Checks and Balances

Sometimes, it's just the little things that make me smile.


Like trying to balance my checkbook at almost midnight...and it came out to the cent.  


Now if only there was any money left over so I could buy myself something to celebrate the achievement.

12 Months?

My last blog post was in January!!  That was January from a frickin' year ago.  What the heck happened?  Was there some sort of time warp that made me miss the last 11 months?


No...it was just the usual thing.  Life got in the way.  Or, to be more specific - teenagers, work, friends, and housework got in the way.  Sheesh.


I used to love to blog.  I made so many friends from keeping an online journal (yes, Andi, I'm talking about YOU!).  So why would I slack off from something I enjoyed so much?  Pure laziness.  Just call me Queen Procrastinator.  


A year ago, I was freshly starting a new Weight Watchers diet.  To everyone's surprise (mostly mine), I stuck with it.  I'm proud to say that I waddle just a little bit less when I walk nowadays.  I lost 47 pounds...and gained back 8 of 'em.  So here I am, new year, but same resolution.  I'm back to tracking my points.  Hopefully, I can get that Wii Fit Bitch to stop groaning and saying "That's Oh-beeese!" when she weighs me every morning. 


I made some other small but surprising changes, too.


For the first time in my 43 years of slovenly living, I decided to start making my bed.  Like, every morning.  Sure, when I have a pretty girl sleeping in it, I decide to wait to make the bed until she finally wakes up for the day, but once my four-legged girlfriend finally stretches, purrs, and crawls out of bed to head for the litter box, I spend a minute or so making the bed look gorgeous.  I'm at 27 days in a row.  There is hope for my fellow slob-sisters everywhere!


One of the highlights of my year was having my dear friends, Michelle and Jim (and their daughter, Tessa) come to visit from Philadelphia.  It was a week of lots of food, a bit of sight-seeing, a few Yu-Gi-Oh/Magic card games, and lots of "I want to see Marvin the Martian!" comments from the little one.  


In the middle of the year, my work clientele practically exploded.  I went from having two offices (8 doctors) to having six offices (21 doctors!).  I've had to hire several more workers and things are going great.  My mortgage company probably has a heart attack every month when I actually pay a couple of hundred bucks extra on the house payment.  


Most surprising of all was that I gave up Facebook.  The changes they made in September or so were just so damn annoying and I hated wasting my time trying to maneuver the site to read what my friends wrote.  Try as I might to get friends to join Google+ (which seems to work just exactly the way Social Media should), very few would make the leap.  The irony is that everyone said "I don't want to go to Google+ because nobody is there"...but nobody is there because nobody wants to go there until other people are there.  Hmmph.  I was recently coerced into coming back to Facebook...but just on a limited basis.  Basically, I have time to make a quick post and glance to see if anyone has written anything interesting.  But I refuse to jump hurdles to read posts, so basically, I'm becoming a "status updater" instead of a "commenter."  I guess if my friends want me to read their updates, they'll have to post on Google+ where it is easy to read.  It sucks, but I only have so much time to goof off and FB just makes it too hard to get to the good stuff.


Anyway...we're back to a new year and that means hopefully updating this old blog more than once every 12 months.  

Diet Dessert Recipe

I found this recipe in a fantastic cookbook (the name of which will remain anonymous so that I don't catch the attention of their lawyers).  It was too good not to share:


Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes
 

Here's the easy-peasy recipe:
For cupcakes:
2 Cups Moist-Style Lemon Cake Mix (half of an 18.25-ounce box)
1 Cup Diet Lemon-Lime Soda (we didn't have Diet Sprite, so we used Fresca and it was just fine)
3/4 Cup Fresh Blueberries (divided)
1 Egg
1 teaspoon Baking Powder

For Frosting (and it was amazingly light and yummy!)
1 Cup Cool Whip Free - thawed
1/2 Cup Skim Milk
2 Tablespoons Lemon Sugar Free/Fat Free Dry Pudding Mix

Optional
12 additional blueberries for garnish

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Make the frosting first:  combine pudding mix and skim milk in a medium mixing bowl.  Using an electric mixer set to medium speed, mix for 1 to 2 minutes.  Let sit for 5 minutes.  Mix in the Cool Whip and refrigerate until the cupcakes are ready to be frosted.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the cake mix, soda, egg, and baking powder.  Stir until blended and lump-free.

Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with nonstick spray.  Evenly distribute cake mixture among the 12 sections.

Place half of the blueberries on top of the cake mixture in the cups (about 3 to 4 berries each).  Bake in the oven for 8 minutes.

Remove pan from the oven and evenly distribute remaining blueberries among cups, pressing down slightly to keep the berries from rolling.  Return pan to the oven and bake for an additional 7 minutes, or until cupcake edges are slightly browned. 

Let cupcakes cool completely, then evenly distribute frosting among the tops.  Add a blueberry to the top of each cupcake, if you like.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Makes 12 servings, each are 3 PointsPlus for Weight Watchers new program.

New Year, Old Resolutions

It seems like every year, January rolls around and I say "this is the year!"  My resolutions always involve my weight.  

Sure enough, I started Weight Watchers again (though I'm too cheap to pay for the meetings).  At first, I was just going to list everything I eat on my phone just so I could be cognizant of my intake.  But, there are just so many wickedly cool Android apps for counting Weight Watcher points that I decided to go whole hog (so to speak).

Speaking of hog...when you weigh as much as I do, it's almost a daunting task to actually consume 31 freakin' points in a day.  Yeah, 31.  And that doesn't count any "weekly flex points" or "activity bonus points."   Here it is, 10 p.m. and I'm munching on Ritz crackers just to try to hit my point level, and I still have 10 points left to blow.  

I also decided that I could only use my excuse of "too much work to do" for so long before I had to accept that I deserve a little bit of fun time.  So, I laced up my sneakers and did 30 minutes of Wii Fit.  It's a lot of fun, but I seriously doubt that it has much benefit in exercise.  It takes almost an hour just to get in the 30 minutes of countable exercise, but it's fun, so I'm gonna do it.  Pictures will NOT be forthcoming as seeing me swinging my hips to imaginary hula hoops is not a pleasant sight.  

I did have a pleasant surprise, though.  I looked back to see what my weight was on January 1, 2010.  On that date, I was 233.5 pounds.  A month ago, I was down to 218.  Woo hoo!  Admittedly, the Christmas snacking hit me hard and I'm up another 5 pounds again at 223.5.  But just realizing that I lost 15 pounds this year without trying at all (I certainly never had the time to exercise and I didn't diet at all) was amazing.  The only change I made was that six months ago I bought those Skechers Shape-Ups shoes.  I didn't think they'd help me lose weight, I bought them because they are comfortable.  But I'm convinced that those missing 15 pounds are from the shoes.  Now...I just need to stay away from the damn Christmas cookies so I can continue the downward slope.

Nookie Time

I bought my B&N Nook ereader in March.  That has resulted in a couple of changes in my life:

1. I no longer read magazines in the bathroom.
2. I no longer buy books (Nook lets me download ebooks from the library).
3. My TiVo queue has grown quite extensive as I prefer reading to watching TV.
4. I don't mind standing in line at the grocery store at all...it just means I get to read a page or two in my book.

But being the gadget guru, I'm always looking for the newest/best gadget out there.

After months of anticipation, Barnes and Noble finally announced the new version of their Nook ereader today.

Rumors were that it was going to be everything I wanted:

• 7 inches (instead of the 6 of the original Nook)
• Full color e-ink screen (instead of original black & white e-ink)
• Portrait or landscape mode (instead of just portrait)
• Full screen touchscreen (instead of just the 1-inch strip at the bottom)

Well, it didn't matter that my Nook was functioning perfectly well.  I knew I had to have it.  I planned to drive to Akron to pick it up as soon as it was available.

Today, they presented the new Nook Color.  What was announced was everything in the rumors...except...it is an LCD screen instead of color e-ink.

 

Nobody who has ever read on an e-ink screen will ever read books on an LCD screen.  First, you can't even see the screen if the sun is out.  Second, LCD screens flicker hundreds of times a minute...you just don't notice it, but your eyes do.  That's why computer work gives folks headaches.  

 Here's a microscope view of an LCD screen versus an e-ink screen:




Here's a magnified view of an iPad LCD screen




  




 And here it is on an e-ink screen












Plus, you can't read a book out in the sun on an LCD screen.  Go ahead, look at your camera or cell phone and try reading when the son is glaring on the screen.  On e-ink displays...no problem.

So, the bad news is that Nook Color is LCD.
But the good news is that since it is LCD instead of e-ink, I save $250.

So, no new Nookie for me.  I'd like to have color, but since I mostly read novels, black and white is just fine.  I will miss having the landscape orientation, though.  Sometimes, it's just nicer having the display wider than it is long.

Purple Power

Those folks on Facebook are always coming up with new ways to get a bunch of people to do something as a group.

We've had the "bra color for breast cancer" thing where you are only supposed to post what color your bra is (without any explanation other than posting the name of the color) and similarly the "purse placement" where you list the place in your house that you keep your purse (both of which I managed to be as sexual as possible by answering "nude" to the first one and "well, I don't like big ones, so I usually just go without" to the latter).


Today was "Wear Purple Against Homophobia."  With all the lesbians I know, I'm surprised there weren't any "purple-people-eater" comments, but maybe I'm the only one with that sick of a mind.


All four of my family members wore purple, but what surprised me was how many of my friends - married, single, gay, straight, young, and old - did the purple thing, too.  I have amazing friends!

Twilight Dreams

Two years ago, mom offered to make me a quilt.  All I had to do was pick a pattern and chose some colors and she’d do the hard stuff.  Am I lucky, or what?

What I didn’t realize was how hard it would be to find a pattern I liked.  I’m not a “traditional quilt” kind of girl and the concept of “scrap quilting” drives my brain bonkers.  I like things neat and organized and orderly (and for those of you who have seen my housekeeping abilities…hush!).

I scoured mountains of quilting magazines and books, and then I found the one I wanted.  It had the rather boring name of “Strips and Strings” or something like that.  But I fell in love with the picture.  It’s basically just a quilt that starts off in ivory/pale lavender and radiates darker towards the edges.

So, Mom started gathering material in varying shades of purple.

This is the center of the quilt.  

 

See all those strips?  

They become the individual blocks of the quilt.  I watched my mom make this thing from start to finish and I STILL can’t figure out how she could take a bunch of solid pieces of material and create this masterpiece.  She’s a quilting genius, I tell ya!

 

A few more of the darker strips going on the quilt.

The top is done!   

Since the only place big enough to pin together a queen-size quilt is the middle of our living room floor…down Mom goes to her hands and knees.  It’s awfully nice that Harmony and Melody are there to help. 

 

And of course, Harmony wants to help hand-sew the binding on the quilt, too.  (Melody’s there, too, but you can’t see her because she’s our “tunneling” cat and she’s buried herself under the quilt by Mom’s feet.)

 

And here it is…Twilight Dreams.   

Gorgeous doesn’t begin to describe it.  It’s ALMOST worth cleaning my room and making my bed occasionally just so I can admire it.