Put Myself on Diet

It was with surprise I stepped on a scale and found myself at 180 pounds. That’s a record for me, and not a good one. So I revived my old Joomla weight component, and made it track my weight on a daily basis. For historic reasons, I added a food diary, but stopped short of Joomlifying it.

What do you know, the new focus seems to be making a difference. Within a couple of weeks, I went down five pounds, and I plan on moving even more. What helped? I think it’s just the realization that consciousness of what you eat makes you eat less. Or, to put it in a different way, having to remember what you ate all day makes you want to eat less.

More Mice, One Man

After having to deal with the mice in my San Francisco house (a thing of the past, as you know now), I got to the house in Hawaii only to find that mice had bitten their way through all available screens. I mean, they could have just bitten their way through one screen and used that to get into the house. No, since they are not the brightest, they bit a little mouse-size hole into each screen that was available to them. Mental note: stupidity causes lots of damage.

Of Mice and Men

A while back, I started thinking I was becoming crazy. I mean really crazy, seeing things that don’t exist flitting around. Black things, to be precise. And then I got really surprised when it turned out I wasn’t crazy. I had a mouse in the house.

This little home is a haven for mice: the construction is a bit shoddy, and there are lots of crevices and hole through which a mouse can get into the foundation and from there easily to the main floor. I tend to be somewhat liberal with anal retentiveness (read: I am a slob ) and this probably made for a perfect match. I had a mouse.

CBR 600 RR

{moszoomimglink:cbr600rr_01_.jpg}Well, who would have known? After five years, I finally got myself a new bike again – a Honda CBR 600 RR. It’s a great bike, I always loved looking at it, and the only reason I had to do without a bike for so long was that I didn’t have a garage to put it in. Now I have it (have had it for a year), and it’s time to live dangerously again.

Escaped another bug

Looks like the cold season already started: everybody is reporting symptom of the common cold, like persistent cough, sinus infection, fever, headache. The whole nine yeard. This year, the cough seems to be particularly persistent.

Ken, my spinning class neighbor, insisted on coughing in my direction, and I got away with a mild case. Fortunately, my immune system recognized the attacker and reacted right away. I woke up feeling miserable yesterday, and by end of day things had started to get better. Today, working from home on a sunny San Francisco Tuesday, things are fine again. Well, except for the skin on my face, which looks like I am 15 years old again and pimply…

What does a beetle taste like?

So I was at Trader Joe’, buying raspberries. You know, those red buggahs that spoil within a day if you don’t notice they are molding? Well, I was going through the packages, most of them in advanced stage of rot, and found 4 that seemed passable. The best one had evidently been left out because it had a sizable black beetle in it.

At home, I place the berries in the refrigerator – some of them in the freezer, where they won’t rot – and make a mental note of checking the package out in the morning. I wanted to get the beetle out safe.

Needed CPR

Yesterday we had Castro Street Fair in town, and that meant I had to take MUNI to get to the gym. Not the best of experiences for a novice: I found myself putting the BART card in, only to hear that one is not valid in MUNI (what an idiocy!). Then I had to get change, since the turnstiles in the stations accept only coins and the changing machines only $5 and $1 bills. Sigh!

Stars, stars, stars

I woke up early again, this morning (around 2:15a) and decided I might as well stay on California time for the next week. So I went down to start the generato and realized the sky was perfectly clear.

An anemic sickle of a moon was shining its yellowish light from low on the horizon, and from Hilo an orange cloud poisoned the sky – undoubtedly the city lights, probably much closer Pepe`ekeo and not the real City. Otherwise, the sky was full of nothing but stars.

Crawling on 19

For those of you who know, Hawaiian driving is a bit of a surreal experience. There are namely three kinds of drivers in Hawaii:

1. Kama`aina, the locals; notable for a propensity to drive strictly speed limit
2. Malihini, the newcomers; always pushing the pedal to the metal in a quest to cut off 1 minute from their circumnavigational record of the island
3. An unnamed and unstereotyped group that drives slower than anyone would think possible.

{moszoomimglink:One of the highway bridges}Yesterday, I was driving on Highway 19 (Hilo to Honoka`a), when I suddenly hit the brakes for a driver of the third type.

Crazy blackbird attacks

Yesterday, I woke up with one of those stupid 1-day colds I get once in a while. I felt horrible, and by noon I needed meds. I pack up and drive to the Safeway. I remember to go to the Starbucks nearby, and just as I get out of the place, something scratches my head very briefly. Everybody around me is snickering.

I look around, see nobody. I look puzzled to the cute girl sitting at a table, doing her assignments. She smiles, points to somewhere in the air and says there is a bird defending a nest.