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{ Monthly Archives } August 2006

My abs hurt, do I have a six-pack yet?

Yesterday was the first day of lower body workout, which included about a million ab crunches. Now I pretty much hurt all over, and I stepped on the scale to discover that I’ve gained two pounds since Monday. My weight fluctuates by about five pounds normally so this is not unprecedented, but hardly bodes well for the start of the 12-week program.

Just to ensure that I don’t lose any weight at all in the next week, my birthday is on Saturday. Tomorrow afternoon, I’m sailing with my friend Ingrid and staying out at her yacht club for a BBQ, after which she’s promised me s’mores for a pre-birthday dessert. Then on Saturday, Pat and my sister Betty are taking me to Banu, an Iranian Kebob Vodka Bar (really!), for lunch; and Damir is taking me somewhere for dinner, the exact location of which is still shrouded in mystery (or not yet selected).

2006 08 31 food & wine
friends
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Barthelme

Nice blog theme, eh? I’ve been in search of the perfect WordPress theme since I moved this blog to WP, and just discovered Barthelme this morning. Of course, I then spent the rest of the morning customizing it, but since it uses WP widgets, I was able to do a lot in a short period of time. I’m still using too many text widgets with my old HTML pasted in them, so I’ll have to brush up on my PHP and just write a few of my own.

In particular, I like the very clean and monochromatic look, as well as the placement of each post’s metadata on the left instead of above and below it. I’m still fine-tuning, any suggestions are welcome. Also, I’ve testing on IE and Firefox and everything appears fine, let me know if it doesn’t look right on your platform/browser.

2006 08 31 blogging Comments (0)

Flickr geotagging: the best new time suck

I haven’t spent this much time on non-productive work since I discovered RSS readers: Flickr’s new geotagging/mapping feature was released this week, and since a lot of my pictures are from my travels, I felt compelled to map them all. Since I tagged most of my photos with the place name, it was pretty easy: just search for all the photos for a location using the tags, then drag and drop them onto the map at that location.

The satellite views can be particularly compelling: try going to this photo of mine, taken at Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) in Australia. Then, under “Additional Information” at the bottom of the right sidebar, note that it says “Taken in Northern Territory, AU” with a (map) link. Click on that link, and you see a popup of the satellite view of this location, which clearly shows the rock in all its enormous glory.

You can also just go to my map, scroll around and click on locations to pop up the photos, but I’m not really keen about how they’ve implemented that since there are a maximum of about 250 photo references on any given map, and my map runs to 6 pages already.

In rereading the Flickr blog post about geotagging, I also noticed a reference to some new Upcoming.org integration: use the tag shown on the Upcoming event page to tag the photos in Flickr, and the photos will show up on the Upcoming page as well as having a direct link back to the event from Flickr. I’m going to head over to the farmer’s market at Nathan Phillips Square at lunch today (an event that I put on Upcoming) and shoot a few pictures to try this out.

2006 08 30 photography
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Working out

Our new exercise regimen started this week on Monday: three days per week on weight training, alternating between upper and lower body, and the alternate three days per week on aerobic exercise. Sunday, we rest. We’re doing the Body for Life plan which requires only about 45 minutes on the weights days and 20 minutes on the cardio days, so it’s hard to make the excuse that it takes too much time. However, with Damir off to a customer early each day this week, that means getting up at 5:30, in the gym by 6 at the latest, and back here for a shower by 7. I’ve never been an early riser, but I’m finding this not too difficult and even waking up before the alarm, maybe because we’re doing it together. Or maybe because I’ve cut out most alcohol during the week. :)

I started with upper body on Monday, and yesterday my arms and chest muscles were aching. Today was lower body, which is a lot harder because of an ancient injury to both of my quadriceps that makes it difficult to do even the easiest exercises. A few weeks of workouts should take care of that. I like a lot of the lower body exercises because I can really feel the muscles stretching (I may not be liking that so much tomorrow when the pain sets in): I feel like I’ve become too inflexible and the stretching of my calves and hamstrings feels good. The upper body ones are just weird — I guess because most women don’t do anything to develop their upper body, me included, and trying to find my triceps, much less work them out, is difficult. I have to keep moving things around slightly to make sure that I’m even working the right muscles and not causing any undue joint strain. I hope to start dropping some weight after the first few weeks, I’m currently as zaftig as I’ve ever been, and it doesn’t feel comfortable — I’d be happy to drop 20 pounds or so over the next several months. Oh yeah, did I mention that this program is 12 weeks to start?!

One cool thing about getting up much earlier than I usually do is that when I turn on my computer around 7, I see a wide variety of friends available on Skype: Australia, Europe and other early-rising North Americans all online at once.

2006 08 30 health Comments (0)

Chairs!

With the rearranging of the furniture caused by Damir moving in and having to have a bit of office space, my dining table and chairs have gone into storage and we’re currently eating our meals off the coffee table — not my favourite arrangement since it leads to a lot of crumbs on the carpet. There’s a great little island counter in the kitchen with an extended overhang on two sides to accommodate a couple of stools, and I haven’t found anything that I like downtown so yesterday morning we trekked out to the Chair Source, a great place for chairs but a hell of a long way out of downtown. I had been there with a friend a few years ago when he bought a counter stool for his kitchen, and I think that it’s even bigger now, amazing selection.

Damir’s not much for shopping (which is quite an understatement), and I thought that I did well to get him around the store and pick out a few stools that we liked. Funnily enough, we settled on the first one that we tried out — small footprint, modern design, comfy back and seat. His patience started to run out when we got to the finish and fabric swatches: he’s never bought furniture that wasn’t at Ikea, and had no idea that you pick the furniture, then pick the fabric, then they go off and make it for you. He was itching to head for the car and quite willing to just let me pick what I wanted, and we settled on the black matte finish for the legs and a caramel-coloured textured faux leather for the upholstery. Should match the black appliances and blond maple floors and cabinets well.

Unfortunately, because it’s all custom made, there’s a 4-6 week wait while they make the damned things, which means at least another month of crumbs on the rug.

2006 08 27 home Comments (0)

Drag Queen Fashion Tips

Personally, I would never give fashion advice to a drag queen, considering that most of the ones that I’ve met have a much better (or at least wildly different) fashion sense than I do. I was at my friend Pat’s last night and she was showing me the retro/trendy/tacky shoes that she just bought: a kitten-heel slide with a rhinestone-encrusted dragonfly on the front — perfect for her. When I commented favourably on them, she remarked that she had been called on to offer advice on what shoes a colleague of hers could wear with his divine gown when he went to gay camp this weekend, and she suggested some silk flowers on his thong sandals. With ideas like that, I figure she could make a good side business in drag queen fashion tips.

2006 08 24 friends Comments (1)

The Accidental Redhead

I colour my hair. There, I said it, I’m 45 years old (very soon to be 46) and I don’t like the grey streaks, and about once a month I use a colour rinse to cover up the grey. I’ve been using Clairol’s Natural Instincts line because it seems to be pretty easy on my hair, and washes out in a month if I really don’t like the colour, but they’ve been playing around with their colours lately, or maybe my local drugstore has, because I can never seem to find #18 (Pecan), which is a “Medium Golden Brown”. I was blonde as a kid and get some blonde lights in my (now brown) hair in the summer if I’m out in the sun a lot, so this was always a good choice. #12 (Toasted Almond) is just a bit too light, although I use it in the summer sometimes.

The last couple of days I’ve been fretting over the increasingly-visible Bride of Frankenstein wave of grey going up from my hairline, and decided to cover it up, but no #18. Next to where #18 would have been was #20B, “Cinnamon Stick”, which is described as “Medium Warm Brown”. In fact, if you look at the Clairol charts online, it is listed under the “neutral” shades which are supposed to add soft beige tones, as opposed to Ash, Gold/Caramel/Bronze or Red Brown/Red. I glopped it on as usual, rinsed it out, and when I took the towel off my head and looked in the mirror… I was a redhead. Medium warm brown, my ass.

2006 08 21 fashion Comments (0)

Window goo

Usually when I write about windows, it’s about the type that runs on my laptop. This time, however, it’s about the window box in which I have a little herb garden. With no balcony, a window box is about the best that I can do for a garden, but it gave me enough space for basil, rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano and mint — my most frequent cooking herbs. The only problem that I’ve had is that someone in an apartment above me (I’m on the 3rd of 8 floors) smokes at their window occasionally, and throws the cigarette butts out, some of which land in my window box. The city air is dirty enough that I wash everything before I eat it anyway, so it’s just a bit gross, but not that big a deal.

I noticed yesterday that things were a bit droopy because of the lack of rain, and opened up the window this morning to give them some water. To my surprise, the entire bottom of the plastic tray was completely melted out through the metal frame that it rests in, and all the plants dead. It looks as if someone has poured acid into it, although I can’t imagine how someone in a floor above could have done that without damaging other things, so it’s a complete mystery to me. I was so freaked out by it and assumed that it contained some noxious substance that I chucked it down the garbage chute without first taking a picture, now I wish that I had photographed it first.

Continuing weirdness in my week.

2006 08 18 home Comments (2)

Shredding the past

Definitely a weird week. It’s the first full week that Damir’s lived here, so there have been a few mornings of me in my bathrobe saying goodbye to him at the door as he leaves for work in the morning — very suburban! However, since I work at home almost all the time, and he is working at a customer every day this week, that’s just the reality of it. Considering that he was here four or so nights a week already, this isn’t that big of a change.

This week, I’ve been sorting and shredding corporate papers from a company that I shut down more than six years ago, which means that I can destroy most of the paperwork now. I’m down to the last three boxes, some of which needs to be kept until the seven-year mark, so I’ll only have to do this one more. Looking through it is a bit depressing, but it will be good to have the book finally closed on that part of my life.

I owned the business with my then-husband for over 13 years, and eventually we stayed together for the business (like some people stay together for their kids). About a year before the company closed, we finally split personally — something that I should have done years before that — and I made the decision to close the business some months later. We had a great team of 40 people, several of whom I still keep in contact with, and I’m proud of what I built. However, the paperwork is a total drag: financial documents, contracts, HR and payroll, all the usual stuff goes into the shredder.

There are a few bright notes: the somewhat arrogant and greedy owners of a company that we considered merging with, who used the upcoming merger as a reason to borrow a huge sum of money from us to pay off their tax bills, then cancelled the merger and forced us to sue them to get our money back, are now selling real estate in Calgary. :)

2006 08 18 business
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Post from Windows Live Writer

I’m trying out the beta of Windows Live Writer, which allows offline composition of blog posts — handy for the times when I’m disconnected for some reason, although my usual reason (while on airplanes) is out of whack right now.

I was able to set up this blog, which is on WordPress, my business blog, which is on Movable Type, and my wine club blog, which is on Blogger, so that I have the same interface for each. It even sucks in my categories so that I can attach those to posts, which is pretty cool.

Something that I really like is that it allows me to edit the post after I’ve published it, and then republish it, which is what I just did to this one because I forgot the category.

2006 08 17 blogging Comments (0)