When I woke up today, I realized I had a broken blood vessel in my eye. Yee, doggies. Nothing says attractive quite like that. I also realized I had not eaten enough yesterday and that my blood sugar was in the toilet. That too will set the mood for your day to be just peachy. As a relevant update to my previous post about zig-zagging calories, I am willing to admit it may be a placebo but for me, it seems to be working. I busted through my plateau and I’m very happy about that. However, I did discover that on my low day, I was not eating enough. (As my good friend, Bill, says, “A hard lesson is a good lesson.”) I’d assumed that because my low day was followed by my high day, it was all fine and the high day would help me stay on balance. Apparently, that’s not the case. I recalculated my zig-zag chart today so that I don’t have any lows that dip too far down. I am trying to make some better calculations too on calories burned during exercise and how many I need as a base level for basic metabolic function. I tend to underestimate things, even when wearing a heart rate monitor. I kinda feel like it’s a wise “ounce of prevention” situation. I need to stop doing that. It all comes back to: a) I don’t believe in people starving themselves and b) if you don’t have enough fuel, you can’t perform. I would rather eat more to be able to exercise more than eat less to do less.


http://realestate.msn.com/blogs/listedblogpost.aspx?post=1535986&_blg=1,1535986

I read this article today when it popped up on MSN and I have to say, I am not surprised. I think the bad economy and abysmal housing market have made it a convenient excuse for men to bow out of buying a home. I remember a date I had with a guy who told me that he’d always lived in apartments (he was 36, by the way) and would always live in apartments. I asked him why and he said he enjoyed not having the responsibilities and expenses of homeownership, he wasn’t handy or a DIY guy and he liked the freedom of being able to move when the lease was up. At that moment, I had a flashback to an ex-boyfriend who is, sadly, living the life I predicted he would be. About the time I was 21, I woke up and clued in that my boyfriend was on a road going nowhere fast. It’s sad but it’s true. He gave me the same speech as that date: he did NOT want the responsibilities of homeownership and he could picture himself living in a one-bedroom apartment forever. (!!!) He also said that the simple act of mowing the lawn was such an anathema to him that he’d rather be shot. I could foresee him driving a shitty car, living in either a small, shitty apartment in a sleazy area of town or renting a crappy duplex/rent house in a sleazy area of town, spending his disposable income on bullshit, never finishing his education and generally existing as a poster child for wasted potential. If I could fly back in time for but a moment, I would pat myself on the back for calling that one dead-on, balls-to-the-wizzall correct. Every single thing I mention in that list of horrors is true in his current life. So when this date made his plea about loving apartment living, I knew the date was concluded. Frankly, it was already dead in the water before that but his obvious lack of ambition and drive sealed my decision even more. I found it funny that he told me he had a $6000 television that was the size of an entire wall of his apartment living room and every other electronic gadget you can imagine yet it never occurred to him to take that chunk of money and apply it to a home down payment. If someone is willing to live in a roach-infested place where people have been shot at before just so he can enjoy a giant-ass TV, that tells me he is no way, shape or form getting a second date, LOL. Nor is he going to get more than 20 or 30 minutes of my time on the first date. It is what it is. It’s a shame to me that there seems to be this whole generation of dudes my age spanning, say, 10 years older to 10 years younger than me, that don’t appear to have much responsibility, drive, or passion. Nor do they know what I will call, for lack of a better term, old school dude skills. Like how to change a tire or the oil on a car; the difference between screwdrivers; how to fix things in general; how finances work, etc. If Gordon Ramsay is on a mission to get women back in the kitchen and learning how to cook again, then I am on a mission to get men back in the freakin’ garage so they can learn some basic handyman skills. As for the lack of responsibility and ambition, who the hell knows how that can be changed.