I’ve been busy. Even though it’s been two weeks since the big studio move, there was still some things that needed to be done around the studio. I spent most of last weekend doing those things.
During the week, I’ve had to take care of all of the usual time-consuming life obligations, Beyond that, I had an appointment with a physical therapist for my ongoingleft-arm problems. I was given a regimen of stretches and arm exercises to do at home to try and strengthen the muscles in my arms and upper back. I think it’s helping.
Jen’s been summonsed for potential jury duty in L.A. (400 miles away, round trip). I spent part of an evening helping her fill out the online “qualification questionnaire.” We did our best to make it as clear as possible that they really don’t want Jen on their jury. We won’t know for at least a few weeks if she’ll have to go.
I’ve written 2/3 of a new song and I kinda like it. Been thinking about the music thing a lot lately. Got some ideas there. Also thinking of finally making good on my threat of taking this blogging thing to a new location. This may tie in with the music thing. I need a clever name for this new project but I haven’t thought of anything yet. I’d like to get a simple domain name that somehow ties into my name. There is actually one shawn.xx top-level domain name available but it’s one of them weird ones that costs $50.00/year to register. Not sure if I want it that badly. I could just do things under my own first and last names (plenty of domain options there). But, I don’t know. I find my name to be rather dull. Also, it seems that my last name is difficult for many people to pronounce. It’s seemingly even harder for them to spell. Six letters. One syllable. You wouldn’t think it’d be so much trouble. This is why I need a clever alter-name to operate under. Let me know if you’ve got any ideas.
It’s end-of-the-year time. As has been tradition here over the last coupleyears, I’m going to make a list of things I’d like to do/achieve in the coming year.
I’ve beensick. It’s the usual November/December sinus/lung/whatever garbage. I went through the absolute worst of it over the weekend before last. I think I’m on the mend now for real, and hopefully I’ll be over it in a few days.
Being sick over the last few days has put me on a rather strange schedule. I found myself on the couch yesterday morning watching kids shows. In today’s podcast, I talked about those shows.
I couldn’t find any online videos for the first show. Here’s some kind of promo video for the second show:
After nearly 1.5 weeks of constant pain in my left arm (and some helpful prodding from friends on Facebook), I went to a doctor today to get things checked out. The arm problem turned out to be nothing more than an injured muscle. I was relieved to know that I wasn’t having a grabber. Still, I put going to the doctor off as long as possible. I have no health insurance, and in the time between making the doctor’s appointment and getting the grabber-free diagnosis, I imagined I’d get sucked into a spiral of tests and exams that’d cause the dollar signs to quickly pile up. I got lucky. The total cost for the office visit was $97.00. Sure, my bank balance is looking pretty sad right now. But it won’t look that way forever. However, had I needed anything beyond just the office visit, the situation would likely be much worse.
I hurt my left arm. Not entirely sure what happened. But I think it was caused by having to carry our new microwave in its big, bulky box across the Madonna Plaza parking lot. I noticed that pulled-muscle feeling in the upper arm area a few days after. And it’s been relentless ever since.
I’m somewhat discouraged to note that FIVE MONTHS AGO I wrote about how I had determined that, in order to lose weight, I had to keep my daily calorie counts under 1500. And since then, I’ve only managed to lose a couple pounds. This is kinda pathetic, and it’s the ultimate proof that I’ve been having far too many 1700 – 1800 calorie days. And when I get to this level of caloric intake, I don’t gain weight, but I don’t lose any, either.
Since the beginning of 2009, I’ve lost 25 pounds. And that achievement shouldn’t be downplayed. But I need to lose more. At the beginning of last year, I set a weight loss goal for myself. I started the year at 253 pounds. I wanted to get below 240 by my birthday (July 11th). I beat the deadline on that goal by almost a month. It was a big deal, because I knew that if I managed to get below 240, it meant I was doing something right, as all of my previous weight-loss attempts never passed the 240 mark. Right now, I’m at 228. And I’ve been at 228 for awhile. I’ve decided to give myself another goal. This time, I want to hit 220 by year’s end. It’s a reasonable goal, and I believe I can do it. I know what I need to aim for on a daily basis (1500 calories total). I just have to do it. And yesterday and today, I have! I made specific choices about my meals that helped me to keep my calorie counts low. Of course, these are things I’ve known about all along. But habits tend to control a lot of my behavior, especially when it comes to eating.
Yesterday was my 34th birthday. It wasn’t really an exciting day, I guess. But it was still a good one.
I went for a walk in the morning. Made it out before the marine layer burned away. Managed to enjoy some of that clean ocean air before it was gone for the day.
In the afternoon, I ordered a pizza (and a salad!) from Woodstocks Pizza. Woodstocks is probably my favorite pizza place here in San Luis Obispo. It was a fine birthday lunch.
A little later on, Jen and I produced one of the funnest (and funniest, at least to me) podcasts we’ve ever done. Immediately after that, we split a piece of German chocolate birthday cake (my favorite!). The cake was actually baked for me by my employer. Here’s a picture of the whole cake before it was sliced up:
The cake was amazing. (We brought home one piece from the office and shared it. The rest was left at the office for my coworkers to enjoy.)
Jen’s been sick with sinusitis (she went to the doctor today and got some antibiotics) so she wasn’t up for doing much. Too bad, ’cause we had planned on going out for karaoke. Instead, we just finished out the evening playing World of Warcraft. Which is just fine by me.
A couple days ago, I wrote about my new computer monitor. At the time, I was discouraged with the new monitor, and I was struggling to get used to using it. Since then, I’ve done a lot of experimenting with different resolution settings and I’ve also tried out some programs designed for low-vision users (like me). And so far, I’d say my experience is improving. Right now, I’m using a feature built into OS X called Zoom. I’m zoomed in at a level of 1.7x, and I can see things well. There’s a trade-off, though. Since Zoom magnifies an area of the computer’s screen, I can’t have my entire work environment on screen at one time. I feel like it’s slowing down my productivity a bit. This may change over time, as I get more accustomed to using this setup. What I’d really like is some way to magnify text in just certain areas. For example, Firefox has a text zoom function. But it applies the same zoom factor to all text on a webpage. So if I’m looking at my GooglesReader, and I want to enlarge the text in the reader section only, I can’t. I have to enlarge the reader section, the headlines, the sidebars. Everything. In turn, this causes the reader section to “shrink” to the point where it can’t really display any content at all. Also, every time I open a new tab, I have to zoom the text again, as the zoom setting doesn’t carry over from one tab to another. I haven’t researched yet to see if there’s some kind of universal setting that could be applied to all text in Firefox. But even if there was, I’m still not sure it’s a good solution. So for now, I’ll keep going with the OS X Zoom feature and see how that goes. I’m also planning on installing a track light in this room, which should help to balance out the ambient light around me, and that’ll be easier on my eyes.
On a related note, I really am enjoying some of the benefits of this new monitor. Specifically, photos and videos are much clearer. And since they’re bigger, I can really see them. It’s given me a whole new sense of appreciation for these visual mediums, and that’s good.
So, I’m going to keep using the monitor through the rest of the weekend. And after using it for a few more days, I should be able to tell whether or not it’ll be worth keeping.
