Things Are Very Bad. Houses have been flooded for weeks. Railways are being washed away. We live in on a hill, thank goodness, and there aren't the big rivers to fill here and flood across their floodplains. And our area hasn't had above average rainfall unlike the SW of England. My family lives there and we all have stories to tell of the sea coming over and all the cars floating around in the square, and ending up with a boat in the garden that isn't yours. So it's not entirely new but people haven't seen it for quite a few years. And when this drags on and on, well, you get worn down.

Snow has now started further north which is causing trouble too.

Tomorrow a new low comes in and we're having logs delivered (hiccup in Birch household planning in the autumn). I've just looked at the maps and I think we should be OK here but I have a nasty feeling the logs will be wet and therefore quite heavy. It's a workout, I tell myself, but I'd rather it was not raining and not too windy as we do it.

Will be back later to log (ha ha) yesterday's and, fingers crossed, today's streak.

That's crazy wind Birch! Glad you're ok!

Hooray for unexpected drops Allison!

Becky-- I'm tending to agree with you. I'm hoping I'll be down so I don't have the internal debate to deal with, but I do feel I deserve it. I was down .2 today after sushi last night so I'm hopeful I can be down more by the weekend.

Back again.

Michele and Allison - that's great to have a drop! Allison, I'm so pleased you're aiming for the summer. If I slip stream, it will give me enough time to lose a good amount and feel like I'm properly back in the game.

Dagmar, it's a long winter and, like Becky says, you've been doing a lot. Moving is a top stressor - you know that! And that's before you factor in all the rest of it.

No butter or peanut butter on Wednesday or Thursday. Streak is 44.

In other news, I am completely fed up with my gymn. Last week I had a row with them about the music. I was lying on the mat when it was suddenly turned up from 4 to 6 at, I gathered later, the behest of two big boy weight lifters who wanted 'motivation'. Yesterday, I had a row with them about the dangers inherent in people skipping or beating their skipping ropes on the mat when people (me, in fact) were lying on the mat very close in front of them. And of people lifting barbells to failure about two feet away from my feet (trainers off) when I was stretching my calves. This is, apparently, the functional fitness area so people do all kinds of things there. I find doing balance work and stretching quite difficult when all this is going on. I am leaving the gymn in a worse state than when I arrived which can't be right. You may remember that I didn't go for about a year and have only just started back again. I kept my membership open during that time but I now think that I'll stop it. My own trainer is in a small shop premises and I see him every six weeks or so. I'll go back to working out at home (even though it's cold) as I don't think there's anywhere else round here that offers what I want - which isn't very much really, just a quiet space to work out. That includes the university gymn, a number of premises run by different councils and schools, the National Watersports Centre and the National Mountaineering Centre. One of the personal trainers did tell me that there's a possibility of a women-only gymn being built. I don't know what I feel about that at all but I'm not holding my breath.

Sending sane weather to Silverbirch, sane environment to Dagmar, and sane office to saef. And I'm watching the snow pile up and up waiting for the rain that will then saturate it.

I detect a theme.

Speaking of which, maybe it's time to begin working on a Spring theme for our next thread - something happy and uplifting, like: The Sunshine, Unicorn, Apple pie, Rainbow thread.

Lovely, lovely, lovely. and kittens.

How many of you watched the dog show ? Wasn't the Best In Show a beauty?If you missed it the winner was a female wire terrier. She was on Good Morning America the next day and forgot all about her show manners. She was kissing all the co hosts and having a good time. I like all dogs except pit bulls.

I'm not such a fan of dog shows. Most of the dogs in them IMO have been bred solely for looks and they can have all sorts of health problems. I've always been a mutt lover - such interesting combinations produce some truly beautiful "dog" dogs.

http://photos.petfinder.com/photos/p...&no_scale_up=1

This would be my dog right now if the cats weren't with us.

Dagmar