Lost a few more pounds

A few more pounds gone!  I've been bouncing between 20-30 pounds for the past two months, because I've been eating off-plan too much, but I'm back on track now.  My immediate goal is to lose 1.4 pounds by Monday, so I can get my next bear (it's a NS thing).

As expected, my TV had gone bad, and I've just replaced it with a new one, a Samsung 22" LED HDTV, and everything's nice a clear now.  It's surprising how much lighter this TV is than my 5-year-old one.  Technological advances, woohoo!  My old one is being delivered to a man who rebuilds them, so hopefully he can reuse some of the parts.  Also being donated is a Bean Exerciser that I never even took out of the box.  Good intentions, bad follow-through *LOL*  The rest of my stuffed animals (yes, I still had some) are also being donated, although I'm hanging on to the Raggedy Ann I've had all my life.  She's a little worse for wear but full of good memories.  How many times did my Mom have to toss her in the washing machine because I fed her orange juice? 

I'm almost ready to conquer all the boxes of books in the garage and my room and let go of the ones I no longer need.  Already the air in my room is lighter, definitely cleaner (dust is my enemy!) and I feel more inspired to be creative.

Finished reading Dan Brown's "Inferno".  I'm always amazed at the depth and amount of research he does for his books.  Not only are they filled with exciting action, he makes the architecture and artwork in his books come alive, and he always leaves me wanting to know more.  This one will make a great movie.

General update

I'm behind on my posting, I see, but I've been busy.

We had the Verizon tech out installing the FiOS system to our TVs, Internet and phone on Saturday.  The Internet and phone are working fine, and my parents' box is working well, but my screen is extremely dark, which did not begin happening until they hooked up the FiOS.  Talked to customer service the other day and went through all the troubleshooting, and they sent me a new box, which arrived today. No change on the picture, however, but I have a feeling it's my TV and not the cable.  GRRR.  One nice thing is that he cleaned up all the wires I had running here and there and removed all the unnecessary ones.  Their router also operates as the modem, so that's one less piece of equipment to deal with.  I had to call them yesterday, because my laptop and two of our Kindles weren't connecting to the Internet, although our other computers and one laptop were working fine, so I was using the password printed on the router label to try to connect, but surprise!  The actual password to use wasn't the one labeled password!  Duh.  Everything's connecting now, and I spent an hour yesterday getting my dad a new email addy, updating all his sites and sending the new address out to his contacts.  It would have taken him a couple of days to do it, and it would have been so frustrating for him to get everything done.

I finally went through my Facebook friends list and dropped over 400 people that were friended to me through games I no longer play or they no longer play, and it felt good to clean that up, and I dropped all but two games, which frees up more time for writing.

And I've been working on sorting and getting rid of things I no longer need, which also feels good.  Lots of things going to Goodwill.  I still need several boxes to pack books in for the garage, though I seriously need to go through them and let go of the books I don't really need.  These are mostly non-fiction books that I use for reference, but how many books that say the same thing does one person need?  Time to let others learn from them.

I WILL finish this book up before November, but I'm hoping to get it done before July's camp now that I've refocused the purpose and finally realized that it doesn't need a specific word count.  Think I got so caught up with that doing NaNo, that I wandered off-topic.  NaNo's awesome for getting a book started, but I have to get my head straight for the work afterwards.  I'd like to try a short story for July's camp, so I need to get moving on this one.

New NS gourmet meals

NutriSystem has brought back their Chef's Table frozen gourmet dishes.  They offered them last year, but their supplier quit supplying them, and that all happened before I joined, so this is my first experience with them.  I've tried four so far.

The Arroz con Pollo was very flavorful, spicy and good.  The Orzo, Shrimp and Lobster Langostino was very tasty.  The Ginger Cashew Chicken was only okay, and I won't re-order those.  Tonight I had the Butternut Squash Ravioli, and I was looking forward to this, as I like butternut squash fries.

This dish has a very unique and citrus-y smell, and the flavor is pretty good with an unusual mixture of cinnamon, turmeric, paprika, nutmeg and sage herbs.  The sauce contains orange juice.  Sort of a Middle Eastern or maybe Indian dish?  The pasta itself was a bit tough.  The  real problem with it is that I did not expect it to be so incredibly liquidy when I opened it.  Although I took care when cutting open the pouch, it was like a fountain and spilled forth the contents not only onto the plate, but all over the counter, the floor, and me.  I must admit that it had an adverse reaction to my enjoyment of the meal.

Of the Chef's Table selections they offered in April, in addition to those four that I tried, there is only one other meal that didn't include beef or pork, and that is Chef's Table Cavatelli with Broccoli Pesto, and I won't be ordering that, because I dislike pesto.  

They've announced that more dishes will be coming out this month.  One of new dishes is supposedly going to be Chicken & Turkey Meatloaf, and I'm looking forward to trying that one. 

Books Read April 2013

Adams, Ellery

• Written in Stone 

Fiction.  Fourth in the Books by the Bay series set in North Carolina.  Olivia and Haviland and her group of writers get involved in an old mystery involving the local Lumbee Indians and a mysterious gypsy woman.  As they work to solve the murders, Olivia and her cop boyfriend, Rawlings, get closer.

Bretton, Barbara

• Spun by Sorcery 

Fiction.  Chloe and Luke have just finished battling Isadora...and won!  But what comes next is a complete surprise.  The entire town of Sugar Maple has disappeared, and Chloe, Luke, and Janice have to travel to Salem to bring back the magic.

Jaffarian, Sue Ann

• The Rabbit Died 

Fiction.  Short story of Zelda Bowen who has to survive the Easter holiday with her family.

• Pull My Paw 

Fiction.  It’s Mother’s Day, and Zelda once again faces the holiday with her bizarre family...and a flatulent dog.

• Where’s Your Daddy?

Fiction.  Zelda visits her grouchy grandfather in the Golden Haven retirement facility for Father’s Day.

Strong, Lee

• Anatomy of A Haunting: The Nightmare on Baxter Road

Non-fiction.  Horrifying, yet well-told, true account of a vicious entity who takes control over a farm, and the generations of families who suffered at its hands, and the scariest part is that it’s not over yet.

Books Read March 2013

Atkinson, Deborah Turrell

• Primitive Secrets 

Fiction.  Cozy mystery set in Hawai’i.  A law clerk working at her adoptive uncle’s law firm comes to work one day to find him dead at his desk.  As she tries to deal with the grief over losing him, she finds herself knee-deep in corporate and personal secrets that threaten everyone around her.  Will an ancient Hawaiian legend help her survive?

Ball, Donna

• A Year on Ladybug Farm

Fiction.  Wonderfully engaging tale of three middle-aged whose children have grown and gone, and whose husbands have passed on or gone their own way.  Out of loss springs a great adventure, as they leave everything they’ve known to move to a small town and buy a farmhouse.  The first of their new lives has ups and downs and many surprises and a boatload of humor-filled moments.

Dams, Jeanne M.

• A Corpse at St. James 

Fiction.  Another installment of the Dorothy Martin series set in England.  The American ex-pat and her husband help an old friend solve a murder that he might be on the hook for.

Camp is a bust, but not a fail

Well, there are two more days of camp left, and I'm not going to make my word count goal.  I realized over this past week that I had wandered away from the original point of the story, which was meant as therapy.  I had been working on another story with the same characters and setting, but needed to dial it back and finish what I originally started.  The word count was becoming more important than the plot, and since the therapy exercise will never be published (at least not that I can foresee), it doesn't matter what the word count is.  I just need to tell the story from beginning to end and worry about cannibalizing it later.

I'm okay with not winning Camp NaNo this time, because I don't see it as a fail, since I'm refocusing my effort, which helps me out in the end.

Weight is stable, ate off plan more than I should have, but I'm back on track now.  I had to delay my shipment twice, because we were getting a new fridge, and I had to wait until the new one was delivered before I could stock it with the NS food.  At least I didn't gain any weight, AND I'm comfortably wearing pants two sizes smaller than when I started, so I am very happy with how it's going.  Yay!

We had a small 3.2 earthquake that was close to us the other night, but our house only shook once, and I didn't feel any aftershocks.

  

Camp and weight update, lost car dream

I have just under 9k words written, which means that I'm about 4k words short of my schedule.  I've introduced two new characters, shop assistants for Sara, although I might end up cutting one out.  Does she need two?  Researching the first assistant's background was fun.  She's an older lady from England, whose husband took a job at U of Washington eighteen years ago, although he died a few years ago.  Since then, she moved to town and started teaching part time at the community college.

I'm not sure what the Bournemouth accent sounds like, or what common phrases they use there, so I'm trying to find suggestions for TV shows or movies that I can watch on Netflix to hear them speak.

The writing that I've done has come easily, and I'm still skipping around and writing random scenes, and so far, I've only written to a few of the plot points that I came up with last month, so there is plenty of work to do.

My writing buddy has been participating in the postcard swap, and it sounds like a lot of fun, so I'll probably participate if they have it during the next camp session.  I never know what to say on postcards.

The weight is still coming off, albeit slowly, and people are actually noticing the weight loss, which makes me very happy :)

I bought a new dream book by Theresa Cheung called "The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 Dreams".  I found a listing for lost cars that says that it can mean a loss of direction:  

"One of the most common dreams in midlife is that of the lost car.  You park the car and return to find it's gone.  You wander anxiously around the area but cover the same ground with no results.  In short, this is a dream about feeling lost because you have followed the rules rather than your instinct or intuition.  If you have this dream, the indication is that some part of your waking life is unfulfilling and you feel as if you have lost something precious; you are not only upset when you recognize you have lost it but your life comes to a complete standstill."  

And that makes perfect sense!  I didn't have the dream until I turned 40 and moved back home, and I've had it almost every night since then.  Now that I recognize what it is, hopefully I can begin to work my way past it, and yes, it's nice to know that it's a common dream, although I've never known anyone else who has had it.

The magic house is still making an appearance almost nightly (technically "daily", since that's usually when I sleep), and my "mother" in the dreams is sometimes a princess, as a symbol of the Goddess.  Family is very prominent in my dreams, and of course, the animals and trying to keep them safe.  The odd obstacle courses are still there, and I have to go through all sorts of contortions to get through them.  There's always a fear that I won't be able to fit through the tunnels, but I always make it through.  That's pretty easy to interpret.

Alright, back to work!