I think I survived the eatathon

[bill_schubert]

When I go to Seattle my sister and I tend to eat way too much. It is pent up restaurant desire. @susandennis generally watches between visits for places we should go and then we gorge. Most of the trip is figuring out what to do until the next meal. It is really fun, like being on a cruise without the water and all the people all the time and the noise and all the people and the 'must have fun' and all... OK, it is nothing like a cruise but for the food.

On my return I had decided not to weight myself for a week. No need to be too depressed. I made it to yesterday. It turned out I was one pound over my top end acceptable weight of 212. And today I'm at 211. I give a lot of credit to Noom. The program taught me a lot about awareness and acceptance and water. I can generally tell how much I'm eating and whether I need to save room for the dinner I planned or can splurge a bit. I track my calories and type of food consumed in my head and could guess plus or minus 10% what my daily caloric intake is without thinking too much about it. And stressing even less. It is nice. I still want to get down to 200 and may make it but I'm not worried as long as I stay near where I am now.

On a separate note. It does look like a it is going to be another disappointing wildflower year. As I said yesterday there are some very small ones:


But what is normally a large patch of bluebonnets is small this year and the flowers are not very large:


This has, in the past, been three times as big full of flowers that are much larger.

It is the impending drought.  They are talking about water restrictions already and I suspect it will be a year of them followed by a permanent situation.  We have drought tolerant grass that grows with very little water.  In fact the weeds tend to die from drought while the buffalo grass does well.  That part is nice.  We have pretty drought tolerant plants too.  But I miss the flowers on our morning walk.

Comments

[susandennis]

I waited until today to get on the scale. I'm down 2 pounds from before you arrived. I think we got some kind of Druid magic waiver. Also today I remembered the Met pork chop/baked pot in the freezer. They will be liberated shortly.

[bill_schubert]

That is funny. We didn't save you as much food this time. Poor planning. Should have gotten bigger steaks.

[susandennis]

yes. nearly total fail this time. our leftover game was way off.

[susandennis]

But!! but but!! when i went to get the pork chop, i found a bag if chicken wings and okra! air fried them for lunch. deeeelish tomorrow the pork chop

[beautiful_dreamer_02]

Thinking about your wildflowers (or, domestic garden beds.)

There's a chap in Africa who is reclaiming desert land and converting it to green, arable space however many square feet at a time using a method similar to hugelkultur. If I don't mis-recollect, he's burying, I've forgotten how deep, critter manure and straw and any odd bits of twigs and tree or shrub branches he finds.
The technique is valid: there are indigenous populations on that same continent who live in places where rain falls for only one relatively brief period of the entire year and who farm by "storing" water in such beds.

It does take work, but it can be done. A community endeavor, maybe?
I admit I don't know what happens after the bed finally decomposes itself into humus instead of acting as a sponge (the principle behind hugelkultur, I believe.) But, if y'all are adding horse/cow/chicken manure and straw and the windfall after storms to pits and then back filling those pits, you can enlarge one bed every year until you have quite a lot of space covered. Er...conditioned.

(O.K.: rambling on in someone else's journal.... Quiet, now.)

[bill_schubert]

An interesting thought. I like the concept.

[beautiful_dreamer_02]

Lol, oh, to be damned by vague, backed courtesy: "Interesting." I remember hearing a story about a bagpipe band holding a fundraiser (for itself, which I guess wasn't considered a bad or selfish thing) to which it had invited members of another bagpipe band which had just done the equivalent of earning silver in the bagpipe band Olympics (except that it's a yearly thing for their competitions.)
The host band officers and members (of what is called a "street band") really couldn't hear the difference between them, and the world-calibre silver-medalists. Host band performed at an intermission for the evening in a low-cielinged, "hard surface" room with no two reeds of their fifteen-piper band (that's sixty reeds, folks) at the same pitch at the same time, and one of their officers then strutted up to one of the invitees and proudly demanded, "Well? Whadja think of [their performance.]" And the piper he'd asked almost choked on his Scotch and water and then answered, "Interesting! I never realized bagpipes could sound that way."
Host band dude was delighted at what he presumed was a compliment (as it was intended to sound---I was acquainted with the "complimenter," so I know he was being sarcastic and tactful at the same time but I hadn't been aware he could be quite so bitchy) and hurried away to report their success to the other band members.

I've used that word, "Interesting..." and let it trail off, when requested to comment or opine, but almost frantic not to have to tell a bald and hurtful truth. (And I just know you're going to twit me by replying, "Interesting..." to this comment; dare ya to come up with something more original!)

Did I mention that I like the concept, too, only haven't needed to use it---yet?

[bill_schubert]

I've always thought that bagpipes have go go a ways to work up to being 'interesting'. But I don't like scotch either.

[beautiful_dreamer_02]

Eh.
I've heard it said that one either loves bagpipes or hates them; there's no middle ground.

Re: Scotch, it's said in Scotland that two streams less than twenty feet apart from each other will give you two completely different tasting whiskies, and Scotland does have a lot of streams and a lot of whiskies.
You've traveled, so I imagine you've had plenty of opportunity to sample various Scotches in their native land? In America, most Scotch is blended for American tastes, meaning, essentially, no taste.

[mollywheezy]

The wildflowers, especially the bluebonnets, were one of my favorite things about living in TX.