Seen a shooting star tonight

Another blog post title brought to you by Bob Dylan. I'm getting in a rut here. If you're a casual Dylan listener, you probably aren't familiar with this song, which he recorded during the late '80s, a time in which only hard-core fans bought his albums. Like me. (And even I'm not hard-core enough to buy his Christmas CD. The reviews are horrible! It's for a good cause, but money's too tight these days.)

The Geminid meteor showers are putting on quite a show. If it wasn't so cold, I'd still be outside. In five minutes I saw half a dozen shooting stars streaking across the early-morning sky.

Here in the Middle of Nowhere we aren't affected by light pollution too much except to the south, but all I had to do was look up and toward the west to catch the performance. I love starting the day – and the week – with a smile, and falling stars always make me smile.

So. The weekend was good as far as food goes. I really feel as though I've got a handle on eating. Since I'm 58 years old, one could say it's about time! I'm cooking healthful meals from scratch probably 90 percent of the time. I use commercially canned tomatoes and mushrooms on pizza, for instance, but the whole-wheat crust and mozzarella are made from scratch and the onions came from the market down the road.

Since it's the holiday season, I've been baking and making treats, but I'm freezing them and everything will be given away. I thought I was done, but sometime in the middle of the night I remembered Snickerdoodles. My mother always made Snickerdoodles at Christmas time, so I will, too. And maybe some Snappy Turtles, another of her specialties.

While my eating has been acceptable, exercise has gone by the wayside. With the treadmill being cranky and the temperatures plummeting, I've seen that I need to figure out other alternatives. Should have a good opportunity for an outdoor walk today; maybe I'll come up with some good ideas while I'm walking.

I'm dithering about the marathon in April. I haven't lost any weight. Training starts in 11 days (if I want a four-month training period). There are other reasons to put it off, too. I'm not sure I could finish at my current weight, so that really needs to be Job One.

Maybe I'll go back out and wish on one of those falling stars. As the old saying goes, it's like chicken soup in a car wreck: It can't hurt!