I find elephants amusing...

And I'd forgotten that until I read through my last two posts (both of which mention elephants) which reminded me of the very first photo album I ever posted on Facebook...

Which didn't really have anything to do with elephants, but was a series of answers that students had given to math questions.

One of them in particular made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe properly:

I can't even explain why I find that funny. To the point of belly-aching, wheezing laughter. Still.

Which actually brings to mind my other favorite random elephant-thing: the winner of the 2003 Darwin award.

Not much more to say about this subject, really.

My career - what next???

Becoming a better business analyst - Part 2 >>

Who, What, Where, When, Why, How.

I have built a career out of asking those questions. (Many thanks to my third grade teacher for introducing them to me...)

That is part of the beauty of being a business analyst. You don't need to know the right answer, you just need to keep asking questions and eventually, you present all the answers you get to someone else, and they make a decision about what to do next. And then you start asking questions again...

So, my current question is: How do I become a better business analyst?

And before I can get to that, what makes me a good business analyst? In fact, am I a good business analyst??

These are good questions.

In order to figure out what makes me a good business analyst, I first have to figure out what a good business analyst is.

(See what I mean by you keep asking questions?)

And right here, I run into what I like to think of as information overload.

How did we live before Google?

I ask this question in all seriousness, of course.

For instance, did you know that enough people have asked the question:

"How many calories in a plastic spoon?"

That there is an answer to the question provided by ChaCha.com, whatever that is. The answer?

Plastic spoons are not measured in calories, but in weight. Eat with a spoon! Not the actual spoon...

And I repeat: How did we survive before Google?

I wonder if anyone else has asked that question??? And, yes. They have.

**EDIT**
Partially related to the first question I asked, there is another one:

"How would you eat an elephant with a plastic spoon?"

Answer:

You would not be able to eat an elephant with a plastic spoon. The elephant would be upset if you tried. for now!

As an aside, my question has veered from "How did we survive before Google" to "How did we survive as a species??? Seriously!!!

Bouncing around my first 5lb weight loss

As expected, my body does not like to lose weight. And I personally, am not a big fan of dieting or tracking. Also, if my routine is not steady, then I stop even trying to maintain it. For example, going home for Thanksgiving, while wonderful, was such a break in my routine that despite my best intentions, I didn't exercise all week. That's 10 whole days, 8 of which, had I been at home, I would have been in the gym for about an hour every day.

And I didn't even pretend to pay attention to my diet - didn't track, didn't drink water, ate pie twice a day... This is proof (even if I already knew it) that I am best suited to a steady routine. Normal becomes me. Sigh. That is a little depressing. Doesn't everybody yearn just a little bit to be one of those people that thrives on the excitement of not ever being quite sure what the day will bring them? I know I do. And yet, I am less healthy when that is the case. No motivation whatsoever to get out and exercise if I could be having a lazy morning with my sisters, and definitely, given the choice between home made apple pie or a salad, I'll pick pie every time.

Oh well. I'm back home (not quite thrilled about it, but here I am) and made it to the gym this morning for day 1 of week 4 of the Couch to 5 K training program, with every intention of going again tomorrow morning and then again on Friday morning, and hitting up the last session of my kickboxing aerobics class on Thursday night.

... and after all that spiel about how I'm getting back on track, this is the email I get:

... I am not giving in, I am not giving in, I am not giving in...

(Maybe, if I repeat it enough, it will work)

I was right - Loving my drawing class!

Free-form garlic might not be my thing, per se, but I'm having fun learning how to shade pictures in!

Original

My first pass - partially completed

Blog overkill

I'm feeling a little bit like I've jumped into this journaling thing with both feet and instead of landing in water, I've landed in something more like quicksand. And now I'm essentially drowning in places to write things, and the lines between what gets written where are getting a bit blurry.

I have this blog where I write about random things that I think about, and a travel blog that I put all of my pictures on, have linked to Facebook, and then email to my Grandmother, who has a real thirst for pictures. I have another blog, where I was writing a list of things that make me happy and poems that I like, and I actually started another one to document things in History that I find interesting. I was unable to make that one do exactly what I wanted, though, so I haven't written anything on it yet. Then I started going to Weight Watchers, and they have a blog feature on their web site for their community members to use, and so I started logging anything to do with weight loss and the program on that site.

At this point, I haven't written anything in my happy list for a year, my travel log is a year out of date, and I feel like in some cases I want to say the same things in this blog and my Weight Watchers blog.

I do believe that the solution is to combine the three blogs (Things I think about, Happyness List, Fascinating History) into one blog, keep the travel blog separate as its own entity, and make sure that the WW one stays limited to WW. Which will be good, because then I will only be writing in three places, and all will have very clear purposes, and I will feel much less like I'm drowning in quicksand. Which is a very desirable thing.

... Not that it changes what I am actually doing, which is actively writing in three places, but I already feel much more organized about it all.

Journaling really is good therapy, apparently.

I'm going to enjoy my drawing class

And I worked out for the third day in a row, and it's raining out, and I have a slight headache, and I've lost another 1/2 lb.

And I'm still getting over my head cold.

These are all things that I could tell you, if you asked me how I'm doing today. I would probably just say "I'm fine, thank you, how are you?" but I do have other things to say, I promise you.

Even writing this blog post, I have a million things buzzing around in my head, and the only one that is going to come out, is the one I just wrote about having a million things buzzing around in my head.

Huh. I wonder why that is?

Oh. One other thing. I'm not really good at drawing garlic. In case you were curious.

Reminder to myself: Life is about more than weight loss

Hard to believe, I know.

The reason I say this, is because I am trying very hard to commit more to the Weight Watchers program, and so I'm deliberately using the etools they have, and one of them is a blog. Which is fine, but I feel constricted on it. Like there are some things that don't belong there. And then it is very limited; I can't change my background or specify where pictures show up, and I get a bit claustrophobic about stuff like that.

Hey. I never said I wasn't more than just a little OCD. Not once.

And of course, I have a lot to say about weight loss and how motivated I am, and how great my workout schedule is, and how much I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE some of the treadmills at the gym, and how excited I am about how much of a head-turning hottie I think I will be...

Also, I never said I didn't feel attractive. Except maybe once, and that was because I was on a road trip for two whole weeks with my sister... and even then, it wasn't that I didn't feel attractive, its that nobody noticed me beside her... which is a completely different thing, and if I'm being perfectly honest, absolutely natural.

Most of the time, I promise, I picture myself as Marilyn-esque, turning heads when I walk into a room.

However, I digress.

Week 2: 1.2 lbs lost, 93.6 to go

...or in terms of my 5% weight-loss goal, 9.8 lbs until I get that little star.

Which I am really looking forward to, actually. I will still be above 200 lbs, but at least it will be progress.

Last week's meeting was good; I'm slowly figuring out what the agenda is in these meetings. Basically, it's all discussion among the attendees, with a few questions to focus the meeting. I don't believe a copy of those questions is posted anywhere; I will start taking notes next week so that I remember them.

There is also a weightwatchers weekly handout at every meeting, and I missed last week's, so this post will include my thoughts on both.

September 1-7, 2013
This month's Routine: Know What You're Having for Lunch

Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? And yet, I really didn't actually pay that much attention to it. To be fair, I got sick on Tuesday, and so basically lived off of chicken noodle soup and toast for most of the week.

However, I am going to try out the whole new routine thing in the online tool, and make that my routine, see if I can actually make that into a habit. (Today, I'll be having half of a chicken bacon ranch wrap, with veggies for the afternoon)

The hand-out had some good lunch tips in it, over all:

• What makes a good lunch - lean protein, complex carbs, healthy fat, fibre
• To prevent boredom, add colour, texture and flavour
• How to survive a business lunch - preview the menu, don't drink alcohol, be very specific with your order
• Eating lunch at home - Stir-fry over whole-wheat noodles or brown rice, Omelet with a side salad and whole-wheat toast, or a grain bowl (quinoa, barley, brown rice, mixed with cooked veggies and some lean protein)
• Eating lunch at work - brown bag it (whole-wheat pasta with extra tomato sauce so it doesn't dry out in the microwave, veggies and lean protein, days of the week salad - greens with different toppings each day of the week, rice and beans from a can, rinsed, and topped with salsa, shredded cheese and broccoli or peppers
• Eating lunch on the go - Use the Food Court Cheat Sheet (who knew???) at the mall, or brown bag it using a freezer pack in a tote: Hard boiled eggs, crackers, peppers, fruit, or Hummus pizza in a wrap for easy carrying, greek yoghurt with granola and berries, carrots on the side

It's Wednesday.

That's about all I have to say today. I woke up with a cold, I'm at home, it's a beautiful day, I still don't have a couch...

:)

I'm trying to stick to my diet, though.

I really thought I had something to say today...

I vaguely remember planning my journal entry this morning on my way in to work... maybe I should go get some coffee before I try to do this...

All right. Coffee in hand, mostly drunk, some work taken care of, and still no idea of what I was thinking about on my way into work.

This is what I definitely remember:

1. Thinking I looked good in yellow, which is a surprise to me after years of avoiding it.
2. Looking forward to "hot me" - Did I mention I started going to Weight Watchers meetings? Now I'm just a little bit excited about what I'll look like with ~90 lbs less weight than I'm carrying now... And to be really clear, I think I'm cute right now, but I'm planning on being absolutely stunning without the extra weight. :)
3. Wishing I was already retired and didn't have to be going to work.

Maybe I was dreaming that I had something to write about today.

And I'm not sure if you can tell, but I'm feeling much less "doom and gloomy" today - yesterday was mostly PMS-induced, and anything after that was just because it was Monday.

Journaling (How do you spell that word, anyway?)

According to my brother, who came to visit me over the September long weekend, journaling is very therapeutic. He writes down the things that are on his mind, and poof!! It's all okay. Those things that were buzzing around in his head, transforming from molehills into mountains are magically contained, prevented from sprouting into something the approximate size of the Himalayas.

He claims that my sister has had the opportunity of being given ~$3600 worth of advice from a professional life coach (for free), and in the end, it boiled down to her receiving a gift of a journal from Grand & Toy.

On Saturday, at my first Weight Watcher's meeting, the leader mentioned writing things down in a journal...

It seems to me that many different things are loudly shouting at me: Start writing stuff down!!! Your life will be less stressful, and you will be more successful for it!!!

And so, now seems to be an appropriate time to resurrect this particular blog, which is the closest thing to a journal that I have. And, in resurrecting it, I should probably own up to all the things that are weighing on my mind right now.

1. I'm overweight.
2. I'm... lost the word... you know, when you postpone things until its almost to late to get them done? Procrastinating. I had to look that up. I'm procrastinating putting my application together to get my CBAP.
3. I'm also procrastinating saving money to buy my second property.
4. I'm feeling out-of-control, and vaguely unhappy about something in my life that I can't quite put my finger on - maybe journaling will help me sort through all of that.

That's probably enough for now... I can only take so much "my inner fears under a microscope and then documented" at a time...

P.S. The general sense of something being off in my life today is probably due to the fact that I'm PMS-ing... just saying.

Weight Watchers Week 1

I'm jamming this post in for last week - I found the Model My Diet weight loss simulator, and wanted to get my Starting picture up for the record...

I want...

SOOO many things!!!

I want to be able to paint.
I want to be able to play the guitar.
I want to be in better shape.
I want to be able to buy clothes in single digit sizes.

I want to be able to run the half marathon as planned in a couple of weeks, but I allowed winter to defeat me this year. And yes, it was a CRAZY winter, lasting from the end of October until the very last week of April, but still, I totally wimped out in mid-March, and then just threw up my hands in defeat the second week of April, when I decided that I would NOT run a 10K race outside when the snowbanks were still taller than me.
I guess what I really want is to be able to say at the beginning of June that I ran a half marathon last month. And to say that I set a goal and followed through to the finish.

I definitely want to be loved.


And, I think I might maybe want something I'm not at all sure I should let myself have.

I'm still working through that one, though.

And if being loved means letting myself have something I'm not sure I should let myself have, am I a bad person?