Monday, February 28, 2011

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

  • Can someone please explain what is meant by "diverse parents"? #ellchat [ 6:05 PM]

Conversations I participated in

What I found interesting or amusing

3 comments:

HealthMonth Rules for March

Tomorrow starts a new month, which means new rules for HealthMonth. My friend Ben (who got me into HealthMonth) will continue to participate, and I talked my middle sister into trying it out with me too!

I'm keeping all my February rules except one ("track meals every day" — because HealthMonth requires typing in the foods eaten, which was annoying duplication of effort with my calorie-tracking that I already do via Lose It). I'm keeping my exercise rule the same, increasing my German-studying rule from 4 to 5 days a week, and no longer allowing myself to count "stay below calorie limit" if I encroach into the 500-calorie-per-day deficit I need to lose weight. Finally, I'm keeping my writing rule, but lowering from the far-too-ambitious daily goal to just 3 days a week. Hopefully I can actually manage that one with a little effort (as opposed to losing tons of health points over it — evidence that I over-committed).

In addition to those February rules that I'm carrying over, I'm adding several new ones: floss every day, get up earlier, limit snacking, volunteer, and work on conlanging or personal programming projects.

Since there's no iPhone app for HealthMonth (yet), I made myself a lockscreen wallpaper to remind me of March's new rules. The red "badge" numbers mean the number of days a week I'm supposed to follow the rule.

The icons stand for the following rules:

  1. floss 6 days per week [source]
  2. stay under my weight-loss calorie limit 6 days per week [source]
  3. exercise 5 days per week [source?]
  4. study German 5 days per week [source]
  5. get up before 10 AM 4 days per week [source]
  6. snack only 4 days per week [source]
  7. write 3 days per week [source]
  8. eat fruit 3 days per week [source?]
  9. do household chores 2 days per week [source]
  10. volunteer 1 day per week [source]
  11. program or conlang 1 day per week [source & ?]

0 comments:

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

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Saturday, February 26, 2011

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

  • I am a book-vulture, feasting upon the corpse of the Los Gatos Borders. So sad. [ 3:08 PM]

Conversations I participated in

  • @I said: @purabuenaonda ¿Son tus preguntas para empezar una conversación o práctica de charlar en español? #es [11:00 AM]
  • @benpop said: Frex, the canonical pronunciation of "rang" the vowel is the one in "ban", but for me it's the one in "rain". #ling [ 1:25 PM]
  • @I said: @benpop same here. I have a Californian accent (SF Bay Area). Where is your accent from? #ling [ 1:55 PM]

3 comments:

Friday, February 25, 2011

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

  • via @epicbaker "I dare you not to say 'awww'" http://i.imgur.com/33DT8.jpg // it's too cute, must ... say ... awwwwww [12:58 PM]
  • I use translate.google.com to check my German & Spanish before posting. It got set to German > Spanish, but I didn't even notice at first :P [ 1:37 PM]

Conversations I participated in

0 comments:

HealthMonth: Good Peer Pressure

I'm up at 8:15 AM, and I'm blaming a combination of HealthMonth and Forrest.

Forrest has requested that, if I wake up before him, I should get out of bed rather than read in bed. Apparently he subconsciously notices some change when I'm reading rather than sleeping, and it eventually wakes him up. So there's that force.

Then the other force: HealthMonth. Ben introduced me to this website last month. It seemed more or less like any of the other social goal sites, nothing really special. Except that I had zero friends using any of the other sites out there, whereas Ben said he'd actually be using HealthMonth. I figured the social pressure might be helpful for motivation, so I signed up.

Now that February is almost done, I can honestly say I'm surprised by how much HealthMonth has been helpful. I've exercised more, eaten less, written more, and put more effort into studying German than I had in January.

I lose a point for each of my "rules" that I miss each day — which you wouldn't think would be a strong motivator, since those points don't mean anything except I "lose" the month if I run out of points. But just that simple gamification has made me tell myself, on more than one occasion, "c'mon, better walk today, or you'll lose a point for your exercise rule."

Strange psychology.

But anyway, the getting up early thing. Next month, I'm adding a new rule: get up before 10 AM at least 5 days a week. Forrest and I have slipped into the get-to-work-at-noon thing again, and while I love sleeping in, I do feel "lazy" for starting the day so late (even when I work the same amount as my coworkers, just on a shifted schedule). So I want to try getting up just a little earlier, more consistently, in the hopes that it has feel-good-about-myself benefits.

So when I woke up this morning and looked at my phone to check the time, I actually did think about next month's rule and decided to get up for "practice." How weird is that? Strange psychology, I tell you.

0 comments:

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Settling In

First full day in California.

At work, I've signed up to be a volunteer ESL tutor at Google. We're partnering with this local program, Building Skills, that gets Googlers to teach English (and computer literacy, if desired) to the janitors that work at Google. I'm pretty excited about this volunteer opportunity, and also nervous since I've never tutored adults.

At work-work, I'm about to be done with our old Jambool code and will start working on Google Checkout code proper. I'm going to miss getting paid to work on Rails; I'll probably start setting aside time to work on my side conlang Rails project again.

At the new house, Forrest has been dealing with utilities guys and movers. Everything should be move-in-able on Monday, which is exciting. I'm looking forward to living in my redwoods!

0 comments:

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

Conversations I participated in

0 comments:

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Back in California

We're back in a California, after 4 years in Seattle. Super tired, so I will just leave you with this beautiful* view of orchards in bloom with the sun setting behind the costal range. California sure can be gorgeous when it wants to.

* The view itself was beautiful. It's not the scenery's fault that my iPhone camera wasn't up to the task.

0 comments:

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

  • Twitter chats seem weird. Why not IRC? Maybe *because* it's so simple, more people grok it? Even though it's not optimal for group chat. [ 1:39 PM]

Conversations I participated in

What I found interesting or amusing

  • RT @jorgeortiz85: PHP is a DSL for writing SQL injection vulnerabilities. // I don't really hate PHP, but this still amuses me. :P [ 1:37 PM]
  • RT @mcpusc: Back in California! // As @wilw would say, CALIFORNIA I AM IN YOU [ 2:00 PM]

0 comments:

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

Conversations I participated in

What I found interesting or amusing

0 comments:

Monday, February 21, 2011

Today's Tweets

Conversations I participated in

What I found interesting or amusing

0 comments:

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Eating & Cleaning

Short post tonight; I'm tired and about to go to bed.

More of the same today. Worked on cleaning the apartment, went out to the (new) Lunchbox Labs, packed up our desks at work, went out to sushi and a bar, gathered (more of) our stuff from Jerry's, got home late.

Tomorrow will be less food and errands, more cleaning tasks; Monday is our last full day in Seattle, so everything on the "move-out todo list" needs to get finished.

As much as I'll miss Seattle, I'll be glad when we're out of this limbo state and finally settled into our new place.

0 comments:

Today's Tweets

Conversations I participated in

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Saturday, February 19, 2011

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

  • Dear Internet: I want to see a fiction narrative in the form of a mathematical proof. Find me a creative writer-mathematician! [ 5:08 PM]
  • Good language-learning advice: "make mistakes rather than maintain a discreet silence," from http://amzn.com/956291450X [ 5:23 PM]
  • Ich habe dieses Buch gekauft: "Essential German Grammar" bei Stern und Bleiler. #de [ 6:03 PM]

What I found interesting or amusing

0 comments:

Friday, February 18, 2011

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

  • Zomg, professional movers can pack FAST. On the other hand, they don't accept payment in the form of beer and pizza. [ 9:26 AM]

0 comments:

German Exercise — I Can Read Instructions!

In the entire paragraph of instruction for this German exercise, I only had to look up five words (plus one suffix), and I understood everything after looking up those words! For the seven sentences to work with, I only had to look up three new words. For the amount of time that I've been studying German so far, I'm pretty pleased with myself, even if it is a super-simple paragraph. They've even tagged it as level A2/B1, not just A1, so... yay! :D

Übung: Polite Requests

  1. Würdest du (bitte) mich nach Hause fahren?
  2. Würden Sie (bitte) ein Foto von uns machen?
  3. >Würde ich heute früher kann gehen?
  4. Könntest du mir 100 Euro leihen?
  5. Würden Sie mir helfen?
  6. Würden Sie die Speisekarte giben
  7. Würden Sie mir sagen, wie spät es ist?

2 comments:

Thursday, February 17, 2011

I'm Really Moving

It's starting to hit home.

All our boxes have been sorted through, culled of things we don't need anymore, and packed back up. The movers come tomorrow morning to steal all our stuff away. Tomorrow night, we'll camp out in our bedroom on the floor, with air mattresses and sleeping bags. Saturday, we'll do the move-out walkthrough with the landlord, then pick up Forrest's dad, Dennis, from the airport. (He's helping us finish clean up and drive our two cars down.)

All this means, we're really leaving Seattle. I've been here since April 2007, and I've really come to like the area here. I've made some good friends, whom I'll miss. So far, I've been busy with the logistical details of the move, which are concrete and unemotional steps. But now that the busywork is trailing off, the Sad is starting to creep in.

I wish I was relocating because I wanted to, rather than because work said "move or quit" (to both of us, of course, which made it crazy for us to both quit at the same time — we learned our lesson on that one last year). But there are certainly worse places to live than California, even the South Bay. And there are worse things than working for Google, even if they are a big company.

On the other hand, I've come to believe it's better, emotionally, to admit when you feel contradictory things. So I'm super excited to have been hired into Google, even if it was "only" through an acquisition. I'm excited about the many opportunities there (offices in Europe? yes please!). I'm very grateful for my salary and generous benefits, which make day-to-day financials not stressful. But I'm sad to have to leave Seattle for the South Bay. And I'm sad to no longer be part of a tight-knit startup.

All in all, though, this will probably be a net-positive experience. Maybe it will only be a "learning experience." Maybe we'll both find the right niche for us that feels a little more like a startup within the large company. Either way, it's not like this is going to send our life spiraling downward; far from it. I guess it's that I was comfortable doing startups in Seattle, and change is always somewhat disruptive and emotional.

Here's to embracing change and making the most of it.

0 comments:

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

Conversations I participated in

What I found interesting or amusing

0 comments:

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

What I found interesting or amusing

0 comments:

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Laser Tag

I mentioned to my friends that Google was doing some sort of Capture the Flag tournament. However, it looked like they were going to play on an open field, rather than a stealthy obstacle-filled course. I like sneaky & stealthy over speed-is-of-the-essence games.

That let to some reminiscing about laser tag when we were kids. And then we realized that there was nothing stopping us from getting together a group and playing laser tag again. Thus, six of us (me, Forrest, Jerry, Ben, Paul, and Josh) went laser-tagging tonight. :)

We had initially thought it would just be us in the arena, as a private party. But that's not what we had reserved, and anyway only six people isn't really enough for a proper game of laser tag. So we played with some randoms.

In the first two games, there was that one annoying player that always seems to be at laser tag places: the really good shot, who follows after you relentlessly shooting you four times in a row, just waiting until your five-second "reprieve" time is up so they can shoot you again. Really frustrating, and it doesn't seem all that "sporting," either.

But the third game, that guy went home, and it was more fun. Then the fourth game was awesome, because most of us ended up allying against the dozen or so other players. We defended one area against all the other players, plus Josh from our group who remained a lone gunman rather than join our team. And sometimes Paul shot us and then we would shoot him, because he was the "traitor" (an in-joke from playing Betrayal at House on the Hill and some zombie board game).

I definitely enjoyed the cooperation of the teamwork, being able to trust others, and being able to more easily do things together than you could have done alone. We had each others' backs, literally. I think I'd like to get together another South Bay game after we move, but this time explicitly with teams.

After our four surprisingly tiring games of laser tag, we were starving and descended upon the nearest Denny's. Although I had burned off enough calories that I could actually "afford" to order a real entree from Denny's (where nearly everything is fried), I ended up ordering a relatively light dinner. You see, I was carefully reserving calories for dessert (which I normally have to skip for calorie or full-stomach reasons).

Forrest, Jerry, and Paul also ordered an unusual dinner: Slam burgers, with pancakes replacing the hamburger bun. The waitress barely batted an eyelash, which was awesome. They did get charged for a short stack of pancakes, but that seems fair. After we finished eating, the cook came by to ask how it was. She said it was a "weird" order. Understatement. But they all praised the pancake burger.

I'm still dubious.

2 comments:

Today's Tweets

What I had to say

What I found interesting or amusing

  • RT @YarnHarlot: Giving email addie on phone: Me: YarnHarlot. Clerk: What? Me: yarn like string, harlot like woman of ill repute. Clerk: Wow. [ 2:00 PM]

Conversations I participated in

1 comments:

Monday, February 14, 2011

Dairy Farm & Leavenworth

Dairy Farm Tour in Canada

Last week, Ben saw this "weird" deal on LivingSocial for half off a tour of Aldor Acres Dairy Farm. He mentioned it in our IRC hang-out channel, presumably to make fun of its weirdness. Too bad I thought it was awesome and knew that Forrest wanted to milk a cow. ;) They had me at "dairy farm tour," and later learning that it was in Canada only added to the crazy-adventure-ness of it. I quickly snapped up the voucher for a tour for two.

So Saturday, we drove up to Canada one last time before we move back to California. We got there with an hour to spare, so we stopped at a drug store to gawk at the strange Canadian products. Forrest bought a chocolate egg with a toy inside; inedibles inside edibles are illegal in the US, so he enjoyed his forbidden candy. He reports that the chocolate wasn't even all that good... except for its delicious forbiddenness, of course.

When we arrived at the dairy farm, we discovered (as Forrest had feared) that the tour was geared more for school-age kids than curious adults. However, the weather was rainy and icky, which scared off all but one other group: an older couple, who had helped their uncle with his cows when he went on vacation, bringing their three grandchildren to see the cows. Since the adults just barely outnumbered the kids, the tour guide / farm owner decided to give us the "adult" version tour (even if that mostly meant he put on the made-for-preteens educational video instead of the made-for-elementary-school-kids before the tour). Regardless, it was still pretty interesting and fun, so we're glad we went. Who says you have to grow out of curiosity, anyway?

After the silly video, he took us into the "milking parlor" to let us watch while they did their evening's milking. They have a machine setup to milk six cows at a time. With the machines, it took only a few minutes to ... drain? empty? milk! each cow. Whereas with hand-milking, he said it took a skilled farmer 20 minutes per cow, and the farmer can't milk them in parallel that way.

Once the farmer demonstrated how the machine automatically milks the cows, he taught us how to hand-milk a cow. We milked the Jersey cow you see in the photo. Turns out, you don't tug down on the teats like you see in cartoons. The cow will kick you if you do that. :P

What you're actually supposed to do is put the crook of your thumb and forefinger up against the udder, wrap the first two or three fingers of your hand around the teat, and then just squeeze. No pulling, no tugging, no kicking. It was surprisingly easy... on the other hand, I wouldn't want to spend 20 minutes per cow doing that by hand. There's a lot of milk in one cow!

Then we went out to the barn that's attached to the milking parlor to see the rest of the cows. There were half a dozen calves, one three days old and another four days old. The latter's mother was in the "hospital," as he described the pen to the kids. She apparently wasn't doing so well after giving birth; normally, they go back to hanging out with their cow buddies two days or so after giving birth. The farmer said they were giving her calcium and other things to help her get better.

After the calves' two days with their mother is up, the farmer bottle-feeds them until they're old enough to figure out how to drink milk from a straws-in-a-bucket contraption. He let us take turns feeding the calf with the bottle. Man, those calves can tug! It was likely playing tug-o-war over the bottle, and I'm pretty sure the calf was winning.

Then we fed the adult cows some hay. That was somewhat familiar, like feeding a horse. I kept my fingers away from their teeth. However, I hadn't expected the cows to lick me while trying to get all the hay. I don't remember horses doing that! It was slimy and icky. Forrest got back at the cow by telling her that her tongue would be delicious. (He likes lengua.)

We finished the tour about an hour later. Rather than drive straight back home the way we had come, we thought it would be nice to go through Vancouver one last time. We'd seen a sign that said it was only 50-odd kilometers away, which didn't seem too bad. Except we didn't count on super-slow Canadian speed limits. Or getting lost and ending up on city streets. Or an utter lack of signage directing us toward any city of any kind. So we drove west. 'Cause Vancouver is west; what could go wrong?

More than two hours later, we finally made it to the outskirts of Vancouver. By that point, we were hungry, irritable, and worried about making it back at a reasonable hour. We grabbed something to eat from a McDonald's, drove through downtown Vancouver until we recognized where we were, and headed for the border. When we looked a map back in the US (where data for our iPhones wasn't $15 per freakin' MB), we realized that if we'd turned left instead of right back before Vancouver started, we could have saved ourselves a fair bit of time. Le sigh.

But we made it back to the States. Not that the weekend's adventure was over...

Cross-Country Skiing in Leavenworth

As if the dairy farm in Canada weren't enough, we drove down to Leavenworth from Vancouver on Saturday night and stayed in a hotel there, ready to go skiing with Ben and Jerry Sunday morning! They had warned us that Stevens Pass through the Cascades had needed chains, but it actually turned out to be fine. Compacted snow and then some slush, but we did breaking tests and had fine traction. So we were grateful we (by which I mean Forrest) didn't have to get out and put chains on the truck.

We got in at 1 AM — wishing we had thought to, you know, bring a map to help us navigate the "foreign" country we'd just escaped — and went straight to sleep. In the morning, we met up with Ben and Jerry, where we realized that they had already eaten breakfast, whereas we had expected to all go out to breakfast together. They went on ahead to the ski area while we grabbed something to eat from Starbucks.

We met in the parking lot of the Icicle River trail, maintained by the Leavenworth Winter Sports Club. We put on all our gear, started off down the trail... only to find out roughly two kick-and-glides in that Ben's muscles (pulled during last weekend's skiing) was having none of that particular motion. It was apparently bad enough that Ben immediately turned around, went back to his car, and drove back to town to wait for us. :(

The three of us went around the trail in about two hours. We had gone here once before — it had been me and Jerry's second time skiing, two years ago. Now, it seems so... flat. Way easier than I had remembered, even though it was icy this time (and last time too, just ask Jerry). We didn't stop for lunch mid-trail like we usually do, wanting to hurry back to town to meet back up with Ben.

We found him in town and took him to München Haus, where we enjoyed tasty Bratwurst, Bier, und Glühwein. After lunch, we wandered around town for a while, checking out the random stores, sampling yummy pretzel dips and cheeses, and buying things like ChocoVino and cool gear clocks.

It's really too bad Ben wasn't up to skiing this time, but even so, I had a good time hanging out with him in town.

When we got back to Seattle that night, Jerry, Forrest, and I ended up at The People's Pub in Ballard, a German restaurant, where I ate lots of tasty, tasty spätzel. All in all, a fitting end to the evening.

1 comments:

Today's Tweets

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Saturday, February 12, 2011

Today's Tweets

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Sleep Talking: Take Your Hub Back

When I was growing up, my younger sister Lisa and I shared a bedroom. Every so often, she'd wake up in the middle of the night, say something completely random and off the wall, then go right back to sleep. (“I don’t drink gin” coming from elementary-school Lisa is a classic.) Of course these outbursts mean nothing, but I am amused by the statements' absurdity.

So I woke up this morning at 6:30 for no good reason. I was hoping to fall back asleep but too awake to just lie there, so I picked my iPhone up off the nightstand and started reading in bed. After half an hour so, Forrest suddenly wakes up, and we have this exchange:

  • [Him] Why?
  • [Me] I didn’t respond, hoping he would go back to sleep.
  • [Him] Hub.
  • [Me] Still staying quiet.
  • [Him] Did you say something?
  • [Me] This time he’s more “awake” and clearly expecting an amswer. No, I didn’t say anything.
  • [Him] Can you at least take your hub back?
  • [Me] I… I don’t understand.
  • [Him] Take this hub [he tugs on my pillow] of gunk.
  • [Me] What is this, I don’t even..?

And then he went back to sleep. :)

1 comments:

Friday, February 11, 2011

Today's Tweets

  • RT @OHnewsroom: Copy Editor: "Knock knock." Photo Editor: "Who's there?" Copy Editor: "To." Photo Editor: "To who?" Copy Editor: "To WHOM!" [ 9:47 AM]
  • @DoubleTranslate 1) Hilfst du Ihnen heute Abend? 2) Das ist uns gut gelungen 3) Wir geben euch später das Geld 4) Ich gefalle ihm nicht##de [ 9:50 AM]
  • @DoubleTranslate That's two pronoun case mistakes now. Time to actually study them! :) #de [11:17 AM]
  • You should ignore short-term weight fluctuations... unless it's in the downward direction, in which case it's definitely a trend. [12:44 PM]
  • Dear German: What's up with "y'all" nominative being the same as "she" dative? Not cool. [ 2:13 PM]

0 comments:

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Today's Tweets

  • RT @pyry: @VerbingNouns Cat. Cat? Cat! Tones for everyone! Mwahaha! [10:41 AM]
  • Anyone have good ideas for how to record language learning progress? Like a portfolio to be looked at later, to see how far I've come. [12:37 PM]
  • I've realized that, now that my blog gathers up each day's tweets, my tweets go to Facebook, Buzz, and my blog. One-stop communication! [12:39 PM]
  • .@bernard_ben http://blog.arthaey.com -- but be warned: I no longer even bother apologizing when I go weeks or months without updates. ;) [12:59 PM]
  • "Der Schlüssel" is a very funny word for "key." :)##de [ 3:51 PM]
  • @DoubleTranslate 1) Es schmeckt mir sehr get. 2) Ich gratuliere Ihnen zum Geburtstag. 3) Wir glauben dir. 4) Ich beweise ihm das. #de [ 4:28 PM]
  • RT @GRAMMARHULK: HULK SMASH "HE OR SHE" AND "HE/SHE" AND ESPECIALLY "S/HE"! USE SINGULAR THEY! IT PERFECTLY CROMULENT! [ 4:35 PM]

0 comments:

Documenting My Language-Learning Progress

As I'm beginning to notice that I'm actually learning as I learn German (imagine that), I'm wanting some way to record or document my progress. Already I have German sentences I've written all over the internet: this blog, Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, emails, and IRC. I think I'd like to keep them collected all in one place... somewhere. Where, or how, exactly, I'm still trying to decide.

Any suggestions? An acquaintance on Facebook suggested that I periodically take some official test (there must be a German equivalent of the Spanish DELE, perhaps the Goethe-Institut exams) to concretely measure my progress. I may do that, though I worry about memorizing answers. Maybe I should just make myself one big monolithic "Learning German" webpage and be done with it...

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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Blogger Tweet Gatherer

Not everyone who follows my blog is into Twitter, where I'm more active on a day-to-day basis that here. So I've been wanting some way of gathering the day's tweets into a single blog post. I found tools to make each tweet into its own blog post, but that's just silly. And I found another tool that almost did what I wanted, except that it made the first tweet the post's title; why would you want that behavior?

So tonight I finally wrote my own tool to do it. It was super easy, because of the Twitter Ruby gem. It handles interacting with the Twitter API, letting me focus on my application-specific logic. Yay libraries!

0 comments:

Today's Tweets

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Sunday, February 6, 2011

Skiing

Jerry and I took our friends Ben and Paul cross-country skiing for their first time today. ... While it turned out better (as measured in collection number of falls and frustration vs fun) than our attempt at sharing downhill skiing with them two weeks ago, neither of them exactly said they were planning to go again on their own. I wish it could have magically been more fun for them, but Jerry and I aren't exactly professional ski instructors. :/

For my personal skiing experience, though, I'm pleased to say that it is "just like riding a bike." With the exception of the Jambool ski trip, I didn't go skiing at all last year. The year before that was my first year skiing. So I don't have a lot of experience yet.

One thing I hate, skiing or elsewhere, is adrenaline. I'm the opposite of an adrenaline junkie. So I dislike hills that are too steep for my current skill level to be able to control my speed sufficiently. This meant that a lot of the times that Forrest convinced me to go downhill skiing with him that first year, I was freaking out, flooding with adrenaline, wanting to be somewhere safe and slow.

This year, though, I have just enough technique to control my speed on beginner terrain. I actually found myself enjoying it, which definitely pleased Forrest (since he's been wanting me to get into it and go with him more often). I still enjoyed cross-country better, but I foresee Tahoe ski trips in our future. :P

Update: Turns out that Ben enjoyed the cross-country skiing more than I had thought. He asked us if we wanted to go skiing again this weekend! Wootles. So we're going to take him to Leavenworth this time, where we can enjoy some bratwurst and beer for lunch. :)

0 comments:

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Fondue is Healthy, Right?

Today was a little lazier than the previous two days. My excuse is the my right foot's been hurting, so I skipped y half hour walk to give it some break time to recover. I'm planning on taking some friends cross-country skiing on Sunday, so I want to make sure my feet are in good shape.

I also indulged in some delicious Melting Pot chocolate dessert fondue, um, deliciousness. It was date night! Interestingly, even with that I'm only 250 calories above the lose-a-pound-a-week number of calories for the day. In other words, 250 below for weight maintenance. Not too terrible, and I did "plan" on a once-a-week semi-indulgent day... So log as I don't do that too regularly, and keep it as a treat, I should be good.

I wish I did enjoy the gym more. It's easier there. But I just get soooo bored. Maybe I should try rollerblading again. And set up my DDR home pads. Or drag Forrest out to a tennis course. :)

German

One unexpected Spanish interference with my German-learning is that I tend to make my H's silent. Oops!

Ich habe meine Lehrbuch, das heißt German: A Self-Teaching Guide, heute gelesen. Es lehrt mir viele neue Wörter. Aber habe ich nicht mehr zu sagen jetzt. (Korrekturen sind gutes! :))

1 comments:

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Gym == Boredom

Exercise

Day 2 of HealthMonth, going strong! Well, all of me except the arch of my right foot; it's kinda achey, not so strong. I tried going to the gym at work today, intending to do 30 minutes on the elliptical machine instead of walking like yesterday. Within 5 minutes, I was bored to tears. I decided it would be better to do a less intensive workout that didn't make me hate exercise, y'know? As soon as I started walking outside, the boredom went away. So that's good to know about myself.

German

Heute sprach ich mit deutsche Leute im IRC. Ich habe über das Wort „Wort‟ gelernt. Es hat zwei Plurale. Lies diese.

Note: If you hover over the German text, it will translate itself into English for you.

1 comments:

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Health, Happiness, and Hochdeutsch

Resolutions, Goals, Rules, Whatever

It's a new month, which is the new New Year. At the suggestion of a friend, I'm trying out HealthMonth for tracking weekly goals. Nothing too surprising here:

  • Exercise for 30 minutes at least 5 days a week
  • Stay under my calorie limit at least 6 days a week
  • Track your meals at least 6 days a week
  • Write or journal every day (blogging counts)
  • Study German at least 4 days a week

I had been using Lose It to track my calories and eat more consciously, but I haven't logged in for a month or two now. So I started up again, to support my HealthMonth goals. HealthMonth uses gamification — points and teams — to encourage you. End of day 1 is looking pretty good. :)

Moving Back to California

So pretty much everyone who knows me in real life already knows this, but this month Forrest and I are moving back to California. When the startup we worked for was acquired by Google, moving to their headquarters in Mountain View was one of the conditions. So February 18th, we're packing up all our stuff and heading back to the Bay Area.

I've lived in Seattle since 2007, and we both really like the area. We had always strongly considered moving back to California... some day. We're not especially happy that we're being forced to move back sooner than we wanted to, however. (Despite great benefits and good pay. I know, I know, it's not really a horrible situation. I'm lucky that this is what I have to complain about. I get that.)

Neither of us like the sprawl of the South Bay, where you have to drive to get anywhere. We are definitely going to miss our apartment in Fremont, where we can walk everywhere or hop on a super-convenient bus. So rather than settle for some expensive, small apartment in some crappy, sprawling suburbia, we found ourselves a cool rental house 8 minutes above Los Gatos. (Note: There's a Borders in Los Gatos! Alas, they may soon be filing for bankruptcy...)

The house is this 150-home community in the middle of the redwoods of the Santa Cruz mountains. It's about as big as our old rental on Dexter Ave, except it has a second bedroom instead of a weird office/walkthrough area. The yard is pretty small, but big enough for chickens! I'm really quite excited about keeping a small flock of chickens. Number and breed TBD. Apart from the yard, there's a small deck between the bedroom's back door and said yard, and then there's a much larger deck off of the living room and kitchen. There is a wood-burning stove in the living room, and a pot belly stove on the large deck. All in all, I think we'll like it there — it will definitely be a nice daily break from the South Bay sprawl.

No, we don't have a date yet

Forrest and I are still engaged and still planning to get married in California this year. We've been holding off on setting a date, because we were waiting until we had moved to California. It's difficult to get a good sense of venues solely based on their websites — they tend to portray only their best side, y'know? And since venue will be the determining factor for specific dates, that's just going to have to wait a little bit longer.

Starting to Learn German

My sister Lisa foolishly said in my hearing, "I want to learn German." You should not say you want to learn a language in front of me. My response: "Orly? Let's!"

Turns out, she was actually serious. She's got some good motivation, since her boyfriend speaks German. We had some snafus with studying together remotely, however, so for now we're studying independently.

Ich nicht spreche Deutsch jetzt, aber ich studiere es. Ich lese deutsche Tweet, und ich höre ein Podcast bei Deutsche Welle.

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