check up

At work we have the option of participating in health screenings to reduce our monthly insurance premiums so in the spirit of the great weight loss adventure, I decided to subject myself to two. The first was a measure of RMR -- resting metabolic rate. As I understand it, this tells you how many calories you burn just being alive. The number does not include calories burned walking around, brushing your teeth, eating bon bons etc. The second test was the body composition one which takes place in a pod like contraption. In both cases a piece of paper is printed at the end that tells you things you might rather not have known.... Actually the RMR was on the encouraging side. I learned that I have a metabolism between normal and fast. The bad news is that means weight gain is really a function of wine and other things... I can't moan about my sluggish metabolism being at fault. The bod pod test was pretty depressing and its numbers shall not be repeated here. The good news here is that I am not officially OBESE. Yay. However, I am also not "moderately lean" which is where I would like to be. You do find out how many lbs of you are non-fat though and the idea is to go back after losing weight and hopefully not have that number decline just the pounds of fat number. Its all about the baseline...

Summer already

It appears that we have gone straight to summer. It was in the 80s today and yesterday; Craig, bless him, got the swamp coolers running. I bought a chaise lounge and Sam has taken to it with a vengeance. Catherine is continuing to use the treadmill, which continues to inhabit the garage. Apart from the fact that it will probably get too hot in there over the summer, it actually isn't a bad place to have it. We are continuing to eat our strange diet concoctions and a lot of grilled chicken and salad. Results are amazing.

the great traveling spate ends

I made a whirlwind trip to Springfield Missouri at the beginning of the week to do another program review. And that concludes the weeks of travel that had me in Canada, England, Arizona and Missouri. I managed to get back up to Silver status on Delta. Now we enter the party season. Our work end of year party is on the 28th followed by goodbye for someone on the 10th, goodbye to our chairship dinner on the 12th, and of course my and Catherine's birthdays.
We have been engaging in serious dieting thanks to my old high school friend Joan who is our coach. We both decided to enter this summer looking fabulous so stay tuned.
To this end, I bought a treadmill yesterday which was delivered and is ENORMOUS. I have it in the garage as we contemplate how and where to put it in the house. The plan was to put it in the basement so we can watch TV, but I think we will end up banging our heads on the rather low ceiling....
Catherine is so dedicated that she used it in the garage yesterday.

yoga

Back to my weekly yoga night with Craig after two weeks away. I was achy. Apparently I groaned unacceptably during 'cat-cow'. I can confirm that I ended the practice with a wobbly om.

gem

My favorite Dear Abby type columnist is Carolyn Hax.

This was the concluding line of her column this morning:

choosing actions consistent with your goals is a path to happiness, unto itself.

I am a writer

Some of you may know that I have been trying to write for the past year - -in the genre called memoir of creative nonfiction. To motivate myself, I have submitted a couple of pieces to competitions. I haven't hit the jackpot, but was very chuffed to get this yesterday:

Dear Jane F. Hacking,

> Thank you for participating in the 2012 Summer Literary Seminars

> <http://sumlitsem.org/> Unified Literary Contest. It was our largest and

> strongest contest to date, with 1600 submissions received from every

> corner of North America and the rest of the world. The results have now

> been posted on our website: www.sumlitsem.org <http://www.sumlitsem.org/>

> .

>

> As indicated previously, we are offering a number of merit-based

> fellowships to the contestants whose work placed beyond the mean of this

> year's submissions. Our judges were strongly impressed with the work you

> submitted, and we are pleased to offer you an SLS fellowship, in the

> amount of a 30% tuition waiver. This offer is being extended to the thirty

> final runners-up in the respective categories of fiction, poetry, and

> non-fiction.

Welcome back

OK, back in Utah and ready to recommit to blogging.

Random thought: just like people seem to be either cat people or dog people, people seem to be either canister or upright when it comes to vacuum cleaners. Craig and I, as in so many things, do not agree. Do you all think it just stems from what you grew up with?

For Alison: I promised work gems.

Got back into the office on Thursday morning and asked Fernando what I had missed.

1) The guy who teaches Kmer is in hospital and unlikely to return before semester's end. Quick, find another speaker of Khmer qualified to teach....starting tomorrow. Done. We are that good (or, at least Fernando is).

2) Wife of Arabic instructor who is scheduled to teach conversational Arabic for us starting in mid-May broke both legs in a car accident while I was gone. Will not be teaching from her wheel chair apparently.

3) Faculty member who discovered this term that she has a hole in her heart (when I asked her if she had known this, she replied, "Well, I knew about the figurative one, not the literal one.") is not American and puzzled to learn that insurance will only cover the operation to repair the hole if it is large enough. If smaller than designated size, she must have two strokes first to qualify for surgery.