A third of the way through Month One

If beginning my health-and-fitness plan the day after Christmas puts me ahead of everyone who started this week, then SO BE IT. Heh.

Making December 26 my Day One of Month One might have been the smartest thing I did last year. I'm feeling very in the groove as I begin the 10th day of the umpteenth diet-and-exercise makeover. Today is a walk-and-yoga day, and I did indeed find a beginner routine for the sun salutation. I haven't tried it yet, so can't personally recommend it. This is one of many on YouTube; if it's not what I need, I'll certainly keep looking.

I haven't mentioned knitting around these parts lately. I'm still working on the endless blue-and-white garter stitch scarf. Pretty soon it'll be spring and I won't need a scarf.

My husband found a piece of paper with an outline of the five-year-old granddaughter's foot, which I thought I'd lost. She and I made the outline so I could make her a pair of slippers that actually fit. So next in the queue is a pair of child-sized Duffers.

(Mine, which I've been wearing since November 21, are already beginning to show some wear. There's a tiny hole developing in the toe of the right one. I'll probably do a quick mend until I have time to make another pair. Or until I make a pair of felted clogs, which last a very long time.)

What else, what else … I backed up my hard drive yesterday, something I hadn't done since July, according to Time Machine. Tsk, tsk. This was in preparation for purging some space-hogging tunes from said hard drive. What's stopping me from ditching all the music (since it's backed up on the external drive) is this: How would I go about loading the iPod again? I'm not done buying music or audiobooks. My laptop (a MacBook Air) only has one USB port, so I'd have to download music from the external back to the computer and then hook the iPod up to load anything new onto it.

I don't dare mention this dilemma to my husband. He would simply tell me to listen to the radio. My solution, as I mentioned a few days ago, is to delete those free-songs-I'll-never-listen-to. That should free up plenty of space. But if any of you have other ideas …

Finally, check out the new widget over in the right sidebar. DailyMile keeps a running mileage total for you, as long as you remember to log your activity. DM doesn't have an Android app, but there's an app called Daily Distance that simply and easily uploads your stats to the website. I use an Android app called Skimble to track my time-and-distance when I walk. (Skimble can track just about any fitness activity you can think of, actually, I just now looked and I can also record elliptical sessions. Yay!)

I just wish downloading and using apps burned calories like walking and yoga do.  (I'm a geek and I know it.) Maybe someone is working on that.

Busy day today

I conserved a lot of personal energy yesterday by doing next to nothing. I haven't been sleeping well the past few days, and so when I wasn't doing what was absolutely necessary – making coffee, fixing dinner, opening the mail – I was, um, napping.

Sometimes you need a Nothing Day.

I'm paying for it today, though. I could have made the grandkids' Christmas cards yesterday. I could have finished knitting a little last-minute gift. Instead I played endless games of smartphone solitaire and I slept.

Today I need to pick up an Amish neighbor at 10:30 to take her to a doctor's appointment. I'm then going to have new tires put on my car. (Merry Christmas!) And I have a walking date at 2 p.m.

I tried to walk late yesterday afternoon, figuring I'd have enough time for two miles before starting the spaghetti sauce. Here's my Skimble report:

It was SO cold and SO windy that we (my husband was with me) gave up before we got to the end of the driveway!

Today should be nice, and then we're in for some kind of winter weather event, according to the multiple alerts I've gotten on my phone. I hope to be well south of it before it hits, as I'm headed out tomorrow to visit family a couple states south. Not sure if I'll be able to keep up with the daily posts or not, but I'll sure try.

'Cause I know both of you are on the edges of your chairs waiting for my updates every morning. Heh.

Thanks for your comments the past few days. I appreciate it more than you know. I hope our collective outrage and our calls to our Congressmen and Senators will bring about effective change in America's gun laws. The problem is huge and will never fully prevent future tragedies. But if we don't try, we will always have blood on our hands.

Up, down, up, down, the same! Again!

It's Tuesday, and since I was being a crankyass last week and didn't/couldn't/WOULDN'T report my weight-loss results, I guess I'd better do so today. Since Tuesday is when I usually 'fess up.

I have finally gotten back to the lowest weight I've been since the first of the year, meaning I've lost nine pounds in 13 weeks. If you'll remember, I'd previously lost nine pounds in five weeks, and then again in 11 weeks. So here I am again, at some kind of critical barrier. For me, anyway.

Would it KILL this body to just go ahead and drop ONE MORE POUND for an even 10?!?

But enough about that.

I've been using a BlackBerry app called Great Trainer to help keep track of my walks, but it's not available for the Android market, so I'm using something new. Skimble works about the same, but I haven't figured out if it will "tell" me, via chirp or voice, when I've reached a certain distance. Since I walk the same route most days anyway, it really doesn't matter. And it's kind of fun to use a new app; this one will track/record a LOT of activities.

I'm also investigating features in various Couch to 5K (C25K) apps. While I don't have plans to run a 5K any time soon, I remember how much I liked the discipline of the training experience when I was preparing to run my first half-marathon. And I especially liked sticking little stars on the chart when I completed each training run. 'Cause I'm a kindergartener like that.

I think I might be at a good point to use running (okay, jogging/walking fast) as a weight-loss tool. Training for the Country Music Half completely stalled what had been pretty steady weight loss in 2007. I had thought I would continue losing, but training affects different people differently, and I'm one of those who ended up rewarding myself for all those long, hard training runs.

All winter I've been doing the elliptical and walking steadily, using free weights at the gym, doing intervals on the stationary bike … all of these things are good and helpful, but now that spring is here it's time to kick it up a notch. A C25K plan would do that.

With the addition of the somewhat physical part-time job (which is all standing, walking and lifting, but nothing strenuous), I should be burning quite a few more calories than I do sitting on my crankyass in front of the laptop.

Now we'll see if the theory translates into real life results.