Normally when I take a vacation, I take a vacation from exercising too. I know I’m not supposed to, but eh, I’m on vacation and I’ll do what I want. However, I’m gasping through running the IrishFest 5K on Saturday morning, so taking a week off before the race would be a very bad idea unless I owned an Irish wolfhound to carry me across the finish line. (I don’t.)

I’m visiting my brother and his wife, and their house is near a trail that was built on an old railroad line, much like the Happy Fun & Fitness Trail near my old apartment is. This trail is amazingly similar to my Happy Fun & Fitness Trail, except for the little things that make it seem like a cloning project that went slightly awry. This trail has more curves and moves up and down on the z-axis creating something I’ve heard are called “slopes.” Us Indiana folk are not familiar with these “hill” things. Thus the huffing and puffing increased cardio workout. I nearly stumbled over [...]

• Continue reading "Trail mix, North Carolina style"

I am at the beach! That is why I posted that depressing entry yesterday, which I actually wrote two weeks ago while pinned to the couch by the gravity of massive depression. I feel much better now, but on Monday morning I needed to post something, and that was all that was in my queue, so Bummed Out Monday it was!

I am in Nag’s Head, North Carolina, checking out my pier.

You can tell it’s my pier because not only is my name on it, but it’s spelled right. I made sure the sign-painting people didn’t misspell it. However, Hurricane Isabel did a number on my pier a few years ago (more like Hurricane Is-a-Bitch), so I hired some contractors to fix her up.

It will be 2011 or so before I can invite y’all over, but keep your calendars clear for when we open up again! And remember, you read it on the Internet, so it must be true!

• Continue reading "Hangin’ out at my pier"

Recently Rebecca asked in the comments of an entry:

By the way, have you been able to lose any of the weight you regained when you were attacked by the Killer Headache? Do you think you’ll ever talk about the subject? Since many (if not most) of us were drawn to this site by your book and or diet adventures, I think you’d have an eager and receptive audience. And, as a long-time maintainer of an 85 pound loss (more than five years, and holding…) I’d be interested in what you have to say about “rebounding.”

Weight loss? Oh, right, weight loss. I would still like to lose my headache weight, and I do think about losing weight every day, but lately my thoughts have been more preoccupied with figuring out how to live with my constant headache. I have a chronic illness. I will probably always have a chronic illness. I have good days. I have bad days. When I wake up in the morning I don’t know what kind of day it will be, but [...]

• Continue reading "A day in the life of chronic illness"

It is a game I play lately, to see how cheap I can live without hating how I live. Now that I’m freelancing full time, I am far more watchful of my income than I was for the past year and a half when I worked Not Quite Plush, But Reasonably Padded Corporate Job. My budget behavior far more resembles the four years before that when I worked Low-Paying, Uninsured, Small Company Job with Spunk and Freedom. I was not paid much, but I was happy to simply have a job. I also had $7000 in gallbladder surgery debt, a $2200 transmission bill, and about $1200 of dental work to pay off, all of which I was not happy to have. Back then, I actually went back to a store to get a $1.20 refund on something I’d bought because I desperately needed every penny of that dollar and twenty cents.

The nice thing about Not Quite Plush, But Reasonably Padded Corporate Job was that I did not have to watch my money that closely. I [...]

• Continue reading "The budgeting game"

“Today is going down as a huge turning point in my life,” my mother told me recently.

“Oh, why?” I asked hesitantly, trying to remember if today was her wedding anniversary, divorce anniversary or some other anniversary.

“They’ve discontinued my General Foods International Orange Cappuccino!” She wailed.

I cannot remember a time in my life when my mother did not drink the General Foods International Orange Cappuccino. There was always one or two of the small rectangular tins on our kitchen counter, one full of the instant coffee mix and one containing drained grease. The tins were metal and wouldn’t melt when hot liquid grease was poured into them after cooking.

But now, just like my lamented Strawberry Shredded Wheat, the Orange Cappuccino is missing from the shelves of Target, Kroger and Meijer. When I visited the General Foods web site, they have a listing for Orange Spice Latte in the place of the the old Orange Cappuccino page. According to comments on this page, the Orange Spice Latte flavor does not taste the same.

I wish they would warn [...]

• Continue reading "In search of Orange Cappuccino"