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Monday, February 20, 2012

Weekly Roundup

These days I'm having a bit of trouble coming up with titles to my posts, especially the ones where I have no real theme or topic and just regurgitate the week's happenings. Weekly Roundup seems like an apt title, if somewhat boring. But maybe that makes it that much more apt!

Anyway, we've been trucking along here at the Sheriko Inn. In an effort to get out of the house and explore our surroundings, we took a day trip to Newburyport. Newburyport is a bit of a swank town on the very tip of the North Shore, only about twenty miles from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It's got a nice little town center and is very much a maritime town, so there's plenty of history and New England village style. It's home to a very welcoming (and well-funded) public library and, our main reason for trekking there, Plum Island. We like Plum Island, even in the winter. Don't you?


So that was a fun day. Cold, but fun. Naturally, we did some extensive searching of the Newburyport real estate market when we got back home, and Google Mapped our commutes to work, because we got Let's-Live-in-Newburyport! fever after our little jaunt. But those feelings have subsided (somewhat). I blame the distractions of life on these fleeting feelings.

Distractions like busy weekends filled with lots of driving and socializing with family. While Doug was hanging with the boys at his now annual Hotel Reunion, I spent my Saturday at work and then traveled down to CT to hang out a bit with my mother and brother. We saw The Woman in Black and had a very tasty dinner. I can't say enough good things about the food at Al Frescos in East Hartford (of all places!) but I have a limited number of good things to say about The Woman in Black, and most of them stop with these two words: Ciaran Hinds. And on Sunday it was more family fun with heading down to see my niece cheer at her last basketball game of the season.

Yes, you read that correctly. My niece, Maria, is a cheerleader. At first when I heard that she was going to be a cheerleader I was a little annoyed. I don't consider myself one who would willingly associate with the cheerleader type (and I do think that there is something of a cheerleader type), so I was having trouble reconciling these feelings with the fact that my niece was going to be, or become, this "type." But, really, who am I kidding. Maria is totally the cheerleader type, and in a good way. She's a performer, that Maria, and she loves the spotlight.



She makes a great cheerleader; in my biased opinion, she's one of the best on the squad. And she's darned cute, too. We'll keep her.

Although we had no cheering squad to help us celebrate a milestone this weekend (if only my niece didn't live so far away!), Doug and I managed to get in the festive spirit to acknowledge our fourth wedding anniversary. Four years! How does one celebrate four years of marriage? By going to Aquitaine and getting the most tender cut of spare rib you can imagine


and getting in some cuddle time with the fuzzy ones.


And by cuddle time I mean narrowly avoiding suffocation by the giant 15-pound beast who thinks that your head makes a very good resting place.

Lest you think that's not enough celebration, that four years is certainly a significant enough milestone in one's married life to warrant something a little bit more substantial, we finally got our new shower door installed at 8am on Saturday morning.


Honestly? I may have liked this activity better than our fancy dinner. I've been trying to get that door installed since early December and have been kept up at night with visions of water leaking through my living room ceiling (due to the water leaking out from the faulty door), but now I can sleep easier. The old door is gone, the bathroom is cleaner than it's been since we moved in, the possible leak in the skylight was investigated and found to be no issue, and now Doug doesn't have to listen to me whine about getting the bathroom fixed anymore. So life is good here now. Onto the next.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Nothing much (new) to say.

I realize that I have been harping on and on about food choices, recipes, healthy eating, weight, blah blah blah... but I have to continue my harpy ways. I have been feeling very strongly and have been very motivated about all of this. For whatever reason, some kind of switch just flipped in my brain three or four weeks ago and now I'm very much obsessed with correcting bad habits (at least bad eating habits).

I finally finished Why We Get Fat, and I have never read a book that I so thoroughly hated for the first ten pages but then started to live and breathe every chance I got. It's like it penetrated my cells, just like simple carbohydrates seem to, but in a much more positive, much more healthy way. This book, conversations with friends, and some good old Internet research, have really turned me off to my constant and devotional intake of simple carbohydrates and sugars. I have also realized that the vast majority of my diet was composed of simple carbohydrates and sugars. Take a look at one of the last meals I had before I started to read this book: a giant pile of sweet potatoes, a giant pile of mashed potatoes, four slices of oatbran bread, some generous pads of Smart Balance spread, a glass of orange juice, and a whole package of Trader Joe's Bistro Biscuits. I ate all of this under the pretense of being healthy. Potatoes? Good for me - a vegetable! Oat bread? Good for me - whole grains and fiber! Non-butter spread? Good for me - not butter and with added flax! Orange juice? Good for me - vitamin C! Bistro Biscuits? Not good for me, but better to eat the whole bag at that point then have them sitting on the shelves calling to me and driving me batty (right?).

So. You get the point.

I have been pretty devoted to my new way of eating since I started this almost a month ago. I have also been better about getting Doug to eat less sugar, or at least drink less sugar. Now, sugar is a treat for us, and so is a giant bowl of cheesy, saucy, coma-inducing pasta. Christmas comes once a year for a reason; if it were Christmas every day then it wouldn't be special. Same thing with cookies, cakes, breads, and others of my absolute most favorite foods. This is a regimen about moderation, not about complete denial. It's also a regimen about eating at home more. This does mean that meal preparation at home takes so much longer than it did before, and that we are spending more at the grocery store than we did before, but it's worth it. I know it is worth it. I can feel it every day that it is worth it. So I'm sticking to it.

There. Hopefully that's it for a while on the whole food revolution thing, because I don't want to get boring.

Otherwise, not much has been going on, which you can tell from this so-far-pictureless post. Just the usual. Work, gym, cooking food, eating, reading, watching a bunch of nothing on TV, cleaning, hanging out. I did see The Iron Lady with friends a couple of weekends ago (a movie that I didn't understand, mostly because it focused almost exclusively on Margaret Thatcher being old and kind-of out of it, and very little on her as Prime Minister, which makes no sense because people who want to learn about Margaret Thatcher don't want to learn about how depressing it is when people, especially influential people, get old and decrepit), and joined a friend at a pretty interesting lecture on the Connectome the other night, too. Doug is recording, as you know, so I have been spending some of my weekends out of the house. This weekend I am spending my Saturday at work. In fact, I'm here right now, taking a break from writing proposals and analyzing fines tables, though I should be getting back to all of this:


One's work is never done, is it. But I'm not complaining, because I know that if in a few months my job is eliminated then I will be wishing I were sitting here in front of a messy desk (at work) again.

Friday, February 3, 2012

News flash - I am an introvert.

You know, some days - most days, really - I would so much rather be doing this job: Library Technician, Camdem Public Library. Have you been to Camden, ME? It's beautiful. Have you been to the library there? The location is just fantastic. I would not mind, not one bit, serving customers at the circulation desk; answering reference and reader's advisory questions; assisting customers and staff with basic technical support; and playing a vital role in their 21st century library if I could overlook Penobscot Bay all day. Or climb Camden Hills on the weekends. Or drive up to Belfast to my favorite fabric store every once in a while. Sign me up for that job!

But no, I am here persevering through the Library Transition, because we live here and not in Maine, and because there is something strong within my psychological makeup that does not allow me to simply walk away from a house, a job (for however long I have it), and an established life. Curse that something strong, because that Camden job is my dream job.

How could that job be my dream? It's not a management job. I would not be a leader, I would not be a director, I would not be in control of anything. I would do my 35-hours a week and that's it. What kind of a career is in that kind of a job? How does the strong, independent 20th century Sex and the City woman who can do and have it all fit in with a job like that? How could I possibly be happy with it?

But I could be. That's the thing. If I could get rid of that stupidly annoying something strong within my psychological makeup that also causes me to push forward and strive for things that I somehow think that I should want but do not actually want, I would go for a job like that in Camden and be happy with it all. Because I'm an introvert. I'm not looking for fame or fortune or for anything else but a place where I can fit in and be comfortable, and be myself. Read the cover article in the February 6th issue of Time and you'll see what I mean. I read the article and finally felt like someone got me. Like there were others out there like me. Like there really is an upside to being an introvert! And that it's okay that I am the way I am.


So if it's okay that I am the way that I am, and if 30% of all people are right there next to me on the introvert scale, why do I always feel so strange? So unique? So out of step and out of touch with the world? Look at me. Do I look that strange to you?


No, of course not. Clearly this is just some kind of personal hangup, and the more that I learn about other people who are like me, successful people (successful because they know who they are and work to their strengths), the better off I will be. Which means someday I may stop trying to fit myself into some kind of round hole that this square body just can't fit into, and instead I'll learn to be satisfied with being me. And I'll be happy to answer your informational questions while on shift at the local public library and not make myself crazy with guilt about not doing something "better."

Of course, you do realize that much of what I say is exaggerated. Because I am often quite satisfied being me. I have fun, in my own way, and I often enjoy myself. For example, I recently turned one of my homemade scarves into a cowl. This scarf was way too long and wide to be a good traditional scarf and I never really wore it. After wearing the cowl that Doug's mother got me for Christmas for about twenty days straight, I started to think that maybe I should get another to mix into the wardrobe. But why buy one? I should be able to make one myself, I said to myself. So I then said to myself, "But wait - you practically have made one already!" I pulled the scarf out of the closet, knitted the two ends together, and viola!


One rather large, rather cone-like cowl. Now I know what Sherman feels like. And I feel like I've accomplished something worthwhile and fun.

And, of course, I entertain myself in other ways. Like keeping up with the most cutting edge technologies. I have finally dipped my toe into the world of QR codes and have been making them for everything these past few days. Every sign I create to hang in the library, or to put in the cases of the e-readers we now circulate, has a QR code or two on it. But why limit my creative powers to work? I could start using these QR codes for everything. Could I now blog with QR codes? Post a QR code on this blog for the text of a post that exists on another of my (long abandoned) blogs? Perhaps that's going a little too far, but I can add a code that brings you to this site to any other site of mine.


Like a Facebook site. Or my twitter page. I'm sure the possibilities are endless.

So while others are out there trying to climb the corporate ladder, updating their resumes, searching job ads, getting advanced degrees to make more money and to have more power and control, I'll be thinking of places to put my QR codes. You know you'd rather be doing that, too.