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.

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.

You have to look close...

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.)

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.

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.

Yesterday, my task was to clean up my email inboxes.

When I first interviewed to work at the college, I was up for a position as the branch librarian at our one branch campus library. (We have five branches, but only one has a library.) Before the formal interview, I met with the woman that I would be replacing, who was moving on to take a library director position in another state. I asked her what she did during a typical day. She said, “Mostly check email.”

At the time, I couldn’t imagine that email could ever take more than about fifteen minutes a day. (Which left me wondering what she did the rest of the time.) Now, I kind of see what she was talking about. (But only kind of.)

I get tons of email. And I’m just talking about my work email here, not my Gmail and my other personal account. Most of it is trash. I get messages from publishers, from database vendors, and from authors wanting me to preview and/or buy stuff. I get notices of college-wide stuff that may or may not involve me. I get suggestions for reading from our other librarians (if one of us finds something that relates to the job, we often forward it to all the others).  Since I take an occasional class from Florida State for continuing ed purposes, I get notices from them every time there is a crime on campus or every time they need to clear parking lots for a football game. I get requests for proposals from conferences looking for speakers. I get invitations to submit articles to journals. I get research questions from students. I get research questions from faculty. I get requests from faculty to come to their classrooms. I get notices of webinars from several different agencies. I get notices of meetings I have to go to. I get a lot of stuff of various sorts from the Florida Library Association. And, every time someone needs a substitute on our statewide online reference service desk, I get the email request.

Needless to say, most of this is immediately deletable. The student questions come first, and the faculty questions come second. After that comes everything else. I do attend a good many webinars, so I’m glad to get those notices. (Since we have no money in our budget for travel for professional development, free webinars are a great way to keep up.) But everything else can go.

I have seen many productivity experts say that you should only check email at a designated time every day. I can’t do that. If a student has a research question, it’s because they’re working on their paper RIGHT NOW. Getting back to them at the end of the day is only going to increase their stress.  If a faculty member has a request, I want to let them know immediately that I got it and I’m going to get to work on it. If there’s something going on at the college that I need to know about, sometimes it’s happening right at that time. So waiting until the end of the day is not possible.

But I do delete as I go, so everything that can be immediately discarded, is.

My boss hasn’t gotten her email under control. Right before the break she had over 2000 in her inbox. The most I’ve ever had is around 300. When I got back from break, I had around 150.

So yesterday I dug in, either deleting things past their time frame or moving everything else into its appropriate folder. Now I have 10, and I can see them all at once without even scrolling down.

Now the goal is to keep it that way, so that I don’t have to have another “clean up email” task day.

And now I have to get started on today’s task. Which has nothing to do with email, fortunately.

I follow Library Journal on Twitter, and back in the fall I saw a tweet that said they were looking for new reviewers. I emailed them, and they got right back to me and sent me the application forms. I had never written a formal book review, and I told them that, but they said that was fine.

Right before Christmas I got my first book to review. The way it works is they send you a book and give you a certain amount of time, about three weeks, to read it and write your review. They have strict guidelines for the reviews, and the toughest part of it is keeping the review to around 175 words.

I read the book over the holiday, using little Post-It notes to mark passages that I thought I might want to refer to, then I wrote out my thoughts and notes on the passages I had marked. That document came to over 1500 words! Needless to say I had to leave most of it out for the review. But yesterday I finalized the review, coming in at 181 words, and sent it off.

It made me nervous! I used to think that book reviewers had to be English majors, with special training that taught them how to tell a good book from a mediocre or bad one. I guess that’s true in some cases. My only training is that I’m a voracious reader. I know what I like, but I never thought that my opinion could be held as valid, I guess. But maybe it can! I suppose that Library Journal could get back to me and say, “You are the worst reviewer we’ve ever had; thanks but no thanks.” Ack! But I thought the review was pretty good, and it fit their criteria…so we’ll see. It will be a couple of months before it gets published. The book I reviewed won’t be published until February, so I’m guessing the review will appear then or shortly thereafter. I can’t say anything public about the book yet because it hasn’t been published.

The best thing about the process is that we get to keep the books they send us. There is no compensation, it’s purely voluntary, but we do get the books. To me, that makes it worth it.

I can’t wait to see it in print. It’s kind of like waiting for Christmas.