‘The Tracker’, ‘La Bete Humaine’, ‘The Boys of Baraka’, ‘Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired’, groundhog adventures, ‘Seducing Doctor Lewis’, FitDay, ‘Doubt’, preparations for pruning.
(posted from home)
(This post covers 23 May to 7 June, 2009)
-------------------------------------------
Sunday, 7 June-
I of course started off the day with a FitDay update and checked the ProteinPower site to see what’s going on there.
After lunch I rode the Concours down to Tollgate for my tea-and-Sunday-Times and stopped at Lowe’s on the way home to look at other pruner alternatives since the power-pruner we have is pretty heavy when extended out. I’m thinking the power-pruner, which is really just a small chain saw, may not prove all the friendly to use for lopping anything but the larger branches and a manual pruner would be more controllable. When your feet are ten feet off the ground and you’re on a narrow orchard ladder, a heavy, corded chain-saw may not be the right tool to lop a wall of small branches.
I spent the latter part of the day on the web and doing my blog update.
---------------------------------------
Saturday, 6 June –
This morning I did a blog update, a FitDay update, and posted a message on the ProteinPower forum describing our experiences thus far, on the 20th day of our 30-day diet.
The rains have finally subsided so I cleaned up the groundhog trap and re-deployed it with new bait. But I think the groundhogs are wary of it now so we’ll just have to try various baits. The one good-news item here is the groundhog family moved out from under the barn and back to the groundhog holes in the woods. That’s where I’ve now moved the trap. Hopefully the groundhogs don’t now decided they need to move back under the barn.
I also helped Labashi research orchard ladders. We’ve been looking at them on the web for the last few days. We need a solution for trimming the Canadian Hemlocks and white pines on our property. They’re threatening to get out of control. They’re about 16-18 feet high and it’s time to top them. They form ‘walls’ of trees (like giant hedges) which define visual boundaries of our property.
After lunch we drove to Boyer’s Nursery in Biglerville to get a first-hand look at a 14-foot orchard ladder. We were able to get up on a twelve-footer (the 14-footer was still packed up). We had thought we’d need a sixteen-footer but it would be expensive to get one shipped in here and I believe the 14-footer would be enough given that we have a long electric pole-pruner. We were at first wary of the orchard ladder because it’s a tripod, i.e., the back side of the ladder is nothing but an aluminum pole. But once we climbed up to the top of the 12-footer, we can see it’s stable and will work much better than a standard stepladder for working among the tree lines. But we still want to do some more testing back home to decide whether to go ahead and buy the orchard ladder.
Late in the day I mowed the lawn and it seemed like a lot of work this time. The grass wasn’t really dry enough and clogged up the mowers. My old early-80’s mower did ok but I like to also run our newer one to give it some exercise and it was a pain today. I had to stop every ten minutes or so and clean out the discharge chute. What a silly design!
That evening we watched the introductory episode of ‘The Expedition’, the re-creation of Stanley and Livingstone’s treks across Africa. Our early impression is it’s a bit too much like ‘Survivor’ in that the producers (under Mark Burnett) seem to have selected people for their potential for interpersonal conflict. These folks are supposed to be professional explorers (whatever that is these days) yet they don’t seem to understand co-operation. But it’s still early in the adventure…
----------------------------------------
Friday, 5 June-
Again I spent a long time on FitDay getting food data entered but it’s going to get easier. As I save the info to the ‘Custom Foods’ area, I can now simply click on the item to add it to my food log.
Again we have a rainy day today but fortunately it’s a light rain. I wanted to get out of the house by mid-afternoon so made a run to the Giant for Labashi.
That evening we watched two Corner Gas-3 episodes and then a good Bill Moyers Journal about contracting-out the wars and news being very inadequately done by ‘the punditocracy’ (and learned about a good web source called ‘PressThink’). After that, the ‘Now’ episode was about the dramatic changes in our food production and a new documentary about it called “Food, Inc”.
----------------------------------------
Thursday, 4 June-
I spent a few hours on my FitDay update this morning. Getting all the food information entered is a bit of a pain when you have to take a recipe and look up the nutrient info for each ingredient then figure how much one serving is and enter the details in a standard nutrition label.
I had lunch with a buddy from the past, Rabbit. He sent me an email out of the blue a couple of days ago and we ended up meeting for lunch today. We had a good time catching up motorcycling and sailing stuff.
After lunch I hit the Camp Hill Starbucks for a tea-and-Times and then walked five miles at Pinchot in a very light rain.
That evening we watched ‘Doubt’ with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. GOOD movie and highly recommended!
-----------------------------------------
Wednesday, 3 June-
We caught our first groundhog this morning. We actually saw it happen. We noticed the groundhogs out from under the barn and feeding in the general area of the trap. They didn’t seem interested in the trap but then the little one stood up on its hind legs and started sniffing around the trap door. Within a minute it entered and went right for the bait, tripping the door as it reached the goodies.
We took the trap and groundhog to a nearby powerline area well out in the boonies and let the little fella go. Hopefully we can relocate the rest of the family here too.
Back home I spent a few hours setting up a diet tracking program called FitDay. This one is recommended on the Protein Power forum (at www.proteinpower.com) and I at first only looked at it casually. But as I played with the features, I decided I like it quite a lot. We’ll see.
I also worked today on finding another electricity supplier but it appears I don’t really have any choice. Despite the state government’s efforts to ensure competition, there is none in my area. Over the last few days I’ve exchanged emails with the Consumer Advocate’s office and called the Med-Ed Retail Choice Center. But the bottom line remains the same—no choice for me.
That afternoon I walked four miles and used the new LifeTrail stations at Rudy Park. LifeTrail stations are exercise stations for us nearing-60-and-over folks.
That evening we watched ‘Seducing Doctor Lewis’, a Quebecois comedy about the efforts of a remote fishing community to attract a doctor to their village. Not bad!
The film was shot in Harrington Harbor, Quebec and now I want to go there in person. It’s on an island in the far reaches of the St Lawrence, not far from the Quebec-Labrador line.
------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 2 June-
Today I drove in to Home Depot and Lowe’s to buy a groundhog trap. I bought a Havahart trap and brought it home and set it up next to the barn in the area we’ve been seeing the groundhogs.
I spent the rest of the day working on the spreadsheet I’m using to compare the Ivy Portfolio to another investing strategy we like. I think we’re going to stick with the other one. The Ivy Portfolio would require a lot of discipline to stay with when it underperforms in a string of bull-market years and I’m not sure we’re willing to do that—even for its benefits of limiting losses in the bad years.
That evening I walked four miles at Pinchot Park (from the east-side mooring area to the campground and back).
------------------------------------------
Monday, 1 June –
In our meeting with the financial guy last week we learned he favors an investing strategy based on principles laid out in a book called ‘The Ivy Portfolio’. It sounded interesting enough to check out so I ordered the book last week and spent today going through it and starting a spreadsheet to help me decide whether I’d want to do something like this.
I also spent an hour or so researching groundhog pest control methods. Our local groundhog had up to this point been staying down in the woods and only seemed to have a passing interest in our barn. But over the weekend we saw four groundhogs come out from under the barn. The little ones are very cute but we can’t let this stand.
That evening we watched three Corner Gas- Season 3 episodes.
------------------------------------------
Sunday, 31 May-
Sunday! I’ve recently taken to driving or riding to the Tollgate Starbucks on Sundays to sip an iced tea and read the Sunday Times.
That evening we watched the extras from the Polanski documentary.
------------------------------------------
Saturday, 30 May-
After some research on the web this morning I decided I should have bought the 500GB portable drive I saw on clearance at Office Max yesterday. My search for zip disks turned up a few disks but they were expensive-- $10 each. And when the drive dies, it will be tough to find a drive and if I do, it won’t be cheap. Time to move on!
The drive is a SimpleTech and it was normally $150 but on clearance for $109. I’ve had good luck with the SimpleTech 120GB drive I use with my laptop so this one should work out well for Labashi to keep her many photos and there will still be space left over to back up her computer.
That evening we watched ‘Roman Polanski, Wanted and Desired’, a good documentary detailing Polanski’s background, his films, and the controversy around his having sex with a 13-year old girl, his 43 days in county jail and his leaving the US to avoid sentencing. I was unaware of the issues around his trial and sentencing and it’s clear the system worked against him and drove him to leave. I’d have no problem with his now being permitted back into the US.
------------------------------------------
Friday, 29 May-
Our meeting with the financial specialist went well yesterday but was only the first of three meetings. The specialist gathered info from us and now will prepare his report and recommendations. We’ll then have time to review them in detail, then go back for yet another session to (hopefully) reach a conclusion about where we stand and what changes we should consider for the future.
I had my hands full this morning with office work. The IRS notice turned out to be a missing form problem for which my tax prep specialist apologized. She missed informing me that I needed to send along a court form from the estate with the return.
After lunch Labashi sent me on a mission for some zip disks and some ingredients for our diet from the Farmer’s Market in East York. I continue to love the diet, by the way, so am more than happy to go on such missions.
That evening we watched our regular Friday night PBS shows.
------------------------------------------
Thursday, 28 May-
I spent the morning finalizing info for a meeting with a financial planner tomorrow. Our tax-prep service offers a free financial ‘checkup’. These are generally aimed at trying to answer the question ‘Are you on track for retirement?’ but in our case we’re trying to answer the question ‘Are we on track for STAYING retired?’
Maypo called me last night to say a notice from the IRS had arrived in regard to mom’s estate so I buzzed on over to Cburg to pick it up and make sure I understand what’s missing.
I made it back home by 1830 and we watched a documentary called ‘The Boys of Baraka’. It follows at-risk boys from a blighted area of Baltimore as they are selected for and attend a boys’ school in Kenya. The film does a great job of digging into the lives of the boys and their families and giving us a thorough understanding of why the families would consider sending their sons 10,000 miles for an education and how it would make a difference to them. Recommended!
-----------------------------------------
Wednesday, 27 May-
Today we received a notice from a debt collector saying we owed $10 for a Cycle World subscription. I had had a subscription expire in January so I called Cycle World directly to figure out what’s going on. The explanation was that ‘someone’ had submitted a subscription request but it was later ‘cancelled by the computer’. Apparently the record went to the collection company before the cancellation. The call-center person says he dashed off an electronic notice to the collector and that should be the end of it. But I lost several hours going through the process of determining what the issue was and sending off a claim dispute.
I spent the greater part of the day preparing for tomorrow’s financial meeting.
----------------------------------------
Tuesday, 26 May-
I spent the morning working in my office, updating the blog and taking care of some financial tasks—paying bills, organizing records, and handling a credit card problem generated by a compromised VISA database. The latter led to the discovery that the only way to update your credit card on Skype is to buy at least $10 of minutes. Does that seem right? I exchanged emails with their call center but it’s clear that they simply say ‘my way or the highway’ (in a nice way). This is actually a very minor issue for me, though. I’ll just wait until I need additional minutes to provide the updated numbers. It just shouldn’t work that way.
----------------------------------------
Monday, 25 May –
We spent much of today shopping for food for the diet. We drove in to the East York Wal-mart instead of our local Giant because we knew we could get some hard-to-find items there. But it still took forever because of the searches for items we don’t normally get.
We returned home late for lunch and then afterward Labashi decided to make a run to the Giant for a few items we never did find at Wal-mart. But we’re not complaining (much!). The recipes from the book have been very, very good. We’re eating excellent food, losing weight, and having no cravings. I’m not sure that lasts long-term but we’re certainly happy with the results thus far.
I also spent a frustrating hour dealing with credit card updates. I’m amazed at how poor some online systems are at this. Verizon’s is particularly bad. I ended up just deciding to wait until tomorrow and do it by phone.
-----------------------------------------
Sunday, 24 May –
We still had some research to do today for the new diet—just small things, like figuring out portion sizes, total protein requirements, alternatives for pre-packaged protein drinks, etc. I spent an hour or so on proteinpower.com, reading through the postings to get a feel for who the experts are and what questions people have about the diet.
I then buzzed down to the Tollgate Starbucks south of York for a ride and to read the Sunday Times. This Starbucks is a little nicer than the others and always seems to have a free paper to read in the rack. The York one took out the comfortable reading chairs to place more tables (I guess I can’t blame them but it’s not as nice for me).
I of course can’t have any of my favorite Starbucks drinks because they have far too many carbs. But I can have an Americano if I want the caffeine or the unsweetened tea is very nice on a warm day like today.
Late in the day I took a walk for a couple of hours — this one behind the mower. Rains are supposed to be coming so I’d better get ‘er done today.
That evening we watched ‘La Bete Humaine’ (“The Human Beast”), a 1938 French film directed by Jean Renoir and based on an Emile Zola novel. This is a classic tale of deceit. Jean Gabin plays a locomotive engineer who lusts for the stationmaster’s wife. Circumstances drive her into his arms but she tries to get him to kill her husband, making him realize what a mistake he has made. The extras include an introduction by Jean Renoir in later life and we also see him as a younger man as one of the characters. The footage of late-1930’s France and trains is worth the price of admission alone. Recommended!
------------------------------------------
Saturday, 23 May-
I spent most of the morning catching up the blog and patrolling my news sites. In the afternoon I continued researching the diet, mostly in comparing the original Protein Power book to the 30-day plan we’re using now (both are by the same authors). The methodologies for figuring things out have changed and they now say you need not limit your protein to the daily recommendation and goes so far as to say you can eat all the protein-only meats (and protein shakes) you desire.
That evening we watched ‘The Tracker’, an Australian film about an aboriginal tracker who is forced to help three white men hunt down an aboriginal man accused of killing a white woman. As the sadistic leader of the group commits heinous acts against others encountered along the way, the hunters find themselves in ever-more perilous conditions. The actor portraying the tracker is David Gulpilil, a name you may not know but a face you’re probably familiar with from ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’ and ‘Walkabout’. Very good movie! And the extra feature about David’s remarkable life is very worth your time.
************** END OF POST **************
(posted from home)
(This post covers 23 May to 7 June, 2009)
-------------------------------------------
Sunday, 7 June-
I of course started off the day with a FitDay update and checked the ProteinPower site to see what’s going on there.
After lunch I rode the Concours down to Tollgate for my tea-and-Sunday-Times and stopped at Lowe’s on the way home to look at other pruner alternatives since the power-pruner we have is pretty heavy when extended out. I’m thinking the power-pruner, which is really just a small chain saw, may not prove all the friendly to use for lopping anything but the larger branches and a manual pruner would be more controllable. When your feet are ten feet off the ground and you’re on a narrow orchard ladder, a heavy, corded chain-saw may not be the right tool to lop a wall of small branches.
I spent the latter part of the day on the web and doing my blog update.
---------------------------------------
Saturday, 6 June –
This morning I did a blog update, a FitDay update, and posted a message on the ProteinPower forum describing our experiences thus far, on the 20th day of our 30-day diet.
The rains have finally subsided so I cleaned up the groundhog trap and re-deployed it with new bait. But I think the groundhogs are wary of it now so we’ll just have to try various baits. The one good-news item here is the groundhog family moved out from under the barn and back to the groundhog holes in the woods. That’s where I’ve now moved the trap. Hopefully the groundhogs don’t now decided they need to move back under the barn.
I also helped Labashi research orchard ladders. We’ve been looking at them on the web for the last few days. We need a solution for trimming the Canadian Hemlocks and white pines on our property. They’re threatening to get out of control. They’re about 16-18 feet high and it’s time to top them. They form ‘walls’ of trees (like giant hedges) which define visual boundaries of our property.
After lunch we drove to Boyer’s Nursery in Biglerville to get a first-hand look at a 14-foot orchard ladder. We were able to get up on a twelve-footer (the 14-footer was still packed up). We had thought we’d need a sixteen-footer but it would be expensive to get one shipped in here and I believe the 14-footer would be enough given that we have a long electric pole-pruner. We were at first wary of the orchard ladder because it’s a tripod, i.e., the back side of the ladder is nothing but an aluminum pole. But once we climbed up to the top of the 12-footer, we can see it’s stable and will work much better than a standard stepladder for working among the tree lines. But we still want to do some more testing back home to decide whether to go ahead and buy the orchard ladder.
Late in the day I mowed the lawn and it seemed like a lot of work this time. The grass wasn’t really dry enough and clogged up the mowers. My old early-80’s mower did ok but I like to also run our newer one to give it some exercise and it was a pain today. I had to stop every ten minutes or so and clean out the discharge chute. What a silly design!
That evening we watched the introductory episode of ‘The Expedition’, the re-creation of Stanley and Livingstone’s treks across Africa. Our early impression is it’s a bit too much like ‘Survivor’ in that the producers (under Mark Burnett) seem to have selected people for their potential for interpersonal conflict. These folks are supposed to be professional explorers (whatever that is these days) yet they don’t seem to understand co-operation. But it’s still early in the adventure…
----------------------------------------
Friday, 5 June-
Again I spent a long time on FitDay getting food data entered but it’s going to get easier. As I save the info to the ‘Custom Foods’ area, I can now simply click on the item to add it to my food log.
Again we have a rainy day today but fortunately it’s a light rain. I wanted to get out of the house by mid-afternoon so made a run to the Giant for Labashi.
That evening we watched two Corner Gas-3 episodes and then a good Bill Moyers Journal about contracting-out the wars and news being very inadequately done by ‘the punditocracy’ (and learned about a good web source called ‘PressThink’). After that, the ‘Now’ episode was about the dramatic changes in our food production and a new documentary about it called “Food, Inc”.
----------------------------------------
Thursday, 4 June-
I spent a few hours on my FitDay update this morning. Getting all the food information entered is a bit of a pain when you have to take a recipe and look up the nutrient info for each ingredient then figure how much one serving is and enter the details in a standard nutrition label.
I had lunch with a buddy from the past, Rabbit. He sent me an email out of the blue a couple of days ago and we ended up meeting for lunch today. We had a good time catching up motorcycling and sailing stuff.
After lunch I hit the Camp Hill Starbucks for a tea-and-Times and then walked five miles at Pinchot in a very light rain.
That evening we watched ‘Doubt’ with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. GOOD movie and highly recommended!
-----------------------------------------
Wednesday, 3 June-
We caught our first groundhog this morning. We actually saw it happen. We noticed the groundhogs out from under the barn and feeding in the general area of the trap. They didn’t seem interested in the trap but then the little one stood up on its hind legs and started sniffing around the trap door. Within a minute it entered and went right for the bait, tripping the door as it reached the goodies.
We took the trap and groundhog to a nearby powerline area well out in the boonies and let the little fella go. Hopefully we can relocate the rest of the family here too.
Back home I spent a few hours setting up a diet tracking program called FitDay. This one is recommended on the Protein Power forum (at www.proteinpower.com) and I at first only looked at it casually. But as I played with the features, I decided I like it quite a lot. We’ll see.
I also worked today on finding another electricity supplier but it appears I don’t really have any choice. Despite the state government’s efforts to ensure competition, there is none in my area. Over the last few days I’ve exchanged emails with the Consumer Advocate’s office and called the Med-Ed Retail Choice Center. But the bottom line remains the same—no choice for me.
That afternoon I walked four miles and used the new LifeTrail stations at Rudy Park. LifeTrail stations are exercise stations for us nearing-60-and-over folks.
That evening we watched ‘Seducing Doctor Lewis’, a Quebecois comedy about the efforts of a remote fishing community to attract a doctor to their village. Not bad!
The film was shot in Harrington Harbor, Quebec and now I want to go there in person. It’s on an island in the far reaches of the St Lawrence, not far from the Quebec-Labrador line.
------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 2 June-
Today I drove in to Home Depot and Lowe’s to buy a groundhog trap. I bought a Havahart trap and brought it home and set it up next to the barn in the area we’ve been seeing the groundhogs.
I spent the rest of the day working on the spreadsheet I’m using to compare the Ivy Portfolio to another investing strategy we like. I think we’re going to stick with the other one. The Ivy Portfolio would require a lot of discipline to stay with when it underperforms in a string of bull-market years and I’m not sure we’re willing to do that—even for its benefits of limiting losses in the bad years.
That evening I walked four miles at Pinchot Park (from the east-side mooring area to the campground and back).
------------------------------------------
Monday, 1 June –
In our meeting with the financial guy last week we learned he favors an investing strategy based on principles laid out in a book called ‘The Ivy Portfolio’. It sounded interesting enough to check out so I ordered the book last week and spent today going through it and starting a spreadsheet to help me decide whether I’d want to do something like this.
I also spent an hour or so researching groundhog pest control methods. Our local groundhog had up to this point been staying down in the woods and only seemed to have a passing interest in our barn. But over the weekend we saw four groundhogs come out from under the barn. The little ones are very cute but we can’t let this stand.
That evening we watched three Corner Gas- Season 3 episodes.
------------------------------------------
Sunday, 31 May-
Sunday! I’ve recently taken to driving or riding to the Tollgate Starbucks on Sundays to sip an iced tea and read the Sunday Times.
That evening we watched the extras from the Polanski documentary.
------------------------------------------
Saturday, 30 May-
After some research on the web this morning I decided I should have bought the 500GB portable drive I saw on clearance at Office Max yesterday. My search for zip disks turned up a few disks but they were expensive-- $10 each. And when the drive dies, it will be tough to find a drive and if I do, it won’t be cheap. Time to move on!
The drive is a SimpleTech and it was normally $150 but on clearance for $109. I’ve had good luck with the SimpleTech 120GB drive I use with my laptop so this one should work out well for Labashi to keep her many photos and there will still be space left over to back up her computer.
That evening we watched ‘Roman Polanski, Wanted and Desired’, a good documentary detailing Polanski’s background, his films, and the controversy around his having sex with a 13-year old girl, his 43 days in county jail and his leaving the US to avoid sentencing. I was unaware of the issues around his trial and sentencing and it’s clear the system worked against him and drove him to leave. I’d have no problem with his now being permitted back into the US.
------------------------------------------
Friday, 29 May-
Our meeting with the financial specialist went well yesterday but was only the first of three meetings. The specialist gathered info from us and now will prepare his report and recommendations. We’ll then have time to review them in detail, then go back for yet another session to (hopefully) reach a conclusion about where we stand and what changes we should consider for the future.
I had my hands full this morning with office work. The IRS notice turned out to be a missing form problem for which my tax prep specialist apologized. She missed informing me that I needed to send along a court form from the estate with the return.
After lunch Labashi sent me on a mission for some zip disks and some ingredients for our diet from the Farmer’s Market in East York. I continue to love the diet, by the way, so am more than happy to go on such missions.
That evening we watched our regular Friday night PBS shows.
------------------------------------------
Thursday, 28 May-
I spent the morning finalizing info for a meeting with a financial planner tomorrow. Our tax-prep service offers a free financial ‘checkup’. These are generally aimed at trying to answer the question ‘Are you on track for retirement?’ but in our case we’re trying to answer the question ‘Are we on track for STAYING retired?’
Maypo called me last night to say a notice from the IRS had arrived in regard to mom’s estate so I buzzed on over to Cburg to pick it up and make sure I understand what’s missing.
I made it back home by 1830 and we watched a documentary called ‘The Boys of Baraka’. It follows at-risk boys from a blighted area of Baltimore as they are selected for and attend a boys’ school in Kenya. The film does a great job of digging into the lives of the boys and their families and giving us a thorough understanding of why the families would consider sending their sons 10,000 miles for an education and how it would make a difference to them. Recommended!
-----------------------------------------
Wednesday, 27 May-
Today we received a notice from a debt collector saying we owed $10 for a Cycle World subscription. I had had a subscription expire in January so I called Cycle World directly to figure out what’s going on. The explanation was that ‘someone’ had submitted a subscription request but it was later ‘cancelled by the computer’. Apparently the record went to the collection company before the cancellation. The call-center person says he dashed off an electronic notice to the collector and that should be the end of it. But I lost several hours going through the process of determining what the issue was and sending off a claim dispute.
I spent the greater part of the day preparing for tomorrow’s financial meeting.
----------------------------------------
Tuesday, 26 May-
I spent the morning working in my office, updating the blog and taking care of some financial tasks—paying bills, organizing records, and handling a credit card problem generated by a compromised VISA database. The latter led to the discovery that the only way to update your credit card on Skype is to buy at least $10 of minutes. Does that seem right? I exchanged emails with their call center but it’s clear that they simply say ‘my way or the highway’ (in a nice way). This is actually a very minor issue for me, though. I’ll just wait until I need additional minutes to provide the updated numbers. It just shouldn’t work that way.
----------------------------------------
Monday, 25 May –
We spent much of today shopping for food for the diet. We drove in to the East York Wal-mart instead of our local Giant because we knew we could get some hard-to-find items there. But it still took forever because of the searches for items we don’t normally get.
We returned home late for lunch and then afterward Labashi decided to make a run to the Giant for a few items we never did find at Wal-mart. But we’re not complaining (much!). The recipes from the book have been very, very good. We’re eating excellent food, losing weight, and having no cravings. I’m not sure that lasts long-term but we’re certainly happy with the results thus far.
I also spent a frustrating hour dealing with credit card updates. I’m amazed at how poor some online systems are at this. Verizon’s is particularly bad. I ended up just deciding to wait until tomorrow and do it by phone.
-----------------------------------------
Sunday, 24 May –
We still had some research to do today for the new diet—just small things, like figuring out portion sizes, total protein requirements, alternatives for pre-packaged protein drinks, etc. I spent an hour or so on proteinpower.com, reading through the postings to get a feel for who the experts are and what questions people have about the diet.
I then buzzed down to the Tollgate Starbucks south of York for a ride and to read the Sunday Times. This Starbucks is a little nicer than the others and always seems to have a free paper to read in the rack. The York one took out the comfortable reading chairs to place more tables (I guess I can’t blame them but it’s not as nice for me).
I of course can’t have any of my favorite Starbucks drinks because they have far too many carbs. But I can have an Americano if I want the caffeine or the unsweetened tea is very nice on a warm day like today.
Late in the day I took a walk for a couple of hours — this one behind the mower. Rains are supposed to be coming so I’d better get ‘er done today.
That evening we watched ‘La Bete Humaine’ (“The Human Beast”), a 1938 French film directed by Jean Renoir and based on an Emile Zola novel. This is a classic tale of deceit. Jean Gabin plays a locomotive engineer who lusts for the stationmaster’s wife. Circumstances drive her into his arms but she tries to get him to kill her husband, making him realize what a mistake he has made. The extras include an introduction by Jean Renoir in later life and we also see him as a younger man as one of the characters. The footage of late-1930’s France and trains is worth the price of admission alone. Recommended!
------------------------------------------
Saturday, 23 May-
I spent most of the morning catching up the blog and patrolling my news sites. In the afternoon I continued researching the diet, mostly in comparing the original Protein Power book to the 30-day plan we’re using now (both are by the same authors). The methodologies for figuring things out have changed and they now say you need not limit your protein to the daily recommendation and goes so far as to say you can eat all the protein-only meats (and protein shakes) you desire.
That evening we watched ‘The Tracker’, an Australian film about an aboriginal tracker who is forced to help three white men hunt down an aboriginal man accused of killing a white woman. As the sadistic leader of the group commits heinous acts against others encountered along the way, the hunters find themselves in ever-more perilous conditions. The actor portraying the tracker is David Gulpilil, a name you may not know but a face you’re probably familiar with from ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’ and ‘Walkabout’. Very good movie! And the extra feature about David’s remarkable life is very worth your time.
************** END OF POST **************
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 19:42
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