Spreadin' The Love

I love reading Neil Gaiman's journal. Partly it's fun to see inside his world, but mostly it's that almost every single day he digs up some strange treasure from the Internet and lays it at my feet. I had a cat that used to do something like that, except with mouse entrails. Same difference, though.

So that's what I want to do for awhile... at least for a month. Every day or so, I'll share one thing that is making me happy.

Today I'm happy that I'm losing some weight. We're only talking about a few pounds, but these are the persistent pounds I picked up seven years ago, when I turned thirty. It was like, "You're thirty? Happy birthday! Here's your love handles."

The key to my recent success has been self-honesty about the calorie deficit between how much I eat and how much I actually exercise. Instead of the weight-lifting of my youth, I now focus on yoga. It's been great for my flexibility and back health, but it doesn't burn nearly as many calories. That's fine... but it means that I shouldn't eat like I used to. Recently I started using an iPhone application called Lose It! to track what I eat and how I exercise. The program is free and dead simple (the two key feature of most great portable apps), but it's really been doing the trick for me. I feel best about my weight when I am at 153 pounds, and right now I'm at 155.4 and falling. At the current rate, I'll probably be back to 153 pounds in another week or so.

Again Too Busy for the Blogging and the What-Not

Been too busy to blog. Things I'm doing:

• Writing. (See the word count. I am, if not the man, then at least a man.)
• Hanging out with writers.
• Preparing for a big ol' Christmas road trip of doom.

Somehow I inadvertently swapped my previous daily exercise habit for my current daily writing habit. That is not a good thing. I am now trying to do both in the morning. That basically means that I get up reasonably early, but I don't get to work until 10 AM. It is at these moments that I am grateful for my 12 years of higher education and my job. When you're the lone scientist in a small company, nobody cares what kind of hours you work.

Oh, and I resurrected two dead people. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to kill them again, though. (That may or may not be work related. I leave it to your imagination.)

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Today's writing totals:
Blog: 113 words
Novel: 517 words (character outline)
DAILY TOTAL: 630 words

DECEMBER RUNNING TOTAL: 9,050/15,500 words