Hey it’s raining! I’m at my dad’s place which is sort of mine and my sister’s place (the last part of estate settling is figuring out the mortgage takeover part) solving little problems like “Where did all these mosquitoes come from?” and “Has this heater always made this funny noise?” It’s been a decent time. It’s school vacation this week in Randolph so I figured I’d come down and do the Fortress of Solitude routine which suits me pretty well. Since the last trip I made one more short trip to Indiana [like 37 hours short] which went pretty well and was fun and had me driving another one of those cute little Fiat 500s. It’s been a while since I’ve had a car that got 35MPG, I sort of miss it.

But the last few weeks have been “not much to report” for a whole ‘nother reason. It’s been nice to be home in Randolph, but with spring coming and the one year anniversary of my dad’s death has come the “Okay now, we gave you a lot of slack and now you need to start picking it up” pep talk to myself in the mirror. I tried to be kind to myself and not be really rigid in terms of things like making sure I went to the gym and making sure I was always eating healthy. So I put on some weight, not much but enough that I wasn’t totally happy about it. Now I’m getting back to more-like-normal and this is on the “to be resolved” list. And just wishing for it to happen and thinking “I am eating less. I am exercising more. Aren’t I?” wasn’t doing it.

So, since I am nerdy and I like math and numbers and charts and routines, I signed up with MyFitnessPal (terrible name, great site) and I just count what I eat, write down my exercise, stick to a limit, make sure I’m getting enough nutrition, and basically set it and forget it. And I’ve never really done this before. I guess you could call it a diet, but I think of it more as big math equation where I’m restricting some of the variables. And since I’m a person who really likes food a lot, this has meant that I’ve had to get creative with cooking and/or allotting a lot of time in the day for some sort of exercise. Or both. I like to cook and have a decent amount of free time to do this, so it’s going well. And I finally suddenly understood all those photos of food I see all over the internet. At least for me. In the past I’ve felt that the food photos thing was more “Hey check me out, I’m eating and taking care of myself.” (as opposed to “Look at this awesome thing” which I am often confused by in that “Who cares about your breakfast?” way) but now I’ve gotten to where I am looking at something I’ve made and saying to myself “Can you believe these are only 420 calories?”

So all this cooking and walking and biking and eating and calculating is interesting to me but not that interesting to outsiders (though if you care, here is what I’ve been eating) and it’s been taking up a lot of my discretionary time.

Two other things worth noting along the same lines.

1. I am participating in an eight mile, eight a.m. fundraising walk for the Randolph Area Food Shelf. If you’d like to sponsor me (and I’d appreciate it if you can spare it but I understand that everyone has their own priorities) wander over and click the “donate” link and just toss my name in the comment box.
2. The other thing that I’ve been up to is practicing ukulele. It’s going well. I am decent at it but I’m having a hard time learning to strum properly. However last week was Kelly’s birthday and we couldn’t make time to get together so I made her this video. She likes John Denver.

Next month has me heading to Montreal and Maine and New York, I think. A lot of travel but no airplanes. June is Massachusetts and North Carolina and New Hampshire then I’ve got nothing for work travel until October. We’ll see if that lasts. I suspect it won’t.