Treading Softly

Seagull feet

alexandsam — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:32:26 +0000

Taken 1/29/12, Daytona Beach, around 7:00 am

Cabbage and Brussels sprouts

alexandsam — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:30:41 +0000

The cabbage yesterday

The cabbage and Brussels sprouts are coming along nicely. We’re having such a mild winter so far, even for us, and the plants are taking full advantage.

At least the cabbage and Brussels sprouts are. The broccoli is not as enthusiastic, although it hasn’t given up yet. I may still have one spinach plant too.

The indoor lettuce is not doing well. I don’t know if it’s a light issue or a water issue. The sprouts came right up, put out a few leaves, then have seemed to stop. They are getting direct sunlight in the afternoon through the sliding glass door, and I’ve been keeping them watered. so I’m not sure what’s up there. Maybe they just prefer to be outside. Maybe the seeds are too old and they’re just not going to produce vigorous plants.

I decided not to buy any seeds this year because I had so many left over. All the ones I have were labeled for either 2010 or 2011, and have been kept cool and dry, so I thought they would be fine. Maybe not. But I’m not going to buy new seeds this year regardless. I should get something to grow, even if it’s just Brussels sprouts and cabbage.

The Brussels sprouts and cabbage look a lot alike at this point, don’t they?

The Brussels sprouts, yesterday

Food diaries work

alexandsam — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:04:55 +0000

At the end of 2011 I had a doctor’s appointment at which I got weighed, and was horrified to find that I was at my heaviest EVER. Ack. I was heavy in high school (when I stopped growing vertically, I started growing horizontally) and then added the freshman 15 (or 20, 0r 30) in college, but then in my 20s lost most of that and got down to a good weight for me, which I managed to maintain for almost 30 years.

Then a mix of things happened: I turned 50 and my metabolism seemed to come to a screeching halt; I was diagnosed with migraines and started taking a preventive medication, Lyrica, which has weight gain as one of its primary side effects, and I transferred in my job from one campus where I could get out and walk every day to our main campus, where I can’t. I pretty much stopped exercising at all except for whatever workout I got in the garden and mowing the lawn. The end result of all that was the poundage that was staring me in the face in the doctor’s office.

I have tried diets in the past, and I am hopeless at it. It just makes me feel too deprived. I don’t have any other vices to give up. Plus we all know that diets don’t work long term for the vast majority of people. But something had to give. I was about to have to go shopping in the dreaded “women’s” department to have some clothes that fit.

So I decided on three actions: begin walking regularly again, begin weighing myself every week at the same doctor’s office (I go there for weekly allergy shots, so it’s convenient), and start keeping a food diary.

I had kept a food diary before. A coworker and I had pledged for a while, a couple of years ago, to do that. She was dieting at the same time, and I told her I would support her by keeping the food diary as well. The one I chose to use was called The Daily Plate, which at the time was a freestanding website. (It’s since been taken over by Livestrong, Lance Armstrong’s health and wellness website.) It was easy to use and had a huge database of most brands of foods, and would also analyze recipes for you if you sent them in.

I did that on and off for a while, but never stuck with it for very long. They kept my account, though, so every time I signed in to start again it wasn’t like starting over. However…every time I resumed, I recorded my weight, and it kept going up.

This time, when I signed back in after months and months, the handy widget on the side of the page informed me that I had “gained 27 pounds since starting The Daily Plate!” Oh joy.

But sign back in I did, and immediately looked to see if they had an iPad app. And they do, and it is very slick. It makes it much more convenient for me to keep track of everything, as I can carry the iPad around with me and record what I eat as soon as I eat it.

And today, when I got on the scale at the doctor’s office, I was delighted to see that in the past month I have lost three pounds.

I have been walking some, but not a huge amount, but I have been faithfully recording my food intake. The goal I listed was to maintain my weight, as the goal of losing 1 pound a week dropped my calorie intake to an unsustainable level. But even though I am only supposed to be maintaining my weight, I am losing. Slowly, but surely. Almost a pound a week so far. And it’s only because I have become much more aware of how many calories I am eating per day, because I am recording it all.

I knew I would fail at a diet, but I could resolve to keep a food diary. And it’s working!

Which gives me even more motivation to continue.

Cruciferous

alexandsam — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:22:38 +0000

The flash made the picture exposure less than optimal, but you can definitely see the first leaves on the Brussels sprouts that look like Brussels sprouts leaves. The cabbage is about the same size, and is starting to look cabbage-y. The broccoli in the middle is still dragging its feet, so it doesn’t deserve having its picture taken.

A big biology experiment…

alexandsam — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:59:37 +0000

You have to look close...

These are the brussels sprouts as of yesterday. They’re starting to get their secondary leaves. The cabbage looks very similar, but its leaves look a little more cabbage-y.

The broccoli doesn’t look as vigorous. I’m not sure what the difference is; they’re in the same bed and have been treated exactly the same.

I think I may have one spinach plant coming up, out of all the ones I planted. I guess I’ll have one spinach salad…those seeds may have been too old.

I need to get some tomatoes and peppers started indoors so they’ll be ready to transplant when the time comes. The indoor Boston lettuce isn’t looking as vigorous, either, but maybe it looks like it’s supposed to at this stage??

Gardening is just a big biology experiment.

Book review: Morganville Vampires

alexandsam — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:25:27 +0000

I finished a book last night, book four of a series called the Morganville Vampires. It is what Twilight should have been, a YA vampire series that is actually well written and has a great plot. There is a bit too much sappy young love in it and the snappy teen patter gets to me sometimes, but the heroine is spunky and smart, a physics major in college, and the adult vampires are truly terrifying. (And they do burn in direct sunlight. None of this vampires-out-in-the-daytime stuff.) The kids involved are college students or college-aged and all have jobs. The town of Morganville, Texas, is run by vampires, and the vampires manipulate the humans for their own purposes. And no one gets out alive – at least not for long.

It’s a good series. There are a total of ten books, but the volumes have been published two by two (after the single books have been out a while, of course), so volume four is actually books seven and eight. My friend Tish had loaned me the first three volumes, so I didn’t have to buy those, and this one was only ten bucks. It is now on my public library donate pile, as it’s not one I would likely read again, but I will read the fifth volume when it comes out.

I haven’t actually read the Twilight series, because I haven’t wanted to waste my time. Several friends who have read it have told me not to bother. So I can’t directly compare, but if you’re an adult, I’d definitely recommend that you start with the Morganville Vampires series. If you like vampires and action/suspense with just enough horror, you’ll like this. (And there are no werewolves. At least not so far.)

Teamwork

alexandsam — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:19:04 +0000

Teamwork in classes is way overrated.
I am taking a continuing ed class at FSU in library leadership. We have to do the majority of our work in team format. We have been assigned teams, based on what type of library we preferred (although I don’t know how that’s going to make any difference overall). There are four people in my team. We have to present in class on Monday and we have to meet beforehand to prep the presentation. So three of us corresponded on the discussion board yesterday, and today two of us met in in the team chat room in Blackboard. I guess the third didn’t get the message about the time. The first thing I did this morning was check back in to see if anyone had posted a meeting time, and indeed she had, so she and I met at the designated time this morning. The third person, who had chimed in previously, did not appear, and no one has heard from the fourth person, who is the only guy.
So the other girl and I did what we had to do: we each presented what we had found out, and talked about how we might present that in class. She is going to email the other two with a poll, and wait until tomorrow morning to see if we hear from them. In the meantime, she and I agreed to meet again tomorrow morning at the same time, and if neither of the other two is there, I guess we’ll proceed with the two of us.
I have been lucky in the past two classes with the teams I’ve been on, but I’ve had some terrible teams in the past, and it’s particularly difficult to work online when you are hundreds of miles apart. I hope this one is not going to be one where there are two of us doing all the work. I guess we will be able to tell the instructor that at some point, but still, it’s not fair. Although if they, especially the guy, are not conscientious enough to check their email or the discussion board, then heck with ‘em.
In our business degree program, the final capstone course that the students take is a completely teamwork-based course, where the teams have to decide on a business that they would like to start, and write a complete business plan about it. I have had so many complaints over the years from these capstone students. Usually there is one of them coming in to the library to do all the research and they are bitching about the rest of their team as they do it.
In the real world, there have been very few instances where I have worked on a team that is similar to the ones that I have found in my classes. It’s too artificial. Real world teams don’t work like that. When I taught the capstone class, I had only five students, and I made them each do their own business plan. Most often in the real world, you end up doing things yourself. You may have a team leader who assigns work, but it’s not a democracy. The team is headed by someone in a position of authority, and that person has the power over you to make you do what you’re supposed to. In classes they try to run the teams as democracies and it doesn’t really work all that well.
I sympathize with the students, but there’s not much I can do about it. I don’t know why instructors are so sold on the team concept; supposedly they have worked in the real world and should know how these things go, but they seem to forget all that when they step into the classroom. In my opinion, if you’re not responsible and you’re not someone who gets along well with others, you’re going to be a lousy team member, and no amount of being on teams in classes is going to change that.

My yearly movie

alexandsam — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:35:22 +0000

I see about one movie a year in the theater. Usually it’s around the holidays. Last year it was Black Swan. This year, I was a little late, but I finally saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on Sunday.

I enjoyed it. It was well done and well acted. The girl who plays Lisbeth, in particular, did a great job. She embodied the character in exactly the way I had her pictured from the book. She was also the one amongst the non-Swedish actors who got the closest, I thought, to the Swedish accent. Daniel Craig looks the part but he pretty much stuck with his British accent. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Would I recommend the movie? Yes, but if you haven’t read the book first, you are going to be confused. Especially the first hour. If you don’t know how the two story lines are going to come together eventually, it seems very odd to have these two seemingly unrelated characters and story lines going back and forth. Also, the character development in the movie was pretty thin as compared to the book. They were very faithful to the book as far as plot, and they got the basics of the plot in, but there wasn’t much time for character development. In the book, Mikael is not as likable as he is portrayed in the movie. It’s not that they changed anything about the character; they just left a lot out.

I read the book after it had been out a while, and was already in paperback, and I finally decided that I just had to see what all the fuss was about. I’m glad I did. The trilogy was great, and the second and third of the books were actually better than the first, in my opinion. The first book gets started a little slowly, but it’s worth it to hang in there. Once the two characters meet, the plot takes off.

So, read the book first, if you haven’t. Then see the movie.

Growing concerns

alexandsam — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:00:53 +0000

The Boston lettuce sprouts are about a half inch high now. I would add a picture but my camera batteries are dead. I took a picture with the iPad but I can’t figure out how to send the picture anywhere but email yet.

I also have sprouts in the raised bed, of broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage. Right now they all look alike but they’ll sort themselves out soon. I haven’t seen any sign of the spinach out there yet.

Boston lettuce sprouts

alexandsam — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 14:45:50 +0000

I haz them.

These weren't there yesterday.

They appeared nearly overnight. Yesterday, I thought that I was seeing a few roots. Today, there is actual green showing. The pictures are a little blurry.

There is one small sprout in the raised bed out back. I think it’s cabbage but I can’t remember exactly what order I planted them in. Should have done it alphabetically.