Weekly Roundup

I'm up way, way too early today. Couldn't sleep. Doug's got a bad cold, so he was breathing really funny last night and tossing and turning, poor guy. Kept me up a bit, but really my restlessness is mostly from the fact that I ate the rest of my Dean's Distinction award chocolate last night right before bed. It wasn't even all that good, either.

Here we are, in for another weekly roundup, though this might actually be a bi-weekly roundup, but whatever! Tomato, tomahto, you know what I mean.

These couple of weeks have been pretty productive. Doug got a lot of recording done. He did a fair bit with his band, and now that the drum tracks are laid down I don't have to flee the house during recording sessions, which is nice. I secretly like to listen to the recording (don't tell him!), at least this part of the recording, because I like hearing Doug be in charge and have his creativity represented in the music. He's got good ideas, and he's actually quite a good organizer of people and of sounds - direct, but pleasant and fair. I've always told him that he should open his own recording studio and be a producer, and I suppose he has, effectively. It's in our basement. Anyway, he also completed three pretty good tracks for this year's RPM Challenge. If I knew how to link to them here I would, but that bit of technological savvy is beyond me.

So what else. We finally - finally! - put a new light fixture into the dining room that actually throws off enough light in the room! Doug worked his electrician magic yet again. Here is the process in a series of photos, ending in the final product.

I threw in that second-to-last one in homage to all the ghost programming that we are still watching here at the Sheriko Inn, though far much less Ghost Hunters and far more Ghost Adventures. Grant's leaving Ghost Hunters; did you know that? Can't bode well for that show.

Okay, so now that we can see in the dining room, which breathes life into daily routines (seriously, good lighting is so important, which is why I have no idea why we waited so long to change out the fixture), we can focus on other things. Like...

- Seeing what we are eating for dinner, though these days it's usually all the same green color so we don't need to see it as much as taste it.

- Getting used to life without plastic frames, which is harder than you might think, since this means that the one little hipster bit of me is gone and I'm now just hip (if even).

- Winning awards of recognition for hard work and notable efforts to serve the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the larger Harvard community. What's really funny is that I nominated my team for this award, because I was feeling like we could all use a morale boost, but didn't tell them about it. They nominated me, but didn't tell me about it. I won, surprisingly, but I told them that they were the real winners, since (and I really do mean this) I wouldn't have any success if it weren't for their hard work and notable efforts.

And, finally, there's our first real snowfall of the winter 2011-2012 season. All of, what, a few inches? Hardly anything at all, but enough to make everything cold, raw, and slick. Enough to make me remember fondly our time in Florida. Enough to make me long for spring. But, enough to make everything rather pretty.

Okay, that's all I've got. The birds have finally started to chirp and the clock just struck 6am. Time to move on to the next!

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.

Monday night thoughts.

It's Monday night and I have a purring cat on my lap (this cat

our first cat, our brownest cat and the one who gets the least amount of attention, except when she's doing something fun like relaxing inside cabinets) and a husband and his bass player in the basement recording some tracks.

That's what's happening on this Monday night, the last Monday in January. It's a good night to get you caught up on my life.

Work is going well. The e-reader pilot project that I worked on for the last eight weeks has finally launched and all the e-readers are checked out. Did it go off without a hitch? Not really, but overall it has been a success. I'm thinking about putting some kind of article together to talk about our pilot development, decision-making process, launch, and assessment. I've never written an article for publication before. Normally I don't do anything publishing-worthy, so this particular event should be documented. Plus, I think it's worth getting word out that Harvard is only now dipping its toe into the world of e-readers. I don't know if Harvard really talks about the programs going on in our libraries in a public way. I think we should. I'd like more transparency into what it's really like at Harvard.

Of course, there was a bit of transparency into what it's really like at the Harvard libraries this past week when the whole world learned of our Library Transition. I capitalize that phrase because it's an event, a noteworthy happening, something that will be captured in the annals of the University. I don't think that the Transition has been a secret, but I don't think that it had the library world's attention the way it did after the Town Hall Meeting we had to discuss the next phase in the process. This phase involves voluntary and involuntary staff reductions in order to meet the Transition goals of efficiency and effectiveness. Rumors had been flying about at Harvard of layoffs (or "staff reductions" in Harvard-speak) since the beginning of the years-long transition, but they were finally confirmed. Harvard librarians were aghast, angry, and offended. They took to Twitter and their blogs to write about the news (a particularly good post about the news was made by my colleague). The story spread and other librarians wrote about the news, too. It's been quite dramatic at work these days to say the least.

(My own two cents on the whole situation is this: From the get-go, this Transition has been about creating "efficiencies and effectiveness" at the Harvard Library, bringing an absurd number of independently-functioning (and collecting!) libraries under one albeit broad and still many-headed umbrella. Anytime anyone talks about "efficiencies and effectiveness" you know that layoffs will be involved. This is how it works in the corporate world, and - newsflash! - Harvard is just as corporate as any big business. I was not surprised when the rumors were confirmed. I am not happy that so many of us could be without jobs by the end of the fiscal year, but I am not surprised. What I am glad about is that we are being given carte blanche to spend time at work - and with our HR departments - working on our resumes, sharing job postings and job leads, and we will not have to clandestinely apply and interview elsewhere but can do so with encouragement. I have no idea if my position will be cut, or if my position will be changed enough in the new organizational structure such that it turns into a different position, one for which I will have to reapply, but I do know that I will be getting great advice on my resume and on my skillset, and I will be in a good position to start interviewing if need be. Because we have only limited (well, none, really) information on what the new organization is going to look like it's too soon for me to get too nervous about my job. The really bad news hasn't hit us yet, and until it does I cannot get too upset about this; I don't want to live in uncertainty and despair for longer than I have to.)

Instead of going home and crying about the possibility of losing my job, I am focusing on my physical and mental health by way of changing my eating habits (which you have read about before). I am not a vegan, nor am I a true vegetarian, but I am definitely a more informed eater. Maybe a reformed eater. Or no, more like a reforming eater. For the past week and a half I have had virtually no dairy, no cheese, very, very few refined carbohydrates, and little to no refined sugars. I've lost a few pounds this way and I am feeling a lot better.

The little amount of weight that I have lost hasn't come off because of Weight Watchers, of which I am now a member. Weight Watchers is teaching me stuff, so it is doing something; I'm learning that portions are key. At Weight Watchers, everything is based on a point system. The more I eat of something the more points it costs me, and because I have a limited number of points that I can eat during the day I have to watch how much I eat. But points are also accrued by the types of foods I eat. Processed foods high in calories, carbohydrates and fats are more points. So I should be eating fewer of these types of foods in order to stay within my points range. Here's the thing, though - I have not actually ever counted points while I have been on Weight Watchers. I find that kind of tracking of what I eat to be tedious and I don't have the patience for it. Instead, I have read through the booklet that tells me how many points different foods have and I now have a sense of what foods have the lowest points. They are, not surprisingly, whole foods, foods like fruits and vegetables in their natural state (not juiced or dried or anything like that), and lean proteins. So that's the vast majority of what I'm eating. And it seems to be working.

It's like a food revolution in our house (maybe Jaime Oliver can come film us!). Doug is joining me on this eating makeover, too. But, lest you think we have buried our deep-fryer in the backyard, know that we never had one in the first place. This makeover may not be as drastic as I am making it sound. Our revolution is not moving from eating deep-fried chocolate-covered donuts each morning washed down with a glass of Quick to eating a plate of egg whites, but instead not eating snack foods that come out of a bag, and being aware of the ingredients and nutrients in our whole day of eating and not just each meal. I viewed each meal and snack as a separate entity, getting my daily requirements of proteins, fats, and carbs in at each meal instead of throughout the course of the entire day. Now I am treating my whole day as if it were one meal, being thoughtful about what I am eating when and how much of it I am eating. Our dinners are remarkably similar to what they used to be (minus the bread and the dairy), but it's the breakfasts and the lunches that are, for me, quite different.

We are both approaching this new diet, this new lifestyle, with enthusiasm and interest. This has not been forced upon us because we have high cholesterol, are at real risk for heart disease or diabetes, or because we are obese. We are choosing to spend more time on making meals like vegan cream of tomato soup (taking the time to dice sun-dried tomatoes, even!)

because because we want to be at our physical and mental healthiest in order to have an improved quality of life, in order to respect ourselves and to live our values. No, I am not giving up ice cream, and no, in no way am I giving up chocolate, but I am just not going to eat it like I once did (when you imagine me with a bag of Hershey's Kisses think Cookie Monster in one of his cookie-eating fits). That's the plan, anyway. And so far I'm sticking to it.