Comment Monitoring

All,

There has been a surplus of comments here advertising unrelated crap (usually using Chinese characters and a link to something pornographic).

So, I have changed our settings so that all comments must be approved before appearing on the site.  I don't know if we will all be able to monitor and approve, or if only one person's email will be delegated the authority, of if we will all do our own posts' comments...

Anywho, we will now be approving comments before they appear so that the stupid spammers don't run amok here.

Thanks,

Alula

A Wii Little Experiment

Hi Ladies!

A few weeks back, Mr. B and I attended his cousin's wedding in Oklahoma (there's yet another great inlaw story here, but that's another post entirely--in fact, between Q and I, that could be another blog entirely). The point is, we spent one night in a hotel in Oklahoma, and something neat happened.

Mr. B got an overview statement of all the hotel points he's raked up from having a job where he travels for a quarter to half the year, and we had enough points to "buy" a Wii Fit with them.

For anyone who hasn't heard of this device, it's a board that connects to the Wii and is intended for use with games (included with the purchase of the board). As the name implies, it's a workout device that comes with routines for Yoga, Strength, Aerobics, and Balance. There are also games like skii jumping, snow boarding, hula hooping, and others. The Wii Fit posts your progress with charts in the game, tracking your weight, how much time you spent working out, how your balance is, your "real age", and how many calories you burn in exercise, and other things. You can even customize your own workouts to target trouble areas.

I've been using the Wii Fit since we purchased it, and have already seen some weight loss (about 3 pounds, which isn't bad for a couple of weeks). And good golly, for just being a board, some of the exercises will make you hurt the next day--my arm muscles give me the most grief after workouts, while Mr. B complains he feels in more in his thighs.

Having struggled with my weight for a while now, I decided that this is something I can do. It's low impact and people at the gym don't have to watch my wiggly butt in sweats doing squats.

Riding the BMI line between overweight and obese, I finally decided to get Mr. B involved to make me do something about it. I've been using the Lose It! app since the start of this year, and showed him the chart of how much I weighed on January 1st, and then how much I gained when he got sick and went to the hospital. Since then, I've managed to get back to my start-of-the-year weight. I signed him up to get weekly email updates tracking my weight and what I'm eating (caloric intake), and he can see when I'm on the Wii Fit, for how long, and session activities.

He has similarly committed to working out with me to try to gain weight as per his doctor's orders, and is increasing the amount that he eats.

I don't know if anyone here has an interest in seeing my weekly caloric intake, but I'm hoping that I continue to see enough progress with the Wii Fit to be worthy of mention here. Hopefully it can get me back to swimsuit weight, and then I can start swimming laps like I did back in high school.

In other news, I think I'm going to start another blog devoted to ereaders. I've developed an unhealthy relationship with my nook (as in, it now joins me at work so I can read scientific articles from our library on it instead of the computer screen, I sleep with it, and I miss it when it's not around). I have found so many cool resources for ereaders in the last few weeks that I am going to try to organize them somehow. I also wrote to author Jennifer Roberson to inquire if she was going to release any of her Chronicles of the Cheysuli books in digital format, and she wrote me back less than 5 hours later (!) saying she was trying to do it--it's more in the hands of the publisher. (For anyone who hasn't read these books, there are 8 of them, they are a dynastic fantasy genre, and they are very good--you may have trouble finding them in a bookstore because they are older, but they are worth it to order from online.)

Alula

Finals

What I see when I look at Q's final. ;)

Check out my final project: Artistic Reflections on Deepwater Horizon. I did the site building & design & technical mumbo jumbo.

My Final

Hey Ladies,

This is a Apron I made in Class, do you think its too... fun... for craft sales?

Between a fire and a gas leak

Ever hear the expression "between a rock and a hard place"? Well I am stuck between a fire and a gas leak. Today Mr Man went out on the AT V's to a wilderness area and what did he run into but a newly sparked wild fire lit by lightning so he spent his day trying to put that out and we have a manged wild fire about 5 miles away that means that they aren't trying to put it out just keep it from getting out of control. As for the gas leak my town has two gas stations and one of them is expanding and someone messed up and created a gas spill right in the middle of town pretty much shutting the town down and for a town with one road down it well with that shut down no one goes anywhere. Well hopefully they cleaned everything up and they will be back to normal soon. And Mr Man and his buddies managed to contain the fire they were at so that it didn't get out of control. We will see what happens tomorrow regarding the fires and gas spills. My sister and I spent all day making Black berry jam. Yummy. and I had a fish commit suicide trying to chase a smaller fish it got stuck and well everyone knows that if a fish isn't swimming it dies. Well that sums up my week.

Not to Toot my Own Horn but.....

TOOT TOOT!!!!!!!!

This week I took a class on making hats. In four days I was able to form 5 hats and this is the one I got completely done. I am very proud of myself, and you can officially reefer to me as a Mad Hatter! I love this hat, its truly amazing! I was able to buy a hat block from my teacher and rest assured hats are going to accompany me to craft sales now.

Parents, Bookstores, and Earning it

My first pea harvest this year--45 pods in total.

Q can tell all of you how I've been drooling over her new Barnes and Noble Nook the last few weeks. I will caveat here that Fuzzy owns a Kindle, an equally awesome product. After weeks of obsessive research, I elected that the Nook would be my product because it's more hackable than the Kindle, despite the fact that Kindle has a heartier brand, a longer and better tested run in the market, and what is generally considered the more user-friendly interface. Nook is has more open file formats and expandable memory, which for me as an individual, were strongly needed features.

I've wanted an e-reader for some time now, but have been holding out due to the price and skepticism over the quality of newly released technology. Generally, I have a 1-year rule for this kind of stuff; new products have problems that need to be worked out. Example: the Xbox 360 red ring of death, the hacked iPad, and the read-aloud feature on the Kindle that got canceled due to copyright infringement. The first round of sales are the last round of tests, and when it comes to shelling out a C-note or more, I like to learn from others' use and abuse stories to know exactly what I'm getting.

I finally settled that I would wait until my birthday, and use gift cards to offset the cost. Then, yesterday, I got an email at work from a research colleague. She had just gotten back from Spain, where she had presented our research from earlier this year to an international group of experts, and several had responded with great enthusiasm! Our research will be featured as a chapter in a book, and I have been invited to write up an additional report on my research methodologies. I got kudos all day, and from my supervisors especially. My main supervisor told me that having my first big publication at 25 was excellent--he didn't author until he was 42. I spent the whole afternoon thinking about my parents, and how grateful I was that they had fostered my academic and literary interests. When the book comes out, I'm going to get a gigantic magnet and stick it to their fridge.

Later in the day, I'm driving home, and as a planned errand, I stop at Barnes and Noble to check out the Nook in person and quiz the sales reps. Walking up to the door, I'm hit with a huge wave of nostalgia, because this was the bookstore of my youth. I'd spent hours in there while my mom or dad just patiently waited on a couch somewhere, browsing fiction, science, art...This was the store that started it. In some small way, that Barnes and Noble contributed to my love of reading, writing, and research. And on the day that I got confirmation of getting published, in the topic of language and the next generation of technology, I wanted to celebrate by getting something from my old friend, the bookstore, and it seemed only appropriate that it would be something to do with the next generation of literature and technology.

I went home, I got my husband, and we went back and got the Nook (I didn't actually need Mr. B to make the purchase, but I wanted him there for my moment of nostalgia and victory dance). I'm counting it as my early birthday present, and I LOVE it. DoHP, Munchkin, you need e-readers--I've had mine for just over 12 hours and it's already changed my life.

Alula