I'm somewhat sad about the fact that I haven't had a good story about my in-laws for a while. Or about Right-Wing-Conservative-Girl, but I haven't spoken to her much lately (which isn't neccessarily a bad thing).

The exercising is still going well, although I was completely un-inspired by my treadmill yesterday, but pushed myself and did 30 minutes. Today I did my (now) usual 60 minutes, so I'm proud of that. I've been listening a lot to Lenny Kravits during the recent workouts. No idea where this came from, but for your listening pleasure:



We had dinner with the in-laws tonight, and they seemed a little taken aback when I said I was skipping dessert. The husband skipped dessert, also (after being told by his dad {my father-in-law} one day last week that he was really getting fat and needed to start losing weight). It was amusing to see the looks on their faces at that.

Pay it Forward...

A friend who posts on Xanga (and who comments here as Just Me - I'd link her here but she's had stalker issues and prefers to keep things private) posted this challenge on her blog. I agreed to participate, so I'm posting it here -

The principle (if you’ve never heard of PIF) : Here are the rules: I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange, and who make the same pledge on their own blogs. I have an idea of what the gift will be, and you'll receive it within a month. You have to be willing to send me your mailing address to participate - if you're game, leave a comment and send me an e-mail with your address!

I ate a candy bar today, and I'm trying not to kick myself in the ass too much about it... slightly impossible, though, as I'm saddled with the guilt of a good Catholic (even though I'm Presbyterian).

I blame it on my boss.

She returned to work Monday from a 10 day trip to Ireland (she sucks). She brought back a gift each for my co-worker and I, a hand-made chocolate bar from some fabulous chocolatier in Dublin - what the hell?!? It lasted a day and a half on my desk before the 'I'll only have a small piece...' crap started... 5 minutes later, it was gone.

I just finished an hour on the treadmill to (try to) make up for it.

I remain cautiously optimistic that I can do this on my own, without having the bypass surgery. I was just reading some inspirational stories yesterday of women my age, older, and younger who have lost the same amount of or more weight than I need to lose, and did it on their own. If they can do it, I can too. I've decided that the only proper way to do this is to give myself some good incentive... after all, when you've got (clears throat to cover up actual number) pounds to lose, you need something really good to look forward to at the end...

I've spent quite a bit of time the last few days here, perusing their offerings, and think I've finally landed on this, if I can take off this - okay, I'll say it - 200 lbs on my own. If achieved, and provided they still offer it, I'll order this to be worn on the middle finger of my right hand - won't that be fabulous?

Yes, it's a decent chunk of change... but I'm worth it.

For Lori

Ah, memories...

And while searching for a picture of the Stay-Puft marshmallow man, I ran across this:

... which is just f-ing scary...

Cool foto editing

I wish I could take credit for manipulating the photo below. I found online a tutorial that walks through the steps to do something similar with Adobe Photoshop Elements, but I got to step two and decided it was too involved and I didn't have time. I'm all about instant gratification, you know.





So after some hunting, I found Foto Flexer. I have most of my pictures uploaded to Flickr (as evidenced by the photostream to the right), and Foto Flexer can connect right to your Flickr account. A few clicks of the mouse, and I was able to turn this

into the pop-art masterpiece you see below. I e-mailed the new image to myself to download into my picture files, and there you have it.

Of note: Foto Flexer does give the option to upload pictures right from your computer, without connecting to a Flickr, et al, account, but I was not able to get this to work.

Happy foto editing - be sure to post your results!

The job interview went very well, and, in fact, he has another one this coming Tuesday.



I become more and more obsessed with my digital camera and the endless editing possibilites that come with photo editing programs each day...



Hope you all are having a great Sunday!