So I thought i would not be able to come up with any hard numbers about my book habits in 2010, but it appears i started GoodReads in late 2009 and it has some handy stats assuming i entered all my reading in (and I'm fairly sure i did).

24 books amassing  10,862 pages.   I will go ahead and try to beat that record this year.

I also managed to take some gift certificates and money to purchase a Kindle.  I still have a couple of actual paper books to read that I have already purchased.  Hopefully more publishers will start taking advantage as well as there are still several books that have no kindle format option.  I was quite leery of e-readers in general for awhile for while i do love gadgets I also like for there to be a purpose and I did not understand at first.   The more i looked at them though the more that I liked the e-ink technology and the benefits.   Never having my bookmark fall out and having to sift through a section trying to find where i left off.  I just finished a 988 page book and had it been electronic the weight would have been reduced.  Not having to watch as a beloved older favorite deteriorates as you pull it out for a re-read.  Not having smudges appear or accidentally dropping a bit of lunch on a page.  Being able to have a portion of my library always available or to get a new book with a few clicks regardless of where I am.

I still love paper books, but I am no longer wondering why these devices are taking off.   And if nothing else there are a few trees cheering on the revolution.

Took today and tomorrow off, leaving for Panama city or some other similar florida type destination this afternoon.   Took another walk this morning in my new minimalist shoes (zemgear), also broke the 5k (3.5mi) barrier.  I've started blending in jogging. 1 minute of jogging followed by 9 minutes of walking, will build up to 2/8, 3/7 etc as i get acclimated to each level.  Also been trying to vary up the course every day, as i get better at distance I'll be going to more new places.

Overall other walkers and joggers seem pretty pleasant, lots of good morning's passed around.  

Growing up my brother walked around the yard so much there was actually a rut in the ground where he habitually walked.  At some point he stopped, which i guess was the start for his eventual decline in health and increase in weight.   While I previously did not get any desire to head outside and wander, it has happened before where I will set foot out of  my apartment and walk to the theatre, or to dinner at a nearby restaurant.  Montgomery is not really designed for such endeavors though as we spread out and not up so depending on your location there is not always a lot within "walking distance", unless you just really like to walk (and sweat).

It has been enjoyable to get out these two times though and actually see some of the area around where i live.  Though it has been two weeks since my last official walk, I have been very, very busy walking up and down the two new schools in town.  We had to get a middle school and high school ready that were built and ready for the start of this school year.  Only problem being that the construction was not completed until nearly two weeks before school opened.  So instead of having a summer to get things ready we literally had just days.  So instead of waking along sidewalks on the weekend, i spent days traversing hallways and climbing and descending stairs marking down room numbers and finding out where various closets and hallways led.   Then to top off all the walking, we had logistical problems to solve without the aid of a logistics department as they were busy delivering desks and chairs and filing cabinets without the time to also deliver several hundred computers, monitors and printers.  The day spent unloading pallets and transporting them via pickup trucks and vans to unload it all yet again was a special joy.

So in conclusion, i've been busy.  And hope to stay busy both at work and home.  I'm off to florida in two weeks where i get to relax because my sister has to work and I can enjoy freeloading in her company provided condo.  I'm off to georgia the week after for Dragon Con which has been a wish of mine to visit for a dozen or more years now and i've finally gotten off my butt and purchased tickets.  I'm off to florida again the week after that to hang out with my aunt and uncle and spend time with extended family who i too often neglect during non-holiday periods.  So take care my friends, and enjoy the upcoming autumn!

 Decided it was about time that I got out of the apartment for a little while and got to play with a new app on my android phone.  So I went on a walk.  Not a bad first time, 35 mins 1.78 miles.   I would like to get a pair of the minimalist/barefoot running shoes that are getting popular as I do not like the feel of normal shoes but I can not walk/run around in bare feet either (pavement gets a little hot on these 100+ degree days).   As it was it still felt pretty warm at 81 degrees at 8 in the morning.

Oh well, here's a link: Walking path

edit: don't know why the stupid map does not show up in the post. Shows up in the editor.

So funny story, i'm making Ham & Rice Casserole tonight.  So I start the prep work and get the milk and cheese and ham and butter and all that fun stuff mixed up and in the pan.  I'm looking at it and knowing, just knowing that something is wrong and that I must be forgetting something when it hits me - I'm forgetting the rice.   So wonderful to know that when making something called ham & RICE casserole that i can apparently nearly forget one of the named ingredients.

It's 2010 somewhere.  Happy New Year and all that jazz, i'm going to bed.

I played World of Warcraft for years.   I do not remember when I joined my last guild, but it was more than a year ago and we played every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.  This made for a relatively easy way to determine the day of the week without the use of a calendar.  If I raided the night before, and what we did during the raid let me know what day it was.

Then my computer broke, and I messed up a friends computer and called it quits while waiting for enough money to come in to repair my pc.  Now I have my machine back up and running but no commitment to a raid or guild which is fine.   The thing I notice now though is that I often have no clue without looking at a calendar what day it is anymore.  Tuesday-Friday are all pretty functionally equivalent. More than once I have said at work that I'll just work on in the morning/tomorrow to find out that tomorrow is saturday and I will not be there.  At least come the weekend i know that i have two days off and then have to go back to work.   So I need a new frame of reference for determining the day, but at least i have a free enough calendar that it really does not matter.

the closer i get to paying off my debt, the more stupid shit just seems to pop up to try and screw things up.  Everything will still work, just have to keep my food budget on track.  hurray peanut butter and jelly.

I haven't had flour in my house in quite awhile.  In fact, one of the last times I had flour my two friends wanted to bake something and when they found out that I had no idea how old the flour in my kitchen was (but at least two plus years old), they made me throw it out and get new flour.  That flour was also eventually thrown away, hopefully I will use more of this current batch.

One reason why "eating healthier" and such costs more is because well, it costs more.  It also just seems to cost more depending on those initial circumstances your kitchen lives in when you convert over to said healthier living.  A week ago, if that food network guy that goes into people's kitchens and helps them make some crazy delicious meal for their next get together had come to my home, we would have been partying with hot dogs, rice and juice.  Now he might actually be able to make a meal.   So I kept some bad things, but hope not to use them and threw away some other items (including the v-8 just because while it is healthy, tastes like crap).   After a long trip to wally world and re-familiarizing myself with the sections of shelves that contain all those other foods my kitchen is respectably full and my wallet is understandably downtrodden.

At least a lot of the more expensive items will also last some amount of time, which is good because i still have half a month to go before i get paid again.

In other news I have finally taken the old luggage pieces and garbage bag of clothes to my church's clothes bank, thus bringing an end to their life of the past nearly a year or so on my living room floor.  Once I get the electronic stuff to my to brother friends, i might actually be able to walk to my dining room table.

I've always been a tad bad at moderating certain behaviors, especially when it came to food and drinks.  No matter how often I tell myself, "I'll just cut back", it inevitably ends up with me eating it just as often if not more often.  Coca-colas were an addiction and I ended up just quitting cold turkey because "cutting back" often meant only drinking three to four in a day instead of six.  At least this is one habit that I have unquestionably conquered, as I can no longer even remember how long it has been since my last cola of any kind and it is second nature to order water when in restaurants.

Sweets have been one of my most recent problem children, and while i never filled up my basket with cookies, brownies and such I would find myself making a quick run to the store to pick up one thing and some little sweet snack.  While I'm sure my arteries and heart were glad that I portioned out my dozen easy bake cookies over a couple of days it has excessively grown my waistline while simultaneously shrinking my self image and self worth.  In addition to the sweets has been a crass over-reliance on restaurants to provide me with food.   For a significant amount of time now, I have been eating typically one meal out a day, and often once or twice a weekend to boot.  So in conjunction with expanding my waistline I have been decreasing my amount of money on hand.

I've decided to make a change in my lifestyle both physically and nutritionally starting very soon.  Just as I had to do with the colas, i'm going the cold turkey route.   I have proven I can't manage my sweets (at this time) and restaurants have little interest in providing really healthy food - a large number of chains manage to make even sandwiches and salads grossly unhealthy, I hope to take in into my own hands.  I have been researching at home methods (tried the gym, i could never make myself go any regular basis and I do not like to work out around strangers) for getting in shape for quite awhile now.  While I would like to add a limited amount of extra equipment like some adjustable weight dumbbells and a pull up station, I have the basics available to me to start very soon.  I'm still researching the nutrition side of it and working out what to get from the store, but I hope to be on a program starting in the next week or two.

I am posting this here in the hopes that it further solidifies in my mind what I am trying to do and to have that eternal representation out in the internet that I am actually trying to start this instead of procrastinating one more time.  I will hold off on the "before" pictures until a later date, I feel the need to hold off on that level of exposure at this time, but if things work out hopefully there will be a better me to write about on this thing.