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Several random things make a post
Feb. 23rd, 2009 09:43 pmMemo to self: You know better than to download a new free computer widget right at bedtime. Especially one with a near-endless potential for time-gobbling. You know better. And yet you did it. So now you have an Apple dashboard widget for calculating beats-per-second of any song playing in iTunes and automatically adding the data to the song file. And now you have close to a hundred song tempos recorded. And now you have a set of playlists organized by tempo-group and a first experimental cardio workout playlist designed to match the song tempo with the desired exercise pace. But you know what? You didn't get to use that playlist in the gym this morning did you? You know why? Because you may not know better than to download software at bedtime, but you do know better than to get up to go to the gym on 5 hours sleep.
The preceding notwithstanding, I did go to the gym after work and gave the new playlist a try. I've been having problems with low energy during my morning workouts and had been blaming it on everything from shorting myself on sleep to exercising on an empty stomach to circadian mismatch. But I think the real answer is too much reliance on talk-podcasts and not enough rousing up-tempo music. New resolution: talk-podcasts are for weight training; cardio requires music.
Deja books: Recall how back last June I wandered into Lacis for some notions and fell upon a book entitled Kölner Patrizier- und Bürgerkleidung des 17. Jahrhunderts: Die Kostumsammlung Hüpsch im Hessischen Landesmuseum Darmstadt? Well today I wandered into Lacis for some notions (needed a nice peacock-blue buttonhole silk for the lacing holes on the new Gothic gown) and noticed that the aforementioned book now comes with an accompanying volume supplying an English translation for the main discussion chapters. When I asked if it were possible to buy the accompanying volume by itself (explaining my previous purchase) it turned out that they'd been supposed to be sold as a set but there had been a miscommunication with the supplier and Lacis didn't know about the second volume back when I bought mine. So I got volume II for free (or rather, for no additional charge).
Rain, rain, come again: Thank goodness we're finally getting some serious rainstorms. I think the paper said that SF was up to 90% of season normal at this point. (Of course, this isn't as positive as it sounds because there's still a lot of snowpack, aquifer, and reservoir depletion to be made up for, and that requires surplus, not just 100%.) But still, we're moving closer to target.
Freezer-container surprise: There are several useful purposes to actually labeling freezer containers with the nature and production date of the contents. On the other hand, life is an adventure. And green-garlic soup is just as interesting when made with salmon broth as it would have been made with chicken broth, or lamb broth, or beef broth, or any of several other possibilities for those unlabeled zip-locks. It would, however, likely not have been as congenial if made with the apple puree. Fortunately, those are labeled. I've been on a fanatic purge of the random freezer containers lately. Given my produce-buying habits, there are only a few things that make sense to buy and store frozen, and most of those are needless convenience (e.g., the bag of pre-sliced bell peppers -- simply picking up one pepper a week would take care of any incidental uses). I'm down to one more container of salmon broth, two quart bags of apple-puree-for-jelly (which must date to back before the second apple tree was taken out), and one sad slightly used back of frozen oriental veggies. To be kept are the zip-lock of lemon-juice-and-zest ice cubes from the last harvest of my lemon tree, the assorted bags of frozen berries (used in baking or smoothies), and of course such things as the whole-bean coffee. No doubt I'll come out of this downswing and fill it back up a bit, but food in the freezer tends to sit there longer than it ought and in general my eating plan centers around cooking only what I plan to eat in one meal, not on making multiple meals up in advance.
The preceding notwithstanding, I did go to the gym after work and gave the new playlist a try. I've been having problems with low energy during my morning workouts and had been blaming it on everything from shorting myself on sleep to exercising on an empty stomach to circadian mismatch. But I think the real answer is too much reliance on talk-podcasts and not enough rousing up-tempo music. New resolution: talk-podcasts are for weight training; cardio requires music.
Deja books: Recall how back last June I wandered into Lacis for some notions and fell upon a book entitled Kölner Patrizier- und Bürgerkleidung des 17. Jahrhunderts: Die Kostumsammlung Hüpsch im Hessischen Landesmuseum Darmstadt? Well today I wandered into Lacis for some notions (needed a nice peacock-blue buttonhole silk for the lacing holes on the new Gothic gown) and noticed that the aforementioned book now comes with an accompanying volume supplying an English translation for the main discussion chapters. When I asked if it were possible to buy the accompanying volume by itself (explaining my previous purchase) it turned out that they'd been supposed to be sold as a set but there had been a miscommunication with the supplier and Lacis didn't know about the second volume back when I bought mine. So I got volume II for free (or rather, for no additional charge).
Rain, rain, come again: Thank goodness we're finally getting some serious rainstorms. I think the paper said that SF was up to 90% of season normal at this point. (Of course, this isn't as positive as it sounds because there's still a lot of snowpack, aquifer, and reservoir depletion to be made up for, and that requires surplus, not just 100%.) But still, we're moving closer to target.
Freezer-container surprise: There are several useful purposes to actually labeling freezer containers with the nature and production date of the contents. On the other hand, life is an adventure. And green-garlic soup is just as interesting when made with salmon broth as it would have been made with chicken broth, or lamb broth, or beef broth, or any of several other possibilities for those unlabeled zip-locks. It would, however, likely not have been as congenial if made with the apple puree. Fortunately, those are labeled. I've been on a fanatic purge of the random freezer containers lately. Given my produce-buying habits, there are only a few things that make sense to buy and store frozen, and most of those are needless convenience (e.g., the bag of pre-sliced bell peppers -- simply picking up one pepper a week would take care of any incidental uses). I'm down to one more container of salmon broth, two quart bags of apple-puree-for-jelly (which must date to back before the second apple tree was taken out), and one sad slightly used back of frozen oriental veggies. To be kept are the zip-lock of lemon-juice-and-zest ice cubes from the last harvest of my lemon tree, the assorted bags of frozen berries (used in baking or smoothies), and of course such things as the whole-bean coffee. No doubt I'll come out of this downswing and fill it back up a bit, but food in the freezer tends to sit there longer than it ought and in general my eating plan centers around cooking only what I plan to eat in one meal, not on making multiple meals up in advance.
