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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Baaahh.

When you're young you marvel at old people. You know, people who are thirty or older. You wonder how they got to be so weird; doing things like waking up early in the morning without an alarm clock, falling asleep while watching TV, going to bed by 9pm, eating gross things like fish and mushrooms and nuts, reading the obituaries, spending free time after work doing dishes or ironing or vacuuming rather than doing something fun, etc. Then you reach the ripe old age of thirty and you realize that you are that old person! You're up each morning by 7:30 because you just "naturally wake up." Even if you're not in bed by 9pm you wish you were. And you find yourself ordering the bags of mixed nuts from your aunt's church fundraiser instead of the bags of gummy bears because suddenly, without warning, you actually like nuts (and you eat mushrooms even if you don't like them because you know you should).

Who are you? How did you get to be this person? What happens when you hit that magical age of thirty? I've noticed that over the past few years I've been going through these changes myself. My tastes have changed. My sleeping habits have changed. My priorities have changed. And my metabolism has changed.

A couple of examples of these changes:

1. I am now interested in things like natural, homeopathic remedies for healthy living and am more inclined to believe in astrological signs and symbols than I was even five years ago. I'm very keen to find the right homeopathic remedy to my over-anxious temperament, my stomach and digestive woes, and my other "ailments." I have been going to my homeopathic doctor for almost two years now (whoa) and am still soldiering on with finding the right essence to give me the improved quality of life that I want. (Now we're trying out the essence of the naja snake family, and putting any bit - even if it's not even a real bit - of a snake in me would have been unthinkable years ago.) And I am open-minded to certain astrological belief systems like the Chinese zodiac. I learned on Friday that I am a goat in the Chinese zodiac calendar - specifically an earth goat - and the description of the goat (in some circles the sheep) is just about spot-on. I'm eager to learn more about goats and Chinese astrology (and Eastern philosophies), and really could have cared less about this kind of stuff before.

(Thank you to Taking Back Tiffany for the goat photo.)

2. My diet and nutrition has become an almost-obsession, and this is probably linked to the fact that my metabolism has clearly changed. I have never been thin, or what I would consider skinny, and I have at various times of my life been what I consider "pleasingly plump." But my weight would fluctuate, and I could control it. If I ate a lot of sweets and breads, which I love, then I would get heavier. If I wanted to lose weight I could, just by cutting down the amount of food I ate, or by kicking my exercise regimen into high gear. Now, not so much. I trained so hard for the 5K in November and December, burning so many calories and not eating much more to compensate, and yet am still weighing in at a number I haven't seen in many years. Hence the Weight Watchers thing. And hence the obsession with vegetarianism, veganism, and cookbooks and recipes. As I write this, Doug is reading to me from Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet, because I am eager to learn more about how this healthy way of living might work for me. When in Florida with Jipty and Chris it seemed so natural to follow a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle when we were in the timeshare cooking meals for ourselves, but when we went out to dinner it seemed... mostly inconvenient. You can't just go to any restaurant and expect that there will be food there that you can eat. I didn't think I would be able to put up with that. I like convenience. But now that I am on Weight Watchers (sort of) and I know that I want to be healthy, and now that I'm learning that maybe a plant-based diet would render my snake and spider and whatever-other-kind-of-creepy-creature remedies unnecessary, maybe I can put up with that inconvenience.

So what is it about this aging thing? Do our habits really change as much as it seems they do as we get older? And don't people become more conservative and less open-minded as they age? I seem to be doing the opposite, but I'm not necessarily complaining, at least about these particular changes. The falling asleep while watching TV (or, worse, falling asleep while in the warm, dark movie theater...), well, that I wholeheartedly complain about and curse the aging process for hitting me with this one so early.

Fun and food.

It snowed yesterday and it's snowing again today. This is what greeted me when I walked out of the front door this morning to pick up the newspaper from the front step:

I'm not really complaining about the snowy scene this morning because it is January 21 and this is the first time we've had any snow cover, or any lasting snow cover, and we haven't had to bust out the shovels just yet (though we may have to today). But I am complaining just a little bit, because it was not that long ago - just last week as a matter of fact - that we were still in Florida.

Florida! My experience with Florida has been minimal, limited to a trip I don't remember (only through photos) when I was probably 4 years old to my grandparents' place near Naples; a trip to Disney World when I was about 8 years old; and a fleeting trip to Disney World with my high school band, sophomore year (I think?). We flew into Fort Lauderdale this time to spend some time in the warmth with our friends Jipty, Chris, and their son Ely, and even though we stayed for only three full days I feel like I got to know Florida a lot better. And I liked what I saw (even with all the gray-haireds!). So did Doug. We're on a south Florida kick now in our house.

What did we see? Here's the usual photo montage of our trip.

At Everglades Holiday Park we took an air boat ride in the Everglades. We saw... a few birds, a couple of large lizards, and some alligator eyes poking out from some weeds. We'd have seen more if it was sunny. Still, it was fun.

We went to the beach and we actually SWAM! (Or, at least went into the water. In January!) The water was clear, the sun was out (and we have little patches of tanned skin to prove it), and the sand was soft. It was a great beach trip.

We saw lots of strange birds; strange because none of them live in New England, save the gull. This little guy was everywhere, and he's native to Florida. We affectionately call him the turkey duck.

Pelicans, too. We saw real pelicans at the beach, just hanging out in the wild. How amazing! Here are a couple relaxing with their cormorant friends on the beach in Key Biscayne. (The sand was so very soft here, too. I could have sat on the beach for hours.)

We got to spend more time with Ely, who we only see once or twice a year, so his development between visits astounds us. He is such a polite boy, and really, very well-behaved. You can have conversations with him - with full sentences! Fun ones. The ones we were having usually involved some reference to Toy Story, but that was fine with us. We had fun with him.

We went to Bill Baggs State Park and saw this fine example of a non-New England lighthouse, the first either Doug or I had seen. Naturally we were impressed, and all the palm trees and clear, green water helped.

At the park we decided to rent this bicycle-built-for-four, and what fun! Ely didn't do any pedaling, but he enjoyed being in the front seat and telling us where to go. Doug got to steer. I liked getting the exercise and didn't mind the stares we got from the other park-goers. They were just jealous they didn't think to rent one of these things!

And, of course, we spent some time in Miami Beach, walking along Ocean Drive, and got a taste of what it might be like there in Spring Break or in the height of the season. We ate at one of Gloria Estefan's restaurants, and while there wasn't much for non-meat eaters to enjoy on the menu (though the friend yuca was very good - better than french fries, I think), we still had a good time.

Doug and I could have spent a lot more time in south Florida, exploring Miami, revisiting the Everglades, driving to the Keys, and just spending time on the beach or at the pool. We hope Jipty, Chris, and Ely want to go away with us again next winter, because we'd go back in a flash. And maybe by then we'll all have to be on the look-out for the non-meat restaurants.

Jipty and Chris (and Ely, too) are vegan now. Have been so for a while. And this means that eating out can be a little difficult. No meat and no dairy. You'd be surprised how many restaurants have few options for this kind of diet. At Lario's on the Beach there was a vegetarian platter (the black beans were vegetarian, so that was good), but that was it. That was the only option for them. Everything else had meat - because who knew that Cuban food was such a meat-centered cuisine? After spending time with Jipty and Chris and learning more about veganism and plant-based diets, and seeing for ourselves how much healthier they are since they have had this vegan lifestyle, I began to be converted. Just a little bit.

Doug and I don't eat a lot of meat. In fact, we really only cook meat once a week if that. In the past few years I have incorporated more vegetarian meals into our diets than meat-based meals. Listening to them and learning about how much better they feel on their vegan diet made me all the more convinced that we need more plants and grains in our diet. Plus, fruits and vegetables are 0 points in Weight Watchers Points Plus system, so I can eat all of them that I want (more on this Weight Watchers thing in another post).

So now I am obsessed with healthier eating. I'm reading recipes and looking at cookbooks each chance I get. I've found two that I'm particularly excited about

(during the big Patriots-Ravens football game tomorrow we'll be enjoying acorn squash and black bean empanadas instead of buffalo wings), but am always interested in recommendations. I am keen on adding a Mexican and Indian cookbook to my collection. We are not giving up on meat (or fish) entirely, but we are certainly focusing more of our attention on plants.

With that, it's time for the gym - healthy living can't just be based in the kitchen.