A cliched resolution on any other day is just a better life choice

My original plan, a good one, was to resolve to use only cloth or reuseable bags for my grocery shopping instead of starting a new collection of disposable plastic and paper bags in my new Pueblo apartment. I'm still going to do this, and I recognize that it might require me to buy a new reuseable bag each shopping trip for awhile until I get used to the change. I'm actually looking forward to starting! Alas, I currently live in a hotel and haven't grocery shopped in over a week so no chances yet to begin.

On the other hand, I watched a ridiculous number of TLC episodes of Big Medicine yesterday and felt overwhelmed by the struggles that these super-obese people face. I realized I am healthy enough to exercise and make better food choices now, but I could easily get into the shape these people are in. So I set up an Excel workbook to look at calories consumed and burned each day for the whole year. I discovered that I probably ate almost 1,000 calories yesterday at breakfast by grazing at the continental breakfast provided by my hotel. 1,000 calories!! Today, I have already done better. I still drank coffee, but chose cereal and a yogurt instead of the scrambled egg/bacon/bagel with pound cake and chocolate muffin option and brought it down to about 500 calories total. Amazing.

So I don't want to say that "losing weight" is a new year's resolution. Ick. Let me stick to no plastic bags. On the other hand, I feel committed to making better food choices and to exercising more. I only wish TLC would have aired the Big Medicine marathon on some random day so it wouldn't seem like a New Year's thing.

A burnt chicken is better than a cold sausage

I burned my chicken last night and it was delicious!

I bought a charcoal grill at the beginning of the summer and have had a miserable time trying to cook things on it. I read through a grilling book and looked at some websites and thought I knew what to do. But each time I tried cooking sausage or hamburgers, the fire would go out really fast, the food would get hot but nothing every had the grill marks. Something was just not right.

I found an awesome grilling book from Cook's Illustrated and they set me right -- I had been pouring the hot coals from my chimney starter onto the bottom basin of the grill, not on the bottom rack. The coals couldn't get any oxygen to keep burning and were too far away from the food to get it really hot right away.

So last night, I fixed this problem and actually burned my chicken and corn on the cob! It was fabulous! Between the 70 degree weather and finally solving my grill problems, I think I'll be grilling way more - like maybe every night.

Tonight's menu: beef fajitas with grilled veggies, fire-roasted fresh salsa

Funny Kid Stories

Sometimes, the best thing about my job is truly how 'kids say the darndest things.' Here are a couple of gems from this week:

At the end of the day, my student and I were putting away her materials and I noticed a couple of note cards on the floor with words on them that we had been practicing that day.

I said "Oh, some words fell on the floor."

My student got upset, asking me, "What words?"

I showed her the note cards and she looked relieved. She told me that she had pictured the words falling out of the book we had just been reading and didn't know how we were going to put them back in.

~~~~~

In a different session, my student was reading through a list of commonly used words so that we could find the tough ones that needed practice. We found as many as we needed that hour and I was about to put the list away when my student exclaimed, "I found God!"

God was listed two words down from where we stopped on the list.

Week 2, Run 1

I started phase 2 of my jogging program today. I was a little worried that my stamina wouldn't be up for the challenge (90 sec of jogging followed by 2 minutes of walking and repeat for 20 minutes) since I hadn't gone for a jog in a week. But I did it! I definitely felt some of the uncomfortable aspects of jogging today -- a stitch in my side at times, tightness in my calf and quads, a small pain in the right ankle. Yet, somehow, it got easier as I kept it up. By the second half, I wasn't checking my timer as often.

A Fool Proof Plan

Thanks to Elinor's suggestion, I have started a running program -- just finished run #2. And I feel great! The program starts with 60 sec of jogging/90 sec of walking alternated for 20 minutes in the first week and gradually increases time and duration of jogging until, by week 9, I'll be jogging for 30 minutes straight. Can't wait.

Last Monday, I only completed 15 minutes of the prescribed 20 minutes. I had a stitch in my side and was bored with the indoor track. Today, it was overcast and 65 degrees. Everyone in the Twin Cities is outside. I loaded my Nano with fast-paced music and headed for Lake Calhoun. Twenty minutes went by so fast!

But the best part? I've set myself up for success this time, without really realizing it. I am working with a student right now who is in high school and has severely depressed reading skills. He wants to learn to read and recognizes how important it is, but because of the frustration he feels and the intensity of the work we do, he often refuses to work and finds excuses for not participating. I saw the parallel between his goals and frustrations with my struggles to find an exercise plan that would allow me to lose weight and feel healthier. So I told him I was starting this running program and compared my goal to build stamina and strength for running with his goal to learn to read. I've been keeping him updated with my progress, including the days I talked myself out of running or didn't go as far as I wanted to. One day he said running would be easy for him. I replied that I would much rather be reading, but that we both need this to make our lives better, and it's not easy for either of us. And that we can do it.

The result is that I can't give up on this plan, can't procrastinate it, can't make excuses and give up, can't pretend I didn't tell him about it. Kids have a fantastic ability to hold us accountable, and I certainly can't go to my student now and say, "Sorry, this running program is just too hard. I'll never be able to run or get healthy." The truth is, if we both stick with it, we can both succeed, and if I'm going to be role-model in this struggle, I better do everything possible to prove that success is possible!

"Woe unto ye beetles of South America"

I am reading Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, by Carl Zimmer. It is a textbook-quality primer on where the knowledge of evolution currently stands, past, present, and pending discoveries included.

I was just reading about Charles Darwin’s preparations for the trip on the HMS Beagle, a story I’ve read many times. Apparently, Darwin was fascinated by beetles during his theological studies at Cambridge. Upon discovering that he would indeed be traveling around the world as a naturalist, he exposed his truly nerdy self by declaring, “Woe unto ye beetles of South America.”

What idealism and unabashed dedication to an obscure subject in the face of the adventure of a lifetime! I like to think that he said this without the obligatory quasi-sarcastic tone that contemporary idealists and nerds must employ to avoid seeming too eager or sincere. I like the idea of quoting Darwin when I am feeling particularly idealistic or nerdy or grandiose, but then, of course, I would be using that quasi-sarcastic tone…

I call bullshit on On Bullshit

After quite a hiatus from my 30-at-a-time library book borrowing habit, I have 4 tasty selections, and more on my wait list.

• On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt
• Godel, Escher and Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter
• In Search of the Mind, by Eric R. Kandel
• A Culinary Traveler in Tuscany, by Beth Elon

I’ve avoided any online talk of On Bullshit so don’t know what the general consensus is, but I think Frankfurt has written a pretty fantastic joke. On page one, he claims “most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and avoid being taken in by it.” I think this is the point of the book — to fool the very intellectual folk who would be so confident. Frankfurt has written a very real book with a very real discussion of the explicit and implicit characteristics of bullshit. Yet, just as he considers it not quite lying, more of a bluff, I believe he wrote the entire piece as a bluff. We are not meant to take it seriously.

I am both annoyed and impressed — much as I would be, I suppose, by any other very good bullshit.