You know, I should recognize what it means to avoid the scale. It means that I know I'm putting on weight, but I don't want to acknowledge it, and often I succeed so well that I'm horrified the next time I step on. I have regained a substantial amount of the weight that I've lost since February (roughly half) and the time to stop and eat right is N. O. W. But this wasn't supposed to happen until after the holidays!

I've been too loose in my food choices lately (and Halloween candy kills me every year; I do sooo love Snickers!) and that will change. It has to. I do not want to undo the good that I've done.

On the pat-my-back front (huh?), though, I am still going to the gym three mornings a week and the gains there are undeniable. My back doesn't hurt (much) anymore, and more importantly, I don't have that little-old-lady hunch and shuffle when I've been sitting for a long time. I need a stretch, but then I'm fine. Four and a half months of progress. Of course, next quarter's class schedule means that it'll be impossible to keep the same schedule, but it looks like maybe I'll just have to get up at 5:15 two days a week. I already know that I simply can't wait until the end of the day to exercise; all I want to do is go home. What I do now is get up, dress in workout clothes, grab my bag that I packed the night before, eat something and then take off. I shower and dress and do makeup and all that stuff after the workout, before classes, and I'm in my office by 9:30. In the winter I'll have to be in my classroom by 9:00 without fail, but it's only 2 days a week that I'd have to get up that early, and we'll be getting up in the dark no matter what time the alarm rings, so... I have to keep it up, though.

What else is going on? It seems like too much and not enough all at the same time. I have a plot on RIT Island in Second Life that is almost finished. The folks at Online Learning call it, I think, "low-stakes experiential learning" and I call it "a way for my students to shoot each other without using my projectile launchers to do it." Seriously, one of the things that prompted me to experiment with Second Life was leaving my lab for three minutes one day, and coming back to find my students firing projectiles at each other and trying to catch them in their mouths. Yeah, I just heard the collective gasp of my employer's law team at the very thought. Well, on Second Life they can shoot each other with abandon (and cannons!), and still do a little physics at the same time. The air tracks that were built for me (in Second Life) simply are not doing what they should and will have to be scripted from start to finish (live and learn), and the ice rink is great for having fun, but it reflects the real world in absolutely no way. I'm going to have to think of some scripted activities for that, too, but hey. That's the whole point of the exercise. I'm disappointed in the way Second Life implements "physics" but that's not what it was designed for, after all. It just seemed like such a cool idea, and maybe it still will be, after I figure out how to work within its limitations.

Tonight was the Landmark Society's annual Rochester Ghost Walk. I've always wanted to go, and never had, so this year I made sure that I bought a ticket. I went by myself; my One True Love is on his way back from Toronto, having attended a Big Giant Geek Conference. (Something sponsored by Stack Overflow, actually, but I prefer Big Giant Geek) and it occurs to me that I don't really have a lot of "girl" friends. Never mind, it was a performance, so being tout seule was OK.

We gathered at a large Lutheran church near the site of the walk, and they divided us up into groups that left at 10 minute intervals. (Shoulda been 15 minute intervals from the traffic jams I was seeing behind us.) Luckily I was in one of the first, so we were a small group, about 20 people. It was dark, and cold, and raining; not a real downpour but it became steadier as the evening went on. We walked up one side of Arnold Park and down the other. Arnold Park was a very fashionable address in the mid-1800s, and most of the houses there date from 1840 - 1910. Lovely architecture, and I'm a sucker for historic architecture anyway. At 5 houses, we stopped and costumed actors (who were REALLY GHOSTS and didn't know that IT WAS 2009!!!) came out to tell us a story about some gruesome or ghoulish event in Rochester's past. Well, not a lot very ghoulish. Mostly not gruesome, either, but what the heck, it was fun. Cold and wet, but fun.

I think we should do a ghost walk on our street for the kids at the local elementary school. Not necessarily with local history (although, I say piously, it would be better for schoolkids if they were historically accurate), but maybe just good ghost stories.

I have been such a good girl about going to the gym! Since early July, I've been going 3X a week, missing only upon genuine provocation. And now I've made enough gains that I don't want to lose them. This weekend I experimentally went into an inelegant squat (I won't tell you what Paul said) just to see if I could do it, and I could! Easily. One of the reasons that I decided to keep going to the gym was because I felt like my legs were weak, and I refused to become an old lady before my time. And I can do it!

But it's cold an dark when I get up now; it was light in the summer, but the sun is coming up later every day. And tonight I left work in the dark for the first time. I was working with some students and finally realized it was 6:15; by the time I was out of the building and to my car, it was almost dark. Wah! From now on that's going to happen with increasing frequency and I hate it, really; getting to work in the dark and leaving in the dark. I don't know how the Scandinavians do it. But we were having lots of fun, the four of us discussing Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, shouting out answers and celebrating loudly when we were right.

More about other things including Second Life later, but right now I have fish to fry, metaphorically speaking.

Classes started 3 and a half weeks ago, and I have been swamped! I promise to update soon, I really do, but I've been so busy! This weekend should be a little better.

I hope.

Bye for now.

Last year, just about this time I complained that exercise wasn't making me feel good. It was making me feel tired and sweaty, and that was about all. It was very discouraging.

Well, as you may know from previous postings, I've been going to the gym three times a week since early July. I'm not doing a lot of cardio right now, I'm concentrating on strength, and it's beginning to pay off. Eight weeks, starting the ninth... and the work I was struggling to do then is easy now, and I feel good walking out of the gym. It's becoming a habit, so it's less and less of a struggle to force myself to do it. My back doesn't hurt anymore.

I still have a long way to go, a very long way, but I'm getting there.

I don't know, I just like saying death goat on a rampage.

OK, today I finished the schedule for the new course. A week-by-week, day-by-day schedule. So now I just have to create 7 labs, 8 homework assignments on Webassign, and some ancillary material. That doesn't sound so bad.

In other news, the gym was closed last week, so I had a week off, but I went back on Monday and today. I definitely have become stronger since I started on July 7. I just increased the weights, and I'm pushing hard by the last reps, but it's better. The best part is walking out.

Two more days in this week, time to work, then friends coming for dinner Friday, Saturday all day at church, Monday I go back for a meeting, Tuesday another meeting, classes start on Sept. 7. Yes, that's Labor Day.

My shoulder is getting lots worse. I don't know what I've been doing this summer, but my left arm is becoming increasingly useless. I was trying to put off the surgery as long as possible, but I don't know; maybe after the fall quarter is over. It really hurts. Wah.

I wish I had something more interesting to report. Sorry.

I did manage to finish one thing:

Before
After

Whaddya think? I really like the way it came out.

Last week my Lutheran denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, had its Churchwide Assembly in Minnesota. There were lots of issues in front of the assembly delegates, but one stood out heads and shoulders above the others. The vote wasn't the huge majority that I'd hoped, but it was definitive. Here are the resolutions, in the order that they passed:

• Resolution 3: “RESOLVED, that in the implementation of any resolutions on ministry policies, the ELCA commit itself to bear one another's burdens, love the neighbor, and respect the bound consciences of all." (Adopted 771-230 as amended)



• Resolution 1: “RESOLVED, that the ELCA commit itself to finding ways to allow congregations that choose to do so to recognize, support and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships.” (Adopted 619-402)



• Resolution 2: “RESOLVED, that the ELCA commit itself to finding a way for people in such publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church.” (Adopted 559-451)



• Resolution 4: This resolution called upon members to respect the bound consciences of those with whom they disagree; declared intent to allow structured flexibility in decision-making about candidacy and the call process; eliminated the prohibition of rostered service by members in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships; recognized and committed to respect the conviction of members who believe that the ELCA should not call or roster people in committed same-gender relationships; called for development of accountability guidelines; directed that amendments to ministry policy documents be drafted and approved; and stated that this church continue to trust congregations, bishops, synods and others responsible for determining who should be called into public ministry. (Adopted 667-307 as amended)

So what does all this mean? It means that the ELCA no longer requires its gay ministers to take a vow of celibacy. It means that gay couples in life-long, monogamous relationships (which is the church's expectation for het marriages too) will have their relationships nurtured and respected. It means that congregations who are wrestling with these notions will have their consciences respected as well; people of goodwill can and do disagree, and this is a hard one for some people.

I will be leading an effort at my church to get the conversation going, with the eventual aim of becoming a "reconciled" congregation, what the UCC calls "open and affirming." (I like the UCC language better.) That's going to be tough. So, for right now, I'm just going to bask in the what the leadership has done to bring us forward in love.

I hate sending serviceable stuff to the landfill. I have put the stupidest stuff up on Craig's List; small rolls of vinyl flooring, an old (not interesting-old, just crappy) chandelier, a tv that no longer worked, phones that sort of worked but not well... I list them for free, and someone always wants 'em.

But now I have fairly cheap hardware from my old hutch. The hinges work perfectly well, but they, as well as the knobs and backplates, used to be bright brass, but they've worn badly. They no longer look good, and I can't imagine that anyone wants them, but I hate to throw them out when they work just fine!

After the Apocalypse we're going to wish we had all this stuff back.

In the Saga Of The Old Hutch, I am happy to announce that I'm almost finished. The doors are being a pain in the butt, being all two-sided and all so that you have to do one side, wait for it dry, do the other side, wait for it dry, flip it over again and do a finish coat... well, you catch my drift. But the main sections are done, and the piece has been put back in place in the kitchen.

Before	Almost-After

Hm... looking at them side by side that way, it looks mostly like a change in color. Which it is, actually. I did trim the cornice board, which I contemplated not putting in. I had to, though, be cause there is a light bulb at the top, and it showed too much without it. The hardware is going to look completely different, and really good, I think. I ordered it from Lee Valley hardware, and it should be here soon. They are very efficient shippers. (Parenthetically, their print catalogs are the most gorgeous tool porn I've ever seen. I love tools anyway, but these photos are amazing. If you like tools, request a catalog. Srsly. I get the Woodworking catalog and the Hardware one.)

Anyway, almost done. Can't wait.

I went shopping at our local Wegmans today and bought a lot of things, including 5 cans of various vegetables for a cold salad. When I got home, I couldn't account for those five things, which had been bagged together. So, back to the store I went.

Looking among the baskets in the cart corral, I didn't see any carts with bags forgotten in the lower level. I went into the store and asked the young woman at the service desk if someone had turned in a bag of canned veggies left in a cart. I told her I knew that it was a long shot, but I had to ask. She looked around, didn't find one, and I showed her my receipt and pointed out which items I'd lost. She told me that because they were small purchases that I should go and replace them, bring them to her, and she'd put "paid" stickers on them. Well, that was nice! It was my problem, my fault, but they were going to give them back to me free! Cool!

So, I went to the shelves and picked out the same products and headed straight back to the service desk. As I was walking back to the desk, I met the same young woman... carrying my bag of vegetables! Someone had actually found them in the bottom of a cart and turned them in! She and I laughed as we traded identical cans (and why did we do that, I wonder) and I left, happy that I live in Rochester. To tell the truth, I wasn't surprised, just pleased.

Mom, Paul keeps harshing my buzz!

At the Auburn Great Race (read all about it here and here) I watched a whole lot of people, from elite, toned and machine-like-in-their-perfection athletes to overweight moms and toddlers compete in a run, bike and paddle race. I was there as support staff to the Gasping Geezers (who neither gasped nor geezed); I carried towels, held onto backpacks and cell phones, reminded a certain paddler to get hydrated before he started paddling and sort of made sure everything they needed was there. And I watched.

I met the wife of a colleague who was competing (he is a world-class kayaker, no exaggeration; former Olympian) and oh my. She's probably younger than I am, let's say by about 10 years? He is younger by about 3 or 4 years, and they have college-age kids. But she is in the best shape that I have ever seen any woman... probably ever. She was competing in a casual way in the short course with her daughter; she was doing the run AND the bike parts, and she'd just run a race in Buffalo the day before. Now, you don't get that way without starting young and maintaining it, but still, when I was at the gym this morning I kept remembering how she looked, and envy is apparently a great motivator. Paul keeps snickering, and of course he's right; if I want to look like that, I'd better quit my job, hire a trainer and go at it full time. But I can get closer to that ideal, and maybe closer than I think I can right now.

It's good to have inspiration. I want to look more like her and less like I do now.

So talk me up! Let's hear it for workouts! And quit laughing at me!

This morning I began my planned week of pushing my reps up 50% at the same weights to see how it feels. It feels OK. Next week the weights go up and the reps back down.

I have to baby my left shoulder, though. I'm trying to figure out when would be the best time to have it surged, both my my life and my work schedule, and "never" is coming up with disturbing frequency. Well, it won't be this fall, for sure, so I'll stop worrying about it for now.

We had the house painted last year, and it looks great. The painter didn't do the front door, because I wanted to see if there was nice wood underneath all that paint; the people next door have a finished wood door and it looks very nice. So I thought I'd see if ours could look as nice.( Cut for picture-heavy boringness. )

I am still not under enough deadline pressure to get this course really done. And I've wasted a great deal of time because I didn't commit to doing anything else, because I had to work on this course. So I just hung out in limbo. Well, no more. I'm not going to get anything done for a while on this course, and that's fine, so I might as well do something else that I CAN do.

So today I went and got more paint remover for the front door. Three weeks ago we took it down and I tried stripping it in the yard, but dayum it was hard! It was warm, so the paint remover dried way too fast. I tried covering it with plastic, as the guy at the hardward store recommended, but it was also very breezy those days, edging into windy, so the plastic drop cloth that I was trying to cover the slimey door with just puffed and blew in the breeze. It was infuriating. So we've been using a door that has 80% of its paint removed. It actually looked kind of artistic that way, but not for this house. A weather-beaten saltbox on the shore, OK. Not here.

So I painted the Peel Away^tm on the door as thickly as I could and covered it with plastic and taped it down. It's working overnight, and we'll see what's what tomorrow.

I also went and bought primer, paint and new hardware for an old, white melamine-covered china cabinet that I've had for about 15 years. It was fine in my old kitchen, but it's too country for this one. So, I'm going to paint it and swap out the hardware and see if I can't make it a little more Arts & Crafts than it is now. Before and after pictures will be provided when there's an after.

I also made saag (Indian-style greens) for dinner tonight. Saag is one of my very favorite Indian dishes, and I'm damned if I can figure out what I'm doing wrong. My saag tastes OK, it's fine. But I'd never order it again if it tasted that way in a restaurant. I'm using a recipe from an Indian cookbook; I don't know what it is. But I'm disappointed. If I could get it right, we'd eat it a lot more often than we do.

I have been slowly putting together a new course for the fall quarter. It's about everyday physics, and it's aimed at students in the arts and business programs. They need one science credit to graduate, and many of them are science-phobic. Many have had bad experiences in science classes, and they avoid it as much as possible, so I'm starting from a negative position here.

Part of the problem is that I do not work well without a deadline breathing down my neck. I have been trying to put this course together for weeks now, and I've done hardly anything. My thoughts scatter and I end up doing other things, like Second Life or... um, posting in LiveJournal. But time is getting shorter, so it's getting a little easier to concentrate.

Let's see. Simple machines. Work in = Work out. Levers. Pulleys. Yeah, that can make for some fun times in lab (lots and lots of lab in this course), and I have the equipment I need already. I'd really like to build a big see-saw ("teeter-totter" for the Midwesterners out there), but that will have to wait. I'd really like to have a pulley arrangement that the students can use to haul one of their own to the ceiling, but I don't know how to do that. Well, yes, I know how, but the actual material specs escape me. I'm a physicist, not an engineer! And OSHA would probably require NASA-like levels of safety provisions.

Energy. Kinetic, gravitational potential and elastic potential energies. Interesting, a little more complex to demonstrate. Gotta work on that. Maybe I need a trip to a bookstore! Borders!

Conservation of energy and simple harmonic motion. That sounds like a quarter's worth of fun fun fun!

I need lab activities.

Why am I still here?

Yeah, Baby! We spent the weekend at the 1880 House in Pulaski, NY with the Paddle Power group from the Huggers Ski Club (yes, really, shut up). We had a great time.

We left Friday morning, dropped the Dread Pups at the Petshotel^tm and took off under lowering skies for Pulaski (which, by the way, is pronounced "pull ask eye" and no one can tell us why). We arrived first, climbed the stairs to our room and then descended to the kitchen for soup and home-made bread. The others started trickling in shortly thereafter and we, after a fairly protracted discussion, took our kayaks north to the Lakeview Pond and headed south, through a long channel to Sandy Creek, and thence to the shore of Lake Ontario. The pond and the channel were awfully weedy. Really, very very weedy. Every paddle stroke picked up ropes of weeds wrapped around the paddle blade and the shaft. Lord, Lord, it was a mess! Once we were into Sandy Creek things cleared up amazingly and it was a very pleasant float to the outlet to Lake Ontario.

And then we had to go back to where we'd left the cars. Sigh.

Back at the B&B we got back with the bikers and hauled out the munchies and beer and spent the evening eating and talking until about 9:00. We headed down to the Firemen's Field for a little carnival and fireworks. Small town America.

In the morning we met for a great breakfast (pumpkin pancakes!) and then went out to another put-in for Sandy Creek. The morning started off chilly and cloudy, but the clouds burned off and by the time we got to the outlet to Lake Ontario it was hot and sunny. Sadly, it seemed as if the pleasant beach we'd shivered on last year had been taken over by geese, which is not bad until you think about what geese leave behind. In abundance. There was also a large group of kayakers from Syracuse who clearly had planned better; they paddled straight past us, out into the lake and around the corner to a beach that the geese hadn't found. We walked up the beach a bit though and found an unsullied stretch of soft sand.

I remembered my bathing suit this year (yay!) and so managed to actually get into the lake and ride some waves. It was easier when I was a kid and the waves were ... higher than they seem to be these days (I blame global warming), but it was fun. I didn't have a spray skirt or a paddle tether so I didn't take my boat out into the lake; I was pretty sure I'd get dumped, so I settled for swimming while Paul road the surf in his boat, looking very pleased. He swears he was saying "Wheeeee!" as he rode the breakers into shore. He probably was. We ate lunch, made sure we were all sun screened adequately and enjoyed the sun and sand and water.

We packed up, paddled back to the put-in, and just kept going for a while. Finally one of the other women and I pulled in close to the edge under a tree where we held onto some branches to stop us from drifting and chatted until the boys came back to look for us. We went back to the parking area, and drove back to the B&B.

That evening was the parade! Fire departments with shiny trucks! Marching bands! Girls twirling flags and batons, wearing shiny dresses and sequins! Floats! Tiny little girls in black leotards marching earnestly, waving tiny batons! We sat curbside with our drinks and chips and cheered loudly at every new group.

After that, we ate a fantastic dinner cooked by the innkeeper, took a walk, chatted out on the front steps because it was cooling off nicely outside and must have been 95^oF inside the inn. I finally succumbed to the exercise, liquor and food and turned in at about 10:30. We could hear people out on the patio chatting and laughing as we fell asleep in the air conditioning.

We awoke to thunder and rain, so we all had another great breakfast, packed and skedaddled.

We are home, dogs are redeemed, dinner is eaten and all's well with the world.

Little Buddy is getting frailer and smaller every week. I have to have him groomed; his fur is disgracefully matted and I don't think he's comfortable, so next Tuesday in he goes to Meesha, who takes very good care of him. He doesn't look quite real, now. He looks like a stuffed dog. His eyes look like opaque marble and without the sense that he's actually looking at something, it's easy to mistake him for a toy.

Paul has pointed out that he's passed a couple of the milestones that I set a long time ago for knowing what it was "time." But they're more bearable than I thought they would be. He still likes his food, he goes out and sniffs the grass and the air, wanders around. When I tell him it's dinner time his little tail vibrates. He hustles across the living room, limping from arthritis, navigating Roomba-style, heading for the room where his kibble awaits!

No, it's not his time yet. But the day is growing closer, of course. His vet says he's basically very healthy for an old, blind, deaf, arthritic dog. I don't know. He seems thinner, although he's still eating, he wakes up and pants in the middle of the night. Is he in pain? He doesn't cry.

My little doggie.

Another long, unexplainable gap. I don't know why these happen. I have been fine since May 28 when I last posted, but June was an extremely busy month, and I got behind. The long I go without posting, the harder it is to pick it up again. But I'm here, I'm fine, lots of stuff happening.

Let's see, in early June I went to visit dinkinsmom and family; two nephews were graduating from high school and middle school. As if this weren't enough, my niece Katy and her handsome husband Jason and their little new son Jake were visiting, so you couldn't have kept me away with weapons. Katy and Jason are relaxed and loving parents, and we managed to persuade them to go downtown for a day without us, leaving little Jake with the old aunties who, we assured them, hardly ever killed their own children when they were infants. Between Jake and his parents, the graduations and a lot of graduation parties, the time flew. But we'll see the Dinkins family again when they roll through here after dropping their elder son at Cornell in August.

We spent Father's Day with Mr. OddP's dad and stepmum in Ontario. His brother and wife were also visiting, and it was good to see them. They live in British Columbia and we live in New York and those facts have conspired to ensure that meetings are few and far between. In fact, the last time we saw them was at our wedding, 12 years ago. The men took us on a sentimental journey to see the places they'd lived and gone to school as boys. We quite enjoyed ourselves; I love historical tours even if the history is significant only to a few. We got a tour of an elementary school by the principal, who was still dressed in tie-dye and a bandana tied around his head for 60s Day ("Wow, principals have changed since I was a kid!"). I think he was kind of interested too to know how things had changed since the actual 60s. I was mildly bummed that they didn't have class pictures from that far back. I remember the pictures on the wall of my elementary school when I was there in the late 50s and early 60s. Those pictures dated from the 40s!

Then I was in Raleigh for a day or so at a workshop series on the online homework and testing system I use. You'd think that would be no big deal, but I love these meetings. The company is still small, I was an early adopter so they know me and greet me personally, and they listen carefully to their users. Plus, its a pretty good system!

OK, work to do, more later.

Seeya.

No, really, I'll be back. I promise.