Note of the Living Deb

I've already talked about the Advanced Journalling badge. I've now tried out my first new types of journal.

Time Diary

I made up some categories for the things I do and tracked them for a month. Then I made a chart with hours on one axis and days on the other, and colored in the time spent on different categories in different colors. I used similar colors for similar types of activities. For example, black for sleeping and grey for trying to fall asleep. Orange for scrolling and red for playing videogames.

I have to say it's a huge relief to not be doing that anymore!

Oh, right, but my goal was to get a closer look at where all my time goes. I was surprised to see that I really don't spend as much time on videogames and internet scrolling as I'd thought. I do sometimes spend very long stretches of time (such as 5 hours) doing those things (or also, working on projects), and certainly it would be good to at least get up and stretch in the middle.

Gratitude Journal

As suspected, I'm already pretty good at remembering and noticing all the many, many things I have to be grateful for. Well, not all the things, but so many! I don't think actually writing down lists of those things does anything for me. It's already part of my internal dialog.

Strava

I joined Strava, an app for recording distance biked, run, or walked, and have been recording my (near) daily walks. I like it as a cute little way to interact with my friends who are also on Strava. You can also add photos, but I haven't figured out how to do that. I might hold off on counting this as one of my journal types until I start doing that. So far, I do want to continue doing that.

Future diary types

Next up: strength-training diary and prompted journal. For the latter, I found a book of prompts and have enjoyed writing them up. To be fair, I looked at many, many options and picked my favorite (FYI, it's called Burn After Writing). (Hmm, and I just now found this nice set of journal prompts online.) This may also give me ideas for writing an autobiography.

Additional activity

These badges are interesting, but they are not my boss. Ahem, I mean, now that I'm more mature (ha!), I'm willing to back away from just doing what it says and looking also at what would improve my life. So my philosophy is to honor both the letter and spirit of the badge in ways that seem fun and/or useful to me.

So, besides looking for new journal types to try and trying some out, I think it also makes sense to read some other journals. I've read Anne Frank's diary. I've read parts of Samuel Pepys's diary, which would be incredibly boring if I weren't so ignorant about daily life during when he lived, but nevertheless too boring for me to want to read the whole thing. Do you have any recommendations? I like autobiographies and memoirs, but for this badge I'd like to look for diaries. Here are some interesting ideas I've seen:

* Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman (1993-2016)

* Nelson Mandela's Conversations with Myself (1960s+) - also includes letters, but I'm okay with that.

* George Orwell Diaries (mid-1900s)

* Journals: Captain Scott's Last Expedition (1913) - literally found on his dead body in Antarctica

* A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska: The Story of Hannah Breece (early 1900s)

* Sarah Morgan: The Civil War Diary Of A Southern Woman

* Anna: The Letters of a St. Simons Island Plantation Mistress, 1817-1859

* Charles Darwin’s Diary of the Beagle (1839) - Normally I'm not into travelogues, but this one could be interesting!

* A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

* The Pillow Book (11th century) - by a lady of the Japanese court

* The Diary of Lady Murasaki (11th century) - by a contemporary Japanese lady-in-waiting and author

* Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (180)

Quote of the Day - I've been writing a lot of e-mails to my elected officials lately and I think it's time for a break because I literally sent something with this sentence to my Senators: "I'm horrified and tired of being in some giant reality TV show, and I'm sure you are, too. So I rely on you and your colleagues to remember that this is an actual government of an actual country."

My brother, who works at a call center, is going to get to travel for his job, to help train people in another call center. In Bosnia. Suddenly I am curious about this country. When you've only heard of a country from being in the news, that's a bad sign, but it seems better now. And has beautiful old buildings. He hopes to take many pictures and share them on Facebook. Yea!

Quote of the Day

On identifying words as adjectives: "I always just go with the "can this word be used to modify a ____ (fill in blank with any noun - for me, that's usually a cat)" method!" - Eco Cat Lady in a comment in her amusing I Don't Think You Said What You Think You Said

I am not currently a normal cell phone user.

Cell phones are not REVOs.

I'm still sore about cell phones not being as good as my old REVO. That's a hand-held device from the Palm Pilot days which I originally got because it had a small keyboard. Reviews said it was too tiny to use like a typewriter, but I have tiny fingers, so I tried it.

I also couldn't type as fast as on a regular keyboard but it was because the keys were too sticky. Still, I didn't have to learn a fancy script. And I came to love that thing, mostly because of databases. I made databases for everything. I had lists of prices everywhere. I had lists of sizes of things (like air filters). I can't even remember all the stuff I had anymore, but I sure did love that thing. Except for the part about how it's made out of electronics and therefore cannot last forever, even when I don't accidentally get it wet by walking home in a flash flood event during which bus service has been stopped.

Modern cell phones have gone in a different direction, which I finally figured out a couple of years ago. My REVO was all about my data. Smart phones are all about other people's data. They do all the work, so you don't have to, but it's their data and you can only manipulate it in ways they have thought up. Which is not much. As a result, smart phones aren't great at even things like cutting a pasting. Di is the only person I know who has this same complaint.

Currently, I use my laptop for everything and carry around pieces of paper and still mourn the loss of my REVO.

I have a smart non-phone.

I do have an I-Pod Touch, which is just like a smart phone except there's no phone. It turns out that I have rarely used it. I don't know why not. I've used it a lot to play "Plants versus Zombies." I've used the timer to time my jogs. I have taken some notes on it at parties for things to look into later. Pretty minimal.

I have a cell phone.

The first smart phones came with really expensive monthly plans, so I resisted. Finally I broke down and got a TracFone, a pre-paid plan that cost me about $8.50 a month. However, I rarely gave out my cell phone number and warned people that my phone was never on. I used it for long distance calls with my parents and for when Robin and I split up at festivals or stores. Then I lost it. It's been lost for several months now.

Even when it wasn't lost, it wasn't very user friendly. The volume was too low and took me years to find any information on how to increase the volume but it didn't work for me. Also, it was hard to deal with my messages, so I ended up just never checking them.

I still never want to turn into a person who keeps checking my phone when I have friends right with me. But I'm now ready to make the switch to something new.

I'm likely going with Republic Wireless.

Many of my favorite personal finance bloggers recommend Republic Wireless. For example:

* Mr. Money Mustache - Republic Wireless: $19 for an Unlimited-Everything Smartphone Plan?! (5/30/13), Republic Wireless: Old Phone, New Phone, and a Tempting Competitor (11/16/13) and Republic Wireless becomes 50% More Frugal with the Moto G: A Review (5/13/14)

* Saving Money in Your Twenties - Republic Wireless: the first week (12/18/13) and An Update on the Cheapest Phone Plan Ever (2/12/14)

* Budgets Are Sexy - How I’m Saving $100/mo on Our Cell Bill! (7/14/14)

Here is a choice quote:

"At this point, I realized we’re dealing with a different kind of mobile phone company here. It’s run by real, intelligent people who are excited by the chance to change this country’s entire communications landscape" - MMM, 5/30/13

Here's how it works:

1) Service is cheap because if you can find a wi-fi network, it connects you through that. But if not, they use Sprint. And if Sprint isn't available, they switch to Verizon. (In Canada they use Bell Canada. In other countries, you need to look for wi-fi.)

2) You have a choice between Moto E, Moto G (1st generation), and Moto X (1st or 2nd generation); these are Android-based smart phones.

3) There are four plans; all include unlimited texting and calls; none require a contract; all have added taxes. For $5/month, you can just use it through wi-fi (an excellent landline replacement). For $10 you can also use it via Sprint and Verizon. For $25 you also get nearly unlimited 3G data as well. For $40 you get 4G data. You can easily switch back and forth between the plans up to twice a month.

Currently, I think I'll get the Moto G or maybe the Moto X 1st generation and start with the $10 plan until I find aps that make me want to switch to the $25 plan.

I love reading recommended books, and my sister likes Organizing Solutions for People with Attention Deficit Disorder by Susan C. Pinsky, which was at my local library, so I read it. She does have ADD and although I don't I still like this book.

That's because it's all about efficiency. You don't have to be ADD to like efficiency. You don't even have to be lazy to like efficiency.

So the most interesting thing was that even though I think I like efficiency, reading this book showed me that sometimes I like other things more. If you're ADD, maybe you should suck it up and realize that actually you like efficiency more. But if you're me, it's good enough to just make sure you're really picking what you like more.

I'm still being too vague.

Efficiency versus organization

Organization is important but it is not enough. My favorite quote of the book is where the author makes this very clear: "I could organize your shoes by putting all of your left shoes in the attic and all of your right shoes in the basement. Hey it's organized. But it is neither efficient nor convenient; in the end, it requires too much effort to put on your shoes."

Efficiency versus beauty

One thing that competes with efficiency is beauty, especially in all those organization catalogs. The author's first example is socks. The pretty way to organize your socks is to roll each pair and then store them in individual bins organized by color. (And if you are like me and my sister, you'll want them in rainbow color order.)

What she recommends instead is to: "Identify a sock style of a medium weight, suitable for year-round use, and purchase two dozen in black and two dozen in white. Throw out all of your other socks. Allocate one bureau drawer to hold all of your socks and only your socks. Now you have achieved an organizational system for socks that is quick, easy, and practical. Socks need never again be mated and sorted. They get dumped directly and willy-nilly from the laundry into the sock drawer."

My current system is somewhere in between. I do match my socks and I do roll them up (even though that's supposed to be bad for the elastic). But then I can throw them willy-nilly into the drawer. And actually I have three drawers: one for black, grey, and red knee socks; one for other knee socks; and one for short socks.

So my first reaction is to think, nooo! I like having lots of colors of socks! And if you have lots of colors of socks, then you really nead to pair them some way or another otherwise they're too hard to find later. So I already have the perfect system for me.

A later reaction was to imagine following this advice. Which two colors of socks would I pick? I think I have to agree with the author, only I'd also pick two different styles. I'd have black knee socks for wearing with pants. I already always wear black shoes to work, so that would be okay even though I wear several different colors of pants. Then I'd have white shorty socks, which I've actually noticed myself choosing on purpose most of the time because I'm too lazy to pick out another color. And again, I'm wearing white sneakers, so it's okay.

So what if I really had nothing but plain black knee socks and white shorty socks? I really could just confirm that they are mine rather than Robin's and throw them in a drawer. Enticing. A friend of mine who does something like this has also pointed out that if you lose one sock in a pair or if one sock gets a hole, you don't have to care much or even notice.

However, one problem is what if you buy a bunch of the same socks and then they turn out to suck? They wear out fast. Or they fall down all the time. Or they pill? Now all you have is socks that you hate. And seriously, I have not found the ideal sock at all.

If I could find the ideal sock, well, I still have socks that I love, but I could still ball those up in their own drawer but mostly have just black and white socks. Interesting.

**

She also recommends hooks over hangers, but I don't think hangers are that annoying (unless my closet is overstuffed).

And she generally recommends shelves over drawers--it's one less step to get to things and you can see where everything is. I'm already a huge fan of shelves for a lot of things, but I'm fine with drawers for the things I have in drawers.

And if you do have bins, they should be clear (so you can see into them and not have to make labels). And maybe they should be open in front so you can get things in and out without having to pull them off the shelf.

Basically, everything should be out in the open, even if it's ugly. So she likes utensils in crocks rather than drawers. She doesn't like things behind doors or curtains or anything fussy like that.

Efficiency versus money

The author listed several ways that spending money can help ADD folks stay organized such as hiring people to help and, in the sock example, throwing away perfectly good socks and buying new ones.

Mostly she is against stocking up when there is a sale because stocking up means you have more stuff than you need and makes it harder to find stuff you're actually using. She says to only buy groceries you're planning to use in the next week for example.

Efficiency versus preparedness

The author says not to buy stuff that might come in handy some day. "If you do someday have need of more, or something else, have faith that you are already prepared because you have the skills to procure it when you need it and the ingenuity to work around it if it can't be found."

I like that point. And it fit's in with Tam's notion that stores are a good place for storing things you don't need right now.

The author makes the point that time and sanity are what are in short supply in today's world more than money or things (for her audience, at least). It's a good point.

And so she is a huge fan of purging. So much so that I find some of the examples shocking. And maybe a bit horrifying.

Extreme efficiency

For example, you should have only four pots: "one fry pan, one saucepan, and two large cook pots."Or maybe six, in case you are often using an additional specialty item such as a wok or omelette pan. Ideally the cookpots are decorative enough to double as serving dishes. Then they can all easy fit into the cabinet with no nesting. And they can be stored with the lid on them.

(Wait, actually I do use only three pots and a frying pan plus one specialty item which I forget what you call it, but a thing you plug in to make a bunch of pancakes on.) On the other hand, I do have a lot of baking dishes.

Okay, better examples. She has a picture of a spice rack with only 10 spices on it. Admittedly, four of them I don't even use. But I do also want cumin, chili powder, rosemary, thyme, onion powder, garlic powder, vanilla extract, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. On the other hand, it's probably true that I have some spices that I'm unlikely to use before they get old. Like curry. And lemon extract.

She recommends that you reduce your food storage containers to five or fewer, and store them with the lids on. Right now I have my lunches for the week in four containers. I also have cheese in three containers (sliced cheddar, block cheddar, and crumbled blue cheese); I also had mozzarella yesterday before I made my lunches. I do like to have a bunch that stack and have matching lids that stack. On the other hand, those are all plastic, which we now know is evil, especially if you microwave your food in them. So I suppose I should be re-thinking this. I suppose it's like anything else--I could track what I'm actually using for a while and see what I really use.

Well, that's the great thing about extreme examples. These are examples of things that are actually working for real people even though they seem crazy at first glance. It makes it very clear that there is still plenty of room for improvement at my house.

Quote of the Day - From The Eco Cat Lady in "If This Is Normal, Call Me Crazy" who recently had to get into traffic and shopping at the same time as people who work standard hours do and also likes to listen to football on the radio:

'I get subjected to all sorts of ridiculous propaganda from the fossil fuel industry using fear tactics and threats of economic ruin to convince people how important coal and petroleum are to "preserving our way of life."

'Soooo... yesterday as I was fighting my harrowing battle against crowds and traffic, all I could think was that anybody who wants to "preserve" this "way of life" seriously needs to have their head examined!

'Honestly, it just doesn't seem to me that the harried existence of stress, and commuting, and crap food, and sleep deprivation, and generalized misery that defines the lives of most Americans is something worth destroying the planet for.

'Call me crazy, but I just think that there MUST be a better way.'

Bring it on, sister! Not that I really know what the better way is, but surely this isn't as good as it gets.

Article of the Day - The Oatmeal's Six Things I Learned from Riding in a Google Self-Driving Car - I'd heard of these kinds of cars but I didn't know Google was working on them. Interesting details. My favorite quote is a picture's caption: "Google's next generation of self-driving cars are your Marshmallow Overlords."

Six meetings this week.
Each one better than the last.
Worst one now over.

(That's calming and soothing just like a real haiku, right?)

Pun of the Day - From our Spanish teacher's extremely pregnant daughter - "Mom, the baby wants to come out, but she's not making any headway."

Cartoon of the Day - XKCD's Future Self - I really admire good commenting.

"# DEAR FUTURE SELF,
#
# YOU'RE LOOKING AT THIS FILE BECAUSE
# THE PARSE FUNCTION FINALLY BROKE."

Do read more--it gets better. Just like my work meetings.

Today's exciting news is that HEB let me return all the unopened packages I did not use for my colonoscopy prep. So in exchange for a lot of vile tasting liquids I am no longer motivated to drink (and a box of lemon jello mix), I got $7.50. And someone who likes those things can now buy them.

I spent much more than $7.50 before leaving, but all for things that I will enjoy.

Quote of the Day - "How do I get Julia [the dual-boot computer I am using for some of my Spanish assignments] to open in Windows, against her will, as if I am raping her?"

(I was told that it's not against her will, it's just not her first choice. My Spanish class is perfectly humane.)

My first Spanish class was today. At first I was a little afraid that our professor was going to be easily distracted into discussing unrelated issues. But she's okay. She does use some Spanish that she has not yet told us, but she mostly explains everything in English. And she likes to explain the actual meaning of things as opposed to just making us memorize phrases.

She has a good sense of humor. She probably has a good mix of toughness (no late things are accepted--we have to do what she says when she says it, etc.) and niceness - explaining things, correcting us, giving us second chances, answering questions (more than once if necessary). She wants us to actually learn Spanish and to enjoy the process. And she really likes some things about the language and the culture.

And she has some of the traits of my favorite dance teacher. She shows examples and counterexamples of how to pronounce things. And she tells us way more things than she expects us to remember and will tell us again--more things will stick each time.

Facebook Quotes of the Day

DK - feeling pained at Lewisville Family & Urgent Care - Getting checked out cuz of my migraine.

Bad news. .. doctor said he can't do a brain transplant. Gave me some ibuprofen 800 and some antihistamine? ?? We'll see.

Oh and now I get to start a diary of when I get headaches. Joy.

SB - You may find the diary useful in discovering your triggers. And once you know those, you can work towards avoiding them. I think one of mine can be poor diet combined with fatigue. And protein seems to help them.

DM - Also, it does not have to be a boring journal. Let's say, for example, that your migraine is named Gigantor. "I really wanted to get home to a nice relaxing dinner when all of a sudden, Gigantor's shadow fell across my head. 'This kitchen ain't big enough for the both of us' I heard him say as I crawled into the dark bedroom and curled myself into a tiny doodle bug shape. Gigantor appears to be a tiny bit afraid of the dark. ..."

Today I got to go to a health fair during my lunch hour. Really I think it was more of an employee benefits fair plus a few other random things.

Food

Usually people are handing out treats for various reasons at these kinds of things, and this was no exception.

I got two KIND bars from that company, one to keep and one to share.

I tried grilled zucchini and peach crunch bars from a place trying to get us to eat more healthily--the latter were good enough to pick up the recipe, but I won't be making that recipe. The first ingredient is 18 1/2 oz medium brown sugar. Um, no--I use measuring cups. Then there's 3 tablespoons of oleo liquid. I don't even know what that is. And this for "two full sheet pans" which I don't own. It wasn't yummy enough for all the conversions I would have to deal with.

Another place was handing out unprocessed foods. Wha? I got a small cup of almonds and a banana.

Then I also got popcorn, but that came with a hard sell from a funeral home.

Expo Dollars

Each booth was also giving out "Expo Dollars" for signing up for mailing lists, talking with them, or just dropping by and asking. When you collected enough, you could buy raffle tickets with them: one for each $20. I collected only $11. A co-worker later told me they rounded up and I could have gotten a raffle ticket. She actually told me in time that I could have gone back and done it. But, although I didn't look into the bags of things, it seems unlikely I would have wanted much of that stuff anyway.

The Expo Dollars are pretty. Maybe I'll give them away to my co-workers when they go above and beyond the call like we used to do with Registrar Bucks at an earlier job. You just write on them who it's for, who it's from, and what awesome thing they did. They won't get the second part where they can buy office supplies stamped with the Office of the Registrar logo on them, but I don't think that matters much. It's fun to get a silly thank-you card.

Rec Sports

You can pay to belong to basically multiple gyms on campus, but I don't. But I did get a one-day pass I can use sometime this summer. They are hoping we will try things out and fall in love.

Financial Check-up

My credit union was there. I feel like I already know everything about them, but I walked over to check. And I was wrong. I learned that you can get $20 for getting a "financial check-up" with them, which the guy explained involved looking over your credit report and seeing if they could make suggestions for improvement. I might look into that.

Insurance Discount

I saw the insurance company that I use for my homeowner's insurance there. Again, I feel like I know everything I'm interested in, but again I found out I was wrong. You can get a discount for working for my employer. I bet this is the same discount I just started getting for belonging to another credit union (for my HSA) and that you can't get both discounts, but I might not always want to keep that HSA. Of course I might not always want to work for this employer, either. I will be making a phone call.

I also asked if they sold earthquake insurance. At first the guy said it's super expensive and probably not worth it. I was surprised and said I thought it would be super cheap since we don't have earthquakes and therefore it might be worth it. He said he was thinking of California where the deductible is $10,000. I said that since their houses cost a million dollars, 10K is nothing to them. He's not what I expect from a salesperson! But he said they did sell it, and it's like flood insurance where they are a third party.

I've been mildly interested in earthquake insurance--we do have a fault running through town though we never have earthquakes. Still, things can change.

And now that fracking is taking over the planet, we might actually start getting earthquakes. The natural gas people will try to tell you that there's no reason to think that fracking causes earthquakes. But I remember when C. was studying environmental engineering in the late 1980's and his textbook said they tried deep-well injection for getting rid of toxic wastes but had to stop because it caused earthquakes. I feel sure that fracking is the same kind of thing. And they already knew this was true back then and were so sure of it that it was already in a textbook. And my state, as you may know, is not really into protecting its populous from business interests. I don't think our politicians even get that businesses could be a thing anyone could possibly need protection from--they are the givers of jobs! And that's all they produce, just magical jobs!

Prescriptions

I picked up a set of FAQs that explains, among other things, that I can transfer a prescription from a retail pharmacy to the mail order pharmacy (which sends three months worth of medicines instead of one month's worth and only charges you 2/3 as much). So there's another thing for me to do.

Body Composition

This measurement was the thing I most wanted from this event. I couldn't find the station after my first run-through, so I walked around again and finally found it hiding in the back. On the stage.

I've always been a good weight, but my percentage of fat has been unhealthy (too high) for several years now. I've lost a few pounds lately, so I was hoping this would be good.

And the answer is: No, still not good. I'm 34.2% fat and anything over 32% is considered unhealthy for women. And this is not one of those areas where I think that the conclusions based on averages are wrong for me--I've had a much lower percentage before.

So next I was wondering whether any of the weight I lost was actually fat or what? There's not much else I'd want to be losing besides fat. I could probably stand to lose some skin weight. But I want my muscles, bones, organs.

Anyway. I have measurements from three years ago. And my fat percentage is lower than it was then (35.7). I also weighed more then. Math shows that 2/3 of the weight I lost was fat. Okay, that's not too scary.

The lady at the station had advice for me though--strength training. She said even if you're jogging, you need to also be working your arms and shoulders. And she recommended checking out the CDC's exercise demonstrations, which are mildly interesting. She also recommended acsm.org (American College of sports Medicine) and acefitness.org (American Council on Exercise) as additional places to find reliable information. ACE Fitness has exercises by body part. She also mentioned eating lean proteins.

Neither of my exercise challenges have rewarded strength training, but you're only supposed to do it 2-3 times a week anyway, so I really don't have any excuses.

Quote of the Day - from a syllabus I had to review today: "No grade grubbing. I do not offer extra credit and I do not raise grades for begging. Preserve your dignity, work hard, and accept the grade you earn."

That draws quite a picture.

I have a bunch of things I want to share today, which means I need to make an entry.

But do you really want to hear about how I'm figuring out that maybe it's not just because I'm the ignorant new gal it work, and it's not just because I'm in a different office down the hall, but it may be the very nature of my job that sets me apart from the other people in the office? Basically, my boss wants students to get their "flags" from courses from our university. And my whole job is to help them get credit if they achieved the same criteria in courses from other institutions. My whole existence is basically suspect.

No, I didn't think so. Zzzz.

Blog entry of the day - Miser Mom's Rich in Socks - This blog entry packs a lot into just a few paragraphs--good writing, humor, realism, family, quality time, goals, victory, better-living tips, all topped off with a happy tear-jerker ending.

It gets better and better as you go on. I recommend reading the whole thing or, if you are highly squicked out by hoarders and the like, I will allow you to skip the first three paragraphs.

Here is a sentence from early on: "One consequence of N-son's vast collection of socks is that our home has become the Where's Waldo? of the sock world." That is a great sentence. But my favorite sentences need context. (Go forth and read.)

Spanish word of the day - emparedado - This means sandwich. I like sandwiches, so this is a good word for me, but it is strangely unfamiliar. So I looked it up. It also means "recluse." The verb "emparedar" means to wall in or confine. That has much worse connotations than our word for sandwich which just makes me think about how things are layered together. Not about how the filling is walled in and separated from the rest of the things on the plate, never again to see the light of day.

Interesting. How am I going to remember this word? It starts the same as empanada, but how will I remember the ending? I don't know.

If you are TexPenguin, that's not the Spanish word for the day after all; it's pinguino with an umlaut over the "u." Who even knew that Spanish had umlauts? I guess it lets you know that you are to pronounce the "u" after all, even though it is hidden behind a "g."

Quote of the Day - "Wooo! Indiana: treating humans with basic dignity since, well since this morning." - Jack Strauss

Indigo Rose will be happy to know that Robin and I really did go exercise after work today. We rode our bikes for the first time this year to our local library. Which was, of course, closed for MLK Day, so no resting, no drinks of water, and no new books, but we still dropped off four books, and that's four fewer grenades of overdue fines available to go off.

I panted. Even Robin broke a sweat. My quads needed stretching. Even though the library is pretty close (1.3 miles away), it felt like exercise.

In other news, I added two cups of blueberries to my banana bread recipe and used the batter to make a dozen muffins. They are not as tasty as raaga123's blueberry muffins, but I can pretend they are healthy. Which is good since that was dinner.

In other news, I requested a doctor appointment due to my continuing cough, just in case it's indicating something that needs doing.

(I almost named this entry "Bike Ride to Hell," short for "Bike Ride to Return the Book Hell Is Empty," but I like the new title better.)

Quote of the Day - "Running for exercise is one thing, but carrying a pack at altitude on broken ground through snowdrifts on snowshoes is something altogether different." - Walt Longmire in Craig Johnson's Hell Is Empty

This guy's situation got more different still by the time the book was over.