Recently, I’ve been thinking
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So, you can see from the graphs in the post below how I did with my personal challenge to try to get 10,000 steps in a day. If you throw out the final data point for a day when I forgot my Fitbit, I averaged about 9600 steps a day, which is a fantastic average. My long term average is 5,400. I had 16 days over 10K steps, which is the same as what I had in all of 2012. I ended up getting a new Fitbit One mid-month, when my Fitbit Classic kind of fell to pieces.
Things I learned:
- To get that many steps, I have to do a Morning Mile without fail. (Thank goodness for Radiolab)
- It’s still pretty cold in the mornings in March.
- The Fitbit One has a nifty feature that allows it to vibrate an alarm. I use it to remind me to get up and walk around at work mid-morning and mid-afternoon.
- I still have troubles getting my steps up on Sundays
- The Briarwood Mall is about 1200 steps round trip
- Sams Club is further away than I expected it by foot.
- If I walk while I’m on the phone, I can up really up my steps
Other goals:
I’ve been doing more Yoga via a Rec and Ed class. It’s been challenging and rewarding.
I have been shaving with a razor (instead of an electric shaver) since the beginning of the year. It’s nice because I don’t have to shave every day anymore.
I spent out on a few things that I wanted for myself. (A new television!)
I’m not very good at getting reviews of the media I am consuming written up.
I am about 36 miles into the 130 miles of the Huron River. I am right on track. The graph below is my Beeminder graph, so you can see when I’m slacking. I don’t actually know if it live updates or not. (The closer the dots on the graph, the more frequent I am rowing. As long as I stay above the yellow/orange line, I’m on track.)
I think my April goals are Plant a Garden (I planted flowers and built myself a raised bed garden last Saturday. Now I just have to fill the garden with soil and figure out what to plant in it.) and Be Braver. I’m also testing Take a Real Vacation.
This year, I set some New Year’s Resolutions, mostly principle based, to help me improve how I feel about myself and about my life.
The idea, when I had them, was to take one or two or three of the principles and work on them in any given time period (months being the most obvious.)
I’ll do a Jan-Feb wrapup here in a post or two, but I wanted to share an experience and my thinking about March.
In February, for reasons still a bit unclear to me, I asked myself a question: “Can I underspend a particular budget category?”
I do pretty good with my budget, but there is one line item that I constantly overspend: Shopping. I bin all of my Amazon purchases, clothes purchases (“Dress Better”), and most household goods to this category, and so have a tendency to overspend. It’s not a problem to my overall budget, as I’ve got a lot of wiggle room baked in. But I wanted to see if I could for once, spend within that budget on purpose. (“Deliberate practices”)
I’m happy to report that I could. It actually took a bit of work to rein back some impulse purchases, but I made it, underspending my budget by $43! No creative accounting or anything, although I did use points to pay for one Amazon purchase.
As I thought about the experience, I wondered what kind of a question could I ask myself for March. I have been playing with the idea of eating Paleo or vegetarian for a month (“Cook More”), but felt like I need a bit more time to learn about those particular diet systems. I’ve been meaning to start back up my Morning Mile (“Deliberate Practices” / “Be More Active”) once the weather starts to warm back up again. I had a great experience with that practice during November, and put it on the back burner for winter.
At approximately the same time I was pondering these big questions, I found an article about getting data out of the FitBit system into a Google Document. I love my FitBit, but I’ve never been able to really analyze my habits with it. It’s great on a one off daily analysis, but I wanted to know how I have been changing over time. Am I walking more? Am I walking less?
I spent some time figuring it out, but I’ve got my data over to a spreadsheet, where I learned some very interesting things. For example, last November was my 2012 high for average daily steps: about 7,600 vs my long term average around 5,500. (No surprise, thanks to the Morning Mile). I was surprised that I only hit 10,000 steps in a day only 16 times in 2012. Sundays are my least active day, and Saturdays are generally my most active, but in 2013 so far, it’s been a virtual tie between Mondays and Thursdays. I’ve apparently been more interested in watching TV on Saturdays than going for a walk. Cut me some slack, it’s cold in January and February!
I decide my question for March would be: Can I average 10K steps? Can I get more 10K step days in March than I did last year? What does it look like if I try to get more walking in?
I started out on Friday with a Morning Mile, and by the end of the day had only made it to 9000 steps. (I definitely took a few extra trips downstairs at bedtime for things I had “forgotten” to get past 9000.) Saturday, I may have overcompensated with a walk, a row, and then picking the vacuum cleaner at Chapel Cleanup. I hit 10K shortly after noon and ended the day with 14K steps. Already today I am at or above my Sunday average.
The graphs at the top of the page should show you how I’m doing. They should update daily. I’ll report back in April and let you know how it went.
I apparently have to share this because after discovering this yesterday, I had very vivid dreams last night about telling other people.
I know that you probably won’t be as blown away as I was, because you probably didn’t devour all of the Oz books when you were a kid, like some people I know.
I’ve been listening to the Wicked Years series by Gregory Maguire during my commute recently, and I’ve been holding a map in my head of Oz, of you know where Munchkinland and Gillikan and the Emerald City are. And I keep getting tripped up. Something wasn’t working quite right with my assumptions about Oz.
Large portions of the book took place in Munchkinland, where Dorothy originally landed. In my mind, (like the map below), Munchkinland is on the left side of the country. But wait! Dorothy landed on the Wicked Witch of the EAST! Munchkinland in my mind is on the West! No wonder I keep getting things messed up.
But notice that compass rose on the map. It’s oriented so that North is up, and East is left. Crazy!
According to Wikipedia, Mr. Baum had a map on a glass slide that he used in a traveling show. When he later copied it from the slide, he accidentally reversed it, and rather than redraw it, he just reversed the compass rose. His editor later flipped it back the normal way, adding to the confusion. Apparently, I am not the only one that this mixed up. Even the woman who took over writing Oz books, Ruth Plumly Thompson, reversed directions in Oz frequently!
And now you know! And maybe your mind was just as blown as mine was.
As part of my goal to Create More, I decided that I should review the media that I consume, as a way of reacting to it and as a way to be more conscious about what I am consuming. Expect to see a few of these here and there. I dream of maybe making video reviews at some point, but I’m not quite there technically yet.
Son of a Witch – Gregory Maguire
I saw this on the Audiobook shelves at the Library, and I’ve kind of been wanting to read it for a while. I’m an unrepentant Oz fan, so I picked it up. It’s the sequel to Wicked, which I read years ago, and of which, I will admit, I didn’t fully remember the plot. It follows the story of Liir, Elphaba’s possible son as he tries to figure out his place in the world. It was a fresh, if slightly dystopic, revisit of the familiar Oz. Liir struggles with feelings of insignificance, and is constantly telling people he isn’t important while taking charge of situations and pushing for results. Who hasn’t been there, but seriously, Liir was a bit whiny. (Not as whiny as the Cowerdly Lion, but I haven’t finished that book yet.)
I listened to a recording that Maguire had done himself. When I first realized that, I cringed internally. Authors usually aren’t as good of voice artists as voice artists are, but I was surprised. With the exception of a few really annoying Animals, he was actually a great voice for the books. (And I imagine that the Animals would have been annoying anyhow.)
I’d give it 3 stars of 5.
The Gathering Storm – Wheel of Time Book 12 – Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
I’ve been saving the last two Wheel of Time books until the final one came out this year. It is such an immersive universe that I wanted to wait so that I could jump in once instead of three times. Just trying to keep characters and plots straight was difficult enough. I resorted to wikipedia for plot summaries of the previous books and I constantly had to google characters and plot points to bring myself back up to speed. But hey, that’s what tablet computers are for, right?
I think Sanderson stepped into Jordan’s story admirably well. I could occasionally see his dorkiness shine through the text, but it wasn’t distracting, and I felt he was true to the story telling styles required for the Wheel of Time. The characters rang true to how I remembered them (It’s been years since I picked up the series, so I can’t speak to if there are glaring differences between the authors.)
As to the story itself, the main themes seemed to be the consequences of alienation and of reconciliation. We creep ever closer to the Last Battle.
I’m going with 4 of 5 stars.
Fringe – Season 1
Fringe is one of those shows that was advertised alongside Lost, and so you’d think I would have picked it up ages ago. I didn’t. The pilot involved a very grotesque terrorist attack, which was heavily advertised at the time. I didn’t get the point of the show from the advertisements, and so I didn’t watch it. Kind of like I did with Pushing Daisies.
Fortunately, some of the tastemakers that I follow on Tumblr posted just enough amusing Fringe GIFs at approximately the same time Amazon made it available for streaming that I was intrigued enough to give it a shot. I’m glad I did.
It took me several episodes to get into the show, but I was eventually hooked. The main characters all have a fantastic chemistry that pulled me into their world. The Peter / Walter relationship intrigues me enough to make up for the silly pseudo-science. I am also a amused by the Ford product placements. When the show finally started hinting at its main mystery, very late in the season, I knew I was in for watching the whole show. I won’t ruin the secret, but trust me when I say that getting past the pilot is totally worth it down the rest of the series.
4 of 5 stars.
Here are my personal awards for the year 2012. These are the people and the things that impressed me the most this year,
Mother of the year : Marianne Emmett and Erin Gong (tied) - Two of the bravest and most awesome mothers I know.
Father of the year : Alvin Emmett - Made tons of efforts to build an adult relationship with me this year
Friend of the year : Rob Witting – Moved most of my stuff plus just general awesomeness
Friend of the year (long distance division) : Melanie Carbine – Keeps in touch better than anyone I know
Person who was there at the exact right moment of the year : David Baker – He knows why
Computer Game of the year : Civilization V – Awesomesauce
Board Game of the year : Lords of Waterdeep – A lot of replayability on this one
Book of the year : Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm - Really got me thinking
Book series of the year : The Dark Tower series by Steven King – The first I’ve really read of Steven King, and I loved it!
Mormon book of the year : The Mormon People by Matthew Bowman – Helped me see how the popular culture has helped shape the Mormon Culture over the last 200 years.
Book Club book of the year: The Road by Cormac McCarthy – Beautifully written and full of feels
Television show of the year : Doctor Who – This will probably always win
Movie of the year : The Avengers – The only movie in years I’ve been willing to see twice in the theater
Pop song of the year : What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction – Yeah, I’m a little embarrassed for me too!
Band of the year : Of Monsters and Men - If you haven’t heard them yet, you’ve just got too.
Concert of the year : Vienna Teng at The Ark featuring Theo Katzman - Theo was a surprise, and great company too! Thanks for scalping tickets, Melanie.
Webseries of the year : The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – So good! Possibly the best adaptation of Pride and Prejudice since Bride and Prejudice.
Personal Electronic Device of the year: Droid Incredible 4G LTE - Kind of glad my Droid Incredible took a bit of a bath
Social Network of the year: Tumblr.com - I might be addicted
Online Retailer of the year: Frank and Oak – I’m loving their shirts
Other Online Retailer of the year: Huckberry – I’m am pretty sure they are going to bankrupt me with their awesome stuff. The Mars poster in my bathroom is my favorite purchase of the year
Paint Color of the Year: Anonymous by Behr (#780F-5) – My walls look awesome!
You can pick up your prizes at the front desk. (All the links to Amazon are affiliate links…)
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